Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that is intended to shed a little more light on the consequences of a census that is not adjusted for the undercount. The bill requires the Secretary of Commerce to notify each governor how much more or less Federal funding in his or her state would receive each fiscal year following a decennial census if the census were adjusted for the undercount and the adjusted figures were used in grant allocation formulas. This bill is not directly related to the controversy over sampling. The sampling proposal made by the Bureau of the Census is one way to eliminate the undercount, but there are other less controversial methods. Not uncontroversial, but less so. Mr. President, the taking of a census goes back centuries. I quote from the King James version of the Bible, chapter two of Luke: ``And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed (or enrolled, according to the footnote) . . . And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city.'' The early censuses were taken to enable the ruler or ruling government to tax or raise an army. The first census for more sociological reasons was taken in Nuremberg in 1449. So it was not a new idea to the Founding Fathers when they wrote it into the Constitution to facilitate fair taxation and accurate apportionment of the House of Representatives, the latter of which was the foundation of the Great Compromise. The Constitution says in Article I, Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years of the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall direct by law. Opponents of adjustment often say that the Constitution calls for an ``actual enumeration'', and this requires an actual headcount rather than any statistical inference about those we know we miss every time. That seems to take the phrase out of context. I note that we have not taken an ``actual enumeration'' the way the Founding Fathers envisioned since 1960, after which enumerators going to every door were replaced with mail-in responses. The Constitution provides for a postal system, but did not direct that the census be taken by mail. Yet we do it that way. Statistical work in the 1940s demonstrated that we can estimate the undercount, the number of people the census misses. The estimate for 1940 was 5.4 percent of the population. After decreasing steadily to 1.2 percent in 1980, the 1990 undercount increased to 1.8 percent, or more than four million people. More significantly, the undercount is not distributed evenly. The differential undercount, as it is known, of minorities was 4.4 percent for Blacks, 5.0 percent for Hispanics, 2.3 percent for Asian-Pacific islanders, and 4.5 percent for Native Americans, compared with 1.2 percent for non-Hispanic whites. The difference between the black and non-black undercount was the largest since 1940. By disproportionately missing minorities, we deprive them of equal representation in Congress and of proportionate funding from Federal programs based on population. The Census Bureau estimates that the total undercount will reach 1.9 percent in 2000 if the 1990 methods are used instead of sampling. Mr. President, I have some history with the undercount issue. In 1966 when I became Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at MIT and Harvard, I asked Professor David Heer to work with me in planning a conference to publicize the non-white undercount in the 1960 census and to foster concern about the problems of obtaining a full enumeration, especially of the urban poor. I ask that my forward to the report from that conference be printed following my remarks, for it is, save for some small numerical changes, disturbingly still relevant. My hope is that if governors and other interested parties learn the financial consequences of the undercount, support may grow for correcting it. It is regrettable that we don't do it, simply because we should. But if a yearly reminder of how the undercount affects formula grant programs helps change some minds, it is worth the effort. I ask my colleagues for their support and I ask unanimous consent that the bill and additional material, be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today I rise to introduce a bill that will amend several parts of our existing immigration laws, specifically those that fall under the umbrella of the Immigration and Nationality Act. These changes are aimed at making our immigration laws not only fairer but more efficient. The first change will amend Section 240(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. In 1996, the laws applying to criminal aliens were made overly restrictive. For example, all persons guilty of aggravated felonies--the number of crimes that fall into this category was greatly expanded and made retroactive in 1996--are now ineligible for virtually any form of leniency. This means that many people, who have led exemplary lives for many years, now find themselves deportable for offenses committed decades ago. They are also subject to mandatory detention and have no chance for an immigration judge to evaluate their individual circumstances. This is unfair. My second change amends Section 240A.(1)(a) of the same act. At present, the Attorney General has the authority to stop the deportation of a lawful resident who has been in this country for seven years. The 1996 changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act now bar this relief for anyone convicted of an aggravated felony. This provision has led to many injustices because of the sheer number of offenses that are now aggravated felonies. I propose that we deny relief only to those who have been convicted of aggravated felonies that carry a penalty of five years or more in prison. In conjunction with this, I propose that we amend Section 240A(d)(1). This provision says that the time for determining the above seven years residency period stops when an aggravated crime is or was committed. This has barred relief for people with ancient convictions but many good years of citizenship since then. This should be changed so that the countable residence period stops only when formal immigration charges are filed because of the crime and not when the crime is or was committed. Another of my amendments made the transitional rules permanent governing Section 236(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This section now requires that all criminal aliens be detained from the time of their release on criminal charges until their deportation hearing. This requirement was so harsh and expensive that Congress provided a two-year transition period, ending on October 1998, that allowed immigration judges to use their discretion in evaluating whether or not an individual was a risk of flight or a danger to the community. This discretion should be continued because it is fair and because it will empty our jails of those who will return for their hearings and who pose no threat to our communities. I also propose that we restore judicial review in deportation cases. The 1996 reforms ostensibly banned criminal aliens from seeking a judicial review of their cases. The courts have reached many different outcomes over this ban and the situation, frankly, is a mess. I believe that criminal aliens should have the right to have their convictions reviewed by a United States circuit court of appeals. Similiarly, I believe that aliens should have the right to legal counsel when they are faced with removal. The law now provides that an alien is entitled to counsel if he can afford to retain one. In reality, this has created great expense and delay for the Federal government because cases are often continued for lengthy periods while aliens try to find pro bono counsel or counsel they can afford. My bill creates a pilot program in selected Immigration and Nationalization districts where free, expert counsel would be provided to aliens. A study of the impact on overall Department of Justice costs would be required to decide if this program should be extended nationwide. My last amendments are concerned with who should be admitted to this country. The most objectionable element of our current admission system is the delay--estimated to be five years--for a vitally important family reunion category, part A of the second family-based preference (FS-2A). This category, for admission of spouses and minor children of lawful, permanent residents, is now limited to 114,000 per year. Nuclear families should live together. To obtain more spaces for the FS-2A preference, the diversity lottery visas should be eliminated, freeing 55,000 spaces annually. Lastly, I believe that the EB-5 preference for investors should be repealed. The rich should not be able to buy their way into this country. This category was added in 1990 to encourage investment. Instead, this provision has led to the creation of some highly questionable investment schemes that have cost the Immigration and Naturalization Service untold hours and resources in attempting to reign them in. Moreover, the evidence of new jobs being created is very thin and not worth the administrative costs. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the ``Y2K State and Local Government Assistance Programs (GAP) Act of 1999.'' I am pleased to have Senators Robert F. Bennett (R-UT) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT), the Chairman and Vice Chairman, respectively, of the Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, as original cosponsors of this legislation. This bill provides a matching grant for states to work on the millennium computer problem. While the Federal government and large corporations are expected to have their computers intact on January 1, 2000, state governments lag behind in fixing the problem. Failure of state computers could have a devastating effect on those individuals who rely on essential state-administered poverty programs, such as Medicaid, food stamps, and child welfare and support. These individuals cannot go a day, a week, or a month without these programs working properly. I am hopeful that the bill Senators Bennett, Dodd, and I are introducing today will help states fix their computers, particularly those computers used to administer Federal welfare programs. It has been almost three years since I asked the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to study and produce a report on the implications of the Y2K problem. CRS issued the report to me with the following comments: ``The Year 2000 problem is indeed serious, and fixing it will be costly and time-consuming. The problem deserves the careful and coordinated attention of the Federal government, as well as the private sector, in order to avert major disruptions on January 1, 2000.'' I wrote the President on July 31, 1996 to relay the findings of CRS and make him aware of this grave problem. In the letter, I warned the president of the ``extreme negative economic consequences of the Y2K Time Bomb,'' and suggested that ``a presidential aide be appointed to take responsibility for assuring that all Federal agencies, including the military, be Y2K compliant by January 1, 1999 [leaving a year for `testing'] and that all commercial and industrial firms doing business with the Federal government must also be compliant by that date.'' Since that time, the government has taken some of the necessary steps to combat the millennium bug. The President created the Year 2000 Conversion Council and appointed John Koskinen to head it. The Senate, under the leadership of Chairman Bennett and Vice Chairman Dodd, established the Special Committee on the Y2K problem. And Representative Stephen Horn (R-CA) continues to due an excellent job in keeping the government focused on the issue. Thanks in part to the work of these individuals, we have made tremendous progress on the millennium bug. Y2K experts have become optimistic enough to dismiss doomsday predictions of widespread power outages, telephone failures, and grounded jetliners in the U.S. Businesses and Federal agencies that were lagging in their repair work last year have redoubled their efforts in recent months; telephone and electric networks, which are crucial to the operation of almost all large computer systems, are in better-than-expected shape; and technicians have found remarkably few date-related problems with the electronic circuitry in a host of other ``day-to-day'' devices, from subway cars to elevators. Mr. Koskinen predicts that the bug's impact will be similar to a powerful winter storm--minor inconveniences for many people and severe, but short-term, disruptions for some communities. I agree with Mr. Koskinen and other Y2K experts. I do not expect the four horsemen, armed with flood and catastrophe, to be riding in on January 1, 2000. But experts agree that state governments are not making sufficient progress in fixing the problem. It is for this reason that Senators Bennett, Dodd, and I are introducing this bill today. The ``Y2K State and Local GAP Act of 1999'' provides funding for states to address the Y2K problem. The bill stipulates that certain Federal poverty programs--Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), food stamps, child support enforcement, child care, and child welfare programs--be listed as priority programs. The people dependent on these programs will be the most adversely affected by the problem if state computers crash. To be eligible for Federal support money, states must submit a plan describing their Y2K development and implementation program. A state that is awarded a grant under this legislation is required to expend $1 for every $2 provided by the Federal government. The matching requirement will give states and local governments incentive to work on their computers. And the numbers indicate that states need a great amount of incentive and help on this issue. According to a National Association of State Information Resource Executives survey, some states have not yet completed work on any of their critical systems, and those systems responsible for administering poverty programs are a real concern. A November 1998 General Accounting Office (GAO) report found that most of the systems used to administer poverty programs are not ready for the new millennium--84 percent of Medicaid systems, 76 percent of food stamps, and 75 percent of TANF systems were not compliant. Since these programs are administered at the state and local level, it is these computers which ensure that benefit payments are on time and accurate. Given the lack of means of those assisted by the programs, the possible disruption of benefit payments should be a cause for concern--a billion dollars in benefits payments might not be delivered because of the millennial malady. Historically the fin de siecle has caused quite a stir. Prophets, prelates, monks, mathematicians, and soothsayers warn Anno Domini 2000 will draw the world to its catastrophic conclusion. I am confident that the Y2K problem will not play a part in this. But we must continue to work on this problem with purpose and dedication. Disraeli wrote: ``Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.'' We created the Y2K problem and we must fix it. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Y2K State and Local Government Assistance Programs Act of 1999 be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation on behalf of myself and my Finance Committee colleague, Senator Jeffords, to repeal a limitation in the Tax Code that results in the double taxation of certain foreign source income. The issue involves the effect of the corporate alternative minimum tax on income earned abroad by United States companies. Correction of this policy flaw is of significant importance to the affected companies, their current and future employees, and their shareholders. The U.S. taxes the worldwide income of its corporations, citizens and residents. Under the U.S. Tax Code, U.S. bilateral treaties, and international norms, it is generally accepted that income with a nexus to two countries should not be taxed by both jurisdictions, and that the jurisdiction in which active business income is earned typically should have the primary right to tax that income. To effectuate these principles and to avoid double taxation, the U.S. tax laws--since the Revenue Act of 1918--allow U.S. taxpayers to claim a foreign tax credit with respect to foreign income taxes paid on foreign source income, and thereby reduce U.S. income taxes on such income. It should be emphasized that the foreign tax credit is not a tax ``loophole'' or ``preference.'' Rather, as noted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1932 case of Burnet versus Chicago, ``the primary design'' of the foreign tax credit system is to ``mitigate the evil of double taxation.'' However, in enacting the Tax Reform Act of 1986, Congress concluded that this salutary purpose was outweighed by another. At that time, Congress was concerned with a serious problem: repeated instances of large corporations with substantial economic profits (reported to shareholders in their annual reports) paying little or no Federal income taxes. In response, Congress rewrote the corporate alternative minimum tax. Congress had specific purposes in mind in rewriting the minimum tax. First, as noted by the Joint Tax Committee in its General Explanation of the Tax Reform Act of 1986: . . . Congress decided that it was inherently unfair for high-income taxpayers to pay little or no tax due to their ability to utilize tax preferences. An obvious and incontrovertible sentiment. Yet, as noted above, foreign tax credits are not tax preferences or loopholes. Congress was also concerned with appearances. The Joint Tax Committee Explanation continued: . . . Congress concluded that there must be a reasonable certainty that, whenever a company publicly reports significant earnings, that company will pay some tax for the year. No argument here. And Congress ensured that companies reporting profits would in fact pay tax by, among other changes, requiring corporations to increase their ``alternative minimum taxable income'' by a percentage of the income reported on financial statements, and requiring the use of a slower depreciation schedule rather than accelerated depreciation for purposes of cost recovery. But what about foreign tax credits? The Joint Tax Committee Explanation stated: . . . While Congress viewed allowance of the foreign tax credit . . . as generally appropriate for minimum tax purposes, it was considered fair to mandate at least a nominal tax contribution from all U.S. taxpayers with substantial economic income. To state it less elegantly, Congress believed that limited double taxation of a corporation's foreign source income was a lesser evil than allowing a corporation to fully use its foreign tax credits. The 1986 tax act provided that foreign tax credits could be used to offset up to 90 percent of a corporation's minimum tax liability. Thus, affected taxpayers pay at least 10 percent of their alternative minimum tax, no matter that the tax relates to foreign source income earned in a high-tax foreign jurisdiction and that the taxpayer has paid tax on that income. Although Congress believed the 90 percent restriction to have been fair policy in 1986, the restriction can no longer be justified. First, we now have a decade of experience over which to judge the effect of the restriction. I am aware of at least one key employer in New York that alone has paid significant amounts of minimum tax due to this provision, some of which was incurred in years during which the company reported losses on a worldwide basis. Second, since the 1986 Act, there have been a number of significant modifications to the minimum tax. For example, the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 allows large corporate taxpayers to use accelerated depreciation under the minimum tax, and it repealed the minimum tax in its entirety for corporations with gross receipts of $5 million or less. In addition, the Energy Policy Act of 1992 allowed taxpayers to claim tax benefits under the minimum tax relating to oil & gas intangible drilling costs. Considering the post-1986 relaxations of the minimum tax, little purpose remains in the 90 percent limitation. Finally, since 1986, many of our largest businesses have seen tremendous expansion in their exports and foreign sales, thus substantially increasing the amount of foreign source income. At the same time, these companies must compete with foreign companies that do not have to bear double taxation. As my friend Senator Alfonse D'Amato noted when introducing similar legislation last year: The result is double (and even triple) taxation of income that is used to support U.S. jobs, R&D and other activities. The restriction can no longer be justified. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be included in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. Presidents, I rise today to introduce the Poverty Data Correction Act of 1999, a bill to require that any data relating to the incidence of poverty in subnational areas be corrected for the differences in the cost of living in those areas. This legislation would correct a longstanding inequity and would provide us with more accurate information on the number of Americans living in poverty. Residents of states such as New York and Connecticut earn more, on average,than do residents of Mississippi or Alabama. But they also must spend more. One need only try to rent an apartment in New York City to understand this. Yet, we have a national poverty threshold adjusted only by family size and composition, not by where the family lives. A family of four just above the poverty threshold in New York City or Anchorage is demonstrably worse off than a family of four just below the threshold in, say, rural Arkansas. And yet that family in New York might be ineligible for federal aid and will not count in the tallies of the poverty population used to allocate funds among the states, while the Arkansas family will be eligible and will be counted. Professor Herman B. ``Dutch'' Leonard and Senior Research Associate Monica Friar of the Taubman Center for State and local government at Harvard have devised an index of poverty statistics that reflects the differences in the cost of living between States. If we look at the ``Friar-Leonard State Cost-of-Living index,'' as it has come to be known, we find that, in Fiscal Year 1997, New York had a poverty rate of 20.5% third highest in the nation. yet the official poverty level for 1997 is 16.6%. These adjusted statistics still reflect poverty accurately: the poor states of Mississippi and New Mexico remain ranked higher than New York in this ranking of misfortune. Mr. President, our current poverty data are inaccurate. And these substandard data are used in allocation formulas used to distribute millions of Federal dollars each year. As a result, states with high costs of living--New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Hawaii, California, just to name a few--are not getting their fair share of Federal dollars because differences in the cost of living are ignored. And the poor of these high cost states are penalized because they happen to live there. It is time to correct this inequity. I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the legislation and its full text be included in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Northern Border Trade Facilitation Act, a bill that addresses the urgent need for increased Customs inspectors and technology along the U.S.-Canadian border. The U.S.-Canadian border is the longest undefended border in the world. Canada is also our largest trading partner, with two-way trade surpassing $1 billion a day. Yet, the resources that we have provided to the Customs Service to process traffic and trade across this border are woefully deficient. In a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee in September 1998, we learned that the current number of authorized Customs inspectors working on the northern border remains essentially the same as it was in 1980, despite the fact that the number of commercial entries they must process has increased sixfold since then, from 1 million to 6 million per year. The increased workload reflects of course the tremendous growth in U.S.-Canada trade: two-way trade in 1988, the year before the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement entered into force, was $194 billion. By 1997, the volume had doubled--to $387 billion. There has also been an enormous expansion in both commercial and passenger traffic across this border. The resources available to the Customs Service over the last decade have not kept pace with this enormous growth in workload. As a result, increased congestion and delays are evident at crossings all along the U.S.-Canadian border. This bill aims to correct these problems by authorizing the additional manpower and technology necessary to handle the increase in trade and traffic between the United States and Canada. In particular, this bill authorizes 375 additional ``primary lane'' inspectors and 125 new cargo inspectors for the northern border, as well as 40 special agents and 10 intelligence agents. The bill also authorizes $29.240 million for equipment and technology for the northern border. The bill will also accord Customs the statutory authorization to continue providing so-called ``preclearance services,'' whereby Customs inspects passengers and baggage prior to their departure from a foreign country rather than upon arrival in the United States. This program began in 1952 and has helped facilitate travel and decrease congestion at JFK international Airport and other ports of entry. Customs has indicated that without this new statutory authority, it will be unable to continue providing these services. Finally, this legislation gives Customs the authority to use $50 million of the total amounts collected from the merchandise processing fee to modernize its automated commercial systems used to track and process imports and exports. Customs' efforts to modernize these systems are several years behind schedule and underfunded. The funds authorized by this bill constitute an essential step in providing Customs with the necessary resources to continue its modernization efforts. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be inserted in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a series of bills aimed at curtailing gun related violence, one of the leading causes of death in this country. These bills launch a two-prong assault. The first seeks to outlaw certain types of ammunition that have no purpose other than killing people. The second imposes heavy taxes on these same deadly categories by making them prohibitively expensive. Similarly, I am proposing that we commission an epidemiological study on bullet-related violence in this country and that we enhance the safety of this nation's police officers by promulgating performance standards for armor piercing ammunition. My first two bills are called the Destructive Ammunition Prohibition Act of 1999 and the Real Cost of Destructive Ammunition Act of 1999. Some of my colleagues may remember the Black Talon. It is a hollow- tipped bullet, singular among handgun ammunition in its capacity for destruction. Upon impact with human tissue, the bullet produces razor- sharp radial petals that produce a devastating wound. It is the very same bullet that a crazed gunman fired at unsuspecting passengers on a Long Island Railroad train in December 1993, killing the husband of now Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy and injuring her son. That same month, it was also used in the shooting of Officer Jason E. White of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, just 15 blocks from the Capitol. I first learned of the Black Talon in a letter I received from Dr. E.J. Gallagher, director of Emergency Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at the Municipal Hospital Trauma Center in the Bronx. Dr. Gallagher wrote that he has never seen a more lethal projectile. On November 3, 1993, I introduced a bill to tax the Black Talon at 10,000 percent. Nineteen days later, Olin Corp., the manufacturer of the Black Talon, announced that it would withdraw sale of the bullet to the general public. Unfortunately, the 103rd Congress came to a close without the bill's having won passage. As a result, there is nothing in law to prevent the reintroduction of this pernicious bullet, nor is there any existing impediment to the sale of similar rounds that might be produced by another manufacturer. So today I reintroduce the bill to tax the Black Talon as well as a bill to prohibit the sale of the Black Talon to the public. Both bills would apply to any bullet with the same physical characteristics as the Black Talon. It has been estimated that the cost of hospital services for treating bullet-related injuries is $1 billion per year, with the total cost to the economy of such injuries approximately $14 billion. We can ill afford further increases in this number, but this would surely be the result if bullets with the destructive capacity of the Black Talon are allowed onto the streets. Mr. President, despite the fact that the national crime rate has decreased in recent months, the number of deaths and injuries caused by bullet wounds is still at an unconscionable level. It is time we take meaningful steps to put an end to the massacres that occur daily as a result of gun violence. How better a beginning than to go after the most insidious culprits of this violence? I urge my colleagues to support these measures and to prevent these bullets from appearing on the market. My third measure, the Handgun Ammunition Control Act of 1999, introduces a measure to improve our information about the regulation and criminal use of ammunition and to prevent the irresponsible production of ammunition. This bill has three components. First, it would require importers and manufacturers of ammunition to keep records and submit an annual report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [BATF] on the disposition of ammunition, including the amount, caliber and type of ammunition imported or manufactured. Second, it would require the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the National Academy of Sciences, to conduct a study of ammunition use and make recommendations on the efficacy of reducing crime by restricting access to ammunition. Finally, it would amend title 18 of the United States Code to raise the application fee for a license to manufacture certain calibers of ammunition. While there are enough handguns in circulation to last well into the 22nd century, there is perhaps only a 4-year supply of ammunition. But how much of what kind of ammunition? Where does it come from? Where does it go? There are currently no reporting requirements for manufacturers or importers of ammunition; earlier reporting requirements were repealed in 1986. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Reports, based on information provided by local law enforcement agencies, does not record the caliber, type, or quantity of ammunition used in crime. In short, our data base is woefully inadequate. I supported the Brady law, which requires a waiting period before the purchase of a handgun, and the recent ban on semi-automatic weapons. But while the debate over gun control continues, I offer another alternative: Ammunition control. After all, as I have said before, guns do not kill people; bullets do. Ammunition control is not a new idea. In 1982 Phil Caruso of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association asked me to do something about armor-piercing bullets. Jacketed in tungsten or other materials, these rounds could penetrate four police flak jackets and five Los Angeles County telephone books. They have no sporting value. I introduced legislation, the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act, to ban the cop-killer bullets in the 97th, 98th and 99th Congresses. It enjoyed the overwhelming support of law enforcement groups and, ultimately, tacit support from the National Rifle Association. It was finally signed into law by President Reagan on August 28, 1986. The crime bill enacted in 1994 contained my amendment to broaden the 1986 ban to cover new thick steel-jacketed armor-piercing rounds. Our cities are becoming more aware of the benefits to be gained from ammunition control. The District of Columbia and some other cities prohibit a person from possessing ammunition without a valid license for a firearm of the same caliber or gauge as the ammunition. Beginning in 1990, the city of Los Angeles banned the sale of all ammunition 1 week prior to Independence Day and New Year's Day in an effort to reduce injuries and deaths caused by the firing of guns into the air. And in September 1994, the city of Chicago became the first in America to ban the sale of all handgun ammunition. Such efforts are laudable. But they are isolated attempts to cure what is in truth a national disease. We need to do more, but to do so, we need information to guide policy making. This bill would fulfill that need by requiring annual reports to BATF by manufactures and importers and by directing a study by the National Academy of Sciences. We also need to encourage manufacturers of ammunition to be more responsible. By substantially increasing application fees for licenses to manufacturer .25 caliber, .32 caliber, and 9-mm ammunition, this bill would discourage the reckless production of unsafe ammunition or ammunition which causes excessive damage. My fourth measure provides a comprehensive way of addressing the epidemic proportions of violence in America. By including two different crime-related provisions, my bill attacks the crime epidemic on more than just one front. If we are truly serious about confronting our Nation's crime problem, we must learn more about the nature of the epidemic of bullet-related violence and ways to control it. To do this, we must require records to be kept on the disposition of ammunition. In October 1992, the Senate Finance Committee received testimony that public health and safety experts have, independently, concluded that there is an epidemic of bullet-related violence. The figures are staggering. In 1995, bullets were used in the murders of 23,673 people in the United States. By focusing on bullets, and not guns, we recognize that much like nuclear waste, guns remain active for centuries. With minimum care, they do not deteriorate. However, bullets