Frank Lautenberg

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank my distinguished colleague. Mr. President, nationally, one in four Americans lives within 4 miles of an NPL site. That is unacceptable. Contaminated sites endanger our environment, they endanger our health, they endanger our economy. We have money in the trust fund. We should use it. We desperately need to clean up these sites and make them safe and productive again, especially for the sake of the communities that surround them. Having these blighted locations throughout our country is simply that; it is a plague on these communities. We ought to get on with transforming them from wastelands into industrial, commercial, and residential sites that benefit everybody. This amendment is cosponsored by several of my colleagues, including Senator Corzine, Senator Boxer, Senator Kennedy, Senator Biden, Senator Clinton, Senator Nelson of Florida, Senator Jeffords of Vermont, Senator Kerry, and Senator Schumer. Mr. President, I hope we will be able to use these funds for the purpose intended: cleaning up more Superfund sites faster in the coming year. I urge adoption of the amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the comments of my colleagues.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, no one would suggest that we shouldn't look for more efficient ways to do things with regard to the Superfund program. And there is always redress, unfortunately, to the court if one wants it. But the Superfund Program has been working: 87 sites a year, on average, were being cleaned up, up until the year 2000; over 800 sites in all. That is pretty darn good. We learned how to do it. The program is working. To deprive it now is really not what ought to be happening. I am sure citizens across this country would agree with us: More money, more cleanups. That is what we want out of the Superfund Program. I yield back whatever time remains.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I am pleased to support the nomination of Governor Tom Ridge as Secretary of the newly created Department of Homeland Security, DHS, when the Senate votes later this morning to confirm him. The Governmental Affairs Committee held its hearing on Governor Ridge on Friday and reported his nomination favorably later that afternoon. The expedited action on Governor Ridge is an illustration that when the administration seeks a consensus nominee from the start, the Senate can be very accommodating. I hope that administration officials will keep that in mind as they consider candidates for the Federal judiciary. Governor Ridge brings strong qualifications and experience to the job. He is literally battle-tested. He has served as President Bush's first and only Director of Homeland Security. He has management experience as the Governor of one of the Nation's larger States, Pennsylvania. Moreover, he has served in Congress and so knows the importance of the task we have, which is to provide adequate funding for this new department and oversee its operations. Having said that, his task is extraordinarily large and extraordinarily difficult. Governor Ridge will preside over the biggest Federal reorganization since the creation of the Department of Defense after the end of World War II. We feel compelled to create a Department of Homeland Security largely because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There were attacks on our soil before 9/11, but 9/11 has focused our Nation's attention much as the attack on Pearl Harbor did for the World War II generation. We face a cunning and ruthless enemy determined to make our home front the front lines. We face an enemy that deliberately targets civilians, not soldiers. We face an enemy that wants to disrupt our society by every means possible. Keeping America safe will be an enormous challenge. Keeping America safe without trampling on the civil liberties that make us a free people will be an even bigger challenge. The Department of Homeland Security's purpose is to prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S. and respond to such attacks that do occur. The DHS will consist of 22 agencies now scattered throughout the Federal Government and will contain four major divisions: A division of information analysis and infrastructure protection, which will operate in concert with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other intelligence agencies to assess threats; A division of science and technology that will develop and promote measures to defend against nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks; A division of emergency preparedness and response--built on the current Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)--which will prepare for and respond to natural and man-made disasters; and A division for border and transportation security that will encompass what is now the Customs Service, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Border Patrol. Additionally, the new Department will include the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and a new Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is to be abolished and nearly all of its employees are being moved to the new Department from the Justice Department. The bill would also move most of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department and rename it the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The new Department will also have an Office for State and Local Coordination charged with helping state and local governments to implement the national strategy for combating terrorism. So Governor Ridge must bring together 170,000 employees from disparate agencies and manage a budget that now totals $20 billion and is expected to reach $31 billion by 2007. That is an enormous task. We are operating on the premise that consolidating all of these agencies and programs under one roof is a good idea. That seems like a reasonable premise, but in all candor, we will have to wait and see. I am concerned about what will happen to the non-DHS functions of