Ed Markey

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, this budget deal is based on a series of assumptions that would make a house of cards look like a sturdy fortress. In their economic assumptions, my colleagues, they project that this year's economy will grow at a rate of 2.1 percent. Unfortunately, the first quarter was 3.9 percent and the second quarter was 5.6 percent. So we will have to have negative growth for the last two quarters in order for this particular projection to be accurate. In fact, what has happened with the Republicans is that they have grown so cautious since they were so wrong in 1993, that is projecting that that deficit reduction was going to be a failure, that since the deficit has gone from $300 down to $60 billion, in other words, from the end zone all the way to the other 20-yard line, there is only 20 yards left to go. Now they check in at $65 billion left to go in balancing the budget. My own personal belief is that if we did nothing, the budget would balance itself over the next year. It has gone down steadily for 5 years. It will continue to go down steadily. The economy is roaring. But what the Republicans do is, instead of taking this 5.6-percent growth that is in the economy, the sigh of relief that Alan Greenspan and the Fed is not going to increase interest rates, they translate it into a slowdown of the economy: 2.1 to 2.2 percent over the next 5 years they project. Even this year. That is just wrong. As a consequence of that, they are forced to ask for deep cuts in programs that should not be touched, and tax breaks that, in fact, are going to fuel economic growth and perhaps cause the Fed to increase interest rates to slow down the economy that could be fueled by their tax policies. Moreover, what they have in here is something which is called a chain weights measure correction, meaning that they believe that the economy is going to go much slower under this chain weights analysis. It reminds me a lot of Marley's ghost that was forced to bear the chain weights dragged around throughout the entire story of Scrooge. Here the chain weights must be borne by those that will have to have their programs cut even as we cut taxes for the wealthiest in our society. Other assumptions in this which are crazy, that the spectrum auctions will bring in $26 billion over the next 5 years. A fantasy, ladies and gentlemen. Perhaps we should tie this assumption to the ability to give capital gains tax breaks, if they are so confident about it. We will link the two provisions together. Usually the budgeters know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In this budget, the budget folks know neither price nor value of the airwaves or this budget proposal. Spectrum Issues in the Budget Background The Budget Resolution contains assumptions that $26.3 Billion can be raised over five years through various auctions of frequency spectrum. Here is the breakdown of where the $$$ comes from: [In billions of dollars] Auction of returned ``analog'' TV broadcast spectrum...............$5.4 Auction of spectrum currently allocated to channels 60-69...........2.5 Auction of ``vanity'' toll free 888 numbers.........................0.7 Broaden & Extend FCC auction authority.............................15.7 Spectrum Flexibility fees...........................................2.0 There are multiple problems with what the ``budgeteers'' have concocted. First, the recent FCC decision on Digital TV sets a target date for the return of the analog TV spectrum in 2006. The budget proposal would take this target date and make it a mandated return date for the purposes of auctioning the returned spectrum. TV stations, however, that are not within the top 30 markets have up to 5 years to build out their digital TV facilities. Consumers in such markets, therefore, may only have 3 years to purchase new sets or digital converter boxes before their old ones become obsolete and these stations go dark. Second, the proposal to ``broaden and extend'' the FCC auction authority ($15.7 Billion) requires the Commission to sell an additional 120 Megahertz (20 of which will come from NTIA). It is unclear where the rest will come from. The Commission had an extremely difficult time identifying 25 MHz to auction as mandated in last year's Appropriations Act. When they finally did, it raised only $13 million instead of the $1.8 Billion it was expected to. Third, the proposal to auction 888 toll free vanity numbers ($700 million) runs into a number (no pun intended) of problems. First, does American Express, user of ``1-800-The- Card'', have a right to first refusal for ``1-888-The-Card'' in order to limit customer confusion? What do citizens of Canada do who use our same numbering system--pay the American FCC for use of a telephone number in Toronto? It is clear that the budget wonks are trying to balance the budget by creating money out of thin air. Telecommunications issues should be looked at through the prism of telecommunications policy, not budget policy. I used to say that the budgeteers are people who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. But since this proposal won't raise the money that they score it to raise, my opinion now is that the budget folks don't know either the price or the value of what they plan to sell. These spectrum issues are anti-consumer: the broadcast industry will not be ready in each and every market, in all states, in rural hamlets, to turn off their TV signals because consumers will not have made the switch to the new equipment.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Tufts University in Medford, MA and to honor the more than 78,000 alumni who this Monday, April 21, 1997, will turn their attention to their alma mater in celebration of the 13th annual Tuftonia's Day. Tuftonia's Day is a gathering of students, alumni, professors, administrators, and parents to celebrate the achievements of the Tufts community. This community extends not only to the campuses in Medford, Boston, and Grafton, MA, but also as far away as the campus abroad in Talloires, France. Students and graduates of Tufts live in more than 100 countries around the world. Tufts is truly a world-class institution of higher education. Tufts University strives to instill in all its students, from undergraduate through the professional degree program, the importance of volunteerism and the need to give something back to one's community. For this reason the focus of this year's Tuftonia's Day is again TuftServe. The purpose of this is to highlight and show appreciation for the volunteer work that the alumni of Tufts have contributed to their local communities. In fact, Tufts alumni logged over 218,915 hours of community service last year. This outstanding record should stand as an inspiration to us all. I congratulate the alumni of Tufts University for their commitment to the community and loyalty to their alma mater.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Telecommunications Trade and Foreign Investment Act of 1997. I am pleased to introduce this legislation today along with Commerce Committee ranking Democrat John Dingell, and committee members Ron Klink and Tom Sawyer. The international trade agreement reached in Geneva last February on telecommunications basic services has provided an excellent opportunity for the telecommunications industry and policymakers to assess the progress this country has made in breaking open new telecommunications markets worldwide. Without question, there are significant new opportunities in the recent telecommunications deal for American companies. When U.S. companies make new inroads into foreign markets, that's good for American workers and the strength of our economy. Yet, we also know that in the agreement there are notable underachievers, most notably Canada, Mexico, and Japan--three of our largest trading partners As a Democrat who has voted in favor of both NAFTA and GATT, I subscribe to the view that America's future economic health is inseparable from the global economy. I believe that this Nation ought to compete for high end, information-based jobs across the planet. These are telecommunications, computer, software, and electronic commerce jobs. For this reason it is imperative that foreign high-tech markets be opened up for competition from the United States. The Communications Act of 1934 clearly did not contemplate a world where there would be trade agreements allowing foreign ownership of common carriers throughout the world. The administration expects the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] to consummate this