Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, my colleague Senator Kerrey, with whom I am pleased to cosponsor this Sense of the Senate resolution, has it exactly right. The payroll tax is regressive. The statistic he quoted bears repeating. Among families that pay payroll taxes 80 percent pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. If--and I say if--we are going to have a tax cut look no further than the payroll tax. Albert Hunt, writing in today's Wall Street Journal, agrees, noting that for most families it is ``the most onerous levy. . ..'' Even excluding interest income, the Social Security Trust Funds will generate $698 billion of surpluses over the next 10 years. That is just about enough to finance the 2 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax that Senator Kerrey and I have proposed in our comprehensive Social Security rescue plan. In contrast, the operating budget will only have a $32 billion surplus over the next 10 years--and no significant surplus until 2006. Finally, maybe we shouldn't be considering any tax cuts. Those surpluses can easily evaporate, even in the absence of a recession. Growth of one percent for the next two or three years --rather than the 2 percent projected by CBO--just about wipes out surpluses for the next several years.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, with regret, I must oppose Senator Daschle's amendment to provide for marriage tax penalty relief. Although I support the idea of a revenue-neutral solution to the inequitable situation created by the Internal Revenue Code for millions of married couples, an appropriations bill is not the proper forum for debating and voting on resolution of this matter. To attach this amendment to this bill would violate the constitutional requirement that revenue measures originate in the House, and it would kill this important appropriations legislation. I agree with the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Roth, that the issue of the marriage penalty should first be considered by the Finance Committee and proceed to the floor in the manner normally associated with tax legislation. I look forward to working with him, and all the members of the committee in coming to a bipartisan agreement on a measure that provides relief to taxpayers saddled with the marriage penalty and is properly offset under the budget rules. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, last week marked the 150th anniversary of one of the most important events in our history. In July, 1848 a revolution was taking place in a small brick chapel in a village in upstate New York. The first Women's Rights Convention was held at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20 of that year. There, a small group ratified the ``Declaration of Sentiments,'' a document which may be considered the Magna Carta of the women's movement. The Declaration proclaimed that: All men and women are created equal: That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That was the first American political idea--that women are equal in civic rights with men. It did not come from Europe, or ancient Athens, or Rome. It came right from central New York. In 1980, we established a Women's Rights Historic Park at Seneca Falls and Waterloo, commemorating this monumental convention. Former Senator Javits and I proposed a bill to create an historic park within Seneca Falls to commemorate the early beginnings of the women's movement and to recognize the important role Seneca Falls has played in the movement. The park consists of five sites: the 1840's Greek Revival home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, organizer and leader of the women's rights movement; the Wesleyan Chapel, where the First Women's Rights Convention was held; Declaration Park with a 100 foot waterwall engraved with the Declaration of Sentiments and the names of the signers of Declaration; and the M'Clintock house, home of MaryAnn and Thomas M'Clintock, where the Declaration was drafted. Mrs. Clinton visited a number of these sites as part of her ``Save America's Treasures'' tour. There she spoke to the meaning of the Women's Rights Convention and called for the work of these pioneers to continue into the next century. I ask that the text of Mrs. Clinton's speech be printed in the Record. The speech follows: Remarks of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Thank you for gathering here in such numbers for this important celebration. I want to thank Governor Pataki and Congresswoman Slaughter and all the elected officials who are here with us today. I want to thank Mary Anne and here committee for helping to organize such a great celebration. I want to thank Bob Stanton and the entire Park Service staff for doing such an excellent job with the historic site. I want to thank our choirs. I thought the choirs really added; I want to thank our singers whom we've already heard from and will hear from because this is a celebration and we need to think about it in such terms. But for a moment, I would like you to take your minds backs a hundred and fifty years. Imagine if you will that you are Charlotte Woodward, a nineteen-year-old glove maker working and living in Waterloo. Everyday you sit for hours sewing gloves together, working for small wages you cannot even keep, with no hope of going on in school or owning property, knowing that if you marry, your children and even the clothes on your body will belong to your husband. But then one day in July, 1848, you hear about a women's right convention to be held in nearby Seneca Falls. It's a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious conditions and rights of women. You run from house to house and you find other women who have heard the same news. Some are excited, others are amused or even shocked, and a few agree to come with you, for at least the first day. When that day comes, July 19, 1848, you leave early in the morning in your horse-drawn wagon. You fear that no one else will come; and at first, the road is empty, except for you and your neighbors. But suddenly, as you reach a crossroads, you see a few more wagons and carriages, then more and more all going towards Wesleyan Chapel. Eventually you join the others to form one long procession on the road to equality. Who were the others traveling that road to equality, traveling to that convention? Frederick Douglass, the former slave and great abolitionist, was on his way there and he described the participants as ``few in numbers, moderate in resources, and very little known in the world. The most we had to connect us was a firm commitment that we were in the right and a firm faith that the right must ultimately prevail.'' In the wagons and carriages, on foot or horseback, were women like Rhoda Palmer. Seventy years later in 1918, at the age of one-hundred and two, she would cast her first ballot in a New York state election. Also traveling down that road to equality was Susan Quinn, who at fifteen will become the youngest signer of the Declaration of Sentiments. Catharine F. Stebbins, a veteran of activism starting when she was only twelve going door to door collecting anti-salvery petitions. She also, by the way, kept an anti-tobacco pledge on the parlor table and asked all her young male friends to sign up. She was a woman truly ahead of her time, as all the participants were. I often wonder, when reflecting back on the Seneca Falls Convention, who of us--men and women--would have left our homes, our families, our work to make that journey one hundred and fifty years ago. Think about the incredible courage it must have taken to join that procession. Ordinary men and women, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors. And just like those who have embarked on other journeys throughout American history, seeking freedom or escapings religious or political persecution, speaking out against slavery, working for labor rights. These men and women were motivated by dreams of better lives and more just societies. At the end of the two-day convention, one hundred people, sixty-eight women and thirty-two men, signed the Declaration of Sentiments that you can now read on the wall at Wesleyan Chapel. Among the signers were some of the names we remember today: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright and Frederick Douglass and young Charlotte Woodward. The ``Seneca Falls 100,'' as I like to call them, shared the radical idea that America fell far short of her ideals stated in our founding documents, denying citizenship to women and slaves. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who is frequently credited with originating the idea for the Convention, knew that women were not only denied legal citizenship, but that society's cultural values and social structures conspired to assign women only one occupation and role, that of wife and mother. Of course, the reality was always far different. Women have always worked, and worked both in the home and outside the home for as long as history can record. And even though Stanton herself had a comfortable life and valued deeply her husband and seven children, she knew that she and all other women were not truly free if they could not keep wages they earned, divorce an abusive husband, own property, or vote for the political leaders who governed them. Stanton was inspired, along with the others who met, to rewrite our Declaration of Independence, and they boldly asserted, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.'' ``All men and all women.'' It was the shout heard around the world, and if we listen, we can still hear its echoes today. We can hear it in the voices of women demanding their full civil and political rights anywhere in the world. I've heard such voices and their echoes from women, around the world, from Belfast to Bosnia to Beijing, as they work to change the conditions for women and girls and improve their lives and the lives of their families. We can even hear those echoes today in Seneca Falls. We come together this time not by carriage, but by car or plane, by train or foot, and yes, in my case, by bus. We come together not to hold a convention, but to celebrate those who met here one hundres and fifty years ago, to commemorate how far we have traveled since then, and to challenge ourselves to persevere on the journey that was begun all those many years ago. We are, as one can see looking around this great crowd, men and women, old and young, different races, different backgrounds. We come to honor the past and imagine the future. That is the theme the President and I have chosen for the White House Millennium Council's efforts to remind and inspire Americans as we approach the year 2000. This is my last stop on the Millennium Council's tour to Save America's Treasures--those buildings, monuments, papers and sites--that define who we are as a nation. They include not only famous symbols like the Star Spangled Banner and not only great political leaders like George Washington's revolutionary headquarters, or creative inventors like Thomas Edison's invention factory, but they include also the women of America who wrote our nation's past and must write its future. Women like the ones we honor here and, in fact, at the end of my tour yesterday, I learned that I was following literally in the footsteps of one of them, Lucretia Mott, who, on her way to Seneca Falls, stopped in Auburn to visit former slaves and went on to the Seneca Nations to meet with clan mothers, as I did. Last evening, I visited the home of Mary Ann and Thomas M'Clintock in Waterloo, where the Declaration of Sentiments was drafted, and which the Park Service is planning to restore for visitors if the money needed can be raised. I certainly hope I can return here sometime in the next few years to visit that restoration. Because we must tell and retell, learn and relearn, these women's stories, and we must make it our personal mission, in our everyday lives, to pass these stories on to our daughters and sons. Because we cannot--we must not--ever forget that the rights and opportunities that we enjoy as women today were not just bestowed upon us by some benevolent ruler. They were fought for, agonized over, marched for, jailed for and even died for by brave and persistent women and men who came before us. Every time we buy or sell or inherit property in our own name--let us thank the pioneers who agitated to change the laws that made that possible. Every time, every time we vote, let us thank the women and men of Seneca Falls, Susan B. Anthony and all the others, who tirelessly crossed our nation and withstood ridicule and the rest to bring about the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Every time we enter an occupation--a profession of our own choosing and receive a paycheck that reflect earnings equal to a male colleague, let us thank the signers and women like Kate Mullaney, who's house I visited yesterday, in Troy, New York. Every time we elect a woman to office--let us thank ground