Paul Simon

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, this Monday we celebrated the 114th annual Labor Day, honoring working Americans for their daily contributions to the most productive economy in the world. Also on Monday, we learned from a new General Accounting Office [GAO] report that the U.S. Government has been routinely awarding billions of dollars in Federal contracts to companies that have repeatedly and flagrantly endangered the health and safety of their workers. According to the report, entitled ``Occupational Safety and Health: Violations of Safety and Health Regulations by Federal Contractors,'' the Federal Government in fiscal year 1994 awarded $38 billion in contracts to companies that were found to have committed significant Occupational Safety and Health Act [OSHA] violations in that fiscal year. In fiscal year 1994, more than 1 in 5 Federal contract dollars went to 261 companies that were found to have committed significant OSHA violations during that fiscal year. The violations cited in the GAO report were not merely technical errors or minor infractions. On the contrary, 35 fatalities occurred at workplaces of the cited companies during the period covered by the report. These fatalities included, just to cite examples from Illinois and the greater Chicago region, that of a Danville, IL worker who was sucked into a grain mill he was cleaning, and the deaths of two workers who were trapped in a fire at an Inland Steel Co. plant in East Chicago, Indiana. A supervisor involved in the latter incident committed suicide a few days after his coworkers had been killed. In preparing this report, the GAO investigators confined themselves to cases involving significant initial proposed penalties, defined as those of $15,000 or more. This definition narrowed the study to the most serious 3 percent of OSHA violations discovered during fiscal year 1994. Eighty-eight percent of the violations covered by the study involved at least one serious violation that posed a risk of death or physical harm to workers; 69 percent of the violations were deemed to have been willful. This report demonstrates that the Federal Government is not doing as much as it could to improve the worker health and safety standards of Federal contractors. The Federal Government has enormous contracting power: 22 percent of the entire U.S. work force is employed by Federal contractors. The Federal Government ought to use this power to encourage companies it contracts with to maintain high standards for worker safety and health. We already hold Federal contractors to high standards in a number of different areas. For example, Federal contractors must comply with Executive Order 11246, which requires them to develop affirmative action programs for their workers. Similarly, the Davis-Bacon and Service Contract Acts require Federal contractors to pay area- prevailing wages when performing Federal construction and service contracts. Given these requirements, it is not unreasonable for Federal contractors also to be held to a higher standard in the area of occupational safety and health. To address this issue, I have introduced legislation that would give the Secretary of Labor the authority to debar firms that show a pattern and practice of OSHA violations from receiving Federal contracts for up to 3 years. This legislation, the Federal Contractor Safety and Health Enforcement Act (S. 781), would provide strong new incentives for firms that contract with the Federal Government to maintain high safety and health standards. Even without legislation, there are steps the Federal Government can take to facilitate the exchange of information between OSHA and agency awarding and debarring officials to help improve contractor OSHA compliance. The GAO report recommends that OSHA develop policies and procedures, in consultation with the General Services Administration [GSA] and the Interagency Committee on Debarment and Suspension, to first, ensure that agencies share health and safety information on Federal contractors; second, determine whether and how it will consider a company's status as a Federal contractor in setting priorities for workplace inspections; and third, assess the appropriateness of also using this information with respect to companies receiving other forms of Federal assistance, such as grants and loans. The GAO noted that the development of such information-sharing between agencies ``would increase the likelihood that a company's health and safety record [will be] considered in decisions to award a contract or to debar or suspend an existing contractor.'' The report also noted that, under the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, OSHA already has authority to debar companies specifically for safety and health violations, but that this authority is seldom invoked because of the high cost of litigating debarment decisions. As the use of contractor debarment for safety and health violations becomes more common and courts develop a clear set of guidelines for assessing debarment decisions, we can expect that such litigation costs would decline. American taxpayers should not be expected to foot the bill for lucrative contracts to companies that flagrantly and willfully disregard the health and safety of their employees. We should put safeguards into place to ensure that Federal contractors are held to high standards of worker safety and health. Rather than using the power of the Federal treasury to reward lawbreakers, we should use that power to reward firms that demonstrate a strong commitment to the safety and wellbeing of their employees. I have no personal knowledge of the health and safety records of the Federal contractors discussed in the GAO report. The list that follows was compiled by the GAO. It contains the names of selected Federal contractors with significant OSHA violations and their corporate headquarters. The list follows: Parent Company and Headquarters Aluminum Co. of America, Pittsburgh, PA.\1\ B.R. Group, Inc., Orange, MA.\2\ \3\ B.T.R. PLC (All-Steel, Inc.), Stamford, CT.\1\ Bethlehem Steel Corpl, Bethlehem, PA.\1\ Biocraft Laboratories, Inc., Fair Lawn, NJ.\1\ Blaze Construction Co., Browning, MT.\1\ The Boeing Co., Seattle, WA.\1\ Boise Cascade Corp., Boise, ID.\1\ \2\ Chrysler Corp., Detroit, MI.\2\ Clean Harbors Environmental Services Inc., Quincy, MA.\2\ ConAgra, Inc., Omaha, NE.\1\ Cooper/T Smith Stevedoring, Inc., Houston, TX.\1\ \3\ Crowley Maritime Corp., Oakland, CA.\1\ Crown Central Petroleum Corp., Baltimore, MD.\1\ Dainippon Ink & Chemicals, Inc., (Sun Chemical), Cincinnati, OH.\1\ \3\ Dana Corp., Grand Haven, MI.\1\ Dell Computer Corp., Austin, TX.\1\ Federal Paper Board Co., Montvale, NJ.\1\ \2\ Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, MI.\1\ \2\ Fulcrum II Limited Partnership (Bath Iron Works Corp.), New York, NY.\2\ General Motors Co., Detroit, MI.\1\ \2\ Georgia-Pacific Corp., Atlanta, GA.\1\ Imperial Americas, Wilmington, DE.\1\ International Paper Co., Purchase, NY.\1\ \2\ Kohler Co. Mill Division, Kohler, WI.\2\ Kone Holding Inc. (Montgomery Elevator), Louisville, KY.\1\ Lockheed-Martin Corp., Calbasas, CA.\1\ \2\ National Beef Packing Co. LP, Liberal, KS.\2\ National Fruit Produce Co., Winchester, VA.\2\ National Health Labs Holdings, Loyolla, CA.\2\ P.M. Holdings Corp. (Purina Mills, Inc.), St. Louis, MO.\1\ Pepsico, Inc. (Frito-Lay, Inc.), Purchase, NY.\1\ Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., France\1\ \2\ Roadway Express, Inc., Akron, OH.\1\ Salvation Army, Alexandria, VA.\1\ Sears Roebuck & Co., Hoffman Estates, IL.\1\ Shell Oil Co., Houston, TX.\1\ \2\ Simplot J.R. Co. (S.S.I. Food Services, Inc.), Boise,

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, first let me acknowledge the leadership of Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy has really been, in all these areas of human rights, a distinguished leader. I really appreciate that leadership. I attended a meeting of the Illinois Society last night, people from Illinois who live in the Washington, DC, area. We started that meeting by saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. One of the things that has interested me is how rarely we do something like that anymore. As part of that Pledge of Allegiance, we said, ``one Nation, under God, indivisible * * *'' Some people want to make it ``one Nation, under God, indivisible,'' except for African-Americans. Some want to make it ``one Nation, under God, indivisible,'' except for Hispanic-Americans. Some people want to make it ``one Nation, under God, indivisible,'' except for Asian-Americans. Some people want to make it ``one Nation, under God, indivisible,'' except for people with disabilities. And some people want to make it ``one Nation, under God, indivisible,'' except for gays. I think there are a great many people who feel uncomfortable in this area. It is a word that Senator Hatch used. Let me comment first on the Defense of Marriage Act and then on the legislation that Senator Kennedy has introduced, of which I am pleased to be a cosponsor. The hate crimes bill that I introduced a few years ago, that is now law, has the FBI keeping track of hate crimes. The greatest number of hate crimes are against African-Americans, but if you look at the numbers of people proportionately, the greatest number of hate crimes are against gays in our society. The last thing we need to do is to divide America more, and the Defense of Marriage Act does that. A great many people do feel uncomfortable, and it is a hidden problem. I grew up in a family where my parents were active in what we then called race relations. I was not aware of this problem at all until I went into the Army. When I went into the Army, I was assigned to the counterintelligence corps. One of our jobs was to screen people for classified material. Let me add for those who argue about this today, people who were gay were drafted into the Army just as much as anybody who was not gay. For those who do not want to accept gays into the military, if you have a draft and you can be exempt if you are gay, I think we are going to have a lot of gays in our country, people who are going to list that. But I became aware that people could be blackmailed very easily who were homosexual. I gradually became more aware of the problem. I can remember in the House--the Presiding Officer may not have been here at that point--we had a House Member who used to introduce gay- bashing legislation, amendments, by the name of Bob Bauman, a Republican Member from Maryland. Then it turned out he was homosexual himself, but he felt compelled to do this. The number of crimes not only against gays, but the number of suicides in this country is a very real problem. I had an experience not too many months ago where a college classmate, a friend I had not seen for some years, stopped by, and as you do when you get together with a college classmate, we talked about our families. And he said, ``We had a very emotional experience.'' I asked him what it was. He said, ``Our daughter told us she was lesbian.'' In the course of it, he said, ``My daughter told me, `You don't think I would choose this.' She said, `I was born this way.' '' Senator Kerrey's comments are apropos. We know now from scientific evidence that there is a genetic basis, at least among men--and the assumption is this is probably true for women, too--for homosexuality. When I grew up, my father did not take me aside and say, ``Paul, you have to be interested in girls.'' He had to give me other warnings. But there are people who by orientation are interested in people in the same sex. Genetically, they are built that way. If, in this Defense of Marriage Act, we start defining marriage, who is to stop the Senator from Massachusetts or the Senator from Kansas or the Senator from Washington from introducing Federal legislation on divorce, for adoptions or other areas? We simply should not be getting into this area. Let me comment on Senator Kennedy's legislation. The statement Senator Kennedy put up there that was put out--I am going to mention the company's name, Cracker Barrel--I have not been into a Cracker Barrel restaurant since that woman testified, and I am not going to go into one until we pass legislation like this. But her separation notice read--let me repeat it again--``This employee is being terminated due to a violation of company policy. The employee is gay.'' That was a woman who worked as a cook, very low wages. When she testified before our committee, she was working part time cutting firewood. What kind of a society are we building? We have to have opportunity for people. I can remember when we first started talking way back when I was in the State legislature, the Fair Employment Practices Commission, ``Let's not discriminate against African-Americans or Jewish-Americans and others,'' and people said, ``Oh.'' They thought, ``My job is going to be taken away.'' And they were worried about a lot of things. It turns out we passed that and we lifted the economy of this Nation because people were not discriminated against anymore. I notice that among the statements that were signed in terms of our practice, Bob Dole, on April 14, 1994, signed a statement: ``The sexual orientation of an individual is not a consideration in the hiring, promoting or terminating of an employee in my congressional office.'' What is good enough for Bob Dole ought to be good enough for the country. The religious organizations--and I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, to have printed in the Record the statement of the United Methodist Church, the National Council of the Churches of Christ, The American Jewish Community, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Mr. SIMON. We have to make sure that ours is a society that gives opportunity to everyone. I want every page here--I do not care what your sexual orientation or race or religion or what your background is--I want you to have every opportunity. I have four grandchildren. I want them to have every opportunity. That is what America is all about, and that is what this legislation is about. We need an education. I still need an education. I am not as fully familiar--in the hearing that we had, I used the phrase ``sexual preference,'' and I was told by leaders of the community they prefer the phrase ``sexual orientation'' because ``preference'' indicates choice. And so I am learning. People were not made by God all the same. Some of us have brown hair, some of us red hair, some of us black hair, some blonde. Some were made with a different sexual orientation than most of us have, and we should not deny them employment opportunities. What happened to that cook in that Cracker Barrel restaurant should not happen to any American. That is what this legislation is all about, and I support it.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in expressing concern about language in the Appropriations Committee report on H.R. 3666, the VA, HUD, and independent agencies bill, which raises concerns about ``HUD's use of funds for * * * fair housing activities aimed at property insurance practices.'' The report concludes that HUD's activities duplicate State regulation of insurance and violate the McCarran-Ferguson Act by ``interfer[ing] with State regulation of insurance.'' I disagree with this view of the nature and effect of HUD's antidiscrimination activities regarding property insurance. Republican and Democratic administrations have recognized that without non-discriminatory access to property insurance, many hard- working Americans will be denied the opportunity to own a home. The Bush administration's regulations implementing the 1988 Fair Housing Act Amendments explicitly applied the act to discrimination in access to property insurance. This interpretation has been upheld by U.S. district and circuit courts which have ruled that HUD's enforcement activities in this area do not constitute a regulation of insurance and do not conflict with the McCarran-Ferguson Act because they do not ``invalidate, impair or supersede'' any state laws regulating the business of insurance. It is my expectation that nothing in H.R. 3666 or the accompanying report will be interpreted to diminish HUD's enforcement authority under the Fair Housing Act with regard to discriminatory property insurance practice. insurance redlining language

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I have great respect for my colleague.

