Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, it has been said that there's no system worse than democracy--except for all of the other ones. What this aphorism reveals is that though democracy, in its republican form of elections, is the best form of government that we know of at this point, it nevertheless has its shortcomings, be they human or mechanical. A close election certainly tends to highlight these human and mechanical flaws in our voting systems. This was never more proven than by last year's Presidential election. Last November and December stories of overvotes, undervotes, and hanging chads flooded the media. Many voters complained that confusing butterfly ballots led them to make unintended choices, while others claimed they were denied the opportunity to vote by being left off of the registration rolls or through intimidation. Unfortunately, these problems are not new. We've had difficulties using punch cards and other machine-readable ballots for more than 30 years. Federal officials were made aware of these issues as early as 1978, by a National Bureau of Standards, now NIST, study, Science & Technology: Effective Use of Computing Technology in Vote-Tallying. That study--and another in 1988--found difficulties in vote-tallying stemming from management failures, technology failures, and human operational failures. The 1978 report cited major difficulties in 7 cities. One of the key recommendations was the elimination of the pre- scored punch card, similar to the kind used in Palm Beach County's Votomatic machines. We know that there is a problem, the question is what are we going to do about it? Senator McCain and I have one answer--the American Voting Standards and Technology Act, which we are introducing today. In short, the Act would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop voluntary consensus standards to ensure the accuracy and validation of the voting process from voter registration through any recount. Quite simply, NIST knows standards--it has been in the standards game for over 100 years. Its experts know how to work with stakeholders like state and local governments and private sector technology leaders to build valid, usable, reliable standards that people trust. The agency updates its standards regularly. NIST's voluntary voting standards could set a threshold for accuracy, maintenance, and usability of voting systems that would feed into the second leg of our program--matching grants to State and local government agencies to purchase new or rehabilitated voting equipment. We want to give priority in this program to the places least able to afford state of the art voting equipment--the precincts with high unemployment and low income levels. However, because we don't want to buy new equipment if no one knows how to use it, our bill would authorize the Department of Commerce to give grants to State agencies to strengthen voter education campaigns. We want voters to understand how to use the technology that is in their polling place and how to determine if their vote will be correctly counted. The right to vote is the most fundamental right bestowed upon Americans by the U.S. Constitution. There are millions of Americans who lost faith in the guarantee and exercise of this fundamental right due to the circumstances of the last election. Senator McCain and I do not claim to know how to restore the American people's faith in our voting systems. However, we do have an idea that setting basic performance standards, helping election officials acquire systems which meet those standards, and helping voters use those systems is part of the solution. When we return from the President's Day recess, we plan to schedule hearings to work through the details of our legislation and improve it. We realize that our American Voting Standards and Technology Act is only one piece of the pie, and we also look forward to working with other Senators who are examining other aspects of the electoral system.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Stevens, Senator Hutchison of Texas, Senator Inouye, Senator Kohl, Senator Dorgan, and myself, I send to the desk a bill, the Children's Protection From Violent Programming Act. Mr. President, it has been a 50-year learning process. I am reminded of Peter, Paul, and Mary, singing that song about, ``Where have all the flowers gone? When will they ever learn?'' The truth of the matter is that we have learned. We have had hearings starting back in the early 1950s with Senator Kefauver. We have had Surgeon General reports, American Medical Association reports, American Psychological Association reports, National Cable Television Association reports, Kaiser Family Foundation reports--reports, reports, reports, again, again, and again; and only this yet to be introduced ``Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General,'' which I quote, among other findings, from page 93: Research to date justifies sustained efforts to curb the adverse effects of media violence on youth. We have had Attorney General Janet Reno, along with other legal scholars, attest to the constitutionality of the safe harbor approach. The truth of the matter is that everybody is talking about bipartisanship. We have had it with respect to TV violence and its effect on children. In the last three Congresses, safe harbor has been reported out of committee almost unanimously, with only one dissenting vote in each Congress, 16-1, 19-1, 17-1, after a series of hearings in the Commerce Committee. Then it gets to the full Senate's calendar and it stops. On Thursday, January 25, a thirteen year old boy was sentenced to life in prison for the killing of a six year old family friend. Why did he do it? To imitate pro wrestling he had watched on television. In this instance, the defendant punched, kicked, and threw a 48 pound little girl against a metal staircase after asking her ``Do you want to play wrestling?'' His defense attorney stated: ``He wanted to emulate them. . . . Like Batman and Superman, they were his heroes.'' He added, that the defendant ``didn't understand that he could hurt the 48-pound girl if he punched her and threw her because he had seen pro wrestlers do that hundreds of times without injuring each other.'' Apparently, the death was one of at least four cases in 1999 in which pro wrestling inspired the killing of one child by another. The day after this sentencing, another thirteen year old boy suffered second and third degree burns when he tried to imitate an MTV personality who set himself on fire as part of the show ``Jackass,'' which airs on that music network. The injured teen, who was from Torrington, CT, allowed his friend to douse his pants and shoes with gasoline and then light them on fire mistakenly assuming that he would not be injured. His burns, and required hospitalization tell another tale. Mr. President, enough is enough. And yet, we can never bring ourselves to act. Remember, it was over three years ago, in Paducah, Kentucky, when a fourteen year old savagely murdered three teenage girls and shot five others who had just completed their morning prayer meeting at school. Prosecutors alleged the defendant plotted his killings after watching ``The Basketball Diaries,'' a movie in which a tormented student dreams of brutally slaying his tormentors in the classroom. In the scene in which the killings take place, popular rock music resonates in the background and students high-five each other and laugh while their friend guns down multiple students and the classroom teacher. And we all are familiar with the incident in which a young boy burned down his home, thereby killing his sister, while imitating the ritualistic pyromaniac practices that were glorified on the popular cartoon show ``Beavis and Butthead.'' A few years before that, in 1991, a thirteen year old boy in Jerusalem accidentally killed himself when he imitated a TV hanging he had witnessed on one of his favorite action-adventure programs. His friends discovered him dead, hanging from the stairway bannister in his home. How much copycat violence will it take? How many violent acts have to be committed, how much vandalism, destruction, injury, and death has to occur, before we act here in Congress? As we have seen in Littleton, Colorado, and in Paducah, Kentucky, violence in our culture is begetting violence by our youths. Violence is everywhere, it is readily accessible, and it is a source of corporate profits. As a Washington Post article entitled ``When Death Imitates Art'' stated two years ago--``For young people, the culture at large is bathed in blood and violence . . . where the more extreme the message, the more over the top gruesomeness, the better.'' This assessment is based on established evidence and facts. We know from the Congressional Research Service that before completing elementary school, the average child will witness 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television alone. By the time he or she graduates from high school, the exposure will rise to 40,000 televised murders. Often accompanied by popular music, portrayed in a glorified light, and delivered without reference to the negative consequences of such dire actions, television violence has a direct, adverse impact on our children. The legislation I offer today provides an opportunity for us to act responsibly to lessen that impact, by limiting our children's exposure to the poisonous effects of televised, glorified, violence. We need to take advantage of that opportunity. The purveyors of violence in corporate America will no doubt criticize this effort and seek the mantle of the First Amendment while espousing the virtue of self- regulation. What they won't say is that U.S. law already restricts the broadcasting of indecent programming on television, a restriction the federal courts have upheld as consistent with the First Amendment. A similar approach for violence is also likely to be upheld, as has been demonstrated in previous Congresses through the hearing testimony of the U.S. Attorney General, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and numerous constitutional