John Johnston

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. That is correct. And I hope our language will properly reflect that. Mr. President, let me be a little more clear if not only for the purpose of this small business amendment, the reg-flex amendment, but also for the purpose of the whole bill. The reason for having the interlocutory appeal is that the question can be put at rest early in the process. If, for example, an agency determines that the rule is likely to have an impact of less than $50 million a year, then it would not be a major rule, would not require the cost-benefit analysis, or the risk assessment. They would make that determination early on, file that in the record, and any party, any interested party, would then have 60 days from the time of that determination to make this interlocutory appeal on the question of whether it was a major rule because of the amount of dollars, whether it was a rule that affects health, safety, the environment, which in turn requires the risk assessment, or in this case whether it has a significant effect upon a substantial number of small businesses. The idea is that if that appeal is not made within 60 days, that you are foreclosed from raising that later on in the process. Keep in mind that if an appeal is made within the 60 days on the basis that they failed to make it into a major rule, that the agency itself could make a determination, could in effect moot the appeal by going back and doing the cost-benefit analysis and the risk assessment. What we find under the present law in areas like NEPA, National Environmental Policy Act, agencies tend to err on the side of conservative in doing an environmental impact statement, which is much more involved than the environmental impact assessment. They will do the statement rather than the assessment many times because they do not want all their work to be thrown out X years later at the end of the process. The result is that it frequently requires tremendous amounts of additional expense in doing that which the law would not otherwise require. And the reason for the interlocutory appeal is to be able to get that question determined up front and early so that the results of the whole system will not be thrown out. The concern with the Nunn amendment, even as amended, when amended, is that it is likely to cause an agency overload or much more than the agencies are able to do. The amount of personnel that the agencies have, the amount of moneys that the agencies have in order to perform these risk assessments is, of course, limited. Now, how many additional rules would this require the agencies to do? We do not know. OMB tells us that it could be hundreds of additional rules that would be caught under this definition. It could have the effect of doubling, tripling, or even a fivefold increase in the amount of work that they have to do. I hope, Mr. President, that if this amendment is adopted and becomes part of this law that that is not the result. However, I think that it is going to require continued analysis as this matter moves along. It is not my purpose, frankly, to vote for this amendment, although we are not making, or at least I am not making, a major challenge to this amendment, given the assurances of the Senators from Georgia that we will be able to continue to work on it to avoid the question of agency overload. However, until we have dealt with a more assuring way with this question of agency overload, I will not be able to vote for this amendment. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, the Senator from Michigan referred to the interlocutory appeal, and, in fact, the Nunn-Coverdell amendment has been criticized because it allows two appeals, both an interlocutory appeal to be taken within 60 days of the notice of the proposed rulemaking and a later appeal. Mr. President, I have just been discussing with the Senator from Georgia a modification of that amendment to make sure that the final appeal relates only to those classes of appeals which would not otherwise be subject to appeal under section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act or under section 625 of this act, which are, in effect, final agency actions, so that both the appeal and the remedy, the final appeal under this bill, would be a very limited and narrow one. But I will describe that amendment when it comes up.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. JOHNSTON. One of the myths put out about the so-called Dole- Johnston amendment is that it contains a supermandate. That is, that the present requirements of law--for example, on the Clean Air Act, when it sets standards, for example, of maximum achievable control technology or the other specific requirements of law--that somehow those are overruled by this bill. Would the Senator agree with me that the language is very clear in saying that does not happen under this bill? To quote the language, it ``supplements and does not supersede the requirements of the present law.'' And, in fact, other language in the bill specifically points out that there will be instances where, because of the requirements of present law, you cannot meet the tests of the risk justifying the cost? The benefits justifying the cost? And, in other words, the requirements of present law, under the instant Dole-Johnston amendment, would still be in effect and would not be overruled by this bill? Would the Senator agree with me?