Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. So it no longer exists. So we would have to create a new one.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I amend my unanimous consent request to have 2 minutes for the Senator from North Dakota, two 2 minutes for the Senator from Minnesota, and no other speakers other than the chairman.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I have to say to my friend from Minnesota that we entered into a very special arrangement to have the two comments and no more. And the chairman feels that if there were to be one more allowed that it would extend indefinitely. And the agreement having been reached, I feel that we will not be able to.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator from North Dakota has 4 minutes, the Senator from Delaware has 4 minutes, and no other.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

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

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I thank the chairman. section 105(e)

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, the Maglev Deployment Program in the ISTEA reauthorization legislation contains contract authority of $60 million for pre-construction activities including investment analyses, environmental impact statements and other corridor development activities. The program then provides authorization of $950 million for construction of a project. I wish to ask the chairman to confirm my understanding that these pre-construction activities are to be funded in the same fashion as other transportation programs, that is to say, with an 80 percent Federal match. The Federal role in the actual construction program, however, is limited to not more than a two-thirds match. Is that also the chairman's understanding?

Mr. MOYNIHAN

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise in the first instance to thank our revered chairman, Senator Roth, chairman of the Finance Committee, who brings this measure to the floor with the unanimous vote of the Finance Committee. From the first, ours has been, under his direction, a nonpartisan effort to deal with a nonpartisan issue of the first order of consequence. We are equally, in turn, grateful for the work of the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service. Senators Kerrey and Grassley of our committee and Congressmen Portman and Coyne from the House side contributed significantly to shaping the concept of the Internal Revenue Service as a customer-based agency, as they put it. I believe, sir, that we have done this. We have done it with the aid and the cooperation and the participation of Chairman Bill Archer and ranking member Charles B. Rangel of the Committee on Ways and Means in the House, who worked with us on the committee of conference. Senator Roth was chairman. And the result before you is an exceptional piece of legislation--and not an everyday event. The Internal Revenue Service became a permanent part of our government in 1862 as part of the Civil War Income Tax Act, which was signed into law July 1, 1862, by President Abraham Lincoln. That was almost a century and a half ago. Yet it was not until just last September that the full Finance Committee of the Senate exercised its oversight jurisdiction to ask, how is this enterprise working and where is it going? The hearing illustrated the need for changes at the IRS and encouraged the thinking on the subject which has produced the measure we bring before you today. As evidence of the process already underway by the unanimous confirmation of this body, Mr. Charles O. Rossotti became the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. This was a stroke of administrative inspiration by Secretary Rubin, who went out into the private sector looking not for a tax lawyer--an honorable profession; normally the Commissioners of the IRS have been tax lawyers--but instead for an administrator. He found the head of a large company that specialized in information services of a wide variety, and who was prepared to do this as a public service and not to continue in the line that has been of a particular profession, the practice of tax law. We have established an IRS oversight board of six private persons, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the representative of the IRS employees, and finally the Commissioner of the IRS itself. The board will be responsible for setting the strategic direction and goals of the agency, while the Commissioner will continue to manage day-to-day operations. The Finance Committee--and then the Senate--specifically voted to include the Secretary and employee representative on the board. The conference agreement, which maintained this arrangement, passed the House by a vote of 402 to 8. With the Secretary of the Treasury on the board, the board will know things it cannot otherwise learn. The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury is a world figure. His presence on the board gives it stature within the Government and with the public. The fear was that otherwise it would lapse into a sort of advisory mode that would fail to serve the objectives of this ``reform and restructuring'' legislation. We are pleased that the agreement maintains the position on the board for a representative of the IRS employees. The representative will be able to work cooperatively on the inside rather than working in opposition from the outside. An ongoing problem is how to attract top executives to a government activity which has its counterpart in the private sector where compensation--if I may use that term--is often very high, if not indeed exorbitant, because the amounts of money involved are very large. So to recognize the disparity between government and private sector salary structures, the conference agreement adopted the Senate provision authorizing the appointment by the Commissioner of up to 40 persons to critical positions for 4-year terms with an annual compensation equivalent to the pay of the Vice President of the United States; that is to say, currently $175,400. These will be persons chosen for their particular skills. They will be there for a 4-year period. They will be departing the private sector for an interval of public service at something approaching the salaries they normally enjoy. Other provisions will permit the establishment of a new performance management system focused on individual accountability, and allow for the creation of an incentive award system bringing the IRS into contemporary management modes--out of the model of the civil service that was developed a century ago when we set up the Civil Service Commission, again establishing grades for employees with salaries that were low, but careers that were guaranteed for life. That effort was very controversial at that time. I can record that two Senators from New York State resigned from the Senate when the newly elected President appointed a collector of customs in the port of New York of whom they did not approve. One was Roscoe Conkling; the other, Thomas P. Platt. Mr. Conkling was no friend of civil service reform and once observed that when Dr. Johnson declared patriotism to be the last refuge of a scoundrel, he underestimated the potential of reform. And yet reform didn't come about, a century passed, and we found that the system had not the internal energies to change itself, to adapt to new technologies and new management modes. We hope the IRS will with these new arrangements--the infusion of new people, and a clear understanding that we expect the system to be open, innovative, and ``user friendly,'' in the term the chairman frequently used in our hearings. And we shall see. There are several other measures, Mr. President. I should point out that the conferees were heroic in their determination not to include all manner of extraneous or narrowly-applicable provisions, as is often the case in a tax bill but is not the case, with very few exceptions, in ours. There are two provisions in the conference report, however, that are of special interest to the Senator from New York. The first adopts the Senate provision for a complexity analysis requirement. It requires the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation to provide an analysis of the complexity and administrative issues associated with tax legislation reported by the Finance Committee and Ways and Means Committee. The provision is intended to provide notice, prior to floor consideration, about provisions that have widespread applicability and may be unduly burdensome for taxpayers to understand and comply with, or difficult for the IRS to interpret and administer, or both. I might interject that when this was before us in the Finance Committee, the distinguished chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation said that she looked forward to this, but that she was fearful as to whether the joint committee could begin this complicated effort so long as it was burdened with the task of determining which items in tax legislation were subject to the line-item veto, a detailed and exhaustive analysis of every tax bill, which was a new responsibility for the joint committee. I am happy to say, in the weeks since that exchange took place, the Supreme Court has dutifully and properly declared the line-item veto to be unconstitutional. So one of the unintended consequences--I cannot imagine the Court had this very much in mind--is that the joint committee