agencies moved to the new Department, such as those of the Coast Guard and FEMA. I want to make sure that that the Coast Guard's traditional functions of maritime safety, search and rescue, aid to navigation, etc., will not be hurt by the reorganization. Port security operations accounted for 1-2 percent of Coast Guard activities before 9/11. By early October 2001, they increased to 56 percent of all operations. The Coast Guard is trying to move towards a ``new normalcy'' with port-security operations accounting for 20-25 percent of all operations. According to the Congressional Research Service, prior to 9/11, the Coast Guard already was been underfunded with regard to its expanding responsibilities. Over the last 25 years there has been a substantial growth in mission areas such as counter- drug operations, alien interception, pollution prevention, and fisheries enforcement. These functions will still need to be performed and have to be funded adequately. Similarly, FEMA's non-DHS functions of natural disaster response and relief should not be weakened. Another issue we will have to grapple with is oversight. Some of the oversight will rest with the Governmental Affairs Committee; some of it will be spread among several committees. That may be a good thing; but it could also prove to be unworkable. Again, we will have to wait and see. How we handle appropriations is another matter we will have to sort out. Another issue is the labor rights of the DHS employees. When President Bush sent his DHS proposal to Congress, it contained anti- labor provisions that would have allowed him to strip civil service protections from Federal employees of the Department, so he could hire, fire and transfer employees as he wished. On the Senate floor, Senator Lieberman offered an amendment to maintain the current collective bargaining rights of more than 40,000 Federal employees slated to move into the new Department. At the same time, in line with long-standing Presidential prerogative, the Lieberman amendment would have given the administration the ability to suspend these employees' collective bargaining rights if new job duties are related to intelligence, counterintelligence or terrorism investigations, and collective bargaining would adversely impact national security. President Bush threatened to veto the bill if the Lieberman amendment passed and Republicans filibustered the amendment. President Bush demanded authority to strip all employees in the department of their civil service protections. Citing national security concerns, the President claimed that the labor provisions would not give him broad enough authority to hire, fire and change job assignments at the proposed agency. I think this course of action was regrettable. The Republicans did agree to a slight compromise on the labor issue: the department is required to consult on any workplace changes with employees' unions. In the end, though, the President will have wider-ranging authority to waive union rights than ever before. This is an issue we will have to revisit. We also need to be concerned about civil liberties. Of course, we need to be vigilant to protect the American people from those who would do us grave harm. But we can't sacrifice our freedom for security. Governor Ridge and the new department will have to balance the two. It won't be easy but it is absolutely necessary. Speaking more parochially, because of New Jersey's proximity to New York, we suffered enormously on 9/11: nearly 700 New Jerseyans lost their lives. But it is not just our proximity to New York that concerns me. We have plenty of critical infrastructure targets: ports, airports, tunnels, rail lines, chemical plants, etc. We have 8.5 million people and several large population centers. I want to make sure that we aren't short-changed when the DHS allocates resources to the States to bolster their security. I also want to make sure that Governor Ridge and the new department fulfill their responsibility to help keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. That means, to me, closing the ``gun show loophole''-- something President Bush pledged to do as a candidate in 2000. It is to easy for people to buy guns and other weapons at gun shows, no questions asked. We shouldn't make it easy for terrorists to buy assault weapons, .50-caliber guns, sniper rifles, etc. In summary, the creation of the DHS has not been without controversy. As I noted, there are questions about whether the consolidation of various agencies under one roof will be an effective way to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks; whether the civil liberties of U.S. citizens--particularly immigrants--will be adequately protected with regard to border security and intelligence gathering activities; whether state and local entities will receive adequate funding for their new DHS-related responsibilities; and whether non-DHS functions of agencies will be protected. Moving a bit farther a field, we need to consider where DHS fits in with regard to our overall priorities for fighting terrorism. The new department is responsible for preventing terrorism, but it will have nothing to do with addressing the root causes of that terrorism. Its very existence and the debate that will swirl around it could take attention and resources away from more proactive foreign policy and domestic law enforcement and social welfare efforts to reduce the impetus for terrorist acts, foreign and domestic. While the primary responsibility to make America safer without sacrificing our freedoms will rest with Governor Ridge and the new Homeland Security Department, in fact, all Americans share that somber responsibility. We will all have to work together, and we wish Governor Ridge well in this great undertaking.