John Johnston

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I introduce legislation that will support research for a disease which disproportionately affects African-Americans and other minority groups. Sickle cell disease is a painful, life-threatening, genetic disease. Approximately 1 of every 12 African-Americans is born with the sickle cell genetic trait, and about 1 in every 600 is afflicted with sickle cell disease. Sickle cell conditions are also found, although less frequently, in other United States populations, including those of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and southern Italian ancestry. The disease has also recently been found in some Caucasians. Sickle cell disease is based in the circulatory system and is a painful and disabling disorder for which there is currently no cure. In a healthy body, red blood cells contain the substance hemoglobin which carries oxygen from the lungs to various organs and tissues. This role of hemoglobin is essential to life because all body components require oxygen to live and carry out their functions. Diseased bodies have an abnormal type of hemoglobin which interrupts the flow of oxygen to these vital organs. Red blood cells that contain normal hemoglobin remain round when they release oxygen. Cells with abnormal or sickle hemoglobin, upon releasing oxygen, become distorted into the shape of a sickle causing a chronic and painful anemia. Distorted, or sickled cells cannot traverse capillaries, further limiting oxygen supply to the body's tissues. Mr. President, the minority population in the State of Louisiana is about 1.29 million people. Of this number roughly 3,250 people are suspected of having the disease, and of this number, 25 percent will have the most acute and serious form, which is often fatal. Alarmingly, about 130,000 Louisianians carry the genetic trait for this illness. Mr. President, despite the fact that the cause of the sickle cell disease has been known for many years, progress has not been made in finding suitable treatment. Currently, the most common treatment for the illness is pain relief medication, treating only the immediate symptoms. Treating only the symptoms results in tissue damage, often to major organs, with each successive episode of oxygen deprivation. Consequently, many of those afflicted with severe forms of the disease often do not even live to see adulthood. Concerned with finding a cure for a disease that has such a devastating effect on the Nation's minority populations, Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA, the largest predominately African- American university in the United States, has committed itself to the creation of a center for sickle cell disease research. With a single purpose, this center will conduct multidisciplinary research to lead to the discovery of a cure for sickle cell disease. The center will conduct basic biomedical research to determine the types of drugs that can prevent, inhibit, or reverse the sickling process, along with clinical research and joint studies to conduct clinical trials on antisickling agents. In addition, the center will work with other institutions to promote and enhance scholarship and teaching knowledge in order to disseminate newly gained knowledge on the disease. Mr. President, it is important to note that the Louisiana State Legislature in recognition of the importance of such a center, and even in these exceedingly hard economic times, has committed $7 million to this project. To complete the center, and to be able to provide this valuable public health research, Southern University needs Federal assistance. To provide this assistance, I offer a bill to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award a grant for the creation of this center. This legislation will direct the Secretary to provide a grant to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals for the establishment and construction of the National Center for Sickle Cell Disease Research at Southern University in Baton Rouge. Mr. President, sickle cell disease is a vital public health problem which this bill would assist in overcoming. Such funding can only aid in the development of this Nation. I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I want to alert my colleagues to a provision of this bill which we are negotiating which I think could be very pernicious and go well beyond anything that has to do with safe drinking water, would expand potentially the authority of EPA to evaluate and issue cost-benefit ratios which, in turn, could affect Federal actions, across the broad spectrum of Federal action. I am referring to section 28, beginning on page 179 of the bill. Under this provision, the Administrator of the EPA can select major Federal actions, and we know that a major Federal action can be anything from drilling in ANWR, building a highway, having a timber sale, granting a loan--most anything. The Administrator of EPA would determine what he thinks would have a significant impact upon the environment and then would do a benefit-cost ratio on that major Federal action. It tells him how to consider the benefits, and under section 6 on page 185, he is told to ``estimate the monetary value, and such other values as the Administrator determines to be appropriate, of the benefits associated with reducing risk'', for example, of ``(C) preserving biological diversity,'' ``(D) maintaining aesthetically pleasing environment,'' and other things with respect to regulating the chemistry of the air, so that, under this provision, the Administrator of the EPA has the specific authority to come up with a rating and a benefit-cost ratio to deal with, for example, a timber sale regarding the spotted owl. So that the Administrator of the EPA, who is now not in the loop on determining a lot of these things, before you know it, there would be a benefit-cost ratio that would say this timber sale or this drilling in ANWR or the building of this highway or the granting of this loan has a benefit-cost ratio of only 50 percent and does not pass anybody's muster in terms of benefit-cost ratio. There is no requirement of peer review. There is no requirement of making a rulemaking where the interested parties would be brought in. There is just simply a broad mandate to the Administrator of EPA to go look around at any place in the Federal Government where there is a major Federal action that may affect pollution--``pollution'' being broadly defined--in which the Administrator of EPA can then take into consideration everything from aesthetics to biodiversity. Mr. President, this could be a very, very bad provision. The intent of the provision, of course, is good. The intent of the provision is to rank various sources of pollution, to look at the relative risks of different sources of pollution. Everyone agrees with that. But the grant of authority under section 28 under this bill is so broad that many Federal Departments will wake up one day and find out something that they had been working on for a long time, let us say the building of a highway, suddenly becomes not feasible because EPA has determined that it had a benefit-cost ratio of only 50 percent and, therefore, should not be built. I suppose the determination that EPA made could be the basis of declaring a regulation or major Federal action to be arbitrary and capricious. It could affect major Federal actions all across the board including, presumably, the Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, Department of Energy. You name it, the Administrator of EPA could make that determination that it does not pass benefit-cost ratio. Again, as the author of the original bill on risk assessment in the last Congress, I very strongly support the idea of relative risk and risk assessment, but I believe in an attempt to deal with this issue. This bill imperfectly does it, and I hope before this bill is finished that we can strike these provisions. S. 343, the regulatory reform bill, deals with this issue, I believe, in a better way, because with respect to benefit-cost ratios, S. 343 provides for a rulemaking and peer review, a rulemaking in which all interested parties would be involved, a rulemaking in which the agency itself, which is putting out the regulation, would have the responsibility of running the rulemaking. Under this, EPA does not have to peer review, does not have to give notice to interested parties. They can simply select around throughout the Federal establishment any Federal action which they wish to deal with and declare it to be not passing the cost-benefit analysis, because it fails to preserve biodiversity or fails to ``maintain an aesthetically pleasing environment.'' That is what it says, Mr. President. It may not be the intent. It may be correctable. I hope it is. But I believe section 28 ought to be stricken. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair. [[Page S 17732]]