is now in a position to begin a type of analysis which is new to American legislation. We are in the practice of having an increasingly complex Tax Code. There can surely be no question that we are dealing with the problems that we found in the Internal Revenue Service because the Internal Revenue Service has to administer a Tax Code that is frequently incomprehensible. An almost priestly hierarchy understands its meanings and can work them through the tax courts and such like. But to the public and, too, the Congress, they are often simply incomprehensible. I remember standing on this floor a year and a half ago with an 800- page tax bill, Mr. President, and that was the only copy of the tax bill on the Senate floor, which we were about to vote for 92-8. A copy provided to the distinguished chairman had been promptly appropriated by the Budget Committee to see if there were any budget points of order, and so the one copy was here on this desk, and Senators on both sides of the aisle would come up and ask whether a provision they had an interest in was in the bill, and I would say, ``I hope in good spirit I can find out, but what will you pay me?'' Indeed, there was no other way for the Senator to learn. And this is not an unusual event. I am going to say this not once but twice because we have to start attending to our own behavior in these matters. I was one of the participants in the enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. This was a wonderful, collegial experience led by our good friend and former colleague, Senator Packwood, along with Senator Chafee, Senator Danforth, a ``core group,'' as we called ourselves, of about six of us. We would meet for coffee at 8 o'clock every morning in Senator Packwood's office, and it would be my job, rather as the dean in a cathedral, to provide a reading for the morning. I would make sure I got the Wall Street Journal early, and without a great deal of effort I would find the advertisements where you would see a little classified ad which would say, ``Rocky Mountain sheep, guaranteed losses.'' And the Wall Street Journal would tell you how you would be certain to lose money in such a manner that the code would eventually reward you for your losses, which is an interesting game to play if you are interested in C notes but not a very productive form of economic activity. Well, we cleaned up that Tax Code. We brought the rates down from, oh, half a dozen income tax rates to 28 percent and 15 percent--two rates. We did ``base broadening'' as the term was; more and more income became subject to taxation, so the rates of taxation could be lowered. And when it was all over, to our surprise and rather to the consternation of the tax bar, you might say, we had, indeed, produced a fairly simple and comprehensible Tax Code. That was 1986--1986, Mr. President. What you have before you, sir, what we have in the Senate before us-- and my revered chairman will know this better than anyone else present--we have the 65th public law to amend the Internal Revenue Code since the Tax Reform Act of 1986. We have passed 65 tax bills. That comes to about six a year. If you were assigned that task, you would say it would be impossible to achieve; it would be asking too much of our staffs and our Members. But we have done this heroic, if absurd, task, and it has to be said again that simplification is the essence of justice and efficiency in the code. We are a large, complex economy, an international economy. We are not going to have a simple code, but there is no reason we should have an incomprehensible one, particularly when the complexities often reflect the influence of special interest in the code. In this regard, not many weeks ago we heard testimony from one of our Nation's most distinguished and accomplished economists, Murray Weidenbaum, who had been chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the administration of President Reagan. I served with him in the administration of President Nixon. At that time he took it upon himself to explain and popularize the idea of revenue sharing--get Federal revenue out to cities and States, let them decide how to spend it, and reduce the dependency on administrative judgments, decisions, and statutes here in Washington. That was a very fine idea which we lost to the budget deficits of the 1980s. But Murray Weidenbaum made a powerful point, coming from a powerful mind. He said, if you spend all your income, the American Tax Code is simple. You just fill out a one-page form: I made $50,000 last year, spent $50,000; I made $100,000, I made $100 million--God in heaven knows there are some who do--but I spent it all, and my taxes are as follows. It is only when you begin to save that the Tax Code gets complicated. Of course, our largest economic question right now is the rate of savings in the American economy. The fact that we have large trade deficits basically reflects that we are importing capital. We have the lowest savings rate of any industrial country in the world--or any prime industrial country of which I am aware. It is quite striking. I would not argue this is the principal factor, but it is the fact that if you save money you can get in trouble with the Internal Revenue Code. Whatever else, that should not be the case. It is the case. I think the complexity analysis, particularly if it is directed with this kind of issue in mind, has the potential of a very important innovation in the development of tax legislation. Don't expect it to change anything in the next 3 or 4 years, but in 20 years' time we might find that this small provision in this large legislation had large consequences. One other item. In the interval since this legislation was agreed to, the majority and minority leaders have created a special committee on the year 2000 problem, with a hurry-up reporting date. But during the Finance Committee's consideration of the bill, Commissioner Rossotti specifically noted, in a six-page letter, that some of the changes the chairman has described in such admirable detail would overburden the IRS's ongoing efforts to upgrade its computers to allow for the century date change. In time we came to see the need for the effective-date changes he recommended--and Secretary Rubin reinforced this in a typically succinct one-page letter. We have, in the main, accommodated the Commissioner in this regard. I think this is probably the first statutory recognition of the year 2000 problem, which we are going to know a lot more about in very short order. Now, briefly, a few matters of concern. Contrary to the unanimous opposition of the tax profession, this legislation includes a provision that shifts the burden of proof in civil cases from the taxpayer to the IRS. We all live in the real world and no one on the surface would ever think it right that the burden of proof be on a taxpayer, not the Government. But reality can be different. Four former IRS Commissioners, who appeared on a bipartisan panel before the committee, testified that shifting the burden of proof would cause more harm than good to the taxpayer. Similar sentiment was expressed by dozens of professors of tax law. Their concern is that this provision will result in more intrusive IRS audits, create additional complexity and litigation, and create confusion for taxpayers and the IRS as to when an issue needs to be resolved in court and when the burden has shifted. I recognize the political popularity of the provision, but I fear it may actually prove to work against the taxpayer. Be warned--persons who have the best reason to be impartial in their judgment have said this is not going to help, it is going to make things yet more difficult. Another provision certain to cause confusion and to lead to additional litigation with the IRS is the expansion of the privilege of confidentiality to tax advice furnished by accountants. This new privilege may be asserted in noncriminal tax proceedings before the IRS and in Federal courts. However, like the current attorney-client privilege, information disclosed for the purposes of preparing a new tax form is not privileged and the conference agreement precludes application of the expanded privilege to written communications to a corporation ``in connection with the promotion of the direct or indirect participation of such corporations in any tax shelter.'' This is a right that most taxpayers will never be eligible to assert, and many will be surprised to learn about its limitations. One provision that the bill does not include, and should, is the correction of a drafting error in the 1997 act which gives a windfall to the few estates in this country with a value of more than $17 million. It costs nothing to fix, and the joint committee estimates that the failure to correct this error would cost taxpayers $900 million in the next 10 years. The Senate bill fixed it. But somehow the conferees could not reach agreement. Finally, Mr. President, and possibly most important, I direct the Senate's attention to a modest, but hugely significant, semantic triumph that has been included in this legislation. Section 5003 of the conference agreement replaces in U.S. trade law the confusing 17th century phrase ``most-favored nation,'' which begins with the French phrase ``la nation la plus favorisee.'' We now replace that term with the plain American term ``normal trade relations.'' This relieves the President and the Congress of the burden of having to