Mark Hatfield

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. HATFIELD. I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague for his very strong assistance on this. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I now send to the desk a number of amendments that have been cleared on both sides of the aisle. I ask unanimous consent that they be considered en bloc, agreed to en bloc, and that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table. I withhold. Mr. President, my unanimous consent request has been formally modified, but that has already been taken care of. I renew my unanimous-consent request.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I yield back all the time of Senator McConnell at his direction, and I yield back whatever time I might have. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. Let us put our staffs together, sooner rather than later, to try to work out some strategy.

Mr. HATFIELD. I would like to thank the Senator from Kansas, Mr. President, for her very astute and calmly stated remarks on a very, very tough issue. I appreciate her contribution. Mr. President, this is a unanimous-consent agreement that is cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent that there be 1 hour for debate on the pending McConnell amendment, to be equally divided in the usual way, and that following the conclusion or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote on or in relation to the McConnell amendment, and that no amendment be in order to the McConnell amendment.

Mr. HATFIELD. I thank the Chair. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mr. HATFIELD. I yield.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I urge its adoption.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to send an amendment to the desk that has been cleared on both sides that does not appear on the list that we have adopted.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin] has presented an amendment that deals with a mutual concern of issues. I am grateful that the Senator put together a way to deal with these issues. The only problem is that under the current parliamentary situation, this is an appropriations measure, and, as the Senator realizes, out of this rather extensive amendment, which is almost 100 pages, there is a lot of legislation in the amendment as well as earmarks relating to appropriations. I would have to, probably, raise a point of order against the amendment being considered on this vehicle. Both from the standpoint of our personal working relationship, that I treasure, and our mutual interest that we share on so many of these issues, I would not like to do that, and I would like to also assure the Senator that I am willing to cooperate and work with him to find some suitable alternative to this particular vehicle. It is fragile enough, without adding more problems to it, in terms of so much legislation. So, I just say I deeply regret the situation I am in, but in order to move this bill on through to a conference with the House and, hopefully, to the signature of the President, I wonder if the Senator would consider the possibility of postponing this action to a time when we could join together in partnership?

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask if the Senator will yield.

