Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise as an original cosponsor of the amendment offered by my colleague from New York to extend Supplemental Security Income [SSI] benefits to elderly and disabled legal immigrants through the end of September. Under last year's welfare legislation, which I opposed, these individuals are to lose their SSI benefits in August. The budget agreement recently reached would restore SSI benefits to many of these individuals. I support that effort, although more should be done. This amendment will ensure that there is no interruption of SSI benefits while legislation necessary to implement the budget agreement is considered. It is a welcome measure of compassion where there has been too little of late.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from North Carolina, Senator Helms, in introducing the Government Secrecy Act of 1997. Congressmen Larry Combest of Texas and Lee Hamilton of Indiana are introducing companion legislation in the House of Representatives this afternoon. The four of us, along with eight other distinguished individuals, served for the past 2 years on the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. Earlier today, the four of us testified together at a hearing of the Committee on Governmental Affairs called by Chairman Thompson to review the Commission's report, issued in March. The legislation that we introduce today is intended to implement one of the core recommendations of that Commission: The need for a statute establishing the principles to govern the classification and declassification of information. The remarks that follow track my testimony before the Governmental Affairs Committee this morning. We begin by defining our subject. ``Secrecy is a form of government regulation.'' It can be understood in terms of a now considerable literature concerning how organizations function. Begin with the German scholar Max Weber, writing eight decades ago in his chapter ``Bureaucracy'' in ``Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft'' (Economy and Society): Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret. Bureaucratic administration always tends to be an administration of ``secret sessions''; in so far as it can, it hides its knowledge and action from criticism. The pure interest of the bureaucracy in power, however, is efficacious far beyond those areas where purely functional interests make for secrecy. The concept of the ``official secret'' is the specific invention of bureaucracy, and nothing is so fanatically defended by the bureaucracy as this attitude, which cannot be substantially defended beyond these specifically qualified areas. Normal regulation concerns how citizens are to behave. As the administrative state developed in the United States, beginning with the Progressive Era at the turn of the century and expanding greatly under the New Deal, legal scholars began to ask just what these new rules were. Were they laws? If not, then what? In 1938, Roscoe Pound, chairman of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Administrative Law and former Dean of the Harvard Law School, attacked those ``who would turn the administration of justice over to administrative absolutism . . . a Marxian idea,'' and inveighed against those ``progressives, liberals, or radicals who desire to invest the National Government with totalitarian powers in the teeth of constitutional democracy . . .'' We managed to get a handle on that system, in no small measure through the efforts of Erwin Griswold, also a dean of the Harvard Law School, and others who decried the fact that administrative regulations equivalent to law had become increasingly important to everyday life and yet were not available to the public. One year after Professor Griswold published a seminal article calling for the publication of such rules and regulations, Congress enacted the Federal Register Act of 1935. Eleven years later, in 1946, working from the recommendations made in 1941 by the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure, chaired by Dean Acheson, Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act. Thus, today our system of public regulation is public indeed. Regulations are both widely accessible and subject to the APA's set of procedural requirements--bringing a degree of order and accountability to this regime. Secrecy, by contrast, concerns what citizens may know, but the citizen does not know what may not be known. Our Commission states: Americans are familiar with the tendency to overregulate in other areas. What is different with secrecy is that the public cannot know the extent or the content of the regulation. Thus, secrecy is the ultimate mode of regulation; the citizen does not even know that he or she is being regulated. It is a parallel regulatory regime with a far greater potential for damage if it malfunctions. Flowing from this understanding of secrecy as regulation is the recognition that, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart's opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, when everything is secret, nothing is secret. We state: The best way to ensure that secrecy is respected, and that the most important secrets remain secret, is for secrecy to be returned to its limited but necessary role. Secrets can be protected more effectively if secrecy is reduced overall. It is time to reexamine the foundations of that secrecy system. The Information Security Oversight Office report to Congress last week estimated the direct costs of secrecy at $5.2 billion in 1996 alone. The same Office reports that in 1995 we had 21,871 original new top secret designations and another 374,244 derivative top secret designations. Meaning that, in a single year, roughly 400,000 new secrets were created at the Top Secret level alone--the disclosure of any one of which would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. It is also time to examine the appropriateness of security arrangements put in place during an earlier age, when the perceived threats were so different from those of today. In 1957, the only previous commission established by the Congress to examine the secrecy system--the Commission on Government Security--issued a report that, for any number of reasons--in particular the fact that its core recommendation that amounted to prior restraint of the press--did nothing to change the prevailing mode. Although the Commission did understand classification as a cost; its report ``stresses the dangers to national security that arise out of overclassification of information which retards scientific and technological progress, and thus tend to deprive the country of the lead time that results from the free exchange of ideas and information.'' When the Commission on Government Security presented its report to President Eisenhower and the Congress, we still were consumed with concerns about a Federal Government infiltrated by ideological enemies of the United States. Today, the public and its representatives have few such concerns; indeed, today it is the U.S. Government that increasingly is the object of what Edward Shils in 1956, in ``The Torment of Secrecy,'' termed the ``phantasies of apocalyptic visionaries.'' We are not proposing putting an end to secrecy. It is at times terribly necessary and used for the most legitimate reasons. But secrecy need not remain the only norm: We must develop a competing culture of openness, fully consistent with our interests in protecting national security, but in which power is no longer derived primarily from one's ability to withhold information. I am struck in this regard by a most remarkable letter that I received on March 25 from George F. Kennan, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, in response to our Commission report. As lucid and thoughtful as ever at age 93, Professor Kennan builds a compelling case for the proposition that much of our secrecy system arose out of our efforts to penetrate the obsessively secretive Soviet Communist regime of the Stalin era. And that the system we put in place remains largely intact today, even as that adversary has disappeared. Professor Kennan writes: It is my conviction, based on some 70 years of experience, first as a government official and then in the past 45 years as an historian, that the need by our government for secret intelligence about affairs elsewhere in the world has been vastly over-rated. I would say that something upwards of 95% of what we need to know about foreign countries could be very well obtained by the careful and competent study of perfectly legitimate sources of information open and available to us in the rich library and archival holdings of this country. I ask unanimous that the full text of Professor Kennan's letter be inserted in the Record. I should note further that Professor Kennan's conclusion about the share of information available from open sources also has been reached by other notable observers of the secrecy system--the estimable George P. Shultz among them. Developing a culture of openness within the Federal Government requires that secrecy be defined in statute. A statute will not put an end to overclassification and needless classification, but it will help by ensuring that the present regulatory regime cannot simply continue to flourish without any restraint. Classification should proceed according to law; classifiers should know that they are acting lawfully and properly. We need to balance the possibility of harm to national security against the public's right to know what the Government is doing, or not doing. We should establish by statute that secrecy belongs in the realm of national security and must serve that interest alone. It should not be employed as a badge of office or a status symbol. Thus we propose this statute, the Government Secrecy Act of 1997. As noted, Representatives Combest and Hamilton are cosponsoring a companion measure in the House of Representatives. This legislation-- defining the principles and standards to govern classification and declassification, and establishing within an existing agency a National Declassification Center to coordinate responsibility for declassifying historical documents--is drawn directly from the Commission's recommendation for such a statute, as set out in the summary and in chapter I of our report. I look forward to reviewing the legislation, as well as the other findings and recommendations of the Commission, with Members of this body, as well as our colleagues in the House of Representatives, executive branch officials, and interested persons outside of Government, in the weeks ahead. I send the bill to the desk and ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record and be referred to the appropriate committee.