Rod Grams

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 10 a.m., on Wednesday, the Senate turn to the product liability conference report, that the conference report be considered read, and there be 5 hours for debate, to be equally divided in the usual form, and at 3 p.m., on Wednesday, the Senate proceed to a vote on the motion to invoke cloture, and the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 19, 1996, at 10 a.m. to hold hearings.

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 19, 1996, to conduct a nominations hearing of the following nominees: Stuart E. Eizenstat, of Maryland, to be under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade; and Gaston L. Gianni, Jr. of Virginia, to be Inspector General, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, March 19, 1996, to receive testimony from the unified commanders on their military strategies, operational requirements, and the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 1997 and the future years defense program.

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Seapower of the Committee on Armed Services authorized to meet at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, March 19, 1996 in open session, to receive testimony on Department of Navy Expeditionary Warfare Programs in review of the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 1997 and the future years Defense program.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that immediately following the cloture vote, regardless of the outcome, the Senate proceed to the cloture vote with respect to the Special Committee to Investigate Whitewater.

Mr. GRAMS

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that if cloture is invoked with respect to the product liability conference report, that the Senate resume the conference report at 9 a.m., on Thursday, and there be 3 hours for debate to be equally divided in the usual form, and at 12 noon, on Thursday, the Senate proceed to the adoption of the product liability conference report, without any intervening action or debate.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until the hour of 10 a.m., Wednesday, March 20, 1996, and, further, that immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed approved to date, no resolutions come over under the rule, the call of the calendar be dispensed with, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 956, the product liability bill, as under the previous order.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, the Senate will debate the product liability conference report at 10 a.m., until 3 p.m., on tomorrow. At 3 p.m., there will be two consecutive rollcall votes. The first vote will be on invoking cloture on the product liability conference report, to be followed by a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to the Whitewater resolution. Following those cloture votes, the Senate will begin consideration of the grazing bill, S. 1459. Additional votes could therefore occur during Wednesday's session of the Senate. Under the previous order, if cloture is invoked on Wednesday on the product liability conference report, there will be 3 hours of additional debate on that conference report on Thursday. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the two cloture votes scheduled for today be postponed to occur on Thursday, at a time to be set by the majority leader, after consultation with the Democratic leader.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, as a former small businessman, I understand the need for regulatory relief and flexibility for small businesses. Recent estimates indicate that regulations cost employees more than $5,000, with much of the cost wrapped into an unbelievable 1.9 billion hours filling out forms, each year. In addition to killing jobs, the cost of this red tape is passed directly to consumers through higher prices on goods and services. The workers are tired of Washington bureaucrats eating up their wage increases. Over the last 3 years I have met with hundreds of workers who have detailed the tremendous burdens of Government rules and regulations. I also met with many job providers at last year's White House Conference on Small Business. Delegates from every State came together to discuss the problems that job providers face and to suggest ways in which Congress could help. The bill before us today is a direct result of their efforts. Although it addresses just a few of their suggestions, I am here to lend my support to this first step in providing small business with some real regulatory relief. In 1980, Congress passed the Regulatory Flexibility Act. This bill required that Federal agencies consider the impact of proposed regulations on job. Unfortunately, that law didn't give job providers much of an enforcement mechanism. This bill will change that. At the suggestion of the White House Conference, this legislation will reduce the impact of Federal regulations on job providers by authorizing judicial review of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. A court could set aside a rule, or order an agency to take corrective action if it finds an action was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law. The bill will also create an atmosphere of cooperation between job providers and regulatory agencies, by giving job providers the opportunity to participate in the rulemaking process and by allowing agencies to wave penalties for first-time rule infractions. This bill allows job providers to conduct their work on a level playing field by providing an opportunity to correct arbitrary enforcement actions and require Federal agencies to be less punitive and more solution oriented. Most importantly, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act will require Federal agencies to examine the need for regulations and weigh them against the Nation's need for job creation. In closing, Mr. President, regulatory reform is absolutely essential if job providers and workers are going to grow and continue to create the jobs that propel the economy and promote prosperity. I encourage my colleagues to support this bill. It is a first step in changing Federal agencies policies that kill jobs, and a first step toward removing the shackles of unnecessary Government rules and regulation from American workers.

