John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the comments of the Senator from Oregon now have highlighted the sort of difference between what they say they do and the reality of what is done here. I am not going to ask the reporter to read back the comments, but let me just quote the Senator. He can tell me if I have said differently. The Senator just said on the floor of the Senate that the Kerry bill seeks to create new torts. Am I correct? Am I stating what the Senator said?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I know my colleagues on the other side are anxious to know how we will proceed. Senator Daschle intends to speak, and I suspect that may be it on our side. I am sure our colleagues on the other side will be thrilled to hear that, and we can move forward. I want to say a couple of things about what has been said in the last hour of debate. Some of my colleagues have mentioned the ``vagueness'' of the standard that is being applied to ask whether or not a company ought to determine if they have a potential for Y2K liability. First of all, there is no vagueness whatsoever in any company's capacity to determine on its own, through its technological knowledge, whether or not it has a potential of liability, and that is because of the nature of the problem. We are talking about inventing chips with time-sensitive digitalization on ``00'' and its capacity for interpretation. People can run through their programs and run through the demand list, so to speak, on that program and pretty thoroughly test it to make the kind of determination about potentiality. Anybody who has sufficiently done that is going to qualify automatically for proportionality. To the degree that my colleagues complain and say, well, gee, they are coming in here with this standard that might have to go to jury-- the Senator from Connecticut is worried about a standard that goes to the jury--turn to their bill, page 28, Section 9: Duty to Mitigate. Damages awarded in any Y2K action shall exclude compensation for damages the plaintiff could reasonably have avoided in light of any disclosure or other information of which the plaintiff was, or reasonably should have been, aware, including information made available by the defendant to purchasers. . . . So there is an issue for the jury. There is an issue. They have no problem putting the responsibility on the plaintiff. They have no problem at all finding a vague standard, so to speak, using their terminology. I do not believe our standard is vague, but they have no problem at all requiring the jury to determine the reasonableness of what the defendants have done. And the plaintiff is going to have to prove it. So that is part of the imbalance of this bill. Every step of the way, there is a shifting, a change in tort law, a requirement for a higher standard that goes beyond the original purpose. I have heard my colleagues say the purpose of this bill is to help technology companies that are an important part of the American mainstream, economic bloodline, if you will, for all of our country. I agree with that. I absolutely agree with that. I do not want frivolous lawsuits. I do not want lawyers lining up for some kind of constructed settlement process that is based on a fiction. But our bill does not provide for that. Our bill is very clear in the way in which it requires a period of cure, just as S. 96 does, a period of mitigation, just as S. 96 does. It requires the same underlying relationship with contract law, with one exception--where you have an intentional, willful, reckless action by a company. No one for the other side has been able to answer the public policy question of why any entity that acts recklessly, with wanton, willful purpose, ought to be exonerated from a standard that holds them accountable. I do not think any American, average citizen, who is subjected to the consequences of those kinds of actions would believe that is true. Finally, on proportionality, the argument was just made by the Senator from Washington that you ought to have this proportionality available to a company. I agree with him. But it ought to be available to a company that has at least made a de minimis effort, a de minimis effort to determine whether its own product might have the potential to have a Y2K problem. I think our colleagues are going to have a hard time explaining why a company should not have to at least show that it inventoried its own products to determine that. It would be irresponsible, in the context of a bill that is supposed to encourage mitigation and encourage remedy and cure, to suggest that companies should not be encouraged to go out and determine what they may have done wrong. It is just inconsistent. So I believe our effort is a bona fide effort to do precisely what the sponsors of S. 96 want to do. I believe it achieves it in a more fair and evenhanded way. I believe that, as a consequence of the White House agreement with our position, ultimately we are going to have to adjust. I say to my friends in the high-technology industry, I hope they will carefully read the language in our proposed amendment. If one of them wants to come to me and suggest language that is clearer, to suggest how they could conform in a reasonable way that they are not afraid of, I will adopt that language. If any one of them wants to show me a reasonable way to have a standard here that makes them a good citizen or qualifies them as such, I am all for it. I have not yet found a CEO of a company who has been able to suggest to me anything except wanting to not be sued as a rationale for why, from a public policy perspective, we should change the law of this country prospectively in an anticipatory fashion to change a longstanding relationship. And I do not think that case will be made. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to cooperate. I cannot agree at this particular instant, because I need to canvas the cosponsors to figure out who desires to speak. We have no intention of prolonging this.

Mr. KERRY. That is precisely the point. The Senator has just acknowledged precisely the point I am making. I come back to it. I am not serving on the Banking Committee and the Commerce Committee and the Small Business Committee because I don't care about business. I have the same desires as the Senator from Arizona to see business succeed. He came here for the same purpose--to create jobs and to make the country better for all of our citizens. But this bill is not going to make lives better for all of our citizens in its current structure. Yes, it is wonderful for those corporate entities to be singled out to get the benefits of it. I agree with the Senator. Everything in the amendment I have offered does the exact same thing--to protect those companies, as his does, with one exception. We are fighting here over one big exception right now. This is the exception. The very thing the Senator from Arizona just acknowledged--he said yes, every company ought to want to find that, and I don't know of any company that isn't trying to. That is the precise standard that we are trying to be sure companies embrace--to have a guarantee that we are doing the most to encourage mitigation, to fix the problem, inadvertently or otherwise. The Senator's bill gives them automatic entry into the proportionality of damages, without the guarantee that they tried to make that effort. Why is that important? It goes to the Senator's question to me. It is important because some companies may conceivably choose the cheaper road, which is to not necessarily pay for the fix up front but wait and see what the damage might be and not engage in the very mitigation we have encouraged. If that company is the midline company that the Senator just referred to, under his proposal they would automatically be subject to get the proportional level of their damage. But they could have weighed on an economic basis whether the bottom line of that proportional damage was such that they would rather wait and see, or weigh that rather than fix the problem and avoid whatever the consequences may be to consumers generally. I don't think that is good public policy. Maybe we differ on that. I think there is a fair way to provide all of these companies with the protection that we want them to have, and we want them to have an appropriate level of protection. But, again, my colleagues can't show me why it is unreasonable to suggest that a company can't identify the potential for a Y2K failure. How can you not do that? All you have to do is sit down with your design people, have a meeting, document the meeting, and ask a couple of questions: Do we have a Y2K problem? Do we have any invented processors? What products do we have them in? Whom did we sell them to? Whoops. Let's send a letter to those people and tell them. Is that asking too much? The purpose of this bill is to encourage people to fix the problem. If you do not ask people to do that, how can you say you are really exhausting all of the possibilities of how you are going to fix the problem? I don't understand that. I say to my colleagues that that is one thing we are fighting about. The other thing is the question of dealing with damages. I know I have said it before. Some people do not like dealing with damages. But the standard you have to get over to have punitive damages apply--I don't know of anyone in the high-tech industry, I can't imagine a company in the high-tech industry, that would be subject to that. Any CEO I have met has as much public conscience as anybody in the Senate and is engaged in a bona fide effort to make their company work. I don't know anybody who is not. But if there is some junk artist out there who is just hungry for the bottom line, trying to gamble on all of the Internet success and everything that has happened with high-tech stocks, who started out fly-by-night, who wanted to go out there and make a quick hit, if that person did it, and willfully, wantonly, recklessly, outrageously impacted the life of an American citizen, I want that American citizen to be able to have redress for that. I don't think it is right to deny them that.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, as Ranking Democrat on the Committee on Small Business, I join Committee Chairman Bond in introducing the Small Business Advocacy Review Panel Technical Amendments Act of 1999. While there are a few minor points that Chairman Bond and I have agreed to work out before the Committee considers the bill, we both agree that this is an important piece of legislation which should be enacted promptly to facilitate the Small Business Enforcement Fairness Act process. This process enables small entity representatives to participate in rulemakings by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and, under this bill, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the Department of Treasury. This bill improves and enhances the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, which has not only reduced regulatory burdens that otherwise would have been placed on small businesses, but also has begun to institute a fundamental change in the way Federal agencies promulgate rules that could have ``a substantial economic impact on a substantial number of small businesses.'' Federal agencies are required under existing law to form so-called SBREFA panels in conjunction with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, and with small entities, or their representatives. These SBREFA panels are charged with creating flexible regulatory options that would allow small businesses to continue to operate without sacrificing the environmental, or health and safety goals of the proposed rule. These panels have been highly effective in saving small businesses regulatory compliance costs. To date, seventeen (17) Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act panels have been convened by the EPA, and three (3) by the OSHA. According to SBA's Office of Advocacy, since the law's enactment in 1996, the EPA SBREFA panels have saved small businesses almost $1 billion, and the OSHA SBREFA panels have saved small businesses about $2 billion. While the process has obviously worked well to date, there are a few technical changes that we are proposing to help the process work even better. These changes were recommended by selected small entity representatives who have experience with the SBREFA panel process, and who testified at a joint hearing held by the House Small Business Committee's Subcommittees on Regulatory Reform and Paperwork Reduction, and Government Programs and Oversight on March 11, 1999. Let me take a minute to describe the provisions of the bill. This bill would lengthen by thirty (30) days the time that small entity representatives have to review the usually technical and voluminous materials to be considered during panel deliberations. For those small businessmen and women who would like to participate but do not have a great deal of time to review technical data, the bill requires OSHA, EPA and IRS to prepare detailed summaries of background data and information. The bill would also allow a small entity representative, if he or she so chooses to, make an oral presentation to the panel. Many small entities have expressed their interest in reviewing the panel report before the rule is proposed, and this bill would require the panel report to be printed in the Federal Register either as soon as practicable or with the proposed rule, but in no case, later than six (6) months after the rule is proposed. Moreover, the bill would add certain rules issued by Internal Revenue Service to the panel requirements of SBREFA. Many small businesses complain that they are overwhelmed with the large burdens that the IRS places on them. It is the goal of this bill to hold the IRS accountable for the interpretative rules they issue that have a major impact on small business concerns, and to open up the rulemaking process so small entities can participate. This new authority would significantly increase the workload of SBA's Office of Advocacy, the Federal office charged with monitoring agency compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, including SBREFA. Chairman Bond and I agree that it is important that the Office of Advocacy have adequate resources to fulfill the new responsibilities mandated by this bill. Therefore, we plan to send a letter jointly to Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and State Chairman and Ranking Member Senators Gregg and Hollings requesting them to approve additional funding for the Office of Advocacy to handle these additional responsibilities under the law. I am proud to support this legislation. I believe it will result in significant savings for small businesses and will improve the mechanism for their voices to be heard. Finally, I would like to thank Chairman Bond and his staff for their efforts working with me and my staff to produce this important bill.