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from North Carolina, Senator Helms, in introducing the Government Secrecy Act of 1997. Congressmen Larry Combest of Texas and Lee Hamilton of Indiana are introducing companion legislation in the House of Representatives this afternoon. The four of us, along with eight other distinguished individuals, served for the past 2 years on the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. Earlier today, the four of us testified together at a hearing of the Committee on Governmental Affairs called by Chairman Thompson to review the Commission's report, issued in March. The legislation that we introduce today is intended to implement one of the core recommendations of that Commission: The need for a statute establishing the principles to govern the classification and declassification of information. The remarks that follow track my testimony before the Governmental Affairs Committee this morning. We begin by defining our subject. ``Secrecy is a form of government regulation.'' It can be understood in terms of a now considerable literature concerning how organizations function. Begin with the German scholar Max Weber, writing eight decades ago in his chapter ``Bureaucracy'' in ``Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft'' (Economy and Society): Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret. Bureaucratic administration always tends to be an administration of ``secret sessions''; in so far as it can, it hides its knowledge and action from criticism. The pure interest of the bureaucracy in power, however, is efficacious far beyond those areas where purely functional interests make for secrecy. The concept of the ``official secret'' is the specific invention of bureaucracy, and nothing is so fanatically defended by the bureaucracy as this attitude, which cannot be substantially defended beyond these specifically qualified areas. Normal regulation concerns how citizens are to behave. As the administrative state developed in the United States, beginning with the Progressive Era at the turn of the century and expanding greatly under the New Deal, legal scholars began to ask just what these new rules were. Were they laws? If not, then what? In 1938, Roscoe Pound, chairman of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Administrative Law and former Dean of the Harvard Law School, attacked those ``who would turn the administration of justice over to administrative absolutism . . . a Marxian idea,'' and inveighed against those ``progressives, liberals, or radicals who desire to invest the National Government with totalitarian powers in the teeth of constitutional democracy . . .'' We managed to get a handle on that system, in no small measure through the efforts of Erwin Griswold, also a dean of the Harvard Law School, and others who decried the fact that administrative regulations equivalent to law had become increasingly important to everyday life and yet were not available to the public. One year after Professor Griswold published a seminal article calling for the publication of such rules and regulations, Congress enacted the Federal Register Act of 1935. Eleven years later, in 1946, working from the recommendations made in 1941 by the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure, chaired by Dean Acheson, Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act. Thus, today our system of public regulation is public indeed. Regulations are both widely accessible and subject to the APA's set of procedural requirements--bringing a degree of order and accountability to this regime. Secrecy, by contrast, concerns what citizens may know, but the citizen does not know what may not be known. Our Commission states: Americans are familiar with the tendency to overregulate in other areas. What is different with secrecy is that the public cannot know the extent or the content of the regulation. Thus, secrecy is the ultimate mode of regulation; the citizen does not even know that he or she is being regulated. It is a parallel regulatory regime with a far greater potential for damage if it malfunctions. Flowing from this understanding of secrecy as regulation is the recognition that, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart's opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, when everything is secret, nothing is secret. We state: The best way to ensure that secrecy is respected, and that the most important secrets remain secret, is for secrecy to be returned to its limited but necessary role. Secrets can be protected more effectively if secrecy is reduced overall. It is time to reexamine the foundations of that secrecy system. The Information Security Oversight Office report to Congress last week estimated the direct costs of secrecy at $5.2 billion in 1996 alone. The same Office reports that in 1995 we had 21,871 original new top secret designations and another 374,244 derivative top secret designations. Meaning that, in a single year, roughly 400,000 new secrets were created at the Top Secret level alone--the disclosure of any one of which would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. It is also time to examine the appropriateness of security arrangements put in place during an earlier age, when the perceived threats were so different from those of today. In 1957, the only previous commission established by the Congress to examine the secrecy system--the Commission on Government Security--issued a report that, for any number of reasons--in particular the fact that its core recommendation that amounted to prior restraint of the press--did nothing to change the prevailing mode. Although the Commission did understand classification as a cost; its report ``stresses the dangers to national security that arise out of overclassification of information which retards scientific and technological progress, and thus tend to deprive the country of the lead time that results from the free exchange of ideas and information.'' When the Commission on Government Security presented its report to President Eisenhower and the Congress, we still were consumed with concerns about a Federal Government infiltrated by ideological enemies of the United States. Today, the public and its representatives have few such concerns; indeed, today it is the U.S. Government that increasingly is the object of what Edward Shils in 1956, in ``The Torment of Secrecy,'' termed the ``phantasies of apocalyptic visionaries.'' We are not proposing putting an end to secrecy. It is at times terribly necessary and used for the most legitimate reasons. But secrecy need not remain the only norm: We must develop a competing culture of openness, fully consistent with our interests in protecting national security, but in which power is no longer derived primarily from one's ability to withhold information. I am struck in this regard by a most remarkable letter that I received on March 25 from George F. Kennan, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, in response to our Commission report. As lucid and thoughtful as ever at age 93, Professor Kennan builds a compelling case for the proposition that much of our secrecy system arose out of our efforts to penetrate the obsessively secretive Soviet Communist regime of the Stalin era. And that the system we put in place remains largely intact today, even as that adversary has disappeared. Professor Kennan writes: It is my conviction, based on some 70 years of experience, first as a government official and then in the past 45 years as an historian, that the need by our government for secret intelligence about affairs elsewhere in the world has been vastly over-rated. I would say that something upwards of 95% of what we need to know about foreign countries could be very well obtained by the careful and competent study of perfectly legitimate sources of information open and available to us in the rich library and archival holdings of this country. I ask unanimous that the full text of Professor Kennan's letter be inserted in the Record. I should note further that Professor Kennan's conclusion about the share of information available from open sources also has been reached by other notable observers of the secrecy system--the estimable George P. Shultz among them. Developing a culture of openness within the Federal Government requires that secrecy be defined in statute. A statute will not put an end to overclassification and needless classification, but it will help by ensuring that the present regulatory regime cannot simply continue to flourish without any restraint. Classification should proceed according to law; classifiers should know that they are acting lawfully and properly. We need to balance the possibility of harm to national security against the public's right to know what the Government is doing, or not doing. We should establish by statute that secrecy belongs in the realm of national security and must serve that interest alone. It should not be employed as a badge of office or a status symbol. Thus we propose this statute, the Government Secrecy Act of 1997. As noted, Representatives Combest and Hamilton are cosponsoring a companion measure in the House of Representatives. This legislation-- defining the principles and standards to govern classification and declassification, and establishing within an existing agency a National Declassification Center to coordinate responsibility for declassifying historical documents--is drawn directly from the Commission's recommendation for such a statute, as set out in the summary and in chapter I of our report. I look forward to reviewing the legislation, as well as the other findings and recommendations of the Commission, with Members of this body, as well as our colleagues in the House of Representatives, executive branch officials, and interested persons outside of Government, in the weeks ahead. I send the bill to the desk and ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record and be referred to the appropriate committee.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a very special American, Ms. Elizabeth O'Donnell of Kenmore, NY. I am proud to announce that Ms. O'Donnell is one of three winners of the 1996 HEROES Awards from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. This honor is given each year to three individuals who make outstanding and unique humanitarian contributions to local sports programs throughout the United States. In 1976, Elizabeth O'Donnell abandoned her lifelong dream of professional ice skating to find a more fulfilling challenge. It was at that time that Ms. O'Donnell left the Ice Capades to teach blind and handicapped people of all ages to ice skate. Motivated by her love of the sport and desire to share the freedom of movement, as well as the physical and psychological benefits which accompany skating, Ms. O'Donnell founded the Skating Association for the Blind and Handicapped [SABAH]. In her 20 years as coach, administrator, and president of SABAH, Ms. O'Donnell has taught more than 8,500 physically challenged people to leave behind their wheelchairs and crutches and learn to skate with specially designed walkers and harness systems. A number of Ms. O'Donnell's students have even learned to overcome their disabilities as a result of her coaching techniques. Ms. O'Donnell's work might best be summarized in the words of Buffalo mayor, Anthony Massielo, the person who nominated her for the 1996 Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association HEROES Award: ``For those people who might have known `sports' as an abstract, Elizabeth has succeeded in translating the joy of achievement and accomplishment, which is so often overlooked in competitive sports, into a triumph of spirit.'' Mr. President, I want to give my warmest congratulations to Ms. O'Donnell and to the people whose lives she helps make better. Her 1996 Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association HEROES Award is richly deserved.