Ralph Regula

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to listen to this debate, because this bill passed the House by about 380 votes, and a majority of the Members from the other side of the aisle voted for the bill. Essentially, it is the same bill, only with some extra funding in. I will address the issue of the riders. Perhaps we should do that right up front. Now, we have good riders and bad riders. The good riders are, one cannot drill offshore. Everybody likes that one. The good rider is that patents giving away mining lands are on a moratorium. That is a good rider. But the riders that were in the Senate, we found objectionable. But in the conference, with the support of the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and other Members on both sides of the House team, we got those riders modified. Let me take each one in order. The mill sites question. Basically the responsibility for mine reform rests with this body and not the Solicitor General. I think that the issue of how we deal with mill sites should be resolved by our authorizing committees and by this legislative body. It is a legislative issue. We cannot very well have attorneys, such as the Solicitor, making law; otherwise, we might as well close up shop. Now, of course I think the Senate provision overturned the Solicitor's opinion indefinitely. That is too long. So we modified it with give and take in the conference. My colleagues have to remember that we have a two-house system here. When we go to conference, and this is a conference report, it has to be worked out. There has to be some degree of compromise and negotiation. What the conference agreement does is water down the Senate provision. We say that the Solicitor's opinion which, in effect, he is in the mode of writing legislation, cannot impact on existing mining plans. One cannot very well look back. One cannot even legislate ex- post facto, after the fact. So we said one cannot possibly change the rules. A lot of people have made a lot of investments. We also provide that plans in operation submitted prior to May 21, 1999, are exempt. We went back as far as we thought was appropriate, and patent applications grandfathered pursuant to the current patent application moratorium in place since 1995, at this time this committee, under the leadership on our side of the aisle and support from the minority, did put in a moratorium on patents. So it is substantially less. Keep in mind this is a 1-year bill. Oil valuation. The gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) just talked about that. The Senate included a provision prohibiting the Minerals Management Service from implementing a new rule on oil valuation throughout the year 2000. We said that is too long. There is a problem here that needs to be addressed. So the conference agreement prohibits the rule from being implemented for a period not to exceed 6 months or until the comptroller general, that is GAO, reviews the proposed regulation and issues a report. Let us get the expert opinion from the GAO. This is a nonpartisan group. They can give us an unbiased opinion. We say it can only be in place 6 months or until we get the GAO report, and then we need to address it legislatively. That is our responsibility. The grazing issue. The Senate included a provision which would have extended all expired Bureau of Land Management grazing permits based on existing terms and conditions. These permits are currently for 10-year periods. What did the conference agreement do? It continues a 1-year provision similar to the last year's law, similar to what we had last year. This provision clearly states that the authority of the Secretary of Interior to alter, modify, or reject permit renewals following completion of all required environmental analyses is not altered. We have also included additional funding for the BLM to accelerate the processing of these permits. We said, let us get on with the job. We know that there has to be an EIS on every permit. Under the conference compromise worked out by both parties, the agreement is that they can renew the permits for 10 years; but if the EIS shows that there is any violation of the standards established in the law and by the regulations, immediately, the Secretary can terminate those permits. This is a question of fairness. We have got to treat people fairly whether they live in the West or whether they live in the East. What we have done in modifying what I thought were too strenuous conditions imposed by the Senate language, we have modified to make the conditions fair. But I think they are reasonable, and I think they protect the interest of the American people. On the hard rock mining, we have said, as soon as the National Academy of Science, again, a nonpartisan, independent group, as soon as they give us the report, we can take action. In the meantime, we have a moratorium. All these things are a matter of fairness. Now, let me just tell my colleagues what a vote yes for this bill will do. A vote yes will give the parks $77 million more than they had last year; the Bureau of Land Management, $50 million more; an additional $55 million to the Fish and Wildlife Service. We continue the recreational fee program. I am advised by the Park Service that that will generate over $100 million which they get to put right back in the park where the fee is generated. Do my colleagues know what the law was before we worked on this? If the parks collected a fee, they sent it to the Treasury. Not much incentive to be out there collecting fees; paying one's team to collect a fee so one can send it to Washington. Now they get to keep it. They have done many improvements with the fee money. I have been visiting the parks. Without exception, and I think the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) was with us when we visited the parks, we heard this from the team at Olympic how much that meant to them to have the fees to fix up different things that have been neglected. Speaking of that, we address backlog maintenance. When we started here, we were told it was up to anywhere from $12 billion to $14 billion of backlog maintenance. Most of us have homes. We fix the roof. We fix the driveway. We fix it if there is a problem with