Mr. SIMON. Will the Senator from Maryland yield 5 minutes to me?

Mr. SIMON. I thank the distinguished Senator from Maryland for her graciousness. I have great respect for the Senator from Ohio. No Member of the Senate has shown more courage. Any of you who have visited the Air and Space Museum and seen that little thing that John Glenn crawled into, I do not know very many human beings who would risk what he did. So I speak in opposition to his position with great reluctance. But my friends, we simply have to get hold of things. This morning's New York Times has an op-ed piece by Paul Krugman, a professor of economics at MIT. He says, in referring to the two candidates for President: The sad truth about this year's economic debate is that the biggest issue facing the Federal Government--the issue that should be uppermost in our minds--is not being discussed at all. Most of what happens in our economy is beyond the reach of government policy. In particular, the evidence suggests that it is difficult for the Government to have any visible effect on the economy's long-term growth rate. There is one thing, however, that the Government can and must control: its own budget. And it is heading inexorably toward fiscal disaster, as the baby boomers in the tens of millions march steadily toward the age at which they can claim Social Security and Medicare. True, the crisis is still about 15 years away. But we expect responsible adults to start preparing for their retirement decades in advance; why shouldn't we ask the same of our Government? Unfortunately, everything that a responsible government should be doing now--raising taxes, raising the retirement age, scaling back benefits for those who can manage without them (that means for the affluent, not the poor)--is political poison. It may be too much to ask the candidates to preach responsibility to the public, but we can at least ask them not to make things even worse by offering goodies the nation cannot afford. My friends, this debate is an illustration of why we need the balanced budget constitutional amendment. There are a lot of good things that we would like to do. If we had a $100 billion surplus, I probably would vote for a space station, even though the Aviation Week & Space Technology of August 26 starts off its story--the heading is ``Cost Increases Add to Station Woes''--with the first paragraph: NASA is considering ways to scale back early scientific work on the international space station to pay for cost increases that threaten to exhaust reserves for the project. There are a lot of things that we would like to do that we just cannot do. I think the space station is one of them. I happen to believe that both political parties are being irresponsible right now in asking for a tax cut. Would I like a tax cut? Sure. Would the distinguished Presiding Officer, my friend from Idaho, like a tax cut? Sure. We ought to restrain ourselves and not have tax cuts until we have the surplus. That means that we are going to have to restrain ourselves on some spending that would be nice but is it essential for our Government. And a space station is one of those things. I think we have to use some common sense. I say to my friend from Arkansas who is here that I am going to be leaving the Senate shortly. You are not going to get an amendment like this passed until we have a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. Until that time, candidates for office are going to continue to promise tax cuts, and we are going to vote for things like this that really do not make sense. I hope that one of these days we will recognize that Thomas Jefferson was right when he said we need fiscal constraint in the Constitution that we do not have. In the meantime, let us do what is right on this and say, it would be nice, it is not essential, and let us not vote for it. That is what we ought to do. Let me just add. I want to commend my colleague from Arkansas for year after year after year pursuing this. I know he feels like he is in the bottom of a well of no one listening. But if we do not push for this kind of restraint we are going to have fiscal chaos in this country. That is the simple reality. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, like most bills, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act contains both good and more worrisome provisions. Some of the better provisions, such as portability, are not perfect and others of importance, such as mental health parity, are now completely absent. One important provision in this bill that has not received much attention is administrative simplification. It sounds innocuous enough. It aims to cut administrative costs by standardizing the way medical information is electronically stored and transmitted. No one is against cutting health care costs. This standardization, however, accelerates the creation of large data bases containing personally identifiable information. All this information is transmitted over electronic networks. We need to be very careful about how safe and secure that information is from prying eyes. Some of it may be extremely sensitive and could be used in a malicious or discriminatory manner. Not only do we need to hold this information securely, we also need to give individuals control over who actually has access to their medical records. We have been working in this Congress this year to try to come up with federal privacy laws for medical records. Senators Bennett, Leahy, Kassebaum, Kennedy, Domenici, Wellstone and Mack have all been concerned with the need to craft meaningful privacy legislation. I commend their efforts in this area. It has been extremely difficult legislation to craft, however. The States themselves have enacted some medical privacy laws. For instance, several States have passed laws that protect the confidentiality of mental health records or HIV status. We should not preempt such protections. I am glad to see that the preemption of State law in this area has been removed from this bill. I commend the Finance Committee, and particularly Anne Marie Murphy of my own staff, for their work in helping to rectify this problem. I am still troubled by the possible time lag between the enactment of standardization and the development of privacy regulations by the Secretary of HHS. The way this provision is currently drafted, standards will be developed by standard setting organizations that are mainly business groups, solely on the basis of cost, within 18 months of enactment of this Act. HHS will submit to Congress detailed recommendations on standards with respect to the privacy of individually identifiable health information within 12 months of enactment of this Act. If Congress does not act on these recommendations within 36 months of enactment, the Secretary of HHS will promulgate privacy regulations within 42 months of enactment. There is, therefore, a possible time lag of 36 months between standard setting and privacy regulations. This puts the cart before the horse. Obviously, privacy should come first. I don t think there is one Senator here who would like to have his or her own medical privacy play second fiddle to business costs. Furthermore, this order of cost first, privacy later, may in fact be much more disruptive to business. For example, it does not make good privacy sense to use social security numbers as a unique health identifier; it would be far too easy for others to decode these. It might, however, make for easy, cost-effective, standardization. If the standards developed need to be fully revised to take account of privacy concerns, then business will be forced to standardize twice, with probably twice the expense. It makes much more sense to have the standards developed with both privacy and cost in mind and for the standards to be enacted after and in accordance with the privacy regulations. I would urge my colleagues to alter these dates and modify this section to couple these two very admirable goals of cost reduction and medical records privacy. In general, although there are weaknesses in this bill and it is far, far less reform than we need, I am pleased that we are finally moving ahead with modest initiatives in the area of access to health insurance. Many Americans will be helped by this legislation. It should be clear, however, to anyone who looks at what is happening to health insurance coverage in this country that this bill is just a first step of many we need to take to meet the health care needs of our Nation. This is especially true in regard to children, where we will fall even farther behind as a result of the Welfare bill we just passed, and in regard to equitable coverage of people with mental illnesses. Senator Domenici and Senator Wellstone deserve great credit for fighting for equitable treatment in coverage for the mentally ill. I hope they will win this fight in the near future. I will do everything I can to help in this effort before the end of this Congress. I hope it will also not be long before the Senate acts to ensure universal access to health care coverage for all children and pregnant women. More than 9.3 million children and half a million expectant mothers in our Nation have no health insurance of any kind. Projections are that by the year 2002 we will have 12.6 million children without coverage and nearly 5 million more may be added to that as a result of proposed changes in Medicaid. When we passed the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill earlier this year, the Senate accepted a sense of the Senate resolution I offered stating that the issue of adequate health care for our mothers and children is important to our nation's future and that the Senate should pass health care legislation ensuring health care coverage for all of our nation's pregnant women and children. The Senate must be held to account on this resolution. It is unacceptable in our rich country to permit these inequities to continue and to permit so many of the most vulnerable in our society to be denied assurance of even basic health care. While I applaud everyone who worked so hard to bring this agreement to the floor, I hope those who follow us in the next Congress will move on from here to make more fundamental progress toward the fair, just and accessible health care system all of our citizens deserve in this great Nation.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. I yield myself 30 additional seconds.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I yield myself 7 minutes.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, let's face it, our choice is: hurting poor people and gaining some votes in the process, or appearing to stand for something that we all know needs change and losing votes but not hurting poor people. My friend from Virginia, for whom I have great respect, says this is a helping-hand bill. The Urban Institute says we are going to put 2.6 million more Americans into poverty, 1.1 million more children. That is not the kind of helping hand we need. We already have 24 percent of our children living in poverty. No other Western industrialized nation is anywhere close to that, and we are compounding the evil. I am supporting Bill Clinton for reelection. In many ways, he leaves a good legacy. But let no one make any mistake about it, he is marring his legacy by signing this bill. He may gain a few more votes on November 5, but he is hurting history's judgment of what he is doing as President. This is not welfare reform. This is political public relations. I heard one of my colleagues, for whom I have great respect, say we have to change the system of children having children. Of course we have to change the system of children having children. But this bill does not do one thing in that direction. And it should be added that the birthrate among people who have welfare is going down, and going down significantly. Second, I say to you, Mr. President, we have about a million teenage pregnancies each year, about 400,000 of which end up in abortions, incidentally. What we know is those who are high school dropouts are much more likely to be involved in teenage pregnancies. You want to do something about that? Let us put some money into education, not this phony bill that is going to cause great harm. Will Durant and his wife have written great histories: ``Reformation,'' ``The Age of Napoleon,'' and so forth. But Will Durant wrote a small book called ``The Meaning of History.'' In that small book, in ``The Meaning of History,'' he said: ``This is the history of nations, that those who are more fortunate economically continue to pile up benefits, and they press down those who are less fortunate until those who are less fortunate eventually revolt.'' What are we doing here in this session of Congress? We are giving the Pentagon, this fiscal year, $11 billion more than they requested. We are going to have some kind of tax cuts that particularly benefit those of us in this Chamber who are more fortunate economically. And with this bill, for the next 6 years, we will be cutting back $9.2 billion a year from poor people. I am for genuine welfare reform, but genuine welfare reform requires providing jobs for people of limited ability and providing day care. I have a bill in that says you cannot be on welfare more than 5 weeks--in some ways, tougher than this--but then the Federal Government has a WPA type of job available. We screen people as they come in, and if they cannot read and write, we get them into a program. If you have no marketable skill, you get them to a technical school or a community college. That would be genuine welfare reform. But as Gov. Tommy Thompson has pointed out--a Republican, incidentally--if you are going to have welfare reform, you are going to have to put in more money upfront, not less money. I like Senator Feinstein's remark that this is the moral equivalent of a ``Dear John'' letter to the poor people of the Nation. She is, unfortunately, right. In October--the Presiding Officer is someone who has a sense of history--in October, we have Roosevelt History Month because we thought at that point we would dedicate the Roosevelt memorial. It looks like now it will not be ready then. But we will celebrate, that month, when we had a great national leader who lifted the poor people of this Nation. Two months prior to that, we are going to celebrate by pushing down the poor people of this Nation. Let us be very practical. A woman who lives in Robert Taylor homes in the south side of Chicago, desperately poor, lives in a public housing project, has three children, and with this bill--and she has very limited skills because she went to poor schools, probably can barely read and write--with this bill we are saying to her, you can at the most stay on welfare 5 years, maybe only 2, but we are not going to provide any job for you, we are not going to have any day care for your children. What does that woman do if she wants to feed her children? Does she take to the streets in crime? Does she become a prostitute? I do not know, nor does anyone else in this Chamber. Let me pay tribute to two people here, one who just spoke against this before, Senator Chris Dodd, who is the Democratic national chairman and who is interested in votes. But despite being Democratic national chairman, despite the stand taken by President Clinton, Chris Dodd stood here and said this is bad for the children of America. And Paul Wellstone, up for reelection, showing great, great courage.