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, founded in 1847, Plymouth Church of Brooklyn, NY, has made significant contributions to the Nation. The church building, designated in 1963 by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a national historic landmark, was known as the ``Grand Central Depot of the Underground Railroad'' because of the antislavery activities of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and the congregation. Reverend Beecher was familiar with the horrors of slavery auctions from his own observation and from experiences of members of his family, including his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote ``Uncle Tom's Cabin.'' Thus, on several occasions between 1848 and 1860, he conducted well-publicized mock slave auctions at Plymouth Church with the results that the congregation secured the freedom of the slaves and he demonstrated to the Nation the barbarity of selling people who had been created, according to the Bible, ``in the image of God.'' These auctions helped create a pro-abolitionist consensus in the North. In February of 1860, Abraham Lincoln, then relatively unknown east of the Appalachians, was invited to speak at Plymouth Church. At the last moment, the location of the speech was changed to Cooper Union where Lincoln made an address which introduced him to the eastern United States which, in turn, led to his nomination for the Presidency less than 3 months later. Lincoln worshiped at Plymouth Church on two occasions, the only times he attended church services in New York State. Following the end of the Civil War, the congregation of Plymouth Church supported the position that women and black men should have the right to vote. Even after the 15th amendment to the Constitution gave newly emancipated black men the right to vote, Plymouth Church continued to advocate for the right of women to vote. Reverend Beecher was the only man ever to serve as president of the American Suffrage Society. Reverend Beecher left an impact on other areas of American cultural life. He was among the first religious leaders in the United States to embrace Darwin's theory of evolution and Spencer's theories of social evolution. He was an early advocate of Jewish-Christian dialog and of giving public standing to Judaism as a major American faith group. Because the church was for many years the largest and best known public building in Brooklyn, many notable persons have spoken there, including Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Clara Barton, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mark Twain, who described Plymouth Church's 1867 grand tour of Europe and the Holy Land in his book ``Innocents Abroad,'' also spoke there. In 1934, Plymouth Church and neighboring Church of the Pilgrims merged to form Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. On May 4 of this year, Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Plymouth Church and the commencement of the ministry of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. I wish to add my congratulations to the Reverend Sharon Power Blackburn; Frank Decker, president of the Plymouth Council; and the entire congregation of Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims on this most important occasion.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my dear friend, the chairman. Mr. President, I rise in support of the resolution of ratification. I will take just a moment of the Senate's time to put this matter in a historical context. Since its development by 19th century chemists, poison gas--as it was known--has been seen as a singular evil giving rise to a singular cause for international sanctions. In May 1899, Czar Nicholas II of Russia convened a peace conference at The Hague in Holland. Twenty-six countries attended and agreed upon three conventions and three declarations concerning the laws of war. Declaration II, On Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases stated: The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases. Article 23 of the Annex to the Convention added: In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden: (a) To employ poison or poisoned weapons * * * Our own Theodore Roosevelt called for a second peace conference which convened in 1907. This time, 45 countries were in attendance at The Hague, and reiterated the Declaration on Asphyxiating Gases and the article 23 prohibition on poisoned weapons. The Hague Conventions notwithstanding, poison gas was used in World War I. Of all the events of the First World War, a war from which this century has not yet fully recovered, none so horrified mankind as gas warfare. No resolve ever was as firm as that of the nations of the world, after that war, to prevent gas warfare from ever happening again. Declaring something to be violation of international law does not solve a problem, but it does provide those of us who adhere to laws mechanisms by which to address violations of them. In June 1925, the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare was signed in Geneva. This reaffirmed the Hague prohibition and added biological weapons to the declaration. In the Second World War that followed, such was the power of that commitment that gas was not used in Europe. It was expected, but it did not happen. Then came the atom bomb and a new, even more important development in warfare. In time it, too, would be the subject of international conventions. As part of the peace settlement that followed World War II, President Roosevelt, with the British, Chinese, and French, set up the United Nations. In 1957, within the U.N. system, the International Atomic Energy Agency was established. The new agency fielded an extraordinary new device, international inspectors, who began inspecting weapons facilities around the world to ensure compliance. This was enhanced by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970, allowing inspectors to monitor declared nuclear sites. This was an unheard of compromise of traditional sovereignty. It has not worked perfectly. The number of nuclear powers, or proto-nuclear powers, has grown somewhat. But only somewhat: around 10 in a world with some 185 members of the United Nations. And never since 1945 has a single atomic weapon been used in warfare. The Chemical Weapons Convention incorporates the advances in international law and cooperation of which I have spoken; it extends them. Its inspections can be more effective than the IAEA because of the ability to conduct challenge inspections when violations of the CWC are suspected. If the Senate should fail--and it will not fail--to adopt the resolution of ratification, it would be the first rejection of such a treaty since the Senate in 1919 rejected the Treaty of Versailles, with its provision for the establishment of the League of Nations. It would be only the 18th treaty rejected by the Senate in the history of the Republic. Every living Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the past 20 years has called for ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Our beloved former colleague, Senator Bob Dole, has given his support and asked us to do what I think we can only describe as our duty. The President pleads. Here I would note a distinction. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson could have had the Versailles Treaty, we could have joined the League of Nations, if only he had been willing to make a modicum of concessions to then- chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and majority leader, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Wilson was too stubborn; in truth, and it pains an old Wilsonian to say so, too blind. Nothing such can be said of President Clinton. In a month of negotiations with the current chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the current Republican leader, the administration has reached agreement on 28 of 33 conditions. Only five proved unacceptable. And, indeed, sir, they are. The President could not in turn ratify a treaty with those conditions. Again to draw a parallel with 1919. During consideration of the Treaty of Versailles, the Senate was divided into three primary camps: those who supported the treaty; those who opposed the treaty, no matter what shape or form it might take--known as ``irreconcilables'' or ``bitter enders''--and those who wanted some changes to the treaty, most importantly led by Senator Lodge. There are some modern day irreconcilables who oppose this Treaty for the same reason they eschew international law: viewing it as an assertion of what nice people do. Such a view reduces a magisterial concept that there will be enforced standards to a form of wishful thinking. A position which runs counter to a century of effort. Today I would appeal to those Republicans who might compare themselves with Senator Lodge. Unlike 1919, this President has heard your concerns and worked carefully to address them in the form the resolution of ratification containing 28 conditions which is now before the Senate. To fail to ratify the CWC would put us on the side of the rogue states and relieve them of any pressure to ratify the convention themselves. As Matthew Nimitz has argued, the United States has a unique interest in international law because it cannot ``match the Russians in deviousness or the Libyans in irresponsibility or the Iranians in brutality * * *. [It is the United States] which stands to lose the most in a state of world anarchy.'' The Chemical Weapons Convention builds on the laws of The Hague: a century of arms control agreements. It bans chemical weapons--hideous and barbaric devices--completely. International law can never offer perfect protection, but we are primary beneficiaries of the protection that it does provide. I urge my colleagues to support this important treaty. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. Might I ask? Does time run consecutively and is it divided equally?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair. May I ask my good friend if he didn't wish that the time be charged to the Senator from Delaware?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of the Auto Choice Reform Act of 1997, a bill submitted by my distinguished colleague, Senator McConnell. This legislation is designed to create a new option in auto insurance for consumers who would prefer a system that guarantees quick and complete compensation. This alternative system would change most insurance coverage to a first-party system from a third-party system and it would separate economic and noneconomic compensation by unbundling the premium. Therefore, drivers would be allowed to insure themselves for only economic loss or for both economic and noneconomic loss. In the 1950's, I first became interested in the issue of auto insurance reform as a member of New York Gov. Averell Harriman's Traffic Safety Policy Coordinating Committee. At that time, while working on auto safety issues, I became convinced that as the number of automobiles increased, the number of automobile accidents would, inexorably, also increase. And the problem with the current state of the insurance system begins right there. A driver buys protection against the risk that he will negligently cause an accident that will injure another person. If that should occur, the driver's insurance company is responsible for compensating the victim. But this contradicts the very nature of traffic accidents. If they were orderly events, in which cause and effect could be clearly discerned and ascribed, then the present insurance system could work. But accidents are nothing of the sort. It is often very difficult to determine fault in traffic accidents. It is the role of the liable party's insurance company to argue that the plaintiff's injuries--no matter how hideous-- are not as serious as he or she claims. These cases overwhelm the court system and in so doing, they prevent real justice from occurring. Justice is possible only when it is done quickly and reflects the sense of what is right and what is wrong, as I wrote in ``Next: A New Auto Insurance Policy,'' which appeared in the August 27, 1967 New York Times magazine: The most serious secondary effect of the existing insurance system, however, lies in its impact on the courts. This process begins with the use of the police to enforce the traffic laws, as a result of which the incidence of arrest by armed police in the United States is the highest of any society in history. The jam starts there, and is followed by a flood of accident litigation cases that derive, in part at least, from the original criminal case. We have now reached the point where accident litigation accounts for an estimated 65 to 80 percent of the total civil court cases tried in the United States. This in turn has brought us to the point where delays in justice here are the longest of any democracy on earth. It now takes an average of 30.1 months to obtain a jury trial in the metropolitan areas of the nation. In Westchester and Kings counties, it is 50 months plus. In Chicago it is 60 months plus. A legal expert in the field, James Marshall, has argued that persons involved in or witnessing an automobile accident are not really capable of reconstructing it in court. The event is too complex, and levels of perception too low. (How would a witness to a shooting respond to a question as to which way the