T. Gorton

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Reserving the right to object, I ask the leader, does this mean we will start the actual debate on the Interior bill later today or will it be tomorrow?

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I take the floor of the Senate today to tell you about the hard working teachers, faculty and parents of the Wellpinit School District and their efforts to improve their children's education by bringing technology to the classroom. For their dedication, I am delighted to present the Wellpinit School District with one of my ``Innovation in Education'' Awards. The Wellpinit School District is located on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington and educates 440 students of which 95 percent are of Native American descent. The K-12 school has already far exceeded any other rural school in Washington state with its efforts to boost the use of technology in the classroom. Under the direction of Wellpinit's Board of Directors and Superintendent Reid Reidlinger, Wellpinit implemented an innovative program that includes increasing student access to computers and improving students' use of the internet and intranet. Wellpinit reconfigured its curriculum, integrating it with a computer program that allows students from both elementary and secondary grades to access an individualized instructional program for any core subject. The computerized curriculum has been highly effective in increasing national test scores. In fact, Wellpinit was named the highest achieving Indian Reservation school based on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Wellpinit has also been selected as one of America's Top 100 Wired Schools by the editors of Family PC Magazine. Earlier this year, I awarded Quillayute Valley School District one of my ``Innovation in Education'' Awards for developing the Washington Virtual Classroom Consortium (WVCC), which links rural schools together via the Internet in order to pool resources and expand learning opportunities for students and staff. Wellpinit has joined the WVCC to further enhance the educational opportunities for all students. Superintendent Reid Reidlinger told me, ``Wellpinit has been a model for other schools. Federal grants have helped with bringing technology to our district, and as a result, we have very advanced students.'' I commend all those who have contributed to Wellpinit's technology plan and ask that the Senate join me in recognizing the hard work and commitment of the students, teachers and faculty at the Wellpinit School District.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I am glad that the U.S. Senate is finally passing the Transportation Worker Tax Fairness Act. This bi-partisan legislation, which I introduced with Senator Murray, will ensure that transportation workers who toil away on our nation's waterways receive the same tax treatment afforded their peers who work on the nation's highways, railroads, or navigate the skies. Truck drivers, railroad personnel, and airline personnel are currently covered by the Interstate Commerce Act, which exempts their income from double taxation. Water carriers, who work on tugboats or ships, were not included in the original legislation. This treatment is patently unfair. The Transportation Worker Tax Fairness Act will rectify this situation by extending the same tax treatment to personnel who work on the navigable waters of more than one state. Mr. President, this legislation will have no impact on the federal treasury. This measure simply allows those who work our navigable waterways protection from double taxation. This matter came to my attention through a series of constituent letters from Columbia River tug boat operators who are currently facing taxation from Oregon as well as Washington state. I am committed to securing this relief for my constituents, as well as hard working tug boat operators across the nation, before the end of the 106th Congress.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I am authorized to yield myself time from the time reserved for the Senator from Utah.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 765, S. 1929.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the committee substitute be agreed to, the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Senator DeWine has an amendment at the desk. I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent the amendment be agreed to, the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask consent that there now be a period for the transaction of routine morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business, using such time as I may consume.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I wish to speak on a subject in a happy vein. Yesterday, the President sent a letter to the Speaker and to our majority leader on the subject of prescription drugs. In that letter he said: I urge you to send me the Senate legislation to let wholesalers and pharmacists bring affordable prescription drugs to the neighborhoods where our seniors live. That proposal was passed by the Senate a couple of months ago as an amendment to the appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture. It was sponsored by my colleague from Vermont, Senator Jeffords, and by Senator Dorgan of North Dakota on the other side of the aisle, others, and myself. It is one of two or three ways that I have determined to be appropriate to reduce the cost of prescription drugs--not just to some Americans, not just to seniors, not just to low-income seniors, but to all Americans--by ending, or at least arresting, the outrageous discrimination that is being practiced by American