Mr. SIMON. When my friend from Virginia, Senator Warner, said the States will protect people, I think of the bill we finally passed when I was over in the House to protect children who wanted to go to school who had disabilities. The States said, ``If you're in a wheelchair, if you're blind, if you're deaf, sorry, we're not going to force education for them.'' The majority of the mentally retarded were not being given any help by our public schools. The Federal Government came along and said, ``You are entitled to this.'' The Federal Government protected people with disabilities, and the Federal Government should protect poor people in this Nation. We are not doing it with this legislation. Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, a former staff member of mine, Alice Johnson, now with the National Institute for Literacy sent me a copy of an article by Richard Wolkomir that appeared in the Smithsonian magazine. It tells the story of Richard Wolkomir and another person teaching Ken Adams how to read at the age of 64. In some ways it is a sad story, looking at his background and looking at all the years that could have been enriched. But it is a story that ought to inspire all of us to do better. We ought to have a national effort on literacy. Mr. President, I ask that this article from the Smithsonian be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From the Smithsonian, August, 1996] Making Up for Lost Time: The Rewards of Reading at Last (By Richard Wolkomir) I decide simply to blurt out, ``Ken?'' I ask. ``Why didn't you learn to read?''Through the Marshfield community center's window, I see snowy fields and the Vermont village's clapboard houses. Beyond, mountains bulge. ``I was a slow learner,'' Ken says. ``In school they just passed me along, and my folks told me I wasn't worth anything and wouldn't amount to anything. Ken Adams is 64, his hair white. He speaks Vermontese, turning ``I'' into ``Oy,'' and ``ice'' into ``oyce.'' His green Buckeye Feeds cap is blackened with engine grease from fixing his truck's transmission, and pitch from chain-sawing pine logs. It is 2 degrees below zero outside on this December afternoon; he wears a green flannel shirt over a purple flannel shirt. He is unshaven, weather reddened. He is not a tall man, but a lifetime of hoisting hay bales has thickened his shoulders. Through bifocals, Ken frowns at a children's picture book, Pole Dog. He is studying a drawing: an old dog waits patiently by a telephone pole, where its owners abandoned it. He glares at the next pictures. Cars whizzing by. Cruel people tormenting the dog. ``Looks like they're shootin' at him, to me!'' he announces. ``Nobody wants an old dog,'' he says. Ken turns the page. ``He is still by the pole,'' he says. ``But there's that red car that went by with those kids, ain't it?'' He turns the page again. The red car has stopped to take the old dog in, to take him home. ``Somebody wants an old dog!'' Ken says. ``Look at that!'' This is my first meeting with Ken. It is also my first meeting with an adult who cannot read. I decided to volunteer as a tutor after a librarian told me that every day, on the sidewalks of our prim little Vermont town. I walk by illiterate men and women. We are unaware of them because they can be clever at hiding their inability to read. At a post office counter, for instance, when given forms to fill out, they say, ``Could you help me with this? I left my glasses home.'' Ken Adams is not alone in his plight. A 1993 U.S. Department of Education report on illiteracy said 21-23 percent of U.S. adults--about 40 million--read minimally, enough to decipher an uncomplicated meeting announcement. Another 25-28 percent read and write only slightly better. For instance, they can fill out a simple form. That means about half of all U.S. adults read haltingly. Millions, like Ken Adams, hardly read at all. I wanted to meet nonreaders because I could not imagine being unable to decipher a street sign, or words printed on supermarket jars, or stories in a book. In fact, my own earliest memory is about reading. In this memory, in our little Hudson River town, my father is home for the evening from the wartime lifeboat factory where he is a foreman. And he has opened a book. ``Do you want to hear from Peter Churchmouse?'' my father asks. Of course! It is my favorite, from the little library down the street. My father reads me stories about children lost in forests. Cabbage-stealing hares. A fisherman who catches a talking perch. Buy my favorite is Peter Churchmouse, a small but plucky cheese addict who befriends the rectory cat. Peter is also a poet, given to reciting original verse to his feline friend during their escapades. I cannot hear it enough. My father begins to read. I settle back. I am taking a first step toward becoming literate--I am being read to. And although I am only 2, I know that words can be woven into tales. Now, helping Ken Adams learn to read, I am re-entering that child's land of chatty dogs and spats-wearing frogs. Children's books--simply worded, the sentences short--are perfect primers, even for 60-year-olds who turn the pages with labor-thickened fingers and who never had such books read to them when they were children. ``Do you remember what happened from last time?'' asks Sherry Olson, of Central Vermont Adult Basic Education, who tutors Ken and hour and a half each week. I have volunteered as Sherry's aide. My work requires too much travel for me to be a full-fledged tutor. But I am actually relieved, not having sole responsibility for teaching an adult to read. That is because--when I think about it--I don't know how I read myself. I scan a printed page; the letters magically reveal meaning. It is effortless. I don't know how I do it. As for teaching a man to read from scratch, how would I ever begin? Sherry, a former third-grade teacher, gives me hints, like helping Ken to learn words by sight so that he doesn't have to sound out each letter. Also, we read stories so Ken can pick out words in context. Ken reads Dr. Seuss rhyming books and tales about young hippopotamuses helping on the family farm. At the moment, we are reading a picture book about Central American farmers who experience disaster when a volcano erupts. ``The people had to move out, and put handkerchiefs over their noses!'' Ken says, staring at the pages. He starts to read: ``They . . . prayed? . . . for the . . . fire? . . .'' ``Yes, that's right, fire,'' Sherry says. ``They prayed for the fire to . . . go out?'' ``That word is `stop,''' Sherry says. I listen carefully. A few sessions ahead, it will be my turn to try teaching. ``They prayed for the fire to stop,'' Ken says, placing a thick forefinger under each word. ``They watched from the s . . .'' ``Remember we talked about those?'' Sherry says. ``When a word ends in a silent e, what does that silent e do to the vowel?'' ``It makes it say itself,'' Ken says. ``So what's the vowel in s-i-d-e?'' she asks. ``It's i, and it would say its own name, i,'' Ken says, pronouncing it ``oy.'' ``So that would be `side.''' ``Good,'' Sherry says. Ken reads the sentence: ``They watched from the side of the hill!'' He sounds quietly triumphant. ``They-un,'' he says, in backcountry Vermontese. ``That's done it.'' After the session, I stand a few minutes with Ken in the frozen driveway. He has one foot on the running board of his ancient truck, which he somehow keeps going. He tells me he was born in 1931 into a family eking out an existence on a hardscrabble farm. His trouble in school with reading is puzzling, because Ken is intelligent. For instance, he says he was late today because he had to fix his truck. And now he launches into a detailed analysis of the transmission mechanisms of various species of trucks. Also, during the tutoring session, we played a game that required strewing word cards upside down on a table and remembering their locations. Ken easily outscored both Sherry and me in this exercise. Ken described himself as a ``slow learner,'' but clearly he is not slow. Sherry had told me he probably suffers from a learning disability. People with these perceptual disorders experience difficulties such as seeing letters reversed. Although their intelligence may actually be above average, learning to read is difficult for them. they need individual tutoring. ``It was a one-room school, with eight grades, so I didn't get much attention there,'' Ken tells me. ``It was just the same as the folks at home were doing when they kicked me along through the grades, and when you got to be 16, that's when they kicked you out.'' After he left school, he left home. ``Then you knock around, one farm to another,'' he says. ``I'd get $15 a week, and room and board.'' Besides farming, he worked in bobbins mills and sawmills and granite quarries. ``Then I was at a veneer mill in Bradford,'' he says. `` After that I was caretaker at a farm for six years until I had to give it up because I had heart attacks.'' Now he subsists on a $400-a month Social Security disability pension plus $90 a month in food stamps. He lives alone in a farmhouse he built himself more than 25 years ago, five miles up a mountain dirt road. He earns money for his medicines by cutting firewood, haying, digging postholes with his tractor, snowplowing an cutting brush. ``I'm doing odds- and-ends jobs where you can take your time, because the doctor told me I have to stop whenever I fell I need to rest,'' he says. He cannot afford electricity from the power company, but he gets what current he needs, mostly for lights by-- ingeniously--drawing it from car batteries. To recharge the batteries, he hooks them up in his truck for a day. He also can charge them with a diesel generator. He waits until prices dip to buy fuel for his generator and tractor. ``I've got a few maples around my house,'' he tells me. ``I'll find a rustedout evaporator, fix it up and make syrup--there's always a few things I can do, I guess.'' I ask how he's managed all these years, not reading. He says his bosses did the reading for him. And now a Marshfield couple, lifelong friends, help him read his mail and bills and notices. But they are entering their 80s. ``Now I've got to learn to read myself, as a backup,'' Ken says. To find out more about what illiteracy does to people like Ken, I telephoned the U.S. Department of Education and spoke with the Deputy Secretary, Madeleine Kunin. She told me that only 3-5 percent of adult Americans cannot read at all. ``But literacy is a moving target,'' she said. ``We figure the 40 million who do read, but at the lowest proficiency levels, have difficulty handling some of the tasks they need hold a job today.'' Kunin, a former Vermont governor, cited that state's snowplow drivers: ``Now they have computers attached, and they need a high school degree just to drive a snowplow.'' Ken arrives for his next session in a dark mood. It turns out his tape recorder, used for vocabulary practice, is broken, ``I can't fix it because the money's all gone for this month,'' he says. ``I had to go to the doctor, and that's $30, and it was $80 for the pills, and they keep going up.'' He says one of his prescriptions jumped from $6.99 to $13 in two months. ``I don't know if I'll keep taking them,'' he says. Illiteracy has condemned Ken to a lifetime of minimum-wage poverty. He brightens reading a story. It is about a dog, John Brown, who deeply resents his mistress's new cat. Ken stumbles over a word. ``Milk?'' Sherry and I nod. ``Go and give her some milk,'' Ken reads, then pauses to give us a dispatch from the literacy front: ``I was trying to figure that out, and then I see it has an i,'' he says. My own first attempt at solo tutoring finally comes, and I am edgy. Sherry has wryly admonished Ken, ``You help Richard out.'' I show him file cards, each imprinted with a word for Ken to learn by sight. He is supposed to decipher each word, then incorporate it in a sentence. I write his sentence on the card to help him when he reviews at home. Ken peers at the first word.``All,'' he says getting it easily. He makes up a sentence: ``We all went away.'' ``That's right,'' I say. Maybe this won't be so hard after all. I write Ken's sentence on the card for him. Then I flip another card. Ken peers at it, his face working as he struggles with the sounds. ``As,'' he says. During our last session, he confused ``as'' and ``at.'' Now he has it right. So he has been doing his homework. ``As we went down the road, we saw a moose,'' Ken says, composing a sentence. That reminds him that the state recently allowed moose hunting, game officials arguing that moose have become so plentiful they cause highway accidents. ``Yesterday, I come around a turn and there was ten moose, a big male and female and young ones,'' Ken says. ``They shouldn't be shooting those moose--they ain't hurting anyone, and it ain't the moose's fault if people don't use their brakes.'' I flip another card. ``At!'' Ken says, triumphing over another of our last session's troublemakers. ``We are at the school.'' But the next word stumps him, It is ``be.'' I put my finger under the first letter. ``What's that sound?'' I ask. When he stares in consternation, I make the sound ``buh.'' But Ken is blocked. He can't sound out the next letter, even though he has often done it before. ``Eeeee,'' I say, trying to help. ``Now put the two sounds together.'' Ken stares helplessly at the word. I am beginning to understand the deep patience needed to tutor a man like Ken, who began these sessions a year before, knowing the alphabet but able to sound out only a few words. ``Buh . . . eeee,'' I say, enunciating as carefully as I can. ``Buh . . . eeee,'' Ken repeats. Abruptly, his forehead unfurrows. ``Oh, that's `be,' '' he says. ``Be--We should be splitting wood!'' ``Was that what you were doing before the tutoring session?'' I ask, to give us both a break. ``Nope, plowing snow with my tractor for my friend who broke off his ankle,'' Ken says. That is arresting information. When I ask what happened, Ken says his octogenarian friend was chain-sawing cherry trees when a bent-back branch lashed out, smashing his lower leg. Ken, haying a field, saw his friend ease his tractor down from the mountainside woodlot, grimacing in agony, working the tractor's pedals with his one good foot. Ken himself once lost his grip on a hay bale he was hoisting. A twig poking from the bale blinded his right eye. Now learning to read is doubly difficult because his remaining eye often tires and blurs. These grim country stories of Ken's make my worries--delayed flights, missed appointments--seem trivial. I flip another card: ``But.'' ``Bat,'' Ken says, cautiously. ``Buh . . . uh . . . tuh,'' I prompt. ``But,'' he finally says. ``I would do it, but I have to go somewhere else.'' I write Ken's sentence on the card and he reads it back. But he stumbles over his own words, unable to sound out ``would.'' I push down rising impatience by remembering the old man in the woods, crawling toward his tractor, dragging that smashed leg. Finally, I put away the cards, glad to be done with them. Tutoring can be frustrating. Why are even easy words sometimes so hard to get? Now we look at a puzzle. On one side it has pictures of various automobile parts. On the other side are printed the parts' names. The idea is to match the pictures and the names. Before I can start asking Ken to try sounding out big terms like ``connecting rod,'' he points to one of the drawings. It looks to me like deer antlers. ``Carburetor?'' I guess. ``Exhaust manifold,'' Ken says. ``What's this one?'' I inquire. For all I know, it might be something Han Solo is piloting through hyperspace. ``Starter,'' Ken says. It seems to me he is gloating a little. He points again. ``Camshaft?'' I ask. Ken corrects me. ``Crankshaft,'' he says, dryly. It is a standoff. I know the printed words. Ken knows the actual objects to which the words refer. ``When I was a kid,'' he tells me, ``I bought an old '35 truck. Sometimes it had brakes and sometimes it didn't. I was probably 17. It made lots of smoke, so mosquitos never bothered me. But one day I got sick of it. I put it under a pine tree and I hoisted the engine up into the tree to look at it. The pressure plate weren't no good. And the fellow showed me how to fix it. That reminds Ken of a later episode. ``One time we had to get the hay in, but the baler was jammed. We had the guys from the tractor place, but they could not fix it. Finally I asked the old guy for some wrenches and I adjusted it, and I kept on adjusting, and after that it worked perfectly. I just kept adjusting it a hair until I had it. And then we were baling hay!'' No