scholars. As for self- regulation, it has been proven unequivocally that such an approach will never work so long as it is pitted against the allure of the almighty dollar. Mr. President, this is an issue about accountability and responsibility. Those responsible for supplying and distributing video programming have been entrusted with public resources--through grants of government spectrum and public rights of way--that allow them to deliver their programming to America's children. Notwithstanding the responsibility that accompanies the grant of this public trust, we know from the studies that there is more violence on television during prime time, during ``sweeps weeks'' and even on weekend afternoons. Why? Because violence sells and money talks. And no amount of self- regulation, and no number of antitrust exemptions is going to change that profit incentive. Moreover, we know that no issue is more developed, more researched, and more debated than this one. Allow me to lay out the history. We were in the last days of the Truman Administration when a House Subcommittee first looked at the issue of violence on radio and television. The Senate Judiciary Committee and Senator Estes Kefauver began to examine media and youth violence in hearings in 1954 and the Senate Commerce Committee began hearings in 1960. In the Senate Commerce Committee alone we have held twenty two hearings on the issue of media violence. In 1972, the Surgeon General's report concluded that there is a causal link between viewing violence as a child and subsequent violent or aggressive behavior. In 1982, the National Institute of Mental Health, after ten years of research, found that ``the consensus among most of the research community is that violence on television does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the programs.'' Congress finally responded to this overwhelming evidence in 1990, when we granted the industry an antitrust exemption to meet and develop ways to reduce violence on television. In response to that legislation, the TV networks issued standards for the depiction of violence on broadcast television. Let me quote from those standards: All depictions of violence should be relevant and necessary to the development of character, or to the advancement of theme or plot. Gratuitous or excessive depictions of violence, (or redundant violence shown solely for its own sake), are not acceptable. Programs should not depict violence as glamorous, nor as an acceptable solution to human conflict. . . . Realistic depictions of violence should also portray, in human terms, the consequences of that violence to its victims and its perpetrators. The goals articulated by these network standards are good ones--they are the same goals I hope to achieve with this legislation. Unfortunately, the standards developed pursuant to the 1990 antitrust exemption were never adhered to by the networks. Instead, the television industry ignored and violated those standards, thereby rendering the antitrust exemption meaningless. We know this because an industry commissioned study by the National Cable Television Association tells us as much. That NCTA study, issued in 1998, reported that: The way that most TV violence is portrayed continues to pose risks to viewers . . . Much of TV violence is still glamorized. . . . Most violence on television continues to be sanitized. Television often ignores or underestimates what happens to the victims of violence . . . Much of the serious physical aggression on television is still trivialized. The NCTA report could not put it more plainly. The networks failed to heed their own standards. I hope we have learned our lesson: no antitrust exemption is going to protect children from the harms associated with television violence. With respect to the causal impact of exposure to televised violence, the NCTA report was equally illuminating. It stated: Prior to this study, it had already been well established that television influences many kinds of attitudes and behaviors by modeling them as appropriate and/or desirable. A highly successful multi-billion dollar advertising industry is built on that premise. More specifically, violence on television has been shown in hundreds of studies to have an influence on aggressive behavior. Over the past 20 years, numerous respected academic and public health organizations and agencies--including the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the U.S. Surgeon General, and the National Institute of Mental Health--have reviewed the existing body of evidence in this area and have unanimously affirmed the validity of that conclusion. Finally, several weeks ago, the Surgeon General released a preliminary report that concludes-- yet again--that there exists a scientific link between violent television programming and increased aggression in children. The report states: ``A diverse body of research provides strong evidence that exposure to violence in the media can increase children's aggressive behavior in the short term.'' The report notes further that a smaller body of reports demonstrates that ``long- term effects exist, and there are strong theoretical reasons that this is the case.'' Finally, the report concludes that ``Research to date justifies sustained efforts to curb the adverse effects of media violence on youths.'' So there you have it. We have come full circle with two significant surgeon general reports almost thirty years apart and scores of studies in between. In the interim, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission have tried to address this problem with a mix of regulation and self regulation. These attempts have been unsuccessful. In the 1970s, FCC Chairman Dick Wiley attempted to cajole industry to adopt a family hour, but that ultimately was abandoned. Then, in addition to the failed 1990 antitrust exemption, we acted in 1996, as part of the Telecommunications Act, to require televisions to be equipped with a V- Chip. We know today, however, almost five years since that provision was passed, that the V-chip is not working. For example, an April 2000 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation demonstrates that only 9 percent of parents of children aged 2-17 own a television with a V-Chip. Moreover, only one-third of these parents (3 percent of all parents) have programmed the chip to block unsuitable programming. Finally, the survey indicated that 39 percent of parents of children aged 2-17 had never heard of the V-Chip. As if that was not bad enough, we know further that the industry developed ratings system designed to work in conjunction with the V- chip is failing as well. To be specific, although almost all broadcast and cable channels now encode their programs with ratings, many violent programs are in fact not specifically rated ``V'' for violence--thereby rendering the system ineffective. The most recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation on this subject found that 79 percent of shows with violence did not receive the ``V'' rating. If the V-Chip and the ratings system do not provide enough protection, it is our responsibility to fill in the gap. Last year, the Senate Commerce Committee held two high profile hearings to examine an issue related to televised violence--that of marketing violence to children. At those hearings we reviewed industry practices as outlined in a Federal Trade Commission report that found that the entertainment industry as a whole routinely marketed violent fare to children that was in fact rated as inappropriate for those same children. I raise this subject because some members of industry responded to the FTC report and our hearings by choosing to limit the advertising of violent material on television to certain hours of the day. In other words, they too believe that it is better to shield children from exposure to violent images when they are likely to comprise a substantial portion of the audience. While I applaud those voluntary actions, they do not go far enough, and as a result, we in Congress have to do more. If it is good for children to limit violent advertisements, it follows that it should be good for children to limit violent programming. A recent study by Stanford University supports this conclusion. Released last month, the study determined that aggression by children can be reduced by limiting their exposure to media violence--exactly the approach advocated in our Safeharbor legislation. Mr. President, that is why I am introducing my legislation today. My bill takes a two track approach to television violence. First, it would require the FCC to study whether the V-Chip and the content-based ratings system can capably meet the compelling government interest in protecting children from the harms associated with their exposure to violence on television. The FCC is to complete this determination within 12 months of enactment and is directed to continue an ongoing annual assessment of this issue. If the FCC at any time determines that the V-Chip and the ratings do not constitute an effective means of satisfying the government's compelling interest in protecting children, then it must institute a Safeharbor to shield children from violent programs when they are likely to comprise a substantial portion of the audience. While this legislation would apply to broadcast television and basic satellite and cable programming, it would exempt pay-per-view and premium cable and satellite programming from the Safeharbor. Prior to the imposition of any safeharbor, the legislation directs the FCC to develop rules penalizing broadcasters and cable and satellite programmers for distributing violent programming on television that is not blockable by the V-Chip. These penalties will be triggered if violent shows are not in fact rated ``V'' for violence as required by the ratings system. This provision will increase the incentive for programmers to rate their shows accurately, and responds to evidence that most violent programming is in fact not specifically rated for violence, and therefore is not blockable by the V-Chip. This legislation was reported favorably