Mr. GRAMS

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

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, a great many businesses, nonprofit organizations, and even Government agencies have created their own mission statements. Far from simply being slogans, mission statements can serve as a guiding force, setting out specific goals, principles, and objectives. When I was elected to the Senate, I drafted a mission statement for my office which outlines the priorities of the Minnesotans I was sent here to represent, and offers a yardstick we can use to measure how well we are meeting their needs. It works--a mission statement brings the mission into focus. But what happens when a massive Federal agency, entrusted with billions of taxpayer dollars, is forced to operate without a definable mission? How can it remain accountable to the taxpayers when its mission is constantly shifting and evolving? Without a well-defined mission to contain it, a bureaucracy can grow in one of two ways. It can spread as quickly as fire on a lake of gasoline, rapidly consuming every inch of available space. Or it might expand slowly, like water dripping into a bucket, gradually growing in volume until it finally spills over its borders. Either way, the results can be disastrous. Metaphors aside, if you need a concrete example that illustrates the kind of bureaucracy I'm describing, you need look no further than the Department of Energy. Mr. President, let me take you back to 1977. Jimmy Carter was President, and the Nation was still grappling with the energy crisis which had paralyzed it earlier in the decade. With the OPEC oil embargo and the gas lines it created still vivid memories, 1977 was the year in which Congress took what it thought was a preemptive strike against future energy emergencies by establishing a Cabinet-level Department of Energy. When he submitted legislation to Congress proposing a national energy agency, President Carter said: Nowhere is the need for reorganization and consolidation greater than in energy policy. All but two of the Executive Branch's Cabinet departments now have some responsibilities for energy policy--but no agency, anywhere in the Federal Government, has the broad authority needed to deal with our energy problems in a comprehensive way. At the same time, however, some were questioning the need for yet another layer of Federal bureaucracy. In May of that year, Nobel Prize- winning economist Milton Friedman likened a national energy agency to a Trojan horse. ``[I]t enthrones a bureaucracy that would have a self- interest in expanding in size and power,'' he wrote, ``and would have the means to do so--both directly, through exercising price control and other powers, and indirectly, through propagandizing the public and the Congress for still broader powers.'' Fast forward to 1996. Decades of fiscal mismanagement in Washington have sapped America's Treasury and left a $5 trillion debt on the Nation's credit card. Middle-class taxpayers have been called on repeatedly to bail out the Government through ever-higher taxes. Now they are frustrated, and they are demanding relief, and they are demanding that the Nation begin prioritizing its precious resources by balancing the Federal budget. In 1996, the Department of Energy is marking its nineteenth anniversary, but at an annual cost to the taxpayers of more than $15 billion, there is little to celebrate. DOE has become a black hole for taxpayer dollars, a bureaucracy without equal, an energy agency without a clear or focused energy mission. Milton Friedman was right--the Trojan horse has arrived. The question is, what went wrong? For one thing, the problems DOE was created to protect us against never materialized. Oil supplies eventually rose, while oil prices dropped. The need for a national energy agency became less apparent. Still, DOE has continued to grow, as bureaucrats seek to justify its existence by branching out into areas only marginally related to national energy policy. Our national energy agency has cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in its ongoing quest for an energy mission. The General Accounting Office published a troubling report last August entitled ``Department of Energy: A Framework for Restructuring DOE and Its Missions,'' which noted that DOE has been in transition almost from the time of its creation. In discussing DOE's changing missions and priorities, the GAO reported: For its first 3 years, DOE's programs emphasized research and initiatives to cope with a global energy crisis that disrupted U.S. and world markets and economies. By the mid- 1980's, accelerating nuclear weapons production and expanding space-based defense research dominated DOE's budget resources. Since the late 1980's, DOE's budget has reflected a growing emphasis on solving a half-century's environmental and safety problems caused by the nuclear weapons and research activities of DOE and its predecessors. To appreciate how far DOE has strayed from