breaking leaders like Jeannette Rankin and Margaret Chase Smith, Hattie Caraway, Louise Slaughter, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm--all of whom proved that a woman's place is truly in the House, and in the Senate, and one day, in the White House, as well. And every time we take another step forward for justice in this nation--let us thank extraordinary women like Harriet Tubman, whose home in Auburn I visited yesterday, and who escaped herself from slavery, and, then risked her life, time and again, to bring at least two hundred other slaves to freedom as well. Harriet Tubman's rule for all of her underground railroad missions was to keep going. Once you started--no matter how scared you got, how dangerous it became--you were not allowed to turn back. That's a pretty good rule for life. It not only describes the women who gathered in Wesleyan Chapel in 1848, but it could serve as our own motto for today. We, too, cannot turn back. We, too, must keep going in our commitment to the dignity of every individual--to women's rights as human rights. We are on that road of the pioneers to Seneca Falls, they started down it 150 years ago. But now, we too, must keep going. We may not face the criticism and derision they did. They understood that the Declaration of Sentiments would create no small amount of misconception, or misrepresentation and ridicule; they were called mannish women, old maids, fanatics, attacked personally by those who disagreed with them. One paper said, ``These rights for women would bring a monstrous injury to all mankind.'' If it sounds familiar, it's the same thing that's always said when women keep going for true equality and justice. Those who came here also understood that the convention and the Declaration were only first steps down the road. What matters most is what happens when everyone packs up and goes back to their families and communities. What matters is whether sentiment and resolutions, once made, are fulfilled or forgotten. The Seneca Falls one hundred pledged themselves to petition, and lit the pulpit and used every instrumentality within their power to affect their subjects. And they did. But they also knew they were not acting primarily for themselves. They knew they probably would not even see the changes they advocated in their own lifetime. In fact, only Charlotte Woodward lived long enough to see American women finally win the right to vote. Those who signed that Declaration were doing it for the girls and women--for us--those of us in the twentieth century. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote a letter to her daughters later in life enclosing a special gift and explaining why. ``Dear Maggie and Hattie, this is my first speech,'' she wrote, ``it contains all I knew at that time; I give this manuscript to my precious daughters in the hopes that they will finish the work that I have begun.'' And they have. Her daughter, Harriot Blatch, was the chief strategist of the suffrage movement in New York. Harriot's daughter, Nora Barney, was one of the first women to be a civil engineer. Nora's daughter, Rhoda Jenkins, became an architect. Rhoda's daughter, Colleen Jenkins-Sahlin is an elected official in Greenwich, Connecticut. And her daughter, Elizabeth is a thirteen-year-old, who wrote about the six generations of Stantons in a book called, 33 Things Every Girl Should Know. So, far into the twentieth century, the work is still being done; the journey goes on. Now, some might say that the only purpose of this celebration is to honor the past, that the work begun here is finished in America, that young women no longer face legal obstacles to whatever education or employment choices they choose to pursue. And I certainly believe and hope all of you agree that we should, everyday, count our blessings as American women. I know how much change I have seen in my own life. When I was growing up back in the fifties and sixties, there were still barriers that Mrs. Stanton would have recognized-- scholarships I couldn't apply for, schools I couldn't go to, jobs I couldn't have--just because of my sex. Thanks to federal laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title 9, and the Equal Pay Act, legal barriers to equality have fallen. But if all we do is honor the past, then I believe we will miss the central point of the Declaration of Sentiments, which was, above all, a document about the future. The drafters of the Declaration imagined a different future for women and men, in a society based on equality and mutual respect. It falls to every generation to imagine the future, and it is our task to do so now. We know that, just as the women 150 years ago knew, that what we imagine will be principally for our daughters and sons in the 21st century. Because the work of the Seneca Falls Convention is, just like the work of the nation itself, it's never finished, so long as there remain gaps between our ideals and reality. That is one of the great joys and beauties of the American experiment. We are always striving to build and move toward a more perfect union, that we on every occasion keep faith with our founding ideals, and translate them into reality. So what kind of future can we imagine together. If we are to finish the work begun here--then no American should ever again face discrimination on the basis of gender, race or sexual orientation anywhere in our country. If we are to finish the work begun here--then $0.76 in a woman's paycheck for every dollar in a man's is still not enough. Equal pay for equal work can once and for all be achieved. If we are to finish the work begun here--then families need more help to balance their responsibilities at work and at home. In a letter to Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes, ``Come here and I will do what I can to help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the pudding.'' Even then, women knew we had to have help with child care. All families should have access to safe, affordable, quality child care. If we are to finish the work begun here--then women and children must be protected against what the Declaration called the ``chastisement of women,'' namely domestic abuse and violence. We must take all steps necessary to end the scourge of violence against women and punish the perpetrator. And our country must join the rest of the world, as so eloquently Secretary Albright called for on Saturday night here in Seneca Falls, ``Join the rest of the world and ratify the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women.'' If we are to finish the work begun here--we must do more than talk about family values, we must adopt policies that truly value families--policies like a universal system of health care insurance that guarantees every American's access to affordable, quality health care. Policies like taking all steps necessary to keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals. Policies like doing all that is necessary at all levels of our society to ensure high quality public education for every boy or girl no matter where that child lives. If we are to finish the work begun here--we must ensure that women and men who work full-time earn a wage that lifts them out of poverty and all workers who retire have financial security in their later years through guaranteed Social Security and pensions. If we are to finish the work begun here--we must be vigilant against the messages of a media-driven consumer culture that convinces our sons and daughters that what brand of sneakers they wear or cosmetics they use is more important that what they think, feel, know, or do. And if we are to finish the work begun here--we must, above all else, take seriously the power of the vote and use it to make our voices heard. What the champions of suffrage understood was that the vote is not just a symbol of our equality, but that it can be, if used, a guarantee of results. It is the way we express our political views. It is the way we hold our leaders and governments accountable. It is the way we bridge the gap between what we want our nation to be and what it is. But when will the majority of women voters of our country exercise their most fundamental political right? Can you imagine what any of the Declaration signers would say if they learned how many women fail to vote in elections? They would be amazed and outraged. They would agree with a poster I saw in 1996. On it, there is a picture of a woman with a piece of tape covering her mouth and under it, it says, ``Most politicians think women should be seen and not heard. In the last election, 54 million women agreed with them.'' One hundred and fifty years ago, the women at Seneca Falls were silenced by someone else. Today, women, we silence ourselves. We have a choice. We have a voice. And if we are going to finish the work begun here we must exercise our right to vote in every election we are eligible to vote in. Much of who women are and what women do today can be traced to the courage, vision, and dedication of the pioneers who came together at Seneca Falls. Now it is our responsibility to finish the work they began. Let's ask ourselves, at the 200th anniversary of Seneca Falls, will they say that today's gathering also was a catalyst for action? Will they say that businesses, labor, religious organizations, the media, foundations, educators, every citizen in our society came to see the unfinished struggle of today as their struggle? Will they say that we joined across lines of race and class, that we raised up those too often pushed down, and ultimately found strength in each other's differences and resolved in our common cause? Will we, like the champions at Seneca Falls, recognize that men must play a central role in this fight? How can we ever forget the impassioned plea of Frederick Douglas, issued in our defense of the right to vote? How can we ever forget that young legislator from Tennessee by the name of Harry Burns, who was the deciding vote in ratifying the 19th Amendment. He was planning on voting ``no,'' but then he got a letter from his mother with a simple message. The letter said, ``Be a good boy Harry and do the right thing.'' And he did! Tennessee became the last state to ratify, proving that you can never ever overestimate the power of one person to alter the course of history, or the power of a little motherly advice. Will we look back and see that we have finally joined the rest of the advanced economies by creating systems of education, employment, child care and health care that support and strengthen families and give all women real choices in their lives. At the 200th anniversary celebration, will they say that women today supported each other in the choices we make? Will we admit once and for all there is no single cookie cutter model for being a successful and fulfilled woman today, that we have so many choices? We can choose full-time motherhood or no family at all or like most of us, seek to strike a balance between our family and our work, always trying to do what is right in our lives. Will we leave our children a world where it is self-evident that all men and women, boys and girls are created equal? These are some of the questions we can ask ourselves. Help us imagine a future that keeps faith with the sentiments expressed here in 1848. The future, like the past and the present, will not and cannot be perfect. Our daughters and granddaughters will face new challenges which we today cannot even imagine. But each of us can help prepare for that future by doing what we can to speak out for justice and equality for women's rights and human rights, to be on the right side of history, no matter the risk or cost, knowing that eventually the sentiments we express and the causes we advocate will succeed because they are rooted in the conviction that all people are entitled by their creator and by the promise of America to the freedom, rights, responsibilities, and opportunity of full citizenship. That is what I imagine for the future. I invite you to imagine with me and then to work together to make that future a reality. Thank you all very much.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the U.S. Capitol Police--so ubiquitous, so steady, so utterly competent. We take them for granted. Yet every day they defend us, our families, our staff, millions of tourists, ready to lay down their lives. Last Friday, two of them did: Officer Jacob J. Chestnut and Detective John Gibson, each an 18-year veteran, each married, each with children. One in the prime of life; the other, a few short months from retirement. What a tragedy. The fact of the matter is that what happened on Friday could happen at any instant. One never knows when. In the crucible of a gun battle, Chestnut, Gibson, and other Capitol Police officers performed their duty in the most exemplary fashion. Chestnut and Gibson made the ultimate sacrifice, laying down their lives to defend others. We can only speculate how many bystanders would have been killed, if not for their--and the other officers'--quick and appropriate actions. To the wives and children, other family members, and friends and colleagues of Officer Chestnut and Detective Gibson, our words cannot assuage your grief. But perhaps there is some solace in knowing that these fine two men, killed in the line of duty, have died the most honorable deaths, defending the United States Congress and its most sacred building. They are heroes. Remember, as Pindar wrote, that ``the bright gleam of noble deeds moves on with undying voice, ever unquenchable.'' And as you struggle to be brave in the days and weeks ahead, know that courage is marked not by the absence of fear, but rather by the presence of faith. May God be with you, and may God be with J.J. Chestnut and John Gibson.