ask, why is this typically not-very-popular country being made a most-favored nation? Why, for example, is there now a dispute about whether Vietnam should be given most-favored-nation status? Of course, it is not most-favored nation; it simply means you get the same treatment that the most- favored nation, some other nation most favored, gets. It is antique usage that immediately confuses everyone involved, and now we will be able to say we propose ``normal trade relations.'' It is plain English and avoids the needless misunderstandings that have accompanied that other term. I do not want to overburden the Senate with detail, but the most- favored-nation concept is well over 700 years old. It has been traced by historians to a clause in the treaty of November 8, 1226, in which Frederick II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, conceded to the city of Marseilles the privileges previously granted to the citizens of Pisa and Genoa. Not greater privileges, but merely the same. The term itself is perhaps a little more recent. The first use that we can come across specifically is in the treaty of 1659 between France and Spain, which guaranteed that the subjects of each sovereign, while in the realm of the other, would be treated as the most-favored nation. Again, the phrase ``le plus favorablement,'' or in modern French, ``la nation la plus favorisee''--having the same rights as were granted the English and the Dutch. In the main, the usage has become counterproductive. It confuses the public as to what is being proposed. I think it is fair to say sometimes it confuses the Congress as well, and we are well to be rid of it. I think it is past time and, if I may say, this is a matter that the Finance Committee has had in mind for some while. The distinguished and revered chairman and I introduced legislation last year for this purpose, and now we see it about to become law. Mr. President, I thank you for your courtesy, and I have said my piece on the matter. I yield the floor. Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I certainly will. I will be succinct, because nothing could be more clear. The United States is blessed with a citizenry that pays its taxes on time and in full. There are exceptions, but we do it voluntarily. Technically, we self-assess; we decide ourselves what we owe the government. The rate of compliance is very high. Up until just recently, and it is just beginning to change, for example, in the United Kingdom, which we associate with and we think of as a free society, and it certainly is, the subjects of the queen did not decide how much taxes he or she owed; the queen decided. They were sent a bill. You are free to contest it in court, and you can contest it in court the rest of your life, but you still have to pay the bill. So the idea of complexity in this system, making it so difficult to know what it is you owe jeopardizes a precious institution, which is the faith of the public in the good intentions and performance of the government itself. That, I think, was one of the reasons the Kerrey Commission called for the reforms that are in this legislation of the IRS. You can have an openness and a sense that things are on the level here and government is doing the right thing.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Indeed. Mr. GREGG addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, on Saturday, June 28, as Congress began its most recent recess, New York City bid a fond farewell to one of County Mayo's finest gifts to our city and nation. Paul O'Dwyer, former New York City Council President and champion of countless progressive causes, was a towering figure in our politics for well over half a century, playing a significant role in such disparate movements as the efforts to create a United Ireland and an independent State of Israel, the American civil rights and peace movements and the New York City reform movement that remade the face of our city's politics in the late 1950's. From running guns to the Irgun in 1947 to organizing black voters in Mississippi in 1964, Paul O'Dwyer was on the cutting edge of every major social and political issue that shaped our nation's politics. He may have only won two of the dozen elections he contested in his long and colorful career, but his legacy lives on in the lives he touched and the issues he championed. Paul O'Dwyer and I were not always on the same side of every issue. You could question his strategy or even his judgement, but you could never question his abiding integrity or his remarkable capacity to sustain passion about human dignity and equal justice. Paul O'Dwyer was born on June 29, 1907 in the Irish village of Behola, the eleventh and last surviving child of Patrick and Bridget McNicholas O'Dwyer. He arrived on our shores in 1925, working on the docks as he went to night classes, first at Fordham University and then at St. John's Law School. It is a measure of how quickly he moved through life that he had to receive special permission from Chief Justice Benjamin Nathan Cordoza of the New York Court of Appeals to take his bar exam in 1929, four years after arriving from Ireland and two years before he could receive citizenship or be formally admitted to the bar. As the younger brother of Tammany Hall fixture (and future mayor) William O'Dwyer, he might have easily become a successfully well-connected lawyer. But that was simply not the way Paul O'Dwyer chose to live his life. ``If I thought at the end of the year that all I did was make a living, I'd regard it as a pretty incomplete year'', he once said of his rich life as an agitator within the system. He must, on retrospect, have had paying clients during his 67 years as an attorney, but they were hardly the reason every segment of New York City's diverse political and ethnic spectrum joined in mourning this remarkable individual. New York City and our nation are inspired by the quality of Paul O'Dwyer's example and enriched by the legacy of his accomplishments. I ask to have printed in the Congressional Record The New York Times' report on Paul O'Dwyer's funeral. The report follows: [From the New York Times, June 28, 1998] Political Elite Out in Force To Mourn Democrat O'Dwyer [By Mike Allen] New York's political royalty packed an Upper West Side sanctuary yesterday for the funeral Mass of Paul O'Dwyer, the gritty liberal who once led the City Council. Mr. O'Dwyer, who died Tuesday, was remembered for the crunch of his eyebrows and the splay of his glasses as he fought for causes as perpetual as Irish nationalism and as fleeting as a strike by flight attendants. Tomorrow, which would have been his 91st birthday, his ashes are to be scattered at his birthplace, his family's three-and-a-half- acre farmstead in County Mayo, in western Ireland. The bagpipes and drums of the Police Department's Emerald Society led the cortege to Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, stepping off to the anthem of Irish rebellion, ``A Nation Once Again.'' Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani sate with his arms folded in a front pew. He was separated from the recent nemesis, Peter F. Vallone, the Council Speaker, by Barrie Robinson, the Irish consul general. Frank Durkan, a nephew and law partner of Mr. O'Dwyer, used his eulogy to reel off a list of public officials Mr. O'Dwyer had known and tormented. ``Mayor Giuliani,'' Mr. Durkan said, ``you're lucky, in a way, that you're not in his line of fire at the moment.'' The congregation of 700, mostly Mr. O'Dwyer's fellow Democrats, laughed and applauded. In the homily, the Rev. Thomas P. Leonard, Holy Trinity's pastor, said Mr. O'Dwyer's style was ``confrontation, with wit and sagacity.'' Father Leonard told of a conversation he had overheard Thursday afternoon in the rectory between two friends who were reading Mr. O'Dwyer's obituary. ``One said, `Wasn't he an anarchist?'' Father Leonard said. ``The other answered, `No, no, no! He was Irish.' '' Percy E. Sutton, the former Manhattan Borough President, remembered Mr. O'Dwyer's flights to help Soviet Jews, and bus rides to help elect a black man in Alabama. ``You see,'' Mr. Sutton said, ``Paul O'Dwyer was not just Irish. Paul O'Dwyer was Italian. Paul O'Dwyer was Jewish. Paul O'Dwyer was Greek. He was Polish. Paul O'Dwyer was also African-American. In his involvement in the causes that were not necessarily his, Paul O'Dwyer was us.'' Mr. Sutton concluded, ``At that place, where he should finally rest, you can bet one thing: There'll be an organizing of protests there. Because that is the nature of Paul O'Dwyer.'' A niece, Joan O'Dwyer Savarese, invoked the notion that at death, life plays back like a movie. ``Uncle Paul,'' she said, ``what a show you're in for.'' That show would have included boarding house life and night law school after immigrating to Manhattan, defense of Irish Republican Army members facing extradition, registration of black voters in Mississippi, marches against the Vietnam War, four losing races for United States Senate, and election as Councilman at Large in Manhattan and City Council President. His wife, Patricia, recalled a Board of Estimate meeting when a fight broke out between landlords and tenants (``Odd, that,'' she said to appreciative laughter), and Mr. O'Dwyer descended into the skirmish as peacemaker. She went on to say that her husband ``is truly not dead.'' ``We have evidence of his physical passing,'' Mrs. O'Dwyer said. ``But that spirit and that passion--it will stay alive if we all leave here today committed to making the lives of our fellow human beings better.'' At the service's close, the white pall that shrouded the coffin was replaced by the Irish flag. Friends, certain Mr. O'Dwyer would be delighted to be wrapped in the tricolor, gave a standing ovation as the casket passed by.