J. Kerrey

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, these two amendments have been agreed to on both sides. The first one was the agreed-upon amendment between Senator Levin and Senator Kyl. We took my language and the language of Senator Shelby and merged them. There is agreement on both sides. I think this and the reporting requirements of Senator Feinstein are excellent additions to the bill.

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. KERREY. I didn't hear everything the distinguished Senator said. He read, I think, an earlier draft. I don't think he meant to. The word ``all'' in the first sentence had been stricken.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I think it is a good amendment. I believe the amendment has been cleared by Senator Domenici as well. I don't think there is any problem with this amendment at all. I think it is a good amendment and a good improvement in the bill.

Mr. KERREY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I, too, thank the Senator from Nevada for bringing this to our attention. I was not aware of the problem. I look forward to the opportunity of having a chance to work with the Senator to change the law and to end the problem he has identified.

Mr. KERREY

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise to join my chairman, Senator Shelby of Alabama, with whom I have had the pleasure to work now for several years. This is my last year on this select committee. It has been an opportunity, for the last 8 years, to acquire an understanding of what it takes to collect intelligence, to analyze that intelligence, to process it, produce it, and disseminate it. It is nowhere near as easy as it used to be. In the old days, you basically sent human beings out there to try to figure out what was going on. You hoped they spoke the language and were smart enough to figure things out. They would come back and bring you the best stuff they could. Oftentimes it would be too late to act upon it. I had a small piece of that some 30 years ago in the service, where we used to collect intelligence as well. So I have at least some independent understanding of the difficulty, especially on the human side. But the importance of what intelligence can bring to an operation cannot be overstated-- the recent operation in Kosovo, the Dayton peace agreement, incident after incident that cannot be disclosed to the public because most of it occurs in a secret environment where warfighters and policymakers get information in a timely fashion and, as a consequence, lives are saved, success is achieved, and national security is improved. This bill is a result of a bipartisan effort to make the year 2000 a watershed year for intelligence. This bill sets the intelligence community on a course to respond to the very complex world we are facing. The era of downsizing has ended. Intelligence must be positioned to collect, analyze, and inform policymakers on the complex threats we face. As my colleagues are no doubt aware, most of the bill is classified. As always, Chairman Shelby and I have made the classified sections available to our colleagues for their review. Further, committee staff is readily available to brief on any aspect of this bill. I believe Members have found the bill to be the result of a completely bipartisan effort to fund intelligence activities in fiscal year 2000. Chairman Shelby and I have tried, and I think on most occasions have consistently applied a single test, to determine whether or not a funding level or a provision or an oversight hearing or a letter or some other action is required. And that test is, will this make the people of the United States of America and our interests more secure as a consequence? If the answer is yes, we have done it. If the answer is no, we have not. We do not, in these committees, check with our leadership to determine whether or not there is a Democratic position or a Republican position. What we do is check to determine whether or not the action will be in the best interest of the United States of America and keep the United States as secure as our best judgments can make it. It has been a pleasure to work with Senator Shelby, and it has been an honor for me to have the opportunity to watch him participate and to experience his leadership on this committee. As I said, I believe the year 2000 must be a watershed year for intelligence. That is because the intelligence community has been significantly downsized in the decade of the 1990s. Again, in classified briefings, we are pleased to provide Members with the information on that. I think most Members will be shocked to see the budget and the number of people, especially the number of people we have today, who are doing the collection, doing the analysis, doing the work of trying to figure out, with new technologies, how to produce and then how to disseminate this intelligence as quickly and accurately as possible. The number of people doing that has gone down. This is not a simple task, such as we sometimes see in crime reports, where somebody will go into a 7-Eleven store, and they will have a camera that shows who they are. It is not that simple. These are, on the imaging side, complicated images; on the signal side, complicated signals; and always, on the human side, a very complicated set of circumstances out there that have to be first observed and then interpreted by men and women who have the requisite skills to get the job done. Furthermore, we are making decisions today that don't just affect this year. We are making decisions today that will affect intelligence collectors and intelligence efforts 10 years from now. In the area of technology, one has to try to anticipate where the world is going to go. The chairman and I put together what is called a technical advisory group, a group of not only highly skilled but highly motivated men and women, who love their country and are concerned about what we need to do to keep our country safe. We were able to basically take very complicated subjects; in my case--I am sure it is not true for the chairman --they had to convert sophisticated subject matter into very unsophisticated phrases so I would be able to understand what it was they were saying and make better judgments as well about what we need to do. Their contributions have been enormously important and have added significant value to our ability to make these kinds of decisions. I pay them a very high compliment and urge my colleagues to consider that it is not just the highly professional and skilled staff--a couple years ago, we went away from a system where Republicans got so many staff members, Democrats got so many staff members or an individual got staff as well, to a professional staff--we have enjoyed the benefit of tremendous input coming from our private sector technical advisory group. The cold war has ended. And it is quite appropriate for us to have downsized our intelligence collection. As I said, in my strong and considered judgment, we have reached the point of no return. We have reached the point now where we are beginning to drawdown, as we say in farm country, our seed corn. We are drawing down our basic stockpile of resources to the point where we are doing great damage to our ability to answer the call of warfighters. Though nobody knew the direction the world was going to take, or the size and seriousness of the threats the United States was going to face after the cold war, during the transition I believe it was quite correct to restructure many national priorities and get our economy back on sound footing. However, this transition must be considered to be open especially now that we have a better understanding of where the rest of the world is heading and we have a much more precise understanding of the kinds of threats the people of the United States face in that world. Unfortunately, in some areas in the world, the world is heading in the wrong direction. Rogue states are trying to acquire chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons for the purpose of threatening us and our friends. Many countries are actively pursuing long-range missile programs, which also threaten international peace. A potential strategic partner, Russia, is in the midst of economic chaos and under extreme political difficulties. In recent war game exercises involving 50,000 conventional forces in Russia, the defense minister said those conventional forces did not have the capability they had 7 or 8 years ago when it was the Soviet Union. They have now made a decision to use nuclear weapons much more quickly than under previous battlefield instructions. That increases the threat to the people of the United States and signals the kind of decisionmaking that other powers out there that do not have conventional parity with the United States and other powers with bad intent might do in order to compensate for their lack of conventional strength. Even more problematic, Russia's nuclear stockpile is aging. It is subject to the vagaries of the political and economic problems that confront its national leaders and too large to serve its essential defense requirements. Moreover, other nations are either at war or on the brink of war. Prior to the Fourth of July recess, I spoke on the floor about the escalating military confrontation building between India and Pakistan. That conflict appears to have been resolved and a stand-down has occurred, but that conflict could flash up in an instant and put the interests of the people of the United States at considerable risk. Elsewhere, in Kosovo and Bosnia, and with Serbia, as well, our relations are extremely unsettled and are the focus of very close attention. The list goes on and on. We have 37,000 Americans forward deployed in South Korea. Americans are forward deployed in many other regions in this world for the purpose of stabilizing those parts of the world. We believe--and I think quite correctly--that forward deployment increases stability in the world and adds to the chances of success to the struggling democratic nations--struggling to make the transition from command economies to market. It is very important for the United States to deploy our forces. It tends to act as a deterrent against potential bad actors. We have a mission in Iraq we are flying on a daily basis, and we are trying to watch literally the entire planet simultaneously so as to prepare our policymakers for something that could happen which could put American lives and interests at risk. I am not trying to turn this statement into an international tour de force over foreign or defense policy. Instead, I want to remind my colleagues and the citizens whom they represent, that in many regions the world order is very disordered, and the Intelligence Community is the edge our policymakers must have in order to stay ahead of what has happened. Without timely intelligence support, we cannot respond effectively. This means the era of downsizing intelligence has to end or we will find ourselves at a point where Congress discovers there are things we can't do. There is a tendency to take our intelligence efforts for granted and see it as sort of an invisible force. We see an image that is presented to us, such as a bomb damage assessment, and we don't understand what went into that. We didn't merely pull it off of a shelf. Or we see a report of an analysis that is done, where decisions are made and troops are deployed, and we don't ask ourselves as often as we should what was the intelligence collection fraction that went into that effort. Was it possible to just pick up the forces and