wonder Ken's bosses were happy to do his reading for him. Even so, in our late 20th-century wordscape, illiteracy stymies people like him. And working with Ken has me puzzled: Why do so many people fail to learn to read? I telephoned an expert, Bob Caswell, head of Laubach Literacy International, a nonprofit organization that trains tutors worldwide. He told me many nonreaders, like Ken Adams, suffer from perceptual reading disorders. But there are other reasons for illiteracy, and it is by no means confined to any one part of the population. ``People think adult nonreaders are mainly poor, urban minorities, but 41 percent are English-speaking whites,'' Caswell said, adding that 22 percent are English-speaking blacks, 22 percent are Spanish-speaking, and 15 percent are other non-English speakers. More than half of nonreading adults live in small towns and suburbs. Caswell cited U.S. Department of Labor figures that put illiteracy's annual national cost at $225 billion in workplace accidents, lost productivity, unrealized tax revenues, welfare and crime. One big reason for this whopping problem is parents who read poorly. Well over a third of all kids now entering public schools have parents who read inadequately, he said. ``Everywhere we find parents who want to read to their kids, but can't,'' he added. ``And a child with functionally illiterate parents is twice as likely to grow up to be functionally illiterate.'' But as I met some of Ken Adams' fellow students, I discovered all sorts of causes for being unable to decipher an English sentence. For instance, I met a woman who had escaped from Laos to Connecticut knowing only Laotian. She learned enough English watching Sesame Street (``Big Bird and all that,'' she told me), and later from being tutored, to become a citizen. I also met a man in his 30s who worked on a newspaper's printing press. He could not spell the simplest words. He said it was because, at age 10, he had begun bringing alcohol to school in peanut-butter jars. After his son was born, he turned to Alcoholics Anonymous and mustered the courage to seek tutoring. I met another man who had dropped out of school in frustration. Not until he tried to enlist in the military did he discover he was nearly deaf. The operator of a creamery's cheese-cutting machine told me he never learned to read because his family had been in a perpetual uproar, his mother leaving his father seven times in one year. And I met a farm wife, 59, who rarely left her mountaintop. But now, with tutoring, she was finally learning to read, devouring novels--``enjoyment books,'' she called them. In central Vermont, these struggling readers receive free tutoring from nonprofit Adult Basic Education offices, each employing a few professionals, like Sherry Olson, but relying heavily on armies of volunteers, like me. Other states have their own systems. Usually, the funding is a combination of federal and state money, sometimes augmented with donations. Mostly, budgets are bare bones. Many states also rely on nonprofit national organizations, like Laubach Literacy Action (Laubach International's U.S. division) and Literacy Volunteers of America, both headquartered in Syracuse, New York, to train volunteers. Laubach's Bob Caswell told me that, nationwide, literacy services reach only 10 percent of adult nonreaders. ``Any effort is a help,'' he said. Help has come late for Ken Adams. Reviewing his portfolio, I found the goals he set for himself when he began: ``To read and write better. And to get out and meet people and develop more trust.'' Asked by Sherry to cite things that he does well, he had mentioned ``fixing equipment, going to school and learning to read, trying new things, telling stories, farming.'' He remembered being in a Christmas play in second grade and feeling good about that. And he remembered playing football in school: ``They would pass it to me and I'd run across the goal to make a score.'' He mentioned no fond family memories. But he had some good moments. ``I remember the first time I learned to drive a tractor,'' he had said. ``We were working in the cornfields. I was proud of that.'' And a later notation, after he had several months of tutoring, made me think of Ken living alone in his hand-built farmhouse on ten acres atop the mountain. ``I like to use recipes,'' he said. ``I use them more as I learn to read and write better. I made Jell-O with fruit, and I make bean salad. I feel good I can do that.'' In our tutoring sessions, between bouts with the vocabulary cards, Ken tells me he was the oldest of four children. When he was small, his father forced him to come along to roadside bars, and then made Ken sit alone in the car for hours. Ken remembers shivering on subzero nights. ``He always said I'd never amount to nothing,'' Ken says. I ask Ken, one day, if his inability to read has made life difficult. He tells me, ``My father said I'd never get a driver's license, and he said nobody would ever help me.'' Ken had to walk five miles down his mountain and then miles along highways to get to work. ``And,'' he recalls, ``I was five years in the quarries in Graniteville--that was a long way.'' Sometimes he paid neighbors to drive him down the mountain. ``They said the same as my father, that I'd never get a license,'' he says. ``They wanted the money.'' It was not until he was 40 years old that he applied for a license. He had memorized sign shapes and driving rules, and he passed easily. ``After I got my license I'd give people a ride down myself,'' he says. ``And they'd ask, `How much?' And I'd always say, `Nothing, not a danged thing!' '' To review the words he has learned, Ken maintains a notebook. On each page, in large block letters, he writes the new word, along with a sentence using the word. He also tapes to each page a picture illustrating the sentence, as a memory aid. To keep him supplied with pictures to snip, I bring him my old magazines. He is partial to animals. He points to one photograph, a black bear cub standing upright and looking back winsomely over its shoulder. ``That one there's my favorite,'' Ken says. And then he tells me, glowering, that he has seen drivers swerve to intentionally hit animals crossing the road. ``That rabbit or raccoon ain't hurting anyone,'' he says. We start a new book, The Strawberry Dog. Ken picks out the word ``dog'' in the title. ``That dog must eat strawberries,'' he says. ``I used to have a dog like that. I was picking blackberries. Hey, where were those berries going? Into my dog!'' We read these books to help Ken learn words by sight and context. But it seems odd, a white-haired man mesmerized by stories about talkative beavers and foppish toads. Yet, I find myself mesmerized, too. The sessions are reteaching me the exhilaration I found in narrative as a child, listening to my father read about Peter Churchmouse. Our classes glide by, a succession of vocabulary words--``house,'' ``would,'' ``see''--interwoven with stories about agrarian hippopotamuses and lost dogs befriended. One afternoon it is my last session with Ken. We have wrestled with words through a Christmas and a March sugaring, a midsummer haying, an October when Ken's flannel shirts were specked with sawdust from chain-sawing stove logs. Now the fields outside are snowy; it is Christmas again. My wife and I give Ken a present that she picked out. It is bottles of jam and honey and watermelon pickles, nicely wrapped. Ken quickly slides the package into his canvas tote bag with his homework. ``Aren't you going to open it?'' Sherry asks. ``I'll open it Christmas day,'' Ken says. ``It's the only present I'll get.'' ``No it isn't,'' she says, and she hands him a present she has brought. And so we begin our last session with Ken looking pleased. I start with a vocabulary review. ``Ignition coil,'' Ken says, getting the first card right off. He gets ``oil filter,'' too. He peers at the next card. ``Have,'' he says. And he reads the review sentence: ``Have you gone away?'' He is cruising today. When I flip the next card, he says, ``There's that `for.' '' It is a word that used to stump him. I turn another card. He gets it instantly. ``But.'' He gets ``at,'' then another old nemesis, ``are.'' I ask him to read the card's review sentence. ``Are we going down . . . street?'' he says. He catches himself. ``Nope. That's downtown!'' I am amazed at Ken's proficiency. A while ago, I had complained to my wife that Ken's progress seemed slow. She did some math: one and a half hours of tutoring a week, with time off for vacations and snowstorms and truck breakdowns, comes to about 70 hours a year. ``That's like sending a first grader to school for only 12 days a year,'' she said. And so I am doubly amazed at how well Ken is reading today. Besides, Sherry Olson has told me that he now sounds out--or just knows--words that he never could have deciphered when he began. And this reticent man has recently read his own poems to a group of fellow tutees--his new friends--and their neighbors at a library get-together. But now we try something new, a real-world test: reading the supermarket advertising inserts from a local newspaper. Each insert is a hodge-podge of food pictures, product names and prices. I point to a word and Ken ponders. ``C'' he says finally. ``And it's got those two e`s--so that would be `coffee'!'' I point again. He gets ``Pepsi.'' Silently, he sounds out the letters on a can's label. ``So that's `corn,' '' he announces. He picks out ``brownies.'' This is great. And then, even better he successfully sounds out the modifier: ``Fudge,'' he says. ``They-uh!'' We're on a roll. But not I point to the page's most tortuous word. Ken starts in the middle again. ``ta?'' I point my finger at the first letters. ``Po,'' he says, unsure. As always when he reads, Ken seems like a beginning swimmer. He goes a few strokes. Flounders. ``Po-ta . . .,'' Ken says. He's swum another stroke. ``To,'' he says, sounding out the last syllable. ``Po-ta-to, po-ta-to--Hey, that's potato!'' He's crossed the pond. ``Ken!'' I say. ``Terrific!'' He sticks out his chin. He almost smiles. ``Well, I done better this time,'' he says. ``Yup, I did good.''

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, Prof. George Anastaplo of Loyola University School of Law in Chicago recently spoke at a convention in Las Vegas, commenting about legalized gambling and where we are going as a nation. It is a thoughtful presentation that I am appending at the end of these remarks. I have condensed his original paper somewhat. What is interesting to me particularly is to read a quotation from an 1850 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Phelan versus Virginia, in which the Court comments on lotteries as compared to private gambling. The Court said: The suppression of nuisances injurious to public health or morality is among the most important duties of government. Experience has shown common forms of gambling are comparatively innocuous when placed in contrast with the widespread pestilence of lotteries. The former are confined to a few persons and places, but the latter infests the whole community: it enters every dwelling; it reaches every class; it preys upon the hard earnings of the poor; it plunders the ignorant and simple. Mr. President, I ask that the condensed version of Mr. Anastaplo's remarks be printed in the Record. The condensed version follows: ``Private'' Gambling and Public Morality (By George Anastaplo) Gambling is in evidence all around us. For example, Texas bingo halls took in $63,000,000 in 1994. The pervasiveness of gambling is evident to anyone who follows sports: the ``point spread'' helps make each encounter of even mismatched opponents ``interesting'' and hence the occasion for wagering. Officials of professional leagues used to worry about the influence of gambling. For example, it was once argued, ``The values of football are hard work, disappointment, and honest competition, which must exist in an honest environment.'' Gambling, it was feared, would ``accentuate'' the pressures on football players beyond a tolerable point, and change a sporting event into a gambling spectacle. Now, the officials of professional leagues cooperate with the gambling industry to make sure that games are not ``fixed.'' But, it can be noticed, the sports contests that are gambled upon may often be intrinsically interesting--and can attract attention without any organized wagering. But lotteries, slot machines, and the like are far less interesting in themselves. Even so, they can be quite entertaining, even thrilling, for participants. Thus, it has been observed, ``Unlike narcotics, which creates droves of criminals who prey on the generally poor black community, the numbers game seems to many people to be just a potent, daily titillation for poor people seeking a rainbow's end.'' The head of an off track betting corporation, upon being accused of taking money from the poor, asked rather rhetorically, ``Who's to say what's gambling and what's entertainment?'' But then, nicotine, too, can be engaging for the addict, however deadly cigarette-smoking may be. We tend to be much more relaxed, as a community, about the damage done by gambling than were some of the earlier generations in this country. Tolerance for lotteries, in the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century gave way, because of growing abuses, to efforts by state governments to put lotteries out of business. In 1895 Congress provided support for these states with its own legislation, ``An Act for the Suppression of Lottery Traffic through National and Interstate Commerce and Postal Service, Subject to the Jurisdiction and Laws of the United States.'' A constitutional inquiry into what was indeed ``subject to the jurisdiction and laws of the United States'' elicited this question from the United States Supreme Court in Champion v. Ames: (The Lottery Case), 188 U.S. 121, at 356 (1903): ``If a state, when considering legislation for the suppression of lotteries within its own limits, may properly take into view the evils that inhere in the raising of money, in that mode, why may not Congress, invested with the power to regulate commerce among the several states, provide that such commerce shall not be polluted by the carrying of lottery tickets from one state to another?'' Further on the Court argued (ibid., at 357-58): ``[B]ut surely it will not be said to be a part of anyone's liberty, as recognized by the supreme law of the land, that he shall be allowed to introduce into commerce among the states an element that will be confessedly injurious to the public morals. . . . We should hesitate long before adjudging that an evil of such appalling character, carried on through interstate commerce, cannot be met and crushed by the only power competent to that end.'' It is evident how people in authority in the first decade of this century were expected to speak about such gambling as the lottery. The dissenting opinion in Champion v. Ames made no defense of lotteries, arguing instead that the power to suppress such ``a harmful business'' belong to the states, not to the national government. The majority of the Supreme Court in Champion v. Ames insisted that Congress should be able to act: ``. . . to protect the country at large against a species of interstate commerce which, although in general use and somewhat favored in both national and state legislation in the early history of the country, has grown into disrepute, and has become offensive to the entire people of the nation. It is a kind of traffic that no one can be entitled to pursue as a right.'' I mention in passing the likelihood that the current indulgences in lotteries and the like will, because of emerging abuses and harmful consequences, eventually be subjected once again to severe restrictions, In fact, it is already likely that lotteries would not be approved in many of the states where they now operate, if put to a popular vote by referendum. No one on the 1903 Court doubted that state governments could try to suppress lotteries if they wished. Phelan v. Virginia, 8 Howard (49 U.S.) 162 (1850) was cited to this effect. The opinion in that case, upholding an 1834 act of Virginia forbidding the sale of lottery tickets, includes this reminder of how lotteries were once regarded in this country: ``The suppression of nuisances injurious to public health or morality is among the most important duties of government. Experience has shown that the common forms of gambling are comparatively innocuous when placed in contrast with the widespread pestilence of lotteries. The former are confined to a few persons and places, but the latter infests