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

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, the section 5 is a slightly different subject matter. I would certainly be very interested in talking to the Senator about that. I do believe section 28 ought to be dropped in its entirety. The problem is, if we do not drop it in its entirety, that will engender amendments to put in the reg reform S. 343 provisions, and that is going to engender a huge debate. It seems to me that that debate ought to be put off until another day and not be engrafted upon the Safe Drinking Water Act. The risk assessment on section 5 does have to do with safe drinking water because it determines how you do risk assessment with respect to drinking water. Section 28 really does not deal with safe drinking water at all. That is why I think section 28 ought to be dealt with separately. We would be prepared to discuss section 5 at any time the Senator wishes to.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. JOHNSTON. I want to ask my colleague what the vote was in the energy committee on this bill, the Alaska North Slope bill, when it came out?

Mr. JOHNSTON. My recollection was that it came out without opposition. I do not recall precisely.

Mr. JOHNSTON. What was the position of the administration on this bill?

Mr. JOHNSTON. When the bill came up on the floor here for a vote, does the Senator recall that was cleared on the hotline and passed on a voice vote? Am I correct on that?

Mr. JOHNSTON. I stand corrected. I am advised it was 74 yeas and 25 nays.

Mr. JOHNSTON. It was 14 to 4. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, I would like to offer my strong support and endorsement of the conference report on S. 395, the Alaska Power Administration sale and exports of Alaskan North Slope oil. This legislation is supported by the President, was passed with an overwhelming margin by the House last week and should be passed with a similar margin in the Senate. Title III of S. 395 is the Outer Continental Shelf [OCS] Deep Water Royalty Relief Act. This provision is straightforward. For the next 5 years, deep water leases will be offered for sale under the following terms: First, payment of an upfront bonus bid, and second, waiver of the royalty on a fixed volume of oil and gas based on the water depth of the lease. In addition, this provision provides for royalty relief to encourage production on existing leases only if the Secretary of the Interior determines the leases would not be drilled but for the relief. It only affects leasing and development in oil and gas producing areas of the central and western Gulf of Mexico west of the Alabama-Florida border. This provision does not in any way affect leasing or development off the coast of Florida or any other region of the Outer Continental Shelf, nor does it affect any areas or leases subject to moratorium. The Treasury will gain in two ways from these leases that otherwise would never have been developed--from current tax revenues and from royalties once the waiver volume has been produced. This provision will generate substantial revenues over the next 5 years as companies bid more for deep water leases and risk investing in leases that are currently too marginal to even consider. The revenues received by the Treasury for oil and gas leases are the combination of bonus bids received at the time of lease sales and royalties paid in the event a lease is developed and brought into production. Since the Federal leasing system began in 1954, $56 billion in bonus payments have been generated versus $47 billion in royalty revenues. In other words, we have received more money from producers paying for the option to produce leases than from actual production royalties. This is especially true in deep waters where only one out of 16 leases ever produce and pay royalties. The Congressional Budget Office [CBO] estimated the Outer Continental Shelf Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, introduced in the Senate as S. 158, would generate additional revenues of $100 million over 5 years. The Minerals Management Service [MMS] of the Department of Interior has estimated that bonus bids would increase by $485 million over 5 years as a direct result of enactment of this legislation. In particular, MMS stated that the leases sold over the next 5 years ``could be expected to rise by 150 percent, with higher percentage increases at greater water depths.'' It is essential that the United States remedy this inane policy of chronic reliance on oil imports when we can more effectively develop our domestic resources in areas such as the central and western gulf. The United States is currently importing 50 percent of its oil at a cost of over $50 billion per year. By the year 2010, the Department of Energy predicts imports will have risen to 60 percent of consumption. In February of this year, the President announced that the current level of oil imports ``threaten[s] the Nation's security because they increase U.S. vulnerability to oil supply disruptions.'' Some 4.2 million of the 8 million barrels per day of oil imports are from OPEC countries. Major deep water development projects are funded with international capital. Failure to invest in the Gulf of Mexico is a lost opportunity for the United States. Those dollars will not move into other domestic development; they will move to Asia, South America, the Middle East, or the former Soviet Union. In 1985, the domestic producers capable of developing projects of this magnitude were investing two-thirds of their exploration and production capital in the United States. This figure has been on a steady downward trend, currently only one-third of those dollars are being invested in the United States. Due to the high cost of development in deep waters, currently only 6 percent of the leases sold are ever developed. The Department of the Interior projects this provision will more than double production otherwise expected to be brought on line. One deep water platform costs upward of $1 billion--this translates directly into jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics each $1 billion invested in the oil and gas extraction industry generates 20,000 new jobs. This provision will improve our energy security situation, create jobs, and benefit the Treasury.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Four minutes.