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to enter into a colloquy with my colleagues, Senator D'Amato, and the distinguished managers of the Commerce, State, and Justice appropriations bill. Mr. President, we have in Buffalo a wonderful old theater, known now as Shea's Performing Arts Center. It opened in 1926 as motion pictures made their ascendance in the nation's entertainment industry, and was also the site of numerous stage productions. As Buffalo's population shifted to the suburbs or elsewhere, Shea's fell on hard times and was almost demolished in the 1970s. But citizens banded together, formed a non- profit group, and began restoration efforts. Today Shea's is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a cornerstone of Buffalo's downtown. I would ask the managers of the bill if they would encourage the Economic Development Administration to consider an application from Shea's Performing Arts Center and provide a grant if warranted.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am deeply appreciative of my distinguished colleagues from New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the Senate's attention the latest development regarding the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has determined that a critical mainframe computer system used to monitor air traffic will continue to function smoothly into the millennium. The FAA, uncertain as to how long testing would take, only recently began an intensive investigation of its mainframe computers. The testing involved the time consuming task of examining more than 40 million lines of software. Although the technicians determined the date problem could be repaired in time, the process underscores the urgent nature of the Y2K issue. The uncertainties of Y2K mean repair work can be as simple as that of the FAA, or more complicated than is possibly imaginable. It is imperative that the public and private sectors follow the example of the FAA and begin testing their computer systems immediately. I continue to hope that it is not too late to properly prepare for the year 2000. I ask that the July 22, 1998 Washington Post article on the FAA be printed in the Record. The article follows: Air Traffic Control Computer System Cleared for 2000 IBM Warning Prompted Tests (By Rajiv Chandrasekaran) Atlantic City, N.J.--Federal Aviation Administration technicians have concluded that a critical mainframe computer system used in the nation's largest air traffic control centers will function properly in the year 2000, despite warnings from the system's manufacturer that the agency should replace the equipment. The determination, reached over the past few weeks by programmers at the FAA's technical center here, has elicited cheers from agency officials who had been castigated by congressional investigators earlier this year for not planning a quick replacement of the systems. ``The examination has revealed that the [system] will transition the millennium in a routine manner,'' FAA Administrator Jan F. Garvey said in an interview yesterday. The mainframe computers at issue, made by International Business Machines Corp., are used at the FAA's 20 air route traffic control centers to track high-altitude aircraft between airports. The computers, IBM's Model 3083 mainframes, receive data from radar systems and integrate that information into a picture for air traffic controllers. Last October, IBM sent a letter to the FAA warning that ``the appropriate skills and tools do not exist to conduct a complete Year 2000 test assessment'' of the 3083 computers, once the mainstay of large corporate data centers. The machines have been mothballed by most users, step IBM urged the FAA to take. Although the FAA plans to replace the mainframes as part of a broader modernization effort, agency officials were unsure they could complete the process by 2000. As a result, they embarked on an aggressive testing program to figure out how the computer system would be affected. Most mainframes use a two-digit dating system that assumes that 1 and 9 are the first two digits of the year. Without specialized reprogramming, it was feared that the IBM 3083s would recognize ``00'' not as 2000 but as 1900, a glitch that could cause them to malfunction. The federal government and private companies are racing to fix other computers to avoid the year 2000 problem. To conduct the testing, the FAA hired two retired IBM programmers and assigned a handful of other agency employees to the project, which involved checking more than 40 million lines of ``microcode''--software that controls the mainframe's most basic functions. Among the initial areas of concern was whether a date problem would affect the operation of the mainframe's cooling pumps. If the computer does not regularly switch from one cooling pump to another, it can overheat and shut down, causing controllers' radar screens to go blank. The technicians, however, found that the microcode doesn't consider the last two digits of the year when processing dates. Instead, it stores the year as a two-digit number between one and 32, assuming that 1975 was year one. As a result, they determined, the system would fail in 2007, but not in 2000. ``Nothing we have found will cause an operational aberration over the new year. It will continue to function as it's supposed to,'' said one FAA technician working on the project. FAA officials recently allowed a reporter to tour the facility here and talk to employees on the condition that they not be named. ``We're dealing with minutes and seconds in air traffic control,'' said another technician. ``The systems don't really care about days and years.'' The programmers did find four software modules that need to be repaired to handle the leap year in 2000, but they said the task would be relatively straightforward. While the technicians came to their conclusions a few weeks ago, Garvey only recently was briefed on the findings. The results, sources said, have not yet been shared widely within the Transportation Department or with lawmakers. Agency officials acknowledge their determination will be met with skepticism on Capitol Hill and in the aviation industry. To bolster their case, the technicians said they have compiled reams of computer printouts that back up their conclusions. The findings highlight one of he uncertainties of year 2000 repair work. While some projects can be more costly and time consuming than originally expected, others can be unexpectedly simple. ``It's a welcome surprise,'' Garvey said. ``And we don't get many of them in government.''

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, yesterday, a dear friend and colleague, Representative Thomas J. Manton, announced his intention to retire at the end of the 105th Congress, saying, ``I have worked for the citizens of this Nation, New York City, and Queens for most of my adult life.'' Indeed he has. Fourteen years as a Member of Congress. Fifteen years before that as a member of the New York City Council. Five years as an officer in the New York City Police Department. And two years as a Marine Corps flight navigator on active duty during Korea. His departure is bittersweet for me. I take solace from the fact that he will continue to chair the Queens County Democratic Organization, a post he has held with honor and distinction for the past twelve years. And I am happy that he and his wife Diane will have more time ``to enjoy life and travel,'' as he put it; to enjoy his four children and-- as of July 5th--his four grandchildren. But we here will miss his calm and steady demeanor, and his unwavering commitment to ``moderate government,'' which is, as Alexander Hamilton observed, the font of real liberty. For the most part, I will leave it to others to recite his legislative accomplishments, which are legion. But I would highlight his service as co-chairman of the Congressional Ad-Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs. The bi-partisan Ad-Hoc Committee was established in 1977 to promote peace and justice in Northern Ireland. His interest is natural, for both his parents were Irish immigrants. The task, of course, enormous. But under Tom's steady leadership, the Ad-Hoc Committee made possible implementation of the McBride Principles. And the Ad-Hoc Committee had a huge role in this year's Good Friday Irish Peace Accord. Few men or women have had such positive effect in such a devastated and forlorn part of the world. Horace remarked that ``We rarely find anyone . . . who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.'' Tom Manton is the rare individual who can retire from Congress like a ``satisfied guest.'' Godspeed, dear friend.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President. With the recent nuclear tests in South Asia, we are closer to nuclear war than we have been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is a challenge which will compel the highest attention and the most subtle diplomacy. It requires extensive discussion with India and Pakistan. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has begun such a dialogue. He is a gifted diplomat; however, I must emphasize that despite the considerable talents of the Deputy Secretary, this is an issue which requires the President's close involvement. Congress must also be involved in addressing the issues which arise from the nuclear tests in South Asia. Legislation is required to lift the sanctions which these actions triggered. As such, I was pleased that my friend from Delaware, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, has set out a very sensible approach to South Asia. In a recent speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Senator Biden challenges us to think anew about South Asia and calls on Congress to provide the President with the flexibility to negotiate in South Asia. This must entail providing him with broad authority to waive the present sanctions. Most importantly, Senator Biden calls on the President to make ``arrangements to go to India.'' This is paramount and I hope that the President will note this wise counsel. The actions which we take to address this volatile situation will have profound repercussion on the future of the subcontinent and the world. Such stakes require the President's active participation. We must talk with them as a matter not just of their survival, but of our own as well. And we must stop supposing that sanctions are the answer. They are not. Mr. President, I commend the remarks of our colleague, Senator Biden, and ask that they be printed in the Record. The remarks follow: A New Approach for South Asia (By Joseph R. Biden, Jr.) Two months ago, in the Rajasthan desert, the Government of India claimed to have exploded five nuclear devices. Just 15 days later, the Government of Pakistan followed suit. These events, in a few short weeks, expanded the acknowledged nuclear club by forty percent. They confront the United States, as well as the rest of the international community, with a monumental challenge, calling into question decades of U.S. non-proliferation policy. Addressing this challenge--devising a new approach toward South Asia--is the subject of my remarks today. I thank you for the kind invitation. We can expect the policy community to dramatically increase the time and attention it devotes to South Asia in the coming months, but you at the Carnegie Endowment can credibly claim that you were focusing on nuclear tensions long before it was even remotely fashionable. If only more had listened. Clearly the tests by India and Pakistan require us to reexamine many aspects of our foreign and national security policy. We need to jettison some long-held beliefs that have acted as self-imposed constraints on U.S. policy. Traditional approaches have not worked in the past in South Asia and will not work in the present situation. We need to think ``outside the box.'' Most of all, our national interests throughout Asia dictate that we end our benign neglect of South Asia. Let me outline the shortcomings of our policy: First, we have not acknowledged or addressed the fundamental sense of insecurity felt by both India and Pakistan since the end of the Cold War. It is both facile and misleading to blame India's decision to test solely on the election of