by the Senate Commerce Committee last year by a 17-1 vote. I look forward to moving the bill out of Committee again this year, and I hope that we can secure enactment of this measure for the first time in this Congress. Mr. President, the evidence is in, we know the results, and we have a solution. Its time to enact a safeharbor for television violence. Mr. President, I refer to page 23 of volume 3 of ``A History of Broadcasting in the United States.'' It alludes to the year 1949 and the production of the program ``Man Against Crime,'' starring Ralph Bellamy. I begin right on page 23: ``Man Against Crime was sponsored by Camel Cigarettes. This affected both writing and direction. Mimeographed instructions told writers, ``Do not have the heavy or any disreputable person smoking a cigarette. Do not associate the smoking of cigarettes with undesirable scenes or situations plot wise.'' Cigarettes had to be smoked gracefully, never puffed nervously. A cigarette was never given to a character to calm his nerves, since this might suggest a narcotic effect. Writers received numerous plot instructions. Listen carefully because this is the instruction that the writers were given 50 years ago: It has been found that we retain audience interest best when our story is concerned with murder. Therefore, although other crimes may be introduced, somebody must be murdered, preferably early, with the threat of more violence to come. That is from the History of Broadcasting. The industry knows that violence is a moneymaker. Ten years ago, the distinguished Senator from Illinois said: No, no, wait a minute, don't rush into this thing; freedom of speech, freedom of speech. We don't want to damage the originality of the producers. So we gave an antitrust exemption so they could work together because Senator Simon said they could not work together and regulate because of antitrust provisions in the Federal statute. We gave them that protection. Then came a very interesting study from cable television. Every time I speak in the Chamber, they give me another study. That is why I wish I could sing: When will they ever learn? This study, done a few years ago, was financed by the National Cable Television Association, but it was done by the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It included, amongst other council members, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America West, the Caucus for Producers, Writers and Directors, the American Bar Association, and the Directors Guild of America. Point: The very people who are doing the producing found that violence begets children's violence. Three weeks ago, a 13-year-old was sentenced to life in prison for bludgeoning to death a 48-pound 8 year old. He had seen this on a cable wrestling show. These wrestlers jumped on each other, they beat each others' heads against a post, and then flung opponents out of the ring. That was the undisputed record: That the 13-year-old saw wrestling matches where everybody got up and walked away unharmed and came back the next week. Just last month, someone else emulated a stunt on MTV showing how people could be set on fire and then walk away unharmed. The individual saw the MTV program, tried it, and got first- and second-degree burns all over his body. I will never forget years ago on the ``Johnny Carson Show,'' they had a fellow with a tie around his neck, and he dropped through a trap door and hung and, again, just walked away. The next day a couple found their young teenager hanging from the bedroom fan. He had tied himself up, got on the edge of the bed, and jumped off and hanged himself. We know monkey see-monkey do, and it begets violence. This country, the industrial country of the United States, has more violence than all other countries combined. What have the other countries done? For years on end they have had a safe harbor in Europe, in Australia, and in New Zealand, and other places. They have a time set aside when children dominate the audience and thou shalt not have violent shows during that time. It works. Their children do not shoot up classrooms, they do not emulate violence, or kill little girls. That does not go on in Europe, but it continues to increase in our country, according to the Surgeon General's report just about to be released. We see it on the increase. The Kaiser Family Foundation counters with: Oh, well, you have to get the V-chip. Under legal decisions, you have to use the least intrusive method of regulating so-called free speech. So we put the V-chip into the 1996 Telecommunications Act. That was supposed to allow parents to take charge. We constantly hear that when we know it is not the case. Sixty-two percent of young single women are in the workforce with latchkey children at home. We have tried that V-chip. One, 40 percent of those interviewed under the Kaiser Family Foundation have never even heard of the V-chip--what are you talking about? Two, less than 10 percent have ever had the V-chip, and, three, less than 3 percent have ever used it. It is impractical. You have to run around to the three or four TVs in the house and say: I have the program, and before I go to work this morning, I am going to put in the chip. Come on, that is unreal, but that is the political solution which has not worked. I do not want to be put aside. I have been put aside. I offered an amendment a couple of years ago to the juvenile justice bill. Some colleagues said: Fritz, I would vote for your amendment, but I don't want any amendments on the juvenile justice bill, or we have not tried the V-chip. They gave any putoff they could think of. We found out that we ought to just include it in a statute. In this bill, we direct the Federal Communications Commission to have hearings on this matter and determine whether or not the V-chip is effective and, if it is not, to promulgate a safe harbor. Constitutionally, the Federal Communications Commission has been given that authority on indecency. Why not on violence? These programs have not been properly rated. We prescribe in this measure that the industry start rating violence--V for violence--on these shows. If they do not, there is going to be a penalty. A Stanford University study has just been issued whereby they have tested the diminution of violence on television and there has been a diminution then in children's violence in that particular community. We will bring that to the floor. We are ready to debate this legislation. This is a bipartisan bill. We have had Republican and Democrats in the last three Congresses join in, but we have never had a fair hearing on the floor. We have done this in a deliberate, measured fashion so that we can get it considered in this Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today to bring the country's attention to one of its most gifted educators, civil rights leaders and theologians, the late Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, and to again encourage the President to award Dr. Mays a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dr. Mays lived an extraordinary life that began in a very unextraordinary setting. The son of slaves, Dr. Mays grew up in the rural community of Epworth, South Carolina where poverty and racism were everyday realities and the church was sometimes the only solace to be found. Yet, as the title of Dr. Mays' autobiography, ``Born to Rebel'' reveals, he was never satisfied with the status quo and looked to education as the key to his own success, and later the key to sweeping social change. After working his way through South Carolina College, Bates College and a doctoral program at the University of Chicago, Dr. Mays worked as a teacher, an urban league representative and later dean of the School of Religion at Howard University here in Washington. Then, in 1940, he took the reins at Morehouse College and--to borrow a phrase--the rest was history. As President of Morehouse, Dr. Mays took an ailing institution and transformed it into one of America's most vital academic centers and an epicenter for the growing civil rights movement. He was instrumental in the elimination of segregated public facilities in Atlanta and promoted the cause of nonviolence through peaceful student protests in a time often marred by racial violence. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other influential 20th century leaders considered Dr. Mays a mentor and scores of colleges and universities-- from Harvard University to Lander University in South Carolina--have acknowledged his impressive achievements by awarding him an honorary degree. After retiring from Morehouse after 27 years, Dr. Mays did not fade from the spotlight--far from it. He served as president of the Atlanta Board of Education for 12 years, ensuring that new generations of children received the same quality education he had fought so hard to obtain back in turn-of-the-century South Carolina. Dr. Mays said it best in his autobiography: ``Foremost in my life has been my honest endeavors to find the truth and proclaim it.'' Now is the time for us to proclaim Dr. Benjamin Mays one of our nation's most distinguished citizens by awarding him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I join with Senator McCain in co- sponsoring the Airline Customer Service Improvement Act. The Commerce Committee has spent a great deal of time seeking ways to hold the air carriers accountable for their service and to force them to do a better job. Deregulation was supposed to make the carriers compete for our business, but it has failed. We now have hundreds of markets with no competition, and without competition, you get no service. Carriers have treated consumers like cattle in a stockyard, and that must end. It is time to stand up for all travelers and demand basic information, and to expect service if we are paying the high fares. The Commerce Committee has held three hearings, enlisted the Department of Transportation's Inspector General, and experienced the lack of service, first hand. It is not complicated, but it does take a commitment from the industry to hire more people and give them the tools to tell consumers what is going on or why a flight is canceled or delayed. Flights delayed 30, 40 percent of the time, according to DOT statistics, or canceled that often, should be eliminated or schedules changed. Telling people truthfully what is happening, providing basic necessities when flights are delayed for hours on end like they were in Detroit in January 1999, is not hard. The chairman and I have waited patiently to proceed with legislation in anticipation of a final report by the Department of Transportation's Inspector General, Ken Mead. The report, released Monday, is a blueprint for change. Mr. Mead and his staff, David Dobbs, Lexi Stefani, Brian Dettleback, and Scott Morris, worked long and hard to find the best way to make improvements in service. The report notes that reducing delays is a tough problem, requiring funding and industry action. We have an air transportation system in crisis, from every angle, nonetheless that is no excuse for poor service. There are more people flying, more planes landing, an increase in delays (up 33% since 1995), a critical shortage of runways, and airlines able to dictate the price and quality of service offered in many markets without regard to competition. Delays will continue to plague the system, but the carriers know this, and their Customer Service Commitments were done in light of known problems. We will work with the industry on many facets of expanding capacity, but it is their job to improve service. The carriers all to often want to cite the government as the reason for their problems. I do not buy that. These carriers have more data than virtually any industry, and make educated guesses on pricing and scheduling every day. They know the likelihood of delays. Even weather, which is unpredictable on a daily basis, is something they can anticipate. I know right now we will have thunderstorms this summer, and snow storms next winter. How will the carriers treat people during those times? I know my flight is likely to be delayed--the reasons may vary, but the process by which you tell people basic information should not be hard. Some of the carriers have attempted improvements. At a hearing last June, one carrier demonstrated a new automatic system that more quickly tells people what to expect. Another carrier has ``chariots'' that set up temporary service counters during emergency periods. An ad this past weekend touted ways to electronically tell passengers that a flight is late. These are a start, but there is a long road to go. The Air Transport Association last month announced a number of initiatives on ways to reduce delays. The ATA called on the President to hire a 1000 more controllers, use satellites to track planes and to redesign our airspace--all actions that could increase capacity. I support those initiatives, but we had better tell the Administration not to reduce the FAA's budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, which they apparently are considering. The Senate is going to spend the time to increase competition, to improve service, and to put back the notion of the public's needs as a priority.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I join with Senator McCain in co- sponsoring the Airline Customer Service Improvement Act. The Commerce Committee has spent a great deal of time seeking ways to hold the air carriers accountable for their service and to force them to do a better job. Deregulation was supposed to make the carriers compete for our business, but it has failed. We now have hundreds of markets with no competition, and without competition, you get no service. Carriers have treated consumers like cattle in a stockyard, and that must end. It is time to stand up for all travelers and demand basic information, and to expect service if we are paying the high fares. The Commerce Committee has held three hearings, enlisted the Department of Transportation's Inspector General, and experienced the lack of service, first hand. It is not complicated, but it does take a commitment from the industry to hire more people and give them the tools to tell consumers what is going on or why a flight is canceled or delayed. Flights delayed 30, 40 percent of the time, according to DOT statistics, or canceled that often, should be eliminated or schedules changed. Telling people truthfully what is happening, providing basic necessities when flights are delayed for hours on end like they were in Detroit in January 1999, is not hard. The chairman and I have waited patiently to proceed with legislation in anticipation of a final report by the Department of Transportation's Inspector General, Ken Mead. The report, released Monday, is a blueprint for change. Mr. Mead and his staff, David Dobbs, Lexi Stefani, Brian Dettleback, and Scott Morris, worked long and hard to find the best way to make improvements in service. The report notes that reducing delays is a tough problem, requiring funding and industry action. We have an air transportation system in crisis, from every angle, nonetheless that is no excuse for poor service. There are more people flying, more planes landing, an increase in delays (up 33% since 1995), a critical shortage of runways, and airlines able to dictate the price and quality of service offered in many markets without regard to competition. Delays will continue to plague the system, but the carriers know this, and their Customer Service Commitments were done in light of known problems. We will work with the industry on many facets of expanding capacity, but it is their job to improve service. The carriers all to often want to cite the government as the reason for their problems. I do not buy that. These carriers have more data than virtually any industry, and make educated guesses on pricing and scheduling every day. They know the likelihood of delays. Even weather, which is unpredictable on a daily basis, is something they can anticipate. I know right now we will have thunderstorms this summer, and snow storms next winter. How will the carriers treat people during those times? I know my flight is likely to be delayed--the reasons may vary, but the process by which you tell people basic information should not be hard. Some of the carriers have attempted improvements. At a hearing last June, one carrier demonstrated a new automatic system that more quickly tells people what to expect. Another carrier has ``chariots'' that set up temporary service counters during emergency periods. An ad this past weekend touted ways to electronically tell passengers that a flight is late. These are a start, but there is a long road to go. The Air Transport Association last month announced a number of initiatives on ways to reduce delays. The ATA called on the President to hire a 1000 more controllers, use satellites to track planes and to redesign our airspace--all actions that could increase capacity. I support those initiatives, but we had better tell the Administration not to reduce the FAA's budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, which they apparently are considering. The Senate is going to spend the time to increase competition, to improve service, and to put back the notion of the public's needs as a priority.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, it is an honor for me to pay tribute to my former Senate colleague Alan Cranston. With Senator Cranston's passing, we lost a gifted leader, a shrewd politician and a dedicated reformer. It seemed significant that Senator Cranston passed away on New Year's Eve 2000 because his life encompassed, literally, the 20th century. He was born the year World War I began, grew up during the Depression, covered the rise of fascism in Europe as a foreign correspondent and led the fight for a nuclear arms freeze during the Cold War. He called luminaries of the age among his friends, most notably Albert Einstein. Alan Cranston arrived in the Senate shortly after I did and we served together for 24 years until his retirement in 1993. We even hit the Presidential campaign trail together, both running for the White House on the Democratic ticket in 1984. Those of us who served with Senator Cranston will remember the tally sheets he carried around to count votes. We will also remember the talent he had for carefully preserving his own liberal ideologies while working effectively with those on the opposite end of the political spectrum. He may have offended some with his push for disarmament, but more often than not he disarmed them with his own friendly manner. Senator Cranston left an indelible mark on environmental, civil rights and global security policy. His legacies are the Global Security Institute, his accomplishments as a U.S. Senator and his dedication to the people of California. He will be missed, but a political giant like Alan Cranston will not be forgotten.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today to join my good friend Senator Dodd, and our distinguished colleagues Senator Hagel and Chairman McCain, in cosponsoring an important piece of legislation with far-reaching effects in our struggle to combat drug trafficking. Our bill calls for the development of a multilateral strategy among major illicit drug producing, transit, drug demand, and consuming countries to improve cooperation with respect to the investigation and prosecution of drug related crimes. Intelligence reports have shown that sophisticated cartels operate on a truly global scale. America's drug demand problems may feed Europe's money laundering problems which are related to Asia's organized crime problems or street-crime in Latin America. All the states of the world are under attack from a common, sophisticated enemy. Our bill encourages the President of the United States to bring the heads of state together to review individual country strategies and develop a new multilateral approach. This bill requires the President to submit to Congress legislation to implement a multilateral strategy devised through the consultation process described above. Drug trafficking becomes harder to fight as the world becomes increasingly interconnected. I am united with my colleagues to remain vigilant in fighting the proliferation of drugs on the streets of the United States. The last time I checked, the United States does not produce one ounce of cocaine, or one ounce of heroin. This bill recognizes the essential truth of drug trafficking--it is a multinational, multifaceted criminal plague that respects no borders. With this in mind, I rise to support a 2-year moratorium of the annual U.S. certification procedures which require the President to certify that other nations qualify as ``partners'' in combating drug trafficking. This certification is required for the release of certain U.S. bilateral assistance, as well as for the release of multilateral development aid from institutions where the United States is a voting member. This practice stymies multilateral cooperation in combating drug trafficking and has not yielded any measurable results--unless one counts the resentment of our neighbors. We need a new approach and new strategic partners. This legislation will direct President Bush to seek out new approaches and new partners rather than wasting time and energy on certification. Officials from Mexico, our neighbor and close ally, have routinely appealed to the President of the United States and to Congress to suspend the drug certification process. They argue it is detrimental to bilateral cooperation in enforcement and interdiction, it is bad for the morale of law enforcement, and it serves to absolve the United States from its responsibility in the proliferation of drug trafficking. Americans spend an estimated $110 billion a year on illegal drugs--the equivalent of one-tenth the value of the country's entire industrial production. Unfortunately, the dedicated and hardworking efforts of our law enforcement and customs officials to gain control of drugs entering our country from Mexico are to date unsuccessful. The Mexican police have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of drugs transhipped through their country (The DEA estimated that, in 1999, 55 percent of the cocaine and 14 percent of the heroin which enter the United States came from Mexico, as did 3,700 metric tons of marijuana). The situation is further complicated by the existing corruption in Mexican police ranks. By way of example, in December 1999 the Government of Mexico reported that between 1997 and 1999 more than 1,400 federal police officers had been fired for corruption and that 357 of the officers had been prosecuted. Given the pervasive scale of the problem, the Federal Preventive Police (FPP) was created to investigate and root out crooked officers in the federal police. By the winter of 2000, several agents of the FPP were under investigation themselves for corruption. Despite these grim examples there are clear signs of hope. In July 2000 Mexico turned a corner in history and ended seven decades of one- party rule by sending opposition candidate Vincente Fox to Los Pinos. Fox cast a wide net in the Mexican mainstream with themes of inclusion and governmental responsiveness in a historic campaign. ``Democracy is a starting point--it is the process by which society becomes organized and gains its own voice'' said Fox. ``Democracy provides the legitimacy necessary for the country to meet the historic challenges in the areas of development, social justice, and the reduction of inequality.'' President Fox represents a clean break with the institutionalized corruption and graft that carried Mexico to the brink of Chaos in 1994 when PRI presidential candidate Donaldo Colosio was assassinated. President Fox inherited a judicial system and a federal police force rocked by scandal and largely ineffectual in combating drug trafficking. Mexico ranked 4th in the World Bank's 2000 list of most corrupt governments. Backed with a popular mandate for change, Fox put fighting corruption as the overarching goal in all his policy initiatives. The task will not be easy. Last Friday, January 19th, for example, it was reported that convicted drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman Loera escaped from a maximum security prison in Jalisco. Guzman is a leader of the Felix Gallardo drug family, which authorities say is deeply involved in shipping illegal drugs to the United States. While I am sobered by the accounts of the Guzman escape, it is encouraging that the Mexican Supreme Court reversed its decision on extraditions for drug crimes and agreed to turn over drug kingpins wanted in the United States. We must further these confidence-building initiatives between the United States and Mexico. One way to do this is to grant Mexico a two-year moratorium from the drug certification process to allow President Fox to organize his Administration and to set his course. We should not evaluate President Fox for the corruption of his predecessors. We must allow him to address the endemic corruption that plaques the Mexican state. This legislation does not cede Congress' role in the so-called drug war. It call for new energy and a new multilateral approach. It emphasizes Congress' interest in building real partnerships and looking for new answers in this difficult struggle. This legislation will give us a fresh start with our neighbor to the south and build confidence between our people. President Fox is committed to reforming Mexico and I intend to urge my colleagues to help this vibrant new leader to achieve his goal. He has brought the liberating force of democracy to his people, but his work is not done. President Fox has to use his power to transform the state. He has an old order to dismantle, a new one to build, and 6 years to do it. I have confidence in Mr. Fox and his able cabinet. My colleagues and I are reaching out to the Fox Administration and the Mexican people; we want to build a partnership and seek new ways to address common problems.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, that sheet breaks down the deficit and debt as debt held by the Government and debt owed to the public. You can see the debt owed to the public has been reduced $37 billion. But then the debt held by the Government has gone up $91 billion. So what happens? Yes, we have now an increase in the debt of $54 billion. This accounting is like using your Visa card to pay off your MasterCard. You still owe the same amount of money under the Visa card; the debt is on the Visa rather than on the MasterCard. It is tomfoolery. It is outrageous nonsense. We only have one Government, and it is public. That is why they call it the public debt. So let's not get that ``owe the public.'' We are the custodians of the public. And we are spending Social Security, Medicare, Civil Service retirement, military retirement, unemployment compensation, all of these other funds, and saying we are balancing the budget. Now they are into a mumbo-jumbo, saving Social Security mode. All you have to do to save Social Security is not spend it. They continue to spend it. If you did not spend the Social Security moneys, you would have between $2.4 and $2.7 trillion in the next 10 years. How about putting $2.7 trillion back into the Social Security kitty rather than taking it out, whereby we owe $1.9 trillion to Social Security alone this minute. The same case applies with Medicare. We have been using those moneys. We talk and say we are not going to do it. In fact, we passed a law, section 13-301 of the Budget Act: Thou shalt not, you Congress, or you President--calculate Social Security moneys in your budget. But they do. They do. And they separate it out, and then they spend it later on. If they have a lockbox and somebody says they put in a bill on the lockbox--I am going to put in a true lockbox. Ken Apfel, the Administrator of Social Security, helped me draft it, whereby each month we remit the amount of T-bills we purchase or give to the public. So we will keep that in the fund and have a true lockbox and not a section 201 as the Social Security Act requires, just put it in Treasury bills. There it is. We have this sheet. That is the game being played. Yes, campaign finance, McCain-Feingold. I voted for that bill five times already; I will vote for it again. That bill deals with soft money. Aspects of this bill are constitutionally questionable, and I have, in the past, introduced a constitutional amendment that says the Congress is hereby allowed to regulate or control spending in Federal elections. My bill received a majority vote in the Senate but never did get the 67 votes needed to send it to the States. They would ratify it in a snap. I can tell my colleagues that right now. We play games with the American public, and the people who keep us honest play the games along with us; namely, the free press of America. They are the only ones who can stop this game. I cannot do it. No one Senator or Congressman or group of them can do it. We have tried. I will put a budget freeze in the budget again this year: Just take this year's budget for next year. That is the kind of economic situation described by Rattner and Plender in their articles. We not only have a fiscal deficit, but we have a current account deficit in the balance of trade of some $366 billion. As those dollars continue to go overseas and decrease in value, we are going to have to raise interest rates in order to attract foreign investment. And if we raise that interest rate to get that foreign investment, we are going in the opposite direction of Chairman Greenspan's recommendations. Chairman Greenspan needs to come forth the day after tomorrow, as he is scheduled to testify before the Budget Committee, and say categorically--without being political about it--but say that what we did in 1993 needs to be done: Proceed very cautiously; do not rely on these ten-year projected surpluses. The ten-year budget projection has been the evil in trying to balance the budget. When we had just the Appropriations Committee and not the Budget Committee, we had a one year budget. Then we got three year budget projections. Then with Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, we got 5-year budget projections. Recently, we played the game of 10-year budget projections until President Clinton said we could do away with the public debt in twelve years. He neglected to say, however, that in those 12 years we could transfer the public debt all back into the Government account and still owe the same amount of money. In fact, we can do that tomorrow morning. Just put in a little bill and say that the public debt shall be paid, and we will transfer it all over to the Government debt and all go home and get reelected. That nonsense has to stop. If anybody can find a surplus in the Government account, namely, in the national debt owed by the United States of America, please tell me, and I will be glad to jump off that dome. But unless and until that happens, Mr. President, old Hollings is going to stand here and berate them and nag them and fuss at them. This whole charade is just totally irresponsible. Senator Thurmond and I are going to get on; we are not going to have to pay for this, but our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay for it. Some of these esteemed Senators who are voting so boldly and introducing bills to ``starve the beast'' are going to learn the hard way that they are going to be spending nothing but interest costs. They are really going to be increasing the worst kind of tax on the American people--interest costs for which they get absolutely nothing. We are spending that amount of money. When President Clinton gave his State of the Union Address last January, it was said by one distinguished Senator that that gentleman is costing us $1 billion a minute. President Clinton then talked for 90 minutes, an hour and a half. President Bush now wants to give a $90 billion-a-year tax cut. Those two equal $180 billion. If we really had been paying the bill and had a true surplus, we could give both President Bush and President Clinton their programs of either spending increases or tax cuts and still have $182 billion. The truth is, instead of spending $362 billion, $1 billion a day, on carrying charges, we would have another $182 billion from the $180 billion with which we could easily increase research at the National Institutes of Health, pay for the military, State Department--all of these other budgets. We would be tickled to death to increase all of them. We are spending the money but not getting anything for it. Somewhere, sometime we all have to start talking out of the same book, and that is the book put out by the U.S. Treasury itself. Every day they put out the public debt to the penny. When we pay down the public debt, rather than increasing it by some $54 billion, then let's all get together and talk about tax cuts. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I am worried. I expressed this concern before the inauguration, and I hoped that cooler heads would prevail after the inauguration. Specifically, as I said at that time, surplus, surplus, everywhere a man cries surplus, and there is no surplus. Right to the point, I have been looking for a surplus since we had one in 1968 and 1969, almost 32 years ago. I worked with George Mahon, then chairman of the Appropriations Committee. We called over to the Capitol, and we asked Marvin Watson to check with President Johnson to see if we could cut another $5 billion from the budget. I think it was around December of 1968, and, at that particular time, there was no Budget Committee. The fiscal year used to run from July to the end of June the following year. We were given permission. We cut the budget. The entire budget amounted to some $178 billion. Now remember, that was guns and butter, the war in Vietnam, and domestic needs. Now, here we are, facing $362 billion just in interest costs--almost $1 billion a day. The government is spending more in interest costs than it spent for the entire budget in 1968 and 69--far more, more than double the amount, for nothing. Then I look at the record, and I follow it very closely because back in 1997, when we passed the so-called Balanced Budget Act, I was on the floor with my distinguished colleague from New Mexico, the chairman of the Budget Committee. I said if that Balanced Budget Act works, I will jump off the Capitol dome. Mr. President, around the fall of last year, I was looking up the price of a parachute because we were getting pretty close to a surplus. When President George Bush left town, the deficit was $403.6 billion. In other words, we were spending over $400 billion more than we were taking in. Of course, we have done that for 30 years. There has been no surplus in the entire 30-year-period since our last surplus. We ended fiscal year 2000 with a deficit of $23 billion. As of September 30th, the year 2000, almost 4 months ago, it was $23 billion. I carry around, in a similar fashion as my distinguished friend from West Virginia--he carries around the Constitution, and I carry around a little sheet, as much as I can keep it up to date, called ``The Public Debt To The Penny.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have this sheet printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, everyone in this land and those out in China and anywhere else can look up the public debt to the penny on the Internet. Yes, if the deficit or debt went up some $23 billion in fiscal year 2000, and they are claiming a surplus, let's see where it was cut in the last 3\1/2\ months. I look and, instead, to my dismay but not to my surprise, the debt ended up at some $5.674 trillion in the last fiscal year. I look today, and, as of 1/22/2001, the public debt was $5.728 trillion. So you can subtract these two figures, and you can see that the debt has gone up some $54 billion. While we are heading toward enlarging deficits and debts, everywhere man cries ``Surplus!''--even those with the best of credibility. I worked with the distinguished Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm, on Gramm- Rudman-Hollings. Incidentally, if you want to have political anonymity, cosponsor a bill with my distinguished friend from Texas. They've called it Gramm-Rudman from then on--which suits me. Today, I picked up the morning paper. And right down on page A2, it says, ``right now our surplus has never been greater.'' He thinks the surplus has never been greater, yet we still have rising debt. Instead, I wish everybody would turn to the ``Tax-Cut Mania'' article on page A17 of today's Washington Post. I ask unanimous consent this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I'd like you to read Steven Rattner, and if you read the Financial Times, the article by John Plender--I ask unanimous consent that his article, ``A Sharp Adjustment'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is Tuesday, January 23--today. You will understand my grave misgivings about all of these tax cuts. Everybody loves a tax cut. But we have to act responsibly and look at whether or not, in essence, instead of cutting taxes, we are increasing taxes, namely, increasing interest costs on the national debt. One of my colleagues, in cosponsoring President Bush's tax cut package, said, ``You have to starve the beast.'' We heard about starving the beast from President Ronald Reagan. It was first Kemp- Roth; and Senator Dole, then the head of our Finance Committee, had his comments about that. Better than all of them was former President Bush. He called it voodoo economics. President Reagan turned Kemp-Roth into Reaganomics, and we are supposed to starve the beast, to cut all the taxes. What did we do? We increased the biggest waste in the history of Government; namely, the interest cost that is gone, where it was at the time we balanced the budget at $16 billion, it has now increased to $362 billion--$362 billion for absolutely nothing, just for past profligacy, just for ``starving the beast.'' Come on, there is no education in the second kick of a mule. Don't come around here saying, ``We are going to starve the beast and reduce the taxes of the people. You know those Washington folks, they are going to spend it. Get it out of the hands of the politicians.'' That is big political nonsense. You talk about campaign finance, the biggest campaign finance abuse is not soft money. Oh no, the biggest abuse is how the politicians-- namely we Senators and Congressmen--use the Federal budget to get ourselves reelected. If we can run around and give tax cuts, then, as President Reagan said, ``The government is not the solution to the problem, the government is the problem. We have had 20 years of that nonsense. We have to sober up, and we have to start paying our bills. I am going to be coming from time to time to explain that we do not have a surplus--I wish we did--and I am going to caution the Members that when they start giving tax cuts, they are only increasing the interest costs of the debt. We know President Bush is going to increase defense. He has already said we ought to have an increase in military pay. We gave a pay raise last year, but we are going to give another increase, he says. We know, according to Secretary Colin Powell, we are going to increase funding for the State Department. We know we are going to increase funding for the Department of Agriculture. If he doesn't increase agriculture funding, Bush will be the first President who has not. We know we are going to increase energy funding. Look at the situation out on the west coast. We know we are going to increase education funding. President Bush has a proposal in right now. If you are going to test everybody, you are going to have accountability. I hear it costs $10 just at the elementary level and $50 at the higher levels for testing. This is going to cost into the millions, perhaps billions. So everybody is talking about increasing spending or increasing the debt and cutting out the revenues, increasing the debt. Somewhere, somehow, somebody will stand in front of this stampede and talk sense to the American people. Hopefully, the message will come through. How is this even called a surplus with any face whatever? There is another little sheet that is put out that says, ``Who Holds The Public Debt?" I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I ask to speak as in morning business for 8 minutes.

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

Mr. HOLLINGS

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

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, this shows how when President Clinton came to office in January of 1993, in fiscal year 1992, the last year of President George Herbert Walker Bush's term, according to the Congressional Budget Office, there was a deficit of $403,600,000. We were spending $400 billion more than we were taking in that year. Since Clinton has taken office, we have reduced that deficit from $403 billion to $23 billion. We were headed in the right direction. I hope Mr. Rothenberg, Roll Call, USA Today, and the free press will finally get the truth to the American people. That is all we want. We have to be talking and singing from the same hymnal. Everybody is running around saying: Yes, I am for a tax cut, but not quite as big; I am for this; I am for that. We don't have any taxes to cut. To put it another way, the best tax cut is to reduce the deficit. If one reads the Internet site of the U.S. Treasury-- publicdebt.treas.gov--the public debt to the penny, as of 11 o'clock-- which is when they changed it--is 5 trillion 728 some-odd billion dollars. At the close of fiscal year 2000 on September 30, it was $5.674 trillion, and it has gone up to $5.728-some-odd trillion. So you can see, not only did we end fiscal year 2000 with a deficit-- not a surplus--of $23 billion--but in 3 months of this fiscal year, President Bush is going to be submitting his budget, talking about tax cuts, loss of revenues; and the deficit is already $54 billion. And that is without factoring in the $30 billion we appropriated before we went home for Christmas. So don't give me all of this talk about fiscal responsibility and everything else. The only responsible thing we had, of course, was President Clinton's and the Democrats' 1993 economic program that cut spending, that increased taxes, and cut the size of Government. Yes, I stand on the floor and publicly acknowledge I voted for an increase in taxes on Social Security. We were told by my distinguished colleague from Texas, Senator Gramm, that they would be hunting us down in the street, us Democrats, and shooting us like dogs if we increased the Social Security tax. We increased the tax on gasoline. We cut, as I say, the size of Government. But they want to keep talking, particularly the media. We politicians do a little liberality, and, well, they call it spin. They even have a program called ``Spin'' now on national TV. But we are entitled to a little spin. We run for public office, and we have to explain a lot of things we do--but not the media; they are supposed to give us the exact truth. There is a recent book called ``Maestro'' by Bob Woodward about Alan Greenspan. I refer to page 95. I am not going to read the whole thing, obviously, but I quote at the bottom of page 95, about our Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Alan Greenspan. I am quoting from the Woodward book: The long-term rates--the 10-year and longer rates--were an unusual 3 to 4 percent higher than the short-term Fed funds rate, at about 7 percent. The gap between the short-term rate and the long-term rate, Greenspan lectured, was an inflation premium being paid for one simple reason. The lenders of long-term money expected the federal deficit to continue to grow and explode. They had good reason, given the double- digit inflation of the late 1970s and the expanding budget deficits under Reagan. They demanded the premium because of the expectation of new inflation. The dollars they had invested would, in the near and distant future, be worth less and less. Perhaps no single overall economic event could do more to help the economy, businesses and society as a whole than a drop in the long-term interest rates, Greenspan said. The Fed didn't control them. But credible action to reduce the federal deficit would force long-term interest rates to drop, as the markets slowly moved away from the expectation of inevitable inflation. Business borrowing costs, mortgages and consumer credit costs would go down. Clinton was so sincere and attentive, and full of questions and ideas, that Greenspan continued. Establishing credibility about deficit reduction with the markets would lower rates and could trigger a series of payoffs for the economy, he said. Greenspan outlined a blueprint for economic recovery. Lower long-term rates would galvanize demand for new mortgages, refinancing at more favorable rates and more consumer loans. This would in turn result in increased consumer spending, which would expand the economy. As inflation expectations and long-term rates dropped, investors would get less return on bonds, driving investors to the stock market. The stock market would climb, an additional payoff. That is the end of the quote. You can read on. I am for a tax cut, too, but how do you get it? Not estate taxes. Giving millionaires' heirs millions of dollars, tax free, is not going to recover the economy and have a good effect. Interestingly, the one thing that really is being spent on Social Security--the payroll tax--nobody wants to cut. That is the crowd that is really getting ripped off. Otherwise, you do not hear anything about the Social Security taxes, that they were going to hunt us down in the street like dogs and shoot us for increasing. They do not say, cut Social Security taxes. But they come with things like the estate tax, marriage penalty, and everything else of that kind. They talk of a $1.3 trillion tax cut that would return us back to where we were in 1993. Yes, the Federal Reserve, Greenspan, they reduced the Fed rate a half a percent yesterday. That was fine business. That is the short-term rates, but that does not affect the overall economy. The long-term, we cannot tinker with that except to set generally fiscally sound policy, put the Government on a pay-as-you-go basis. I have been up here 34 years, and we did it in 1968, 1969. We had a balanced budget. I got the first AAA credit rating for the State of South Carolina from Standard & Poor's and Moody's back in 1959, 1960-- 40 years ago. But it is a tremendous frustration to this particular Senator to hear everyone crying surplus. What is the monkeyshine? The monkeyshine is, you can look right at the front page of the same Treasury report. And you ought to read that. As of the final monthly Treasury statement--highlighted--I quote: This issue includes the final budget results and details, a surplus of $237 billion for fiscal year 2000. And then, as old John Mitchell would say, don't watch what we say, watch what we do. You turn to page 20, table 6, and there is no surplus at all. On the contrary, there is a deficit of $23 billion. How do they do that saving face? I will tell you how they do it. They do it, No. 1, by taking from the trust funds, Social Security. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this document entitled ``Trust Funds Looted to Balance Budget.''

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, parroting Patrick Henry: Peace, peace, everywhere man cried peace, but there is no peace. Surplus, surplus, everywhere men cry surplus, but there is no surplus. That is the point of my comments this afternoon. I have to embellish it or flesh it out so you will understand the reality, that ``it is not the economy, stupid,'' rather it is the real economy. During Christmas week, I picked up USA Today. A headline read ``Surplus soars despite the slump.'' That is dangerous. People think we have a surplus and everybody is running around: Whoopee, cut all the revenues; wait a minute, if you don't cut it, those Democrats are going to spend it. Let's have tax cuts, tax cuts. This morning, I picked up Roll Call. It had a very interesting article by Stuart Rothenberg, one of the best of the best. Not quoting the entire article, he had a little squib about our new colleague and my friend, Senator Tom Carper of Delaware. I quote part of the article as of this morning: Delaware Senator Tom Carper's record in the House is not easy to pigeonhole. During a six-year period, from 1983 through 1988, his U.S. Chamber of Commerce ratings ranged from 38 to 64, his liberal Americans for Democratic Action ratings ranged from 55 to 80 and his AFL-CIO ratings ranged from 59 to 86. The Delaware Democrat tended to be more moderate on economic issues, but that generally reflected his aggressive efforts to cut the budget deficit. Since that's no longer a problem, he will face a different set of legislative priorities on the economy, possibly altering his image. I will repeat that: ``Since that's no longer a problem . . .'' The deficit has been solved, according to this morning's Roll Call. Not at all. We had that balanced budget agreement in 1997, so you would think that the budget would have been balanced in 1998. To the contrary. In 1998, according to the Congressional Budget Office, we had a deficit of $109 billion, not a surplus. In 1999, we had a deficit of $127 billion, not a surplus. For the year 2000, just 3 months ago, fiscal year ending September 30, 2000, I quote from page 20, table 6 of the final monthly Treasury statement by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It shows that the agency securities issued under special financing authorities at the beginning of fiscal year 2000 was 5 trillion 606 some-odd billion dollars, whereas on September 30, it was 5 trillion 629 some-odd billion dollars. That is a deficit, not a surplus, of $23 billion. If there is any doubt, the distinguished Presiding Officer and I were here when we worked out the last surplus under President Lyndon Baines Johnson. That was in 1968-1969. That was before we changed the old fiscal year to October 1. It used to begin July 1. In December, early that first week, if I remember correctly, George Mahon, who was then chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and all of us called over to Marvin Watson and said: Ask the chief if we can cut another $5 billion, and we did. We got permission. Does my colleague know what the budget was for fiscal year 1968-1969 for Social Security, Medicare--go right on down the list--guns and butter, the war in Vietnam? The civil economy was $178 billion. The interest now is $365 billion, $1 billion a day; just the interest carrying charges, not for Government, just for past profligacy. I have a list of the Presidents from Truman through Clinton and their corresponding budget information; these are Congressional Budget Office figures. I ask unanimous consent this table be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Very much so. That is the tax cut I favor. That is the way to give to middle America so they get a lower mortgage rate and lower financing rate on the refrigerator, the stove, et cetera. That is what Greenspan told them, and I hope Greenspan will get back and say the same thing here, some 7, 8 years later, that what we really need to do is hold the line. I had the privilege of sitting there with Don Evans, the new Secretary of Commerce-designate, the best friend of President-elect Bush. One sentence I got, over all the things he said with respect to trade, competition, trade and technology, there is one sentence: tell the President rather than, by gosh, all these tax cuts, just come in and hold the line, stay the course as Greenspan recommended last year and take this year's budget for next year. Don't start us pell-mell down the road to loss of revenue and increasing the deficit, increasing the debt, when we are telling the people that this is going to lower the debt and lower the deficit. It is pure folly.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is it. She had the courage to do it. But here we are in January, seeing this binge that we are on and the only argument is how are we going to spend a so-called surplus. How many tax cuts are we going to get to buy the people's vote. That is the best thing, running on TV, saying: I voted for tax cuts, I am for tax cuts. That is the only thing that holds that crowd in office.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I looked at that list and it looks to me like a bunch of corporate heads who are interested in sales. They are not interested in the economy and the market; they are corporate heads interested in sales. It is like asking children if they want broccoli or spinach, or do you want a dessert. They are in Austin saying whoopee, give me dessert. I know the advice that crowd will give. Tell them to start talking to the Bob Rubins. This action yesterday by the Federal Reserve and Greenspan will influence the short-term but not the long-term rates. I thank the distinguished leader, and I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished leader. The truth will out, is what the distinguished Senator from Nevada is saying. I am glad we have Senator Cantwell here. It was another Representative from Pennsylvania, I remember we had to finally get her vote and she lost. She was a distinguished Member.