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Abraham amendment. I congratulate the Senator for, first, his concern about small business, which is a concern of all Members on regulations; second, for having an appropriate screening mechanism to prevent the agency overload. Agency overload, Mr. President, is one of the principal problems with this bill. We are all in favor, at least everyone that I have heard, says they are in favor of cost-benefit analysis, says they are in favor of risk assessment. The question is, do we give the agencies more work than they can do and overload their capacity to do it? In its original form, the Abraham amendment might well have been subject to that criticism in that any rule on a look-back which the advocate designated would go into the workload of the agency. However, in the form that the Senator from Michigan has proposed, there is an appropriate screen because the head of OIRA would have to concur with that judgment, which would ensure, I believe, that those rules which have a major effect on small business would be included in the workload, as they should be, but that we could prevent the agency overload. Mr. President, I think this is an excellent amendment which will presently protect small business on the look-back. If I may speak for a few moments on the pending bill and on the Glenn substitute, which the Senator has spoken about, there are a number of differences, Mr. President, and I believe that the pending bill, the so-called Dole-Johnston amendment, is a much better bill in terms of accomplishing the control over a runaway agency. Mr. President, the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Glenn] states that under the Dole-Johnston bill, there would be a judicial review of the procedures in the risk assessment management; and under the Glenn substitute, there would not be that review of procedures. Mr. President, exactly the opposite is true under the language proposed. Under the language of the Glenn substitute, it states specifically that any regulatory analysis for such actions shall constitute part of the record and shall, to the extent relevant, be considered by a court in determining the legality of the agency action. The risk assessment protocol is included as part of the record and shall be considered by the court--shall be considered by the court--in determining the legality of the agency action. Now, what does legality mean, Mr. President? Legality can only mean, in my judgment, the legality as measured by section 706 of the Administrative Procedure Act. If it does not refer to section 706, there is not, within the Glenn amendment, a separate rule for testing and determining legality. Now, what does section 706 say? Section 706(D) refers to the procedures, and that any rule which the reviewing court shall hold unlawful and set-aside agency actions which are ``without observance of procedure required by law.'' `` * * * without observance of procedure required by law.'' There is nothing, Mr. President, in the Glenn substitute, to say that section 706(D) does not apply. That is the only thing that legality can mean. Now, when we get into a further discussion of what the Dole substitute shows, we will have a blowup of the language and make this clear. Mr. President, exactly the opposite is true. That is, Senator Glenn says that his amendment would prevent the review. We say it not only permits it, but requires it. And that, under the Dole-Johnston pending amendment, it prevents any such review by saying that, ``failure to comply with the subchapter may be considered by the court solely for the purpose of determining whether the final agency action is arbitrary and capricious or an abuse of discretion.'' Mr. President, another serious deficiency of the substitute is that there is no enforceable petition process on the Glenn substitute, no enforceable petition process--no enforceable look-back process. Oh, there are words in there about you can adopt it--you have the petition process as provided for under the present law. But what does that amount to? I mean, if all you get is the petition process under the present law, you get nothing. That is what this bill is all about. What happens when you have an oppressive regulation, of which there are many, which did not follow a risk assessment protocol, which did not involve scientists or ignored the scientists, which is exorbitantly expensive, and which you want to take a look at? Effectively, there is almost nothing you can do about it, because there are no standards by which you can seek that petition and get it reviewed. And, under the Glenn substitute, they simply take the present law and say: Whatever you do under the present law, we are not going to disturb. There is no look-back process that is enforceable. None at all. What it says is that you shall look back at these, all these regulations, within 10 years, or you may request to extend that up to 15 years. But what happens if you do not do it? It says you shall institute a rulemaking under section 553. What does that mean? It means you submit a notice of proposed rulemaking, which can [[Page S 9614]] go on forever, and which in turn is not enforceable. That is the problem today. What happens when you can not get an agency to act? You have no recourse at all. Some of these agency actions are absolutely ridiculous. Two years ago I first proposed a risk assessment. And the reason I did was we found in some of the rules which come before the Energy Committee, which I chaired at that time, that these costs were out of control. We could not figure out why it was, for example, that the cost of analyzing the Yucca Mountain waste site--the costs of characterizing that site--had gone up a hundredfold--a hundredfold--from $60 million to $6.3 billion. And we said, Why could this be? How can the cost of just determining, in this case a site for storage of nuclear waste, whether that site is suitable--not the building of the site, just determining whether that site is suitable--how could those costs have gone up from $60 million to $6.3 billion? One of the things we found that they had done was adopted a rule where they had ignored their own scientists, absolutely ignored what the scientists had told them. They did not know what it was going to cost. The rule had no basis in health or safety. It was going to cost $2.1 billion to comply with and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The Glenn substitute takes that same attitude, which is to say: Do not worry about it. You are fully protected under the present rules. We are not going to give you a right to go to court. We are not going to give you a right to enforce a petition process. We are not going to give you a right to have an enforceable look-back process. We are going to leave it as under present law, and under present law all you have to do is file your notice of proposed rulemaking and that is all you have to do. You cannot