the plumbing. Yet, we were allowing our parks, our forests facilities, the Smithsonian, many others to be neglected. On their own testimony, backlog maintenance was up to almost $14 billion. We decided, as a policy, that we need to address the backlog problem. We need to take care of maintenance. We have been putting in probably twice as much money as was going into maintenance simply to ensure that we are taking care of what we have. We all understand how important that can be. The conference report ensures environmental protection for the Everglades, including a national park in Biscayne Bay. There is a lot of money in this report to restore the ecosystem and the water flow in the Everglades. How important that is in preserving this great system for the future generations. Funding for the Forest Service is $10 million over the administration's request and $16 million over the administration's request in trail maintenance. Trails, people love trails. If one has a trail in one's area one knows how much it is used. We recognize that even to a greater extent than the administration did. This bill is designed for people. It is designed to allow them to use the forest for recreation, to make the parks safe, to make sure they have nice conditions when they go there to visit. So we maintain the sewage systems. We maintain the camp sites. We maintain the things that are important to people. Funding for the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund continues at $15 million. We increased Indian Health Services by $130 million, very important in the Indian community. Again, a concern for people. We have tried to address that throughout the bill. We have the money to buy the Baca Ranch in New Mexico which will add a great piece of land to the base of this Nation, some 95,000 acres with an elk herd of 6,000 that just roam. Think of what that will mean for people to have an opportunity to visit. That is what my colleagues are going to vote yes for if they vote for this bill. We, earlier today, had an amendment on science. I have seen op ed pieces on how important science is in our schools. We provide in this bill for science and research at the USGS, one of the premier science agencies of this Nation. It gets a total $824 million. How about this one, a vote yes on this bill is a vote to clean up abandoned mine sites. We really neglected this country and our land when we allowed the rape of lands with mining, open pit mining. We have $191 million, a $6 million increase, to address the problems of open- pit mines, to stop the acid rain runoff that goes downstream and goes far beyond the mine site. Well, there are a lot more things in here that I can talk about. I only can say this, that a vote yes for this bill is a vote for the people of this Nation. We have done the best we could with the money we have had. We tried to be fair. I think our friends on the other side of the aisle will recognize that, in terms of projects, programs, that each side was treated equally, and that we made our judgments on the merits of the programs and the projects rather than any political decisions. In view of that, I think we should get support from all the Members, as we did on the original bill. This bill is not that much different. It is, maybe, better in some respects, more funding because of what the Senate did. I certainly urge the Members here to respect the people of this Nation and support this legislation.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I certainly urge my colleagues to support this bill. We cover a diverse number of functions such as Federal law enforcement, trade negotiations, diplomatic functions, and Federal courts. A couple of things I would highlight. First of all, we have increased funding for the United States Trade Representative. I think our Trade Ambassador Mrs. Barshefsky has done an excellent job and along with the Commerce Department and Secretary Daley. They have a big challenge ahead to represent the United States interest at the WTO meeting in Seattle in about 6 weeks. It is important that we have trade opening initiatives to get more exports of American products, and they are working hard at that. Secondly, embassy safety, there was no money requested in the original budget from the administration. It is a very important function because of the proliferation of terrorists. We recognize this fact and put substantial amounts in this bill to upgrade the safety programs at our embassies around the world. Thirdly, the bill continues funding for the manufacturing extension program in small business development, again programs that are very important to our economy because probably 70 percent or more of the jobs in our economy are from small business development. We need to encourage and enhance the opportunities in small business. Fourthly, the JASON program is a very innovative program that is funded in this bill. It basically is the electronic school bus. This is a program whereby students can go, as they have, to the rain forest, they can go to the bottom of Monterey Bay, they can go to the National Park at Yellowstone, and next year I think they will go into space all by the electronic bus. Under the JASON program, for the schools that are wired properly, they can have two-way conversations between the students and the people and the locations I have mentioned. Very innovative. It is the future in education, and I am pleased that we could do that. It is long- distance learning at its best. I rise in support of the Fiscal Year 2000 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations conference report. This is a good and balanced bill that was put together under tight funding restraints. I urge my colleagues to support this bill which contains many diverse functions from federal law enforcement programs, to trade negotiation and enforcement programs, to diplomatic functions, to the funding of our federal courts. I will highlight just three areas that are of importance to the people of Ohio. This bill provides funding levels that are necessary to continue the important work of opening new markets for U.S. goods and of protecting our domestic industries against unfair foreign trading practices. The United States Trade Representative's