bullet was traveling?) A fortiori the attempt to reconstruct such an episode three, four, or five years afterward is nigh impossible. Thus the question must be asked whether a social concern of the highest order--the administration of justice--is not being sacrificed to one of a much lower priority, the reenactment of traffic accidents. (As indeed the whole cops-and-robbers, shoot-'em-up paradigm for managing the road system must be questioned. It was not just chance that the riots in Watts and Newark began with police arresting a motorist.) There is little likelihood, however, that greater efforts toward the administration of justice--more judges, or whatever--would change matters. A New York survey has shown that of 220,000 annual claims of victims seeking to recover damages caused by another's fault, only 7,000 reach trial, and 2,500 reach verdict. Given the number and rate of accidents in the existing transport system, a kind of Malthusian principle governs the courts: the number of litigated cases will automatically increase to use up all the available judicial facilities and maintain a permanent backlog. At a time when issues of justice, violence, and civic peace are of immediate and pressing concern, to devote the better part of the judicial (and an enormous portion of the legal) resources of the nation to managing the road system is the kind of incompetence that societies end up paying for. Only one adult response is possible: the present automobile insurance system has to change . . . In that article, 30 years ago, I proposed two alternatives to traditional tort coverage as solutions for the problem. One was to have the Federal Government provide insurance--financed by a penny or so increases in the Federal gasoline tax--for injuries and economic losses, with claims being adjusted in a fashion similar to the workers' compensation system. The second alternative was along the lines of the current legislation. For the past 35 years, Jeffrey O'Connell, the Samuel McCoy Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, has been figuring out the permutations of this second type of reform. It is his recommendations that shape today's legislation. Over 16 million motor vehicle accidents occur every year. The average amount of time it takes to receive compensation for losses in a tort case is over 18 months. Minimally injured parties are overcompensated while victims of serious injuries often fail to receive full restitution. According to a study by the RAND Institute, people with economic losses of under $5,000 receive over two to three times that amount in compensation. People with $25,000 to $100,000 worth of losses, however, currently are compensated for just over one-half of their losses, on average. The very seriously injured-- those with economic losses of over $100,000--receive compensation worth only 9 percent of their damages, on average. The current system does not work. This legislation is called Auto Choice because drivers would have a choice between this new system, called personal protection insurance [PPI], or they could remain insured under the system currently operating in their State--the tort maintenance system [TM]. For people who choose to insure themselves for only economic damages, this is akin to a $243 tax cut, according to a recent report by the Joint Economic Committee, only without any impact on the Federal budget. Our legislation would ensure more complete and more rapid recovery of losses for the people who incur them, and it would reduce the number of cases that presently overwhelm the courts. I thank my friend from Kentucky for inviting me to cosponsor this legislation, and hope other Senators agree with us that the time for auto choice has come.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, last year, the President and Congress enacted welfare legislation which I said was welfare repeal, not welfare reform. At that time, researchers at the Urban Institute estimated 2.6 million people would fall below the poverty line because of the legislation, 1.1 million of them children. The same researchers projected that 3.5 million children would be dropped from the rolls in 2001 because of the time limits contained in the legislation. During the debate last year, there was little attention given to the provisions concerning the eligibility of legal immigrants for benefits. These immigrants have come to America legally. They pay taxes and serve in our military. Yet the new law eliminates the eligibility of these immigrants--should misfortune strike them--for SSI and food stamps, and it severely limits their eligibility for TANF and Medicaid. Many legal immigrants affected by these restrictions are elderly. In my own State of New York, they might be frail disabled survivors of the Holocaust, or refugees from the former Soviet Union who are about to lose their only means of support. This situation has come to our attention now because it is among the first parts of the bill to be implemented. The President has proposed restoring eligibility for SSI to those legal immigrants who become disabled after entering this country. He has also proposed permitting refugees and asylees additional time before becoming subject to the various restrictions, in light of the difficult circumstances under which they arrive on our shores. I support these proposals, although I regret that enactment of the welfare repeal law has made this new legislation necessary. I am pleased to join with colleagues of both parties in introducing legislation to continue SSI and food stamp benefits to those legal immigrants already receiving them and to permanently exempt refugees and asylees from the eligibility restrictions. This is a good first step in addressing the immediate and pressing needs of these immigrants, and I urge our fellow Senators to join us in this effort. It represents the beginning of a bipartisan discussion on how to address this issue, and I commend the legislation to the Senate.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I commend the President for his decision to invoke investment sanctions on Burma, in accordance with section 570 of Public Law 104-208. The President deserves praise for his action. Conditions in Burma remain grim and warrant this limited measure. Perhaps no one is more deserving of praise than the Senator from Kentucky, Senator McConnell. He and I have stood together in support of the people of Burma for many years now and I congratulate him for his steadfast efforts to assist in achieving a democratic transition in Burma. Burma is a democracy denied. It is a country with a democratic past. With our help it can have a democratic future. We find ourselves at a point in history where numerous nations are struggling to build democratic governments. It is not always an easy process. Those who are involved in such transitions watch for America s response to situations such as we find in Burma, where a military junta prevents the implementation of a democratic election. Let us be clear. This is not only about human rights and trade. This is about our commitment to democracy. There are those who argue that constructive engagement is the only way to effect change in a country. Constructive engagement is a euphemism for doing business with thugs. Foreign investment in Burma provides hard currency for the State Law and Order Restoration Council [SLORC]. Most U.S. companies refuse to support such a regime through foreign investment. Amoco, Levi Strauss, Liz Claiborne, Macy's, Eddie Bauer, Columbia Sportswear, Oshkosh B'Gosh, Pepsi, Apple Computer, and many other companies already have cut business ties with Burma. I commend the President for his action which supports the decisions of these responsible companies. Finally, I would note that this is not an end to our efforts in Burma, but a beginning. Strong bilateral pressure needs to be supplemented with multilateral action. I call on other nations which share our concern for the people of Burma to join us. Most importantly, the SLORC should know that we will remain vigilant and continue to defend the rights of Burmese democracy leaders.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I submit a concurrent resolution congratulating the residents of Jerusalem and the people of Israel on the 30th anniversary of the reunification of their historic capital. I am joined in this effort by my distinguished colleague from Florida [Mr. Mack] as well as by 68 other Senators. Next week, Jews around the world will conclude their Passover Seders with one of mankind's shortest and oldest prayers: ``Next year in Jerusalem.'' Throughout the centuries Jews kept this pledge, often sacrificing their very lives to travel to, and live in, their holiest city. The Jewish people's attachment to Jerusalem is as ancient as it is fervent. That Jerusalem is, and should remain, Israel's undivided capital would seem an unremarkable statement, but for the insidious campaign-- begun in the 1970's--to delegitimize Israel by denying her ties to Jerusalem. For too long, the United States acquiesced in this shameful lie by refusing to locate our Embassy in Israel's capital city. As long as Israel's most important friend in the world refused to acknowledge that Israel's capital city is its own, we lent credibility and dangerous strength to the lie that Israel is somehow a misbegotten, an illegitimate, or transient state. On November 8, 1995, the Jerusalem Embassy Act became the law of the United States. The law states, as a matter of United States Government policy, that Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel, and should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected. The concurrent resolution I submit today continues in this spirit, and in the spirit of the many previous resolutions I have authored on this subject. In 1990, I introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, which stated simply: ``Jerusalem is and should remain the capital of the State of Israel.'' In 1993, in a message to the American-Israel Friendship League, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wrote: In 1990, Senator Moynihan sponsored Senate Resolution 106, which recognized Jerusalem as Israel's united Capital, never to be divided again, and called upon Israel and the Palestinians to undertake negotiations to resolve their differences. The resolution, which passed both Houses of Congress, expressed the sentiments of the United States toward Israel, and, I believe, helped our neighbors reach the negotiating table. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process faces difficult challenges at this time. It is my hope that this clear reiteration of U.S. policy on Jerusalem will help insure that Jerusalem will remain a city at peace and bring closer the day when it will once again become a symbol of peace for all humanity.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise as an original cosponsor of this legislation to associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Finance. Unauthorized browsing of confidential tax information undermines the confidence of taxpayers, and such behavior ought to be subject to criminal penalties--which it will be under this bill. This legislation is a product of the bipartisan efforts of the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Glenn, the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Coverdell, the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Roth, and the Senator from New York, among others. I join my chairman in urging its prompt enactment.