Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, as we go about our leisurely way, the majority of people back home think Iraq is a mistake. The Commanding General says we can't win, and Congress refuses to pay for the war. This generation not only has to fight the war, but this generation will have to pay for it, because my colleagues in the Senate want tax cuts so we can get the vote in November. I think we all need to sober up about the realities of what is happening to our young soldiers in Iraq. Joseph Galloway, of the Knight Ridder Newspapers, wrote a column that should be mandatory reading for all of us. It appeared recently in The State newspaper in Columbia, and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the reason I had the China article printed in the Record is because China is following Japan. We have yet, in 50 years, to get into the downtown market, Main Street, Tokyo. We cannot sell in Tokyo what we sell in the United States. No. They have total protection. They not only have MITI with the financing and the refinancing and keeping even bankrupt entities going, but they control that market so they go for market share. They are not worried about profits the way the government runs things. We have antitrust, they have pro-trust. That Lexus I have sells for, let's say, $35,000. It will sell for $45,000 in downtown Tokyo. They pay at the local market way more for that camera, way more for that television set, way more for that automobile because we are talking about profit, and they keep on getting more and more market share. So we have to understand not only the thrust of their competition, but that they are competing. They are as protectionist as can be on antidumping. We get into WTO and say: Oh, no, it is WTO violative; you cannot enforce any antidumping statutes in the United States. That is why we have that funny tax bill over there that they loaded with all these extra tax cuts for corporate America. It is a disgrace. Everybody has written about that. Warren Buffett, two days ago, said that tax bill is a disgrace. But the reason we got the tax bill started was to try to equalize the situation where we have been taking care of our particular businesses and industries, and if we are going to have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce join the other side, this is like joining Saddam in Iraq. If my colleagues want to see a business-oriented State, come to North Carolina where John Edwards is a Senator. I can say right now, they talk now about the two most liberals. That is the biggest bunch of nonsense I have ever heard. I resent it, particularly respected entities like the National Chamber of Commerce taking business away from America. Tom Donohue is just adamant on doing that. He has been taken over by the multinationals. His main membership is the Business Roundtable. They are not for your stores, they are not for the Main Street merchants anymore. That is why the Chamber of Commerce--by the way, I was a member of the oldest Chamber of Commerce in the United States, so I speak with some authority. I have seniority in something. I have been around here for so long, I have been looking for it wherever I could find it. In any event, what we have to do is sober up. The business leadership has to quit this race to China, quit this tax race avoidance to Bermuda, quit this Chamber of Commerce nonsense about who is liberal and who is conservative, and understand that our jobs are here to build up this market so they can sell what they sell here, not dump. If we do not have any jobs, they cannot buy, they cannot sell. We have the richest market in the world, but we are vastly developing into the poorest market. That is why I have my job. I see some other Members. But they talk about a wonderful economy, we have 5 percent growth. Baloney. I have 56,800 manufacturing jobs lost since President Bush took office, and they have not come back as of last night. This is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is manufacturing. Do not tell me about growth, growth, growth. I am not getting all of this growth. We have a lot of Government jobs. The Government is growing, the law practice is growing, health care is growing, but business is not growing. Production is not growing in America. The middle class is diminishing. It is shrinking. We have to worry about that. We cannot go along with these labels about, we have the Chamber of Commerce now which has already said he is the most liberal. He could not be a Senator--he could not have won any election in the State of North Carolina if he had that character. I say to my colleagues, he believes in hard work, he believes in justice, he believes in trying his case, and 12 jurors and the presiding judge and the appellate court all agreed with John Edwards. Tell Tom Donohue to bug off. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right. They know their scheme. I tell you, our Republican colleagues know what they are doing when it comes to running campaigns. We know how to run the office once we get in, but they know how to run for the office. We saw President Bush was already in Raleigh, NC, and they called for, of all things, class actions so they can lambaste our Vice Presidential choice. That is what is going on. The campaign is going on on the floor, and I am joining in on the campaign. I have tried to stay out of it, but I am happy to join it because when we get about protectionism--and this is what this article says, we are going to lose out on everything and regressive--what are all those funny words they use? Here is yesterday's Financial Times: ``China vows to use anti-dumping and trade measures to protect its markets.'' I ask unanimous consent to print the Tom Donohue article and this article about China in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I have come to the floor momentarily on account of a headline in the Financial Times, on page 3, U.S. business hits a choice of running mate. It quotes Tom Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in stating that he attacked Mr. Edwards in an interview in the Wall Street Journal. He warned if Mr. Edwards were chosen, the group might abandon its traditional neutrality in Presidential elections and dedicate the best people and the greatest assets to defeating the Democratic ticket. This is unfortunate. Since I know a little bit about the Chamber of Commerce, and I know even more about my friend Tom Donohue, I want to admonish that they not take that course and begin to try to work for ``Main Street'' America rather than ``Main Street'' Shanghai. I speak advisedly of the Chamber of Commerce. As a young Governor, I was the first Governor to take a trip to Latin America to develop economically our little State of South Carolina. I reasoned the Port of Charleston was 300 nautical miles closer to the Port of Caracas, Venezuela, than New Orleans, and New Orleans was always getting the Midwest business. But there was no reason why we could not bring it to Charleston. So I went down to Caracas, and to the Ports of Santos and Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and we started building up industry there. Incidentally, in June of 1960, I made a trip to Europe, following my friend Luther Hodges of North Carolina. We called on the various Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and other towns in Germany, and the little State of South Carolina now has 126 German industries. We had gone to France in June of 1960. I called on Michelin. Michelin Tire of Paris, France, now has four large production facilities and their North American headquarters and more than 10,000 employees in my State. We are proud. We are business Democrats. That is my friend John Edwards. He is a business Democrat. If there was one leader in this industrial development, it would have been the State of North Carolina with its then-Governor Luther Hodges. Hodges had been the president of the New York Rotary Club. He had been the vice president of the Marshall Field chain before he was Governor. So he knew all of those businesspeople. I had to compete with him, follow on board, so to speak, and try to get the jobs and develop businesses. One thing we know upfront; that is, you have to have a sound fiscal policy. We raised taxes in South Carolina. And I got the first triple A credit rating. So it is nonsense for the Chamber of Commerce to call John Edwards a ``wide-eyed liberal'' and John Kerry a ``wide-eyed liberal.'' Incidentally, I can tell you when I had Gramm-Rudman-Hollings on the floor of the Senate, I was opposed by the Democratic leader, who voted against it; I was opposed by the Democratic whip, who voted against it; I was opposed by the chairman of the Budget Committee, my late friend Lawton Chiles of Florida. And in spite of that opposition, on 14 different votes, up and down, we got the majority of Democrats to support cutting spending and working for a balanced budget. It was hailed at that time. Everybody talks about President Reagan, and I can talk about him advisedly because he was outstanding in international trade. But let me stick right to this particular point. In order for Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, I had to go to many so-called liberal friends in the Northeast, and I got Senator Chris Dodd and Senator John Kerry, who had just been elected to the Senate, to vote for fiscal responsibility. Yes, my friend Senator Kerry laid his life on the line in Vietnam. He immediately, when he came to the Senate, laid his political life on the line. I know Tom Donohue well. I used to work very closely with the American Trucking Association, and I was their loyal supporter, still am their loyal supporter. I, under Tom Donohue, was their man. I am telling you, I got every financial support and every assistance and what have you. I know Tom Donohue, and he knows trucking all right, but I never have seen him go out and develop an industry. Yes, he got on the boards. He went big time, just like joining the country club. He immediately started getting on the boards of all these multinationals and changing the national Chamber of Commerce into the international, multinational Chamber of Commerce. That is my resentment. That is why I take the floor. I have worked with the Chamber of Commerce. Go back home to the State of South Carolina and you name a county or a city that I hadn't gotten the Chamber of Commerce award. That is how I met my friend, Robert Kennedy. I was 1 of the 10 men of the year back in 1954, 50 years ago. We met on the TOYM program. And, yes, bring it right on up to 1992. In 1992, they had a fellow named Bob Thompson. He was the national president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and I was his boy. I was the toast of the town and got all kind of help because I had held up labor law reform on eight up-and-down cloture votes. We defeated that initiative. We believed in the right to work and we didn't need labor law reform. I only have to harken to the 8 years of President Clinton when we had the strongest economy in the history of the United States, with all the taxes that they are trying to cut. Even with all those taxes, we had the 8-year record of economic outburst and production. So what have you. Now comes the Chamber of Commerce being admonished by Tom Donohue that we can't have this wild, crazy Senator from North Carolina, which is a bellwether of industrial development. That is where he was grown and that is where the people who sent him know him best. And now we are going to have him depicted by Johnny-come-lately to business over at the Chamber of Commerce after heading up the trucking association for years and totally skew trial lawyers. You know, I have tried to go quietly, and I have stayed off the floor a good bit this year. I have had my time. But I still struggle. I can't keep quiet when I hear all of this lawyer talk. I practiced law on both sides of the aisle. I represented the electric and gas company and the bus system. If you want to represent a defendant, represent the local power company buses. I can tell you, come November, everybody slips on a green pea in the aisle; everybody gets their arm caught in the door; everybody gets their head bumped or whatever else it is. And do you know what. They bring these little claims. When I say little, in those days they were relatively little--$5,000 claim, $10,000 claim. And the corporate lawyer was lazy. They didn't try the cases. So they settled them out of court and they just paid. You see, corporate lawyers are the most lazy group in the United States. So I backed up all those claims and took them to court all during the month of December and the Christmas holidays and into January. And I won my bet with Arthur Williams who was president of the electric and gas company. I saved them over $1 million at that particular time. The only reason I mention this, you don't brag but you have to talk to the record. And what happens is that I have been on the side of the corporate practice as well as the plaintiffs