pharmaceutical manufacturing concerns that are benefiting from American research and development aspects, benefiting from the research paid for by the people of the United States through the National Institutes of Health, but still discriminating against American purchasers by charging them far more--sometimes more than twice as much--for prescription drugs than they do for the identical prescription drugs in Canada, in the United Kingdom, in Germany, New Mexico, and elsewhere around the world. The proposal by Senator Jeffords and others to which the President referred at least allows our pharmacies and drugstores to purchase these drugs in Canada or elsewhere when they can find identical prescription drugs at lower prices than the American manufacturers will sell them for to these American pharmacists, and to reimport them into the United States and pass those savings on to our American citizens. I don't often find myself in agreement with President Clinton, but I do in this case. I believe he is entirely right to urge the Speaker and the majority leader to include this proposal in the appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture or, for that matter, any other bill going through the Senate and the House of Representatives, so that we can take this major step forward to slow down, at least, this unjustified discrimination in the cost of prescription drugs to all Americans. In this case, I join with the President in asking both the Speaker and our majority leader to use their best efforts, as I believe they are doing, to see to it that this overdue relief is in fact offered.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the Supreme Court, with eight of nine Justices concurring, has just agreed with Microsoft that the notorious prosecution of Microsoft by the Department of Justice should go through the normal process of appeal and should be determined and should be examined by the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals before any possible or potential appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. This was a correct decision for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the complexity of the case and the length of the record which, under almost any set of circumstances, would go through the normal appeals process. The district court judge who decided the case and who has determined, I think entirely erroneously, that Microsoft must be broken up, wished to skip the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, stating that this matter was of such importance that it should go directly to the Supreme Court. The real motivation of the lower court, I suspect, however, was the fact that one of the vital elements of the district court's decision is directly contradictory to a decision of just about 2 years ago by the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals--the integration of a browser/Microsoft operating system, a major step forward in technology and convenience for all of the purchasers of that system. It is easy to understand why the district court judge didn't want to go back to a higher court that he had directly defied, but that is no justifiable reason for skipping a District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court, I am delighted to say, agrees with that proposition. This matter is now on its normal way through the appeals process, a process that I am confident will justify, in whole or in major part, the Microsoft Corporation, but only at great expense and at a great expenditure of time. Once again, I call on this administration or on its successor to see the error of its ways in bringing this lawsuit in the first place. It has been damaging to innovation in the most rapidly changing technology in our society, one that has changed all of our lives more profoundly, I suspect, than any other in the course of our lifetimes. It is immensely damaging to our international competitiveness, encouraging, as it does, similar lawsuits by countries around the world that would love to slow down Microsoft's competitive innovation so they could catch up. This is a field about which 10 or 15 years ago we despaired. Today, we are clearly the world leaders. For our own Government to be hobbling our own competitiveness is particularly perverse. It opens up the proposition that innovations in software will have to be approved by Justice Department lawyers before they can be offered to consumers in a way that seems to me to be perverse. It doesn't take a great deal of courage to say that I trust Microsoft software developers in their own field more than I do Justice Department lawyers. At best, this was a private lawsuit, effectively brought on behalf of Microsoft competitors but being paid for by the taxpayers of the United States, where it should have, had it gone to court at all, been just that--a private lawsuit in which the Federal Government had little or no interest. So, good news from the Supreme Court but news that can be greatly improved by a new administration's fresh look and the dismissal of its case in its entirety.