John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, represents an opportunity to change not only the regulatory burden on small business, but more importantly, to begin to change the way all Federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service [IRS], deal with small business. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the bill. In far too many cases, the Federal Government has acted as the judge, jury, and executioner for small businesses. Testimony before the Small Business Committee indicated many small businesses fear agencies like the IRS will levy huge fines on them for failure to comply with minor rules and regulations--of which they may be entirely ignorant. The Federal Government must become a partner in the growth and development of small businesses, not an adversary. While not perfect, this legislation includes a number of provisions which will ease regulatory burdens and give small businesses some recourse when Federal bureaucrats are over zealous in the exercise of their power. The bill requires agencies to publish in plain English a guide to assist small business in complying with regulations. Federal regulations are often too difficult for anyone to understand, let alone a small businessperson who is trying to run his or her business. It will also allow Small Business Development Centers to offer assistance to small businesses in complying with Federal regulations. The bill would also establish an ombudsman to help small businesses get fair and legal treatment from the Government if they have been treated unfairly. The ombudsman would also assist small businesses in recovering legal fees as a result of unfair Government actions. Under the bill, Federal agencies would be required to waive civil penalties for first violations by small businesses that do not constitute a serious threat to public health, safety, or the environment. The bill provides that small business representatives are to be consulted in Federal agency rulemaking decisions that would have a significant impact on small businesses so that small business interests would be considered at the outset in the development of regulations. While these reforms will not end the difficulties many small businesses face in complying with Federal regulations, they should help ease the burden. I hope this legislation will mark the beginning of a new era of better relations between Government and small business. The Federal Government should be working in partnership with small businesses--not at cross-purposes with them. I am proud to support this legislation and would like to thank the chairman of the Small Business Committee, Senator Bond, and the ranking member Senator Bumpers along with their staffs for their effort in producing this legislation.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I will vote to support the Bond amendment to the underlying Lautenberg-Kerry amendment only because it provides some additional funding for environmental programs that are critical to improving the health and safety of all Americans and because it is the most that Democratic negotiators could wrest from the Republicans for these purposes. Regrettably, this Bond-Mikulski compromise eliminates any opportunity to pass the Lautenberg-Kerry amendment which contains almost double the funding for environmental protection, including water infrastructure funding for the State revolving loan fund and additional funds to cleanup of Boston Harbor. However, I hope that the overwhelming support for the Bond-Mikulski compromise amendment will demonstrate to the House conferees that the vast majority of Senators want to support increased funding for critical environmental protection. I plan to work with the White House and the Senate and House conferees in the hope that we can provide even more support for the environment. Let me first put in perspective the situation before us on funding for environmental programs. I was pleased to join Senator Lautenberg in offering the underlying amendment to the Hatfield substitute to H.R. 3019. Our amendment would add back nearly $900 million for environmental programs at four Federal agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Interior. The EPA would receive over $700 million--for clean water, Superfund and EPA enforcement and operations, environmental technology and climate change programs--with the remainder going to important conservation programs at the other agencies. This funding is critically needed to continue to protect the public's health and safety at a level that Americans have come to expect from their Government. The conference report on the 1996 VA/HUD/independent agencies appropriations bill, from which the Environmental Protection Agency obtains its funding, was vetoed last December by President Clinton in part because it provided $1.6 billion less for environmental protection than the President's budget request of $7.4 billion--a 23-percent cut. The President, in budget negotiations with the Republicans, then proposed to compromise by restoring approximately $1 billion to the EPA budget. The Republicans rejected that proposal. The amendment I offered with Senator Lautenberg and a number of other Senators would restore just over $700 million for the EPA including $365 million for the two State revolving loan funds for water infrastructure projects and an additional $75 million to share the costs facing the residents of the Boston area for a multi billion- dollar water and sewer treatment facility. This further compromise was also rejected by the Republicans. Following that rejection, Senators Mikulski and Lautenberg negotiated with Republicans the deal reflected in the amendment before us today-- the Bond-Mikulski amendment. While it provides far less environmental protection than the Lautenberg-Kerry amendment, it does restore critically needed resources to the EPA that neither the House bill nor the underlying Senate committee bill includes. The Bond amendment restores $300 million for the State revolving funds for water projects and additional funding for Superfund and EPA operations. That is important and beneficial. However, I cannot fail to describe why I wish the Bond amendment went further. While the Bond amendment restores funding for some activities at the Environmental Protection Agency, it eliminates critical funding for services and functions vital to protecting the environment in my State of Massachusetts and the rest of the Nation. Relevant to the Democrat proposal, the Bond amendment reduces the additional funding for the EPA contained in the underlying amendment by almost half. It reduces funding for water infrastructure projects under the State revolving loan fund by $75 million and eliminates the additional $75 million for cleaning up Boston Harbor--high priorities for both me and for the President and other Members of the House and Senate. In addition, the Bond-Mikulski amendment cuts $100 million from other crucial environmental protection activities within EPA such as the Environmental Technology Initiative, the climate change program and the operations and enforcement budgets--the environmental cops on the street. Finally, the Bond amendment eliminates $170 million included in our amendment for other environmental enhancement and protection efforts, including funding for the Department of Energy's conservation and weatherization activities which would have insulated 12,000 homes, $72 million to help keep our national parks open and $20 million for conservation and research projects at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Environmental Protection Agency and environmental protection activities it and other agencies operate have been subjected to far more than their fair share of cuts in the past year. For example, in the fiscal year 1995 rescission bill, the EPA budget was cut by $600 million to pay for disaster assistance. Now, for fiscal year 1996, we are asking the EPA to take another huge reduction in its budget. It is clear the Republicans are not imposing cuts on environmental protection activities just to reach a balanced budget. Their objective is far more sinister--to cripple environmental protection efforts because their friends who own or manage polluting industries don't want to go to the trouble or expense. If we want a healthier environment for all Americans, we must provide adequate resources to accomplish this to those arms of our Government charged with that responsibility. What has happened to these activities during the past year is a tragedy. In the case of the EPA, first, there was a Government shutdown, then proposals for significant layoffs of thousands of employees, followed by another 3-week-long shutdown, followed by another short-term funding measure which only served to prolong the anxiety and uncertainty among EPA employees. EPA is facing a crisis where its best and brightest minds are seeking more secure employment outside public service. This directly affects the quality and effectiveness of our Government's efforts to ensure a clean, healthy environment to all our citizens. The only way to resolve this crisis is for Congress to make environmental protection a priority, not a punching bag. This Congress is seeking to place more burdens on the EPA through new regulatory reform measures and new assistance for small businesses. I support a number of these measures. But if they are to be implemented properly, or at all, we must provide the requisite resources. If we want clean water and air, if we want to clean up toxic waste dumps, if we want a healthy environment, we in the Congress have to support those activities. The Bond amendment is the very least we should do. But it is more than anything for which we have been able to secure Republican support up to this point. So I support the Bond amendment and I still firmly support the goals of the Lautenberg-Kerry amendment to restore environmental protection and I will work to achieve the higher funding levels in the conference committee.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to address this issue as well. The Senate has voted more than once on the question of how best to promote the full accounting of Americans missing in action in Vietnam and on the issue of moving forward in our relations with Vietnam. In each case, this body has voted to take reciprocal steps toward Vietnam as a means of achieving both these objectives. The provision contained in the House bill, if included in the conference report, would be contrary to the Senate's clear record and for that reason it should be rejected by the conferees. That is not the only reason it should be rejected, however. Working with Vietnam, we have established an unprecedented process for resolving outstanding POW/MIA cases. American and Vietnamese teams are working together to conduct field exercises and to pursue other leads. Even as we speak, a high-level Presidential delegation is in Hanoi consulting with Vietnamese government officials on the progress of this effort. The legislation contained in the House bill could jeopardize this ongoing work and set back the progress we are making. I think we should recognize this provision for what it is--a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the administration's decision to normalize relations with Vietnam. The majority of Members in this body was indicated they support normalization. We should not allow the House to put us on record otherwise.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I thank the distinguished Senator from Oregon. Mr. President, again, I join with my colleagues in encouraging colleagues to vote for the Hatfield provision. In the final days of January, in an effort to avert a third Government shutdown, this body passed by unanimous consent a continuing resolution which included a provision that will decimate international family planning programs. After studying this provision more closely, we now know that the effects will be far greater than was known at the time the Senate acted on the bill. We are currently in the sixth month of the fiscal year. Unfortunately, we are living under an extraordinary reduction in family planning funding. In fact, it has received no funding from any continuing resolution since October 1, 1995. As we know, the January continuing resolution prohibits any funding for family planning until July 1. Beginning in July, the program will be funded at a level reduced 35 percent from the 1995 funding level, to be allocated on a month-by-month basis for the next 15 months. So, in effect, you really have a reduction that is catastrophic. Mr. President, in dollar figures, the family planning program has been cut from $527 million in 1995 to $72 million in 1996, which is an 85-percent cut in 1 year. One can only conclude that that cut is not just a cut to try to reduce overall spending commensurate with the other reductions in the budget; it is punitive, purposeful, and it is wrong. Fortunately, in the continuing resolution before us today--the 10th continuing resolution and I certainly hope the last funding bill we are going to debate in 1996--we have the opportunity to reverse those cuts and restore critical funding for these vital family planning programs. I congratulate Senator Hatfield for his efforts to try to do this and express my very firm support and conviction that the international family planning programs are in our best interest and do not have to do with abortion. To the degree that any arguments about abortion enter into this debate, it is a preventive measure. I think everybody has spoken to the fact that this planning money will reduce abortions and avoid a catastrophic situation which will only result in a great deal more abortions than we would want. Funding for these programs is an investment that will save the lives of thousands of women and prevent millions of unplanned births and abortions in the future. These programs ensure that mothers all over the world are going to give birth to, more often than not, healthy babies, and that the competition for resources in our world is not even more severe for those babies who are born into it because of continued significant overpopulation problems. I joined Senator Simpson in representing the United States at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, where the United States went to great lengths to play a leadership role in galvanizing the international community to action on this issue. The conference called for a global effort, which we signed onto, which we helped lead, and which the Vatican signed onto, to help address the overpopulation and to work together to promote maternal and child health care, as well as educational opportunities for women and for girls, and, most importantly, family planning programs. After pledging to provide world leadership in the area of international family planning, we should not now abandon our global partners at this juncture. Mr. President, I again want to just emphasis what I think we must understand and underscore in this debate. Family planning does not mean abortion. In fact, family planning has been proven to rule out the incidence of abortion through education and contraception. Family planning programs help women and families living in impoverished countries to begin childbearing at a later stage of life, to space their children apart, and to avoid unwanted pregnancies. The issue of helping families to better plan for children is in the interest of everybody on this planet. In addition, Federal law, now in effect, prohibits the United States from funding any abortions abroad. The U.S. Agency for International Development has widely and strictly abided by that law. Those who argue that international family planning programs fund abortions are simply wrong, and they argue in contravention of the law of the United States. Mr. President, by denying people access to the family planning programs worldwide and by slashing their funding, there will be an estimated 4 million more unintended pregnancies, close to 1 million infant deaths, tens of thousands of deaths among women--and I emphasize, for those who oppose permitting women to choose abortion as an alternative--that the result of cutting this money will create 1.6 million more abortions. I think none of us want to encourage that abortion. So, Mr. President, I simply say that these programs provide 17 million families worldwide with the opportunity to responsibly plan their families, to responsibly space their children, to provide a better life for those children, to provide for healthy children, and to avoid adding to a population problem that hurts all of us and hurts the unborn generation even more severely. I hope my colleagues will vote against the McConnell amendment which is counter to all of our interests.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I object.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Delaware, who, when he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, shepherded the single-most comprehensive and important crime bill probably in this century, or ever, through the U.S. Senate. It was the first crime bill in history to comprehensively try to deal with the problem of crime in this country. Generally speaking, previously, we came to the floor and we had a bill that sought to deal with guns, or we had a bill that sought to build prisons, or a bill that sought to deal with drugs, and occasionally something like the LEAA that sought to do something with the criminal justice system itself. But this was the first time, under the leadership of Senator Biden, that we stood back and said, ``How do we deal systemically with the problem of crime?'' To the credit of the U.S. Senate, we finally --after we got over the issue of guns--shed party lines and shed the partisanship, and came up with a comprehensive approach to try to deal with crime. We put slightly less than $10 billion into the building of prisons. We put up almost the same figure into prevention, and almost the same figure into police officers. What I think is most significant about the approach that we adopted is that we recognized something that has been building in this country for perhaps 20 years and did something about it even as we recognized it. That is, specifically, we took note of the fact that for about 15 or 20 years we had been disarming our communities in this country. We had been losing numbers of police officers, losing the ratio of police officer to crime. I think for any Member of the Senate who has spent time in the criminal justice system--there are a number of us here who have done that--or for anybody who spent a lot of time, like Senator Moynihan or others, studying the relationship of values and other damaging trend lines in the disintegration of the fabric of our communities to law and order issues, I think most people have come to the conclusion that there is a relationship between people in the community and their perception of how the law is applied and how it is enforced to their sense of justice, their sense of deterrence, their sense that there is a linkage between the law and behavior. Most people in America have been able to come to the conclusion that when you are properly administering the judicial system, when you have adequate police officers, when you have an adequate level of deterrence, there really is a relationship to how people choose to behave. That is no different from what we try to do in our schools at the earliest stage. When the teacher is out of the classroom, kids tend to run amuck a little bit and take advantage of it. When the teacher comes back in, usually to a greater degree or lesser degree, order is restored and people begin to have a sense that there is an authority figure there, and they know how to behave. The same is true at home. Depending on whether a babysitter is a strong, hard-nosed babysitter, or lax, or present or not present, at the refrigerator or the television versus taking care of kids, kids will make decisions about how to behave. It is no different in the rest of the world in which we live. In a community, when people perceive that there are not any officers of the law, they write the law. They take their