Rod Grams

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Muriel Humphrey Brown, who was the widow of the late Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey and known to many throughout my state as Minnesota's ``First Lady.'' Mrs. Humphrey Brown passed away on Sunday at the age of 86. Throughout her life, she remained steadfast in her dedication to family and her interest in politics. In her last public appearance, just 5 days before her death, she was on hand to congratulate her son, Skip Humphrey, for winning the Minnesota DFL gubernatorial primary. Many of my colleagues knew her, respected her, and join me in offering our heartfelt condolences to her husband, Max Brown, her sons Hubert, Doug and Bob, her daughter Nancy, and the entire Humphrey family. Muriel Humphrey Brown was born on February 20, 1912, in Huron, SD. After marrying Hubert Humphrey, she became a devoted mother and enthusiastically took on the role of a political wife. She played an active part in her husband's numerous campaigns. After Hubert's death in 1978, Muriel was appointed to his Senate seat, the same Senate seat that I am proud to hold today. By finishing out her late-husband's term, Muriel Humphrey Brown became Minnesota's first and only female U.S. Senator and just the 12th woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. In fact, she was the only woman serving in the Senate at that time. In carrying out her husband's Senate term, Muriel Humphrey Brown was an inspiration to women throughout Minnesota as she accepted the call to public service even in her time of great personal loss. Rather than being known simply as the wife of the most popular politician in Minnesota, Muriel left her own mark on those issues of public policy about which she felt so strongly. Her calm and gentle manner did not mute her passionate voice on behalf of social programs, labor issues, and the mentally disabled. She once described her term in the Senate as, ``the most challenging thing I have ever done in my whole life.'' In 1979, she married Max Brown and lived the rest of her life out of the political spotlight. Her devotion to family and public service is truly an inspiration to all Minnesotans, and I am proud to say that her legacy will remain. It is a special honor for me to hold the Senate seat she once held, in the Chamber where she served with such grace, dignity, and honor. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Accordingly then, it is my view that the FFIEC should delay implementing any changes to its Uniform Policy for Classification of Consumer Installment Credit Based on Delinquency Status until it is clear whether and in what final form the bankruptcy reform is enacted.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, as a cosponsor, I rise today in strong support of the Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Bill. The bill contains sorely needed provisions to help curb the dramatic rise of personal bankruptcies in this country. It is incredible that while most sectors of the economy are experiencing an economic boom--with the notable exception of some of the hardest-working farmers in the country--personal bankruptcy filings have reached record highs. My constituents tell me that declaring bankruptcy has become so routine as to be considered just another personal finance option. No longer is it an avenue of last resort. It has become a matter of convenience, sometimes to avoid the personal responsibilities of living within one's means and repaying one's debts. I believe this shift in attitude is due in large part to a system which readily lends itself to abuse and exploitation. The passage of the Consumer Bankruptcy Reform bill is critical because it directly confronts the abuses within our bankruptcy system. One of the main features of the bill would allow bankruptcy judges to dismiss or reassign cases if the system is being ``abused.'' Under the bill, one of the factors which shows abuse in a chapter 7 filing is if the debtor has current income sufficient to pay at least 20% of unsecured claims against him. A motion alleging abuse of the system could be filed by the judge, the trustee, or any party in interest. We must return to the real purpose of bankruptcy laws--to establish uniform rules in facilitating debt collection. Unfortunately today, the laws are increasingly recognized as a tool for escaping debt responsibility. They are becoming a substitute for personal responsibility. In addition, I am disappointed that some of my colleagues seek to offer a nongermane amendment to to the underlying bankruptcy legislation that would increase the minimum wage. As my colleagues may recall, it was only two years ago that Congress enacted legislation that increased the federal minimum wage in two phases, from $4.25 to $4.75 on October 1, 1996, and from $4.75 to $5.15 on September 1, 1997. Now, as part of the Small Business Regulatory Fairness Act of 1996, this provision represented a 20 percent increase in the federal minimum wage. Now, I voted for this legislation because it included a number of long overdue tax measures designed to help small businesses grow and create more jobs in our economy. These changes, in my judgement, would be far more helpful to wage earners than would the minimum wage increases. Two years after enactment of this legislation, I am not convinced that the economic effect of that federal minimum wage increase is fully understood. For this reason, I am particularly concerned that an additional increase in the federal minimum wage at this time could actually have an adverse impact upon our economy. Mr. President, the proponents of an additional increase in the minimum wage argue that Congress should do more to help Americans increase their take-home pay. I agree. However, I believe this can be done far better through tax cuts and reduced government regulation. By doing so, we will save the private sector billions of dollars which could be used for investment that brings better jobs and higher wages. Mr. President, basic economics tells us that raising real wages above what the market will bear will cause unemployment. The higher real wages rise above the market rate the greater the level of unemployment and overall downward pressure on all wages. The solution, therefore, is to allow wage rates to adjust to market conditions. Otherwise we will have persistent, widespread unemployment that hurts the low-income workers the hardest. Raising the cost of doing business by raising the minimum wage is probably going to mean even fewer of those jobs. Some statistics say as many as 600,000 of those jobs will be lost, killing work opportunities for young people and those families who depend on a needed second income. Besides artificially inflating salaries, hiking the minimum wage ignores the real concerns of many working Americans. Yes, they want better jobs that pay better salaries, but they have told me repeatedly that what matters most is not how much you earn but how much of your own paycheck you are allowed to keep after the greedy Federal Government has deducted its taxes. Families today are taxed at the highest levels since World War II, with 38 percent of a typical family's budget going to pay taxes on the federal, state, and local level. In nominal dollars, a two-income family is paying more just in taxes today than their paychecks totaled in 1977. That's nearly 50 percent more than they are spending for food, shelter, and clothing combined. Compared to the proposed minimum wage increase, tax relief and economic growth is a better solution for helping low-income families. It will increase incentives to work, save and invest. It will allow families to maximize their income and improve their standard of living. Tax relief will allow families who today are forced to scrimp just to cover their monthly bills and their tax bills to have more money to spend on their children's education, health care expenses, food and clothing, or insurance. In 1981, President Reagan initiated massive tax reduction which resulted in an economic miracle we are still benefiting from today. Over eight years, real economic growth averaged 3.2 percent and real median family income grew by $4,000, 20 million new jobs were created, unemployment sank to record lows, all classes of people did better. According to the National Taxpayers Union, if Congress could roll federal domestic spending back to 1969 levels, a family of four would keep $9,000 a year more of its own money than it does today. Recent estimates by the CBO show that the government will enjoy a nearly $1.6 trillion budget surplus over the next ten years. This potential surplus is generated by working Americans and should be returned to the taxpayers. Tax relief particularly, lower payroll income tax rates will immediately increase Americans' take-home pay and allow them to keep a little more of their own money. In sum, Mr. President, the real answer to increasing the take-home pay of American families is not promoting political grandstanding efforts like this which would only destroy jobs, but to support more meaningful tax relief and sustainable economic growth. I urge my colleagues to support the bankruptcy legislation and resist any effort to distort the intent of this most important bill.

Mr. GRAMS. I thank my colleague from Iowa for yielding the floor to me. First, I ask unanimous consent that I be made an original cosponsor of the consumer bankruptcy reform bill.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, I rise today to express my deep disappointment over the Senate's failure to override the President's veto of legislation which would ban the inhumane procedure known as partial-birth abortion. A majority of the Congress agrees that the partial-birth abortion ban is not about the politics of pro-life and pro-choice. It is legislation that addresses a far more fundamental issue--our intolerance, as a civilized community, to allow this unparalleled cruelty to continue. I thank Senator Santorum for his heartfelt dedication and determination to making this issue a priority for the Senate this session. His sincere, passionate speeches delivered during floor debate spoke directly to the hearts of his colleagues and to the American people. This is the second time the Senate has voted on an override of a Clinton veto of a prohibition on partial-birth abortion. The will of both Houses of Congress, and of the American people is clear. I am dedicated to passing the partial-birth abortion ban, as I know are most of my colleagues in the Senate. We will continue this fight until we have succeeded, and I urge the Senate leadership to make the ban on partial-birth abortions the first piece of legislation we take up in the 106th Congress.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, I rise today in support of the Child Custody Protection Act. Nearly half the States have adopted laws which require some kind of parental involvement in their minor daughter's decision to have an abortion. Increasingly, these laws are being undermined by adults who take a pregnant girl across State lines for a secret abortion. The Child Custody Protection Act will make it a Federal offense for someone, other than the minor girl's parent, to transport her knowingly across State lines in order to usurp her home State's abortion parental notification or consent laws. It does not impose any new parental notification or consent requirements on any State. It merely prevents the undermining of parental involvement laws in States that have them. The Child Custody Protection Act is a parental rights bill. It prevents the circumvention of State laws, a policy all of us should support. It protects our daughters against manipulation and abuse. I urge the support of this legislation by all of my colleagues.