are consumed. Estimates suggest we have only a 4-year's supply of them. Not only am I proposing that we tax bullets used disproportionately in crimes--9 millimeter, .25 and .32 caliber bullets--I also believe we must set up a Bullet Death and Injury Control Program within the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. This Center will enhance our knowledge of the distribution and status of bullet-related death and injury and subsequently make recommendations about the extent and nature of bullet-related violence. So that the Center would have substantive information to study and analyze, this bill also requires importers and manufacturers of ammunition to keep records and submit an annual report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms [BATF] on the disposition of ammunition. Currently, importers and manufacturers of ammunition are not required to do so. My next two bills, the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 1999 and the Real Cost of Handgun Ammunition Act of 1999, ban or heavily tax .25 caliber, .32 caliber, and 9 mm ammunition. These calibers of bullets are used disproportionately in crime. They are not sporting or hunting rounds, but instead are the bullets of choice for drug dealers and violent felons. Every year they contribute overwhelmingly to the pervasive loss of life caused by bullet wounds. Today marks the fifth time in as many Congresses that I have introduced legislation to ban or tax these pernicious bullets. As the terrible gunshot death toll in the United States continues unabated, so too does the need for these bills, which, by keeping these bullets out of the hands of criminals, would save a significant number of lives. The number of Americans killed or wounded each year by bullets demonstrates their true cost to American society. Just look at the data. The lifetime risk of death from homicide in U.S. males is 1 in 164, about the same as the risk of death in battle faced by U.S. servicemen in the Vietnam war. For black males, the lifetime risk of death from homicide is 1 in 28, twice the risk of death in battle faced by Marines in Vietnam. As noted by Susan Baker and her colleagues in the book Epidemiology and Health Policy, edited by Sol Levine and Abraham Lilienfeld, there is a correlation between rates of private ownership of guns and gun- related death rates; guns cause two-thirds of family homicides, and small, easily concealed weapons comprise the majority of guns used for homicides, suicides and unintentional death. Baker states that: * * * these facts of the epidemiology of firearm-related deaths and injuries have important implications. Combined with their lethality, the widespread availability of easily concealed handguns for impetuous use by people who are angry, drunk, or frightened appears to be a major determinant of the high firearm death rate in the United States. Each contributing factor has implications for prevention. Unfortunately, issues related to gun control have evoked such strong sentiments that epidemiologic data are rarely employed to good advantage. Strongly held views on both sides of the gun control issue have made the subject difficult for epidemiologists. I would suggest that a good deal of energy is wasted in this never-ending debate, for gun control as we know it misses the point. We ought to focus on the bullets, not the guns. I would remind the Senate of our experience in controlling epidemics. Although the science of epidemiology traces its roots to antiquity-- Hippocrates stressed the importance of considering environmental influences on human diseases--the first modern epidemiological study was conducted by James Lind in 1747. His efforts led to the eventual control of scurvy. It wasn't until 1795 that the British Navy accepted his analysis and required limes in shipboard diets. Most solutions are not perfect. Disease is rarely eliminated. But might epidemiology be applied in the case of bullets to reduce suffering? I believe so. In 1854 John Snow and William Farr collected data that clearly showed cholera was caused by contaminated drinking water. Snow removed the handle of the Broad Street pump in London to prevent people from drawing water from this contaminated water source and the disease stopped in that population. His observations led to a legislative mandate that all London water companies filter their water by 1857. Cholera epidemics subsided. Now treatment of sewage prevents cholera from entering our rivers and lakes, and the disinfection of drinking water makes water distribution systems uninhabitable for cholera vibrio, identified by Robert Koch as the causative agent 26 years after Snow's study. In 1900, Walter Reed identified mosquitos as the carriers of yellow fever. Subsequent mosquito control efforts by another U.S. Army doctor, William Gorgas, enabled the United States to complete the Panama Canal. The French failed because their workers were too sick from yellow fever to work. Now that it is known that yellow fever is caused by a virus, vaccines are used to eliminate the spread of the disease. These pioneering epidemiology success stories showed the world that epidemics require an interaction between three things: the host--(the person who becomes sick or, in the case of bullets, the shooting victim); the agent--(the cause of sickness, or the bullet); and the environment--(the setting in which the sickness occurs or, in the case of bullets, violent behavior). Interrupt this epidemiological triad and you reduce or eliminate disease and injury. How might this approach apply to the control of bullet-related injury and death? Again, we are contemplating something different from gun control. There is a precedent here. In the middle of this century it was recognized that epidemiology could be applied to automobile death and injury. From a governmental perspective, this hypothesis was first adopted in 1959, late in the administration of Gov. Averell Harriman of New York State. In the 1960 Presidential campaign, I drafted a statement on the subject which was released by Senator John F. Kennedy as part of a general response to inquiries from the American Automobile Association. Then Senator Kennedy stated: Traffic accidents constitute one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest of the nation's public health problems. They waste as much as 2 percent of our gross national product every year and bring endless suffering. The new highways will do much to control the rise of the traffic toll, but by themselves they will not reduce it. A great deal more investigation and research is needed. Some of this has already begun in connection with the highway program. It should be extended until highway safety research takes its place as an equal of the many similar programs of health research which the federal government supports. Experience in the 1950's and early 1960's prior to passage of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, showed that traffic safety enforcement campaigns designed to change human behavior did not improve traffic safety. In fact, the death and injury toll mounted. I was Assistant Secretary of Labor in the mid-1960's when Congress was developing the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, and I was called to testify. It was clear to me and others that motor vehicle injuries and deaths could not be limited by regulating driver behavior. Nonetheless, we had an epidemic on our hands and we needed to do something about it. My friend William Haddon, the first Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, recognized that automobile fatalities were caused not by the initial collision, when the automobile strikes some object, but by a second collision, in which energy from the first collision is transferred to the interior of the car, causing the driver and occupants to strike the steering wheel, dashboard, or other structures in the passenger compartment. The second collision is the agent of injury to the hosts--the car's occupants. Efforts to make automobiles crashworthy follow examples used to control infectious disease epidemics. Reduce or eliminate the agent of injury. Seatbelts, padded dashboards, and airbags are all specifically designed to reduce, if not eliminate, injury caused by the agent of automobile injuries, energy transfer to the human body during the second collision. In fact, we've done nothing revolutionary. All of the technology used to date to make cars crashworthy, including airbags, was developed prior to 1970. Experience shows the approach worked. Of course, it could have worked better, but it worked. Had we been able to totally eliminate the agent--the second collision--the cure would have been complete. Nonetheless, merely by focusing on simple, achievable remedies, we reduced the traffic death and injury epidemic by 30 percent. Motor vehicle deaths declined in absolute terms by 13 percent from 1980 to 1990, despite significant increases in the number of drivers, vehicles, and miles driven. Driver behavior is changing, too. National seatbelt usage is up dramatically, 60 percent now compared to 14 percent in 1984. These efforts have resulted in some 15,000 lives saved and 100,000 injuries avoided each year. We can apply that experience to the epidemic of murder and injury from bullets. The environment in which these deaths and injuries occur is complex. Many factors likely contribute to the rise in bullet- related injury. Here is an important similarity with the situation we faced 25 years ago regarding automobile safety. We found we could not easily alter the behavior of millions of drivers, but we could-- easily--change the behavior of three or four automobile manufacturers. Likewise, we simply cannot do much to change the environment--violent behavior--in which gun-related injury occurs, nor do we know how. We can, however, do something about the agent causing the injury: bullets. Ban them. At least the rounds used disproportionately to cause death and injury; that is, the .25 caliber, .32 caliber, and 9 millimeter bullets. These three rounds account for the ammunition used in about 13 percent of licensed guns in New York City, yet they are involved in one-third of all homicides. They are not, as I have said, useful for sport or hunting. They are used for violence. If we fail to confront the fact that these rounds are used disproportionately in crimes, innocent people will continue to die. I have called on Congress during the past several sessions to ban or heavily tax these bullets. This would not be the first time that Congress has banned a particular round of ammunition. In 1986, it passed legislation written by the Senator from New York banning the so- called ``cop-killer'' bullet. This round, jacketed with tungsten alloys, steel, brass, or any number of other metals, had been demonstrated to penetrate no fewer than four police flak jackets and an additional five Los Angeles County phone books at one time. In 1982, the New York Police Benevolent Association came to me and asked me to do something about the ready availability of these bullets. The result was the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act, which we introduced in 1982, 1983, and for the last time during the 99th Congress. In the end, with the tacit support of the National Rifle Association, the measure passed the Congress and was signed by the President as Public Law 99- 408 on August 28, 1986. In the 1994 crime bill, we enacted my amendment to broaden the ban to include new thick steel-jacketed armor-piercing rounds. There are some 220 million firearms in circulation in the United States today. They are, in essence, simple machines, and with minimal care, remain working for centuries. However, estimates suggest that we have only a 4-year supply of bullets. Some 2 billion cartridges are used each year. At any given time there are some 7.5 billion rounds in factory, commercial, or household inventory. In all cases, with the exception of pistol whipping, gun-related injuries are caused not by the gun, but by the agents involved in the second collision: the bullets. Eliminating the most dangerous rounds would not end the problem of handgun killings. But it would reduce it. A 30-percent reduction in bullet-related deaths, for instance, would save over 10,000 lives each year and prevent up to 50,000 wounds. The bills I introduce today would begin the process. They would begin to control the problem by banning or taxing those rounds used disproportionately in crime--the .25-caliber, .32-caliber, and 9- millimeter rounds. The bills recognize the epidemic nature of the problem, building on findings contained in the June 10, 1992 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association which was devoted entirely to the subject of violence, principally violence associated with firearms. My seventh bill introduces legislation today to amend Title 18 of the United States Code to strengthen the existing prohibition on handgun ammunition capable of penetrating police body armor, commonly referred to as bullet-proof vests. This provision would require the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General to develop a uniform ballistics test to determine with precision whether ammunition is capable of penetrating police body armor. The bill also prohibits the manufacture and sale of any handgun ammunition determined by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General to have armor-piercing capability. Mr. President, it has been seventeen years since I first introduced legislation in the Senate to outlaw armor-piercing, or ``cop-killer,'' bullets. In 1982, Phil Caruso of the Patrolman's Benevolent Association of New York City alerted me to the existence of a Teflon-coated bullet capable of penetrating the soft body armor police officers were then beginning to wear. Shortly thereafter, I introduced the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act of 1982 to prohibit the manufacture, importation, and sale of such ammunition. At that time, armor-piercing bullets--most notably the infamous ``Green Hornet''--were manufactured with a solid steel core. Unlike the softer lead composition of most other ammunition, this hard steel core prevented these rounds from deforming at the point of impact--thus permitting the rounds to penetrate the 18 layers of Kevlar in a standard-issue police vest or ``flak-jacket.'' These bullets could go through a bullet-proof vest like a hot knife through butter. My legislation simply banned any handgun ammunition made with a core of steel or other hard metals. Despite the strong support of the law enforcement community, it took four years before this seemingly non-controversial legislation was enacted into law. The National Rifle Association initially opposed it-- that is, until the NRA realized that a large number of its members were themselves police officers who strongly supported banning these insidious bullets. Only then did the NRA lend its grudging support. The bill passed the Senate on March 6, 1986 by a vote of 97-1, and was signed by President Reagan on August 8, 1986 (Public Law 99-408). That 1986 Act served us in good stead for 7 years. To the best of my knowledge, not a single law enforcement officer was shot with an armor- piercing bullet. Unfortunately, the ammunition manufacturers eventually found a way around the 1986 law. By 1993, a new Swedish-made armor- piercing round, the M39B, had appeared. This pernicious bullet evaded the 1986 statute's prohibition because of its unique composition. Like most common ammunition, it had a soft lead core, thus exempting it from the 1986 law. But this core was surrounded by a heavy steel jacket, solid enough to allow the bullet to penetrate body armor. Once again, our nation's law enforcement officers were at risk. Immediately upon learning of the existence of the new Swedish round, I introduced a bill to ban it. Another protracted series of negotiations ensued before we were able to update the 1986 statute to cover the M39B. We did it with the support of law enforcement organizations, and with technical assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. In particular, James O. Pasco, Jr., then the Assistant Director of Congressional Affairs at BATF, worked closely with me and my staff to get it done. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent on November 19, 1993 as an amendment to the 1994 Crime Bill. Despite these legislative successes, it was becoming evident that continuing ``innovations'' in bullet design would result in new armor- piercing rounds capable of evading the ban. It was at this time that some of us began to explore in earnest the idea of developing a new approach to banning these bullets based on their performance, rather than their physical characteristics. Mind, this concept was not entirely new; the idea had been discussed during our efforts in 1986, but the NRA had been immovable on the subject. The NRA's leaders, and their constituent ammunition manufactures, felt that any such broad- based ban based on a bullets ``performance standard'' would inevitably lead to the outlawing of additional classes of ammunition. They viewed it as a slippery slope, much as they have regarded the assault weapons ban as a slipper slope. The NRA had agreed to the 1986 and 1993 laws only because they were narrowly drawn to cover individual types of bullets. And so in 1993 I asked the ATF for the technical assistance necessary tow write into law an armor-piercing bullet ``performance standard.'' At the time, however, the experts at the ATF informed us that this could not be done. They argued that it was simply too difficult to control for the many variables that contribute to a bullet's capability to penetrate police body armor. We were told that it might be possible in the future to develop a performance-based test for armor-piercing capability, but at the time we had to be content with the existing content-based approach. Well. Two years passed and the Office of Law Enforcement Standards of the National Institute of Standard and Technology wrote a report describing the methodology for just such a armor-piercing bullet performance test. The report concluded that a test to determine armor- piercing capability could be developed within six months. So we know it can be done, if only the agencies responsible for enforcing the relevant laws have the will. The legislation I am introducing requires the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Attorney General, to establish performance standards for the uniform testing of handgun ammunition. Such an objective standard will ensure that no rounds capable of penetrating police body armor, regardless of their composition, will ever be available to those who would use them against our law enforcement officers. I wish to assure the Senate that this measure would in no way infringe upon the rights of legitimate hunters and sportsmen. It would not affect legitimate sporting ammunition used in rifles. It would only restrict the availability of armor-piercing rounds, for which no one can seriously claim there is a genuine sporting use. These cop-killer rounds have no legitimate uses, and they have no business being in the arsenals of criminals. They are designed for one purpose; to kill police officers. The 1986 and 1993 cop-killer bullet laws I sponsored kept us one step ahead of the designers of new armor-piercing rounds. When the legislation I have introduced today is enacted--and I hope it will be early in the 106th Congress--it will put them out of the cop-killer bullet business permanently. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bills be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation intended to help students in those States that do not fare well in academic comparisons with students from other nations. It authorizes grants to States whose students continue to be outperformed by students in a majority of the nations which took the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS. TIMSS showed us that indisputably our students do not fare well in international competition. The most striking finding was that American students do worse, comparative speaking, the longer they are in our schools. Our fourth graders performed in the middle range of scores in math and were second to Japan in science. Our seniors are bringing up the rear. American high school seniors performed among the lowest of the 21 countries in the study. In mathematics our students were outperformed by those of 14 countries, were statistically similar to 4 countries, and outperformed only 2 countries. In science our students were outperformed by those of 11 countries, were similar to 7 countries, and again outperformed only 2 countries. Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, and Singapore did not participate in the twelfth grade study. Just as well, for morale purposes. Their students embarrassed our students at the fourth and eighth grade levels. The two questions that come to mind are what did we expect and what are we to do? Our expectations were high at the beginning of the decade. In September 1989, President Bush met with the Nation's governors in Charlottesville to set out goals for education. Four months later he devoted a sizable portion of his State of the Union Address to setting forth the agreed-upon goals. Some were lofty, harmless, and unmeasurable: ``By the year 2000 every child must start school ready to learn.'' Most children are. ``Every adult must be a skilled, literate worker and citizen.'' We know what it means to be a skilled mechanic, but a skilled citizen? Others were lofty, measurable, and the product of a leakage of reality that was stupefying then as now. First and foremost that ``By the year 2000, U.S. students would be first in the world in math and science achievement.'' President Bush was speaking to Congress in a vocabulary created in the 1960's by James S. Coleman, then professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University. The ``Coleman Report'' introduced the language of educational outputs. Previously we spoke of inputs: student-teacher ration, money per student, and such. Coleman introduced the idea of outputs, and measuring our standing in the world is one such. With Coleman we had a new vocabulary for education, but sadly not a new understanding. The first finding of his remarkable report was ``that the schools are remarkably similar in the effect they have on the achievement of their pupils when the socioeconomic background of the students is taken into account.'' This was seismic. Family background is more important than schools. But 24 years later, in 1990, it had not been learned, or could still be ignored. Stating that our goal was to become the leader in math and science was folly. I wrote in the Winter 1991 Public Interest that ``on no account could the President's goals--the quantified, specific goals-- reasonably be deemed capable of achievement.'' I cited the general decline in high school graduation rates that began in 1970 and the lack of success we had in meeting very similar goals President Reagan set out in 1984. Most basically, we were ignoring Coleman's findings that we would have to start with the American family before we could expect improvements in American students. I concluded the Public Interest piece by saying, ``If, as forecast here, the year 2000 arrives and the United States is nowhere near meeting the educational goals set out in 1990, the potential will nonetheless exist for serous debate as to why what was basically a political plan went wrong. We might even consider how it might have turned out better.'' Our children will not meet the goals set for math and science leadership. How can we help them do better? The TIMSS report says that it is too early to draw specific conclusions about how to improve performance in twelfth grade, that it will take some time to analyze all the data therein. I should thing the higher education community would be at the forefront of this effort, for the colleges are the most immediately affected by undereducated high school graduates. One student in five takes remedial courses in at least one subject. Without giving short shrift to helping our elementary school students, we must focus on finding ways to keep them at the level they have achieved by fourth grade as they continue through school. This bill would make a small contribution to that effort by providing grants of $500,000 to $1,000,000 to states whose students collectively fall below the median score among the nations whose eighth graders retake the TIMSS tests this year or next. The money would be used to improve mathematics or science education. The grants would be awarded competitively; states whose students' scores qualify them must propose constructive ways of using the grants, such as for equipment, teacher training, or other purposes. The Department of Education last year released Linking the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study: Eight grade results. This study showed how the states' NAEP scores and other nations' TIMSS scores could be compared. The Department of Education would use the same process to determine where states rank in comparision with the upcoming results of the TIMSS exams by a new group of eight graders around the world. Those states whose students score below the median in either math or science would be eligible to apply for these grants. Mr. President, money is not the answer to our dismal showing among the nations of the world. Better families is the place to start. These grants, however, would help those states that need help the most. I ask my colleagues for their support and ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a tax bill that would correct a serious misallocation of our limited resources under present law: a tax subsidy that inures largely to the benefit of wealthy sports franchise owners and their players. This legislation-- the Stop Tax-exempt Arena Debt Issuance Act, or STADIA for short--was introduced by the Senator from New York for the first time in 1996. Since that time, the bill has attracted the close scrutiny of bond counsel and their clients, and has received much attention in the press, almost all of which has been favorable. Mr. Keith Olbermann, at the time an anchor of ESPN's Sportscenter program, even declared that the introduction of the bill was ``paramount among all other sports stories'' when introduced. Passage of the bill, Mr. Olbermann said, would be ``the vaccine that . . . could conceivably at least lead towards the cure, if not cure immediately, almost all the ills of sports.'' Mr. Olbermann may just be right about the importance of this bill, both to sports fans and to taxpayers. The bill closes a big loophole, a loophole that ultimately injures state and local governments and other issuers of tax-exempt bonds, that provides an unintended federal subsidy that contravenes Congressional intent, that underwrites bidding wars among cities battling for professional sports franchises, and that enriches persons who need no federal assistance whatsoever. A decade ago, I was much involved in the drafting of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. A major objective of that legislation was to simplify the Tax Code by eliminating a large number of loopholes that had come to be viewed as unfair because they primarily benefited small groups of taxpayers. One of the loopholes we sought to close in 1986 was one that permitted builders of professional sports facilities to use tax-exempt bonds. Mind, we had nothing against new stadium construction, but we made the judgment that scarce Federal resources could surely be used in ways that would better serve the public good. The increasing proliferation of tax-exempt bonds had driven up interest costs for financing roads, schools, libraries, and other governmental purposes, led to mounting revenue losses to the U.S. Treasury, caused an inefficient allocation of capital, and allowed wealthy taxpayers to shield a growing amount of their investment income from income tax by purchasing tax- exempt bonds. Thus, we expressly forbade use of ``private activity'' bonds for sports facilities, intending to eliminate tax-exempt financing of these facilities altogether. Yet team owners, with help from clever tax counsel, soon recognized that the change could work to their advantage. As columnist Neal R. Pierce wrote, team owners ``were not checkmated for long. They were soon exhibiting the gall to ask mayors to finance their stadiums with [governmental] purpose bonds.'' Congress did not anticipate this. After all, by law, governmental bonds used to build stadiums would be tax- exempt only if no more than 10 percent of the debt service is derived from stadium revenue sources. In other words, non-stadium governmental revenues (i.e., tax revenues, lottery proceeds, and the like) must be used to repay the bulk of the debt, freeing team owners to pocket stadium revenues. Who would have thought that local officials, in order to attract or retain a team, would capitulate to team owners--granting concessionary stadium leases and committing limited government revenues to repay stadium debt, thereby hindering their own ability to provide schools, roads and other public investments? The result has been a stadium construction boom unlike anything we have ever seen, and there is no end in sight. What is driving the demand for new stadiums? Mainly, team owners' bottom lines and rising player salaries. Although our existing stadiums are generally quite serviceable, team owners can generate greater income, increase their franchise values dramatically, and compete for high-priced free agents with new tax-subsidized, single-purpose stadiums equipped with luxury skyboxes, club seats and the like. Thus, using their monopoly power, owners threaten to move, forcing bidding wars among cities. End result: new, tax-subsidized stadiums with fancy amenities and sweetheart lease deals. To cite a case in point, Mr. Art Modell recently moved the Cleveland Browns professional football team from Cleveland to Baltimore to become the Ravens. Prior to relocating, Mr. Modell had said, ``I am not about to rape the City [of Cleveland] as others in my league have done. You will never hear me say `if I don't get this I'm moving.' You can go to press on that one. I couldn't live with myself if I did that.'' Obviously, Mr. Modell changed his mind. And why? An extraordinary stadium deal with the State of Maryland. The State of Maryland (and the local sports authority) provided the land on which the stadium is located, issued $87 million in tax-exempt bonds (yielding interest savings of approximately $60 million over a 30-year period as compared to taxable bonds), and contributed $30 million in cash and $64 million in state lottery revenues towards construction of the stadium. Mr. Modell agreed to contribute $24 million toward the project and, in return, receives rent-free use of the stadium (the franchise pays only for the operating and maintenance costs), $65 million in sales of rights to purchase season tickets (so- called ``personal seat licenses''), all revenues from selling the right to name the stadium, luxury suites, premium seats, in-part advertising, and concessions, and 50 percent of all revenues from stadium events other than Ravens' games (with the right to control the booking of those events). Financial World reported that the value of the Baltimore Ravens' franchise increased from $165 million in 1992 (i.e., before the move from Cleveland) to an estimated $250 million after its first season in the new stadium. It's little wonder that Mr. Modell stated: ``The pride and presence of a professional football team is far more important than 30 libraries, and I say that with all due respect to the learning process.'' Meanwhile, the city of Cleveland has been building a new, $225 million stadium to house an expansion football team. When Mr. Modell decided to move his team to Baltimore, the NFL agreed to grant Cleveland a new football team with the same name: the Cleveland Browns. Most cities are not as fortunate when a team leaves. We are even reaching a point at which stadiums are being abandoned before they have been used for 10 to 15 years. An article in Barron's reported that a perception of ``economic obsolescence'' on the part of some owners has doomed even recently-built venues: The eight-year-old Miami Arena is facing a future without its two major tenants, the Florida Panthers hockey team and the Miami Heat basketball franchise, because of inadequate seating capacity and a paucity of luxury suites. The Panthers have already cut a deal to move to a new facility that nearby Broward County is building for them at a cost of around $200 million. Plans call for Dade County to build a new $210 million arena before the end of the decade, despite the fact that the move will leave local taxpayers stuck with servicing the debt on two Miami arenas rather than just one. How do taxpayers benefit from all this? They don't. Ticket prices go way up--and stay up--after a new stadium opens. So while fans are asked to foot the bills through tax subsidies, many no longer can afford the price of admission. A study by Newsday found that ticket prices rose by 32 percent in five new baseball stadiums, as compared to a major league average of 8 percent. Not to mention the refreshments and other concessions, which also cost more in the new venues. According to Barron's, the projects: . . . cater largely to well-heeled fans, meaning the folks who can afford to pay for seats in glassed-in luxury boxes. While the suit-and-cell-phone crowd get all the best seats, the average taxpayer is cosigned to ``cheap seats'' in nosebleed land or, more often, to following his favorite team on television. Nor do these new stadiums provide much, if any, economic benefit to their local communities. Professors Roger G. Noll and Andrew Zimbalist recently published Sports, Jobs & Taxes with the Brookings Institution Press, in which they presented studies of the economic impact of professional sports facilities. The conclusion: [I]n every case, the authors find that the local economic impact of sports teams and facilities is far smaller than proponents allege; in some cases it is negative. These findings are valid regardless of whether the benefits are measured for the local neighborhood, for the city, or for the entire metropolitan area in which a facility is located. Or, as concluded by Ronald D. Utt in his Heritage Foundation ``Backgrounder'' Cities in Denial: The False Promise of Subsidized Tourist and Entertainment Complexes: As the record from around the country indicates, the economic boost from public investment in entertainment complexes is exceptionally modest at best, and counterproductive at worst. It diverts scarce resources and public attention from the less glamorous activities that make more meaningful contributions to the public's well-being. And what of the economic consequences to the communities abandoned by teams that relocate? Any job growth that does result is extremely expensive. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that the new $177 million football stadium for the Baltimore Ravens is expected to cost $127,000 per job created. By contrast, the cost per job generated by Maryland's economic development program is just $6,250. Finally, Federal taxpayers receive absolutely no economic benefit for providing this subsidy. As CRS pointed out, ``Almost all stadium spending is spending that would have been made on other activities within the United States, which means that benefits to the nation as a whole are near zero.'' After all, these terms will invariably locate somewhere in the United States, it is just a matter of where. And should the federal taxpayers in the team's current home town be forced to pay for the team's new stadium in a new city? The answer is unmistakably no. Nevertheless, it seems that every day another professional sports team is demanding a new stadium, threatening a relocation if the demand is not met. This is a growing phenomenon. Professors Noll and Zimbalist wrote that: Between 1989 and 1997, thirty-one new stadiums and arenas were built. At least thirty-nine additional teams are seeking new facilities, are in the process of finalizing the deal to build one, or are waiting to move into one. When I first introduced legislation to address this issue in 1996, stadium bond issuance had already exceeded $1 billion per year. Issuance reached $1.8 billion in 1997, a 30 percent increase from 1996. The bonds issued during 1997 alone represent a federal taxpayer subsidy of approximately $300 million over 10 years. It seems safe to predict that stadium bond issuance continued to increase in 1998. In closing, one note about implementation of this legislation, should it be enacted. It might be considered unfair that some teams have new taxpayer-subsidized sports facilities, while other teams do not, all due to the arbitrary effective date of a change in the tax law. After all, why should some team owners be rewarded with a stadium subsidy while those owners who were reluctant to threaten relocation or to exploit unwarranted tax benefits do without? Congress could certainly provide appropriate transition rules--as it did in the 1986 Act when it first shut down tax-exempt stadium financing--to allow these latter teams stadium subsidies. What is clear is that we have got to do something about the explosion in tax-subsidized stadium construction, if not through this legislation, then through some other similar means. Perhaps Congress should consider some form of excise tax, or some limitation on use of bonds to situations that do not involve a relocating team. We could also consider requiring that stadium bonds be repaid by stadium revenues--or at the very least we could re-examine current law, which effectively prohibits such a use of stadium revenues. Or, we could consider tightening the prohibition on the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance luxury skyboxes so that it cannot be so easily circumvented. The STADIA bill would save about $50 million a year now spent to subsidize professional sports stadiums. The question for Congress is should we subsidize the commercial pursuits of wealthy team owners, encourage escalating player salaries, and underwrite bidding wars among cities seeking or fighting to keep professional sports teams, or would our scarce resources be put to better use? To my mind, this is not a difficult choice. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today I join my colleague, Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, in introducing a bill to allow certain members of the clergy who are currently exempt from Social Security an open season to ``opt in.'' Under section 1402 of the Internal Revenue Code, a member of the clergy who is conscientiously, or because of religious principles, opposed to participation in a public insurance program generally, may elect to be exempt from Social Security coverage and payroll taxes by filing an application of exemption with the Internal Revenue Service within two years of beginning the ministry. To be eligible for the exemption, the member of the clergy must be an ``individual who is a fully ordained, commissioned, or licensed minister of a church, or a member of a religious order who has not taken a vow of poverty.'' Once elected this exemption is irrevocable. This legislation would allow members of the clergy who are not eligible for Social Security a two-year open season in which they could revoke their exemption. At the time of exemption, many clergy did not fully understand the ramifications of their actions, and it is not until later in life, when they are blocked from coverage, that they realize their need for Social Security and Medicare. This decision to ``opt in'' would be irrevocable and all post-election earnings would be subject to the payroll tax and credited for the purposes of Social Security and Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this legislation would affect approximately 3,500 members of the clergy and would increase revenues by about $45 million over the next five years. Similar legislation was passed both in the 1977 Social Security Amendments (Section 316) and in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (Section 1704). This bill has been endorsed by the United States Catholic Conference and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. It is a simple but much-needed measure, and I urge every member of the Senate to support it.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the NIS Education Act. For 75 years academic freedom was squelched in the Soviet Union and the tools to build a democratic society were lost to its successor states. Thankfully, that is now passed. The Russians have the right to claim that they freed their own country from the horrors of a decayed Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. The Russian people and their leaders have something about which to be proud. I rise in that spirit to offer a bill that is simple in both premise and purpose: build democratic leaders of the NIS for the future through education. The NIS Education Act will partially fund graduate education in the social sciences for 500 students from the NIS during the next five years. The benefits of education and exposure to the United States will be long lasting. We want to give these students from the NIS a chance to see American democracy and learn the tools to improve their own society. Indeed, for many it will be their first chance to visit the world's oldest democracy; to see the promise that democracy offers; and to judge its fruits for themselves. As one of our most famous visitors, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote: Let us look to America, not in order to make a servile copy of the institutions that she has established, but to gain a clearer view of the polity that will be the best for us; let us look there less to find examples than instruction; let us borrow from her the principles, rather than the details, of her laws . . . the principles on which the American constitutions rest, those principles of order, of the balance of powers, of true liberty, of deep and sincere respect for right, are indispensable to all republics. . . . In 1948 the United States instituted the now famous Marshall Plan which included among its many provisions a fund for technical assistance. Part of this fund included the ``productivity campaign'' which was designed to bring European businessmen and labor representatives here to learn American methods of production. During the Plan's three years, over 6,000 Europeans came to the United States to study U.S. production. Though the funding for this part of the plan was less than one-half of one percent of all the Marshall Plan aid, its impact was far greater. The impact of the NIS Education Act may also be great. We must note here the current state of Russia's affairs: it is deplorable. Despite this situation, last spring the United States Senate voted to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Throughout the elements of the Russian political system NATO expansion was viewed as a hostile act they will have to defend against; and they have said if they have to defend their territory, they will do so with nuclear weapons; that is all they have left. The distrust born from NATO expansion will not fade quickly. Let us hope that the NIS Education Act will provide individuals from Russia and the other NIS the opportunity to see that we Americans do not hope for Russia's demise and isolation. Perhaps we can dispel the betrayal they may feel as a result of NATO enlargement, and give them the tools to further develop their own democracies. Beyond that, the importance of training the next generation of social scientists in the NIS is immeasurable. It is this generation that will revitalize the universities, teaching the next generation economics, sociology and other disciplines. It is this generation of social scientists who will be prepared to enter their Governments armed with new ideas and new ways of thinking different from the status quo; they will bring their new knowledge and standards, their linkages to the United States back to their own countries, and they will have the best opportunity to influence change there. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, Thomas Carlyle remarked, ``A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.'' Truer words never were written, if construed as a double entendre, about my rare, dear friend, Russell Baker. Baker's last ``Observer'' column appeared in the New York Times this past Christmas, ending a 36-year run. Over the course of some 3 million words, by his own reckoning, Russell Baker has displayed grace, gentle wit, decency, and profound insight into the human condition. Nearly fifteen years ago, I stated that Russell Baker, * * * has been just about the sanest observer of American life that we've had. He has been gentle with us, forgiving, understanding. He has told us truths in ways we have been willing to hear, which is to say he has been humorous . . . on the rare occasion he turns to us with a terrible visage of near rage and deep disappointment, we do well to listen all the harder. He leaves a huge hole I doubt any other journalist can fill. A life well-spent? He's a patriot, having served as a Navy flyer during World War II. For nearly fifty years, he has been married to his beloved Mimi. They have three grown children. His career has taken him from the Baltimore Sun's London Bureau to the Times' Washington Bureau. He has covered presidential campaigns, and he has accompanied Presidents abroad. He has met popes, kings, queens--and common people, too, for whom he has such enormous and obvious empathy. And now he is the welcoming presence on Mobil Masterpiece Theatre. A life well-written? The Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley calls Russell Baker ``a columnist's columnist,'' writing, ``Baker broke his own mold. He was, simply and utterly, sui generis.'' I would not use the past tense, because I doubt Russell Baker is done putting pen to paper. But the sentiment is spot on. A life well-written? Baker has won two Pulitzer Prizes--one in 1979 for Distinguished Commentary and another in 1983 for his 1982 autobiography, ``Growing Up.'' He has written thirteen other books and edited The Norton Book of Light Verse and his own book of American humor. Russell Baker isn't just one of the best newspaper writers around; as Yardley puts it, he is ``one of the best writers around. Period.'' Mr. President, I ask that Russell Baker's last regular ``Observer'' column, which appeared in the December 25, 1998 edition of the New York Times, appear in the Congressional Record following my remarks. I further ask that Jonathan Yardley's ``Russell Baker: A Columnist's Columnist,'' which appeared in the January 4, 1999 edition of the Washington Post, also appear in the Record following my remarks. The material follows: [From the New York Times, Dec. 25, 1998] A Few Words at the End (By Russell Baker) Since it is Christmas, a day on which nobody reads a newspaper anyhow, and since this is the last of these columns titled ``Observer'' which have been appearing in The Times since 1962, I shall take the otherwise inexcusable liberty of talking about me and newspapers. I love them. I have loved them since childhood when my Uncle Allen regularly brought home Hearst's New York Journal-American with its wonderful comics, Burris Jenkins cartoons and tales of rich playboys, murderous playgirls and their love nests. At that age I hadn't a guess about what a love nest might be, and didn't care, and since something about ``love nest'' sounded curiously illegal, I never asked an adult for edification. On Sundays Uncle Allen always brought The New York Times and read himself to sleep with it. Such a dismal mass of gray paper was of absolutely no interest to me. It was Katenzjammer Kids and Maggie and Jiggs of the King Features syndicate with whom I wanted to spend Sunday. At my friend Harry's house I discovered the New York tabloids. Lots of great pictures. Dick Tracy! Plenty of stories about condemned killers being executed, with emphasis on what they had eaten for their last meal, before walking-- the last mile! The tabloids left me enthralled by the lastness of things. Inevitably, I was admitted to practice the trade, and I marveled at the places newspapers could take me. They took me to suburbs on sunny Saturday afternoons to witness the mortal results of family quarrels in households that kept pistols. They took me to hospital emergency rooms to listen to people die and to ogle nurses. They took me to the places inhabited by the frequently unemployed and there taught me the smell of poverty. In winter there was also the smell of deadly kerosene stoves used for heating, though their tendency to set bedrooms on fire sent the morgue a predictable stream of customers every season. The memory of those smells has been a valuable piece of equipment during my career as a columnist. Columnists' tendency to spend their time with life's winners and to lead lives of isolation from the less dazzling American realties makes it too easy for us sometimes to solve the nation's problems in 700 words. Newspapers have taken me into the company of the great as well as the greatly celebrated. On these expeditions I have sat in the Elysee Palace and gazed on the grandeur that was Charles de Gaulle speaking as from Olympus. I have watched Nikita Khrushchev, fresh from terrifying Jack Kennedy inside a Vienna Embassy, emerge to clown with the press. I have been apologized to by Richard Nixon. I have seen Adlai Stevenson, would-be President of the United States, shake hands with a department-store dummy in Florida. I have been summoned on a Saturday morning to the Capitol of the United States to meet with Lyndon Johnson, clad in pajamas and urgently needing my advice on how to break a civil-rights filibuster. I have often been played for a fool like this by other interesting men and, on occasion, equally interesting women. Pope John XXIII included me in an audience he granted the press group en route to Turkey, Iran and points east with President Eisenhower. The Pope's feet barely reached the floor and seemed to dance as he spoke. Newspapers took me to Westminister Abbey in a rental white tie and topper to see Queen Elizabeth crowned and to Versailles in another rental white-tie-and-tails rig to share a theater evening with the de Gaulles and the John F. Kennedys. Thanks to newspapers, I have made a four-hour visit to Afghanistan, have seen the Taj Mahal by moonlight, breakfasted at dawn on lamb and couscous while sitting by the marble pool of a Moorish palace in Morocco and once picked up a persistent family of fleas in the Balkans. In Iran I have ridden in a press bus over several miles of Oriental carpets with which the Shah had ordered the street covered between airport and town to honor the visiting Eisenhower, a man who, during a White House news conference which I attended in shirtsleeves, once identified me as ``that man that's got the shirt on.'' I could go on and on, and probably will somewhere sometime, but the time for this enterprise is up. Thanks for listening for the past three million words.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, might I just confirm the observations of the distinguished majority leader. He has been faultless in his effort to find agreement on all sides in regard to all questions of which there is yet no list or likely ever to be a final one. But we admire him so and appreciate his efforts and will continue to work with him.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, will the distinguished majority leader yield?

