Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to that we are today seeing Senate passage of this important legislation. I especially want to thank Senator Kassebaum for her efforts in working out the details of this consensus bill and in arranging for its passage as a freestanding measure. I also want to thank Senator Kennedy for his cooperation and efforts in clearing the bill for passage. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the legislation. It has been very gratifying to have been a part of the process of reaching agreement on the provisions of this bill among representatives of the animal drug industry, livestock and poultry producer organizations, consumers and the Food and Drug Administration. In particular, I would like to commend Dr. Stephen Sundlof, Director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at FDA for his hard work and cooperation in reaching consensus on this bill. This has been an exemplary effort in reaching a common-sense balance between the need for adequate regulation and the practical realities of livestock and poultry production. The bill does not in any way weaken the protections for human health contained in current law pertaining to animal drugs. The bill does, however, streamline the animal drug approval process, primarily by removing unnecessary and duplicative testing and investigation requirements found in current law. By reducing unnecessary requirements in the approval process, the approval of new animal drugs will become less costly and time consuming. That is very important, since the livestock and poultry industries are facing a near crisis caused by the lack of approved new drugs. For example, there has been only one new drug approved for use in swine since 1990, and that drug cannot be marketed as a practical matter until this legislation passes. The bill also contains a much needed resolution of the problems associated with veterinary oversight in dispensing of drugs for use in livestock and poultry feeds. This legislation is a huge step forward in improving FDA's animal drug approval process and a real victory for livestock and poultry producers, consumers and producers of animal drugs.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, again, I would just point out under the amendment of my colleague from Iowa, money that would go to pay for the ocean freight differential would still come out of the Agriculture budget, out of food aid. That is what I am basically opposed to, having it come out of Agriculture. It is a 6-percent limitation that my colleague has in his amendment, but any higher costs of U.S.-flag ships would still come out of Agriculture. I do not think it ought to. I think the money for the ocean freight differential ought to come out of the Department of Transportation. That is what my amendment does. Again, I hear all of these comparisons of shipping rates. My friend from Colorado, and of course my esteemed colleague from Iowa, have all these comparisons, but these are based on artificially low foreign rates subsidized by foreign governments, or rates for ships that operate without having to comply with the operating standards that apply to U.S.-flag vessels. So these kinds of comparisons may seem appealing, but they do not reflect a fair or accurate representation of the factors involved in the rates charged by U.S. ships. For example, our people are paid higher wages, our ships have to follow stronger and stricter environmental standards and our ships have to meet stricter working conditions and occupational health and safety requirements. None of these considerations is taken into account by the amendment of my colleague from Iowa. I keep pointing out that workers on U.S.-flag ships, U.S. citizens, pay Federal, State and local taxes. In fact, I am informed that existing Federal and State income tax requirements alone nearly double the cost of U.S.-citizen crews to U.S.-flag operators. Well, where do they pay those taxes? They pay those taxes here in America. Mr. President, let me also point out that there currently are limitations in place on the rates that U.S.-flag vessels may charge for hauling cargo preference shipments. For non-defense cargoes, for example, by law preference is given to U.S.-flag vessels only when such vessels are available at ``fair and reasonable rates,'' which are determined by an OMB-approved method based on detailed cost information submitted by American flagship operators. If U.S.-flag vessels are not available at fair and reasonable rates, they are not awarded the cargo, and foreign vessels may be used. In summary, I again point out that what my amendment seeks to do is to shift any higher costs of using U.S.-flag ships out of Agriculture to the Department of Transportation where it rightly belongs. I do, however, strongly support keeping U.S. jobs here in this country. I strongly support making sure that we support a maritime industry in this country and make sure it is there for us when we need it in periods of national emergency. I ask support for my amendment to shift those costs to DOT. I yield the floor and the remainder of my time.

Mr. HARKIN. Four minutes forty-eight seconds?

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Child Labor Free Consumer Information Act of 1996, legislation to establish a voluntary labeling system to help inform American consumers whether wearing apparel or sporting goods they see on the store shelves are made without the use of abusive and exploitative child labor. Although it is late in the session, I believe we should begin a substantive dialog about ending child labor right now. That is why I am introducing this legislation today. And I intend on reintroducing this measure at the beginning of the next Congress. A Worldwide Scourge When I speak about child labor, I am not talking about children helping out on the family farm or running errands after school. I am speaking about children who are forced to work in hazardous and dangerous conditions--children denied the classroom and driven into the workrooms. Child labor is a scourge around the world. But we can't dismiss the problem simply because it may occur an ocean away. We cannot ease our conscience by declaring it a ``them'' problem, because it is not. It is an ``us'' problem. And all of us can do something to stop it. Take a moment to look around. Maybe it's the shirt you have on right now. Or the silk tie or blouse. Or the soccer ball you kick around with the kids in the backyard. Or the tennis shoes you wear on weekends. Chances are that you have purchased something--perhaps many things-- made with abusive and exploitative child labor. And chances are you were completely unaware that was the case. That is hardly surprising. Because the tag we see for items in our stores tell us how much we have to pay to buy it. But it doesn't tell us how much someone else had to pay to make it. For example, the price tag on a soccer ball doesn't tell us that a young child in South Asia--perhaps no older than 5 years of age--paid to make it by working in cramped conditions, stitching together balls for hours at a time and a dollar a day. Last year, the United States imported almost 50 percent of the wearing apparel sold in America and the garment industry netted $34 billion. According to the Department of Commerce, last year the United States imported 494.1 million pairs of athletic footwear and produced only 65.3 million here at home. Americans may ask, ``What does this have to do with us?'' It is quite simple. By protecting the rights of workers everywhere, we will be protecting jobs and opportunities here at home. A U.S. worker cannot compete with a 12 year old working 12 hours a day for 12 cents an hour. Public Support As I have traveled around the country and spoken with people about the issue of abusive and exploitative child labor, I have found that consumers--ordinary Americans--want to get involved. They want information. They want to know if products on the shelves are made by children. And they do not want to buy it if it is. Public opinion polls back that up. According to a survey sponsored by Marymount University last year, more than three out of four Americans said they would avoid shopping at stores if they were aware that the goods sold there were made by exploitative and abusive child labor. Consumers also said that they would be willing to pay an extra $1 on a $20 garment if it were guaranteed to be made under legitimate circumstances. Mr. President, consumers have spoken. They do not want to reward companies with their hard earned dollars by buying products made with abusive and exploitative child labor. This body has also spoken. On September 23, 1993, the Senate put itself on record in opposition to the abhorrent practice of exploiting children for commercial gain. This body passed a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that I introduced which asserted that it should be the policy of the United States to prohibit the importation of products made with the use of abusive and exploitative child labor. This was the first step to ending child labor. Now it's time for the next. Let the Buyer Be Aware The Child Labor Free Consumer Information Act of 1996 will inform and empower American consumers by establishing a voluntary labeling system for wearing apparel and sporting goods made without abusive and exploitative child labor. In my view, a system of voluntary labeling holds the best promise of giving consumers the information they want--and giving the companies that manufacture these products the recognition they deserve. The centerpiece of this legislation is the establishment of a working group of members from the wearing apparel and sporting goods industries; labor organizations; consumer advocacy and human rights groups; along with the Secretaries of Commerce, Treasury, and Labor. This Child Labor Free Commission would establish a labeling standard and develop a system to assure compliance that items were not made with abusive and exploitative child labor. In my view, Congress cannot do it alone through legislation. The Department of Labor cannot do it alone through enforcement. It takes all of us--from the private sector to labor and human rights groups--to take responsibility and work together to end abusive and exploitative child labor. Voluntary Approach Let me be clear, companies can choose whether to use the label. This bill is not about big government telling the private sector what to do. It is based on the commonsense approach that a fully informed American consumer will make the right and moral choice and vote against abusive and exploitative child labor with their pocketbook. We have seen such an approach work effectively with the Rugmark label for hand-knotted oriental carpets. It is operating in some European countries. Consumers who want to buy child labor-free carpets can just look for the Rugmark label. Over 150,000 carpets have received the Rugmark label and been shipped to Germany. Rugmark licenses already provide 30 percent of German carpet imports from India. And I am pleased to say that there are now two wholesalers in New York that offer carpets with the Rugmark label. Building on Progress Mr. President, the progress that has been made on eradicating abusive and exploitative child labor is irreversible. We must continue working together to end child labor for all. And I believe my bill provides a road map to reaching that goal. It allows the consumer to know more about the products they buy and it gives companies that use the label the recognition they deserve. I urge my colleagues to support my bill. Our Nation began this century by working to end abusive and exploitative child labor in America, let us close this century by ending child labor around the world. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that additional material be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Child Labor Free Consumer Information Act of 1996, legislation to establish a voluntary labeling system to help inform American consumers whether wearing apparel or sporting goods they see on the store shelves are made without the use of abusive and exploitative child labor. Although it is late in the session, I believe we should begin a substantive dialog about ending child labor right now. That is why I am introducing this legislation today. And I intend on reintroducing this measure at the beginning of the next Congress. A Worldwide Scourge When I speak about child labor, I am not talking about children helping out on the family farm or running errands after school. I am speaking about children who are forced to work in hazardous and dangerous conditions--children denied the classroom and driven into the workrooms. Child labor is a scourge around the world. But we can't dismiss the problem simply because it may occur an ocean away. We cannot ease our conscience by declaring it a ``them'' problem, because it is not. It is an ``us'' problem. And all of us can do something to stop it. Take a moment to look around. Maybe it's the shirt you have on right now. Or the silk tie or blouse. Or the soccer ball you kick around with the kids in the backyard. Or the tennis shoes you wear on weekends. Chances are that you have purchased something--perhaps many things-- made with abusive and exploitative child labor. And chances are you were completely unaware that was the case. That is hardly surprising. Because the tag we see for items in our stores tell us how much we have to pay to buy it. But it doesn't tell us how much someone else had to pay to make it. For example, the price tag on a soccer ball doesn't tell us that a young child in South Asia--perhaps no older than 5 years of age--paid to make it by working in cramped conditions, stitching together balls for hours at a time and a dollar a day. Last year, the United States imported almost 50 percent of the wearing apparel sold in America and the garment industry netted $34 billion. According to the Department of Commerce, last year the United States imported 494.1 million pairs of athletic footwear and produced only 65.3 million here at home. Americans may ask, ``What does this have to do with us?'' It is quite simple. By protecting the rights of workers everywhere, we will be protecting jobs and opportunities here