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of H.R. 3130, the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act of 1998. This legislation contains two important components to improve child support collections: a better system of making incentive payments to states for their performance in collecting child support and a new penalty system to help ensure that state child support systems meet basic data processing standards. While both of these components are rather technical, they do represent concrete steps forward and should result in thousands of children--many of them poor--receiving critical financial assistance from absent parents, something all too many poor children do not receive today. In addition, the bill contains provisions to improve enforcement of the medical aspects of child support and to help ensure data privacy. These latter provisions we owe to the hard work of my colleagues Senator Rockefeller and Senator Baucus, and I thank them for these improvements to the legislation. Mr. President, I urge H.R. 3130 be passed.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, I rise to praise the Constitution, but also appropriately perhaps in this setting, the Senate's foremost expositor and defender of that document, the Honorable Robert C. Byrd, who has today helped write a page in the history of liberty. I mean no less, and I could say no more. In 1995, led by Senator Byrd, Senator Levin, Senator Hatfield and others, we pleaded with the Senate not to do this, not to enact this legislation. We said it is unconstitutional. That is a large statement. We did not say it was unwise or unseasonal. We said it was unconstitutional. We take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and domestic enemies can arise from ignorance, well-intentioned ignorance. This surely was the case, because the bill passed 69 to 31. It passed in the face of the clearest injunction from George Washington in 1793 who said, I must sign a bill in toto or veto it. Senator Byrd, along with the Senator from New York and Senators Levin and Hatfield, chose, with two Members of the House, to sue the Government of the United States declaring this act to be unconstitutional. The Court held we did not have standing, although two Justices dissented. Justice Stevens, who wrote today's opinion, said in his dissent in that earlier case that we did have standing, and that the measure is unconstitutional. This was so plain to a scholar and a judge. I will take just a moment to add and to emphasize Senator Byrd's citations of the writers at the time the Constitution was composed. In the Federalist Papers, Madison at one point asks, given the fugitive existence--that nice phrase--of the Republics of Greece and Rome, why did anybody suppose this Republic would long endure? Because, it was answered, we have a new ``science of politics.'' The ancients depended on virtue to animate the people who govern. We have no such illusions. We depend on the clash of equal and opposed opinions and interests--the conflict of opposings interests and the separation of powers, those two fundamental ideas. And we wrote them into the Constitution: article I, the legislative branch; article II, the executive branch. And the court decisions in this matter, too, have hearkened back to those early times. I was struck by the opinion written by Judge Hogan, who earlier this year was the second judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to hold this statute unconstitutional. He cited Edward Gibbon, whose ``Decline and Fall'' was published in 1776. Here is Gibbon's passage as cited by Judge Hogan: The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive. And that is exactly the direction we were moving in. Justice Kennedy, in this morning's opinion, quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers in which Montesquieu, in the ``Spirit of the Laws,'' is cited: When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body, there can be no liberty. Liberty is what Senator Byrd was talking about. Liberty is what was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States today, and liberty is what was put in jeopardy, I am sorry to say, Mr. President, by this body, by the other body, and by the President who signed the bill. Liberty was put in jeopardy. Liberty has prevailed. Let us learn from this. Let us not just let it go by and think nothing happened. Something did happen. A smallish group opposed it, took it to court, were rebuffed, took it to court again. We were there as amici and prevailed. But had we not, what would have happened? Had Robert C. Byrd not been here, what would have happened to our liberties? Not to our budget. These are inconsequential things compared to that fundamental. And so, sir, I rise to express the honor I have felt in your company and hope that history will long remember and largely note what was done today in the Court at the behest of the sometime majority leader, the distinguished upholder of our Constitution, Robert C. Byrd. Not as a man but as a man speaking for the ideas and principles on which the Constitution of the United States is based. Finally, sir, I express thanks to our counsel, Michael Davidson, Lloyd Cutler, Alan Morrison, Charles Cooper, and Louis Cohen--some of the finest attorneys in our country--who have helped us with this matter, and have generously done so on a pro bono basis. Professor Laurence H. Tribe at the Harvard Law School, and Dean Michael J. Gerhardt of Case Western University School of Law, were also of great assistance, as were others. I celebrate the moment and yield the floor. Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, a milestone will occur on Tuesday, July 7th, which I do not want to go unacknowledged: Ellen Bennett Kantrowitz, a remarkable New Yorker, will celebrate her 80th birthday. Mrs. Bennett Kantrowitz is a native of Queens, New York. She married Matt Bennett of Brooklyn, New York and had four children: daughter Pat, and sons Bill, Mike and Matt. Today they all have achieved much success which they attribute to the guidance provided by their strong mother. Pat is a program assistant with the National Association of Secondary School Principals in Reston, Virginia. Bill is a Long Island businessman. Mike is News Director of WHUD/WLNA in Peekskill, New York. Matt is a partner in a Goshen, New York law firm. Forty years ago, a tragic accident claimed the life of Matt Bennett. The lawsuit which followed led Mrs. Bennett Kantrowitz to enlist the help of New York lawyer Moses Kantrowitz. Seven years later, the pair were married. For twenty three years this couple lived happily, continuing to promote and sustain the strong family bonds which characterize the Bennett Kantrowitz family, until Moses Kantrowitz's death in 1989. Mrs. Bennett Kantrowitz is the matriarch of a large and loving family, one which extends throughout the state of New York from Huntington, North Babylon, Massapequa, Selden, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island to Upstate, Monroe, Highland Mills, Central Valley, Newburgh and Beacon. She remains steadfast in her dedication to her children, grandchildren and great-children, undeterred by age and ailment. As Ellen Bennett Kantrowitz turns 80 she will be surrounded by family at a celebration July 4th weekend in Monroe, New York. With appreciation and admiration I take this opportunity to congratulate her on her 80th birthday, and wish her many more.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, President Clinton long ago announced his intention to veto the Education Savings and School Excellence Act. For reasons I will describe in a moment, I oppose this bill and agree with the President's decision to veto it. However, apart from the merits of the legislation, I do want to thank Chairman Roth for insisting that the appropriate place for initial consideration of the Coverdell legislation was in the Finance Committee, not on the floor. This legislation was reported by the Committee on February 10, 1998, by a vote of 11-8. This is one of those infrequent occasions in which Chairman Roth and I disagree on a policy matter. The good intentions of the proponents of expanding the availability of education individual retirement accounts are clear. However, in my view the proposed changes to the education IRA provisions, passed just last July and effective on January 1 of this year, are fraught with serious policy and technical defects. Secretaries Rubin and Riley have expressed strong opposition to the education IRA provisions in this bill, and President Clinton agrees with their recommendation that he veto this conference agreement. In a letter to members of the Finance Committee dated February 9, 1998, the Secretaries of the Treasury and Education stated that the education IRA provisions in this bill would disproportionately benefit the most affluent families and provide little or no benefit to lower and middle-income families. In addition, they indicated that the provisions ``would create significant compliance problems.'' In a letter to Speaker Gingrich dated June 16, 