the whole community: it enters every dwelling; it reaches every class; it preys upon the hard earnings of the poor; it plunders the ignorant and simple.'' This, then, is the sort of public opinion, running back to 1850 and earlier, that the Supreme Court could invoke in the opening years of this century. Now, at the end of the same century, not only are lotteries no longer spoken of in this fashion by officials, but the states of this Union are themselves in the business of running and vigorously promoting lotteries with ever-growing prizes. In Illinois, for example, the gambling industry contributed more than a million dollars to political candidates in 1995. Furthermore, it has been able to hire a former governor of the state and other former Illinois officials as paid lobbyists. This is not just an American phenomenon, of course. State lotteries are very much in evidence in Europe and elsewhere. The ``pools'' have long been a feature of British life. And something is to be said for legalizing (or at least decriminalizing) what is likely to be done anyway, thereby permitting both regulation and taxation. But is not the state's doing it, and promoting it, something significantly different from toleration, taxation and regulation? Is it as if the state had gotten into the business of producing and selling firearms, prostitutes, alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, and other narcotics? The newest gambling rage in this country, however, is not lotteries but rather casinos. These are licensed by states which count on a hefty cut of the revenues. Respectable newspapers prod their legislatures to take measures to counter the competition from the casinos in neighboring states. Consider, for example, the opening and closing sentences of a recent Chicago Sun-Times editorial (``Casino Shutdown in East Dubuque, Illinois Forces Gambling Issue,'' December 7, 1995): ``Two Illinois riverboat casino got no satisfaction from the Legislature last month when they asked for help in competing with Iowa boats across the Mississippi River. . . . While the Legislature fiddles, Illinois gaming revenue floats across the Mississippi to lucky Iowa.'' It is the practice of the gambling industry, by the way, to refer to the ``entertainment'' it offers as ``gaming,'' not as ``gambling.'' A recent Chicago Tribune editorial, supporting an effort to exact more revenues from riverboat casinos, begins with these observations (``Bet on Edgar's casino tax plan,'' March 8, 1996): ``Who says gambling doesn't pay? ``Last year the Empress Casino in Joliet hauled in $200 million, after paying off bettors. For Harrah's, also in Joliet, the figure was more than $190 million. ``Gov. Jim Edgar's proposed 1997 state budget would impose on those and other high-rolling casinos a graduated tax to tap some of the windfall for the state's schools--and rightly so. ``Under current law, all casinos are taxed a flat 20 percent of their adjusted gross receipts (that's what they have left after they've paid out winnings), regardless of how much money they're making. ``For a struggling operation (and there are some), 20 percent is too much; for the widely successful ones, it's a bargain, and for the state it's an inefficient approach to taxation of this protected industry.'' Immediately following this Tribune editorial about how the state should take further advantage of ``this protected industry'' is an editorial, ``No more cosying up to gangsters,'' commenting upon the conviction of eight members of a gang for distributing narcotics in Chicago and the suburbs. There is much to be said, of course, for the decriminalization of drug sales in this country, just as there has been for the decriminalization of gambling. But ``cosying up'' to, and relying upon, such activities, and even promoting them for their revenues pose questions that we seem to have lost sight of about the role of law in sustaining morality. Far from encouraging morality, we find ourselves catering to vices and trying to exploit them. To some extent, as we have noticed, gambling is a form of self-chosen entertainment less harmful in many ways than some other forms of entertainment. It tends to be for most of the ``players'' more self-correcting than several other forms of self-abuse, such as alcohol and drug addiction. But this sort of entertainment is not intrinsically satisfying, requiring as it does constant intensification in order to maintain its interest for participants. Thus, it has been noticed by a Haverhill, Massachusetts newspaper (``Opinionline,'' USA-Today, November 13, 1995, p. 13A): ``We've gone from the Sweepstakes era, with a once-a-week, 50-cents-per-ticket drawing, to state-run and fostered gambling industry which is worth millions. The state government is addicted to gambling, as government finds ways to avoid dealing with the issues of how much money it should spend and what tax it ought to levy. But something is drastically wrong when government becomes increasingly dependent on the misfortunes of its people to finance its operations.'' There is something ``realistic'' in recognizing that people will gamble, however much government attempts to suppress it. The considerable lure of gambling, sometimes with catastrophic consequences, has long been known. But what seems to be forgotten from time to time is the price paid, even in economic terms, for widespread gambling. The next decade should see the publication of more and more studies which expose to public view the hidden costs of the revenues that are derived from the gambling industry. These include the effects upon small businesses as large sums of money are siphoned out of the community by casinos. These hidden costs include, as well, the social services that have to be provided the families that are victims of gambling addictions. (The University of Chicago library has extensive entries under the catalogue heading: ``Addictive disorders update: alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling.'') Even more important than the economic and social costs of intensified addiction is what has been happening (but not only because of the gambling industry) to the authoritative opinions of the community. Hedonism is encouraged along with the notion of getting ``something for nothing.'' Self- centeredness is thereby legitimated, as may be seen in the growing scandal of the level of compensation these days for the chief executive officers of our major corporations (especially when their compensation is compared to that of their equally successful European and Japanese counterparts). It sometimes seems that shamelessness has become the order of the day. . . . A billboard recently on display in Chicago invited us to a Wisconsin Dells casino with the slogan, ``Come to the Land of Milk and Money.'' (This advertisement was illustrated by the drawing of a slot-machine showing three cows lined up: a real winner!) That, we are thus told, is the new Promised Land. The public should be encouraged in these matters to face up to two sets of delusions. This can help us face up in turn to what we are doing and how best to accommodate ourselves to the vices that human beings are bound to have. The first set of delusions has to do with what organized gambling depends upon: the systematic fleecing of the ignorant by the informed. Professional gamblers do not believe in gambling any more than professional panderers believe in love: gambling magnates are no more gamblers than casino riverboats are boats. The huge outlays that casino operators are willing to devote to securing licenses reveal what a treasure-trove the well-placed casino must be. The sooner that casino customers recognize that they are suckers, the sooner most of them are likely to entertain themselves some other way. The second set of delusions has to do with the notion that revenues derived from the gambling industry are a painless substitute for the taxation required for schools and other essential community services. Thus, it can be said that ``money raised through legalized gambling is one of the few forms of taxation that people voluntarily and cheerfully pay.'' (Geis, Not the Law's Business?, p. 237) But for an action to be truly voluntary a minimum of understanding is required. Consider, for example, these observations (``Take a Hard Look at Costs of Gambling,'' Chicago Sun-Times, September 28, 1955: ``Some $330 billion was wagered legally in 1992, up 1,800 percent from 1976. In Mississippi last year, gamblers wagered $29.7 billion, whole total retail sales were only $27.6 billion. Since casinos opened in Atlantic City in 1978, 100 of the 250 restaurants have closed, as have all the movie theaters.'' ``Despite evidence that gambling may not be the panacea once thought, legislators continue to legalize gambling as a way to bring money into state coffers. But what are its costs long-term?'' The need for reliable information here, to which I have already referred, may well be served by the current efforts in Congress, by Senator Paul Simon and others, to investigate gambling in this country. The thesis to be tested is that offered last year by a syndicated columnist (William Safire, ``New Evil Empire,'' New York Times, September 28, 1995, p.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, for many years I have had the privilege of knowing Ed Marciniak, now president of the Institute of Urban Life at Loyola University, who chairs the City Club of Chicago's committee on the future of public housing in Chicago. He had a commentary on public housing that was published in Commonwealth, which is really more of a commentary on poverty and urban life and what we ought to do. He says: The average income of families living in Chicago's public housing is $2,500. Broadly speaking, a fatal flaw of these projects is that they provide tenant families with little else than space: little in the way of opportunity or incentive to better themselves and their children. In most cities the high-rise projects, often with as many inhabitants as a small town, house not a single teacher, nurse, firefighter, manager, technician, or civil servant and offer few role models for the children, few standard-setters for the adults, and scant motivation to become self-sufficient. Recently Congress has approved a pilot project called Moving to Opportunity. Marciniak points out that it was based on a model in Chicago. He writes: Moving to Opportunity was modeled on a successful program sponsored by Chicago's Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. Since 1976, the Council has used federal funds to screen and then relocate more than 6,000 public housing families, most of them female-headed, into privately owned apartments, half of them in suburbs. By bidding good-by to public housing, most of the families not only bettered their living conditions but also greatly improved their children's opportunities. Among the suburban children only 5 percent dropped out of school, 54 percent attended college, and 27 percent found jobs. When people's expectations were raised and standards established, many started living up to them. Residential mobility made a difference. I have had a chance to observe this program and it is a great step forward. With a little creativity and sensitivity we can do much better in this country. What is required is that we recognize that we have to do something to address the problems of those who are the least successful now in our society. They lack success not because of lack of ability in most cases, but because they find themselves trapped. We have to open that trap. Mr. President, I ask that the article from Commonweal be printed in the Record. The article follows: More Than a Roof--Promising Moves in Public Housing (By Ed Marciniak) Not long ago, I attended a national housing conference where a featured panelist was a woman introduced as a longtime resident of public housing. She herself then noted, matter-of-factly, that she had lived in public housing for forty-five years. For me, that admission was mind-blowing. Even more startling, however, was the realization that her remark had not caused even a ripple of surprise among the subsidized-housing professionals in the audience. Nonchalantly, they had come to accept public housing's way of life as a given for which they felt no personal responsibility. It's unlikely that informed members of the general public are so complacent, whether as taxpayers concerned with the costs or as citizens aware of the pathologies associated with much public housing. People in the know are beginning to insist that government subsidies must not only meet their recipients' immediate needs but must be oriented toward helping them become self-supporting. Recent developments in and around Chicago, the area I know best, confirm that most public housing clients, the poorest of the urban poor, have not given up. Many have already helped themselves escape the trap that public housing has become. We now know that there are ways of giving them a chance to do so that have been tested, at least on a small scale, and found workable. These approaches deserve to be better known and more broadly applied. But, as will be seen, many questions need to be asked and answered. In a bipartisan effort, Congress is currently overhauling the U.S. Housing Act of 1937. Despite its noble purpose and promising beginnings with scattered, low-rise public housing, that legislation has produced something of a monster. Today the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD finances some 1.4 million apartments owned and managed by local hosing authorities. Another 1. 5 million privately owned units are federally subsidized through rent vouchers of one kind or another. Taking into account these programs and a host of others sponsored by HUD, the department has become the nation's largest slumlord. But the problem is not primarily the numbers or costs. Our giant high-rise public housing projects have become ghettos for the urban poor: conglomerations riddled with drugs, gangs, crime, and poverty, peopled by far too high a proportion of single-family households, some now in their third and fourth generation. The average income of families living in Chicago's public housing is $2,500. Broadly speaking, a fatal flaw of these projects is that they provide tenant families with little else than space: little in the way of opportunity or incentive to better themselves and their children. In most cities the high- rise projects, often with as many inhabitants as a small town, house not a single teacher, nurse, firefighter, manager, technician, or civil servant and offer few role models for the children, few standard-setters for the adults, and scant motivation to become self-sufficient. In recognition of these realities, Congress has persuaded HUD to begin dismantling these housing projects by giving residents, through rent vouchers, the option of living in privately owned housing in mixed-income neighborhoods; by scattering low-rise public housing throughout the city and its suburbs; by tearing down vacant high rises instead of rebuilding them; by using HUD dollars to attract other investment in additional housing for families of low and moderate income; and by stricter screening of a applicants and the prompt eviction of lawbreakers who are drug dealers or gang leaders. In April, HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros released a report on ``The Transformation of America's Public Housing,'' reporting these and other steps HUD is taking to ensure ``long-term recovery.'' Congress has approved, though as a pilot project, a ``Moving to Opportunity'' initiative, which offers public housing families a chance to move to scattered-site public housing in the city or the suburbs. This modestly funded program, already in operation in Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere, is being evaluated by its success or failure in escorting families into the urban mainstream. Important data will be collected about families who become home owners or leaseholders paying conventional rents. What were the bridges or escalators they used to leave public housing? Who provided the ladders of opportunity? Are the relocated families now in better housing? How many stayed in the suburbs, how many moved back to the city? ``Moving to Opportunity'' was modeled on a successful program sponsored by Chicago's Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. Since 1976, the Council has used federal funds to screen and then relocate more than 6,000 public housing families, most of them female-headed, into privately owned apartments, half of them in suburbs. By bidding good-by to public housing, most