enforce and require the agency to proceed with that rulemaking. So we will have a lot to discuss about this question of the two bills. There are improvements which need to be made, to be sure, in the Dole-Johnston substitute. One of those, which I hope to propose and have agreed to, and I have some confidence that we will be able to do so, is to take the CERCLA provisions--that is the Superfund, or environmental management procedures--out of this bill. I think they ought to be considered separately. Almost everybody agrees that you need to use risk assessment principles in determining cleanup when you have Superfund sites, but that it would better be done in a separate bill, reported out of the Environment and Public Works Committee in the Senate. And I believe there is a desire on the part of that committee to proceed with that. I think we ought to take those provisions out. I also hope at the appropriate time we can increase the threshold amount from $50 to $100 million. Again, that relates to this question of overload. Because, just as Senator Abraham has so wisely provided a screen to have a check on the amount of overload coming from consideration of small business matters, we need a screen to lift that bar a little higher, from $50 to $100 million. There is going to be a lot of work to be done under risk assessment and under cost-benefit analysis. There is a lot of work to be done. We do not want to overload the agencies. So, Mr. President, I quite agree with Senator Glenn when he says that this is a very, very important bill. I am delighted there is, I believe on the part of all parties--myself and Senator Dole, Senator Glenn, Senator Hatch, Senator Roth, those who have been the leaders in this area--a desire to try to find a way to provide for an appropriate risk assessment and appropriate cost-benefit analysis. I believe, with that desire of all parties, that we can work our will and get a good bill. But make no mistake about it, risk assessment, putting science as opposed to politics or emotion or prejudice or superstition--putting science back into the decision process and having a process that works, and that is required to be followed, a logical process--that tells the American taxpayer we are going to fully protect your health and safety but we are not going to foolishly spend money on things that do not relate to health and safety. One final point about the Dole-Johnston amendment. My friend from Ohio, Senator Glenn, says that under our amendment you must take the least-cost alternative. Mr. President, that is simply not true. The bill very specifically states that where uncertainties of science or uncertainties in the data require a higher cost alternative, that you may do so. Or, where there are--actually, to give the language here, the language says, ``if scientific, technical or economic uncertainties or nonquantifiable benefits to health, safety, or the environment identified by the agency in the rulemaking record make a more costly alternative that achieves the objectives of the statute appropriate and in the public interest and the agency head provides an explanation''-- that may be adopted. So, Mr. President, what we say is you get the least cost alternative that achieves the objectives of the statute unless the science is uncertain, or the data are uncertain, in which event you can get a more costly alternative. Or you may make a more costly alternative if nonquantifiable benefits to health, safety, or the environment make that in the public interest. What does that mean? That means, if it would save more lives to do something else. How can you quantify the value of life? You cannot. But you can go to a higher cost alternative if those nonquantifiable benefits to health, safety, or the environment make another alternative more advisable. But we say that, if you are going to go to this higher cost alternative because of these nonquantifiable benefits, or if there are uncertainties of science, then you must identify what those uncertainties are, or you must identify what those nonquantifiable benefits are, and then provide the least cost alternative that takes into consideration the nonquantifiable benefits. So what we are saying is you may go higher, but you have to say why you went higher, and you cannot do it just because you want to or because it is politically attractive to do so or because some constituent group wants you to do it. You have to identify what it is that is uncertain or what it is that is nonquantifiable. So, Mr. President, in closing, I will just say that the Abraham amendment, I think, is a good one now that both protects small business on the lookback procedures but provides the appropriate screen. Therefore, I support that amendment.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, that is not correct. I think it is an excellent question. I think the problem with the interpretation of the Senator from Ohio is that he is putting a very tortured and incorrect definition of the term ``nonquantifiable benefits to health, safety and the environment.'' The value of the human life is by its nature nonquantifiable. I mean, you may say there are 10 lives. You can quantify it in that narrow sense. But that is not the sense in which this is meant. We are talking about values and benefits which are nonquantifiable. The value of breathing clean air is by its very nature nonquantifiable. How can you say when you go out on a beautiful, clear day where the temperature is just right, you feel good, how can you say that is worth $764 a week? You cannot. It is by its nature nonquantifiable. The health, safety, or the environment are by their nature nonquantifiable and, therefore, we have provided that. But all we are saying is, if you as administrator are saying that you can save 10 additional lives, that you have to identify that as your reason for going to the more costly alternative, and if that was the reason, then you must take the least cost alternative that takes care of your 10 lives, that saves your 10 lives. [[Page S 9615]] I hope I have made that clear to my friend from Ohio because it is a very key point.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes. Privilege of the Floor