1998, President Clinton states ``If the conference report on H.R. 2646 is presented to me, I will veto it because the A+ accounts that it would authorize are bad education policy and bad tax policy.'' Treasury Department analyses conclude that 70 percent of the tax benefits from this provision would go to the top 20 percent of all income earners. In a memorandum of March 2, 1998, the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that 52 percent of the tax benefits of the enhanced education IRA provision would to 7 percent of taxpayers: those with dependents already enrolled in private primary or secondary schools. The Joint Committee memorandum indicates that the per tax return benefit for taxpayers with children in private schools will be five times greater than the benefit to taxpayers with children in public schools. This bill will not result in greater opportunity for middle and lower income families to send children to private schools, as supporters contend. Instead, it will merely provide new tax breaks to families already able to afford private schools for their children. If the proponents are truly concerned about the middle class, the tax benefits should be targeted there. In order to accomplish this, the income limits would have to lowered, and the ability to circumvent those limits would have to be prevented. Nor will this legislation result in an increase in national savings. The expansion of the education IRA will provide further incentives for taxpayers to shift money to tax-favored accounts, and to spend funds that would otherwise be used for retirement. Further, the additional complexity these new provisions would add to the Internal Revenue Code is of real concern. Taxpayers are just beginning to become aware of the hundreds of changes made in the 1997 tax bill. And now we are considering additional changes to a provision that became effective on January 1, 1998. More confusion for taxpayers; a boon for H&R Block. A week after a vote in the House to terminate the Internal Revenue Code for among other things its mind-numbing complexity, we have before us a bill that would create a maze of rules in attempting to define what constitutes as ``qualified elementary and secondary education expense.'' For example, the bill defines such expenses to include computers and related software and services, but how is the IRS to monitor whether a computer (or the use of the Internet) is used by a child for educational purposes or for entertainment, or by the child's parents for unrelated purposes? Under this bill, the ability to contribute up to $2,000 per year in an account for elementary and secondary education expenses would sunset after 2002. However, money contributed through 2002 could still be used for such expenses. There will be different rules depending on whether contributions were made in 1998, 1999 to 2002, or post-2002. It will be up to the taxpayer to track--and the IRS to examine--when funds were contributed, the earnings on those funds, and whether they can be used for only higher education, or both elementary and secondary education and higher education. Who will understand these rules? Mr. President, we are already spending enough on IRAs and other tax- advantaged savings vehicles. At a cost of $40 billion over 10 years, the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 created the Education IRA and the Roth IRA, and significantly expanded existing IRAs and the tax benefits of State-sponsored prepaid college tuition plans. Having said all of that, I must also express continued bewilderment at the opposition by the House of applying the income exclusion for employer-provided educational assistance, which is section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code, to graduate students. The conference agreement extends the income exclusion for undergraduates, but once again fails to restore such treatment for graduate studies. Section 127 is one of the most successful Federal education policies we have. A million persons per year are provided tax-free higher education by their employers; about a quarter of those are students enrolled in graduate-level education courses. In a world of continuing education, section 127 permits an employer to send an employee to school to learn something new, get a degree, and bring the skills back into the workplace. The employee gets more income, and the Federal Treasury gets more tax revenue. This is a program that works, and it administers itself. This is a repeat of what took place last year. The Senate version of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 would have made this absolutely easy; it made section 127 permanent for both undergraduate and graduate study. For reasons I will never understand, the Senate language was dropped in conference. Finally, I appreciate Chairman Roth's good faith efforts in working with members on both sides to try and come up with measures designed to address the issue of school infrastructure. Last year, Senators Carol Moseley-Braun and Bob Graham brought the issue of crumbling schools to our attention, and they continue to be the leaders in the effort to address this serious problem. Most of use would prefer not to address this issue via the Tax Code, but previous attempts at more direct solutions have been opposed. I am afraid that such opposition has resulted in the nominal tax provision we find in this bill to address a problem that is estimated to cost at least $112 billion--a figure that does not include the cost of building new schools.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to offer my congratulations on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the oldest Catholic church in continuous existence on Staten Island, the Church of St. Joseph-St. Thomas. Evolving out of a small Catholic community in Rossville, the church has improved New York's quality of life for generations and is an integral part of the Staten Island community. The impact this parish has had on its community is remarkable. Both in times of prosperity and in times of despair, the contributions of the pastors and congregants of St. Joseph-St. Thomas have profoundly affected the residents of Staten Island. The parish has provided education for children, held community gatherings and helped the disadvantaged. The leaders of St. Joseph-St. Thomas have been responsible for much of this tradition of community involvement. Though I will not name all of the former pastors here, I would like to mention two. Father Edward A. Dunphy's established child-care programs for immigrants during the 19th century. These first Catholic child-care facilities helped maintain the devotion to Catholicism within Staten Island's immigrant community. During the Great Depression, Father Thomas S. Magrath cut church expenses to relieve parishioners' fiancial burdens. All the while, he developed projects and programs to feed and shelter the suffering. Today this spirit of helping those in need lives on with Monsignor Peter G. Finn and the church's involvement in such programs as Project Hospitality and the St. Vincent De Paul Society. With appreciation and admiration I extend my best wishes to the Church of St. Joseph-St. Thomas. Its 150th Anniversary is cause for much celebration and anticipation of even greater accomplishments to come.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to report to the Senate that on June 18, 1998 in Geneva, at the conclusion of the 86th International Labor Conference, the International Labor Organization adopted by an overwhelming margin an important new ``Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.'' The vote was 273 in favor of the new Declaration, zero opposed, with 43 abstentions. The adoption of this measure is a singular achievement and holds great promise for advancing core labor standards in the international community. Our distinguished Secretary of Labor, the Honorable Alexis M. Herman, deserves much credit, as does Andrew Samet, her able Deputy Under Secretary for International Labor Affairs. Over the last three weeks, Secretary Herman energetically pursued this agreement throughout difficult and long negotiating sessions, and in critical corridor side- bars. Ultimately, she succeeded. Secretary Herman has characterized the new Declaration and its follow-up mechanism as ``a big step forward for the ILO and its members as we enter the 21st Century.'' In the statement that she issued on June 18, 1998, upon the adoption of the new Declaration, she said: With the passage of this declaration, the ILO underlined and clarified the importance of the fundamental rights of workers in an era of economic globalization. It firmly demonstrates that we can and will move forward in an effort to see trade and labor concerns as mutually supportive--not mutually exclusive. Another of the United States' Delegates to the International Labor Conference, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, called the Declaration ``an historic breakthrough that dramatically underscores the importance of basic rights for workers in the global economy.'' And to emphasize the tripartite nature of the ILO, it should be noted for the record that the U.S. Council for International Business, which is the United States' employer representative to the ILO, was a principal supporter of this new initiative, and has been from the beginning. The Council's President, Abraham Katz, called the new Declaration ``a major achievement for the