Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I send to the desk an amendment for myself and Mr. Warner and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Hyperbole. Hyperbole.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. In the brief period that I will be speaking, I would like to concentrate on the central issue: the dangers of nuclear war in the years ahead. Earlier, in an address to the 150th anniversary gathering of the Associated Press, I cited a comment made last autumn by Richard Holbrooke, the American diplomat, now temporarily in private life. Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the Dayton agreement regarding the former Yugoslavia, commented that ``almost a decade has gone by since the Berlin Wall fell and, instead of reaching out to Central Europe, the European Union turned toward a bizarre search for a common currency. So NATO enlargement had to fill the void.'' As if this were an accidental policy that derives from the unwillingness of our European friends--some of them our NATO allies--to engage in the more serious work of bringing the once more independent republics of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland into the European Union, a common market from which their economic development can grow, that being clearly the single most pressing concern they have in the aftermath of the half century of a Stalinist economy imposed upon them with the same results for them--not quite so bad, but bad enough--that Russia itself experienced. The disaster of this era for the Russians cannot be exaggerated. I say to my dear friend from Delaware, who has been so generous in letting us speak on these matters, Murray Feshbach has recently established that the life expectancy of Russian men dropped from 62 years in 1989 to 57 years in 1996. There is no historical equivalent. A century ago, a 16-year-old Russian male had a 54 percent chance of surviving to age 60. Two percent less than had he been born a century ago. Such has been the implosion of Soviet society--in every respect, including the nuclear one. Now, earlier on in a statement, I remarked, and I will take the liberty of remarking once again, that the origins of NATO seem very distant to most Members of the Senate. That age seems like another era. And in a sense it was another era. But there are a few witnesses from that era who are still active and who still speak. George Kennan, who conceived the whole idea of containment, of which NATO was an expression and perhaps the most important one, George Kennan has said NATO expansion, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Soviet Union, he says, would be ``the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era.'' ``The most fateful error.'' Paul Nitze, who was the principal author of NSC-68, the national security directive written in 1950, which established the American policy of containment, recently wrote to me to say, ``In the present security environment, NATO expansion is not only unnecessary, it is gratuitous. If we want a Europe whole and free, we are not likely to get it by making NATO fat and feeble.'' In my remarks to the Associated Press, I simply said that expanding NATO at this time, and particularly should we move up to include the Baltic States, which we are pledged to support, would put us at risk of getting into a nuclear war with Russia: wholly unanticipated, for which we are not prepared, about which we are not thinking. Professor Michael Mandelbaum, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said ``that is not hyperbole.'' That is what we are dealing with here. And the reason, NATO expansion is viewed throughout elements of the Russian political system as a hostile act. Some think of it as a hostile act they could live with; some think it is a hostile act they will have to defend against; and they have said if they have to defend their territory, they will do so with nuclear weapons; it is all they have left. Their Army has all been disintegrated--not entirely, but they remark in a December 17 National Security memorandum signed by Mr. Yeltsin, that stretches of their borders are undefended. Their Navy is rusting in a seaport, nominally part of the Ukraine. They have nuclear weapons. After all we have gone through to achieve rational nuclear postures: a no-first-use policy, graduated response to threats, only resorting to strategic nuclear weapons at the very last moment when no other options are available--that is gone. We are back to the hair trigger that we knew when I was a young person in this Government, in this city, when we could imagine having use air-raid shelters. We could imagine it, because we could remember the Second World War. I was called back into the Navy in 1951, briefly, as it turned out, but found myself in Bremerhaven, in the submarine pens there that the Nazis had built. The British finally got a bomb through one, but never did during the war. We were sent on an expedition to Berlin. We had the practice of sending American officers on trains through Soviet-occupied Germany to establish the fact that we had the right to do so. I arrived in Berlin, and it wasn't there. Just ruined rubble; early in the morning, a few men stumbling out of a few bars, lost to the world. We knew what war meant, and we can imagine what nuclear war means. We just had dropped two bombs on Japan. From the time of President Eisenhower, we have been negotiating ways to control atomic weapons-- and we had success. Those early arms control agreements, apart from the agreement President Kennedy reached on atmospheric nuclear testing, those early agreements typically just ratified the increases in nuclear weapons that each side wanted, but we got the START agreement and we reduced our nuclear arsenals. The START Treaty, negotiated with the Soviet Union, was signed by four entirely different countries, because by the time it was finished the Soviet Union had disappeared. Russia has not yet ratified START II. The idea of START III, to reduced deployed nuclear weapons ever further, hasn't even begun. They haven't ratified START II, not least because of NATO expansion. I don't claim to know what the actual decisions in the Duma are, but that is what one hears, and one can imagine it. Tomorrow there will be a report by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, an American group, principally, that has won a Nobel Prize on the issue of preventing nuclear warfare. They will publish a report in the New England Journal of Medicine which says that the danger of nuclear attack continues and may even be thought to escalate. The New York Times reports this in the terms we have been speaking about on this floor, the exact same terms, with no idea that was coming. It says, ``Russia's Disarray Brings a Nuclear Risk to the U.S., Study Says.'' The Physicians write, ``Although many people believe that the threat of a nuclear attack largely disappeared with the end of the cold war there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Each side routinely maintains thousands of nuclear warheads on high alert. Furthermore, to compensate for its weakened conventional forces, Russia has abandoned its no-first use policy.'' Madam President, that is all I and my friend from Virginia has said on this floor this week of debate and when the expansion of NATO was debated a month ago. Suddenly we have it in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, saying to those who think this threat is behind us. Indeed, it is ahead of us, and we must be very careful, so careful, about what we do. That is why so many of us, starting with the great men--Kennan and Nitze--who conceived the strategy for the cold war, which we won, are saying, ``Don't do this.