Samuel Nunn

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I rise to address H.R. 4, the Personal Responsibility Act of 1995, a bill to reform the Nation's welfare system. H.R. 4 is a radical departure in Federal welfare policy. This bill would end a 60-year-old Federal entitlement to poor families with children under the Aid to Families With Dependent Children Program [AFDC]. In the place of AFDC, the Senate bill would create a Federal welfare block grant that will give almost $17 billion annually to State governments over the next 7 years to provide cash assistance, child care, job training, and other services to our Nation's poor. The States will have nearly complete flexibility to design and carry out these programs. The Federal Government requires only that the States impose a 5-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits and begin moving welfare recipients to work as rapidly as possible between now and the year 2000. Opponents of H.R. 4 have talked extensively about this bill's flaws. It is said that the Federal money contained in the H.R. 4 is insufficient to meet the work requirements. We are told that funds for child care will make it impossible to care for the children of welfare recipients who go to work. Others have argued that States will cut welfare dramatically and set off a reverse bidding war as States reduce and eliminate benefits to avoid becoming welfare magnates. Mr. President, I supported amendments to this legislation that address many of these concerns. I voted for Senator Dodd's amendment that would have provided an additional $6 billion in Federal child care subsidies. We reached a compromise to increase Federal child care spending by some $3 billion. The Senate also agreed to require the States to continue spending at least 80 percent of their 1994 welfare dollars. I believe these amendments have significantly improved H.R. 4 and increased the likelihood that it will succeed in reducing welfare dependence. The Senate also took up an amendment offered by Senator Domenici on the issue of limiting welfare benefit increases for women who have additional children while on welfare. When H.R. 4 emerged from the Finance Committee it allowed States to impose the so-called family cap but did not require it. The Dole substitute amendment made this policy mandatory. The Domenici amendment reinstated the state option on the family cap. New Jersey, Georgia, and several other states have imposed family caps based on the premise that increases in benefits for new births encourage illegitimacy. My instincts tell me this is probably true and, at the State level, I would have voted for this experiment. At this point, however, there is simply no firm analytical evidence to support it. A Rutgers University study published earlier this year found that the New Jersey family cap had no effect on illegitimacy rates and may have increased the State's abortion rate. Until the States have accumulated enough experience with the family cap to show it is effective in reducing illegitimacy, I believe it should remain a State option but should not be mandated by the Federal Government. Mr. President, I voted for the Dole substitute amendment to H.R. 4. I understand the concerns expressed by those who fear this legislation will not do enough to protect children whose parents have reached the end of their welfare time limits. If this bill becomes law, I believe its effects on the well-being of children should be monitored carefully. Further steps will likely be needed by Congress and the States to assure that children are adequately cared for. Mr. President, H.R. 4 is unlikely to be the last word in welfare reform. The problems we are trying to address in this legislation-- welfare dependency and the illegitimacy, violence, and drug abuse that it engenders--are probably the most complex, troubling, and intractable problems facing American society. Anyone who believes that they have the single set of reforms to solve these problems is wrong. As UCLA sociologist James Q. Wilson argued late last year in an essay entitled, ``A New Approach to Welfare Reform: Humility,'' what is really needed is the kind of State-based experimentation that might yield innovations that could be replicated by other States. I voted for H.R. 4 because I believe it offers the best opportunity to encourage this kind of experimentation. It is my hope that the conference between the Senate and the House will produce a compromise that I can also support. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the essay by James Q. Wilson be printed in the Record. The essay follows: [From the Wall Street Journal, Thursday, December 29, 1994] Firm Foundations: A New Approach to Welfare Reform: Humility (By James Q. Wilson) We are entering the last years of the 20th century with every reason to rejoice and little inclination to do so, despite widespread prosperity, a generally healthy economy, the absence of any immediate foreign threat, and extraordinary progress in civil rights, personal health and school enrollment. Despite all this and more, we feel that there is something profoundly wrong with our society. That communal life is thought to be deficient in many respects, plagued by crime, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, WELFARE dependency and the countless instabilities of daily life. What these problems have in common in the eyes of most Americans is that they result from the weakening of the family. Having arrived at something approaching a consensus, we must now face the fact that we don't know what to do about the problem. The American people are well ahead of their leaders in this regard. They doubt very much that government can do much of anything at all. They are not optimistic that any other institution can do much better, and they are skeptical that there will be a spontaneous regeneration of decency, commitment and personal responsibility. I do not know what to do either. But I think we can find out, at least to the degree that feeble human reason is capable of understanding some of the most profound features of our condition. The great debate is whether, how and at what cost we can change lives. If not the lives of this generation, then of the next. There are three ways of framing the problem. First, the structural perspective: Owing to natural social forces, the good manufacturing jobs that once existed in inner-city areas have moved to the periphery, leaving behind decent men and women who are struggling to get by without work that once conferred both respect and money. Their place is now taken by street-wise young men who find no meaningful work, have abandoned the search for work, and scorn indeed the ethic of work. Second is the rationalist perspective: Welfare benefits, including not only aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), but also Medicaid, subsidized housing and Food Stamps, have become sufficiently generous as to make the formation of stable two-parent families either irrational or unnecessary. These benefits have induced young women wanting babies and a home of their own to acquire both at public expense, and have convinced young men, who need very little convincing on this score, that sexual conquest need not entail any personal