practice in punitive damages. I know all about them. I have had a hard experience with them. I have had a hard experience with every Chamber of Commerce in my State and with the national group. When Tom Donohue starts this talk about lawyers, if he wants to really save corporate money, I wish he would go to the corporate lawyers. They talk about frivolous claims. Who in the Lord's world as a trial lawyer can afford to be frivolous? They have rules of court that get you out. Tomorrow you can file, if you assume all the facts alleged in the complaint as being true. You still don't have a cause of action or, if it is a frivolous charge, you can take it up under rule XI and have it done up. The courts take care of these things, but the pollsters are like used car salesmen and kill all the lawyers and go after trial lawyers who have to work for a living. What does the trial lawyer do? The trial lawyer says: Poor client, haven't you been offered anything for this particular injury? They said no. Or sometimes they said yes, but they only said $200 or $2,000 or $20,000, and that is not going to take care of my medical expenses for more than a year. We don't get cases as trial lawyers. Talking about ambulance chasers, I don't know how you chase an ambulance, to tell you the truth. I have been in practice now for--well, I got in in 1947--over 50-some years. I practiced law up here. It is just like making a jury argument. The only thing about it is, you can serve on the jury and you can vote. I like it better. But the point is that we usually get the client, once his incident, his accident, his claim has been totally investigated by corporate America. I know them. I represented them. They have investigators. All you have to do is tell them, go see this, go see that. When you have investigators to go out and check the jurors: Go around, by gosh, in a particular neighborhood and ask questions. What kind of fellow is John Adams? Is he liberal or conservative? Has he ever had a law case before? They have all the resources in the world. But the trial lawyer gets it after the cake is done and you can't hardly rise it. And it is done falling flat, and the poor client is disconcerted and disillusioned and finally gets to you. The last case I tried I said, Did you go to so-and-so? He knows this kind of case better. And I went to another one and another one and everything else of that kind. And it was an antitrust case. I had to brief myself, antitrust work. Finally I tried that thing. But what I am trying to say is, get off of this ambulance chasing issue. No trial lawyer, all the ones that you read about--Fred Baron, in one of the articles, an eminent attorney, head of the American Trial Lawyers Association from Texas. They work. They know what they are doing. And they take on all the expenses, the investigations, the making up of all the models that have to be made, pay the photographers who have to take the pictures. In some instances, they pay the medical bills going along. They take a risk and take that case on as their own. Why? Because they don't get one red cent until they win. They have to win all the way through, taking the expenses of all the interrogatories, all the depositions, all the motions, all the delays, all the frivolity of corporate America because that corporate American is sitting up there on the 12th or the 25th floor, and the clock is running. The biggest cancer we have in the law practice is billable hours. This crowd down here on K Street is nothing but billable hour boys. They don't try cases. They fix you and me. And they are the ones who have the unmitigated gall to come and talk about frivolous claims. They never go to work. They take you to a dinner, take you to a movie, take you to a weekend down to the golf course, take you out to Alaska fishing, take you anywhere you want to go. They never try cases, but the trial lawyer does. He has to get prepared, and he has to work, and he has to not only try that case that might take a day, might take a week--some cases take several weeks and months--but as they try that case, they are carrying those expenses all that time. But the corporate lawyer is trying to delay it. It pays them because their clock is running. It pays the trial lawyer to get on with the business of trying the case and bringing it to a conclusion. I know, I have been there on both sides. What do you have to do? He has to get all 12 jurors--all this about runaway juries. There are some exorbitant verdicts. I have seen in the headlines. When we get to debating this thing, maybe on legal fees, or class actions, or medical malpractice, or whatever it is--if the doctors policed themselves as the lawyers, they would not have any medical malpractice. There was a headline down in my own backyard how nationally they had about 100,000 injuries and deaths last year as a result of medical malpractice. It would be 200,000, or 300,000, or 500,000 if we didn't have medical malpractice. What do you think the purpose is of being able to recover for somebody else's wrongful act? Heavens above, we have to get all 12 jurors. I can tell you now, that defendant, all he has to do is get one. Just like they had one on a recent criminal case of some kind. They held that thing up and held it up, and that one juror said he just wasn't convinced. The jury system is the fundamental of not only the British but the American system of jurisprudence. We have many sayings of not only Winston Churchill and Alexander Hamilton, the forefathers about the importance of trial by jury, because when you get a group of your peers together, they will listen to the facts and make an honest judgment about it. Sometimes if they do go extreme, the trial judge can set it aside, or give them an entire new trial, or just no verdict at all. One of the last cases I had, I had over $40,000 in costs and expenses--not time, no. I didn't have any clock. I never heard of billable hours. Senator, I have never practiced law for a billable hour. It means if you send the case or dispose of the case and everything else like that, you lose. The corporate lawyer wants to keep all the cases going. He has all the hours. He just goes to the club, and on the weekend he is off with the chairman of the board, and that is all he has to do. They keep delaying things. You talk about my friend, John Edwards, is a liberal, some kind of nut and some kind of frivolous nonsense here. He has worked hard, and the Chamber of Commerce ought to know that. Let's talk a minute about trade itself. It is the fundamental duty of Congress to protect--we take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend, and we have Social Security to protect us from the ravages of old age. We have a minimum wage to protect us from slave labor. We have Medicare and Medicaid to protect us from ill health. We have clean air and clean water to protect us from those environmental poisons. You can go right on down the list. We have the Army to protect us from within. The fundamental of us is to protect jobs and the fundamental of us is to create jobs. You know what the multinationals have to do? They have to move the jobs out because it is cheaper. Why? Because of you and me. We say that before you can open up in manufacturing, you have to have clean air, clean water, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage, plant closing notice, parental leave, safe working place, safe machinery--I can go down the list. But you can go to Shanghai, China, for 58 cents an hour with none of that. I called up Walter Allison Dreeny. He was an executive of Pirelli. We brought him to South Carolina in the Lexington County area. I helped him get connected with water and sewer lines. He made a heck of a success in the fiber glass section of Pirelli. He went out on his own and organized what is called Avanex on the big board, and he was doing good. This was about 5 years ago. I learned a lesson. I called Walter and I said: Walter, I see where you are doing good and we don't have a plant of yours in South Carolina. If you continue to do well and you expand, I would like to get your expansion somewhere in Columbia, where you still have a home, or somewhere in our State. He said, Fritz, I don't produce anything in this country. I said: You don't? He said: No, I have my research and sales here. He sells the innards of computerization and communications, fiberoptic stuff. He says: I produce in China. When you go to China, they will build a billion. You have a year-to-year contract. They have a good and capable workforce. You got a guarantee. You put a quality man there; you get a young Byron Dorgan and say you go to Shanghai and oversee this thing-- somebody you can trust who knows the business. He watches it for you. You sit on the Internet and you watch it every day as to what they have done. You visit three or four times a year to see how it is going. If the national trend goes big, you get an additional contract in China. If it goes bad, you don't have to renew the contract. You have no obligation to the labor at all. That is what we are competing with. That is the reality. Yes, the Chamber of Commerce has to understand why their task is to make a profit for the stockholders. Our task is to build jobs. We are not interested in profit. We are interested in building the economy, in education, in health care, safety, law enforcement, yes, and we are interested in the economic strength of this country. The security of the United States is like a three-legged stool. You have the one leg of our values, our stand for individual freedom, unquestioned the world around; you have the second leg of the military, unquestioned, the superpower; the third leg, the economic leg, has been fractured intentionally. I say intentionally fracture because after World War II, we had to rebuild freedom and capitalism the world around us, and we had to more or less give up the store. We not only had the Marshall plan, the expertise, the money, and the equipment, but we gave a good part of our own production. I had a hearing with President Kennedy in 1961 when he put out his famous seven-point program showing that it was injurious to the national security of the United States for us to import more than 10 percent of our consumption in textiles clothing. I am looking around and everywhere I look, I can tell my colleagues that 70 percent of the clothing is from offshore, imported into the United States. Yes, 84 percent of the shoes on the floor of this Chamber are imported. We are out of the shoe business. We are out of my textile business. Yes, we are going to go out of the computer business, and we are going out of the semiconductor business. Ronald Reagan was the best of the best. He saw that during his 8 years. And do my colleagues know what President Reagan did? He got what they called VRAs, voluntary restraint agreements, on semiconductors, automobiles, steel, and machine tools, hand tools. Ask Andy Grove of Intel. If President Reagan had not put protectionism, a voluntary restraint agreement, on semiconductors, we would not have had an Intel. We put that program in SEMATECH. It was assistance to equalize high technology development that was about to go out. As I see it, we are about to go out not only of textiles but semiconductors, automobiles, and other products. We have to have basic production. That basic production has developed the middle class, the strength of America. If you want to do away with it, Mr. Chamber of Commerce, and move everything to China all for a profit and no country at all--it is scandalous what corporate America has been doing, running over to Bermuda, evading and avoiding taxes. I saw one report the other day that in corporate America, something like only 20 percent pay taxes. About 80 percent of them do not pay taxes at all. And they talk about high corporate taxes. They have more experts on how to evade and avoid and change and cancel out. So it happens. Yes, Senator Edwards has worked not only on the Intelligence Committee, knowing foreign policy for 6 years now. In one of the stories, they said if something happened to John Kerry, we would have a President with no experience again. The only thing is, this President, Edwards, would be interested in being President. President Bush is only interested in being Candidate Bush. He goes out every day to some military or some police or other particular situation, gets that 7 o'clock news photo, makes his little statements, and he does not keep up with any of the legislation. He is not proud of any legislation. We do not have any leadership from the White House on getting anything done. We are getting little nagging spitballs of class actions and-- what is that other thing--a constitutional amendment on marriages. One can get a common-law marriage in South Carolina. Are we going to put that in the Constitution? Come on, a big national problem. He has more funny bunny things to think of and bring up and waste our time. It is the worst administration I have ever seen. My point is the Chamber of Commerce.