Mr. JOHNSTON. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I will not subject the Senator to a long series of questions because I sympathize with the condition of his voice. Mr. President, we have had conversations, both Senators from Georgia and myself and my staff, Senator Roth, and others, concerning the problem of agency overload. It seems to me that all sides in this endeavor want to arrive at the same place, and that is the maximum protection for small business but a workable system for the agencies so that the agencies will not be overloaded. We had proposed to the Senator from Georgia an alternative, which is, in effect, to have the same kind of fix that Senator Abraham had in his amendment, which is to give OIRA, in effect, a veto over these procedures. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment that the Senators from Georgia and I have discussed be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I will not propose that amendment today, but I simply ask the Senator, in fact both Senators from Georgia, if they will continue to work with us with a view to dealing with this problem of agency overload, hoping to find some alternative--if not the one that I have sent to the desk for printing, then some other alternative, so that we may deal with that question of overload. [[Page S 9624]]

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia for his answer.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I submitted legislation in the 103d Congress designating the week beginning on November 21, 1993, and the week beginning on November 20, 1994, as ``National Family Week.'' This was signed by the President and became Public Law 103-153. Today I am pleased to submit legislation which would designate a ``National Family Week'' for the following 2 years, the week beginning on November 19, 1995, and the week beginning on November 24, 1996. The family is the basic strength of any free and orderly society and it is rather appropriate to honor the family as a unit essential to the continued well-being of the United States. It is only fitting that official recognition be given to the importance of family loyalties and ties and that the people of the United States observe such weeks with appropriate ceremonies and activities. Since Thanksgiving falls during both these weeks, families may already be gathered for festivities. Therefore, it is particularly suitable to pause as a Nation and recognize the support that families give to their members, and therefore to the community of the United States. I hope my colleagues will join me in this effort.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. No, the only unanimous consent I asked is that when this draft is prepared, that it be printed in the Record for notice. The majority leader, I was just informed, will ask on tomorrow afternoon--I did not ask unanimous consent but I was just advised that he would ask for permission to withdraw the committee amendments to S. 343 and send a substitute to the desk. I am not asking that be done. I was just giving the Senate notice because his staff just gave me that notice. I wanted to make the Senate aware of that. I hope tomorrow we can reassure Senators on matters, or change that which needs to be changed, and get a very broad consensus bill so when we come back after the recess we will have a bill that passes overwhelmingly. Mr. President, I said a moment ago Senator Dole intended to put in the substitute tomorrow afternoon. I meant on Friday afternoon, because that is what he meant. I wanted to give my colleagues notice of that.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I understand that will be the pending business when the Senate returns from recess. In the meantime, we will continue to discuss this package with our colleagues and, hopefully, will be able to arrive at further modifications along the lines we have talked about. I believe those negotiations will happen tomorrow.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I commend my colleagues on this side of the aisle who have been involved in this negotiation, particularly Senator Levin, Senator Glenn, Senator Biden, Senator Baucus, Senator Kerrey, and Senator Lautenberg especially, who have contributed so much in bringing the draft up to where it is now. As I say, it is not a done deal yet in terms of satisfying everyone's concerns, but it is much, much closer to that than when the Judiciary Committee bill started out. Mr. President, I am advised it is the majority leader's intention Friday afternoon to withdraw the committee amendments to S. 343 and send the substitute to the desk. That substitute is, in effect, the Dole-Johnston discussion draft filed a few days ago, which is being supplemented by the agreement identified by myself and Senator Levin, and with other modifications which we have worked on during these hours. So I ask unanimous consent that be printed in the Record tonight, when submitted to the Chair.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Hatch, as well as Senator Dole, and their staffs, and Senator Roth, and others on the other side of the aisle, for making this bill and the negotiation on it thus far a true bipartisan effort. The Judiciary Committee bill was, indeed, the product of last Congress' risk assessment legislation, which I sponsored, as well as S. 1020, which dealt with regulatory reform from earlier in the 1980's. Since that time, Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Kansas, Senator Dole, and I, worked together over a period of some 10 hours-- excuse me--12 hours of direct negotiation in working out what we called the Dole-Johnston draft, discussion draft. Since that was filed in the Record, we have spent an additional--or at least I have spent 20 hours in negotiation with both Republicans and Democrats, seeking to work out the problems in that draft. All of our problems have not yet been worked out. But if I may give my colleagues and others the state of play on it, I think the mood is there, the will is there, and I think eventually substantial agreement can be arrived at, dealing with nine major points: First, judicial review. The argument about judicial