go into an area? The answer is no. A significant amount of analysis is done, and that analysis has given us an edge. It gives us battlefield superiority and the capability of doing things that, in previous wars, we were simply unable to do. Our enemies know that. Our intelligence capability, all by itself, acts as a considerable deterrent. Because people know we have the capabilities, they are much less likely to take an action that would be hostile to us, dangerous to us and at the end of the day dangerous for them as well. As colleagues may recall, last year when introducing the Fiscal Year 1999 Intelligence Authorization Act, I referred, as I mentioned, to this technical advisory group that Chairman Shelby had the foresight to create. This highly qualified group of Americans evaluated some of the most esoteric and technical subjects the committee had to confront in order to position intelligence for future challenges. We used their services this year. They provided us with extremely valuable advice and saved taxpayers, my guess is--it would not be out of line to say they have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. They have identified the areas where we might be able to use technology to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Because of the enormous contributions these men and women on the technical advisory group have made to the intelligence oversight effort, we had the ability not to just write a bill but, as I have said, write a bill that will keep Americans more safe. I would be remiss if I didn't mention a subject that held a lot of media attention over the past 3 or 4 months, and that is counterintelligence. This bill contains provisions intended to help intelligence and law enforcement meet the espionage challenges we face. I am sure it is obvious that because of who we are, many nations want to know what we do. Espionage is a fact of life. We should act decisively when we detect it and prosecute fully those who engage in it. But it will not go away. Thus, we need to strengthen counterintelligence to meet the challenges. The bill contains important provisions to help us attack this very real and present danger. As my colleagues are no doubt also aware, there will be an important amendment on the bill concerning a reorganization of parts of the Department of Energy. Most of the amendment is not about intelligence or counterintelligence; it is about nuclear weapons security. The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board's report entitled ``Science At Its Best, Security At Its Worst'' reminds us it is also about accountability. I look forward to a full debate on the amendment of which I am a cosponsor and to our discussion on the intelligence and counterintelligence provisions. Again, I thank Senator Shelby, the chairman of the committee, for his bipartisan and patriotic approach to developing this bill. I thank the entire staff for their work to present the committee a bill they could fully support. Because of the spirit of working together, the bill was reported out of committee unanimously. I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. KYL addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Arizona. He is persistent with this legislation. I appreciate very much his interest in the beginning in trying to do something about, as he knows, what many people have previously said needs to be done. The distinguished Senator from Virginia finally succeeded in getting a provision accepted by the administration in the national defense authorization bill having to do with an oversight committee appointed by the leadership, which I think will add a lot of value to our effort to make these labs produce good science and the best security as well. I was asked the question, I say to my friend from Arizona, not long after our caucuses, which the Senator from Arizona might be interested in: Do you think the Republicans want an issue or do they want to get something done? My view is, Senator Kyl of Arizona, Senator Murkowski of Alaska, and Senator Domenici of New Mexico want to get something done. It has been probably 20 years people have been calling to our attention the need to change the structure of this organization. It is basically a hodgepodge of various agencies that were combined in, I believe, 1978 or 1979--in the 1970's. Various agencies were combined into the Department of Energy. It is very important we seize this opportunity. Senator Rudman said he did not know what happened exactly, but all of a sudden the focus is on it. A series of things have occurred that present us with an opportunity to change this law. The law needs to be changed. The law needs to be changed to restructure this agency to make it more likely that the United States of America and our interests are going to be safe and secure, and that we will continue to produce the high-quality science these laboratories are known throughout the world for producing. I have very high praise for the Senator from Arizona. I appreciate very much his perseverance in this matter and his willingness to change his own bill to accommodate former Senator Rudman, the PFIAB's recommendations, and accommodate some of the concerns I had as well. We are trying to write a law. I know Senator Levin and Senator Bingaman, Senator Reid, and others, are going to offer some amendments. I say to my colleagues on the Democratic side, I believe, and I believe so strongly, that the Republicans do not desire an issue. They want to make real change. It would have been real easy, in fact, to say: OK, we got 10 or 11 things on the defense authorization bill. You can say that is a success; why fight that battle. We have encryption to do. We have lots of other issues--all of us do--to take care of. I am very impressed with the fact there is a determination to get a good piece of legislation that will improve the security of the United States of America and will enable us to stay in the high-quality science direction these laboratories produce. I hope the debate, which I am not sure is going to occur tonight--I understand we may not have any amendments offered to this bill until tomorrow. I hope I am wrong. It will be nice to have people offer these amendments and get them out of the way so we can move on to other business. I hope the debate is engaged in the same high-level manner that we have negotiated the changes in this legislation. By high level, I mean, as I referenced earlier in praise of Chairman Shelby, the only test that is important is: Does it make the United States of America more secure? I believe the amendment of the Senator from Arizona does. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of it. I intend to vote for it, and I hope some of the changes being suggested can be accommodated, but most important, I hope we end this year changing the law and are able to look into the future 10 years from now and say the laboratories are producing the finest science and the highest level of security as well.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise today in strong opposition to the motion to discharge the Finance Committee from further consideration of S.J. Res. 28. I oppose the efforts of the Senator from New Hampshire because I believe passage of S.J. Res. 28 would be a step backward and would jeopardize our efforts to encourage political and economic change in Vietnam. Mr. President, I am confident my colleagues on both sides of this debate share the same goal: helping to create a democratic Vietnam. We all want to see a Vietnam that respects the rights of all of its citizens. A Vietnam whose society is based on the rule of law. A Vietnam that protects private enterprise and abides by international commercial standards. A Vietnam that cooperates with the United States in seeking to end the pain and the lingering questions of the thousands of American POW/MIA families. While we share the same goal, we fundamentally disagree on how best to achieve a democratic Vietnam. Those who support S.J. Res. 28 believe we are more likely to promote democratic reforms and the human rights of the Vietnamese people by discontinuing our dialogue with the Government of Vietnam. They believe we can encourage the transition to free market economics by putting U.S. businesses in Vietnam at a disadvantage relative to their global competitors and making it more difficult for them to operate. Finally, they believe we can improve Vietnamese cooperation in solving outstanding POW/MIA cases by jeopardizing successful, joint investigative and recovery programs. Proponents of this legislation will argue passage of S.J. Res. 28 would only have the minimal effect of denying the President's waiver of the provisions of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. The truth is, this vote is a referendum on our entire policy of engaging Vietnam. Those who support this Resolution have opposed every effort to normalize U.S.- Vietnamese relations. With this Resolution, they are trying to take us back to the policy of the 1980s that sought to isolate Vietnam from the United States both diplomatically and economically. This policy failed in the 1980s, and will undoubtedly fail again. Mr. President, proof of the failure of disengagement is found in the fact that since renewing our diplomatic relations with Vietnam we have seen progress on the issues we care about. I attribute most of this improvement on the ability of our government to communicate with Vietnam through normal, diplomatic channels. This progress will continue if we allow people like Ambassador Pete Peterson to continue to impress upon the Government of Vietnam the seriousness with which we attach to issues such as democratization, human rights, and POW/MIAs. Passage of this Resolution will undermine Ambassador Peterson's efforts, will force us to step back from our policy of engagement, and will endanger the progress we have already achieved. This is not to say that we do not continue to have issues with which we disagree with the Vietnamese government. Economic and social reforms are not progressing quickly enough. We continue to hear of cases where the rights of political dissidents are not respected. And until every POW/MIA is accounted for, we will continue to press the Vietnamese government for answers. However, the authors of S.J. Res. 28--those who oppose continued normalization of our relations with Vietnam--have failed to explain how disengaging from Vietnam will encourage their government to take positive action on any of these issues. Mr. President, those who prefer isolation simply fail to fully understand the power of the United States to act as a catalyst for societal and economic change. We cannot be this catalyst for the Vietnamese people if we are not fully engaged in Vietnam. I would argue we need to be more engaged than we are today. Where we disagree with Vietnamese government, we should forcefully challenge them. And where we see the budding signs of reform, we should foster its growth. We cannot do this if--as those on the other side propose--we do not continue to move forward in our relationship with Vietnam. Passage of S.J. Res. 28 is a step backward. Rather than going back, I believe we should look forward. We should look for ways to fully unleash the power of our people, our ideals, and our system of government to help the Vietnamese achieve the goal of democracy. I urge my colleagues to oppose the motion to discharge S.J. Res. 28. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from New Mexico, how is the time being controlled?

Mr. KERREY. Do I have to use my time to speak against or not?