behavior and start to do things that there is no outside influence to suggest to them they should not do. It is so elementary that it almost defies the imagination that we are here debating about it. The word ``cop'' stands for constable on patrol. It is not rocket science. We learned years ago in America when we were this great immigrant nation welcoming people from everywhere that one of the great ways in which we sort of brought people together was through the establishment of a set of laws and a standard of behavior which people followed as a whole. One of the critical ingredients of that was the cop, the constable on patrol, the person walking down the street with a billy stick in a uniform of blue who stood for the standards of that community. Mr. President, during the 1960's and 1970's, we walked away from that. We took police officers off the streets, literally, putting them both into headquarters and into an automobile. We eliminated precinct after precinct after precinct station in America. This was part of the great new policing and cost-saving consciousness of that particular time period. What we did was kind of modeled our policing habits after the general sort of living habits of Americans. We all went for the automobile, and America moved its sense of community from the community into this transient status which we are in, fairly well to do, where people live in apartment buildings and do not even know each other. We have neighbors in these apartment buildings who are utter strangers. We have a whole new level of what we call stranger crime in America; murders that are committed by people who never met their victims. In fact, we have learned in the past few years in America--thanks finally to our having required the Justice Department to report the truth of who kills whom--we have learned that the great story about most people committing murder being people who knew each other is a myth. It is not true that most murders in America are committed in this passion between lovers or family disputes. We now know that in the last 10 years in America, out of 200,000 or so murders, 100,000 of our fellow citizens were blown away by somebody they never met, an utter stranger. And we now know that, of those people who were murdered, two- fifths of their murderers have never set a foot across the threshold of a police station--not for an inquiry, not for an arrest, and certainly not for a prosecution. That is why there is an increase of fear in America; that is why there is an increase of anger in America; because the average citizen feels this loss of freedom in this country. There is a dramatic loss of freedom in the United States of America--still the freest country on the face of the planet, but not the same free country that it used to be where we felt that we could go anywhere, travel anywhere, go to a restaurant, not have fear of our car being stolen, not having to pay extra money for insurance, not having to pay extra money for trauma in our hospitals, not having to pay for the price of this incredible wave of violence that has consumed our Nation. What has happened at the same time as we have had this wave of violence? We have diminished the number of police officers. In community after community after community we have less police officers on the streets of our country today than we did 15 and 20 years ago. So here you have these two lines. One line is the increase in crime. It is going up. The other line is the presence of police officers, and it is going down. What is the message? The message is very clear. If you are a criminal and you know that the police cannot even respond to the current 911's, if you know that if there is a burglary or an armed robbery, that their ability to track it down is limited because they are already having difficulty filling out their own overtime because they are already having difficulty going to court for the number of court appearances that they have to meet for the crimes already investigated, and they are having difficulty doing their patrols on the level that they ought to be doing them because, lo and behold, there are not enough officers to cover those patrols. What are you going to wind up sending as a message? The message has been crime pays. That is the message we have sent America--crime does pay. All you have to do is talk to any hardened professional criminal out there, and most of them will tell you that you just learn in the undercurrent and the subculture of crime in this country that that is their perception. It is their perception because we have never had a serious war on drugs in America. Why? Because we only treat 20 percent of the addicts in this country. So what is the message? The message to 80 percent of the drug addicts of America is it does not make any difference if you are lying in somebody's doorway drugged out; it does not make any difference if you have committed your 50th household break-in to support your habit because there is nobody there to get you off your habit, and nobody to catch you for the crime you are committing. Go to most cities and dial 911, and see what happens. We have had tales that baffle the imagination here in Washington where three blocks away from this Capitol people have dialed 911, and it took 20 minutes to half an hour for a cop to show up. My wife was involved in an attempted robbery in the city of Washington a few months ago, stuck up by a man with a handgun, and a guy who happened to be driving by in his car called 911, reported it, and nobody showed up. And it was only thanks to that lucky citizen's presence that he took the license plate of the car that got away, and they caught the person who did it. In Boston a few months ago, we had a guy who started to run amok out in the street at night. The cop came up to him, the guy pulled a gun and shot the cop and started running down the street. He went around a corner, but there happened to be an off-duty cop working a detail who heard it on his radio; he heard the call of what was happening, started looking around, saw the guy, ran after him, and the guy went around the corner and blew his own brains out before the cop got to him. Another example in the 99 Restaurant in Charlestown just a few months ago. Guys walked in the restaurant with guns in the middle of the day, in the middle of lunchtime and started firing away at five people sitting in a booth. I think there were four people killed. It might have been five. I cannot remember--four anyway. Two guys come running out with their guns. They are taking off in the light of day, having committed murder, but two cops happened to be in the place eating, off duty again--off duty--and two other guys were out there, again off duty, on a detail. The four of them managed to make the arrest red- handed, right there in the parking lot. What happened? Cops off duty, cops not part of the regular duty happened to be there. What is the message out of that? What is the message out of the cop who happens to be there when somebody runs amok in the street? The message is cops in the streets make a difference. You do not have to go to school to learn that a police officer walking down the street is an invitation not to commit a crime. Most people do not go out and rob a bank when the cop is standing on the corner. Most people do not run up to an old lady and pull her purse away when there is a cop in the lot. That happened in Brockton, MA, just last week. A 73-year-old woman was murdered at random, in an act of senseless violence, when a young guy from a neighboring city, who was just caught a couple of days ago, came to that parking lot, grabs her purse and beats her senselessly, and she is dead. I tell you, if he had seen a cop in that lot, that would not have happened. Now, obviously, we cannot cover every corner, we cannot cover every parking lot, but you know what we can do? We can guarantee that this priority of putting cops on our streets that we committed to only a year ago is not now taken away. For what? For what reason? Nobody has spoken here and said this is not working. The arguments that were made a year ago were that you are not even going to put 5,000 cops out there. This is a joke. Well, we have put 33,000 cops on the streets of America in the last year and a half. We have added 265 cops alone to the city of Boston. The Federal Government is now paying for a 25-percent add-on of cops to the city of Chelsea, next to Boston, and we are taking back communities. I was over there the other day listening to the police chief and to the community activists tell me what has happened to the drug dealers and the crack houses since we put those cops on those streets. They are gone. They are painting the houses today. People come out in the community. They care about the community. They come back into it, and they suddenly have new life, Mr. President. Why would we want to not continue that commitment? Now, I know some people will come to the floor and say: ``Well, Senator, what we want to do is give the local community the power to choose and give these people the opportunity to have a big block grant, and they can pick and choose what they want to do.'' But that is totally contrary to the decision that we made based on the evidence a year ago. There are communities in America that need these cops. When you make the cops competitive with a cruiser or floodlights for a jail or a drug court or another program, you are diminishing the number of cops that will be put on the street. That is the result. There is a fixed pot of money, and this block grant takes the fixed pot of money and makes cops competitive with everything else that is in the block grant. The end result is there will be fewer police officers on the streets of America. Why would we want to do that when the Conference of Mayors says, do not do that; we want the cops. Why do it when the police chiefs across the country say, do not do that; we want police officers. Why do it when the police officers' unions and patrolmen themselves say, we need more cops to help us do our job. The mayors are against it, the police chiefs are against it, the district attorneys and attorneys general are against it, and we are going to go ahead and do it. Now, why would we do it when it flies in the face of truly giving people local control? When small communities give it to the Governors, that is not local control. That is State control. When you give it to the Governors in the format of which it has been given, it is actually more expensive administratively. We are currently administering this program for less than a 1-percent administrative cost. You put it in a block grant with all of this competition at the State level and you drive your administrative costs up to at least 3 percent and maybe more. Moreover, you enter politics into the situation. What is going to happen when you have a Republican Governor and a Democratic district attorney who may be thinking about running against the Governor and he is going to submit a plan to the Governor for this money? Do you think he is going to be the first to get it? We took the politics out of this program. A cop, as the Senator from Delaware said, can directly send a single sheet of paper to the Justice Department and he can get an answer within days, and they have been doing that. I do not know how you get more direct local control than that; a local police department goes to where the money is, says we need help and gets the money. Instead, we are going to go three tiers. We are going to go to the Federal Government, to the State Government, State Government through the process down to the local government. It just is not part of the revolution of restoring local community control. It flies directly in the face of that, and it is contrary to it. I do not think this is politics. I think this is really common sense. This is how we are going to restore our communities. I think that 100,000 cops, as I said a year and a half ago, is a downpayment on what we need to do in America today. I think we ought to add 100,000 more cops to the 100,000 we have, and I absolutely guarantee you that if we do that, we will diminish the number of Americans in jail; we will restore whole communities; we will reduce the costs to our hospitals and all the trauma people suffer as a result of violent crime, and we will honestly send a message in this country about law and order. I can take you to community after community. Lowell, MA. Let me read to you what happened in Lowell in the last year and a half. We were lucky in Lowell--not lucky. People made some good judgments. They hired a terrific police chief named Ed Davis. He came in 18 months ago, and he came in particularly committed to community policing. I went to a street in Lowell called Bridge Street with the chief where prostitutes and druggies were taking over the street and senior citizens literally did not dare to come out of their homes because they feared what was happening in the street. I walked into the corner pizza store and the guy there who owns it told me, ``Senator, you know, people don't come in here anymore. I am going to go out of business unless we do something about this.'' So the police chief put several police officers in a building right on that street, a new precinct, new storefront. And literally the street has been revived. The drug dealers left. The pimps and prostitutes are gone. Seniors come out of their homes. People take part in the community again and the store owner is thriving. That has been replicated in other parts of the community. Let me just share with you what the Justice Department has reported about Lowell. In Lowell, MA, for the first time in 25 years, 365 days passed without anyone being murdered. In a city plagued by heroin use and street gangs, many say the city changed over the last 18 months as a result of an intensive community- based policing effort now supported by a Federal COPS grant. The city's effort has provided 65 new officers, 6 neighborhood substations with bicycle patrols, a gang unit, and a mobile precinct for public events. Mr. President, that is the story. Over 60 new officers, 6 substations. Bill Bratton used to be the police chief in Boston. I began working on community policing with him in Boston a number of years ago. As we know, he is now the police commissioner in New York City, and he graced the cover of Time magazine a couple of weeks ago because the crime rate in New York has gone down 20-some percent and it has done it, most agree, because of the presence of police officers and the commitment to community policing. Mr. President, 15 years ago in America we had 3.5 police officers per violent crime. Today we have 4.6 violent crimes per police officer. So I hope my colleagues will again reach across the partisan divide and agree that common sense and the experience we are seeing in our streets today dictate that we should not take this pot of money and divert it from cops. Am I saying that the other priorities that they have included in the block grant are not important? The answer is no. They are important. I would like to see those funded too. That would truly be part of a comprehensive effort to deal with crime. But the first priority, beyond any of those other things, is to guarantee that our children can play in parks without fear of harm; that our seniors can come out of their homes and walk a street to go to the post office or the bank or the corner store; and that all of us in our communities can believe that the fundamentals of public safety are being attended to by putting police officers on the street. I will tell you, even with all the computers in the world, all the other things people are looking for, until community after community of this country is sufficiently staffed by police officers on patrol, we will not regain our liberty and we will not restore the order that is so cared about by so many of our citizens. I think that is the first order of priority and that is why I hope this amendment will be adopted. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I particularly want to thank the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from New Jersey, Senators Mikulski and Lautenberg, for their leadership and efforts to try to guarantee that we have a sensible environmental policy in this country. What is really astonishing is that this is the 10th time this year that we are debating the environmental programs of this country, the 10th time we are debating the 1996 budget. We are now in the sixth month of the current fiscal year, and we are setting a historic first for the United States of America. In the 11 years that I have been in the U.S. Senate, never--never once--have we had to go into a succeeding fiscal year and still be debating the items of the last fiscal year. I would say, without any question at all, that the responsibility that fell to the majority last year or the year before, when they won the election, has really not been discharged properly. I remember when we were in the majority, in the last occasion of 1994, all 13 appropriations bills were passed on time. Whatever compromises were necessary in order to achieve that, we understood the Constitution of this country, we understood the nature of the system. What has really happened here in Washington in 1995 and 1996 is that a small band of radicals in the House of Representatives have fundamentally hijacked the Constitution of this country. In the name of ideological purity and of their particular point of view, they have disavowed the balance of power between the executive and the legislature. They have taken into their own hands their own definition of timing. They are breaking the law, Mr. President. They are breaking the law. The law says that these bills will be accomplished by a specific point in time. They have not been. So we are here for the 10th time debating where we are going. People will say, ``Well, the President won't agree.'' Well, the President has the veto power. That is what the Founding Fathers gave him, and when the President has the veto power, and there is not a sufficient political force in the country to undermine whatever sustaining capacity there is in the Congress with that veto, then the President gets to have that balance. The reality is, you are supposed to compromise. But that is not what is happening. I think it is very unfortunate for all concerned. I know that there are moderates on the Republican side, many in the Senate, who are uncomfortable with what is happening, who do not agree with it, who would rather see the Congress of the United States do its business. I think it is entirely inappropriate for the country to pay the price for this small group in the House of Representatives. It is revealing that while a certain group of appropriations bills have made it into law, it is revealing that the bills that fund the agencies with primary responsibility for the environment and our natural resources, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, have not been signed into law. I think, Mr. President, that the fact that those particular bills have not been signed into law underscores the clash of priorities that is evidenced in the Republican approach to the funding of those bills and the Democratic approach. The fact that the Republican leadership is still fighting for large cuts in environmental programs is, in my judgment, an indication that they are not in touch with the real concerns of the American people and their desire for clean air and clean water. The response from some will quickly be, ``Wait a minute. Of course we're in touch. Being in touch means you balance the budget. We have shown that you can balance the budget.'' But you do not have to do it at the expense of these environmental programs. So, in the final analysis, it really comes down to a fundamental confrontation between choices--the choices you make to balance the budget. And the choices that you make to balance the budget are the final evidence of your priorities and of your values. That is why, Mr. President, I am here once again in this 10th series of efforts on the environment with Senator Lautenberg and Senator Mikulski and others, to speak in support of increasing the