Office received a much- needed increase of over $1 million to continue the work of that our trading partners reciprocate and opening their markets in the same manner as the U.S., which remains the most open market of the world. The important trade functions that reside in the Commerce Department to promote our exports abroad and to protect domestic industries are also provided adequate funding levels. The bill continues funding for the Manufacturing Extension Program and the Small Business Development Centers, both programs which are critical to small businesses as they modernize and prepare to compete in the global marketplace. Finally, the bill funds two innovative programs. The first provides an additional $2 million to the JASON Program which makes available to over 3 million students the good work that is occurring in the Commerce Department with regard to oceans and ocean research. The JASON Program is an exciting interactive education program which I call the ``electronic school bus'' because after a year of studying a science curriculum, students participate in an expedition via interactive telecommunications means. This program represents the future of our education system. The bill also funds the National Inventors Hall of Fame at $3.6 million to continue the partnership with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office to highlight to the public the importance of our national patent system. This system is critical for the U.S. in maintaining its preeminent position with the world with regard to development of technology. This is a fair bill that funds many critical federal functions and I urge your support for it.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time, and I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman).

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express concerns about the upcoming World Trade Organization ministerial meeting which will be hosted by the United States in Seattle, Washington, from November 30 until December 3. The purpose of this meeting is to prepare an agenda for a new round of multilateral trade negotiations aimed at expanding and liberalizing world trade in the wake of the Uruguay Round of negotiations which ended in 1994. As Chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus, I recently convened two days of briefings by U.S. steel industry executives and the President of the Steelworkers of America. In addition to discussing the continued threat of low-priced imports, the industry and steelworker representatives also provided the caucus with advice on what should and should not be included in the agenda which is being drafted in Seattle. There is general support for this new round of negotiations because liberalized trade has a great potential benefit for the U.S. economy as long as that liberalized trade is fair, and I emphasize the word ``fair,'' is rules-based and is market economy based. The caucus heard that any future negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization must in no way weaken U.S. trade laws, particularly our antidumping and countervailing duty laws. These laws provide essential remedies against unfair foreign imports. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that we have been repeatedly assured by Ambassador Barshefsky, Secretary Daley and other administration officials that antidumping and countervailing duty statutes will not be reopened in Seattle or in any new round of negotiations to follow. But we have also heard repeatedly from several of our trading partners that they will seek to reopen discussions on these laws. My particular concern arises from an addendum to the WTO General Council Chairman Mchumo's draft Ministerial Declaration for the Seattle meeting which he drafted ``on his own responsibility.'' The proposals in this addendum would seriously weaken the U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty laws as they stand today. Although this addendum is not official, it indicates that there will be substantial pressure on the U.S. delegation to include discussions of changes to the antidumping and countervailing duty laws in the new round of negotiations. The proposed changes would allow the dumping of goods into the United States and would allow goods to be subsidized by foreign governments. These changes in turn would jeopardize United States jobs. I will mention just a few of the 24 changes that have been proposed in the Mchumo addendum. One, once an antidumping investigation under U.S. law is concluded, no new petition involving the same product could be initiated for at least a year. This means dumping of that product could resume and continue for a year before any remedy could be pursued. Two, if a penalty duty lower than the calculated margin of dumping were thought to be sufficient to reduce the injury, then that lower duty would be mandatory, even if dumping continues. Three, countervailing duties would be imposed not in the full amount but only in the amount by which the subsidy exceeds the applicable de minimis level. Four, developing countries would suddenly be exempted altogether from the present prohibition on export subsidies and import substitution subsidies. Mr. Speaker, these proposed changes sound technical, but they would have a dramatic impact on U.S. jobs in the manufacturing sector and in other important sensitive sectors. These changes would mean job losses for many Americans and, therefore, these changes must be resisted. I support the Visclosky-Ney resolution stating that the antidumping and antisubsidies code of the WTO should not be reopened in Seattle. I will be part of a delegation travelling to Seattle in November as part of the Speaker's advisory group on the WTO ministerial. A strong vote in the House and participation by Members in the delegation to Seattle will be essential in backing up, and I say that supporting, the administration's position that the U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty laws should not be weakened in any way during the upcoming multilateral trade negotiations.