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, earlier this afternoon, the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator McCain, and my distinguished colleague, Senator Murray, and I believe others on both sides of the partisan divide, came to the floor to speak about the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2000. That bill was passed by the Senate unanimously. It resulted from a broad, bipartisan coalition that worked over a period of more than 1 year here in the Senate. It was sparked by my colleague and myself as a result of a terrible tragedy-- an explosion in a gasoline pipeline in Bellingham, WA, that snuffed out the lives of three wonderful young men, destroyed a magnificent park, and left physical damage that will be years in repair. No individual involved in this debate got every single element in that bill that he or she wished. Liquid and natural gas pipelines are vitally important to the Nation and the transportation of fuels. Some thought renewal of the act would be somewhat weaker than the present statutes. Others, myself included, wanted considerable strengthening, particularly with respect to local input into the way in which such pipelines are managed in communities near homes, schools, parks, and the like. The net result, however, is a pipeline safety renewal that is a considerable and significant improvement over the present act. There will be more notice. There will be more severe penalties. There will be greater opportunities for local comment and local participation. But in spite of all of this work, in spite of the passage of this bill, little is happening in the House of Representatives. The Bellingham Herald, the daily newspaper in the community subjected to this tragedy, pointed out just a little bit more than a week ago that the passage of the Senate bill means nothing if it is not passed by the House. Almost immediately, however, after the passage of the Senate bill, a number of Members of the House of Representatives began to place roadblocks in the way of the passage of the Senate bill, claiming it wasn't strong enough and it didn't do this, or it didn't do that, or it didn't do something else. The House of Representatives has had exactly the same opportunity to deal with this issue as the Senate. After a brief hearing a month or so after the accident took place, literally nothing at all took place in the House of Representatives. Many of us here were led to believe that if the Senate bill were passed in its ultimate form, it would be taken up and easily passed in the House of Representatives--until these last-minute critics began to point out what they consider to be the facts. Talk is cheap. But talk doesn't create safer pipelines in the United States. Those who oppose this bill have proposed nothing with the remotest chance of passage by the House of Representatives, much less the Senate of the United States. We have only a short time left. Those who criticize the bill as being too weak would do far better to pass the reforms that we have and attempt to build on them later than to destroy a bill which, if it does not pass within the next few weeks, will have to begin its process all over again next year, with highly questionable prospects. Believing that accomplishment is better than demagoguery and that a bill beats oratory any day, I come here to join with both Republican and Democratic colleagues to plead with the Members of the House of Representatives to take up the Senate bill, to debate it to the extent the House wishes to do so, and to pass it so we can get it signed by the President and enacted--which, incidentally, I am confident would take place if the House were to pass the bill.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, today the Washington state Congressional delegation introduced bills in the House and in the Senate to honor a fallen hero, William Kenzo Nakamura, by designating the Seattle federal courthouse in his honor. This brave soldier fought in Italy during World War II, and he died valiantly protecting his battalion. The day he died, Mr. Nakamura had already risked his life and saved his combat team by disarming an enemy machine gun stronghold. Mr. Nakamura should have received the Medal of Honor for this act of bravery, but he did not. Even as this man's family was held in an internment camp in Idaho, he volunteered for duty in the United States military, and he headed to Italy to serve his country. After his heroic and selfless deeds, Mr. Nakamura was posthumously eligible for the Medal of Honor, but in World War II the Army did not award Japanese-Americans the Medal of Honor. I was pleased that earlier this year that twenty-two veterans, in similar circumstances to and including Mr. Nakamura, received Medals of Honor for their brave service in World War II. These men and their families waited too long for proper recognition and appreciation, and these honors are well deserved. Though military heroes are often given medals for their service, the people of Washington state would like to extend a special tribute to Mr. Nakamura by naming the federal courthouse in Seattle in his honor. This action has not only the support of the entire Washington congressional delegation, but of local communities, veteran and military retiree organizations, and by Medal of Honor recipients in the Senate, my friends Daniel Inouye and Bob Kerrey. To this outpouring, I add my support and commitment to seeing this designation passed through the Senate and acted into law.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 783, H.R. 4700.

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be deemed read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 785, H.J. Res. 72.

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolution be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to this resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 745, S. 1658.

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent that the committee substitute be agreed to, the bill be considered read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 737, S. 2272.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 734, S. 1865.

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent the committee substitute be agreed to, the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.