responsibilities. Third is the cultural perspective: Child rearing and family life as traditionally understood can no longer compete with or [[Page S 14563]] bring under prudent control a culture of radical self-indulgence and oppositional defiance, fostered by drugs, television, video games, street gangs and predatory sexuality. Now, a visitor from another planet hearing this discourse might say that obviously all three perspectives have much to commend themselves and, therefore, all three ought to be acted upon. But the public debate we hear tends to emphasize one or another theory and thus one or another set of solutions. It does this because people, or at least people who are members of the political class, define problems so as to make them amenable to those solutions that they favor for ideological or moral reasons. here roughly is what each analysis pursued separately and alone implies: (1) Structural solutions. We must create jobs and job- training programs in inner-city areas, by means either of tax-advantaged enterprise zones or government-subsidized employment programs. As an alternative, we may facilitate the relocation of the inner-city poor to places on the periphery where jobs can be found and, if necessary, supplement their incomes by means of the earned-income tax credit. (2) Rationalist solutions. Cut or abolish AFDC or, at a minimum, require work in exchange for welfare. Make the formation of two-parent households more attractive than single parenthood and restore work to prominence as the only way for the physically able to acquire money. (3) Cultural solutions. Alter the inner-city ethos by means of private redemptive movements, supported by a system of shelters or group homes in which at-risk children and their young mothers can be given familial care and adult supervision in safe and drug-free settings. Now, I have my own preferences in this menu of alternatives, but it is less important that you know what these preferences are than that you realize that I do not know which strategy would work, because so many people embrace a single strategy as a way of denying legitimacy to alternative ones and to their underlying philosophies. Each of those perspectives, when taken alone, is full of uncertainties and inadequacies. These problems go back, first of all, to the structural solution. The evidence that links family dissolution with the distribution of jobs is, in fact, weak. Some people--such as many recent Latino immigrants in Los Angeles--notice that jobs have moved to the periphery from the city and board buses to follow the jobs. Other people notice the very same thing and stay home to sell drugs. Now, even if a serious job mismatch does exist, it will not easily be overcome by enterprise zones. If the costs of crime in inner-city neighborhoods are high, they cannot be compensated for by very low labor costs or very high customer demand. Moreover, employers in scanning potential workers will rely, as they have always relied, on the most visible cues of reliability and skill--dress, manner, speech and even place of residence. No legal system, no matter how much we try to enforce it, can completely or even largely suppress these cues, because they have substantial economic value. Second, let's consider some of the inadequacies of the rational strategy. After years of denying that the level of welfare payments had any effect on child-bearing, many scholars now find that states with higher payments tend to be ones in which more babies are born to welfare recipients; and when one expends the definition of welfare to include not only AFDC but Medicaid, Food Stamps and subsidized housing, increases in welfare were strongly correlated with increases in illegitimate births from the early 1960s to about 1980. At the point, the value of the welfare package in real dollars flattened out, but the illegitimacy rate continued to rise. Moreover, there remain several important puzzles in the connection between welfare and child-bearing. One is the existence of great differences in illegitimacy rates across ethnic groups facing similar circumstances. Since the Civil War at least, blacks have had higher illegitimacy rates than whites, even though federal welfare programs were not invented until 1935. These days, it has been shown that the illegitimacy rate among black women is more than twice as high as among white women, after controlling for age, education and economic status. David Hayes Bautista, a researcher at UCLA, compared poor blacks and poor Mexican-Americans living in California. He found that Mexican-American children are much more likely than black children to grow up in a two-parent family, and that poor Mexican-American families were only one-fifth as likely as black ones to be on welfare. Even among blacks, the illegitimacy rate is rather low in states such as Idaho, Montana, Maine and New Hampshire, despite the fact that these states have rather generous welfare payments. And the illegitimacy rate is quite high in many parts of the Deep South, even though these states have rather low welfare payments. Clearly, there is some important cultural or at least noneconomic factor at work, one that has deep historical roots and that may vary with the size of the community and the character of the surrounding culture. Finally, the cultural strategy. Though I have a certain affinity for it, it has its problems, too. There are many efforts in many cities by public and private agencies, individuals and churches to persuade young men to be fathers and not just impregnators, to help drug addicts and alcoholics, to teach parenting skills to teenage mothers. Some have been evaluated, and a few show signs of positive effects. Among the more successful programs are the Perry Pre-School Project in Yipsilanti, Mich.; the Parent Child Development Center in Houston; the Family Development Research Project in Syracuse, N.Y.; and the Yale Child Welfare Project in New Haven, Conn. All of these programs produce better behavior, lessened delinquency, more success in school. The Manhattan Institute's Myron Magnet (author of ``The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass'') and I have both endorsed the idea of requiring young unmarried mothers to live in group homes with their children under adult supervision as a condition of receiving public assistance. I also have suggested that we might revive an institution that was common earlier in this century but has lapsed into disuse of late--the boarding school, sometimes mistakenly called an orphanage, for the children of mothers who cannot cope. At one time such schools provided homes and education for more than 100,000 young people in large cities. Though I confess I am attracted to the idea of creating wholly new environments in which to raise the next generation of at-risk children, I must also confess that I do not know whether it will work. The programs that we know to be successful, like the ones mentioned above, are experimental efforts led by dedicated men and women. Can large versions of the same thing work when run by the average counselor, the average teacher? We don't know. And even these successes predated the arrival of crack on the streets of our big cities. Can even the best program salvage people from that viciously