the BJP government. While the BJP certainly had a domestic political imperative to test, there was already a consensus across the political spectrum in India (except for the Communists) that India needed to conduct tests. Why? Because of India's underlying perception in the aftermath of the Cold War that it was isolated, vulnerable, and not taken seriously. For much of the Cold War, but especially after the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, a measure of stability prevailed with China and the United States as key supporters of Pakistan, and the Soviet Union as the chief ally of India. This set of power relationships, combined with the threat of U.S. sanctions, restrained India and Pakistan from either testing or deploying nuclear weapons. With the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, India could no longer rely on Moscow to balance China. In addition, India perceives us--falsely, I believe--as cultivating China as the regional hegemon that will preserve Asian stability. The perceived U.S. preoccupation with China generates deep concern in New Delhi. Remember: China defeated India in the 1962 war and occupied several thousand square kilometers of disputed territory, a humiliation from which India has yet to recover. And a decade ago Indian and China massed several hundred thousand troops along their disputed border. India's sense of strategic encirclement was heightened by reports of Chinese missile and nuclear transfers to Pakistan and budding Chinese military and security ties to Burma throughout the 1990s. Pakistan's test of a missile with a 1,000 kilometer range last April appeared to fit this pattern even though U.S. officials pointed to North Korea as the real source of the missile. To put this in context, how would China feel if the tables were turned? What if India transferred its missiles to Vietnam, fighter planes to Mongolia, or a nuclear bomb design to Taiwan? In such an environment, India felt that it was on its own and needed to demonstrate its capabilities, change the strategic landscape, in order to be taken more seriously by China, the United States, and other powers. Pakistan's motives for testing are far less complicated than India's, but no less serious. Its strategic aim has been to resist Indian hegemony and guarantee its survival. Just as India's drive for a nuclear device can be traced to the defeat it suffered at the hands of China in 1962 and China's subsequent nuclear test in 1964, Pakistan's nuclear program can be traced to the role India played in splitting Pakistan into two with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Many in Pakistan believe that India has never accepted the partition of the Indian subcontinent back in 1947. In Pakistan, therefore, nuclear capability is seen as the ultimate guarantor of its statehood. It should come as no surprise, then, that Pakistan felt it needed to test to reestablish the deterrence that was disrupted by India's tests. The end of the Cold War also made Pakistan feel abandoned and isolated. The United States no longer needed Pakistan to contain Soviet power. The Pressler amendment, invoked in 1990, banned aid to Pakistan and led directly to the erosion of Pakistan's conventional arsenal. This was seen as a betrayal, and has limited our influence with Pakistan ever since. Unfortunately, we failed to acknowledge or act upon these fundamental shifts affecting Pakistan, just as we ignored the changes in India's security perceptions. The second shortcoming of our South Asia policy is that its two chief elements--commerce and sanctions--are contradictory. We use sanctions to punish proliferation at the same time we are promoting commercial ties to take advantage of long-overdue market openings in both countries. This policy is half right. The expansion of trade and investment ties with India and Pakistan will help these countries realize their full potential as well as benefit our own economic interests. But the application of a one-size-fits-all non- proliferation policy is not appropriate to the special circumstances in South Asia. It lumps India and Pakistan with the far more dangerous outlaw states such as Libya and Iraq. It ignores the great lengths both countries have been prepared to go in order to achieve a basic sense of security. It presumes our influence is much greater than it actually is. Finally, it has prevented us from developing creative approaches to stabilize nuclear and missile development in the region. Legislation initiated by the Congress, and signed by successive Presidents, is the basis for this rigid approach. I voted for that legislation. But when viewed in the context of Pakistan's and India's decision to test, I have to conclude that while our approach worked for many years, it is no longer working. It didn't stop them from testing, and it provides no incentive for India and Pakistan to take positive steps now. To be sure, sanctions, when carefully calibrated, are a valuable policy tool. But I think it is clear that multilateral sanctions are more effective than unilateral sanctions. For example, the recent decision by the Group of Eight to delay indefinitely World Bank loans for India and Pakistan is more likely to produce results than unilateral U.S. action. Given these defects in our policy, I believe we have no choice but to construct a new conceptual framework. Here are our options. First, we could maintain the status quo. That is, we retain sanctions on India and Pakistan indefinitely, not recognize their nuclear status, and keep the fundamentals of our Asia policy unchanged. That would ``keep the faith'' on non- proliferation, but leave the underlying tensions in place and set the stage for the next, perhaps more dangerous, crisis. A second approach that has been suggested is bolder: why not enlist India as a potential strategic ally against a ``China threat?'' But this runs the risk of becoming a self- fulfilling prophecy. China does not show signs of becoming hostile, nor are china's interests necessarily in conflict with our own. China prizes peace, stability, and economic development above all else. I suggest a third approach. First, we should abandon our one-size-fits-all non-proliferation policy that we have applied to South Asia. We need to make distinctions between India, Israel, and Pakistan on the one hand, and nations that flout international norms such as Iraq and Libya on the other. The former should not concern us as much as the latter. We are better served by bringing India and Pakistan into non-proliferation arrangements than by simply expecting them to foreswear their nuclear programs. In practical terms, this means that Congress should provide the President with the flexibility to negotiate a package that would lift sanctions in exchange for restraint by India and Pakistan in the areas that matter most to us. We should seek agreement on five items: Formal commitments, preferably through adherence to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to refrain from further nuclear testing; pledges to enter negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty; Assurances that both countries will continue to refrain from spreading nuclear and missile technology; verifiable commitments not to deploy nuclear weapons on missiles, submarines, or aircraft; and a resumption of comprehensive bilateral discussions between India and Pakistan aimed at reducing tensions. Such a package would serve our twin objectives of repairing the damage to the global non-proliferation regime, while not indefinitely isolating one-fifth of humanity. Second, we need to distinguish between the relative importance of India and Pakistan to our interests over the long-term. Pakistan has been a good friend in the past, and we should not forget that. Moreover, a policy that dismisses Pakistan's legitimate security needs is bound to fail. In fact, I believe that when we eventually ease the recently-imposed sanctions on India and Pakistan, we should simultaneously waive the Pressler and Symington amendments, which restrict military and economic aid to Pakistan. The time has come to clear the decks in our relationship with Pakistan and end a policy which is perceived as discriminatory by Islamabad. Nor should we overlook the important strategic role Pakistan could play as a secure transit route for the vast oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Basin, if, and this is a big if, peace can be secured in Afghanistan. But American national interests in the new multipolar world dictate a different level of relations with India. Because of its growing economic and political weight, India will become a significant player in Asia and at the global level. Already India has a middle class approaching 200 million people. If Indian governments make policy decisions that continue to unleash the latent potential of a talented population, then India will in time achieve the great power status to which it has long aspired. Furthermore, if current trends hold, I believe that it is only natural for some form of rivalry to persist, if not intensify, between a growing India and China. Obviously, this would diminish security and threaten U.S. interests across Asia. To prevent it, two things must be done. First, the Sino- Indian rivalry must be channeled into a healthy and constructive competition. Second, as both India and China achieve great power status, they will need to ease the anxieties of lesser powers. To deal with this emerging regional picture we must move away from a focus on discrete bilateral relationships in Asia, and broaden our vision with a more integrated region- wide approach that regards South Asia as an integral part of Asia. I propose a new framework that would give a ``seat at the table'' to all of the major players in Asia--India, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States. The emphasis should not be so much on formal structures, but on substance. The goal of this new framework would be to promote greater consultation and transparency among the countries. The two emerging powers in this group--India and China-- should be encouraged to set an example of cooperation for the rest of Asia. Such a system would also help them to realize that along with great power status comes responsibility. They must convince smaller nations of their peaceful intentions; they must act to strengthen, not weaken, international norms; and they must be seen as supporting an international environment that promotes peace and prosperity for all. The ``Gujral doctrine'' demonstrates that India has the potential to mature into a responsible great power. As espoused by the previous Indian Prime Minister, this doctrine called for India, as the dominant power in South Asia, to go more than halfway in easing the fears of its smaller neighbors. I hope that the new Indian government will not stray from this far-sighted policy adopted by its predecessor. The United States will need to take the lead in setting this regional security mechanism into motion. It could begin today with the President picking up the phone and speaking to the leaders of India, Russia, and Japan about the insights he gained from his trip to China and making arrangements to go to India. Regular consultation among the key Asian countries could go a long way toward dispelling anxieties and suspicions. It would give everyone a stake in maintaining stability. It would provide an incentive for regional powers to work toward the settlement of long-standing disputes such as those over the Sino-Indian border, the Kurile islands, the Korean peninsula, and the South China Sea. Key countries could be encouraged to share information about their armaments and defense budgets. If the other side does not have information, it will assume the worst. This inevitably leads to decisions and potentially dangerous cycles of action and reaction that are predicated upon assumptions that may be false. Let me conclude. Devising a new approach to South Asia will not be easy, especially considering that it is being done in response to actions we don't approve of--namely, the Pakistan and Indian nuclear tests. But we have no choice, because the status quo is not an option. We must show India and Pakistan that while we condemn their tests, we understand their security concerns and are willing to deal with them. If we don't devise a new approach, tensions will grow and South Asia's endemic security problems will undermine our long-term interests. And one thing is clear: South Asian security is becoming inseparable from Asian security. And, of course, Asia matters to the United States. Despite recent economic setbacks, Asia will continue to be the most dynamic region into the next century. Our economic links will continue to grow. The regional balance of power and security perceptions will also undergo dramatic changes. I believe that we will need to find new mechanisms to preserve our security interests. An effort that begins today in enlisting the key Asian powers in advancing our common objectives of peace, stability, and prosperity is one that could pay dividends far into the next century. Now is the time to begin.