ILO.'' In essence, the ILO has bunbled together, in a single declaration, four sets of fundamental rights--the core labor standards embodying the broad principles that are essential to membership in the ILO. Having declared that those rights are fundamental, the document then provides for a monitoring system--a ``follow-up'' mechanism, to use the ILO's term--to determine how countries are complying with these elemental worker rights. The four sets of fundamental rights are: (1) Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; (2) the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor; (3) the effective abolition of child labor; and (4) the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. These rights flow directly from three sources. First, from the ILO Constitution itself, which was drafted by a commission headed by Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor and became, in 1919, part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. Second, from the immensely important Declaration of Philadelphia, which reaffirmed, at the height of World War II, the fundamental principles of the ILO, including freedom of expression and association and the importance of equal opportunity and economic security. Adopted in 1944, the Declaration of Philadelphia was formally annexed to the ILO Constitution two years later. And, not least, these four groups of core labor standards flow from the seven ILO conventions that are recognized as Core Human Rights Conventions. These seven conventions are not the highly technical agreements that make up the vast majority of the ILO's 181 conventions. Rather, they directly address the rights of working people. They are: No. 29--the Forced Labor Convention of 1930; No. 87--the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right; to Organize Convention, 1948; No. 98--the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949; No. 100--the Equal Remuneration Convention of 1951; No. 105--the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention, 1957; No. 111--the Discrimination in Employment and Occupation Convention of 1958; and No. 138--the Minimum Age Convention of 1973. They are extraordinary conventions. The Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995 identified six of these ILO conventions as essential to ensuring human rights in the workplace: Nos. 29, 87, 98, 100, 105, and 111. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has classified them as ``International Human Rights Conventions.'' The Governing Body of the ILO subsequently added to the list of core conventions Convention No. 138, the minimum age convention, in recognition of the importance of matters relating to child labor. These conventions embody the broad principles that are basic to membership in the ILO. But what makes this year's Declaration so significant, Mr. President, is its second component--the monitoring mechanism, the element that will, if implemented properly, ensure that something will come of all this. For example, the follow-up mechanism will take a look at how China is doing on prison labor, how Pakistan is doing on child labor, how the United States performs with respect to freedom of association. Yes, we will be examined, too. I spoke to the Senate at some length about this matter during our debate last Fall on the fast track legislation. Indeed, the fast track bill that the Finance Committee reported to the floor contained an explicit endorsement--which was included in the Administration's draft proposal at this Senator's suggestion--of the ILO's efforts in this regard. That section of the Committee's bill, S. 1269, reads as follows: It is the policy of the United States to reinforce the trade agreements process by--promoting respect for worker's rights by--(ii) seeking to establish in the International Labor Organization . . . a mechanism for the systematic examination of, and reporting on, the extent to which ILO members promote and enforce the freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, a prohibition on the use of forced labor, a prohibition on exploitative child labor, and a prohibition on discrimination in employment. . . . In January of this year, I traveled to Geneva to discuss this new initiative with ILO Director General Michel Hansenne and his deputies. I did so because I believe that this new Declaration has great potential. Its monitoring mechanism could evolve into an effective tool for upgrading global compliance with these core labor standards. I have argued that the monitoring system ought to include inspections, an idea that could gain acceptance over time. The ILO is the only League of Nations organization that has survived into the era of the United Nations. It arose at a time when the idea of sending inspectors into a country to see whether that country was keeping an agreement would have been thought much too radical. That all changed in the aftermath of World War II, with the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957. With the IAEA, inspections have become established practice over a range of international concerns and international organizations, including the ILO. Although not explicitly provided for in the ILO Constitution, several ``inspection'' mechanisms have in fact evolved in the organization since the early 1960's. Two are of particular note. ILO Commissions of Inquiry, which investigate members' compliance with ratified conventions in accordance with Article 26 of the ILO Constitution, have conducted on-site investigations since 1961. And the special procedures established under the ILO for examining matters relating to freedom to association have, since 1965, included on-site inspections. Thus it would seem reasonable to suggest that such inspections might eventually be an effective means of reviewing countries' compliance with core labor standards. With this Declaration and its follow-up mechanism, we have a very good beginning. In fact, this new Declaration and its follow-up mechanism might just be the key to getting our international trade policy back on track. Last November, the trade policy that has guided this country for the past 64 years--since the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934--was called sharply into question when the Congress considered the reauthorization of the so-called ``fast track'' negotiating authority for trade agreements. After a promising start in the Senate, where two procedural votes demonstrated strong support for the measure (68 votes in favor, including a solid majority on both sides of the aisle), the effort foundered in the House when it became clear that there were not enough votes to pass it. One of the central issues that surfaced during that debate was whether trade agreements should include provisions--in effect, statutory requirements--concerning labor and the environment. At first, this might should like a good idea. Upon reflection, however, it simply will not work. Developing countries will not accept the proposition that they must reduce their tariff and non-tariff barriers (discriminatory product standards, import licensing requirements, and the like) and, at the same time, willingly adopt stricter environmental and labor standards. Their reaction is understable: they view such proposals as putting them at a double disadvantage--lowering their protection against foreign goods and at the same time increasing their production costs, thus eroding their competitive advantages. The ILO has a role to play here. Indeed, it was created in 1919 for the express purpose of providing an avenue for governments that wanted to do something to improve labor standards, but were reluctant to do so unilaterally because they feared it would put them at a competitive disadvantage in world commerce. For 79 years, the ILO has sought to address these matters. Certainly both President Roosevelt and his Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, understood well the connection between the ILO and our trade policies, having launched both the Reciprocal Trade Agreements program and the United States' membership in the ILO--two parallel but distinct measures--in the same year, 1934. The ILO is the one League of Nations organization that we were least likely ever to join, and the only one we did. Even so, the United States has never been an active ratifier of international labor conventions. Of the 181 ILO conventions agreed thus far, the United States has ratified only 12. Indeed, until 1988, the United States had only ratified 7 conventions--6 maritime and one technical--the seventh convention having been ratified in 1953. Then an interval of more than 35 years with no action on the subject. In 1988, however, a new era commenced: the United States began to ratify substantive labor conventions. Altogether, the United States has approved five ILO conventions since 1988: Convention No. 144, the 1976, convention on Tripartite Consultation on International Labor Standards, which approved by the Senate on February 1, 1998; Convention No. 147, the Merchant Shipping Convention on Minimum Standards, adopted in 1976, and approved by the Senate February 1, 1988; Convention No. 160 on Labor Statistics, adopted by the ILO in 1985 and approved by the United States Senate on February 20, 1990; Convention No. 105, the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention of 1957, which the Senate approved on May 14, 1991; and Convention No. 150 on Labor Administration, adopted