John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, my home State of Massachusetts is the leading producer, year in and year out, of cranberries in America and in the world. The economic contribution cranberries make to Massachusetts is impressive, with more than $200 million in payroll to Massachusetts workers and about 5,500 jobs for Massachusetts citizens. I am also proud that Ocean Spray's corporate headquarters are located in Middleboro, MA. I invite the attention of my colleagues to the article which follows from the November 1994 edition of Yankee magazine. It tells a poignant and all-American story of one cranberry growing family, that of Clark and Geraldine Griffith. Mr. Griffith's family goes back to the 1700's like many multigenerational cranberry families around our Nation. The article tells an impressive story of the mechanization and modernization of what remains, after all, a small family farming operation. It also reminds us of the vulnerability to weather and governmental actions of an important crop that is not subsidized by the Federal Government. And, most of all, it captures the spirit and the hard work of Massachusetts cranberry growers. Both Clark and Geraldine Griffith are fine citizens of my State, and I commend this article to your reading. I ask that it be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From Yankee magazine, November 1994] Waiting for the Frost in Cranberry Land Clark Griffith works one row of cranberry vines at a time, driving his water-reel tractor back and forth in a decreasing spiral. The ride is rough and swaying, and he has to brace his legs and keep a secure grip on the wheel so as not to fall. The water reflects the light up into his eyes, and Griffith squints to see the long stake that marks the submerged row just combed and the red and yellow flags that indicate the location of irrigation ditches. At the end of a row he bends forward, pulls out the stake with one hand, quickly turns the wheel with the other, and hurls the stake back into the bog. Water mists the air as the metal rods of the cylindrical beater comb the vines, and berries bob through the white foam to the surface. Amorphous, blood-red trails foam in the wake. Griffith, who owns 90 acres of bog, flooded this three-acre section two days earlier and is now harvesting his cranberry crop. A strapping man of 62 with peppery hair and a squarish face, he runs the Griffith Cranberry Company in the town of Carver, Massachusetts. Located about an hour's drive southeast of Boston and just inland from historic Plymouth Bay, the three precincts comprising the town--North, Center, and South Carver--have more than 3,500 acres of active bogs: Nearly half of the taxable land is directly or indirectly cranberry related, and almost all of Carver's 121 growers are members of the huge Ocean Spray cooperative. It is a town where police cars sport the logo ``Cranberry Land USA'' and cranberry vines are stenciled on the walls of the post office. Carver is justifiably called the Cranberry capital of the world. From Labor Day through Halloween, the town's farmers bring in their crop, flooding fields late at night and working bleary-eyed days. In the late fall of 1993 Griffith knows the harvest will be disappointing. He frowns as he reaches into a bin and scoops up glistening berries. The weather has made for a year of small berries. ``It takes a lot of small fruit to fill a box,'' Griffith says. He drops the berries and watches as they bounce in the bin. Cranberries have always been a part of Carver. Up through the 19th century, when Carver was a community of lumber mills, gristmills, and iron furnaces, people gathered wild cranberries solely for personal consumption. Griffith's family moved here from Rochester, Massachusetts, around the time in 1790 that the 847 souls who lived in Plympton's South Precinct decided to secede from that community and form Carver. His ancestors forged stoves, heaters, pans, and sinks from the bog iron excavated from nearby Sampson Pond. But in the late 19th century, as the iron industry began to wane, his grandfather Alton and his great-uncle Lloyd decided to start farming cranberries. Alton and Lloyd's first bog was inconspicuously christened Bog One in 1902, and it still produces good berries behind Griffith's house. Griffith started serious work in the fields when he was 13 and labored along with the 40 to 50 workers the family hired at harvest time from the nearby mills in New Bedford. Pickers then used hand scoopers, small wooden boxes with metal or wooden teeth that were combed through the vines. ``When your back got tired, you kneeled,'' recalls longtime Carver grower Albertina Fernandes, ``and when your knees got tired, you stood up.'' But for Griffith, the work was exciting. ``I always considered harvest season to be fun,'' he says. ``I grew up with it, and there was always a gang around laughing and joking.'' Mechanization in the mid-1950s revolutionized the industry. ``It used to take 60 days to do 60 acres. We can now do four to six acres in a day,'' says Griffith, who employs only four fulltime workers. Most equipment is handmade, much of it cannibalized from old cars and trucks. ``When someone discards a piece of equipment, that is what we use,'' says Wayne Hannula, a grower who constructs sanders from old Dodge pickups. ``We all built our own equipment because we all know what we want.'' If the temperature drops too low, it can kill the berries, so there are now daily frost reports. Many farmers have a Chatterbox, an electronic monitoring device that calls them on the phone if it gets too cold. If that happens, the grower has to flood the bogs so that the berries will not freeze. ``The frost can come anytime,'' says Griffith. ``Sometimes it is 4:30 in the morning, and you dash out. Fortunately, I have all electric sprinklers, so all I have to do is snap switches.'' Yet even with the innovations, the work still has its hardships. ``If you have worked all day and the frost comes early, you don't get any sleep,'' says Griffith. ``By three o'clock in the morning, you are pretty tired. You try not to stumble over things and fall in the water while jumping ditches.'' Even with machinery there are losses. ``I had an evening when I got caught flat-footed,'' Griffith recalls of a night in the early 1970s. ``The frost came early in the evening, and I didn't have sprinkler systems on all the acreage. I had to flood a lot of it. We did everything we could, but we lost a lot of cranberries that night.'' One of the area's smaller growers lost part of his crop when a neighbor--a newcomer to town--shut off his sprinklers and left a note: ``Water your crops in the daytime; the noise of the engines keeps us awake.'' Griffith has experienced all the unexpected calamities that have racked cranberry farmers. The worst event to befall the industry, though, was not a natural calamity but a simple government pronouncement. On November 9, 1959, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare announced that an experimental weed killer, Aminotriazole, that was used by some cranberry growers, had caused cancer in laboratory animals. The market immediately dried up. ``We were done picking,'' recalls Griffith, ``and we had a nice crop of berries sitting in the screen house. Of course no one knew what was going to happen to them until the decision was made by Ocean Spray and the government to dump the berries. They came to us and counted the boxes. Then the berries were just poured into dump trucks and taken away.'' Aminotriazole is no longer sprayed on crops, and growers are required to keep detailed records on the chemicals they use. Griffith has files in his office dating back decades. The office is located just up the street from his home. There are maps of the bogs on the wall, a computer linkup to Ocean Spray, and a stained-glass window of a cranberry scooper. He stops by in order to retrieve from his computer information on the previous day's delivery to the Ocean Spray processing plant. He then picks up a stack of papers and drives to the town hall in center Carver. He hitches himself out of his pickup, and bog soil flecks off his shoes as he lumbers toward the building. A gray-haired man greets him in the hall. ``Clark, how is your crop?'' he nervously inquires. ``Terrible,'' Griffith frowns as he shakes his head. ``How about you?'' ``I got about three-quarters of what I got last year.'' ``Everyone says that it is going to be down,'' Griffith shrugs his shoulders. ``It's not what Ocean Spray estimated. It can't be a bumper crop every year.'' When Griffith finishes at the town hall, he heads back to his bogs. Around noon Griffith's wife, Geraldine, brings coffee and brownies to Bog 20. The men and women emerge from the water and enjoy a few moments of rest. After the break Angel Vasquez mounts the water reel and starts harvesting the rows. Workers smooth the floating fruit carpet with shiny aluminum pushers while others corral the berries with a series of long, white wooden booms. Water presses against the sides of their chest-high rubber waders as firm cranberries bob against their calves. Swarms of small black spiders scamper over the thickening red mass toward the shore. Swallows flock to the water to gather the unexpected bounty. Griffith drives the winding series of bumpy one-lane dirt roads, checking on his other crews, tending the levels of his various bogs, flooding some and draining others. Before he eats dinner with Geraldine, Griffith checks on the latest frost report and plans for the evening vigil. He talks of slowing down, of doing less work. His house is backed by the moss-covered pines that surround the land. It has a beautiful view of the bog, of the dark green vines that his family has spent generations tending and harvesting. One day it will make for a tranquil retirement spot. But now, after dinner, Griffith drives over to a [[Page S8049]] pump house and draws water from Sampson Pond to flood Bog 22 for the morning pick. When he returns home, he checks the weather and waits.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the American Jewish Committee for its contributions to the ongoing debate on the appropriate role for our Nation in international affairs. Through a series of advertisements in national and local publications in recent days, the American Jewish Committee has engaged in a worthy education effort to broaden public understanding of, and support for, America's investment in its leadership role in world affairs. This effort could not be more timely. The budget resolutions that have been adopted in this and the other body in the past week, along with measures approved by the respective authorizing committees to reorganize international affairs functions and sharply reduce foreign aid spending, could profoundly compromise our ability to protect America's vital economic, political, and strategic interests around the world. Underlying these shortsighted actions, I fear, is the common assumption that the public simply does not and will not support expenditures for international affairs. Indeed, public opinion surveys have consistently shown weak support for foreign aid. But they also have revealed a general and significant misunderstanding of the Nation's international affairs programs--including an overestimation, by a factor of 15 in one recent survey, of the portion of the Federal budget devoted to foreign aid. That profound misunderstanding of the cost, and I submit the cost- effectiveness, of American engagement in international affairs must be confronted and reversed; it must not be allowed to dictate or excuse a retreat from American leadership. It is to raise awareness of the value and necessity of America's continued international engagement, and to place the current debate on foreign aid and related programs in the proper context of America's leadership role and the protection of America's interests, that the American Jewish Committee has launched its current public education effort, I commend AJC's message to my colleagues, and hope that it gains the serious attention it so clearly merits. Mr. President, I ask that the text of the American Jewish Committee's ad, as it appears in the current issues of the Washington Post weekly edition and Roll Call, be printed in the Record. The text follows: American Leadership in World Affairs Is Expensive Until You Consider the Alternative During this century, America has played a proud and unparalleled role in the leadership of formal alliances and informal coalitions to vanquish tyrants, extend human freedom, and craft the rules and institutions of commerce and peace. The cost of our leadership in world affairs has been high; we honor the profound sacrifices made in the exercise of that leadership. At the same time, we know that, for the realization of our fundamental principles and the welfare of our country, the cost of withdrawal from leadership--or of its assumption by other nations--would have been intolerable. Through two world wars and five decades of post-war conflict between the Soviet bloc and the Western alliance, America's role has been central and irreplaceable. In the uncertainties and conflicts that lie ahead, we foresee no diminution-- indeed, a likely extension--of the call for American leadership in international affairs. It is in the interest of human progress, and the particular interest of our own nation, that America continue to answer that call to leadership. In fact, America's national and international interests are mutually reinforcing. In the developed world, American commitment to free trade in goods and ideas, and to the entrenchment and protection of democracy, strengthens our and our partners' economies, the well-being of our people, and our political and strategic infrastructures. In the developing world, American commitment to human rights and to the relief of human suffering, to the creation and sustenance of democratic institutions, and to defense against extremism, ultranationalism and expansionism, is not only morally compelling but yields alliances, markets and regional security regimes vital to American economic and political interests. The American Jewish Committee, founded in 1906 in part to spur U.S. action against the oppression of Jews in czarist Russia, has consistently advocated our nation's leadership in world affairs. A participant in the Versailles conference of 1919 and consultant to the American delegation to the San Francisco conference that chartered the United Nations in 1945, the American Jewish Committee has long recognized the singular role of the United States as a defender of freedom, protector of human rights, and proponent of peaceful relations between states. As Americans, inheritors of the world's longest and most successful experiment in constitutional democracy, we know the provenance of our freedoms--the struggle to found a nation free of religious persecution, intolerance and political oppression; we know, as well, that our nation's struggle for freedom is incomplete and ongoing. As Jews, inheritors of an ancient and noble tradition of laws and culture, whose communities in other lands have been decimated by political and religious decree, we cherish the American ideal of liberty, a beacon of hope to all the world. For these reasons--America's role and investment in shaping the modern world; the dangers of alternative or absent leadership; the economic, political and strategic benefits of active international engagement with both the developed and developing worlds; and the history, virtue and motivating power of the American ideal--we commend our Government's continued dedication to the projection of American leadership in world affairs. To that end, we urge the following: Vigorous resistance to neo-isolationist calls for American withdrawal or retreat from international commitments. American [[Page S7636]] economic, political and strategic interests cannot be isolated or insulated from world affairs; their successful engagement in world affairs are America's guarantor of prosperity and peace. An understanding of the cost-effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid and a strong commitment to maintain it as an efficient instrument of foreign policy. Reduced in real-dollar terms in recent budgets to less than 1 percent of Federal spending-- and the lowest, as a percentage of GNP, among major industrialized nations--U.S. foreign aid serves to safeguard America's political and economic interests abroad and spurs the development of new markets, generates American jobs (with 3 out of 4 aid dollars spent at home), and helps ease foreign crises that could escalate into instability and military conflict. Continued U.S. leadership in efforts to resolve regional conflicts in areas of vital economic, political and strategic interest; to bar the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and to combat international terrorism that threatens America, Israel, moderate Arab states, and the values and institutions of modern civilization. America's role in the pursuit of Arab-Israeli reconciliation, and in the development of regional economic and security arrangements to promote Middle East peace, has been, and continues to be, indispensable. Continued U.S. leadership, active participation, and appropriate investment in multilateral and bilateral institutions, including international lending agencies, trade and health organizations, and the United Nations. These institutions are valuable tools through which the United States, with vital security and economic interests across the globe, seeks global consensus on issues of national importance. The protection of international human rights as an essential component of U.S. foreign policy, reflecting America's deepest values while advancing its interests in a safer world. Indeed, at the founding conference of the United Nations 50 years ago, it was American Jewish Committee representatives Joseph Proskauer and Jacob Blaustein who argued persuasively that governments which respect human rights in their own countries are less likely to upset regional and global stability. This message, one of a series on public policy issues, was adopted by the Board of Governors of the American Jewish Committee at its 89th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., on May 3, 1995. The American Jewish Committee, Robert S. Rifkind, President; David A. Harris, Executive Director.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Yesterday the Senate voted on an amendment sponsored by Senator Roth which removed from the budget all savings attributable to enactment of legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas leasing. The Arctic Refuge is often referred to as America's Serengeti because of its outstanding wildlife, beauty and recreation opportunities. ANWR serves as the staging area for thousands of migratory birds, denning habitat for polar bears, and calving grounds for the 160,000 member Porcupine Caribou Herd. Moreover, the Refuge plays an integral part in the [[Page S7470]] lives of the Gwich'in people, whose members depend upon the seasonal migrations of the caribou for both survival and cultural identity. The biological heart of this pristine wilderness is the 1.5 million acre coastal plain. The fate of ANWR has been the subject of a complex and highly contested debate for more than a decade. That is why I am deeply saddened that the Budget Committee would use this back door approach via the budget process to try to open one of the Nation's last great wilderness areas to oil drilling. Under current law, receipts generated from assets sales and leases cannot be used for deficit reduction. I fear using the anticipated $1.4 billion proceeds from opening ANWR to drilling for deficit reduction may signal the beginning of a ``fire sale'' of natural resources such as the ANWR. For many Americans, trading the Arctic Refuge wilderness for a one-time budget reduction, and the possibility but only the possibility of finding oil, is simply not worth it. The environmental costs of opening the Refuge to leasing are not worth the estimated benefits, especially when the oil--estimated to supply only a 200 days supply of oil for the nation--is not needed because small gains in energy conservation could provide both more energy and more job creation than developing all of the potential for oil available in ANWR. It is very ironic that, while taking the first step towards opening up ANWR for exploration for petroleum, this budget will cut funding for energy conservation programs that could decrease our dependence on petroleum and create more U.S. jobs. A national energy efficiency program would create, on average, ten times the number of jobs that might be produced from Arctic Refuge drilling. All Americans have a stake in our national wildlife refuges and parks. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the crown jewel of the National Wildlife Refuge System. The Refuge is a wilderness area unique not only in the United States but in the world. The words of the renowned naturalist, George Schaller, say it all: Based on my experience, I conclude that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in all its magnificent diversity, from mountain range to coastal plain, is unique and irreplaceable not just on a national basis, but also on an international basis. It is sometimes thought that there are still many remote and untouched wilderness areas in which the earth's biological diversity will be protected . . . Most remote ecosystems, both inside and outside reserves, are rapidly being modified. The Refuge has remained a rare exception. It represents one of the last and true large wilderness areas left on earth, an area unspoiled, its biological systems intact. Our civilization will be measured by what we leave behind. The Refuge was established not for economic value but as a statement of our nation's vision. There are certain places on earth that are so unique that they must be preserved without compromise . . . Such places include the Virunga Volcanoes with its mountain gorillas, the Serengeti plains, the Chang Tang of Tibet--and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. President, I voted for the Roth amendment primarily because I believe it is unconscionable to allow the degradation of the ``biological heart'' of the only complete arctic ecosystem protected in North America without a thorough and substantive debate undertaken in full view of the American public. I terribly regret a majority of the Senate did not vote the same way and that we moved one step closer to what I believe is an unacceptable outcome.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, America has three deficits--not one. And we have to address all three if we are to solve our fiscal and social problems. We have to cut the budget and reduce the fiscal deficit, but, as I have said before, we also have an investment deficit and a spiritual deficit that require our collective commitment to retool and rebuild our communities, our politics, and our culture for the next century. This budget, Mr. President, is wrong-headed and misdirected in concept as well as in substance. It is at best myopic and at worst destructive. I have come, once again, to the floor to talk about the three American deficits, not one about a commonsense approach to the budget and about fair cuts. These things seem to have eluded my friends on the other side of the aisle, and I submit that this budget proposal, Mr. President, proves it. I have to say, first, I think the American people are looking for an honest, truthful budget that tells them what really is being cut and who will bear the burden. Mr. President, we all want to eliminate the deficit. It is bankrupting this country, but to cut Medicare and break a generational compact with American mothers and fathers who are retired and struggling to make ends meet in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest among us is not the way to do it. I was both troubled and in a way amused to see, Mr. President, that the Republican cuts in Medicare actually take ``choice'' in health care away from senior citizens. They will not be able to chose their own doctors. That is exactly what my friends on the other side complained about last year when they rejected the President's health care plan because working Americans would not have a choice of doctors. And now, here they are doing what they said was wrong for workers last year, but in their minds is apparently right for senior citizens this year. Mr. President, this is the height of hypocrisy. We saw television commercials that played on those fears, and here we are today with those same Republicans doing what they claimed a year ago was dead wrong. If that is not a flip-flop on the fundamental issue of health care reform, then I don't now what is. Let me say a few things about Medicare, Mr. President. Medicare was a Democratic compact and I--for one--will not trade it for an ill-conceived attempt to score political points. It is a bedrock program that provides adequate health care to one out of every seven Americans--that's 38.3 million people--38.3 million Americans who worked hard, played by the rules, and made plans based on our contract with them, and we won't break it. Without these benefits many if not most of our seniors would have limited access to adequate care, and in many cases no treatment at all. Mr. President, when it comes to Medicare, turning our back on our commitment to the elderly and disabled by asking them to pay almost $900 more per year in premiums, $1200 for home health services, and $100 more per year to meet their deductible may be what the Republicans think they need to do to keep their promise to protect the wealthiest and the strongest in this society, but it is not part of the Democratic commitment to protect average, hard-working Americans. That is not to say that Medicare doesn't need to be fixed, but this is not how we ought to fix it. Mr. President, I find it very interesting that the proposed cuts in the Medicare program under this Republican plan virtually equal the total amount the Republicans have budgeted for a tax cut for the wealthy. They have to break a promise to millions of Americans who live on fixed incomes and have made careful plans based on our commitment to them to achieve their goal. It is absolutely outrageous. It is fundamentally unfair. And it's just plain wrong. We need to fix the system, Mr. President, but fixing it does not mean using it to balance the budget or win some ideological points. The system is, indeed, costly. This year's estimated Medicare expenditures will be 10.4 percent higher than last year. But that is not the function of government largesse. It is the function of a number of factors: including a rapidly aging population resulting in more beneficiaries, increases in the costs of medical procedures, inefficiencies in the utilization of medical services, and the costs of new technologies for increased medical care. For all these reasons, Mr. President, Democrats supported comprehensive health care reform last year, and my colleagues on the other side took a walk on it; and now I am amazed to hear my colleagues demanding that the Democrats should take the lead on the budget and do something about health care costs. We did, and they said no. Now it is time for them--now that they are in the majority--to stand and deliver. The truth is that the President's proposals to accomplish this last year were shot down by the Republicans without their offering even a single alternative--and despite all the publicity of the Contract With America, it has not produced even the beginnings of a broad health care reform proposal, much less a comprehensive plan this year. Mr. President, it has been my belief that we must gain control over the increases in Medicare costs. But it should be done in the context of comprehensive reform of our health care system, not by willy-nilly cutting benefits to the elderly. The problem with Medicare is nothing new. It has been articulated by the trustees, and by every responsible government official. For this reason, Mr. President, when this latest political effort to trade Medicare for tax cuts is over, I anticipate that this Congress, Republicans and Democrats, will support a broad range of bi-partisan reforms that will make the Medicare trust fund solvent--just as we did for Social Security in 1981. I do not support dumping those problems on the States, or thoughtlessly cutting eligibility for these programs or the services they finance for the elderly. And I am not for cutting reimbursement rates to providers so deeply that they leave the program, go out of business, or simply shift costs to individuals who pay for their care directly or with private insurance. Mr. President, I will support only thoughtfully-devised approaches designed to address these six basic reforms to Medicare: eliminate unneeded care and treatment; put a stop to paying for ineffective treatments; increase inefficiency of the entire medical care delivery system; emphasize preventive rather than remedial care; emphasize outpatient rather than inpatient care; and implement financial reforms that build-in disincentives to excessive use of medical services without inhibiting needed preventive care. Any plan that addresses these six basic areas will represent the kind of comprehensive reform we need. But, Mr. President, we must approach reform intelligently and compassionately with a deep and abiding regard for the promises we've made to elderly Americans who have reached the age of 65 and have planned on Medicare benefits. Medicare needs to be fixed--not raided. [[Page S7469]] Having said that Mr. President, I believe that Medicare is hardly the only problem with this proposed budget. I have said on this floor, and I will say it again, that we face an enormous fiscal deficit and I am prepared to make the cuts necessary to reduce the deficit and avoid bankrupting our children and grandchildren, if they pass the fairness test and the common sense tests. But I want to discuss how this budget fails to address the two other American deficits. Yes, we face a growing fiscal deficit, but we also face a growing investment deficit and a growing spiritual deficit, and this budget is wrongheaded in not understanding or appreciating the significance and interrelation of the three American deficits that are ruining this nation. As much as we need to reduce the fiscal deficit we also need to increase living standards, create jobs, educate our children and our workforce, and preserve and protect the quality of life that generations of Americans have come to expect. I believe the budget debate should focus on attacking all three of these deficits: The first is the fiscal deficit. The national debt has more than tripled since 1979 and will soon top $5 billion. Just the interest payments on the debt affect every other budget decision we can make. We know that. We know that if we let this continue, we will be crowding out all the other choices we can make: how much we can spend on national defense and on essential social programs like drug treatment and prevention. The second deficit is the investment deficit. We need to find ways to invest in our infrastructure as well as in our people. A nation that does not invest is a nation that has given up hope for the future. We are not such a nation. And let me tell you, we are a nation that has always found a way to build and grow--re-tool and re-invest in education, in business, in the arts and sciences, in our culture and in our families. We need to remove unnecessary regulations so business can create jobs while, at the same time, we maintain the health and safety of every American. The third deficit is the spiritual deficit. Values, my friends, do not come from laws and speeches. They come from families, teachers, and churches. There are millions of young Americans today who no longer have significant contact with any of these sources. If this country is going to have children having children; if families are going to continue to erode--then our ability to reach these kids is essential. If that means investing in community organizations with a track record of success, then we should do it. So, I submit that this budget debate needs to go beyond the political rhetoric about our fiscal deficit. We all agree that we need to downsize and streamline government, but we must not lose sight of our obligation to re-invest in our people and in our nation to keep both strong. Mr. President, let me quote from an editorial on this budget debate in the Washington Post on Tuesday by E.J. Dionne. I think he asks an important question that must be addressed. He asks, ``Will Democrats be bold enough to question the Republicans' core assumptions about government? The issue in this debate,'' he said, ``should not be whether to reduce the deficit, but how that can be done in ways that will increase living standards and average wages, which have been dropping for two decades.'' Now, Mr. President, I am challenging those core assumptions of the Republicans because I believe they are short-sighted and wrong. And I believe that we will not be in an economic position to increase living standards until we have a budget that addresses the three American deficits simultaneously. In fact, Mr. President, I submit that if we pass this budget we will dramatically increase our investment and our spiritual deficits because we will not have committed ourselves to creating opportunities and jobs. We will not have committed to preserving the fundamental structural integrity of our nation--whether it's our roads, railroads, and bridges, or our values and our belief in citizenship and in the concept of community. This budget, Mr. President, is, therefore, wrong-headed, misdirected. It doesn't make any sense. It fails the common sense test. It fails the fairness test. This budget disinvests in people and makes us less competitive. It cuts Medicare by $256 billion; it cuts student aid by $14 billion; it terminates AMTRAK by the year 2000--terminates it. Do you know that we are 34th in the world in our commitment to our rail system which industry and commerce rely on. We are behind Ecuador and just ahead of Bangladesh. And the Republicans now want to cut all support for the railroads. The proposed budget decimates environmental programs and cuts all the crime prevention programs we passed last year. It cuts $34 billion from food and nutrition programs. It cuts unemployment compensation, SSI, and other programs under the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee by $66 billion. But this so called revolution doesn't stop there. It disinvests in our infrastructure by cutting $3 billion for airports, highways and school improvements. It disinvests in job training for young people by cutting $272 million. It disinvests in summer jobs for kids by cutting $871 million. It even disinvests in safe drinking water with a $1.3 billion cut in grants to the states to keep our water clean. These are not just draconian cuts that go to the heart of our ability to address the three deficits we face. They are the symbol, Mr. President, of a wrong-headed political philosophy that does not represent the mainstream of America. So, I submit that this budget is fundamentally flawed in its concept and is designed simply to achieve the political goals of a minority of anti-government zealots who are blind to the real needs of this nation. They cut what we need and keep what we don't. Let me conclude by saying, Mr. President, that I am emphatically for a balanced budget. I voted for the Bradley and Conrad alternative budgets because, though they are not perfect, they better protect Medicare, Medicaid, education, and other critical government services and they make better choices than the Republican leadership's budget. What the Bradley and Conrad alternatives prove is that we can balance the budget in less than ten years without increasing income tax rates for lower- and middle-income Americans. They prove in some what different ways that we can balance the budget without pillaging or eliminating key government services on which tens of millions of Americans depend and which are critical to keeping our nation competitive and our people healthy, happy, and safe. Both of these alternatives balance the budget in a fairer fashion than the Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate has tried to persuade the American people is possible. Mr. President, until my Republican colleagues understand that this budget is about people and their future and the future of our nations, and that there are three deficits we face as a nation--until they change their core assumptions about what we must preserve as well as what we must cut, then they will have failed, as the majority party, to legislate in the best interest of the people who have entrusted them with the fundamental process of this democracy. As I oppose this Budget Resolution, I commit to continue working to place us on a different course that will permit us to realize our potential as a nation. amendment no. 1150 oil and gas leasing in the arctic national wildlife refuge

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to cosponsor, with my friend and colleague Senator Sarbanes, an amendment to Senate Concurrent Resolution 13, the congressional budget resolution, which would restore funding for clean water and safe drinking water State revolving funds [SRF's], the low-interest loan programs that assist local communities to provide quality water to their residents. Mr. President, there are many things in this budget resolution before us that I find absolutely amazing. Ranking right up there at the top of the list of bad ideas is a provision to eliminate the Federal low- interest revolving loan program which helps communities finance important water infrastructure projects. This provision in the Republican budget proposal cuts one of the very important Federal programs which helps local communities meet their financial obligations to safeguard our citizens' water. Our amendment would restore the water infrastructure revolving fund accounts to the 1995 levels of $2.96 billion annually through 1996- 2002. In addition, our amendment is deficit neutral in that it provides funding by allocating money from section 204 of the budget resolution's surplus allowance. I find it extremely ironic that the Republican leadership would allow a provision which totally eliminates assistance to local communities when just weeks ago the Congress passed and the President signed into law a bill which would require such assistance in future legislation. As we all know, the unfunded mandates legislation requires the Federal Government to fund 100 percent of certain requirements for local and State governments to meet Federal safeguards in areas such as water or air quality beginning on January 1, 1996. However, at the same time, this bill would phase out the very Federal assistance that the Federal Government has provided for over two decades. While I would have liked to see certain changes in the unfunded mandates legislation and while I offered and supported amendments to improve the bill, I voted for the final version specifically because I have always believed and continue to believe in a strong Federal-State- local Government partnership. Have we forgotten so quickly the concerns we heard expressed from towns and cities across this country? I have not. I remember the concerned conversations I had with dozens of concerned local officials and the letters I received from hundreds of concerned citizens about the need for assistance from the Federal Government. That is why I am supporting this amendment today. Why is Federal assistance still needed in this area? Americans have come to expect a certain level of protection in the water they drink, the air they breathe and the food they eat. Polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe that the appropriate role of the Federal Government is to provide the necessary safeguards to maintain the public health and safety standards to which they have become accustomed during their lifetimes. With approximately 40 percent of our Nation's water sources still impaired, we must continue our commitment to water pollution prevention and abatement. As we seek to balance the budget, we must be mindful not to hastily eliminate the public infrastructure investments that for too long have been short-changed in the recent budget proposals. In 1972, a bipartisan Congress passed and a Republican President signed into law the original Clean Water Act, the comprehensive measure to protect and restore the quality of water in our Nation's rivers, lakes, and streams. Since then, the water infrastructure program has been an important component of a well-balanced effort to help local communities reduce pollution from sewage and industrial wastewaters. In addition, the Safe Drinking Water Act provides a similar program to protect the Nation's ground waters from which we get the water that flows from our taps. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that outstanding water infrastructure needs total over $135 billion nationwide. Phasing out the SRF Programs over the next 3 years will leave many local towns and cities stranded in their financial pursuits. In my home State of Massachusetts, even with the assistance provided by the Federal Government over the years, the cost of meeting the water quality standards has placed and continues to place an extraordinary burden on many families and communities. Many Massachusetts residents currently pay water and sewer bills that exceed their property taxes. Companies are considering moving their activities out of State and lower income families worry about paying the ever-increasing water bills. Ratepayers in the greater Boston area must shoulder the burden of a $5.2 billion water infrastructure construction project, with only minimal assistance from the Federal Government. However, it is not just large cities such as Boston or Baltimore or San Diego that need assistance. Small- and medium-sized towns across the country borrow funds from the State revolving fund to upgrade septic systems and build wastewater treatment and stormwater management facilities. In Massachusetts, communities across the State--Fall River, Gloucester, New Bedford, South Essex, Lynn, to name just a few--have mounting water rates because of their water projects, and need the assistance available from the revolving funds. I hope my colleagues will support this amendment because it is setting the right priorities for this country by investing in our local communities to help them to do the long-term planning that is vital to sustained economic growth and prosperity.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I did ask unanimous consent.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I call up an amendment at the desk on behalf of myself, Senators Simon, Ford, Feingold, Bradley, Biden, and Wellstone. I ask unanimous consent that several letters and editorials supporting the existing campaign finance law be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair, and I thank the distinguished managers. Mr. President, there is in this budget resolution an effort to do away with the Presidential checkoff finance system. I would like to share with my colleagues what Archibald Cox, the Watergate prosecutor, said with respect to this particular effort. Watergate dramatized the three-step relationship between large political contributions, the outcome of elections, and the governmental decisions of those who win. We should never forget the acceptance of a $2 million pledge from the Milk Producers Association to the Nixon administration which concurrently granted an increase in the support price of milk; the approval of American Airlines' route application shortly after a large corporate contribution to the party in power; or the settlement of antitrust litigation against ITT Corp. shortly after an ITT subsidiary agreed to underwrite a large portion of the cost of the Republican National Convention. Mr. President, this campaign system has worked. Some 63 primary candidates since 1976 have used the checkoff fund. The checkoff fund democratizes the Presidential races of this country. It distances Presidential candidates from the fundraising process. It liberates our entire system from the influence of big money, as Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox said. In 1972, when Richard Nixon ran for President, he spent $60 million in that race, the equivalent of $200 million today. That is more than President Bush and Bill Clinton spent together in 1992. If this amendment were to fail, if we proceed on the assumption that that campaign system will be taken away, all voluntary limits on campaign spending in Presidential races are gone. No voluntary limit will remain, and it is only that volunteerism in the system that keeps accord with the Constitution on Buckley versus Valeo that allows us to have a limit in Presidential races. So we will have gone back to the system of 1972 when there was unlimited funding from sources in Presidential races. I cannot imagine anything that runs more contrary to the vote of 1994 and to the grassroots statement of Americans in the 1994 election. They do not want this country going back to big money, large corporate interests. They want people liberated to participate. In fact, Mr. President, more people participate through the checkoff than contribute voluntarily to campaigns in this country. One out of seven Americans participate in the checkoff, whereas only one in 22 Americans contributed to campaigns in 1994. The checkoff could, in fact, be stronger than it is today. But, everybody should understand, no American is coerced to do this. It is a voluntary system where $3 from an individual has as much impact as tens of thousands of dollars from the rich or from corporate interests. Mr. President, it would be an enormous setback in our efforts to gain control of our political process if, now, we choose to go backward. Some people say, ``Well, we're not controlling all the money in the system; you still have soft money and we should be closing that loophole.'' The solution is not to take the hard money restriction in the voluntary system and make it like soft money. The solution is to make the soft money like the hard money or outlaw it altogether, Mr. President. So it is my hope that colleagues who have supported this in the past will not now go counter to the very grassroots effort that is supposedly being represented on the floor. This system has worked. It costs $45 million on the year, Mr. President, but to lose it would be tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. I hope we will support the system.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I certainly apologize. I had no idea. I thought the procedure was to call the amendment up. There was no intention to try to go outside of the Senator's desires. I ask unanimous consent that the past exchange not come out of this Senator's time.

Mr. KERRY. I ask unanimous consent----

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, there is in this budget an unfortunate effort to try to take away the current system of a----

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the Kerry amendment reduces the reconciliation [[Page S7393]] instructions to the Rules Committee by the amount attributable to repeal of the existing system of public financing and spending limits for Presidential campaigns, which the Rules Committee would be able to meet only by repealing that system. In order to offset the budget effect of reducing the instructions to the Rules Committee to save the amount of funding attributable to the Presidential public financing system, the amendment will leave a requirement for the same amount of savings in Function 800--general government--without specifying how the savings are to be achieved, but will lower the nondefense discretionary caps beginning in 1999 by the equivalent amount. This will have the effect of giving the responsibility to the Appropriations Committee beginning in that year to allocate the aggregate amount of approximately $250 million over the period covered by the budget resolution to administrative and overhead savings in various Federal agencies, leaving the judgment to the Appropriations Committee as to which agencies, for what Function 800 purposes, and in what amounts to allocate the spending reductions. This leaves the deficit reduction effects of the budget resolution unchanged. It means that this amendment is not subject to a point of order.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I simply would like to say to the manager, we are prepared to accept this. We can save the Senate time and proceed to the underlying amendment.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, Massachusetts is proud to be home to the North American Okinawan Karate-Do Association. Early in this century, Kanbum Uechi studied this ancient art on the mainland of China where it was first developed. Returning to his homeland of Okinawa, he introduced it there in 1910 and was the first master of the Okinawan Karate-Do system. In 1956, for the first time, American servicemen were accepted as students in the Okinawan Karate-Do schools. One of them settled in the Boston area after his military discharge and began teaching this art form to people in the area. Walter Mattson of Framingham, MA, is the senior American instructor. Over the years, there has been a continuing cultural exchange between the Masters on Okinawa and practitioners here in North America. Mr. Mattson is primarily responsible for this 35-year exchange program. This summer, Senior Instructor Peter McCrae from Plymouth, MA, will be studying on Okinawa with Master Shintoku Takara. Many Americans have found in Okinawan Karate-Do a physical and mental discipline which promotes positive attitudes, good health, and self- mastery. Our young people have found in it an alternative to the streets and, in its instructors, positive role models. We are grateful for this Japanese import and we hope that this positive exchange between our two countries continues for many years.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise to commend Chelsea Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc. [CNHS], and Citizens Bank of Massachusetts [Citizens], which were nationally recognized for their exceptional partnership achievements by the Social Compact in its 1995 Outstanding Community Investment Awards Program Tuesday night. Together, CNHS and Citizens have developed a unique pilot program that helps former low-income renters become homeowners and building managers. The two organizations have designed this successful program specifically to meet the needs of low-income residents in Chelsea, MA. Chelsea, historically a city of immigrants, has a population that often is the last hired and the first fired. Consequently, when the State of Massachusetts experienced a severe economic downturn in the early 1990's, Chelsea's residents were greatly affected. This population, with a per capita income of less than $8,600, is unable to accumulate savings for downpayments or closing costs for home purchases, even when working overtime or holding two jobs. Nevertheless, despite the problems, many residents are determined to stay in Chelsea and buy their own homes. Citizens--formerly known as Boston Five--originally approached CNHS to discuss a collaboration because it wanted to increase loans in Chelsea and create a successful program that could be replicated in other cities. When CNHS and Citizens designed rent-to-own, they carefully considered the needs of Chelsea residents. They recognized that additional financial assistance would be needed for first-time homehbuyers in order for them to have downpayments and meet closing cost requirements. Triple-decker properties, three-story buildings with a two-bedroom apartment on the ground floor and two three-bedroom apartments upstairs, provided part of the answer. The income from rental units helps decrease the barrier to homeownership. To qualify for the program, the potential managers/buyers must commit to a 3-year program that requires them to attend monthly training sessions and learn how to be good landlords. In return for their work and training, they receive 100 points a month and are docked if absent from training or if they do not fulfill management responsibilities. At the end of each year, the points earned are converted to a maximum of $1,200 and deposited to an escrow account at Citizens Bank. After 2 years, the account's balance--potentially $2,400--is considered the manager/ buyer's cash downpayment toward the average purchase price of $120,000 for his or her home. [[Page S6943]] CNHS piloted the program in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. With initial financial assistance from Citizens and further assistance from the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a State grant from the corpus of the Federal community development block grant to Massachusetts, Neighborhood Housing Services of America, and the State Executive Office of Communities and Development, CNHS bought a vacant and vandalized condominium and converted the early 20th-century building into four triple-deckers now called Garden Apartments I. The commitment of Citizens to the rent-to-own project is impressive. Over 150 hours of staff time was logged to develop and shape a program that would fit the needs of both clients and sponsoring institutions. Additionally, Citizens' senior staff worked with CHHS to gain approval of the program for Fannie Mae's secondary market. Since the first days of occupancy, the rent-to-own project has been self-sufficient. The residents keep the building immaculate, so its presence visibly improves the entire neighborhood. Both partners are pleased--Citizens is achieving its original mission, the development of a model program that can be expanded and adapted in other cities, and CNHS has a program that serves its special constituency. They are now acquiring one building a month, and 50 percent of those will be rent- to-own units. On behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I commend Chelsea Neighborhood Housing Services and Citizens Bank for their distinguished cooperation and success, and suggest that their model be considered for replication throughout the country.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to acknowledge a ceremony which was held yesterday in Boston to honor Mr. Massimo Santeusanio. Mr. Santeusanio recently celebrated his 100th birthday and the ceremony is to honor not only this extraordinary event but his service during World War I. He is to this day an inspiration to those Americans who appreciate the unselfish sacrifices made in defense of freedom and liberty. During this Memorial Day period, I would like to express our country's gratitude to all World War I veterans through Massimo Santeusanio.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is with great sadness that I note the death of Donald L. Collins after a brief but fierce battle with cancer. At the time of his death last February, Mr. Collins was Deputy Federal Insurance Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] in Washington, DC. That position of leadership capped a remarkable career in Federal service of more than 20 years. It is a genuine honor to commend to my colleagues in the Senate the life and service of Don Collins. Don had many remarkable achievements in his Federal career that I would like to touch on briefly. But perhaps, for anyone who ever met him, Don Collins' most memorable qualities were his deep, unabashed love for his Catholic faith, his genuine compassion for others, and his quick sense of humor that could disarm and charm any opponent. For Don, there were never any strangers, never any enemies--even after the most heated debate. He was available to everyone, at any time. While Don always assumed the lion's share of the work for every project, he still always had time for everyone on his staff. There was never a closed door to his employees at the Federal Insurance Administration [FIA] or to the public he served. His love and caring were contagious. Don had, in the words of his brother, long arms--always ready to draw people to himself, no matter how different their point of view. Don loved and respected the law as well--which he demonstrated by always molding policy interpretations for the National Flood Insurance Program [NFIP] to comply with the intentions of Congress for that program. His regard and respect for law were developed early as he worked his way through undergraduate school at Fordham University in New York City and law school at night. He completed his juris doctor at Saint John's University, also in New York. He was admitted to practice in the following courts: the courts of the State of New York, District of Columbia Court of Appeals; U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit; U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York; U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; and U.S. Court of Military Appeals (DC). Marking another dimension of this charming, approachable, funny man were the awards he received to commemorate a textbook Federal career. In 1991, Don Collins received the Presidential Rank Award-Meritorious Executive, Senior Executive Service. That award recognized in part his lasting contributions and service to the Federal Insurance Administration, especially for his efforts to shape and implement the NFIP program. In that connection, Mr. Collins played a major role in framing the public policy debate about how to reduce the public's losses from floods, which resulted in the enactment of the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973. That legislation redirected the Nation toward a more prudent course in flood loss reduction. From 1990 to 1994, he worked closely with the White House and congressional leaders to shape the NFIP Reform Act of 1994 which strengthens the NFIP and provides lenders with the tools needed to comply with legal requirements for flood insurance. Over the years, Don Collins also helped foster a close working relationship with the insurance industry. His integrity and disarming personality were largely responsible for the good will enjoyed by the program with its industry partners. He developed and administered the entire claims and underwriting systems in support of the NFIP and developed all NFIP policy forms and the agents' manuals. Similarly, he developed all flood insurance regulations and was central to the development of all significant policies governing the NFIP. In sum, Don Collins was a model Federal executive. More than that, Don Collins was an exemplary person. He was a man of deep faith, a loving husband and father, a person dedicated to his community, and a manager who set the standard for excellence at the Federal Insurance Administration and the National Flood Insurance Program. When my staff and I worked with Don on NFIP legislation over the course of 2 years, his knowledge, diligence, good humor, grace, and personal warmth were always present, and prevented a series of difficult negotiations from becoming unpleasant and onerous. None who worked with him will forget him. Indeed, he will be appreciated and fondly remembered by all.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, what I would like to do--the Senator from Wisconsin has been waiting patiently. I talked longer than I told him I intended to--I will just conclude my comments. I will have more to say on this in the course of the next weeks. But I believe we are at a crossroads, and I think that the choices that I have outlined are only a few of the choices. But we cannot look at the needs of this country exclusively in terms of an arbitrary approach to the deficit reduction. We have to look at the other two deficits that the Nation faces. There is such a thing as investment, and there is such a thing as a return on investment, and there is such a thing as multiples of return on investment. I think that most people in the Senate understand that. The question is whether or not we are going to make those wise judgments. I thank my colleague from Wisconsin for his patience, and I thank the distinguished managers for their courtesy. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to say to my colleagues that the last time I looked at the Federal budget, which has been many times in the last few days, I did not notice that spending was increasing significantly in the discretionary domestic side of the budget. I did not notice that Americans were coming up to any of us and saying to us, Senator, we have too much drug treatment in America; we ought to cut it so fewer addicts can get treatment. I did not notice that a lot of people were coming up and saying, it is already easy enough for me to send my kid to school, so why not cut the tax deduction to send our kids to college and make it harder for us to send our kids to school. I did not notice people were suggesting that our train system is comparable to the Japanese or the Germans or the French, and therefore we ought to be reducing the investment in our railroads. I did not notice that our colleges and universities were so fat with money that their laboratories, which are 20 and 30 years old in many cases, are state of the art and so they do not need additional Federal funding to increase the science capacity or research of America. I could run down a long list of things that I do not think Americans are asking us to cut, but, Mr. President, we are cutting them. We are cutting them. And I respectfully suggest we are cutting out of this country the guts of our ability to be able to remain a great country and guarantee that our kids, who are increasingly growing up in a vacuum, are going to have the best education system in the world, the kind of opportunity that we have promised through these years. We had a period of know-nothingism in America once before, and I am not sure that we are venturing close to a new period of sort of put your head in the sand and pretend--pretend that a 15-year-old kid who has an abusive parent or a drug addict parent and whose other parent is absent, pretend that that kid, who is already at risk and dropped out of school, is somehow suddenly going to be saved by cutting access to the YMCA, YWCA, the Boys and Girls Clubs, Youth Build, the City Years, the AmeriCorps of this country. That is what we are doing. The one part of the budget that is increasing is entitlements. It is the only part of the Federal budget that is really increasing in real dollars. And the truth is that you are not going to solve that problem just by whacking away at a fixed amount of money when more and more Americans are turning 65, more and more Americans are living longer, and more and more Americans have a right to expect that they are going to get quality medical care. What will happen if we just lop off several hundred billion out of Medicare? Sure, we will cut out some waste. And, yes, some good entrepreneurs will respond and there will be an increase in managed care and HMO's, and so forth. But you will take the guts out of teaching hospitals. You will take the guts out of research and development. And those things that have provided the United States with the most extraordinary advanced technology and medical care in the world will suddenly begin to diminish, just like deferred maintenance on a building. Sure, we can cut the maintenance today, and we have been doing that, I might add, in many different sectors. But 5 and 10 years from now, after 10 years of cuts and deferred maintenance, the buildings begin to crumble, the bridges begin to fall down, the sewer systems fall apart, the water treatment facilities are not there. Mr. President, we have to stop and recognize that there are three deficits in this country. There is a fiscal deficit, but there is also an investment deficit, and there is a spiritual deficit. And we are not going to address the investment deficit, which is critical to dealing with the spiritual deficit, unless we treat all three of them simultaneously. And all this budget that we will be presented does is deal with the fiscal deficit. What do I mean when I say an investment deficit? Well, Mr. President, let me give you one example: railroads. The United States is ranked 34th in the world in our investment in our railroads. We are just behind Ecuador and Bolivia and just ahead of Bangladesh. And there are only seven countries I think with railroads that are behind us--34th in the world. Now, I can tell you that in Boston, in New England, along most of the eastern seaboard and much of the west coast now, and in other parts of this country, rail transportation is essential to moving millions of people to their jobs, taking the burden off of our highways, and yet, we are disinvesting in those railroads, Mr. President. France has its TGF, Japan has a bullet train. And instead of thinking about how we are going to provide millions of jobs for Americans building an adequate transportation system, we are disinvesting. No country on this planet has a railroad system that does not have a subsidy. There is not a country in the world that does not subsidize its railroad system. And yet the House of Representatives has zeroed out--zeroed out--money for support of railroads. Now I can give you dozens of other examples like that. Global climate change. We do not know all the answers. We know that there is a phenomenon taking place. We do not have a complete understanding of it. We need to have an understanding of it, because the consequences could be cataclysmic. And yet we are cutting that research. The Coast Guard, the admiral in charge of the Coast Guard told me they just to keep their ships running properly to stay current with the demand--Cuba, Haiti, fishing enforcement, drug trafficking. But, Mr. President, we are not providing that money. We have cut significantly the amount that they need. Science and research. There is not a public university in this country that is not struggling to have the capacity to be able to raise the standards of learning for our children. And yet, we are going to have a harder time than ever before in providing the wherewithal for those universities and for those entities to carry on to meet that high standard. Mr. President, there are so many examples like this that it defies the imagination. The last time I looked, this was a very rich country. And not only is it a very rich country, but it is a country that is increasingly seeing a huge division growing between those who have and those who do not. From 1940 to 1950 to 1960 to 1970, Americans all grew simultaneously, at every sector of American society. If you were at the lowest quintile of earnings in America, your income grew in 10 years by 138 percent. If you were in the next two quintiles from 1940 to 1980, for 40 years, if you were in those middle two quintiles, you grew at 98, 99 percent over a 10-year period. And if you were in the top quintile, Mr. President, you grew at about 98 percent. In the last 12 years in America, the bottom quintile went down 18 percent, the next quintile went down 4 percent, and the top quintile went up 105 percent. Now, while income has become tougher and tougher for the average American to earn, they have been witnessing the phenomenon of globalization and technology, where more and more the labor of human hands and hearts is not applied to work. You have automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and technology advancements which are what provide most of the productivity increases of this country. It is very clear that America is not going to compete, by and large, except for niches here and there with low-wage, low-scale jobs. Increasingly, Americans are being forced into low-wage, low-scale service sector jobs. And we are not increasing the manufacturing base of this country in a way that creates the high value-added jobs that allows an American to earn more money and be able to move up the ladder. That, Mr. President, accounts for most of the anger that we feel in America today; that, coupled with the accompanying disintegration of families and communities. Now that gets you to the spiritual deficit. Mr. President, in 1965, our colleague, Pat Moynihan, warned us about what happens in America when children are having children out of wedlock--children born into a single-person family. In 1965, Senator Moynihan told us of a 27-percent-out-of-wedlock birth rate in the inner city. He was accused of being a racist. Most of America put its head in the sand and did not pay much attention. Today that 27 percent is 80 percent. Thirty-six percent of all American children are born out of wedlock. And I ask my colleagues how they think they are going to deal with a 15- or 16-year-old kid who has already dropped out of high school, who does not relate to their home, who has no organized religion, who does not have in his or her life any of the normal ingredients of teaching values--family, church, synagogue, school--how are you going to reach that 15-year-old in order to prevent that 15-year-old from becoming the next inhabitant of a $50,000-a-year jail cell? I am not proposing to my colleagues that Government ought to do it or that Government is the solution. But I do know that Government can make a difference in helping to create a framework which will allow those kids to have a shot. And that framework can be the support that we give to nonprofit entities, the support that we give to a boys club, a girls club, support we give to the YouthBuilds, the Americorps and other efforts that try to intervene where there has been such a total failure otherwise. As I listen to my colleagues in the House and elsewhere, they say, ``Well, it is the family's responsibility. Cut it off and people are going to have to take care of themselves.'' The problem is, Mr. President, that this country already has a track record of doing that. In the 1920's, 1930's, 1860's, 1870's and 1880's, we saw what happened when everybody was left to their own devices. That is when we had sweatshops. That is when we had slums and squalor. That is when we had no ability to cure half of these things. The truth is, Mr. President, that over the course of the last years, in the last 40 years, particularly, in America, we have learned that some of these interventions truly make a difference in the lives of our communities and of our kids. I respectfully suggest that the U.S. Senate, the House, the Congress, the country, are on their way to creating a clash unlike any we have ever known before in this country. The summer job money has been cut. Let me ask you: What are those kids going to do this summer in the heat of New York City or Los Angeles or Detroit or Chicago or Boston when they have no job? The Government said, ``We don't care. We're taking the money away. Go fend for yourself.'' But we all know that the economy, historically, carries 6 percent unemployment or more. So even though we, the leadership, know that America is going to have at least 6 percent of its country unemployed, are we still going to say, ``Go take care of yourself,'' and cut them off? What are they going to do? So I think, Mr. President, we are heading for a cropper. I remember the 1960's, when I came back from Vietnam. I can remember people out in the streets with guns. I remember cars being overturned. I remember bombs. I remember firestorms of automobiles burning. I respectfully suggest that we better stop and think carefully about the consequences of the steps we take and the choices we make. Those children that Pat Moynihan talked about in 1965 turned 15 and 16 in 1980. All you have to do is go and look at the increase of juvenile violence in America in 1980, and you can begin to project what those children born today in the 80-percent category are going to do in the year 2010 when they turn 15 and 16. The increase of murder among juveniles is up 250, 260 percent. There were 29,000 juveniles murdered in America in the last 10 years, and 4,000 juveniles are currently under arrest charged with murder. The highest level of murders in America today are juveniles between the ages of 14 and 25 who are murdering other juveniles between the ages of 14 and 25. I absolutely guarantee you, it is inescapable, unavoidable, incontrovertible that if you have a kid born today in a country that is providing less work, in a country where information and education are more important to your ability to work than ever before, in a country where it will be harder for these kids to get that education, not easier, there is an absolute predictability to what those kids will be like 15 and 16 years from today. Mr. President, I used to prosecute some of those kids. I used to be a prosecutor, and I talked to some of them back then. It was OK, you could have a conversation and you could learn something about what they felt and about their anger. In the last 2 years, I have spent time going to some of the at-risk programs that we are now running, which are the last link between these kids and total loss. I have never, ever in my life heard such a level of anger that is without explanation. They cannot explain it to you. They do not know where it is coming from. But you can hear those kids talk about being runaways in Florida or New York, about how they left their families at age 10, 11, 12. Mr. President, do you know that the median age of handgun ownership, or gun ownership, in America today, the median age of first-time gun ownership is 12\1/2\ years old? So as we think about the budget choices that we are going to face over the course of this next 1\1/2\ or 2 weeks, it is my prayer that we are not going to put our heads in the sand and ignore the other two deficits this country faces: The investment deficit and the spiritual deficit. even the right entity to ``deal with the spiritual'' or attempt to. But Government needs to understand the connection with those entities that should be doing it, or can be doing it, and their capacity to do it, in the world that we are creating. Government needs to be an empowerer of the local community to reach these children. For example, in Brockton, MA, there is a Boys and Girls Club, but only 10 percent of the kids in that community get access to that club. Simple question: What happens to the other 90 percent of those kids? They are out on the streets, nobody is there, there is no connection. That is our responsibility, it seems to me, to try to empower the communities to be able to help create the civic reaction that will begin to deal with these children. And the ultimate response will come from churches and synagogues, spiritual organizations, nonprofit agencies, schools, and parents, but you have to have a place to begin. You have to start somewhere. It seems to me, that if you have a kid sitting in front of you who is 12 or 13 years old and they are already dabbling in drugs, and they are already in trouble at home, and they are already disconnected to the school, we have a fundamental choice: Are we going to turn our back on that kid and cut that kid off, or are we going to try to channel that child toward some group or organization that will bring the child in, embrace the child with a notion that the child has a stake in the community and the community cares? I think this budget is draconian with respect to those efforts. I am not sure how in the next days, given the choices we have, we are going to fix it. Mr. President, none of what I am saying should be interpreted to mask over the deficit that we do face on the fiscal side. I am prepared to make tough choices about cuts that we ought to make and even reordering priorities to try to balance the budget, which I think we ought to do. But nobody has ever convinced me of why we absolutely have to do that in 6 years versus 8 or versus 10 years. Nobody has convinced me that there is some economic virtue in picking a target date that is so arbitrary that may wind up cutting capacity to meet other needs that we have. One other point, Mr. President. Increasingly in America, we are seeing the cash economy of this country grow. It is now, I am told, about a $600 billion economy. That means that we are losing annually about $100 billion of revenue because people just choose not to pay taxes. In fact, as a nation, we have gone from voluntary compliance in our income tax of 96 percent down to 81 percent. Each loss of a point of voluntary compliance is the loss of $5 billion of revenue. So your good taxpaying, hard-working family that is earning $25,000, $30,000 a year and paying their taxes is slugging it out to make ends meet, to pay for fire, police, schools, roads, everything we do, while an increasing number of American citizens are getting away with not paying their taxes. We have a choice. I read in the newspaper the other day that we are going to have a new thing called a lifestyle audit, and people in America are now going to be able to anticipate the IRS jumping into their driveways and asking them why there is a certain kind of car in their driveway, how they manage to go ski somewhere, what their vacation style is, why they eat at certain restaurants, and that is the way we are going to supposedly enforce the Tax Code. I do not think Americans are going to tolerate an IRS gestapo-like entity of people intrusively moving into their lives. So, Mr. President, if we are really going to make this system work and recapture that cash economy, we have to talk about changing the tax structure of this country and moving away from a dependency on income and into consumption where it is the only place that you can begin to shift to a reflection of what the cash transaction is while simultaneously, I think, increasing people's savings and moving in a new direction. Mr. President, I see that the manager of the bill is on his feet. If he has an amendment, I am prepared to conclude.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me just say to the majority leader, I had asked if there were any amendments. There were no amendments, and I allowed whatever amendments were there to be done before speaking. If there is an amendment that is ready to go forward, I am not trying to delay the process or hold up the Senate, but I thought I would call attention to this issue in the absence of that.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, last night the Budget Committee, in the wee hours, passed the budget resolution for the U.S. Senate on which we will shortly go to work. There are many, many questionable choices within that resolution. There will be a time, a very fixed time obviously, a minimum number of hours that we have to debate it here on the floor, with a finality for that debate, and it is predetermined. But I would like to just talk for a moment, if I can, about a couple of aspects of that budget as we frame the debate about where we are going in this country. First, I would like to call the attention of my colleagues to one provision that is in this budget that this Senator finds profoundly disturbing, and that I hope other colleagues will think hard about before we ratify it in the course of the budget process. A lot of things are being proposed in America today under the banner of deficit reduction. I think there is a unanimity here that we obviously have to reduce the deficit. We are going to be bankrupt if we do not. We cannot continue down the road that we are going on. But there also ought to be an application of common sense to the choices that we make as we do that. Reducing the deficit does not predicate that we simply come in with a machete or a pickax and chop away at things that make sense, while simultaneously leaving out there the things that do not make sense. One of the items that has fallen under the budget committee's ideological approach to this issue is the Presidential campaign fund. For whatever reasons--I can give you the descriptions that are given, but I think the agenda is considerably different--the committee has chosen to eliminate the mechanism by which Americans for the years since Watergate have funded Presidential elections. That method is to have a checkoff on your tax form with which you decide to give money to the Presidential election fund. It is a voluntary mechanism in America. But it has been a most important mechanism by which we have freed Presidential politics from the demeaning process of requiring our candidates to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from special interests all across this country. It has worked, Mr. President. The system has worked. President Ronald Reagan used it. President George Bush used it. I believe President Bush in the course of his career as a Vice President and as a President, used something in the order of $200 million in order to run for the highest Federal office in this land. The majority leader, Robert Dole, has used it in the past. Other Presidential candidates in this Senate have used it, Republican and Democrat alike. No one has suggested that system is wrong, corrupt, not working, or not freeing the Presidential process from the rather terrifying money chase that we in the U.S. Senate have to go through. Yet, this Budget Committee, in an effort to try to whack away at the deficit, is going to do away with this campaign financing mechanism. Mr. President, for the life of me I don't understand why--but I understand the argument that will be made. The argument will be the soft, easy, political sloganeering arguments that, ``Gee, politicians should not be getting welfare.'' It sounds really catchy. And the American taxpayer should not necessarily be paying. That is the argument you are going to hear. But I will bet you that four members of the Republican caucus who are running for President are prepared, in a matter of weeks, to ask for that money and will take it and will use it. Now, it seems to me, Mr. President, if we cannot remember the lessons of Watergate and remember the degree to which this country felt a revulsion at what happened during that period of time, when stacks of cash and enormous sums of money were changing hands in an effort to try to curry favor and votes in America, if we do not remember that lesson, then we have not learned much about what was wrong with American politics in the course of the last years. So I hope that before we just accept what the Budget Committee has done, Members will think hard about what is really good for this country in the context of political campaign finance reform. This Senate has twice passed campaign finance reform in the last years. We passed it in 1992, and the House passed it, but President Bush vetoed it. We then passed it again in 1994, but it died mostly because the House of Representatives did not want to take it up. The bottom line, I think all colleagues will agree, is that we saw a period of scandal in America that brought reform, and it would be irrational now in the face of the extraordinary impact of money in American both of our candidates, or any major party candidate, from having to go out and raise these extraordinary sums of money which most Americans have come to agree distort the American political process. That is not the only issue raised in this budget, and we will have ample time in the days ahead to discuss it. Mr. President, I see that the majority leader is in the Chamber. I do not know if he had an announcement or a procedure.

Mr. KERRY. I would like to retain the right to the floor, but I will yield.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as if in morning business.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, unless somebody is about to propose an amendment or wants to proceed, I would like to proceed as if in morning business for a few minutes.