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

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I join Lindsey Graham in supporting Bryan Harwell to be a Federal judge in the Low Country. I support nominees from both parties no matter who is President, but I don't believe this Nation's courts should be filled with judges who are advancing a political agenda. We need to stay above politicizing the courts for short-term political gain. I have been disturbed by a few of the President's nominees, who have been outside the judicial mainstream, or are only marginally qualified, or are tainted by conflicts or their past political work for Kenneth Starr. We should not use the Federal bench to reward our political operatives. Bryan Harwell has distinguished himself as a trial lawyer with a law firm in Florence and Marion, representing individuals and small businesses in general civil, criminal, workers compensation and family court matters. In particular, he has developed expertise in torts and insurance, product liability, malpractice and other negligence cases. His Martindale-Hubbell Rating is AV, the highest possible rating. As a veteran, I appreciate Mr. Harwell's service for a number of years in South Carolina's Army National Guard, during which he rose to the rank of JAG Captain. He has also contributed to his community as a Trustee of the Florence Darlington Technical College and as a business law professor there. Bryan Harwell will be a fine Federal judge.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today to again acknowledge the important work and contributions of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. The Ocean Commission, consisting of 16 distinguished individuals, was established by the President pursuant to the Oceans Act of 2000, legislation I sponsored to bring special attention to the problems facing our oceans and coasts, and to lead to recommendations for a new national ocean policy. The Oceans Act directed the Ocean Commission to submit a report to Congress and the President of its findings and recommendations regarding national ocean policy. Exactly one month from now, the Ocean Commission will release its final report, which reflects the deliberations, findings, and comments generated by 15 public meetings, 17 site visits, 37 State Governors and over 700 stakeholders. The last time an oceans report of this magnitude was issued was over thirty years ago. The report of the Stratton Commission led to the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and passage of landmark legislation protecting our fisheries and coasts. I have read the preliminary report of this Ocean Commission, and I can tell you it is very balanced and comprehensive. The final report, when it is issued, will no doubt influence ocean policy for years to come, and has already inspired oceans legislation which my colleagues and I have introduced in the House and Senate. I am also currently developing legislation that will set out a national vision for ocean policy, conservation, research, and education, building upon the commission's recommendations. Reports do not write themselves, and today I am taking a moment to acknowledge the tireless efforts of Admiral James Watkins, USN (Ret.), Chairman of the Ocean Commission, the Commissioners, and their staff. Admiral Watkins deserves to be commended for leading this monumental task and generating the attention it so wisely deserves. Dr. Tom Kitsos, as Executive Director, should also be recognized for bringing a well balanced report to completion. Each of the Commissioners should be applauded for lending their valuable expertise and a considerable amount of their own time to this task: Dr. Robert Ballard, Ted Beattie, Lillian Borrone, Dr. James Coleman, Ann D'Amato, Lawrence Dickerson, Vice Admiral Paul Gaffney, USN (Ret.), Marc Hershman, Paul Kelly, Christopher Koch, Dr. Frank Muller-Karger, Edward Rasmuson, Dr. Andrew Rosenberg, William Ruckelshaus, and Dr. Paul Sandifer. I know Admiral Watkins, Dr. Kitsos and my colleagues share my appreciation of the commission staff, who wore many hats and put in countless hours to craft a fine report. The commissioners and Dr. Kitsos obtained invaluable advice and support from Terry Schaff and editorial expertise and advice from Morgan Gopnik. At the heart of the report were the staff who lent their considerable talents to developing the major themes in each of the working groups and in actually drafting the recommendations. Laura Cantral, Aimee David, and Gerhard Kuska contributed their expertise to the discussions on governance. The stewardship working group was ably assisted by Captain Malcolm Williams, USCG (Ret.), Brooks Bowen, Angela Corridore, and Frank Lockhart. Research, education, and marine operations issues were developed with the skilled support of Ken Turgeon, Captain George White, NOAA, Roxanne Nikolaus, and Chris Blackburn. A report of this weight depends on careful execution of a public relations strategy. Kate Naughten, Peter Hill, and Michael Kearns are to be commended for their liaison work with the government and press. And we all know that every office would not function without a solid administrative support team. Lee Benner, Macy Moy, Polin Cohanne, Sylvia Boone, Robyn Scrafford, Stacy Pickstock and Nekesha Hamilton are to be congratulated for managing the day-to-day operations of the commission. My heartfelt thanks go to everyone on the commission for a job well done.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I submitted a column on how we got into the mess in Iraq, which appeared this morning in The State newspaper in Columbia, SC. I ask unanimous consent it be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, at a luncheon with Bernard Baruch, Mr. Baruch commented that Harry Truman ``had a good memory'' and ``he also had a good bad memory.'' We are hearing both at the passing of former President Ronald Reagan. There is no question that if a President is to be credited for the end of the Cold War that credit should go to Ronald Reagan. We were anxious about the depletion of our defenses in the U.S. Senate in the year preceding President Reagan's administration so we passed a 5 percent across-the-board increase in the Defense budget. But President Reagan came on board and really moved to strengthen our defenses, building a 600-ship Navy and not hesitating to deploy intermediate missiles in Europe. He also moved to formalize our ballistic missile defense system, calling it the Strategic Defense Initiative and increasing its support. President Reagan can also be credited with a competitive trade policy. Though he had the power to rescind the anti-dumping order on the importation of motorcycles, he let the order stand; reviving as we all know the Harley Davidson industry. Moreover, he imposed voluntary restraint agreements in steel, semiconductors, machine tools and automobiles. There is no question, for example, that Intel would have had a hard time surviving had it not been for Sematech and Reagan's VRA on semiconductors. But at this time of praise, those with ``good bad memory'' forget it was Ronald Reagan who started supply side economics. Former Senator Bob Dole led the opposition to its forerunner, Kemp-Roth, and former President George Herbert Walker Bush characterized this cutting revenues to increase them as ``voodoo.'' With Reagan looking for an issue at a low point in his administration, he locked onto supply side, ignoring his campaign pledge to ``balance the budget within one year.'' It is good to note that in this country after 200 years existence, with the cost of all the wars from the Revolution up to the War in Vietnam, the national debt stood at less than $1 trillion. Reagan's supply side or ``voodoo'' gave us the first trillion dollar debt and he left office having increased the national debt $1.7 trillion. Under Bush 41, in 4 years the debt increased $1.4 trillion. President Clinton over 8 years slowed the increase of the debt to $1.6 trillion with spending cuts and tax increases, leaving a projected surplus. President George W. Bush, with three tax cuts or Reagan ``voodoos,'' has eliminated the surplus and increased the debt over $2 trillion in 4 years. As his chief counselor Vice President Cheney said, ``Deficits don't matter.'' Since the beginning days, this country has shown sacrifice at a time of war by adopting a tax measure to pay for the war. But not for the War on Terrorism. We in the Congress need a fourth tax cut, voodoo, to get reelected. Today the GI fighting the war is also going to have to pay for the war. At this time of remembrance, let's not forget that Reagan dignified ``voodoo.''