destructive drug? We don't know. There is evidence that such therapeutic communities as those run by Phoenix House, headquartered in New York, and other organizations can salvage people who remain in them long enough. How do we get people to stay in them long enough? We don't know. Now, if these three alternatives or something like them are what is available, how do we decide what to do? Before trying to answer that question, let me assert three precepts that ought to shape how we formulate that answer. The first precept is that our overriding goal ought to be to save the children. Other goals--such as reducing the costs of welfare, discouraging illegitimacy, preventing long-term welfare dependency, getting even with Welfare cheats--may all be worthy goals, but they are secondary to the goal of improving the life prospects of the next generation. The second precept is that nobody knows how to do this on a large scale. The debate has begun about welfare reform, but it is a debate, in large measure, based on untested assumptions, ideological posturing and perverse principles. We are told by some that worker training and job placement will reduce the welfare rolls, but we now know that worker training and job placement have so far had only a very modest effect. And few advocates of worker training tell us what happens to children whose mothers are induced or compelled to work, other than to assure us that somebody will supply day care. The third precept that should guide us is that the federal government cannot have a meaningful family policy for the nation, and it ought not to try. Not only does it not know and cannot learn from experts what to do, whatever it thinks it ought to do, it will try to do in the worse possible way. Which is to say, uniformly, systematically, politically and ignorantly. Now, the clear implication of these three precepts, when applied to the problem we face now, is that we ought to turn the task and the money for rebuilding lives, welfare payments, housing subsidies, the whole lot, over to cities and states and private agencies, subject to only two conditions. First, they must observe minimum for fundamental precepts of equal protection, and second, every major new initiative must be evaluated by independent observers operating in accordance with accepted scientific canons. Some states or counties in this regime may end AFDC as we know it. Others may impose a mandatory work requirement. A few may require welfare recipients to turn their checks over to the group homes in which the recipients must reside or the boarding schools that their children must attend. Some may give the money to private agencies that agree to supply parent training, job skills and preschool education. Some may move welfare recipients out of the inner city and to the periphery. Any given state government may do no better than Washington, but the great variety of the former will make up for the deadening uniformity of the latter. And within the states, the operating agencies will be at the city and county level, where the task of improving lives and developing character will be informed by the proximity of government to the voices of ordinary people. Mr. Wilson is professor of management and public policy at UCLA. A longer version of this essay will appear in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I would like for the Senate to recognize the retirement of Thomas L. Ayres from the Department of Veterans Affairs after more than 41 years of exemplary service in providing health care to the armed service members and veterans of our nation. On September 30, 1995, Mr. Ayres will retire from his position as the Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta, GA. Tom Ayres began providing health care during his service with the United States Army from 1955 until 1959 at the 279th Station Hospital in Berlin. After his service in the Army, he started his career with the Veterans Administration by becoming a nursing assistant at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Marion, Indiana. From 1962 until 1969, Tom Ayres worked as a supervisory recreation specialist at the Veterans Hospital in Brecksville, OH. From 1969 until 1972, he served as a voluntary services officer at Veterans Administration Hospitals in both Madison, WI and Gainesville, FL. In 1972, Tom Ayres became a medical administration assistant at the Veterans Hospital in Madison, WI. Since 1972, Tom Ayres has earned appointments to positions of increased responsibility within the Department of Veterans Affairs. In 1976, he became a hospital administration specialist and soon thereafter was transferred to the Veterans Affairs central office and served as the executive assistant to the Associate Chief Medical Director for Operations. Tom Ayres received an appointment to the position of Medical Center Director of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salisbury, NC in 1981. Nine years later, he became the Director of the two-division Veterans Administration Medical Center in Augusta, GA. He also serves as the Associate Administrator for Veterans Affairs at the Medical College of Georgia and as a member of the Medical College of Georgia's Clinical Enterprise Executive Committee. Throughout his long and distinguished career in providing health services for U.S. veterans throughout our great Nation, Tom Ayres has received numerous awards based on the exemplary performance of his duties. His awards include the National Daughters of American Veterans Commander Award, the Award for Valor from the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, three Superior Performance Awards, and five consecutive Executive Performance awards. In 1990, he received the Presidential Rank Award from the President of the United States. It is important to note that his compassion and sense of civic responsibility does not start and end with his job. Tom Ayres is an active participant with the local United Way, Kiwanis Club, American Legion, Senior Executive Association, and the American College of Hospital Administrators. In addition, he serves on the administrative board of Trinity on the Hill Church and is a life member of the Disabled American Veterans and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking Thomas L. Ayres for his outstanding career spent in service to our Nation's veterans. He is a model citizen in every sense of the term. We wish him, his wife Christa, and their children and grandchildren Godspeed and every success for the future.