its original energy mandate, one must first understand that 85 percent of its budget today is spent on activities that have no direct relation to energy resources. Let me say that again. Eighty-five percent of the budget of DOE today is spent on activities that have no direct relationship to energy resources. An examination of where those nonenergy dollars are being directed is perhaps the best way to illustrate the enormous gap between the stated missions of DOE, and the results those missions have generated. The bulk of DOE's nonenergy funds goes toward the cleanup of radioactive waste from nuclear weapons facilities and for overseeing storage of the Nation's nuclear waste. Unfortunately, the waste problem--which wasn't one of DOE's missions in 1977 but has since become one of its primary responsibilities--has also become its primary failure. There are 26 nuclear power plants nationwide, including the Prairie Island facility in my home State of Minnesota, which will run out of storage space for their spent nuclear fuel beginning as early as 1998. That's the very year in which DOE is required by law to start accepting nuclear waste at an interim storage facility. DOE has known about the 1998 deadline for 14 years, since passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The Senate Energy Committee this week reaffirmed its intention to hold DOE to its legal obligation. And yet years of backpedaling, false starts, and feet-dragging by DOE have thrown that deadline in doubt. Despite repeated warnings from Congress that the deadline is fast approaching, no temporary site has been selected and a permanent storage facility is no more than a pipe dream at this point. Those 26 nuclear plants are left with the distasteful choice of either building more temporary storage or closing down and depriving millions of electric customers of cost-effective fuel. Electric utility customers are paying the price for DOE's delay. Through a surcharge on their monthly energy bills, they have already contributed $11 billion of their hard-earned dollars to a nuclear waste trust fund established to finance creation of a permanent storage facility. DOE has raided the trust fund of $5 billion, with little to show for it. I would suggest, Mr. President, that the failure of DOE to move forward with this most basic mission--over 14 years, at a cost to the taxpayers of $11 billion--should itself raise serious questions about DOE's ability to carry out any of its missions. DOE is also responsible for national energy research, which includes the development of alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind, synthetic fuels, and clean coal. DOE research has cost the American taxpayers more than $70 billion since 1977, but we have little to show for this tremendous investment. That $70 billion has bought plenty of pork, but few meaningful scientific breakthroughs. In testimony last year before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute said, Energy R&D spending has cost the American taxpayer plenty without any real reform. . . . Virtually all economists who have looked at those programs agree that Federal energy R&D investments have proven to be a spectacular failure. Another of DOE's missions has been to promote energy conservation in the aftermath of the OPEC oil embargo. But unlike the days of the oil crisis, when the Federal Government predicted that supplies of fossil fuels would be depleted by the year 2000, U.S. oil reserves are 50 percent higher today than they were in the early 1970's. Coal and natural gas reserves have increased substantially. Energy prices are actually lower. For most Americans, the energy crunch is just a vague memory--keeping a multimillion-dollar agency around just in case, at a time when we face a $5 trillion public debt, is hardly prudent Government management. And what of DOE's mission to ensure affordable power, and access to it by consumers? Unfortunately, DOE has been ineffective in carrying out both of those functions. The Department's ultimate goal of guiding the Nation toward independence from foreign energy sources has obviously never been achieved. Let me explain why. DOE itself projects that crude oil production in the United States-- which is already in decline--will continue to drop over the next decade. By the year 2005, the United States will be 68 percent dependent on imported oil, and natural gas imports are expected to increase as well. Mr. President, 68 percent of our energy needs will come from outside of the United States. Back during the oil embargo it was only about 33 percent. You can see what problems we ran into when there was a squeeze on the oil from abroad at that time. By the year 2005, more than double that, 68 percent, will come from outside our borders. We will become hostage to the world's energy. That is hardly energy independence. DOE has clearly strayed from its original missions. At a time when Federal spending priorities are being re-examined, and agencies which are