Mr. HOLLINGS. They did the right thing. There is no question.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, at the end of fiscal year 2000--last September--we owed Social Security some $1.009 trillion. We owed military retirement $149 billion, and civilian retirement $522 billion. You can go right on down. Now, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office, we are going to borrow $244 billion more this fiscal year 2001 from these trust funds. When the day of reckoning comes, who is going to raise the taxes? Who is going to issue the bond and raise the taxes at that particular time to pay for the benefits? All we need to do to make Social Security fiscally sound is quit spending it. I have a lockbox, a true lockbox written by Ken Apfel of the Social Security Administration. I couldn't get a vote on it all last year or the year before. I will put it up again this year. If you want to have truth in budgeting, please see my staffer, Mr. Barry Strumpf, and join with me in a bipartisan fashion to get at least truth in budgeting. We are going to offer an amendment calling for a budget freeze because we still play this game here of surplus, surplus. We put in an amendment to the budget resolution year before last in that last session of Congress, and we got 24 votes for the Greenspan stay the course. Alan Greenspan, at that time, said: Stay the course and just take this year's budget for next year. If you did that, you could save some $50 billion. As a Governor, I had to do that. Many a mayor this year will do just that. He will go before his council and say: We don't want to fire the firemen. We don't want to fire the policemen. We are getting along well. Let's just take this year for next year. If we did that at the Federal level, we would save $50 billion. The other way in which they play this game of public debt and Government debt is not only to borrow from all these trust funds--like borrowing from yourself, like taking your MasterCard and paying off your Visa card--but they are also projecting no new spending. The CBO will adjust their economic assumptions to accommodate the $1.3 trillion tax cut. You can see what is going on. I don't think the economy can stand it. I think the best tax cut and the way to get on top of long-term interest rates is to do exactly what was done back in 1993. I will make one more reference. Two weeks ago, in an issue of Newsweek they had an article on page 58: ``Boy Did We Know Ye,'' comments by members of the Clinton administration, by Stephanopoulos, Leon Panetta, and several others. I will read just this one little paragraph by Bob Rubin. The moment that most sticks in my mind was the meeting we had with Clinton on Jan. 7, 1993 in Little Rock. I read that because this is just about January 7 in the year 2001. Reading further: We met with him for six and a half hours on what the budget strategy ought to be. From the beginning what we [the economic team] recommended was that there ought to be a dramatic change in policy, with the view that deficit reduction should create lower interest rates and spur higher confidence. Before the meeting, George Stephanopoulos told me that was going to be hard, [that Clinton] would have to make that decision over time, but after about a half hour at the meeting, Clinton turned to us in the dining room of the governor's mansion in Little Rock. He said, ``Look, I understand what deficit reduction means [in terms of public criticism for program cuts], but that's the threshold issue if we're going to get the economy back on track. Let's do it.'' And we did it, and that is why we have had the good economy. We are about to go the other direction on this tax cut, returning to the increased deficits of the Reagan years. We had less than a trillion- dollar debt when President Reagan took office in 1981. For 200 years-- including all the wars, the Revolution, Spanish American, World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam--we accumulated less than a trillion-dollar debt. We now have a debt without the cost of a war--the Saudis took care of Desert Storm--of 5 trillion 700-some-odd billion. We can't stand that any longer. I thank the distinguished Chair for indulging me, but the truth has to come out. I hope Members on both sides of the aisle will work with us to reduce the deficit and reduce the debt. Let us get to work on it and quit playing games with the American public. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. It would constitutionalize the profligacy and the waste and the reckless fiscal conduct that we engage in here, and you wouldn't have any control over it because everybody would say: There is the Constitution. And you would read the first page of the Treasury report, how we have a surplus of $237 billion, when the truth of the matter is, if you look in the report, we have a $23 billion deficit. When you constitutionalize, you dignify the blooming thing. That was the ultimate. I couldn't go along with that game.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, each year since 1978 our capital city has inaugurated its season of celebration with the Kennedy Center Honors, a joyful celebration of the lifetime achievements of our greatest performing artists. The whole nation shares in that celebration during the CBS broadcast of the Honors Gala, which this past year was on December 27. All Americans should be grateful to CBS for its commitment to what has become an American institution, our highest honor for the performing artists who do so much to define our national spirit and our identity around the world. Our deepest gratitude goes to those talented individuals who conceived the Honors and have produced it for more than two decades. George Stevens, Jr., Washington's own showman who came here in the Kennedy Administration to work with Edward R. Murrow and who has since given us a remarkable series of Emmy Award-winning films, created the Honors with the great Hollywood showman Nick Vanoff, one of the shaping influences of popular television. They produced the show for years--and since Nick's death, George has produced the show each year with Don Mischer, who has given the world other extraordinary broadcasts from the Emmy Awards to the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Their artistic genius constantly renews the Honors, fills it with fresh delights and gives us an evening that is both entertaining and equal to the Pantheon of artists it celebrates. This year's show honored Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chuck Berry, Placido Domingo, Clint Eastwood, and Angela Lansbury--again illuminating the span and sparkle of America's talent. I think how proud President Kennedy would have been of this ceremony which, like the Kennedy Center itself, fulfills his hope for ``an America that will not be afraid of grace and beauty and which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.'' So for all they do to make that dream come true, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Chairman of the Kennedy Center, James A. Johnson, and the impresarios of the Honors, George Stevens, Jr. and Don Mischer. For so many years, they have graced the stage of the Kennedy Center with this great celebration; they have graced the life of our nation by marking out the heights of its history in the performing arts. May the show go on and on.