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge support of the amendment of the Senator [[Page S 14267]] from Maryland, and I commend her for taking this leadership and also commend the Senator from Missouri for pointing out things that need to be corrected in this program. That is what we ought to be doing. We ought to be correcting the faults, not killing the entire program. Mr. President, we have heard comparisons of how many Pell grant programs we could fund, how many job training programs we could fund. These criticisms are valid as far as they go but what they forget is a very important point. That is, we are requiring service, and service is being rendered. A good analogy is our Nation's Armed Forces. We do not maintain Armed Forces in order to provide valuable skill and help develop good character in young men and women. Rather, Armed Forces personnel develop skills and character in the military as they carry out their primary mission for providing for our Nation's security. The same is true of national service. Would critics have us disregard the benefits to society of national service participants helping flood victims in Montezuma, GA, last year, a town completely overcome by the flood? Should we ignore the benefits of the first-time immunization program of 33,000 children in Fort Worth, TX, in 1 month? Mr. President, independent studies verified by the GAO found recently that AmeriCorps returns between $1.68 and $2.58 for every $1 invested. I think it is important that we continue this program. National service says to the participants, along with society's opportunities come duties. If you will provide your honest sweat and elbow grease to improve society, we will help you attend college or acquire a skill. This is a win-win-win situation. The question I have for my colleagues is what other program is aimed at accomplishing these social ends without a handout, without stifling bureaucracy, and with such enormous benefits to our communities? As my colleagues know, the idea of national service is one in which I have been involved for several years. In 1989, I introduced with Senator Robb, Glenn, Breaux, and Sasser introduced legislation to demonstrate the concept of national service in a small number of programs nationwide. President Bush signed that legislation into law in 1990, and the effort yielded a number of highly-successful demonstration programs, including two in my State. In 1993, Congress passed President Clinton's National and Community Service Act to create thousands of young people serving their communities. While the scope of AmeriCorps is much larger than our original demonstration project, the philosophy behind it, supported by Democrats and Republicans, is the same--make plain the essential connection between rights and responsibility by putting Americans to work meeting the unmet needs in their communities. At present this Congress is involved in a great debate over how to reverse the fraying of our Nation's moral fabric. The question which confronts us is how to stop the rising tide of crime, illegitimacy, falling test scores, and rising despair that plague our communities. I do not pretend that funding national service is the answer to all of these problems. What I can say with great conviction, however, is that national service is one of the few Government enterprises with the potential to inspire large numbers of young people against this tide. In Georgia, success stories are not hard to find. In my State, AmeriCorps members alone have contributed more than 300,000 hours of service, and served more than 19,000 individuals. In addition to their required service, AmeriCorps members have volunteered 7,500 hours to community-wide philanthropic efforts and traditional volunteer programs. They have also recruited more than 2,500 community volunteers to help in their community service efforts. Members are working with the Macon police department to patrol communities and establish neighborhood watch programs. In Douglas, members are helping to erect road signs to ensure that emergency crews can respond quickly to calls on the newly-installed 911 telephone system. In Atlanta, members mentor and tutor low-achieving students in schools and recruit volunteers for further community service efforts. In Atlanta, the principal of Ralph McGill school in a low-income area of Atlanta informed me on a visit that since AmeriCorps young people started working as teacher's aides discipline problems have declined at his school by 70 percent. This list of accomplishments is mirrored in virtually every State in this Nation. Critics have tried to attack national service in a number of different ways. With the recent release of the GAO report on the costs of national service we have heard cries of how expensive the program is. I would caution the program's critics to examine the benefits of the program as well as its costs before issuing such casual independent studies. The GAO study often quoted by critics found that AmeriCorps' per-member costs to the Federal Government are in fact lower than the estimates the Corporation set for itself. In addition, the benefits generated by the program, as reported by an independent accounting agency and verified by GAO, have yielded excellent ratings for cost- effectiveness. Most importantly, however, the program receives high marks from the beneficiaries of the service, like the teacher of Ralph McGill school, who is better able to teach his students through AmeriCorps' efforts. In this way AmeriCorps is living up to its slogan, ``Getting Things Done.'' I hope that the program's critics, many of whom were singing the praises of cost-benefit analysis on this floor in a different debate on regulatory reform just a few weeks ago, will practice that preaching for this program as well. Our Nation's Armed Forces provide another good historical analogy to national service--the GI bill. This program, which began in the mid- 1940's as an effort to provide an education to those who fought for our Nation's survival in World War II, has been judged one of the most successful investments of public funds in our history. The program continues today as the Montgomery GI bill. The GI bill gives the participants an education benefit in exchange for their great service to this country. Like the GI bill, national service provides a triple payoff in terms of the service performed, the service experience, and the post-service benefit. Do my colleagues who criticize national service believe that the GI bill was a mistake? Here, Mr. President, is a program that has just as much potential to help our society. Finally, Mr. President, I would point out that since its initial authorization in 1993, AmeriCorps has had only one full year of operation. As with any newly created enterprise, there are growing pains of varying degrees, and I am the first to express my willingness to search for ways to make the program more effective. The time for such debate and change, however, is during the program's scheduled reauthorization next year. That way we can have a systematic, rational consideration of whether this program has provided sufficient ``bang'' for the Government's buck, and whether structural changes are needed. To kill this program in this appropriations bill would be a costly mistake. Mr. President, as our distinguished colleague Senator Byrd often points out, one of our primary duties as Senators is to exercise the ``power of the purse'' and be good stewards of the taxpayer's dollar. I have been watching AmeriCorps' work in my State, and I am pleased to inform my colleagues that AmeriCorps is achieving its goals. This is an innovative, nonbureaucratic, decentralized approach to one of our Nation's most important tasks--creating citizens who understand that responsibilities accompany rights and who provide real services to individuals and communities. I urge my colleagues to look at the benefits as well as the costs of this program, and to support the Mikulski amendment. Mr. President, we are developing leadership and we are also serving communities and individual needs. I urge this program be retained.