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to an organization that has been aiding the children of their community for fifty years. The Kiwanis Club of Hasbrouck Heights-Teterboro is celebrating its 50th anniversary. For 50 years the club has conducted numerous projects to help sick children, abandoned children, special needs children, exceptional children and children suffering from poverty in their community. They help individuals of all ages from infants to senior citizens. The Kiwanis Club is also honoring Dr. Burnett Eglow. Dr. Eglow is the only original charter member of the Kiwanis Club of Hasbrouck Heights- Teterboro that has been active in this club for all 50 years. I ask my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to Dr. Burnett Eglow and the Kiwanis Club of Hasbrouck Heights-Teterboro for all they have done throughout their 50 years for their community.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, it is with great pride that I rise today to pay special tribute to an outstanding gentlemen from New Jersey. On January 20, The American Jewish Committee Institute of Human Relations Award Dinner will honor John L. McGoldrick. Since 1979, John McGoldrick has served as a director of the New Jersey Transit Corporation, which is the United States' third largest passenger rail and bus company. As anyone from New Jersey knows, passenger rail and bus service is extremely important to the commerce and quality of life in our State. Currently John McGoldrick is executive vice president of Bristol- Myers Squibb Company. He is vice chairman of the company's executive committee and is responsible for Global Corporate Policy. He is also general counsel of the company and director of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. More important than any of those responsibilities is Mr. McGoldrick's responsibility for Bristol-Myers Squibb's HIV/AIDS initiatives in Africa. That includes the company's groundbreaking $115 million Secure The Future program in Southern and Francophone Africa, as well as the ACCESS program to make antiretroviral therapy more accessible in the developing world. At Bristol-Myers Squibb John McGoldrick has also led the company's efforts in support of the State of New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education. John McGoldrick is also very active outside of his work at Bristol- Myers. Mr. McGoldrick is a director of the Regional Plan Association, a trustee of Legal Services of New Jersey and a Trustee of the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey. Mr. McGoldrick also has been elected a Member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a fellow of the American Bar Association and a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He is also a director of Zimmer Holdings, Inc., which is a company that manufactures artificial hips and knees as well as other orthopedic products. I ask my colleagues to join me and the American Jewish Committee Institute of Human Relations in honoring Mr. John L. McGoldrick for his great service to New Jerseyans and people all over the world.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. May I have 5 minutes?

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington and commend her and Senator Hollings for their work on getting this amendment in front of us. And I am pleased to see the chairman of the Commerce Committee here because over the years, while this is the first time I have spoken on the floor in a couple of years, nevertheless, the tune is similar and we have sung it before. I hope that finally we will come to the realization that Amtrak is not simply a Northeast corridor program, that it is an essential part of an intermodal transportation system. That fact was made abundantly clear on September 11, 2001, when jet-liners crashed into the World Trade Center and shocked America to its very core. Aviation--I never believed that it would shut down--was shut down across the country as a result of that terrible tragedy. Highways were jammed. Thank goodness we had Amtrak still running. It kept some semblance of order going between Washington and New York and throughout the Northeast region. How quickly this seems to be forgotten when we get to appropriating proper funding for Amtrak to continue its operations. Amtrak has been starved almost since birth. We heard the distinguished Senator from South Carolina talk about the amount of funds that were put into Amtrak over a 30-year period--something like $500 to $750 million a year, which is certainly not peanuts in anybody's vocabulary--but the fact is, we have just never spent enough. Last fall, the Senate Appropriations Committee provided $1.20 billion for Amtrak. The bill we are considering tonight cuts that amount by $374 million, to $826 million. That's a cut of nearly one-third! Amtrak would be better off under the Continuing Resolution, which at least provides $1.04 billion. Amtrak can't survive on $826 million--it's that simple, that stark. I was with the distinguished Senator from Arizona at a meeting in Brussels when there was a NATO gathering there, and I took the train from Brussels to Paris. The train ride was about 200 miles--roughly the equivalent of the ride to Washington from New York, which is 225 miles--and it took an hour and 25 minutes. Can you imagine what would happen to the traffic along I-95 if we could ride like that from Washington to New York? Even if the New York to DC trip were 2 hours, frankly, it would not pay to go near the airport--not by the time you get out to the airport, finish parking and unloading, and all that. We could avoid so many problems. Two hours, city to city, would facilitate so much travel and commerce between these two capitals, New York City, the financial capital of the world, and Washington, DC, the capital of our great country. So when we look at what we have done, what we have done is just not enough. Amtrak has received $24.2 billion in Federal support since its creation in 1971. To put that in perspective, it's less than we spent on highways just in 2001 alone. In the 1980s, the Western European nations made a push to develop their high speed corridors and spent $101 billion in just ten years. That is more than four times what we have spent in 30 years. It is time now to start facing up to the reality. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)--a precious instrument in terms of our aviation system--got $13 billion worth of funds this year; $3 billion of that came from the General Treasury and $10 billion came from passenger facility charges and taxes on aviation. What happened after 9/11 with aviation? I think the Senator from South Carolina made reference to it. The fact is, we had to go to the airlines and bail them out further, make sure they got plenty of subsidies. I hope this amendment that is being offered here to restore fiscal year 2003 funding for Amtrak to $1.2 billion is passed--but not only passed here. I ask the Senator from South Carolina, can we be confident that this amendment won't fall by the wayside in conference? Can we be confident that we have the full support of the leadership in the Senate, especially on the Majority's side, when Committee Members sit down at the table with their House counterparts to discuss this funding? I certainly hope so because it is essential. We spent almost $10 billion on Northeast Corridor infrastructure improvements. About a third of that amount was for the electrification of the line from New Haven to Boston to make sure we had continuous service. There has been a real improvement in rail passenger service in the Northeast as a result, and there has been an improvement in rail passenger service in the country. But we can and need to do more.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I ask for 1 more minute.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Senator. So we have made improvements and they have been popularly received. People could not stop talking about what a nice ride it is from Washington to Wilmington to New York to-- you name it, along the way. What a change from what we used to have. I hope my colleagues will recognize that continued investment in Amtrak and higher speed rail is essential for our Nation. It is not just a Northeast corridor thing, which is often the mythology here. And I hope that we will see a positive vote on this amendment, supported further by an insistence that the conference committee retain the full funding. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, you do that job perfectly with diligence, for the record. I am happy to yield. In fact, I would be afraid not to yield to our distinguished Senator, my friend from West Virginia.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Chair. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Massachusetts, again with it understood that I retain the floor.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, before I yield, and I will continue to do so throughout the night, I say to my friends, my colleagues from Massachusetts and Delaware, that I am grateful for their comments. I am sure we will see, and I am particularly grateful to the majority leader and Democratic leader, an Amtrak bill on the floor early in the next session. I am sorry I will not be here, but in the meanwhile, I will yield to the majority leader.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the majority leader.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, may I, with all due respect, remind the majority leader and the President that I yielded time based on the fact that I would recover the floor.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader and the Chair for recognition.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I want to be sure before I go into my remarks that neither of the leaders, the majority leader or the Democratic leader, is waiting for some floor time for some special things they want to go ahead with because I hope not to cover every day of the 18 years I have served here. But I do want to make some remarks about this moment in time --a moment that I have kind of looked at with some amount of trepidation because this is the end for me, at the bottom of the ninth inning, and we have a couple of things to do before it is pretty much all over. I am probably speaking now for the last time in the U.S. Senate. After 18 years as a Member of this institution, some time ago I made a reluctant decision to step down--not to try again after three terms. And, to be perfectly honest, there are those moments when I look at that decision not to run for a fourth term with considerable regret. This has been an incredible experience--an experience that so few ever get to have and such a worthwhile thing to do. While my friends, the Democratic leader and the Democratic whip, are on the floor, I want to express to each one of them how deep my appreciation is for the cooperation and the ability to work together on issues of concern--not just for my State but for the country at large-- and how helpful Senator Daschle, our leader, has been; and my good friend Harry Reid from Nevada, the only State that really competes with New Jersey in the hospitality of the gaming industry. I hope we will continue to do more business than Nevada. In all seriousness, these are States that have a certain kinship that is not always easy to recognize because our coast is far larger than their coast, and sometimes we differ on issues but never on intent. This is a job that has been the highlight of my life, next to my family--my children, my grandchildren, eight of them; the oldest is seven. I want to make sure they understood what their grandfather did when he was spending time in Washington. They are too young to really know what the job is about. But they know who the President of the United States is. Some of them knew because the oldest one is seven. There are eight of them, obviously, and one is just 2 months old. The little one could not understand what I have done. I was lucky and brought all of them down for Father's Day. I was able to take them to the White House and take some pictures with the President. They will look at these pictures one day and say, OK, that is where our grandfather spent his time when we didn't see much of him. I hope they will feel the same kind of pride and love for country as I do. This job, one of some 