Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in emphasizing the importance of providing adequate assistance to the dairy farmers of the Northeast, who suffered tremendous losses due to the ice storm of January 1998. Our amendment will address an important gap in the Dairy and Livestock Disaster Assistance Program described in the supplemental--by providing for compensation for diminished milk production for the remainder of this year. In the days and weeks following the January ice storm, my staff met with dairy farmers from upstate New York, and listened while they detailed the extent and the nature of their losses. My staff realized that one of the main needs expressed by our farmers--compensation for the diminished production which they knew would ensue for the remainder of the year--was not being addressed. Working with the New York Farm Service Agency, my staff developed an approach which will provide crucial assistance to our farmers for these losses. I am pleased to see that compensation for diminished milk production is included in this amendment. Without electric power, farmers were unable to use electrical milking machines, in some cases for several days. Veterinarians at Cornell University estimate that two days of missed milkings will result in an average loss in milk production of ten percent for the remainder of the lactation cycle. The situation is analogous to damages to fruit trees, which suffer production losses in the months--or years--following a storm, in addition to the initial losses suffered at the time of the storm. Diminished milk production losses will greatly surpass the value of milk dumped at the time of the storm. For example, in New York, the value of milk dumped in the days immediately following the storm is estimated to be $1 million. The New York Farm Service Agency projects $12 million in losses due to diminished milk production. Dairy farmers in Vermont and Maine will be similarly affected. The amount provided for dairy and livestock in the Administration's request--$4 million--drastically under represents the amount of damage. The $10 million which this amendment will provide for dairy and livestock farmers is based on the best estimates of damages available from the Farm Service Agencies of the affected states. Through this amendment, we will be able to compensate dairy farmers for 30 percent of the value of their demonstrated losses--the same proportion provided to other farmers under previous disaster relief programs. The farmers of the Northeast dairy industry do not have sufficient means of emergency support outside of Federal aid. Many farmers were shocked to find that their private insurance policies, which do cover losses sustained due to fires, floods, and other natural disasters, will not cover damages sustained during ice storms. The states of New York, Maine and Vermont are offering limited assistance to their dairy farmers, but additional Federal aid is sorely needed. Mr. President, I thank Senator Stevens and Senator Byrd for their assistance with this amendment.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, there is an article in the Metro section of today's Washington Post, ``A New Way to See the Future,'' about a small school which is going about the difficult business of reclaiming young people here in the District of Columbia. The school, which is called See Forever, was started by two lawyers, David Domenici and James Forman, Jr. See Forever--on its way to becoming a charter school--only enrolls those students who have become ``entangled'' in the D.C. court system. The regime consists of a regimented schedule, strict discipline, core classes and electives, participation in a school-run catering service, and paid internships (the money from which is put into Merrill Lynch investment funds, which the students learn to manage). The school runs 12 months a year, and 10 and one-half hours a day. The youngsters enrolled are turning their lives around; they are beating the odds. Adlai E. Stevenson once remarked of Eleanor Roosevelt that she ``would rather light candles than curse the darkness.'' So it seems with David Domenici and James Forman, Jr. (whose father was active in the civil rights movement a generation ago). Of course, knowing David's father--the senior Senator from New Mexico--it is not surprising at all that David should dedicate his life to helping those less fortunate. Mr. President, throughout the course of our nation's history, we have seen the shift from labor to capital--in agriculture, in manufacturing, etc. But there is one enterprise that remains stubbornly labor- intensive, if we are to do it properly. And that enterprise is raising our children, especially those who are socially and economically disadvantaged. David Domenici and James Forman, Jr. understand. The student-teacher ratio at See Forever is 5-1, and more than sixty volunteers help tutor the twenty or so students. Two years ago, I published a book on social policy, ``Miles to Go.'' I ended that book by saying, Even were governments specifically qualified for such work, which is to say the restoration of individual character and moral instruction in everyday life, the national government has entered a time of chronic, even disabling fiscal stricture. . . It is a time for small platoons; a time possibly to be welcomed for such can move quickly, and there are miles to go. David Domenici and James Forman, Jr. have formed one such ``small platoon'' and we--and the lives of those whom they touch--are lucky for it. I ask that the article, ``A New Way to See the Future,'' be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From the Washington Post, Mar. 23, 1998] A New Way To See the Future--School With High-Powered Backers Aims To Help Troubled D.C. Teens (By Peter Slevin) Sherti Hendrix was 15 years old and headed nowhere but down. School was lousy and the rest of the day seemed worse. After she was jailed overnight in the District for fighting with a teacher, nothing ahead or behind her looked good. The same was true for Jerome Green. Kicked out of one New York school at age 14 for what he called ``cussing teachers . . . and fighting,'' he blew another opportunity by getting arrested in Washington, accused of street fighting. Both teenagers are now on a different track. Both got another chance to do things right. Both say an innovative school program run by a pair of fired-up young District lawyers is helping them believe in themselves and in a future no longer entirely bleak. The school is called See Forever. Not yet one year old, it serves about 20 students in a row house on a tattered block of Sixth Street NW. Amid modest beginnings, See Forever's dreams are big and its backers include some of the best-known faces in Washington. The two lawyers are David Domenici, 33, son of Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), and James Forman Jr., 30, namesake of the civil rights activist who presented the 1969 ``Black Economic Manifesto,'' demanding $500 million in reparations from white churches and synagogues. Domenici and Forman, who have run study and work programs for youngsters in trouble before, believe too many adolescents are written off early by a D.C. juvenile justice system that seems forever short on solutions. ``We're trying to get kids into the game. They've been locked out. They're not players,'' Forman said. ``They need discipline. They need high standards. They need jobs. One of our goals is to change the vision of where they can go.'' It's not just another struggling D.C. program for delinquent youths. The idea for the school was hatched by Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., a former U.S. attorney for the District, and Holder's friend Reid Weingarten, one of Washington's most prominent white-collar criminal defense lawyers. The first fund-raiser was sponsored by then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown before his death in an April 1996 plane crash. Another fund-raiser--a $100-a-plate gathering March 10-- drew poet Maya Angelou and a constellation of D.C. power players, including Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala, White House Chief of Staff Erskine B. Bowles, former U.S. Senator Robert J. Dole and a half-dozen senators. See Forever has a $500,000 budget this year and plans to spend $2 million in coming years to expand the school to 100 children, including space for 20 boarders. In September, it will become a D.C. charter school--The Maya Angelou Public Charter School--which will mean an allocation of $6,000 in D.C. tax money per student and the authority to award high school diplomas. One D.C. Superior Court judge, who asked not to be identified, calls See Forever ``the only program I have complete faith in.'' Such words are high praise for a largely untested program, but students echo the sentiment. ``These streets are only going to lead you to getting locked up. Or you'll probably die,'' Sherti, now 16, said. ``Today, I'm not all the way all right, but I'll be all right for the future. I know what I'm capable of doing.'' For that, Sherti credits the adults at See Forever, where the student-teacher ratio is 5 to 1 and more than 60 volunteers come each week to tutor the teenagers individually. The 12-month school calendar and 10\1/2\-hour day are not for the faint of heart, and some students drop out early. The school is open only to students who have been entangled in the D.C. court system, but the seriousness of their situations varies. What gets each teenager in the door at See Forever, after interviews and recommendations, is that school's assessment that the youngster can be saved. Twenty percent of the students, Forman estimates, were ``factually and legally innocent,'' and the cases were dropped. An additional 50 percent were picked up for crimes such as joy riding, fighting or theft. The remaining 30 percent faced more serious charges, including armed robbery. In a typical tightly structured day, the teenagers are kept occupied from 9:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. They eat two meals a day cooked by other students in a catering kitchen. Each student gets lots of individual attention and is tutored every night. Some stay until 11 p.m. because they prefer the place to home. Study subjects are broken into five 80-minute classes. Core subjects are math, English, social studies and computer. Electives have included a layman's law class taught by two Pentagon lawyers, an art class led by Domenici's sister Helen, and classes in jazz appreciation and public speaking. All students do internships part of the year. The school requires that they be paid $130 a week, and the money goes into bank accounts and Merrill Lynch investment funds that they learn to manage. Each student also works in a moneymaking catering service called Untouchable Taste, run by the school. A guiding principle is that