Mr. JOHNSTON. I thank my colleague. Mr. President, I congratulate my colleagues on this side of the aisle for using this opportunity to debate this question of a shutdown of the Government which, in my view, is unnecessary. In my view, this debate really is not about a balanced budget in 7 years; the question is whether you want a deep tax cut which costs a great deal of money and, in the process, socks it to the seniors through the Medicare trust fund. But, Mr. President, as strongly as I believe that our colleagues on this side of the aisle are making the correct statement, correct arguments, to which I subscribe and to which I heartily agree, I just want to put in context what the measure is that we are debating just so we do not lose sight of the fact that this is the conference report on the Alaskan North Slope oil and to tell my colleagues what is involved. Initially, Mr. President, we required that Alaskan North Slope oil destined for the gulf coast go all the way, by tanker, to the Panama Canal where it was offloaded, pipelined across the isthmus and then reloaded and then transported to the gulf coast. Why did we do that? Because of seamen's jobs, because of the Jones Act which required that American seamen pilot those ships. Of course, it was economically not feasible to do that. It did not make economic sense except in the context of American seamen and the Jones Act. And the reason that the law so said that all those years really had nothing to do with energy security; it had to do with American seamen's jobs. It has taken all this time, all these years, to get it worked out for American seamen and the Jones Act to make our grand compromise on this question of seamen's jobs. That now having been done, virtually all sides support this legislation in this conference report. There is, of course, some opposition. I think when it originally came up, the conference report passed by a vote of 74 to 20 something. The deport of royalty part of this legislation was part of that conference report at that time or part of the Senate bill at that time, which got 74 votes. The deport of royalty came up again and passed by 71 to 28. The administration supports this legislation. It is economically efficient, saves the country money, is good for the economy of America. And for those reasons, there is virtually no opposition. I simply say that, Mr. President, not because there has been any argument here today to speak of on this conference report, but just so that my colleagues will know that this conference report has nothing to do with the balanced budget or tax cuts for the rich or any of those grand and wonderful subjects. This has to do only with the Alaskan North Slope oil and whether it can be exported in the most efficient way. And it also has to do with deport of royalty. Both parts of that have been overwhelmingly approved here on the floor of the Senate. The deport of royalty was approved here twice, and the Alaskan North Slope was approved by a margin of 74 to 25. So, I simply say that, Mr. President, so that my colleagues will know that the conference report ought to be approved however you feel about tax cuts for the rich, Medicare cuts and all the rest of the subjects that are so much on everyone's mind. I yield the floor, Mr. President. Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, one of the most able Senators I have ever served with is the distinguished Senator from New Mexico. He also happens to be one of my best friends in this body. So it is with real enthusiasm that I have undertaken to work on this appropriations bill with him. By and large, he has produced, considering the challenges, an excellent bill, for which I congratulate him. I congratulate his staff as well. Our staffs have worked together as a team. I have worked together as a team with him to produce this bill. So I have great praise for him and great admiration for him, and I might say great affection for him all at the same time. Now, as sometimes is customary in this body, pride goeth before a fall and praise goeth before criticism, and while I mean every word of the praise, Mr. President, I am here to say that I cannot vote for the bill because of one particular area of this bill, which is called nuclear waste. Mr. President, the conference agreement on the fiscal year 1996 energy and water development appropriation bill, H.R. 1905, provides $19,336,311,000 in new budget obligational authority, including scorekeeping adjustments. This amount is $707 million less than fiscal year 1995 appropriations, and is $1.225 billion less than the President's budget request for this bill. The agreement is $654 million more than the bill as passed by the House, but $833 million less than the bill as passed by the Senate. I concur in the explanation and summary given by the senior Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Domenici], chairman of the subcommittee. I congratulate Senator Domenici on bringing his maiden voyage to this conclusion. This is his first appropriation bill as chairman, and he was the chairman of our conference committee also. I commend him for his hard work. I also want to express my appreciation to our House colleagues, led by our good friends Representative John Myers, of Indian, and Representative Tom Bevill of Alabama. They have worked together as a team for many years and I am proud of our association. We have had a long tradition of bipartisan cooperation and compromise in this subcommittee, and I hope that spirit will continue. I would like to thank all of the House and Senate conferees. Mr. President, I would like to mention several Louisiana items contained within the conference agreement. I am pleased that we have included authority for the Corps of Engineers to design and construct flood control improvements to rainfall drainage systems, in Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Tammany parishes in Louisiana. These areas have suffered disastrous floods due to torrential rainfall that occurred in southeast Louisiana in May 1995, which resulted in the loss of seven lives, inundation of 35,000 homes and estimated property and infrastructure losses exceed $3 billion. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Mr. Livingston, is to be commended for proceeding and I strongly supported the inclusion of this beginning in the conference report. Also, included in the report is language directing the Secretary of the Army, acting through the Chief of Engineers, to design and construct a regional visitor's center in the vicinity of Shreveport, LA, as a part of the Red River Waterway project. The successful prosecution of this project which provides navigation from the Mississippi River to Shreveport, is a source of great pride to me. It is a project I have worked on during my entire career in the Senate, and navigation has now been completed. The conference agreement also approves an amount of $7 million for the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana to create the Center for Biomedical Technology Innovation. The center will serve as a focal point for the ongoing biomedical research and development that is carried out at many of the national laboratories, and for the clinical testing of products that result from that research. It will focus specifically on the development of instrumentation for minimally invasive procedures--including advanced imaging technologies-- technologies for individual self care, telemedicine, and medical robotics. Priority will be given to those technologies which are most likely to reduce the cost of care. The center will be housed within the Foundation's Biomedical Research Institute, and managed by a consortium organized and led by the Biomedical Research Foundation. Mr. President, the conference agreement, in nearly all cases, represents a fair and reasonable disposition of the differences between the House and Senate, and I hope the conference report will be approved. I regret that I cannot support the conference report.