deal administratively by modifying its regulations to encompass the new multilateral trade pact. I am particularly concerned, however, about the administration's current interpretation of the FCC's authority because it implicates foreign ownership of U.S. television and radio stations. Section 310(b) of the Communications Act treats foreign ownership issues for both broadcasting and common carrier licenses the same way. Congress certainly did not envision that the Communications Act could be read in a way that would wind up allowing 100 percent foreign ownership of U.S. television and radio stations. The administration's current reading of the statute would allow such an outcome. I appreciate the fact that the administration has stated that it has no intention of unraveling the prohibitions on foreign ownership of broadcast licenses. I believe it would serve a useful purpose to ensure that this cannot be done legally and that the law should be appropriately modified to treat broadcasting as separate and distinct from common carrier issues. Mr. Speaker, the legislation I am introducing today will cap foreign investment in broadcast licenses at 25 percent. This proposed legislation will not allow any future FCC to unilaterally limit, by rule, the scope and applicability of possibly determinative public interest criteria and thereby grant waivers for 100 percent foreign ownership of U.S. television and radio stations. The legislation I am introducing today will also serve to update and amplify the statutory language with respect to common carrier foreign investment by making it clear that where America has a trade commitment, the FCC is directed to show deference to the President on such matters for applicants from countries that are part of the trade deal. This provision is a WTO-friendly provision and is intended to dovetail with the process that the FCC, as an independent agency, has indicated it will use to implement this multilateral trade pact. In the last session of Congress, Mr. Speaker, the House was successful in legislating in this area of communications law. I look forward to working with Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley, committee ranking Democrat John Dingell, Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Tauzin, my good friend Congressman Mike Oxley, who has long advocated updating our telecommunications foreign investment laws, as well as my colleagues--on both sides of the aisle-- on the Commerce Committee and in the House, in fashioning common sense legislation that will modernize and clarify the foreign investment provisions of the Communications Act.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 410, the Investment Advisers Coordination Act. This bill would extend the April 9 effective date of the Investment Advisers Supervision Coordination Act by 90 days to July 8. This change is needed to give the SEC time to adopt appropriate rules, and for the necessary registrations at both the Federal and State levels to be made, as required under the act. Unfortunately, because this title of the National Securities Markets Improvement Act was added by the Senate at the last minute, it contains several technical and other drafting errors, some of which require correction. Giving the SEC additional time to issue its rules before the title becomes effective will prevent any regulatory gaps from developing. While I strongly commend the SEC's Herculean efforts to promulgate a complex package of rules within the tight time limits set by the Improvement Act, I am compelled to express serious concerns with certain aspects of the SEC's proposed rules that, if uncorrected, will have a highly negative impact on investors. I note and concur with the comment letters submitted to the SEC by the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Office of the Attorney General. For the benefit of Members, I included copies of these letters in the Record at the end of my remarks. It is important to keep in mind that Congress struck a careful balance in the Improvement Act's investment adviser provisions between the roles of the SEC and of the States. I am very concerned that the SEC's proposed definitions of investment adviser representative [IAR] and of place of business seek to limit the authority of State regulators beyond the intent of Congress. The definition of IAR is so different from the NASAA Uniform Securities Act as to virtually guarantee a wide divergence between State investment adviser registration requirements and SEC investment adviser registration requirements for firms having investment adviser representatives. I therefore strongly urge the SEC to withdraw the proposed definition and for the SEC and NASAA to move quickly to develop a national uniform definition of the term that both levels of government can support. I am also concerned that the place of business definition in the SEC's proposed rule could impede the ability of State regulators to take action against fraudulent or deceptive practices by investment advisers over the phone or the Internet. I urge the SEC to assure that State regulators will be fully capable of protecting investors from false or deceptive telemarketing or Internet-directed activities by investment advisers. I also strongly oppose the SEC's attempts to broaden the scope of the Improvement Act's Federal preemption for SEC-registered investment advisers and supervised persons beyond that contemplated by the Congress. Congress refused to place overly broad and unwise restrictions on the ability of the States to police the licensing of and prosecute fraudulent advisers and their representatives. It is incomprehensible that the SEC would willfully roll back State protections that Congress intended to apply, thereby leaving investors prey to abusive practices by unscrupulous advisers and planners seeking to avoid State regulation and enforcement authority. Finally, I would note that the Improvement Act contains a provision mandating establishment of a toll-free 800 number or Internet site that investors can use to check on the disciplinary records--if any--of their investment adviser and its supervised persons. It is consistent with the intent of the Congress for the Commission to delegate this responsibility to the self-regulatory organization which already administers the broker-dealer hotline--the NASD. In doing so, the SEC must assure that the NASD is effectively disseminating all the information that investors need to make informed choices about the financial professionals they are considering doing business with, whether the NASD is carrying through on the commitments it has made to expand the types of disclosable information disseminated to investors, whether the NASD is carrying out its promise to do more to publicize the existence of the hotline, and whether the NASD is moving quickly to provide for Internet access. Again, while I have some concerns about some of the pending rulemaking efforts and intend to closely monitor implementation, I rise in support of this bill. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston, MA, February 7, 1997. Re rules implementing amendments to the Investment Advisers Act of 1940; release No. IA-1601; file No. S7-31-96. Mr. Jonathan G. Katz, Secretary, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, DC. Dear Secretary Katz: I am writing to formally comment as the Chief Securities Regulator of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the above-captioned proposed rules. I am gravely concerned that several of the proposed rules will seriously and adversely affect Massachusetts investors. In many instances these proposed rules are in direct conflict with the intent of the NSMIA as annunciated by various members of Congress in the Congressional Record. As an active participant in the external discussions relating to NSMIA, I am very disturbed to see rulemaking that so clearly contradicts the often stated and well understood purpose of this statute. In particular, the attempt of the Commission to define the term ``investment adviser representative'' and thus limit the authority of state regulators is a direct contradiction of the Act in which Congress deliberately declined to define the term. Under the terms of the Act, only the states are specifically required to license or otherwise qualify investment adviser representatives. The authority to license must, by implication, contain the ability to define. The Commission should not impede the rights of the states in this regard. Of even greater concern to Massachusetts consumers would be the effect of the proposed preemptions of