of the families not only bettered their living conditions but also greatly improved their children's opportunities. Among the suburban children, only 5 percent dropped out of school, 54 percent attended college, and 27 percent were enrolled in a four-year college. As for the parents, 75 percent found jobs. When people's expectations were raised and standards established, many started living up to them. Residential mobility made a difference. This good news is part of a larger movement toward depopulation of Chicago's family projects; occupancy has decreased from 137,000 in 1980 to 80,000 in 1995. More importantly, the council's work reflects a growing awareness among government and private funders of antipoverty programs of the need to find answers for certain key, long-neglected questions. How do people shed chronic dependency to achieve self-sufficiency? How do we reverse the nation's poverty rate, which declined in the 1970s and early 1980s but has been inching up ever since? How is the underclass turned into a working class? Accordingly, the role of the private sector serving poverty-engulfed neighborhoods is also under scrutiny. Churches, social service agencies, youth clubs, and counseling centers are being asked to link short-term aid to more lasting improvement, to do more than collect the statistics on Sunday attendance, on youngsters who use the gym, on Christmas baskets, on kids in day care, on midnight basketball, or on mothers in self-improvement classes. Funders want to know whether and how their dollars made a difference: How many of the families were no longer on public aid? What percentage of the teen-agers finished high school? How many adults found jobs? Similar questions can be and are now being asked about the persistence of homelessness. How did it happen that the homeless were made the immediate responsibility of local housing officials? Many of the homeless are jobless or the victims of a family break-up. Many were evicted from mental health institutions and dumped mercilessly on city streets. Some are vagabonds, down-and-outers addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. All may qualify as homeless, but what they desperately need encompasses a lot more than a space to live in. Too often, of course, discussion of such problems devolves into ideological debates, focused on ``Who is to blame?'' rather than on ``What is to be done?'' On homelessness, however, as with public housing, there are pragmatic initiatives in play. An example is Deborah's Place in Chicago, a shelter for homeless women but with a difference. From day one, the purpose of Deborah's Place has been to help the women return to a more normal lifestyle--a job, a family, or, in case of need, to a caring institution that matches the woman's special problem. At three different locations, each with a staged program. Deborah's Place works to ``help women leave the streets and shelters behind for new lives of independence, productivity, and well-being.'' As clients move up and out, they leave room and time for other women to be assisted. On ending joblessness, strategy can also make a difference. Suburban Job Link, with offices in Chicago's South Lawndale community and suburban Bensenville, uses a unique method for promoting upward mobility. On contract with relatively job- rich suburban employers, the organization buses workers to temporary jobs that often lead to ``working interviews'' for applicants who want to demonstrate their potential to fill entry-level positions. Factory owners and other employers are invited to hire any worker full-time without a fee, thus supplying the missing rung on a stepladder to year-round employment. Through its ``no-charge'' arrangement, Job Link will place 1,000 ``temps'' into regular jobs with benefits in the next twelve months. Finally, it continues to bus the newly hired until they arrange transportation on their own, through a car pool, for example. As a not-for-profit, Job Link is funded by government and foundation grants and by its own earned income. Another strategic point of entry for encouraging upward mobility has to do with school choice. Over the past decade it has become evident that nonpublic schools, especially those under religious sponsorship, have been remarkably successful in easing not only children but also their low- income parents into the urban mainstream. Nearly one of every four youngsters enrolled in an elementary or secondary school in Chicago attends a nonpublic school. Now, hundreds of scholarships to attend Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal schools are given to youngsters who live in the Cabrini Green, Henry Horner, Rockwell Gardens, and other public housing projects. The aid covers only part of the tuition, requiring parents or guardians to pay the balance and fees. Though statistics are not available, it is our experience that the decision by a public housing family to enroll children in a private school is often the first step that eventually leads to an apartment in the private housing market. The choice made by a deserted mother, taken at personal sacrifice, is rewarded and reinforced when she sees that her child is in fact making educational progress; she is likely to strive even harder to climb out of poverty in order to continue sending her child to the school of her choice. A final example--useful even though at present it is a matter of aspiration rather than achievement--returns to a housing program. It will be operative in 1997 when Chicago's Lawson YMCA finishes rehabilitating its twenty-five-story building to provide 583 single-occupancy rooms. The difference here lies in the overall aim, which is not just to provide livable space for otherwise homeless persons but also to help people who are homeless, jobless, and difficult-to-employ get jobs, preferably within walking distance, and become self-sufficient. The YMCA staff will work, for example, with people who are recovering from substance abuse by concentrating aggressively on job training and job getting. Success will be measured not just by occupancy rates but, more importantly, by the number who have moved to independent living. As with the other examples, the virtue of the YMCA initiative lies in its responding not just to today's need but also to tomorrow's challenge. To paraphrase columnist Robert J. Samuelson, the United States struggles through a soul-searching transition from an era of entitlement to an era of responsibility.

Mr SIMON

Mr SIMON. Mr. President, recently a friend of mine, Gene Callahan, sent me an editorial from the Evansville Courier suggesting that Evansville look at year-round schools. The reality is the whole Nation should do that. We take the summer months off, in theory, so that our children can go out and harvest the crops. That made sense a century ago and maybe even 60 years ago, but it does not make sense today. If we increased the school year from 180 days to 210, we would still be far behind Japan's 243 days and Germany's 240 days. And simply adding that 30 days would mean the equivalent of 2 additional years of school by the time the 12th grade is finished. But in reality it would be more than that. Any fourth grade teacher will tell you that part of the first weeks of teaching in the fourth grade is revisiting what students learn in the third grade. The three month lapse makes it more difficult for students starting in the fourth grade. But suggesting year-round schools is not going to be simple. We will have to pay teachers more. We will have to air condition school rooms. In essence, what we will have to do is to make the priority out of education that we must, if we are to be a competitive Nation with the rest of the world. One not so incidental result of that would be that our students would be better prepared, we would gradually reduce our illiteracy rate, and because students will have more opportunity upon graduation and would not be in the streets in the summer months, the crime rate is likely to drop some. The drop is not likely to be dramatic, but it would help. I commend the editors of the Evansville Courier. Mr. President, I ask that the editorial from the Courier be printed in the Record. The editorial follows: [From the Evansville Courier, June 17, 1996] Take Another Look at Year-Round School The Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp. has good cause to consider starting the school year in mid-August--test- readiness of children is a valid concern in both home and classroom. And in our view, the same argument weighs for future consideration of a year-round school calendar. The school administration has recommended that the School Board approve a calendar that moves up the beginning of school by eight school days, in great part to allow students more time to prepare for state performance testing. The ISTEP tests have been given in the spring, but beginning in the fall, they will be administered the last week in September and first week of October. With students returning from a three-month vacation, it will be a challenge for teachers to get them up to school speed in time for the tests. The earlier start would buy time for students and teachers. The premise here--that students returning from a long summer vacation are not prepared to take a test--seems just cause for consideration of year-round school, such as the plan that will be tried at Lincoln Elementary School on an experimental basis. In fact, children no longer need a three-month vacation; they no longer need to be off that long to work in the fields. Three months away from school is counterproductive to learning. As a result, valuable learning time is needed each fall to reacquaint children with learning and to refresh what they learned the previous year. The School Board should approve the administration's recommendation for the earlier school start, and then ask itself if the same rationale doesn't justify a serious look at year-round school.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, few would dispute the fact that one of the most distinguished and highly respected public servants in our lifetime is Gen. Colin Powell. I read in Carl Rowan's column of a speech he gave at a commencement at Bowie State University. I contacted General Powell to obtain a copy of it, and I have just read his remarks for the second time. They are common sense. They are compassionate. They are forward- looking. A significant part of his remarks, in my opinion, is what he has to say about affirmative action. Affirmative action can be abused like any good thing can be abused. His comments should be spread much more widely than simply to this graduating class. I ask that Gen. Colin Powell's remarks be printed in the Congressional Record. The remarks follow: Remarks of Gen. Colin Powell I can never speak at a commencement such as this without the years peeling away as I drift back into a reverie of my own commencement some 38 years ago. The world you have educated yourselves for is so very, very different from the world that I started in those many years ago. I graduated as the Cold War was deepening, as lethal arsenals of nuclear weapons were growing ever more ominous. The world in 1958 that I entered was a world that seemed on the verge of gloom and despair. For most of my years as a soldier, for most of those 35 years, I participated in a death struggle of survival between the forces of Communism and the evil empire, and the forces of good, the forces of democracy, that we represented. It was a long, long struggle, a struggle that dominated most of my life. I can still remember the commission I got at my ROTC graduation in 1958. It was signed by Dwight Eisenhower, and the mission they gave Lt. Powell at that time was simple. ``Lt. Powell go to Germany. Take command of 40 soldiers. Find the City of Frankfurt. Go to the east of the City of Frankfurt. You'll find the Iron Curtain. Lt. Powell, with your 40 soldiers, guard a small section of the Iron Curtain. In the time of war, don't let the Russian Army come through. Got it?'' ``Yes, sir. Got it.'' And I did that for two years, successfully preventing World War II from breaking out. The years went by, and 28 years later, I got a new commission. This time from Ronald Reagan, and he made me a Lieutenant General of Infantry And they gave me 75,000 proud American soldiers to command. And 28 yeas later, my mission was, ``General Powell, with your 75,000 soldiers, you'll be in Germany, find the city of Frankfurt. Go the east of the city of Frankfurt. Guard a slightly wider section of the Iron Curtain this time. Try to do as good a job as you did when you were a Lieutenant.'' During your years here at Bowie, that Cold War came to an end. The arsenals of nuclear weapons are being dismantled. The Soviet Union has broken into 15 individual nations, each seeking its own way down a difficult path of learning how democracy works, mastering the mysteries of free enterprise and market economic system. Communism lies discredited, its few remaining adherents cling to the corpse of a dead ideology. This historic reconciliation that has taken place between East and West has changed the old Cold War map that used to be red and blue with an Iron Curtain between the colors into a new kind of map, a map full of mosaic pieces, different colors as new nations and old nations seek to find a new way in a different kind of world, a world structured as a world trading system as opposed to a world in conflict. This reconciliation that took place between the Soviet Union and us is matched by other historic reconciliations that have taken place around the world in recent years. In the Middle East, the peace process is moving forward that we hope will be successful in finally bringing peace to that troubled part of the world. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela who was on trial when I graduated from college and who spent 27 years in prison, is now the president of his country. And in his triumph, he killed the evil ideology of Apartheid. In our own hemisphere, as I think back just seven years to when I was National Security Advisor to the President of the United States and we had all kinds of problems here in Haiti, in Nicaragua, and Honduras and El Salvador and Panama and now, all of those nations are moving forward down the road to democracy with elected civilian leaders; all of them save one, Cuba. But Cuba cannot withstand the winds of historic change that are sweeping across our hemisphere. In Asia, the pattern is the same as we watch the Philippines and India, the Southeast Asia tiger, Vietnam, even China, emerging into this new world trading system. You are entering a world where our former adversaries, those that we were in conflict with for all these decades, have now become our economic competitors as well as becoming our new markets, new opportunities for us. It is not a world without problems or conflicts. Bosnia, Liberia, North Korea, and other places of tragedy remind us on our television sets every evening of the dangers that will lurk ahead. Yet, I want you to see this as a time of hope and optimism because our value systems have prevailed. There is no cross-border war anywhere in the world today. No nation is fighting with any other nation across a national border. American troops on this Memorial Day are not at war. Instead, they are conducting peacekeeping operations. In Bosnia they are even working alongside Russian soldiers who were once their sworn enemies. The world that you are entering to make your contribution will increasingly be structured not by armies staring at each other across iron or bamboo curtains. Instead, it will be structured by free world trade, by the power of the information and technology revolutions, by the instantaneous flow of capital, data, ideas, values. The cellular telephone, the fax machine and the Internet are breaking down all the old Cold War boundaries that once divided people. What will not change is the responsibility that America will have to burden the very difficult, difficult task of world leadership. We have power that is trusted. We are still a beacon of freedom, and we are still an example of what can be achieved, what can be accomplished when free people are allowed to determine their own destiny. With the end of the Cold War, we have now turned inward here in America to start to deal with those vexing problems that, perhaps, we overlook while we were worrying about nuclear warfare and World War III. We look inward and know that we need a more rapidly growing economy to provide good, well-paying jobs for all Americans. We know that we have to do something about the problems of violence on our