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am delighted that the Senate will confirm Denise O'Donnell to be the United States Attorney for the Western District of New York. She now becomes the first woman in the history of the 17-county Western District to be chief federal prosecutor. No woman before has ever had a presidential appointment in the district to one of the top three justice posts: judge, prosecutor or federal marshall. Ms. O'Donnell is a career Assistant U.S. Attorney. She came to the Western District in 1985 as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and was named First Assistant in 1993. She has served as Interim U.S. Attorney since September 1997. In addition, she was a part-time instructor in the the Trial Technique Program at her alma mater, the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School. She graduated summa cum laude from that institution and was the senior editor of its law review. During her distinguished career as a prosecutor, Ms. O'Donnell has handled a host of complex criminal matters, including cases involving RICO, tax fraud, narcotics, and violent crimes. She is also an active participant in her local and state bar organizations and, last year was the Women Lawyers Association Lawyer of the Year. I am confident that Ms. O'Donnell will serve with the highest distinction. nomination of margaret e. curran

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am very pleased that the Senate has confirmed Norman A. Mordue to the bench of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. Norman Mordue is a distinguished and competent jurist, having previously served as an assistant district attorney and county judge. He is now a New York Supreme Court justice. He is also a war hero. He earned this country's second highest military honor, the Distinguished Service Cross for Extraordinary Heroism, while serving as an infantry platoon leader with the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam. Judge Mordue has been active in many New York State Bar activities-- he is a presiding officer in the Bar's judicial section and a continuing legal education lecturer--and he has been elected by his peers to head the Supreme Court Justices' Association. I have every confidence that he will make an excellent addition to the federal judiciary. nomination of margaret seymour

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, as we wind up the 105th Congress, I would like to commend Senator Bennett and the Special Committee on the Year 2000 (Y2K) Technology Problem for their work in addressing the computer problem. The Committee has done a fine job in looking at the impact of Y2K on all aspects of our critical infrastructure: the utilities industry, the health care sector, financial services, transportation, government, and businesses. The Committee should also be applauded for the role it played in formulating and passing S. 2392, The Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act. As an original cosponsor of this piece of legislation, I am delighted to see that the President signed it into law yesterday. This bill should help us ameliorate the Y2K problem. I say well done to the Committee for all of the work it has done in such a short amount of time. Almost two and a half years ago, in the 104th Congress, I sounded the alarm on the computer problem. On July 31, 1996, I sent President Clinton a letter expressing my views and concerns about Y2K. I warned him of the ``extreme negative economic consequences of the Y2K Time Bomb,'' and suggested that ``a presidential aide be appointed to take responsibility for assuring that all Federal Agencies, including the military, be Y2K compliant by January 1, 1999 [leaving a year for `testing'] and that all commercial and industrial firms doing business with the Federal government must also be compliant by that date.'' January 1, 1999 is quickly approaching. Progress has been made on the Y2K problem. The public and private sector are starting to give it the attention that it deserves. But much work remains to be done. As we head into the 106th Congress, we must continue to work on this problem with dedication and resolve. Historically, the fin de siecle has caused quite a stir. Until now, however, there has been little factual basis on which doomsayers and apocalyptic fear mongers could spread their gospel. After studying the potential impact of Y2K on the telecommunications industry, health care, economy, and other vital sectors of our lives, I would like to warn that we have cause for fear. For the failure to address the millennium bug could be catastrophic.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to offer my congratulations to the former United States Ambassador to Spain, Richard N. Gardner who earlier this year received the Thomas Jefferson Award for his service during his tenure in Madrid. Since its inception in 1993, the Thomas Jefferson Award has been given annually by American Citizens Abroad to the State Department employee who has ``done the most for American citizens overseas.'' After consulting American clubs, Chambers of Commerce, and individual Americans around the world, American Citizens Abroad announced in Geneva that Richard Gardner was this year's recipient. The Ambassador was commended for his assistance to U.S. business, his establishment of twenty new scholarships for young Spaniards to study in the States, and for his frequent and informed articles in Spanish publications. Richard Gardner currently serves as the Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia University Law School. He has spent a lifetime devoted to promoting international stability. He recognizes as only too few do the value of international law in the world. I ask that his article ``Why U.N. Dues Aren't Optional'' from The International Herald Tribune be printed in the Record and with appreciation and admiration I extend my congratulations to Ambassador Gardner and his wife, Danielle, on this most splendid and deserved award. The article follows: [From the International Herald Tribune, Mar. 11, 1998] Why UN Dues Aren't Optional (By Richard N. Gardner) New York.--A top priority for the Clinton administration is to persuade Congress to pay more than $1 billion in back dues to the United Nations. Failure to do so would undermine critical UN operations in peacekeeping and development and further diminish U.S. influence in the world organization. Complicating the administration's task is a new and fallacious idea, accepted by many members of Congress, that America has no legal obligation to pay its UN debts. Last fall the Senate Foreign Relations Committee declared that the UN Charter ``in no way creates a `legal obligation' '' on the U.S. Congress to provide the money to pay the dues. In justification, the committee wrote: ``The United States Constitution places the authority to tax United States citizens and to authorize and appropriate those funds solely in the power of the United States Congress.'' Those statements reflect a dangerous misunderstanding of the relation between international and domestic law. The UN Charter is a treaty that legally binds every UN member. Of course, a treaty cannot override the U.S. Constitution; Congress is free as a matter of domestic law to violate U.S. obligations under international law. But these truisms do not alter the facts: If Congress exercises its constitutional right to violate a treaty, America still has a legal obligation to other countries, and refusal to live up to U.S. commitments can have legal consequences. There is no international police force to enforce international law, but nations generally observe treaty obligations because of a desire for reciprocity and fear of reprisal. In 1961, when the Soviet Union refused to pay its assessments for the Congo and Middle East peacekeeping operations, Republican and Democratic members of Congress insisted that the United States go to the World Court to get an advisory opinion that the Soviet Union had a legal obligation to pay. The U.S. brief to the court, in whose preparation I had a part, stated: ``The General Assembly's adoption and apportionment of the organization's expenses create a binding legal obligation on the part of the member states to pay their assessed shares.'' In 1962, the court agreed with that proposition, and the General Assembly accepted it. Article 19 of the UN Charter provides that a country in arrears of its assessments by two full years shall lose its vote in the General Assembly. The assembly, in an unfortunate failure of political will, failed to apply that sanction to the Soviet Union when it became applicable in 1964. Nevertheless, the assembly recently has regularly applied the loss-of-vote sanction. We are not just dealing here with legal technicalities, but with realpolitik in the best sense of the word. If nations were free to treat their UN assessments as voluntary, the financial basis of the organization would quickly dissolve. Some Americans would not mind it if the United Nations' financial support unraveled. They do not seem fully to appreciate how important the United Nations' work in conflict resolution, peacekeeping, sustainable development, humanitarian relief and human rights can be for America. If the United States has no legal obligation to live up to its treaties and other international agreements, neither do other countries. Then, any country would be free to violate any legal commitment it has made to America, whether to open its domestic market, reduce its nuclear arsenal, provide basing for U.S. ships and aircraft, extradite or prosecute terrorists or refrain from poisoning the global environment.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I agree with the distinguished Chairman of the Finance Committee. I would also point out that both the funding for the Conservation Trust and the opportunity to provide much needed monies to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands could have been accomplished by including the Administration's rum ``cover over'' proposal as part of the tax extenders package in the omnibus appropriations measure. The needs of Puerto Rico, and the importance of this provision, were magnified by the devastation recently caused by Hurricane Georges. Despite significant bipartisan support in the Senate and the House, and a strong push from the Administration, for some reason the House refused to include this provision in the bill. I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to work with him next year to address this issue.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the Senate has done the right thing by agreeing to support David R. Kaczynski in his effort to donate more money to the victims of his brother, ``Unabomber'' Theodore J. Kaczynski. I hope the House of Representatives will now follow suit. This is a rare opportunity for Congress to write a happy ending to a sad story, and we should seize it. The U.S. Congress should not be in the business of discouraging acts of altruism. In August, Mr. Kaczynski and his wife, Linda E. Patrik, constituents of mine from Schenectady, New York, received a $1 million reward from the FBI for information leading to the 1996 arrest of Theodore Kaczynski. Immediately upon receiving the reward, David Kaczynski pledged that after payment of taxes and attorney's fees, all reward monies would go to the Unabomber's victims and their families. Mr. Kaczynski then contacted my office to ask whether Congress could provide, through legislation, that no tax be imposed so that a greater amount would be passed on to the victims. The uniquely compelling case for this measure was clear from the moment David Kaczynski first contacted me. I agreed and immediately introduced legislation, which was cosponsored by Senators D'Amato, Baucus and Burns. Since then, our legislation has received the support of others. Senators Roth, Hatch, Dodd, Lautenberg, and Moseley-Braun have all stated their strong support for the measure, and in the House, Congressman Mike NcNulty and Amo Houghton of New York, both Ways and Means Committee members, have introduced companion legislation. The Kaczynski family's decision was a wonderful, selfless act of humanity. Congress ought to applaud and support this fine example. It is good public policy to encourage reward recipients to donate those proceeds to the victims of violent crime. Without this legislation, federal taxes on the reward would total approximately $355,000. In other words, the Federal Treasury would get that money instead of the victims. It would be unjust for the Federal government to take that money when we have the power to pass it on to the victims. I thank Senators for supporting this important measure, and I urge its early enactment.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I would agree with the chairman of the Committee that the issues raised by the Senator from New Mexico deserve further attention next year, and would also welcome the opportunity to work with him and with my other colleagues.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the budget agreement reached on Thursday evening was celebrated by both parties in competing press conferences, and there may well be much to commend in the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act. The trouble is, how would anyone know? According to a wire service report on Friday, the bill was ``expected to be more than one foot thick.'' In fact, it is closer to two feet thick, and contains some 4,000 pages. Will any Senator or Representative know what's in that monster bill when it is passed shortly--as is now inevitable? Of course not. Yet in recent years we are given to feel that even to ask such a question is to reveal an embarrassing naivete. Last year, as Ranking Member of the Committee on Finance, I was Floor Manager during Senate consideration of an 820-page bill somewhat unconvincingly entitled the ``Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997.'' While it was pending before the Senate, the only copy of the bill present on the Senate floor was on the Democratic Manager's desk, having been obtained by our resourceful and learned Minority Chief Tax Counsel, Mr. Nick Giordano. A second copy provided to the majority Manager, Chairman Roth, had been lent to the Budget Committee so that it could be inspected for violations of assorted rules. During that debate, many Senators, having no other way to find out, came round to ask if I could ascertain whether this or that provision was in the bill. Sensing my opportunity, I would reply, ``I could, but what will you pay me?'' This year's legislation is no different; we continue to discover items that mysteriously found their way into--or out of--the text long after the agreement was announced. And so as we reflect on the successes and failures of the 105th Congress now ending, I rise simply to sound a note of caution, if not alarm. Having served here for 22 years now--I looked up at the beginning of this Congress to find myself 9th in seniority among Senate Democrats, and 14th in the Senate overall--I am troubled that of late we are getting ominously careless with our procedures. This growing neglect of our rules is becoming increasingly hurtful to the institution of the United States Congress. Surely it is not how business ought to be conducted in the national legislature of the United States of America. In an article yesterday headlined ``Spending Deal Represents Failure, Not Success,'' the distinguished Vice President and columnist for the Associated Press, Walter Mears, recalls that A decade ago, President Reagan confronted Congress with the ``43 pounds of paper'' it passed in 1987 to finance the government in one catchall bill after failing to enact separate appropriations. Reagan told the Democratic Congress not to pass any more ``behemoths'' like that, and said he wouldn't sign one again. ``The budget process has broken down,'' said Reagan, ``It needs a drastic overhaul.'' I do not assert that in some earlier, happier time, every Member of Congress read every word of every bill. That has never been possible. But only quite recently have the negotiations over, and contents of, our mammoth annual budget measures been kept secret from nearly everyone save the two Republican Leaders and the White House Chief of Staff. We are beginning to resemble a kind of bastard parliamentary system. Members loudly debate issues on the floor, but the real decisions are made in a closed room by three or four people. This deterioration in the process has taken place over about the last half decade, or so I would reason. Such things would never have been attempted, or tolerated, when I arrived here. That was a time when the rules and prerogatives of this institution were still revered. One shudders to think how the current state of affairs would be viewed by men of the House such as Thomas P. O'Neill or Dan Rostenkowski, or by giants