at home. A U.S. worker cannot compete with a 12 year old working 12 hours a day for 12 cents an hour. Public Support As I have traveled around the country and spoken with people about the issue of abusive and exploitative child labor, I have found that consumers--ordinary Americans--want to get involved. They want information. They want to know if products on the shelves are made by children. And they do not want to buy it if it is. Public opinion polls back that up. According to a survey sponsored by Marymount University last year, more than three out of four Americans said they would avoid shopping at stores if they were aware that the goods sold there were made by exploitative and abusive child labor. Consumers also said that they would be willing to pay an extra $1 on a $20 garment if it were guaranteed to be made under legitimate circumstances. Mr. President, consumers have spoken. They do not want to reward companies with their hard earned dollars by buying products made with abusive and exploitative child labor. This body has also spoken. On September 23, 1993, the Senate put itself on record in opposition to the abhorrent practice of exploiting children for commercial gain. This body passed a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that I introduced which asserted that it should be the policy of the United States to prohibit the importation of products made with the use of abusive and exploitative child labor. This was the first step to ending child labor. Now it's time for the next. Let the Buyer Be Aware The Child Labor Free Consumer Information Act of 1996 will inform and empower American consumers by establishing a voluntary labeling system for wearing apparel and sporting goods made without abusive and exploitative child labor. In my view, a system of voluntary labeling holds the best promise of giving consumers the information they want--and giving the companies that manufacture these products the recognition they deserve. The centerpiece of this legislation is the establishment of a working group of members from the wearing apparel and sporting goods industries; labor organizations; consumer advocacy and human rights groups; along with the Secretaries of Commerce, Treasury, and Labor. This Child Labor Free Commission would establish a labeling standard and develop a system to assure compliance that items were not made with abusive and exploitative child labor. In my view, Congress cannot do it alone through legislation. The Department of Labor cannot do it alone through enforcement. It takes all of us--from the private sector to labor and human rights groups--to take responsibility and work together to end abusive and exploitative child labor. Voluntary Approach Let me be clear, companies can choose whether to use the label. This bill is not about big government telling the private sector what to do. It is based on the commonsense approach that a fully informed American consumer will make the right and moral choice and vote against abusive and exploitative child labor with their pocketbook. We have seen such an approach work effectively with the Rugmark label for hand-knotted oriental carpets. It is operating in some European countries. Consumers who want to buy child labor-free carpets can just look for the Rugmark label. Over 150,000 carpets have received the Rugmark label and been shipped to Germany. Rugmark licenses already provide 30 percent of German carpet imports from India. And I am pleased to say that there are now two wholesalers in New York that offer carpets with the Rugmark label. Building on Progress Mr. President, the progress that has been made on eradicating abusive and exploitative child labor is irreversible. We must continue working together to end child labor for all. And I believe my bill provides a road map to reaching that goal. It allows the consumer to know more about the products they buy and it gives companies that use the label the recognition they deserve. I urge my colleagues to support my bill. Our Nation began this century by working to end abusive and exploitative child labor in America, let us close this century by ending child labor around the world. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that additional material be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, as an original cosponsor of the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act, I am pleased that the Senate is acting quickly to take this important step in our fight against drugs. Meth is destroying lives, families, and communities across Iowa and across the country. Just last week Des Moines police reported that marijuana use in the city is on the rise and that the increase is being driven by the popularity of methamphetamine. For Iowa, and many other States, this bill passage of this legislation can't come fast enough. As Iowa's new drug of choice, meth has left no part of our State untouched. In a word, meth is poison. This dangerous and popular drug is cheap and easy to access. In Iowa, the street price for one gram of meth is $100, similar to that of cocaine. However, unlike cocaine whose effects last about 20 minutes, one quarter of a gram of meth will last about 12 to 14 hours. A leading Iowa doctor referred to meth as ``the most malignant, addictive drug known to mankind.'' There is no doubt that the time for this legislation is now. Federal methamphetamine investigations have doubled and meth arrests have more than tripled over the past 2 years. The Division of Iowa Narcotics Enforcement reported a nearly 400 percent increase in meth seizures in a one year period. And in our largest city, Des Moines, meth seizures increased more than 4,000 percent. The legislation we are passing today takes bold actions to help States like Iowa fight back. The Comprehensive Methamphetamine Enforcement Act stiffens penalties for the possession and trafficking of this deadly poison and cracks down on producers and traffickers by increasing penalties for the illicit possession of the chemicals and equipment used to manufacture methamphetamine. The bill increases restrictions and reporting requirements on companies who supply the ingredients for its production and creates national working groups comprised of public health officials and local law enforcement to develop strategies to continue to fight this budding epidemic. Iowans have worked hard to cultivate a good quality of life. They have worked hard to make their communities a place to raise a family, a safe place, a decent place. But meth producers and dealers are peddling poison and wreaking havoc on small towns and communities across our State. I appreciate the efforts of Senators Hatch and Biden, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and look forward to working with them to ensure this legislation gets to the President this year. Amendments Nos. 5365 and 5366, En Bloc

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we must maintain a strong national defense. There can be no question about that. I believe part of that strength comes from wise use of taxpayer dollars. The $265.6 billion authorized by this Congress is $11.3 billion more than the Pentagon requested. I am offering this bill today to roll back this addon and restore the Pentagon's requested level. It directs the Secretary of Defense to achieve this goal by making adjustments that do not jeopardize our military readiness or the quality of life of our military personnel. The Secretary of Defense should not have trouble finding areas to trim. This budget adds less than $1 billion for readiness and quality- of-life issues. Too much of the rest is for gold-plated hardware and questionable weapons development. Some star wars items, like the space-based laser system at an additional $70 million, or the kinetic energy antisatellite program at an additional $75 million, are expensive, destabilizing, and probably won't work. Other items, like the Kiowa helicopter, at an additional $190 million have missions that can be filled by other weapons at less cost. In this era of tight budgets, when we are slashing other programs, I don't see how we can justify these unwise, unwanted, unnecessary and untimely expenditures. Mr. President, this simply defies common sense. The cold war is over. The proposed increase, by itself, is only slightly smaller than the combined defense budgets of North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Cuba. I think the American taxpayers are owed an explanation of this excessive spending. I would like to know how my colleagues plan to pay for such extravagance in this time of constrained spending. This bill will either steal from parts of government that are already doing their part to reduce the deficit, or it will add billions of dollars to the deficit. We simply can't avoid one of these consequences. Mr. President, let me put the magnitude of this fiscal irresponsibility into perspective. The $11.3 billion bonus is almost equal to the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Transportation Department. It's about twice the budget of the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, and it's almost four times larger than the budget of the National Science Foundation. Furthermore, for this amount of money we could fund the Pell Grant Program for 2 years or we could fund the Head Start Program for over 2\1/2\ years. To look at it in terms of my State of Iowa, this addon of $11.3 billion is almost three times the budget for the entire State of Iowa. Iowans could fund their K-12 education system, some 500,000 pupils in about 380 school districts, for 5 years. At the current spending and enrollment levels, the $11.3 billion could fund Iowa State University for 94 years, the University of Iowa for 99 years, the University of Northern Iowa for 166 years, or all three together for 38 years. We simply can't justify this excessive spending, we shouldn't ask our constituents to fork over $11.3 billion for programs the Pentagon does not need or could safely delay. It's time for some fairness. It's time for some common sense. And fairness tells us that the Pentagon shouldn't be exempt from our efforts to balance the budget. Common sense dictates that we can't afford $11.3 billion in addons over what the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff say we need to maintain a strong national defense. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this commonsense bill to cut the deficit and put our priorities back in order.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we must maintain a strong national defense. There can be no question about that. I believe part of that strength comes from wise use of taxpayer dollars. The $265.6 billion authorized by this Congress is $11.3 billion more than the Pentagon requested. I am offering this bill today to roll back this addon and restore the Pentagon's requested level. It directs the Secretary of Defense to achieve this goal by making adjustments that do not jeopardize our military readiness or the quality of life of our military personnel. The Secretary of Defense should not have trouble finding areas to trim. This budget adds less than $1 billion for readiness and quality- of-life issues. Too much of the rest is for gold-plated hardware and questionable weapons development. Some star wars items, like the space-based laser system at an additional $70 million, or the kinetic energy antisatellite program at an additional $75 million, are expensive, destabilizing, and probably won't work. Other items, like the Kiowa helicopter, at an additional $190 million have missions that can be filled by other weapons at less cost. In this era of tight budgets, when we are slashing other programs, I don't see how we can justify these unwise, unwanted, unnecessary and untimely expenditures. Mr. President, this simply defies common sense. The cold war is over. The proposed increase, by itself, is only slightly smaller than the combined defense budgets of North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Cuba. I think the American taxpayers are owed an explanation of this excessive spending. I would like to know how my colleagues plan to pay for such extravagance in this time of constrained spending. This bill will either steal from parts of government that are already doing their part to reduce the deficit, or it will add billions of dollars to the deficit. We simply can't avoid one of these consequences. Mr. President, let me put the magnitude of this fiscal irresponsibility into perspective. The $11.3 billion bonus is almost equal to the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Transportation Department. It's about twice the budget of the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, and it's almost four times larger than the budget of the National Science Foundation. Furthermore, for this amount of money we could fund the Pell Grant Program for 2 years or we could fund the Head Start Program for over 2\1/2\ years. To look at it in terms of my State of Iowa, this addon of $11.3 billion is almost three times the budget for the entire State of Iowa. Iowans could fund their K-12 education system, some 500,000 pupils in about 380 school districts, for 5 years. At the current spending and enrollment levels, the $11.3 billion could fund Iowa State University for 94 years, the University of Iowa for 99 years, the University of Northern Iowa for 166 years, or all three together for 38 years. We simply can't justify this excessive spending, we shouldn't ask our constituents to fork over $11.3 billion for programs the Pentagon does not need or could safely delay. It's time for some fairness. It's time for some common sense. And fairness tells us that the Pentagon shouldn't be exempt from our efforts to balance the budget. Common sense dictates that we can't afford $11.3 billion in addons over what the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff say we need to maintain a strong national defense. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this commonsense bill to cut the deficit and put our priorities back in order.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I did not start at 8 o'clock. I apologize to my friends on the floor. I have been talking now for just a little over 7 minutes. I started about 7 minutes ago.