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, as Ranking Democrat on the Committee on Small Business, I join Committee Chairman Bond in introducing the Small Business Advocacy Review Panel Technical Amendments Act of 1999. While there are a few minor points that Chairman Bond and I have agreed to work out before the Committee considers the bill, we both agree that this is an important piece of legislation which should be enacted promptly to facilitate the Small Business Enforcement Fairness Act process. This process enables small entity representatives to participate in rulemakings by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and, under this bill, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the Department of Treasury. This bill improves and enhances the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, which has not only reduced regulatory burdens that otherwise would have been placed on small businesses, but also has begun to institute a fundamental change in the way Federal agencies promulgate rules that could have ``a substantial economic impact on a substantial number of small businesses.'' Federal agencies are required under existing law to form so-called SBREFA panels in conjunction with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, and with small entities, or their representatives. These SBREFA panels are charged with creating flexible regulatory options that would allow small businesses to continue to operate without sacrificing the environmental, or health and safety goals of the proposed rule. These panels have been highly effective in saving small businesses regulatory compliance costs. To date, seventeen (17) Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act panels have been convened by the EPA, and three (3) by the OSHA. According to SBA's Office of Advocacy, since the law's enactment in 1996, the EPA SBREFA panels have saved small businesses almost $1 billion, and the OSHA SBREFA panels have saved small businesses about $2 billion. While the process has obviously worked well to date, there are a few technical changes that we are proposing to help the process work even better. These changes were recommended by selected small entity representatives who have experience with the SBREFA panel process, and who testified at a joint hearing held by the House Small Business Committee's Subcommittees on Regulatory Reform and Paperwork Reduction, and Government Programs and Oversight on March 11, 1999. Let me take a minute to describe the provisions of the bill. This bill would lengthen by thirty (30) days the time that small entity representatives have to review the usually technical and voluminous materials to be considered during panel deliberations. For those small businessmen and women who would like to participate but do not have a great deal of time to review technical data, the bill requires OSHA, EPA and IRS to prepare detailed summaries of background data and information. The bill would also allow a small entity representative, if he or she so chooses to, make an oral presentation to the panel. Many small entities have expressed their interest in reviewing the panel report before the rule is proposed, and this bill would require the panel report to be printed in the Federal Register either as soon as practicable or with the proposed rule, but in no case, later than six (6) months after the rule is proposed. Moreover, the bill would add certain rules issued by Internal Revenue Service to the panel requirements of SBREFA. Many small businesses complain that they are overwhelmed with the large burdens that the IRS places on them. It is the goal of this bill to hold the IRS accountable for the interpretative rules they issue that have a major impact on small business concerns, and to open up the rulemaking process so small entities can participate. This new authority would significantly increase the workload of SBA's Office of Advocacy, the Federal office charged with monitoring agency compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, including SBREFA. Chairman Bond and I agree that it is important that the Office of Advocacy have adequate resources to fulfill the new responsibilities mandated by this bill. Therefore, we plan to send a letter jointly to Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and State Chairman and Ranking Member Senators Gregg and Hollings requesting them to approve additional funding for the Office of Advocacy to handle these additional responsibilities under the law. I am proud to support this legislation. I believe it will result in significant savings for small businesses and will improve the mechanism for their voices to be heard. Finally, I would like to thank Chairman Bond and his staff for their efforts working with me and my staff to produce this important bill.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I too wish to thank the Senator from Kansas for clarifying his intentions with regard to the language in this bill as it relates to funding for the Department of Energy's Nuclear Cities Initiative. There is no more important national security issue facing America today than preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Through the Nuclear Cities Initiative, the United States and Russia are working together to downsize Russia's nuclear weapons complex and prevent the dispersal of the scientific and technical legacy that remains in Russia today. In the short term, this will require the creation of alternate industries and new employment for as many as 50,000 scientists and technicians who are under tremendous financial burdens and might be tempted to offer their nuclear expertise to rogue governments and others who are all too willing to pay top dollar for that information. Over the long run, it will require sustainable economic development to allow Russia's scientific and technological assets to be put to peaceful, prosperous use. Mr. President, the Nuclear Cities Initiative is an integral part of our ongoing counterproliferation efforts. I join my colleague from New Mexico in pledging to continue to work with the Senator from Kansas and the Department of Energy in support of this program. I yield the floor. Health Care Choice for Military Retirees

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I regret that I have to come to the floor to cast my vote against the emergency supplemental appropriations bill before the Senate today. When we face crises in this country, when you have American men and women serving courageously in Kosovo, when you have the borders in Macedonia and Montenegro overflowing with refugees, and when you have hundreds of thousands of hurricane victims in Central America, you would expect that the U.S. Senate would be capable of coming together--unanimously--to address these challenges. It used to be that way in the Senate. It's not that way anymore. Now we fund our operations in Kosovo, and we help the refugees, and we aid the hurricane victims, but at the same time we practice legislative extortion--we say to every Senator, ``You want to vote for Kosovo? You want to vote for aid for hurricane victims? Go ahead--but you have to vote to cut vital housing programs for working Americans across this country. And you need to vote to eliminate environmental regulations.'' That's not the way we ought to do business in the U.S. Senate, and I think it's time we start to talk about changing that course before it contaminates public life any further. That is why I will cast my vote against this emergency supplemental appropriations bill: to register my frustration and my sadness with the way we now do business in the U.S. Senate. Before I say more about the damage this bill does to so many of the vital areas of public policy in the United States, I must tell you that in many respects I only have the liberty of voting against this bill-- of casting a symbolic stone against legislative blackmail--because I know this bill will pass the Senate overwhelmingly. Critical investments for our troops in Kosovo--which, as a veteran, as a citizen, and as a senator, I have aggressively supported--will be made in spite of my vote against this bill. The truth is, if this were not the case, if my vote would have undermined in any respects our efforts in Kosovo, I would have had to vote for this bill, in spite of the damage it does. I would have had to--regrettably--support this bill because we have a responsibility to support the American troops we have committed overseas, and I would never stand by and allow the Senate to send what I believe is the wrong message to our troops, and the wrong message to Slobodan Milosevic about American resolve . I believe the United States, and NATO as a whole, must remain united against the systematic killing, raping and pillaging of innocent Kosovar Albanian men, women, and children at the hands of Serb forces. The funding included in this supplemental appropriations conference report will provide support for the U.S. service men and women who are putting their lives in jeopardy and will, I believe, give them a greater capacity to achieve our military objectives in Kosovo. It will also provide the desperately needed relief for humanitarian efforts already underway to assist the refugees in that region. And these investments will be made by the U.S. Senate, reflected in our final tally. I believe this Nation must have a bipartisan foreign policy, and that we can not afford to allow politics to endanger our troops. But I wish that more of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, those who included provisions which cut directly against the interests of low income working Americans and our environment, would also have a commitment to bipartisanship on domestic issues of tremendous importance to so many working Americans struggling to keep their heads above water even in this great economy we celebrate on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The rescissions and changes in policy included in this Conference Report will eventually hurt the poorest Americans and will immediately hurt our environment. That should not be acceptable in a Senate which prides itself on its ability to do what is right for all Americans. I can not in good conscience support these measures. I question what it says about our commitment to helping those who are being left behind in this new economy, that we could find the resources to provide $983 million in disaster relief for those whose lives were disrupted when Hurricane Mitch struck the Central American nations of Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala and when Hurricane Georges struck in the Caribbean last year--but we are cutting critical investments in housing for working Americans. Hurricanes in Central America have left almost 10,000 dead and have driven millions from their homes. The cost of damages to businesses, hospitals, schools and individual homes have been enormous. We are right to provide assistance to the victims of these hurricanes. But we ought to be able to do it without abandoning thousands of our neediest citizens here at home. Today there are more than five million low-income Americans facing severe housing needs, receiving federal housing assistance. At least another 15 million Americans qualify for help but do not receive it because of limited budget appropriations. They suffer from homelessness--600,000 Americans homeless each night; 5.3 million Americans pay rents that are more than 50 percent of their household income, or live in severely substandard conditions--these are the severe housing problems we once hoped to address. These families are one misfortune away from homelessness. A child gets sick, a parent gets laid off--even for a week or two, the car breaks down, and that family ends up on the streets. So what are we doing in this supplemental appropriations bill? We're rescinding $350 million from the Section 8 program that helps these families who are working through the tough times--and we're rescinding this money in spite of the fact that the HUD budget in FY1999 will already be almost $1 billion less than it was in FY1994. This rescission will result in a shortfall that will cause the loss of subsidy and the displacement of approximately 60,000 families. 