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I would like for the Senate to recognize the retirement of Thomas L. Ayres from the Department of Veterans Affairs after more than 41 years of exemplary service in providing health care to the armed service members and veterans of our Nation. On September 30, 1995, Mr. Ayres will retire from his position as the Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta, GA. Tom began providing health care during his service with the United States Army from 1995 until 1959 at the 279th Station Hospital in Berlin. After his service in the Army, he started his career with the Veterans' Administration by becoming a nursing assistant at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Marion, IN. From 1962 until 1969, Tom worked as a supervisory recreation specialist at the Veterans Hospital in Brecksville, OH. From 1969 until 1972, he served as a voluntary services officer at Veterans Administration Hospitals in both Madison, WI and Gainesville, FL. In 1972, Tom Ayres became a medical administration assistant at the Veterans Hospital in Madison, WI. Since 1972, Tom Ayres has earned appointments to positions of increased responsibility within the Department of Veterans Affairs. In 1976, he became a hospital administration specialist and soon thereafter was transferred to the Veterans Affairs central office and served as the executive assistant to the Associate Chief Medical Director for Operations. Tom Ayres received an appointment to the position of Medical Center Director of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salisbury, NC in 1981. Nine years later, he became the director of the two-division Veterans Administration Medical Center in Augusta, GA. He also serves as the associate administrator for Veterans Affairs at the Medical College of Georgia and as a member of the Medical College of Georgia's Clinical Enterprise Executive Committee. Throughout his long and distinguished career in providing health services for U.S. veterans throughout our great Nation, Tom has received numerous awards based on the exemplary performance of his duties. His awards include the National Daughters of American Veterans Commander Award, the Award for Valor from the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, three Superior Performance Awards, and five consecutive Executive Performance awards. In 1990, he received the Presidential Rank Award from the President of the United States. It is important to note that his compassion and sense of civic responsibility does not start and end with his job. Tom is an active participant with the local United Way, Kiwanis Club, American Legion, Senior Executive Association, and the American College of Hospital Administrators. In addition, he serves on the Administrative Board of Trinity on the Hill Church and is a life member of the Disabled American Veterans and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking Thomas L. Ayres for his outstanding career spent in service to our Nation's veterans. He is a model citizen in every sense of the term. We wish him, his wife Christa, and their children and grandchildren Godspeed and every success for the future.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I think it is important that we not use all of our economic leverage on this matter, as important as it is. If the Russians wanted the Iranians to have nuclear weapons, they could get them nuclear weapons in 24 hours. Yet, this provision in this bill acts as if the Russians are indeed trying to give the Iranians a nuclear weapons capacity. That is not what the Russians are doing. They are trying to gain economic advantage because of their economic situation. I do not have an amendment on this. I think all Members ought to think about this very carefully. The Russians are the only empire in history with 30,000 nuclear weapons that has collapsed. They have some thousands and thousands of tons of chemical weapons, and no one even knows how much in biological weapons, and with scientists that know how to produce this material and know how to make these weapons of mass destruction. We have an enormous amount of security at stake in maintaining our good relationship with Russia, as long as they proceed and struggle toward democracy and market reform. If Russia becomes unstable, if Russia becomes paranoid, if Russia becomes nationalistic, we are going to have terrible difficulties in the years ahead, and even the months ahead, in dealing with this situation. That may happen, inevitably, but certainly we should do no harm. This provision in this bill is going to cause very big problems if it remains in conference. I hope all Senators will think carefully about this situation. I hope the conferees will look very carefully as to whether they can use a rifle approach, making it clear what our policy is, making it clear that we disagree with this sale, that it has some penalties attached, but not cutting overall economic assistance to a country that really holds the future of nuclear proliferation in its hands with its huge arsenal of weapons, and a country whose own stability is enormously important to our own national security. I ask the conferees to consider this matter very carefully when they go to conference and not to be locked into this position, which I think is unwise and against our own national security interests. Mr. President, I would like to comment briefly on the section of H.R. 1868 that provides: No funds may be made available under this heading for Russia unless the President determines and certifies in writing to the Committees on Appropriations that the Government of Russia has terminated all planning and implementation of arrangements to provide Iran with technical expertise, training, technology or equipment necessary to develop a nuclear reactor or related nuclear research facilities or programs. It is clear, Mr. President, that the Government of Russia has decided, over strong and I believe well-founded United States objections, to proceed with the sale of light water reactor technology and equipment to Iran. So the effect of this provision would be to block all United States foreign assistance to Russia in the coming fiscal year. Mr. President, I oppose the sale of Russian nuclear reactor technology and equipment to Iran. It is not in our country's national security interests. I believe it also will not serve Russia's national security interests. However, I think we need to consider carefully whether a cutoff of all foreign assistance to Russia will advance our national security interests. I have serious doubts that this provision will serve U.S. interests. First, I believe Russia's decision to proceed with this sale was based on economic considerations. The Russian economy, and particularly the budget of the Ministry for Atomic Energy, badly needs additional revenue. From their perspective, this deal appears very lucrative. Second, in my view, a cutoff of U.S. foreign assistance is not going to stop this deal. The decision has been made at the highest level, after the Russian side listened to the best arguments the United States side could made in opposition to the proposed sale. The