funding for specific environmental programs. What we are seeking to do is to add back over $900 million for environmental programs at four Federal agencies--at the Environmental Protection Agency, at the Department of Energy, at the Agriculture and Interior Departments. It is our judgment that this money is critically needed in order to fully protect America's health and safety at a level that Americans have come to expect and that they believe is their right. Mr. President, if we succeed in passing an omnibus spending bill, we are going to set the environmental budget for the EPA through the end of this fiscal year. If we pass a bill that includes environmental funding increases in this amendment, all we will have succeeded in doing is bringing us back to last year's level of protection. I think Americans need to understand that. This is not a Democrat effort to try to add huge sums of money, even though many of us believe that in certain areas we ought to be spending more. This is simply an effort to hold our citizens harmless from a reduction below the level that we were at last year. If, however, this amendment is defeated, Congress will have turned its back and turned the clock back on some 25 years of environmental gains. Ironically, for 19 of the last 25 years, Republicans were in charge of the EPA. It was Richard Nixon who signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act and delivered protection of the environment as a national priority. I think it is particularly ironic that after George Bush joined with us to help sign into effect the Clean Air Act, and after the many efforts of the last years that have been bipartisan, that we are suddenly thrown into this partisan clash over whether or not we can keep the funding at last year's level. Regrettably, our friends on the other side of the aisle have made a different choice, and it is different from what most Americans are telling us that they want. I think almost every poll in the country has shown that Americans want to protect their environment: they want cleaner air, they want cleaner water, they want pristine rivers, they want our ecosystems protected, they want an abundance of species, plants, and animals, they want clean beaches and national parks, and they want public lands that are safe and they want them protected. They want cities with breathable air and industries and businesses that are willing to join in the effort to guarantee that these kinds of protections exist. Unfortunately, Mr. President, you cannot reconcile that stated desire of the American people with the budget figures that we are being presented. So the central question in this debate is really: What priority do you place on protecting the Nation's environment and natural resources and the health of our citizens? I am confident that we are going to hear Senators on the other side of the aisle say, ``I take no second seat to anybody in the country on protecting the environment.'' We will hear Senators say, ``Let's not kid ourselves; nobody is against the environment. Nobody wants to have bad water,'' and so forth. It is fine to say that, Mr. President, but if you are in favor of cutting inspections, if you are in favor of cutting a community's ability to be able to provide that clean water, if you are voting for an amendment or a bill that reduces the commitment from last year, even though no American is asking for a reduction except for some companies, it is very hard to follow through and say, you are, in truth, voting for what you are talking about. That is the real difference here. What are you voting for? What are you putting into the budget? What numbers do you really support? While the bill that is being brought to the floor is an improvement from the conference report, it is still a budget that is hundreds of millions of dollars below the level that most people in good conscience and good faith have decided is necessary in order to continue the level that we have committed to the American people. In addition to that, Mr. President, the bill contains a series of legislative riders that cripple the EPA's ability to be able to protect the Nation's wetlands, which is precisely what some people want to do. They have never liked the wetlands protection. They want to develop wetlands, and they do not care about the standards. So they are intentionally setting out to cripple it. And it would also halt the Department of Energy's work on setting energy efficiency standards for appliances. Mr. President, we have, as I have said before--but I think it needs repeating again and again--shown that you can balance the budget in 7 years without doing what the Republicans are choosing to do here. I hope that we will recognize that without restoring some of this funding, the cuts to the EPA are going to deal an extraordinarily harsh blow to efforts to be able to protect us. I would like to bring it down to a local level, if I may, Mr. President, to my State of Massachusetts. We are trying, in this bill, to increase the State revolving fund by $365 million over what the Republicans have provided. Every State will benefit. All cities in each of our States that are in need of new infrastructure will benefit by adding to the State revolving fund. We have communities in Massachusetts, a community like New Bedford, for instance, about 100,000 residents, is building a sewer treatment facility that will cost more than $200 million. It has to build this under Federal law. Yet the tax base is such that the citizens cannot really afford to do that on their own. In the 1980's we had a partnership with the Federal Government where the Federal Government would provide anywhere from 55 to 75 percent of the money. That is not happening today. As a result, local communities are being harder and harder pressed to be able to try to live up to the standards that we have set at the Federal level. Because they are harder and harder pressed to do that, they get angrier and angrier over those Federal standards and begin to blame the standards themselves. What happens here, you get caught in a vicious circle. People begin to lose their commitment to the standards and to wanting to clean up because they feel oppressed by them. The reason they feel oppressed by them is they are required to do things they do not have enough money to do. The reason they do not have enough money to do it is the Federal Government has pulled out of the partnership and taken away the help that was given in the 1970's and the 1980's. That happened, as we all remember, in 1982 when Ronald Reagan came along and stripped away title II of the Clean Water Act and left the mandate. All of a sudden the anger was directed at mandates Mr. President, we desperately need that kind of funding assistance. In a city like Fall River, a partner city to New Bedford, you have a similar sort of tax base, similar difficulties. You have a combined sewer overflow problem which the community desperately needs to be able to refurbish, rehabilitate the sewer overflows, 100-year-old infrastructure, a current population, and the current population is required to pay for the next 100 years. That is not fair. You have to try to spread that out. Nowhere is that more felt, Mr. President, than in the city of Boston where we are living under a court order, Federal mandate, Federal court order, that you have to go ahead and clean up the harbor; at the same time, put in a secondary treatment facility for water, billions of dollars of expenditure. So the citizens of our State and city have seen a 40 percent increase in their water rates in the last few years. It has gone up to about $618 per family and will go up to $800. This drives out business, drives down the value of property, and most importantly, it is just impossible for the average family, already struggling on a lower income, to be able to pay these increasing costs. Once again, what is the result? The result is people get angry at the mandate, even though it is a legitimate mandate that you have clean water. The result is we begin to lose the consensus in this country to be able to do these things. Mr. President, in the 1970's and 1980's, many communities got money to the tune of 90 percent, 75 percent, 55 percent of their project being paid for by the Federal Government. In 1996, Boston has received a total of 18 percent funding, contrary to the 55 percent, 75 percent, 90 percent of years past. Even President Bush saw fit to put $100 million each year into our budget to help us with that. We desperately need the State revolving funds and those kind of commitments. That is an example of one State. That can be replicated all across this country. There are other communities in need of additional money. Mr. President, there is another area that is a concern. That is the area of the funding for the cleanup of toxic waste sites. This bill provides an increase, for which we are obviously grateful, over the conference report which devastated this program. Our amendment would restore an additional $50 million to the Superfund which is still several hundred million dollars below what the President of the United States has asked for. Now, while our amendment is not everything we would have liked, we believe what the Republicans are doing will slow the cleanups. It will continue to stall cleanup efforts in communities that have very, very patiently waited for Federal intervention. Let me just share with my colleagues a story that I think underscores why this is so important. The toxic waste cleanups are critical to our ability to be able to provide the fundamental protection that our citizens are looking for. There was a young man in Woburn, MA, named Jimmy Anderson who got sick from a contaminated well in Woburn. He died from lymphocytic leukemia in 1981. His story underscores why this $50 million is important. About 30 years ago, his mother, Ann, suspected that something was wrong and that their water was bad because it smelled bad. She went to authorities and said, ``There is something wrong with our water.'' The authorities just said, ``No, don't worry about it. It's OK. It will be all right.'' Then in 1972 her son Jimmy got sick. Despite her concerns, the wells that they were drinking from remained in use until 1979, when an environmental inspection that was triggered by a totally different event revealed that in those wells there were, indeed, high levels of toxins. Eventually, other leukemia victims came forward. It turned out that between 1966 and 1986 there were 28 cases of leukemia among Woburn children with victims concentrated in the two sections that were served by those wells. Now, investigations revealed when they analyzed the water, that there were whole lagoons of arsenic, chromium, and lead that were discovered on a tract of land that had once housed a number of chemical plants, and from a nearby abandoned tannery that had left behind a huge mound of decades-old rotting horse hides that gave off a smell that commuters used to call the Woburn odor as they drove by. I say to my colleagues, before we rush into adopting a budget that is going to reduce the level of inspections and give us more Jimmy Andersons, why do we not just stop and think about what the environmental protection effort is trying to achieve and what it has achieved in its previous years. Jimmy Anderson's mother came to Congress to testify. This is what she said: ``It is difficult for me to come before you today but I do so with the realization that industry has the strength, influence, and resources that we, the victims, do not. I am here as a reminder of the tragic consequence of uncontrolled toxic waste and the necessity of those who are responsible for it, to assume that responsibility.'' Mr. President, in no uncertain terms, the budget that the Republicans are offering empowers those polluters and takes away the responsibility. The budget that we are offering tries to hold those people accountable and provide power to the victims. I hope, Mr. President, that in the hours ahead we can find the same kind of bipartisan coalition that we found yesterday on education. This should not be a partisan issue. I regret that there are some who have stated their priorities different from other people's. Finally, I hope we will rectify the legislative riders that open up more timbering, that create a greater imbalance in the relationship between our natural resources and the people of this country. There is nothing, frankly, more important, than education. This is part of our education effort. It is also part of our fundamental responsibility to the next generations. I hope we will add the money that is necessary.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to rise in support of S. 1494, the Housing Opportunity Program Extension Act of 1996. Mr. President, this bill is important to the country and particularly important to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I thank the other Members of the Senate for their support of this legislation. S. 1494 extends several housing authorizations that expired at the end of the last fiscal year. Among these are the Community Development Block Grant direct homeownership assistance provisions which have proven useful to the city of Boston and other communities in my home State, and the Federal Housing Administration's multifamily risk- sharing program in which the Massachusetts State Housing Finance Agency is an important participant. The bill also extends the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Program, that provides elderly homeowners with the ability to use the equity in their home without having to sell the house. This bill also extends the section 515 rural rental housing program and two important set-asides within the program--a set-aside for nonprofit developers and a set-aside for underserved areas. Mr. President, the section 515 program is one of the few Federal housing programs providing much needed affordable housing assistance in rural areas. The passage of this bill also sends to the President provisions from an amendment that I cosponsored with Senator Grams in the Banking Committee. This amendment would limit access to public housing by drug abusers and alcohol abusers. We need to make sure that our federally assisted housing provides a decent, safe, and peaceful living environment for its residents. The final version of this bill addresses one of my principal concerns with earlier versions: it makes it clear that a public housing authority should look at a person's pattern of drug or alcohol abuse--rather than their history of drug or alcohol abuse--when screening candidates for admission. S. 1494 also enacts provisions that will streamline the process that public housing authorities must follow to designate a building as elderly-only or disabled-only housing. I would like to thank the managers of this legislation for also including language I recommended to authorize vouchers for people who may be adversely affected by a PHA's designation decision. I would like to mention that this bill includes an extremely helpful provision that extends the timetables for processing and approving sales to nonprofits under the low-income housing preservation program. Many residents of HUD-assisted housing around the country--and especially in Massachusetts--have been working very hard to purchase their buildings under the preservation program. Extending the deadline will ensure that these people's efforts will have time to come to fruition. Finally, Mr. President, S. 1494 allows the HUD Secretary to transfer up to $60 million in support of national nonprofit housing and community development organizations. The bill authorizes $25 million for Habitat for Humanity, $15 million for other similar self-help housing programs, $10 million for the National Community Development Initiative--which includes the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the Enterprise Foundation--and $10 million for National Cities in Schools. These are all excellent organizations and I am pleased to lend my support for this authorization.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I wish to join my colleague from South Carolina in supporting his amendment, and I regret the characterizations of my friend from New Hampshire, the southern portion of which certainly has a significant amount of technology companies that are in partnership with the Federal Government. It seems to me the arguments that are made by the Senator from New Hampshire fundamentally avoid the reality that we confront in the marketplace and that our companies are confronting in the marketplace today. It would be nice if we could just sit here and say the Government should not be involved in this or that and proceed along. But the reality is that the governments of every country against which we compete are deeply involved in major commitments to science, to technology, to research, to development, and even carry those commitments way out into the marketplace in order to effect pricing and the marketing of the products that come out of their companies. We are not living in a sort of pure Adam Smith world where everybody can sit around and say, gee, the Government should not be doing this, should not be doing that. Every government of every industrialized country in the world is engaged in what most of us would consider to be unfair trade practices in subsidizing their companies' efforts to penetrate the market of one country or another. We know that our own marketplace, as efficient as it is--and it is efficient, it is brilliant--but even in its brilliance, our marketplace does not always respond in the ways that we would like it to or as rapidly as we might like it to in the development of new products. In fact, from the great expenditures on defense of the late 1950's and on, we have seen a remarkable number of purely Government-created markets emerge, Government-created products emerge: Teflon, Gortex, digitalization, the Internet. Here we are with the Internet itself, the fastest growing market in the United States today. Some 30 million people have access to it, and it is growing at 300,000 people a month. Who created it? The Government. The Government was able to create it because the Government was able to leverage investment or make a fundamental primary investment that no private dollar was willing to do because of the risk level. Every one of us knows that in the capital markets of the United States, we have a relatively small amount of money that goes into pure venture capital. The last time I looked, which was some time ago, it was somewhere in the vicinity of $30 billion or so. That venture capital pool often does not go for some of the job-creating efforts that are critical on the cutting edge of technology. Mr. President, I think we have learned enough in the last few years about our need to try to build the partnership, if you will, to guarantee that we are on the cutting edge of certain technologies. We saw that in the early 1980's. I can remember when we were deeply committed to energy and certain kinds of environmental research. We actually went so far--we, I was not in the Senate then--but the Senate went so far and we as a Nation went so far as to create the Energy Institute in Colorado. Professors literally gave up tenure at certain universities and went out to Colorado and invested in the notion that the United States of America was committed to major energy research. What happened? Along came Ronald Reagan and a different attitude about Government involvement in energy. So we pulled the plug on the research institute. People were thrown back out into the street, and, lo and behold, what happened? The Japanese and the Germans picked up the leadership in photovoltaics and renewable energy resources, and all of a sudden, in the post-cold-war era, as the prior Communist bloc countries suddenly wake up to what they have done to the Danube River or to the region around Kijev where you can pick up ashes in your hand and there is not a living bush within a mile of their powerplants, they suddenly said, ``We have to do something about this.'' Where do they go? Not to the United States, because the United States had lost the technology lead. So