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article from the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Oh, yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce with my colleague Senator D'Amato, and with Senators Mikulski and Snowe, legislation important to ensuring that women with breast cancer and cervical cancer will receive coverage for their treatment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a successful nationwide program--National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program-- that screens low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. However, CDC's program does not have funding to treat these women after they are diagnosed. The women eligible for cancer screening under the CDC program are low-income individuals and yet are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid coverage. They do not have health insurance coverage for these screenings and for subsequent cancer treatment. From July of 1991 to March of 1997, the CDC program provided mammography screening to almost 600,000 women and diagnosed nearly 3,500 cases of breast cancer. During this same period, the program also provided over 700,000 pap smears and found more than 300 cases of invasive cervical cancer. The CDC screening program has had to divert a significant amount of time and funding in order to find treatment opportunities for the women found to have breast and cervical cancer. The lack of subsequent funding for treatment has, therefore, jeopardized the programs' primary function: to screen low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. Currently, the program screens about 12 to 15 percent of all eligible women. A recent study conducted at Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation and the University of Michigan School of Public Health on treatment funding for women screened by the CDC program found that, although funding for treatment services were found for most of these women, they often experienced time delays. In addition, during the search for treatment funding, the CDC program lost contact with several women. The study also found that the sources of treatment funding are uncertain, tenuous and fragmented. The burden of funding treatment often fell upon providers themselves. The uncertainty and delays worsen the stress of coping with cancer. Some women, upon learning that they have cancer, must hold lunches and bake sales to raise funds to cover their needed treatment. Our legislation would provide treatment coverage for the women screened and diagnosed through the CDC program and who are uninsured. States will have the option to provide this coverage through its Medicaid program. If a state chooses this option, they will receive an enhanced match for the treatment coverage, similar to the federal match provided to the sate for the CDC screening program. Mr. President, the Senate has approved this proposal in the past. A similar provision was included in the Senate version of last year's Balanced Budget bill. It is my hope that the Senate will again support this important legislation.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce with my colleague Senator D'Amato, and with Senators Mikulski and Snowe, legislation important to ensuring that women with breast cancer and cervical cancer will receive coverage for their treatment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a successful nationwide program--National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program-- that screens low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. However, CDC's program does not have funding to treat these women after they are diagnosed. The women eligible for cancer screening under the CDC program are low-income individuals and yet are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid coverage. They do not have health insurance coverage for these screenings and for subsequent cancer treatment. From July of 1991 to March of 1997, the CDC program provided mammography screening to almost 600,000 women and diagnosed nearly 3,500 cases of breast cancer. During this same period, the program also provided over 700,000 pap smears and found more than 300 cases of invasive cervical cancer. The CDC screening program has had to divert a significant amount of time and funding in order to find treatment opportunities for the women found to have breast and cervical cancer. The lack of subsequent funding for treatment has, therefore, jeopardized the programs' primary function: to screen low-income uninsured women for breast and cervical cancer. Currently, the program screens about 12 to 15 percent of all eligible women. A recent study conducted at Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation and the University of Michigan School of Public Health on treatment funding for women screened by the CDC program found that, although funding for treatment services were found for most of these women, they often experienced time delays. In addition, during the search for treatment funding, the CDC program lost contact with several women. The study also found that the sources of treatment funding are uncertain, tenuous and fragmented. The burden of funding treatment often fell upon providers themselves. The uncertainty and delays worsen the stress of coping with cancer. Some women, upon learning that they have cancer, must hold lunches and bake sales to raise funds to cover their needed treatment. Our legislation would provide treatment coverage for the women screened and diagnosed through the CDC program and who are uninsured. States will have the option to provide this coverage through its Medicaid program. If a state chooses this option, they will receive an enhanced match for the treatment coverage, similar to the federal match provided to the sate for the CDC screening program. Mr. President, the Senate has approved this proposal in the past. A similar provision was included in the Senate version of last year's Balanced Budget bill. It is my hope that the Senate will again support this important legislation.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank my friend from Arizona.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Would it be correct to say that the statement, ``Conflict in the North Atlantic area stemming from ethnic and religious enmity, the revival of historic disputes or actions of undemocratic leaders'' does not represent any expansion of the 1991 doctrine?