state enforcement authority against dishonest or unethical conduct which does not rise to the level of fraud. This proposed rule is clearly anti-consumer and would provide safe harbor to those who deftly mislead. Moreover, it has the potential to drain the resources of state enforcement authority by possibly causing them to repeatedly litigate the enforceability of state regulation on a case by case basis. I strongly urge this portion of the rule be significantly amended or stricken. Another portion of the proposed rule which represents an inappropriate preemption of state authority would be the effect of the proposed rule to limit state authority over investment adviser representatives to those that provide advice to natural persons. Such a preemption would leave a significant void in the regulatory plan. Not only small businesses would be left unprotected, but also many family trusts, retirement trusts and charitable institutions. This is a most unwise and unnecessary restriction. On behalf of Massachusetts investors, I strongly object to the proposed exemption for individuals licensed as broker dealer agents from the definition of investment adviser representatives. This is a wholly inappropriate exemption since investment adviser representatives are fiduciaries who are much more likely to have discretion over client funds and, therefore, should be held to a different and higher standard. Lastly, I would urge the Commission to eliminate the term ``regularly'' from the definition of ``place of business''. The use of this undefined term can only cause confusion in the interpretation of the rules particularly in an era of multiple media communications by investment agents. All of these are significant issues which I urge the Commission to address before proceeding further with the rules. Respectfully submitted, William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join today with Chairman Oxley and Chairman Bliley in introducing the Common Cents Stock Pricing Act of 1997 and I appreciate the opportunity to put in my 2 cents on the reasons why this legislation is good for investors and good for our financial markets. For over 200 years, stocks and bonds have traded in minimum price increments of one-eighth of $1 or 12\1/2\ cents. The origins of this practice are obscure, but some historians trace it back to the 18th century, when the Spanish dollar was a widely used currency in America. Stock traders would cut up these dollars into pieces of eight or bits and use them to pay for stocks and bonds. As our financial markets move into the 21st century, it's time we eliminate the eighth, which is little more than a relic of the days of knee breeches and powdered wigs. In recent months, we have already moved to force stock prospectuses to be written in plain English so they are more understandable to investors. Why not force stock quotes to be made in plain dollars and cents, so that investors don't have to convert from fractions every time they read the stock tables in the newspaper? Four years ago, when I chaired the Finance Subcommittee, we held a series of hearings on the future of the stock markets. During those hearings, we heard many market participants raise concerns about certain trading practices, such as payment for order flow or preferencing, which they argued had the potential to compromise the fiduciary duty of brokers and other financial professionals to achieve best execution of their customer's orders. Many proposals were put forward to address abuses in these areas, ranging from banning such practices entirely, enhancing disclosures to customers, or stepping up regulatory oversight. While many of these proposals had merit, they merely address the symptoms while ignoring the underlying problem--the fact that the artificial requirement for stocks to trade in eighths establishes a fixed minimum spread between the prices quoted by buyers and sellers of stocks. This requirement prevents market forces from working to narrow the spread to 10 cents, 5 cents, or even 1 penny. As a result, market makers have resorted to practices such as paying for order flow. I think that our markets would function better if we moved to a more transparent form of quote-based competition. Let stocks trade in dollars and cents, and then the market can more accurately determine what the prices and the spreads should be. Investors will get more opportunities for price improvement in the most actively traded and liquid stocks, and the spreads in such stocks should narrow. Investors will also be able to more readily comprehend how much the value of a stock is increasing or decreasing, as they will not have to constantly convert fractions to dollars. At the time we held our hearings the stock exchanges resisted such an innovation. I believed then, as I believe now, that many of the objections raised to this proposal are ill-founded, while those which warrant consideration can be readily accommodated through the regulatory process. Some might ask, why are we bothering about a few pennies? The answer is the golden crumbs that Wall Street extracts for each trade adds up to billions of dollars in costs to consumers each year. Estimates of the resulting savings for investors range widely--from $4 to $9 billion a year, depending on what stocks are covered and where the minimum price increments are set. But even if investors only saved 1 penny per share, that would still mean over $1 billion in savings annually. The bill we are introducing today is very simple. It directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to use its existing rulemaking authority to adopt a rule, within 1 year after the date of enactment, that would transition the stock and options markets away from trading in factions to trading in dollars and cents. We give the SEC the flexibility to determine what the appropriate minimum price increment or increments should be, and how to implement it in a fashion that does not impose undue burdens on trading and information systems. The time for delay has ended. American investors want Wall Street to show us the money by moving away from trading in fractions to a more understandable stock pricing system. They also want more opportunities to get better prices and lower their transaction costs when they buy or sell stocks. I congratulate Chairman Oxley and Chairman Bliley for their leadership in undertaking this initiative, and SEC Commissioner Steve Wallman for his outspoken advocacy on the merits of adopting this reform. I look forward to working with them, as well as with SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, the leaders of our Nation's stock exchanges, individual and institutional investors, and the securities industry as we move to early hearings and a markup of this bill, which I believe may be the most important proconsumer legislation the Congress considers this year.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join today with Representative Connie Morella and a bipartisan group of colleagues to introduce the Civil Rights Procedures Protection Act of 1997. This bill is designed to reassert workers' rights to have their claims of unlawful employment discrimination. Recently employers and even whole industries have sought to circumvent civil rights laws by forcing employees to sign away the fundamental rights to a court hearing. As a condition of hiring or promotion, a growing number of employers are requiring workers to agree to submit any future claims of job discrimination to binding arbitration panels. This practice, called mandatory arbitration, is engaged in most prominently by the securities industry, but is also increasingly relied upon by employers in information technology, health care, engineering, and other fields. Together, they are reducing civil rights protection to the status of the company car: a perk which can be denied at will. The U.S. Constitution guarantees every citizen equal justice under law. Forcing employees to choose between their civil rights and their job denies them their right to equal justice. Employees who consent to mandatory arbitration give up their right to due process, trial by jury, the appeals process, and full discovery. By no means, do I wish to denounce arbitration in general. Voluntary arbitration in an impartial setting can be a fair and inexpensive way to resolve a wide range of disputes. But when it is forcibly imposed on one party with inherently less bargaining power, it ceases to be of value. Mandatory arbitration of civil rights is wrong even if the arbitration process were a balanced one. But, too often, it has a semblance