overgrown, obsolete, duplicative, or irrelevant-- four counts on which DOE must plead guilty--are being dragged into the light, the Department of Energy demands scrutiny by Congress. Mr. President, I believe there are three basic reasons DOE has been unable to achieve even its most basic missions: First, DOE is too big. It takes 20,000 Federal bureaucrats to manage it and another 150,000 contract workers to carry out its far-reaching agenda. Second, DOE is too expensive. It has an annual budget of $15.4 billion. Even in the absence of another energy crisis like that which led to its creation, DOE's budget has grown 235 percent since 1977. And third, DOE has no real mission. By virtue of its massive size and annual cost, it has become inefficient and nearly impossible to manage. Due in part to its constant attempts at justifying its own existence, DOE has fallen victim to its own sprawling, tangled agenda. DOE's long-documented management problems were highlighted in last summer's report by the GAO. As part of an ongoing management review of DOE, the GAO surveyed 37 experts on DOE, including former DOE Secretaries, President Carter, and representatives of the private, academic, and public sectors. GAO wanted to know whether DOE was meeting its mission goals, and whether those missions were still appropriate functions of the Federal Government in the post-cold war, budget-conscious 1990's. Victor Rezendes of the GAO summed up their findings during a congressional hearing last year: DOE suffers from significant management problems, ranging from poor environmental management . . . to major internal inefficiencies. . .. Thus, this agency is ripe for change. Although the GAO offered no recommendations as to DOE's future, not one of the experts surveyed thought that DOE should remain as it is today. And they raised many questions: Why is the Nation's energy agency maintaining nuclear weapons stockpiles and managing the cleanup of weapons production facilities? Why is the Nation's energy agency involved in nonenergy related research? Why is DOE undertaking such activities as science education and industrial competitiveness? As the GAO concluded in its report: It is not clear if the Department and its missions are still needed in their present form or could be implemented more effectively elsewhere in the public or private sectors. Unlike the muddled missions offered up by the Department of Energy, the mission of my Senate office is concise and focused, and is precisely summed up in our mission statement. This is how it begins: As the Senator and staff of the State of Minnesota, we pledge to lead the fight to reaffirm Congress' oversight responsibilities. By doing so, we will evaluate programs to ensure the wisest use of taxpayer dollars and focus on future streamlining and downsizing of Federal Government. Mr. President, that is the mission I was sent here to carry out by the taxpayers of Minnesota--taxpayers who are no longer willing to foot the bill for a bloated and cumbersome agency which is unable to meet its obligations and has outlived its usefulness. The Department of Energy needs the immediate attention of Congress. It's time we put this Trojan horse out to pasture. Mr. President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMS

Mr. GRAMS. That is correct. The taxpayer is under the belief that money is being saved in their name, but it is just being moved from one pocket and put into another.

Mr. GRAMS. Just a couple of quick other notes. This is not the first time this idea has been introduced. The lockbox language has been adopted by the House three times already, by large votes, the latest vote, 373 to 52. Also, it has the support of a number of groups such as the Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Madam President, if we are going to be responsible for the taxpayers, we should get our house in order. If we are talking about saving some money, let us make sure we do save it and just do not play a shell game and put it in another pocket and spend it later. Madam President, I will yield to the Senator from Missouri who had a comment.

Mr. GRAMS. Yes.

Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, I understand the yeas and nays have been ordered on this amendment. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, I want to say I have the deepest respect for the chairman of the committee, Mr. Domenici, and also the highest respect, of course, for the hearing process, but I would like to see a vote on this. So I move to waive the Budget Act, and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAMS. That is correct.

Mr. GRAMS. That is correct.

Mr. GRAMS. That is correct. Say our projected revenues will be $1.6 trillion and because of the hard work of the American workers, it comes in at $1.7 trillion, that additional $100 billion really should benefit the taxpayers and workers of this country to pay off the deficit and not to be laid on the table for people to grab at it and spend it in different ways.