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

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Would the Senator agree that in 1949 the issue facing Western Europe and the United States was not ethnic and religious conflict, it was international communism in the form of the Soviet Union, which had declared ethnic and religious conflict to be a premodern phenomenon, long since sent into the dustbin of history?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank my colleague.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Your colleague has said he would have a formal estimate of costs for Senator Warner and that will arrive in a time we can do that kind of debate.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President. I rise as an original sponsor of the resolution acknowledging the historic Northern Ireland peace agreement. In adopting this resolution, the Senate will demonstrate its strong support for this agreement which has been so long in coming. When I first came to the Senate in 1977, Senator Kennedy, Speaker O'Neill, then-Governor Hugh Carey of New York, and I joined together and issued this St. Patrick's Day statement: We appeal to all those organizations engaged in violence to renounce their campaigns of death and destruction and return to the path of life and peace. And we appeal as well to our fellow Americans to embrace this goal of peace, and to renounce any action that promotes the current violence or provides support or encouragement for organizations engaged in violence. Now, finally, one of the oldest conflicts in Europe has the potential of healing and being resolved. A courageous agreement has been reached in Northern Ireland. We in the United States Senate can be particularly proud of the role that our former colleague and leader George Mitchell played in mediating this agreement. He deserves no less than the Nobel Peace Prize. The search for a just and lasting peace in Northern Ireland has entered a most promising stage. This resolution indicates the strong support of the United States Senate for this historic agreement. May it fulfill our hopes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to mark a very important event to the 78,000 plus other graduates of Tufts University--Tuftonia's Day. Tuftonia's day marks the anniversary of Tufts University on this date in 1852 (It is the second oldest college in the Boston area). It is a time for all Tufts students, alumni, professors, and friends of the university to turn their thoughts to Tufts and their fellow Tuftonians. Tufts is my alma mater. I graduated from the university and received both my masters degree and my doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Tufts, a school of 7,800 students, is one of the finest universities in the country and is rated as such by the most recent U.S. News and World Report survey. The main campus is located in Medford, Massachusetts and is home to the Tufts College of Liberal Arts, Jackson College, the College of Engineering, the Boston School of Occupational Therapy, and the Fletcher School. The Dental and Medical schools are downtown on the Boston campus and the School of Veterinary Medicine, the only such school in New England, is located in Grafton, Massachusetts. When Charles Tufts founded the college, it is said he wanted to found a ``light on the hill.'' The first rate education, the wonderful experiences, the enduring friendships, and the values instilled in Tufts students during their years on the hill, shows that Charles Tufts' dream has been realized. Mr. President, Tufts University is a wonderful place, and Tuftonia's Day is a special time for all Jumbos (our mascot) to think about our days at Tufts and to pay tribute to our alma mater, the dear old brown and blue. I join with my fellow Tufts alumni in doing so and in recognizing Tuftonia's day.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I congratulate Chairman Roth for his statement and for once again bringing a Finance Committee bill to the floor that includes ideas supported by members on both sides. And I thank the Chairman for insisting that the appropriate place for initial consideration of the Coverdell education savings account 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 the Chairman 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 our view the proposed changes to the education IRA provisions, passed just last July and effective on January 1st 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 have indicated that they will recommend that the President veto a bill that contains such provisions. 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.'' Treasury Department analyses conclude that 70 percent of the tax benefits from this provision would go to the top twenty 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 go to seven 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 be 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 changes 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. Even as we hear ever louder calls to simplify and even terminate the Code, we have before us a bill that would create a maze of rules in attempting to define what constitutes a ``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 express thanks to the Chairman, who gave priority in this package to the income exclusion for employer- provided educational assistance, which is Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code. It 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. 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. Members of the House have already indicated that in a conference on this measure they will move to strip the Section 127 provisions, particularly the piece for graduate students. Finally, I appreciate the Chairman'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 us 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 provisions 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. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, a milestone will occur on Saturday, April 18, while the Senate is in recess, which I do not want to go unacknowledged: Dr. Richard Hermann Kastner of Clarksburg, Maryland, will celebrate his 75th birthday. Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked, ``. . . to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.'' I imagine it would be nearly impossible to count how many lives have ``breathed easier'' because of Richard Kastner. For nearly 45 years, he has helped individuals and families cope with drug and alcohol dependency, abuse, discord, illness and death, and seemingly inconsolable grief as a psychiatrist and therapist, and as a friend. He has devoted his life to helping others find meaning in their lives. Richard Kastner is a native New Yorker. He received a bachelor's degree in psychology and biology from New York University, a master's degree in psychology from the City College of New York, his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College, and his doctorate in psychology from New York University. He then went to the University of Minnesota for post- graduate medical training and for his psychiatric residency, which he then continued at St. Elizabeth's Hospital here in Washington. Richard Kastner achieved glittering academic success and then embarked on his career to achieve glittering professional success. He was a captain in the Medical Corps and served as a military psychiatrist at Andrews Air Force Base. He has been a senior psychiatric consultant for the National Security Agency, chief psychiatrist of the Employees Health Service at the National Institutes of Health, and a consulting senior psychiatrist and lecturer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He also served as an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard University's School of Medicine, and is a Fellow in the Royal Society of Medicine. He is a pilot, husband, and father of three children. Even now, as he turns 75, he maintains a robust private practice, undeterred by age, ailment, or surgery. I suppose the animating force is an unquenchable desire to help others. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate him on his 75th birthday and wish him many more.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself fully with the remarks of my distinguished colleague from New York. Kodak has compiled volumes of evidence, based on more than 100 years of experience in the Japanese market, that clearly document the thicket of laws and regulations that have the intent--and the effect--of curbing sales of foreign photographic film and paper. Through an elaborate system of restrictions on sales and distribution, Japan has succeeded in severely limiting market access for foreign film and paper. Nearly three years ago, on May 18, 1995, Kodak filed a petition with the U.S. Trade Representative under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, urging action on the broad range of trade barriers. After a formal investigation, Ambassador Barshefsky found that Japan's practices were indeed in violation of our trade laws, and dispute settlement proceedings in the World Trade Organization were begun. The verdict from the WTO, issued in its final form on January 30, 1998, was a great disappointment. But certainly not the end of the argument, nor the end of Kodak's attempts to penetrate the Japanese market. The resolution that I am pleased to cosponsor today emphatically endorses the initiative that Ambassador Barshefsky and Secretary Daley unveiled on February 3, 1998, which will put the Government of Japan to the test. During the course of the WTO proceedings, as my colleagues are aware, the Japanese Government asserted that its market was fully open to foreign film and paper. And so our government has proposed that we monitor that proposition, by collecting data and examining, every six months, the progress that Kodak--and other foreign suppliers--have made in competing in the Japanese film and paper market. This initiative is worthy of our support, Mr. President, and I urge my colleagues to join in supporting this resolution.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I was greatly saddened to learn of the death of Bella S. Abzug. While we began our association as political rivals, past quickly became past, and I came to respect and admire her as a friend and colleague. She served three terms in the United States Congress with extraordinary distinction, establishing an unparalleled record of commitment to women's issues that would distinguish her career. With a rare combination of intellect, energy, and wit, Bella properly won a place on the national stage. And she did not stop there--in short order Bella Abzug became an international figure. As President of the Women's Environment and Development Organization, she added her voice to a wide range of international debates with a style that was all her own. Bella's stature was such that in 1995 she was selected to lead a delegation of United States nongovernmental organizations to the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China. She made us proud. To know Bella Abzug was to know a woman of indefatigable passion for the fray. Regardless of the issue, whenever New Yorkers needed an outspoken advocate, Bella could be counted on to lead the charge. She will be missed. I ask that her obituary from the New York Times of April 1, 1998 be printed in the Record. The obituary follows: [From the New York Times, Wed., Apr. 1, 1998] Bella Abzug, 77, Congresswoman And a Founding Feminist, Is Dead (By Laura Mansnerus) Bella S. Abzug, New Yorker, feminist, antiwar activist, politician and lawyer, died yesterday at Columbia- Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. She was 77. She died of complications following heart surgery, said Harold Holzer, who was her spokesman when she served in Congress. She had been hospitalized for weeks, and had been in poor health for several years, he said. Ms. Abzug represented the West Side of Manhattan for three Congressional terms in the 1970's. She brought with her a belligerent, exuberant politics that made her a national character. Often called just Bella, she was recognizable everywhere by her big hats and a voice that Norman Mailer said ``could boil the fat off a taxicab driver's neck.'' She opposed the Vietnam War, championed what was then called women's liberation and was one of the first to call for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon. Long after it ceased to be fashionable, she called her politics radical. During her last campaign, for Congress in 1986, she told The New York Times, ``I am not a centrist.'' Bella Abzug was a founding feminist, and an enduring one. In the movement's giddy, sloganeering early days, Ms. Abzug was, like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, an icon, the hat bobbing before the cameras at marches and rallies. After leaving the House in January 1977, she worked for women's rights for two more decades. She founded an international women's group that worked on environmental issues. And she was a leader of a conference of nongovernment organizations that paralleled the United Nations' fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Even then, she continued to rankle. Former President George Bush, on a private visit to China that coincided with the Beijing conference, said to a meeting of food production executives: ``I feel