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

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, what we have just done is very simple; that is, that Senator Hatch had cleared the concept on both sides of the aisle in terms of expanding the support for the drug czar. The question was on the offset. This is budget neutral. The money has been offset from GSA. That has also been cleared. I thank the Chair. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, first of all, I commend my colleague for her keen interest and her willingness to become involved in one of the great issues that confronts the Pacific Northwest--not only the Pacific Northwest, but the entire country, and not just for the entire country, but now something that is an issue that is worldwide. I want to just say briefly that we get ourselves oftentimes so focused on our own geographic focus of interest, we sometimes forget the impact of policies that affect the entire world. A group of us went to Siberia to see the timber situation in Siberia this last August and to review the cutting policies of that part of the world. Due to the stalemate and the gridlock in the Northwest, which has succeeded pretty much in eliminating this Northwestern part of the United States which is, worldwide, the greatest productive area for softwood timber in the world, effectively eliminating it from the area of supply for one of the great demands in our own country, housing--housing for many people: poor, middle income, rich, everybody. The only product for housing that really is a renewable product that is grown by free solar energy and that can be replaced and renewed, renewed, and renewed, as it is a thesis of our whole timber policy, is a renewable resource. Let me just say that we are, today, witnessing what I call a modern type of environmental imperialism, much the same as the 18th and 19th century imperialism of Britain and the European powers. For what we have not found available, in part due to our own policies on the home front, we are going to the rest of the world, to exploit the rest of the world--the rest of the world that has no policies in place. Siberia has a great hunger for hard cash. Let me just say that this is a reality. We have 10 small mills in the Northwest consortium, and in the 10 small mills--6 from the State of Oregon--they have gone in to make purchases of Siberian timber because of our own lack of supply. In Siberia, there is a multiplier of 15. What we can produce in the Northwest on 100,000 acres takes 1.5 million acres of timber in Siberia--1.5 million. It seems to me that we have to begin to lift our eyes to not only the environmental needs of our own area within this country, and in this country on this continent, but also the whole world. The same is happening in South America. The demand has not been met in our own country, and, as a consequence, we are looking to other markets in South America. Again, let me emphasize, even our Canadian friends have not fully implemented a national timber policy governing the way in which timber is managed in Canada. The pressure is on Canada. Our 13 Southern pine States, mostly made up of small wood lots, are stripping their lands to meet the supply. That is just one facet of what we do here and its environmental impact on the rest of the world. I think the day has come when we have to take seriously the right of the United States to go to the rest of the world and exploit and extrapolate their raw materials to feed our own need here domestically. Now, I think also that it is very important to recognize that these pictures that we see absolutely chill my blood--about the same as if I went to a slaughterhouse to watch sausage being made would chill my blood. But I still like sausage. I am a tree planter. I do not know how many people in this Chamber planted trees. I have planted 1,800 of them on 5 acres of seedlings. I do not like to see the process of providing us housing material or beautiful paneled walls in our offices, and the other myriad of ways in which we use the timber product. And I think, also, our history is very, very limited. We have had some floods in the Pacific Northwest. There are those who are trying to say those floods were tied directly to timber harvests. I think in some areas that is true. But to say that the floods were created solely, or exclusively, or in the main by this is not historically accurate. The greatest flood we had was in 1891. We were not doing much timbering in 1891 in my State, nor I do not think in the State of Washington either. We also have a short history when, in World War II, the National Government said, ``We have to have timber for the war effort, and we are not using our Federal timber. We are asking the private timber landowners to produce the timber now for the cause of the war, and we will replace it from Federal timber after the war.'' That is an important factor in this history of timber in our Pacific Northwest. A lot of people like to go around and say, ``Look how they have stripped the land of the timber.'' That was because we had locked up our own Federal land timber and, for the sake of the war effort, calling on people's patriotism to strip their land for that timber because it was faster to be gathered and cut, rather than having to wait to build roads into the Federal area. I want to now just recall something in 1989. That is not that long ago. In 1989, Mr. President, Speaker Foley, Congressman Les AuCoin, and I called a timber summit to face the problem we had at that time of a shutdown of our Federal forests for any timber harvesting. In 1989. It is very interesting because in July 1989 the Ancient Forest Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, proposed their own short-term timber supply solution. What did the Ancient Forest Alliance propose? They proposed a 9.6 billion board feet harvest--a 9.6 billion board feet harvest in 1989 and 1990, a 2-year period. That was to take place on the Federal forest lands and the BLM lands in Oregon and Washington alone. They had other parts to their proposal, such as minimizing the fragmentation of old growth using the Forest Service definition and PNW-447, or regional guide, and protecting the spotted owl. These were all components. But can you imagine a 9.6 billion board feet proposed cut from the Ancient Forest Alliance? History changes. And this is obviously another example of change. But let us keep a continuity of that history, and let us look at all parts of that history, and let us remember that at that particular time we had just left the period when the so-called ASQ, the allowable cut, was 5.3 billion board feet annually from the Pacific North region, never having reached that level of cutting; the highest was 4.8. But that has changed, too. Now, let us be very straightforward and historically correct on this. No one should be surprised about the rider. The administration negotiated every dot and every comma in that rider, fully cognizant of its meaning and fully understanding of what it proposed to do and what it proposed not to do. It was a rider to what? An administration bill, a rescissions package. The administration, let us face it, had a higher value on getting the votes for that rescissions package than they did at that moment in negotiating a rider on timber. That is a fact, too. I was one of the negotiators. So for people to say somewhat that this is a great surprise, that all of a sudden we opened it up and here was the fine print, that is not true. Everybody that was involved in that, including the administration, understood precisely what it said in that. Now intervene the next step: A Federal district judge and a suit that he had to rule on relating to his interpretation of this rider. Now, when it is said that Senator Gorton and I found that it was not the best rider or the best effort we could have made, or whatever, it was the intervening interpretation by a Federal district judge that caused anybody and everybody who understood what the rider was and that it had gone too far. Now, let me say that the administration then began to discuss and negotiate a modification to this rider. They asked for five points. First of all, before I give the five points, what are we talking about? We are talking about contracts that had been negotiated in the past on the basis of the forest procedures, on the basis of all of the in-place regulations. Nobody has done this in the dark. All of those were fully operative and negotiated, and they were fully publicized, as all timber sales are. In other words, we moved down not to the subject of timber sale, but to the right of contract. Three points of contract: Offer, consideration, and acceptance. I learned that in my one and only year of law school. My colleague graduated; I did not. So we are talking about a legal instrument that is fully enforceable under our American jurisprudence system. Consequently, we are talking about a contract. When they say, ``Well, any substitute sale has to be agreed to by both parties,'' of course, you cannot violate a contract. Two parties had entered the contract, and if you are going to modify that contract, you have to have the two parties agree to the modification. This is not anything strange or weighted in the favor of one side or the other. It is a fundamental law of contracts. So we have these contracts, or a $150 million value of contracts, that the Federal Government entered into in good faith, and the buyer, in good faith, with consideration. OK. What were these points then? The administration said, ``Your language is too narrow, as it has been interpreted,'' and so forth. The language was, in effect, and I want to quote it: The administration has the ability to offer replacement for those areas where a marbled murrelet is known to be nesting. Oh, did we have long discussions with the White House on how do you define the presence of a marbled murrelet. They are reclusive kind of birds. If you find an eggshell, is that sufficient evidence? If you heard one fly over? So we said, ``nesting.'' And we said the replacement for those areas and those sales, if you found a marbled murrelet nesting, could then be set aside and replaced in like kind as a substitute sale. They said those were restrictions that they felt could not produce the best environmentally sound replacement policy. Two points: Expanded beyond the marbled murrelet, and do not make it replacement sale in kind. That would require an old growth, or no growth, or second growth, or whatever. So, consequently, we lifted both of those out of the rider modification. In effect, we said, for any reason that you feel it would be environmentally unsound to pursue a sale, set it aside, and you do not have to replace it in kind. Replace it in volume with a mutual agreement because there were two parties to this contract. We have no other way to do this except to legislate it and invalidate an existing contract. I do not think the Congress wants to get into that business. All right. Those were two issues that we cleared up. Then they said, ``Well, there are times when, perhaps, we do not want to have a substitute sale. We would like to have a buyout of the contract,'' which is always possible under contract, any contract. So we said, ``All right. Have a buyout.'' There is a little question as to where we are going to get the money for the buyout. But the point is, we would give them authorization for a buyout and work with the administration. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I have a little flexibility to do things of this kind, to make commitments. We will find ways to help finance an agreed financing system for the buyout. Then they said, ``Put a date of December 1996 as to when all of this has to be accomplished.'' That might rush us into premature cutting in order to meet a deadline. So it took a deadline off. The last thing they asked for was a repeal on the sufficiency language, which is a red light, a red herring, or a bell in the minds of most environmental groups. But based on history and based on the record, there were people who were filing an injunction on every single timber sale to tie up every timber sale whether it had an environmental issue or not an environmental issue. We had the woods being run by lawsuits or locked up by lawsuits. So the sufficiency language which we used in other cases, in other laws in this Congress and in this Government--wait until Superfund comes out. There will be sufficiency language in that. That is OK because that is against corporations who use the courts to stall their responsibilities to clean up. I will support it. I think it is a legitimate instrument if used carefully, and the record will show that there is plenty of evidence why sufficiency was going to have to be the implementation on this. By the way, it went clear through the court system from the district to the ninth circuit to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court sent back the ruling, the ninth circuit having invalidated section 318 when the first sufficiency language appeared, and, in effect, said, ``Leave the management of the forest to the experts,'' and unanimously overruled the district court and the ninth circuit court. Of course, the ninth circuit court has a great record of being overruled. It is probably overruled more than any other circuit at certain times. But the point is simply this. That was very legitimate. So four of the five--but listen to what we did with the four. You do not need sufficiency from the standpoint of the administration, or administering the forest, because it said for any reason you want to indicate that you do not feel a contract should be implemented, do not implement it. Have a substitution or a buyout--all power. Let me make an observation. If the administration's position now is one of surprise, or they did not realize what they were signing and they want it repealed, let them talk to their foresters, their experts, and not to the pollsters and the political counsel at the White House. This is not a forestry issue, Mr. President. This is purely a political issue. And they need to repair that base of their support in the environmental community, and this is the only way the environmentalists say it: Do it this way, our way, or we will go out there and trash it. And they have already been doing that, when this first came about. So, this is not a forestry or an environmental problem. This is a political problem being put into environmental wraps for the sake of the political election cycle we are in. They knew every inch of the way and every word of the rider, and now they are trying to get out from under it. By the same token, we have given them all the leeway, all of the flexibility necessary to cancel any sale by a buyout, or a negotiated replacement. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I yield back our time.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was adopted.

Mr. HATFIELD. I would like to add to information on the previous amendment that the subcommittee chairman, Senator Gregg, I am informed, approved of the amendment as well. Mr. President, we are now at a time when the so-called big issues, not all of them, but a goodly number of them, have been disposed of. We invite Senators who have other amendments to be considered, first of all, to consider whether they want to offer the amendments. We had 116 amendments that had been designated as of last night. I was hoping that we could reduce that considerably, and I am pleased to say that on our side, the acting majority leader, Senator Lott, has been doing yeomen work to get them reduced in number, and Senator Daschle, the Democratic leader, had indicated to me earlier this morning that, likewise on the Democratic side of the aisle, there has been an effort to try to reduce these numbers of amendments. Mr. President, the House of Representatives is expecting to pass a 1- week extension of the existing CR perhaps this afternoon. They will send that over to the Senate once they have adopted it. The Senate, in this process now, would be then privileged to have a vote on that CR or to continue work on the current vehicle, the omnibus appropriations bill. I am very hopeful that we can keep on this bill to clean it up and finish it because we have to go to the House for a conference following our action. One week is not a very long time in the consideration of this vehicle and that which we are substituting for the House-passed omnibus package. I am very hopeful that we can finish this and launch our conference with the House and by Friday midnight pass the 1-week extension that the House will probably pass today. I think that is an orderly progression of our responsibility because I am fearful that if we extend this CR for 1 week, there is no pressure to finish this bill, and that will put us into next week on this vehicle and shortening the time, we have to understand, necessary to allow for a conference with the House. I hoped we could escape any additional CR, but that is not the way the Senate has worked its will. I wish to indicate again that if Senators are serious about the amendments they have listed, I hope they will appear in the Chamber and provide the body an opportunity to discuss and to dispose one way or another of the amendments. Senator Hatch has indicated that he will be here at 1 o'clock in order to offer an amendment. I see the Senator from North Dakota in the Chamber, looking as though he is preparing to ask for recognition, and hopefully he is preparing to offer an amendment, because, very frankly, I do need a soft shoe or catchy tunes. We have about a 20-minute interval facing us that I do not want to waste until the Senator from Utah arrives on his schedule for submission of an amendment. Am I reading the actions of the Senator from North Dakota correctly?

Mr. HATFIELD

Mr. HATFIELD. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.