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I yield the floor and thank my distinguished colleague from Washington for her leadership, and also Senator Levin for alerting me to this particular danger. This is a highly dangerous matter. We should not be running around with a little legislative rider on the Armed Services bill on a single State exception, even if it were legal. I don't think it is legal. But even if it were legal, it would all of a sudden indirectly, and without other States being involved, redefine high-level radioactive waste. We don't want to do that. This is no way to legislate, and no way to treat this highly dangerous element. I thank the Chair.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The South Carolina Wildlife Federation; South Carolina Sierra Club; South Carolina Coastal Conservation League; Carolina Peace Resource Center; Environmentalists, Inc.; the mayor of Savannah; Action For a Clean Environment; Atlanta Women's Action for a New Direction; Center for Environmental Justice; Coosa River Basin Initiative; Georgia Conservation Voters; Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition; Physicians for Social Responsibility in Atlanta; Southern Alliance for Clean Energy; Alliance for Nuclear Accountability; National Council of Churches; Sierra Club; National Resources Defense Council; Public Citizen; Episcopal Church; United Methodist Church; American Rivers; League of Conservation Voters; Church Women United; GreenPeace; a number of Native American tribes; and the Idaho Conservation League. Incidentally, Mr. President, this particular editorial that appeared timely this morning, ``Shortcut on Nuclear Waste,'' in the New York Times, outlines the particular problem. It emphasizes why we don't have States' rights with respect to high-level radioactive waste. We are playing with fire here on the Armed Services bill. This is a stealth amendment with no hearings and no consideration. I know my State as well as anybody. In the majority of the State, everybody is against this. I ask unanimous consent that the New York Times editorial be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. This is on May 20. He addresses it to Senator Graham and says: I am writing about this section to allow an accelerated cleanup. The administration is concerned--he is talking about the prospect of long-term storage at Savannah River. However, the amendment allows the Department of Energy, working with the State of South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, to move more quickly to clean up the Savannah River site. He doesn't say to reclassify high-level waste. And in fact, the estimated cleanup time will be reduced. Here is the key paragraph of this particular letter: Most important is ensuring that the State of South Carolina will be able to retain an oversight to the cleanup process. No. Under the exclusionary clause, there is no oversight by the State of South Carolina, the State of Idaho, the State of Colorado, the State of Michigan, the State of Washington. There is no oversight to that particular provision because you have the categorical law under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act where the Congress alone defines it and not by agreement between the health and environmental department of a particular State and the U.S. Department of Energy. So you can see that the Governor thinks he has something. But then he cancels it out. It reminds me when we had the reorganization of our insurance department. The Capital Life Insurance Company was reorganizing and looking for a slogan. And the winning slogan was by Sam B. King. He said: Fritz, do you know what the new slogan is? Capital Life will surely pay if the small print on the back don't take it away. So you have a similar kind of situation here in this amendment and in this letter and in this understanding and this intent. You have to go to congressional intent. He says: It ensures that the State of South Carolina will be able to retain an oversight. You don't retain an oversight over the exclusionary clause of the definition of high-level waste by an agreement between a DEHC department and the Department of Energy. Come on. That is exactly what we have in play here. The House of Representatives over on the congressional side, they considered this and said: Wait a minute; if we are going to redefine high-level radioactive waste in America, let's go to the National Academy of Sciences and get an expert. Don't listen to Senator Hollings or Senator Graham or any other Senators or any other Secretary that is trying to save money because they have been engaged in this over the years. Let's go to the National Academy of Sciences. Let's have hearings. Let's get the expert opinion. And if there is a redefinition of high-level radioactive waste, we will have it. But let's not do it this way. I have many an authority here with respect to it, but the most recent authority is the State itself. You can get a letter from the Governor, but here is the amicus brief in the National Resources Defense Council v. Spencer Abraham whereby in Idaho they have already lost the case. The council brought it in the State of Idaho. The State of Idaho joined with them and everything else like that, and they lost at the district level. Then on appeal, we have a brief signed by Samuel L. Finklea, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, 2600 Bull Street, Columbia, SC, dated 23 March. So as of March 23, the State of South Carolina on appeal said: No way; we are with Idaho. We are with the decision. We are not redefining high-level radioactive waste. And yet you have the State of South Carolina's Governor writing this letter but saying, provided further that the State has a sign-off, which legally it can't. You can't designate to the State under the exclusionary clause one State sign off to the thing. That is what has caused the confusion here and the misunderstanding between the particular colleagues. I am going to cut it short because I know everybody wants to move today. I think I have made our position clear. I have letters here. I ask unanimous consent that letters and citations from the South Carolina Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and various other organizations that I will enumerate be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I will get through my thought and I will yield. They seem to think there is sort of a States rights to high-level radioactive nuclear waste. I can tell you, I have the distinction of standing at the desk of John C. Calhoun, the grandfather of States rights. But there are no States rights when it comes to high-level radioactive waste. I am having a hard time getting a logical grasp to this particular problem because I want to be super cautious and understanding of my colleague, Senator Graham. He is a wonderful Senator. He and I work together on everything, but we differ on this one. It is not a political difference; it is a matter of policy. I have been involved with nuclear policy over some 50 years. Forty- nine years ago, as Lieutenant Governor of the State of South Carolina, I was chairman of the Regional Advisory Council on Nuclear Energy. It was a compact of some 17 States. We were talking about the high-level radioactivity waste. At that particular time we were cautioned by the experts in nuclear fission that the Savannah River was not a place for permanent storage, whatever, in that we had the Tuscaloosa aquifer, which is the water supply going into the Savannah River that now furnishes Savannah, Augusta, and other cities along that river their water supply. Otherwise, it is on the very edge of an earthquake fault. The earthquake fault comes right through from Calhoun County to Orangeburg County over to Aiken County. I had hearings about the San Andreas earthquake fault out in California in the Commerce Committee some 30 years ago. I know how dangerous this is. We are all familiar about the dangerous nature of trying to store high-level radioactive waste in the Savannah River site. We were told at that time: Don't worry they will only be there for 2 years. And now, as I stand on the Senate floor, the 2 years has become 4, the 4 has become 8, the 8 has become 16, the 16 has become 32; and now it is almost 50-some years and we are still dealing with this problem. It is a complex problem, but it has been dealt with nationally with the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. They ascribed to the Department of Energy the administration of high- level radioactive waste. Along came the State of Kentucky, along with this so-called scheme that is afoot--the Kentucky case against the United States--and Kentucky tried to redefine high-level radioactive waste. In the Kentucky decision, under the exclusionary clause, the court found they could not do that; that is, States were only relegated to solid waste, not radioactive or high-level waste. So under that particular decision, citing, of course, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, they said the States could, yes, deal with the solid waste but not with the high-level radioactive waste. And we had subscribed. That is what is confusing to this Senator and the Senators from Idaho and California and the State of Washington and everywhere else, because under that exclusionary clause of the 1954 Act, you cannot just come around with a little State amendment, and try to redefine high-level radioactive waste for the other 49 States or the other 48 States. That is why, if it were able to be handled just at the State level, the Senators from Idaho or the Senators from Georgia or the Senators from South Carolina could handle it on their own. It would just be handled on their own. That is the dilemma we are in. Because my distinguished colleague has not only put in what the New York Times has called a stealth amendment, with no hearings and no consideration whatsoever, and gone around to his colleagues, obviously, over on the other side of the aisle, because he has been looking for assistance from Georgia and Idaho and Washington and all the other States that could be affected, and he said: Now this only affects my State. My Governor is for it and I am for it. I have talked to the Energy Department, and this is how to get moving and accelerate the removal of this waste. And what I am interested in is the removal of this waste. Well, I am interested in the removal of the waste just as expeditiously and as safely as possibly can be done. Let me emphasize-- and it will show in an affidavit by David E. Wilson, the Assistant Bureau Chief for Land and Waste Management of the Department of Health and Environmental Control of South Carolina. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the entire affidavit.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from Washington, Senator Cantwell, and my colleague from Michigan, Senator Levin. They have been carrying the ball for a national policy particularly as it affects my State of South Carolina. The truth is, I just heard that the Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, upon which I serve, had hearings about Savannah River. I had never heard of the hearings. I know they did not have hearings in the Armed Services Committee and they did not consider it in the Armed Services Committee. Now, right to the distinguished request made by my wonderful colleague from Idaho, they seem to think there is sort of a States rights.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I object.