they go to Germany and they go to Japan and they buy from them. Whose workers wind up benefiting? That is a clear lesson, Mr. President. What I am suggesting is this is not an enormous boondoggle or giveaway. This is a program that is set up with peer review. It is a highly competitive grant structure. It is one where there has to be some likelihood of a frontier that is going to provide new jobs under the definition of the critical technologies that most countries have recognized as critical technologies. Lester Thurow, one of the eminent scholars and thinkers of Massachusetts at MIT, recently noted that we are living in an age where industrialized nations like the United States are not going to achieve economic growth by conquering new lands or amassing greater natural resources, or even through further revolutions in technology necessarily, which are the traditional pathways that countries have taken to greatness. He said we are going to have to do it by investing in human capital. American business has demonstrated an impressive ability to develop new products and to invest in the technology that is needed to give us those new products. But the record of investing in workers has fallen far short of what is necessary to maintain the leadership position in today's global environment. Mr. President, if we look at these add-backs, what we see is a combination of the best of both worlds: An effort to try to invest in technology and an effort to try to invest in human capital. Let me just quickly underscore a couple of those areas, if I may. Mr. President, the Council on Competitiveness finds that a 10-percent increase in workers' education levels yields almost a 9-percent gain in workplace productivity, more than twice the rate of run for the same investment in tools or in machinery. Every year of postsecondary education or training boosts the lifetime earnings of an individual by 6 to 12 percent. So here we are wrestling in this country with the problem of diminished earnings of 80 percent of America--80 percent of America-- that has not had an increase in their take-home household income in the last 13 years. We know you can have a 6 to 12-percent increase by investing in their skill levels in the transfer of technology to human beings. That is what the Senator from South Carolina and I and others are trying to do here. In Massachusetts, we have been able to have about one-third of our work force employed in these kinds of endeavors, and we find that they are always more productive and they always pay higher wages. Let me give you an example, perhaps, Mr. President. The ATP, the Advanced Technology Program, and the NTIA grants and the EPA envirotech and educational technology programs that would get an add-back under this make a direct difference in the lives of our citizens. The Advanced Technology Program, for instance, helped Dr. Richard Yohannis of Data Medic in Waltham, MA, to create an automated medical data gathering and processing system that will improve the quality of care at Boston Children's Hospital and reduce at least $560,000 of administrative costs. Private banks and venture capital groups would not finance this idea. So without the ATP's matching support, Dr. Yohannis' idea simply would not have become a reality. With it, we save $560,000 and we create jobs and provide better health care. Another example: The National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Assistance Program is helping Massachusetts Information Infrastructure to begin to wire schools and libraries and local government entities to the information superhighway. NTIA now has more than 80 matching grant requests pending from equally deserving groups in the State of Massachusetts. Without the NTIA's support, the 352 MII sites around Massachusetts would simply still be on the waiting ramp on the information highway. Now I ask a simple question. We just overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to raise the level of education in this country. Here is a grant that links those schools and our students in their math and science capabilities to the information highway, to the future, to jobs and to the world. I think that is an emergency. The only reason it is required to be treated as an emergency is because our friends on the other side of the aisle, most of them, do not think it is an emergency and do not want it at all. And instead of having a 50-vote decision on the floor of the Senate, which is what you get by defining it as an emergency, they want it to be 60 votes, so the hurdle is harder to get over. This is not a fight over defining an emergency. It is not a fight over pork. It is a fight over the priorities of this country and whether or not we ought to be making a more significant commitment to science and to technology. The Hollings amendment, gratefully, would secure a critical commitment to technology. Let me give one last example. There are global demands for pollution control, for waste disposal and remedial cleanup goods and services ranges from about $200 to $300 billion. Here is a $200 to $300 billion market waiting for us. In Massachusetts alone, the environmental industry is more than 1,500 companies employing about 55,000 people, and it generates more than $5.5 billion in sales. But some of their efforts simply cannot be engaged in without the leverage of these dollars, either from a basic venture capital basis or banking basis or from fundamental risk taking in the marketplace. It seems to me, Mr. President, that it is extraordinarily valuable for this country to encourage and leverage the transition of our workplace. When 40,000 workers are downsized from AT&T, and those workers find it difficult to find the same level of paying jobs and they wind up driving taxicabs or doing things at a whole different level than they were trained for, we do not just lose their technical skill, we lose their commitment, we lose their morale, we lose the fabric of our communities. It seems to me that nothing should gain a greater focus from the U.S. Senate except for education as a whole than the effort to transfer science from the laboratory to the marketplace, to take it from laboratory to shelf as rapidly as possible. This effort has proven its ability to do that. It is not pork. It is a fundamental commitment of this country to science and to technology itself. And I hope colleagues will join together in adding back this critical funding. Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the manager is rising. I do not want to be----

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, if I could just pick up where the colloquy between the Senator from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania left off, I would like to emphasize what I think is the most important point, which is that over the 7-year period there is a sufficient offset. The Senator from Pennsylvania is correct that you do not get it every single year and you do not have it necessarily in the up front, but we are talking about a 7-year budget, and over that 7-year budget there is a sufficient offset. Now, if there is not, assume for the purposes of argument there is not, my question to the Republicans is: Are we going to offer that as a show stopper, or are they prepared to put the money where their rhetoric is and, in fact, fund education to the level that it ought to be in this country? Now, if there are not sufficient offsets, are we being told by the Republicans that out of a $1.5 trillion budget, $1.3 trillion or so of which is actually revenue funded, we cannot find a sufficient amount of money to guarantee that the disadvantaged school communities in this country will get funded? That Head Start will be funded? That school to work is going to be funded? That summer jobs are going to be funded? Look, this is a statement about priorities. There has been no trouble funding the B-2 bomber in the year 1996; there has been no trouble funding the freedom-to-farm bill, which finds an extraordinary amount of money being given away to the mining interests in this country, extraordinary amount of money being given away to the timber industry, extraordinary amount of money being given away to people to not grow crops. So we are going to pay people in America not to grow a crop, but we are not going to pay people in America to grow a child? Unbelievable choice of priorities. Unbelievable choice of priorities. Pay people not to grow something out of the ground, but do not pay for this kid that is already alive that needs Head Start, hot lunches, or decent education? That is the choice on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The Senator from Tennessee, Senator Thompson, the Senator from Arizona, Senator McCain, Senator Feingold, and I were able to identify 60 billion dollars' worth of cuts that we thought were pretty reasonable that we could come to. Now everybody here will agree they are reasonable, but it certainly is fairly indicative of something, that the Senator from Arizona, a Republican, the Senator from Tennessee, a Republican, two divergent areas of the country for Democrats, the State of Wisconsin and Massachusetts, could all agree on 60 billion dollars' worth of cuts. What kind of things did we find? We found the closing of the Uniformed Services of the University of Health Sciences, increasing the burdening sharing of the Republic of Korea, terminating the advanced neutron project, consolidating and downsizing overseas broadcasting by capping our funding to Radio Free Europe to perhaps only $75 million per year, putting other fiscal restraints on it, eliminating certain travel authorizations, reducing some of our export enhancement program for corporations that make millions of dollars. We have people in the U.S. Senate who a few weeks ago voted to continue to fund extraordinary amounts of money to multimillion-dollar corporations making a profit, to help them sell their products overseas. How do you balance the equities of funding a profitmaking American corporation to sell its product overseas but not fund a nonprofitmaking entity that is trying to raise our kids for the future here in this country? I think the choice is very, very clear. I said yesterday in my comments on the floor and I repeat again, obviously money is not the whole solution. We all understand that. Clearly, we need reform in our school systems. We need testing. We need to know when a student gets a diploma they can actually find the Capital of the United States on a map or recite the basics of American history, or do basic math. Regrettably, we have people in America who are content to pass kids on from one grade to the other without even an assurance that they can do that. That is disgraceful. That ought to change. A large part of that is a matter of personal accountability within the school system. But there is not any one of us who has not traveled to school systems in our States where they do not have computers, where they are not wired to the network, where they do not have state-of-the-art laboratories for science, where they do not have language laboratories, where they do not have modern reference books for their libraries, where their libraries do not even stay open, where the whole school shuts at 2:30 in the afternoon. Mr. President, it seems to me that if we are going to talk about values in the United States of America we ought to start living them here on the floor of the U.S. Senate in our votes. This is a value- oriented vote. What is extraordinary to me in this measure is that children in the United States are being held hostage to the whole budget process. This is a game that is being played; one more political game. What is the game? The game is that all of this money that is being talked about as an add-back is not an add-back at all. It is a contingency. It is going to be there if something else happens. It is not going to be there because we think our kids need it. It is not going to be there because it absolutely ought to be there, and schools ought to be able to plan on what they will spend next year. It will be part of the great political game in Washington because the section in the bill that does the add-backs, section 4002, says none of this money can be spent, even if we pass this today, unless there is a future agreement that is passed between the President and the Congress regarding all of the fiscal years of the budget agreement. In other words, we could pass this today and some people can go home and say, ``Aren't I terrific, because we just added back money to education,'' but it will not be added back at all unless Medicare is cut, Medicaid is cut, taxes are cut to the level that the House of Representatives is currently holding everybody hostage to. That is not serious legislating, Mr. President. What we have done is offer an amendment that is real, that offers real money, that brings us back not to the level that many of us in the U.S. Senate think we ought to be back to with respect to spending on education, but at least gets us back to hold us harmless from last year. It is a tragedy that in the United States of America, recognizing what is happening to our workers, recognizing what is happening to the whole workplace where people's ability to be able to get ahead is tied to their ability to get an education, where countless numbers of our workers now are the victims of the downsizing and of this new information age that we live in, where people are working harder and harder and harder just to pay the bills and to make ends meet, here we are debating add-backs that do not even get us to last year's level of commitment to education. It is astonishing, absolutely astonishing. There is not an educator in America who will not document the need to have sufficient basic skills to be able to move into the information world. All of us are on the floor constantly talking about the virtues of technology. You look at the entire history of this country from World War II, 75-plus percent of the productivity increases in America since World War II have come from advances in technology. Every one of us understands that in order to continue to compete to advance our productivity we will continue to diminish the labor of human hands in the workplace. Now, if we are going to increase that labor with respect to services or with respect to the new technologies, people have to have the skill level. Mr. President, they are not getting it in our school system in America today sufficiently. They could. Let me share quickly an experience from a school in Boston. This came to me from the principal of the school, Thomas Gardner School. He wrote and said, The staff and the parents of the Thomas Gardner School were devastated to learn recently that the title I funding for 1996/1997 school year will be taken away as a result of Federal funding cuts. After working so diligently in implementing an Inclusion Program at the school and receiving the Boston School Improvement Award in the Fall of 1995 for being the second most improved school in the city, it is a rude and sad awakening to all of us that with the loss of our Title I Grant, our efforts to establish a superior educational environment may have been in vain. Without the $213,000 that we received this year from Title I, two full-time and one part-time teachers will not be with us next year. The loss of these teachers will result in our having to relinquish the Inclusion Program which has been so successful and return to the traditional classroom setting. This will seriously disturb our school climate, ultimately reducing our students' self-esteem which we at the Gardner School have worked so hard to increase. This will also gravely affect the students in our Bilingual Program because we are losing both a literacy and an English as a Second Language teacher. Not only will the students suffer with the loss of the program but this will also cause low morale amongst the staff. Since my announcement of this tremendous loss of money, I can already see that there is an air of dismay and anxiety in the building because a number of staff members are wondering if they are going to be displaced. This affects teaching and learning because it breaks the spirit of the school community--the teachers, the parents and the students. Our new computer system, which was funded by Title I money, helped us accomplish a very difficult task during the 1994/1995 school year. During that year there was a significant rise in the Metropolitan Achievement Reading/Math Percentile test scores. With this success, we planned to move forward with Title I money so that every classroom at the Gardner School would have Computer Assisted Instruction next year. The teachers and parents of the Gardner School and the other 22 Boston schools which stand to lose a total of 3.5 million dollars in Title I funding next year, strongly protest the insensitive and unjustifiable cuts in Title I funding proposed by Congress. Mr. President, that is one example. I know that can be replicated in schools all across this country. But what really leaps out at me here, above all, is this contradiction: ``During that year, there was a significant rise in the Metropolitan Achievement Reading/Math Percentile test scores.'' That is what we are trying to achieve, what we are talking about, what we are struggling about. They had planned to put it in every classroom. That is what we are talking about. Every classroom in America ought to have this. We ought to want to do that before we build the next bomber, before we put out the next set of missile systems, or whatever it is. We ought to want every classroom in this country--and we ought to make a commitment--to have that computer capacity. We know it is more than just computers. It is guidance counselors, books, the whole atmosphere of the school, its safety, its drug-free schools. Why are we cutting drug-free safe schools by 57 percent? That was the original effort. Now the Senator will come back and say we are going to add back that money. As I pointed out, it is not a real add-back, unless we get all the other cuts that will come with the rest of the budget agreement. So we are holding children and the education goals of this country hostage to the politics of Washington. They do not come first; the politics are coming first. Let me share another quick letter. This is from the mayor of the city of Boston: I am writing to alert you to an urgent situation facing economically disadvantaged youth next summer--the elimination of the Federally-funded summer jobs program for 1996. As you may know, funding for the Summer Youth Employment and Training Program was eliminated in both the Senate and House appropriations bills for 1996-- Why would we eliminate them? What is it that sets a priority in the first place to eliminate this? Why is our time being consumed to come back here and have to struggle to put back into a bill money for summer jobs for youth? What U.S. Senator believes that kids are better off wandering around the streets of our country in the dead of night in the summer because they have not had a constructive day? Who believes that? Why was it taken out in the first place? Why are we struggling to do that here at the last moment? Well, maybe it ties everybody up and it ties up the energy of the Senate. But it is surely not a great statement about the priorities of this country. The mayor writes: In Boston, as across the nation, the JTPA IIB program provides constructive activities for young people and keeps them from idling in the streets during the hot summer months. Through the program, thousands of young people gain work experience, build academic and employment skills, and earn money through service at neighborhood- based community organizations and downtown government agencies. The program also includes specialized units emphasizing life skills, academics and the arts, and tailored efforts for young people with special needs, including employment for deaf/hard of hearing youth; English as a Second Language instruction for refugee/immigrant youth; and counseling for court-involved youth. Mr. President, we have a provision in our Tax Code that encourages companies to take a deferral and reduce their taxes for