review is now not about the principle, it is about the language. I believe our language achieves the result. We will continue to listen, but I believe it achieves the result that everyone wishes. Supermandate has been eliminated from the bill. I believe that is also clear. And both sides agree that underlying statutes are not superseded. Whatever the requirements of the Clean Air Act are, for example, are still in place. And we believe that the language of the draft now reflects that. We are willing to work further to clarify that--not to clarify, but to reassure Senators that that is so. With respect to decisional criteria, Mr. President, I believe that from our side of the aisle the language now in the draft fully gives the discretion to the agencies that we wish. I call attention of my colleagues to the language of section 624, which states certain requirements, such as the benefits rule to justify the cost. But it goes on to say that if scientific, technical, or economic uncertainties or nonquantifiable benefits to the health or safety of the environment identified by the agency in the rulemaking record make a more costly alternative that achieves the objective of the statute appropriate and in the public interest, and the agency head provides an explanation of that, that they may chose the more costly alternative. Mr. President, we will listen to further elucidation on this. But it seems to me that this is a complete victory for those on our side of the aisle who have always said the difficulty with risk assessment is sometimes scientific uncertainty, where scientists do not agree in some areas, where the data is uncertain or where you have values that are nonquantifiable by their nature, such as the value of life, the value of good health, the value of environment, the value of clean air which are, by their nature, nonquantifiable. As I say, the theme, the idea is there, and I believe is clear. But to the extent it is not, we are certainly willing to negotiate, I believe, on both sides of the aisle. The question, again, is not whether to grant discretion for these things, but rather the question is how best to phrase the language. With respect to petition, appeal on that petition, sunset, consolidation, we believe, Mr. President, that we now have complete agreement on that. It covers the issue of agency overload, and we will soon be filing in the Record language that will reflect that agreement. Anything, of course, is subject to further wordsmithing, but we believe both Democrats and Republicans have arrived at a decision in that very difficult area. With respect to effective date, I hope we can come to agreement on that. On the Democratic side, we do not want to have to go back and redo regulations which have, in some cases, been 2 or 3 years in the making. On the Republican side, the concern has been that they do not want to have a flood of new regulations come in at the last minute to escape the requirements of this bill. I believe effective date can be appropriately worked out and pick some date such as July 1 of this year. With respect to threshold, I believe the threshold should be 100 million, and 50 million is now in the bill. I believe also that is a doable thing. My prediction is that we will end up agreeing on 100 million with some language with respect to small business because small business has really been a concern here. At least I am in good hopes we can agree on that. I hope we can agree to drop Superfund at some point. Not that anybody thinks a process of risk assessment should not be applicable to Superfund, it should definitely be applicable to Superfund, but we believe that is best done by the Environment and Public Works Committee, working their will against special requirements of the Superfund site. To put it in this bill, I believe, would be very difficult. With respect to toxic release inventory, the language now in the Dole-Johnston draft, I believe, can be much improved. It, in turn, was an improvement over the Judiciary Committee draft. Frankly, we are waiting for some kind of improvement language that we hope will solve this problem. Toxic release inventory is a high-profile issue, but I believe, in terms of importance of the issue, it is clearly one of the lesser issues in this bill and should not stand in our way of getting a bill. The final point I have has to do with the Delaney rule. We greatly improve the Judiciary Committee draft on the Delaney rule. The language now in the Dole-Johnston draft says that an administrator or an agency head cannot fail to license a chemical if it has negligible or insignificant foreseeable risk to human health resulting from its intended use. It seems to me that this ought to be the standard. It is a good standard. I have heard no defense of keeping the Delaney rule as it is, and I submit that the votes will be on the floor to change the Delaney rule. Our request is that those who think the standard we have in this draft is not appropriate should come up with alternative language which we are happy to consider. We have given notice of consideration of alternative language now for a week or two, and I have not yet received it. So I urge people who want that to be reconsidered to please submit language. The point I am making, Mr. President, is that the most difficult things about this bill--things like decisional criteria, judicial review, supermandate--have been agreed upon in principle, and the problem now is to determine language that carries out the principle. We all understand that language and wordsmithing in this area is very important, is crucial, is critical, and we will continue to negotiate to seek very precise language that carries this out, and we solicit that from both sides of the aisle. But, Mr. President, frankly, given the attitudes on both sides of the aisle, I believe it is going to be possible to come to those agreements, not with all Senators. We are not going to get 100 votes, but I believe that there is a real possibility for a broad consensus, and I am happy to be part of the group that is putting together what I consider to be the most important bill in this field that has ever been enacted by the Congress. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. JOHNSTON. I ask unanimous consent that Dr. Robert Simon be given the privilege of the floor for the pendency of S. 343 and any votes thereon.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be able to proceed for 2 minutes.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Ohio, with the understanding that he will yield some time to Senator Levin.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Park Renewal Fund Act. This legislation would grant the Secretary of the Interior additional authority to impose and collect entrance fees at units of the National Park System and deposit those increased revenues in a special fund-- the park renewal fund. These moneys could then be used, without the need for further appropriation, to help cover the cost of priority park maintenance and repair projects. The legislation also includes other provisions designed to enhance the Park Service's ability to generate badly needed funds from park users and other non-Federal sources. Last year, I introduced park fee legislation at the request of the administration. The committee unanimously reported an amended version of that bill late in the session, but no further action was taken in the Senate. The bill I am introducing today is very similar to the version I introduced last year and incorporates the current administration position on park fees. Like last year, it is possible that changes will be made to this bill before it is reported from the committee. I welcome the attention of my colleagues to this bill and urge their support. I also look forward to their input and the input of others on how to improve the legislation. Although I am flexible on many provisions in this bill, there is, in my view, one concept that must be included in the final version of any park fee bill. New fee revenue generated by this legislation must go directly to the parks for use in the parks and not be diverted for nonpark purposes. There is considerable public support for paying higher park entrance fees if those fees are used to enhance the parks and visitor use and enjoyment of them. Without such a provision, there is no need to raise fees and certainly no incentive for the parks to collect them. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a section-by-section analysis and the text of the bill appear in the Record.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Park Renewal Fund Act. This legislation would grant the Secretary of the Interior additional authority to impose and collect entrance fees at units of the National Park System and deposit those increased revenues in a special fund-- the park renewal fund. These moneys could then be used, without the need for further appropriation, to help cover the cost of priority park maintenance and repair projects. The legislation also includes other provisions designed to enhance the Park Service's ability to generate badly needed funds from park users and other non-Federal sources. Last year, I introduced park fee legislation at the request of the administration. The committee unanimously reported an amended version of that bill late in the session, but no further action was taken in the Senate. The bill I am introducing today is very similar to the version I introduced last year and incorporates the current administration position on park fees. Like last year, it is possible that changes will be made to this bill before it is reported from the committee. I welcome the attention of my colleagues to this bill and urge their support. I also look forward to their input and the input of others on how to improve the legislation. Although I am flexible on many provisions in this bill, there is, in my view, one concept that must be included in the final version of any park fee bill. New fee revenue generated by this legislation must go directly to the parks for use in the parks and not be diverted for nonpark purposes. There is considerable public support for paying higher park entrance fees if those fees are used to enhance the parks and visitor use and enjoyment of them. Without such a provision, there is no need to raise fees and certainly no incentive for the parks to collect them. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a section-by-section analysis and the text of the bill appear in the Record.

Mr. JOHNSTON

Mr. JOHNSTON. I thank the distinguished leader for his statement. He is correct that he and I have agreed upon a draft. It has been arrived at after extensive conversations, negotiations and [[Page S 8794]] writing, and we have worked in over 100 amendments to the underlying text. I hope my colleagues like the result, and I have reason to suspect that they will. I would like to emphasize and ask the majority leader, if he does not agree with this--that this is, in fact, a discussion draft, and that we invite input from all of our colleagues. By filing this to be printed, it is simply a matter of giving notice to colleagues of what is in the discussion draft. It is not the filing of the bill or the filing of an amendment. But it is a filing of notice, so that all of those who have meaningful input can work through the process and, hopefully, we will be able to improve the bill, so that by the time a bill or an amendment is filed, it will contain the suggestions of our colleagues, if we can agree upon those suggestions. Am I correct on that?

Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes, of course.

Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, in response to the Senator from Ohio I might say the excellent work he and Senator Roth and the members of the Governmental Affairs Committee did was very much a matter of concern and negotiation to us on this bill. Particularly the judicial review, the recommendations which will appear in this draft are, really, motivated by the good work the Senator from Ohio and Senator Roth did in their bill. So it is not that we considered only the Judiciary product. To the contrary, the good work that went in the Roth-Glenn bill we sought to incorporate in this bill--I hope successfully. But to the extent it can be improved we solicit and invite those comments and suggestions.