Mr. HARKIN. I am delighted to yield a minute to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Maryland. I had written down here that a vote for my amendment does not contradict a vote for McCain at all. The Senator from Maryland pointed that out. What I am saying is that, for the first year, all of the increase can go to Florida and can go to Arizona, these high-growth States. All we are saying is, don't cut the legs out from underneath those States, so we at least have 1 year to figure out what is going on here. That is why I offered this amendment. I am not trying to fix on the past. I am not advocating that at all. I want efficiencies. But any plan that does not take into account the age and the illness, rural areas, that type of thing, I am sorry, that is not a good plan. Again, I point out that last night the Senator from Arizona modified his amendment. If you read the first page, what was modified and stricken out--it says this as it was first written: The Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall develop a plan for the allocation of health care resources in the Department of Veterans Affairs among the health care facilities of the department so as to ensure that veterans who have similar economic status and eligibility priority or medical conditions. . . . Guess what was stricken out? ``Or medical conditions.'' That is what I am talking about. This amendment says wait a minute, you have to take into account medical conditions. I say to my friend from Florida, that is why I think we need a year, as the Senator from Maryland said, as a bridge. I know that the number of veterans in Iowa is going down. They are going up in Florida and in Arizona. I understand that. But keep in mind, as I keep saying, that the ones we have left are the older and the poorer of the veterans. They don't deserve to have their legs cut out from underneath them in one fell swoop. Let us be careful.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues, what is the Department of Veterans Affairs planning to do to the veterans of your State? We are doing something here in the dark without any information on their impact on the States. My amendment simply says this, that if there is an increase like there is in this bill, that no State will get less than what they did last year. That means that Mr. McCain in Arizona and perhaps Mr. Graham in Florida and other sunshine States, they can get the increase, but at least do no harm. That is what my amendment does. It borrows from the adage: First, do no harm. We are about to rush in, make rash changes in the VA medical care funding allocations, and in a lot of our States, a lot of veterans are going to get hurt. So let us not do any harm. All my amendment says is--we will cede the increase--but let us next year hold the States harmless, that no State will get a cut next year. And then let us see what the VA's plan really does when they come to Congress next year. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wanted to have the amendment fully read so all Senators and staff watching on their television sets would know exactly what this amendment is all about. The veterans of the United States have earned the right to decent health care and medical care. They have risked their health and their lives to secure the liberties that we all enjoy. As we allocate scarce dollars for veterans' health care, we must ensure that no State is unfairly cut. That is why I am rising here to offer an amendment that will ensure that no State will lose funding for veterans' health care this year if the overall budget for veterans' medical care increases, which it does in this bill. The budget goes from $16.6 billion in fiscal year 1996 to $17 billion in this bill, an increase of about 2.4 percent. Why this amendment? Yesterday this body voted for an amendment by Senator McCain that calls for changes in the funding formula for veterans' health care. I hope my colleagues understand the full impact of that amendment. I want to make sure my colleagues know the amendment that was adopted yesterday goes far beyond a mere study of the funding formula. I listened to some of the debate yesterday, and I talked with some Senators. They said to me, ``This is just a study of the funding formula.'' That amendment, adopted yesterday, calls for implementation of the plan without further action by Congress. Let me read the relevant part of that amendment. (d) Implementation.--The Secretary shall implement the plan developed under subsection (a) [``shall'' implement the plan developed under subsection (a)] not later than 60 days after submitting the plan to Congress under subsection (c), unless within that time the Secretary notifies Congress that the plan will not be implemented in that time and includes with the notification an explanation why the plan will not be implemented in that time. That is the end of it. So subsection (d) says the Secretary shall implement the plan within 60 days, not later than 60 days. It does not say that Congress has to do a darn thing. He just has to submit it to Congress, and then within 60 days, he has to implement it, unless within that time he submits or notifies Congress that the plan will not be implemented and spelling out the reasons why it will not be implemented. I hope we all understand the full force and effect of this. The Secretary of Veterans Affairs will submit a plan to Congress for reorganization. The McCain amendment says it shall be implemented not later than 60 days, unless the Secretary turns right around and tells Congress, ``Oh, no, we don't want to implement it, and here are the reasons why we shouldn't.'' That is about as bizarre as you can get, that the Secretary would come up with an implementation plan and then turn right around and tell Congress, ``But it's no good, and we don't want to implement it.'' I urge my colleagues, each and every one of the Senators here, to call your regional network director to find out what the amendment will do to their States. I think you may be in for some surprises, because the VA, without notice to all of us, is already working to phase in a change in payments to the States over the next 2 years, and that change, which is similar to that called for under the McCain amendment this body adopted, would result in substantial cuts to many States' VA medical care budgets, even with the 2.4 percent increase that this bill provides nationally. The draft VA plan would significantly cut funds to Iowa. I only found out about the cuts because of an article in the August 23 issue of the Cedar Rapids Iowa Gazette that indicated that veterans centers in Iowa and Nebraska would be receiving $12 million less in fiscal year 1997 than in fiscal year 1996. This reduction was confirmed by John T. Carson, director of the Central Plains Network, in a letter to my office. Mr. President, this article goes on to show that there are going to be huge cuts in Iowa and in Nebraska, at least, under this article, and others, even though the total amount of money for VA health care is increased next year. I have a letter from Mr. Carson spelling out the details of what it would mean for Network 14. The fiscal year 1996 base of distribution is $268,035,000. The recommended fiscal 1997 allocation is $255,942,000, a difference of over $12 million less for that network, even though the funding nationally is going up. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article and the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, if that article had not appeared, I probably would have blindly gone forward and voted for the McCain amendment and voted for this bill, assuming that Iowa would get a 2.4 percent increase in its VA health care budget. After all, that is what is in the bill. The bill contains a 2.4 percent increase. If we do not adopt the amendment that I just sent to the desk, I am concerned that my colleagues from the Midwest and many other States will also see massive cuts. All my amendment does is ask for a little fairness in allocating the veterans health care budget. Our veterans in Iowa are older than the national average. We have the highest percentage of citizens over age 85 in the Nation--the highest. The health care that these, our oldest, veterans require is much more expensive than that for the general veteran population. Any capitation funding formula that does not adequately account for these factors will be grossly unfair to States like Iowa, and the McCain amendment does not do the job. In fact, the amendment of the Senator from Arizona was specifically revised to strike the factoring in of the medical condition and, thus, the cost of caring for veterans from the distribution formula. Let me repeat that. The Senator from Arizona specifically revised his amendment to strike the factoring in of the medical condition and, thus, the cost of caring for veterans from the distribution formula. My friend, the Senator from Arizona, argues that the sheer number of veterans moving to his State creates an unfairness, but it is the younger, healthier, and generally better off retired vets who are moving to the sunshine States. It is the older, the sicker, and the poorer vets who are increasing in other States like Iowa. As a result, the McCain amendment and the VA draft plan are grossly unfair to our States. While on the surface it may sound very nice to say we ought to allocate the money for just every veteran, that every veteran ought to count the same in allocating the money. On the surface it sounds generally reasonable that, if you have more veterans in one State, they ought to get proportionally more than veterans in another State if that State has fewer veterans. But what about a State like Iowa or New York or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Indiana, or a lot of other States, where, again, our populations are older and they are poorer and they require this VA medical help? I suppose my friend from Arizona might say, ``Well, they are moving to Arizona,'' but I am sorry, Mr. President, that is not the case. It is the younger, the healthier, and the more prosperous ones who are moving to Arizona. What we are left with are those who are older and sicker and poorer, and they cost more to care for, especially in a rural area. This has to be taken into account. It would be grossly unfair to equate an 80-year-old veteran, let's say, who is making $12,000 a year or less and living in Iowa and has severe health problems with a 65-year-old veteran fully mobile who has moved to Arizona and plays golf every day. So the formula that the VA comes up with has to take the medical condition into account.