streets and violence in our schools. We have to do something about an education system, while it serves you well, it is not structured to serve all our youngsters well. We must do something about the scourge of drugs that threatens to wipe out an entire generation of young people. We will have to deal with the breakdown that has occurred in the norms of civility within our society which have led to such public and political rancor that causes us to wonder what kind of a society we are becoming. We must do something about the racial separation that exists in our nation and keeps us from the dream of an integrated society that Dr. King set out for us. In some ways, the new world that we face will be more complex and demanding than the old world, both here and abroad. But despite the challenges, incredible opportunities await you in this new world, opportunities that await educated people. The education you received here, the additional education you must acquire in whatever field of endeavor you enter--because in this increasingly technical and competitive world, success will go to those who realize that education must now become a lifelong pursuit. America will not be going back to smokestack industries. The corporate restructuring that you see taking place allow us to be more competitive, more agile, more ready to deal with the challenges of a world economic system. You each face the prospect of several different careers in several different companies in different places around the country and around the world as you go about your working career. America has changed in so many, many wonderful ways since my graduation in 1958. When I graduated as a black man, I was, by law, a second-class citizen. When I graduated in 1958, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights didn't fully apply to me. I entered at that time perhaps the only institution in America that permitted a black person to rise in an integrated setting limited only by my own willingness to work hard and my dreams and ambition. And that institution was the United States Army. The Army led the nation, and the nation followed. The young Captain Powell who was once refused service at a lunch counter in Georgia, when I came home from Vietnam after a year of fighting for my country, that Captain Powell was able to become General Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Armed Forces of United States. But I didn't do it alone. I climbed on the backs of the those who came before me and those who broke the trail, the Buffalo soldiers and Tuskegee Airmen, and the other black military pioneers. I climbed on the backs of men and women who knew that they served a country that was not yet prepared to serve them. But they did it anyway because they had faith in what the future held for them and for their country. I benefited from the sacrifices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesse and Rosa and Andrew and so many, many others-- black and white--who were determined to build an America that would be faithful to the dreams of its founding fathers. The men and women who are honored along with me today, your teachers and parents and family members who are present today, they struggled as well. We succeeded because we worked hard, we believed in ourselves, and because we believed in the fundamental goodness of the American people and we believed in the redemptive potential of our society; and we did it all for you. We now expect you to do even more. We expect you to climb higher. We expect you to take advantage of the marvelous opportunities that are before you, opportunities that were not there for us. We expect you to let your shoulders be used by those who still search for success, who wonder if the dream is still there for them. Because you see, the struggle is not yet over. We're not where we have got to be. We're not where we want to be. We have a great America. We can make it a greater America. There are those who say, ``Well, you know, we can stop now. America is a color blind society.'' But it isn't yet. There are those who say, ``We have a level playing field.'' But we don't yet. There are those who say that, ``All you need is to climb up on your own boot straps.'' But there are too many Americans who don't have boots, much less boot straps. A few--a few Horatio Alger stories, not enough to give hope to our fellow citizens who still live in the despair of racism, who are trapped in tightening circles of poverty and poor education, who wonder if compassion and caring are still the pillars of the American dream. There are those who rail against Affirmative Action. They rail against Affirmative Action preferences, while they have lived an entire life of preference. There are those who do not understand that the progress we have achieved over the past generation must be continued if we wish to bless future generations. And so, Colin Powell believes in Affirmative Action. I believe it has been good for America, and I know that we can design Affirmative Action Programs that will satisfy the Constitutional requirements, because what we want is Affirmative Action that provides access for all Americans to the opportunities that rightfully belong to all Americans. In my travels around the country since retirement, I have visited with many corporate leaders, and I have been pleased to see how committed American industry is to Affirmative Action. They understand that we cannot waste any human potential. They understand that in the future that is ahead they must have diverse work forces. They must be prepared to operate in a world trading environment that is increasingly minority, as we would call it, becoming a majority. I'm very, very proud of what I've seen in American corporate life. In one case, one company leader said to me, ``We don't care what the government does with respect to Affirmative Action. We believe in it. We believe it's the right thing to do. We are going to continue to move forward.'' Affirmative Action finds and prepares qualified people for entry into the education system and into the work force. We must resist misguided government efforts that seek to shut it all down, efforts such as the California Civil Rights Initiative which poses as an Equal Opportunity Initiative, but which puts at risk every outreach program. It sets back the gains made by women, and puts the brakes on expanding opportunities for people who are in need. I don't speak about Affirmative Action from an academic sense. I speak from experience. In the military, we worked hard to include all Americans. We used Affirmative Action to reach out to those who were qualified, but who were often overlooked or ignored as a result of indifference or inertia. We used Affirmative Action in the military to create the level playing field and to create the color blind environment that so many people speak of. We didn't wait for it to happen. We made it happen in the military. We created an environment where advancement came from performance and a striving for excellence and not from color or gender. But first we had to open the gates to let people in. As a result, we produced an Armed Force rich in its diversity and the very, very best in the world, a reflection of what all of America should look like. So we have to keep it up. We have to commit ourselves. There is no alternative. When one black man graduates, at the same time, 100 black men are going to jail. We still need Affirmative Action. When half of all African American men between the ages of 24 and 35 years of age are without full-time employment, we still need Affirmative Action. When half of all black children live in poverty, we need Affirmative Action as well as quality education systems and a thriving economy to produce the good jobs, the good jobs that free enterprise and capitalism can produce, the jobs that at the end of day are the only solution to the problems we face. Some people will say that Affirmative Action stigmatizes the recipients. Nonsense. Affirmative Action provides access for the qualified. And for anybody who feels stigmatized, go get A's instead of C's. Knock them dead. And then--I tell the story in my book about when I was a young Lieutenant and one of my commanding officers back then in the late '50s came up to me and said, ``Powell, you're doing great. You're one of best black Lieutenants I've ever known.'' And I just said, ``Thank you, sir.'' And I said to myself silently, ``That ain't going to be good enough. You may have a stereotype of me, but I intend to be the best Lieutenant you ever saw.'' And I will--for the way to handle stereotypes and stigmatism is to let it be somebody else's problem. You just perform and do your very, very best. Because you see, the Army put me in an environment where I could be a winner, and I wanted to be a winner. Beautiful graduates before me this morning are all winners. You have benefited from the sacrifices of those who went before you. You have worked hard. And today, you receive your reward. You are filled by the love and by the dreams of your parents and families. You are nourished by the education you have received from the dedicated teachers here present who have given you the priceless gift of learning. We expect you to go forth and prosper and contribute to the economic growth of this nation. We expect you to lead a life of service to your community and to serve those who have not had the advantages that you have. You are people of accomplishment. You are now role models. Each of you must find a way to reach down and back to help someone in need, someone in pain, someone who wonders if anybody cares, somebody who wonders if the American dream is still there for them. In order to have a complete life, make sure you share your time, your talent, and your treasure with these who are less fortunate. We expect you to raise strong families. We expect you to raise children who are inspired to do even better than you are. Marry well, and marry for life. Be parents of value. Teach your children the difference between right and wrong. Teach your children the place of God in their lives. Teach your children the value of hard work and education. Teach them to love. Teach them to be tolerant. Teach them to be proud of their heritage, their color. And teach them to respect their fellow citizens who may look different but who are not different. Teach them to respect themselves, to believe in themselves. Teach them, above all, to believe in America as you must believe in America. America, a noisy, noisy country, the noise has a name. It's called ``democracy.'' Democracy as we argue with each other to find the correct way forward. America, a wonderful place. A place with problems, problems that are now yours to solve and not just to curse, because we are a good people. We want to do the right thing. We must have faith in ourselves. We are, as Lincoln put it, ``The last, best hope of earth,'' I am so proud of you today, so very, very proud. Go forth now to make this a better land. Go forth to find your destiny. Go forth to find happiness. Go forth on your American journey. Go forth with my congratulations and with God's blessings. Have a great life. Thank you.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently the Nashville News, of Nashville, IL, carried a column by Grover Brinkman, a former newspaper editor who is now 93 years old and lives in Monroe County, IL. What he wrote for the Nashville News is a great combination of wisdom and humor. Those of us who have acquired the status of senior citizen-- I am now 67--can appreciate the wisdom handed down by a 93 year old. I ask that the Nashville News article by Grover Brinkman, be printed in the Record. The column follows: Admit A Generation Gap (By Grover Brinkman) How does one accept senior status with grace? Good question, isn't it! Perhaps some sage will have the right answer some day, but it's debatable. One can turn hermit and play checkers in a nursing home. Or perhaps a better way . . . face the ticking clock in a humorous vein that has no negatives. Or if deep thinking is part of your waking hours, check out some of the following questions: Do you remember the time when you dimmed the lights for romantic reasons? Now you replace the 100 watt bulbs with 40s as an economy measure to stretch your Social Security dollars. There are many memories of voluptuous gals in a halter and bikini; now a bit of this memorbilia triggers your pacemaker and raises the garage door. Your house is much too large at the moment. When the kids were growing up, it was just the opposite. A rocking chair was once used by grandma, now you're in it. You bite down on one of those luscious red apples from the Pacific Northwest, and your newly-acquired dentures stay there. You satisfy a whim to have your palm read, but the seer instead concentrates on your forehead, for the lines there are more distinctive. You always insisted that burning the midnight oil was the routine that made life livable; now end of day seems to be nine o'clock. You read only the headlines in the morning paper, for your tired eyes can't decipher the seven-point body text. You get winded playing a game of dominoes with your grandson. Most of the seniors at the center carry little black books, but now they contain only names with an added M.D. If you get an occasional gleam in your eyes, it's probably the sun bouncing off your tri-focals. Your realize that your entire body aches, and what doesn't, won't work. Even your toes at times have toothaches. (Or would the word toe-aches be better?) Your children have a middle aged look, and your grand-kids are six feet-plus basketball giants. You walk holding your head high, necessary to see the potholes high, necessary to see the potholes in the walk through your tri-focals. You're still 15 around the collar, 54 around the waist, and 90 on the golf course. When you go for a haircut, the barber trims more hair out of your nose and eyebrows than on your balding head. Presumably you're well-versed, know most of the answers to today's problems, but no one asks for your opinion. All your peers talk about the golden years, but you doubt if they have as much shiny metal as a new penny. You used to take a pill or two at bedtime to keep a vigorous health, now they advise one to help you sleep. Even a sip of your favorite wine seems to aggravate your ulcer, so you drink skim milk instead, remembering when you were a boy growing up on a boon-docks farm, they used skim milk only for hogs. Today it costs about as much as the real article. 'Taint fair!'' You awake at seven, at least with a bit of ginger in your time-tossed frame; by the noon hour you've degenerated well past 60, and by bedtime you're a centurion, too tired to put proper emphasis in a prayer. You try to be entertaining, reciting pleasant memorabilia, but the young crowd think only of athletics, so you realize that you're trying to bridge a generation gap, and it simply doesn't work. You despise nursing homes, but deep down you realize that they are the only bus stations, offering bed and board, between here and a tombstone. One of your role models, the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, insisted that the only way to solve life's problems was in daily positive thinking, but you admit that on many things you're as negative as the minus-post on your car battery. In your youth, you couldn't wait to tie the knot with your best gal and start a family; now you fumble in tying the knots in your shoe laces. Health authorities insist that you include plenty of fiber in your daily diet, but a bowl of chicken soup is far easier to masticate. You love chocolate in all of its forms but your arthritis does not. When more and more people, some of them strangers, keep calling you Pops, you know definitely that a generation gap exists. Leg cramps are now a nightly experience. But as a youngster, the only cramps you knew were deep stomach wretching called cholera morbus, after you'd eaten too many green apples. But it's still a good life despite negative viewpoints. In fact it's the only thing left, come to think of it. You're old, stubborn as the proverbial Missouri mule, but still confident that you'll be around for a few more moons, awaiting the day when the good Lord throws in the final towel. There is one consoling thought in this treatise on longevity--scores of old friends are up there, holding open the gate. Some of them, with genes shorter lived than mine, have been holding open that gate for a long time. I don't have the genes of a Methuselah, but I'm running neck and neck with Bob Hope, and that would tickle anyone's hormones. Grow old, but don't let senility be a part of it!