of impartiality. The securities industry, in particular, has transformed a potentially impartial and independent judicial environment into one where neutrality and independence are virtually nonexistent. A 1994 GAO study of the security industries' arbitration process found that vast majority of securities arbitrators are white men over 60 with little or no expertise in the area of employment law. At best such a setting has the appearance of unfairness; at worst, it is a tainted forum in which an employee can never be guaranteed a truly fair hearing. Like forcing employees to buy goods at the company store, the price of such so-called justice is just too high. Our legislation would protect the rights of workers to bring claims against their employers in cases of employment discrimination. By amending seven Federal civil rights statutes to make it clear that the powers and procedures provided under those laws are the exclusive ones that apply only when a claim arises, the Civil Rights Procedures Protection Act would prevent discrimination claims from being involuntarily sent to binding arbitration. In short, this bill prevents employers in all industries from forcing employees to give up their right to go to court when they are discriminated against on account of race, sex, religion, disability, or other illegal criteria. By reinforcing the fundamental rights established under various civil rights and fair employment practice laws, our bill restores integrity to employer-employee relationships. No employer should be permitted to ask workers to check their constitutional and civil rights at the front door.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, today, I am introducing a bill, along with Representatives Burton, Spratt, Moran, and others, to encourage the television industry to add content labels to the age-based TV ratings. Additional original cosponsors of ``The Children's Protection from Violent Programming Act'' include Representatives Greenwood, Klink, Poshard, Kennedy, J., Tauscher, DeFazio, Hinchey, Filner, and Hooley. The ratings system proposed by the TV industry last December has proved to be inadequate. It fails to inform parents of objectionable content, and it frustrates the use of blocking categories because they are so broad as to be useless. The V-chip law was intended to give parents the ability to block shows on the basis of violent, sexual, or profane content. Instead, the ``V'' for violence disappeared into the industry committee that developed the ratings system and has not been sighted since. We need to return to a content-based system. This point has been made to the industry in every conceivable way--in private meetings, in academic research, in focus groups, in newspaper editorials--yet the industry continues to turn a deaf ear, sticking stubbornly to a system that is convenient for the industry, but condescending and contradictory to parents. After all, who is raising our kids? Not Hollywood, not the broadcasters, not the cable industry. Parents, not corporations, are raising our kids. If we don't listen to them, the system is indeed a mess. The system is condescending because it tells parents that ``Hollywood knows best'', that some industrial Big Brother will decide whether a show is appropriate for your child's age group. Parents don't want this decision left to a corporate executive. We have left the era of ``Leave It To Beaver'' and entered the era of ``Beavis and Butthead.'' Instead of three channels, we have dozens, with more coming through the miracle of digital compression, satellites, and telecomputers. Today's parents want specific information about the level of violent or sexual material distributed in the form of entertainment to their home, so that they can decide for themselves what is appropriate for their own children to see on their own family TV set. The system is contradictory because, on the one hand, it requires an executive to examine the show for the level of violence, sex, or language, but on the other hand, it denies that information to parents. Instead, everyone is asked to engage in a game of ratings Hide-and-Go- Seek where the executive disguises what he knows by throwing it into a giant category called ``TV-PG''. In fact, an estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of all television programming is being tossed into this Black Hole called ``TV-PG.'' What at first blush appears to be a six category system is, for most purposes, just this one category. It swallows up material that ranges across the entire spectrum of TV programming, from mild to graphic, from silly to sick, from profound to profane. The clips that you will be shown today by the organization Children NOW make this point very well. ``TV-PG'' has, unfortunately, come to stand for ``Too Vague--Parents Give Up.'' This is the core of the problem. This is the reality that the industry has, so far, refused to face. Clearly, parents want and deserve more information than they are getting from these general age-based icons. The head of one of our Nation's largest broadcasting undertaking, Mr. Earvin Duggan of the Public Broadcasting System, put it well in his recent letter to the committee: ``We who serve the television audiences should provide more information about program content rather than less. The ratings system recently adopted by commercial broadcasters and cable is, in our judgment, to a vague, imprecise and grudging in the information it provides.'' Fortunately, we do not need to reinvent the ratings wheel. The industry's proposal can be made acceptable to most critics by simply adding content descriptors to the age-based icons. ``TV-PG'' would become ``PG-V'', with the ``V'' indicating violence. Such content- descriptors are already widely used by the American cable industry in the HBO-Showtime system. We already have more than 3 years of experience with this system on three major cable networks, and more than a decade of experience on HBO. The president of Showtime will give testimony later today about the positive reaction to this system, both by his subscribers and by the employees who must preview the shows, and attach the ratings. This approach gives parents the information they want and need without abandoning the progress represented by the industry's efforts to date. Adding content-descriptors to the industry's age-based icons is clearly the outline of a solution. PBS is willing to do it; four cable networks are already doing it; it is time for everyone to move in this direction. Nevertheless, we must be realistic about the industry's intransigence. We must ask ourselves what can be done to help parents if the industry refuses to reconsider voluntarily its ineffective system. To that end, I am introducing, along with Representative Dan Burton and others, the House version of Senator Hollings' bill (S. 363) to encourage, but not force, distributors of television programming to add specific warnings for violence to the vague age-based ratings already proposed. The legislation does not require content descriptors. If a broadcaster chooses not to send them to parents, that's his right. But under this bill, he would no longer be able to air that unlabeled show during hours when children comprise a substantial part of the audience. it's his choice. If he includes the content descriptors, he can air the show regardless of the number of kids who may be watching. If he doesn't, then he can only air the show when kids are not likely to be watching. We think this is a fair trade. Parents want a content-based ratings system. Just last Saturday the New York Times poll concluded that 69 percent of parents support this approach. There is no guarantee that parents will use the system, but there is a much greater likelihood they will use it if they have a clear warning of content that might harm their kids. And only through such ratings will parents be given reasonable options for blocking out the harmful programming using the V-chip. It is my hope that the industry will, ultimately, come to the realization that this ratings system is for parents and must meet their needs. Parents should also register their concerns by writing the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC record is open for initial public comment until April 8, and the FCC Chairman has announced his intention to hold a hearing at the Commission sometime after that. The introduction of this legislation should help to focus attention on the importance of this decision and hasten the day when the pleas of parents are finally heard.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yeild?