somewhat sorry for the Chinese, having Bella Abzug running around. Bella Abzug is one who has always represented the extremes of the women's movement.'' When told of Mr. Bush's remark, Ms. Abzug, 75, and in a wheelchair, retorted: ``He was addressing a fertilizer group? That's appropriate.'' Her forceful personality and direct manner made her a lightning rod for criticism from those who opposed the idea of holding a women's conference. After Bob Dole, then the Senate majority leader, said he could not imagine why anyone ``would want to attend a conference co-chaired by Bella Abzug,'' she responded that she was not running the meeting but simply participating with more than 30,000 other women over how best to achieve equal rights. But much of what Ms. Abzug agitated for--abortion rights, day care, laws against employment discrimination--was by that time mainstream political fare. In Congress, ``she was first on almost everything, on everything that ever mattered,'' said Esther Newberg, Ms. Abzug's first administrative assistant and one of many staff members who quit but remained devoted. ``She was first to call for Richard Nixon's impeachment, first to call for an end to the war.'' Ms. Abzug made enemies easily--``Sometimes the hat and the mouth took over,'' Ms. Newberg said--but Ms. Abzug saw that as a consequence of a refusal to compromise, as well as a matter of sport. Of her time in the House, Ms. Abzug wrote in a journal that was published in 1972 as ``Bella.'' ``I spend all day figuring out how to beat the machine and knock the crap out of the political power structure.'' She worked relentlessly at organizing and coalition- building. A founder of Women Strike for Peace and the National Women's Political Caucus, she spent a lifetime prodding for change, with a lawyer's enthusiasm for political channels, through organizations from the P.T.A. to the United Nations. She made friends easily, too. ``She's fierce and intense and funny,'' said her longtime friend Gloria Steinem. ``She takes everyone seriously. When she argues with you fiercely, it's because she takes you seriously. And she's willing to change her mind. That's so rare.'' her first speech in a subway station Bella Savitzky Abzug was born on July 24, 1920 in the Bronx, the second daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia. Her father, Emanuel Savitzky, whom Ms. Abzug later described as ``this humanist butcher,'' ran (and named) the Live and Let Live Meat Market on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. She said she knew from the age of 11 that she wanted to be a lawyer, and not longer afterward gave her first public speech, in a subway station, while collection for a Zionist youth organization. She went from Hunter College, where she was student body president, to Columbia University Law School, where she was an editor of The Law Review, to a practice representing union workers. Ms. Abzug traced the wearing of her trademark wide-brimmed hats to those days. She once recalled: ``When I was a young lawyer, I would go to people's offices and they would always say: `Sit here. We'll wait for the lawyer.' Working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously. ``After a while, I started liking them. When I got to Congress, they made a big thing of it. So I was watching. Did they want me to wear it or not? They didn't want me to wear it, so I did.'' All the while, she was a leftist and an agitator. Years later, in a moment of exasperation with her Congressional aids, she wrote: ``I just don't understand young people today, quite frankly. Our struggle was political, ideological and economic, and we felt we couldn't make something of ourselves unless we bettered society. We saw the two together.'' In the 1950's, Ms. Abzug's law practice turned to other cases identified with the left. One client was Willie McGee, a black Mississippian convicted of raping a white woman and sentenced to death. Ms. Abzug, who was pregnant at the time, argued the case in Mississippi while white supremacist groups threatened her. Though the Supreme Court stayed the execution twice, Mr. McGee was eventually executed. She also represented people accused of Communist activities by Senator Joseph McCarthy's Congressional committee and its counterpart in Albany. In the 1960's, Ms. Abzug became an antiwar activist. A founder of Women Strike for Peace, she was its chief lobbyist, opposing nuclear testing and, later, the Vietnam War. She organized insurgent Democrats into other groups, too, becoming a leader of the movement against President Lydon B. Johnson and prominent in the 1968 Presidential campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy. During those years, Ms. Abzug started navigating New York City politics. She and her husband, Martin Abzug, moved from Mount Vernon, the Westchester suburb where they had raised their two daughters, to a town house at 37 Bank Street in Greenwich Village. In 1970, Ms. Abzug ran for Congress. The 19th Congressional District, which snaked from lower Manhattan to the West 80's, had four registered Democrats to every Republican and had been represented in Congress for seven terms by Leonard Farbstein, a solid but rather somnolent liberal. Ms. Abzug won the Democratic primary with 54 percent of the vote. campaign became a women's crusade At this point, Bella Abzug became national news, a flash of local color in a political year. She seemed to be everywhere, clapping backs and jabbing biceps. Her campaign headquarters next to the Lion's Head, a writers' and journalists' bar in Greenwich Village, was also a daycare center for her legions of female volunteers. The women's crusade she led brought considerable, if sometimes derisive, attention. Though she eventually took 55 percent of the vote, she had genuine Republican opposition, unusual in an era when New Yorks' main political action consisted of various Democratic factions knifing one another. The Republican-Liberal candidate way Barry Farber, a well-known radio talk show host. Mr. Farber drew many Democrats who resented Mr. Farbstein's humiliation or were simply put off by Ms. Abzug's style. To her chagrin, Mr. Farber accused Ms. Abzug, who advocated direct negotiations between Israelis and Arabs, of flagging in her support of Israel. For years after that, she made a point of stating her Jewish credentials, dating to childhood: her family was religious and she went regularly to synagogue (though she was bother that women were relegated to the back rows of the balcony), studied Hebrew and was enrolled for a time at the Jewish Theological Seminary. setting her sights on the pentagon When Ms. Abzug went to Washington, she set her sights on a appointment to the House Armed Services Committee. She wanted a resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and she vowed to take on the military-industrial complex. She wanted an end to the draft. She wanted