moving their jobs overseas. Here we are fighting to put back money at the expense of that program so kids right here at home can have a job during the summer. That is a pretty fundamental choice. Let me share one last example of what is at stake here. This information comes to me from New Bedford, MA, one of the highest unemployment sectors of Massachusetts, perennially, which has been hard-hit now by the loss of industrial jobs and jobs in the fishing industry. There is a program there that started, a Head Start program in New Bedford. It has been about a year going on. It actually has a two-part program called People Acting in Community Endeavors. In 1994, because of the capacity to do this inexpensively and keep the administrative costs down and run a whole program, they bought a building, in order to create a second outreach program of Head Start for kids who need it. And 294 children are participating in the New Bedford Head Start program as of a year and a half ago. That program provides nutrition and educational services to a multi-cultural community. Now we learn, according to the budget cuts that have been proposed here, that there will be a 50-percent reduction in that funding, which adds to their now $6.5 million debt and to other cuts in the CDBG title I. So you are not only going to wind up laying off teachers, you are going to wind up cutting the program. Mr. President, it just does not make sense. I know there are colleagues of mine on the other side of the aisle, like the Senator from Vermont, Senator Jeffords, and others, like the Senator from New Hampshire in the chair, who care enormously about education, who are committed to this. I do not think that the U.S. Senate should have that hard a time finding a way, out of this $1.5 trillion budget, to guarantee that we provide what is needed, not what we sort of want to find to provide, but what the country desperately needs in order to be able to provide structure for these kids. We cannot just come to the floor of the U.S. Senate and be bombastic about illegitimacy, births out of wedlock, and run around saying how the values of the country are imploding and then forget that the three great teachers of values are the schools, parents, and religion. There are too many kids today who grow up without contact with any one of those. It is no wonder that we have sociopaths raised in this country who are prepared to shoot another human being just to wear their Levi jacket or their Reebok sneakers. If we are going to be real in our talk about how you inculcate values into young human beings, let us recognize the lessons of what taught all of us. Let us affirm some structure in those children's lives. Let us somehow find a way in the Senate to guarantee that the 36 percent of all the kids in America who are born out of wedlock are going to somehow find some teacher in their life, a mentor, one-on-one, some outreach, some affirmation that will give them an opportunity to believe that they too can make it in this country because, if we do not do that, it is an absolute certainty that we will continue to fill our jails, our substance abuse programs, our shelters, and we will continue to bemoan the loss of the country that all of us care about and want to have. That is what is at stake in this debate. That is what this amendment is about. And I hope we can find it in ourselves to strip away the politics, to strip away the sort of the scorecard, if you will, of who wins and loses. We all win. We all win. Most importantly, the children of America will win, if we can find a way to sufficiently guarantee the resources for our education system are adequate. I hope we are going to do that today. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the two letters I used be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation intended to correct a problem created last October when Congress passed S. 895, to strengthen and reduce the cost of the Small Business Administration's (SBA) 7(a) Guaranteed Loan Program and the 504 Certified Development Company Program. My bill will restore a level playing field in Federal export financing between small and large exporters and help assure small businesses do not lose export opportunities just because they cannot get the financing they need from banks. S. 895, developed in response to a growing demand for SBA's 7(a) loan guarantees, expanded the amount of loan guarantee funding available to small businesses by decreasing the share of the guarantee for which the Federal Government is responsible from the then-current 90 percent to a maximum of 80 percent for loans of $100,000 or less, and to a maximum of 75 percent for loans from $100,000 to $750,000. As a subset of the 7(a) program, SBA's Export Working Capital Guarantee Program [EWCP] also had its Government loan guarantee portion adjusted downward. While equalizing the difference between the terms for regular 7(a) loan guarantees and export guarantees, this change penalized small business exporters vis-a-vis their larger counterparts: smaller exporters now receive less favorable financing terms through SBA than big exporters receive through the Export-Import Bank [Ex-Im Bank]. This change comes just 1 year after the SBA and Ex-Im Bank, in response to a directive from the Trade Policy Coordinating Committee [TPCC], had harmonized their export terms to provide a consistent 90 percent loan guarantee rate regardless of the size of the loan. The TPCC endorsed the harmonization to streamline the comparative strengths of Ex-Im Bank and SBA into a single U.S. Government program for the small and medium sized exporter. Through its many local offices, SBA is well positioned to provide assistance to small businesses at the local level. Ex-Im Bank, on the other hand, has only five regional offices and few personnel versed in the needs of small business. Lenders obviously choose how to allocate their resources based upon the likely return of one transaction versus another. So, while small business working capital requirements tend to be relatively small in dollar amount terms--for example, $25,000 to $500,000--the amount of expenses/overhead devoted to a small transaction is the same as it would be for larger transactions--for example, more than $2 million. In addition, banks will avoid taking foreign lending risk if coverage is reduced. Banking practices are different for domestic lending and foreign lending. Banks will include almost any current domestic receivable in the borrowing base of the customer eligible for financing, but they will not include foreign receivables because they are perceived to be higher risks. SBA's EWCP converts foreign receivables into domestic receivables that can be financed. Finally, a number of exporters with small transactions are not considered bankable because they are new-to-export, having relied on family, friends, second mortgages and credit cards to start their businesses. SBA helps move them closer to becoming bankable. The legislation I am introducing will restore parity among small and large exporters in Federal export financing terms, and help assure that no small business loses an export sale just because the financing is not there. Mr. Bennett Schwartz of BayBank and who is also vice president of the Coalition of New England Companies for Trade, a group of more than 100 companies, makes a compelling case for this bill: The single greatest obstacle to small business exports is the inability to obtain adequate financing; The EWCP program was initiated only on October 1, l994 and it is clear that the 90 percent guarantee provides a critically needed incentive for lenders to make these loans. At a 75/80 percent guarantee this already difficult to obtain financing will become even less attractive to banks and the loans will likely not be made; Under the harmonization of export finance programs with the Ex-Im Bank, whose Working Capital Guarantee program is not changed, small businesses will be discriminated against. In addition, the SBA underwriting criteria are different than Ex-Im's in that SBA emphasizes transactional based finance over balance sheet lending, precisely the type of financing most difficult to come by for small businesses. The average exporting deal for small businesses ranges from $30,000-$400,000. The average size of approved SBA EWCP loans has been $300,000. Many smaller banks without International Departments will participate in an SBA program because they are comfortable with the Agency. The SBA focus on providing advice on structuring a deal so that it meets a bank's criteria is particularly effective in making this type of program work. The General Accounting Office also supports the principle behind this legislation, arguing there is a clear rationale for treating export guarantees differently than other 7(a) guarantees: banks that make export guarantees have a greater risk and lower profit than banks making other 7(a) loans. ECWP loans are short-term and cannot be sold on the secondary market, making them relatively less profitable than conventional 7(a) loans. SBA testified before the House Small Business Committee last September 7, that a 90 percent loan guarantee rate for ECWP loans ``will not really affect the Section 7(a) program subsidy rate * * * even if the ECWP doubles in the fiscal year l996, it will still represent less than 1 percent of the total 7(a) loan portfolio.'' At the same hearing, a representative for the Bankers' Association for Foreign Trade argued the difference in the two guarantee rates would raise ``serious concerns about the future involvement by banks in this area of trade finance.'' Since October 1, l994, the harmonized program has been solely responsible for ensuring 285.3 million dollar's worth of additional United States exports. In fiscal year l995, SBA approved more than 132 transactions worth $44.3 million as compared to 77 transactions worth $27.4 million in fiscal year l994. While these numbers clearly demonstrate to me the importance of the loan guarantees to small business exporters, in enacting S. 895 last year, Congress requested SBA to evaluate the impact of the disparity in export loan guarantee rates. SBA surveyed lenders and borrowers throughout the United States, using its field offices, small business associations and the President's Export Council. Not surprisingly, the results of SBA's Impact Study, . . . overwhelmingly illustrate that the reduction in SBA's maximum guarantee percentage has had, and will continue to have, a detrimental effect on SBA's ability to expand access to working capital for small business exporters. Ultimately, this will likely have a negative effect on the ability of small businesses to enter the global marketplace as they continue to be unable to obtain the financing they critically need. Specifically, the Impact Study found: Access to working capital trade finance by small businesses will be severely reduced. Three-quarters of the small businesses interviewed stated that the lower guarantee will have an adverse effect on their ability to obtain export financing. Many lenders will retreat from making trade finance loans due to decreased risk mitigation. Over half of the banks interviewed stated that they would not have made a loan under the EWCP at the 75/80 percent guarantee rate. Small banks, in particular, will be less likely to offer export finance to their customers. The ability of small business to compete in the global marketplace will be negatively affected. Mr. President, small business exporters in Massachusetts tell me they need this legislation to help them continue to obtain critical financing. I am sure this is also the case for small business exporters across this Nation. At a time when exports are a key component of continued economic growth and the creation of family-wage jobs, it is incumbent upon Congress to do all it can to help rather than hurt America's small business exporters. I am pleased to have Senator Lautenberg join me in introducing this bill and urge my colleagues to support this important legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise to support, as an original cosponsor, the amendment proposed this afternoon by the Senator from South Dakota with the objective of restoring some of the funds that have been cut from the education budget of this country. I know that most Americans will quickly agree that money is by no means the whole solution for the schools of this country. I think all of us agree with that. The reason this fight is taking place is not because of some automatic response that suggests that, ``Gee, they are cutting education. It doesn't matter how much. We must fight to put the money back.'' This amendment is not such a reflexive action. But I think, just as most Americans would automatically agree that throwing money at something is not the solution, so they would also agree that they want schools that are free of drugs and that are safe. So they would also agree that they want 3- and 4-year-olds to have the maximum exposure to early intervention school programs. So they would also agree that it is critical to take kids who are at risk in their teenage years, who have either dropped out of school or have a drug problem or are facing some other kind of difficulty in life, and give them an opportunity to get into the workplace. So they would also agree that it is important to share the wealth of this great Nation with a disadvantaged community, an urban community which depends on the property tax to fund its schools but which has very, very little tax base because of the problems it faces, in order to help the kids in that community get a decent education. What we have here in the Republican approach to this continuing resolution is a disavowal of each and every one of those realities. I do not think there is any American in a community that is affected who is coming to the Congress and saying, ``Hey, we only have 50 percent of our kids getting drug education last year. Let us lower the funding for drug education.'' Or, ``Hey, we know that this community cannot match the high-income communities in the rest of our State in the local funds it invests in schooling its children, but, nevertheless, let us lower the Federal funding provided to that community and make it harder to educate its children.'' No one has come to me in my State and said, ``Senator, it's too bad that those kids at the Jeremiah Burke School only had 12 computers a year ago for 900 kids. But that's really not so important. Let's make sure they only have five next year--or maybe none.'' That is the effect of what is being proposed by the Republicans in their approach to education, because the hard, inescapable truth in the United States of America is that we have district after district that does not have sufficient resources to provide kids with an adequate education. I was at the Healy School in Somerville, MA, the other day, which receives title I money. In that community there are kids who are in a joint first and second grade class. Some of those kids have special needs, and they are trying to mainstream through the education process those kids with special needs, because to take them out of the mainstream is to have them miss the very important experiences to which other children the same age are exposed. And the evidence is that they perform better and advance further scholastically when they feel they are part of the regular group. It is an important component of building self-esteem. It is an important component of helping people to grow up to be productive citizens. It is an important component of reducing the later costs that are imposed on taxpayers in this country for people who are not able to be part of the mainstream. In that school in Somerville, they have teachers' aides, part-time teachers helping the regular teachers to be able to keep these kids progressing as close to the norm as possible. What is the rationale for the Republicans to come along and say, ``That doesn't matter, we're going to cut Federal funding for that effort, because we have to balance the budget of this country?'' We do not disagree, of course, that we have to balance the Federal budget. In fact, we emphatically state that we must balance the budget. The debate is not over whether we have to balance the budget, the debate is over how the budget should be balanced. And most Americans, I believe, would say, ``Do we really need to build a B-2 bomber in 1996 instead of educating these kids in Somerville and in all of America's other communities from coast to coast? Could we not find other parts of our $1.6 trillion budget to trim in order to guarantee we have the best education system in the world?'' I fully understand that we need standards, we need testing, we need a change of attitude in the school place. We need principals who have the power and authority to direct the schools and hold teachers accountable for satisfactory teaching. Of course, we need all those things. But, Mr. President, we need to guarantee that our kids have computers. We need to guarantee that our schools are wired to the computer age. We need to guarantee that the libraries that they have are open in the afternoon. We need to guarantee that those libraries that are open have current reference books. We need to guarantee that teachers are not doing just the minimum in order to stay employed, that they are not just xeroxing materials in order to be able to put something in front of children so they have something to work on during the day. We need teachers striving to be the best they can be, and motivating children to be the best they can be. The Republicans, a couple of months ago, suggested to us that it was OK to zero out the money for summer jobs--eliminate summer jobs entirely. That was their priority. They went back home and talked to their constituents and read the polls, and they saw their agenda was not working as they intended. The American people did not like what they saw. So they came back to Washington and have included in this bill about two-thirds of the amount the President requested for summer jobs for teenagers. But they are not through with their intransigence. They have nominally appropriated funds to pay the costs of two-thirds as many jobs as the President requested, but then in the same bill they prohibit expenditure of those funds until a further deficit reduction bill is enacted that is to their liking. They say they are no longer holding schoolchildren and teenagers who want to work as hostages, but we all should look behind the story they are telling and closely inspect the facts of their bill. The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program is being cut by over 50 percent. I do not understand that. This will equate to a reduction of about $2 million from a program that serves over 14,000 kids in Massachusetts. It serves 39 million students nationwide. I do not know of any American today who will come in here and say, ``We've got the drug problem licked, let's go home.'' We just appointed a new drug czar. Most people will agree that the incidents of youth violence are increasing. Most people have accepted the stark reality of statistics that show us that 36 percent of all the kids in the United States of America are born out of wedlock, which means that they are mostly, not all, but mostly starting in one-parent families with one parent who has to struggle to make ends meet. Most people in this country understand that those kids are going to be most at risk, and most people understand the devastating effects of drugs within those communities where a huge number of children are born out of wedlock. So what is the rationale for reducing our effort to provide teen counselors, peer programs, all of the DARE programs and other efforts in our schools that make a difference in the lives of these at-risk children and young people? There is no credible rationale, Mr. President, and yet, in the name of balancing the budget and so-called fiscal austerity, the Republicans suggest that we can do more with less with respect to our education system. The distinguished Senator from Oregon said earlier, ``Well, we're not really cutting the amount of money being claimed, we are actually