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes, I will.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his generous remarks. Everything he says about what this bill accomplishes is exactly true. Mr. President, there is no more difficult nor unpleasant task in all of the Senate than dealing with the question of nuclear waste. First of all, you have to disagree with your friends from Nevada, two of the most competent, most able, and two of my best friends in this Senate. But, Mr. President, it has been my job over a decade to have the principal responsibility for nuclear waste. Both as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee--this subcommittee--and as chairman of the authorizing committee, it has been my duty to keep it going. Now, sometimes you try to do what is right and be with your colleagues. But, Mr. President, this program of nuclear waste is too big, it is too important, to deal with it on personalities. We have collected $10 billion for nuclear waste. We have spent $5 billion on nuclear waste and have almost nothing to show for it. Mr. President, of all the programs in the Federal Government, there is probably more waste, there is probably more mismanagement through the years in this program than in any other program that I know of in the Federal Government. Not only that, Mr. President, it is a program which affects most Americans because there are over 100 reactors out there. There are about 80 reactor sites in this country, each of which is a potential nuclear waste dump unless we solve this problem, not to mention, in addition, the Hanford and Idaho National Labs, as well as Savannah River in South Carolina. So, Mr. President, this is not an issue that is going to go away. It is an issue that is with us right now. Now, what have we done in this bill? Mr. President, we have cut back to less than half the requested funding from the Department of Energy. What is that going to mean? By reducing funding to $315 million, we are going to have to stop all work on the environmental impact statement. We are going to have to stop the license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We are going to have to fire between 875 and 1,300 employees. There will be no work going forward on interim storage. It leaves only a research program with no prospect for completing the repository any time in the foreseeable future. As a matter of fact, I have put quotes up there from the Director of Nuclear Waste, which says: Under the funding levels the program has historically received, the schedules for . . . start of operation in 2010 are not achievable . . . That is, under funding levels that they have historically received, which is higher than this level. A flat funding profile would be insufficient to carry out the program of developing geologic disposal capability by 2010 as currently projected. That is, if we had level funding at higher levels than this bill calls for, we will not get nuclear waste capability by 2010. What that means, Mr. President, is it is going to cost the consumer of electricity from $5 to $7 billion additional, because that is what they have to pay for temporary storage onsite up to 2010. That does not carry us beyond 2010. You can spool those figures up. It is going to cost that $5 to $7 billion, while at the same time we have collected $10 billion for DOE to solve the problem the DOE cannot solve. It cannot solve it at these levels of funding problems. We are paying for it twice and not solving the problem. Mr. President, if you want to get a scandal that the people can understand out there, then do something like let somebody charge up a meal with a bunch of drinks or something to some defense contractor or somebody in the Federal Government. Everybody gets all exercised. They understand that they are cheating on the Federal Government. They are cheating, you know, violating some ethical rule. But when you have a program of this size, the sheer enormity of it seems somehow to pass everybody's consciousness. Well, it may pass everybody else's consciousness, but I had responsibility for this, and I want to put in the Record what is happening. Ten billion dollars has been collected, and there is no way to solve the problem at these funding levels. You are going to have to spend another $5 to $7 billion, with a ``B.'' Mr. President, those are not incidental dollars; those are huge dollars. Then what is the American public going to say a few years from now when I guess somebody is going to finally wake up? They are going to say, ``What have you done with all that money and the problem is not solved?'' The problem cannot be solved--the Director tells me, Dr. Dreyfus tells me, at this level we will never solve the problem. His official quotes do not say that. It says: If the program receives funding at the levels contemplated in the Administration funding proposal, the Department would be able to carry out the program . . .. Any major reduction . . . would require restructuring of the program plan with significant delays . . .. Now, look up there at the top and you get the DOE request; $630 million was requested this year. We are down to $315 million. Next year it goes up to $684 million, then to $713 million, then to $732 million. At the rate we are going, Mr. President, we will be lucky to maintain the $315 million, which means you cannot solve the problem. Now, what does the administration say? The administration says-- privately they will tell you, ``Look. This is an election year.'' At least that is what they say inside. But officially they say, ``We should not put any interim storage out at Yucca Mountain until we determine whether the site is suitable.'' They do not define what suitability in the site is, but a few years ago they said, ``If we have this funding at that level, we can determine suitability by the year 2002.'' That means if you give them that kind of money. So if you do not give them that kind of money, according to that definition at that time, it would be, I guess, who knows when before you would determine even suitability of this site. Mr. President, you cannot solve the problem. Look. Rather than do what we are doing now--and I have been trying to get this at Yucca Mountain--we honestly ought to abolish this program, abolish the tax, and let the nuclear utilities have the responsibility for their own program and have the money with which to do it. That would be much better than playing out this charade. Mr. President, it is a charade. The President does not want to solve it. The Congress seems to be incapable of solving it. The antinuclear activists out there, of which there are many, they do not want to solve it because by not solving it then they are able to show that nuclear energy does not work. Let me tell you, Mr. President, people are not going to build nuclear utilities in this country, not at any time for the foreseeable future, and we can foresee a pretty long time. And that is because of the economics of this program. They do not need to try to kill this program in order to try to make nuclear energy nonviable. That has already occurred. All they are doing is creating a problem all across this country and creating a big expense for taxpayers. There is a conspiracy here, in effect, Mr. President: The administration, which has a do-nothing attitude; the antinuclear groups, of which there are many; and many out there who want to kill the program; and, believe it or not, the scientists. You say, ``scientists. They are supposed to be the ones