national health insurance, legislation to finance day-care centers and housing, and more money for New York City, all to be paid for with billions siphoned from the Pentagon's budget. She got little of this, but during the next six years ``she was indefatigable,' Ms. Newberg recalled. ``She yelled a lot,'' Ms. Newberg said, ``only because she couldn't get everything done.'' And if she couldn't, she added, ti was partly because ``her agenda was too pure for her moment in time.'' Ms. Abzug became expert at parliamentary rules, worked them skillfully and was famously well prepared for every vote, hearing and committee spat. The ``sunshine law'' requiring governing bodies to meet publicly came out of a subcommittee she headed. She coaxed funds for New York from the Public Works Committee. She was a sponsor of the women's equal rights amendment. ``She was one of the most exciting, enlightened legislators that ever served in the Congress,'' said Representative Charles B. Rangel of Manhattan, with whom Ms. Abzug sometimes collaborated and sometimes sparred. From her first day on Capitol Hill, to the day she dismayed her colleagues by introducing her Vietnam resolution, Ms. Abzug derided the Congressional club, the seniority system, the log-rolling and back-scratch. She did not spare fellow Democrats; when she spoke of liberals, it was usually dismissively. She badgered the House leadership over committee appointments and votes. She badgered the President, too. Invited to a reception at Richard Nixon's White House, she accepted (while writing in her journal, ``Who wants to listen to his pious idiocies?''), then told Nixon in the receiving line that her constituents demanded a withdrawal from Vietnam. For all of her railing against Democrats who went along to get along, Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill named her one of his dozen assistant whips, and by most accounts she worked well with some of the crustiest fixtures in the House. Still, in 1972 Ralph Nader estimated that Ms. Abzug's sponsorship of a measure often cost it 20 to 30 votes. Her reputation as an irritant came from all quarters. Jimmy Breslin wrote of a campaign worker who went to the Lion's Head one night, holding his side and vowing never to work for Ms. Abzug again. ``She punched me,'' he said, in a quarrel over scheduling. The next day, Mr. Breslin wrote, Ms. Abzug called the aid. ``Michael, I called to apologize,'' she said. ``How's your kidney?'' Mr. Breslin also recounted the Congresswoman's introduction to Sol Linowitz, the former chairman of the Xerox Corporation and a Democratic Party luminary: ``Are you the man that used to be the head of the Xerox?'' Ms. Abzug asked. ``That's right,'' Mr. Linowitz replied. ``I'm glad to meet a big shot,'' Ms. Abzug said. ``I'm in hock $35,000 on my campaign.'' Ms. Abzug acknowledged loneliness in her years in Congress. ``Outside of Martin and the kids, I don't feel very related to most people at this point,'' she wrote in 1971. ``I feel detached in social situations. I'm always thinking about other things, about Congress, about the issues, about the political coalition I'm trying to organize. It never leaves me. I even have trouble relating to some of my closest friends, though God knows I still love them, even if they don't know it.'' Always, she returned to Manhattan to spend weekends with her husband. She had married Martin Abzug in 1944. The two New Yorkers met on a bus in Miami, on the way to a Yehudi Menuhin concern. Mr. Abzug, a stockbroker and an author of two published novels, had next to no interest in politics. In an interview in 1970, he murmured, while his wife was out of the room, ``The political bug is a curious bug.'' But he was also, she said, her best friend and supporter, and ``one of the few unneurotic people left in society.'' corrosive ambition hampers a career Ms. Abzug's own ambition was too corrosive for many people, even--or, perhaps, especially--for her fellow New York Democrats. When the State Legislature sliced up her district in 1972, they urged her to challenge one of the two conservative incumbent Democrats in adjoining districts, Representative John J. Rooney or Representative John M. Murphy. Instead, she opposed a liberal Democrat, William Fitts Ryan, in the 20th District, encompassing the Upper West Side and the Riverdale section of the Bronx. The primary was bitter and, eventually, politically expensive to Ms. Abzug. Bill Ryan was one of the earliest heroes of the city's insurgent Democrats, an early opponent of the Vietnam War and a genuinely well-liked man who, as many of his constituents knew, was waging a gallant fight against cancer. Mr. Ryan defeated Ms. Abzug in the Democratic primary but died before the general election. The Democratic County Committee appointed Ms. Abzug as the candidate to replace him, but she was challenged by Mr. Ryan's widow, Priscilla, who ran on the Liberal line. Ms. Abzug won in November, but she had made dedicated enemies who believed she was an overly aggressive politician who would not hesitate to attack anyone who got in her way. Ten years later, she was denied a seat in the state's delegation to the national party's biannual conference because New York leaders considered her disruptive. In 1976, she gave up her House seat to run for the Senate. She lost in the primary, to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, by a margin of only 1 percent. Two more campaigns quickly followed. (In a 1978 interview, she said: ``I'm a politician. I run for office, That's my profession.'') She lost to Edward I. Koch in a crowded mayoral primary in 1977. The next year, running for the House again, she lost, again by 1 percent, to a little-known Republican, S. William Green. She was appointed co-chairwoman of President Jimmy Carter's National Advisory Committee on Women, and then after disagreeing with him over economic policy, was dismissed. The majority of the committee members resigned in protest. Ms. Abzug, unapologetic, said with a shrug, ``I've got to find myself another big, nonpaying job.'' Her next and last campaign was in 1986, this time for a House seat in Westchester County. She won the primary in a burst of the old, ebullient campaigning style, but lost in November to Joseph J. DioGuardi, the Republican incumbent. It was during that campaign that Martin Abzug died. Her friends said Ms. Abzug never recovered. Nine years later, she said in an interview, ``I haven't been entirely the same since.'' There was one more bid for office for her old house seat on the Upper West Side, when she announced her candidacy to replace Representative Ted Weiss on his death just before the 1992 election. But she was quickly eliminated from the field at the party convention. During the next decade, Ms. Abzug suffered from ill health, including breast cancer, but continued to practice law and work for women's groups. She wrote a book, ``Gender Gap,'' with her old friend Mim Kelber. She started a lobbying group called Women U.S.A. and founded the Women's Environment and Development Organization, a nonprofit group that works with international agencies. In addition to her daughters, Eve and Liz, Ms. Abzug is survived by her sister, Helene Alexander of Great Neck, N.Y. ``I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prizefighter, a man hater, you name it.'' Ms. Abzug said of herself in ``Bella.'' ``they call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy.'' ``There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash and overbearing. Whether I'm any of these things or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am--and this ought to be made very clear at the outset--I am a very serious woman.''

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I want to make this point. I want to shout this point at the American people: They are trying to scare you out of your Social Security. You don't think you are going to get it now. Why, I am not sure. But ask anyone on the streets at home. Ask someone in their thirties or in their forties. The polls are clear. People do not expect to get it. Partly this is bad management at the Social Security Administration. It got lost in the HEW and then HHS. In 1994, we re-created it as an independent agency with an independent Administrator, but the SSA never tells people that the agency knows their name, what they are going to get in benefits, and that they are on top of this. I say it right now, there are people who would like to scare you into thinking you are not going to get Social Security, so don't worry about it when they take it away, and what they are going to make you instead is a millionaire in the stock market. I don't think that will happen. I don't think it should. I think we should allow the accommodation of both. I think we should begin, if I can use a term from the academy, to demystify some of these claims, not by Senator Roth, who is loyal to this institution. He has been on the Finance Committee for 30 years and has helped maintain the system. But there are those who are out to do away with it. Why, I do not know. They take as their model the system in the Nation of Chile, a nation of some 12 million people, I believe, a system developed under General Pinochet, which does not immediately suggest sound social policy or equity. I don't say there is anything wrong with their system, but there is nothing wrong with ours either. It is ours to maintain. We should do it, and we should not let our people be frightened into giving up something so important to them and to their children and to their parents. I thank my friend for giving me this time. I regretfully have to say that while I very much endorse the idea of personal savings accounts, right now we should use the surplus money we have to pay down the debt, increase investment, and get on with the simple changes we need to make this system permanent and stable. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I thank the manager for his courtesy.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and neighbor from New Jersey, the manager on our side, and my friend Senator Conrad of the Finance Committee, for his remarks. Mr. President, I rise not so much in opposition to the proposal by the esteemed chairman of our committee, as to see if it is not possible to clarify some of these issues. And to welcome the Senate to what should be a substantive, constructive debate over the next 6 months-- pending the time when our distinguished Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Franklin D. Raines, has indicated the administration plans to begin to have legislation on this issue, in the first session of the next Congress. In my view, we ought to take up such legislation as a first order of business in that session. May I take the presumed responsibility of this body, which tends to have long tenure, to give a bit of history? In 1935, we established the Social Security system on a pay-as-you-go basis. It was no time, in the midst of a great economic depression, to take more money out of the economy than was being put back, even if it was only a nominal process. This went on until 1977 when we moved from a pay-as-you-go system to a partially funded system. I was a member of the committee of conference between the Senate and the House which adopted that change, and I can say there was very little attention paid to it. We put in place a huge surplus to provide for the baby boom retirement, as the phrase was. But we did not put in place any mechanism to save that surplus. Indeed, if I look around the horizon of political economy, I do not think there is any such mechanism. You can strengthen an economy by paying down debt such that the private sector grows. Theoretically you could build warehouses and fill them with cans of Campbell soup to be opened in 30 years time. But in a system of this kind, a defined benefit arrangement for retirement and for survivors and the disabled-- only 62 percent of persons receiving Social Security benefits are retired persons; the rest are spouses and children of persons who have died, and the disabled--there is no way to save a surplus. The result was that for 21, now 22 years, we have had each year a large surplus from the payroll tax. This is what Senator Conrad was speaking about. And we have used it for other reasons altogether. We have abused it because at a minimum we have never let our debt be paid down so our private savings and investment would rise as an absolute reciprocal, as mathematicians say. For every dollar of debt you pay down you get a dollar of savings that will be used for private investment. Instead, we used this money to conceal the enormity of the deficits we ran in the 1980s and which we now have gotten past. We are now down to a stable situation, not yet one of surplus, because we still have this money coming in from the partially funded system we put in place in 1977 with a very regressive, high payroll tax, 12.4 percent of payroll, paid on the first dollar of income and up to $68,400 this year. But this is no longer much of a surplus. The numbers are approximately this, and I say approximately because we won't know for another year or so, but next year the combined costs of old age and survivors and disability insurance, plus hospital insurance, will be roughly equal to the combined payroll tax revenues for these two programs; thereafter you are in deficit. Technically, there are Treasury bonds that can be cashed in, but then you have to get general revenue or borrow more to convert them into benefits. By about the year 2010, there is no longer any surplus in the primary OASDI, Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. We have 11 years until there is nothing left there either. Senator Kerrey of Nebraska and I have introduced legislation