of the Senate like Howard H. Baker or Russell B. Long. But the reality is that in recent years, a growing lack of respect for the institution of the Congress has begun to manifest itself in any number of damaging ways. To cite just a few other examples: The budget process has broken down. This year, for the first time in 24 years, Congress failed to pass a budget resolution. And we have had great difficulty passing reconciliation bills. In fact, the last proper, complete reconciliation bill we were able to enact was the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. Since Thursday night we have been busily congratulating ourselves over completion of the latest budget--as if the simple act of keeping the government open is a unique achievement. Committees of Conference have been reduced to formalities. Meetings of conference committees are now rarely convened, and when they are, it is frequently done only to announce an outcome that has been predetermined--generally without participation by the minority. The appointment of conferees has sometimes been corrupted, with conference membership or party ratios within conferences subject to manipulation for partisan advantage. Even the ``scope of the conference'' requirement of Rule 28 of the Standing Rules of the Senate, which prohibited consideration by conference committees of provisions not in the bill passed by either house, has been overturned. On October 3, 1996, the Senate casually did away with that rule by a vote of 56-39. Likewise we no longer prohibit legislating on appropriations bills. This was a most useful rule that had existed since the adoption of the Standing Rules of the Senate in 1884; it helped prevent all manner of mischief in the annual appropriations process. Yet on March 16, 1995, during consideration of a bill to provide emergency supplemental appropriations for the Department of Defense, we voted, in effect, to repeal the rule. An amendment was offered to impose a moratorium on listing of new endangered species by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Chair promptly sustained a point of order that the amendment violated the rule against legislation on appropriations bills. Without any thought given to the consequences, the ruling of the Chair was immediately appealed and then overturned, by a vote of 57-42. A new precedent had been set, and the rule was wiped out. Not one word was said on the floor, before or after the vote, about the terrible precedent we were creating. I voted against both of those changes to our rules. I found it astonishing on both occasions that the Senate would so blithely disregard its own procedures. The gigantic new Omnibus Appropriations Act, filled with hundreds of non-appropriations provisions never considered separately in either house, is the latest example of why those two little-noticed votes were big mistakes. Indeed, the distinction between appropriations measures and legislative changes is now so blurred that on Sunday, the House Appropriations Committee posted a press release on its website announcing ``Significant Legislative Provisions in Appropriations Bills.'' Parliamentary irregularities are creeping their way into acceptance. For instance, in several cases the Senate has, by unanimous consent, ``deemed'' bills passed before they are received from the House of Representatives. In 1997, a provision giving a $50 billion tax credit to the tobacco industry was slipped into a conference report after the conference committee had completed its work. (That provision was repealed soon after its existence was discovered.) In another case in 1998, the routine right to modify a floor amendment was used for a different purpose altogether: to undo a compromise agreement on assistance to tobacco farmers, and to defeat without a vote a bipartisan measure reported by the Committee on Finance. Also of concern is the now common practice of filing ``motions to bring to a close debate'' under Rule 22--cloture motions--on bills before a single word of debate has been uttered on the floor. This nonchalance about our procedures reached an extreme in 1995 and 1996 when we took up the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution and the Line Item Veto Act. These measures, which were part of Item One in the ``Contract with America,'' proposed to dramatically alter the procedures by which Congress, under Article I, Sections 7 and 8, of the Constitution, exercises the power of the purse. We had the good sense to defeat the Balanced Budget Amendment, albeit narrowly. However, the Line Item Veto Act passed the Senate by a vote of 69-31 on March 27, 1996--notwithstanding the pleas of this Senator and others that the bill was unconstitutional. Ultimately, of course, that Act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on June 25, 1998 in the case of Clinton v. City of New York. But not before the Senator from New York, along with our revered leader Senator Byrd and Senators Levin and Hatfield, had to take the extraordinary step of becoming plaintiffs in one lawsuit, which was vacated due to lack of standing, and amici curiae in a second suit. Happily, as I say, we finally prevailed. In his powerful concurring opinion concluding that the Line Item Veto Act violated the separation of powers, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that ``Liberty is always at stake when one or more of the branches seek to transgress the separation of powers.'' Justice Kennedy went on to say this: ``The citizen has a vital interest in the regularity of the exercise of governmental power.'' I repeat: ``The citizen has a vital interest in the regularity of the exercise of governmental power.'' Surely this admonition applies to the regularity of the exercise of power in the United States Senate. We are not talking about mere technicalities or niceties to be observed or ignored at whim. The rules and procedures of the United States Congress matter. Just as the finely-wrought proscriptions in our Constitution matter. Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution provides that ``Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings. . .'' Those rules are meant to be, and must be, obeyed. The Supreme Court held that the Line Item Veto Act threatened liberty by distorting the carefully designed constitutional procedure for passage and enactment of laws. In quite the same way, our failure to observe the rules and procedures of this institution threaten, ultimately, democratic representation of the American people in the Congress. Disregarding our rules erodes the power conferred by citizens on each elected Member of the Congress, undermining the integrity of our legislative process. And it therefore weakens the Congress as an institution and contributes to cynicism and a loss of confidence among the citizenry about our competence to govern. If we do not take better care, I fear we will find this institution in decline. I know that my friend Senator Robert C. Byrd, whose knowledge of the Senate rules is unsurpassed, shares these concerns. Yesterday on the floor, he said this of the pending Omnibus Appropriations Act: I will never vote for another such monstrosity for as long as I am privileged to hold this office. I hope that I never see another such monstrosity. I will never again support such a convolution of the legislative process as the one we have seen this year, and I hope that others will agree that this process is just as silly and as sad and as ridiculous and as disgraceful as I think it is. I hope they will join me in an effort to prevent it in the future. That is not the kind of statement that Robert C. Byrd, the Ranking Member of the Committee on Appropriations and our sometime President pro tempore, would make lightly. I hope Senators were listening. Perhaps the Committee on Rules and Administration, on which Senator Byrd and I serve together, will see fit to take up this issue. And I do hope all Senators will recognize the importance of regular order and take greater care with the rules of this institution when the 106th Congress convenes in January of 1999. In the meantime, on this measure, my vote is No.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today humbled by the considerable accomplishments of a great friend and colleague, Lee Hamilton of Indiana. After 17 terms, he will leave the House of Representatives at year's end. What a profound loss for us all. Not surprisingly, Lee Hamilton continues to be recognized for his achievements. Last Tuesday's New York Times quotes Congressman Hamilton as ``feeling pretty good about the job'' he has held for 34 years. ``I have more confidence in the institutions of government and the Congress than most of my constituents. The process is often untidy, but it works.'' David S. Broder wrote in a column entitled ``Lee Hamilton's Mark,'' ``. . . no one will be more missed by his colleagues of both parties than Lee Hamilton of Indiana . . . (h)e is an exemplar of the common-sense, instinctively moderate model of legislator that used to be common in Congress but is increasingly rare today.'' I had the honor of serving with Representative Hamilton on the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy (1995-1997). Our Commission recommended unanimously that legislation should be adopted to govern the system of classifying and declassifying information, which for a half century has been left to executive regulation. The Congressional members of the Commission introduced such legislation in the House and Senate and one of my largest regrets for the 105th Congress is that we could not get this legislation adopted in honor of Lee Hamilton's retirement. This will take some time, but eventually, surely, we will pass such a bill. As the former Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Lee Hamilton has showed an extraordinary capacity to lead our country through difficult times. Last year, Lee received the Edmund S. Muskie Distinguished Public Service Award from the Center for National Policy and, just last month, the Hubert Humphrey Award from the American Political Science Association. I might note here that Hubert Humphrey was the first Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars here in Washington. To our great benefit, Lee Hamilton has just recently agreed to head the Wilson Center. He will assume his new post in January, succeeding the Center's distinguished director, Charles Blitzer. Dr. Blitzer's tremendous achievement--the building of a permanent home for the Wilson Center at the now complete Federal Triangle--fulfills the commitment to President Wilson's living memorial as established in its 1968 founding statute. That statute required that the Center be located on Pennsylvania Avenue. Today the Wilson Center can be found at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue where it maintains architectural and functional autonomy from its neighbor, the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. It is of enormous comfort to this Senator to know that Lee Hamilton will remain close at hand and continue to engage us all in matters of great import. I ask that David Broder's column ``Lee Hamilton's Mark'' from The Washington Post and the article, ``A Life Reflected in a House Transformed,'' by Melinda Henneberger in The New York Times be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From the Washington Post, October 11, 1998] Lee Hamilton's Mark (By David S. Broder) He's not the oldest or longest-serving of the 21 House members who are retiring this year and not running for other offices. Those distinctions belong to two other Democrats, Illinois' Sidney Yates, the ardent defender of arts funding, and Texas's Henry Gonzalez, the populist scourge of bankers and other big shots. He may not have had the political impact of a much more junior Republican retiree, New York's Bill Paxon, who led the 1994 campaign that ended 40 years of Democratic control of the House and who appeared to be on track to a future speakership until he fell out last year with his former ally Newt Gingrich. But my hunch is that no one will be more missed by his colleagues of both parties than Lee Hamilton of Indiana, who is ending a notable 34-year career in the House with the adjournment of this Congress. Hamilton is a throwback to the old days of the House--and not just because he still has the crew cut he wore when he came to Washington as a small-town Hoosier lawyer in the Democratic landslide of 1964. He is an exemplar of the common-sense, instinctively moderate model of legislator that used to be common in Congress but is increasingly rare today. Hamilton has made his mark in two areas unlikely to produce public acclaim. Like his mentor and friend, former representative Morris Udall of Arizona, he has struggled with modest results to improve the internal organization and operations of the House and the way its members pay for their campaigns. More notably, he has been the Democrats' leader on international policy, serving as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee when his party had the majority. In both arenas, he has consistently placed principle above partisanship and worked comfortably with like-minded Republicans. He first attracted attention in 1965 when, as chairman of the big freshman Democratic class, he wrote President Lyndon Johnson urging ``a pause'' in the breakneck pace of Great Society legislation, the first clear signal that Johnson has pushed the mandate of his election sweep beyond safe political limits. Johnson came to Indiana to help Hamilton with his first--and hardest--reelection campaign in 1966, but the following year, Hamilton again demonstrated his independence--and his prescience--by sponsoring one of the first (but unsuccessful) amendments to scale back American military operations in Vietnam. As Hamilton recalled in a speech last November, Johnson had been a friend as well as his ally. ``He had the freshman class in the Cabinet Room and told us, `Buy your home.' He said, `If you're like most politicians, it'll be the only decent investment you'll ever make.' I did, and it was.'' But after the Vietnam amendment, Johnson called him in. ``I will never forget his eyes when he asked me, `How could you do that to me, Lee?' '' Hamilton recalled. ``I have served with eight presidents and 11 secretaries of state, and I have sympathized with the burdens and pressures all of them have faced.'' But he has operated on the principle that if Congress is to meet its responsibilities, it must offer its best and most candid counsel to an administration. ``Our great fault,'' he told me, ``is timidity. We don't like to stick our necks out.'' That has not been true of Lee Hamilton. He has given his best judgment freely and plainly, usually supportive of the president, but has never been reluctant to dissent. In his final months in office, Hamilton received the Edmund S. Muskie Distinguished Public Service Award from the Center for National Policy and the Hubert Humphrey Award from the American Political Science Association. Accepting the first award, he said, ``Politics and politicians may be unpopular, but they're also indispensable. . . . Representative democracy, for all its faults, enables us to live together peacefully and productively. It works through a process of deliberation, negotiation and compromise--in a word, the process of politics. At its best, representative democracy gives us a system where all of us have a voice in the process and a stake in the product.'' Hamilton understands that ``when healthy skepticism about government turns to cynicism, it becomes the great enemy of democracy.'' So his new career will position him to battle for understanding of politics and against corrosive distrust. He will head the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, where academics from other nations gather with Americans to think and write about contemporary public policy problems. He will also lead a newly formed Center on Congress at Indiana University, an interdisciplinary program aimed at making the legislative branch less mysterious and suspicious. He is the right man for both jobs. [From the New York Times, Oct. 13, 1998] A Life Reflected in a House Transformed (By Melinda Henneberger) Washington, Oct. 12.