by the ILO in 1978, and approved by the Senate on October 6, 1994. I was the floor manager for four of these. In all five conventions, we lost the votes of only two Senators on the floor: both on Convention No. 144 regarding tripartite consultation. The other four conventions passed unanimously. Most notable was the Senate's ratification in 1991, by a vote of 97-0, of the first of the ``core'' human rights conventions--Convention No. 105 on the Abolition of Forced Labor (1957), an area where the ILO has made vital contributions. As the President announced May 18th, in his historic address to the World Trade Organization at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, he has now transmitted to the Senate for ratification a second ``core'' convention--Convention No. 111, the Discrimination in Employment and Occupation Convention of 1958, which calls for a national policy to eliminate discrimination in access to employment, training and working conditions. It may be that there is new life in the ILO, that we have entered a period in which we can look to the ILO for leadership as the United States and our trading partners reap the rewards--and adjust to the challenges--of globalization. In the area of worker rights, the ILO ought to be the place to do it. To remind the Senate, the World Trade Organization, at the conclusion of its first ministerial meeting in Singapore in December 1996, reaffirmed that the ILO was the ``competent body'' to set and deal with internationally recognized core labor standards. The Director-General of the WTO, Renato Ruggiero, with whom I discussed the ILO initiative at length in January, has lent his strong support. As Ambassador Ruggiero put it in a speech in Bonn on December 9, 1997, the WTO's members agreed at Singapore that ``the ILO was the relevant body where the issue of labor standards should be addressed.'' He noted: The fact that the ILO is now making important strides in these areas demonstrates, not only that consensus on the most difficult issues is possible, but that consensus is absolutely critical to real and lasting progress. Supporting the current efforts in the ILO toward reaching a declaration on Fundamental Workers Rights is the best way of demonstrating that the real objective is to promote labor standards and not to seek protectionist measures. It is possible, Mr. President, that this new Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, together with its monitoring provisions, will give new energy to the ILO at a time when new energy and direction are sorely needed to guide us out of the muddle in which we find ourselves with respect to trade. I offer my great congratulations to Secretary Herman, to John J. Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, and to Abraham Katz, President of the U.S. Council for International Business for this singular achievement, and I ask that the full text of the declaration and its follow-up mechanism, as well as the text of Secretary Herman's statement, be printed in the Record. The material follows: International Labour Conference--86th Session Geneva, June 1998 ilo declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work Whereas the ILO was founded in the conviction that social justice is essential to universal and lasting peace; Whereas economic growth is essential but not sufficient to ensure equity, social progress and the eradication of poverty, confirming the need for the ILO to promote strong policies, justice and democratic institutions; Whereas the ILO should, now more than ever, draw upon all its standard-setting, technical cooperation and research resources in all its areas of competence, in particular employment, vocational training and working conditions, to ensure that, in the context of a global strategy for economic and social development, economic and social policies are mutually reinforcing components in order to create broad- based sustainable development; Whereas the ILO should give special attention to the problems of persons with special social needs, particularly the unemployed and migrant workers, and mobilize and encourage international, regional and national efforts aimed at resolving their problems, and promote effective policies aimed at job creation; Whereas, in seeking to maintain the link between social progress and economic growth, the guarantee of fundamental principles and rights at work is of particular significance in that it enables the persons concerned to claim freely and on the basis of equality of opportunity their fair share of the wealth which they have helped to generate, and to achieve fully their human potential; Whereas the ILO is the constitutionally mandated international organization and the competent body to set and deal with international labour standards, and enjoys universal support and acknowledgement in promoting fundamental rights at work as the expression of its constitutional principles; Whereas it is urgent, in a situation of growing economic interdependence, to reaffirm the immutable nature of the fundamental principles and rights embodied in the Constitution of the Organization and to promote their universal application; The International Labour Conference, 1. Recalls: (a) that in freely joining the ILO, all Members have endorsed the principles and rights set out in its Constitution and in the Declaration of Philadelphia, and have undertaken to work towards attaining the overall objectives of the Organization to the best of their resources and fully in line with their specific circumstances; (b) that these principles and rights have been expressed and developed in the form of specific rights and obligations in Conventions recognized as fundamental both inside and outside the Organization. 2. Declares that all Members, even if they have not ratified the Conventions in questions, have an obligation arising from the very fact of membership in the Organization, to respect, to promote and to realize, in good faith and in accordance with the Constitution, the principles concerning the fundamental rights which are the subject of those Conventions, namely: (a) freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; (b) the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour; (c) the effective abolition of child labour; and (d) the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. 3. Recognizes the obligation on the Organization to assist its Members in response to their established and expressed needs, in order to attain these objectives by making full use of its constitutional, operational and budgetary resources, including by the mobilization of external resources and support, as well as by encouraging other international organizations with which the ILO has established relations, pursuant to article 12 of its Constitution, to support these efforts: (a) by offering technical cooperation and advisory services to promote the ratification and implementation of the fundamental Conventions; (b) by assisting those Members not yet in a position to ratify some or all of these Conventions in their efforts to respect, to promote and to realize the principles concerning fundamental rights which are the subject of those Conventions; and (c) by helping the Members in their efforts to create a climate for economic and social development. 4. Decides that, to give full effect to this Declaration, a promotional follow-up, which is meaningful and effective, shall be implemented in accordance with the measures specified in the annex hereto, which shall be considered as an integral part of this Declaration. 5. Stresses that labour standards should not be used for protectionist trade purposes, and that nothing in this Declaration and its follow-up shall be invoked or otherwise used for such purposes; in addition, the comparative advantage of any country should in no way be called into question by this Declaration and its follow-up. Annex Follou-up to the Declaration i. overall purpose 1. The aim of the follow-up described below is to encourage the efforts made by the Members of the Organization to promote the fundamental principles and rights enshrined in the Constitution of the ILO and the Declaration of Philadelphia and reaffirmed in this Declaration. 2. In line with this objective, which is of a strictly promotional nature, this follow-up will allow the identification of areas in which the assistance of the Organization through its technical cooperation activities may prove useful to its Members to help them implement these fundamental principles and rights. It is not a substitute for the established supervisory mechanisms, nor shall it impede their functioning; consequently, specific situations within the purview of those mechanisms shall not be examined or re- examined within the framework of this follow-up. 3. The two aspects of this follow-up, described below, are based on existing procedures: the annual follow-up concerning non-ratified fundamental Conventions will entail merely some adaptation of the present modalities of application of article 19, paragraph 5(e) of the Constitution; and the global report will serve to obtain the best results from the procedures carried out pursuant to the Constitution. ii. annual follow-up concerning non-ratified fundamental conventions A. Purpose and scope 1. The purpose is to provide an opportunity to review each year, by means of simplified procedures to replace the four- year review introduced by the Governing Body in 1995, the efforts made in accordance with the Declaration by Members which have not yet ratified all the fundamental Conventions. 