job skills and schoolwork are connected. See Forever aims to be broader than either a conventional school or a vocational school by combining the best elements of each. If the skills are useful, the reasoning goes, jobs will be available and the students will stay motivated. ``Schools dump kids with behavioral problems, learning problems, those who've been locked up,'' said Forman, a Yale Law School graduate on leave from the D.C. Public Defender Service. ``D.C. taxpayers are spending money that is being wasted on programs that aren't working.'' Judges and advocates alike acknowledge that options are painfully limited for children in the District's court system. D.C. delinquents are offered few broad services close to home. Some are sent to distant states in search of programs that work at costs that exceed $100,000 a year per child. Some of Washington's most violent teenagers, and many who are not, end up at the city's Oak Hill Youth Center, a widely perceived failure that has operated under court supervision since 1986. In November, Department of Human Services Director Jearline Williams and the D.C. financial control board declared a state of emergency at Oak Hill because of poor conditions. See Forever, with room for only about 20 students, can serve only a fraction of the needs of a city where supervision or jail beds were required for 3,800 youths in 1996. The goal is to set a tone, create a model. As Holder said, ``If it works, maybe it can be copied.'' Angelou, taking the stage at the March 10 fund-raiser, told the students of her own life. ``Somebody would've looked at me as an illiterate or semiliterate black girl on the dirt roads of Arkansas and said, `Never!' '' Angelou said, adding ebulliently, ``Look at me now!'' She sang a Negro spiritual, ``Don't You Let Nobody Turn You Around,'' and told students, ``Keep on walking, keep on talking, keep on learning, keep on burning, keep on laughing.'' Jerome is feeling good about things. In an essay, he recalled how difficult his work at See Forever seemed at first. He said he got mad and sometimes skipped his schoolwork. But then he made a discovery: He could do it. ``Now that I have finally made a change, I want to look back on everyone who told me I was stupid or dumb,'' Jerome said. ``I want to see if they are still on the street selling drugs. I want to ask them. `Who's dumb now?' ''

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. This is Kaliningrad right here, cut off from Russia by Lithuania, Belarus, and Latvia. I would like to make a point that the Russians have already asked for passage through Latvia and have not received it. One point about the proposal of the Senator from Virginia to have a pause before further expansion. Last December, the Woodrow Wilson National Center for Scholars had a conference on NATO enlargement, and there was just this one passage that struck me by a Finnish scholar Tiiu Pohl. She said, ``In 1994, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung of Germany organized a study of the Russian military elite to find out whom they considered to be enemies of the state. The results of the research showed that Latvia was named most frequently, by 49 percent of the respondents. Latvia was followed by Afghanistan, Lithuania, and Estonia. After Estonia came the United States.'' Sir, we are walking into historical ethnic and religious enmities. Catholics here, Orthodox here, and Lutheran here. We have no idea what we are getting into. I thank the Senator.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, we would march our troops right up the Volga.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, earlier my friend and colleague, the Senator from West Virginia, described the ring we were putting into Europe. I observe that within that ring there would be a portion of the Russian nation. Here is the map.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I wasn't.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may I take a moment to thank the distinguished deputy majority leader. I couldn't be more grateful. If there are auspices, his comments make them very good indeed. I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I do not think there are 100 people in the country who understand the formulas by which you have a higher rate of benefit for persons with lower incomes, but it has been there from the beginning. It is a very progressive program in that regard. That level of general unawareness, as the Senator knows, is a threatening fact, that a majority of nonretired adults think they will never get Social Security, not knowing they might need it for other purposes. If they don't think they will get it, they won't miss it if it is taken away. That is why we had better act now, and soon, and with a measure of courage that the people who created this institution showed in 1934, 1935.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. If you think of the prospect of retirement benefits, and that is real, but something that is not always recognized--I know the Senator understands it--only 62 percent of the beneficiaries of Social Security at this moment are retirees. The rest are survivors or persons who have been disabled, and that can be someone 24 years old or 35 years old. This is a system that is not just devoted to the elderly. Keeping it is essential, and we can do it. I cannot tell you how much I am honored by you associating yourself with this proposal.