Mr. HARKIN. I will be delighted to yield, if I do not lose my right to the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my leader, I thought it would only take about 10 minutes. I only wanted to make my point on them. I think the Senator from Arizona is probably going to rebut them. I am sorry. I apologize, I did not know we had a 9:30 time.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this body is making a major change in the dark, without adequate information of its impact on the States. I have asked the VA for a State-by-State breakdown of their draft reallocation plan so I could share it. However, the VA will not provide it to me. They will not provide it to me. After begging and pleading for information, I found out that 8 of the 22 regional networks are scheduled to receive cuts under the draft plan. I believe that more would be cut under the McCain amendment because the VA is phasing in their change over 2 years. Under the draft VA plan, networks could see cuts as high as 15 percent next year alone. Mr. President, I have an incomplete list of States and these networks that would be cut, up to 15 percent, despite a 2.4 percent increase in this bill. They are Iowa, Nebraska, California, Nevada, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, and Vermont. This is an incomplete and unofficial list. I have derived it from information provided by VA officials. So I want to assure you that this is not in any way complete. Let me tell you about the probable impact on Iowa veterans. Until a month ago the regional network for Iowa and Nebraska was counting on a budget increase commensurate with the proposed 2.4- percent increase in the VA medical budget for fiscal year 1997. Even with this increase there have been significant layoffs at our hospitals and an increase in the number of veterans being turned away from medical care. They are being told ``tough luck.'' Let me just relay a couple of the stories. One of the Iowa veterans who has been shut out has multiple sclerosis. He qualifies for Social Security disabilities. But Medicare does not come close to covering all his medication costs. He is classified as a category C veteran because his wife works and makes about $18,000. Mr. President, let me remind you category C veterans are treated at the discretion of the VA. Because of the tight budgets, this veteran is being turned away without warning after coming to rely upon the Veterans' Administration for help. He is justifiably angry he is being dropped by the Government. He is worried about his medication bills. He and his wife are trying to be independent, but they need help from the VA medical center to make it. There is another Iowa veteran who has diabetes, back problems, depression. He is on Social Security disability, Medicare. He has bought Medicare supplemental. He has been going to the VA medical center for his medications which cost over $10,000 a year. If he were single he would be eligible for VA medical services. But his wife makes about $25,000 a year. He is classified as category C. The local VA medical center has turned him away because of tight budgets. This veteran who faithfully served this country is trying to decide between dropping most of his medication for diabetes, depression and pain or separating from his wife. Mr. President, can we in good conscience do this to our veterans? A third Iowa veteran had rectal cancer. He had his anus, rectum, part of his colon, and part of a lung removed. He has had painful chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Despite all this, he is managing to keep a small business going, but he has been told he earns too much, cannot come back to the VA medical center for treatment. He is now faced with giving up his business just so he can get medical care. These three veterans are far from unique in Iowa. And now, if Iowa is subject to this big cut, as opposed to a 2.4-percent increase in the Nation, it will get much, much worse. This amendment has the support of the American Legion in Iowa, the Iowa AMVETS, the Iowa VFW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters from them be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. HARKIN. I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator Moynihan, myself, and Senator Specter, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. HARKIN. Ten minutes.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, what this amendment does is it basically is a hold-harmless amendment. There is no contradiction between this amendment and the McCain amendment of last night. This amendment says that any increases can go to these States, but no State this year can get less than what it did last year. It is almost commonly held around here that when we make major changes in formulas, we always have a 1- year hold harmless as a bridge. That is what this amendment does; it makes that bridge. What I am saying, basically, is that this vote on this amendment I have offered means that a lot of States will not be severely cut in their veterans health benefits this year. It holds them harmless. But it says to those high-growth States, like Arizona, Florida, and others, they can go ahead and get the increase. But there will not be big cuts in a lot of other States. I suggest that people might want to check to see what is going to happen to their States if the McCain amendment is adopted without this hold-harmless clause. I know people say we have to treat veterans equitably, and we do. But in a lot of the States, like Pennsylvania, New York, Iowa, and a lot of Northern States, our veterans are older, poorer, and sicker, and it costs more. That is not taken into account in the McCain amendment, and it is in mine.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to bring to the attention of the Senate a notable speech by one of our colleagues, and one of my fellow Iowans, Senator John C. Culver. The subject of Senator Culver's speech is that of another prominent Iowan, Henry A. Wallace. Both these men embody the wisdom and insight of the residents of the great State of Iowa. Senator Culver's distinguished speech, given March 14 at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, marked the inaugural of the Henry A. Wallace Annual Lecture. Sponsored by a research center named after Henry A. Wallace, the annual lecture will address agricultural science, technology, and public policy. Senator Culver's speech, entitled ``Seeds and Science: Henry A. Wallace on Agriculture and Human Progress,'' held listeners spellbound as he described the life and times of a pragmatic farmer from Iowa. As many of you know, Henry A. Wallace served our country in many ways: as a farmer, editor, scientist, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, and Vice-President. As a farmer, Wallace realized the importance of environmental stewardship. As he once wrote, ``The soil is the mother of man and if we forget her, life eventually weakens.'' While Henry A. Wallace made many contributions to this Nation for which we thank him, it is perhaps Mother Nature who thanks him the most. I ask that the text of Senator Culver's speech appear in the Record. Seeds and Science: Henry A. Wallace on Agriculture and Human Progress-- Guest Lecturer: Senator John C. Culver Sometime in 1933, while he was battling to rescue American agriculture from its greatest crisis, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Agard Wallace was invited to be the featured guest at a swanky party in New York City. It was not the sort of thing Wallace enjoyed. A quiet, cerebral man, Wallace often found such social functions uncomfortable. He wasn't good at flattery or small talk, had no interest in gossip and disdained off-color humor. Gathered around him that evening was a group of writers, planners, technicians and other members of the New York intelligensia eager to take his measure. Wallace was still something of a mystery to them, as he was to most of the nation. At age 44, he was the youngest member of President Roosevelt's Cabinet. The son and grandson of prominent Iowa Republicans--his father had served in the Harding and Coolidge cabinets--Wallace was still a registered Republican himself. He was, by background, an editor and corn breeder; he had never sought public office and had accepted his current position with considerable reluctance. Perhaps most intriguing to the people in the room was the depth and breadth of Wallace's intellectual interests. Wallace was not only a geneticist and journalist, he was one of the nation's leading agriculture economists, an authority on statistics and author of the leading text on corn growing. His interests ranged from diet to religion, from weather to monetary policy, from conservation to Native American folklore. Somewhere along the line, he also found time to start the world's first--and still the world's largest and most successful--hybrid seed corn company. So his small audience had much to ask Wallace about and they peppered him with questions. Finally one of them inquired: ``Mr. Wallace, if you had to pick the one quality which you thought most important for a man to have in plant- breeding work, what would it be?'' The man settled back to enjoy a long scholarly reply but Wallace's response was brief and startling. Without a moment's hesitation he said: ``Sympathy for the plant.'' For Wallace, the failure to understand the nature of plants and animals--their structure and purpose, their needs and cycles--was symptomatic of modern man's inability to understand life itself. ``When you sweat on the land with a purpose in mind you build character,'' he wrote. ``Watching things grow, whether plant or animal, is all important. One of the wisest of the old Anglo-Saxon sayings is, `The eye of the master fattens the ox.' How, he wondered, could man grasp the essence of life without taking into account the totality of living things: plants and animals and human beings and the spirit that animates their existence? He later acknowledged that he usually liked plants better than animals, but he appreciated the latter because ``they gave [the] manure that nourished the plants.'' Wallace had nothing sentimental in mind when he used the expression ``sympathy for the plant.'' Rather, he viewed ``sympathy'' as an outgrowth of rigorous observation and exacting employment of scientific principles. Throughout his life, beginning at an unusually early age, Wallace placed great store in the value of scientific understanding. By training and temperament, he was an unusually unsentimental man. About 1904, when Henry Wallace was in his mid-teens, he attended a young farmer's ``corn show'' and watched as ears of corn were judged by their appearance. The ``beauty contest'' winners, based on their uniformity, shape, color and size, were deemed to be the superior breeding stock. Professor P.G. Holden, part crusading scientist and part flamboyant showman, was the great evangelist of corn, and he was undoubtedly the best-known corn show judge in the United States. He was also a personal friend of the Wallace family. Young Henry's grandfather, the beloved preacher-journalist known to thousands of midwestern readers as ``Uncle Henry'' Wallace, had been largely responsible for bringing Holden to his teaching position at Iowa State. The story of what happened at that corn show was later written by Paul de Kruif, author of a colorful book on the great food scientist called The Hunger Fighters: Gravely, for the instruction of youth, [Holden] held up a great cylindrical ear that was not so good to his learned eye. ``This ear, boys, shows a marked lack of constitution!'' cried Holden. ``And look at this one for contrast,'' said he. ``Observe its remarkably strong middle!'' And such is the folly of teaching--that every boy, hypnotized, could do none other than see what Holden wanted him to see. Solemnly the professor judged and awarded the medal