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I rise with Senators Lautenberg and Lieberman and a distinguished group of my colleagues today to introduce the ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997. This bill is designed to reauthorize, with some modifications and improvements, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. ISTEA is an innovative law that addresses the fundamental imbalance in national transportation investment, and in so doing, serves to promote intermodalism, improve mobility and access to jobs, protect the environment, empower local communities, and enhance transportation safety. ISTEA spurred the Federal Government and the States to invest their transportation dollars in whatever modes were most efficient for moving people and goods and to solicit the input of local communities in planning those investments. The result was a dramatic increase in investment in maintenance and rehabilitation of existing roads and bridges, in mass transit, and in creative approaches to our transportation needs, from bicycle and pedestrian paths to ferry boats. When I introduced the original ISTEA legislation in 1991, I had only four Senate cosponsors--Quentin Burdick of North Dakota, Steve Symms of Idaho, John Chafee of Rhode Island, and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The bill I introduce today has broad bipartisan and grassroots support, with 31 Senate cosponsors from across the country joining me. We have learned a lot over the last 6 years. In 1991, my House counterpart Robert A. Roe of New Jersey, then chairman of the Public Works Committee, and I had hoped to develop a Federal highway bill that would mark the end of the era of interstate highway construction. That era had brought the nationwide, multilane, limited access highway system, as first envisioned at the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair, and then advanced in 1944 by President Roosevelt. The New York State Thruway was the system's first segment. In fact, the civil engineer who built it, Bertram Tallamy, left Albany in 1956 to start up the national program in Washington with funding from a dedicated tax proposed by President Eisenhower and approved by Congress that year. But by 1991 the interstate system was essentially done and Chairman Roe and I confronted the question, ``What now?'' We developed three principles for the first highway bill to mark the post-interstate era. First, the primary objective was to improve efficiency of the transportation system we already had. Second, the time had come to turn the initiative in transportation matters back to the States and cities. Third, transit was to be an option for cities. I am proud to say we achieved our three principles and more. The Interstate Highway System left a big mark on American cities, where the majority of the funds were spent. I wrote in The Reporter in 1960: It is not true, as is sometimes alleged, that the sponsors of the interstate program ignored the consequences it would have in the cities. Nor did they simply acquiesce in them. They exulted in them . . . This rhapsody startled many of those who have been concerned with the future of the American city. To undertake a vast program of urban highway construction with no thought for other forms of transportation seemed lunatic. The results often were. American cities were cruelly split, their character and geography changed forever, with interstate highways running through once-thriving working class neighborhoods from Newark to Detroit to Miami. Homes and jobs were dispersed to the outlying suburbs and beyond. The wreckage was something to see. Some cities have used ISTEA funds to try to repair the damage where they could, using funds for transit--even bike and pedestrian paths--instead of more road building. Or with plans such as Boston's Central Artery, a project that will reunite some of that city's most historic and colorful neighborhoods, separated for almost 40 years by an elevated highway. Today, I ask that we continue to build upon our success with ISTEA, changing it only as needed. The bill we introduce today retains the basic structure of ISTEA, which distributes funds primarily on needs balanced with such factors as historical shares, but updates outmoded formulas and streamlines the equity adjustment programs. The ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 also increases flexibility for States by allowing them to use some of their transportation funding to support Amtrak. This is the first step this year in meeting our commitment to address Amtrak's long-term funding needs. The ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 reauthorizes all the program categories of the original legislation--the National Highway System, the Interstate Maintenance Program, the Highway Bridge Rehabilitation and Replacement Program, the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, the Surface Transportation Program, the Interstate Highway Reimbursement Program, and the Transportation Enhancements Program--at a total funding level of $26 billion, which can be fully supported by the Highway Trust Fund. While the ISTEA Reauthorization Act increases funding for all the program categories, I want to mention three programs in more detail. The bill strengthens the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, funding it at $2 billion annually, with a portion of the authorized amount to be distributed on the basis of population residing in fine particulate non-attainment areas. The CMAQ program, which has allowed States and municipalities to find creative solutions to improving air quality and reducing traffic congestion, has been an ISTEA success story, resulting in impressive improvement in U.S. air quality over the last few years. The bill also increases funding for the Highway Bridge Rehabilitation and Replacement Program to $3.75 billion per year. The success of the Bridge Program is dramatic--in four years, there has been a 15 percent drop in deficient bridges--from 111,200 in 1990 to 94,800 in 1994. I believe broad consensus exists to strengthen this important program that has already done so much to preserve our existing bridge infrastructure. Finally, the ISTEA Reauthorization Act fully funds the Interstate Highway Reimbursement Program at $2 billion per year. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided for the Federal Government to fund the construction of the Interstate Highway System with a Federal-State share of 90-10. At that time a number of States had, at their own expense, already constructed a total of 10,859 miles of highways that later became part of the Interstate System. As a result, Congress tasked the Bureau of Public Roads with determining the cost of reimbursing States for those segments, and the Bureau arrived at a figure of $5 billion in 1957 dollars. ISTEA used that figure, adjusted to $30 billion in 1991 dollars, and established a 15-year repayment schedule. The ISTEA Reauthorization Act retains this program, which is a matter of basic equity and provides urgently needed funds for those highways that are the oldest and among the most heavily used portions of the Interstate System. These programs are essentially, but I do hope that as Congress considers reauthorization of ISTEA, we can ask the question once again, ``What now?'' Congress must focus on increasing the U.S. investment in transportation infrastructure. The United States has watched our European and Asian competitors finance and build innovative transportation infrastructure that is the envy of the world. As the budget process gets underway this year, we will need innovative financing ideas to leverage scarce Federal dollars and address our chronic multi-billion dollar underinvestment in U.S. roads, bridges, rails, ports, and transit systems. We must also search for new technologies and innovations--like Magnetic-Levitation trains [maglev] and Intelligent Transportation Systems [ITS]--to solve our congestion and air quality problems without pouring ever more concrete. The railroad represents an early 19th century technology, the automobile an early 20th century technology; we need new modes of transportation for the next century. Today, maglev trains run in Bremen, but not in New York, where the maglev concept was first conceived in 1960 by a young Brookhaven scientist, James Powell, as he sat mired in traffic on the Bronx- Whitestone Bridge. In truth, today most of the meager Federal transportation research and development resources are going for improvements in existing highways, and not into other modes such as rail and transit, where I suspect we can achieve much greater economic and environmental returns. As we determine the course for this bill, I also wish to address the so-called donor State issue. To distribute Federal transportation funds primarily upon the ability of each State to collect fuel taxes, as advocated by representatives of the donor States, would run counter to whole concept of federalism, which is based on collecting national resources to address national needs. When California has an earthquake, or Florida has a hurricane, or the Mississippi River floods its banks, the entire Nation addresses these needs, without considering whether the needed funds were raised in the affected States. Every other Federal program--from crop supports to water reclamation projects to airport improvement grants--distributes funds on the basis of need. For example, in response to the Savings & Loan crisis, the Resolution Trust Corp. was formed to help bail out depositors, but each State did not contribute according to the amount of dollars lost in that State. If such an approach had been taken, Texas alone would have faced costs of over $26 billion, while the cost to New York would have been only $3 billion. Under our Federal system, which allocates national resources to meet national needs, the taxpayers of New York shouldered a significant portion of Texas's burden. The cosponsors of the ISTEA Reauthorization Act, most of them from donor States in the larger scheme of the balance of Federal payments, reject the idea that gasoline taxes should be distributed according to where they are collected. Furthermore, some of the highway bill proposals put forth this year, which distribute up to 60 percent of transportation funding on the basis of where the gas taxes were collected, thwart our national environmental efforts. These bills reward States with high gas consumption, and punish States that conserve fuel and invest in mass transit. Under these proposals, a State that invests in a new bus or rail line, or in other improvements that reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality, would receive less transportation money as gas consumption falls. As a Nation we have made clean air and reduced dependence on foreign oil two major priorities--these bills threaten to undo the progress we have made. In 1944, the United States exported oil. In 1956, we imported only 11.5 percent of consumption. Today, we import nearly 50 percent of the oil we consume. It could be said that the biggest single effect of the Interstate Highway System has been in the field of American foreign policy. We are a nation that absolutely must have foreign oil, and must shape our defense and foreign policies accordingly. We must strive to keep that dependency to a minimum. The sponsors of the ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 are committed to that goal. We are also committed to working with other Members, including our distinguished colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, Senators Warner and Baucus, who have both put forth their own proposals for reauthorizing ISTEA. Each coalition's bill reflects, to a greater or lesser extent, the interests of its own member States and regions, and I am confident that all will ultimately contribute to a transportation bill that best serves the Nation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 legislation be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I rise with Senators Lautenberg and Lieberman and a distinguished group of my colleagues today to introduce the ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997. This bill is designed to reauthorize, with some modifications and improvements, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. ISTEA is an innovative law that addresses the fundamental imbalance in national transportation investment, and in so doing, serves to promote intermodalism, improve mobility and access to jobs, protect the