in there trying to solve the problem.'' There is a phenomenon, Mr. President, in our Government now where sometimes you call on scientists to make a judgment in which they may not have a direct interest but their discipline has an interest, and it is sort of like, if you ask the scientists what has to be done, they will give you the most expensive answer because that is in the interest of the science. It is kind of like asking the trial lawyers, ``What do you think we ought to do on damage awards? Should we decrease damage awards?'' They would say, ``Oh, no. You have got to watch out for the victim.'' Well, the scientists, unfortunately, Mr. President, always go with the most expensive thing. We asked the National Research Council, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, to study one aspect of this thing and to look into the question of human intrusion. In other words, when you go to build a repository, how much of a safeguard do you have to put on that and to what standards must you build that? Let me tell you what the National Research Council said. I really want to get this off of my chest because I have been seething ever since we got this report. It is the most outrageous thing I have ever seen by a scientist. It says: We considered a stylized intrusion scenario consisting of one bore hole of a specified diameter drilled from the surface through a canister of waste to the underlying aquifer. What that means is that when we get around to building the repository, in order to ensure its safety, we must ensure that somebody is going to put a derrick up there and drill a hole down which pierces one of these canisters and goes down to the underlying aquifer. You say, how could that possibly happen? You have fences out there and you have guards. I do not know how it happens. I can think of a couple of scenarios. One would be that a meteorite hits the country and destroys civilization, as it did--that is the notion, at least--when the dinosaurs died. Another is that you have some big volcano that virtually kills all life except maybe some cavemen, a few who survived and are able to rebuild civilization; or a nuclear war that virtually wipes out all civilization, except some people in caves. I must say, Mr. President, if those scenarios happen, then why are you worried about nuclear waste anyway? I mean, civilization is gone. But if civilization survives, there is no way that you would not know that the Yucca Mountain repository is there. There is no way you would not know that. We are not going back in civilization, back in the time of the ancient Greeks, when the location of the town of Messinia was lost and they go back in and dug and found out where it was. Mr. President, civilization is marching forward, not backward. We are not going to get into the situation where, some day, people are going to be digging up there and find out that New York City was up there on the Hudson River. They are going to know that. They are going to know where Yucca Mountain is. But just assume that this takes place and civilization is wiped out. How are they going to drill this bore hole through Yucca Mountain and happen to hit a canister? Well, there are two assumptions. One is that they know what they are doing. If they know what they are doing, they are not going to be drilling on Yucca Mountain because there is no mineral activity out there by which you would drill a hole. The second is that they do not know what they are doing, and they are going around randomly drilling holes all over the country. Now, what do you think the chances are, Mr. President--a scientist ought to be able to tell you what the chances are, if you are doing a random hole in the thousands upon thousands of square miles in the United States, and you have one little area that is a nuclear waste dump, and of the nuclear waste dump, most of it does not have the canisters, just what are the chances of that? Is it 1 in 10 billion, 1 in a trillion, 1 in 5 trillion? These scientists ought to be able to say that. But indeed, no, they say that you have to assume ``one bore hole of the specified diameter drilled from the surface through a canister of waste to the underlying aquifer.'' How did they penetrate this without knowing that they have penetrated a canister? It is the most absurd thing. In any event, I digressed for a moment just to tell you what we are up against on this program. We have the scientists, we have the administration, we have the antinuclear activists, we have the people in Nevada, none of whom want to put in this program, all of which would be fine if we were starting out with a question of whether we are going to do nuclear energy or not, you could take this into consideration. But, Mr. President, we have nuclear waste now. We are generating it at the rate of about 2,000 metric tons each year. There are 30,000 metric tons of nuclear waste now stored, principally, in what we call ``swimming pools,'' where you basically put the rods down in pools of water, unprotected from anything. That is the only plan we really have. There are 67 powerplants in 32 States that will have run out. By the year 2010, we will have 85,000 metric tons to be stored. Mr. President, we just simply cannot ignore this problem. I proposed an amendment, Mr. President, in the conference committee which said, let us do the long-lead-time things we need to do, the environmental impact statement, the preliminary design, on an interim storage facility, and if you cannot start construction until 1998 and if, in the meantime, it is found to be not a suitable site, then you would stop all activity on both the interim storage facility, as well as the final storage--the repository, the underground facility, and move on to some other place. Now, Mr. President, that was rejected by the conference--rejected on the grounds that a bill is moving through the House, and that that bill will have a chance to be enacted next year. Mr. President, next year we have the same problems we have this year. That is, you have an administration that would oppose that bill, that has threatened to veto that bill, and you still have to produce the same 67 votes--only next year is an election year. Just what are we going to do, Mr. President? We are collecting the money--$10 billion is already collected--and we have spent $5 billion. We have a program which the director says cannot work. We are facing an assurance of having to spend some $5 billion to $7 billion between now and the year 2010 on temporary storage, and that is not funded. That is going to have to be paid for by the utilities. Mr. President, I will be retiring from the U.S. Senate at the end of next year, and I am sure my friends from Nevada--though we are good friends--will perhaps breathe a sigh of relief and will say this guy who has been trying to cram that nuclear waste down our throats in Nevada is gone and our problem is solved. Well, Mr. President, if we are not to do this activity in Nevada, then I say it is time to terminate the program in Nevada, terminate the collection of the tax, and move on to an alternative program. Let the utilities themselves build their own, what we call, ``dry cast storage'' on-site. That is the activity that is going to cost the $5 to $7 billion between now and the year 2010. Or, if there is another site other than Nevada, then let us start picking that site. Let us start looking at others. I think they have a formation up in Maine which was suitable; and Texas, down in Deaf Smith County, I believe it was. Another one is up in Hanford. There was a site down in Mississippi. Potential sites are all over the country. Of course, there is the Savannah River. There was one in Tennessee. Let us start looking at those sites, because you have