1,850 people who ever served in the Senate, is such an honor to have. It is such an exciting place to be. I look at my desk now as a reminder of why I had this desk moved as my seniority improved from the far corner next to where it is now. I brought it with me wherever I went. It was a fairly easy task. I don't want the citizens to think I had people put to work for little reason; just a couple of screws lift out of the floor and we move it over here. When I think of my parents and what this country meant to my grandparents when they brought my parents as little children to these shores, I open the desk. As everyone here knows but the public probably doesn't, there is something one could call ``graffiti'' in these desks--a signature, a carving, a writing in indelible ink that gives a name and the State that the individual represented. I never got discouraged about this job, but anytime I needed a little stimulation about how important the work we were doing was outside of the legislative routine, I looked in this desk and I seen ``Truman, Missouri.'' Harry Truman sat at this desk when he served in the Senate. It is such an honor for me to be able to fill the seat, not the shoes, as they say. Every day I came to work here was a privilege, even when the day didn't turn out as one expected. The people of New Jersey sent me here to accomplish things that affected their lives and their families, and it is not easy to relinquish those duties. I hope they will believe that Frank Lautenberg served them honestly and diligently. I will leave it to them to mark the report card to see how we did. My service was a way for me to give something back. I had a successful business career, and I spent 30 years doing that, but there was something more that was needed as far as my life was concerned. I am so grateful my grandparents, in their wisdom in the earliest part of the last century, decided to pack up bag and baggage--they didn't have much baggage, I can tell you that; all they had was the spirit and desire to live free--and come to this country, my mother a year old from Russia, and my father 6 years old from Poland. They believed so much in America. They were so sensitive about things. For my grandparents, whose native tongues were reflective of the country they came from, anything but English was almost prohibited in the house. They wanted to talk English. They wanted to speak the language that their friends and their neighbors believed should be used as Americans. Now we understand people can live in multiple cultures and continue to treasure the language that they or their parents had before they came to America. In those days, any indication they could get that they were truly Americans meant so much. So they came and worked hard, with no education. My father went to the sixth grade only; he had to help his parents. But they never dreamed their children would have the opportunities that were so robust and so fulfilling. I spent 30 years in the computer business, running a company called ADP, Automatic Data Processing. The company started with two boyhood friends of mine. We started without any money of our own, without any outside financing. The company today has 33,000 people and is one of America's best performing companies in terms of its products and the stock market's response. I got there because this government was there to render service to our people. The one thing that bothers me when we get into political campaigns and speeches are made on the stump and people talk about the government and how small it ought to be and why it is too big and the loaded bureaucracies, I can't stand it. Honest to goodness, I work with the people who populate this place day in and day out--not the Senators exclusively but those who work here on both sides, Democrat and Republican. I see how diligent they are in trying to get their day's work done and how committed they are in the service of the people. I respect them. Of course, those whom I have gotten to know in my office, I love them as well. One develops a respect and almost a reverence for people who will come in and go to work at 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock in the morning and stay; if we stay until 2 o'clock in the morning, they stay until 2 o'clock in the morning. For many years, until very recently, there was never any compensation for overtime; that was considered part of the job. For those in the management of the office, and the leadership position among the staff, there is still nothing like overtime. They do it because they feel the responsibility. It has made an enormous difference in the way we conduct ourselves. Mr. President, the bottom line view that I bring is one that has developed as a result of the opportunities that were afforded me. I know I probably have said it too many times, but I ask my colleagues to indulge me once again when I talk about my family. My father died a very young man, at age 43. I had enlisted in the Army and was given the benefit of the GI bill. The GI bill made the difference in my life, enabling me to use the knowledge and programs I studied and learned to start a business that became an industry. It is the computing industry, as contrasted to the computer industry, the hardware industry. To me it was a great example of the way government can empower individuals and families to improve their lives. It is a lesson I will never forget. The education I got through the GI bill set the foundation for me to build that business. When I look at what happened with ADP and the number of people it has put together, 33,000 employees, processing paychecks for 33 million people across our country and others. When I was finishing my 30th year in business, I thought there were other things I ought to try to do to help pay back what I thought was a unique opportunity. I wanted to make sure that it continued to exist for others, as well. I came to the Senate. I ran in 1982 and was elected then. I brought what was a fairly unique perspective because there weren't, at that time, as there