Russian Government has invested too much prestige, and expects too much monetary return, for this decision to be reversed because of cessation of United States aid. Third, I believe Russia has wrongly discounted the disruptive impact on international affairs that Iran could play, should it succeed in developing even crude nuclear weapons. Yet it is unreasonable to assume that Russia wants to help Iran to become a nuclear weapons state. Russia possesses over 20,000 nuclear warheads, tons of weapons-grade fissile material, and hundreds of scientists and technicians skilled in creating nuclear weapons. Russia does not need to build a light water reactor in Iran to boost the Iranian nuclear weapons program. If Russia decides to supply Iran with nuclear weapons, it can do so in a few hours. Fourth, I believe we must ask whether United States influence on Russia to safeguard nuclear technology, to prevent it from being applied to the Iranian nuclear weapons program, will be increased by a ban on United States assistance to Russia. I think the reverse is more likely: that cessation of United States aid will decrease the likelihood of Russian cooperation with us on this vital issue. Mr. President, our concern over Russia's determination to continue with sale of civilian nuclear reactory technology and equipment to Iran should be addressed, in my view, with a carefully-aimed marksman's rifle, not with a shotgun blast that demolishes everything in front of it. If we cut off all aid because of this sale to Iran, what do we take away the next time Russia acts in a way we believe is contrary to our interests? We will have fired all our ammunition and will have little economic leverage left. It may be that some aspects of our assistance to Russia merit critical review and reduction. That is another issue entirely. Overall, however, I believe our assistance has made an important contribution to movement toward the development of market economy, a political democracy, and a pluralistic society in Russia. To my mind, this is clearly in our national security interests and should not be brought to a total halt because of our disagreement with an unwise decision by the current Russian Government. Mr. President, I offer these remarks in the hope that the Senate conferees will review this provision carefully as they enter into conference on H.R. 1868.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I have great reservations about a provision in this bill that cuts overall aid to Russia based on the Iranian nuclear reactor sale. I will not detain the Senate tonight. I will ask for Senators to think very carefully about this. I think it is essential that we understand that the number one national security challenge we have in the next 5, 10 years relates to proliferation. I completely agree with the critics of this sale by the Russians to the Iranians. It is my view that this is against the U.S. national security interests and also against the security interests of Russia. We have a common security interest in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We differ because the Russians are making the sale for economic reasons. The question is: How do we respond? Do we respond with a shotgun attack, cutting overall aid which is what this bill does, or do we have a more refined approach, a rifle approach, making it clear that our own policy is not in any way going to permit them to do this without protest, nevertheless, reserving some economic leverage--

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the Brown amendment No. 2688, which would prohibit the outlay of any Federal funds for salaries and expenses of U.S. Department of Agriculture employees who carry out the peanut program. I know the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from Georgia have spoken on this amendment. It is my hope there are going to be some changes in the amendment. I speak to the amendment as it now exists. Mr. President, I oppose the Brown amendment on three basic grounds. No. 1, while well- intentioned, I am sure the amendment is poorly drafted. No. 2, even if the Brown amendment was drafted correctly, it singles out the administrative cost of the peanut program and raises questions that are beyond the scope of the bill, and No. 3, the Brown amendment preempts the legislative process and, I think, would undermine a very serious effort by a bipartisan group of Senators who are working for reform in the authorization bill to greatly lower, if not eliminate, the cost of the price support program from the agriculture budget. First, let me speak to the language of the amendment. The amendment has two basic sentences. The sentence No. 1 says: None of the funds made available under this act may be used to pay the salaries and expenses of USDA employees who carry out a price support or production adjustment program for peanuts. And then No. 2: Assessment.--The Secretary of Agriculture may charge producers a marketing assessment to carry out the program under the same terms and conditions as are prescribed under section 108B(g) of the Agriculture Act of 1949. Mr. President, as I read this amendment, this means that an Agriculture Department employee who might spend 1 percent of his or her time administering the peanut program and 99 percent of his or her time administering the cotton or the CRP program or other programs will not receive any salary. The amendment says that no funds may be used to pay salaries and expenses of anyone who runs the peanut program, period. It does not say ``unless that money is reimbursed.'' That is what the second sentence implies, but that is not the way the amendment reads. Even if a peanut grower paid the portion of the salary of a CFSA employee who administers the peanut program, that person, under a literal reading of the Brown amendment, could not receive a Federal salary at all for administering other commodity programs-- cotton, feed grains, CRP program, and others. The peanut program is run by county employees of Consolidated Farm Service Agency, and these same employees administer the other programs in the Department of Agriculture. So if read literally, as I think any interpretation would have to read it, the Brown amendment could terminate the operation of every Federal farm program in every county where peanuts are grown. Again, I do not think that is what the Senator from Colorado means, but that is what the amendment says. Second, the Brown amendment singles out peanut producers to pay for the administrative costs of their own program. Notwithstanding the Brown sense-of-the-Senate amendment adopted yesterday on tobacco, no other group of producers has been asked to pay for the administrative cost of their program. Furthermore, the other American groups, like bankers, do not pay for the cost of administering the banking program, the FDIC program and many other programs. If we are going to do this, it ought to be done on a broad basis and not simply for one commodity. Why not do it for the feed program, sugar, dairy, and so forth? If this kind of reform is going to be undertaken, and there may be some merits for it, it would imply a much broader set of reforms going far further than the Department of Agriculture and really encompassing our entire Federal Government. That