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman very much for that statement. Mr. Speaker, we have come a long way in the last year and a half on this legislation. I think many observers would have thought it was impossible that we could have had such a historic overhaul of securities laws. At the beginning we were on different planets in terms of how we viewed these issues. But back in March, the gentleman from Texas, Jack Fields, and I, we went to his office for 2 hours, sat down and went through each and every issue trying to find the common ground in each and every one of them. The agreement in principle that we reached that night is the core of this legislation. It is altogether fitting that it be the last bill before the continuing resolution that we in fact take up here, because when the history of this Congress is written, there is no question that this securities overhaul and the telecommunications overhaul will be at the top of the list in terms of constructive, productive use of this Congress. It is a tribute to Jack and his understanding of the need to develop bipartisanship in the development of legislation which will leave that legacy for him to look back at. We deal here with national securities offerings in a way that will preempt duplicative State review of mutual funds and stocks and bonds. We overhaul the margin provisions of this country. The mutual fund company reforms that are included in this bill are the greatest since 1940 that have come through this Congress. We have gone through months of discussion to reach this point. But it is, as technical as it may be, as significant a piece of legislation as we will have passed during this 2 years that the 104th Congress was convened. Let me join as well in praising Linda Dallas Rich and David Cavicke; Steve Cope, who sits over there, J.D.; and on our side Consuela Washington; and Jeff Duncan; and David Moulton; and especially, because of his incredible efforts on this project over the last year and a half, consuming enormous amounts of time, with his wife pregnant, or just having had a baby, depending upon the circumstance a year and a half ago or right now, Tim Ford. We all know, most of the Members here, how humble we have to be at moments like this with a continuing resolution and so much important legislation coming through here, that without the work of the staff, it would not be possible. So let me finish again. Without question, the gentleman from New York, Dan Frisa; and the gentleman from Virginia, Rick Boucher; so many other Members, I see the gentleman from Michigan, Bart Stupak, here; all participated in this bill. Again, for me, it is a moment where I say good-bye legislatively to my good friend, the gentleman from Texas, Jack Fields. And I say good- bye because, in a sea of acrimony, there was an air of good feeling that he was able to develop that produced historic legislation in two areas that could have been intractable in the wrong hands. For that, I salute you, Jack. The statement of managers on this conference report notes that ``The Managers agreed to include certain Amendments to the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 to eliminate publication, promote efficiency and protect investors.'' I would like to take just a few moments to describe what these amendments do and the congressional intent underlying them. First, the bill provides a $20 million authorization for the enforcement of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, which regulates investment advisers and financial planners. These funds are intended to be used to beef up the SEC's inspections, examinations, supervision, and enforcement of the Advisers Act. For too many years, the SEC has not devoted adequate resources to this area, and this authorization is intended to reverse that situation. I am committed to assuring that funds are appropriated for this area, and intend to work closely with the SEC and the administration to assure this is the case. Second, the conference report provides for the establishment of a toll-free 800 number that investors can call to check on the disciplinary history of an investment adviser. This provision gives investors the tools they need to protect themselves against dishonest, unscrupulous, or shady individuals by letting them call a number to check and see whether the person they are considering turning over their life savings to has any history of previous disciplinary problems relating to fraud, sales practice abuse, or other misconduct. I expect the SEC to move quickly to assure that this 800 number is established, and that it provides investors with all the information they need to make informed decisions in this area. In this regard, I would expect the Hotline to include the same types of information available--or which is now slated to be made available--to investors over the existing NASD hotline for broker dealers. In addition, I expect that the new Hotline will also be supplemented by on-line services that will allow investors to access this type of information over the Internet-- similar to what is now being planned for the current NASD broker-dealer Hotline. With respect to Federal-State jurisdiction, the conference compromise assigns primary responsibility to the SEC for supervision of large investment advisers while reserving for the states primary supervisory responsibility for small advisers. At the same time, we agreed that the States should continue to have authority to license the individual representatives of investment advisers. Finally, the bill provides for uniformity in State requirements in books and records, capitol, and bonding requirements. This is an equitable compromise in this important area. However, it leaves unaddressed other issues that I continue to consider important to assuring investors are fully protected against wrongdoing by their investment advisers, such as enhanced disclosure of fees and conflicts- of-interest. I intend to continue to press for these reforms in the next Congress. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would ask if I could engage in a colloquy with the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the chairman, is it the manager's intention not to limit, alter, expand, or otherwise affect in any way any State, statutory, or common law with respect to fraud or deceit, including broker-dealer sales practices, in connection with securities or securities transactions?

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell], the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Commerce.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I seek recognition at this time so that I can properly recognize the work of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Fields]. This is Mr. Fields' last bill out here on the floor of Congress, and it is indeed a historic bill. Paired with the telecommunications bill which passed the Congress in February of this year, this historic securities bill represents the other historic landmark legislation which has passed the Congress and will be signed by the President during the 2- year tenure of Mr. Fields as chairman of this committee. Mr. Speaker, I would like all of the Members to pay recognition to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Fields] at this time for the tremendous work which he has done. Mr. Speaker, Jack is more than a congressman and chairman to me; he is my good friend as well. That is why the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell] and I and all the Members on our side have had such a wonderfully productive working relationship with him. Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of good things in this bill, especially in the mutual funds area, where we are overhauling 50 year's worth of law, reforming it so it reflects now the new financial marketplace that has been constructed over the last 10 or 15 years in this country and around the globe. It includes an 800 number that individual investors can call in order to find out what the record is of the investment advisers that are seeking the business of individuals with their life savings. It includes much that is good, Mr. Speaker. That is largely a tribute to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Fields]. I know that I join with all Members in standing here this evening in praise of his work, and in knowing that this final bipartisan effort is something that is in fact indicative of the way in which he conducted his subcommittee. Mr. Speaker, I want to praise, as well, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley] and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Oxley]. They, along with the Members on our side, worked together patiently over the last year and a half toward the construction of this historic legislation, and I cannot tell the Members tonight how proud I am to be part of the team that brings it out here to the floor. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Again, I thank the gentleman. In conclusion, I also thank the gentleman from Virginia, Tom Bliley, following the tradition of the gentleman from Michigan, John Dingell, in creating the climate at our committee historically that has made it possible. And Alan Roth and J.D. on this bill helped to create the environment where the Members worked together to produce this bill.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I ask that this bill be rejected. Let me just give the Members the very simple five-step program to understanding this bill. Step No. 1: The Department of Transportation finds a very serious problem in pipelines across the United States. They might explode, for some reason or another, because of some defect which they have found in pipelines nationally, a very serious problem, a great public safety problem in community after community across the United States. Step No. 2: The Department of Transportation decides to promulgate a rule in order to ensure that the public safety will be protected against the defects which have been created in pipelines in neighborhoods near where children play all across the United States. Step No. 3: The bill, as constructed by the authors, then forces an extremely complex risk assessment cost-benefit analysis of whether or not these pipelines should in fact be repaired or the changes made in the methodology that in the future will ensure that all of the citizens, all of the children that live in these neighborhoods, will be protected. Step No. 4: An industry-dominated peer review panel reviews the rule and then dissents from it. It says to the Department of Transportation, as the peer review panel we really do not think that this rule is necessary. The interesting thing is that under the bill, the peer review panel that has this right to dissent is packed with, guess what, pipeline company officials, who will have to change the way in which they make these pipes that are endangering the children in the neighborhoods. Now, with this peer review panel packed with pipeline officials that make their living off of these pipes, they say no, we dissent. We do not think the rule should go into place. Then, step No. 5: The lawyers for the pipeline companies then use the dissent of the peer review panel at the Department of Transportation as the basis for their lawsuit, which keeps the rule from going on the books for years in this country. Meanwhile, the pipelines continue to exist or continue to be built that endanger the children in the neighborhoods of this country. Mr. Speaker, how in the world can we in good conscience, with less than 1 day left to go in the Congress, with so little understanding of what this impact could be, cater to the special interests of pipeline companies and give them this opportunity of railroading through here this inoculation against the guarantee that the people of this country will be protected?