environment, empower local communities, and enhance transportation safety. ISTEA spurred the Federal Government and the States to invest their transportation dollars in whatever modes were most efficient for moving people and goods and to solicit the input of local communities in planning those investments. The result was a dramatic increase in investment in maintenance and rehabilitation of existing roads and bridges, in mass transit, and in creative approaches to our transportation needs, from bicycle and pedestrian paths to ferry boats. When I introduced the original ISTEA legislation in 1991, I had only four Senate cosponsors--Quentin Burdick of North Dakota, Steve Symms of Idaho, John Chafee of Rhode Island, and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The bill I introduce today has broad bipartisan and grassroots support, with 31 Senate cosponsors from across the country joining me. We have learned a lot over the last 6 years. In 1991, my House counterpart Robert A. Roe of New Jersey, then chairman of the Public Works Committee, and I had hoped to develop a Federal highway bill that would mark the end of the era of interstate highway construction. That era had brought the nationwide, multilane, limited access highway system, as first envisioned at the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair, and then advanced in 1944 by President Roosevelt. The New York State Thruway was the system's first segment. In fact, the civil engineer who built it, Bertram Tallamy, left Albany in 1956 to start up the national program in Washington with funding from a dedicated tax proposed by President Eisenhower and approved by Congress that year. But by 1991 the interstate system was essentially done and Chairman Roe and I confronted the question, ``What now?'' We developed three principles for the first highway bill to mark the post-interstate era. First, the primary objective was to improve efficiency of the transportation system we already had. Second, the time had come to turn the initiative in transportation matters back to the States and cities. Third, transit was to be an option for cities. I am proud to say we achieved our three principles and more. The Interstate Highway System left a big mark on American cities, where the majority of the funds were spent. I wrote in The Reporter in 1960: It is not true, as is sometimes alleged, that the sponsors of the interstate program ignored the consequences it would have in the cities. Nor did they simply acquiesce in them. They exulted in them . . . This rhapsody startled many of those who have been concerned with the future of the American city. To undertake a vast program of urban highway construction with no thought for other forms of transportation seemed lunatic. The results often were. American cities were cruelly split, their character and geography changed forever, with interstate highways running through once-thriving working class neighborhoods from Newark to Detroit to Miami. Homes and jobs were dispersed to the outlying suburbs and beyond. The wreckage was something to see. Some cities have used ISTEA funds to try to repair the damage where they could, using funds for transit--even bike and pedestrian paths--instead of more road building. Or with plans such as Boston's Central Artery, a project that will reunite some of that city's most historic and colorful neighborhoods, separated for almost 40 years by an elevated highway. Today, I ask that we continue to build upon our success with ISTEA, changing it only as needed. The bill we introduce today retains the basic structure of ISTEA, which distributes funds primarily on needs balanced with such factors as historical shares, but updates outmoded formulas and streamlines the equity adjustment programs. The ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 also increases flexibility for States by allowing them to use some of their transportation funding to support Amtrak. This is the first step this year in meeting our commitment to address Amtrak's long-term funding needs. The ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 reauthorizes all the program categories of the original legislation--the National Highway System, the Interstate Maintenance Program, the Highway Bridge Rehabilitation and Replacement Program, the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, the Surface Transportation Program, the Interstate Highway Reimbursement Program, and the Transportation Enhancements Program--at a total funding level of $26 billion, which can be fully supported by the Highway Trust Fund. While the ISTEA Reauthorization Act increases funding for all the program categories, I want to mention three programs in more detail. The bill strengthens the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, funding it at $2 billion annually, with a portion of the authorized amount to be distributed on the basis of population residing in fine particulate non-attainment areas. The CMAQ program, which has allowed States and municipalities to find creative solutions to improving air quality and reducing traffic congestion, has been an ISTEA success story, resulting in impressive improvement in U.S. air quality over the last few years. The bill also increases funding for the Highway Bridge Rehabilitation and Replacement Program to $3.75 billion per year. The success of the Bridge Program is dramatic--in four years, there has been a 15 percent drop in deficient bridges--from 111,200 in 1990 to 94,800 in 1994. I believe broad consensus exists to strengthen this important program that has already done so much to preserve our existing bridge infrastructure. Finally, the ISTEA Reauthorization Act fully funds the Interstate Highway Reimbursement Program at $2 billion per year. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided for the Federal Government to fund the construction of the Interstate Highway System with a Federal-State share of 90-10. At that time a number of States had, at their own expense, already constructed a total of 10,859 miles of highways that later became part of the Interstate System. As a result, Congress tasked the Bureau of Public Roads with determining the cost of reimbursing States for those segments, and the Bureau arrived at a figure of $5 billion in 1957 dollars. ISTEA used that figure, adjusted to $30 billion in 1991 dollars, and established a 15-year repayment schedule. The ISTEA Reauthorization Act retains this program, which is a matter of basic equity and provides urgently needed funds for those highways that are the oldest and among the most heavily used portions of the Interstate System. These programs are essentially, but I do hope that as Congress considers reauthorization of ISTEA, we can ask the question once again, ``What now?'' Congress must focus on increasing the U.S. investment in transportation infrastructure. The United States has watched our European and Asian competitors finance and build innovative transportation infrastructure that is the envy of the world. As the budget process gets underway this year, we will need innovative financing ideas to leverage scarce Federal dollars and address our chronic multi-billion dollar underinvestment in U.S. roads, bridges, rails, ports, and transit systems. We must also search for new technologies and innovations--like Magnetic-Levitation trains [maglev] and Intelligent Transportation Systems [ITS]--to solve our congestion and air quality problems without pouring ever more concrete. The railroad represents an early 19th century technology, the automobile an early 20th century technology; we need new modes of transportation for the next century. Today, maglev trains run in Bremen, but not in New York, where the maglev concept was first conceived in 1960 by a young Brookhaven scientist, James Powell, as he sat mired in traffic on the Bronx- Whitestone Bridge. In truth, today most of the meager Federal transportation research and development resources are going for improvements in existing highways, and not into other modes such as rail and transit, where I suspect we can achieve much greater economic and environmental returns. As we determine the course for this bill, I also wish to address the so-called donor State issue. To distribute Federal transportation funds primarily upon the ability of each State to collect fuel taxes, as advocated by representatives of the donor States, would run counter to whole concept of federalism, which is based on collecting national resources to address national needs. When California has an earthquake, or Florida has a hurricane, or the Mississippi River floods its banks, the entire Nation addresses these needs, without considering whether the needed funds were raised in the affected States. Every other Federal program--from crop supports to water reclamation projects to airport improvement grants--distributes funds on the basis of need. For example, in response to the Savings & Loan crisis, the Resolution Trust Corp. was formed to help bail out depositors, but each State did not contribute according to the amount of dollars lost in that State. If such an approach had been taken, Texas alone would have faced costs of over $26 billion, while the cost to New York would have been only $3 billion. Under our Federal system, which allocates national resources to meet national needs, the taxpayers of New York shouldered a significant portion of Texas's burden. The cosponsors of the ISTEA Reauthorization Act, most of them from donor States in the larger scheme of the balance of Federal payments, reject the idea that gasoline taxes should be distributed according to where they are collected. Furthermore, some of the highway bill proposals put forth this year, which distribute up to 60 percent of transportation funding on the basis of where the gas taxes were collected, thwart our national environmental efforts. These bills reward States with high gas consumption, and punish States that conserve fuel and invest in mass transit. Under these proposals, a State that invests in a new bus or rail line, or in other improvements that reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality, would receive less transportation money as gas consumption falls. As a Nation we have made clean air and reduced dependence on foreign oil two major priorities--these bills threaten to undo the progress we have made. In 1944, the United States exported oil. In 1956, we imported only 11.5 percent of consumption. Today, we import nearly 50 percent of the oil we consume. It could be said that the biggest single effect of the Interstate Highway System has been in the field of American foreign policy. We are a nation that absolutely must have foreign oil, and must shape our defense and foreign policies accordingly. We must strive to keep that dependency to a minimum. The sponsors of the ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 are committed to that goal. We are also committed to working with other Members, including our distinguished colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, Senators Warner and Baucus, who have both put forth their own proposals for reauthorizing ISTEA. Each coalition's bill reflects, to a greater or lesser extent, the interests of its own member States and regions, and I am confident that all will ultimately contribute to a transportation bill that best serves the Nation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the ISTEA Reauthorization Act of 1997 legislation be printed in the Record.