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to talk a little bit about tax relief and the obligation I feel this Congress has to the American people in the remaining days of this session. I also compliment the Senator from Alabama, who now occupies the Chair, for talking about the need to be better stewards of the tax money we do collect from Americans today. Instead of beginning with the American experience, I will start overseas for just a moment, and that is in Japan. After years of rapid economic growth, which many called an ``economic miracle,'' Japan's economy is now stagnating. To a large degree, the sickening Japanese economy has dragged the world economy down with it. The U.S. government has been pushing Japan to pursue vigorous reforms to boost the economy again. One of the recommended measures is tax relief. President Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, have repeatedly asked Japan to permanently reduce its income tax. As a result, the Japanese government proposed a tax cut of 7 trillion yen, but it is now suggested that this tax relief is too small and that deeper cuts are needed. I think this is a sound policy and the right approach to helping cure Japan's ills and I commend the administration for such advice. I just wish they would have that same advice for Congress. The question is, if tax relief will work for Japan as it has worked for many other countries, including our own during the Reagan administration, why do we not we pursue that same policy here in this country once again? Mr. President, what these two events tell us is, first, the Federal tax burden has grown too high, too ridiculous. And second, the best solution to maintaining economic growth in this country is tax relief. We have debated this issue in this Chamber again and again and the conclusion is clear to me: a high tax burden distorts economic behaviors. It discourages work, saving, and investment. It slows productivity and growth and decreases our competitiveness. Tax relief, on the other hand, does just the opposite. It will benefit millions of American families and will keep our economy healthy and strong. Mr. President, I firmly believe that it is still critical to provide meaningful tax relief for the American people this year. The average American family today spends more on taxes than it does on food, clothing, and housing combined. A typical median-income family can expect to pay nearly 40 percent of its income in Federal, State, and local taxes. This means more than 3 hours of every 8-hour working day are dedicated just to paying taxes. In 1996, an average household with an annual income between $22,500 and $30,000 paid an average of $9,073 for food, clothing, and housing, and paid $11,311 in total taxes. Households with incomes ranging from $45,000 to $60,000 averaged $16,043 for basic necessities, and paid the tax collector $25,276. If the ``hidden taxes'' that result from the high cost of government regulations are factored in, a family today gives up more than 50 percent of its annual income to the Government. When the Government takes more, families get less. Between 1989 and 1995, the typical American family's real income fell by 5.2 percent. Most economists point out that the decreased income was the result of slow economic growth, a direct result of higher Federal taxes. The American taxpayers desperately demand real tax relief and reform. They ushered in a new congressional majority in 1994 on our pledge that we would provide that relief. While we have delivered on a portion of our promises, much work remains to be done. Reforming the tax system for the taxpayers who sent us here begins with cutting their taxes. Our mission has not yet been completed. We should not walk away from our obligation to the American taxpayers to pursue a Federal Government that serves with accountability and leaves working families a little more of their own money at the end of the day. We must pass meaningful tax relief this year. In the next 5 years, for example, the Federal Government will take in more than $9.4 trillion from the pockets of the American people. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that in the next 10 years, we will have a $1.6 trillion budget surplus. Even after excluding the Social Security surplus, we will still have a surplus of $169 billion. The Government has no claim on any surplus because the Government did not generate it--it will be the result of the hard work of the American people, and it therefore should be returned to them in the form of tax relief. I agree that reforming the Social Security and Medicare programs to ensure their solvency is vitally important. Any projected budget surplus should be used partly for that purpose. Yet, I believe strongly that the surplus alone will not save Social Security and, therefore, fundamental reform is needed to change it from a pay-as-you-go system to a fully funded one. What truly bothers me, Mr. President, is Washington's continuation of its tax-and-spending policies. Despite a shrinking Federal deficit, the Government is getting bigger, not smaller. Total taxation is at an all- time high. So is total Government spending. The White House and my colleagues have been talking about fencing off the budget surplus to save Social Security, but even as they talk, they continue to spend this budget surplus. Before the surplus even materialized, Washington had already spent $6 billion of it in the last supplemental bill. It is reported that another proposed supplemental bill will spend another $18 to $20 billion of this budget surplus. Mr. President, when it comes to Federal spending, Washington rarely asks how the American taxpayers can afford to give up more of their income to Government, and how such excessive spending will affect a working family's budget and finances. Equally upsetting is the fact that when it comes to tax relief, Washington is always reluctant to act. Congress even goes so far as to require the tax cut advocates to pay for any tax relief via Washington's PAYGO rule that requires increasing taxes in order to cut taxes. Increase taxes on some Americans so we can get tax relief to others, but that is the only way that the system can work. Nothing is more ridiculous than this requirement of the PAYGO rule. We must repeal it so we can shrink the size of the Government and we can let working families keep more of the money they earn, to spend on their priorities--not Washington priorities. Washington's tax-and-spend policies have systematically ignored our children's future and severely undermined the basic functions of the family. We must abandon those policies and help restore the family to an economic position capable of fulfilling its vital responsibilities. Therefore, we must provide American families with meaningful tax relief, allowing them to keep more of their hard-earned money. I commend our colleague in the House, Chairman Archer, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for his so-called ``90-10'' plan. The proposed plan includes many good tax relief measures that will help working Americans. I think this is a step in the right direction. However, there are two things in the proposal that concern me. First, the proposed $80 billion in tax relief over 5 years is just too small, compared with the possible budget surplus and total government spending. By the way, an $80 billion surplus, or $80 billion in tax relief, over the next 5 years amounts to about $4 per person per month. That is not real tax relief, that is token tax relief. We need to do more. It leaves only $30 billion for relief of the $150 billion marriage penalty tax, and this means millions of American couples will continue suffering from this tax injustice. We can and should do better. Second, I do not have any problem at all returning some of the budget surplus to the taxpayers. In fact, I have argued repeatedly that the budget surplus should be returned to the taxpayers in the form of tax relief, Social Security reform and debt reduction. But what bothers me is that the proposed plan does nothing to reduce Government spending. In fact, we are talking about spending billions of dollars of the surplus in a supplemental spending bill this year. I believe we should cut the Government's wasteful programs and overhead, and let the taxpayers benefit from a more efficient, effective Government. In the next few weeks, I will work with my colleagues to improve the House tax bill and deliver tax relief at the highest possible levels to America's families. My final point is that we must pass a contingency plan to avoid a future government shutdown, and we must do it this year. I have asked both the Senate majority and minority leaders several times to honor the commitment they made during the consideration of last year's disaster relief legislation to support an automatic CR to avoid a Government shutdown. But so far there is little interest in this good Government legislation. We need to pass that. And here we are again, with just a few weeks left in this session, with only one appropriations bill signed into law. Clearly, we will not have a budget conference report this year, and I sincerely doubt we will complete all the appropriations bills before this fiscal year ends. So tell me--do you not think we need a contingency plan, something to avoid the end-of-session battles that often result in more government spending? Different priorities on spending and tax cuts often prevent us from completing all of the appropriations bills. Competing policy differences, particularly during an election year, make our budget and appropriations process more uncertain. We need a contingency plan to avoid a government shutdown. There are essential functions and services of the federal government we must continue regardless of our differences in budget priorities. Mr. President, I will wrap this up quickly. I know our time is running out. But let us not hold the American people hostage because of disagreement in Washington. I urge the leadership to support a sizable tax cut this year and take up the good Government legislation that would prevent a shutdown. Thank you very much. I yield the floor. I thank the Senator from Idaho for securing this time for us to be able to talk this morning.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise to briefly make a few comments in strong support of the amendment. I do so not because it will assist my State of Minnesota, which already has an established gaming compact with Minnesota Indian tribes, but because this is an issue of fundamental fairness for States and localities. I find it difficult to understand how anybody can argue that the Secretary of the Interior should be given the authority to approve a class III gaming compact, absent the consent of the State in which the gaming is to occur. States must, I believe, have the authority to negotiate and object to gaming compacts. If you remove their right to object to a gaming compact, then you remove their right to negotiate a gaming compact as well. Similar to what now happens in trust applications, the tribal authority will have little incentive for negotiating in good faith, knowing that the Secretary of the Interior can come in and improve their compact and bypass the State anyway. Our States and localities are much too often becoming irrelevant in the decisionmaking process of the Department of the Interior when considering tribal-related situations. The amendment we are addressing here today prevents a Secretary of the Interior from ignoring the impact of gaming operations on States and localities and from circumventing their authority and making unilateral decisions. Mr. President, States must have the right to negotiate gaming compacts without undue interference from the Federal Government and without the heavy hand of an overactive Secretary of the Interior waiting to usurp that authority. Again, the Enzi-Sessions amendment has the support of the National Governors' Association, the National Organization of Attorneys General, and the Christian Coalition. The amendment extends the current moratorium placed on the Secretary of the Interior from using Federal funds to approve tribal-State compacts, again, without the consent of the States. It doesn't only prevent Secretary Babbitt from moving forward on new regulations but in fact gives him authority to bypass State approval. So I urge my colleagues to stand up for the rights of our States by supporting the Enzi-Sessions amendment. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. ENZI addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to highlight National Caregivers Day. As such, I wanted to show my appreciation to those who work so hard to meet the needs of the mentally and physically disabled, the elderly, and the terminally ill. Our nation is blessed to have individuals motivated by a caring and giving attitude toward others. Indeed, there are roughly 1.6 million elderly and disabled people in our nation receiving care in one of approximately 16,800 facilities throughout the country and countless others providing in-home assistance. These thousands of individuals live each day loving, nurturing, and supporting those entrusted to their care and on behalf of the United States Senate, I want to say thank you. Mr. President, I would also like to recognize other health-care related commemorations in the month of September: National Rehabilitation Week, Mental Health Workers Week, National Vision Rehabilitation Day, and Deaf Awareness Week. National Rehabilitation Week, September 13-19, gives us an opportunity to commend the nearly 43 million people with disabilities in America who daily display their courage and determination. It also calls to our attention the unmet needs of our nation's disabled citizens. Mental Health Workers Week is set aside for us to thank those who have dedicated their talents to improving the mental health of our nation. Nearly half of all Americans between the ages of 15 and 54 experience a psychological disorder during their lifetime. Psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, and others are there every day to help those Americans who are experiencing problems pick up the pieces and move forward with their lives--truly important work. September 16 is National Vision Rehabilitation Day, which recognizes the tremendous lack of understanding we have of vision loss and the lack of availability of vision rehabilitation services. National Vision Rehabilitation Day gives us the chance to promote aggressive education and treatment for people with vision problems. As the baby boom generation moves into the retirement years, we need to begin learning how to deal with serious eye diseases like macular degeneration, which currently affects thousands of people and about which--when it comes to causes and treatment--we know very little. Finally, Mr. President, I would like to recognize Deaf Awareness Week and the opportunity it provides to recognize the deaf culture experienced by nearly one million Americans. Most people don't know that American sign language is the third most widely used language in America, and that Washington, D.C. is home to the only deaf university in the world, Gallaudet University. Deaf Awareness Week allows us to discover the significant contributions offered by individuals who happen to be deaf.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I am pleased to rise today to express my concerns about the pending McCain-Feingold amendment. Since the beginning of the 105th Congress, I have heard from Minnesotans on a variety of important issues such as high taxes and the future of social security. Despite the public outcry by my constituents to address these issues important to America's working families, I am very concerned that the Senate is again debating a proposal to regulate political speech. I commend Senators McCain and Feingold for their deeply held views that the only way to restore the public's trust in their government is to reform the system for financing our federal campaigns. As someone who has heard first-hand of the public's growing mistrust of their government, I strongly agree with their belief that the people's trust in their government should be restored and their participation in our democracy encouraged. However, I respectfully disagree with their approach to the passage of new campaign finance laws. By the way, these new laws become even more restrictive on who can be involved, what they can say, and how they can be a participant in the public policies of this country. The people's faith in the Government can be restored, I believe, by encouraging greater enforcement of our existing campaign finance laws, rather than going out and trying to ignore the laws that were broken, and passing new laws that again would only silence those Americans who wish to have their voices heard. Each time the Senate has considered a version of the McCain-Feingold proposal, Minnesotans have contacted me in large numbers not in support of its passage but out of great concern for its potential impact upon their first amendment right of free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, they have demanded that Congress focus more on the allegations of campaign finance irregularities during the 1996 campaign cycle rather than passing new campaign finance laws. In other words, not to brush over those laws that were broken or those who broke those laws and try to camouflage this by saying all we have to do is pass new campaign finance laws and everything will be fixed. That is like trying to pass new laws every day to take care of old problems. We need to get to the source of the problem. In this regard, I am encouraged by Attorney General Reno's recent decision to initiate a 90-day investigation of whether President Clinton's involvement in Democratic National Committee campaign advertisements in 1996 circumvented election laws. And the Attorney General should also be commended for continuing the Justice Department's investigation of whether Vice President Gore unlawfully raised campaign contributions from the White House, and the activities of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Harold Ickes, during the 1996 campaign cycle. Current law works if we enforce it. Despite the modifications that proponents of McCain-Feingold have made to improve support for this initiative, my views on its basic premise have not changed. Similar to the previous versions of this bill, this proposal will discourage rather than promote greater participation in the democratic process. They always talk about big money and how that controls the process and how we should be encouraging and what we should be doing to encourage more people, those $10-an-hour workers who we have heard about in the Chamber today, to become a voice no matter how small, and to participate in the political process. The way they can do that is through PACs, political action committees, and that is where a lot of people with little incomes can put their money together to have a stronger voice in how their government works and how it operates, and we should encourage that, not discourage it. Most fundamentally, the McCain-Feingold proposal continues to be based upon the belief that there is too much money spent on American elections--too much money. About $3.50 per person per year is spent on campaigns, totally, in this country. That is less money than we spend on a Value Meal at McDonald's. I remember talking to somebody about the United Nations. We spend about $3.81 per person per year supporting the United Nations, and everybody thinks we get a great deal out of that. But yet we spend less money per person to support our way of government in this country, and somehow they say that is spending too much money. So the whole political process in this country is worth less to the supporters of the McCain-Feingold bill than our support perhaps, say, for the United Nations. I think we need to support this form of government and encourage more people to participate, not to close the door and say that this is how you can participate or we are going to manage what you say, how you say it, when you can say it, and who can afford to say it. If we accept this assumption, then Congress has decided to assert questionable authority to suppress the rights of Americans to become involved in the political process and suppress the rights of many Americans to have their voices heard. As my colleagues know, the belief that there is government justification for regulating the costs of political campaigns was rejected by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo. The importance of conveying the ideas of those who seek office to the electorate is critical and was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Buckley. And in Buckley the Court declared that ``a restriction on the amount of money a person or groups can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money.'' That is from the Buckley v. Valeo Court decision. They label this bill as an effort to protect and preserve democracy. They say that democracy is disappearing because of this. But this bill would not protect free speech. It would only limit free speech. I would like to ask those watching today that if you can restrict the speech of one American today, whose speech can you restrict tomorrow? Are you going to give the government this much control and say, well, let's do it today to protect this process, but in doing this we are going to have to take away some of your freedoms? We are going to have to impose restrictions. We are going to manage those who want to participate in the political process. And if we can do that today, who is going to come tomorrow and say, well, let's squeeze these restrictions a little more? And then who is going to come the next day and say, well, let's squeeze these restrictions a little more? And pretty soon we are going to take the ability of free speech, to participate in our political process, away from Americans. And then who is going to have a voice? Is it going to be the media, the newspapers, television? Are they going to be the ones that define my campaign or Senator McCain's campaign or maybe Senator Feingold's campaign? I think we need to have that freedom. For these reasons, I remain concerned about the core provision of the McCain-Feingold bill which continues to place, again, questionable new restrictions upon the ability of national parties to support State and local party activities as well. We should not pursue a suspect expansion of government control of national parties; rather, recognize that political parties enjoy the same rights as individuals to participate in the democratic process. For nearly two decades, political parties have been allowed to raise money for party building and similar activities without limits on the size of contributions. Additionally, the Supreme Court decision in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC, in which the Court found that Congress may not limit independent expenditures by political parties, makes it questionable whether these restrictions would be constitutional. We have a responsibility to the American people to help restore their faith in government. However, this cannot be accomplished by placing new and expansive restrictions on the communication of ideas or the issue of free speech. And above all else, we should not use violations of existing laws that have raised a lot of this concern and ire of Americans over campaign financing--those violations of existing laws should not be used as an argument today to suppress our right of free speech. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMS. I thank the Senator.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the men and women who serve in the United States Air Force as we celebrate the 51st anniversary of its founding. In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, creating the United States Air Force. Although military aviation units were around as early as 1907, these units were a division of the Army and the Navy. It was not until forty years later that the Air Force was established as a separate military service. Ironically, President Harry Truman signed the legislation creating the United States Air Force while aboard the presidential aircraft, which later became known as Air Force One. W. Stuart Symington became the first Secretary of the Air Force and General Carl A. Spaatz became the first Chief of Staff of the Air Force. The inherent strengths of air power--speed, global range, stealth, flexibility and precision--are crucial to the achievement of our military goals in the world today. Through innovation, the Air Force is evolving into an air and space force that will be able to meet the challenges of the next century. Working with the other Armed Forces, the Air Force provides the citizens of the United States with the security we enjoy as it watches over America's airspace. On the same day the Air Force was established, the Air National Guard was also born, and seven months later, on April 14, 1948, the Air Force Reserve was created. Today, these two are an integral part of the total Air Force. Minnesota is home to two Air National Guard units, the 148th Fighter Wing in Duluth and the 133rd Airlift Wing in the Twin Cities. The 133rd Airlift Wing was the first federally recognized Air National Guard flying unit. A division of the 133rd unit, the Security Forces Squadron, was awarded the Air National Guard's Outstanding Security Force Unit for 1994. In addition, Minnesota has one Air Force Reserve unit, the 934th Airlift Wing in St. Paul. The Airlift Wing provides support for the transporting of passengers and cargo around the world. In 1992, the brave men and women of the 934th Airlift Wing provided airlift of passengers and cargo as part of a humanitarian relief effort in Bosnia- Herzegovina. Mr. President, since its birth in 1947, the Air Force has shown the utmost dedication and service to this country, while protecting our national interests. I truly appreciate its commitment to defending this nation and am honored today to pay tribute to the men and women of the Air Force.