to put it somewhere. It either has to be on-site or somewhere. Like the old joke about somebody who was found by an irate husband in the closet of his home and he said, ``What are you doing there?'' and he said, ``Everybody has to be somewhere.'' Believe me, nuclear waste has got to be somewhere. What we are saying in the Congress is that we do not know, we will put the problem off. Mr. President, I have seen this problem put off year after year after year while the cost escalates. It was back in 1982 when we passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. That act called for us to pick three sites--first a larger number of sites and whittle that down to three sites--and then the three sites would be ``characterized.'' That is, determined whether the three sites would be suitable as a place for the repository, and then the DOE was to pick one of those three. When we first passed that legislation, the cost of characterization was supposed to be $60 million per site. I thought, just to determine whether a site is suitable--that is outrageous. I remember thinking that so clearly. A few years passed and we had a hearing on it and we asked what was the cost of characterization and activity that was going forward at that time. They said, ``Well, it is going to be $1.2 billion per site.'' I then introduced legislation to call on the Department of Energy to pick one of the three sites and characterize that and thereby save $2.4 billion. My version did not pass because when it got to the conference committee with the House they said go ahead and name Yucca Mountain--do it politically, not scientifically. They had the votes. It so happened that the Speaker of the House was from Texas, one of the three sites. The majority leader was from Washington, the other site. That left Nevada. Nevada got picked. I must say in all fairness Nevada probably would have been scientifically picked at least. That was the indication I got at the time. But I think Nevada had a proper cause to complain because it was, in fact, a political decision rather than a scientific decision, although that might well have been the place where it would have been picked. We then proceeded with Yucca Mountain. What has happened in the meantime, we are now told that the cost of characterization of Yucca Mountain is not $60 million as initially estimated, not $1.2 billion as later estimated, but $6.3 billion--not to build the facility, just to determine whether it is suitable. How in the world did it go up that much in cost? Well, I think to a large extent because these scientists made these kind of determinations that you have to assume all kind of silly scenarios like drilling bore holes down through the canisters, like doing every conceivable study to keep these scientists busy for the rest of their lives and for their sons' and grandsons' and granddaughters' lives ad infinitum. It is an expanding scope of work which probably is not capable of being done no matter how much money we put in here and certainly not at the levels that are contained in this bill. Mr. President, I hate to sound a discordant note on what is otherwise an excellent job that the Senator from New Mexico has done. In his defense, he has a bill to pass. He has responsibility for that bill. The President has said he would veto this bill if we came up with interim storage. I can understand that judgment. I have a lot of sympathy for that judgment. I say that in his defense. At the same time, Mr. President, this body needs to understand, the Congress needs to understand, the nuclear industry needs to understand, the American public and taxpayers and ratepayers need to understand that they are being made the victims of a gigantic shell game, a great rip-off, in which $10 billion has been collected, $5 billion has been spent, and there is no way to solve the problem in the direction we are going. It will not be solved. People out there who think the Congress has a program that will eventually lead to a repository, they are wrong, Mr. President. It will lead to nothing but an endless stream of money stretching from here to infinity, with no waste dump at the end. What will happen in the meantime is that the ratepayer will not only have to pay that $10 billion already paid, but the tax at 1 mill per kilowatt hour will continue, and in addition to that, the ratepayers of these utilities--these 80 sites around the country--their ratepayers will have to pay for temporary storage on site. Mr. President, $5 billion to $7 billion worth between now and the year 2010. Now, are we going to pass that authorizing legislation later this year or later next year? Mr. President, I hope so. But I can say I have no confidence that is so. The history of this program has been delay, avoid the tough decision, get by until after the next election, get by until after the next career, make an excuse, spend some more money, fund some more scientists, and never, whatever you do, do not ever look at the program. Do not ever analyze what they are doing. That can be very, very, disquieting when you find out some of the incredible judgments which have gone into this gigantic waste of money. It has been, Mr. President, it has been just incredible to consider what has been wasted on this program. No one looks into it--at least no one listens to the alarms--because no one seems to understand. We talk about the bore holes; what does that mean? The scientists must have a reason for that, right? EPA set a carbon 14 discharge level of one-millionth background radiation, for the amounts of the carbon contained in the body naturally. Nobody said anything. We tried to straighten that out with legislation. We gave it to the scientists and all we got was babble. This report is an embarrassment to the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. President. It is almost unintelligible. The nuclear waste director says this means that you cannot build a repository--cannot build one no matter how much money. It just cannot pass the test. Some of the scientists who did the report said, ``Oh, no, this will make it easy to do it.'' It is babble, Mr. President. Mr. President, I hope by my little soliloquy here on the floor today that we can awaken a little interest in this subject, that we can alert people who ought to be interested in it, people in the nuclear industry ought to be interested in this. Ratepayers ought to be interested in this. The National Association of Regulated Utility Commissioners ought to be interested in this. Some years ago they said look, if you do not get this program straightened out, we are going to discontinue allowing you to rate base the 1 mill per kilowatt hour fee. That means that they were going to not pass it on to customers because it was a program that could not work, but we are going to require utilities to eat it--that is, to have their stockholders pay for it. I am telling you, this program cannot work. Who says so? Dr. Dreyfus, who is running the program, says that at these levels of funding, you cannot have an appropriate program. You cannot have a workable program. I hope we get a little attention here. I hope early next year we can pass legislation. If we cannot, we ought to shut this program down. I would like to reiterate my praise for the distinguished chairman of this committee for, otherwise, a very good bill. This is not his fault, because he is operating under a veto threat. But it, unfortunately, is going to be his responsibility because he now occupies the position which I did for so many years, which is the guy who has to make the program work. And as of right now, it is not working and cannot work. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSTON. From this side I do not think that a vote is necessary.

Mr. JOHNSTON

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

Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2984

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, according to the Mineral Management Service, this provision which Senator Wellstone would seek to knock from this bill would produce 320 million barrels of oil in the central gulf which would otherwise not be produced. Need I remind my colleagues that the Mineral Management Service is part of the Department of the Interior. Bruce Babbitt, a Secretary who has never been known as being in the pocket of the oil companies--this is backed by Secretary Babbitt. It is backed by Secretary O'Leary. I ask unanimous consent that her letter backing this be printed in the Record.

Mr. JOHNSTON. It raised $200 million for the Treasury, according to the Mineral Management Service, which that report shows. It is supported by the administration. It is necessary to meet our target, and it came out of the Energy Committee by 17 to 2.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I strongly support the provisions of this legislation opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil and gas leasing, exploration and development. Mr. President, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [ANWR] is seen by many as a place of great beauty. It is a place of vastness, a place where the land stretches farther than the eye can see. It provides important habitat for muskoxen, brown bears, polar bears, wolverines and a multitude of migrating and other birds. It is a place where, in the summer months, the porcupine caribou herd roams, and rainbows arch over the Beaufort Sea. But a different kind of national treasure is thought to underlie the surface of a small portion of ANWR. That national treasure is oil--huge quantities of oil. Simply put, the coastal plain of ANWR represents the most highly prospective onshore oil and gas region remaining in the United States. Mr. President, if developing the large quantities of oil thought to underlie the coastal plain would, as some suggest, destroy the 19 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, then the question of proceeding would be much more difficult. But that is not the issue. The coastal plain can and should be developed in an environmentally sound and sensitive way that does not despoil the wildlife and other environmental values of ANWR. Mr. President, the case for authorizing oil and gas leasing in ANWR is as compelling as it is straightforward. First, oil and gas activity would be limited to only a small portion of the refuge--the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain--also known as the ``1002 area--'' an area some 30 miles wide by 100 miles long. Absolutely no oil and gas activity would take place on the remaining 17.5 million acres that comprise the refuge. In fact, approximately eight million acres of ANWR, have already been designated as wilderness, including 450,000 acres of the coastal plain region between the Aichilik River and the Canadian border. In addition, the technology and the environmental sensitivity of oil field development in the Arctic have evolved steadily in the 25 years since the oil and gas facilities at Prudhoe Bay, which are located directly west of ANWR, were designed and constructed. Given these advances, and with the environmental safeguards that are currently applicable to all oil and gas activities in the Arctic, development can take place on the coastal plain in an environmentally sound manner without lasting effects. It is a serious misconception that oil and gas development would destroy the habitat functions of the coastal plain. In reality, full leasing, development and production from three oil fields, for example, would affect less than 1 percent of the area's land surface by both direct habitat alteration and by indirect effects such as road dust or local impoundments of water along a road. Ninety-nine percent of the area would remain untouched; and the area's habitat will not be altered sufficiently to affect the size, growth rate, or regional distribution of fish and wildlife populations. The area will continue to be used by caribou for calving and will continue to provide habitat for polar bears, brown bears, wolves, muskoxen, and millions of birds. The only significant change on the coastal plain would be aesthetic. If oil is discovered, widely spaced roads, pipelines, drilling structures, and support facilities would be visible on the coastal plain. Of course, even these facilities would be removed and graveled areas rehabilitated when production ceased. During the years of exploration and production, the coastal plain region will still support wildlife, provide recreational opportunities, and be home to the Inupiat Eskimo. Mr. President, the vegetation and wildlife inhabiting the coastal plain are well adapted to the extreme Arctic environment. Biological evidence does not support the popular notion that wildlife and plants in the region are fragile things, living on the edge of survival. After a decade of study, there is no evidence that oil development at Prudhoe Bay had an adverse effect on significant numbers of wildlife. The central arctic caribou herd uses Prudhoe Bay and the surrounding area for calving. This herd has grown from 3,000 to 18,000 animals since oil development activities began at Prudhoe Bay in the early 1970's. The caribou live alongside the structures related to oil and gas activity, such as roads, pipelines, and drilling pads, with no ill effects. While it is true that the porcupine caribou herd uses a portion of the coastal plain for 6 to 8 weeks each year, it is not true that this area contains core calving areas critical to the survival of the 150,000 animals which currently comprise the herd. In the first place, the herd calves throughout a huge expanse of territory in Canada and Alaska, including portions of ANWR. In some years, probably as a result of snow conditions or the presence of predators, only a very few caribou calve in the coastal plain at all. In other years, there is a higher concentration of calving in certain areas of the coastal plain. The widespread and annually variable distribution of calving strongly suggests that no one small portion of this huge calving area is critical to maintaining the viability of the porcupine caribou herd. Finally, the human activity resulting from oil production would not be new to the coastal plain. Although human presence in the coastal plain region has been relatively light, there has been, and continues to be, evidence of man in the area. There have been three DEW. line stations--one of which is still active--there is a Native village, Kaktovik, which has been relocated in the area three times in recent history, and there have been, and continue to be considerable subsistence activities in the area. Mr. President, let me now turn to the crucial importance to our Nation of the oil thought to underlie the coastal plain. For the foreseeable future, oil will remain a critical fuel for the United States and other industrialized nations. Currently, the United States consumes approximately 17 million barrels of oil per day. The Department of Energy projects that under current policies, this may well increase to almost 23 million barrels per day by the year 2010. At the same time, domestic production will decline, resulting in a significant increase in foreign oil imports. DOE projects that domestic production of crude oil will fall from today's level of 6.8 million barrels per day to 5.4 million barrels per day in 2010, a decrease of 21 percent. Imports of foreign oil are projected to increase substantially by the year 2010, making our Nation dependent on foreign oil for more than 60 percent of our oil needs. This level of import dependence is extremely dangerous for our country. More significantly, as the Persian Gulf war tragically demonstrated, oil is an important strategic resource, and the struggle to control that region's vast oil reserves can disrupt the delicate balance of peace in the Middle East. United States oil imports are so massive, and the use of oil is so ingrained in our economy, that a substantial demand for oil will exist for the foreseeable future--certainly well into the early decades of the 21st century. This conclusion remains firm in the face of even the most optimistic assumptions about increases in energy efficiency and the substitution of alternative fuels. These policies alone will not suffice. Unless domestic oil production is encouraged and pursued, oil imports will continue to rise, and rise significantly. By any measure, the coastal plain of ANWR represents the primary prospect [[Page S 16067]] for domestic onshore oil and gas exploration in the United States. The opponents of opening the coastal plain argue that the amount of oil at stake is not significant, that it is only a 200-day supply. However, a single field large enough to supply this country with all of the oil it consumes for 200 days represents a huge reservoir of oil. Eighty percent of all onshore oil fields discovered in the lower 48 States over the last 100 years have contained less than 1 day's supply. According to the BLM, the mean estimate of oil thought to be economically recoverable