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today I introduce a bill to correct a glaring competitive imbalance that has arisen because of an anomaly in our tariff schedule. Hickey-Freeman has produced fine tailored suits in Rochester, New York since 1899. Nearly a century. However, the U.S. tariff schedule currently makes it difficult for Hickey-Freeman to continue producing such suits in the United States. The facts are straight-forward. Companies like Hickey-Freeman that must import the very high quality wool fabric used to make men's and boys' suits pay a tariff of 31.7 percent. They compete with companies that import finished wool suits from a number of countries. If these imported suits are from Canada, the importers pay no tariff whatever. If the suits are imported from Mexico, the tariff is 11 percent. From other countries, the importers pay a duty of 20.2 percent. Clearly, domestic manufacturers of wool suits are put at a significant price disadvantage. Indeed, the tariff structure provides an incentive to import finished suits from abroad, rather than manufacture them in the United States. The bill I am introducing today, along with Senators D'Amato and Specter, would correct this problem, at least temporarily. It suspends through December 31, 2004 the duty on the finest wool fabrics (known in the trade as Super 90s or higher grade--fabrics that are produced in only very limited quantities in the United States. And it would reduce the duty for slightly lower grade but still very fine wool fabric (Super 70's and Super 80's) to 20.2 percent--the same duty as on finished wool suits. The bill also provides that, in the event the President proclaim a duty reduction on wool suits, corresponding changes would be made to the tariffs applicable to `Super 70's' and `Super 80's' grade wool fabric. This bill would correct a troublesome tariff inversion that puts U.S. wool suit producers at a serious competitive disadvantage. It is a small step toward modifying a tariff schedule that favors foreign producers of wools suits at the expense of U.S. suit makers. I therefore urge my colleagues to join me in supporting its adoption, and ask for unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the Senate's attention the excellent speech on the Year 2000 (Y2K) technology problem given by Senator Bennett at the National Press Club on Wednesday, July 15, 1998. The insightful and informative speech by the Chairman of the Senate's Special Committee on the Year 2000 further advances the work of our committee in bringing this time-sensitive issue to the fore. The speech accurately emphasized the urgent nature of Y2K, and candidly surmised the dire consequences if left uncorrected. I commend Senator Bennett on his efforts to bring increased awareness of the millennium bug to the public and private sectors. I ask that Senator Bennett's address to the National Press Club be printed in the Record. The speech follows: National Press Club Luncheon Speaker, Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Washington, DC, July 15, 1998 Senator Bennett. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. And I have to introduce myself as ``the other Bob Bennett.'' I know that name has been prominent in the Press Club in the past. You may even have heard from him. I point out that I'm the tall, skinny, bald Bob Bennett. He is the short, fat, hairy Bob Bennett--(laughter)--and that's how you keep us separated --keep us apart. I first got interested in the Year 2000 problem I suppose the way anybody did; I read about it briefly, thought that's kind of an interesting sort of thing, more of a feature story issue, but not something to get particularly worried about. Oh, two years ago, 18 months ago, whenever the first stories first started filtering out, I was chairman of the--I guess I still am--chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Technology and Financial Services. Ever since I've been on the Banking Committee, I've been saying to the chairman we need to spend more time talking about technology, smart cards, digital signatures, those kinds of things. And finally, Al D'Amato said we're going to create a subcommittee on technology, make you the chairman so you'll leave us alone. (Laughter.) And we started holding hearings on those various things I've described, and then said to Robert, ``You know, let's hold a hearing on this Year 2000 problem. That'd be a subject that we could talk about to keep the subcommittee going. And so we convened a hearing on the Year 2000 problem, focusing primarily on the banking system, since that's the jurisdiction of the subcommittee, and heard for the first time some real details about the Year 2000 problem. And when it was over, Chris Dodd, who had stayed through the whole hearing--and those of you in the Washington press corps know how unusual that is-- turned to me and said, ``Mr. Chairman, we need another hearing. This is pretty scary stuff.'' And I said, you know, ``You're exactly right.'' We've now held eight hearings in that subcommittee, and each time we've gotten a little more scared. Finally, in the early part of this year I went to Senator Lott and Senator Dodd went to Senator Daschle, and we said, ``This problem is serious enough it needs more than just the jurisdiction of the Banking Committee.'' And out of those conversations Lott and Daschle got together, put through the resolution creating the Senate committee on the Year 2000. I became the chairman, Chris Dodd became the vice chair, and in a(n) unprecedented, I think, certainly an unusual, move we picked up two ex officio members of that committee: Ted Stevens and Robert C. Byrd. So we have a direct pipeline into the Appropriations Committee, and we saw how that worked. Had the first meeting of the committee in which I outlined some of the problems. Ted Stevens leaned over and whispered in the ear of one of his staffers who was there, and the next day he had set aside $2\1/4\ billion of extra money to help the federal government solve its Year 2000 problem. I'm not used to having that kind of horsepower on my committee-- (laughter)--and I'm delighted to have Ted and Senator Byrd there, but also delighted that Senator Dodd is the ranking Democrat and the vice chairman of the committee. He's probably going to join us a little later. But I wanted to publicly acknowledge the work that he's done on this. We have tried to be the Paul Revere. But I tell people we're not yet Chicken Little. The British are, indeed, coming. This is a serious problem, and one that cannot be minimized. But I'm not yet ready to say that the sky is falling, as some people do on the web sites. And so we've tried to strike the balance between Paul Revere and Chicken Little. Now, in that capacity I wrote the White House and said we need some direction out of the executive branch and urged the president to appoint a Y2K czar. He didn't answer my letter, but he appointed a Y2K czar, which is even better--John Koskinen, appointed in February of this year. And when he came to see me and we chatted for a while, I said ``I'm very impressed with you. I think you're just what the president needs, only I have one problem: you're not high enough profile. Nobody's ever heard of you.'' We do need a higher profile here. I called Erskine Bowles. Senator Dodd joined me. Erskine came to my office. We sat there, the three of us, and talked about how we could get the president involved. And I am delighted that yesterday the president made a major address on this. If you missed it, go back and get a hold of it. Much as it hurts me, as a Republican, to have to say so, it was a superb speech. He touched all of the right bases, sounded all of the right notes. And this is a very, very welcome addition to the Y2K challenge. Then I picked up the paper this morning and saw Robert Samuelson's column on this issue. As the Paul Revere of this particular challenge, it's nice to hear some additional hoofbeats on the side while I'm riding from every Middlesex village and town. (Soft laughter.) Now the problem, of course, that we face is time. We can do a lot of things in the United States Congress, but we cannot legislate that the year 2000 will not come. We cannot pass a law saying we will only allow the year 2000 to occur once these fixes have been made. So we have to do something very, very dramatic. We have to do it in a number-one priority state of mind, and that's why the president's statement is so welcome, because he said this should be the number-one priority of every CEO in the country. And of course, he is joining Tony Blair and other international leaders who are saying the same thing. Unfortunately, there are not enough of them saying this in enough countries, and the problem globally is worse than it is here. I'll get to that in a minute, but I wanted to make that very clear. While I'm focusing on the United States, I do not mean to minimize the difficulties of a national-- pardon me, an international challenge here. Well, when I get out here in these speeches and hearings and other presentations, the first thing that comes up is that people say, ``How did we get into this mess?'' We've gotten the quick answer in the introduction; they tried to save space, and so they held it down to just two digits for the date. But it's actually more generic than that, and I'd like to spend just a minute with you on the generic side of it, so that you get an understanding of exactly how serious this really is. Go back with me a quarter century--or, living in Washington terms, four Senate elections--(laughter)--and take a look at the economy and where we were. We were in the Industrial Age. We were perhaps at the peak of the Industrial Age, the Industrial Age that was created because somewhere, somebody had a very simple idea, and that idea was interchangeable parts. Before we had the notion of producing things that were interchangeable, every manufacturing operation was really producing a work of art. Everything was one of a kind. And then someone got the notion of interchangeable parts, and factories began to turn out things that were alike. And mass production was possible, mass distribution was possible, mass advertising came along. The Industrial Age came, and it revolutionized everything; created enormous wealth, enormous social problems but enormous opportunities. And we were just beginning to get comfortable with all of that when somebody had another simple little idea, as revolutionary as the idea of interchangeable parts. It was the idea that said the switch in a transistor is either on or off. And, therefore, you can write code that can be read mechanically by a series of transistors strung together that show that they are either on or off. And that was the beginning of the what we now call digital code. And we began to get serious about it roughly 25 years ago. And just as the concept of interchangeable parts transformed the world in the Industrial Revolution, the concept of digital code transformed the world in the Information Revolution. And we are living through that revolution in ways that future historians will look back on and comment about. But it has happened to us gradually enough that we don't really understand the incredible impact of that little notion that a switch can be either on or off, that a punch in an IBM card can either be in or out, or that a pit on a laser disk can be burned to either be there or not, only a micron wide so that on a disk this size, you can put the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and read it by virtue of digital code. Enormously significant things have happened as a result of that revolution. We have now eliminated whole portions of the hierarchy of corporate organizations. Middle management is pretty well gone. Where did it go? It was replaced by computer technology, because the purpose of middle management was to manage information. Now, an individual on the factory floor can call up on a screen more information than he could have gotten from acres and acres of Harvard MBAs in the middle management prior to the invention of the computer and digital code. And it has become ubiquitous this digital code. It is everywhere we look. One of the things that has happened--and I am going to focus on this for just a minute out of my business background, to help you understand how difficult the Y2K challenge is--is that we have changed manufacturing fundamentally, and not just by robotics and all of the things you think of in terms of computers. Go back 25 years ago to General Motors, and they would have warehouses filled with steel and aluminum and glass and rubber and chrome and all the other things necessary to produce a car. And usually there would be about 90 days-- (audio break). (Following audio break)--in these warehouses. Along came digital code. Toyota pioneered Edward Deming's idea of ``just in time'' inventory. The warehouse holding