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President I yield such time as is necessary from our side to speak in favor of the Kyl-Domenici-Murkowski amendment. I believe this reorganization plan complements the reforms already included in our defense authorization bill as well as the reforms set forth by Secretary Richardson and that they help him achieve his mission. This plan, which is contained in this amendment, will sustain and improve the extraordinary science performed by the nuclear laboratories of the Energy Department while significantly improving security and counterintelligence. Under this reorganization, the Secretary of Energy will set policy and maintain authority over all elements of the new Agency for Nuclear Stewardship. The agency director will then implement his policy and demand that the highest security standards are maintained within the nuclear weapons laboratories. This plan reduces the bureaucracy that both stifles scientific endeavors and hinders security and counterintelligence at our laboratories. The agency will maintain the links between the weapons labs and other labs in parts of the Department of Energy, thereby preserving the capability to cross-fertilize science that is being performed in different programs and in different locations. Numerous reviews that have been performed over the past 25 years by executive branch agencies, the General Accounting Office, the Congress, independent panels, and the Energy Department itself have found security wanting and lax at all of the weapons laboratories. A spate of espionage cases over the last 15 years, cases involving the potential theft of our most potent nuclear weapons designs, shows that counterintelligence at the Energy Department needs serious improvement. In recent hearings, witnesses before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and other committees have described the confused lines of authority, lack of accountability, and both inadvertent and conscious disregard for security concerns. Last month the President's National Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the PFIAB, led by former Senator Warren Rudman, issued the latest in a long series of reports critical of security and counterintelligence at the weapons laboratories. In its report entitled ``Science At Its Best, Security At Its Worst,'' the PFIAB found that ``organization disarray, managerial neglect and a culture of arrogance both at DOE headquarters and the labs themselves, conspired to create an espionage scandal waiting to happen.'' In response to these problems, the Rudman panel calls for reorganization as necessary ``to resolve the many specific problems with security and counterintelligence in the weapons laboratories but also to address the lack of accountability that has become endemic throughout the entire Department.'' The new structure envisioned in this amendment strengthens the management structure overseeing the nuclear weapons laboratories. By removing the unnecessary involvement of redundant officials in the running of the labs, the new Agency for Nuclear Stewardship sets both clear lines of authority and defined lines of accountability in how the labs are managed. This helps assure that policy directives are properly and expeditiously developed, and that officials can be held accountable for success and failure related to scientific research and security measures. No management structure, however well designed, can be effective if the personnel filling the organization chart are not up to the job. The Under Secretary for Nuclear Stewardship will be appointed by the President and subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. He or she will be required by statute to have an extensive background in national security, organizational management, and the appropriate technical areas relevant to weapons design work. This individual will be assisted within the Agency by three Deputy Directors for defense programs, nonproliferation and materials disposition, and naval reactors. To promote security throughout the Agency, the Director will be assisted by a Chief of Nuclear Stewardship Counterintelligence, a Chief of Nuclear Stewardship Security, and a Chief of Nuclear Stewardship Intelligence who will work to promote the awareness of and implement measures related to security and counterintelligence. Under this amendment, the Under Secretary will have the necessary authority to effectively manage the Agency for Nuclear Stewardship. This Under Secretary will follow the policies established by the Secretary. The Agency's subordinate security, counterintelligence, and intelligence chiefs will follow policies developed by their corresponding Energy Department offices and approved by the Secretary. The point here is that the Secretary remains accountable, the Secretary retains authority, and as a consequence, the Secretary retains responsibility for the work that is being done. This amendment essentially, under statute, will remove much of the middle-level structure that has built up over the years, which has made it extremely difficult to manage and almost impossible to determine who is responsible. Despite the end of the cold war, our Nation still faces a nuclear threat, and that threat continues to grow. We must not allow the nuclear secrets paid for by the toil and ingenuity of Americans to become tools of those who may wish to harm our Nation. The new Agency for Nuclear Stewardship will help protect those secrets and keep our nuclear arsenal the most advanced and safest among nations. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues, Senator Landrieu, Senator Breaux, Senator Lott, and others in supporting the Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 1999. This important legislation will provide consistent funding to state fish and wildlife conservation programs to help maintain our precious natural resources, and will help to bring more Nebraskans back to the river--in our case, the Missouri River. This legislation will give states the necessary funding to carry out a flexible, non-regulatory approach to conservation that prevents species and their habitats from becoming endangered and to restore fish and wildlife populations to healthy numbers. This legislation is consistent with and fully complementary to the Missouri River Valley Improvement Act of 1999 that I recently introduced, along with my colleagues Senator Daschle and Senator Johnson. The most important provisions of the Conservation and Reinvestment Act for my home state of Nebraska are Titles II and III, the Land and Water Conservation Fund reform provisions. Title III of this legislation would restore state-side funding to the Land and Water Conservation Fund--funding that has been diverted in recent years for other uses. However, as emphasized by the bill's authors and supporters, restoration of these funds to states is more important now than ever before, as Nebraska and all states are faced with accelerated population growth and urban sprawl, and increased demand by families, communities, and the business sector for recreation and conservation areas--areas that draw people and economic growth. Nebraska, as well as other states, has relied on hunters and anglers to provide the bulk of financial support for fish and wildlife programs--particularly through the purchase of hunting and fishing licenses and through excise taxes on sporting goods. However, these funds have not been adequate to address the needs of declining nongame species. Titles II and III of the Conservation and Reinvestment Act would provide a permanent Federal funding source to meet these needs in Nebraska and other states, and would revitalize the state matching grants program. The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, as passed in 1965, utilized a portion of the proceeds from Outer Continental Shelf mineral leasing revenues to give to state and local governments for recreation and conservation purposes as those governments deemed necessary and beneficial for their communities. In 1997, a record $5.2 billion in royalties, rents, and bonus payments from new lease sales was collected by the Federal government. Significant federal revenues from Outer Continental Shelf leasing and production has been designated by law for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, but since 1995, Congress has not appropriated these monies to the states, but rather has transferred most of these funds to the U.S. Treasury for other uses. This important legislation would rectify this, and bring the funding source back to Nebraska and to local Nebraska communities. State and local governments match, dollar for dollar, Federal Land and Water Conservation funds for open space conservation and recreation in our communities. This act would restore the state and local funding, bolster the federal funding component, and also secure funding for urban parks and recreational areas. While this act would currently provide 7 percent of Land and Water Conservation Funds to the states, I signed a letter today, along with several of my colleagues in the Senate, urging that funding for this provision be increased to 10 percent--a level that I believe to be consistent with the needs that exist in my state of Nebraska and in others. Besides providing recreational funding support for community needs, this source of funds can have a significant impact on non-regulatory approaches to preventing wildlife species from being listed as threatened or declined under the Endangered Species Act--listings which often find landowners embroiled in private property rights vs. species protection laws. By enabling communities and states to preserve identified areas where habitat and species can be allowed to flourish with minimal or little disruption on the lives and activities of people, we can help to prevent future listings, and to safeguard against some of the social and economic disruptions that have often accompanied past listings. Additionally, wildlife conservation, conservation education, and wildlife-associated recreational programs--all of which contribute increasingly significant tourism and recreational dollar returns to the state of Nebraska--are traditionally underfunded. The International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies estimates these needs nationally to be approximately one billion dollars per year. Increasing Title III funding to 10 percent of Outer Continental Shelf receipts would give Nebraska approximately an additional $1.7 million annually--money that I know from the people of Nebraska is both needed and would be well-spent. The Nebraska State Legislature passed a resolution this year in support of this bill, as did the City of Grand Island in Nebraska. Nebraska Governor Mike Johanns is one of 27 Governors to officially support this legislation. All 50 state fish and wildlife agencies, including the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, and more than 3,000 local entities, businesses, clubs, and conservation organizations have endorsed the Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 1999. Nationwide, more than 200 state and local ballot initiatives sought to commit billions of dollars for conservation, farmland protection, and urban revitalization policies. More than 70 percent of these initiatives were supported by voters. I enthusiastically add my support to this impressive list of supporters, and look forward to working with Senator Landrieu and our colleagues to finalize and pass this important legislation.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, the Senator from New Mexico has done a very good job of outlining an urgent need to change our law governing the Department of Energy. I have high praise for him and Senators Warner, Murkowski, Kyl, and, on our side, Senators Levin, Bingaman, and Lieberman, who have worked to try to fashion a piece of legislation, a law that will balance our need for secrecy and our need for security. I appreciate very much, I say to the Senator, his leadership on this and the sense of urgency that he has brought to the need to change our law. My hope is that we, at the end of the day, at the end of this debate--I do not think there is going to be very much objection to moving to this bill--my hope is that we can get a very large majority, if not a unanimous vote in support. I know the Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, has some amendments he wants to offer. He has talked to me a little bit about them. We will have a chance to talk about those, I guess, tomorrow when we come to it. But there is no question that the laboratories have been a tremendous source of pride and a tremendous source of discovery and a tremendous success story as far as delivering to the United States of America things that have made the United States of America more secure and more prosperous. Likewise, there is no question that over the years--over the last 20 years or so--since the Department of Energy was created, there has been sort of a gradual buildup of layers of bureaucracy that make it more and more difficult for any Secretary of Energy, whether that individual has the requisite skills or not, to know what is going on in the laboratories and to have the authority needed to manage those agencies so those laboratories, as Senator Rudman, chairman of the PFIAB says in the title of his report, can get both the best science and the best security simultaneously. We unquestionably have the best science. I am quite certain the Senator from New Mexico believes the same way I do. In visiting the