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to honor, thank, and remember the men and women who fought so bravely to protect our freedoms during World War II. As my colleagues know, it was 53 years ago today that Japan officially surrendered to the Allies, prompting President Truman's declaration of September 2nd as Victory-Over-Japan Day, or V-J Day. That monumental declaration marked the end of the most immense and devastating war the world has ever seen--a war that shaped not only the course of history but also the lives of the many brave Americans who, through their service in the U.S. military, fought to restore freedom to lands halfway around the world. These young Americans were thrust into a situation best described by General William Sherman when he said, quite simply, that war is hell. It is safe to say they experienced horrors and fear most of us cannot begin to comprehend. To gain some understanding of the realities of war and of the heroism exhibited during World War II, let me take you back to December 7, 1941. The place was Pearl Harbor. George Albert Enloe, a young Navy flyer from Anoka, Minnesota, had just two days earlier turned 26 years old. Before that day he had never really known the realities of war. Here is part of the diary entry he made on that Sunday describing the surprise Japanese attack: I can, and will always, remember the bullets that sprayed past me as I ducked into the hanger. Ensign Fox and Ensign Willis were right behind me. Fox was killed; Willis got through with a bullet through his head. The bullets came through the hanger as though it was made of paper . . . I understood then what it means to be ``under fire.'' Before, these were just words. But I found myself actually there. I was scared. I forced myself to stay. We kept shooting. Enloe survived that day and went on to serve for five more years in the military. In that short period, he became one of the most decorated combat pilots in the entire Navy and just last month, the City of Anoka dedicated a park in his honor. Unfortunately, as years pass and our nation enjoys one of its greatest periods of prosperity, too many Americans, especially young Americans, are unaware of the sacrifices made and the lessons taught to us by the likes of George Enloe. In Winona, Minnesota, for example, a young man was recently found guilty of vandalizing flagpoles at a veterans park. What makes this act even more disheartening is that, according to the corrections agent who handled the case, the teen ``did not really know what a veteran was.'' Thankfully, the judge understood the importance of educating this young man on the sacrifices made by those who have served our nation's military. The sentence handed down by the judge required the teen to see and then write a report on the movie ``Saving Private Ryan.'' At a time when the movies and TV are saturated with senseless violence, this film exposes Americans to a bleakly realistic portrait of war--a war in which large numbers of Americans fought heroically in the worst conditions imaginable and often died horrible deaths in a battle against oppression. ``Saving Private Ryan'' is a violent film, just as war is violent. It is a disturbing film, as it ought to be. I hope that young vandal walked out of the theater with some sense of what a veteran truly is. I hope ``Saving Private Ryan'' will help to raise that awareness in all Americans. During this time of relative peace, we cannot turn a blind eye to the sacrifices of the past. We must remember that our ability to speak freely, choose a place of worship, and pursue the American dream were protected by every man, every woman who served in World War II. Above all, we must never take for granted what our veterans have taught us, the lesson that is chiseled into the stone of the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC--``Freedom Is Not Free.'' On the anniversary of the official end of World War II, I encourage Americans to take time today to thank and remember our veterans. Whether they are a neighbor, a friend, or a grandparent, ask about their experiences during that turbulent time. Through their sacrifices, freedom and prosperity have flourished. Tell them they are appreciated. Mr. President, I have taken a few moments to try to put into perspective the magnitude of the sacrifices made by our young soldiers during World War II. I know that my words are wholly inadequate in reflecting the experiences of those brave men and women. Perhaps understanding ultimately lies not in words, but in actions--the actions of every veteran who swore an oath to defend our sacred freedom from ``all enemies, foreign and domestic.'' We are duty-bound to pass on those experiences to future generations of Americans, to ensure they know the stories, sacrifices, pain, and ultimate triumph of World War II. For their sake and for the sake of this nation, we must never let another young American forget what a veteran is.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much. Mr. President, I rise to respectively oppose the amendment by my colleague, Senator Kyl. As has been noted before, this amendment would reverse all of the progress made on the conditions package negotiated among many of us when we supported the $18 billion replenishment for the IMF on the Supplemental earlier this year. Senator Kyl's amendment includes a negotiating position that was debated, and rejected by members of this body. It would, in effect, result in the U.S. share of the replenishment being delayed or withheld at a time when IMF assistance is needed to help us shore up economies in crisis, now expanding well beyond Asia. We need to stabilize and improve these markets for our farmers and exporters, whose losses have begun to resonate, most recently in our own stock market. As was noted before, our agriculture exports are down 30 percent since the beginning of the year. This is not the time to play games with IMF funding. I believe few of us want to reopen these sensitive negotiations. I urge my colleagues to stick to the agreement we passed earlier. It was a good one that will result in progress toward improving the way the IMF operates. This is not the time for the Senate to reverse its leadership on IMF funding. We should stay the course--and urge our colleagues in the House and in the White House to do the same. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Kyl amendment. I yield the remaining time.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the United States Coast Guard as it celebrates the 208th Anniversary of its founding on August 4, 1998. On August 4, 1790, Congress passed a law creating within the Department of Treasury a service to enforce customs laws. The passage of this law was the foundation for the modern day Coast Guard. The following year, Hopley Yeaton was commissioned as ``Master of a Cutter in the service of the United States for the protection of revenue.'' Yeaton's commission, which was signed by President George Washington, marks the first commission of a seagoing officer, thus giving the Coast Guard the distinction of being the oldest continuous seagoing service of the United States Armed Forces. Today, the Coast Guard has grown into a force of over 35,000 men and women on active-duty and 8,000 reservist. On a daily basis, the dedicated members of the Coast Guard carry out a number of task which ensure the safety of our waters. These tasks include Search and Rescue, Maritime Law Enforcement, Aids to Navigation, Ice Breaking, Environmental Protection, Port Security and Military Readiness. In times of war, the Coast Guard has performed valiantly to protect our national interests. From the War of 1812 to the Persian Gulf War, members of the Coast Guard have served and given their lives during our Nation's most trying times. The Coast Guard's wartime service was especially noteworthy during the Second World War when 241,093 Americans answered the call to service as members of the Coast Guard, 1,917 of whom were either killed or wounded in the service of their country. Equally impressive are the often unsung acts of heroism performed by the Coast Guard on a daily basis. Whether the action is a preventative measure such as ensuring our waterways are clear of hazardous ice, or saving the lives of boaters in danger in the high seas, the work of the Coast Guard affects us all and is a contributing factor to the security we enjoy as Americans. Mr. President, the Coast Guard motto of ``Semper Paratus'', meaning ``Always Ready'', indeed speaks to the dedication and efficiency of the Coast Guard as it stands watch over America's waters. For more than two centuries the Coast Guard has responded with the utmost dedication to service, and for this, Mr. President, all Americans have reason to be grateful.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, during the past few weeks, I have made a series of remarks on the Senate floor concerning Social Security. I discussed the history of Social Security, the program's looming crisis, the old-age insurance reform efforts taken by other nations, and the financial gender and race gaps created by the current Social Security system. Today, I will sum up the major points I have made so far and then move on to speak about possible solutions to Social Security's problems, and the principles of reform we must uphold as we move forward. The concept of ``social security'' originated in Europe in the 1880s. It was devised supposedly to correct the problems created by laissez faire capitalism, to avoid a Marxist-led revolution. Social Security was not an American experience. In fact, a very small group of intellectuals promoted and designed the Social Security program in this country. Congress hastily passed the Social Security Act less than seven months following its introduction in 1935. The public never got the chance to participate in the debate. At the time, many Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle raised serious questions about the program. Unfortunately, many of their prophecies have become reality today. Senator Bennett Clark, a Democrat from Missouri, recognized the non-competitive nature of Social Security and offered an amendment to allow companies with private pensions to opt out of the public program. Workers would be given the freedom to choose either the federal Social Security program or a private pension plan offered by their employers. The Clark amendment received popular support in the Senate, but was dropped from the conference report with the promise it would be reconsidered immediately the following year. It was not--that promise was broken, the first of many broken promises that plague us today. In the 60 years following its creation, despite continued questions and criticism, the Social Security system has grown dramatically in size and scope. As more beneficiaries and more programs are added, Congress has raised the payroll tax 51 times. In 1964, Ronald Reagan was among the first to suggest investing Social Security funds in the market. But no one took his advice seriously. Then, in 1977 and 1983, Social Security ran into major crises, and Congress had no choice but to pass Social Security rescue packages that significantly increased taxes. Washington promised that Social Security would remain solvent for another 75 years. Today, another Social Security crisis is imminent. Unlike the previous two crises, however, the coming crisis will have a profound and devastating impact on our national economy, our society, and our culture. The Social Security program's $20 trillion--that is a large number-- $20 trillion--in