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, the name of this bill is the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that America's sovereignty over its lands is at risk here this afternoon and in need of protection. It would have been leading every news story in America for the past week, because it is 130 years since the end of the Civil War, the last time our national sovereignty was directly threatened. There does not appear to be any imminent threat of invasion from Canada or Mexico. The Russians are having a tough time with the Chechnyans. So just where does this threat to America's national sovereignty come from? What group of Fifth Columnists stand ready to betray us? What band of modern day Benedict Arnolds is threatening America? According to the bill's sponsor, the answer is very simple: It is Bruce Babbitt. That is right. According to the bill, America's national sovereignty is threatened by our own Secretary of the Interior and the Babbitt brigade serving under him. The danger to our national sovereignty comes not from some foreign despot or from some dictator, but from the risk that Bruce Babbitt might actually name sites such as Yellowstone Park and the Everglades to the U.N. List of World Heritage Sites. According to this bill, we cannot trust Bruce Babbitt, so we will not let him name any site to the World Heritage List without prior congressional approval. So what are we worried about? Are we afraid that the World Heritage List, once it is constructed, will have U.N. Secretary Boutros Boutros- Ghali in our districts, which is what the Republicans have been handing out here on the floor? Mr. Speaker, I can understand the threat because I have been listening to the Republicans over the last year, because we very well might have blue-helmeted U.N. troops sweeping in in black helicopters, driving out our poor Smoky the Bear-hatted park rangers in a triumphant victory of the new world order of sinister forces. That is their version. What this whole thing is about is putting the Everglades on a national honorary list of the environmentally protected parts of America that we are proudest of. Let me say this: If in fact we were putting a mining company on the U.N. list of the best mining companies in the world, we would have this side up here cheering. If we were putting the best timber-cutting companies in the United States on some world list, to be honored, we would have these guys up cheering. But if we want to honor the Everglades, if we want to honor Yellowstone Park or the Grand Canyon internationally, oh, my God, it is a conspiracy. The problem here is that, just like the Presidential Medal of Freedom that we give to Americans, just because people receive it does not exempt them from the laws of the United States; they still have to live under all the laws. If we honor the Everglades by having it recognized internationally, it is still under all American laws, not international laws. The problem that the Republicans have is that they are afraid that the world will recognize that the Everglades and Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon are parts of the world that should not be mined, that should not be stripped. That is the one thing they are afraid of, is that the whole world will recognize what they have been trying to do for the last 2 years. That is what they are afraid of. That is why the only environmental vote for the coming generations of Americans is a no vote on this preposterous, absurd, last-minute, crazy consumption of congressional time.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, it has come to my mind, listening to you, that there was another initiative which was absolutely preposterous. It was a national parks closings bill. We had a military base closings bill, because as the cold war ended, there was clearly going to be a need to consolidate military activities across this country to save a little bit of money. The Republicans in this Congress, they decided they were going to have a national parks closings bill. They were going to close down national parks across the country. Mr. Speaker, I have been in Congress for a while and I have talked to thousands and thousands of people over my years in public service. I can tell the gentleman this, I have never had a person come up to me yet and say, ``Ed, do you know what the problem with this country is? We have too many parks in this country. Really, we have to shut down the parks in this country.'' That is the preposterousness of their interpretation of what the American people were saying in 1994. The American people want a balanced budget. We accept that. We are going to go along with it. We heard the message.

Mr. MARKEY. Again, Mr. Speaker, this bill is not going anywhere this year, but it just sits there right behind the moderate macarena for the next 6 weeks. They are sending out memos about adopting a tree, or go visit a zoo and show that you are politically sensitive to the environmental concerns of your constituents, but it is the agenda of the Contract With America. I do not think the American people understood that in 1994, but as it has been outlined in detail, as each week and month has gone by in the last 1\1/2\ years, the American people have become quite aware that it is an environmentally radical program that has been put on the books that calls into question every environmental advance we have made over the last quarter of a century. I do not think the American people want to go backwards. I think they want even cleaner water, even cleaner air, even safer areas around hazardous waste sites.

Mr. MARKEY. In each and every one of these areas I think they have a big decision to make in 1996, and thanks to the gentleman, I think millions are having it explained to them here today.

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman very much, and I thank you for calling this special order because it is so important to remind the American people here at the end of this congressional session that the GOP--you know, GOP used to stand for grand old party, but today it stands for gang of polluters. They took the whole first year and a half of this Congress trying their best to undermine the environmental law which were put on the books in this country over the last 25 years. They took the EPA and they wanted to change it from EPA to every polluter's ally. You know, the American people, they have to ask the question: Is the water really too clean? Is the air too clean? Is there too little cryptosporidium in our water? Is there too little E. coli in our hamburger? Is the ozone hole too small? Can we really afford to cut the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, enforcement budget by 30 percent, which was the Republican proposal? I do not think so. I do not think the American people want less environmental protection. I do not think they want their water to be dirtier, their air to be dirtier, their food to be less safe. They want it to be more safe. They appreciate the fact that in the 20th century, largely because of Democratic initiatives, we have extended the life expectancy of the average American from age 48 in 1900 to age 70 today. We have added 31 years to the life expectancy of the average American in this country in the 20th century, largely because the Democratic Party health and environmental and job safety initiatives. What a radical change. We went from the Garden of Eden to 1900, and the life expectancy of the average American male or female was 48 years of age, added 31 years in the last 95 years, and the Republicans look at it, and they say, ``Let's roll back Medicare, let's roll back Medicaid, let's roll back the Environmental Protection Agency, let's roll back all the safeguards we offered to ordinary people so their lives could be protected in ways that no one from the dawn of time until the introduction of these programs had ever been protected if they are working people, if they are ordinary people, white, black, hispanic, Asian, whatever, in our country they all get the protections.'' Then they look at the Superfund Program. As you know, we have hundreds of sites across this country where polluters in the twenties, in the thirties, in the forties, fifties, sixties, they just dumped their chemicals into the water, into the ground near neighborhoods, turning the whole neighborhood into a neighborhood nightmare, but, more importantly, putting the children in those neighborhoods at risk because the water that they drank, the dirt which they might have been playing in, it came back to haunt communities, and so the Superfund Program was put into place. It is not perfect. It needed to be reformed, and the Democrats were more than willing to work to ensure that the imperfections were corrected. But that was not the objective of the Republican Party. Their objective was to destroy the Superfund Program. In fact, they constructed something which I call the Ed McMahon polluters' clearinghouse sweepstakes, which meant that if you were a polluter, if you had already in a court of law or in an administrative proceeding accepted legal responsibility for having polluted a neighborhood and you had already cleaned it up, you will get a rebate from the Federal taxpayer, and it will be half of all the money which we, as