are now, so many businesspeople who came from not having had an elective office experience but came in fresh from the business to the Senate. When I got here, my goals were to try again to permit people to think independently, to make sure that the rights and the freedoms we enjoyed would be protected, to make sure there would be an opportunity for those who could learn without having, necessarily, the financing to do it. That is what the GI bill taught me. It has been my hope that people would understand that these opportunities must continue to exist. That is why we have these discussions about investing in education, making sure children have the appropriate nutrition, and that people can count on getting their health protected when they have a problem, or at least making certain as they grow and mature that they know they don't have to worry about an illness wiping out not only their assets but also demolishing their health. Just so everybody knows, I am going to take some time here. Therefore, it may take a little time for me to do the whole story. I see the majority leader either looking at me so anxious to hear the whole story that he wanted to ask me what it was.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am happy to cooperate because I have a sense that the subject to be included in their remarks is one with which I have intense fascination. I am happy to yield to the distinguished leaders.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for that recollection. I will be happy to yield to our friend from Delaware.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I am happy to yield to the majority leader for conducting further business provided, of course, that the recognition continues. I thank the Presiding Officer for being so careful in his statement.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield up to 5 minutes to the Senator from New York.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New York. The majority leader made a private statement to me, which I will state publicly. He said, as we ready for my departure, bipartisanship is breaking out all over. And I am not quite sure how that is meant. But I yield up to 3 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania, with the understanding I retain the floor.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for not only his comments but for his help. He is someone we counted on to work so closely with us, to bring seriously a bipartisan aspect to the protection that we are looking for to make sure that Amtrak--the national goal for railroading all across this country--will be able to continue. It is obvious to me, as we have listened to the comments, that unless these investments are made now, or very soon, we will be unable to fulfill the objectives of having Amtrak as a self-sufficient entity operating with its operating budget met by the revenues that it derives. The funds that we will be able to get from this proposed bond issue will enable it to make the capital investment it so desperately needs.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, one of the things I wanted to do, as I tried to plan my Senate objectives, was to make sure the children of our country were as protected as they could be by legislation that we developed in the Congress. Under Republican leadership, when President Reagan was the President in 1984--Elizabeth Dole was the Secretary of Transportation--we were able to write a bill and create a law that made the 21-year-old drinking age the minimum drinking age for serving liquor across the country. Since that time, 17,000 families have been spared the need to mourn the loss of a child. Mr. President, 17,000 youngsters, that is enough to fill a large arena. If one looked at the number of young people who would fill that arena, you would say: My Lord, are we lucky that these children have lived and will survive to their adulthood and through their full life because we were able to restrict their access to alcohol. Therefore, it was appropriate, toward the later days of my career, that we were able to add another item of protection by lowering the blood-alcohol level to .08, a standard which will save an additional 500 to 700 lives a year. President Clinton recently signed that into law, as well. So I am pleased with the fact we were able to get that done. My team and I worked very hard to make that happen. It took several years for it to be accomplished, but accomplished it was. A large part of that accomplishment, I must say, was because of our distinguished friend and leader--I think they would have a reference in totalitarian governments, but I mean it in the kindest way--as a leader for life, that Senator Byrd has brought to us, not only with his knowledge, his understanding of the process, but he is virtually the historian of the Senate. The thing that has always amazed me is he can do it virtually from memory, and bring us all to our senses about how we conduct ourselves and how we process legislation. I am not only so delighted and honored to have been able to serve with him as a mentor but as a friend as well. We learn on a continuing basis in this place that Senator Byrd is someone to whom we can always turn, not only to understand his thinking on issues, and the decisions that he provides, but also his leadership. We saw it manifest again this day because he wanted to help us out of the dilemma with which we were struggling, to find a way to get Amtrak the strength and resources that it needs, but reminding us at this moment there were so many things in front of us that it was not the time, but nevertheless was helpful in his reassurance that he, too, would help process this early in the next Congress. I just am sorry I will not be here to see the day when that takes place. But I am grateful for the friendship and guidance that the distinguished senior Senator from West Virginia has given me, and all of us, over these many years.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am happy to yield to the Senator from West Virginia.