60,000 families. It will make the current waiting list crisis, where families must sometimes wait years to find some relief, even more difficult to solve. This isn't the first time this has happened. Year after year, HUD's budget is raided--targeted for cuts in 1995, in 1997, in 1998, and again this year--to pay for emergencies which, by their nature and by law, are not required to be offset with budget cuts. Only a very small portion of this $15 billion bill is offset with spending cuts. I am disturbed, really, that some of my colleagues have chosen to make cuts to this program because they believe it is politically vulnerable. HUD's budget should not fall victim to this type of spending cut--and families struggling to stay off the streets shouldn't fall victim to this kind of politics. I am not new to this game. I have fought year in and year out against substantial cuts that have been made to the HUD budget. These cuts have jeopardized the existing public housing services and have undermined HUD's capacity to continue the Secretary's ambitious program of reform or even just to make up for previous under-funding of capital needs to meet our Nation's demand for affordable housing. Last year, the Congress passed the first new section 8 vouchers in 5 years. This rescission would reverse in large part the down payment Congress made in addressing unmet housing needs. At least 100,000 new vouchers are needed to begin to address the outstanding needs. This rescission moves us in the wrong direction. As the ranking member of the Housing Subcommittee, as someone who sees first hand in Massachusetts the struggles of so many families working their fingers to the bone and trying to stay off the streets, I can not support these draconian cuts in housing. But this bill doesn't stop there. Some of my colleagues have included dangerous environmental riders in this bill--in a practice that is becoming all too common in this Senate. It wasn't this way 15 years ago when I came here, it wasn't that way 30 years ago when Democrats and Republicans worked together to write our first environmental laws, but it's that way now--even basic environmental protections have become a partisan fight--and the riders in this bill do serious damage to our environment. Specifically, the conference report includes three environmental riders that I believe will set back environmental progress, unnecessarily limit federal revenues and undermine the legislative process--and I oppose all of them. The conference report extends the moratorium on issuing a final rule- making on crude oil valuation until October 1, 1999. It restricts the implementation of the Department of the Interior Solicitor's opinion on mining that limits the number of millsites to one five-acre millsite per patent. The environmental rider that I find most egregious prevents the Department of Interior from issuing new rules for hardrock mining on public lands. This is the third time the Senate has attached such a provision to an appropriations bill. As a result, the hardrock mining industry continues to cause environmental damage and costs the taxpayer. The extraction of hardrock minerals like gold, silver and copper usually includes the excavation of enormous pits and the use of toxic chemicals like cyanide, and its results have been destructive. According to the General Accounting Office, there are almost 300,000 acres of federal land that have been mined and left unreclaimed. Abandoned mines account for 59 Superfund sites and there are more than 2,000 abandoned mines in our national parks. The Mineral Policy Center estimates that the cleanup costs for abandoned mines on public and private lands may reach $72 billion. Rather than reform the industry through comprehensive legislation or proper execution of existing executive branch authority, we will once again block reform through a rider. It is time that we put an end to this policy of undermining the environment, of gutting environmental protections, by slipping riders through the back door of every spending bill. We ought to be a better Senate than that. We ought to have our debates on the floor, in public, and if you want to promote a vision of an America where we turn the environment over to polluters, over to those who would destroy our natural resources, if that's your vision, then let's debate it--and let's end the practice of environmental degradation through appropriations bills. Before I yield the floor, I do want to draw our attention to something in this supplemental bill which I believe is an important victory for Massachusetts, and for our fishermen. I am pleased that $1.88 million was included for NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, NMFS, to promote cooperative management and research activities in the Northeast multispecies fishery. These funds will complement the $5 million in emergency assistance that was appropriated for Gulf of Maine fishermen last November. Many in this Chamber know that too many fishermen in New England are experiencing economic hardship due to new groundfish regulations recently imposed in the Gulf of Maine. In order to help alleviate the negative effects of these new regulations, fishermen have joined with NMFS in developing a spending plan for the $5 million in emergency assistance. The plan proposes to compensate fishermen for lost fishing opportunities that have resulted from inshore groundfish closures. Fishermen, in return, will make their vessels available to take part in cooperative research projects. A portion of the $1.88 million will be used to fund the cooperative scientific projects that will be conducted by NMFS and other institutions. In addition, some of the new funding will be used to employ fishermen as scientific observers. This new partnership will have a twofold benefit. Cooperative research activities will keep fishermen employed on the water while groundfish stocks recover, and this plan will promote a more constructive relationship between fishermen and NMFS with the goal of improving management activities in the Gulf of Maine groundfish fishery. I express my very real appreciation for the support of Senate Appropriations chairman, Senator Ted Stevens and the Democratic ranking member, Senator Byrd, for including this provision in the conference report and for their continued steadfast support of the New England fishermen. In conclusion, let me just say that I fully support the American men and women who are putting their lives in jeopardy in the Kosovo region for a mission which I believe in very deeply--as a veteran, I support their interests very personally in fact. I would have liked to have seen the Senate produce an Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill that we could all vote for, unanimously. But this bill is a far cry from that kind of legislation, a far cry from the kind of bipartisan foreign policy we demand from our leaders in the United States. I am entirely disappointed that some members of the Senate have used this bill as a vehicle to hurt low-income working families and damage the environment we all share. Mr. President, we are a great country of Americans who care about each other, who believe that we have a national purpose and that part of the reason we are a special nation is that we help each other make it through the times and make the most of our own lives. We're a great nation. We ought to be a great Senate that reflects that sense of commitment to one another, and I look forward to the day when those values return to this Chamber.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the passage of this Juvenile Justice Bill represents an important step forward for those of us who have expressed concern for the safety and well-being of America's young people. I am pleased that in spite of the tensions and the controversies that have marked these past weeks in the United States Senate, we are, in the final analysis, able to come together as a Senate in support of certain principles that we know are absolutely essential if we are to reform our nation's juvenile justice policy to reflect modern life and the needs of all our children in this nation. The aftermath of the tragic school shootings in Littleton and even the violence today in Atlanta underscored for all of us the importance of getting serious about juvenile justice. In this debate here in the Senate about juvenile justice, we heard a great deal about efforts to keep guns out of the hands of violent students, we heard about efforts to try juvenile offenders as adults, about stiffer sentences, about so many answers to the problem of kids who have run out of second and third chances--kids who are violent, kids who are committing crimes, children who are a danger to themselves and a danger to those around him. I was a prosecutor in Massachusetts before I entered elected office. I have seen these violent teenagers and young people come to court, and let me tell you, there is nothing more tragic than seeing these children who--in too many cases --have a jail cell in their future not far down the road, children who have done what is, at times, irreparable harm to their communities. I am pleased we are passing a bill today which demonstrates we don't only begin to care about these kids at that point --after the violence, after the arrest, after the damage has been done, when it may be too late--when we could have started intervening in our kids' lives early on, before it was too late. We can say that we have had a real debate about juvenile justice because we are passing a bill that makes some critical investments in vital early childhood development efforts, but a great deal of work remains undone. The truth is that early intervention can have a powerful effect on reducing government welfare, health, criminal justice, and education expenditures in the long run. By taking steps now we can reduce later destructive behavior such as dropping out of school, drug use, and criminal acts like the ones we have seen in Littleton and Jonesboro. We are doing that in this bill--but we should be doing far more. A study of the High/Scope Foundation's Perry Preschool found that at- risk toddlers who received pre-schooling and a weekly home visit reduced the risk that these children would grow up to become chronic law breakers by a startling 80 percent. The Syracuse University Family Development Study showed that providing quality early-childhood programs to families until children reached age five reduces the children's risk of delinquency 10 years later by 90 percent. It is no wonder that a recent survey of police chiefs found that nine out of ten said that ``America could sharply reduce crime if government invested more'' in these early intervention programs. I know it can work. I visited an incredible center, the Castle Square Early Childhood Development Center in Boston, and I saw kids getting the attention they need during the day while their parents work, children being held and read to, and cared for, children who aren't raising themselves, parents who come in and volunteer in the evening and take classes there so they can better take care of their kids when they're sick or when they need special attention. But you know what, for the sixty kids in that program, there are six hundred on a waiting list. There is the Early Childhood Initiative in Allegheny County, PA--one of the first pilot programs in this country which gave life to the kind of legislation we're passing here today--an innovative program which helps low-income children from birth to age five become successful, productive adults by enrolling them in high quality, neighborhood-based early care and education programs ranging from Head Start, center-based child care, home-based child care, and school readiness programs. ECI draws on everything that's right about Allegheny County--the strengths of its communities-- neighborhood decision-making, parent involvement, and quality measurement. Parents and community groups decide if they want to participate and they come together and develop a proposal tailored for the community. Regular review programs ensure quality programming and cost-effectiveness. We're talking about local control getting results locally: 19,000 pre-school aged children from low- income families, 10,000 of which were not enrolled in any child care or education program. By the year 2000, through funding supplied by ECI, approximately 75% of these under-served pre-schoolers will be reached. Early evaluations show that enrolled children are achieving at rates equivalent to their middle income peers. And as we know, without this leveling of the playing field, low- income children are at a greater risk of encountering the juvenile justice system. That's a real difference. These kinds of programs are successful because children's experiences during their early years of life lay the foundation for their future development. But in too many places in this country our failure to provide young children what they need during these crucial early years has long-term consequences and costs for America. Recent Scientific evidence conclusively demonstrates that enhancing children's physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development will result in tremendous benefits for children, families, and our nation. The electrical activity of brain cells actually changes the physical structure of the brain itself. Without a stimulating environment, the baby's brain suffers. At birth, a baby's brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way. But the wiring pattern between these neurons develops over time. Children who play very little or are rarely touched develop brains 20 to 30 percent smaller than normal for their age. Reversing these problems later in life is far more difficult and costly. We know that--if it wasn't so much harder, we wouldn't be having this difficult debate in the Senate. I think it is time we talked about giving our kids the right start in their lives they need to be healthy, to be successful, to mature in a way that doesn't lead to at-risk and disruptive behavior and violence down the road. We should stop and consider what is really at stake here. Poverty seriously impairs young children's language development, math skills, IQ scores, and their later school completion. Poor young children also are at heightened risk of infant mortality, anemia, and stunted growth. Of the 12 million children under the age of 3 in the United States today, 3 million--25 percent--live in poverty. Three out of five mothers with children under three work, but one study found that 40 percent of the facilities at child care centers serving infants provided care of such poor quality as to actually jeopardize children's health, safety, or development. In more than half of the states, one out of every four children between 19 months and three years of age is not fully immunized against common childhood diseases. Children who are not immunized are more likely to contract preventable diseases, which can cause long-term harm. Children younger than three make up 27 percent of the one million children who are determined to be abused or neglected each year. Of the 1,200 children who died from abuse and neglect in 1995, 85 percent were younger than five and 45 percent were younger than one. Unfortunately, our Government expenditure patterns have been inverse to the most important early development period for human beings. Although we know that early investment can dramatically reduce later remedial and social costs, our nation has spent no more than $35 billion over five years on federal programs for at-risk or delinquent youth and child welfare programs. That is a course we are taking some steps to change today. We are starting to talk in a serious and a thoughtful way--through a bipartisan approach--about making a difference in the lives of our children before they're put at risk. We are starting to accept the truth that we can do a lot more to help our kids grow up healthy with promising futures in an early childhood development center, in a classroom, and in a doctor's office than we can in a courtroom or in a jail cell. But we could be doing much more. These issues are now a part of this juvenile justice debate. But they need to be a bigger part of every debate we have about our kids' future. My colleague Kit Bond and I reintroduced yesterday our Early Childhood Development Act which we had previously introduced in the last Congress, and which had passed as part of the tobacco legislation last summer. That bill moves us forward in a bipartisan way towards a different kind of discussion about juvenile justice--and towards actions we can take to provide meaningful intervention in the lives of all of our children. I am appreciative of the deep support we've found for our approach in this legislation by Senator Stevens, Senator Jeffords, Senator Dodd, Senator Kennedy and all of the cosponsors of the original Kerry Bond bill: Senator Hollings, Senator Johnson, Senator Landrieu, Senator Levin, Senator Moynihan, Senator Wellstone, and my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Bob Torricelli. I am pleased to join Senators Stevens and Kennedy in supporting parenting, but as we expressed in our sense-of-the-Senate amendment there is much more we need to be doing in terms of broader early childhood development efforts--we need a more comprehensive approach. In this legislation we have taken an important step towards recognizing the importance of early childhood development programs for our children, as well as the responsibility of the Congress to make early childhood investments a priority in our budget process.