taxpayers, put into the Superfund Program. We give the money to the polluters, but accepted legal responsibility. And then they had a backup solution. It is the Evian solution: Well, we really cannot afford to clean up your site, but if there is an acceptable alternative for you to get water in your neighborhood, then the site will not be cleaned up. And this is called the Evian solution. That is, if you can go down to the corner store and buy bottles of Evian every day for the rest of your life, that is a good substitute for actually having water that is drinkable coming through the tap. Now, there is a great innovation. Everyone in America, buy stock in Evian, buy stock in any water, and, by the way, you will get no Federal subsidies for that either. And then you have the superfence. If there is a way in which you can build a superfence around the site, not cleaning it up, well, that is a good substitute, too, for ensuring that the hazardous waste material has been taken out of the community. It is the superfence superfiction, to be more accurate, because we all know that kids on their bikes are going to go right through these fences within about 15 minutes after they are put up, and they will be riding up and down these hills, these embankments of hazardous materials, not really aware of what the long- term consequences for them and their families will be. That is the concept that the Republicans brought to environmental reform in our country. And then I sit on the Committee on Natural Resources. What a great idea they came up with. We have subsidies on the public lands which we give to the mining industry. We have subsidies on the public lands of the United States that we give to the timber industry. We have subsidies; we are talking billions of dollars every year that come out of the Federal taxpayers' pockets. That is money we do not ask mining companies, timber companies, grazing companies to pay the American people for use of the public lands of our country. We just give it away to these Fortune 500 companies. So the Republicans, they said, ``Well, we have a deficit crisis in America. We're gong to have to do something in order to ensure we raise more money to reduce this deficit.'' So they touched grazing subsidies of the Fortune 500 companies? No. Gas, timber, mining, no. We would not want to touch those people, those people who exploit our resources every day and then go and make a private sector profit on it. What do they offer as a reform in our committee? Well, we allow grandmothers and grandfathers to get into national parks across our country for half price. What they did was strip out this spring the protection given to grandma to get in with her Golden Age passport into the national parks of America. That is how we are going to balance the budget, on grandma's back, not the mining, not the oil, not the gas, not the timber, not the grazing industries that are on the public lands. They do not have to pay market price. But grandma, she loses her senior citizen pass. And, by the way, and the gentleman from New Jersey knows this better than anybody, what a tough year and a half for grandma, huh? Boy, has she had a tough year and a half. You know we have about 13 million elderly women in America who live on $13,000 or less a year. The Republican proposal was to take their Medicare payment and increase it by $400 a year. And grandma, of course, has sacrificed throughout her life. A lot of people think she has really been getting too much for free here in America; you know, all these grandmothers living on $13,000 a year and Medicaid. Well, grandpa might be in the nursing home, but the Republicans' proposal was to make grandma sell her home before she would qualify for any Federal help at all to keep grandpa in the nursing home, and we know the average cost of nursing home care in the United States is $55,000 a year in most of the larger States, $40,000 at a minimum even in the smaller States, $40,000 a year. No matter how hard you try, no matter how many years you save, you cannot save enough money, if one of the spouses has Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, to pay $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 each year to keep them in a nursing home. And, by the way, 50 percent of all people in nursing homes in this country have Alzheimer's, and 70 percent of all people in nursing homes are on Medicaid. But let us make grandma sell the house before she qualifies for anything. And, by the way, they also propose to strip off the books the regulation which said that grandpa cannot be drugged while he is in the nursing home or tied down just to keep him under control.

Mr. MARKEY. Again, when they were called on it out here on the floor, they said, ``Don't worry, our intention is not to hurt grandma,'' and they never corrected it. We were forced to vote out here on the floor on the bill with grandma paying 400 extra bucks each year, and, by the way, the same bill giving $25,000 a year tax breaks for people who make $400,000 or $500,000 a year. It would take 70 or 80 grandmas, each kicking in 400 bucks to then turn around and hand away 25,000 tax breaks to people making over $400,000 or $500,000 a year. Now let me say this about grandma. There was one weekend where she could get grandpa out of the nursing home, and they were so happy. They decided to take the grandkids to a national park, and so they got into the 1974 Ford Fairlane with the grandkids and headed off for the national park, and then the ultimate indignity: The Republicans propose to strip away the Golden Age passport so they can get into national parks. Now is that right? I mean, yeah, OK, maybe we should look at some of these programs, but do you really think grandma and grandpa are getting too much? You know they took us through the thirties, the Depression, World War II, and then they built us into the greatest country in the world in the fifties, sixties, and seventies that has ever been known in the history of the planet. They have sacrificed to make this the great country it is. Now is it really fair to tell yuppies who are making $500,000 that you deserve a $25,000 tax break and we are going to turn again to grandma and get $400 out of her in order to make that tax break possible? That is wrong. We should not be giving out those tax breaks to the wealthy. And within the same bill we should not be telling the mining and the timber and the grazing industries that they should be paying market price. If you are taking coal, if you are taking oil, if you are taking timber, if you are taking grazing materials off of public lands, you should pay the same that you would pay if it was on a private piece of property. We should not be subsidizing you. Adam Smith is spinning in his grave looking at this policy. We tip grandma upside-down on Medicare and Medicaid, and then we turn a blind eye to the people making $500,000 a year and say, ``No, we're going to give you a tax break this year.'' Well, where is the sacrifice, the shared sacrifice? Grandma will always do what she always has, but is it fair, before you have gone to the people, that you should ask her to sacrifice for tax breaks? That is wrong. So that we do not have to touch the mining or the grazing or the coal or the other companies on-- that is wrong. So the environmental policies of the Republican Party over the last couple of years have been just upside-down, just completely misunderstanding what the American people want. They want clean water, they want clean air, they want hazardous waste sites cleaned up. They want our national parks to be protected. Again, Americans are willing to sacrifice, but they want it to be fair. They want the priorities to be correct. They do not want it to be all skewed toward the wealthiest in our society. They want it to be balanced. if it is balanced, they will sacrifice. But there is no reason why the environment has to be sacrificed in this entire endeavor. So my point is that we have a reckoning that has arrived where the American people have to decide whether or not in fact they are going to allow for a continued erosion, and by the way, a lot of the Republicans right now, they are engaging in the moderate macarena, where for about 6 weeks here they are going to pretend that they are as concerned with all these issues as we are. The point is, though, that once they get back in January, we are going right back to where we were over the last 1\1/2\ years. We have a 6-week macarena where they are walking around, I see nothing, I hear nothing, I am with you, and they do the little twist, and let us hope we make it through this election. But we are coming right back with the same agenda, cutting, slashing the environment of this country. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing this subject up. I think it is very important for us to have the American people know the critical nature of this election and the referendum that has been created on whether or not we should gut the EPA and Superfund and clean air and clean water, right down the whole line, all of these issues. I do not think that they do. I hope that, working with the gentleman and those who have led this charge across the country, because it has been a grassroots movement, ordinary people in cities and towns all across this country, who have risen up against this environmental radicalism, I think that the day of reckoning is approaching where the voice of the people will be heard on clean air, clean water, and all the rest of the environmental issues.