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Let me just state at the outset that South Carolina has 70 percent of all of the Nation's defense-related radioactivity. Under section 8 of Mr. Wilson's affidavit, there are 3 million gallons of this sludge containing 226 million curies of radioactivity, 55 percent of the curies. That is over half of the radioactivity. You are not dealing with just little remains and harmless sludge that we can pour sand over and then seal with concrete. Incidentally, it is not going to leak from the top. The only thing that leaks from the top is the Ship of State. That is the White House. We all know that. These containers ship and leak from the bottom. We have three types of containers: the one single wall, the second type is the single wall with a saucer underneath, and then they made the double wall. We have found, from a recent report by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, the type 1s and 2s have leak sites. The third type tank has small amounts of ground water that have leaked into the tanks, and so forth. So we are dealing with fire, and we are dealing with it on a national basis. Heaven knows, I have worked with it on an international basis. In earlier years, they had a plane that, unfortunately, let go of a hydrogen bomb into the Mediterranean. If anybody wants to travel to the Cote d'Azur or the Mediterranean, all they have to do is come to Aiken, SC, because they loaded up the marsh and the sand all where this bomb had been dropped in the Mediterranean, put it in 55-gallon drums, brought it across the harbor there at Charleston, carried it up and buried it in Aiken, SC. I have worked with the 5-year compacts, and that is why I was astounded and aghast at this idea that somehow this is a little problem for South Carolina and it would be easily handled. It is not that easily handled. This is what the amendment says, and this is, I think, the intent of the distinguished colleague from South Carolina, because we have to sign off on it. Well, under the Kentucky case, there is not any signoff on it. Now, of course, the Department of Energy--and they are all friendly with the distinguished Secretary Abraham. But I do not trust them--not honest- wise. I know Senator Abraham is as honest as the day is long, but I do not trust his disposition with respect to nuclear. In fact, I had to stand on the floor when he was trying to abolish the Department of Commerce and Energy. President Bush's Secretary of Energy wanted to abolish his Department before he became Secretary. This particular amendment has been put on the Armed Services bill, without hearings, without us knowing anything about it, and certainly without the Attorney General knowing about it. I called two members of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, and they did not know anything about it. They were appalled and aghast. It says: Notwithstanding any other provision of Law with respect to materials stored at a Department of Energy site at which activities are regulated by the State-- ``At which activities are regulated by the State.'' Now, that goes to that 1976 act, which says that the States under that particular provision regulate solid waste but not radioactive. That is why we have had this difference. One lawyer would say, reading that: Why, it starts off ``at which activities are regulated by the State,'' and that could only relate to solid waste, not radioactive waste. It doesn't amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1954 which exclusively relegates to the Congress and to all 50 States the designation of high-level waste. But then he goes on to add this language: High level radioactive waste does not include radioactive material resulting from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel that the Secretary of Energy determines is in deep geological repository and has, to the maximum extent practical, in accordance been removed. And you get into these fancy words ``to the maximum extent practical.'' Now, why do I say what I do? On the one hand, you know what the intent is. The intent of Senator Graham of South Carolina is the same intent of Senator Hollings of South Carolina: to protect South Carolina from this high-level radioactive waste. But that doesn't happen that way because of the Kentucky case and everything else of that kind. You can go and read the Kentucky decision. I don't want to take up all of the time. In other words, it isn't the intent. And if I was seated as a judge on a court saying, well, let's try to find out what the congressional intent was, the congressional intent was not to redefine high-level radioactive waste; it was just to allow an agreement with the State of South Carolina and the Department of Energy to work out how to remove that sludge. But it didn't go to the basic law. That would be one argument. Another argument would say: Wait a minute; with the State of South Carolina, we can do whatever we want, and we could give permission to the Department of Energy, the right to reclassify high-level radioactive waste. So you have this duplicity in this particular amendment, particularly as you see how it is drawn. Section D of the amendment says: Defined in this section, the term ``State'' means the State of South Carolina. So all you have to do is run around to the colleagues and work the amendment and legislation in the same way. I don't fault my colleague, but I think he is making a grievous error in the sense that he is saying this just applies to the State of South Carolina, and we can protect the State. The Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, has been strong on the environment. I knew he wouldn't approve it. Now I have his letter purportedly approving it. I ask unanimous consent to print the letter in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, let me also acknowledge the fact that my mother, too, had three stars in the window. I had one brother in the Pacific, one in the Mideast, and myself in Africa and Europe. Senator Stevens, Senator Warner, and a bunch of us went down to the World War II Memorial with our friend Senator Dole who chaired that particular memorial. It was a rather blowy day, and all that wind was blowing those fountains all over us. We veterans, in visiting with our good friend Bob Dole, renamed the memorial Viagra Falls after Bob Dole. But the truth of the matter is, if you go down on the right-hand side, there is a saying by Roosevelt in 1942 dedicating a good part of that memorial and the thought of that memorial to Rosie the Riveter. That brings to mind the fact that we all had an easy time. We are lucky to be here, as we know. We had an easy time when we came back. It makes me think of the distinguished Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel. He fought in the war in Vietnam, where the soldiers came back facing hardships. And that is the big difference. We really honor our friend Daniel Inouye, because he had to fight his country in order to fight his country's enemy. He struggled for a year and a half. He was in the military at the time of Pearl Harbor, but being a nisei of Japanese descent, it wasn't until we were very short of troops in Italy, that we first committed the full 442nd combat team into the lost battalion, into the Rhone Valley and then into Italy. And God bless him, he deserves a Medal of Honor, not only for the courage in battle but the determination against an ungrateful nation that would not even allow him to fight. Now, what is the point? The point is that we know how to fight a war, but we don't know when to start one. That is why I particularly wanted to thank the majority and minority leaders, in addition to all the Senators, too, who have had these laudatory remarks. We are all very grateful. And we welcome, incidentally, our distinguished former colleague, the Senator from Maryland, Joseph D. Tydings. He is still ready to fight. This is the first time he has been on the floor of the Senate in 30 years. But I had the pleasure and distinction of serving with him as a junior Senator. And then, of course, our colleague from Arkansas, Dale Bumpers, went to fight that war. We had, as Senator Tydings and I just remembered, that Gulf of Tonkin. I had to sit in the chair. I got two Golden Gavel Awards; 200 hours listening to Wayne Morse, whom I thought was a little looney at the time because I was from South Carolina. We were committed in Vietnam. I found out later that I was the one who was looney, and Wayne Morse was right. He was debating Bill Fulbright on the Gulf of Tonkin. This is not political. We know now why we are not into Iraq. We know specifically that there wasn't any al-Qaida. The Department of State put out a listing of 45 countries that had al-Qaida ties on 9/11, and it did not have Iraq listed. We know it wasn't the matter of Saddam being any threat. Retired General Zinni said the other day that his army was a decaying force. He used that word. If you read Dick Clarke's book ``Against All Enemies,'' you will find Paul Wolfowitz, and Clarke and none other than John McLaughlin, of the CIA are talking about going into Iraq. Wolfowitz, who is a friend of mine, says, what about Iraq? He says, there is no evidence, no intelligence whatever of any terrorism against the United States in the last 10 years. Isn't that right, John? And John confirms that. Let me make a sort of harsh comment, but take it advisedly because we were just talking earlier today with respect to the McCarthy days. I want to talk about intelligence. I served in the McCarthy days 50 years ago. Doolittle had made a study that was a whitewash. So they came back and the Congress said: Let's give President Herbert Hoover, the commission on the reorganization of the executive branch. I was one of the six members on the Hoover commission task force investigating the intelligence activities. In the Senate, I served 8 years on the Senate Intelligence Committee. So I speak with some experience when I say right now our intelligence is one grand charade. I say it with all due respect. You cannot find any finer people than those on the 911 Commission--Governor Kean, Lee Hamilton, John Lehman, who is a good friend. There is nobody I respect more. The individuals are doing the job. But the idea that we somehow lacked intelligence is out of the whole cloth. Why? Because our best friend in the Mideast, Israel, has the best of the best of intelligence. Their survival depends on their intelligence. Senator Inouye, Senator Akaka, Senator Stevens, Senator Warner, and Senator Lautenberg, in the 1980s, Israel had to go into Iraq to take out its nuclear facility. They could not have a U.N. meeting or whatever to discuss the situation. They had to destroy the plant for their own survival, and that is what they did. This Senator thought at the time the United States went into Iraq it was because we faced clear evidence of peril. That is what the President told us. He said we cannot wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud. So the lesson to learn is not just the heroism of the greatest generation but the mistakes. We have to be awfully cautious. All six of us World War II vets say nobody wants to cut and run from Iraq. We hope yesterday's news was good, with this new council. It seems as if they have some support of the U.N. If President Bush can get that resolution out of the United Nations, we still have a chance to win in Iraq. That is still my hope. I will conclude with the prayer to the fallen comrade: Lord, lest I go my complacent way, Help me to remember that a man died for me today. So long as there be war, I must ask and answer, Am I worth dying for? That is the test of this ``greatest generation'' still. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the Senate recently confirmed Debbie Hersman to become a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. She has served the Commerce Committee for 5 years, and all of us will miss her presence. We all wish her the best in her new position and know that she will serve with honor and integrity. I ask unanimous consent that the following statements that are part of the hearing record on her nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, let me again read from my article: President Bush came to office imbued with one thought: reelection. I say that advisedly. I have been up here with eight Presidents. We have had support of all eight Presidents. Yes, I supported the President on this Iraq resolution, but I was misled. There weren't any weapons, or any terrorism, or al-Qaida. This is the reason we went to war. He had one thought in mind, and that was reelection. I say that about President Bush. He is a delightful fella, a wonderful campaigner, but he loves campaigning. You cannot get him in the White House or catch him there, hardly. He doesn't work on these problems at all. I have worked with all of the Presidents. I know the leadership goes to the White House and tries to work with him. He is interested in one thing, and that is to be out campaigning. So he had one thought in mind, and that was reelection. Again, let me read: Bush thought tax cuts would hold his crowd together and that spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats. Is there anything wrong with referring to the Jewish vote? Good gosh, every 1 of us of the 100, with pollsters and all, refer to the Jewish vote. That is not anti-Semitic. It is appreciating them. We campaigned for it. I just read about President Bush's appearance before the AIPAC. He confirmed his support of the Jewish vote, referring to adopting Ariel Sharon's policy, and the dickens with the 1967 borders, the heck with negotiating the return of refugees, the heck with the settlements he had objected to originally. They had those borders, Resolution No. 242--no, no, President Bush said: I am going along with Sharon, and he was going to get that and he got the wonderful reception he got with the Jewish vote. There is nothing like politicizing or a conspiracy, as my friend from Virginia, Senator Allen, says--that it is an anti- Semitic, political, conspiracy statement. That is not a conspiracy. That is the policy. I didn't like to keep it a secret, maybe; but I can tell you now, I will challenge any 1 of the other 99 Senators to tell us why we are in Iraq, other than what this policy is here. It is an adopted policy, a domino theory of The Project For The New American Century. Everybody knows it because we want to secure our friend, Israel. If we can get in there and take it in 7 days, as Paul Wolfowitz says, then we would get rid of Saddam, and when we got rid of Saddam, now all they can do is fall back and say: Aren't you getting rid of Saddam? Let me get to that point. What happens is, they say he is a monster. We continued to give him aid after he gassed his own people and everything else of that kind. George Herbert Walker Bush said in his book All The Best in 1999, never commit American GIs into an unwinnable urban guerrilla war and lose the support of the Arab world, lose their friendship and support. That is a general rephrasing of it. The point is, my authority is the President's daddy. I want everybody to know that. I don't apologize for this column. I want them to apologize to me for talking about anti-Semitism. They are not getting by with it. I will come down here every day--I have nothing else to do--and we will talk about it and find out what the policy is. Let me go back to this particular column: But George Bush, as stated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and others, started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days before the Inauguration. There is no question, he got a briefing. That was the first thing he wanted out of former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen. Then the nominee, about to take the oath of office as President of the United States, wanted to be briefed on Iraq. They had this policy in mind coming to town. Mr. President, 9/11 had nothing to do with it, and we all know it now. We have to understand it because that is the only way really to help Israel and get us out of the soup. Everybody is worrying about Iraq. We better worry about Israel because we certainly have put her in terrible jeopardy with this particular initiative. Without any Iraq connection to 9/11, within weeks President Bush had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq. He was determined. President Bush thought taking Iraq would be easy. Wolfowitz said it would take only 7 days. Vice President Cheney believed that we would be greeted as liberators, but Cheney's man, Chalabi, made a mess of de-Baathification of Iraq by dismissing Republican Guard leadership and Sunni leaders who soon joined with the insurgents. Worst of all, we tried to secure Iraq with too few troops. In 1966 in South Vietnam, with a population of 16 million, General William C. Westmoreland, with 535,000 U.S. troops, was still asking for more troops. In Iraq, with a population of 25 million, General John Abizaid, with only 135,000 troops, can barely secure the troops, much less the country. If the troops are there to fight, there are too few. If they are there to die, there are too many. To secure Iraq we need more troops, at least 100,000 more. The only way to get the United Nations back in Iraq is to make the country secure. Once back, the French, Germans, and others will join with the U.N. to take over. With President Bush's domino policy in the Mideast gone awry, he can't keep shouting ``Terrorism war.'' Terrorism is a method, not a war. We don't call the Crimean war, with the charge of the light brigade, the cavalry war, or World War II the blitzkrieg war. There is terrorism in Northern Ireland, there is terrorism in India, and in Pakistan. In the Mideast, terrorism is a separate problem, to be defeated by diplomacy and negotiation, not militarily. Here, might does not make right. Right makes might. Acting militarily we have created more terrorism than we have eliminated. The title of this article is ``Bush's failed Mideast policy is creating more terrorism, `` and, I could add, jeopardizing the security of Israel. They say: He talks like a big fan of Israel. I am. I have a 38-year track record. I will never forget some 34 years ago meeting with David Ben-Gurion. He talked about little Israel, less than 3 million at that time in a sea of 100 million. Let's say Israel has 5 million people there now, but there are 150 million Muslims surrounding it. If you punch the particular buzzer I did with Yitzhak Rabin 1 day down on the Negev to scramble the air force, I think it was 21 seconds they were up in the air, and in a minute's time, they were outside over Jordan. Militarily, Israel is a veritable aircraft carrier. You can hardly fly and you are out of the country, and everybody has to understand that. You cannot play the numbers game Sharon plays. He thinks he can do it militarily. I want to remind you, it was in that 6-day war--the book is ``Six Days of War'' by Michael Oren. Look on page 151, and Major Ariel Sharon says: Look, we are going to decimate the Egyptian army and you will not hear from Egypt again for several generations. And Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister, on page 152 says: ``Militarily victory decides nothing. The Arabs will still be here.'' That is my theme. I have watched it over the years. You have to learn not to kill together, but to live together. The finest piece I ever read was right in this morning's paper. There is still hope. I refer to an article: ``Israeli Arabs Exalting in a Rare Triumph.'' There are a million Israeli Arabs. They won a soccer match in Tel Aviv. The majority of the team was of Israeli heritage, and they held an Israeli flag, if you can imagine that in the political United States of America. They are living together. Every Prime Minister since David Ben-Gurion has realized that fact: that they have to learn to live together. They all moved, and they almost had it under Ehud Barak and President Clinton. Arafat proved he did not want peace. He did not accept it. That was our one chance. Unfortunately, rather than working on that one chance and continuing, Ariel Sharon went in their face at Temple Mount, the intifada started, and he has been killing 10 to 1. He plays the numbers game, almost like we had in Vietnam. He thinks he can eliminate by moving the ball some, getting some more settlements, bulldozing a house, but he is creating terrorism. I had a headline the other day. When I saw it, I showed it to my staff. I said: You all come in here, I want to ask you something. ``Israel plans to destroy more Gaza dwellings.'' You see that headline? I asked staff members: Suppose they bulldoze your daddy's home. Wouldn't you want to cut their throat? They said: In a New York minute. How do you create terrorists? Where is the front line in the so- called war on terrorism? I learned the answer recently on a trip I was on with the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. We talked for over an hour with the King of Jordan. He finally cautioned at the very end, when we stood up, he said: You have to settle this Israel-Palestine question. That is the only way to get on top of this. We went over to Kuwait to the Prime Minister when he got through, he said: You have to settle the Israel-Palestine situation. I will quote Mr. Musharraf, the President of Pakistan. When we got there, he cautioned if you can settle the Israel-Palestine question, terrorism will disappear around the world. Then we came in on a Friday evening to make a little courtesy call with the French. The distinguished Senator from Virginia with Lafayette--and I have slept in Lafayette's bed over there in Richmond, VA, and I helped with that particular thing because I believe and remember the French help. I will never forget--everybody is going to the 60th anniversary of D-Day, but I was at the 50th anniversary and we went over to Ste-Mere-Eglise, where a major, who was a Citadel graduate, had broken through the line and saved us from having to leave the beachhead and go back to England. They made a movie of it. A shell burst killed him. They laid him down on their side. He is buried on the side of the chapel. We went to the services. We had talks there. This little old lady came. She was about 80 years old, walking with a cane. I was listening to the mayor, and she pulled my jacket and she said: Thank you, Yank. If you had not come we would be goose-stepping. I turned to her and I said, thank you, madam, because if you had not come, we would still be a colony. The majority of the troops on the field at Yorktown with the surrender of Cornwallis were French troops. We had French troops that helped us get this so-called freedom. All this anti-French stuff, do not give me french fries and everything else, is crazy. I was proud to appear with the Senator from Virginia. But Chirac, he said, look, we have to have western solidarity. We have to work together now and we have to watch this competition from China in the Far East, and we in the western world have to stick together. He said he wanted to help in Iraq, but he needed a U.N. resolution to cover. He said what we have to do is do something about Israel and Palestine. I said, what would you do? He said, I would put a peacekeeping force. I said, would French troops come? He said, French troops would come immediately. We would be part of it and we would separate them from killing each other every day. My position is, and I believe in this particular policy as strongly as I know how, might does not make right, but right makes might. We have lost our evenhanded posture and reputation in the Mideast. We are in worse off shape with Israel, our principal interest in the gulf. Sharon has not helped us at all. We see him going back and forth. They say, oh, no, it is negotiation. But we are throwing over the United States-Israel policy of some 35 years insofar as negotiating the settlements and the refugees. We are saying forget about all of that, let Sharon keep bulldozing them. Now in the morning paper on the front page one sees the killing of children, they are saying, we are defending Israel. That is the U.S. policy. That is not just Israel's policy. They are coming in there with U.S. equipment, U.S. gun helicopters, U.S. tanks that are bulldozing. That is our policy. That is the reason for 9/11 and Osama. He said, I do not like American troops in Saudi Arabia, get the infidel out. That is why they went right into that thing. Where do you think we get all this talk about hate America? I do not buy that stuff. I have traveled the world. They love Americans. Recently we met with the Ambassadors of Germany and France, and Britain in our policy committee and they said the young people are disillusioned. They always look to the United States for the moral position and taking and defending that particular position. They do not look there anymore. We are losing the terrorism war because we thought we could do it militarily under the domino policy of President Bush, going into Iraq. That is my point. That is not anti-Semite or whatever they say in here about people's faith and ethnicity. I never referred to any faith. I should have added those other names from the Project For The New American Century, but I picked out the names I had quotes for. And for space, I left other things out. Mr. President, on May 12 of this year, I had printed in the Record the article in its entirety. I diverted from the reading of the article several times, so for the sake of accuracy I wanted the whole article printed. This particular op-ed piece appeared in the Post and Courier. Never would they have thought, having read it, if it was anti-Semitic, that they would have ever put it in there. Nor would the Knight Ridder newspapers in Columbia, SC. Nor would the Metro Media newspapers in Greenville, SC. But the Anti-Defamation League picked it up and now they have given it to my good friend, Senator Allen of Virginia. I have his particular admonition how I am anti-Semitic and I cannot let that stay there. My staff knew I was coming over and waiting my turn in order to talk under the Pastore rule. I know I am as vitally interested as anybody can be about this issue. Our distinguished colleague from Washington, Senator Cantwell, knows this subject backward and forward. The reason I had not known or gotten all fired up is I have been doing some other work and South Carolina has already looked to me for everything at that Savannah River plant. I am on the Energy Appropriations Subcommittee and we have gotten all the money--do not worry about money. This is a policy of nuclear waste disposal, high- level waste, being reclassified under an end-around-end deal of trying to make it low-level waste and, as Senator Cantwell says, pouring in some sand and concrete on top of it. The scientists say, watch out, the remains in these tanks are 50 percent as deadly and dangerous as the entire tank container. Back to Saddam, everybody is glad we have gotten rid of Saddam, but we can see what has happened. There is an old saying we learned in World War II that no matter how well the gun is aimed, if the recoil is going to kill the gun crew, you do not fire. Did this White House and administration ever think of the recoil? It severely injured the gun crew. Yes, ordinarily to get rid of Saddam, like they put a missile on the intelligence head, they could have put a missile on him any time they wanted, but they did not want to do that. They wanted the domino policy to ensue. No, no, getting rid of Saddam was not worth almost 800 dead GIs and over 3,500 maimed for life. Some say every time we want to criticize the policy, we are weakening the GIs. I am strengthening the GIs. I said let's get enough in there so they can secure themselves. We have 135,000 now. A third of those are guarding the other third, and that means leaving a third, 35,000 or 40,000 troops, running out like a fire drill to any particular trouble and coming back in and eating. I have been there. You can see it in Rafah. They are building a big old thing like in Kosovo, where we hunker down and act like we are in charge of Kosovo. The Albanians are in charge of Kosovo. You can't force-feed democracy. It has to come from within. We helped liberate Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, 60-some years ago, and Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia have not opted for democracy, nor has Libya, nor has Egypt, nor has Lebanon, nor has Syria, nor has Iraq, nor has Iran, nor has Afghanistan, nor has Pakistan, nor has Jordan, nor has Yemen, nor has Aden, nor has Saudi Arabia, nor has the organization of Arab states. Come on. So we have to go out and not speak sense with respect to policy, and when you want to talk about policy, they say it is anti- Semitic. Well, come on the floor, let's debate it. Because my friend from Virginia admonishes me. Referring to me he says, ``I suggest he should learn from history before making accusations.'' I didn't make any