the spare parts or the component parts of a Toyota consisted of the railroad car in which those parts arrived at the plant. And the railroad car pulls up to the side of the plant, they open the doors and start off-loading the parts directly onto the assembly line until the car is empty, and it is then pulled away and another car pulled up. You can imagine the savings--money, time, effort, capital, everything else--that has occurred because of ``just in time'' inventory. But you must understand that ``just in time'' inventory cannot work without computers. You cannot have enough middle managers with Harvard MBAs figuring it out to make it work if you don't have computers. And quite frankly--I'll make one last comment on this and then move on. We Republicans will tell you that the good economy we're enjoying is because we won control of the Congress in 1994. The Democrats will say no, it's because Bill Clinton won control of the presidency in 1992. And then some of us will say no, it's because President Bush appointed Alan Greenspan chairman of the Fed back in the 1980s. I think that, of the three, has the most validity to it. (Laughter.) But we have to recognize that one of the major reasons we have a good economy is because we have eliminated the old warehouses and those huge inventories. We have made people more productive, we have smoothed out the curves of the business cycle, and we have done it all with computers. We are reaping the benefits, whether the Republicans claim credit or the Democrats claim credit, we are reaping the benefits in the economy of the introduction of the Information Age, and it is wonderful. And as I say, all of the incumbent politicians are taking credit for it, even though none of them deserve it. That's the good news. The bad news is that that flaw that got put into the system in terms of two digits for a date instead of four, that used to be just part of a single software program and then several software programs and something that would get taken care of later, has become over the last 25 years, absolutely pervasive, and the flaw is everywhere. Yes, it's in computer programs, software programs; it's also imbedded into those microcomputers that we call chips that are imbedded into machine tools, supertankers, valves on pipelines that control natural gas and, yes--get your attention--probably in the presses that print your magazines and newspapers. And the estimates we get on our committee are that between 2 (percent) and possibly 5 percent of those chips will fail. And you don't know which 2 (percent) to 5 percent they are, and you don't know where they are. But if all of a sudden the pipeline that is bringing natural gas to the generating plant that is creating the electricity that's lighting these lights shuts down because an imbedded chip in one of the valves fails, it isn't just a valve in a pipeline that has failed, the whole power grid is now at risk. And if enough of them fail in enough key places, you don't have any power. Or, if enough of them fail in enough water purification plants, you don't have any water. Or, if enough of them fail in enough medical devices in an ICU in a major hospital, some people will die. I'm beginning to sound a little like Chicken Little, but I want you to know these are very real possibilities. And the only reason I am not Chicken Little yet is that we have 17 months in which to get from here to there. Now, the number-one problem we face is denial. People say, ``No, it can't possibly happen.'' If I may take a swipe at the National Press Club--I hope this is permitted--the McLaughlin Group--I was on a program with John McLaughlin. We talked about this. And then he played a few clips of our program to the McLaughlin Group and took a vote. And by three to one, they decided it was not a major problem. (Laughter.) Awareness: Understanding of how serious the problem is, in fact, our biggest challenge. And that's why the president's statement is so welcome, because we can hold all the hearings we want, I can give all the speeches on the floor of the Senate I want, I've long since learned that if I had a secret document of highest national importance that I wanted to put someplace where no one ever would find it--(laughter)--I would put it in the Congressional Record. (Laughter.) So we can't do this without a much higher level of awareness to get everybody involved and get everybody going. That's why, as I say, the president's speech was so welcome and so well done. But the other thing that I get after I get the first question of how did we get into this mess and how pervasive it is--and I hope I've helped you understand how pervasive it is--I say again, as I said at the outset, what I have described in the United States applies in spades abroad. The only countries that I think are moving aggressively in this area so far, besides the United States, in no particular order: Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore. Now the Netherlands have just appointed a former CEO of Phillips (sp) to head their effort, and I think they will soon join that group. There may be some other countries that belong there. But specifically not in that top tier are Japan, Germany, France, and many of our other allies. This is a global problem, pervasive in robotics, pervasive in embedded chips, pervasive in connections. To give you a quick anecdote about that, I was at the Defense Department talking about this to Secretary Cohen and Deputy Secretary Hamre. And I--they said, ``Yeah, we're--you know, we're working very hard on this.'' And I said, ``It'll be real embarrassing if the screen goes blank on the year 2000.'' And Secretary Hamre said, ``Well, actually, Senator, that's not our biggest problem.'' He said, ``That's kind of good news. If the screen goes blank, we know we've got a problem. Our problem is if the screen stays up and we are receiving data that is wrong and we don't know it, and the whole database then becomes suspect.'' So those are the three areas. You've got the software problem that people can quickly understand, you've got the embedded chip problem that they probably haven't thought about, and then you have the connections problem that can ultimately kill you. Well, back to the ``McLaughlin Group'' for just a minute. This is the question I get: Are we going to win or lose? Okay, is it going to be a catastrophe or are we going to get by? Give me an answer so I can cut to a commercial. (Laughter.) All right. Let me leave you with this analogy. I think the president's statement yesterday was a stirring call to arms. And if I may say so without overdramatizing it, it's a little like announcing that we are at war. Now, this is a different war in that it has a set time period. But if you had asked Franklin Roosevelt on the 8th of December, 1941--Are we going to win or lose''--he would have said, ``We're going to win''--just the way Bill Clinton said yesterday, ``We're going to win. We're going to solve this problem.'' But would you in the press corps say, ``Oh, good. The president has told us we are going to win, so we can now ignore this story.'' And yet too many in the press are saying that: ``Oh, we've got a three-to-one vote on the `McLaughlin Group' that says it's not going to be a big deal, so we can ignore this story.'' I believe we're going to win; that is I think that civilization as we know it is not going to come to an end. It's a possibility. Possibility, if Y2K were this weekend instead of 76 weekends from now, it would. But we have 76 weeks in which to try to get this under control. But we are, in a sense, at war against this problem. And you would not have said in the Second World War, ``Oh, because the president assures us we're going to eventually prevail, we do not need to cover Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, or any of the rest of it.'' And so my plea to you here in the Press Club is: Do not ignore this story just because someone is reassuring you that it's going to work out all right. There are all kinds of stories out there that need to be covered and, most importantly, need to be exposed. This is the ideal story for the Washington press corps. In covering it, you can affect the outcome. Isn't that what you're always trying to do? (Laughter.) Here's an opportunity! (Applause.) Well, as you know, I've told you I've been immersed in this. It has become my obsession. I said that to the president yesterday as I congratulated him on his speech. And he said, ``Good. Somebody has to be obsessed.'' But I think I will quit at this point and respond to whatever questions you might have. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today with my friend and colleague, Senator D'Amato, to introduce a bill to designate the East Northport, New York Post Office as the ``Jerome Anthony Ambro, Jr. Post Office Building.'' Jerry Ambro's life was one dedicated to serving the people of New York. A Brooklyn native, he was educated in the New York City public schools and was graduated from New York University. After a two-year stint in the United States Army, he began working for the Town of Huntington, New York. He went on to serve on the Suffolk County Board of Supervisors and was elected Town Supervisor of Huntington for four terms. First elected to Congress in 1974, in the wake of President Nixon's resignation, Jerry Ambro was a leader among leaders. He served as the chairman of the 82-member New Members Caucus, a reform-minded group that instituted campaign finance reform and new procedures for selecting committee chairmen. The Caucus aided in deposing three committee and subcommittee chairmen. As Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Natural Resources and the Environment, he fought to protect the environment. He prevented the Long Island Lighting Company from converting from oil to coal and he preserved wetlands in Massapequa. As Town Supervisor, he enacted one of the first municipal bans on DDT. Following his years in Congress, he went on to serve ably as the Washington lobbyist for then-Governor Hugh L. Carey. He died in 1993 from complications from diabetes. I am pleased to introduce this bill today to name a post office after such a distinguished New Yorker. Congressman Gary L. Ackerman has introduced a similar measure in the House. That it has the support of the entire New York delegation demonstrates how widely admired Jerry Ambro was. I urge the swift passage of this legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be placed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today with my friend and colleague, Senator D'Amato, to introduce a bill to designate the East Northport, New York Post Office as the ``Jerome Anthony Ambro, Jr. Post Office Building.'' Jerry Ambro's life was one dedicated to serving the people of New York. A Brooklyn native, he was educated in the New York City public schools and was graduated from New York University. After a two-year stint in the United States Army, he began working for the Town of Huntington, New York. He went on to serve on the Suffolk County Board of Supervisors and was elected Town Supervisor of Huntington for four terms. First elected to Congress in 1974, in the wake of President Nixon's resignation, Jerry Ambro was a leader among leaders. He served as the chairman of the 82-member New Members Caucus, a reform-minded group that instituted campaign finance reform and new procedures for selecting committee chairmen. The Caucus aided in deposing three committee and subcommittee chairmen. As Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Natural Resources and the Environment, he fought to protect the environment. He prevented the Long Island Lighting Company from converting from oil to coal and he preserved wetlands in Massapequa. As Town Supervisor, he enacted one of the first municipal bans on DDT. Following his years in Congress, he went on to serve ably as the Washington lobbyist for then-Governor Hugh L. Carey. He died in 1993 from complications from diabetes. I am pleased to introduce this bill today to name a post office after such a distinguished New Yorker. Congressman Gary L. Ackerman has introduced a similar measure in the House. That it has the support of the entire New York delegation demonstrates how widely admired Jerry Ambro was. I urge the swift passage of this legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be placed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, President Clinton yesterday called for urgent action regarding the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem in a speech at the National Academy of Sciences. The President stated ``This is clearly one of the most complex management challenges in history.'' He cited progress in American business and the Federal Government in preparing for the Y2K problem, while simultaneously noting ``far too many businesses, especially small-and medium-sized firms, will not be ready unless they begin to act.'' I am pleased to see that President Clinton is speaking openly about the seriousness of the Y2K computer problem. Over two years ago I stated ``that the Year 2000 problem is indeed serious, and that 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.'' 