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the Communications Workers of America [CWA] has recently elected Larry Mancino as the new vice president to lead CWA District 1, the largest region in the union. As a fellow native of New York City, I am pleased by Mr. Mancino's election to vice president. Most significant, Mr. Mancino made it to the top of the CWA District 1 the old-fashioned way. He earned it! For more than 30 years, he has been a dedicated trade unionist, serving as a rank-and-file activist before advancing to the union's national staff. In 1991, he was promoted to assistant to CWA President Morton Bahr, the position he held prior to his election as vice president. Mr. President, there are revolutionary changes occurring in the telecommunications industry as the United States approaches the 21st century. The convergence of computer and telephone technology is transforming not only how our citizens communicate with each other, but also how Americans communicate with the world. In this turbulent time of transition in the telecommunications field, the CWA members in district 1 are fortunate that Larry Mancino is an innovative leader who can confront the challenges that workers in the telephone industry face. I wish the CWA members in New York and throughout district 1 well as they journey forward under the proven leadership of Larry Mancino.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to state that this is a fine moment in the history of the Senate. It has come about through the leadership of Senator Robert C. Byrd and his devotion to the Constitution of the United States. The court today ruled in the most explicit terms. It said, ``* * * the Act effectively permits the President to repeal duly enacted provisions of Federal law. This he cannot do.'' Then with a grace note that I hope the Senate will appreciate, and I know our distinguished occupant of the chair will, with Senator Byrd's great attachment to the history of democratic government and theory and its glorious origins in Greece, the court referred to the sword-of- Damocles effect: Not that the President would exercise this power, but that he might do it. There is a sword still suspended in this Chamber, but soon, I cannot doubt, to be taken down as a consequence of the judgment of the Supreme Court. I might add, sir, that there are some in Congress who are concerned that the courts interfere too much with our procedures. This is a court defending the Constitution and the U.S. Congress in its responsibilities. Finally, sir, may I state a moment of gratitude to the attorneys, our learned counselors, who, on a pro bono basis, argued this case so effectively. I ask unanimous consent that their names be printed in the Record at this time.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to salute five extraordinary New Yorkers who, on Monday April 7, 1997, will receive the Public Service Award of the Yale Alumni Association of Metropolitan New York [YAAMNY]. These individuals have demonstrated both extraordinary leadership and a deep commitment to public service. Each honoree brilliantly exemplifies the motto of the Empire State: Excelsior. I thank the Chair, and I ask that the text of YAAMNY's citation of the achievements of the respective honorees be printed in the Record. The Text Follows: The Yale Alumni Association of Metropolitan New York, 1997 Public Service Awards, April 7, 1997

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, nearly 100 years ago, in March of 1901, the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia was directed by Senate Resolution to ``report to the Senate plans for the development and improvement of the entire park system of the District of Columbia * * * (F)or the purpose of preparing such plans the committee * * * may secure the services of such experts as may be necessary for a proper consideration of the subject.'' And secure ``such experts'' the committee assuredly did. The Committee formed what came to be known as the McMillan Commission, named for committee chairman Senator James McMillan of Michigan. The Commission's membership was a ``who's who'' of late 19th and 20th- century architecture, landscape design, and art: Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., Charles F. McKim, and Augustus St. Gaudens. The Commission traveled that summer to Rome, Venice, Vienna, Budapest, Paris, and London, studying the landscapes, architecture, and public spaces of the grandest cities in the world. The McMillan Commission returned and fashioned the city of Washington as we now know it. We are particularly indebted today for the Commission's preservation of the Mall. When the members left for Europe, the Congress had just given the Pennsylvania Railroad a 400-foot wide swath of the Mall for a new station and trackage. It is hard to imagine our city without the uninterrupted stretch of greenery from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, but such would have been the result. Fortunately, when in London, Daniel Burnham was able to convince Pennsylvania Railroad president Alexander Cassatt that a site on Massachusetts Avenue would provide a much grander entrance to the city. President Cassatt assented and Daniel Burnham gave us Union Station. But the focus of the Commission's work was the District's park system. The Commission noted in its report: Aside from the pleasure and the positive benefits to health that the people derive from public parks, in a capital city like Washington there is a distinct use of public spaces as the indispensable means of giving dignity to Government buildings and of making suitable connections between the great departments * * * [V]istas and axes; sites for monuments and museums; parks and pleasure gardens; fountains and canals; in a word all that goes to make a city a magnificent and consistent work of art were regarded as essential in the plans made by L'Enfant under the direction of the first President and his Secretary of State. Washington and Jefferson might be disappointed at the affliction now imposed on much of the Capitol Grounds by the automobile. Despite the ready and convenient availability of the city's Metrorail system, an extraordinary number of Capitol Hill employees drive to work. No doubt many must. But must we provide free parking? If there is one lesson learned from the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, it is that free goods are always wasted. Free parking is a powerful incentive to drive to work when the alternative is to pay for public transportation. As we have created parking spaces around the Capitol, such as the scar of angle-parked cars at the foot of Pennsylvania Avenue made available ``temporarily'' during construction of the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, demand has simply risen to meet the available supply. The result--the Pennsylvania Avenue spaces have become permanent and a portion of the Nation's main street remains an aesthetic disaster. Today, I am reintroducing legislation to complete the beautification of the Capitol Grounds, as envisioned by the illustrious McMillan Commission in 1901, through the elimination of most surface parking and restoration of the sites as public parks. The Arc of Park Capitol Grounds Improvement Act of 1997 would require the Architect of the Capitol to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to improve the Capitol Grounds through the creation of an ``arc of park,'' sweeping from Second Street, NE to the Capitol Reflecting Pool and back to First Street, SE, with the Capitol Building as its approximate center. Delaware Avenue between Columbus Circle and Constitution Avenue would be closed to traffic and rebuilt as a grand pedestrian walkway from Union Station to the Capitol. The angled parking would be eliminated on Pennsylvania Avenue between First and Third Streets, NW, and the Pennsylvania Avenue tree line would be continued onto the Capitol Grounds. There is, of course, the matter of parking. This legislation authorizes the Architect of the Capitol to construct underground parking facilities, as needed. These facilities, which will undoubtedly be expensive, will be financed simply by charging for the parking. A legitimate user fee. In the matter of parking, this legislation is an appropriate companion to a bill that my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Chafee, and I introduced earlier today, which will enable employers to provide their employees with cash compensation in lieu of a parking space. This bill, which was also included in the Administration's ISTEA reauthorization proposal, will expand employee options for commuting and reduce auto use.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I rise today to speak about the city of Jerusalem, a subject I have spoken about at some length and on numerous occasions during my tenure in the United States Senate. In the not too distant future, the people of Israel will celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the reunification of their Capital. It is altogether fitting and proper that the United States Congress should mark this anniversary with an appropriate resolution. For 3,000 years Jerusalem has been the focal point of Jewish religious devotion. Although there had been a continuous Jewish presence in Jerusalem for three millennia--and a Jewish majority in the city since the 1840's--the once thriving Jewish population of the historic Old City of Jerusalem was driven out by force during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. From 1948 to 1967 Jerusalem was divided by concrete, barbed wire, and cinder block. Israelis of all faiths and Jews of all nationalities were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan. Jerusalem was finally reunited by Israel in 1967 during the conflict known as the Six Day War. Since then, Jerusalem has been a united city in which the rights of all faiths have been respected and protected, and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites within the city. In 1990, I sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, which was overwhelmingly adopted by the United States Senate, while a similar resolution (H. Con. Res. 290) was adopted by the House of Representatives. These resolutions declared that Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, ``must remain an undivided city'' and called on the Israelis and the Palestinians to undertake negotiations to resolve their differences. The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin credited S. Con. Res. 106 with ``[helping] our neighbors reach the negotiating table'' to produce the historic Declaration of Principles signed in Washington on September 13, 1993. In the fall of 1995, I joined with Senator Dole to introduce ``The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995'' (Public Law 104-45) which states as a matter of United States policy that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel. I firmly believe that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected, as they have been by Israel during the past thirty years. I congratulate the people of Israel on the approaching thirtieth anniversary of the reunification of their historic capital. When the Senate reconvenes next month, I will introduce a resolution to commemorate this event, as I have done on previous anniversaries.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I will vote against both the Republican and the Democrat resolutions. I hold that the Attorney General should appoint an independent counsel to investigate alleged improprieties by Democrats and by Republicans in fundraising for the 1996 Presidential and congressional campaigns. I believe the public will only be reassured if an independent counsel looks into what has been happening. The issues must be aired in an independent, nonpartisan setting. And if there have been violations of law, there must be consequences. Last week, after much debate, the Senate agreed to fund the Governmental Affairs Committee probe into illegal and improper fundraising and spending practices in the 1996 Federal election campaigns. A unanimous Senate believed that a credible investigation requires that we look not only at our President, but also at ourselves. So, too, should an independent counsel. Senate Joint Resolution 22 suggests that the scope of the independent counsel's investigation should be limited to the allegations of wrong- doing by Democrats in the 1996 Presidential campaign. There is no mention of an investigation of congressional campaigns. Senate Joint Resolution 23 does not call for the appointment of an independent counsel. To say again, in my view, an independent counsel is the only entity capable of conducting an investigation without dissolving into partisan bias. And it is the only way of proceeding that avoids the appearance of conflict of interest.