2. The follow-up will cover each year the four areas of fundamental principles and rights specified in the Declaration. B. Modalities 1. The follow-up will be based on reports requested from Members under article 19, paragraph 5(e) of the Constitution. The report forms will be drawn up so as to obtain information from governments which have not ratified one or more of the fundamental Conventions, on any changes which may have taken place in their law and practice, taking due account of article 23 of the Constitution and established practice. 2. These reports, as compiled by the Office, will be reviewed by the Governing Body. 3. With a view to presenting an introduction to the reports thus compiled, drawing attention to any aspects which might call for a more in-depth discussion, the Office may call upon a group of experts appointed for this purpose by the Governing Body. 4. Adjustments to the Governing Body's existing procedures should be examined to allow Members which are not represented on the Governing Body to provide, in the most appropriate way, clarifications which might prove necessary or useful during Governing Body discussions to supplement the information contained in their reports. iii. global report A. Purpose and scope 1. The purpose of this report is to provide a dynamic global picture relating to each category of fundamental principles and rights noted during the preceding four-year period, and to serve as a basis for assessing the effectiveness of the assistance provided by the Organization, and for determining priorities for the following period, in the form of action plans for technical cooperation designed in particular to mobilize the internal and external resources necessary to carry them out. 2. The report will cover, each year, one of the four categories of fundamental principles and rights in turn. B. Modalities 1. The report will be drawn up under the responsibility of the Director-General on the basis of official information, or information gathered and assessed in accordance with established procedures. In the case of States which have not ratified the fundamental Conventions, it will be based in particular on the findings of the aforementioned annual follow-up. In the case of Members which have ratified the Conventions concerned, the report will be based in particular on reports as dealt with pursuant to article 22 of the Constitution. 2. This report will be submitted to the Conference for tripartite discussion as a report of the Director-General. The Conference may deal with this report separately from reports under article 12 of its Standing Orders, and may discuss it during a sitting devoted entirely to this report, or in any other appropriate way. It will then be for the Governing Body, at an early session, to draw conclusions from this discussion concerning the priorities and plans of action for technical cooperation to be implemented for the following four-year period. iv. it is understood that: 1. Proposals shall be made for amendments to the Standing Orders of the Governing Body and the Conference which are required to implement the preceding provisions. 2. The Conference shall, in due course, review the operation of this follow-up in the light of the experience acquired to assess whether it has adequately fulfilled the overall purpose articulated in Part I. The foregoing is the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up duly adopted by the General Conference of the International Labour Organization during its Eighty-sixth Session which was held at Geneva and declared closed the 18 June 1998. IN FAITH WHEREOF we have appended our signatures this nineteenth day of June 1998. The President of the Conference, The Director-General of the International Labour Office.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today the Senate takes an important step in the search to unfold the events of the holocaust by adopting the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. This bill requires the disclosure of classified information, currently held by the United States government, regarding individuals who participated in Nazi war crimes, and stolen assets of the victims of Nazi war crimes. The bill also requires a government-wide search of records to ensure the release of as many relevant documents as possible. Researchers seeking information on Nazi war criminals and the assets of their victims will have unprecedented access to relevant materials in the possession of the United States government, which until now have remained classified. It is my view that these documents have been held far too long. Well beyond the time when their disclosure might have posed a threat to national security--if indeed such disclosure ever did. While reviewing relevant material for declassification, officials will be required to maintain a strong presumption that relevant material should be declassified. This is based on the ``balancing test'' included in the bill which presumes that the public interest in the release of Holocaust records outweighs the damage to national security that might reasonably be expected to result from disclosure. This provision is in keeping with the Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy which recommended that such a balancing test be applied in all classification decisions. With the passing of time it becomes ever more important to document Nazi war crimes, lest the enormity of those crimes be lost to history. The greater access which this legislation provides will add clarity to this subject. I applaud those researchers who continue to pursue this important work. Those who suffered from the Holocaust are reaching the end of their life-span. We owe it to them to make available as much information about that terrible period as possible. This is our solemn task.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, Senator Kerrey and I, along with Senators Breaux and Lieberman, are pleased to introduce the Social Security KidSave Accounts Act, which nicely complements the Social Security Solvency Act of 1998 introduced by Senator Kerrey and me in March. In that proposal we reduced payroll taxes by $800 billion over 10 years. The reduction in the payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 10.4 allows the funding of personal savings accounts with the 2 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax. A worker with average earnings depositing 2 percent of wages--one percent from the worker and one percent from the employer can--over 45 years--accumulate almost one half of a million dollars. Add in the wealth generated over a lifetime of 70 years from the interest on the KidSave accounts of $3,500--$1,000 at birth and $500 for each of the next five years--and you have created a new class of millionaires. Workers will have estates which they can pass on to their heirs. Combined, these two bills create wealth without spending the budget surplus. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that for the ten year period 1999-2008, our bill, which saves Social Security indefinitely, increases the budget surplus by $170 billion. This KidSave bill spends only about $100-$120 billion of that increase. In short, we create private savings without reducing public savings. Together these bills provide for a more comprehensive approach to retirement savings. The foundation of this approach remains Social Security, the financial future of which is secured for 75 years and beyond. If this legislation is enacted, as I hope it will be, significant new private savings would be added to this foundation.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, Senator Kerrey and I, along with Senators Breaux and Lieberman, are pleased to introduce the Social Security KidSave Accounts Act, which nicely complements the Social Security Solvency Act of 1998 introduced by Senator Kerrey and me in March. In that proposal we reduced payroll taxes by $800 billion over 10 years. The reduction in the payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 10.4 allows the funding of personal savings accounts with the 2 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax. A worker with average earnings depositing 2 percent of wages--one percent from the worker and one percent from the employer can--over 45 years--accumulate almost one half of a million dollars. Add in the wealth generated over a lifetime of 70 years from the interest on the KidSave accounts of $3,500--$1,000 at birth and $500 for each of the next five years--and you have created a new class of millionaires. Workers will have estates which they can pass on to their heirs. Combined, these two bills create wealth without spending the budget surplus. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that for the ten year period 1999-2008, our bill, which saves Social Security indefinitely, increases the budget surplus by $170 billion. This KidSave bill spends only about $100-$120 billion of that increase. In short, we create private savings without reducing public savings. Together these bills provide for a more comprehensive approach to retirement savings. The foundation of this approach remains Social Security, the financial future of which is secured for 75 years and beyond. If this legislation is enacted, as I hope it will be, significant new private savings would be added to this foundation.