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

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we have an additional 10 minutes. The distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee is agreeable to that. The Senator from Louisiana would like to conclude our remarks.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank my colleague for his generosity. Mr. President, if the deputy leader would allow me, I just conclude our morning business. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Social Security Solvency Act of 1998 be printed in the Record, along with a brief summary of the bill.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. It would be one of the largest tax cuts in our history, and, in the process, it would put the Social Security System into permanent actuarial balance.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, if I could say to my friend from Delaware, that is when I became convinced the Soviet Union would not last through the 20th century. When a person of Arkady N. Shevchenko stature defects, it means the system is not working. And it did not work. But when it came apart, there is a proposition in which Owen Harries, in a very fine article in The National Interest, cites British historian Martin Wight who observed that ``Great Power status is lost, as it is won, by violence. A Great Power does not die in its bed.'' Of all the extraordinary events of the 20th century, nothing is more important, more striking than the fact that the Soviet Union and that whole world empire died in bed. There was virtually no bloodshed. The only bloodshed that really took place occurred within the remaining Russian Federation, with its many different languages and regions, when you began to get things like Chechnya and the appearance of a Russian army that clearly was not capable of fairly elementary military operations. I say that is a beleaguered and troubled society. And one that could have resisted, in the first instance, the Polish defection. They could have resisted others. They had an army; they had an air force; they had nuclear strategic and tactical weapons. They did not, Owen Harries argued--a man, I must say, of impeccable conservative credentials--that there was an implicit understanding that we would not take advantage of what the Soviet Union was allowing to happen to their empire. They gave up everything they had hoped for from 1917. They collapsed. And they recognized their failure. Again, we had been picking up things like that in the mid-1970s. Murray Feshbach, a distinguished demographer here at the Bureau of the Census, noted that life expectancy for Soviet males was declining. It wasn't working. It was all a lie. If I could relate one more event as a bit of an anecdote but not without some interest. Our distinguished Ambassador at the time has related it as well. In 1987, I was in Moscow on a mission of possible importance. It had to do with the infiltration of our new Embassy with listening devices and things like that. We were treated with great courtesy. We were presented a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier. We visited Lenin's tomb. We were shown Lenin's apartment. I was struck; behind Lenin's desk there were four bookshelves, two shelves of English books and two of French. Now, I expect they were put there for the delectation of George Bernard Shaw and Lady Astor in the 1930s, but still there they were. And I recognized that I had met three of those authors. I can not say I was intimate with them, but I had met them. Two days later we called on Boris Yeltsin, who was then a candidate member of the politburo. This was August, and he had the duty to stay in town in August while the rest were off in the Crimean. To be friendly, I said, well, we were in Lenin's apartment looking over his books and I knew three of those people. Isn't that interesting? And it was very clear, as the U.N. Ambassador said, that Yeltsin had never heard of any of these authors and could care less; he hadn't read a book since he had left technical school. There was not a person left in the politburo who believed any of that. I say to my friend from Delaware, Yeltsin said to me, ``I know who you are. I know where you are from. And what I want to know is how am I supposed to run Moscow with 1929 rent controls?'' This was the level of ideological discourse. It was a sick society, wounded. It collapsed, died. And what is left is fragile, and they have just formally proclaimed both their vulnerability and their determination that if NATO is expanded, the no- first-use principle, which saved mankind in the 20th century, is over because all they have to defend themselves are nuclear weapons. It is a curiously ironic outcome that at the end of the cold war we might face a nuclear Armageddon. I leave it there. I have nothing more to add at this moment. But I ask, Madam President, if I might have excerpts printed from the Russian National Security Blueprint in the Congressional Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. May I finally thank my friend from Delaware for the civility with which this debate is taking place. If David Broder is watching, I am sure he is relieved--he wrote this morning that there are things more important than renaming airports--that this debate has commenced. And let it continue in this mode and we will see how it comes out. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. No.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I, too, yield.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I would like to first thank my friend from Virginia. We have reached across the aisle to collaborate on two amendments which we will offer at the appropriate time. Today we are engaged in just some preliminary observations. I will begin with the current event of one of the more interesting aspects of life in Moscow at this moment, which is that it is in so many ways much more open than the United States. Their archives are open, and their national security plans are open. I do not doubt there are closed elements as well. But on December 17, the Russian Federation issued Presidential edict, No. 1300, entitled ``The Russian National Security Blueprint.'' This is the kind of document that we would not have gotten from Moscow in the past. We can think of the famous NSC-68, which was drafted early in 1950 and was so powerfully influential in our affairs for many years. NSC-68 remained secret for 30 years. By contrast, the Presidential edict, No. 1300, was published in Moscow's official gazette on December 26, 9 days after it was issued. It is a disturbing document; yet, in many ways it is an admirable one in the clarity with which it sets forth the exceptional difficulties facing the Russian Federation at this point. It speaks in its first paragraph that: The Russian Federation National Security Blueprint is a political document reflecting the aggregate of officially accepted views regarding the goals and state strategy in the sphere of assuring the security of the individual and the state from external and internal threats of a political, economic, social, military, manmade, ecological, informational, or other nature in the light of existing resources and potential. It speaks of internal threats in the context of the convulsions that have occurred in that country within the past decade. The forces which played such a fundamental role in breaking up the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. It is a sober assessment of the threats to Russian security. Madam President, in this debate it should be recorded that the national security document, the guiding principles of the Russian Federation, states right up front: The prospect of NATO expansion to the east is unacceptable to Russia since it represents a threat to its national security. That was drafted, or agreed to, on December 17 and published December 26. It is a formidable document and an extraordinarily candid one. It speaks to the ethnic problems, it speaks to the economic decline, it speaks to poverty, it speaks to unemployment, and it speaks to the nature of the Russian defense forces. They acknowledge that large portions of their borders are undefended. They acknowledge that their traditional conventional weapons systems are deteriorated, if not in fact disfunctional. And they say--and this is the most difficult part--that they do have nuclear weapons and, if necessary, they will use them. This is not the type of posture that we had hoped for, after the long arms control efforts from President Eisenhower's time to START II. I was one of the Senate observers to the START II talks and the present Russian Ambassador to the United States, who wrote a very important article recently in the Washington Post, was one of the negotiators then. With START, for the first time we agreed to build our nuclear forces down. Previous agreements had really legitimated the respective nations' plans to increase their nuclear forces. We reached that historic moment, and have been able to build on that important achievement. Since then, other historic treaties have also been achieved, allowing eminent Senators, such as the Senator from Delaware, to bring to this floor the Chemical Weapons Agreement, a very powerful, far-sighted document. But now the Russian government says, under the circumstances, we have nothing left but nuclear weapons. We are in serious difficulty. The prospect of NATO expansion to the east is unacceptable. The term is ``unacceptable.'' It is not a calculating document. May I make this point twofold? I would like to go back just a bit. There is not one of us in this body who has not paid some heed to the affairs of the Soviet Union over time and the world of communism over time. Yet rather early on it began to occur to some of us that all was not well in that arrangement and that it was not going to remain permanent as was often presumed. Just a short while ago, Arkady Shevchenko documented--and his obituary appeared in the principal national papers. Arkady Shevchenko was the second ranking official at the United Nations during the time when I had the honor to be our Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Shevchenko