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, during the vote on H.R. 2679, the Motor Carrier Safety Act of 1999, I was unavoidably delayed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the managers on the part of the House may have until midnight, Friday, October 15, 1999, to file a conference report on the bill (H.R. 2466) making appropriations for the Department of the Interior and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2000, and for other purposes.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would just briefly address a few of the points made by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks). First of all, on the matter of amending the Mining Act of 1872, that is a policy change; and I think that correctly it should be done by the Congress in the normal legislative process. I do not believe that a Solicitor General should exercise a privilege of amending a policy matter that has been adopted by the Congress. That would, to me, be bad public policy. I think, obviously, something we need to address is the Mining Act. 1872 is a long time ago and many things have changed since then, but it should be done in an orderly way rather than to delegate legislative responsibility to the Solicitor General. I might mention on the matter of the arts, since there has been a rather lively discussion prior to this on the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and that is that we maintain in this bill the Congressional reforms: 15 percent cap on the amount of funds any one State can receive; State grant programs and State set-asides are increased 40 percent of total grants; anti-obscenity requirements for grants, and this is supported by the Supreme Court decision in 1998, as was stated in the previous debate, puts six Members of Congress on the National Council on the Arts, three from the House, three from the Senate; reduce the presidentially appointed council to 14 from 26; prohibited grants to individuals except for literature fellowships or National Heritage fellowship or American Jazz Masters fellowship; prohibited subgranting of four full seasonal support grants; allows NEA and NEH to solicit and invest private funds to support the agencies; provided a grant priority for projects in underserved populations; provided a grant priority for education, understanding, and appreciation of the arts; and provided emphasis for grants to community music programs. These changes were incorporated in prior Interior bills limiting the NEA. I think they worked extremely well, and that has been evident by the fact that we have not had some of the problems that were prevalent in the past. I think these conditions are an important element in congressional responsibility or congressional oversight, as my colleagues may choose to define it. That is one of the issues, of course, in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and that is what oversight does Government have on the way in which funds are expended. We have tried to do a responsible piece of work on this issue, and I think it has been a great help in keeping support for the NEA and the NEH, and particularly the NEA, in our bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo).

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I just have one comment: The ranking minority member talked about the Congressional reforms, and I want to compliment Mr. Ivy and Mr. Ferris. I think they have tried to live up to these standards in the administration of their two agencies. I would say to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Baldacci), you mentioned about the areas of lesser population, and we did recognize that in these standards, to get grants into the smaller communities across this country. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. Modification to Motion Offered by Mr. Dicks

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons). (Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 2466) making appropriations for the Department of the Interior and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2000, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, this is not for big companies. This is for people. This is for that steelworker or that oil worker that is unemployed, 60,000. This is to help them pay the mortgage, to pay the tuition for their son or daughter that wants to go on to college, to perhaps help a child that is ill. This is to give them back self- respect and self-confidence by giving them their jobs back. Remember, this is a vote for people, not for companies. This is not one taxpayer's dollar being given to these companies. We are simply saying as we have done for agriculture as we have done for housing, as we have done for small business, as we did for Chrysler, as we did for Lockheed, as we did for New York City. We said we will help them by guaranteeing their loan. That is what we are talking about tonight. We are guaranteeing the loan. Not all of it, 85 percent. And that loan has to be approved by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, by the Secretary of Commerce, by the Chairman of the Securities Exchange commission, three highly respected individuals. I think what it does is simply say that this Government, which historically has provided a helping hand to the people of this Nation, once again says we want to help, we want to help by ensuring that those individuals can go back to work, that we can compete in the world marketplace. As the gentleman from Ohio said, we need revision of our State laws to stop the dumping, to stop the unfair practices. But in the meantime, that steelworker, that oil worker is out of a job. A vote ``yes'' is a vote to give them a helping hand from their Government so they can have their job back, so their family can enjoy this great Nation and the opportunities it provides. I urge all of my colleagues to support this. It has been said that it is going to take it out of all these other programs. Not so. It is travel, travel for the bureaucracy. It is administrative. It is the bureaucracy. It is not programs. As the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) pointed out, it does not affect any veterans, does not affect any individual, just Government travel. And there is too much of that now. So, in summation, this is a helping hand to the people of this Nation. I urge support of the bill.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney).