labs, in particular the lab that is under question, Los Alamos, most of the people I have met there described themselves as being very conservative to extremely conservative on the question of security and expressed their concern that their reputation for keeping the United States of America safe has been damaged. Of all the people who are anxious to get the law changed so that the lab's reputation for being the world's finest both for science and security can be restored, there are no more powerful advocates of that than at Los Alamos Laboratory from Dr. Brown on down. This is an unusual opportunity because normally the intelligence authorization bill goes through almost with unanimous consent. Since I have had the opportunity a few years to come here with the chairman, with usually about 15 minutes' worth of conversation and without a lot of interest, the bill goes through. The good news this year is that it will not go through quite so quickly. It is good news because it gives us an opportunity to examine what it is this bill does and what it is this bill does not do. Unfortunately, current law does not allow us to tell the people of the United States of America either how much we spend on all of our intelligence collection, analysis, or dissemination efforts, or does it allow us to tell what the individual components of that are. I say ``unfortunately'' because I do believe quite strongly that we would be better off changing the law so the public did know both of those things. I believe that unless the people of the United States of America support what it is we are doing with our intelligence efforts, it is very difficult, over a long period of time, to sustain that effort. I myself am very much concerned that at the moment the general public does not either understand what it is we do on the intelligence side, or as a consequence of some very highly publicized failures are they terribly confident that we are doing a very good job of collecting intelligence, analyzing that intelligence, producing that intelligence, and then disseminating that intelligence to either warfighters or to national policymakers. I have had the good fortune of watching the men and women who do this work for a number of years. I am not only impressed with their skills, but I am impressed with their patriotism and impressed with their successes, most of which I cannot talk about on the floor this afternoon. Let me make the case, first of all, for secrecy. I think there are times when it is absolutely vital and needed. When we have warfighters on the field, as we recently had in Kosovo, we obviously can't provide the target list to the public and let people know where it is that these pilots are going to be flying. We cannot obviously provide battlefield information. Otherwise, we are going to increase the risk to these warfighters. It is always difficult in an environment where it is just the United States, let alone where there are 18 allies, to contain that intelligence and not have a terrible example of something where intelligence information got to our enemies, and as a consequence, they were better prepared, and as a consequence either we were not as successful as we wanted to be or there were casualties as a consequence. It is a life-or-death matter that we keep these secrets. We have asked men and women to put their lives at risk, and we have to protect their interests. Otherwise, we will find it very difficult to find volunteers to go on these missions. It is needed for military operations. It is needed for some covert operations as well, where the President has signed a finding. He has asked that certain things be done, again, in the interest of the United States, overseen by the Congress. Today, I have very high praise for this administration in that regard. Since the Aldrich Ames spy incident where Aldrich Ames, traitor to his country, not only gave up U.S. secrets, he gave up secrets that led to the deaths of many men and women who were working on our behalf, this administration has increasingly come to the oversight committees, one in the House and one in the Senate that were created in 1976, with what are called notifications of errors, notifications of problems and mistakes that were made on a weekly basis. We are receiving information that the executive branch thinks we need to know in order for us to make judgments about what it is we think the United States of America ought to be doing. So there is a lot more--in fact, it feels like a fire hose at times--notifications that are occurring in both the House and the Senate committee. Indeed, our committee was notified about this particular incident in 1996, and I think we responded appropriately to it at the time. We pushed back and asked for additional counterintelligence. When I say ``this particular incident,'' I am talking about the notification of the possibility that the Chinese had acquired what we now know in published accounts to be details about a weapons system known as the W- 88, our most sophisticated nuclear weapon, that the Chinese had acquired that through espionage in the 1980s. We were notified of that in 1996, 11 years after it was suspected to have happened. I think the committees were properly notified, and I think the committees properly responded and measured the relative threat to other things in the world and pushed back and responded, I thought, in an appropriate fashion. There was much more that we probably could have done. I will let history judge whether or not we did enough. The point is, there are secrets. As a consequence of those secrets, under law, under a resolution we have created, the Senate Committee on Intelligence and the House has done the same. Those committees have congressional responsibility for hearing these secrets and making judgments, first, about what kind of structure, what kind of budget, and what kind of operations we are going to approve. I make the case that secrecy is needed in order to maintain our security both for military and for our operations. There are sources that we use, there are methods we use, both of which must be kept secret in order for us to continue to recruit and in order for us to continue to operate with a maximum amount of safety for, again, the men and women who have chosen, as a result of their patriotic love of their country, to serve their country in these missions. We need to make certain we provide them with the secrecy needed for them to conduct their operations. However, there are times when secrecy does not equal security. It is a very important point for us to consider as we both debate this bill and try to think about how we want to write our laws and think about how we are going to do our operation. Sometimes secrecy can make security more difficult. There is a recently declassified report called the Venona Report that describes the acquisition of information about spies inside the United States during the post-World War II era. In that report, there is a very interesting moment when General Omar Bradley, who at that time was in charge of intelligence, made the decision not to inform the President of the United States that Klaus Fuchs and others were spies for the Soviet Union. The President was not informed. Secrecy was maintained. General Bradley liked President Truman; he was an Army man like himself. But he made a judgment that secrecy had to be maintained, that the commanding officer of all our forces, that the President, duly elected by the people, didn't have a need to know. So a judgment was made to preserve secrecy. I believe, as a consequence, policies didn't turn out to be as good as they should have and security was compromised as a consequence. I am not blaming General Bradley. I see it from time to time. Indeed, what caused me to talk about this was my belief that we should change the law and allow the people of the United States of America to know how much of their money we are allocating for intelligence and how much in the various categories is being allocated. I fear that all the public has are bad stories about mistakes that are being made, the most recent one being a mistake in targeting inside of Belgrade. The Chinese Embassy was mistakenly hit one block away from another target that should have been hit. A great deal of examination of that has already been done. It caused us a great deal of trouble with the Chinese Ambassador. Under Secretary of State Pickering had to make a trip to China. This all occurred at a very delicate time when we were trying to get the Chinese to agree to some changes in their policy to ascend to the WTO. It was a big embarrassment. I get asked about it all the time: What kind of so-and-so's are over there? Are we getting our money's worth? Are we wasting our money? Couldn't they just have spent $2 on a map that was readily available to show where the Chinese Embassy was? Why spend billions of dollars on all these folks if they don't even have good enough sense to use a commercially made $2 map? There are questions about the failure to predict the detonation of a nuclear weapon in India over a year ago, which was followed by a detonation by Pakistan. A third item I hear a lot is that the CIA failed to predict the end of the Soviet Union, and anybody that can't predict that doesn't deserve to get a lot of U.S. tax dollars. It is unfortunate that only the bad stories get out. First of all, on the targeting of the embassy, it was a mistake, but we were in a war, for gosh sakes. We are being asked to deliver targets, asked to identify the targets, and the operation's requirement was to minimize the casualties to the United States and our allies. Not a single American or single ally was killed during that entire operation. I consider that a mark of tremendous success. That did not occur by accident. There is no shelf of books with one saying ``T'' for targets in Belgrade and Kosovo. We had to develop those targets on our own and relatively late. We didn't expect the bombing operation to go on that long. We had--when I say ``we,'' I mean the administration--the impression that possibly it would be over quicker, based upon the experience of 1995. In short, it was a tremendous success. Not only were we able to conduct that operation without a single allied casualty, but, in addition, we reversed the trend of modern warfare in the 20th century. Modern warfare in the 20th century has seen an increasing fraction of casualties that are noncombatants. I believe, in this case, except for the casualties produced by the Serbian army and their military police and their paramilitary units in Kosovo, there was also success in minimizing civilian casualties in this effort. We could not, for example, have implemented Dayton. One of the untold stories is the success of the intelligence operations. At that time, it was General Hughes who organized the takeover authority in December of 1995. It was a United Nations operation, transferred over to NATO. They worked night and day to set up a communications system that allowed us to know who was and who wasn't abiding by the Dayton agreement--a very, very complicated agreement. The people who were in charge of developing our intelligence operation read it, knew it, and disseminated it down the ranks. Everybody understood what had to be done. It was impressive that, in a very small amount of time, we were able to put together an intelligence collection and dissemination effort that enabled us to implement the Dayton agreement. There are many other examples, such as the Indian detonation of a nuclear weapon. In fact, we had the intelligence collection that predicted and prevented one about 18 months earlier. Nobody should have been surprised. We don't really need to have intelligence officers collecting and predicting a detonation of nuclear weapons in India when the successful party in an election promised, and made a part of their campaign a promise, to detonate if they were elected, to test a nuclear weapon. Anyway, I think it is very important for me, as somebody who has been given by my leader the opportunity to sit on this committee and to observe what is going on, to attempt to correct things I thought were wrong, make decisions about how much taxpayer money to allocate, about how to respond to mistakes made and intelligence errors that occur, how to respond and correct those errors--it is very important for me to say to taxpayers that my view is that you are getting your money's worth. According to published accounts, we spend $28 billion a year. I wish I could provide that number as well as some additional details, but if that is the current dollar amount, according to published accounts, in my view, just watching what is done, the American people are getting their money's worth. There are tremendous threats in the world that our intelligence agencies collect against. They supply that intelligence to our warfighters, to our military people. Imagine what it would be like to be in charge of U.S. forces in South Korea. You have the most heavily militarized area in the world between North and South Korea. There are about 37,000 young men and women in South Korea defending against a possible attack from North Korea, and the question to their commanding officer is: What are North Korea's intentions? What are they doing? They need an answer. It is an extremely hard target to penetrate and to know what is going on. Those warfighters need to know that information. They can't operate in the dark. Our intelligence collection operators do that time in and time out, day in and day out, try to collect, process, produce, and