cutting a lesser amount of money.'' But the fact is that the only way that a lesser amount of money is being cut is if you count the funny money in this bill. What do I mean by funny money? I mean the money in the bill, $8 billion, that depends on a future agreement with respect to budget legislation. Let me read the very language of the bill. Page 780 in S. 1594, the pending legislation, line 20: No part of any appropriation contained in this title shall be made available for obligation or expenditure, nor any authority granted herein be effective, until the enactment into law of a subsequent Act entitled ``An Act Incorporating an Agreement Between the President and Congress Relative to Federal Expenditures in the Fiscal Year 1996 and Future Fiscal Years.'' So, Mr. President, this is funny money. This is a fake. This is a scam. This is the Republicans coming along with another political gimmick to suggest to the country that they are really providing money for purposes the American people believe are vital when they are not providing money at all, because what they are providing depends on a subsequent agreement for the entire budget which, as we all know, depends on both sides being willing to move much further than they have given any indication they are prepared to move. The result will be even worse than the funding cuts that will be enforced when the subsequent budget agreement legislation proves to be a mirage that is unreachable by anyone. In fact, no school district in America can plan its budget for the next school year, because they do not know how much money they will get for these purposes from the Federal Government. Is that a real problem? Let me just share with you this information. Because there are no 1996 commitments for key Federal education programs, Boston is proceeding to budget on a worst-case scenario, because they have to. Why? Because Boston must pay all teachers who have a contract for next year unless a teacher has been notified he or she is being laid off by May 15. So the school system has to plan for the worst, and send out the layoff notices. What does that do for morale in the schools? What does that do for the capacity to build education reform programs and other areas where we have been making some progress in Massachusetts and other States? The truth is that in school district after school district, people are left, by virtue of this game that is being played, making worst- case plans and not being able to implement the full measure of the reforms for which most of us have fought very hard over the last few years. Goals 2000 is an example of those reforms. The Republicans are cutting Goals 2000 money. Why? Goals 2000 money is used to help teachers get the ongoing education and the ongoing training necessary to help them deal with reform, to produce reform, to teach better, to be state-of-the-art teachers and, hopefully, transition our kids successfully into the modern, complex workplace of the future. Mr. President, all you have to do is look at the statistics on reading in America. If one does so, it is then impossible to answer why we are making these kinds of reductions. Only one-third of the kids in the United States of America last year who graduated from high school, graduated with a passable--passable-- reading level. Out of 2\1/2\ million kids who graduated from high school, fully two-thirds were below a basic high school reading level. Out of 2\1/2\ million kids who graduated from high school in America, only 100,000 had a world-class reading level. And what are we doing at the Federal level? We are going to pull back from the incentives we can offer for providing an adequate education for our kids. Mr. President, every one of these efforts, frankly, is critical. Title I money enables schools to provide additional training in math and in reading and also provides technology resources and assistance to parents of at-risk students in order to help those students learn to read and write adequately. I can introduce you to one Boston student who started as a below- average elementary student, but after completing the title I program, this student went on to become his high school's class president and is currently enrolled at MIT in Cambridge. There are, thank God, thousands of other similar examples. I know students who were having great difficulty with math or with reading who, only because of the extra attention they were able to get, were able to go on in the mainstream, attend college, graduate and secure a career, and, in some cases, proceed to an even higher level of education. It is incomprehensible, Mr. President, that in 1996, out of our Nation's $1.6 trillion budget, when we know that there are wiser offsets, we are being asked to reduce the safety in our schools, the quality of our education, and the access by kids to additional training and assistance, and to make it impossible for our children to receive the highest level of teaching. My colleagues supporting this amendment and I believe that all of these things are being sacrificed needlessly. I might add that, given the new recognition in recent months of the problems in the American workplace, it is even more puzzling that our friends on the other side of the aisle would find some virtue in trying to balance the budget by giving a tax cut to the wealthy while simultaneously taking away help for kids to go to school in the poor communities of this country. It is ironic. Patrick Buchanan and the Republican Party have been experiencing a certain awakening with respect to some of those things that many of us have been fighting for in the Senate for a long time-- the problem of people raising their wages in this modern economy, the problem of people holding on to the jobs that they have or getting the jobs they want to have, all of which in today's world depends more and more on the linkage of technology and skill and training to a particular job opportunity. What is the rationale, in the face of that clear connection, for reducing our commitment to those kinds of efforts, particularly where each of those efforts has been proven to be competent, valuable, and productive? It is not as if our colleagues are coming to the floor of the Senate and saying, ``Look, here's this program. It is a terrible program. It doesn't do anything. The kids aren't learning. We have had 10 years of wasted money. Nobody seems to be able to get ahead.'' That is not the evidence. I hear no one making that claim. Instead, they are saying, ``Our eyes are closed. Our minds are made up. We have to cut these programs regardless.'' The evidence is that every single one of these efforts has made a difference in the lives of children, in the schools they attend, and in the communities where they live. And that is what makes up the fabric of this country. And that is what produces the real values of this Nation. Mr. President, if we are going to hear lectures about values, it should be clear that the vote we will have on this education amendment will be a vote about values. If you care about values, you are not going to strip money from children who are trying to mainstream in a school in an inner city that is struggling to obtain adequate resources. You are not going to take that away from them in order to give some larger tax break to people who have seen the stock market go up 43 percent in the last year. So, I respectfully say to my colleagues that this is one of the most important amendments the Senate will consider this year, and the vote we will cast on it will be one of the most important votes we have an opportunity to cast in the Senate this year, because this really is a vote about where we want this country to go and what kind of people we are going to be. No one has made up the statistics or the studies which document the linkage of early intervention, of structure, of quality reading and math and science education to the ability of students to achieve their maximum potential. I hope that tomorrow or the next day, whenever we vote on this measure, we will articulate to the Nation our sense of the proper values in this country and of the proper priorities in this budget. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I join Senator Bill Bradley in introducing legislation to repeal the timber salvage rider, a law that has permitted destructive logging of ancient forests because it waives important environmental safeguards. Let me first say that I do not oppose responsible logging on public or private lands, as long as it is done in compliance with our environmental statutes. The fundamental problem with the timber salvage provision as it is currently written, is that it does not comply with current Federal protection laws. During debate of the 1995 Rescissions Act, proponents of the emergency timber measure stressed the need to remove dead and dying trees to protect the health of our forests in the Pacific Northwest. We were told that the rider would not cost the federal treasury one dime; in fact it would make money. We were told that the measure would not harm fish and wildlife and that it was needed only to expedite a small number of outstanding timber sales. In other words, we were told that this rider would be a simple fix to a small problem and should be added without a congressional hearing or review to an entirely unrelated bill that was moving quickly through congress. As are all too aware, this was the way many anti- environmental statutes were being sold by the Republican leadership during the 1995 congressional term. Regrettably, we know of the severe environmental damage that this statute has wrought on some of our most beautiful and oldest forest lands. We now know that this statute is being used to clearcut healthy forests across the Nation including ancient forests as old as 500 years. We know that this statute will cost American taxpayers billions of dollars by requiring them to subsidize bargain basement logging of our national forests. We know that timber is being clearcut on steep slopes next to streams of spawning endangered salmon. And we now know that the Federal Government is being forced to enter into far more than just a small number of contracts, and in fact, that the effect of this rider will be felt in the logging of national forests across the country. I commend the Senator from New Jersey for his leadership on this issue, and I hope that the Senate will act expeditiously to enact the bill being introduced today and thereby repeal this extremely harmful so-called timber salvage rider.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I join Senator Bill Bradley in introducing legislation to repeal the timber salvage rider, a law that has permitted destructive logging of ancient forests because it waives important environmental safeguards. Let me first say that I do not oppose responsible logging on public or private lands, as long as it is done in compliance with our environmental statutes. The fundamental problem with the timber salvage provision as it is currently written, is that it does not comply with current Federal protection laws. During debate of the 1995 Rescissions Act, proponents of the emergency timber measure stressed the need to remove dead and dying trees to protect the health of our forests in the Pacific Northwest. We were told that the rider would not cost the federal treasury one dime; in fact it would make money. We were told that the measure would not harm fish and wildlife and that it was needed only to expedite a small number of outstanding timber sales. In other words, we were told that this rider would be a simple fix to a small problem and should be added without a congressional hearing or review to an entirely unrelated bill that was moving quickly through congress. As are all too aware, this was the way many anti- environmental statutes were being sold by the Republican leadership during the 1995 congressional term. Regrettably, we know of the severe environmental damage that this statute has wrought on some of our most beautiful and oldest forest lands. We now know that this statute is being used to clearcut healthy forests across the Nation including ancient forests as old as 500 years. We know that this statute will cost American taxpayers billions of dollars by requiring them to subsidize bargain basement logging of our national forests. We know that timber is being clearcut on steep slopes next to streams of spawning endangered salmon. And we now know that the Federal Government is being forced to enter into far more than just a small number of contracts, and in fact, that the effect of this rider will be felt in the logging of national forests across the country. I commend the Senator from New Jersey for his leadership on this issue, and I hope that the Senate will act expeditiously to enact the bill being introduced today and thereby repeal this extremely harmful so-called timber salvage rider.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, as Black History Month, 1996, draws to a close, we have had an extraordinary opportunity to remember African-Americans who have changed America. We find our Nation more culturally enriched in the arts, in film and theater, in literature and music, in the humanities, the sciences, in our military and political history, in education, communications, and civil rights because of the contributions of African-Americans. But the most compelling stories are of the earliest African-American leaders who are among America's greatest heroes. They struggled and succeeded in the face of slavery and against the odds, and rose above the extraordinary prejudice and hatred of the 19th century to have a lasting impact on the cultural, social, and spiritual fabric of America. To name just a few: poets like Phillis Wheatley, a Massachusetts native and the first African-American woman to have her poetry published; Crispus Attucks, said to be the first person killed in a Boston battle that presaged the Revolutionary War; and the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first African-American unit in the Civil War who were memorialized in the film, ``Glory,'' and in a statue on Boston Common are not heroes to just African-Americans, but heroes to every American. Their stories are part of this Nation's lexicon and should be as commonly known as the story of another Massachusetts native, Paul Revere, but they are not. That is one of the reasons that, 20 years ago, Black History Month formalized a 70-year-old celebration begun in 1926 by Dr. Carter Woodson, the father of black history. Dr. Woodson set aside a special time in February to celebrate the achievements and contributions of African-Americans and the rich traditions and proud heritage of those who contributed so much to the building of this Nation. But, as we celebrate we must also recognize that the contributions of African-Americans serve as a bridge over the troubled waters of economic insecurity. Their struggle and achievements in the face of incredible odds give us hope when we see that struggle for freedom, and equal justice has become an economic as well as a social struggle that finds hard working, self-reliant, responsible African-Americans looking for a good job at a liveable wage. The economic disparity between African-Americans and the rest of America is disproportionate. I know that African-Americans in Massachusetts--from Roxbury to Lowell, from New Bedford to Springfield--are working harder and harder, like all Americans, without receiving a raise, struggling to get the skills they need, and trying to educate themselves and their families, and some are falling further and further behind. So, this month, in recognizing the importance of African-American heroes and their contribution to the history of America, we must not only reaffirm our commitment to civil rights and equal opportunity but to building an opportunity economy that provides for a better paying job, decent benefits, and a chance for their children to make more and do better in a world that judges them as Martin Luther King said, ``on the content of their character.'' Black History Month is one more important step in tearing down the economic, social, and cultural walls that divide us and bridging the racial gaps between us. As we approach the 21st century, this will be one of our greatest challenges.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to commend the great service that was performed by the men of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Twenty Seven in September of 1995 after the tornado that ransacked Great Barrington, MA in May. Their ability to clear massive amounts of debris without damage to nearby civilian residences is worthy of praise. The dedication and hard work exhibited by each of the SeaBees was combined in a solid team effort that succeeded in removing debris and constructing firebreaks in a quick and efficient manner. As a result, the residents of the Great Barrington area were spared further destruction and loss. The men of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 27, LCDR A.M. Edgar, EOC Timothy R. Burns, EAC Carl A. Passarelli, EO1 Willard H. Card III, EO1 Harold T. Reinhard, UT1 Mark C. Shea, SW2 James Hughes, BU2 Morris A. Wells, BU1 R.L. Clawson, EO1 John A. Neville, and BU3 Robert Tanner, have displayed skills and capabilities in this aid effort of which they and the Navy can and should be proud. The commendable efforts of the SeaBees in this endeavor are greatly appreciated by the citizens of South Berkshire County, MA. I wish to publicly express my gratitude before the Senate and pay tribute to their efforts.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I voted against final passage of S. 1541 because, while it was better than some proposals put forth during this debate, ultimately, it was not the package that I believe it should have been. Yesterday, I supported cloture on the Leahy-Dole substitute because I felt strongly that it was essential that Congress act to develop new farm policy reforms as soon as possible. The existing authorization for the numerous nutrition, conservation, and commodity programs that comprise the heart of the farm bill expired during 1995. With the expiration of these programs, the outdated 1949 Agricultural Act became the permanent law governing Federal commodity programs. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the 1949 statute, if enacted today, would cost taxpayers $10 billion for 1996 alone, substantially more than the recently expired provisions. I believed then, and remain convinced, that we need a new approach to farm policy. Therefore, I supported cloture to advance the debate on the Leahy-Dole reform package which would have replaced the 1949 statute with a new reform program to phase out price supports after 7 years and would have reauthorized critical nutrition and conservation programs through 2002. However, the package that was before us on final passage, while it included many important provisions on nutrition and conservation, fell short of true reform because a provision was added to retain the 1949 act as the permanent law. By retaining the 1949 statute, the 7-year farm support phaseout provisions of the Leahy-Dole bill become just another price support program. There is no longer a phaseout, only an interim payment plan for the intervening 7 years. Until this package returns from conference, there is always hope that there will be important improvements to the reform provisions while retaining critical conservation and nutrition programs upon which millions of Americans depend. Amendment No. 3184

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Nevada for his persistent efforts and for his tenacity in trying to address this question of inappropriate corporate welfare. I think all of us here would understand and be sympathetic to the notion that, if there are situations in our trading relations where you have a company that is hard pressed and disadvantaged against competition, as some of our companies are in certain industries, then it is conceivable that you can make a legitimate argument that you want to find some kind of Government subsidy to redress the imbalance in the marketplace. I know, for instance, that Airbus received significant subsidies. And Boeing and McDonnell Douglas have to compete against the French, or against other countries in those industries where there is a very significant subsidy. But here we have a situation where companies that are extraordinarily profitable are going to sell their products abroad anyway for which there is a market for those products anyway, where they are profitable beyond any of the need criteria that you might try to establish, and nevertheless the taxpayers of this country are simply reimbursing them for a subsidy for an advertising budget that they would expend anyway. Let me be very explicit about that. The M&M Mars company, for instance, has about a $262 million advertising budget. They spend that no matter what. When a company spokesman was asked, ``What do you think about taking these Government funds?'' the company spokesman's answer was, ``Well, you know, it is sort of like the mortgage interest rate deduction. If it is there, you take advantage of it.'' So they take advantage of the funds. It is not even a question of being need based. At a time when everyone is looking for a responsible way to make judgments, critical judgments about who deserves Government assistance and who does not, it is simply wrong--it is just wrong, wrong economically, wrong politically, wrong morally, wrong on every kind of balance--to suggest that these companies with their--look at Tyson Foods. What is Tyson Foods doing getting a subsidy at this point in time for this? I like Tyson Foods. I like what they do. We are enormously proud of what they have accomplished and of what they are capable of doing. But at a time when we are being asked to cut back on education funding, on environmental cleanup, on science research, on the R&D tax credit, on all kinds of things that are important, how can you justify this kind of effort? There are some small companies, there are some people working at a great disadvantage in the international marketplace against countries that have a much greater degree of assistance and of partnership between the Government and the private sector than we do that may need some kind of leverage. It is with that in mind that the Senator from Nevada and those of us who are promoting a change are not suggesting, even though we think this is not an appropriate program overall, we think that it is fair to recognize those small areas of need and simply to cut this program back to the $70 million cap. When you measure this particular program and whatever justifications are given for it against the extraordinary reductions that we are facing in title I funds, in drug free safe school money, in Pell grants, in student loans, in environmental enforcement, in infrastructure development, in science and research, in global climate change research--you can run down the gambit and every one of those fundamental needs are being reduced--how can you justify continuing this kind of corporate welfare? I think most Americans are not even aware that this kind of subsidy is taking place, and every American that I have ever talked to, when you explain to them what is happening, their eyes bug out and they simply are aghast at the notion that this is what people in Washington are choosing to do with their money. The American citizen knows this is inappropriate, it is unnecessary, and measured against all the other choices that we are making in Washington it is plain and simply wrong. I am grateful to the Senator from Nevada for being willing to lead the charge here in an effort to try to redress it. I hope the Senate will once again vote as it did previously. We won this battle in the Senate. Unfortunately, as is so often the case here in Washington, the interests come into the conference committee or get one or two people to hold up everything and so it was taken out in the conference, and here we are back again. This is the same history that we had on a mink subsidy and on the wool and mohair subsidy, and ultimately we will win this battle because it is the right thing to do. I thank the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I voted for cloture on the Leahy-Dole substitute to S. 1541 because I believe it is essential that the Congress act on and approve legislation to reform national farm policy and to reauthorize vital agricultural conservation and nutrition programs. The existing authorization for the numerous nutrition, conservation and commodity programs that comprise the so-called ``omnibus farm bill'' expired during 1995. Regrettably, the Republican leadership did not choose to bring reauthorization legislation to the floor prior to its expiration, or even in the intervening months since expiration. While Senators Daschle, Leahy and many others have called repeatedly for a thorough debate of and action on farm policy for nearly a year now, no comprehensive farm bill was brought to the Senate floor for consideration until last week. This is yet another example of the way in which the Republican-led Congress is failing to get the people's work done in Washington as it pursues its radical platform. However, with the expiration in 1995 of the 1990 farm reauthorization legislation, the 1949 Agricultural Act, a decades-old and outdated statute authorizing farm commodity programs for wheat and grains subsidies automatically again became the controlling statute. According to the Department of Agriculture, the 1949 law could substantially increase, to an estimated $10 billion for 1996 alone, the federal taxpayers' already-mammoth payments to farmers--an outcome that in my opinion would be sheer folly, especially at a time when prices for many farm products are at record high levels. Last week, Senator Dole decided to bring before the Senate the Republican version of a farm bill which addresses only commodity reform. I opposed the cloture motion on the Dole bill because it was not a comprehensive package--it failed to reauthorize the vitally important nutrition programs or the valuable conservation programs that together with farm provisions should form any responsible comprehensive farm legislation. After the failure of the Dole bill, Majority Leader Dole, Democratic Leader Daschle, Agriculture Committee Chairman Lugar, and Agriculture Committee Ranking Democrat Leahy met for several hours and crafted an outline of a potential bipartisan compromise on farm policy. However, after working for several days and throughout the weekend, the negotiations unfortunately hit a brick wall, and Senator Dole called for a cloture vote on a package that he previously had negotiated with Senators Leahy, Craig, and Lugar. The Leahy-Dole substitute is a comprehensive, bipartisan package that adds to the Dole bill's farm provisions with the reauthorization of important nutrition programs upon which millions of poor Americans, preponderantly children and the elderly, rely for their health and well-being, and farmland conservation programs on which farmers rely to help protect their farmlands from degradation. The Leahy-Dole bill--as did the original Dole bill--replaces the existing farm subsidy programs with a reform program geared toward weaning farmers off farm subsidies over a seven-year period expiring in 2002. Few government programs cry as loudly for reform. The subsidy programs for wheat and other grains have paid farmers more than $135 billion in direct income support over the last 10 years. In 1993, this conversion of tax dollars to support payments represented 26 percent of net farm income. However, these subsidies consistently have failed to bolster the incomes of the neediest farmers. Further, five percent of the subsidies went to farmers whose annual gross incomes exceed $1 million. To compound the injury, these outdated programs contribute to soil erosion and overuse of agricultural chemicals, retarding environmental progress, with the effect that Americans pay twice for these farm programs: once for the subsidies and again to clean up environmental damage that would be greatly reduced without the subsidies. The Leahy-Dole proposal also reauthorizes key conservation programs like the Conservation Reserve Program [CRP], with an authority to enroll up to 36 million acres. It is critical that the Federal Government assist farmers with environmental protection given that, as a point of reference, farmlands constitute twice the acreage of the national wildlife refuge system. The CRP plays an important role in the protection of this rural acreage, contributing greatly to protection of soil, water and wildlife habitat. The Environmental Quality Incentive Program [EQIP] provides further assistance to this effort, making available $200 million a year for technical and financial assistance to livestock and crop producers who wish to address environmental problems on their farms. The bill also restores the authority, on a voluntary basis, for permanent and 30-year easements to protect wetlands. In my view, no component of a so-called farm bill is more important than the way it addresses national nutrition programs. The Leahy-Dole package reauthorizes several vital nutrition programs for seven years: food stamps, the emergency food assistance program [TEFAP], the commodity supplemental food program--an alternative to the Women, Infants, and Children or WIC Nutrition Program in many cities--and the food distribution program on Indian reservations. As just one illustration of how extensive is the impact of these nutrition programs, 14 million children depend on food stamps to ensure they have a minimally adequate diet. Also included in the Leahy-Dole proposal is a provision that grants consent of Congress to the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact, using the same language that passed the Senate last year with 65 votes. The New England States want to improve the way milk is priced in their region by creating a commission comprised of both farmers and consumers that would have the authority to adjust and stabilize fluid milk prices in the six State area of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The New England Dairy Compact was supported by all 12 of the region's Senators--from both parties and all points on the political spectrum--and would allow New England to take more control of pricing the fluid milk produced there. This compact is also consistent with the National Governors' Association's agricultural policy and is strongly supported by the New England Governors' Association. Madam President, I do not want my vote for cloture on the Leahy-Dole alternative to be mischaracterized as a total endorsement of this package. This legislation is a long way from anything I could consider even adequate to meet our Nation's agricultural, economic, and nutrition needs, protect taxpayers and consumers, and protect the environment. I expect to offer at least one amendment to eliminate funding for an unnecessary program that subsidizes foreign marketing of U.S. agricultural products, often by wealthy multinational corporations, and will support efforts of other Senators to improve the bill. But I concluded that I should support cloture based on the following facts: First, if we do not enact into law--and soon--some replacement for the farm legislation that expired last year, American taxpayers will be paying far more than the already much-too-large sums in farm subsidies at a time when both our Federal budgetary problems and the farm economy indicate the desirability of reductions in those subsidies. I am certain that a better bill could be devised; I have strong doubts it will be devised and passed this year. Second, no farm bill should be passed without strong nutrition and conservation components. Yet the Republicans who control both Houses have proven they are entirely willing to do exactly that. Senator Leahy, in his negotiations, secured a commitment from Senator Dole and Senator Lugar, both men who honor their word, that the nutrition and conservation provisions will be retained in conference committee. No one else has such a commitment for any nutrition or conservation provisions, no matter how strong they might be willing to seek to make those provisions. Third, while I have grave doubts about the structure of the freedom to farm approach Republicans are taking toward reforming farm policy-- the approach used in the Leahy-Dole bill --I am certain that the farm programs of the past have outlived any usefulness they may have had and must be replaced. No other proposal being discussed comes anywhere close to effecting the kinds and magnitude of reform that ought to take place--to reduce the cost of these programs to taxpayers, to reduce the negative incentives they establish for misuse of farm land and environmental damage, to reduce the amount of tax dollars that go to wealthy corporations and gentlemen farmers, and to focus the program resources on assisting needy family farmers. The Leahy-Dole compromise at least contains components I think are vital--for nutrition and conservation--and carries with it a commitment to protect those provisions through conference. It at least moves away from a failed or obsolete farm policy and places subsidies on a downward trend through 2002. It is important that I serve notice that I will only vote for this legislation if it is improved sufficiently during Senate action to warrant that support. And I will oppose it if despite the commitments to the contrary it returns from conference committee with weaker nutrition or conservation provisions. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the United States and, indeed, the world have embarked upon a new technological revolution. Like previous revolutions sparked by technological innovation, this one has the potential to change dramatically our daily lives. It will certainly transform the way we communicate with each other. What we are witnessing is the development of a fully interactive nationwide and, indeed, worldwide communications network. It has the potential to bring our Nation and our world enormous good; without appropriate groundrules to assure fair competition, however, this revolution could create giant monopolies. It could hurt workers and families. We bear a tremendous responsibility to assure that does not happen with this legislation. The communications policy framework we create here will determine whether many voices and views flourish, or few voices dominate our society. The impact of this new age communications revolution on the way we send and receive information, and the way we will view ourselves and the world, is profound. Even more staggering is its potential impact on our economy. We could be seeing the largest market opportunity in history. Some forecasters, including the WEFA Group in Burlington, MA, predict an opening of the telecommunications market this year to full competition would create 3.4 million new jobs, increase GDP by $298 billion, save consumers nearly $550 billion in lower communications rates and increase the average household's annual disposable income by $850 over the next ten years. As the Communications Workers of America have underscored, delaying free and fair competition means fewer new high-wage, high-skill jobs. For workers and companies in Massachusetts, which has a significant comparative advantage in technology or knowledge-intensive industries, this legislation is good news. It should expand opportunities for our current telecommunications companies, it should create a fertile climate for the creation of new companies and it should create more family-wage jobs. The telecommunications industry in Massachusetts is well situated to take advantage of the communications and information revolution. New telecommunications-related or dependent technologies and industries seem to be emerging and merging almost daily. They range from such sectors as entertainment and education to broadcasting, advertising, home shopping and publishing. One key player in this revolution is the Internet--the global computer cooperative with a current subscriber base of approximately 37 million in North America alone and a 10-15 percent monthly growth rate. One billion people are expected to have access to the ``net'' by the end of the decade. While some may consider the ``net'' to be the revolution, it is only one of many players in the new communications network game. We see examples of this new era almost daily, such as someone driving a car while talking on a cellularphone. In the future, we are likely to see more Americans accessing video dialtone, choosing their television programs through their telephone service. Likewise, cable franchises may enter the local telephone service market. Residents of Springfield, MA, may be able to watch their state legislators in Boston debate an education bill and instantaneously communicate with those legislators about how to vote on an amendment. As we consider this brave new age of communications, it is clear the current law, the l934 Communications Act, is not a sufficiently sturdy foundation upon which to build a communications system for the 21st Century. Moreover, although the courts on occasion properly have intervened to halt monopoly abuse--most notably a little over a decade ago in the telephone industry--we should no longer leave the fundamentals of telecommunications policy to the courts. The conference report on S. 652, the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of l996, is not perfect. In some respects, I would have preferred S. 1822, the bill crafted so ably by Senator Hollings and reported by the committee in l994. However, the conference report before the Senate now is preferable to the status quo. It will foster competition and establish fair and reasonable groundrules for the intense competition that will continue in the communications sector as we enter the next century. This legislation sets forth a national policy framework to promote the private sector's deployment of new and advanced telecommunications and information technologies and services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications markets to competition. Free and fair competition and maintaining universal service are the twin pillars of this new framework. The bill seeks to assure that no competitor, no business and no technology may use its existing market strength to gain an advantage on the competition. The legislation requires that a company or group of companies satisfy certain competitive tests before being able to offer a new service or enter a new market. Entry into new services and new areas is contingent upon a demonstration that competition exists in the market in which the business currently competes. But once competition has been achieved, most Federal and State regulation is replaced by consumer demand to regulate the market. These fundamental features of the conference report on S. 652 are designed to create a level playing field where every player will be able to compete on the basis of price, quality, and service, rather than on the basis of monopoly control of the market. The conference report also maintains universal service as a cornerstone of our Nation's communications system. With many new entrants in the communications market, the legislation provides that every player is to pay his fair share to continue universal service throughout our Nation. I am also pleased the conference report includes three amendments which I sponsored. The first deals with the cable broadcast rates for public, educational and governmental entities, known as ``PEG'' access groups. These are the local channels that produce and broadcast such things as town council meetings, Chamber of Commerce seminars and little league baseball games. My amendment will assure the continued production and broadcast of these important community events by guaranteeing that the PEG access groups are not charged more than local broadcasters to air their programs. The second amendment will establish a level playing field for independent payphone providers. For too long, these small, independent entrepreneurs have gone toe-to-toe against some of the biggest players in the telecommunications market. We have in Massachusetts about 75 independent payphone providers, employing several