that we think accommodates the situation we are in which, first of all, does not save Social Security. Social Security does not need to be saved. What it does not need is to be destroyed. There is now abroad a powerful ideological movement to turn the system of retirement benefits and survivors benefits over to personal savings in the market. This is a legitimate idea, but I am not sure, if it were understood, it would be a very popular idea. It puts at risk much more than we would ever wish to do in terms of the entire population. It translates the experience of successful entrepreneurial people in an age of great economic growth into a proposition that this is something that the whole of the population can and ought to want to do. We have a plan which does two things: One, it secures Social Security as a defined benefit for retired persons, for disabled persons, for survivors indefinitely. Simultaneously, it provides for lowering payroll taxes and allowing the difference to be used for just the kind of personal savings accounts, investment accounts, that our friend from Delaware would like to do. Specifically, we move from the current 12.4 percent payroll tax--half of it by the employee, half by the employer--to 10.4. That will pay your benefits for more than 30 years; thereafter the payroll tax is gradually increased to a combined 13.4 percent thereby, with some other adjustments I will mention, securing the system for more than a century. Then we say give the employee the option of taking his or her 1 percent as income--some will do that; young persons will do, no doubt--or having the 2 percent deposited into some kind of thrift savings plan. We have such an arrangement in the Federal Government. You can contribute part of your salary, which the Federal Government matches. There is a booklet, and you pick the kind of investment you would like. Some people like index funds, bonds, mutual funds--there are a whole range of these products, as they are called, and you can pick what you wish, and from time to time you can change, if you wish. The prospect for the average earner with a 2 percent investment is that, after contributing for 45 years into the system, the worker would have a nominal asset from that 2 percent contribution in the range of $400,000. This would mean Americans would have an estate. They could leave something to their grandchildren, who might even be more attentive given that prospect. We have an idea of an America very different from the world of the 1930s and the system we put in place, which was put in place in Europe in the 1880s. We have an idea of a retirement system in which persons begin to have a three-tiered system: You have your Social Security, a fixed amount, an annuity. You have benefits from private pensions that you earned with your employer. About half of American workers now have such. And then you have income, if you wish it, from your savings and investment accounts. That requires a few other changes. It requires that we get an accurate cost-of-living index by which to adjust the benefits for changes in the cost of living. We do not now have one. There is a small group of economists who dissent, but the overwhelming judgment of the profession is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index is not a cost-of-living index, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics insists it is not. They do not misrepresent their product; it is we who misuse it. I will say that again. The Department of Labor does not misrepresent its Consumer Price Index; it is we who misuse it. We began the practice in 1972 at a time when Social Security benefits were the object of a biannual auction on the House and Senate floors as Members rose to say, ``I propose we raise benefits 5 percent,'' then 10 percent, then 15 percent. I think on one occasion we went up 20 percent. We had to stop that. The nearest thing at hand was the CPI. We can make a correction. A committee of distinguished economists, headed by Professor Michael Boskin, the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush, reported to the Committee on Finance a year and a half ago recommending a correction of 1.1 percentage points. Different economists, different Government officials, have different judgments, but they are almost all in the same range. And just at this moment, the principal economic planners of the U.S. Government do not use the CPI as a measure of inflation. They just don't; they know otherwise. We have to gradually increase the age of retirement to 70, as we do in our bill, way into the next century. Under current law, we are already approaching an increase to 67. The majority of beneficiaries, Mr. President, retire at age 62 at a reduced benefit, which is actuarially sound. We get rid of that dumb earnings test. It wasn't dumb in 1935 when we were encouraging people not to be in the labor force. Right now, if you work between ages 62 and 70, you lose some or all of your benefits. At age 70 and above, you would then get increased benefits. That is, you receive the same benefits over the course of your retirement. Under our bill, you can decide when to collect your benefits, regardless of whether you are working. You don't have to fool around. We would tax these benefits at the rate at which ordinary pension income is taxed. May I say, Mr. President, for a very, very large number of our present recipients, particularly the old ones, their Social Security benefit and any other income they might have is so low that they pay no Federal taxes of any kind and would not pay any taxes under this new proposal. But I say that this can be done, but it won't be done if we don't understand that we are dealing with a group, a body of respectable opinion, that basically thinks Social Security is a failed plan, perhaps never should have been put in place and now should be transitioned out. This is not the view of the Senator from Delaware. He would like to see a basic annuity for all Americans continue. But it is the view of many more people than we know, or perhaps are aware of, or perhaps are collected in a coherent manner. This morning in the Committee on Ways and Means, Mr. Gingrich spoke very much in these terms. Typically, Senator Dole, who appeared as a witness, did not. The problem is, right now there are groups who are so attached to the present system that they will not make the changes necessary to maintain the present system. It is painful. They know who they are. If I may say, the White House knows who they are. I daresay there aren't many of us in the Finance Committee who do not know. But they must recognize that the alternative is the loss of everything we have developed over 60 years, 60 years in which the system has never been a day late or dollar short on any payment, but which has somehow lost the confidence of the public. I ask my distinguished friend for another 2 minutes to conclude.