is not to say that the support price of it should not be addressed, and I am sure it is going to be addressed in the reform bill that is now occurring. Finally, this amendment preempts the legislative process. Later this week, the Senate Agriculture Committee, I understand, will begin marking up commodity titles for the 1995 farm bill which will be part of the reconciliation bill. The Brown amendment, as I view it, would undermine a very serious effort by a number of Senators who are working for reform of the program in the authorization bill. Peanuts are grown in 72 of Georgia's 159 counties. Yesterday, the junior Senator from Georgia, Senator Coverdell, noted that in 75 percent of those counties, the poverty rate exceeds 20 percent. If we make an unreasoned and abrupt change, rather than an evolutionary change, in the peanut program, the economies of these counties will be hit very, very hard. That means that farm workers, not just landowners, will be deeply affected, as well as small and rural communities. The top two peanut-producing counties in Georgia are Worth County--I believe that is the birthplace of our good friend from Alabama, Senator Heflin--and also Early County. In 1993, 9.71 percent of the population of Worth County received aid to families with dependent children benefits and 19.4 percent received food stamps. In Early County, 13.38 percent of the population received AFDC benefits; 28.9 percent of the population received food stamps. Mr. President, no question about it, farming and the peanut program are vital to these economies. Nevertheless, peanut producers have not circled the wagon and said they are against all change. They have not rejected cost reductions. Indeed, peanut producers are working with Senators on both sides of the aisle toward a sound, workable program that will eliminate the taxpayers' cost of the overall support program. I do not believe we want to send a signal that a process like that will be thrown out the window by an amendment to the appropriations bill. I concur with the Senator from Colorado that Government expenses ought to be eliminated from the peanut program to the greatest extent possible. I know that my colleagues, Senator Coverdell, Senator Cochran, and Senator Heflin also generally agree with this sentiment. I also agree with the Senator from Colorado that the program must be reformed to reflect new challenges and new opportunities presented by both the NAFTA Agreement and the GATT Agreement, but the amendment by the Senator from Colorado does not help in that regard. I think it impedes progress for real reform. Many in the peanut program did not support GATT or NAFTA, but these major trade programs passed, and they have been enacted into law. I voted for them. We are now working through the farm bill to make sure the peanut and other programs reflect these new realities. This amendment would short circuit that process. NAFTA and GATT will require peanut producers to face new realities. They understand that. Our authorizers in the Agriculture Committee are working on orderly, but effective, reform of the peanut program. Mr. President, I am a cosponsor of the bill, S. 1155, the Agriculture Competitiveness Act of 1995, which was introduced by Senator Cochran last month. This legislation eliminates the cost of the price support program to the U.S. Treasury. The Senator from Colorado mentioned that the peanut program cost $120 million last year. I agree with him that that cost has to be driven down. As I understand S. 1155, these costs would be eliminated over a period of time under that bill. Mr. President, I am particularly proud of the leadership of Georgia's peanut growers in supporting legislation that will eliminate the costs of the price support program. The peanut title in S. 1155 is a real reform measure. It delivers real savings to the Government--$96 million in fiscal year 1997, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In closing, Mr. President, let me reiterate that I agree with the Senator from Colorado that the costs of the peanut price support program to the taxpayer should be eliminated. I also agree with him that with the enactment of GATT and NAFTA, the program must reflect the realities of foreign competition. I am confident that under the leadership of Senators Heflin, Coverdell, and Cochran, the Senate will produce peanut legislation that meets both of those goals. But the Brown amendment undermines this process. I urge that the amendment of the Senator from Colorado be defeated. Unless it is substantially redrawn, I hope it will be defeated. It is my hope, after talking with the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from Colorado and others, that there may be some redrafting underway. I yield back any time I have remaining that was yielded to me by the Senator from Alabama, and I thank him for yielding me the time.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I would like join my good friend from New Mexico in trying to alleviate the fears of those concerned about the USA tax proposal's treatment of municipal bonds. In crafting our proposal, we explicitly elected to retain a preference for investments in municipal bonds, and we did so primarily to preserve the ability of State and local governments to obtain capital for needed infrastructure improvements. It was never our intention to undermine our country's municipal bond market. As Senator Domenici pointed out, some analysts believe the manner in which our proposal is crafted could erode substantially the current tax preference for municipal bond investments. Others, including an editorial at the Bond buyer, take a much more optimistic view and equate our proposal as being far too generous in its treatment of municipal bonds. I believe the truth falls somewhere in between these two analyses. In the USA proposal, we have essentially equalized the tax treatment of all investments, including those investments in municipal bonds. All investments under the USA proposal are tax- deferred. However, the USA proposal makes an important distinction about the tax treatment of the returns from these investments. The returns from investments other than municipal bonds would not be tax exempt unless the returns are reinvested in their entirety. On the other hand, returns from municipal bonds would be tax exempt and could be spent or reinvested without future income tax consequences. I believe this is an equitable outcome regarding the tax treatment of municipal bonds. If another approach, consistent with the overall goals of the USA proposal, especially revenue neutrality, can be found in this area, I am more than willing to consider such proposals. Mr. President, before yielding the floor, I would like to raise a final point. I find it very interesting about the absence of any concern about the elimination of any, I repeat any, preference for municipal bonds under either the flat tax or the national sales tax proposals. I do not mind the criticism of our proposal. Constructive criticism is useful and can work to improve our proposal, but it would be refreshing to have an informed, factual comparison of all the tax replacement proposals and their tax treatment of municipal bonds, rather than a Chicken Little approach often evident today.