--As he waits for the last votes of his 34-year Congressional career, Democratic Representative Lee Hamilton runs one hand through his crew cut and thinks out loud, in his right-down-the-middle way, about why the House is both meaner and cleaner, more hard-working and less thoughtful, than when he arrived here from Columbus, Ind., in 1965. In those days, he recalls, members of Congress palled around, played cards and made a good-faith effort to be on the golf course by 1 P.M. Now they barely have time to get to know one another, let alone contemplate the meaning of legislative life, in the press of 24-hour news cycles and three-day work weeks bracketed by rush-rush trips home. Back then, you could legally accept fancy gifts and pocket leftover campaign money when you retired. Even if you managed to get into trouble, there was no House ethics committee until 1978. Then again, neither was there any need to work full time raising money. Mr. Hamilton is nostalgic about the $30,000 he spent as a small-town lawyer on his first race in 1964, the year of Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide. He spent $1 million on his last race in 1996. In his office, the Congressman's papers are already being packed up, and the mail marked ``return to sender.'' Settling in for a leisurely interview, the 67-year-old Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer drapes his large frame over a straight wooden chair in a room adorned with paintings of his dogs, Tawny and Buffy. The politically moderate son of a Methodist minister from Evansville, Ind., he has been a major force on foreign policy and led opposition to aid for the Nicaraguan contra guerrillas. He was House chairman of the panel that investigated Reagan Administration support for the contras with the proceeds of illegal arms sales to Iran, and also chaired the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees. The Presidential nominees Michael S. Dukakis and Bill Clinton seriously considered him as a running mate. Yet when invited to linger for a moment over some favorite accomplishment, he mentions, not very grandly, that he was proud simply to have been among those who voted for the creation of Medicare, even if he did not write the bill. Despite his talk about 1960's sociability on the Hill, Mr. Hamilton seems always to have put in long hours. A 1966 profile in The Washington Star noted that, ``Hamilton gets to the office every morning at about 6:30, reads all the mail, answers nearly all the roll calls, and has missed going back home on weekends only a couple of times since he took office. He doesn't drink and he doesn't smoke and he works hard.'' He has been enormously popular in the Ninth District in southeastern Indiana. (He is also popular among his staff in a workplace in which aides are often treated casually. Behind his back, staff members are misty about his retirement.) ``I've been going to a lot of retirement dinners back in Indiana,'' he said, ``and the things people remember are the simple things, that I've tried to be accessible and honest and tried to make government work. When I drive through my district and see a sewage system or a library or a school I've had something to do with, that gives me a lot of satisfaction.'' And most likely, this unwillingness to trumpet his career and contributions would have set him apart at any moment in the history of the big, noisy institution he clearly loves. On the other side of the ledger, Mr. Hamilton said, ``You don't walk away from a 34-year career without some regrets, and I leave very disappointed that we haven't done something on campaign finance or affordable health care.'' Not surprisingly, his most immediate regret is what he sees as the necessity of an inquiry into the possible grounds for impeaching the President, a man he has praised on policy and excoriated for the private conduct that got him into trouble. ``It's a depressing way to end a career, on the note of impeachment,'' he said, removing his glasses, fiddling with them, putting them back on. ``I'm distressed with the ending, but you don't control these things.'' Still, living through Watergate and Iran-contra, Mr. Hamilton said, has given him some perspective on the current situation: ``We look back now and say the system worked in Watergate but in the middle of it, it was messy and partisan. And something like that is happening now, in my view.'' How does he answer those in his own party who respond to criticism of Mr. Clinton's behavior by saying essentially that President Reagan did far worse and survived? ``In Iran- contra you were looking at a President abusing the powers of the Presidency''--as opposed to the personal conduct under discussion in the Clinton case, in his view. ``But though a lot of people on the left were disappointed we didn't hang him, the evidence didn't point to that.'' Mr. Hamilton was among the 31 Democrats who broke party ranks and voted for an open-ended impeachment inquiry. He thought it only right to continue the process, he said, though he has concluded that the President's wrongdoing does not meet the constitutional standard of an impeachable offense and believes Mr. Clinton will finish his term. And as Mr. Hamilton leaves office, he wants to spend some time thinking about how the President might be rehabilitated to assure that America is not weakened, particularly on the international stage. Mr. Hamilton's future includes two new jobs, as director of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, a Government- sponsored institution that promotes research as well as exchanges between scholars and policymakers, and of a new center for the study of Congress at Indiana University. He and his wife, Nancy, will stay on here, in their home in Alexandria, Va. Not only Congress, he said, but political life in general is a different game now than it was in 1960, when Mr. Hamilton was unable to turn out a respectable crowd to greet Senator John F. Kennedy in Columbus. ``I called everybody I knew and couldn't get 40 people to come out to the Old City Hall to see him just a few months before he got the nomination'' for the Presidency, he said, laughing at the innocence of the time. ``Now you start running for President four years ahead of time and the voters are so well informed, you do something and get back to the office and the phones are already ringing.'' Not all of that sophistication is progress, he said. He dared to say what no candidate would: that today's elected officials pay too much attention to constituents, tracking every hiccup in public opinion. In some ways, he feels he is leaving on the same note he came in on: ``We're still fighting about Medicare 30 years later.'' But there has been positive change, he said, in that the workings of Congress are much more open now, and the body more truly representative, with many more women and members of minority groups in office. If he has learned anything, he said, it is the difficulty of making representative government work. He has for some time now missed the collegiality of his early years in Washington, when a senior Republican corrected a glaring parliamentary error Mr. Hamilton had made on a bill the man opposed--an act of generosity that he said would be unimaginable today. He will miss his colleagues, too. And if he has not fully focused on his feelings about leaving, because there has not been time, Mr. Hamilton exits feeling pretty good about the job: ``I don't leave as a pessimist. I'm not gloomy because I have more confidence in the institutions of government and the Congress than most of my constituents. The process is often untidy, but it works.''

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the news from Russia remains grim. The Times reported on Saturday: Rocked by its worst harvest in 45 years and a plummeting ruble, Russia appealed today for relief aid from the European Union. It has also approached the United States and Canada for help. Clearly Russia is in a perilous--one could say dangerous--state. The grain harvest is down almost 40 percent primarily because of a summer drought in the Volga River and Ural regions. And the financial crisis in Russia has only added to the problems. For example the Times also reports that because payment has not been made ``15 ships full of American frozen poultry have delayed unloading their cargo.'' What to do? For starters let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. Following the defeat of Germany in World War I, we failed to provide aid to the Weimar Republic as it attempted to sustain a democratic government. The resulting Nazi reign of terror was both devastating and unspeakable. By contrast, following the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, we adopted the Marshall Plan to rebuild a democratic Germany. From 1948 to 1952, the United States gave almost $3 billion a year to fund the Marshall Plan. A comparable contribution in round numbers, given the current size of the United States economy, would be about $100 billion a year for five years. Recognize that Russia, no less than Nazi Germany, is a defeated nation--the latter on the military battlefield, the former on the economic battlefield. To keep Russia on the road to democracy and economic reform will require economic aid perhaps on the scale of the Marshall Plan. When you consider what we have been through, a post cold war Marshall Plan does not seem excessive. Particularly since we were able to fund the Marshall Plan at the same time we were threatened by an empire that subscribed to the view that eventually the entire world would succumb to communism. The singular truth is that we were utterly unprepared for the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 1980s we began a defense build up which resulted in the largest debt the United States has ever known. When the Soviet Union did collapse, we felt broke and unable to launch the kind of economic assistance that we were able to do after World War II. While we have provided some assistance, it falls far short of Russia's needs and lacks a coherent plan. Such a plan would include technical assistance on tax collections, operations of banks and stock exchanges, protection of property and individual rights to name just a few areas that a country with little or no experience with democracy and free markets might find helpful. Let me emphasize: without real short- and long-term financial assistance none of this technical assistance will be effective or, indeed, welcome. But the United States cannot do it alone. What would make the countries of Central and Eastern Europe more secure than any military alliance would be membership in the European Union. Unfortunately, our Western European allies have not embraced their eastern neighbors in this way. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has explained that to a certain extent, expanding NATO served as a surrogate for EU enlargement. Roger Cohen reports Ambassador Holbrooke's remark in the International Herald Tribune: Almost a decade has gone by since the Berlin Wall fell and, instead of reaching out to Central Europe, the European Union turned toward a bizarre search for a common currency. So NATO enlargement had to fill the void. We seem to have stumbled into a reflexive anti-Russian mode. The United States continues to act as though the Cold War is still the central reality of foreign policy, withal there has been a turnover and we now have the ball and it is time to move downfield. For instance, in a Times story on Sunday about the selection of a trans-Caucus oil pipeline, it was reported: The Administration favored the Baku-Ceyhan route because it would pass through only relatively friendly countries-- Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey--and would bind them closer to the West; because it would pull Azerbaijan and Georgia out of the Russian shadow; and because it would not pass through either Russia or Iran, both of which have offered routes of their own. Is ``binding'' Azerbaijan and Georgia closer to the West part of a flawed strategy of isolating Russia? We seem clearly headed in that direction with the expansion of NATO. And ignoring George F. Kennan, who lamented the Senate vote on NATO expansion in an interview with Thomas L. Friedman. Commenting on the Senate debate, Ambassador Kennan stated: I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove the Soviet Regime. We would do well to remember these words.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today I rise to congratulate Dr. Robert F. Furchgott of the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn on winning the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Furchgott, along with Dr. Louis J. Ignarro of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad of the University of Texas, were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discoveries of how natural production of nitric oxide can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions. Those include the regulation of blood pressure, widening blood vessels, preventing the formation of blood clots, fighting infections, reducing sexual dysfunction, and functioning as a signal molecule in the nervous system. The bestowment of this prestigious honor to Dr. Furchgott brings long overdue recognition to the medical research conducted at ``SUNY Downstate''. I commend Dr. Furchgott and the entire staff of the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn for their many contributions to the field of medicine. Mr. President, I ask that the article on Dr. Robert F. Furchgott from the New York Times be printed in the Record. The article follows. Research Honor Goes to the Brooklyn Side (By Jennifer Steinhauer) The State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn has always been a bit of an underdog among the city's medically elite institutions. In spite of its groundbreaking work in the study of AIDS, alcoholism and other illnesses, kudos most often went to hospitals and research centers on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, like Mount Sinai and New York University. But yesterday, SUNY Downstate, as the science center is known, earned its boasting rights over Manhattan when Dr. Robert F. Furchgott, a distinguished professor of pharmacology there, received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the highest recognition possible for a body of work that most Americans would recognize only in the form of Viagra. Dr. Furchgott, 82, is in many ways a quintessential representative of Downstate, which had never received that Nobel Prize and is better known to most New Yorkers as the college that provides doctors to Kings County Hospital Center, one of the city's busiest and perhaps most embattled hospitals. Colleagues described Dr. Furchgott as modest, spending nearly every day nibbling sandwiches and eating yogurt in his office while poring over scientific journals, or toiling in his laboratory, pondering the mysteries of nitric, pondering the mysteries of nitric oxide. ``His personal modesty stands in marked contrast to his magnificent achievement,'' said Dr. Eugene B. Feigelson, the college's dean of medicine. ``It is a source of pride for the entire institution and to Brooklyn and is a further distinction for us and for the State University of New York.'' When asked to reflect on his honor, Dr. Furchgott seemed almost dismissive. ``I was kind of surprised,'' he said in a telephone interview from his home in Hewlett, N.Y. ``My work is sort of old-fashioned pharmacology. ``Is it the highlight of my career? I guess in a way, though you don't do research to win prizes. You do it because you're curious about what makes things tick.'' Sure, international attention, television cameras planted on the front lawn, phone ringing off the hook with calls from reporters struggling mightily to understand the subtleties of his work--these things have tickled him. But his favorite moment in his entire career, he said, ``was when we discovered that endothelial cells were necessary for relaxation of arteries.'' ``Then,'' he said, ``it was finding that the endothelium- derived relaxing factor was nitric oxide. There have been lots of fun things.'' He is, by admission of his admirers, a serious man of research. ``His lectures were dull, onerous and droning on,'' said Eli A. Friedman, a distinguished teaching professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate and a former student of Dr. Furchgott. ``But the content of his work was profound and inspiring. So if one could get past the fact that he was less than electric competition for Jackie Gleason on television, he was very exciting and moving.'' Dr. Furchgott, who holds a doctorate in biochemistry and is a professor emeritus at Downstate, won his prize for discoveries of new properties of nitric oxide. With colleagues, he was able to demonstrate that the gas nitric oxide can act as a messenger molecule that tells blood vessels to relax and dilate, which lowers blood pressure. The discovery was vital to developing the anti-impotence drug Viagra. In 1996, he won an Albert Lasker Award in basic medical research, which is often a precursor award to the Nobel Prize. ``Everyone here will walk a little straighter and hold their head a little higher because he is here.'' Dr. Friedman said. Dr. Furchgott was born in Charleston, S.C., and received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina in 1937 and a doctorate in biochemistry from Northwestern University in 1940. When asked what else he would like known about his career, Dr. Furchgott said: ``Nothing really. I would like to get myself some lunch now.''