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.'' I trust the President's acknowledgment of the Y2K issue as a grave and pervasive problem will prompt the agencies and private sector to act quickly. Yet having spent two years studying the problem and warning of the lagging progress of federal agencies in addressing it, I must state that combating the millennium bug at this late date ``looks to be the 13th labor of Hercules.'' I can only hope that both American businesses and the Federal Government follow the President's warnings and begin to give this problem the attention it deserves.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, Yesterday, The New York Times reported that Wall Street firms will turn their clocks ahead today to December 29, 1999, to begin mock trading in the widest ranging Year 2000 (Y2K) test yet by any industry. The tests will investigate what might happen to anyone trading stocks, options, or corporate and municipal bonds on December 30 and 31, 1999, and January 3 and 4, 2000 (January 1, 2000 falls on a Saturday). As a member of the Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology, I am encouraged to see that the financial community is taking the Year 2000 computer problem seriously. On Monday, July 6, Senator Bennett and I held a field hearing in New York to examine the progress of U.S. and foreign financial firms in addressing the Y2K problem. At the hearing, we emphasized the importance of testing, and the need to begin testing by December of this year. Appearing on behalf of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the First Vice President Ernest T. Patrikis said that he ``does not think it is possible to over-emphasize the importance of testing to help improve readiness.'' The hearing last week made it clear that Y2K is a serious and pervasive problem confronting the domestic and international economy. The Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of the New York Stock Exchange, William A. Bautz, said that the Securities Industry Association (SIA) refers to solving the Year 2000 computer problem as ``the biggest business-technology effort that the world has ever experienced.'' I am pleased that SIA is sponsoring this industry-wide test and look forward to seeing the results. I only hope that the other industries follow the lead of the financial community and start their testing soon. I ask that the article from yesterday's Times, ``Wall St. to Roll Clock Ahead To See if Year 2000 Computes,'' be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From the New York Times, July 12, 1998] Wall St. to Roll Clock Ahead To See if Year 2000 Computes (By Barnaby J. Feder) For computer wizards on Wall Street, tomorrow will be Dec. 29, 1999, a step into electronic time travel that will be studied anxiously around the globe. After months of preparation, the nation's leading brokers, the major exchanges, clearinghouses and depository companies will begin mock trading in the widest-ranging test yet by any industry of how well computers will cope with the transition to the next century. The tests, sponsored by the Securities Industry Association, are designed to help brokers and other key players in the $270 billion industry figure out whether their computer systems are ready to handle trades that will settle on Jan. 3, 2000, the first business day of the new century. Over the next two weeks, the industry will reset the clocks on the test computers and investigate what might happen to anyone trading stocks, options or corporate and municipal bonds on Dec. 30 and 31, 1999, and Jan 3, and 4, 2000. Not much has been left to chance. The multimillion-dollar effort is supervised by Coopers & Lybrand following trading scripts carefully developed by the participants with the help of outside consultants. Thus, Leonard De Trizio, the J.P. Morgan & Company vice president in charge of the computers that support equity trading, knows that he will be selling 800 shares of a fictional Big Board company with the ticker symbol KDD at 9:30 tomorrow morning, and he knows that Morgan Stanley will be buying it, while Merrill Lynch & Company will be selling Home Shopping Network convertible bonds to Lehman Brothers. The participants are looking for signs of the millennium bug, the catchall name for a variety of electronic foul-ups that are likely to occur when computers fail to recognize that the first days of the new century come after the last days of the old one. The problem stems from the way many microprocessors and computer programs use only two digits to refer to the year in dates--98 for 1998, for example. Many chips and programs do not accept a low number like 00 for the year 2000, or 01 for 2001 as valid dates that follow the 99 for 1999. What complicates the problem is that computers often react in unpredictable ways. Some spew inaccurate data. Others appear to function normally but then cannot be restarted once they have been shut down. Computer specialists have talked about the millennium problem for decades. But only recently have businesses and public officials begun to recognize how widely dates are used in computing and to take seriously warnings that the dawn of the new century could see widespread disruptions in daily life, at the very least, and deadly accidents or perhaps a global economic recession if the problem is not tamed. Because the securities industry is the first to conduct tests involving connections between many computer users and is publishing vast amounts of data about the results on its World Wide Web site (www.sia.com), year 2000 experts say that the results of these tests could have a huge effect on morale in the rapidly growing legions of specialists working on the problem. ``It's good that they are setting a standard of openness for the entire corporate sector,'' said Edward Yardeni, chief economist of Deutsche Bank Securities. Mr. Yardeni has become one of the highest-profile year 2000 pessimists, predicting a 70 percent chance of worldwide recession stemming from computer problems related to the millennium. ``If it goes badly, though, corporations may be more reluctant to share information, and more people are going to come around to my view of the risks,'' Mr. Yardeni said. Those managing the securities tests are discouraging any attempt to draw broad conclusions from them. The managers point out, for example, that the tests will deal with very small volumes of fictional securities, and they describe the exercise as a mere dress rehearsal for high-volume tests planned for next spring. Some major computer systems have been completely excluded, including those that manage dividends and interest, margin trading and client account records. In addition, only the most common types of trades and securities will be tested this week. ``Dealing with this isn't rocket science, but there is a mountain of details,'' said Donald Kittell, the association's executive vice president. ``People don't realize that a trade may go through 40 to 50 steps from start to finish.'' The securities companies participating in the test that starts tomorrow account for about half the trading volume in stocks, bonds, options and other financial instruments. Each agreed to set up a discrete computer operation to run the tests. In the United States alone, securities companies are expected to spend $3 billion to $5 billion addressing year 2000 and related problems. Yet, when the millennium arrives, Wall Street's ability to function will depend not just on the internal systems it began to test today but on the preparedness of markets overseas, where many players offset any bets placed domestically. What is more, Wall Street's success at ushering in the millennium will also depend heavily on the year 2000 readiness of New York's power, water and telecommunications utilities and of countless other systems that are beyond its ability to test. All of this underscores what many computer experts consider one of the most troubling aspects of the year 2000 challenge. Each phase of the problem--from identifying vulnerable systems to figuring out remedies to testing fixes--has proved more complicated, time-consuming and expensive than had been expected. The emerging consensus has been that testing has been the most widely underestimated challenge. Consultants are consistently warning that very few corporations, government agencies or other computer-dependent enterprises will end up having enough time and resources to do as much testing as they should. ``It would be a setback if this doesn't go well,'' said William Ulrich, a year 2000 consultant in Soquel, Calif., ``because these guys are way out in front.''

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I rise, of course, to support and endorse the proposal by the Senator from Connecticut, cosponsored by the senior Senator from Alaska, with one small anecdote. The Women's Rights National Convention met 150 years ago at the Wesleyan Chapel on Fall Street in Seneca Falls. There will be a lot of ceremony this week and next. The First Lady will be there. I was in Seneca Falls about 1978 and was having a beer with the county leader, George Souhan, in the Gould Hotel. Looking down at the street, I just happened to say to him, ``Where was that chapel where the convention met?'' He said, ``It was just down the street.'' I said, ``Let's go look.'' Down the street we went. What did we find, but a laundromat. The Wesleyan Chapel had become a laundromat on Fall Street and a garage behind. We had it declared a national park in 1980. We went around the city, the village, and found the houses of the ladies of Seneca Falls--the Bloomer girls and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the like. We went to Waterloo, where in the McClintock House the declaration was drafted. That needs repair; the Park Service should do it. It is quite an achievement, but it makes the point that the Senator from Connecticut has just made that you better look after these important sites. That was the first original American political idea-- that women were equal in civic rights with men. It didn't come from Europe. It came right from central New York. It had almost vanished as a site until we came along. If the Senator wishes to do more, more power to him. I thank my friend from Colorado.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, there has been some discussion in the press of late concerning a ruling in Federal District Court of the Southern District of New York involving a business coalition in Manhattan called the Grand Central Partnership. In this case, Archie v. Grand Central Partnership, Inc. (1998 WL 122589, 1998 U.S. Dist. Lexis 3599, S.D.N.Y. 1998), the judge agreed with the plaintiffs who had brought suit against the partnership demanding to be paid at minimum wage rates pursuant to the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York State Minimum Wage Act. The language of the decision reads as follows: Despite the attractive nature of the defendants' program in serving the needs of the homeless, the question of whether such a program should be exempted from the minimum wage laws is a policy decision either Congress or the Executive Branch should make. . . . The Court, however, cannot grant an exemption where one does not exist in law. Setting aside any personal bias, the judge ruled solely on the basis of law. In Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners (970 F. Supp. 1094, S.D.N.Y. 1997), this same judge ruled in favor of one Marilyn Bartlett, an applicant with a learning disability similar to dyslexia, who sought admission to the State bar. The Board of Law Examiners had denied Bartlett's special accommodation--in this case, an extension of time limitations in which to take the bar examination. The judge found that the Americans With Disabilities Act clearly required the board to provide the accommodation. Again, this decision was made--as it ought to have been made--on the basis of law. Nothing more. The district court judge in both of these matters was the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor of the Southern District of New York, who now seeks confirmation from this body for appointment to the Second Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. May I take just a moment to thank the distinguished chairman, Senator Hatch, and ranking member, Senator Leahy, and the members of the Committee on the Judiciary. With confirmation earlier this year of Robert Sack, Chester Straub, and Rosemary Pooler, the judicial emergency in the Second Circuit declared by Chief Judge Ralph K. Winter on March 23 will soon be over. It will be over, Mr. President, when Judge Sotomayor is confirmed by the Senate. She has been reported by the Judiciary Committee. A little over one year ago, President Clinton nominated Judge Sotomayor to fill a vacancy on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on September 30, 1997 and she was reported out by a vote of 16 to 2 on March 5 of this year. Seven years ago, in March 1991, it was my honor to recommend Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Southern District Court of New York. President Bush placed her name in nomination shortly thereafter and she was sworn in on October 2, 1992. The distinguished members of the Committee on the Judiciary were surely impressed with the background and accomplishments of this extraordinary woman. Sonia Sotomayor was raised in the projects of the South Bronx. Her father, Juan Luis, worked in a tool and die factory while her mother, Celina, worked as a nurse. Through discipline and hard work she was graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1976, receiving the university's highest distinction, the M. Taylor Pyne Honor Prize. She went on to graduate from Yale Law School in 1979 where she served as editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, Ms. Sotomayor joined the New York County District Attorney's office. After more than five years there she moved to the firm of Pavia & Harcourt, attaining the position of partner. She is a former member of the New York City Campaign Finance Board and the New York State Mortgage Agency. All of these achievements are detailed in Ms. Sotomayor's resume which I ask, without objection, be incorporated into my remarks. Her service on the Southern District Court has been exemplary. In 5\1/2\ years, having presided over 500 cases, she has been overturned only six times. Her decisions are scholarly, well-researched, and well- reasoned. She has presided over cases of enormous complexity with skill and confidence. My colleagues will likely recall that it was Judge Sotomayor who put an end to the baseball strike in 1995. Her ruling in Silverman v. Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee, Inc., 880 F. Supp. 246 (S.D.N.Y. 1995) was upheld by the very court she now seeks to join. During the course of her confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee, some questions were introduced regarding Judge Sotomayor's position on mandatory sentencing and Federal sentencing guidelines. As of October 1997, in the 217 criminal cases over which she presided, she departed downward a total of 58 times. Forty-four of those departures were at the Government's specific request, because of the defendant's substantial assistance. Excluding such departures, the Judge has departed downward in only 6.5 percent of her criminal cases. The judge has upwardly departed in 6 of her 217 criminal cases, an average of 2.7 percent. A recent New York Law Journal article reports on the 1996 sentencing practices of Federal district judges. Comparing Judge Sotomayor's sentencing record to these statistics, it is apparent that Judge Sotomayor is more conservative in sentencing than many of her colleagues on the Federal bench. Her 6.5 percent downward departure rate is below the national average of 10.3 percent, and well below the Second Circuit average of 15.2 percent. Her upward departure rate of 2.7 percent is three times the national average of 0.9 percent. Mr. President, we have before us a candidate who embodies all of the finest qualities we could possibly ask for in a Federal judge. She is brilliant, principled and thoughtful. I can see no reason to prolong the process that will lead to her confirmation any further. Surely the time has come for us to act. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. BREAUX addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask that I be granted 10 minutes to speak in morning business.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I rise, of course, to support and endorse the proposal by the Senator from Connecticut, cosponsored by the senior Senator from Alaska, with one small anecdote. The Women's Rights National Convention met 150 years ago at the Wesleyan Chapel on Fall Street in Seneca Falls. There will be a lot of ceremony this week and next. The First Lady will be there. I was in Seneca Falls about 1978 and was having a beer with the county leader, George Souhan, in the Gould Hotel. Looking down at the street, I just happened to say to him, ``Where was that chapel where the convention met?'' He said, ``It was just down the street.'' I said, ``Let's go look.'' Down the street we went. What did we find, but a laundromat. The Wesleyan Chapel had become a laundromat on Fall Street and a garage behind. We had it declared a national park in 1980. We went around the city, the village, and found the houses of the ladies of Seneca Falls--the Bloomer girls and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the like. We went to Waterloo, where in the McClintock House the declaration was drafted. That needs repair; the Park Service should do it. It is quite an achievement, but it makes the point that the Senator from Connecticut has just made that you better look after these important sites. That was the first original American political idea-- that women were equal in civic rights with men. It didn't come from Europe. It came right from central New York. It had almost vanished as a site until we came along. If the Senator wishes to do more, more power to him. I thank my friend from Colorado.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. It has been a pleasure to work with my colleague from Missouri on the Faculty Retirement Incentive Act. Before I discuss the specifics of our bill, however, I would just like to commend the Chairman, Senator Jeffords; the Ranking Minority Member, Senator Kennedy; and the other Committee members for the bipartisan way they have gone about the business of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act. I think they have done an outstanding job. It has taken us several years to address the need of institutions of higher education to offer age-based incentives for the voluntary retirement of faculty. In 1990, Congress passed the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBRA) which made early retirement incentives permissible in the context of defined-benefit retirement plans, but did not address the status of such incentives in the context of defined-contribution retirement plans. Defined-contribution retirement plans are most popular with tenured faculty due to their pension portability. The OWBRA did not preclude defined-contribution retirement plans, but by not addressing them at all, it added to the ambiguity surrounding the matter. Functionally, early retirement incentives operate in the same manner for both types of plans. There is continued uncertainty, however, whether early retirement incentives with an upper-age limit that are offered to tenured faculty conflict with the purpose of the ADEA of prohibiting arbitrary age discrimination. Inclusion of the Faculty Retirement Incentive Act in the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act will provide a safe harbor for colleges and universities by clarifying that the early retirement incentives are permitted by the ADEA. Senator Ashcroft and I believe that the faculty retirement incentive provision will benefit colleges and universities, as well as those faculty who choose to participate. As officials for the American Association of University Professors have stated, this provision will ``provide greater flexibility in faculty retirement planning, offer a substantial retirement benefit to those professors who choose to retire under the terms of an incentive plan, and leave other professors whole in their choice to continue their careers.'' Senator Ashcroft and I intended to offer our bill as an amendment to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, but the Chairman informed us that there is broad support among Committee members for the House-passed provision, and that this issue can be resolved in the Conference Committee.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment and, from the perspective, if I may, of someone who has been involved with welfare dependency for a third of a century and more, and to make two points, not each of which will give complete comfort to either side of the debate. First, to say that when we began to recognize that a different sort of person was finding herself on welfare--which is to say the program which began for widows, and was a temporary bridge program until survivors insurance matured, as old-age insurance matured; and Francis Perkins, who presided over the creation of the Social Security Act, would describe the AFDC program, the typical recipient, as a West Virginia miner's widow, someone who wasn't going to work in the mines, this was a time of depression--this was a person who was left with children and no other source of support. We began to recognize that, more and more, we were getting younger mothers who had never been married, who had never had, either themselves or through a spouse, a relationship to the workforce; and we began to think in terms of vocational education. Vocational education was a Federal program. It began in World War I with the idea of training persons for the elementary purposes of providing the skills needed at the time in war industries. That has turned out to be a problematic experiment. Too often it became a way of providing jobs for teachers in vocational education programs, and with no real cumulative effect upon the recipients it was designed to help. However, in that interval I have been engaged in this, 33 years, we have seen something quite remarkable in our educational system, the development of a new level of education called the community college, 2 years after high school, to acquire some specific training, often in complicated tasks for which there is a direct job relationship. That is the way the community colleges have learned to work. They train you at things for which there are jobs. Last evening on the Jim Lehrer show we had a quarter hour segment of a community college in Austin, TX, where they are running short of high-tech computer producers and they are taking people in the community college there and they are teaching them about as advanced a degree of production skills as you could imagine--people who work with masks over their mouths lest their breath contaminate the infinitely complex circuitry of the computer chips they are making. This is done with the support of local industries who want those people to be employed and are in need of them and in a hurry for them. This is exactly the sort of work program, training program, that takes people off welfare permanently, as much as you can speak so of any individual. It puts them, not just in jobs, but in jobs that require high levels of training for which there is real demand in this economy. To deny that opportunity to young women because they have been on welfare is a form of injustice as well as a self-inflicted wound on the society. This is good sense. These are good training programs. These are people who, as the Senator from Kentucky has observed--let them get these 2 years behind them, get into the workforce, and buy Roth IRAs-- Roth IRAs. The more the better for the people and the more people with this kind of education the more such purchases there will be. Mr. President, I do hope in the interests of good common sense and experience, that this amendment be accepted. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may I first thank our esteemed chairman for his characteristically generous remarks, and all involved--to agree with him; to point out that this is the first such legislation since the Internal Revenue Service was established under Abraham Lincoln in 1862. Our purpose was to renew the 19th century agency, to invigorate it, and to give to the employees, the public servants, the respect to which they are entitled as public servants. Respect is one of the principal rewards for public service. I hope we have done that with the overwhelming support here on the floor, and the unanimous vote in the Finance Committee. Once again, our chairman has managed to bring us together and produce yet another major legislation out of the Finance Committee unanimously, which presents itself so clearly to the entire Senate floor. I would not want to close without mentioning again the role of Senators Kerrey and Grassley in the commission that preceded our work, and the staff that did heroic work. I would particularly mention on our side Mark Patterson, and Nick Giordano, whose encyclopedic knowledge, in fact, made our contribution hopefully of substance. So concludes a long year's work. I say well done to the chairman. I thank the chairman.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the Senator deserves to be heard. May we have order?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from North Dakota be allowed to speak for 3 minutes in response to the remarks by our chairman, the Senator from Delaware, and that the chairman, in turn, have 3 minutes, and that these two 3-minute speeches be the only comments made before we proceed to a vote on the motion to sustain the ruling.