unfunded liabilities have created an economic time bomb that threatens to shatter our economy. Beginning in 2008, 74 million baby-boomers will become eligible for retirement and the system will begin to collapse. The problem begins with the fact that the current Social Security system is a ``pay-as-you-go'' entitlement program. The money a worker pays in today is used to support today's retirees--there are no individual accounts waiting for future retirees to dip into. This was not a problem in 1941, when there were 100 workers to support every beneficiary. It is a tremendous problem in 1998, when only two workers support each beneficiary. These factors all lead to the conclusion that the Social Security Trust Fund will go broke by 2032 if we continue on our present course. If the economy takes a turn for the worse, or if the demographic assumptions are too optimistic, the Trust Fund could go bankrupt even earlier. Without real reform, the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office estimate the debt held by the public will consume up to 200 percent of our national income within the next 40-50 years. A national debt at this level would shatter our economy--and shatter our children's hopes of obtaining the American dream. Mr. President, retirement security programs worldwide, not just here in the United States, will face a serious challenge in the 21st Century due to a massive demographic shift that is now underway. The World Bank recently warned that, across the globe, ``old-age systems are in serious financial trouble and are not sustainable in their present form.'' While Congress has yet to focus on this problem, many other countries have moved far ahead of us in taking steps to reform their old-age retirement systems. Some of these international efforts are extremely successful. Chile and Great Britain are excellent examples. Back in the late 1970s, after Chile realized that its publicly financed, pay-as-you-go retirement system would go broke, it replaced it with a system of personalized Pension Savings Accounts. Nearly two decades later, pensions in Chile are between 50 to 100 percent higher than they were under the old government system. Real wages have increased, personal savings rates have nearly tripled, and the economy has grown at a rate nearly double what it had prior to the change. When facing bankruptcy in the early 1980s, the United Kingdom reformed its system to allow individuals to choose the option of a new, self-financing private pension plan. The success of the English system has been overwhelming. Today, nearly 73 percent of the workforce participates in private plans, with a total pool worth more than $1 trillion. The United Kingdom will pay off its national debt by 2030, about the same time experts estimate our Social Security Trust Fund will go bankrupt. Mr. President, we can learn a great deal from our global neighbors. As we pursue reform, we must also address the issue of why the current Social Security system puts women and minorities at a greater financial risk and disadvantage than other retirees face today. For women and minorities, average income remains low. This means they have less money available to save for their retirements. Therefore, a growing number of women and minorities are becoming increasingly dependent upon their Social Security checks. Today, the average female retiree earns approximately $621 per month, compared to her male counterpart at $810 per month. But marriage alone does not always improve a woman's situation. In fact, 64 percent of all elderly women living in poverty are widows. This is because when a spouse dies, the widow's benefits are reduced by up to one-half. Race also continues to be an important factor in determining the level of retirement security for some Americans. As Social Security approaches bankruptcy and the rate of return diminishes, Hispanic and African-Americans will be forced to bear a disproportionate share of the financial burden. In an economic model prepared by the Heritage Foundation, a hypothetical Hispanic community of 50,000 lost $12.8 billion in 1997 dollars over what it could have earned had they invested their Social Security funds in a conservative portfolio. The findings within the African-American community are similarly troubling. Like single Hispanic males, single African-American males have a lower life expectancy and are especially disadvantaged by the current Social Security system. A low-income, African-American male born after 1959 can expect to receive less than 88 cents back on every dollar he contributes to the Social Security trust fund. Mr. President, Congress and the public itself have begun to focus on the inequities of the current system, with an eye toward the rapidly approaching crisis. To date, a number of Social Security reform proposals have been introduced by Members of Congress of both parties, by think tanks, and by individuals in the private sector. This is very encouraging. It appears to me there are wrong and right approaches to reforming the Social Security system. The wrong approaches are to tinker with the current system by either increasing the payroll tax or reducing benefits, or letting the government invest Social Security Trust Funds for the American people. Mr. President, let me take a few moments to discuss why. There are two points to consider in whether the federal government itself should invest the Social Security Trust Funds in the equity markets. The positive aspect of this approach, in my view, is that the authors of this proposal have admitted the insolvency of Social Security and have recognized the power of the markets to generate a better rate of return, and therefore improved benefits for retirees. The negative side is that direct federal involvement in the markets has the potential to do great harm. In the last week's Humphrey-Hawkins hearing, I asked Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan whether we should allow the government to invest the Social Security Trust Funds in the markets, and if this is right direction to go. Here are his exact words: No, I think it is very dangerous. . . I do not know of any way that you can essentially insulate government decision- makers from having access to what will amount to very large investments in American private industry. . . I am fearful that we are taking on a position here, at least in conjecture, that has very far-reaching, potential dangers for a free American economy and a free American society. It is a wholly different phenomenon of having private investment in the market, where individuals own the stock and vote the claims on management, (from) having government (doing so). I know there are those who believe it can be insulated from the political process, they go a long way to try to do that. I have been around long enough to realize that that is just not credible and not possible. Somewhere along the line, that breach will be broken. Perhaps no one in the country is more knowledgeable about the American economy than Chairman Greenspan. He was among the first to raise the issue of Social Security's unfunded liabilities and warned Congress a few years ago about the consequences if we fail to fix Social Security. Chairman Greenspan has been consistent in his position. But last week was the first time he spoke so clearly, forcefully, and persuasively against the idea of letting the government invest the Social Security Trust Funds. Mr. President, we should never venture out onto what Chairman Greenspan called ``a slippery slope of extraordinary magnitude. We hear some argue that Social Security is not in crisis, it is not broken, and all we need to do is make a few ``minor adjustments,'' such as raising the payroll tax by 2.2 percent. History has already proved that this approach will not work. If we were to adopt this plan, the tax hike would cost roughly $75 billion in fiscal year 1998, which is the equivalent of a 10 percent increase in everyone's personal income taxes. Such an increase would not only represent an impossible hardship for America's already overtaxed, hard-working families, but it would not fix Social Security either. This 2.2 percent figure is based only on what is called actuarial balance, not operating balance. This calculation itself is problematic because actuarial balance counts accumulated surpluses, which are nothing but IOUs that can only be redeemed by raising taxes or borrowing from the public. Even if Congress adopted the 2.2 percent solution, Social Security would still face large and steadily growing deficits starting in 2020. When I asked Chairman Greenspan about this proposal, he told me that increasing taxes will not create the savings, the investment, nor the production of real assets required for retirees, because: First, it is the same failed remedy we have turned to repeatedly, and second, it does not change a pay-as-you-go system to a fully funded one. The right approach, according to Chairman Greenspan, is to allow private retirement accounts which he believes will ``far more readily move toward full funding'' of the system. He believes a fully funded system will provide the savings and investment, and thus increased productivity, needed for retirement security. I fully agree with him. You don't have to go far to find empirical evidence supporting this approach. Employees of Galveston County, Texas opted out of Social Security in 1981 to set up a private retirement plan. Let me offer some comparisons. Under Social Security, the death benefit is only $253 while under the Galveston plan, the average death benefit is $75,000 and the maximum benefit can reach $150,000. Disability benefits under Social Security are $1,280 per month, compared with $2,749 for Galveston employees. The maximum Social Security retirement benefit is $1,280 per month, while the average retirement benefit for Galveston employees is $4,790 per month. Mr. President, it is obvious which plan is superior. Those who argue passionately for preserving Social Security's status quo insist that personal retirement accounts are too risky and too expensive to operate. This is not true. Any investment involves risk, but in my view, Social Security is even riskier than other long-term market investments. Social Security has already had two crises in the last two decades. The coming crisis will wipe out a worker's entire lifetime of Social Security investments. With today's well regulated and matured markets, risk can be managed to the minimum for long-term investment. In addition, workers do not necessarily have to invest in stocks. In fact, they can invest in low-risk bonds, and even Treasury bills, and still do better than Social Security. Actual fees and administrative costs for existing investments in the markets are generally well below 1 percent. With much higher yields, a market-based system still results in much better benefits than are realized under Social Security. Supporters of the status quo also argue that a personalized retirement security system will hurt lower-income workers. Again, this is untrue. Under the Galveston plan, a 25-year-old worker, making $20,000 a year and retiring at age 65, will receive $2,740 in retirement benefits per month. That's more than three times greater than Social Security's $800 per month benefit. A personalized retirement system is the best retirement system for today's and tomorrow's American workers because, not only will it make Social Security solvent, it will produce maximum retirement benefits and a sustainable economy. In fact, I believe this is the only solution to the Social Security crisis. We should move in this direction as soon as possible, and we should allow workers to use as much of their payroll tax as possible to set up their personal retirement accounts. There are existing proposals to allow workers to set aside two, three, or four percent of the payroll tax for their personal retirement accounts. These are all well-analyzed proposals, and each has its own merits. We should take a close look at them. However, if a personalized retirement system will generate the best outcome, why do not we allow workers to put all their payroll taxes into the new system? That would allow workers to accumulate more savings, enjoy higher returns, generate additional benefits for their retirement in a shorter time, and pass the savings on to their children. By so doing, we can shift to a fully