Mr. NUNN

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I intend to make a statement concluding the final passage of the authorization bill outlining some of the challenges I think we have in conference. I do think there have been a number of improvements made in the bill in the Chamber, most notably the Missile Defense Act, which I anticipate will be approved in a few minutes on a rollcall vote. There are a number of other challenges we have in conference if this bill is going to become law, and I will speak to that at passage of the authorization bill because I think it is enormously important that we work together in a cooperative way with the administration to make every effort to see that this bill will be one the President will be willing to sign. There are a number of items that are in the bill now which will not meet that definition according to what I have been reliably informed. So I will be working with my colleagues to both identify the administration objections and to see if those can be worked on as we go forward. I also think the committee chairman and all those who worked in good faith in the Chamber have a real stake in trying to make sure we get a bill that can become law this year, and I know we will work together in that regard.

Mr. NUNN. I say to my friend from Virginia, I was referring both to that matter and to other matters also. My comments were in general because there are a number of areas where the administration and the Secretary of Defense have noted they want to work to see that changes are made. So I was not speaking just on the Missile Defense Act but that was included in my remarks.

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2464 (Purpose: To make various technical corrections and other technical amendments to existing provisions of law)

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that the Senator from Arizona had on the Defense appropriations bill. I believe it has been worked out. I worked with him on it. We modified some of its provisions. I urge its adoption.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the amendment.

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

Mr. NUNN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2462

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Levin, I offer an amendment which would authorize the Army to use leasing agreements to modernize its commercial utility cargo vehicle fleet. This fleet is past the point of economically useful life and has become a significant training and operational maintenance fund. This program, using commercial practices to require essential commercial services, is in keeping with the spirit of acquisition reform. I believe the amendment has been cleared on the other side.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I urge the Senate to adopt the amendment.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I wonder if it would not be appropriate at this time to ask for the yeas and nays on the pending amendment, which is the missile defense amendment sponsored by myself and Senators Warner, Levin, and Cohen.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I believe that we are now prepared to clear some more amendments. The first amendment is the Warner amendment, as I understand it.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from South Carolina for his summation of this bill. As he said, there are many important features in this bill. I supported the bill in the final form that it passed. I think there have been dramatic improvements made on the floor. The Corps SAM Program has been restored, which is an important part of our overall theater missile defense capability. The national missile defense language has been, I think, made much more acceptable and compatible with America's security interests. That has been done on an amendment we passed this morning. An important program on the junior ROTC that had been cut has now been restored. The civil-military language has been modified and, in my opinion, strengthened, and some of the problems there have been corrected. The humanitarian and disaster assistance, which had been cut, has been partially restored, which is important. And there have been very significant changes made on the floor in the Department of Energy section. We need to ensure that the conference maintains the Senate approach in these areas. We also have other challenges in the conference. I think too much has been cut out of defense research, even in our bill. The TRP Program has been cut in ways that I think need to be reexamined in conference, in close consultation with Secretary of Defense Perry, who probably knows more about this program than any person in America and has spent an enormous amount of his Secretary of Defense time and energy in making sure that this program is successfully implemented. Also, I think there is too much micromanagement of the ballistic missile defense accounts in our bill and in the House bill, and that needs to be addressed in conference. We have some serious challenges on the House bill that are going to be difficult to work out when we get to conference, including language on abortion, including language on HIV, including command and control of U.S. forces participating in multilateral organizations, including peacekeeping and contingency operations, as well as some of their language--and perhaps, from their point of view, some of our language-- on missile defense and other programs. My final assessment is that we have a bill here that has been improved on the floor, that we have an opportunity to work on and make further improvements on in conference, working in good faith with the House. We have a lot of high hurdles to clear if we are going to have this bill become law this year, based not on what I have been told formally but on what I have heard informally from the White House and from the Department of Defense. But I have seen a lot of high hurdles in the past and I have seen those high hurdles overcome by people working in good faith for the national security interests of our country. So it is my hope that, with a cooperative spirit and a constructive approach, we will be able to work with our House conferees and with the administration to see that the Defense authorization bill becomes law this year. That remains a serious challenge, but I think it is one that we must all strive to meet. I thank the Senator from South Carolina and all of his staff and all of the staff on the Democratic side and all the members of the committee for a very, I think, commendable effort. I thank the Chair.

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I support the amendment. I think the Senator from Virginia has outlined it correctly in terms of the urgency of trying to find some solution to this. I commend him for sponsoring this amendment. I agree with him. At some point, we will have to legislate on this subject unless the parties can agree. Mr. President, I believe we have a pending amendment, which is the Nunn-Warner-Levin-Cohen amendment. I ask unanimous consent that be temporarily laid aside so that we can handle these three or four amendments that have been worked out, at which time the pending amendment would then be the pending action.

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

Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify the previously adopted Nunn amendment No. 2078 by striking out subsection (d) thereof. This has been cleared on both sides.