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr President, in the aftermath of the tragic school shootings in Littleton, and in this debate here in the Senate about juvenile justice, we've heard a great deal about efforts to keep guns out of the hands of violent students, we've heard about efforts to try juvenile offenders as adults, about stiffer sentences, about so many answers to the problem of kids who have run out of second and third chances--kids who are violent, kids who are committing crimes, children who are a danger to themselves and a danger to those around him. Mr. President, I was a prosecutor in Massachusetts before I entered elected office. I've seen these violent teenagers and young people come to court, and Mr. President let me tell you there is nothing more tragic than seeing these children who--in too many cases--have a jail cell in their future not far down the road, children who have done what is, at times, irreparable harm to their communities. And Mr. President, I keep asking myself, why is it we only start to care about these kids at that point--after the violence, after the arrest, after the damage has been done, when it may be too late--when we could have started intervening in our kids' lives early on, before it was too late. Mr. President, we can't say that we're having a real debate about juvenile justice if we're not talking about early childhood development efforts. The truth is that early intervention can have a powerful effect on reducing government welfare, health, criminal justice, and education expenditures in the long run. By taking steps now we can reduce later destructive behavior such as dropping out of school, drug use, and criminal acts like the ones we have seen in Littleton and Jonesboro. A study of the High/Scope Foundation's Perry Preschool found that at- risk toddlers who received pre-schooling and a weekly home visit reduced the risk that these children would grow up to become chronic law breakers by a startling 80 percent. The Syracuse University Family Development Study showed that providing quality early-childhood programs to families until children reached age five reduces the children's risk of delinquency ten years later by 90 percent. It's no wonder that a recent survey of police chiefs found that nine out of ten said that ``America could sharply reduce crime if government invested more'' in these early intervention programs. Let me tell you about the Early Childhood Initiative (ECI) in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania--an innovative program which helps low- income children from birth to age five become successful, productive adults by enrolling them in high quality, neighborhood-based early care and education programs ranging from Head Start, center-based child care, home-based child care, and school readiness programs. ECI draws on everything that's right about Allegheny County--the strengths of its communities--neighborhood decision-making, parent involvement, and quality measurement. Parents and community groups decide if they want to participate and they come together and develop a proposal tailored for the community. Regular review programs ensure quality programming and cost-effectiveness. We're talking about local control getting results locally: 19,000 pre-school aged children from low-income families, 10,000 of which were not enrolled in any child care or education program. By the year 2000, through funding supplied by ECI, approximately 75% of these under-served pre-schoolers will be reached. Early evaluations show that enrolled children are achieving at rates equivalent to their middle income peers. And as we know, without this leveling of the playing field, low-income children are at a greater risk of encountering the juvenile justice system. That's a real difference. These kinds of programs are successful because children's experiences during their early years of life lay the foundation for their future development. But in too many places in this country our failure to provide young children what they need during these crucial early years has long-term consequences and costs for America. Recent Scientific evidence conclusively demonstrates that enhancing children's physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development will result in tremendous benefits for children, families, and our nation. The electrical activity of brain cells actually changes the physical structure of the brain itself. Without a stimulating environment, the baby's brain suffers. At birth, a baby's brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way. But the wiring pattern between these neurons develops over time. Children who play very little or are rarely touched develop brains 20 to 30 percent smaller than normal for their age. Mr. President, reversing these problems later in life is far more difficult and costly. We know that--if it wasn't so much harder, we wouldn't be having this difficult debate in the Senate. Well I think it's time we talked about giving our kids the right start in their lives they need to be healthy, to be successful, to mature in a way that doesn't lead to at-risk and disruptive behavior and violence down the road. We should stop and consider what's really at stake here. Poverty seriously impairs young children's language development, math skills, IQ scores, and their later school completion. Poor young children also are at heightened risk of infant mortality, anemia, and stunted growth. Of the 12 million children under the age of three in the United States today, three million--25 percent--live in poverty. Three out of five mothers with children under three work, but one study found that 40 percent of the facilities at child care centers serving infants provided care of such poor quality as to actually jeopardize children's health, safety, or development. In more than half of the states, one out of every four children between 19 months and three years of age is not fully immunized against common childhood diseases. Children who are not immunized are more likely to contract preventable diseases, which can cause long-term harm. Children younger than three make up 27 percent of the one million children who are determined to be abused or neglected each year. Of the 1,200 children who died from abuse and neglect in 1995, 85 percent were younger than five and 45 percent were younger than one. Literally the future of millions of young people is at stake here. Literally, that's what we're talking about. But is it reflected in the investments we make here in the Senate? I would, respectfully, say no-- not nearly enough Mr. President. Unfortunately, Mr. President, our government expenditure patterns are inverse to the most important early development period for human beings. Although we know that early investment can dramatically reduce later remedial and social costs, currently our nation spends no more than $35 billion over five years on federal programs for at-risk or delinquent youth and child welfare programs. That is a course we need to change, Mr. President. We need to start talking in a serious and a thoughtful way--through a bipartisan approach--about making a difference in the lives of our children before they're put at risk. We need to accept the truth that we can do a lot more to help our kids grow up healthy with promising futures in an early childhood development center, in a classroom, and in a doctor's office than we can in a courtroom or in a jail cell. Mr. President, these questions need to be a part of this juvenile justice debate, but they're not being included to the extent to which they should. My colleague Kit Bond and I are introducing our Early Childhood Development Act to move us forward in a bipartisan way towards that discussion--and towards actions we can take to provide meaningful intervention in the lives of all of our children. Kit Bond and I are appreciative of the deep support we've found for this legislation, evident in the co-sponsorship of the Kerry-Bond bill by Senator Hollings, Senator Johnson, Senator Landrieu, Senator Levin, Senator Moynihan, Senator Wellstone, and my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Bob Torricelli. We are looking forward to working with all of you, from both sides of the aisle, to make that debate on the Kerry- Bond bill a productive one, a debate that leads to the kind of actions we know can make the difference in addressing violence ten years before it starts, in getting all our children off to the right start towards full and productive lives.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr President, in the aftermath of the tragic school shootings in Littleton, and in this debate here in the Senate about juvenile justice, we've heard a great deal about efforts to keep guns out of the hands of violent students, we've heard about efforts to try juvenile offenders as adults, about stiffer sentences, about so many answers to the problem of kids who have run out of second and third chances--kids who are violent, kids who are committing crimes, children who are a danger to themselves and a danger to those around him. Mr. President, I was a prosecutor in Massachusetts before I entered elected office. I've seen these violent teenagers and young people come to court, and Mr. President let me tell you there is nothing more tragic than seeing these children who--in too many cases--have a jail cell in their future not far down the road, children who have done what is, at times, irreparable harm to their communities. And Mr. President, I keep asking myself, why is it we only start to care about these kids at that point--after the violence, after the arrest, after the damage has been done, when it may be too late--when we could have started intervening in our kids' lives early on, before it was too late. Mr. President, we can't say that we're having a real debate about juvenile justice if we're not talking about early childhood development efforts. The truth is that early intervention can have a powerful effect on reducing government welfare, health, criminal justice, and education expenditures in the long run. By taking steps now we can reduce later destructive behavior such as dropping out of school, drug use, and criminal acts like the ones we have seen in Littleton and Jonesboro. A study of the High/Scope Foundation's Perry Preschool found that at- risk toddlers who received pre-schooling and a weekly home visit reduced the risk that these children would grow up to become chronic law breakers by a startling 80 percent. The Syracuse University Family Development Study showed that providing quality early-childhood programs to families until children reached age five reduces the children's risk of delinquency ten years later by 90 percent. It's no wonder that a recent survey of police chiefs found that nine out of ten said that ``America could sharply reduce crime if government invested more'' in these early intervention programs. Let me tell you about the Early Childhood Initiative (ECI) in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania--an innovative program which helps low- income children from birth to age five become successful, productive adults by enrolling them in high quality, neighborhood-based early care and education programs ranging from Head Start, center-based child care, home-based child care, and school readiness programs. ECI draws on everything that's right about Allegheny County--the strengths of its communities--neighborhood decision-making, parent involvement, and quality measurement. Parents and community groups decide if they want to participate and they come together and develop a proposal tailored for the community. Regular review programs ensure quality programming and cost-effectiveness. We're talking about local control getting results locally: 19,000 pre-school aged children from low-income families, 10,000 of which were not enrolled in any child care or education program. By the year 2000, through funding supplied by ECI, approximately 75% of these under-served pre-schoolers will be reached. Early evaluations show that enrolled children are achieving at rates equivalent to their middle income peers. And as we know, without this leveling of the playing field, low-income children are at a greater risk of encountering the juvenile justice system. That's a real difference. These kinds of programs are successful because children's experiences during their early years of life lay the foundation for their future development. But in too many places in this country our failure to provide young children what they need during these crucial early years has long-term consequences and costs for America. Recent Scientific evidence conclusively demonstrates that enhancing children's physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development will result in tremendous benefits for children, families, and our nation. The electrical activity of brain cells actually changes the physical structure of the brain itself. Without a stimulating environment, the baby's brain suffers. At birth, a baby's brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way. But the wiring pattern between these neurons develops over time. Children who play very little or are rarely touched develop brains 20 to 30 percent smaller than normal for their