funded retirement system much more quickly. This will have an enormous, positive impact on our savings and investment, and our economy--while providing the retirement security we have pledged to deliver. I soon will offer legislation to achieve this goal. Clearly we have no choice but to pursue real reform of Social Security. What remain are the difficult questions of how we should proceed, which principles should guide us, and which options offer Americans the best opportunities for retirement security. In my view, the primary principle in reforming Social Security is to protect current and future beneficiaries who choose to stay within the traditional Social Security system. The government must guarantee their benefits. Any change that reduces their benefits, or adversely affects those Americans, is not acceptable. Let me repeat: it is not acceptable if any reform results in a reduction of benefits, or harms in any way those Americans who are depending--or who want to depend--upon Social Security. I emphasize this principle not so much because we want to gain the support of seniors--although their support is essential to the success of our efforts--nor to neutralize their opposition to Social Security reform, but because of the sacred covenant the federal government has entered into with the American people to provide their retirement benefits. It is our contractual duty to honor that commitment. It would be wrong to let current or future beneficiaries bear the burden of the government's mistakes in creating a poorly-designed program and failing to foresee demographic changes. The second principle we must uphold is to give the American people freedom of choice in pursuing retirement security. The purpose of Social Security is to provide a basic level of benefits for everyone in case of misfortune. So if social insurance is a safety net to catch those who fall, it does not make sense to penalize those who are quite able to stand on their own two feet. Freedom is the cornerstone on which this nation is built--taking away freedom will lower the standard of living we enjoy today. Allowing workers to control their own funds and resources for retirement will strengthen our constitutional democracy and put individuals in charge of their own savings. The third principle is to preserve a safety net for unlucky or disadvantaged Americans, so that no covered person is forced to live in poverty. Today's Social Security program has 44 million beneficiaries: we must ensure that the safety net will continue to be there for them. But we must also separate the retirement function from the welfare function and make them transparent, so that we can better manage and improve old-age retirement programs and welfare programs. The fourth principle is that reform should provide better or improved retirement security for American workers than is currently available. We can do that by enabling them to build personal retirement savings, improve the rate of return on their savings, increase capital ownership, and pass their savings on to their children. More and more people are relying on Social Security as their only source of retirement income. As that number grows, however, the rate of return for Social Security contributions is diminishing. And so it is becoming ever more difficult to juggle the increased dependency on Social Security with the expectations for a decent retirement. Any reform of the current system must meet this challenge and provide better benefits for every American, regardless of their income, than are available under the current system. The fifth principle should be to replace the current pay-as-you-go system with a fully funded program. The fundamental flaw of the Social Security system is the PAYGO finance mechanism, which has been very vulnerable to changing demographics, and hardly remains actuarially balanced. It has created enormous financial burdens for our children and grandchildren. Moving to a fully funded system will not only reduce inequality among generations, it will also greatly increase our nation's savings and investment rates, and therefore prosperity. The sixth principle is that any reform of the current system should not increase the tax burden of the American people. The taxpayers are already paying an historic 40 percent in federal, state and local taxes out of every paycheck they earn. Although Congress has increased payroll taxes more than 51 times in the past 63 years, Social Security still faces a crisis. Hiking taxes yet again to fix Social Security would be unfair and unjust to working Americans, and would only pave the way for additional, future tax increases. We must neither increase taxes to tinker with the current system, nor to finance a transition from a PAYGO system to one that is prefunded. Instead, we should look for a more innovative and more appropriate way to finance reform, such as reducing government spending and selling government assets, to achieve the goal. Although the degree to which the various reform proposals being discussed meet the core principles I have outlined varies greatly, the fact that we are openly debating this subject at all is heartening. In conclusion, Mr. President, the looming Social Security crisis is real. The threat to our economy is devastating. The best solution to avoiding this imminent crisis is to move from Social Security's PAYGO- based system to a personalized retirement program that is fully funded and offers each American the security they seek--and deserve--in their retirement years. Congress has the power to create this brighter future for all. Congress has the responsibility to act before the coming danger is irreversible. All Congress needs now is courage.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, as an original cosponsor of the sense-of- the-Senate on providing humanitarian relief to the Sudan, I believe it is important that we focus on the tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes. The people of southern Sudan are starving. Khartoum is using the denial of food as a weapon in its war against the rebels in the south-- and we are letting the government of Sudan get away with this odious practice by allowing Khartoum to have a veto over aid deliveries. Sudan has been torn by a devastating civil war between the Muslim north and the predominantly Christian and animist south for most of history since independence. The current phase of the war started in 1983 when the then-President embarked on an Islamization program. Recurring famine is just one of the tragic outcomes of Khartoum's brutal method of warfare where women, children, and livestock are taken as prizes of war. It has also resulted in institutionalized slavery, more than 4 million internally displaced people, and more than 1.5 million casualties in the past 14 years. Our State Department lists Sudan as a terrorist state. We have sanctions on Sudan which prohibit American investment. But we respect the right of the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum to veto the delivery of humanitarian relief to the south. That just doesn't make sense. Most of the aid flowing to southern Sudan is through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participating in a United Nations relief program, Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS). While traveling through east Africa in December, I had the opportunity to visit the OLS Southern Sector headquarters and see firsthand the efforts of the NGOs. These NGOs are on the ground, along with UNICEF, mounting a heroic effort to distribute aid to these starving people. And I know that many of them share my frustration with the UN's political agreement with the government of Sudan which allows Khartoum to have the final say in the distribution of aid to the south. This has resulted in the starvation of citizens and soldiers alike when Khartoum decides it is advantageous to halt the delivering of aid. For the past few years, Khartoum has restricted flights during the planting season so that aid organizations cannot deliver the seeds and tools necessary to help the people of southern Sudan feed themselves. This year Khartoum went a step further. Khartoum didn't just restrict flights. It banned relief flights in the Bahr el Ghazal region. It should be no surprise that another poor harvest is predicted in the Fall. According to the UN World Food Program, 2.6 million people in Southern Sudan are in imminent peril of starvation. Quite frankly, until we can find a way to deliver seeds and tools to southern Sudan during planting season, I see this cycle of famine continuing indefinitely. This is a warfare tactic of cowards. The flight ban wasn't the only problem that OLS had in delivering aid effectively. When the flight ban was lifted and aid could once again be provided, OLS faced another barrier put in its way by Khartoum. OLS was forced to wait for Khartoum's permission to add four Ilyushin cargo planes to the handful of C-130s that deliver relief supplies to southern Sudan. Any agreement by the United Nations which permits Khartoum a veto over the number of relief planes as well as when and where they can fly is fatally flawed. The President should aggressively seek to change the terms of this agreement which restricts the ability of Operation Lifeline Sudan to distribute aid effectively to southern Sudan. As chairman of the International Operations subcommittee, I have to say I hold little hope that the United Nations will take any significant steps in this direction. That leaves, of course, the option of unilateral action by the United States to bypass Khartoum's veto. Currently, U.S. AID funnels aid to Sudan almost exclusively through OLS-affiliated groups. That must change if we are to have any chance to effectively combat the use of starvation as a tactic of war. The United States government shouldn't just cooperate with these non-OLS groups when Khartoum institutes restrictions on the delivery of aid--as we did during the Bahr El Ghazal flight ban. The United States should actively assist and develop relief distribution networks outside of Operation Lifeline Sudan's umbrella which are not subject to the whims of Khartoum. If we don't, yet another planting season will pass without seeds being sown, and hundreds of thousands of more people will starve.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to speak for as much time as I may consume.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, the Senate today passed by unanimous consent the nomination of Bill Richardson to be the next Secretary of Energy. Mr. Richardson's nomination passed the Senate unanimously because he was an honorable Member of Congress, he was an honorable representative for our country at the United Nations, and he is an honorable man. Mr. Richardson has the capability to be among the best Secretaries of Energy to serve our nation. But if we had voted today on Mr. Richardson's nomination, I would have voted no. I would have done so not out of doubt for Mr. Richardson's capabilities, but because of the horrible record of the Clinton Administration in responding to my concerns and the concerns of many other Members of Congress with regard to nuclear waste storage. On April 8, 1998, I wrote a detailed letter to the President outlining my dissatisfaction with responses to questions I have posed to nominees for positions within the Department of Energy. In that letter I quoted those nominees and showed very clearly how they all want to do something, how they all want to work with Congress, and how they all recognize the problems at the DOE. Regrettably, not one of them has ever been allowed to tackle the issues for which they express so much concern before Congress. This Administration has yet to allow a nominee or professional staffer from the DOE to come to Congress and speak openly about nuclear waste. As I stated earlier, I wrote to the Administration with my concerns on April 8, and just received a response this morning. They knew I was going to be looking closely at the answers of Mr. Richardson and that I expected those answers to be detailed and substantive. Instead, they ignored my letter until the last minute and sent to me responses from Mr. Richardson that displayed the same lack of candor as all previous nominees. Let me read for the Senate a couple of examples. I provided Mr. Richardson with a detailed description of what I learned on a recent trip to France about its nuclear industry. I explained how France uses nuclear energy to meet over 80% of its electricity needs. I explained their use of reprocessing and MOX fuel and the level to which they are able to reduce the amount of nuclear waste they retain for final disposal. I then asked Mr. Richardson if he felt we should begin to look for ways to expand our use of nuclear energy. Mr. Richardson's response was notable in its brevity. He wrote: I agree that nuclear energy must be a viable option to meeting future electricity demand in the United States. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Richardson, who used to represent the Congressional District in which Los Alamos National Laboratory rests, cannot be more specific in his views on the future of nuclear power in the United States. The answer provided above was written by a staffer at the DOE who sought to evade my question. I expanded on that question by asking Mr. Richardson how we expand our use of nuclear power? He wrote: The Department, in its FY 1999 Budget Request, recognized the need to maintain a viable nuclear option for the future. The Budget Request proposed new programs to work on the technologies required to extend the licenses nuclear plants and to undertake the research necessary to develop more efficient, more reliable, and safer nuclear plants for the future. I think these efforts are a good start at providing the Nation with the option of safe and affordable nuclear power in the future. Again, not a very definite statement on the future of nuclear power, but at least it was longer than the one sentence answer to the previous question. Sadly, Mr. Richardson's answer doesn't address any of the real issues in relation to the continuation and expansion of nuclear power. First, he never once mentioned nuclear waste storage in his answer. Without a storage solution, not only will we not build new plants, but our existing plants will begin to shut down prematurely. In fact, Minnesota is set to lose our Prairie Island facility in 2007 due to a lack of storage space for nuclear fuel. Minnesota will at that point lose 20% of its electricity generating capacity and will be forced to replace clean nuclear power with polluting fossil fuels at exactly the same time the Kyoto Protocol is set to take effect--and consumer costs will soar. That brings me to the next consideration unmentioned in Mr. Richardson's response: the role of nuclear power in our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear power is responsible for 90% of our greenhouse gas emissions reductions from the electricity industry since 1973. The countries of Europe and Japan are going to meet their requirements under the Kyoto Protocol using nuclear power. Mr. Richardson mentioned a new program to develop more reliable and safer nuclear power plants. Europe, Japan, and others are using our technology right now to build new plants--technology we continue to ignore. Those are but two of the important issues which must be addressed when we consider expanding or maintaining our use of nuclear power in the next century. I find it unreasonable that this Administration would send to me responses which so clearly lack the information directly asked for in the question. Mr. Richardson did, however, write some interesting things about nuclear power in his responses. Let me share with you a couple of those responses. They read: Nuclear power is a proven means of generating electricity. When managed well, it is also a safe means of generating electricity. It is my understanding that spent nuclear fuel has been safely transported in the United States in compliance with the regulatory requirements set forth by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Transportation. From the experience that France, England, and Japan have reported, it appears that they have engaged in successful shipping efforts. However, my understanding is that these countries also have experienced some degree of difficulty and criticism from the public. The widely publicized shipment last week of spent fuel from California to Idaho is proof that transportation can be done safely. The safety record of nuclear shipments would be among the issues I would focus on as Secretary of Energy. I asked Mr. Richardson to tell me who would pay the billions of dollars in damages some say the DOE will owe utilities as a result of DOE failure to remove spent nuclear fuel by January 31, 1998. After writing about the DOE's beliefs on their level of liability he wrote: ``I will give this issue priority attention once I am confirmed as Secretary of Energy.'' I asked Mr. Richardson if he felt the taxpayers had been treated fairly. Again, after telling me about the history of the Department's actions to avoid their responsibilities, he wrote: ``I share your interest in resolving these issues and I will continue to pursue this once I am confirmed.'' Now, Mr. President, lets look at who then nominee Federico Pena responded to my question regarding the responsibility of the DOE to begin removing spent nuclear fuel from my state. He said in testimony before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee: . . . we will work with the Committee to address these issues within the context of the President's statement last year. So we've got a very difficult issue. I am prepared to address it. I will do that as best as I can, understanding the complexities involved. But they are all very legitimate questions and I look forward to working with you and others to try to find a solution. Does that sound familiar? I suspect Secretary O'Leary had something equally vague to say about nuclear waste storage as well. Secretary Pena, I believe, said it best when he stated, ``I will do that as best as I can, understanding the complexities involved.'' Those complexities, Mr. President, are not that complex at all. Quite simply, the President of the United States, despite the will of 307 Members of the House of Representatives and 65 Senators, does not want to keep the DOE's promise and does not want to address this important issue for our nation. His absence in this debate is all the complexity we need identify. Mr. President, I want to be very clear that I am sincere in these complaints. My concern is for the ratepayers of my state and ratepayers across the country. They have poured billions of dollars into the Nuclear Waste Fund expecting the DOE to take this waste. They have paid countless more millions paying for on-site nuclear waste storage. Effective January 31, 1998, they are paying for both of these cost simultaneously even though no waste has been moved. Mr. President, when the DOE is forced to pay damages to utilities across the nation, the ratepayers and taxpayers will again pay for the follies authorized by the DOE. Some estimate the costs of damages to be as high as $80 to $100 billion or more. The ratepayers will also have to pay the price of building new gas or coal fired plants when nuclear plants must shut down. And, if the Administration gets its way, my constituents will pay again when the Kyoto Protocol takes effect in 2008--exactly the same time Minnesota will be losing 20% of its electricity from clean nuclear power and replacing it with fossil fuels. Six years of rudderless leadership in the White House with regard to nuclear energy holds grave consequences for the citizens of my state. I cannot merely sit by now and tell my constituents I tried. I must take whatever action I can to raise this issue with this Administration and with this Congress. The Administration has admitted nuclear waste can be transported safely. They have admitted they neglected their responsibility. They have admitted nuclear power is a proven, safe means of generating electricity. And they have admitted there is a general consensus that centralized interim storage is scientifically and technically possible and can be done safely. If you add all of these points together and hold them up against the Administration's lack of action, you can only come to one conclusion: politics has indeed won out over policy and science. If the Senate would have voted on the Richardson nomination I would have voted no. I like Bill Richardson and I think he will do a fine job as Secretary of Energy--but my state and my constituents need someone to take substantive action at the DOE to begin removing nuclear fuel from my state. Regrettably, as long as Bill Clinton occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I do not believe it will happen. I do not believe Bill Richardson will have the opportunity to do what is needed to resolve these problems. I know he will have to advocate the policies of President Clinton and Vice President Gore. And in my opinion, that is the problem. This Administration has made this a political issue at the expense of the electricity needs of the country. Until this Administration wants to deal with policy and not politics, I will not support its continued lack of action.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the men and women of the U.S. Customs Service as it celebrates its 209th anniversary today. As our young nation was on the verge of economic despair and in search of revenue, the First Congress passed and President George Washington signed into law the Tariff Act of July 4, 1789, which authorized the collection of duties on imported goods. This, the fifth act of the 1st Congress, established Customs and its ports of entry as the collector and protector of the revenue on July 31, 1789, essentially creating what we now know as the U.S. Customs Service. For approximately 125 years, until the passage of the Federal Income Tax Act in 1913, Customs provided our federal government with its only source of revenue. During this time, the incoming revenue from Customs funded the purchases of Alaska and Florida, and the territories of Louisiana and Oregon. In addition, Customs collections built Washington, D.C., the U.S. military and naval academies, and many of the nation's lighthouses from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Most impressively, by 1835, Customs revenues alone reduced the national debt to zero. Customs offices first appeared in Minnesota around 1851, seven years before Minnesota achieved statehood. Minnesota's geographical layout as head of three great navigation systems--the Red River to the North, the Mississippi to the south, the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River to the east, and 395 miles along the Canadian border to the north--was a key to handling the traffic of people and goods that passed through these ports. In its first year of existence, Customs collected $2 million in revenue in 59 ports of entry. Today, the U.S. Customs Service has a total of 301 ports of entry which collect over $20 billion annually in revenue. In addition, Customs processes over 450 million persons entering the United States each year. As for Minnesota, there are 14 ports of entry throughout the entire state. These ports of entry collected nearly $2 billion in revenue for the U.S. Customs Service during FY 1997. Besides all the products that are processed, many people enter the United States through Minnesota. An estimated 1.1 million people have entered through Minnesota's ports of entry since last October alone. This number continues to grow at an increasing rate over previous years. The U.S. Customs Service has grown from being the chief collector of revenue on imports into what has become our nation's first defense against the threat of terrorism, combatting the illegal drug trade, and ensuring that all imports and exports comply with U.S. laws and regulations. Mr. President, I commend the U.S. Customs Service for its long history protecting the American public. But most of all, I want to pay tribute to the many men and women who continue to stand as symbols of national pride and enforce the mission of the U.S. Customs Service: to ensure that all goods and persons entering and exiting the United States do so in accordance with all United States laws and regulations.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 249. I voted ``yea.'' It was my intention to vote ``no.'' Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote. This will in no way change the outcome of the vote.