disseminate intelligence to warfighters and the national policymakers and decisionmakers, in order that the United States of America can be as safe as it possibly can be. My view is that they have achieved a substantial success. They are not perfect; none of us are. But their substantial success deserves a very high amount of praise. Mr. President, a related problem we have with intelligence is that many people presume that the Director of Central Intelligence, who manages the CIA and other national intelligence efforts, controls it all. Not true, though the Brown commission report that was assembled after the Aldrich Ames betrayal recommended that increased authority be given to the Director of Central Intelligence to budget and select personnel for these other areas. For many reasons, these authorities were not granted the Director. The current Director, Mr. Tenet, controls far less than they realize, under law. I don't believe that is a healthy situation. We were successful 2 years ago in getting the Director, under statute, some additional authorities. But my view is that it is not enough to match authority with responsibility. We have not done that. We are holding the Director responsible for intelligence failures in many areas over which he has no real direct budget authority or personnel authority. So the distinguished Senator from New Mexico has properly identified a problem at the laboratories, as a result of the structure of the law that governs the Department of Energy, that needs to be fixed. The concern is that through some set of facts--today, we don't even know what the set of facts are--the Chinese probably acquired information about our nuclear secrets, and, as a consequence, they may have the capacity to build and deploy very dangerous weapons. They stole secrets from us, and, as a consequence, we are concerned about how to increase the secrecy of these labs. I underscore with this statement that secrecy does not in all cases equal security. There are times when secrecy will make security more difficult to achieve. My own view is that the failure under law to let the public know what our expenditures are, and how those moneys are spent, decreases our security because, unless I am mistaken in just sensing citizens' attitudes toward our intelligence agencies, they do not have a sufficient amount of confidence that they are getting their money's worth. As a consequence of that lack of confidence, I think we are having a difficult time acquiring the resources necessary in a world that is more complicated and a world that, in many ways, is more dangerous than it was prior to the end of the cold war. My hope is that this debate about the Department of Energy can occur relatively quickly, that we can get to it tomorrow, that we can resolve the remaining conflicts, and that we can get this intelligence authorization bill passed. Both the chairman and I see the year 2000 as a watershed year. We were successful last year in increasing the resources given to our intelligence checks and analysis and production and dissemination efforts. We need to continue that trend. We have been downsizing in the 1990s. I believe very strongly that that downsizing must stop if we are going to be able to honestly say yes to the American people, that we are doing all we can to keep them as safe as possible against a real range of threats which are still out there in the world. The United States of America is the leading nation on this planet. We have the strongest economy. We have the strongest military. We have the longest running democracy. We tend to take sides on issues, whether it is in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, or someplace else on the planet. We clearly take sides when it comes to fighting for individual freedom--for the freedom of people in China, for the freedom of people in Russia, and throughout this planet. We put our resources and our reputation and our lives on the line. In 1996--it has been so long ago--Americans stationed in Saudi Arabia after the gulf war, flying missions and supporting missions in the southern area, were killed. We suspect a variety of possibilities as perpetrators. But they were killed not because they were in Saudi Arabia by accident; they were in Saudi Arabia defending U.S. interests, and they were killed because they were targeted by people who didn't want them in Saudi Arabia. We take sides, and, as a consequence, we are targets. We are targets as well because we have been successful. There is jealousy and hatred towards the people of the United States of America. We understand the interconnected nature of our economy and of our diplomacy throughout the world. A problem in Angola can be a problem in Omaha, NE relatively quickly. So we forward-deploy our resources. We don't just have missions in NATO or missions that involve the United Nations. We are forward- deployed throughout the world in an attempt to make the world more peaceful, more democratic, and more prosperous. It is a mission the United States of America has selected for itself. I thank God that it has. It is a mission that has resulted in enormous success. I don't know how the rest of my colleagues felt at the time, but I remember quite vividly and was very moved for moments during Joint Sessions of Congress--not that Presidents haven't moved me with their State of the Union Addresses. But far more moving to me was Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, and Kim Dae-jung of South Korea. All four of these men came to a Joint Session of Congress and said to the representatives of the people of this country: Thank you; you have put your lives on the line for our freedom; you put your money on the line for our freedom; you stayed the course, and we are free. Since Kim Dae-jung of South Korea gave that address, if I ever ran into a man who fought in the ``forgotten war'' in South Korea in the 1950s, I am quick to say this. I know there are many criticisms of that war. Many people wondered whether or not it was worthwhile. Let me tell you, on behalf of the President of South Korea and the people of South Korea, that that war was worth fighting. All one has to do is look at the difference between living in freedom in South Korea--an imperfect democracy, as many are; but, nonetheless, the people of South Korea are free; their standard of living is higher; they have the liberty to practice their religion, to speak on the streets--and North Korea, which is a nation of great suffering and great anguish. Large numbers of people are dying as a consequence of malnutrition. The country is arguably in the worst condition of any country on the face of this Earth. That didn't occur by accident. The world marketplace didn't get that done. I am a big fan of the marketplace and a big fan of what business can do. The intervention that liberated the people of South Korea was not the intervention of Sears & Roebuck; it was the intervention of American forces, American will, American blood, and American money. The people of South Korea are free as a consequence. We didn't make a decision based on the shape of their eyes or based on the color of their skin or based upon their religion. We didn't do it based upon a desire to own territory or a desire to own wealth or a desire to establish a colony. We did it based upon a desire to fight and to keep the people of South Korea free. When you take a stand such as that, as the distinguished occupant of the Chair knows--he has been in politics a very long time, an outstanding public servant--you know when you take a stand, especially on a controversial subject, you are apt to provoke some enemies; you are apt to get people organized against you. They don't agree with the position on this, that, or the other thing. The United States has enemies as a result of taking a stand and as a result of our having taken a stand throughout the world in general on behalf of freedom. We provoke animosity in many ways. We are at risk, as a consequence, not just from nation states--that is the older world where nation states were the No. 1 threat--today, it is nonnation state actors such as Osama bin Laden and other terrorists who organize themselves away from the normal powers and structures of government. Cyber warfare, biological and chemical warfare--all of these things we have discussed at length are real and present dangers to the people of the United States of America. It is certainly true that our diplomats at the State Department and our diplomats in other areas of Government have to try to use our intelligence and produce diplomatic successes, as well as to reduce threats. But the State Department, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture--throughout Government--the Congress, and the President of the United States regularly receive analysis that has occurred after checks have been done, after analysis has been done, after production has occurred, and then it is disseminated to people who make decisions all the time and, hopefully, make better decisions as a consequence of the intelligence delivered to them. My view is that this budget decline we have experienced in the 1990s needs to stop. I hope that this intelligence authorization bill will be passed by the Senate, that we can go to conference quickly with the House, and get it to the President for his signature. I have no doubt that the President, subject to our not putting things on here that the President can't support, will sign the bill. One of the things that I think undercuts our ability to do that is the continued belief we have to keep from the American people how much money is being spent. I have said that often enough now. I am not going to offer an amendment. I can count votes. I know that amendment would not succeed. But I intend to continue to make the point and try to persuade, especially my friends on the other side of the aisle, that we will increase the Nation's security by making this information publicly available to the American people. Again, the point here is that 100 percent secrecy does not always equal 100 percent security. Sometimes 100 percent secrecy can actually decrease the security, as a consequence of the right people not getting the information. As a consequence of discussions not proceeding subject to compartmentalization that prevented one key person from talking to another key person, and, as a consequence, neither one of them knew what the other was doing, the result is that a bad decision was made. I also would like to discuss an issue that, to me, is extremely important. I don't know if the Senator from New Mexico has additional things he wants to say. Does the Senator from Michigan desire to speak? Since I will be assigned to sit down for a long period of time, Senators may want to move on. I think I will have plenty of time to talk about this bill. Mr. President, I presume they would like to speak. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. KERREY. Madam President, this bill doesn't normally get a lot of attention, but because of the concern over the loss of secrets through our laboratories at the DOE, we are going to have a debate about an amendment to restructure the Department of Energy. I want to make a point that I made earlier, which is that secrecy and security are not the same thing. Sometimes secrecy equals security. Sometimes secrecy can make security more difficult, harder for us to accomplish the mission of keeping the United States of America as secure as we possibly can. I am not going to offer an amendment to this bill, because it has been defeated pretty soundly in the past--although I must say I am tempted to do so--to disclose to the American people how much is spent on intelligence gathering. Right now, under law, we cannot do that. I want to call my colleagues' attention to what is happening. Our first vote is on cloture. I think cloture will be invoked pretty easily. Our leader is not going to hold anybody up from voting for cloture. Maybe we can go right to the bill. Listening to Senators Domenici and Levin earlier, I think they may be able to solve their differences. The vote may end up being unanimous, which is my wish. I hope we can continue to move closer together on that piece of legislation, an important piece of legislation on which Senator Domenici and others have been working. I want to call my colleagues' attention to what we do every year basically, and that is, the authorization of appropriations for the intelligence bill is very small, as a consequence of not being able to disclose to the American people what is in the bill. The House bill contains six titles. The Senate bill, which will be offered as a substitute for the House bill, also contains six titles. The first two titles are identical. Titles I and II in the House bills are identical. Then there are general provisions, and then each bill has additional things in there. But you can see the problem we have getting public support for intelligence collection. That is one step in the process of intelligence. We collect with imaging efforts, we collect with signals intercepts, we collect with human intelligence, and we have measurement intelligence. We have all sorts of various what are called INTs that are used to gather raw data. Then somebody has to take that data and analyze it. What does it mean? What does this data mean? What is the interpretation of it? Oftentimes secrecy can be a problem because one compartment may not be talking to another. This administration and others have worked to try to bring various people together so there is more consultation than there has been in the past. But oftentimes decisions have to be made very quickly. Sometimes interpretations of public information are made, and an adjustment is made. Let me be very specific. About 80 percent, in my view, of the decisions that most elected people make in Congress having to do with national security are made as a result of something they acquired in a nonclassified fashion in a TV report, in a radio report, in a newspaper report, or a published document. Staff analyze it and come and say: This is what we think is going on--about 80 percent of the information that we process. I would say that would probably be on the low side. It may be even higher than that. Indeed, the President may be in a similar situation. He may be making a decision on a very high percentage of publicly accessible information as opposed to classified information. That is quite the trend. The trend is both healthy and at times disturbing because more and more information is being made available to the public that was not available in the past. The good news is citizens have more information. They process that information. We have a lot of independent analysts out there. In a couple of years, when metering satellite photographs are available, we are going to see competing analyses being done over images. This is what I see when I take that photograph. I say this because I think it is true that it is very difficult, for any length of time for the Congress and the President to do something the public doesn't support, especially when it comes to spending their money. In this case, I just hazard a guess. I never polled on this. But certainly I take a lot of anecdotal stories on board from citizens who question whether or not they are getting their money's worth. Is all the money we are spending worthwhile when we aren't able to tell where the Chinese Embassy is in Belgrade? A $2 map would have told us where it was. When we were unable to forecast a class of facility, when we were unable to foresee that India was going to test a nuclear weapon following an election, during which the party that was successful campaigned, and their platform said, if we are elected and we come to power, we are going to test a nuclear weapon? Many failures, in short, are out in the public, and the public acquires the information. I think it has caused them to lose confidence that they are getting their money's worth. It is a real crisis for us. It is a real challenge for us because, again, if you look at the document we will be voting on sometime in the next couple of days--usually this thing goes through very quickly and we don't have much time to consider it. In an odd way, I thank the Senator from New Mexico for bringing so much attention to the Department of Energy's need for restructuring because it has given us some time to pause and look at this piece of legislation. As I said, the two most important titles, the ones you will see in almost every intelligence authorization bill, is title I and title II. Title I has five sections. It authorizes appropriations. It give us classified schedule authorization, personnel ceiling adjustment authorization, community management account authorization, and emergency supplemental appropriations. That is in the House bill. The Senate bill has four titles. It is quite revealing when you go into title I. Again, normally, if this is a Department of Defense authorization, each one of these titles would provide the detailed and specific number of how much is being spent, all the way down to the very small individual accounts that would be disclosed to the public. There would be a great debate going on. The committee report comes out. The budget comes out. The bill is reported by the Armed Services Committee. Editorials are written. Journalists and specialists say we are spending too little; we are spending too much; we need to build this weapons system, and so forth. A great public debate then ensues when the committee brings the bill up and reports it out for full consideration by the Senate. I think that debate is healthy. The public participates and helps us decide what it is we ought not be doing. Sometimes we still put things in we shouldn't and some things we should. We still make mistakes. That public debate helps us. Under this authorization, what you see in section 101 is the following: The funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2000 for the conduct of intelligence and intelligence- related activities of the following elements of the U.S. Government: the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Air Force, the Department of State, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Conference Office, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency--11 different Government agencies are named but no dollar figure is included. The only dollar figure in this entire budget comes in section 104 where the public learns we are authorizing $171 million to be appropriated for the Community Management Act of the Director of Central Intelligence. We have that piece of information. Later in the bill that we will be voting on, we learn $27 million is available for the National Drug Intelligence Center. Then later, a third time we get another number. We learn $209.1 million is authorized to be appropriated to the Central Intelligence Agency's retirement and disability fund for fiscal year 2000. That is all the public learns. That is all the public knows. The public does not know how much we spend in each one of these agencies, nor how much the committee is recommending in this authorization bill, nor the total amount of dollars being spent. We have had debates about this before. There are good arguments usually filed against it: This is going to deteriorate our national security; we need to maintain, in short, a secret in order to preserve national security. I have reached the opposite conclusion, that this is a situation where the preservation of a secret deteriorates our national security as a consequence, first of all, of not having a public debate about whether this is the right allocation but, most importantly, as a consequence of deteriorating citizens' confidence that we are authorizing and appropriating the correct amount. In short, keeping this secret from the American people has caused difficulty in retaining their consensus that we ought to be spending an amount of money they do not know in order to collect, analyze, produce, and disseminate intelligence. I think that is a problem for us. Again, I have not done any polling on this, so I don't know. I typically don't poll before I make a decision, to the consternation of my staff and supporters. But my guess is, just from anecdotes, there is a deterioration of confidence. It bothers me because my term on the Intelligence Committee--thanks to the original appointment by our former Democratic leader, George Mitchell, from the great State of Maine, and also Leader Daschle's confidence in retaining me on this committee--over time my confidence has increased. Indeed, the argument in my opening statement about this bill is that we have drawn down intelligence investments in the 1990s as we have drawn down our military from roughly 2 million men and women under active duty uniform to 1.35 million. We have also drawn down our intelligence efforts to a point where I don't believe we can do all of the things that need to be done either today or in the future. As I said, I have to collect intelligence. I have to analyze the information. I have skilled people who can analyze it. These images delivered from space very often mean nothing to me when I look at them. It requires somebody who is not only skilled but can process it in a hurry and can make something of it in a hurry. In the situation with India, where we had difficulty warning the President that a test might occur, again, according to published accounts, the Indians were aware that we, first, were able to identify a year earlier they were about to test, and we warned them not to test, as a result of overhead imaging. And they took evasive measures in the future. These are very difficult things to tell. You have to hire skilled people to do it. That is the analysis. The next piece is the production. It is getting very exciting but also very complicated. There is a lot of competition with the private sector to do this production work. Back in the ice age when I was on the U.S. Navy SEAL team, we were given a map if we were going to do an operation in an area in Vietnam. We would look at a map and say: This is the area we will operate in. The map might be 10 years old. Then we would supplement that with human intelligence. Somebody would say: There are some changes here that aren't quite the same as the map. Today an image is used. It is enhanced. It is remarkable how quickly we can deliver very accurate pictures of theaters of operation to the warfighter to disseminate differently, produced in a much different way, and enable that warfighter to have a competitive edge on the battlefield. Indeed, anybody who is thinking about becoming an enemy of the United States of America knows we have tremendous capability on the intelligence side. We get warnings, and those warnings are delivered when threats begin to build. Oftentimes a mere warning enables the heading off of a potential threat that could have erupted into a serious conflict and would have resulted in a loss of lives. The effort to collect, analyze, produce, and disseminate to the right person at the right time, and to make a decision, is not only complicated, but it is also quite expensive. It is not done accidentally. I hope this year is a watershed year and we are able to authorize additional resources for our intelligence agencies. If we don't, at some point we will have a Director of Central Intelligence in the future deliver the bad news to Congress that there is something we want to do but we can't because we cannot accomplish the mission we want to accomplish--not just because of resources but also because it is getting harder and harder to do things we have in the past taken for granted, such as intercept signals, conversations, or communications of some kind between one bad person and another bad person with hostile intent against the United States. Increasingly, we are seeing a shift in two big ways away from nation states. In the old days, we could pass sanctions legislation or do something against a government that was doing something we didn't like. What do we do if Osama bin Laden starts killing Americans or narcoterrorists or cyberterrorists say they hate the United States of America and are going to take action against us? It is very difficult-- indeed, it is impossible--for diplomacy to reduce that threat. We need to intercept and try to prevent it and, very often, try to prevent it with a forceful intervention. Not only is it shifting away from the nation state, making it harder both to collect and to do the other work--the analysis, the processing and dissemination, or production of dissemination--the signals are becoming more complex and difficult to process, and they are becoming more and more encrypted. I have had conversations with the private sector, people in the software business, who say we have to change this export regimen that makes it difficult for these companies to sell encryption overseas. This administration has made tremendous accommodation within the industry to try to accommodate their need to sell to companies that are doing business all over the world. Don't doubt there is a national security issue here. There is significant interception, both on the national security side and the law enforcement side. That encryption at 128 bits or higher is actually deployed. We will find our people in the intelligence side coming back and saying: Look, I know something bad happened, and do you want to know why I didn't know? I will tell you why I didn't know. I couldn't make sense of the signal. We intercept, and all we get is a buzz and background noise. We cannot interpret it. We can't convert it. In the old days, we converted with a linguist or some other technological application. In the new world, we are being increasingly denied access to the signals. As described by the technical advisory group that was established on the Intelligence Committee, it was described as number of needles in the haystack but the haystack is getting larger and larger and harder, as a result, for the intelligence people to do the work they need to do. The chairman is moving to the floor. I know he will make a brilliant and articulate statement. Earlier, the Senator from New Mexico offered a statement on his amendment that he hopes to offer tomorrow. Senator Levin was here as well. I believe there is reason to be encouraged that we will move this bill quickly tomorrow, and reasonably encouraged, as well, that the differences which still exist on this bill can be resolved, and we can get a big bipartisan vote and move this on to conference. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERREY. I have a unanimous consent request, and then I am pleased to let the Senator continue. Privilege of the Floor

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Biden, I ask unanimous consent that the privilege of the floor be granted to David Auerswald, an American Political Science fellow on the Democratic staff of the Foreign Relations Committee, during the pendency of H.R. 1555, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2000 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities for the United States Government.

Mr. KERREY

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

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, first of all, I did not hear everything the Senator from Georgia said. As I understand it, he was talking about income tax cuts; is that correct?

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, the Senator from Georgia does not have to stay for this, but I agree with the fundamental principle the Senator from Georgia laid out. I may come at it slightly differently. There have been a lot of arguments about income tax cuts and why they are needed. I call to my colleagues' attention, one of the biggest reasons is the total amount of taxes we are currently taking from the American people which totals 20.7 percent of U.S. income. That is the highest it has been since 1945, and it continues to go up. I believe we need to measure and look at that very carefully as we decide how much in taxes we are going to take from the American people. I put myself on the side of I believe at least the fundamental principle about which the Senator from Georgia talked. There are many ways to cut taxes, and I want to talk about one way to do so this afternoon. I rise today to talk about the introduction of a bipartisan bill called the Bipartisan Social Security Reform Act of 1999. It is the only bipartisan, bicameral--it has been introduced in the House as well--Social Security reform bill, and it is the only bill that can claim to cut taxes, cut programmatic costs, leave current retirees' benefits untouched, and it substantially increases the benefit checks of women and low- and moderate-income workers. This reform plan is a reform plan for all generations. First, in our bill, current seniors--those who are eligible either for the old age, survivor, or disability benefits who have not had time to financially prepare for benefit changes--will not face any benefit cuts. Second, current workers--the baby boomers and the generation Xers-- will participate in a modernized and strengthened Social Security program. Our proposal gives all current and future workers a 2- percentage point payroll tax cut which they can invest in individual investment accounts. That is a $928 billion tax cut over the next 10 years. Indeed, as I will illustrate with my presentation, what Congress should consider, when we consider the payroll tax, is do we want to take that payroll tax and pay off the national debt. I favor a substantial debt reduction. Under our proposal, instead of going all for debt reduction, that $928 billion will be accumulated as an asset in 137 million working American households. That will add to the net worth of American working families. It is, in my view, a preferable way of dealing with the payroll taxes. It gives the baby boomers and generation Xers who have time to plan under our proposal not only a payroll tax cut, but it gives them an opportunity to invest in their future. At retirement, these workers will receive the traditional monthly benefit check. We preserve not only the old age benefit, but we preserve intact the survivor and disability benefit. This traditional defined benefit will be supplemented by the retirement wealth they have accumulated in their individual savings accounts. Third, future workers--that is, those who are born after 1995--will not only get to participate in individual savings accounts, but they will get to start saving for their retirement at birth through our bill's KidSave account program. Through KidSave accounts, all children will be given a stake in the American economy and a chance to build substantial retirement wealth at the same time. Each child born in the United States will receive $3,500 to invest in their retirement. When a child takes his or her first job, he or she will be able to contribute 2 percentage points of their payroll tax to the KidSave account. Not only is this a plan for all generations--it is a plan for all income levels. Our plan has something for every wage earner. It will result in substantially higher benefit checks for low- and moderate- income workers. It will result in substantially lower taxes for high- income workers, and it has a combination of higher benefits and lower taxes for middle-income workers. I have brought with me some examples of how real Nebraskans would be affected by our legislation. These charts compare Social Security benefit checks under current law with Social Security benefit checks under the Senate bipartisan Social Security reform plan. The first example is a friend of mine by the name of Verner Magnuson, a retired farmer from Oakland, NE. This chart says, 75-plus. I do not think Verner would object to me telling you he was born in 1915. So Verner obviously is an individual who says: Well, what do I benefit from additional savings? He is exactly right. He does not have time to save and benefit from the buildup in cash that can occur by taking advantage of compounding interest rates. So under current law, Verner receives a benefit check of approximately $1,500 per month. Under our bill, his check will be exactly the same, $1,500--and it will continue to grow with inflation from year to year. We make no adjustment in Verner's CPI nor in anybody's CPI over the age of 62. The second example shows an Omaha resident and the divisional social services director for the Salvation Army, Linda Burkle. Linda, who has a relatively high income--although she may object to that description-- demonstrates how higher income individuals will experience somewhat lower monthly benefits under our Social Security plan--at least during the transition period. These temporary benefit reductions for high- income people will only occur until the new Social Security program-- that is to say, with individual accounts--is fully phased in. At that point high-income people will not experience reductions in overall benefits. These are temporary benefit reductions for higher income people, and they will only occur until a new program with individual accounts is fully phased in. You can see from this chart that a baby boomer with a low or moderate income will still have a higher income benefit in our plan than under current law. A moderate-income worker, for example, will receive a monthly benefit check of $673 under current law. Since Linda will become eligible to retire for old-age benefits in 2020, her benefit check will not reflect the large benefit cuts that are expected to occur in 2034 under current law. I will not spend a great deal of time on this point, but one thing we all need to understand is if we do not change the law, people who are under the age of 45, under current law, according to the trustees of the Social Security Administration, will experience a 25- to 33-percent cut in benefits. Ask them. If any citizen doubts that, call the Social Security Administration. If you are under the age of 45, call them up and ask them: What will my benefits be unless Congress changes the law? And they will tell you that your benefits are going to be cut 25 to 33 percent. I have listened to my colleagues from time to time who say: Gosh, it is not going to run out of money until 2034, and that is a long time away. Why do anything now? Why should we act now, especially when the choices are hard and people are apt to get upset with you? The answer is, in 1983, when Congress fixed Social Security as it was about ready to not be able to pay benefits, it made a radical departure from the previous plan. In 1983, what Congress said is that we are not going to only fund current beneficiaries; we are going to fund all beneficiaries. That is what the 75-year mark does. It is not just 75 years; we are trying to write the law so that whatever your age, whether you are born this year or you are 16 years old or you are 76 years old, that we can keep the promise we have on the table. We cannot keep the promise we have on the table to the people under the age of 45. It is not just a small haircut they are going to take; it is a big haircut they are going to take. Or there is going to have to be a comparable--actually, a larger tax increase on their children and grandchildren. That is the current law--a big benefit cut for people under the age of 45. You can see from this chart that a baby boomer with a low- or moderate-income will have a higher benefit under our plan than under current law. A moderate-income worker will receive a monthly benefit check of $673 under current law. Under our plan, a low-income worker will receive a benefit of $813. That is a very important point. We believe that the current Social Security Program is not very generous to low- and moderate-income workers. We add what is called under law an additional benefit point. So for that lower wage individual, in my view, not only are there many of them today, but there are apt to be many of them in the future, who are both an important force for economic reasons as well as for moral reasons. We have to make sure that that defined benefit program is sufficient so they can live with some dignity in their retirement years. This plan not only provides them a higher benefit check, it also provides them the thing that I think produces real financial independence, and that is ownership of some financial assets. My third example shows how Kelly Walters, a 20-something generation Xer from Columbus, NE, will fare under our Social Security reform bill. Generation X is the first generation that will experience very significant benefit increases from our Social Security reform plan. If Kelly earns the average wage over her lifetime, she can expect to get a benefit check, under current law--assuming no tax increases--of $884 per month. Under our reform plan, she can expect to get a Social Security benefit check worth $1,329 per month. That is a 50-percent increase in benefits over current law. If she turns out to be a low- income worker throughout her lifetime, Kelly can expect to get a $536 monthly check under current law but a $1,115 benefit under our new plan. That is more than double the benefit under current law. One of the very difficult things we are experiencing, as the occupant of the Chair knows--he was on the Ways and Means Committee in the House, and I look forward to the day when he is on the Finance Committee as well--but as the occupant of the Chair understands, what we have is a situation where people are living longer. Generation Xers are probably going to be looking forward to living to the age of 85 or 90. So it is very important that that defined benefit program be solid for them. It is also very important that they have the financial assets and wealth that allows them to sustain themselves through to the course of their old-age years. My fourth and final example shows how the next generation of children will fare under our Social Security reform plan. Erin Kuehl, who is only 2 years old today, will benefit not only from the 2-percent account but also from the KidSave account I described earlier. Under the current Social Security system, Erin can expect to have a Social Security benefit worth $1,037 if she earns the average pay. Under our plan, she will receive a monthly benefit worth $2,693. If she becomes a low-income worker, Erin will receive a benefit worth $629 under the current system and $1,631 under the new system--again, more than one and a half times her current expected benefit. Many people get confused about this because they will look at the existing benefit plan and they will say: Well, that is not true. Under what shows up on her benefits, Erin is going to get a much larger check. But that assumes that Congress is going to raise taxes. The President said he is against raising payroll taxes. That presumes that Congress somehow is going to come up with some additional money. If anybody wants to do that, let them come down and argue for that. Let them come down and make a presentation or a proposal to raise taxes even more on people who get paid by the hour than we have under current law. The message with our proposal is very clear: Our bill provides better benefits for low- and moderate-income workers. And although some high- income individuals will temporarily experience slightly lower benefits during the transition from the old system to the new system, all workers in America will eventually experience higher benefits and lower taxes than current law provides. In Nebraska alone, there are over 283,000 Social Security beneficiaries: 182,000 have an old-age benefit; 35,000 are taking the survivor or widower benefit; and the balance are in the disability program. The average monthly check under the old-age benefit is $753 for retired workers. For the widower, it is $740. Not only is $753 not a livable monthly benefit, that is an average. That means many are getting substantially lower than that. Even in Nebraska, that is not adequate, unless it is supplemented by additional wealth and income from pensions and personal savings. This is an even lower amount and not likely to provide that individual with what they are going to need, especially with longer lifespans projected out into the future. Our bill will ensure workers have larger benefits. Our bill also ensures they have wealth with which to supplement their retirement income. There are tradeoffs in our bill. Although our reforms will ensure lower taxes and higher benefits from future workers, our bill does call for programmatic changes which will lower the guaranteed defined benefit check for some middle and upper workers in the future. I don't want to sugarcoat this. Unless you are for a tax increase, if you want to walk out on the floor and say, let's raise taxes, you also favor at some point lowering benefit checks. If you don't like the idea that we are making some adjustments out in the future in benefit checks--and again, for emphasis, if you are watching this and you are over the age of 62, please don't call my office and say I am cutting your benefits. I am not. This proposal does not cut benefits for people over the age of 62. It makes adjustments out in the future. Again, if you don't like those adjustments, come down to the floor and say you want to raise taxes because that is the only option to making these kinds of adjustments. Our bill includes a provision which instructs the Bureau of Labor Statistics to study overestimates in the CPI and correct them accordingly. When the recommendation was made well over a year ago now, it was a commission that studied this. They came back and said that the CPI was overstated 1.1 and we ought to make an adjustment, and nothing happened. I guarantee you, if they had come back and said that it is understated 1.1, there would have been 535 votes for it. It would have been unanimous in the House and Senate. But because it is overstated, we recognize that the adjustment is going to mean somebody is going to have to give up something. We make that adjustment for beneficiaries out into the future. We think this will result in a downward adjustment in the CPI and COLAs of .5 percent. It brings the CPI much more closely in line with what real cost-of-living increases are. It doesn't reduce the cost-of- living increase. It brings us a much more accurate cost of living. In addition, the CPI adjustments will affect income tax revenues. I do not argue that it will not. But our bill allows the Social Security Administration to recapture these initial income tax revenues for the Social Security trust fund. Another benefit change in our bill is the indexation of benefits to life expectancy. Earlier I introduced a bill with Senator Moynihan that would have moved the eligibility age. It set off a howl, a protest, and concern. I listened to those concerns. By the way, in 1997, we had 1.3 million old-age beneficiaries who became eligible for Social Security's old-age benefit. Of those 1.3 million, 1.1 million took the early benefits at 62. So when news commentators try to figure out what this does, they typically say: Kerrey is proposing to move the retirement age. Not true. We are talking about eligibility age, when you are eligible for the benefit. By the way, this bill would also eliminate the earnings test that is still present. That earnings test is gone. So whenever you are eligible, if you want to continue working, that is fine under our proposal. But this change to index benefits to life expectancy is a response to people saying: Don't move the eligibility age. We keep the eligibility age exactly as it is under current law. We do accelerate the move from 65 to 67. Once the retirement age increases to 67, as under current law, our bill will provide for benefits that track the life expectancy of your birth cohort. I think we made that adjustment so we do not accelerate it until 67, or do we? We do? I was right the first time. Our bill will provide for benefits, as I said, that track the life expectancy of your birth cohort. The longer your birth cohort lives, the more years over which your benefits must be spread. This may mean that retirees far in the future may experience a lower defined benefit under our program, but again, it does not affect the value of their individual account. We have several other benefit changes in our bill, but those are the two big ones. I disclose them up front. There is a price. Again, I say, for the third time, for those who object to it, what is your alternative? What else do you want to do? I graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1965 with a B.S. in pharmacy. It is a land grant college. I am not a Rhodes scholar. I didn't go to Yale University. I don't have a Ph.D. behind my name. This is not difficult to figure out. The difficulty is looking at the 10 or 12 options and saying: Oh, my gosh, I don't want to pick any of those because somebody is going to get mad at me. Somebody will object to it. Somebody will criticize it. Criticize the changes if you want, and there will be many who do, but if you are an elected official, if you are an elected representative, I hope people outside, after they have leveled their criticism will say: What is your solution? Or are you suggesting that people under the age of 45 should just be basically out of luck because we don't expect to have to worry about them in our political lifetimes or perhaps even in our physical lifetimes. Ultimately, the public must decide whether it is willing to risk some benefit adjustments and some benefit uncertainty for the long-term gains that come with a Social Security program that includes individual accounts. Furthermore, the public must weigh the costs and benefit adjustments against the cost of doing nothing. As I said, the cost of doing nothing, if you favor doing nothing, if you favor delay, what that means is you favor, unless you have an alternative, you favor a 25 to 33 percent cut in benefits for people under the age of 45 because that is what current law provides. This is a reform proposal that Republicans and Democrats are supporting and should be supporting. If Congress wants to get serious about Social Security reform, this is the bill to mark up. If Members want to stop talking about saving Social Security--we just had a cloture vote on the lockbox proposal. Democrats have a lockbox proposal. Everybody wants to save Social Security. If you want to save Social Security, this is the bill to rally behind. If the President, who cannot run for reelection, wants to save Social Security, this is the bill for him to embrace as well. If the public wants the politicians to enact Social Security reform legislation that shares costs across generations, protects benefits and lowers tax burdens, this is the bill to write their Congressman about. You may detect frustration in my voice. I have been frustrated in recent weeks by our difficulty to come to a resolution of this problem. We do talk a great deal about it. I understand the difficulty. I do not underestimate the political difficulties of solving this problem. The difficulty, in my judgment, is not picking the solution. This is not like Medicare. This is not like youth violence. There are lots of things out there that are extremely complicated, that are very difficult to figure out. This one is not difficult to figure out. You just, in the end, must select which proposals, which solutions you want. The Congressional Budget Office, the office that dictates what we do far too often around here, and the Office of Management and Budget, the executive office, recently released their midsession review that projected surpluses of $2.9 trillion over the next 10 years, 65 percent of which comes from excess FICA taxes. What I find to be odd in our current debate is that from 1983 to 1999, after we raised taxes on working people in 1983 to prefund all Americans who were going to be eligible in the future, we raised taxes then. Every single year what Treasury does is, any excess tax, it credits the Social Security Administration with a treasury bond, an asset that has real value. This year at the start of the year, that is about $860 billion that the Social Security Administration owns for future beneficiaries. It will be over $1 trillion at the end of this year because there will be $130 billion of revenue taxes, taxation of benefits and the interest off these bonds that flow into the Social Security trust fund. The Social Security trust fund will own over $1 trillion of the bonds. It will build up to $4.5 trillion in the year 2014. From 1983 to 1999, what we did was, we ended up, after the trust fund owns bonds, Treasury ends up with cash. It ends up with cash. And it has been using that cash for all sorts of things. It has to buy something. So basically what this excess did was made the deficit look smaller. So from 1983 to 1999, people who got paid by the hour--and 80 percent of Americans have higher FICA taxes than they have in income taxes-- people who get paid by the hour shouldered a disproportionate share of deficit reduction. Now, in 1999, that the deficit is gone and we are at a surplus, what the lockbox says is that people who get paid by the hour are going to shoulder all of the debt reduction. Every single penny of debt reduction under the President's proposal, the Democratic proposal, and the Republican proposal is paid for with payroll taxes, FICA taxes. So what we say with our proposal is not only do we want to give a tax cut to people who get paid by the hour--almost $1 trillion over a 10-year period--but what it effectively does is say that rather than paying down the national debt all of us owe, we will increase the net worth of Americans by transferring that to the asset side of their balance statement. That is basically what it does. At the end of the 10-year period, 137 million working families will have at least $1 trillion of new assets. That assumes no interest, no accumulation on that ownership. Furthermore, each day we let go by means this problem gets harder to solve. This body rarely takes the opportunity to solve future crises. I understand that. I have been in the situation many times before. I urge and beg my colleagues to let the issue of Social Security reform be the exception to the rule. This bipartisan, bicameral bill represents a real effort to work in a truly bipartisan fashion, not just to save Social Security, but to modernize it, strengthen it, and improve it. I urge my fellow Senators to cosponsor this bill and join with us in urging the chairman of the Finance Committee, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and the President to take up and endorse a Social Security reform bill this year. In addition, I announce that I intend, when we mark up a tax bill in the Finance Committee, to offer this piece of legislation as a way to cut substantially more taxes than anybody is currently proposing. I thank my colleagues who are on this bill, including Senator Gregg and Senator Breaux who are both on the floor today. I am proud to be a cosponsor of it. I praise them for their leadership. They have been fearless and future-looking. When we talk about our kids and grandkids, sometimes we don't often back those words with actions. I praise them for being willing to back, in a very courageous way, their words with action. I ask unanimous consent that letters in support of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERREY

Mr. KERREY. Would the Senator mind if the Senator from Nebraska went first?

Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Mikulski, and Senators Schumer, Graham, Kennedy, Murray, Daschle, Durbin, Rockefeller, and Torricelli, and ask for its immediate consideration.