hundred people. They range from ``mom and pop'' operations with a handful of payphones to several that have more than 1,000 payphones. Virtually all of them have invested their own capital in their businesses, from life savings to the proceeds of mortgages on their homes, and it is a tribute to their perseverance that they now own ten percent of the payphone market in Massachusetts. My amendment will allow all the players in the payphone market to compete against each other on the basis of price, quality and service, rather than on marketshare and subsidies. The third amendment will make sure that as we build the information highway, the builders do not bypass poor rural or urban communities. When interstate highways were built through cities across our Nation, oftentimes they went directly through poor neighborhoods. Construction of the technology interstate system must not be allowed to detour around children and families in the same or similar areas who already face enormous challenges. My amendment is designed to assure that the telecommunications network will reach every neighborhood, offering access to those who need it most for a decent education, to upgrade their job skills or to connect them to medical help they need. Another provision that I am pleased was included in the final hours of negotiations on the conference report relates to local regulation of public rights-of-way. The language added to the conference report brings needed clarification to this area. It retains for local authorities the right to regulate public rights-of-way while at the same time guaranteeing that if local authorities exercise that latitude, they do so in a manner that is non-discriminatory and competitively neutral. A cable or phone company that needs to tear up a street to lay new line should not be allowed to disturb a neighborhood in the middle of the night. The clarifying language on public rights- of-way should help in this regard. Through the debate we have had on this legislation, I believe we have crafted a solid telecommunications policy framework for the next century. Today, each of us is in a sense a pioneer heading out on the new information highway. Each of us is not only a witness to, but a participant in, one of the most amazing technological revolutions in history. We, as legislators, bear a special responsibility to assure that competition in this new era is fair and that every American in this and future generations may enjoy the fruits of this competition. This is truly one of the greatest challenges we face as we enter the 21st century. I want to express my deep admiration for the outstanding work my good friend and colleague from South Carolina, Senator Hollings, has done on this landmark legislation. He has exercised visionary leadership throughout this long and arduous process. I also want to extend my appreciation to his very able staff, particularly Kevin Curtin, John Windhausen and Kevin Joseph, for their tireless efforts and the good humour they always brought to the task. I also want to thank Chairman Pressler and his staff for their hard work on this legislation.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the vote that will occur later this afternoon on the resolution of ratification for the START II Treaty is a truly historical event in the course of man's attempt to curtail conflict and violence and resolve differences by peaceful means. It is an especially historical event in the much briefer but arguably more frightful history of the world's effort to prevent use in anger of the terrifying power of nuclear fission and fusion, power that was initially unleashed only five decades ago. When the Senate took up this this treaty on the floor on December 22, I spoke at some length concerning the potential benefits of this treaty for the United States, Russia, and, indeed, the entire world. I spoke of the great leap forward that this treaty represents as it is added to the foundation of earlier arms control agreements, notably including the original START Treaty signed by the United States and the Russian Federation in 1991 that provided for the first real reductions, rather than just limits on further growth, of strategic offensive arms of both nations. The leap forward that START II represents will increase the stability of the nuclear balance, ban deployment of the most destabilizing type of nuclear weapons system--land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple independently targetable nuclear warheads [or MIRVs], and reduce the number of nuclear weapons the United States and Russia each possess to 3,500. The debate on December 22 is a part of the Record, and lays out clearly the history of this treaty, its importance to enhancing stability and reducing the likelihood of use of nuclear weapons in anger, and the specific provisions of the treaty. This information is contained in the remarks of the distinguished Senator from Indiana [Mr. Lugar] who served with distinction as a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the remarks of the distinguished ranking member of the Committee, Mr. Pell, who also served admirably as a previous chairman of the committee, and my remarks and those of the other Senators who participated in that debate. It is not necessary to take the time of the Senate today to repeat or embellish those remarks. The treaty's record is clear. Its benefits are clear. It will pass overwhelmingly this afternoon. I am gratified that I was able to play a role in bringing us to this point by reaching an agreement with the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Helms to release for Senate floor action the treaty, which he was holding hostage until he could obtain floor action on the annual reauthorization bill for the State Department and its activities which he chose to use as a vehicle for provisions to dramatically reduce the structure of, and funding for, the agencies that implement our Nation's foreign policy and represent the U.S. interests to the rest of the world. The START II Treaty was and is too important to have been used in such a manner. While it should have been possible for the Senate to act on it much earlier than today, I am relieved that at least our action was not delayed beyond today, and am pleased to have played a role in liberating it so the Senate can give it ringing endorsement. Once again, Mr. President, I compliment Senator Lugar, Senator Pell, and all other Senators who have labored through the analytical and hearing processes to demonstrate conclusively that START II will significantly benefit the United States. I am fervently hopeful that the Russian Duma will act expeditiously and favorably on the treaty, sharing our recognition that it is strongly in the best interests of both nations, and that we do not discover that the delay in Senate consideration, during which Russia has experienced considerable political flux and has elected a number of new members to the Duma, has fatally injured the treaty. The treaty's ability to increase stability and reduce the risk of nuclear conflict will be even more important to the extent Russia's political unrest continues or accelerates.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution before us today is the ninth, let me repeat, the ninth continuing resolution for fiscal year l996. I cannot recall during my service in the U.S. Senate another time when the funding of basic services that people need and the concern for people's daily lives have been treated so cavalierly by the majority. This is a misuse of the appropriations process, and the fact that this is the ninth continuing resolution demonstrates amply and clearly in my mind the inability of the party that currently holds the majority in Congress to govern. In some areas, the amounts contained in this stop-gap resolution will barely keep basic services operating. This is not, in my view, what the American people want, it is certainly not what they deserve, and it most assuredly does not reflect the American people's priorities. The American people will have the opportunity in the elections this fall to express their views on the priorities we have seen the Republicans advance. I am confident the proponents of those misplaced priorities will be shaken by the voice of the people. The last Government shutdown cost Americans $1.4 billion. Its effects are still being felt. Approximately 170,000 veterans did not receive their December GI bill education benefits on time, delaying action on some 87,000 initial benefits claims and nearly 70,000 certifications. More than 200,000 veterans disability and compensation claims were added to the backlog during the last shutdown. More than 5,000 small businesses saw their government-guaranteed financing delayed. Hundreds of Superfund toxic waste cleanups were suspended, and more than $2.2 billion in American exports were delayed because their licenses could not be processed. Thousands of Americans were prevented from business or other travel abroad because passports were not issued. Thousands of Americans were prevented from enjoying or learning from their natural or historical American heritage as national parks and forests and federally funded museums and art galleries were closed to them. We simply cannot afford another Government shutdown, so this measure represents a compromise. The funding levels it contains are far from adequate for many Government activities upon which Americans depend or which have a daily impact on their lives. I speak specifically about those items supported through the Labor/Health and Human Services/ Education budget--education grants for students, assistance for disadvantged students, worker training and retraining, summer youth jobs, Americorps and Head Start, and through the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies budget, like health care for veterans and environmental cleanup activities. I also am deeply disturbed by the funding caps imposed by this legislation at 75 percent of last year's expenditures on such critical law enforcement activities as the cops on the beat program--or COPS-- and drug courts. Which 25 percent of our communities will not see a cop walk down their streets because of these caps? Which 25 percent of the drug offenders will not be prosecuted in the drug courts because of these caps? These caps also will hurt the Advanced Technology Program that has helped dozens of entrepreneurs and researchers in Massachusetts with good ideas for new technologies to bring their ideas to the commercialization stage. ATP has worked in Massachusetts to bring forth new products as diverse as hip replacement procedures and fire detection codes to benefit consumers. Funds are also affected for critical scientific research to help cure diseases, research conducted through National Institutes of Health grants by medical institutions and teaching hospitals in Massachusetts--whose world-renowned research institutions have been chosen to receive grants from NIH sufficient to rank the Commonwealth third among States in receipt of NIH grants. Mr. President, it is not with great enthusiasm or, indeed, any enthusiasm that I will support this measure. The process that has brought us to this ninth continuing resolution is a disgrace. And it is also a disgrace that once this bill passes, which I reluctantly hope it will, the Senate will not remain here to work at hammering out an agreement on the budget or to pass the normal appropriations bills, or to cleanly extend the debt limit to honor this Nation's full faith and credit commitment to those from whom it borrows money. I predict we will be back here to repeat this shameful exercise again and again this year. The American people deserve better. But we are caught in a momentous clash of philosophies and politics-- with a new group of Republicans zealously committed to imposing their personal ideological beliefs throughout Government. Those ideologues have proven themselves entirely willing to bring Government to a wrenching, grinding halt, regardless of who is hurt or how badly, if they are not satisfied with the rapidity or extent of movement toward their goals. In the face of such a group, the best we have been able to hope for is a compromise--with which neither side is satisfied. President Clinton spoke eloquently during his State of the Union Address Tuesday night about the necessity under the circumstances to negotiate and enact such compromises in order to keep the business of our Nation moving forward and minimize injury of innocent Americans who must depend on the services that only Government can provide. Up until yesterday, the Republican majority in the House has been entirely unwilling to countenance any significant compromise. While I am extremely disappointed about the contents of this legislation, and believe the American people will be the ones who are hurt by its contents--or, more accurately, its omissions--I am relieved that the House Republicans have finally exhibited a willingness to engage in legislative compromise. At least the Government will keep running so that it will continue to provide most of its services to most of those who need them. There will be some who will be hurt, I regret to say. But we will struggle along. That is to be preferred to the unquantifiable and needless suffering that the Republican House majority imposed on the Nation up to this point. I am hopeful that we will be able during the remainder of this year to reach more suitable solutions regarding more of the services on which Americans depend--while we also find agreement on a fair way to achieve a balanced budget in 7 years that provides for needed investment in our future, human, technological, and infrastructure. Ultimately, I look toward November for the American people to pronounce their views and priorities, and to elect a Congress that will pursue the best interests of the country and not a narrow ideological agenda. In the meantime, we will pass this resolution, the President will sign it, and the Nation will limp on for a while longer. Mr. HATFIELD addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I urge my colleagues to vote with the senior Senator from Massachusetts to provide this minimal but vital increase in funds for education. Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, first of all, I congratulate and thank my senior colleague from Massachusetts for his leadership and for his effort, a very important effort to bring before the Senate the real choices that are facing our country. I listened to my friend from Pennsylvania and while, indeed, we must contend with some so-called caps, funding levels that have been allocated among the Appropriations subcommittees, et cetera, everybody here knows that we are engaged in tough bargaining right now and that none of those caps is set in concrete--because if we were to resolve this budget crisis, we could make any number of changes in the budget. We could decide that we were going to find some more revenue and use it to fund services critical to our nation's future. We could remove the firewall that protects funding for the Defense Department and take some of the $7 billion that the Congress added to the budget request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and instead put it into education or another priority of the American people. So let us not fool the American people. These choices are in our hands. We are not helpless here. We are not powerless. If we believe something is sufficiently important to this Nation's people and future, we can make it happen. Everybody understands that what we are doing now is drawing dramatic lines between one group's set of priorities and others' priorities. I do not understand how my colleagues in the Senate can ignore every single analysis from the best educators in our country, the best scientists in our country, the best child psychologists in our country, the best criminologists in our country, all of whom say that we have to find a way to impart to our children the high skills they need to compete for jobs here, and to permit our industries to compete globally. This is absolutely essential if we are to create and fill high value-added jobs that will raise the incomes of the American people. Analysts agree that last year, if you were a graduate degree holder in America, you lost income by 1 percent. If you were a high school graduate, you lost income by about 15 percent. And if you were a high school dropout, you lost income by about 27 percent. Each of those categories, in addition to experiencing significantly different income change, experiences significantly different health care coverage--as a reliable rule, the workers with the lowest educational levels have the least health care coverage. In this way, the success of our educational system has a profound social effect that extends well beyond the job market and personal finances. Failure of our educational system contributes directly to our nation's health care crisis. Those are the choices, and here we are in the Congress being told we have to accept a continuing resolution that accepts and perpetuates a continuing process of diminishing all of these opportunities for our citizens. It is fundamental; Pell grants cut by 40 percent in the budget. Why? Why do we want to make it harder for people to get the higher education that is the gateway to good jobs? Why is it that we are going to reduce the capacity of our kids in the most hard hit, economically depressed areas of our country where there is the least property tax base from which to draw in order to support the school system? Why would we want less Federal assistance that is provided in an effort to minimize that inequity according to a national standard, and thereby attempt to make real the commitment of equal opportunity? The Federal Government does not run the schools. We do not tell them what they have to do. We do not intrude on local control. We are simply holding out this enormous carrot and saying: Look, if you will raise your standards, if you will teach better, if you will make these improvements, we will offer to pay some of the costs in order to help you put your kids in a higher education status. Eliminating this assistance and the incentives it provides is just incomprehensible. We must face this directly, and add these funds for education programs--recognizing the fact we then must come back and adjust budget allocations in order to prevent other vital services from being inadvertently reduced as a result. Funding for badly-needed services offered by the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services must not be further reduced as a result of this amendment. Indeed, there is a crying need to increase funding for a number of these other key services as well. The amendment before us will increase Federal spending through the expiration date of this resolution--March 15--for a handful of education programs, in order to enable schools and colleges to plan for the year ahead and not find themselves forced to cancel vital services and programs for their students. This is something we must do. But before this resolution expires, we must act to restore the amount of this amendment that technically will be deducted from other services funded by the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill--for example, to ensure sufficient resources for training adult workers, retraining dislocated workers, and assuring summer jobs for at least 600,000 economically disadvantaged young people who otherwise will be tempted to spend their summertime in pursuits that may jeopardize their lives or their futures as well as the health and safety of other Americans. The House-passed appropriations bill will deprive Boston alone of $2.3 million for summer youth jobs, and will deprive all of Massachusetts of nearly 11,000 summer jobs. We also must restore funds for helping dislocated workers which are slashed by 30 percent in the House Republicans' appropriations bill. This program is extremely important in Massachusetts in helping laid- off workers--most recently, 448 workers from Raytheon Corporation and 2,400 workers who lost their jobs as a result of the tragic Christmas fire in Methuen.