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I also would like to rise and join Senators Brownback and Ashcroft in offering an amendment to correct the injustices of the marriage penalty. I want to take a few minutes to speak on behalf of that. It is vitally important, I believe, that Congress pass this amendment, and as quickly as possible. I also would like to note that Senator Helms of North Carolina would like to be added as a cosponsor of this amendment. Mr. President, we have debated this issue now for quite some time. It is clear to me that this is noncontroversial and should have support from all Members of this body. Everyone in this debate agree that the family has been and will continue to be the bedrock of American society. We all agree strong families make strong communities; strong communities make for a strong America. We all agree that this marriage penalty tax treats married couples unfairly. Even President Clinton agrees that the marriage penalty is unfair. But still Washington refuses to get rid of this bad tax policy that discourages marriage--the most basic institution of our society. As a result, millions of married couples will be forced to pay more taxes simply for choosing to commit to a family through marriage. A 1997 study by the Congressional Budget Office, entitled ``For Better or Worse: Marriage and the Federal Income Tax,'' estimated 21 million couples, or 42 percent of couples incurred marriage penalties in 1996. This means 42 million individuals pay $1,400 more in taxes than if they are divorced, or living together. But marriage penalties can run much higher than that. Under the current tax law, a married couple could face a Federal tax bill that is more than $20,000 higher than the amount they would pay if they were not married. Again this is extremely unfair. This was not the intention of Congress when it created the marriage penalty tax in the 1960s by separating tax schedules for married and unmarried people. The marriage penalty is most unfair to married couples who are both working. It discriminates against low-income families and is biased against working women. The trends show that more couples under age 55 are working, and the earnings between husbands and wives are more evenly divided since 1969. As a result, more and more couples have received, and will continue to receive, marriage penalties and while fewer couples receive bonuses. The marriage penalty creates a second-earner bias against married women under the federal tax system. The bias occurs because the income of the secondary earner is stacked on top of the primary earner's income. As a result, the secondary earner's income may be taxed at a relatively higher marginal tax rate. Married women are often the victims of the second earner bias. During the 1970's and 1980's, as more and more women went to work, their added incomes drove their households into higher tax brackets. Today, women who return to the work force after raising their kids face a tax rate as high as 50 percent. The CBO study also found ``small but statistically significant effects of marriage penalties in reducing the likelihood of marriage for women.'' Mr. President, what this finding means is that the marriage penalty tax has discouraged women from marriage. This is shameful. This is a direct insult to our most basic and most stable institutions. We must put an end to it. American families today are taxed at the highest levels since World War II, with nearly 40 percent of a typical family's budget going to pay taxes on the Federal, State, and local level. They deserve a tax break. Last year's tax relief was too little and too late. More meaningful tax relief must be provided. In the next 5 years, the Federal Government will take $9.6 trillion from the pockets of working Americans. The revenue windfall will generate a huge budget surplus. This surplus comes directly from taxes paid by the American people. It is only fair to return it to the taxpayers. Repealing the marriage penalty will allow American Families to keep $1,400 more each year of their own money to pay for health insurance, groceries, child care, or other family necessities. Mr. President, some argue that repealing the marriage penalty will only benefit the affluent. This is completely false. The fact is, the elimination of the injustice of the marriage penalty will primarily benefit minority, low- and middle-class families. Data suggests the marriage penalty hits African-Americans and lower income working families hardest. According to the CBO, couples at the bottom end of the income scale who incur penalties paid an average of nearly $800 in additional taxes, which represented 8 percent of their income. Eight percent, Mr. President. Repeal the penalty, and those low-income families will immediately have an 8 percent increase in their income or an 8 percent cut in their taxes. Some also argue that repealing the marriage penalty would affect families receiving marriage bonuses. This is not true either. Although there are couples who receive marriage bonuses, this doesn't justify the Federal Government penalizing another 21 million couples just for being married. We should give more bonuses to all American families in the form of tax relief, whether both spouses or only one of them are working. In closing, I must point out that this amendment takes the approach of income splitting to repeal the marriage penalty. Married couples would be allowed to split their income down the middle, regardless of who earned it, and be taxed at the lower rate. This would protect working couples without punishing women who remain at home. In his book ``The Decline (And Fall?) of the Income Tax,'' Michael Graetz, former Treasury Department tax whiz, writes ``A tax system can't survive when it departs from the fundamental values of the people it taxes''. I couldn't agree with him more. Mr. President, it is unfair and immoral to continue the marriage penalty tax. Today, let us just get rid of it. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much. Mr. President, I rise to strongly support Senator Hutchinson's amendment to terminate the tax code. I commend his leadership and his persistence in advocating what is real tax reform. Mr. President, more than 200 years ago, our ancestors staged a tea party and revolted against their mother country to protest the imposition of unfair taxes. Today, taxes imposed by our own government are unfair by any standard. Had our ancestors faced a tax system as punitive as ours has become, they might very well have jumped into the harbor along with the tea. Americans today are working harder but taking home less of their pay. Why? In excess of $1.7 trillion of their income is siphoned off to Uncle Sam each year. In 1997, total taxes--federal, state, and local-- claiming a record 38.2 percent of a typical family's income. Nearly 40 percent of everything the average family made went to support government. Nearly 4 hours of every 8-hour working day are dedicated just to paying taxes. The total tax burden borne by the American taxpayer in 1998 is the highest in U.S. history. We are being taxed at a higher level today than at any time in history, including World War II and other conflicts. The tax code must be terminated because the earnings, spending, and savings of the American people are taxed over and over to squeeze more money out of their pockets to line the pockets of government. Income is taxed when it's first earned. The after-tax income is then subject to certain excise taxes when spent. If this after-tax income is saved in a savings account or invested in a business, the interest and profits will be taxed again. If the corporation pays out its after-tax earnings as a dividend to the saver, or if the saver sells his investment, the savings is taxed a third time through a capital gains tax. If the saver dies with some accumulated savings, these savings will be taxed a fourth time through estate and gift taxes. Even after death, one's tax liability lives on. The tax code must be terminated because it has long been used as a tool for social engineering and income redistribution rather than sound economic policy. Clearly, a system of graduated marginal rates violates the principle of fairness. In addition, special interest groups are often unfairly rewarded by politicians with special tax privileges. We need to have a date certain when this Tax Code is going to end and that we can begin with something new. No matter what we have done recently to try to improve the IRS and the Tax Code, it is like putting lipstick on a pig. We can't make it pretty. We have to pull this code out by the roots, and we have to change it and replace it with something that is friendly and that is fair and taxpayer friendly. We need something like this legislation to act as a stick of dynamite under the chairs of Congress to make them act, rather than procrastinating and saying, ``We will do it next year, or maybe the year after, or the year after.'' The American taxpayers aren't going to wait that long. The Tax Code must be terminated because it has become simply complicated. It is difficult for anyone to understand, as Senator Brownback showed us with this huge stack of just the forms that we are having every year. The Tax Code has grown, as he showed us, from 14 pages when it was first enacted to more than 10,000 pages of Tax Code today, plus another 20 volumes of tax regulations, and then thousands of pages and instructions that go along with it. Even the IRS and tax professionals repeatedly make mistakes. IRS agents reportedly gave wrong answers to taxpayers at least half of the time. And the question is, How can anyone master all of the code? I don't blame the IRS or any of the good workers at the IRS. But it is Congress that has developed a Tax Code that is so complicated that even the experts in the field of the IRS can't guarantee that they are going to give the average taxpayer an answer that is right when they call and ask. So, again, the tax code must be terminated because it's too expensive for the American people. The IRS employs over 102,000 agents to collect taxes, more agents than the FBI and the CIA combined. The taxpayers must pay more than $8 billion each year to operate the IRS. Worse still, American families, small business owners, and corporations will spend at least another $225 billion just trying to comply with the Tax Code, money that could be better spent elsewhere. If they fail to comply due to innocent mistakes, the IRS penalties could actually ruin some lives. The tax code must be terminated because the IRS has evolved into an arrogant, inefficient, intrusive, and abusive bureaucracy. IRS agents routinely use their enormous, coercive power to squeeze more money out of the taxpayers' pockets to meet the demands of ever-increasing government spending. Rooted deeply within the system rests the core flaw of the tax system: policymakers care little about spending other people's money because the money isn't their own. Now is the time to reverse that thinking. If you are going out tonight for supper and spend your own money, you might spend $50. But if you are going to go out for supper and you take my credit card, you might spend $500 on a night out. In Washington, much of that is what is happening. With millions of our citizens demanding real tax reform, Congress must grasp this historic opportunity to deliver change--change that will forever repair the system, honor our great American heritage of individual choice and responsibility, and reflect true American values. In sum, Mr. President, the current tax code is an unmerciful mess-- but it doesn't need to be. We can and must replace it with a new system that is simpler, fairer, flatter, and friendlier--a better system that will lead this great country into the 21st century. We will not have a better incentive to reform than an actual date to terminate the code. I urge my colleagues to support Senator Hutchinson's in this very, very important amendment. Thank you, very much. I yield the floor. Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMS. I heard you say if this code were eliminated and replaced with a possible national sales tax, it could take up to 30 percent of a sales tax to replace what the Government has taken. Now, does that mean hidden behind all the hidden taxes, that somehow the Government now is taking from the average taxpayer, the average worker in this country, 30 percent of their income just to support the Federal Government?