to the very finest ear of all those hundreds of ears of maize, and pronounced it champion. A mob of disappointed farm boys straggled out of the room. Henry stayed. The professor unbent. ``Now young man, if you really want proof that I'm right, why don't you take thirty or so of these prize ears? Then next spring plant them! Plant them, one ear to a row of corn. Then harvest them next fall-- and measure the yield of them.'' The next spring Henry Wallace took those 33 fine ears, shelled them into separate piles, stuck them under the soil, four kernels to a hill, in 33 rows, one ear to a row, on a little piece of land his father gave him. What he learned from those 33 rows of corn, of course, was that Holden and his corn shows were all wet. The ten ears of corn judged fairest by the good professor were among the poorest yielders in the test, and some of the ugliest ears produced the highest yields. Conventional wisdom or not, Holden's personal friendship with the Wallace family notwithstanding, the scientific experiment showed the appearance of corn had nothing whatever to do with its yield. As Wallace himself put it succinctly: ``What's looks to a hog?'' Henry Wallace's first lesson in agricultural experimentation came from his mother, May, a woman endowed with strong religious convictions and a great love of plants. May Wallace taught her young son how to cross-breed pansies, to his great delight. ``It happened that in that particular outcome, the flowers were not as pretty as either parent, but I attributed to them unusual value simply because they had been crossed.'' His mother also frequently said, ``Henry, always remember, you are a Wallace and a gentleman.'' Wallace never forgot. From his father and grandfather he inherited his first and last names, a tradition of progressive thinking and an intense belief in the value of ``a distinctive and satisfying rural civilization'' that offered ``nothing less than the comforts and the cultural elements of the best city life blended with the individualism and the contact with nature that the country gives.'' His father and grandfather had founded the family's influential farm journal, Wallaces' Farmer, and summed up their philosophy in six words that appeared on the cover of every issue: ``Good farming, clear thinking, right living.'' Another important influence on young Henry, as he was called in the family, occurred when he was a very young boy. Wallace had moved with his family to Ames, Iowa, where his father completed his degree at Iowa State and taught for a few years as a professor of dairying. There the shy boy was befriended by one of his father's students, a gangly black man by the name of George Washington Carver, who had been born in slavery. Together this unlikely duo--one who became the nation's greatest secretary of agriculture, and the other who gained international fame as a botanist and chemist-- tramped through the woods and fields around Ames exploring nature in intimate detail. Six decades later, it was said, Henry Wallace was still able to impress agrostologists with the minute knowledge of grasses he learned at Carver's feet. His lifelong fondness for grass was later evidenced by a national radio address he made while Secretary of Agriculture entitled ``The Strength and Quietness of Grass.'' It was Carver, Wallace said, who introduced him to the ``mysteries of botany and plant fertilization'' and who demonstrated that ``superior ability is not the exclusive possession of any one group or class. It may arise anywhere,'' Wallace noted, ``provided men are given the right opportunities.'' He also learned from Carver an approach to science: ``Carver's search for new truth,'' Wallace later observed, ``both as botanist and chemist, was a three-pronged approach involving himself, his problem, and his Maker.'' He earnestly believed that God was in every plant and rock and tree and in every human being, and that he was obligated not only to be intensely interested but to call on the God in whom he so deeply believed and felt as a creative force all around him. ``There is, of course, no scientific way of proving Carver . . . right or wrong,'' Wallace noted. ``But we can safely say,'' he added, ``that if a corn breeder has a real love for his plants and stays close to them in the field, his net result, in the long run, may be a scientific triumph, the source of which will never be revealed in any statistical array of tables and cold figures.'' As a boy growing up in Des Moines, there was always available to Wallace a small plot of land on which to experiment and ample encouragement from his family to let his curiosity range free--provided, of course, that he had milked the cows, fed the chickens and completed his other routine chores. As a student at Iowa State he worked on experimental farms operated on the county's ``poor farm'' and learned first hand that progeny from one ear of open-pollinated corn could yield twice as much as progeny from another ear of corn of the same variety. Having proved that ability to yield is more important than appearance, he was receptive to the concept of hybrid corn. He carefully followed scientific reports and experiments relating to its development while graduating first in the agricultural class of 1910, at Iowa State College. Throughout the 1920s, Wallace worked intensely on his own breeding projects and to promote the development and use of hybrid corn. In the early years of that decade, he had been influential in founding the Iowa Corn Yield Contest, which he saw not only as a scientifically valid replacement of the ``corn shows,'' but as a means to demonstrate to farmers the superiority of hybrid corn. Wallace knew even then that a revolution--his word--was coming to the Corn Belt. It was a revolution which he predicted and, more than any other individual, led. In 1933, six years after he started his own little company to develop and market hybrid seed, only one percent of the corn planted in the midwest was grown from hybrid seed. Ten years later, more than three-fourths of corn grown in the Corn Belt came from hybrids. Today, of course, virtually all commercial corn comes from hybrids. Yields grew from less than 25 bushels an acre in 1931 to 110 or more bushels today. The corn revolution stimulated an agricultural revolution throughout the world and transformed American agriculture from an art to an applied science. Wallace viewed this revolution not in the raw statistics of yields-per-acre, certainly not in bottom-line sales and profits, but in an intimately personal way. ``Every living thing, whether it be plant, animal or human being, has an individuality of its own,'' he wrote at the height of his corn breeding work. ``Some are pleasing, some repulsive, but all are interesting to whosoever tries to understand them. For fifteen years, I have tried to understand corn plants, until now the individuality of corn plants is almost as interesting to me as the personality of animals or human beings.'' It has been said that Henry Wallace was the only genius to have served as Secretary of Agriculture. The period 1933 to 1940 was the golden age in the Department's history and the creation of much of the intellectual dynamism of the New Deal. Agricultural programs and policies were enacted which remain the basic framework today. Under Wallace's creative stimulus, soil conservation, to protect what his grandfather called ``the voiceless land,'' was promoted. The ever-normal granary, to ensure against famine, an idea which Wallace derived from reading Confucius and the Bible, was established. These food reserves later proved of critical value in World War II. In addition, the REA, food stamps, the school lunch program, and ``food for peace'' were all begun. He was responsible for the Yearbooks of Agriculture in 1936 and 1937, which were the first devoted to agricultural research and plant genetics. He was proud that he had not succumbed during this period to the pressures to have the scientific work of the department reduced. He wrote: ``Science, of course, is not like wheat or cotton or automobiles. It cannot be over-produced. It does not come under the law of diminishing utility, which makes each extra unit in the stock of a commodity of less use than the preceding unit. In fact, the latest knowledge is usually the best. Moreover, knowledge grows or dies. It cannot live in cold storage. It is perishable and must be constantly renewed. Static science would not be science long, but a mere junk heap of rotting fragments. Our investment in science would vanish if we did not freshen it constantly and keep training an alert scientific personnel.'' Secretary Wallace was also directly involved with the expansion of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Facility. He noted in his diary on April 5, 1940, just prior to the fall of France: ``President Roosevelt was very emphatic about moving the Agricultural Department out of the farm at Arlington [where the Pentagon now sits]. He wanted to bring in the rest of an army battalion and a regiment of cavalry. The President has the War of 1812 in mind and doesn't want some foreign nation to come in and burn up Washington. Perhaps his ideas are sound, although responsible people seemed to be inclined to pooh-pooh them. The President wanted Agriculture to get in touch with the Budget Bureau and the War Department and get prepared to move out at once.'' President Roosevelt had developed great respect for Wallace's counsel as a Cabinet member for eight years on a great variety of subjects beyond agricultural policy. He referred to him as ``old man common sense,'' and selected him as his vice presidential candidate in 1940 because, according to Eleanor Roosevelt, he could best carry out Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policy if something should happen to the president. In December 1940, Wallace, recently elected vice president, was sent to Mexico by President Roosevelt to attend the inauguration of its new president. While there, Wallace, who had learned Spanish a few years before, asked to tour the rural areas and saw the desperate need for better agricultural methods to improve food yields. He was impressed by the prominent role of corn in Mexican agriculture, as well as the reverence the people had for it. Upon his return to the United States, he persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to establish the first of a series of highly successful international agricultural research centers. The Wallace proposal was timely because the foundation had begun to realize that its global public health programs, while controlling diseases such as hookworm, yellow fever and malaria, might be saving people from disease only to have them experience slow starvation due to inadequate diets. He was also responsible for the establishment of the Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Costa Rica and took an active part in the plans which led to the creation of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. A fellow Iowan, Norman Borlaug, who received the Nobel Prize for his work with the ``Green Revolution,'' once remarked that the award should have gone to Henry Wallace, whose leadership and inspiration was the moving force in these efforts. Wallace was the first vice president in American history to be given formal executive branch responsibilities as head of the Board of Economic Warfare. This agency was charged with the critical task of obtaining and ensuring the availability of vital raw resources from Latin America and elsewhere after the United States entered World War II. Wallace, in implementing the procurement contracts with countries from whom materials were obtained, required the commitment that they would in turn provide improved wages and living conditions for the workers. His objective was two- fold: healthy workers would best provide the supplies needed, and, in Wallace's view, such economic and social developments within the society would help advance democracy, ensure better post-war trading opportunities and good relations with the U.S. This approach was vigorously opposed by conservatives within the administration and the U.S. Congress, and the practice was therefore discontinued. Wallace typically, like his forebears, was concerned not only with the problems of his generation, but also with those of his grandchildren. Painfully mindful of the errors in U.S. policy, which he felt lost the peace following World War I, Wallace, as early as 1941, predicted with typical vision: ``The wisdom of our actions in the first three years of peace will determine the course of world history for half a century.'' On May 8, 1942, Vice President Wallace delivered his most well known public address entitled ``The Price of Free World Victory,'' but known to millions throughout the world as the ``Century of the Common Man'' speech. The speech represented Wallace's effort to inform World War II with a moral purpose: ``This is a fight between a slave world and a free world,'' he declared, ``and the free world must prevail.'' His remarks, however, went far beyond a call for the defeat of Germany and Japan. Wallace saw the war as a struggle against oppression everywhere. ``Victory for the allies,'' he said, ``must lift the men and women of all nations from the bonds of military, political and economic tyranny.'' In short, Wallace envisioned a worldwide revolution against the old order. ``Some have spoken of the `American Century,' '' he said, referring to an earlier address by Henry Luce of Time Magazine. ``I say that the century on which we are entering-- the century which will come out of this war--can and must be the century of the common man.'' In Wallace's mind the post- war situation should be a world free from want and deprivation in which nations traded freely and where lawful international order superseded national militarism. Wallace wrote: ``When a political system fails to give large numbers of men the freedom it has promised, then they are willing to hand over their destiny to another political system. When the existing machinery of peace fails to give them any hope of national prosperity or national dignity, they are ready to try the hazard of war. When education fails to teach them the true nature of things, they will believe fantastic tales of devils and magic. When their normal life fails to give them anything but monotony and drabness, they are easily led to express themselves in unhealthy or cruel ways, as by mob violence. And when science fails to furnish effective leadership, men will exalt demagogues and science will have to bow down to them or keep silent.'' Wallace preached that Americans must be prepared to support decolonization, international demilitarization and economic cooperation if victory was to have any true meaning. He was, however, frequently frustrated in these objectives. The voice of the common man, he complained in his diary, was not heard by the powerful elitists who ran foreign affairs. ``So long as the foreign affairs of the U.S. are allowed to be controlled as the sacrosanct preserve of one social class only, the weight of this country will continue to be thrown on the side of the `proper' people in other countries, all lip service to democracy notwithstanding * * *.'' In an earlier speech responding to Hitler's claim of the superiority of the Aryan race, Wallace said that, ``As a result of my study of genetics . . . there is nothing in science to interfere with what might be called a genetic basis for democracy. The seed bed of the great leaders of the future, as of those of the past, is in the rank and file of the people.'' As the cold was developed in March 1946, Wallace said, ``The common people of the world will not tolerate a recrudescence of imperialism even under enlightened Anglo- Saxon atomic bomb auspices. If English-speaking people have a destiny, it is to serve the world, not to dominate it.'' In light of his scientific background, Wallace had been designated by President Roosevelt as his personal liaison to secretly work with the group proposing the development of the atomic bomb. It has been said that the explosion of the atomic bomb ``changed everything but man's thinking.'' Not true with Wallace, for he immediately understood the threat now represented to human survival and rededicated all his efforts from that point forward to the cause of world peace. On September 21, 1945, in his last Cabinet meeting as Secretary of War, Republican patrician, Henry Stimson, proposed that information about atomic energy (not how to make the bomb) should be shared with other members of the United Nations, including the Soviet Union. Failing that, Stimson argued, the Russians would view atomic energy as another weapon in the Anglo-American arsenal that must--and would--be matched. Wallace sided with Stimson and, in a follow-up letter to President Truman, joined those U.S. atomic scientists who warned that, in attempting to maintain secrecy about these scientific developments, we will be indulging in ``the erroneous hope of being safe behind a scientific Maginot Line.'' Wallace was also acutely aware that another bomb was ticking--the growing global discrepancy between rich and poor--and that dramatic population growth, accompanied by even greater human misery and suffering, would lead to an explosion even more probable than the bomb itself. For the last 17 years of his life, Wallace was retired on his New York farm, out of public life and politics, continuing the work he loved most--his experiments with gladioli, strawberries, corn and chickens, as well as his efforts to increase agricultural productivity and improve the nutrition of the people in the less developed world with a special emphasis on Central and Latin America. In 1963, in a commencement address at the Pan American School of Agriculture in Honduras, Wallace told the young graduates that if any people wished long to survive, they should work at least one-third of the time with their hands and preferably in contact with soil. He urged them to invest ``their personal interest wisely,'' and the ``depth of that interest will draw other people to you. Some of them good, some bad. Eventually some of you will come to understand human beings which is the most difficult job of all.'' He went on to say that ``you are scientists who have learned to use your hands in a practical way. In so doing you will be intensely patriotic, serving your country in the most fundamental way. You will not belong to the right or the left or the center, but to the earth and those who work the earth lovingly and effectively so that it may be preserved and improved century after century.'' What, then, are we to make of this shy revolutionary, this complex genius with such an elusive personality, and what can we learn from his attitude towards plants, science, agriculture--and human life and progress? We might begin by asking ourselves the question he often asked himself: ``What is worthwhile?'' This is the question at the heart of our inner selves, part of the Presbyterian catechism he learned as a young boy from his grandfather. It is a question of faith. The answer given by the catechism is: ``The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.'' How is one to glorify God? The Wallaces were believers in the ``social gospel;'' that is, one glorified God by serving one's fellow human beings. In his oral history, Wallace said that if he were: To draw conclusions from my life so far I would say that the purpose of existence here on earth is to improve the quality and increase the abundance of joyous living. The improved quality and increased abundance of life is a progressive matter and has to do not only with human life but with all plants and animals as well. The highest joy of life is complete dedication to something outside of yourself. I am convinced that God craves and needs humanity's help and that without that help expressed in terms of joyous vitality, God will have failed in this earthly experiment. This is the core of Henry A. Wallace. If these views strike you as an odd way for a plant geneticist to talk about his work, rest assured you are not alone. Plenty of Wallace's contemporaries were equally perplexed. ``A senator moves easily from corn to hogs,'' the journalist Jonathan Daniels wrote. ``But he can be disturbed by a grinning Iowan who moves casually from genetics to God.'' Dr. Raul C. Manglesdorf, head of the Harvard University Botanical Museum, said, ``It was Wallace's fate to be often regarded as a `dreamer' when actually he was only seeing in his own pragmatic, realistic way some of the shapes of things to come and more often than not he was right. . . . Wallace's predictions,'' he further noted, ``were based less on inspiration or intuition than upon an objective evaluation of the available facts in the light of historical perspective. As a student of history he was well aware that history often repeats.'' During his lifetime, political opponents often derided Wallace as a ``mystic,'' a term which they intended to conjure up visions of crystal balls and secret ceremonies. Wallace himself accepted the term ``practical mystic.'' ``I've always believed that if you envision something that hasn't been, that can be, and bring it into being, that is a tremendously worthwhile thing to do.'' Wallace once co- authored a wonderful little book with William Brown on the history of corn, titled Corn and Its Early Fathers, at the beginning of which he devoted an entire page to this quotation from Jonathan Swift: ``And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.'' Wallace, the ``practical mystic,'' saw a way to make the equivalent of two or four ears of corn grow where one grew before. This, in his view, seemed a ``tremendously worthwhile thing to do,'' precisely because it seemed an obvious way of improving the lot of his fellow human beings. But there was another component to his vision. This was the hope that hybrids would help bring about the ``distinctive rural civilization'' of his family's dreams. He asked: ``Can we go ahead to create a rural civilization that will give us a material foundation solid enough so that life can be enjoyed instead of being wasted in a chase after enough dollars to keep the sheriff and wolf away?'' Perhaps hybrid seed, and science in general, provided an answer. It may be charged--certainly it was in his own time--that such a vision is utopian. But Wallace was not intimidated by such language. ``Our utopias,'' he wrote, ``are the blueprints of our future civilization, and as such, airy structures though they are, they really play a bigger part in the progress of man than our more material structures of brick and steel. The habit of building utopias shows to a degree whether our race is made up of dull-spirited bipeds or whether it is made up of men who want to enjoy the full savoring of existence that comes only when they feel themselves working with the forces of nature to remake the world nearer to their heart's desire.'' It is worth reflecting upon this comment, for it encompasses Wallace's answer to both those who would say science must be allowed to work its will regardless of the consequences, and to the critics of science who would rather forego knowledge than cope with change. To scientists he said this: ``The cause of liberty and the cause of true science must always be one and the same. For science cannot flourish except in an atmosphere of freedom, and freedom cannot survive unless there is an honest facing of facts . . . . Democracy--and that term includes free science--must apply itself to meeting the material need of men for work, for income, for goods, for health, for security, and to meeting their spiritual need for dignity, for knowledge, for self- expression, for adventure and for reverence. And it must succeed.'' In other words, the ends of science must always be mankind. Scientists, no less than the rest of us, must every day ask themselves; What is worthwhile? To the anti-scientists, Wallace said this in 1933: ``I have no patience with those who claim that the present surplus of farm products means that we should stop our efforts at improved agricultural efficiency. What we need is not less science in farming, but more science in economics . . . . Science has no doubt made the surplus possible, but science is not responsible for our failure to distribute the fruits of labor equitably.'' In other words, the answer to society's problems lies not in blocking progress but in guiding it to serve mankind's ends. And to everyone he offered this warning: ``The attacks upon science stem from many sources. It is necessary for science to defend itself, first, against such attacks, and second, against the consequences of its own successes. What I mean is this: That science has magnificently enabled mankind to conquer its first great problem--that of producing enough to go around; but that science, having created abundance, has now to help men live with abundance. Having conquered seemingly unconquerable physical obstacles, science has now to help mankind conquer social and economic obstacles. Unless mankind can conquer these new obstacles, the former successes of science will seem worse than futile. The future of civilization, as well as of science, is involved.'' Wallace also once observed ``scientific understanding is our joy. Economic and political understanding is our duty.'' His concept of scientific research was a broad one and included the lifting of the social sciences to the same level as the natural sciences. In turn, he challenged these scientists to have a greater conscience concerning the implications of their work. Applied research would properly involve social planning, which would enable man to have more leisure time and thus better enjoy non-material things, such as ``music, painting, literature, sport for sport's sake, and the idle curiosity of the scientist himself.'' The New Republic, which he served briefly as editor after his retirement from politics, once described his concept of political democracy as ``. . . that of a science which would blend political freedom with the full use of resources, both of manpower and of technologies, for everyone's welfare.'' It is intriguing to speculate about what Wallace might say if he were here today, about the state of agriculture in this country and around the world, about the movement for a sustainable alternative agriculture, about the role of science and the march of human progress. Probably his comments would surprise all of us, as they so often surprised audiences during his lifetime. His was a provocative and remarkably original mind, unfazed by popular opinion and conventional wisdom. The absence of ``corn shows'' testifies to that. First, on a very contemporary note, we can assume Wallace would be appalled and disgusted by the attack now being made on the nation's conservation programs, especially those related to agriculture. The efforts made to preserve land--to remove marginal land from production and protect the remainder from erosion and abuse--were among his proudest accomplishments. ``People in cities may forget the soil for as long as a hundred years, but mother nature's memory is long and she will not let them forget indefinitely,'' he wrote. ``The soil is the mother of man and if we forget her, life eventually weakens. Second, Wallace would admonish us to use our abundance more ``virtuously and wisely.'' In the long run, Wallace believed, a healthy democracy could not tolerate the politics of scarcity. In his own time, Wallace saw the devastating consequences of scarcity run amuck; one-third of a nation ill-nourished, ill-clad, and ill-housed. Today, however, we might imagine that Wallace would see too much money, made in unproductive ways, in the hands of too few people, too many people without health insurance or secure and satisfying employment, and far, far too many people leading wasted lives in the poverty and degradation of our major cities. He would deplore the national priorities which call for huge defense budgets while reducing investments in education, environment, and job training. He would be greatly troubled by the lack of concern for the ``general welfare,'' the widespread violence in our country, and the lack of civility and loss of community in our national life. He would urge creative social and economic planning to address these issues. While he would welcome the liberalization of international trade, he would decry the enormous expenditure of scarce Third World resources on arms. He would advocate a stronger U.N. military force and greater foreign assistance through more efficient and reformed multilateral lending institutions. Third, we might guess that Wallace would look upon the sustainable agriculture movement with considerable affection. This is speculative because Wallace, like all of us, was a man of his times, and no one would say he was close to being ``certified organic'' in his own practices. He used chemical pesticides and fertilizers liberally, and, some would argue, helped pave the way for a highly mechanized, industrialized agriculture through the introduction of hybrid seed to commercial farming. Still, Wallace was a man who believed in facts. If the facts argued against chemical pesticides, he would have accepted them totally. What he sought, in his life's work, was not prosperity for corporations, but for the men and women living on farms, doing God's work, preserving their land and seeing ``the fruits of their labor raise the living standards of mankind.'' Prosperity, he often warned farmers, was not an end but the means to an end. He wrote: ``Can we remember that prosperity is worthless except insofar as it gives us more freedom and strength to do good work, to love our fellow men and to take delight in the beauty of a world wonderful enough to give pleasure to the Workman who planned it?'' Finally, we can guess that he would say to farmers and scientists: ``Small is good.'' When Wallace began his corn breeding experiments, he recalled, he ``had only a fraction of an acre within the city limits of Des Moines on which to work. An inbred corn capable of unusually high yield came out of [this] backyard garden, which was but ten by twenty feet. . . .'' He was concerned that breeders might substitute masses of data for real understanding and pointed out that James Logan, an 18th Century experimenter, had learned from four hills of corn, and that the principles of heredity were discovered by Gregor Mendel, growing peas in a monastery garden about 15 feet wide and 30 or 40 feet long, and finally, that George H. Shull, one of the inventors and developers of hybrid corn, used no more than one quarter of an acre each season in conducting his experiments. He deplored that the modern trend in science is in exactly the opposite direction. ``The present emphasis,'' he wrote, ``is directed toward doing things in a big way, toward large numbers and multidisciplinary research. In many of our educational institutions, scientific progress seems to be measured in terms of the growth of departments and the number and size of financial grants that can be obtained for support of the work. . . . The great scientific weakness of America today.'' he said, ``is that she tends to emphasize quantity at the expense of quality--statistics instead of genuine insight--immediate utilitarian application instead of genuine thought about fundamentals. . . . True science cannot be evolved by mass-production methods.'' At 75 years of age and in outwardly remarkable physical condition, Wallace became afflicted with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. This disease affects the nervous system and causes muscular atrophy. There is no cure. An experimenter to the end, he kept a careful record of his symptoms and reactions in a memo entitled, ``Reflections of an ALSer.'' In the final weeks of his illness, in September 1965, Wallace was visited by a friend while a patient at NIH. The visitor noted that the flowers in his room had been sent by President Lyndon Johnson. Wallace, who, given the disease's progression, could no longer speak, wrote on a notepad, ``I hope they think about decentralization as the hope of the future. Big cities will become cesspools.'' Wallace always rose very early on his Farvue farm and, as long as his failing health permitted, continued to type his own correspondence with geneticists, plant breeders and others around the world before going out to the field in a mechanized wheelchair to work with his research plots. One of his last letters was to a long-time friend and corn breeder: ``Your 3306 [a hybrid seed corn code] has me all excited. So glad you have 2,000 acres of it. . . . I was feeling rather blue when I got up this morning, thinking the end of the road was not far off. But when I got to thinking about 3306, I felt I just had to live to see how [it] would adapt to the tropical program, the Argentine program, and the South Georgia program. Yes, this is the most exciting letter I have ever received from you.'' That was his message. Think big, plant small, work hard, seek the truth, glorify God, and have sympathy for the plant.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I supported the health insurance conference agreement. I want to speak a few minutes about some of the very good and some very problematic provisions in this agreement. I want to congratulate Senator Kennedy and Senator Kassebaum and others for their hard work and perseverance. A number of the provisions of this bill follow the framework of a proposal I put forth in the last Congress. In 1994, I offered what I called a downpayment plan that would have made health insurance affordable for every child in America, provided for increased portability and other insurance reforms, full tax deductibility of health insurance costs for the self-employed and a clampdown on health care fraud, waste, and abuse. I am pleased that provisions similar to several of these items are included in this conference report. I am very pleased that this legislation prohibits group and individual health plans from establishing eligibility, continuation, or enrollment requirements based on genetic information. I offered an amendment on this issue during committee consideration of S. 1028 and am pleased that it is included in the conference bill. I believe this is a very important provision that will become even more important as the availability and use of genetic tests grows in the coming years. Genetic information should be used to help people stay healthy and should not be used to put a person at a disadvantage when it comes to health insurance. While this legislation still leaves serious flaws in our health care system, it represents an important step toward reforming health care and injecting some fairness and common sense into the system. The portability provision in the bill would provide some much-needed relief for many Americans. Provisions to gradually raise the percentage of health insurance costs that farmers and other self-employed can deduct from their taxes from 30 to 80 percent over the next 10 years, would provide greater relief, if not equity, with larger businesses. Mr. President, the portability provisions in the bill are particularly important. Americans should not have to worry about facing preexisting condition exclusions if they get sick, change jobs, or lose their job. This health insurance bill will provide many American families with added security and choices. The provisions in the legislation related to preexisting conditions are important and add some common sense to the current health insurance market. The bill limits the