from the coastal plain of the ANWR is 3.2 billion barrels. The range of estimated economically recoverable reserves runs from 400 million barrels to over 9 billion barrels. The probability of discovering economically recoverable oil has been estimated by that agency at 46 percent. The oil industry routinely considers probabilities of discovery in the range of 10 percent worth the payment of substantial bonuses for the right to explore for oil. As many of my colleagues know, the USGS has recently completed its 1995 assessment of onshore oil and gas resources for the United States. In general, the assessment shows an increase in the amount of natural gas thought to be present in northern Alaska and a decrease in the amount of oil thought to be present in that area. The USGS has prepared a preliminary analysis of the oil potential of the coastal plain and has concluded in a draft memorandum that the mean estimate for oil in the 1002 area is slightly less than a billion barrels, with a 1 in 20 chance that some 4 billion barrels are present. The agency is currently in the process of gathering more information from the 1002 area to refine its very preliminary estimate. The BLM, it should be noted, continues to have confidence in its earlier mean estimate of 3.2 billion barrels for the 1002 area. Since 1980, when we began to debate the issue of opening the coastal plain of ANWR, there have been numerous studies and estimates of the amount of oil likely to be found if the area is opened to leasing. These estimates have been made by the BLM, USGS, the Energy Information Administration, the GAO, the State of Alaska, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and others. These estimates vary considerably due to different methodologies employed, different interpretations of geologic data, and differing geologic engineering and economic assumptions that are made relative to the methodology. As a result, it is very difficult to directly compare these estimates. However, two important conclusions can be drawn from these estimates. First, they all reflect a wide range of uncertainty, which is expected for an area that has not been drilled. Until we have reliable well data from the 1002 area, we simply have no way of knowing how great the potential of the area is. Second, all these estimates show a very large potential for oil and gas, with even the lowest estimates that have been made having an upside potential of at least 4 billion barrels. In addition to the benefits to the country provided by the oil itself, the Federal Treasury will also benefit. Under the ANWR provisions contained in the bill currently before the Senate, the CBO estimates that two lease sales in the coastal plain will occur between now and the year 2000 which will result in bonus bids totalling $2.6 billion. The legislation requires a 50-50 revenue split with the State of Alaska--the same as other western States--which will mean that the Federal Treasury will receive $1.3 billion in new revenue during the next 7 years if the coastal plain is leased. Should oil be discovered and produced from ANWR in significant amounts, a steady stream of royalty income will also accrue to the Federal Treasury for many years to come. In addition to the direct budget plus for the Treasury, this measure provides that the Federal share--50%--of bonus bid revenues in excess of $2.6 billion will be made directly available for maintenance, repair and rehabilitation projects at our Nation's national parks and refuges. This provision will provide a significant funding source for our parks that so desperately need more money. Mr. President, oil and gas development on the coastal plain is a step that must not be postponed any longer. Most experts agree that it will take up to 10 or 15 years before commercial production could begin if the area is leased this year. Sometime between 2008 and 2014, the DOE estimates that production from Prudhoe Bay and adjacent fields, which currently account for nearly 25 percent of our domestic oil production, is projected to decline to approximately 300,000 barrels per day, the minimum level needed to operate the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System [TAPS]. If we continue to delay exploring for oil on the coastal plain and developing what we find there, the TAPS could be forced to shut down, and we will have lost our ability to transport billions of barrels of Alaskan oil to waiting consumers. When Congress enacted the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, we declined to designate this portion of ANWR as wilderness and specifically reserved for ourselves the decision on whether that area should be made available for oil and gas leasing. We directed the Secretary of the Interior to study the area and to make recommendations on whether to allow oil and gas development. In 1987, the Secretary recommended that oil and gas development be allowed to take place. Since that report was issued, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee alone has conducted 11 hearings and built a solid and thorough record on this issue. Our committee has voted on three separate occasions, on a bipartisan basis, to proceed with oil and gas leasing. It is now time for the Senate to exercise its responsibility and make a decision with respect to oil and gas development on the coastal plain. Our Nation can have the benefit of the oil from ANWR, the revenues leasing will generate, and still preserve the beauty and the vastness of the Refuge.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. The Senator is absolutely correct. The provisions of the Interior conference report were the result of weeks of careful bipartisan effort. As ranking member of the authorizing committee I have been familiar with each of these issues for many years and have shared with the Senator from Hawaii the frustration of trying to find a solution. This is why I joined with my chairman, the senior Senator from Alaska, in writing to the chairman and ranking member of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee urging that the administration's proposal, as modified and reported by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, be included in the Interior appropriations bill. I have been dealing with territorial issues since I first came to the Senate in 1972, and I can assure my colleagues that although these islands are small and remote, their needs are just as real as those of the States. We have responsibilities to U.S. citizens and nationals and citizens of the former Trust Territory that we simply cannot turn our backs on. After three long years we have finally come up with a solution to meet four of our most pressing problems in the islands. I simply cannot understand how the House justifies its proposal, which would ignore these responsibilities and commitments. Let me reassure my colleague from Hawaii that I will do all that I can to ensure that the Senate position prevails on this matter.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, 23 years ago I came to the U.S. Senate as what we call a Southern conservative. There are not as many of us left as I would like there to be, but throughout that time, Mr. President, I have frankly given my party some consternation by opposing some things which I thought were too liberal, particularly when it came to what I thought was income redistribution. I can recall opposing the CETA Program because I thought it was sort of a make work program that would take money and give it to poor people, just sort of without working. Now, Mr. President, in spite of the fact that I remained through all those 23 years as a Southern conservative, I oppose strongly this program. Mr. President, this program goes in the exact opposite direction because it is income redistribution from bottom to the top. Mr. President, I will be leaving this institution in another year. I must say that we are leaving, if this passes, we are leaving in its wake a real difficult situation for people of modest means in this country. While we are taking care of those who are better off--the tax credit for children goes up to $110,000, people with those incomes--the top 1 percent, Mr. President, in this country, are going to get almost $5,000 per person. Mr. President, what this does to poor people, what it does to people of modest means in my State--this is not scare tactics, Mr. President-- we are going to have 4,700 fewer people on Head Start, school loans are going to be restricted, summer jobs are eliminated by the thousands in my State. There will be 406,000 children in Louisiana whose nutrition is going to be cut because of this program. Mr. President, 60,000 people of modest means in my State are going to have to pay more for housing. Mr. President, going right down the line--look at Medicare. We will have 17 million low and moderate-income people in this country who will have an average tax increase of $352. The Medicare people who are having their Medicare cut, their average income is $17,750, while we are giving tax cuts to those of greater income. Now, Mr. President, there is a blizzard of propaganda----

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I oppose this program because it is income redistribution from the bottom to the top.