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago the House freshmen came to Washington to carry out a revolution. They promised to balanced the budget, to slash wasteful spending, to end pork-barrel spending. Now, 2 years later, two unsuccessful Government shutdowns later, the freshmen are running scared. The voters have said no to Medicare cuts, no to education cuts, no to mean and extreme programs dealing with the environment, no to the Gingrich revolution. So what do the freshmen do now in their desperate attempt to save their own political hides? They attach $350 million for pork-barrel projects for themselves in a clean drinking water bill while more important programs, of course, are going to suffer in the 50 States where the money should have been spent. So here is what we have: One little piggy goes to Iowa; one little piggy program stays home in Ohio; one little piggy program gets money for Washington State, and other more important programs get none; and 13 vulnerable House Republicans go wee, wee all the way home with their pork. Mr. Speaker, if this is a revolution, if this is the most important thing that we can be doing in this country for the next generation, it would be like fighting the French Revolution and not attacking the Bastille for the Republicans to have all this pork in this safe drinking water bill, and for all of them to unanimously be saying vote for it. What a transformation for the freshman class, so proud that they are now able to stick port in for their own district while knowing that it violates the instructions of this very House, of the recession of the Senate to our position that there should be no pork, and at the same time delaying so long in figuring out how to put in the pork that an extra $725 million are lost across this country for safe drinking water projects in every State in the Union.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, the reason that we should support the Schaefer amendment here this evening is that we will be helping to distort favorably the marketplace to compensate for the huge financial distortion which has been created by the Federal Government in giving huge subsidies to the nuclear industry over the last 40 and 50 years. Even since 1973, the last year nuclear power plant was in our country, $27 billion has been voted on this floor to subsidize nuclear energy. If we were going to list, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania did, all of the investments in nuclear energy that has been wasted in the last 20 years, it would be every single dollar. We have not seen a single benefit from it in new nuclear power generation in our country. A solar energy investment is the investment in the technology of the 21st century. That is what a ``yes'' vote on Schaefer represents here this evening.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey], and the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Torkildsen] have joined me today in offering two bipartisan amendments, dealt with en bloc, dealing with pyroprocessing, a program that has important budget, nonproliferation, and environmental consequences for our country. Friends, colleagues, countrymen, lend me your ears. We come to bury pyroprocessing, not to praise it. The evil that dead government programs do lives after them, while the good is oft interred with their bones. So it is with pyroprocessing. Pyroprocessing is the last living remnant of one of the biggest budget-busting boondoggles in congressional history, the failed breeder reactor program. Pyroprocessing is not exactly a household name instantly recognized by citizens across the country. In fact, if you are not a nuclear physicist, like the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers], then you probably never heard of pyroprocessing, which is a chemical procedure used to separate plutonium and uranium, the building blocks of a nuclear bomb from radioactive waste. Its secondary definition in the dictionary is, it is also a fancy name for burning money, taxpayers' money, at very rapid rates, getting almost nothing in return. Mr. Chairman, nonetheless, you do not have to be a Ph.D. to understand that pyroprocessing is a budget-busting boondoggle that is bad for the environment and bad for American efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Mr. Chairman, before any pyro- processing pyrotechnics erupt on the floor over whether pyroprocessing at the Argonne National Lab is the same thing as a procedure called reprocessing, let me start by simply saying that a radioactive rose by any other name is a radioactive rose, nonetheless. According to James Warf, a group leader for the Manhattan project and a holder of several patents on reprocessing, he says, ``There is no question that the projects proposed to be conducted at the Argonne National Lab West is reprocessing.'' Prof. Albert Wohlstetter, who over the last 45 years has served as a science and security adviser at the White House, National Security Council, and Departments of Defense, State, and Energy, for every Democrat and Republican President for the last 40 years, stated in a recent court case: ``Whatever the name, what DOE proposes is clearly reprocessing.'' The top three reasons why the Markey-Kasich-Obey-Torkildsen amendments should be adopted. First, our amendment is good budget policy. Pyroprocessing is a radioactive relic from a bygone era when specialized nuclear reactors called breeders were touted as the answer to our energy needs. After pouring billions of dollars into the breeder program, Congress killed the breeders by terminating the infamous Clinch River reactor in 1983, and the advanced liquid metal reactor in 1994. Costs of a breeder program are astronomical. Former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Ivan Selin, estimated that it would cost $82 billion to build and operate a full-scale breeder program. But like a vampire that just refuses to die, a money-sucking program, the pyroprocessing part of the breeder program continues to haunt us, sucking money from taxpayers by draining millions of dollars for a program that should have been buried along with the breeder program. Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens for a Sound Economy support the Markey-Kasich amendment to cut funding for pyroprocessing as a way of putting an end to the wasteful breeder program once and for all. Pyroprocessing also raises serious nuclear proliferation issues. According to national security experts like former assistant director of national security policy in the White House, Frank von Hippel, pyroprocessing could undermine the long-standing U.S. policy of discouraging reprocessing in other countries. This policy began in the Ford administration and has been in place ever since. Changing course now would be a radical departure from our 20-year position and would send a contradictory and potentially dangerous message abroad. Pyroprocessing would make it easier for rogue states to use a civilian nuclear program as a cover for a nuclear weapons program, like India did and like North Korea did. Peter Johnson, the project director of the 1994 Office of Technology Assessment study on the advanced liquid metal reactor, has stated that the pyroprocessing project should not be encouraged in other countries, and it should be protected from use by countries that may wish to protect weapons materials. Our amendments are supported by major arms control groups, including Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nuclear Control Institute, and Greenpeace. Finally, pyroprocessing is bad for the environment. Everyone agrees that we must find a way to handle our nuclear waste safely and efficiently. However, while the backers of pyroprocessing promote it as an environmentally friendly method of handling nuclear waste, the reality is quite different. Pyroprocessing actually creates a variety of new waste materials. This waste has not been evaluated to determine its stability over the long term. As the National Academy of Sciences points out, rather than solving the waste problem, pyroprocessing only makes it worse by generating more waste, including wastes that have not been analyzed to ensure they are stable enough for long-term storage. This amendment is endorsed by the Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters. I urge my colleagues to support the Markey- Kasich-Obey amendment. It cuts out $20 million not needed. The amendments are supported by budget watchdog groups, Citizens for a Sound Economy and Taxpayers for Common Sense. Our amendments are supported by arms control groups, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Nuclear Control Institute. Our amendments are supported by environmental groups, the Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters. Bad budget policy. Bad energy policy, bad environmental policy, bad nonproliferation policy. A ``yes'' vote tonight helps to preserve this Congress investing in each one of those dangerous avenues for the American people. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?