ability of insurers to impose exclusions for preexisting conditions. Under the legislation, no such exclusion can last for more than 12 months. Once someone has been covered for 12 months, no new exclusions can be imposed as long as there is no gap in coverage--even if someone changes jobs, loses their job, or changes insurance companies. The preexisting condition provisions will help real people who have already experienced an illness and want to switch insurers or change jobs For example, a father from Iowa City called my office about his daughter who has a chronic health condition and will graduate from college this spring. He was worried that when she graduates and is no longer covered under his health insurance policy she will not be able to find insurance coverage for her chronic health condition. Because the Health Insurance Reform Act would require insurers to credit prior insurance coverage, his daughter can move to another health insurance plan without being denied coverage for her preexisting condition. The portability provision in the bill will help with so-called job lock. Workers who want to change jobs for higher wages or advance their careers often have to pass up opportunities because it might mean losing health coverage. These provisions will provide greater security for Americans currently covered under group health plans. I've heard form Iowans who have had to pass up new job offers or forgo starting their own small business because they or someone in their family has a preexisting condition. Workers with a sick child are forced to pass up career opportunities because their new insurance may not cover a preexisting condition for 6 months or more. These families have played by the rules and have been continuously insured--they deserve to know that if they pay their insurance premiums for years, they cannot be denied coverage or be subjected to a new exclusion for a preexisting condition because they change jobs. But, I do want to express my concern about some of the comments that are being made on both sides of the aisle about this bill. In today's edition of the Washington Post, House Speaker Newt Gingrich is quoted as saying ``it means guaranteed health insurance for everyone who's in the system.'' Mr. President, this bill is an important step forward, but it in no way means guaranteed health insurance for people now in the system. We should not overpromise or oversell this bill. American workers still face the possibility that their employer will reduce their health insurance or drop coverage altogether. Workers still face the possibility that coverage for their children will be dropped. In fact, the number of children covered by employment- based health insurance has been decreasing and over 9 million children have no health insurance. If you lose your job you still face the high costs of health insurance--certainly many people who have just lost their job can't afford health insurance premiums. If you get sick, lose your job, and can't afford health insurance premiums you are still out of luck under this bill. And, Mr. President, today if a worker switches jobs their next employer may or may not offer health care coverage. The bill before us today does not change this situation. Companies can also continue to eliminate health care coverage for retirees. So, Mr. President, this bill does not guarantee health insurance. It is an important step forward and it should be passed. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but we also shouldn't lead Americans to believe it does more than it really does. While there are many positive things in this bill that merit its enactment, Mr. President, there are several provisions that I believe would substantially undermine our efforts to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare and other health programs. Our two lead agencies in combating health care fraud and abuse, the Department of Justice and the office of inspector general of the Department of Health and Human services, have also raised serious concerns with different provisions in this conference report. First, the conference agreement includes language from the House bill that significantly raises the burden of proof on the Government to prove fraud and impose civil monetary penalties. Let me read from a letter that June Gibbs Brown, HHS inspector general wrote to me recently about this provision. I ask unanimous consent that the relevant portion of the letter be included at this point. Letter from June Gibbs Brown, Inspector General September 29, 1995. Hon. Tom Harkin, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. Re H.R. 2389: ``Safeguarding Medicare Integrity Act of 1995'' Dear Senator Harkin: You requested our views regarding the newly introduced H.R. 2389, which we understand may be considered in the deliberations concerning the ``Medicare Preservation Act.'' We strongly support the expressed objective of H.R. 2389 of reducing the fraud and abuse which plagues the Medicare program. The proposed legislation contains some meritorious provisions. However, if enacted, certain major provisions of H.R. 2389 would cripple the efforts of law enforcement agencies to control health care fraud and abuse in the Medicare program and to bring wrongdoers to justice. The General Accounting Office estimates the loss to Medicare from fraud and abuse at 10 percent of total Medicare expenditures, or about $18 billion. We recommend two steps to decrease this problem: strengthen the relevant legal authorities, and increase the funding for law enforcement efforts. Some worthy concepts have been included in H.R. 2389, and we support them. For example, we support: ``a voluntary disclosure program, which allows corporations to blow the whistle on themselves if upper management finds wrongdoing has occurred, with carefully defined relief for the corporation from qui tam suits under the False Claims Act (but not waiver by the Secretary of sanctions); ``minimum periods of exclusion (mostly parallel with periods of exclusion currently in regulations) with respect to existing exclusion authorities from Medicare and Medicaid; and ``increases in the maximum penalty amounts which may be imposed under the civil monetary penalty laws regarding health care fraud.'' As stated above, however, H.R. 2389 contains several provisions which would seriously erode our ability to control Medicare fraud and abuse, including most notably: making the civil monetary penalty and anti-kickback laws considerably more lenient, the unprecedented creation of an advisory opinion mechanism on intent-based status, and a trust fund concept which would fund only private contractors (not law enforcement). Our specific comments on these matters follow. making civil monetary penalties for fraudulent claims more lenient by relieving providers of the duty to use reasonable diligence to ensure their claims are true and accurate Background: The existing civil monetary penalty (CMP) provisions regarding false claims were enacted by Congress in the 1980's as an administrative remedy, with cases tried by administrative law judges with appeals to Federal court. In choosing the ``knows or should know'' standard for the mental element of the offense, Congress chose a standard which is well defined in the Restatement of Torts, Second, Section 12. The term ``should know'' places a duty on health care providers to use ``reasonable diligence'' to ensure that claims submitted to Medicare are true and accurate. The reason this standard was chosen was that the Medicare system is heavily reliant on the honesty and good faith of providers in submitting their claims. The overwhelming majority of claims are never audited or investigated. Note that the ``should know'' standard does not impose liability for honest mistakes. If the provider exercises reasonable diligence and still makes a mistake, the provider is not liable. No administrative complaint or decision issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has found an honest mistake to be the basis for CMP sanction. H.R. 2389 Proposal: Section 201 would redefine the term ``should know'' in a manner which does away with the duty on providers to exercise reasonable diligence to submit true and accurate claims. Under this definition, providers would only be liable if they act with ``deliberate ignorance'' of false claims or if they act with ``reckless disregard'' of false claims. In an era when there is great concern about fraud and abuse of the Medicare program, it would not be appropriate to relieve providers of the duty to use ``reasonable diligence'' to ensure that their claims are true and accurate. In addition, the bill treats the CMP authority currently provided to the Secretary in an inconsistent manner. On one hand, it proposes an increase in the amounts of most CMPs which may be imposed under the Social Security Act. Yet, it would significantly curtail enforcement of these sanction authorities by raising the level of culpability which must be proven by the Government in order to impose CMPs. It would be far preferable not to make any changes to the CMP statutes at this time.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise as cosponsor of America's Agricultural Heritage Partnership Act of 1996. This bill would establish America's Agricultural Heritage Partnership in northeast Iowa in order to promote the story of agriculture in our Nation's rich history. A few years ago, leaders from Waterloo and other communities in northeast Iowa developed an initiative called Silos and Smokestacks. Silos and Smokestacks is a private organization that has worked to remodel and renovate old, and often abandoned, buildings in Waterloo. This effort is a wonderful example of communities and concerned citizens working together to preserve a unique part of American history. The hard work by Silos and Smokestacks has provided the foundation for a unique heritage park that would combine the stories of our Nation's agricultural and industrial development. In the past, the focus of the National Park Service has been to create and administer the so-called natural areas, commonly known as our National Park System. A heritage park involves local, State, Federal, and private interests in recognizing and preserving sites of cultural and historical significance. Heritage areas are something like a large interactive museum in which people have the opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge of an important facet of our Nation's history. The National Park Service has determined that northeast Iowa is an ideal location for a heritage park. This park would tell the nationally significant, but often overlooked, story of American agriculture. Northeast Iowa combines the rich histories of our Nation's farming and industrial sectors. In the area surrounding Waterloo one will find some of the most productive and fertile land in the Nation. Boasting the production lines of John Deere and other farm equipment manufacturers and some of the largest meatpacking operations in the Midwest, the city of Waterloo represents our Nation's industrial strength. Taken together, this area represents nearly every aspect of agricultural and food production. The National Park Service has suggested that four principal topics of the heritage area could include: the amazing science of agriculture, agriculture as a way of life, organizing for survival, and crops from the field to the table. The legislation introduced today would authorize the Secretary of Agriculture to make grants and provide technical and management assistance to those entities developing the introductory heritage park. This assistance would be the critical impetus to see this unique project through to completion. A heritage project in northeast Iowa would provide countless Americans with a valuable insight into one of the most fascinating, and important, aspects of American society.