accusations. I stated facts. That is their policy. That is not my policy. Mind you me, when we went into Iraq, the only people in the world who favored that policy were the people of the United States and the people of Israel. The people of Jordan, Iraq, Britain, Spain, Poland, Italy, Japan, everywhere around the world said you just don't invade a sovereign country no matter how bad the rascal is. We have Kim Jong of North Korea--he has weapons of mass destruction, but we don't do anything there. Don't give me this about how we saved this and we did this or did that. We have to sort of learn that the front line now is not the Pentagon but the State Department. We have to work through diplomacy. We live in a global economy and a global world. That is only going to come about economically, politically, diplomatically, and by negotiations. The United States, until this invasion and this domino policy for Israel--don't tell me it is otherwise, about spreading democracy. They know what they are talking about. They are insisting on it. It is not a Jewish policy or a Semite policy. It is their domino policy. That is exactly what it is. But they know how to make you tuck tail and run. Not the Senator from South Carolina. We don't run, we don't win, we are not right, we are wrong a lot of times, but I have thought this out as thoroughly as I know how, and it worries me that here we are. I said after we got into that thing in Vietnam with the Gulf of Tonkin--I came there at that particular time, in 1966, went to Vietnam when we were under fire three times--actually over into Cambodia before and that kind of thing. We finally came up with McNamara writing a book saying he was wrong. I'll never forget, McNamara comes out to Allie Richenberg near Saint Albans to get his tennis lesson at 7 o'clock, and Bob Mcnamara turned to Allie and said, ``Allie, what do you think about my book?'' He said, ``It's as bad as your backhand. You should not have written it.'' But we had to wait 20 years for that one, and we killed 58,000 Americans. Now we have killed almost 800, maimed for life thousands of others. Are we going to just continue on? What would the Senator from South Carolina do if I were king for a day? Yes, I would put the troops in to get security, and I would step up the election. I can tell you right now, I have run for all kind of offices, 20-some statewide offices and campaigns. But don't put me in on that temporary coalition. That fellow, El Baradei, who is running around the United Nations to get a temporary coalition or government to turn power over to on June 30--don't put me in that. I immediately have to repudiate the United States, that I am not a stooge for the United States. We just have our fingers crossed that we can hold law and order so we can have an election. But don't wait until 2005, or December; by September 30, let's get that election going. Let's realize we are in real trouble. Saudi Arabia is in trouble. Israel is in trouble. The United States is in trouble. I am going to state what I believe to be the fact. In fact, I believe it very strongly. They just are whistling by on account of the pressures that we get politically. Nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on. It was a mistake like Vietnam. We got misled with the Gulf of Tonkin, we got misled here, and we are in that quagmire. ``Municipal guerrilla war and a quagmire,'' that says George Herbert Walker Bush. I will end on my authority--President George Herbert Walker Bush said: Never commit U.S. troops into an unwinnable urban guerrilla war and turn off the Arab world. Look in that book of his and you will see exactly what I am talking about. He is not anti-Semitic. He is sensible. He didn't go in. Yes, Colin Powell, General Powell said if you are going in, let's have enough troops. They tried to do it on the cheap. They were ill advised. My friend Paul Wolfowitz said you will do it in 7 days. Come on. And they let the Republican Guard back into the city of Baghdad and into the Sunni triangle, and the next thing you know, when Chalabi, who has now been demoted or set aside--he did away with their leadership and everything, so they got turned off and they buddied up with the insurgents, and now we have hell on our hands. Everybody knows that. So it has been ill prepared, ill advised, and ill administered. The entire thing is a mess. Don't give me ``support the troops, support the troops.'' I have been with troops, about 3 years in combat, so don't tell me about troops. I have always supported the troops. You ask how many Senators have gotten a Woodward Award from the U.S. Army. They don't give that out lightly. I have been with every Secretary of Defense until this one, and I think he is brilliant, but I think he has made a mistake going along with this domino policy. We have it now out on the table, and we will all talk about it, and we will be around and ready to debate it. I appreciate the colleagues yielding to me. I wish I had all the time to put all these articles in. I want to thank--and I am going to sit here and support my friend from Washington. She has done a magnificent job stating what the issue is. It is simply under the auspices of an accelerated disposal plan going around end to reclassify--and it is around end. I had not heard anything about it. I have been handling everything at Savannah River for 30 some years. I called up the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control--DHEC--and they were adamantly opposed and gave me the brief they signed a few weeks ago adamantly opposing it, with the assistant attorney general's name on it. They say this is DHEC policy. I talked to two members of DHEC and they said it was never brought up at their meetings. They do not know anything about it. So, yes, it is a little rider for one special State that is injurious not only to the State itself--I say that advisedly--but also to the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Without losing my right to the floor, I will yield. Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar

Mr. HOLLINGS. Not until I complete this thought. Time is running out on me. The papers are the ones that pointed out Wolfowitz, Pearle, and Charles Krauthammer were of the Jewish faith. They are the ones who brought all this Semitism in there. I can tell you that right now, I didn't have that in mind. I had my friends in mind and I followed them. We had this in the late 1990s under President Clinton, when we passed a resolution that we ought to have Saddam removed from power, have a regime change. I was wondering how it went. I had to find my old file--on this Project For The New American Century. Now, going back to my article: ``every President since 1947 has made a futile attempt to help Israel negotiate peace. But no leadership has surfaced amongst the Palestinians that can make a binding agreement. President Bush realized his chances at negotiation were no better. He came to office imbued with one thought.''

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleagues. I have, this afternoon, the opportunity to respond to being charged as anti-Semitic when I proclaimed the policy of President Bush in the Mideast as not for Iraq or really for democracy in the sense that he is worried about Saddam and democracy. If he were worried about democracy in the Mideast, as we wanted to spread it as a policy, we would have invaded Lebanon, which is half a democracy and has terrorism and terrorists who have been problems to the interests of Israel and the United States. It is very interesting that on page 231, Richard Clarke, in his book ``Against All Enemies,'' cites the fact that there had not been any terrorism, any evidence or intelligence of Saddam's terrorism against the United States from 1993 to 2003. He says that in the presence of Paul Wolfowitz. He says that in the presence of John McLaughlin of the CIA. In fact, he says: Isn't that right, John? And John says: That is exactly right. The reason was when they made the attempt on President Bush, Senior, back in 1993, President Clinton ordered a missile strike on Saddam in downtown Baghdad, the intelligence headquarters, and it went right straight down the middle of the headquarters. It was after hours so not a big kill--but Saddam got the message: You monkey around with the United States, a missile will land on your head. So, in essence, the equation had changed in the Saddam-Iraq/Mideast concerns whereby Saddam was more worried about any threat of the United States against him than the United States was worried about a threat by Saddam against us. I want to read an article that appeared in the Post and Courier in Charleston on May 6; thereafter, I think in the State newspaper in Columbia a couple days later; and in the Greenville News--all three major newspapers in South Carolina. You will find that there is no anti-Semitic reference whatsoever in it. The reason I emphasize that upfront is for the simple reason that you cannot put an op-ed in my hometown paper that is anti-Semitic. We have a very, very proud Jewish community in Charleston. In fact, it is where reform Judaism began. The earliest temple, Kadosh Beth Elohim, is on Hasell Street. I have spoken there several times. I had the pleasure of having that particular temple put on the National Register. This particular Senator, with over 50 years now of public service, has received a strong Jewish vote. Let me emphasize another thing because the papers are piling on and bringing up again a little difference of opinion I had on the Senate floor with Senator Metzenbaum. It was not really a difference. What had happened was we were discussing a matter, and we referred to each's religion in order to make sure there would not be any misunderstanding or tempers flaring. The distinguished Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Helms, referred to himself as the Baptist lay leader, Senator Danforth as the Episcopal priest. I referred to myself as the Lutheran Senator. And when Senator Metzenbaum came on the floor, I referred to him as the Senator from B'nai B'rith, and he took exception. He thought it was an aspersion. I told him: Wait a minute, I will gladly identify myself as the Senator from B'nai B'rith. I did not mean to hurt his feelings. I apologized at that time but not for the legitimacy and the circumstances of the particular reference. Now here we go again, some years later. The Senator from Virginia, Mr. George Allen, and I are good friends. Maybe after this particular thing he might feel different, but I know his role as the chairman of the campaign committee. And so I have an article here where Senator Allen denounces Senator Hollings' latest political attack, Senator Hollings' antisemitic, political conspiracy statement. Let me read the statement here from the May 6 Post and Courier, and you be the judge: With 760 dead in Iraq, over 3,000 maimed for life--home folks continue to argue why we are in Iraq--and how to get out. Now everyone knows what was not the cause. Even President Bush acknowledges that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Listing the 45 countries where al-Qaida was operating on September 11 . . . the State Department did not list Iraq. They listed 45 countries and at that particular date on September 11, 2001, they did not even list Iraq. Richard Clarke, in ``Against All Enemies,'' tells how the United States had not received any threat of terrorism for 10 years from Saddam at the time of our invasion. On page 231, John McLaughlin of the CIA verifies this to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. In 1993, President Clinton responded to Saddam's attempt on the life of President George H.W. Bush by putting a missile down on Saddam's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. Not a big kill, but Saddam got the message--monkey around with the United States and a missile lands on his head. Of course there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel's intelligence Mossad knows what's going on in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know. Israel's survival depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction . . . Let me divert for a second there. I was here when Israel attacked the nuclear facility in Baghdad during the 1980s. In all candor, when President Bush, on October 7, 2002, said, after all that buildup by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and everybody else, that facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud, I thought we were attacking for Israel. I thought that they knew about some kind of nuclear development there. And rather than getting them in further trouble with the United Nations and the Arab world, that its best friend, the United States, would knock it out for them. That is why I voted for it. I got misled. Our attack on Iraq, the invasion of Iraq is a bad mistake. I will get into that later. But let me read even further: . . . if there were any [weapons of mass destruction] or if they had been removed. With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel. Led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there had been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel's security is to spread democracy in the area. Wolfowitz wrote: ``The United States may not be able to lead countries through the door of democracy, but where that door is locked shut by a totalitarian deadbolt, American power may be the only way to open it up.'' Namely, invasion. That is Wolfowitz talking. And on another occasion: Iraq as ``the first Arab democracy . . . would cast a very large shadow, starting with Syria and Iran but across the whole Arab world.'' Three weeks before the invasion, President Bush stated: ``A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example for freedom for other nations in the region.'' I referred to those three gentlemen because I know them well. They are brilliant. I have been for years associated one way or the other with each of them. I read Charles Krauthammer. I wish I could write like he can. With respect to Richard Perle, he was sort of our authority in the cold war, best friend of Scoop Jackson. That is how I met him 38 years ago almost. I followed him and I followed his advice, and that is in large measure how we prevailed in the cold war. So I have the highest respect for Richard Perle. And, of course, the other gentleman, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Wolfowitz, I met him out in Indonesia when he was Ambassador. He came back. We were good friends. He was looking around for a position, and I know I offered him one--in fact, we might go to the records and find temporarily he might have been on my payroll for a few weeks. But I have always had the highest regard for Paul Wolfowitz. That is why I referred to him. I had their sayings and everything else. But let me go, diverting for a minute, right to the Project For The New American Century. I have a letter that was written on May 29, 1998, to Newt Gingrich, the Speaker, Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader. These are the gentlemen who said this: We would use U.S. and allied military power to provide protection for liberating areas in northern and southern Iraq, and we should establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the region and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power. And that is signed by--and I want everybody to remember these names-- Elliot Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John R. Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick. There is a studied school of thought of the best way to secure Israel. We have been going for years back and forth with every particular administration, you can see where we are now. But in any event, the better way to do it is go right in and establish our predominance in Iraq and then, as they say, and I have different articles here I could refer to, next is Iran and then Syria. And it is the domino theory, and they genuinely believe it. I differ. I think, frankly, we have caused more terrorism than we have gotten rid of. That is my Israel policy. You can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here. I have followed them mostly in the main, but I have also resisted signing certain letters from time to time, to give the poor President a chance. I can tell you no President takes office--I don't care whether it is a Republican or a Democrat--that all of a sudden AIPAC will tell him exactly what the policy is, and Senators and members of Congress ought to sign letters. I read those carefully and I have joined in most of them. On some I have held back. I have my own idea and my own policy. I have stated it categorically. The way to really get peace is not militarily. You cannot kill an idea militarily. I was delighted the other day when General Myers appeared before our Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and he said that we will not win militarily in Iraq. He didn't say we are going to get defeated militarily but that you can't win militarily in Iraq.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I have not had the opportunity to work with my distinguished colleague. We have worked very closely together on many matters, and I have the highest respect for him. It has really been a pleasure for this Senator to work with him as he has come over to the Senate. Only yesterday on our way to a vote, I asked him about this issue because I heard about it from our colleague from the State of Washington, Senator Cantwell. He said he had a letter from the Environmental Control Division of the State of South Carolina. I thereupon got in touch with the director of the DHEC of South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control. Mr. Hunter said: Oh, no, we adamantly oppose any kind of reclassification of high-level to low-level. I said: That is exactly what is being done. He said: That is not what we understand. We know that Senator Graham has been working with the Department of Energy, and we were led to believe we would have a signoff on it and his amendment would give us any kind of collaborative agreement, as characterized by the distinguished Senator, that was worked out, and we could sign off on it. On page 2 of the amendment, he refers to subsection A and subsection B--rather subsection A shall not apply to any other material otherwise covered by that subsection that is transported from the State. Then down in section D, in this section, the term ``State'' means the State of South Carolina. So referring to that particular section, what we have is not a preemption, but really the preemption is invalid. That language is, ``any such action may be completed pursuant to the terms of the closure plan of the State-issued permit notwithstanding the final criteria adopted by the rulemaking pursuant to subsection A.'' We had this in the Kentucky case with respect to the supremacy clause. We know this has already been taken to the 6th Circuit Court. That does not protect the State of South Carolina at all. I know my distinguished colleague wants to protect the State of South Carolina, but I think he even knows now that language does not protect the State. I asked: Where in the world did this all come from anyway? He said: Oh, Senator, we have been working on it. We have a brief filed on March 25, a certificate of a brief in the case of the National Resources Defense Council v. Spencer Abraham. We won the case, and it is up on appeal. On this appeal, we have signed that brief, Samuel L. Finckley III, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control--that was just a few weeks ago--stating the Department's position. I have nothing from the Governor. I know Governor Sanford extremely well. We traveled back and forth for 6 years when he was in Congress. I know the one thing he is known for and that is protecting the environment. Governor Sanford does not approve of this. I understand informally he told my distinguished colleague: If you can work out an agreement that protects the State of South Carolina, then we will go along with it. That is not what is occurring with this amendment. I have been in this game for 50 years. In 1955, I was the chairman of the Regional Advisory Council on Nuclear Energy. We called it RACNE then. It was a 17-State compact. We had all the dangers of nuclear emissions. We looked for places for permanent storage. At that time, in the early fifties, they said--at that time, I was Lieutenant Governor-- they said: Governor, don't worry about it. This Savannah River site we are developing is twofold very dangerous for any kind of permanent storage. One reason is this site is over the Tuscaloosa aquifer water supply that comes down below Aiken County. More than anything else, there is an earthquake fault from Calhoun, Orangeburg, into Aiken County. He said: We are not going to have anything stored here for over 2 years. Two years became 4, 4 became 8, 8 became 16, 16 became 32, and now it is some 50 years. It has been some 50 years and that problem has yet to be solved. We worked on the financial end of the problem, and we exacted 1/10th of one cent on a kilowatt of power sold by the various energy companies engaged in nuclear power, and that fund has some $13 billion in it. We are not worried about money. The Department of Energy went around--and that is the case to which I am referring. They ran around and surreptitiously said we are going to reclassify and call it low-level waste, and that means we can save a lot of money and bother and use the money maybe on tax cuts. Don't worry about that fund because the power companies have sued on the particular fund. Otherwise, that fund has been built up, and there is plenty of money. It is just not cleaning it up. They were trying to empty out the waste and throw some sand and concrete on top of it. We found out in expert hearings back in 1982, when we classified it as high-level waste--the finest of experts came in, and that is where the classification came, and that, my dear friends, is what should occur here. If there is some reason to reclassify, then let's come before the Environment Committee and the Energy Committee and let's have a hearing as has been provided for by my colleague, the distinguished Congressman from the 5th District, Congressman John Spratt, whereby on the House side they said, let's refer to the National Academy of Sciences, and we will go about it in a deliberate way, and if the Energy Department wants it reclassified and has some authoritative source that will support their particular position, maybe the Congress itself will reclassify. But this has been classified by us, upheld in the courts, now on appeal, and here they come around in a fancy little surreptitious way on a Defense authorization bill and get the Graham language in the bill that would not hold up in the State legislature where general provision would say it is unconstitutional. When I heard about this going on, I looked to see if maybe this was unconstitutional, but it is not. That can be done, and it has been done already. So there has been precedent set for this. I can say categorically, the State in the last 48 hours is in an uproar over this particular measure. They did not know of any kind of special provision that was going to be put on for one State in a Defense authorization bill. They resent it, they resist it, and they have asked me by advertisement and telephone calls to please ``adamantly oppose,'' is the expression they have used. This is all in the offing. We can see what my colleague has done. He has put language on here so that when the deal is made with the Energy Department where apparently the State still would have a signoff--under the supremacy clause, the Federal Government has got it--and it means absolutely nothing, but it allows them to get the deal and lock the State in, and then we will start all the legal proceedings all over again. So I implore my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, this is no way to legislate high-level waste in the United States. I have worked with the Department of Energy. We have the facility down when Secretary Richardson--now the Governor of New Mexico--was in, and I have brought every particular benefit that I could possibly bring to this particular facility, but apparently the contractors want to move ahead and certainly the Department of Energy wants to move ahead and not have to pay out the full sums. If they can get a precedent set for the reclassification in a surreptitious fashion of this kind called low-level waste, then it will set a precedent for the other States and we have an environmental disaster in the offing because we will not be here. That is about the attitude around here, that if it can be handled in a day's time, then let us forget about the future. This is a highly dangerous procedure. It is wrong for the State of South Carolina. It is wrong for the Nation. It is wrong for the Department of Energy. I had misgivings when the Secretary of Energy came up for nomination. I remembered very clearly my debate with Spencer Abraham. He wanted to abolish the Department of Energy and abolish the Department of Commerce. I can see him over on that side of the floor right now. We had a debate about that. I was sort of shocked that he would want to be Secretary of a Department that he wanted to abolish, but he is a good fellow. I got along with him, and I said, all right, I will cast a vote and keep my fingers crossed. But this is monkeyshines. We cannot go along with this one. If they want a reclassification--this is not a money problem, this is a reclassification problem--then let us reclassify it in the orderly fashion in which we made the classification back some 22 years ago in the Congress. The House of Representatives says let us handle it that way, so let us handle it that way over in the Senate. If we want to give permission to have hearings and then change that law, that is fine business, let us do it in that fashion, but do not put a rider that says this is for the interest of the State of South Carolina because it is not. It is not in the interest of the United States of America. I do not know how else we can solve this. I know the other States are involved. The Senator from Michigan on the Defense appropriations has been very alert on this particular measure. I am just a Johnny-come- lately to it, but it affects my State, and it affects an area that I have been vitally interested in for over 50 years now. I have worked with every particular facet that one can think of. Never has this Senator been contacted about this deal. I know the Governor, I know his position on the environment, and I know he will not approve of this one. I can tell my colleagues right now that reclassifying high level as low level, saying that we protect the State of South Carolina when we know the legalistic wording is just that, legalistic wording, has already been found ineffective by the highest court of the land. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.