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to bring to the attention of my colleagues the moving remarks of our former Majority Leader, the Honorable George J. Mitchell, which he delivered at the American-Ireland Fund Dinner on March 13, 1997. Senator Mitchell spoke about the peace process in Northern Ireland and his own efforts to facilitate reconciliation in that troubled land. I commend Senator Mitchell's remarks to all Senators, and I ask that the text be printed in the Record. The text follows: Excerpts from remarks by Senator George J. Mitchell, American-Ireland Fund Dinner, Washington, DC, March 13, 1997 I'm grateful for this award. The American-Ireland Fund is an important force for good in Ireland. I commend you for your efforts and I encourage you to continue them. As you know, I've spent most of the past two years in Northern Ireland. On my trips back to the U.S., I've been asked two questions, over and over again, by Americans who care about Ireland: Why are you doing this? And, What can I do to help? Tonight, I'll try to answer both of those questions. Why am I doing this? I've asked myself that question many times. To answer it, I must go back nearly 20 years, before I'd ever been to Ireland, before I'd ever thought seriously about Northern Ireland. Before I entered the United States Senate I had the privilege of serving as a Federal Judge. In that position I had great power. The power I most enjoyed exercising was when I presided over what are called naturalization ceremonies. They're citizenship ceremonies. A group of people who'd come from every part of the world, who'd gone through all the required procedures, gathered before me in a federal courtroom. There I administered to them the oath of allegiance to the United States and, by the power vested in me under our constitution and laws I made them Americans. It was always emotional for me, because my mother was an immigrant from Lebanon, my father the orphan son of immigrants from Ireland. They had no education and they worked hard all their lives at difficult and low-paying jobs. But because of their efforts, and, more importantly, because of the openness of American society, I, their son, was able to become the majority leader of the United States Senate. After every naturalization ceremony, I spoke personally with each new American, individually or in family groups. I asked them where they came from, how they came, why they came. Their stories were as different as their countries of origin. But they were all inspiring, and through them ran a common theme, best expressed by a young Asian. When I asked why he had come, he replied, in slow and halting English, ``I came because here in America everybody has a chance''. A young man who'd been an American for just a few minutes summed up the meaning of our country in a single sentence. Here, everybody has a chance. I was one of those who had a chance, and I thank God for my good fortune. Now, by an accident of fate, in a way that I did not seek or expect, I have been given the opportunity to help others to have a chance. That they are in Ireland, the land of my father's heritage, is just a fortuitous coincidence. That I am able to help, even if in just a small way, is what matters. No one can really have a chance in a society dominated by fear and violence. And so I, who have been helped by so many, now must do what I can to help others to try to end the violence, to banish the fear, to hasten the day when all the people of Northern Ireland can lead lives of peace, reconciliation and opportunity. Let me say, as clearly and as emphatically as I can: There will be peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. I don't know exactly when it will come. But I am convinced that it is inevitable, for one over-riding reason: It is the will of the overwhelming majority of the people of Northern Ireland. They remain divided along sectarian lines, and they mistrust each other. But they share a fervent desire not to return to the violence which for so long has filled their lives with fear and anxiety. It will take a very long time for the mistrust to end. But it need not take a long time for the violence to end. Once it does, once people can live free of fear, then gradually the walls of division will come down. Walls that exist on the ground, and in people's minds, will come down, brick by brick, person by person, slowly but inevitably. Over the past two years I've come to know the people of Northern Ireland. They're energetic, Intelligent and productive. I admire and like them. They deserve better than the troubles they have. But there is only one way to achieve that better life. There is no alternative to democratic, meaningful, inclusive dialogue. For that to come about, there must be an end to violence and to intransigence. They are the twin demons of Northern Ireland--violence and intransigence. They feed off each other in a deadly ritual in which most of the victims are innocent. There are those who don't want anything to change, ever. They want to recreate a past that can never be recreated. But their way will only guarantee never-ending conflict. It will insure that the next half century is as full of death and fear as was the past half century. The people of Northern Ireland must make it clear to their leaders that they oppose intransigence, that they want meaningful negotiation. Not capitulation; not the surrender of conviction. But good-faith negotiation that places the interest of the people, the interest of peace, above personal or political considerations. Good faith negotiation can produce an agreed settlement that will command the support of the majority in Northern Ireland, including the majority in each community. I know in my heart that it can be done. With an end to intransigence must come a total and final repudiation of violence. There is no justification for violence, or the threat of violence. To those of you who ask; what can I do? Here is my answer: You, the leaders of the Irish-American community, must say that you condemn violence, that you demand its end, that you will not support those who engage in or support or condone violence. You must say it publicly, you must say it loudly, you must say it forcefully. And you must say it over and over again. Violence is wrong. It is counter productive. It deepens divisions. It increases hatred. It hurts innocent people. It makes peace and reconciliation more difficult to attain. It must end. Let me be clear on one more point. They may be twin demons but there is no moral equivalence between intransigence and violence. They are both wrong. But as bad as intransigence is, violence is worse. Intransigence takes away people's hopes. Violence takes away their lives. There exists an historic opportunity to end centuries of conflict in Northern Ireland. If it is not seized now, it may be years before it returns, and the failure could cost many their lives. Peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland is a worthy cause. It deserves your attention and support. You can make a difference. What you say is heard, what you do matters. As you leave tonight, ask yourself this question: Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if, on St. Patrick's day next year, rather than praying for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, we were celebrating its existence? If you agree, then beginning tomorrow, do all you can to make it happen. When you do, you will reap the greatest of all rewards: You will have earned the title of peacemaker.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise with my colleague from Rhode Island, Mr. Chafee, to introduce the Clinton administration's legislation to re-authorize the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, or ISTEA. I applaud the administration's proposal as a sincere effort to reauthorize ISTEA under the principles of intermodalism, environmental protection, sound community planning, and safety, that have made this innovative transportation act work so well these past 6 years. I do not agree with all of the details of administration plan--the formulas used to distribute funds to each State based on the Federal fuel taxes collected in that State are an unfortunate departure from the need- based formulas in all other Federal programs. The President's proposal, however, preserves the basic ISTEA framework and represents a good starting point as we begin considering the reauthorization of ISTEA. I also intend to join with a bipartisan group of colleagues later this month to introduce our own proposal to re-authorize ISTEA. This proposal would reauthorize the key provisions of ISTEA--which was crafted to promote intermodal, economically efficient, and environmentally sound incentives in Federal transportation policy-- through more fully needs-based formulas. ISTEA has worked, and its reauthorization will be more important for the economy than any other transportation bill since the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Our goal should be now to make a good law better.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased today to be introducing legislation with the chairman of the Committee on Finance, Senator Roth, to correct an unintended item contained in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. I want to thank the chairman for his leadership on this issue and associate myself with his statement. Mr. President, it recently came to our attention that Internal Revenue Code section 168(j), a provision intended to help attract private industry investment to Indian reservations and similar lands that continue to be held in trust for Indian tribes and their members is benefitting private investment on ``former Indian reservations'' having no current connection to any Indian tribe. As a result, we are introducing legislation today that would correct the definition of ``Indian reservation,'' under Internal Revenue Code section 168(j)(6), so that these tax incentives are available only for businesses operating on Indian reservations and similar lands. Mr. President, it is important to note, as Chairman Roth did, that we wish to take into consideration any Indian lands that may technically not fall within the definition of ``Indian reservation,'' under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, but which should be made eligible for these special investment incentives. Such situations should be brought to the attention of the tax-writing committees, and we will then consider further modifications as the bill moves through the legislative process.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to prohibit the use of tax-exempt financing for professional sports stadiums, the Stop Tax-exempt Arena Debt Issuance Act [STADIA], with one modification. The bill I introduce today is identical to S. 122, the previously introduced version of the STADIA bill, in all respects save one. The new version, rather than generally applying to bonds issued on or after the date of first committee action, as specified in S. 122, will be effective generally for bonds issued on or after the date of enactment. On February 27, during the floor debate regarding the reinstatement of the airport and airway trust fund taxes, the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, raised an objection to the majority leader's request that the aviation tax bill be taken up and passed. Senator Specter's objection was based on his concerns about the effective date of S. 122. In view of the importance of the aviation tax legislation, which is critical to the funding of air safety measures, I agreed to revised the effective date of my bill. Senator Specter then withdrew his objection to passage of the aviation tax legislation, which the Senate proceeded to pass by unanimous consent.