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus).

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt).

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Watkins). (Mr. WATKINS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman agree that those are travel budgets for those various agencies, just travel for members of the executive branch?

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. (Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the previous order of the House of August 3, 1999, I call up from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 1664) making emergency supplemental appropriations for military operations, refugee relief, and humanitarian assistance relating to the conflict in Kosovo, and for military operations in Southwest Asia for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1999, and for other purposes, with Senate amendments thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the previous order of the House of August 3, 1999, I offer a motion.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 1664, and that I may include tabular and extraneous material.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this is an issue of agreeing to a Senate amendment to the bill, H.R. 1664. It provides for steel, oil, and gas loan guarantee programs. These two sectors of the economy need a helping hand because they have not enjoyed the benefits of our robust economy recently because of unfair foreign trading practices and depressed prices. Independent oil and natural gas producers have lost about 56,000 jobs over the past 18 months because of depressed oil and gas prices. The U.S. steel industry has lost over 10,000 jobs due to the record level of low priced steel imports that came into the United States in 1998. Steel imports continue at above average rates in 1999. In addition to the jobs lost in the steel industry and the surrounding communities, these unfair imports have driven companies into bankruptcy. Both of these industries have and are seeking relief through our anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws. The Commerce Department has found dumping in numerous steel cases and the International Trade Commission has found injury, so that dumping duties are now being collected on many steel imports. But this process has been a long and costly process for the companies and their workers. The results of slightly lower imports are just now beginning to show. But many of the affected companies and their workers need the self- help, and I emphasize ``self-help,'' loan guarantee that is provided in this legislation. They are having trouble gaining access to private capital in order to deal with the cash flow problems and to restructure in order to weather the steel import crisis. The loan program is not, and I emphasize again, is not a Federal giveaway. It is a tough, self- help program which does have protections for the U.S. taxpayer. Let me list those: The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, will serve as the chairman of the board that will review all loan guarantee applications. The Secretary of Commerce and the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission are also members of the board. So obviously this is a tough board that these companies would have to go to for a guarantee. The loan guarantee amount for each company is limited to $250 million and must be paid back by December 31, 2005. Companies must provide security for all loan guarantees and shall pay a fee to cover the cost of the program. Only 85 percent of the principal loan amount can be guaranteed by this program. Furthermore, any company that receives a loan guarantee is subject to a GAO audit. So there are tough conditions in this, I want to emphasize. The board's authority, the board headed by Chairman Greenspan, to make loan guarantees terminates on December 31, 2001. In other words, it is essentially a 17-month program. So this is not an open-ended new program. I should also add that the credit subsidy cost of this bill, $267 million, and that is the charge we would have to appropriate just to cover it, not that there would be any Federal money involved, this is a guarantee, all the loans would come from the private sector, with the government guaranteeing 85 percent of the loan. But it is completely offset by a rescission of Federal administrative and travel expenses. As we prepare to give a helping hand to our farmers, and most of those are grants, in some cases loans, but we are saying billions we are talking about to help our farm economy, agriculture, as we should, but as we prepare to give them a helping hand, and they are affected by the current drought, I ask that we also give the steel and oil and gas industries a helping hand to overcome the import crisis that they have had no control over. We cannot allow foreign nations to export their unemployment to the United States. I urge support of this legislation and, in effect, the support of American jobs. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to say that the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member and the staff have done an excellent job under the constraints that were put on the subcommittee in terms of the amount available. Mr. Chairman, this funds a very diverse range of projects. I would just like to address a couple of them that I think are very important. But first, I would mention embassy security and additional Border Patrol agents. Those are certainly two items that needed additional funding and received it. The two I want to mention, one is the JASON program and the other is our trade functions. The bill provides an additional $1 million in funding over last year's base for the U.S. Trade Representative's office, because this is a very important function in terms of opening up markets for U.S. goods. I think Ambassador Barshefsky has done an outstanding job as the USTR and has been very aggressive in getting markets open to U.S. products, and I am pleased that we can not only support them with last year's numbers, but add $1 million to their budget. The second item under the trade issue is the ITA, the International Trade Administration. They too, as part of the Commerce Department, have continued with the important programs, including the Import Administration, which enforces our U.S. trade laws. We have had a number of cases in which they have ruled in favor of American goods to prevent unfair trade practices and dumping into our market and taking jobs away from American workers. Those two things, opening foreing markets and protecting U.S. jobs against unfair trading practices, are critical to the expansion of our economy and the job base and maintaining well-paying jobs. The other item is the JASON project. This is an exciting program. JASON is pioneering in terms of interactive TV. This is the way in which a classroom in Ohio or Kentucky or New York can take the electronic school bus to sites all over the world. Thus far, JASON has taken students to the Yellowstone National Park and compared the thermals there, with thermals in Iceland. They have taken students to the bottom of Monterey Bay. They have taken students to the rain forest in Brazil. So students in a classroom, in our case in Ohio, could interact through the medium of TV to talk to these people in Monterrey Bay or in the rain forest. This is an exciting program, and I think it is going to be the future. I can see when the agencies around this city, the National Gallery, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, the Holocaust Museum will be doing a lot of this type of work with classrooms throughout the Nation. We provide $2 million for the JASON program. Next year they hope to take students into outer space and deep sea laboratories and juxtaposite the outer space with the deep sea laboratories in one program, so students can compare what is not only happening up in space, but what is happening on inner space, namely the bottoms of the oceans or in the deep sea areas. So it is a great project. I am pleased that we have the funding for this in the bill. This is the third year, and I believe it is a pioneering effort that will bring great benefits to the education programs of this Nation. I would like to commend the Chairman for putting together a bill under very difficult circumstances this year. The Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill contains many diverse functions from Federal law enforcement programs, to trade negotiation and enforcement programs, to diplomatic functions, to the funding of our Federal Judiciary. Under the tight funding caps, an effort was made to keep most programs and agencies at last year's levels so that no program or personnel reductions would be necessary. There are program enhancements to ensure embassy security and to provide additional border patrol agents, in addition to the funding needed to do the enhanced Census work required by the recent Supreme Court decision. I would like to discuss two issues of particular interest to me-- funding for our national trade functions and funding for an innovative educational partnership with the JASON program. The bill provides an additional $1 million in funding over last year's base for the U.S. Trade Representative's office so that the important work of opening foreign markets for U.S. goods is continued. The U.S. market remains the most open market in the world and it is critical that we ensure that other nations reciprocate by opening their markets to U.S. goods. The Commerce Department also contains important trade functions within the International Trade Administration (ITA). The bill provides funding sufficient to continue the important program within ITA including the Import Administration which enforces our U.S. trade laws against unfair foreign imports. Also with ITA is the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service which provides technical and practical assistance to help U.S. companies enter foreign markets. Expanding markets for U.S. goods and protecting domestic industries against unfair foreign imports are two important functions of our Federal Government. These functions are critical to ensure a level playing field in the global marketplace and to maintain well-paying jobs for American workers. The bill also provides $2 million to continue the exciting educational partnership that has developed between the JASON program and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The partnership allows Federal research on oceans to be used in the interactive educational JASON program. This program seeks to excite our elementary, junior high and high school students into pursuing careers in the sciences. Next year the students will be studying ``extreme environments'' focusing on outer space and deep sea laboratories and comparing the science related to both of these environments. Every year after studying the course materials, the students take the electronic school bus on a virtual scientific expedition using interactive communications technology. This innovative program represents the future of our education system. I urge members to support the Fiscal Year 2000 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill.