Charles Robb

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ROBB. I thank my distinguished senior colleague. One minute will be sufficient because I know the chairman of the committee is about to make a unanimous consent request. I state to my good friend from Pennsylvania, I am very much opposed to this amendment. I cannot imagine a modification of this amendment that would cause me to be supportive. We have already debated this essential question twice. Congress has the power to declare war. If we are concerned about consultation with the executive branch, as we speak consultation is taking place up in S-407 in a classified briefing where the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the National Security Adviser and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been briefing all Senators on what is taking place, what has taken place, what will take place and have again reaffirmed the intention of the President to consult with the Congress before any change, particularly with respect to the implementation of any particular plan that might involve the commitment of ground troops, takes place. With that, Mr. President, I ask our colleagues to look very seriously at the long-term implications. Think of the kind of message this sends to Milosevic. Think of the kind of message this sends to our 18 alliance partners, if we were to continue to try to take this type of action on the floor of the Senate. Mr. President, I urge a rejection of this particular amendment and I yield the floor.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, Richard D. Fairbank, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Capital One Financial Corporation, delivered remarks at the Virginia Chamber of Commerce Congressional Dinner last month. Capital One, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, is one of the fastest growing private employers in my state. Mr. Fairbank's remarks offered invaluable insight into the challenges and opportunities the technology revolution is producing in both the private and public sectors, and I ask that they be printed in the Record. The remarks follow: Remarks by Richard D. Fairbank, Virginia Chamber of Commerce Congressional Dinner, April 29, 1999 Members of Congress, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Let me first take the opportunity to thank the Virginia Chamber for supporting Virginia's business community. It is an honor to join you this evening to share a bit of the Capital One story and give you my thoughts about the challenges facing the Virginia business community as we move into the 21st Century. First, a comment about Virginia. What a wonderful state we live in! I am reminded of that everyday. The irony is, Virginia was not where I was supposed to live. I grew up in California, and thought I would always live in California. When I graduated from business school, I applied only to California firms, except for one company in D.C., and only because they were just about to start a San Francisco office. When my wife and I came out here, we fell in love with Virginia, and never went to that San Francisco office. So now we've been Virginians for 18 years, and we're here to stay. My wife and I and our four children live right here in Fairfax County. And our larger family--our COF family--now numbers 8,000 associates in Virginia--in Richmond, Chesterfield, Fredericksburg and Northern Virginia. Virginians have a wonderful blend of Southern charm and tradition mixed with a very positive spirit that believes in possibility. It's a magical combination. It's made Virginia a great home for COF. Capital One's growth has at times surpassed our capacity to hire here in Virginia, so we have expanded into Florida, Texas, Washington State, Massachusetts and the UK. But our first choice is always to grow as much as we can right here at home. Just last year, we added 3,500 new jobs here in Virginia. This year we've announced we're adding another 3,000 new jobs in Virginia, but truth be told, we'll probably exceed that number significantly. Tonight I've been asked to talk about how the business world is changing, using Capital One as an example. I think the story of Capital One is a story of what happens when a band of believers fixates on a vision of how the world is changing, and pours everything they have into getting there. Today, Capital One is one of the fastest growing companies in the country. But it wasn't always that way. In fact if you had asked anyone 12 years ago to bet even one dime on Nigel Morris and myself and the dream we had, you wouldn't have found many takers. I know that for a fact. Because we were out there asking. And they weren't taking. Our dream was this. We believed information technology could revolutionize the way marketing is done. The most basic truth of marketing is that every person has unique needs and wants. Yet from the beginning, companies have tended to respond to those needs with a one-size fits-all approach, because they can't accommodate the unique needs of thousands or millions of customers. But we saw the possibility to change all that. To use technology and scientific testing to deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time and at the right price--a strategy we call mass customization. And we saw the credit card as a perfect candidate for this strategy. Ten years ago, virtually every credit card in the U.S. was priced at 19.8 percent interest rate with a $20 fee. Yet people varied widely in their default risk, their financial circumstances and their needs. Our dream was to build a high-tech information-based marketing company to change all that. The problem was we had no money and no experience in the credit card business. We needed a sponsor. So, Nigel and I embarked on a national journey to every financial institution that would talk to us. The good news is that we got audiences with the top management of 20 of the top 25 banks in America. The bad news is that every one of them rejected it. But finally, a year into our journey, we found a sponsor right here in our backyard. Signet Bank in Richmond. And so Capital One was born. For years we worked to build the business, to build the technology and operations to customize decision-making at the individual account level. Four years into it, we still had no success. Yet Signet never lost faith, despite nearly going under themselves with real estate loan problems. Finally, we cracked the code of mass customizing credit cards. And in 1992 we launched credit cards at dramatically lower prices for consumers with good credit. And we've never looked back. Today we have thousands of product variations for our customers. Including products like our Miles One card that gives mileage credit on any airline, with no blackout period, and with a 9.9 percent fixed interest rate. We can price this low because we use technology and information to make sure that our low-risk customers don't have to subsidize high-risk customers. By 1994, we had grown to 6 million customers. Signet Bank spun off Capital One, and we became a fully independent company. But our dream was just beginning. Because we never defined ourselves as a credit card company. We're a technology-based marketing company. So, we have taken this very same strategy and expanded into other financial products like deposits, installment loans and auto loans. We've also taken our strategy internationally to the UK and Canada so far. And, we even entered the telecommunications industry, creating a company called America One, where we are marketing wireless phones. While everyone else markets wireless phones through stores, we are selling direct, tailoring each offer to our customers' needs. The strategy appears to be working. We are now in 41 states. And America One is now the largest direct marketer of wireless phones in the U.S. Our next frontier at Capital One is the Internet, which is a perfect medium for our strategy of information-based mass customization. We are mobilizing a major effort to be a big player in the Internet. So from credit cards to wireless phones, from the U.S. to the UK, and from the mailbox to the Internet, we've been able to keep the growth going at Capital One. We now have 18 million customers, and are growing by 15,000 customers a day. Capital One's success in many ways has come simply from understanding and embracing the inexorable implications of the technology revolution. First, that marketing will be revolutionized. And second, that technology is changing the leverage of the human mind. This insight has massive implications for human resources. One hundred years ago, in factories and farms, the smartest or most educated workers were not necessarily the most productive. But the computer and the Internet can take the human mind to a quantum new level. In the technology age, the key asset in a company is its knowledge capital. And to us, this meant that our greatest imperative is recruiting and developing incredibly talented workers. If there's one thing that is talked about the most and delivered upon the least, it is this--recruiting the best people. At Capital One, we have made it the number one corporate imperative. In fact, I believe that the single biggest reason for Capital One's success is a totally fanatical commitment to recruiting. It is the most important job for every executive and manager in the company. The average executive at Capital One spends about one full day a week recruiting. It's an incredible commitment. Our future depends on it. So that's the Capital One story. I believe that many of the things I've said about Capital One have direct relevance to Virginia and its challenges. Like Capital One, Virginia is enjoying exceptional growth, fueled significantly by being a leader in technology. The good news is that the entire Commonwealth is benefiting from the booming economy. It seems that economic expansions are announced every week in Virginia. But Virginia cannot rest on its laurels. While Virginia has done a good job at attracting high quality, high salaried jobs providing unprecedented opportunities for all Virginians, we continue to face many challenges that need attention from both our political and business leaders. Let me mention just a few . . . The greatest challenge for Virginia's rapidly growing companies is to attract and retain the most talented employees who have the technical skills to lead our businesses into the 21st century. There are nearly 25,000 unfilled technology related jobs in Northern Virginia alone and the Department of Commerce predicts that nearly every new job created from now on will require some level of technology expertise. This poses the greatest threat to Virginia's economic growth. We must start with quality education. Virginia already has world-class institutions of higher learning, and I am pleased that Capital One is tapped into this talent. Many companies, such as ours, are partnering with our university system to help design curriculum and training for a multitude of jobs. We also offer a full tuition reimbursement plan to every one of our 11,000 associates to encourage them to seek continuing education. Also, to help address our acute shortage of technology workers, we offer our non-technical associates the opportunity to be retrained and shifted into one of our many unfilled technology jobs. I am pleased that many of our associates have taken us up on these opportunities. But Capital One can't get there from here simply by training and developing our associates. It certainly will not meet our long-term needs. We need to recruit on a massive scale. Simply put, Virginia's universities are not producing enough technology graduates to meet the demands of companies like Capital One. This forces companies to look elsewhere to meet their needs for technology workers. And elsewhere includes overseas. Nations like India and China are producing many more engineering and technology degrees than the United States. Many of the leading technology companies are building massive programming shops in those countries, sending the programming specifications from the US. We need to reverse that trend and work with our universities to produce more technology graduates here at home. However, this will not happen overnight. In the interim, in order to meet our current needs, our immigration policies must be flexible. Congress provided a small measure of help last year by raising the cap on H1-B visas thereby allowing more high tech workers from outside the United States to come into the country. Clearly, this is a step in the right direction. But, much more must be done if we are going to meet the needs of Virginia's growing high-tech industry. Growing up in the San Francisco mid-peninsula, I witnessed firsthand the development of Silicon Valley--now the technology capital of the world. The same thing can happen here. We are well underway. In fact, the Internet revolution has its roots in Virginia. Virginia is already the home to more than 2,500 technology businesses that employ more than 250,000 people. It includes AOL, UUNET, and P-S-I Net. With more than half the Internet traffic flowing through Virginia, we must continue to expand on our reputation as a technology center and the Internet hub of the United States. Let's build upon our fast start. While Virginia owns the infrastructure of the Internet, with the exception of AOL and a few others, we do not have a major presence in marketing e-commerce. That means more dot/ com companies. YAHOO!, Amazon.com, EBAY, Charles Schwab and most other leading e-commerce firms are not located here in Virginia. These businesses are redefining retail channels-- and we must make certain that Virginia cultivates and attracts these types of companies. We need to be more than the infrastructure backbone of the Internet. The growth of e- commerce is just beginning. And already, it is affecting everyone, everywhere, everyday. Business will never be the same again. And new economic realities lead to new political realities. Our public policies must give this new technology and way of doing business time to develop. For example, as the Internet revolution is exploding, some have suggested that we create taxes on Internet transactions. I believe that would be a big mistake. I know that Governor Gilmore is currently leading a Commission studying Internet taxation issues on the national level. Their decisions can have a lot of impact on a rapidly growing industry still in its infancy. With sound legislation, such as the Internet Tax Freedom Act, companies are better positioned to grow and attract consumers into this new business channel. All these new technologies also bring a need to act responsibly with our customers' information. Information is the lifeblood of companies like Capital One, who use it to tailor products for the individual consumer at the best possible price. It's why we have been able to help bring down the cost of credit cards and other products--and simplify the process of obtaining them. The same is true for the Richmond- based grocery store UKROPS, Geico, EBAY and thousands of other companies. We must find a balance between the clear economic benefits that derive from access to information and the responsibility we all owe to our customers to safeguard their personal information. Companies need to lead the way. Like many companies, Capital One has developed a comprehensive privacy policy to ensure that our customers' personal information is used appropriately with very clear limitations. While we must be vigilant about consumers' privacy, I believe that restrictive legislation in this area would turn back the clock and actually hurt consumers. We also must be prepared to meet the basic day-to-day demands that a fast-growing economy will place on Virginia and its communities. While technology and e-commerce are making the world a smaller place, the reality is that people will still need to get to work. With a booming national economy and low unemployment, our workers have choices. If they cannot get to and from their places of employment, these highly skilled individuals will relocate. You can read the survey results or simply talk to your employees: transportation is most often cited as the number one quality- of-life issue by most working people, especially here in Northern Virginia. Thanks to the hard work of the Virginia Delegation more Federal dollars are flowing to Virginia than ever before for transportation. We must continue to work together to address this issue. So those are a few of my thoughts of the biggest challenges and opportunities we face as we move into the 21st century. The world is changing so fast, it's hard to make sense of it all, and to know where we all fit in. We can't predict the future. But, I believe that one can identify a few trends that are absolutely inexorable. The story of Capital One is an example of doing that. The key for Capital One has been to see a few of those inexorable trends and try to get there first. No matter what it took. Whether or not we had the skills or market portion to make it happen. Because we had destiny on our side. Many people and many companies and many politicians don't think this way. They tend to think incrementally. That's a risky cause of action in a world that's changing so fast. Virginia is in a great position to the lead the way into the 21st century. Let's make sure we think big and do what it takes to get there. Thanks.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from West Virginia and the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee. Like our other colleagues, I commend him and the distinguished Senator from Alaska for their hard work on this particular proposal we will be voting on today. I regret that I am not able to support this particular bill because there is so much in it that I do support. I clearly recognize the critical need for additional spending for our military. Indeed, we are not spending enough on our military today, even with the emergency spending that is legitimately included in this bill for the crisis in Kosovo. We are going to have to spend even more if we are going to meet our commitments around the world and provide the national security that we're expected to provide--and indeed that we profess to be able to provide. We are not spending enough money on ships, or planes, or ammunition, or on quality of life improvements for members of our Armed Services. We are going to have to address those needs, even beyond what is provided in this bill. I am embarrassed by the fact that we're just now getting around to funding the emergencies that occurred as a result of Hurricane Mitch, and the needs of our farmers are acute and critical. There is simply no excuse for the delay in providing the emergency funding in these areas. The concern I have is with the process. We cannot continue to do business this way. If we determine that this is an emergency spending measure, we ought to make sure that what we are funding are true emergencies and take care of our other priorities through the normal authorization and appropriations process. We have the promise of a surplus. We ought not to abandon the fiscal responsibility that brought us that promise and has given us the chance to make real progress on debt reduction. We should not use the fact that we have our men and women in harm's way overseas as an excuse to go on a spending binge here at home. Many of the projects in this bill have merit. If it is an emergency, it ought to be in this bill. And we ought to take out the nonemergency spending, pass a clean bill, and get the emergency spending where it is needed, especially to our military. In short, Mr. President, providing substantial emergency funding for our troops in Kosovo is the right thing to do. Providing long-overdue emergency funding for the victims of Hurricane Mitch is the right thing to do. And providing desperately needed emergency funding for our nation's farmers is the right thing to do. But combining these legitimate emergency requests with billions of dollars of nonemergency spending--no matter how meritorious the individual project--is the wrong way to do it. With that, I yield back any time I may have. With great regret, I announce that I am unable to support the bill, although I fully support many of the priorities the bill includes.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 319

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I rise today to salute a member of our Senate family, and a fellow Virginian, Lyttleton Macon Yates, Sr. Lyt Yates--of the Sergeant at Arms, Printing Graphics and Direct Mail Branch--will retire on July 25, 1999 after twenty-seven years of loyal service to the United States Senate. He started his career on May l5, 1972 as a Computer Operator with the Sergeant at Arms Computer Center, and has worked his way up the ladder to his current position as Supervisor. As a valuable member of the Computer Center team, he was instrumental in assisting with the creation of payroll forms, letterhead and other Senate forms still in use today. Over the years, Lyt has enjoyed working with Senate staff--assisting with countless individual requests, solving problems, and seeing the job through to completion. He is looking forward to retirement with his wife, Joanna, in Midland, Virginia. His future plans include, traveling, wood carving and spending time with his eight grandchildren. On behalf of his Senate family, I thank Lyt Yates for nearly three decades of outstanding and dedicated service to the United States Senate--and I wish him well in the years ahead.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. I thank the Senator from Vermont. I had an opportunity prior to the offering of this amendment to make a statement about the amendment. I will give the other side an opportunity to speak.

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I will be happy to yield 2 minutes for a response.

Mr. ROBB. The Senator from Minnesota would like to respond as well. I will say, again, to address the specific concern raised by the Senator from Utah with respect to the duplication, this is an effort to provide one-shot, one-stop assistance to States, localities, individuals and others who need assistance who are currently uncovered by any of the programs that are in effect. If this program is as effective as we believe it can and will be, it may be that some of the other programs will ultimately be folded into this protection. We do not need 100 or several hundred different hotlines. They are desirable if the local jurisdiction can afford them. In this case, we will have a national clearinghouse, a national hotline. We will have the coordination of the Department of Justice and the Department of Education. That is what we are trying to accomplish in a single bill.

Mr. ROBB. I am pleased to yield to the Senator from Utah.

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I had appeared on two previous occasions today believing that would be the time at which amendments would be accepted only to find that that had changed. Because I, like the Chair, have responsibilities with the defense authorization committee and subcommittee markups, I may be absent when that time eventually arises. I rise now to discuss, rather than offer, an amendment, which I will offer as soon as we are permitted to do so, that I hope will add an essential component to the larger debate we have begun about school violence and juvenile justice. Given the last year of school tragedies in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oregon, and now Colorado, discussions about seemingly random acts of school violence have moved from the school board meeting rooms to the kitchen tables of America. Our dialog has encompassed everything from Internet use and video games to gun control. If anything positive has resulted from these tragedies, it is that we, as a nation, have finally started to focus on school violence by acknowledging that this is a multifaceted problem demanding multifaceted solutions. Unfortunately, the issue of violence in our schools is not new. Six years ago, I stood in this Chamber to talk about school violence and offered an amendment to create a 2-year commission to study school violence. I acted in response to shootings that involved students and took place in the Norfolk area of Virginia. When I spoke in 1993 about school violence, I mentioned that we had experienced a cultural change. In fact, I brought this very chart to the floor to illustrate that point. In 1940, public schoolteachers were asked to cite the top disciplinary problems they dealt with on a routine basis. The list included: Talking out of turn, chewing gum, students making noise, running in the halls, cutting in line, dress code violations, and littering. The same list of routine disciplinary problems in 1990 looked like this: Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, and assault. That was 1990. If the same survey were done today, I suspect assault would rank even higher on the list. In the 1996-1997 school year, 43 percent of our Nation's schools had no incidents of crime at all. For those that did, the vast majority of crime involved theft and vandalism. But despite these facts, in the last year alone, 40 people have died as a direct result of school shootings. The most serious of them, of course, occurred 3 weeks ago today at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. The most common questions asked following incidents of school violence are: Why? and, What could have been done to spot the warning signs and intervene before it was tragically too late? In an effort to better educate school districts across the country about how to develop violence prevention and intervention strategies, the Secretary of Education and the Attorney General last August issued a comprehensive guide entitled ``Early Warning, Timely Response.'' The guide was developed with the help of experts from law enforcement, education, juvenile justice, mental health, and other social services and was based upon extensive research about violence prevention plans. The emphasis of this guide is communitywide involvement. Our children come into contact every day not only with us as parents, but also with teachers, administrators, pastors, bus drivers, coaches, counselors, and so many others. We all have a responsibility to help parent and guide our Nation's children. Furthermore, we all know that recognizing the warning signs of stress, depression, substance abuse, and violent behavior starts at home and extends well into our communities. We, as public officials, have a responsibility to work with States and communities to ensure that we are doing all we can to keep our schools safe. That is the thrust of the amendment I plan to offer. It is about the Federal Government becoming a better, more responsible partner with States and localities to combat school violence in America. I use the word ``partner'' because there is not a single requirement that States or localities participate at all. Instead, this proposal is about providing the sources and expert advice to States and communities and schools who worry today about school violence and want to renew their efforts to fight it. For those of us on both sides of the aisle who care deeply about education, this amendment is a recognition that good schools are safe schools. In this spirit, the amendment I will offer, hopefully later today, establishes a national resource center for school safety and youth violence prevention and authorizes additional funding to communities to develop violence prevention and intervention plans and to expand mental health services and treatment programs. First, the national center that we envision will serve as an ``education FEMA,'' if you will. In the event of an incident of school violence, the center's experts would be dispatched directly to the school involved to provide emergency response services. The center's team of experts would provide crisis counseling, additional school security personnel, and long-term counseling for students and families who chose to take advantage of these services. Second, the center will establish a toll-free, anonymous student hotline so that students may report, without fear of retaliation, criminal activity or threats of criminal activity and other high-risk student behavior they witness or of which they become aware. For example, a student could call such a hotline to report another student's substance abuse or gang affiliation. The center would work with the Attorney General to develop guidelines about how to coordinate with law enforcement agencies to both relay the information and protect student privacy. The importance of this hotline became apparent to me during my own research on this bill, as well as during the visit I made with President Clinton to T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA, just 2 days after the shooting in Littleton. It is clear to me that there has been a void in our legislative approach to promoting school safety. While we have substantially increased the funding of school safety plans under the COPS program over the last 2 years, we need to do a better job of encouraging and teaching our children that students themselves also have a responsibility to report high-risk or threatening behavior of which they are aware in themselves or other students. But to effectively encourage this, we have to provide students with safe channels through which to report this information. A student who is aware of a plan to build bombs or knows that another student is suicidal should have a confidential way to report that knowledge. In the long run, an investment in prevention is an investment not just in the child who may be on the brink of pulling the trigger or throwing the bomb, but an investment in the safety of all our children who can all too quickly become tragic victims. Third, the center will provide training and technical assistance to teachers, administrators, parents, law enforcement personnel, and others in communities about ways to develop effective school safety strategies. Components include helping schools effectively utilize tip hotlines, assisting with threat assessment, helping create partnerships among police, schools, parents, and social service agencies, developing media and police protocols to handle emergencies and, very important, working with the Departments of Justice, Education, and HHS to help train teachers to learn to identify students at risk of bringing violent behavior into their schools. Fourth, the center will serve as a clearinghouse of information about model school safety plans across the country, with the center's staff available to offer a wide array of plans to a community seeking assistance, from increased use of surveillance equipment to a community case management process to deal with troubled youths. This includes the operation of a nonemergency, toll-free number for the public to obtain information about school safety. Finally, the center would conduct research about school violence prevention and the extent to which smaller learning communities help reduce incidents of violence in our schools. We can do all this for less than $100 million. That is the center's authorization in the legislation that we plan to offer. From emergency response teams, to the student hotline, to the teacher training to identify violent behavior in school, this small investment in an education FEMA is well worth the expense. In truth, however, nothing can ever compensate a family for the loss of a child. But we ought to be able to say to all communities throughout this country that we are doing everything we can to prevent these tragedies from happening in the first place. The second part of this amendment provides direct support to communities as they look for resources to develop or enhance their own school safety and youth violence prevention services. I believe communities will benefit tremendously from this amendment, because it authorizes more funding for comprehensive community-wide school safety plans under the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Program, an existing program that was enacted in response to the tragic incident in Jonesboro, AR. I will not go into detail about this part of the amendment because I know Senator Kennedy has been working on these issues for some time now and has particular expertise about the combined work that the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services have done with communities that have come together to improve or establish mental health services for violence-related stress and other types of community efforts. I certainly applaud the Senator for all he has done in this regard. He has been an outstanding advocate for children and families over the years. Let me conclude by saying as a public official and as a former marine, I have long believed that the first responsibility of the Federal Government is to keep our citizenry safe--safe from enemies both foreign and domestic. Americans have a right to be safe in their homes, on their streets, and in their workplaces. And our children have a right to be safe in their schools. Fear of violence should not threaten our children's learning environment. The bottom line is this: We cannot have good schools unless we have safe schools. As I said at the outset, there are many components of this debate about school violence and juvenile justice. We need to talk about parenting and values and teaching our children about respecting their lives and the lives of those around them. We need to talk about how we hold accountable those who endanger or harm our children. We need to talk about guns and the extent to which there are loopholes in existing laws that can be changed to better protect our children. But there is absolutely no question that we need to talk about prevention, and this amendment builds upon the work Congress has already done in the area of prevention. This amendment will be just one component of a debate that I hope we will all support to help our kids and their families, America's teachers and counselors, our law enforcement officials, and entire communities across our Nation who have one goal in common--to stop school violence before it starts. Here in Washington we can do our constructive share. We can provide expertise. We can provide resources directly to communities. We can empower communities to better protect America's children. We can, and we should. As I said on the floor last week, simply going to school should not in and of itself be an act of courage. With that, Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, under a previous unanimous consent order, I am to be recognized to speak on an amendment which I plan to offer to the pending legislation.

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, this bill is designed to address problems that are not being met at this particular point. The distinguished Senator from Utah makes the point that there are duplicative programs. There are many programs in many areas of the country, some statewide, some local, some in jurisdictions that can afford to provide the kind of services that this Senator would provide, but what this bill attempts to do and would do, if approved, is provide a national center which will provide the hotline services that many school districts simply cannot afford. Many States are indeed putting hotlines together. In my State yesterday, the Governor announced the establishment of a hotline, but a number of States do not have them; many local jurisdictions do not have them. This will provide for the States that do not have the resources to meet these needs, not only with respect to the hotline, but with respect to providing technical assistance, providing any kind of help that the particular school or students who recognize a need for assistance might designate. It will not require anything. It will not compel any jurisdiction to take on any new responsibilities, nor use any of the facilities that are available. But it will provide at one place the kind of technical response which can respond to these emergencies when they occur so that we have the expertise immediately available in terms of emergency response, we have the type of expertise that can assist school systems and other districts in putting together their own plans to deal with problems that fall into this particular area. With respect to the other part of the bill, I yield now to the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, who is the author of that particular provision.

Mr. ROBB. How much time remains under the control of the Senator from Virginia?

Mr. ROBB. I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts such time as he may need of that 3 minutes 20 seconds.

Mr. ROBB. I see the Senator from Delaware approaching. Does he desire to speak on this? In that case, I think the differences have been explored. Once again, I suggest to you that this is an attempt to codify and collect in one place the wisdom of those professional agencies and institutions which we look to for guidance in this particular area to address the problem the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts has related to us and which all of us know in terms of our personal experience is a very serious problem that cannot be ignored and simply cannot be solved solely by locking people up, no matter how much we might think that actually addresses the problem. So I would again observe that this is a desire to make a collective opportunity available for those institutions that may not have the resources to take advantage of the various provisions of this bill and to provide additional funding for a program that has been demonstrated to work. With that, I yield back----

Mr. ROBB. I yield whatever time remains to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be permitted to speak in morning business.

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to introduce legislation that I have been working on for several months and had not planned to introduce until later this year when the Senate considers the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. However, the tragic event in Littleton has moved everyone's timetable forward. When I was Governor of Virginia, education was my top priority. I might note that I know it was a top priority for the Presiding Officer when he was Governor of Ohio. Since I have been in the Senate I have become increasingly concerned about school safety. We simply cannot have good schools unless we have safe schools. In 1993 I was able to get legislation enacted to create a commission on school violence. Regrettably, that commission was never funded, but it should have been. Two years ago the Senate approved an amendment I offered to allow COPS funding to be used for school safety. Last year we significantly expanded on that program, and I am grateful for the Senate's and the President's commitment to that important effort. Over the past year, a year in which we have had too many horrible tragedies in our schools, we have all noticed that the most common questions asked following an incident of school violence are: Why didn't we see it coming? What could we have done to spot the warning signs and intervene before it was too late? The legislation I offer today is designed to address one essential component of the school violence crisis: Prevention and intervention. In the coming weeks the Senate will consider a variety of proposals to address the issues of preventing school violence, how to manage crises when they occur, and how to punish those who engage in violence in our schools. I look forward to working with our colleagues to develop a comprehensive approach to school violence which incorporates this legislation and acknowledges the need for prevention and intervention efforts. Out of respect for the families in Littleton and deference to the majority leader's request that we not take up legislation until next week at the earliest, I will not make extended remarks at this time and will defer to a later time. For now, I simply offer my continued prayers for those in Littleton who are still coping with a tremendous loss to their community. Simply going to school should not be an act of courage.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to introduce legislation that I have been working on for several months and had not planned to introduce until later this year when the Senate considers the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. However, the tragic event in Littleton has moved everyone's timetable forward. When I was Governor of Virginia, education was my top priority. I might note that I know it was a top priority for the Presiding Officer when he was Governor of Ohio. Since I have been in the Senate I have become increasingly concerned about school safety. We simply cannot have good schools unless we have safe schools. In 1993 I was able to get legislation enacted to create a commission on school violence. Regrettably, that commission was never funded, but it should have been. Two years ago the Senate approved an amendment I offered to allow COPS funding to be used for school safety. Last year we significantly expanded on that program, and I am grateful for the Senate's and the President's commitment to that important effort. Over the past year, a year in which we have had too many horrible tragedies in our schools, we have all noticed that the most common questions asked following an incident of school violence are: Why didn't we see it coming? What could we have done to spot the warning signs and intervene before it was too late? The legislation I offer today is designed to address one essential component of the school violence crisis: Prevention and intervention. In the coming weeks the Senate will consider a variety of proposals to address the issues of preventing school violence, how to manage crises when they occur, and how to punish those who engage in violence in our schools. I look forward to working with our colleagues to develop a comprehensive approach to school violence which incorporates this legislation and acknowledges the need for prevention and intervention efforts. Out of respect for the families in Littleton and deference to the majority leader's request that we not take up legislation until next week at the earliest, I will not make extended remarks at this time and will defer to a later time. For now, I simply offer my continued prayers for those in Littleton who are still coping with a tremendous loss to their community. Simply going to school should not be an act of courage.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I rise to endorse emphatically granting to the Commander in Chief the authority he needs to achieve our military objectives and the objectives of our NATO alliance against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Rather than considering limitations to the President's powers, as they are interpreted through the War Powers Act, we ought to be singularly focused on aiding his ability to prosecute and end this war as quickly as possible. That is why I am an original cosponsor of this resolution permitting the use of all necessary force and other means to accomplish our goals in the Kosovo region of Yugoslavia. We are now weeks into an air campaign that may last months. Americans need to prepare themselves now, psychologically at least, for war. War is not risk free. We have to accept the fact and the responsibility that goes with it that we may well lose significant numbers of American lives, and we can't wait to see how it turns out before we risk taking a stand for which we will be and should be held accountable. The longer we exhibit a lack of resolve to see this through to conclusion, the longer it is going to last, the more it is going to cost, and the greater the risk that the U.S. and alliances' casualties will mount. In effect, Mr. President, we are exacerbating everything we purport to worry about--time, money, and, most importantly, lives--and we protract the suffering of those we are trying to save. We cannot and should not tolerate defeat or compromise simply because we lack the will and conviction to win. Doing so would injure the credibility we fought so hard to rebuild in Operation Desert Storm. It is simply inconceivable to me that we would allow the confidence restored in American military power in Iraq to be frittered away in the Balkans. Given the importance of this military campaign, I was stunned by last week's House vote on support for current operations, and remain deeply concerned that individual feelings about our Commander in Chief seem to be influencing votes that have consequences that are so much more important than any Commander in Chief. At the same time, I am deeply concerned about our unwillingness to accept responsibility for our position of world leadership. I regret that fewer and fewer of our citizens are willing to take necessary risks. There are beliefs and principles that our founders were willing to die for, and we cannot shrink from the challenge that we face today. This resolution simply gives the Commander in Chief the options necessary to implement our military objectives, and it is consistent with my belief that winning the conflict is of paramount importance. I commend Senators McCain and Biden for their efforts today and urge support for the resolution and opposition to the tabling motion. With that, Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ROBB

Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, when future generations search for ``lessons learned'' from America's 18th, 19th and 20th century military experiences, they no doubt will be accessible through dusty texts, dated documentary videos, or long-forgotten Congressional transcripts. I am concerned, however, that these lessons will not carry forward into the next century as an enduring reminder of the true costs, and the true benefits, of waging wars, on behalf of freedom and democracy. Increasingly, we have seen the gap between the military, and the rest of society, widen. Early in the next century, for example, we expect that less than four percent of the population will be veterans, down from over 11 percent in 1980. This means that fewer and fewer civilians will have a personal understanding of the military, making it more and more difficult to pass on to successive generations, one of our most powerful military assets--our experience. How then do we ensure that we don't ``repeat'' our past mistakes--and that we build on our past successes? Mr. President, I am joined by Senators Hutchison, of Texas, Kerrey of Nebraska, Hagel, Reed of Rhode Island, Smith of New Hampshire, Cleland, Abraham, and Hutchinson of Arkansas in introducing the National Military Museum Act. It will teach visitors about each of the major wars in which America has fought. Finally, it will help build pride, in our military, and the nation. The United States, through the fine stewardship of the Smithsonian Institution, operates over a score of excellent national museums--from the National Portrait Gallery, to the National Postal Museum, yet none of these are dedicated to the armed forces. In fact, the individual military services have many museums--the Army alone, has over 60. We also have military artifacts and battles represented in sections of some of the Smithsonian museums. Yet we do not have a single, prestigious, integrated national museum to tell America's military story and to honor our armed forces. This is an extraordinary shortcoming in the telling of our national heritage. By contrast, many of our key allies have national military museums. The British Imperial War Museum, and the Australian War Memorial, are two fine examples. The United States is a nation that has influenced world events decisively over the last century and will continue to do so for centuries to come. And it is a military power that has sought not to conquer other lands, but to bring freedom, and democracy to the entire world. History shows few if any nations, with such disproportionate means, employing force for such consistently altruistic ends. Yet we have no national place to tell, this extraordinary story. Mr. President, where, would a teenager interested in World War I, World War II, Korea, or Vietnam, go, to learn more about these wars? There really is no museum displaying artifacts from these wars, in a comprehensive fashion. We do in fact have several fine Civil War museums, but the lack of representations of so many other wars is remarkable. The idea of a National Military Museum goes back to the late 1800s. Several attempts to build this museum, (including a concerted effort by President Truman) failed, for various reasons: inadequate funding, post-war disillusionment, or blueprints that were too ambitious. Now, as we enter the 21st century, the time is right to display the enormous inventories of artifacts, that have been accumulated from this century--especially from conflicts since World War II. As now envisioned, the National Military Museum would include display sections for each of the military services as well as separate sections for each of the country's major wars. A spectacular atrium would house large items, from: missiles to ship sections to aircraft. Based on a review of numerous potential sites, this legislation authorizes that the new museum be located on the Navy Annex property just west of the Pentagon. Bounded symbolically, by Arlington National Cemetery, to the north, and offering a commanding view of the capital area, this location is ideal, and one of the last available parcels, in the area, suitable for a museum of this scope and importance. The museum would share a large 55-acre tract of land with an expansion of Arlington National Cemetery and possibly other veterans' memorials. The buildings currently on this land, are slated for demolition around 2015. The National Military Museum Act establishes a National Military Museum Foundation, which will be responsible for the design construction, and operation, of the museum. The Foundation's Board, will consist of 10 members, and their first action will be to conduct a study on the siting, design, environmental impact, and governing of the museum. The Foundation may recommend that the museum, become part, of the Smithsonian Institution. Assuming no Congressional action, upon receipt of both this study, and a General Accounting Office evaluation, the Foundation will proceed with final design preparations, and pursue fundraising. Construction would begin after demolition of the existing Navy Annex buildings. Mr. President, I am very pleased to introduce this legislative cornerstone, for building, one of the most important, and--I would anticipate--most visited museums, in the world. Let us honor our nation's military with this long overdue museum. Let us safeguard our past, so that future generations will know what has been done before--and what may have to be done again, in the future--to push back the forces of tyranny, and to preserve the freedoms, we are so fortunate to enjoy.