age. Mr. President, reversing these problems later in life is far more difficult and costly. We know that--if it wasn't so much harder, we wouldn't be having this difficult debate in the Senate. Well I think it's time we talked about giving our kids the right start in their lives they need to be healthy, to be successful, to mature in a way that doesn't lead to at-risk and disruptive behavior and violence down the road. We should stop and consider what's really at stake here. Poverty seriously impairs young children's language development, math skills, IQ scores, and their later school completion. Poor young children also are at heightened risk of infant mortality, anemia, and stunted growth. Of the 12 million children under the age of three in the United States today, three million--25 percent--live in poverty. Three out of five mothers with children under three work, but one study found that 40 percent of the facilities at child care centers serving infants provided care of such poor quality as to actually jeopardize children's health, safety, or development. In more than half of the states, one out of every four children between 19 months and three years of age is not fully immunized against common childhood diseases. Children who are not immunized are more likely to contract preventable diseases, which can cause long-term harm. Children younger than three make up 27 percent of the one million children who are determined to be abused or neglected each year. Of the 1,200 children who died from abuse and neglect in 1995, 85 percent were younger than five and 45 percent were younger than one. Literally the future of millions of young people is at stake here. Literally, that's what we're talking about. But is it reflected in the investments we make here in the Senate? I would, respectfully, say no-- not nearly enough Mr. President. Unfortunately, Mr. President, our government expenditure patterns are inverse to the most important early development period for human beings. Although we know that early investment can dramatically reduce later remedial and social costs, currently our nation spends no more than $35 billion over five years on federal programs for at-risk or delinquent youth and child welfare programs. That is a course we need to change, Mr. President. We need to start talking in a serious and a thoughtful way--through a bipartisan approach--about making a difference in the lives of our children before they're put at risk. We need to accept the truth that we can do a lot more to help our kids grow up healthy with promising futures in an early childhood development center, in a classroom, and in a doctor's office than we can in a courtroom or in a jail cell. Mr. President, these questions need to be a part of this juvenile justice debate, but they're not being included to the extent to which they should. My colleague Kit Bond and I are introducing our Early Childhood Development Act to move us forward in a bipartisan way towards that discussion--and towards actions we can take to provide meaningful intervention in the lives of all of our children. Kit Bond and I are appreciative of the deep support we've found for this legislation, evident in the co-sponsorship of the Kerry-Bond bill by Senator Hollings, Senator Johnson, Senator Landrieu, Senator Levin, Senator Moynihan, Senator Wellstone, and my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Bob Torricelli. We are looking forward to working with all of you, from both sides of the aisle, to make that debate on the Kerry- Bond bill a productive one, a debate that leads to the kind of actions we know can make the difference in addressing violence ten years before it starts, in getting all our children off to the right start towards full and productive lives.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, with sadness but with great pride, I join my colleagues today to mark the passing of a remarkably patriotic and--I think everyone would agree--extraordinarily committed public servant. Rear Admiral James ``Bud'' Nance devoted his entire life to serving his country, to public service. That was made up, as we have heard, of a remarkable 35 years in the U.S. Navy, 2 years as Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs under President Reagan, and then, as we heard our colleagues recount today, great years of service here in the Senate, years where all of us know he didn't have to serve. He could have chosen any number of other courses for his life, but right up until the end, he stood watch. He earned, as we have heard, two Distinguished Service Medals in all of the campaigns that were listed by my colleagues. One of the things for which I personally--and I am sure Senator McCain will join me-- express the greatest respect was his service as skipper, commander of the U.S.S. Forrestal, which our colleague, Senator McCain, has very close ties to. I served one of my tours of duty in Vietnam at the Gulf of Tonkin, as we did a lot of search and rescue work with pilots and occasionally were doing guard duty right behind the carrier, so I became intimately familiar with carrier operations. I think anybody who has ever been on a carrier, those 5,000-person floating cities, understands the extraordinary leadership skills that are necessary to keep everybody in those close quarters working at the pace they work under--the intense, stressful combat situation in which they work. It is a remarkable tribute to this man that he rose to that level and, indeed, performed those responsibilities with such distinction. I first met him, obviously, when he came here, in 1991, and he became the Republican staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Believe me, it became evident very quickly how fast he was going to be sort of the glue that helped to bring people together and keep them together. Everybody here will remember the great smile, the constant twinkle in his eye, and the wonderful kind of calm that he had about him. Literally, I think 5 days or 6 days before he passed away, clearly without any inkling on our part that that might happen so suddenly, we were down in Senate Foreign Relations room 116 dealing with a number of issues. I went over to sit beside him and seek his counsel on something. As was his manner, he sort of patted me on the knee in a calm way and said: I think we can take care of that; we can take care of that. That is the way he worked. He enjoyed the give and take. He loved the responsibility. He loved the Senate. And most of all, he clearly loved his country which he served so diligently. Not only did he have the confidence and friendship--a very, very special friendship--with Senator Helms, but he also approached the job with pure professionalism, with fierce determination, and great skill. Surely he was always committed to advancing the values and belief system--such a strong value system and belief system--of Senator Helms. Their priorities were the same. But he also was every bit as committed to working out even the most contentious issues on a bipartisan basis. I consider myself privileged to have worked very closely with Admiral Nance when Senator Helms was a member of the Senate POW-MIA committee, which I then chaired. I will always be grateful to him for his very steady support during that difficult and highly emotional time. He understood the importance of dealing with that issue head-on, regardless of partisanship or political consideration, and understood as well as anybody, because of his years of service, the need to begin to heal the wounds of war that still divided this country. His participation with Senator Helms and the work of that committee was a great service to this country. The admiral and I also worked closely together during the 6 years that I was privileged to have the responsibility as chairman, and then ranking member, of the International Operations Subcommittee for the State Department authorization bill. I know that Bud Nance believed it was more than just another bill. To him, it was a reflection of our priorities in a global strategic sense, which he understood so well. So it wasn't just a substantive issue to him; it was also an institutional issue, and he cared about that. He cared about the Senate prerogatives, he cared about the committee priorities and prerogatives, and he shared that concern with all of us. Although we found much to agree on, we obviously sometimes disagreed. But, boy, I can tell you it was never with anything except the deepest sense of respect and understanding for the substance of another person's position. Even throughout those disagreements, I always knew I could talk to Bud Nance and he was going to give me a fair hearing, and, working with Senator Helms, he was going to do his best to resolve those differences. We all know the degree to which Bud Nance was a devoted public servant. But of greater meaning and of greater consequence to him, surely, Bud Nance was a devoted husband and father. We have heard others talk of the wonderful marriage that he had to Mary Lyda for 53 years. Together they had four children. I simply want to take this opportunity to extend my condolences to them and to their families for their loss. It is also very hard to think about Bud Nance without obviously thinking about the special relationship he had with his closest friend and our colleague, Senator Helms. I will always fondly remember the many stories that Senator Helms shared with us in the Foreign Relations Committee and here on the floor about two young tykes growing up within streets of each other and spending literally their lives together, even when they weren't together. No one could ever doubt the strength of the bond between them or the personal loyalty they felt toward one another over so many years. This was really a rare friendship. That it has a marvelous endurance is a tribute to both Bud Nance and Jesse Helms, not just as public servants or as partners in a public endeavor, but as private people, as human beings. Modern politics is not kind to personal lives, to private lives. It is sometimes easy to lose sight of the importance of those friendships in this city, and that is why I think it is so important, in part, to recognize the full measure of the friendship they shared. I don't remember all of the words, but there is a wonderful poem by William Butler Yates that speaks about the glory man shares here on Earth, but in the end he calls on us to hope that every individual would say: And so my glory was I had such friends. Really, that is glory in itself, that he had a friend like Bud Nance. Mr. President, this is a city marked by transients. People come and people go. But Adm. Bud Nance was forever proud that his service here was, in many ways, neither ephemeral or transient. It was a tireless service to the country, the Senate, stellar leadership in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and lifelong devotion to country. It defines patriotism. He will be greatly missed, but he will also be remembered very fondly by all of us who knew him and remembered him as a good man who made no secret of his love of family, love of friends, and love of country. He epitomized the best of what can come from our Nation's capital and from the country itself, as well as the best of what our foreign policy can be. We will miss him today, but so much more so, we honor his legacy and his memory. Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to speak before you today about a critical challenge before this Senate--the challenge of reforming the way in which elections are conducted in the United States; the challenge of ending the ``moneyocracy'' that has turned our elections into auctions where public office is sold to the highest bidder. I want to implore the Congress to take meaningful steps this year to ban soft money, strengthen the Federal Election Commission, provide candidates the opportunity to pay for their campaigns with clean money, end the growing trend of dangerous sham issue ads, and meet the ultimate goal of restoring the rights of average Americans to have a stake in their democracy. Today I am proud to join with my colleague from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone, to introduce the ``Clean Money'' bill which I believe will help all of us entrusted to shape public policy to arrive at a point where we can truly say we are rebuilding Americans' faith in our democracy. For the last 10 years, I have stood before you to push for comprehensive campaign reform. We have made nips and tucks at the edges of the system, but we have always found excuses to hold us back from making the system work. It's long past time that we act--in a comprehensive way--to curtail the way in which soft money and the big special interest dollars are crowding ordinary citizens out of this political system. Today the political system is being corrupted because there is too much unregulated, misused money circulating in an environment where candidates will do anything to get elected and where, too often, the special interests set the tone of debate more than the political leaders or the American people. Just consider the facts for a moment. The rising cost of seeking political office is outrageous. In 1996, House and Senate candidates spent more than $765 million, a 76% increase since 1990 and a six fold increase since 1976. Since 1976, the average cost for a winning Senate race went from $600,000 to $3.3 million, and in the arms race for campaign dollars in 1996 many of us were forced to spend significantly more than that. In constant dollars, we have seen an increase of over 100 percent in the money spent for Senatorial races from 1980 to 1994. Today Senators often spend more time on the phone ``dialing for dollars'' than on the Senate floor. The average Senator must raise $12,000 a week for six years to pay for his or her re-election campaign. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The use of soft money has exploded. In 1988, Democrats and Republicans raised a combined $45 million in soft money. In 1992 that number doubled to reach $90 million and in 1995-96 that number tripled to $262 million. This trend continues in this cycle. What's the impact of all that soft money? It means that the special interests are being heard. They're the ones with the influence. But ordinary citizens can't compete. Fewer than one third of one percent of eligible voters donated more than $250 in the electoral cycle of 1996. They're on the sidelines in what is becoming a coin-operated political system. The American people want us to act today to forge a better system. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 77% of the public believes that campaign finance reform is needed ``because there is too much money being spent on political campaigns, which leads to excessive influence by special interests and wealthy individuals at the expense of average people.'' Last spring a New York Times found that an astonishing 91% of the public favor a fundamental transformation of this system. Cynics say that the American people don't care about campaign finance. It's not true. Citizens just don't believe we'll have the courage to act--they're fed up with our defense of the status quo. They're disturbed by our fear of moving away from this status quo which is destroying our democracy. Soft money, political experts tell us, is good for incumbents, good for those of us within the system already. Well, nothing can be good for any elected official that hurts our democracy, that drives citizens out of the process, and which keeps politicians glued to the phone raising money when they ought to be doing the people's business. Let's put aside the status quo, and let's act today to restore our democracy, to make it once more all that the founders promised it could be. Let us pass the Clean Money Bill to restore faith in our government in this age when it has been so badly eroded. Let us recognize that the faith in government and in our political process which leads Americans to go to town hall meetings, or to attend local caucuses, or even to vote--that faith which makes political expression worthwhile for ordinary working Americans--is being threatened by a political system that appears to reward the special interests that can play the game and the politicians who can game the system. Each time we have debated campaign finance reform in this Senate, too many of our colleagues have safeguarded the status quo under the guise of protecting the political speech of the Fortune 500. But today we must pass campaign finance reform to protect the political voice of the 250 million ordinary, working Americans without a fortune. It is their dwindling faith in our political system that must be restored. Twenty five years ago, I sat before the Foreign Relations Committee, a young veteran having returned from Vietnam. Behind me sat hundreds of veterans committed to ending the war the Vietnam War. Even then we questioned whether ordinary Americans, battle scarred veterans, could have a voice in a political system where the costs of campaigns, the price of elected office seemed prohibitive. Young men who had put their life on the front lines for their country were worried that the wall of special interests between the people and their government might have been too thick even then for our voices to be heard in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. But we had a reserve of faith left, some belief in the promise and the influence of political expression for all Americans. That sliver of faith saved lives. Ordinary citizens stopped a war that had taken 59,000 American lives. Every time in the history of this republic when we have faced a moral challenge, there has been enough faith in our democracy to stir the passions of ordinary Americans to act--to write to their Members of Congress; to come to Washington and speak with us one on one; to walk door to door on behalf of issues and candidates; and to vote on election day for people they believe will fight for them in Washington. It's the activism of citizens in our democracy that has made the American experiment a success. Ordinary citizens--at the most critical moments in our history--were filled with a sense of efficacy. They believed they had influence in their government. Today those same citizens are turning away from our political system. They believe the only kind of influence left in American politics is the kind you wield with a checkbook. The senior citizen living on a social security check knows her influence is inconsequential compared to the interest group that can saturate a media market with a million dollars in ads that play fast and loose with the facts. The mother struggling to find decent health care for her children knows her influence is trivial compared to the special interests on K Street that can deliver contributions to incumbent politicians struggling to stay in office. But I would remind you that whenever our country faces a challenge, it is not the special interests, but rather the average citizen, who holds the responsibility to protect our nation. The next time our nation faces a crisis and the people's voice needs to be heard to turn the tide of history, will the average American believe enough in the process to give words to the feelings beyond the beltway, the currents of public opinion that run beneath the surface of our political dialogue? In times of real challenge for our country in the years to come, will the young people speak up once again? Not if we continue to hand over control of our political system to the special interests who can infuse the system with soft money and with phony television ads that make a mockery of the issues. The children of the generation that fought to lower the voting age to 18 are abandoning the voting booth themselves. Polls reveal they believe it is more likely that they'll be abducted by aliens than it is that their vote will make a real difference. For America's young people the MTV Voter Participation Challenge ``Choose or Lose'' has become a cynical joke. In their minds, the choice has already been lost--lost to the special interests. That is a loss this Senate should take very seriously. That is tremendous damage done to our democracy, damage we have a responsibility in this Senate to repair. Mr. President, with this legislation we are introducing today, we can begin that effort--we can repair and revitalize our political process, and we can guarantee ``clean elections'' funded by ``clean money,'' elections where our citizens are the ones who make the difference.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I was just going to ask the Senator how long he was going to speak.

Mr. KERRY. I would like to ask a question.

Mr. KERRY. Will my colleague yield for a question?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank particularly the Senator from Maryland, the ranking member, for his leadership on this issue. I regret that the Senate is in the position it is in on this particular bill. I have previously supported financial modernization. We have voted on it in several incarnations. Last year I was among those who happily sent this bill, what was then H.R. 10, to the Senate with a very significant vote of support in the Banking Committee, because we believed overwhelmingly that we had the right balance between the interests of the financial services community, whom we are all concerned about and we all understand need the needs of that community; at the same time we had what most people thought was a very fair and sensible recognition of the virtues of the CRA. In the waning hours of the last Congress, all Members remember there was a single, very adamant voice of opposition, the now chairman of the committee, who in fairness has deep-rooted beliefs about it, but who frankly stood in a very, very small number last year who ultimately, because of the timing of the bill, was able to prevent an entire bill from passing the Senate. Now we are back here once again revisiting the important imperatives of financial modernization. This year many of us who want to vote for that financial modernization are put in the very difficult position of having to take a position of fundamental principle that because we believe so deeply that the CRA provision is so disturbed by this bill that a strong relationship that has existed and worked with a profound, positive impact for people in this country, is being sufficiently undone, even attacked, and requires that we oppose the bill in its current form. I am used to going through Pyrrhic exercises in the Senate, regrettably with increased frequency. It is a sad commentary on the nature of the legislative process today that sometimes measures move through here in a very partisan way and then we ultimately wind up in the conference committee with the administration negotiating and things are changed. That may or may not happen here. It certainly didn't have to be this way. We could have arrived at some kind of fairminded compromise that reflected the views of the vast majority of Senators. Instead, we find ourselves with a bill that is not just about financial modernization. It is also about a significant reduction in the capacity of the Community Reinvestment Act to work. Many Members believe very, very deeply we can do better than that. I think we obviously need to recognize that U.S. financial institutions as a whole are the most efficient providers of financial services in the world today. There have been remarkable changes in the marketplace in the last years. All Members ought to pay proper tribute to the virtues of the entrepreneurs who have themselves undertaken to put those changes in place. I don't think Congress can stand here with a straight face and take entire credit for the virtues of the economy that we are living in today. I do think we take partial credit because I think it was a courageous effort in 1993 to face up to the realities of the deficit and to come up with a solid deficit reduction act. In addition to the congressional efforts, Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Fed, deserves enormous credit for his courage during the banking crisis of the last years of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s when he took bold action to help refinance the banks, as well as his remarkable stewardship of monetary policy itself. Finally, it seems to me a very significant amount of the credit goes to the companies themselves and the CEOs who saw a change coming down the road, who responded to the demands of the 1980s when people were writing books about Japan, Inc. and writing off American enterprise and suggesting we needed a wholesale adoption of another model. Indeed, our model has proven perhaps at times to be excessive and at times even to be insensitive, but nevertheless to be way ahead of any other capacity or structure in the world in the marketplace. Increasingly, one of the reasons for that success has been the blurring of the lines between banking, insurance, and securities. We need to do our part. We are way behind the curve, years behind the curve. Were it not for the thoughtful and judicious steps taken by the regulators themselves without congressional impetus we perhaps wouldn't have been able to accomplish some of what we have. Now is the time to respond by breaking down the artificial legal barriers of an outdated era, the barriers that prevented banks, security firms and insurance companies from affiliating. It is time we take the step to ratify the liberation of financial service companies so they can provide a broader array of services to consumers and corporate customers. I don't think we should hesitate to do it. This is several years overdue. It is regrettable that we find ourselves in this position, after the Senate Banking Committee overwhelmingly by a 16-2 vote passed legislation. That is a fairly profound statement of the Senate Banking committee's willingness to move forward. Here we are again, notwithstanding the challenge of financial modernization, with too many Members having to say no to moving forward because of the extreme measures being applied to the CRA itself. That judgment is not ours alone. The Treasury Secretary, whose expertise and judgment over the last years, I think, has been without parallel, and the President of the United States, clearly on Secretary Rubin's recommendation, have stated that if the CRA measure stays as it is, this measure will be vetoed. Very simple: It is going to be vetoed. We have a choice. We can either take a look at the CRA and make a judgment about what it accomplishes or we can go through another Senate exercise, send the bill out for veto and accept failure in the end for our capacity to be able to recognize the importance of the vast changes that I referred to a moment ago. Let me say a few words about the CRA, if I may. The CRA is now more than 20 years old. It is very straightforward in concept. It is imminently reasonable. It says simply that banks have to provide credit to all the communities in which they take deposits. In other words, if a bank accepts deposits from a neighbor, that bank has some kind of responsibility to make loans available to creditworthy borrowers in those neighborhoods. That is common sense and it is fundamentally fair. This statement of reciprocity, of mutual responsibility, says an awful lot about the kind of country we want to be and the kind of country we are as a consequence of that kind of effort. Let me speak for a moment to what the CRA has accomplished. It has helped to make more than $1 trillion in good, profitable loans to low- income areas, loans that bankers in my State and in States all across the country have said would not have been made without the law. It has given low-income communities of working families access to capital that is absolutely crucial to start a small business or to buy a home. And it has created new business opportunities for the banks themselves. I would say that CRA is a fundamentally conservative, procapitalist law because it is not a handout; it is not something for nothing. It requires responsibility. It broadens the tax base. It broadens the capitalization capacity of a community. It brings people into the economic mainstream. It is a law that provides that all Americans, low- and moderate-income Americans, very often African Americans or Hispanic Americans, with the opportunity to buy a home or build a business if they are creditworthy. The law is very clear on the last point, about creditworthiness. Loans have to be made with all of the normal concerns for safety and for soundness. The act itself could not have been more clear on that. It says that it has to help meet the credit needs of the local communities from which it is chartered, ``consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.'' So, when the chairman of the committee says it is just an extortion program, I think there is such a level of extreme exaggeration and rhetoric in that, measured against what happens --and I will speak for a moment later to the question of extortion--because any bank has the ability to prove that any particular request was not able to meet the requirement of safe and sound operation of that institution. It is clear there are plenty of ways of doing that. And the balance of the weight is on the bank; it is really against the person requesting the credit, based upon the normal standards by which banks do business. If you talk to most bankers, they will tell you the CRA loans perform as well as the rest of their portfolios. We are not looking at some enormous drag on banking institutions. In fact, some banks have begun to sell CRA loans on Wall Street in order to acquire more capital to make more CRA loans. Those are market forces that are being harnessed to expand opportunity and to grow our economy. Here in the Senate, lately, we have heard a lot of talk about the ``opportunity society.'' The fact is, the Community Reinvestment Act exemplifies that notion. Credit is the economic lifeblood of every community, whether it is rich or poor. In our society, I think it is fair to say that historically we know that credit denied is also opportunity denied. When you deny hard-working Americans the chance to buy their own homes or start their own businesses, you are denying them the opportunity to share in the American promise. This is a country where we have demanded a lot of our citizens. We expect them to make the most of their own lives, to take responsibility for themselves and for their families--largely because of the kinds of public policy decisions we have had the privilege of supporting here in the Senate with respect to this kind of economic sharing, if you will. We say to Americans: If you take the effort to live by the rules, to show your creditworthiness, to stand up within the economic structure, then we have the ability to help provide some of the tools to build that decent life for yourself. CRA was built on that. But what we are considering today--and I heard the Senator from Wyoming and I have heard other Senators try to suggest this is really just a fixing of the CRA, that it doesn't really take it apart, it is going to leave it in place; we are just going to take, whatever, about 38 percent of the banks out from under it--those are the banks under the $100 million mark--and then we are going to make it a lot more difficult to apply any real measurement because we are going to change the standard by which we measure a violation; and, we are also going to change--according to the chairman--we are going to exempt banks from protest based on a 3-year satisfactory CRA record no matter what. And of course for the new activities we are empowering in this bill, it doesn't apply at all. If ever there was a reason to make judgments about whether or not people are in compliance, it is when they are going to go out and engage in new activities that involve a whole series of new, larger roles within the economic community. It seems to me it is inconceivable that, when they are going to take on those new kinds of responsibilities, you are suddenly going to say: We are not going to apply it; we are going to hold it where it is based on the theory of what CRA is supposed to be. There is a reason that there is this kind of semi-subtle approach--I would not call it that subtle in the end. It is sort of a sledgehammer, but it is hidden enough in a way that people who are not completely familiar with it or with the process might say there are some redeeming factors here. But the fact is, the reason it is done in this sort of backdoor approach is that they learned they cannot do a frontal assault. They are not going to strike it altogether. It does not give people enough cover. So then you are left sort of analyzing: What is it that it is really going to do? What is going to happen here, in terms of this effort? I believe the Bryan amendment will preserve the appropriate relationships by simply requiring that banks have and maintain a satisfactory CRA rating as a condition of exercising the new affiliations allowed in this bill. The Bryan amendment also strikes the safe harbor language and the exemption from CRA regulations for banks with less than $100 million of assets. I listened to the chairman in the committee and I addressed this directly--raised this issue of extortion. I acknowledged at the time, and I will acknowledge on the floor, that I know of instances where people have come into a bank at the last minute, or at the moment of a merger, feeling the iron is hot, and of course when the bank wants the merger to move--carefully and without ruffled feathers. When the banks don't want the regulators suddenly getting their dander up at this critical moment of merger. So people take advantage of this opportunity. Let me say, I know of some instances where there have been some marginally meritorious requests. But the record of the numbers of challenges--and I will address that in a moment--is very clear. It is so de minimis that no one can come to the floor with anything except pure anecdote, sort of a story here or there, that suggests that somehow there is some massive problem. What bank does not deal with community groups, all the time--this is not some sort of a last minute thing where there are a bunch of unknown people sitting at a table who can walk into the bank and the newspapers and the local television are all going to take them seriously. We are dealing, after all, with communities in which there are sets of relationships which everybody understands. Most of the people within that community--the political leaders, the elected political leaders, the opinion leaders, the bankers, the businesspeople, the news people--understand the difference between legitimacy and extortion. They understand the difference between a community that is getting its fair share of community investment from a bank and a community that has been starved. The fact is, if somebody is walking in, in some sort of bald-faced ``extortion effort,'' the bank can tell them no way and probably stand there with impunity and justification in doing so. If some banker is complaining about some illegitimate group coming in and holding them up, then that banker, frankly, ought to be fired for not having the courage and the guts to say: Look, we are meeting our standards. We have covered all the people who have made legitimate requests. Your request is not legitimate. It will not withstand the scrutiny in the light of day, and I am not going to be blackmailed, period. Moreover, there are laws in this country already on the books, Federal laws, State laws and local--within counties--which district attorneys can prosecute with respect to those kinds of extortion efforts. To suggest we are going to hold up the financial modernization efforts of the United States of America in a global marketplace over these anecdotal stories and not be able to find a common ground where we could fix or address the question of legitimacy--there are any number of language changes you could make in the standards or in the review process or in the process, all of which would be adequate to deal with the questions that the Senator from Texas has raised. But none of those is on the table, none of them. What is on the table is an entire exemption for a whole set of banks for whom this has worked very effectively. Moreover, what is on the table is an exemption of any consideration at all for these remarkable new powers that are going to be given to the banks which demand that you make some kind of judgment about what their commitment really is in their community. You can talk to most of the bankers in the country right now. The Wall Street Journal summed it up this way: Few Republicans share (the Chairman's) passion for the (CRA) issue. Bankers don't love the CRA but have largely made their peace with it. . . . ``CRA is part of the way we do business--we don't have any problems with it,'' says Pamela Flaherty, a vice president at Citigroup, Inc. It is not industry leaders or community leaders who are driving this effort to undermine the CRA; it is the tendency in this Chamber and in our politics for ideology sometimes to work against the needs of communities and the interests of good public policy. When you measure what we are doing against the broad-based effort of the House of Representatives and the House Banking Committee to develop a more broad-based effort, you have a real confrontation with that approach. If you look at some of the language we have heard about the CRA-- comparing it to slavery--that is the kind of statement that just ignores the reality of what the CRA has accomplished. The CRA, accepted by most bankers in this country, supported by people like Alan Greenspan, supported by major bankers in the country, has brought billions of dollars of credit into African communities, Hispanic communities, and Asian-American communities where thousands of banks have become active partners in creating opportunities for working families so they can become new homeowners and by providing the capital to budding entrepreneurs. Slavery? That is an extraordinary comment. Too many of our colleagues are willing to forget the redlining and the racism that plagued lending in too many low-income communities in previous years. Before 1977, when the Community Reinvestment Act became law, many financial institutions believed they had absolutely no responsibility to the communities they served. Some financial institutions accepted racial and economic discrimination as part of their mortgage credit and business lending policy. It is because we found that too many banking institutions saw an ease to the profit line by moving into certain areas and an unwillingness to do business and reach out to Main Street with access to credit that we put the CRA in place. Studies from that time period show that some financial institutions routinely invested more than 90 percent of their deposits that they received from low-income and minority neighborhoods into other areas. Ninety percent of the deposits that came from certain low-income communities went out to other areas. We have a fundamental responsibility not to start segmenting and dividing up the financial marketplace in a way that is going to allow people to turn away from that responsibility of inclusion that has benefited everybody in this country and has made this country a better place. In Roxbury, MA, a low-income minority neighborhood within the city of Boston, only 20 percent of home sales were financed by financial institutions between 1975 and 1976. But in the prosperous suburbs of Boston, 83 percent of home sales were financed by financial institutions in the same time period. The residents of Roxbury who were able to obtain financing were forced to use private mortgage companies, often at substantially greater expense than at financial institutions. The cost of denying private mortgage credit and business lending was literally devastating to the social and economic growth of Roxbury and other low-income neighborhoods in the inner city and in rural areas. Over time, property values and small business activity plummeted, and then crime and poverty escalated. We can recreate that cycle if we want to go backward in time, Mr. President. Activities like that are exactly what brought the Congress to pass the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, to encourage bank and thrift regulatory agencies to help meet the credit needs in all areas of the communities that they serve. I don't think we can afford as a nation to roll ourselves back to those days when it was more power to the powerful, more money to those who already had the money, and less concern and less effort to try to be the country that all the speeches are about and all our days of celebration are about. CRA has worked in Massachusetts where there has been more than $1.6 billion in commitments made by financial assistance institutions to assist low-income neighborhoods. These funds have been invested in home ownership, affordable housing development, minority small business development, new banking facilities and services, and it has made a difference in our inner-city neighborhoods from Roxbury to Jamaica Plain to the South End. Let me give a direct example. Stacy Andrus, from Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, was a restaurateur struggling to make ends meet and retain her clientele in a competitive environment. She knew she had to be creative just to keep pace. She began toasting chips out of pita bread to serve as finger food before meals. As one might expect, those chips soon became the most popular item on the menu. Like so many businessowners who know they have latched on to a great idea, she wanted to expand the operation. She tried to bring the concept to scale, but capital and credit were not available to her; they were not available in Jamaica Plain. Even though their deposits went into the bank, they did not come back into the community. She could not find the help she needed until finally she started working with the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation. This corporation works within a network of small business providers that use CRA programs at local banks to secure funding for small businesses. With their help, Stacy obtained a $60,000 loan from BankBoston. As a result, her business expanded rapidly: She has leased a production plant in Jamaica Plain; she has residents of the low- income community working for her; she has put former welfare recipients on the payroll; she has 900 bags of chips rolling off the assembly line every single day. Thanks to CRA she has now made them one of the top selling gourmet snack foods in all of Boston, and she has major airlines interested in serving her chips to first-class customers. Without the CRA, Mr. President, the community of Jamaica Plain would not have received those kinds of benefits from economic development that has been generated. In addition, it is also giving low-income communities a shot at home ownership. Julie Orlando is a single working mother of three. She wanted to buy a home for her family in Leominster, MA, which is Northwest of Boston. In the days before CRA, she would not have possibly been considered a likely candidate to own a home, but because the Fidelity Cooperative Bank was involved in the CRA coalition, she was able to obtain a $72,000 mortgage with no points. The city of Leominster provided additional assistance to Julie and her family. Because the Fidelity Cooperative Bank participated in the CRA coalition, she and her children can live with their first home, which is, after all, Mr. President, not just the American dream, but it is good for the community. How many times have we heard of the problem of crime that comes from transient members of the community, people who do not have a stake in the community. That is exactly the type of assistance that CRA was designed to provide. It is my hope we are not going to take measures here that deny a whole generation of CRA success stories in the future. The CRA and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data continue to show that blacks and Hispanics face significantly higher mortgage rejection rates. The Boston Federal Reserve showed conclusively that African Americans get turned down for a mortgage 1.6 times more often than whites, even after you control for many of the economic income and creditworthiness differences. A New York Newsday study, looking at 100,000 mortgage applications on Long Island, showed that blacks' applications were rejected three times as often as whites', even when they had the same income. In a study right here in the Washington, DC, area, completed last year, we found that significant lending discrimination exists against blacks and Hispanics. Mr. President, the need for the CRA remains very much alive in the United States. Let's put the rhetoric aside. Let's put the ideology aside. Let's find the common ground within the Senate whereby we can guarantee that we can build a coalition that will support the best of financial modernization and the best of our effort to broaden the economic base of this country. I might add, some have suggested there is sort of a legalized concept to what has been called the ``legalized extortion.'' In fact, some people have suggested that the regulators have assisted that process. Let me say, Mr. President, I find it very hard to believe that people would suggest that Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, for whom we have--all of us--such respect for, is complicitous in that process. This is what he said about the CRA: . . . the CRA process is something that we clearly have been supportive of and think is crucial and necessary to the development of communities. We think that it's in the interest of the banks. We think that it's in the interest of communities. Mr. President, the data from the regulators--let me just close on this--the data from the regulators is clear. The chairman of the Banking Committee wants the Senate to fundamentally weaken CRA. He will stand up and argue, this is not taking it away. He is going to try to point to the exemption for the small banks. And he will come back to the notion that it somehow is still in effect, even though it does not apply to the new services that will be provided, and even though the 3- year safe harbor provision is included. But the fact is, that fewer than 1 percent of bank applications have been receiving an adverse CRA comment. Fewer than 1 percent of the 660 applications that received the adverse comment were denied on CRA grounds--1 percent of the 1 percent. Not a single application receiving adverse comments has been denied since 1994. So here we are with the entire regulatory structure of our modernization effort of the financial services of our country held hostage to a few people's perceptions, based on ideology, of 1 percent of 1 percent, notwithstanding that all of the banks in the country have learned that this is, in fact, good economic policy, good banking policy, and they have accepted the CRA. It is my hope that our colleagues will recognize that, even as this country has grown strong and the economy and the marketplace has grown, even as the stock market is reaching the extraordinary 11,000 level, the fact is that there are more Americans who are poor, there are more Americans who are living on 1989 wages, there are more children in poverty today than there were 3 years ago or 4 years ago in this country, by a figure of about 400,000, and the fact that too many families are working too hard at the bottom level just to make ends meet. For us to backtrack on a fundamental commitment about the relationship of financial institutions within the communities in which they do business, would be to turn our backs on what has made America stronger and better. And I hope my colleagues will not do that. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Senator.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, there are two issues of critical importance to the future of Indonesia, the region, and the international community which has interest in securing a stable and democratic future for Southeast Asia: the upcoming elections in Indonesia and the political status of East Timor. If the June national elections in Indonesia are determined to be free, fair and transparent, the ballot for East Timor's political future has a much better chance of being conducted under the same conditions. The U.S. and the international community must make a strong effort now to ensure that these conditions are established and upheld. For the first time in forty-five years, Indonesians have a chance to participate in a free and fair election and to establish a government with popular support and legitimacy. For the first time in twenty-four years, the Indonesian government is willing to consider an East Timor that is independent of Indonesian rule, pending the decision of the East Timorese, themselves. Indonesia, indeed, stands at a cross-roads. We must be sure that the U.S. and the international community stands there with it to guide Indonesia down the correct path. The path that leads to democracy and free-market economic growth. Not the one headed into chaos and economic downturn. It is clear that the stakes are high. Indonesia boasts the fourth largest population, and is a crucial player in Asia, where American economic and political interests overlap. In 1996, the United States benefitted from some $3 billion in exports to Indonesia and American firms had invested over $5.1 billion in Indonesia's growing economy. The Asian financial crisis reversed this course of economic expansion, crippling Indonesia's economy and exposing the inherent weakness in Indonesia's political structure under the Suharto regime. The resulting disintegration, which I saw first-hand during my trip to Indonesia in December, is overwhelming. Indonesia's GNP fell by fifteen percent in 1998, and is predicted to experience another decline this year. Unemployment stands at over 20 million, up from 8 million last May. Forty percent of Indonesia's 218 million people live below the poverty line. But, this is not the end of it. Economic instability has exacerbated the already prevalent political and social tensions. Student protests, attacks on Chinese businessmen, conflicts between Ambonese Christians and Muslims, and paramilitary violence in East Timor is evident across the country. Separatist forces on Aceh, Irian Jaya and other islands in Indonesia's multi-ethnic archipelago are gaining sway as Timorese independence moves closer to reality. The Indonesian government must take strong and decisive steps now to reduce these tensions and build respect for the rule of law and human rights. This is necessary and crucial in order to create an atmosphere conducive to holding democratic elections and determining, peacefully, the future political status of East Timor. I must, however, commend the actions that President Habibie has taken thus far to open the political process and set the stage for democratic elections in June. In February, 1999, he signed legislation that established guidelines and procedures for conducting national elections. Forty-eight parties are now registered to compete in the June election, as opposed to three in the Suharto era. The military's representation in the parliament has also been reduced. Seats will be allocated by proportional representation, rather than the winner take all strategy which favored the Golkar party. I am pleased to cosponsor legislation introduced by Senator Robert Torricelli which supports these efforts of the Indonesian government to achieve a real and peaceful transition to democracy. This bill calls upon the government to make necessary preparations to ensure that free, fair and transparent national elections will occur in June and that there is a strong commitment to uphold the results of them. It also asks all parties involved in determining the status of East Timor to seek an equitable and workable resolution to this issue. I have cosponsored similar legislation in the past which affirmed the right of the East Timorese to have a referendum on self-determination, encouraged the Indonesian government to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms and urged the Indonesian political leaders to implement political and economic reforms. I will continue to support such efforts in the future. The reforms that the Indonesian government has implemented --however encouraging--do not on their own guarantee free and fair elections, nor do they help to reduce the tensions related to East Timor's political status. Violence has been on the rise. The world has witnessed increased hostilities in recent months among groups that have cultural and political interest in what the future shape of East Timor will be. The Indonesian government has a responsibility to resolve these tensions. I believe it can begin by abandoning its plan to employ civilian militias to combat violence and dismantling existing militias, whose abuses are already heightening the potential for violence. The government must help the military find means for handling violent outbursts effectively, without abuse. Allegations of the Indonesian military's direct involvement in committing human rights abuses and perpetuating violence led me to support a restriction on U.S. arms sales and International Military Education and Training (IMET) aid to Indonesia which was initiated by Congress in 1993. I was, and still am, concerned that the Indonesian armed forces might use U.S. arms, military training, and financial assistance to commit human rights violations against innocent civilians. It remains necessary to keep these restrictions in place until it is clear that the Indonesian military is committed to upholding democratic principles. I am encouraged that the leaders of the Indonesian military, the pro- Indonesia militias and the pro-Independence rebels signed a peace agreement on April 21, 1999 that calls for an end to the violence and a laying down of arms. It also establishes a Peace and Stability Commission which may help to determine the process by which full disarmament can occur and the political status of East Timor can be determined. These are significant steps forward and I believe lay the groundwork for real stability and peace. Mr. President, it must not stop there, however. The Indonesian government--with the support and commitment of its military--must continue its dialogue with all competing factions, both those that support and those that oppose independence. Together, they must seek to resolve outstanding issues--such as disarmament and the question that will be asked on the ballot--in the most expeditious way possible. I am pleased that East Timor groups favoring independence from Indonesia have been included in recent discussions regarding the future political status of East Timor. It is important for all parties to be at the table since all parties must ultimately abide by the agreement if it is to be credible and enduring. While the exact details of the tripartite negotiations that occurred last month between Indonesia, Portugal and the U.N. are not fully clear at this time, the world community will be watching closely when they are released. The August ballot is supposed to determine the political future of East Timor. Whether the East Timorese choose independence or continued unity with Indonesia, the voting process and the period following the vote must be free of violence and intimidation. The world community can play an active role in helping the Indonesian government see that this happens. The Administration has pledged $30 million to assist Indonesia during its national election. However, I believe we, and others in the international community, should do more to make sure that sufficient funds are available both for a free and fair election to occur in June and to help the Indonesian government conduct a free and fair ballot for East Timor in August. The United Nations already has agreed to send a civilian police force to East Timor to monitor the vote. I believe this is a good first step. The U.N. presence should, though, be supplemented by international, non-governmental organizations, or equivalent Indonesian groups, which can help monitor and facilitate the ballot process. The time is now for the U.S. and the international community to focus on Indonesia and East Timor. The national election for Indonesia is less than six weeks away and the ballot for East Timor is only about eight weeks after that. I believe, as one long involved in Southeast Asia, that it is important for those who have interest in the future stability of this region to start creating a positive atmosphere in which both of these events can occur.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair. I thank the Senator from Texas. I thank the Senator from Maryland. Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the problem is that isn't going to work on the schedule I have now this evening. I simply say to the Senator, Mr. President, that it would seem to me, in furtherance of what the Senator from Maryland has said, that if we were to write in the order for the morning for tomorrow that X amount of time will be set on both sides, taking into account the amount of time I have requested from the Senator, we could accomplish all of the goals, if the Senator were willing to try to make that the order.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, if the Senator will further yield, I don't want to disturb the schedule of the Senator from Maryland or concept of how he wishes to proceed managing our side of the aisle, if that would fit within his framework.

Mr. KERRY. Unaccustomed as I am to speaking from this side of the aisle, maybe it will get me extra credit from the Senator from Texas. Would it be possible to carve out some time because of my complications on the schedule? I have been here a number of times today trying to get in on the schedule to speak prior to the vote. Would I be able to have 20 minutes set aside for that purpose?

Mr. KERRY. Will the Senator yield?