was a protege of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko. He was on anyone's short list to succeed Gromyko. He held one essentially attractive position after another. There he was, the Under Secretary General responsible for the Security Council, about as important a position as you will get in any diplomatic service and particularly in that of the Soviet Union. Whilst I was at that post in New York, Shevchenko defected to the United States. It was a very closely held matter. He simply passed a note in a book in the General Assembly library, that he was thinking of defecting. He was a man at the top of his form. In the manner of the espionage craft, we established that he had defected and then left him in place for some two and one half years, where he remained in his position as Under Secretary General whilst providing us information. In Moscow they began to sense something was the matter and they began to think a defector was in place. It even got to the point where the Soviet Ambassador here in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, another person of great stature in the Soviet system, came under suspicion as the source of the security leaks. Finally, they worked it out. That is not too hard. You give three messages to three different people and you see which one the United States gets. Shevchenko had to defect. He later moved to Washington, where I got to know him. I had known him somewhat at the United Nations, but I got to know him better here. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the obituary for Arkady N. Shevchenko be printed in the Record, which is a way of saying goodbye to someone who chose democracy.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I cannot speak with the authority of the minority leader, who is necessarily detained. It won't be that long before he can be here. I will have to offer my impression, regretfully, that that would not be possible.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Would my distinguished friend yield for a question?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. My friend spoke of this arch dropping from Poland through Romania and Bulgaria.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. A tiny border on the Arctic sea.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I wanted to respond to his wonderful, vivid image of an iron ring surrounding Central Europe and facing Russia. Would my friend not agree--and of course, he will agree because it is a fact of geography--that Russian territory will be within that ring? The simple fact that Poland will be in NATO means that Kaliningrad will border NATO though it is cut off from the rest of Russia. It is cut off, in any event, by Lithuania and Belarus, but I don't have to tell the former Secretary of the Navy that, other than Sebastopol in the Black Sea, the main port of what was the navy of the Soviet Union is in Kaliningrad. We may expand NATO beyond that. Surely that cannot but cause anxiety in Russia.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Not a Naval base in the Baltic.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am sure that the distinguished Senator from Colorado has other appointments he has to meet and will have to leave the floor shortly. But could I congratulate him on his remarks, and to say that we are about to introduce a bill, the Social Security Solvency Act of 1998, that is almost precisely the one he contemplates, or is in that range of reference. For his particular concern, we reduce the present 12.4 percent payroll tax by 2 percentage points, to 10.4. That puts us on a pay-as-you-go system, which with other adjustments, particularly the cost-of-living adjustment, means we will never go much above 13.4 percent, and we stay at 12.4 all the way to the year 2045. And then we give to each worker-employee the option of having 2 percent, the reduction in tax under our bill, put into a personal savings account-- not very different from the Federal Thrift Savings Plan in which you have a whole catalog of mutual funds of various kinds in which you can invest. The magic of compound interest is extraordinary. The Wall Street Journal this morning comments on this proposal and notes that--well, I will just read it: Why shouldn't working stiffs have the same chance others have to exploit the magic of compound interest? Mr. Moynihan shows that workers earning $30,000 a year-- Which is not a high income at this time-- can at a modest 5 percent return amass $450,000 in savings after 45 years. By just shifting that 2 percent. And this gives workers something they have not had in the past. It gives them an estate they can pass on to their children. Oh, heavens, I am about to say something which I suppose should be stricken from the Record, but it will make them all Republicans. Still, it is very much in line with the Senator's comments. I very much appreciate what he has said, and I congratulate him on doing so. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article from the Wall Street Journal be printed in the Record, and I yield the floor.