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the United States has made clear its intention to veto a second term for United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. This unfortunate opposition to his reelection was the subject of a column I wrote for Illinois newspapers, which I ask be printed in the Record. The column follows: A Misstep by the United States (By Senator Paul Simon) Suppose a local Rotary Club had the community's most wealthy and powerful citizen, Sam Smith, as a member. Imagine that the Rotarians had a dues system that reflected the ability to pay, so that wealthy Sam Smith paid more in dues than any other Rotarian. To complicate the story, Sam Smith is far back in the payment of his dues, so far back that the money he owes amounts to almost the total budget of the club for a year. The president of the Rotary Club is up for reelection, and most of the members want him reelected, but Mr. Big, Sam Smith, says no. How popular do you think Sam Smith would be with the other Rotarians? Would his influence rise or fall? And what will the other Rotarians do in their election of a president? The story is true. Only the ``club'' is called the United Nations. The wealthy deadbeat member is called Sam, Uncle Sam. Most of the UN members believe that Secretary General Boutros-Ghali is doing a good job, despite being hampered by approximately $1.4 billion that the United States owes but has not paid. But the United States has made clear that we want to veto his reelection as Secretary-General. The other nations, already too often unimpressed by our uncertain leadership in foreign policy, are not pleased with what we are doing, believing it is dictated by domestic political considerations. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter designated me as one of the delegates to a two-month session of the United Nations, and I have followed the UN and its work with more than casual interest. My impression is that overall the United Nations performs a vital service and a good job, not perfect, and that Boutros- Ghali has been a hard-working, effective leader--hampered in part by the United States talking a great game, but not paying our dues. Egypt is the home of the Secretary-General, and as an Egyptian he is also an African. Africa sometimes is called ``the dark continent.'' It is more accurately described as the ignored continent. One little-known fact is the gradual spread of democracy in Africa, some of them fledgling democracies that deserve more encouragement from the United States and other nations. African countries take pride in having Boutros-Ghali as the Secretary-General. Our opposition to him is coupled with other realities that they see: President Clinton has never visited Africa. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has not visited any sub-Saharan country since he has been Secretary, compared to 24 visits to Syria. Our inattention, coupled with our unfortunate open opposition to the reelection of the Secretary-General, has not made us any friends.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the annual Defense Department authorization passed by the Senate would create a Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and Firearms Safety. In a weekly column that is distributed to newspapers in Illinois, I discussed this useless and wasteful program. I ask that the column be printed in the Record. The column follows: A Boondoggle for the NRA (By Senator Paul Simon) Buried in the annual Defense Department authorization bill is an outrageous gift of $77 million that will benefit something called the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and Firearms Safety. This corporation is the new ``private'' incarnation of the old National Rifle Association-backed Civilian Marksmanship Program. This program was intended to make sure people could shoot straight in case they entered the military. In recent years, however, it has simply funneled cash, weapons and ammunition to private gun clubs, thanks to the power of the

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, my attention has been called to an article in the Miami Herald by Ernest Dumas, who is described in the Miami Herald as ``Sometime critic of Bill Clinton who teaches journalism at the University of Central Arkansas, and writes a column for the Arkansas Times. A former political writer, and associate editor of the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock, he wrote this article for the Herald.'' I don't believe I've ever met Mr. Dumas, but he has written an article that gives a perspective on the Whitewater situation that I frankly have not seen in the media elsewhere. I call this to the attention not only of my colleagues in the Senate and in the House, but I call this to the attention of editorial writers who may be looking through the Congressional Record. It gives a very different perspective on ``The Politics of Whitewater.'' I ask that the Miami Herald article be printed in the Congressional Record. The article follows: [From the Miami Herald, June 23, 1996] The Politics of Whitewater (By Ernest Dumas) When Sens. Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth, the North Carolina Republicans, had lunch in 1994 with their old friend and protege, Judge David R. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, even they must have have fathomed the importance of what Sentelle was about to agree to do. His Judicial panel would remove Robert B. Fiske Jr. as the independent counsel for Whitewater and replace him with a far more doctrinaire Republican, Kenneth W. Starr, who had lost his job as solicitor general when Bill Clinton became president and who was representing the Republican National Committee and groups hostile to the Clinton administration, including the tobacco industry. Starr would keep the Whitewater investigation on track for the 1996 presidential election all right, but he would prove far more valuable to his party. The majority report of the Senate Special Whitewater Committee last week said the two lending institutions that were the heart of the scandal were ``piggy banks for the Arkansas political elite.'' It was half true. A who's who of Arkansas Republicans had helped David L. Hale plunder his federally subsidized small business investment company. Hale, who triggered the Whitewater investigation and the appointment of an independent prosecutor when he accused President Clinton of asking him to make an illegal loan in 1986, actually was illegally channeling federal tax dollars into the campaign of Clinton's Republican opponent. Moreover, according to his testimony at the trial in April, he was paying the Republican state chairman to help him defraud the federal Small Business Administration. Another former state Republican chairman and perennial candidate was on the books for a substantial federally subsidized loan when the Clinton administration moved to shut Hale down in 1993. Other prominent Republicans collaborated with Hale to skim money from the company. Other than Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, then a private businessman, and the ubiquitous James D. McDougal himself, the owner of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Corp., no Democratic political figure had anything to do with the dummy companies and scams that Hale ran. Thanks to Kenneth Starr, this is not the picture Americans got of Whitewater. Not only did Starr not seek indictments against the Republicans when they began to turn up on every chapter of the examinations of Hale's small-business lending company, he did not call them as witnesses at the trial at Little Rock. The prosecutors persuaded the trial judge not to allow the deeds of Hale's Republican collaborators to be used as proof of selective prosecution. It would have confused the picture of Whitewater, a story about the rascality of Bill Clinton and his Democratic friends. The special prosecutor's refusal to explore any of the Republican bigwigs to the glare of trial--while leveraging misdemeanor pleas from many spear carriers in the real estate deals who made no profits from the deals--makes a compelling case that the investigation is politically motivated and the prosecution selective. Hale ran a federally licensed and subsidized small business investment company at Little Rock called Capital Management Services, which in 1992 applied to the Small Business Administration for another $45 million. It claimed an expanded capital base. He didn't get approval before the election and Clinton's SBA in 1993 got suspicious. When auditors began digging into the company's records, Hale told the SBA to just forget the whole thing. Clinton's new SBA director, Erskine Bowles, referred the matter to the Justice Department. When the SBA put Hale's company in receivership, 86 percent to fits loans were overdue and its accumulated losses exceeded its private capital by 171 percent. On July 20, 1993, the FBI raided Hale's offices and confiscated his files. By August Clinton's new U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Paula Casey, prepared to ask a federal grand jury to indict Hale for defrauding the

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, The salaries of the most elite professional basketball players who became free agents and signed contracts during a 1-week period in July outstripped the amount of United States development aid to all African nations except Egypt. I discussed this development in a weekly column written for newspapers in my State and ask that it be printed in the Record. The column follows: NBA Star Pay Shoots Past U.S. Development Aid To Africa (By Senator Paul Simon) Ask people at any town meeting whether we are spending too much money on foreign aid and there will be a resounding ``yes'' response--but there would not be if they knew the facts. The world's poorest continent is Africa, and this year we are spending $628 million in development aid to African nations, if Egypt is excluded from the calculation. Compare that with the total for the contracts signed July 11th to July 18th for free agents with the National Basketball Association: $927 million. Twenty-nine African nations have total government revenue less than the amount paid to these star athletes. I have no objection to the money earned by Michael Jordan and the others. They are players of unbelievable talent. And the people of the nation are not making any great sacrifice to provide these funds for them. Nor are we making a great sacrifice in foreign aid. That $628 million in aid to Africa compares to $1.2 billion we get from one cent of gasoline tax in the United States. So the aid to Africa is slightly more than one-half cent a gallon, if we were to use the gasoline tax to pay for it, which we are not. The United States was once the most generous nation in helping the poor beyond our borders. Now, of the nations of Western Europe and Japan, Australia and New Zealand, we are dead last. We once gave almost 3 percent of our national income to help the needy beyond our borders, and now we give less than one-sixth of 1 percent. Norway gives eight times as much as we do, in percentage terms. Foreign aid is less than 1 percent of our Federal budget. And the total is getting smaller each year. Should we be doing a better job of giving opportunity to the poor here at home? Of course we should. And those of us who advocate doing more to help the poor at home are the same ones who advocate helping them beyond our borders. If instead of giving the Defense Department $18 billion more than they requested for this year and next, which we are doing, we were to devote one-third of that amount to helping the poor here at home, one-third to helping the impoverished in other countries, and one-third to reduce the deficit, we would have a stronger nation, a better nation, and a more stable world. The United States is gradually becoming more short-sighted and provincial both at home and abroad. ``Let's take care of ourselves,'' is the cry, and ``ourselves'' excludes the poor at home and the poor abroad. And so we fall far behind in paying our United Nations dues, and do not provide adequate leadership in troubled areas at home and abroad. Congressman Ray Thornton of Arkansas suggested that the United States should have a Marshall Plan for impoverished areas of our Nation. He is right. We need it both here and for other nations. But that requires creativity, courage and compassion by leaders. ``Welfare reform'' for too many has become a code phrase for bashing the poor even more, though genuine reform is obviously needed. The nation that led the world with the exciting and compassionate and sensible Marshall Plan is now a nation in retreat. We are now a nation that pays more money to a few professional basketball players than we spend to give opportunity to the people of Africa. We can do better.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, today I introduce the Presidential Succession Clarification Act. Much has been said and written about the laws of succession following the death of a sitting President. In general, these laws clearly and precisely provide for the transfer of Presidential power. The laws of succession, however, do not adequately address the possibility that a Presidential candidate might die during the voting period itself--by that I mean during the period beginning roughly with the popular election in mid-November and ending with the formal naming of the President-elect in early January. A candidate's death during this 2-month period could seriously disrupt the voting process and raise doubts about the election results. The seriousness of these problems would depend on the precise point in time at which the death occurred. A hearing that was held in the 103d Congress on this subject highlighted the various scenarios in which legal ambiguities could lead to electoral crises. Broadly speaking, the act, which I introduced in the last Congress, addresses three distinct situations: First, let us suppose that a Presidential candidate dies after the electoral delegates have cast their votes but before those votes are counted. If the deceased would have won the election, who is now President elect? Scholars disagree on the answer. Second, suppose that a major party candidate dies immediately before the popular election, or immediately prior to the time that the electoral college delegates vote. Would it not make sense to give the voters a couple of weeks to adjust to this unsettled situation? Third, suppose that no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, and that the election is thrown into the House of Representatives as a result. If one of the candidates should die at this point, is the House permitted to consider an alternative candidate? The act provides answers for each of these, admittedly complex, questions. None of these scenarios, of course, is likely to occur during any election cycle. But any one of them could lead to confusion and uncertainty at a time when clarity and stability would be vital. Prudence dictates that we should act now, while we have the time for calm reflection, rather than wait for a possible crisis to catch us unprepared.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, today I introduce the Presidential Succession Clarification Act. Much has been said and written about the laws of succession following the death of a sitting President. In general, these laws clearly and precisely provide for the transfer of Presidential power. The laws of succession, however, do not adequately address the possibility that a Presidential candidate might die during the voting period itself--by that I mean during the period beginning roughly with the popular election in mid-November and ending with the formal naming of the President-elect in early January. A candidate's death during this 2-month period could seriously disrupt the voting process and raise doubts about the election results. The seriousness of these problems would depend on the precise point in time at which the death occurred. A hearing that was held in the 103d Congress on this subject highlighted the various scenarios in which legal ambiguities could lead to electoral crises. Broadly speaking, the act, which I introduced in the last Congress, addresses three distinct situations: First, let us suppose that a Presidential candidate dies after the electoral delegates have cast their votes but before those votes are counted. If the deceased would have won the election, who is now President elect? Scholars disagree on the answer. Second, suppose that a major party candidate dies immediately before the popular election, or immediately prior to the time that the electoral college delegates vote. Would it not make sense to give the voters a couple of weeks to adjust to this unsettled situation? Third, suppose that no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, and that the election is thrown into the House of Representatives as a result. If one of the candidates should die at this point, is the House permitted to consider an alternative candidate? The act provides answers for each of these, admittedly complex, questions. None of these scenarios, of course, is likely to occur during any election cycle. But any one of them could lead to confusion and uncertainty at a time when clarity and stability would be vital. Prudence dictates that we should act now, while we have the time for calm reflection, rather than wait for a possible crisis to catch us unprepared.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Madam President, I appreciate the efforts of Chairman McConnell and Senator Leahy for working to include the amendment I offered along with Senators Kassebaum, Feingold, Moseley-Braun, Jeffords, Feinstein, and Mikulski on the Development Fund for Africa. We all share the conviction that aid to Africa should be a priority. Africa has two unfortunate distinctions--it is both the poorest and the most ignored continent. That is why, 8 years ago, Congress established the Development Fund for Africa to ensure aid for sub- Saharan Africa was given a high priority within our foreign aid budget. Unfortunately, aid to Africa was considered expendable when resources were sought for other purposes. We realized, however, that the United States has an interest and a duty to help out the impoverished in that region, and that the Development Fund for Africa was a good way to help meet our commitment. It would be senseless now, with the measure of hope that we see in Africa, even while it still suffers from poverty, pollution, and the scourge of AIDS, to abandon our support for sub- Saharan Africa. Our amendment does not add new money. It maintains the language, worked out by Senators McConnell and Leahy, that protects aid to sub- Saharan Africa from being cut disproportionately in a development assistance account that is getting smaller. I commend the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee for their support for Africa, and I think this amendment can strengthen their efforts to see that aid to this region is maintained as an important priority. I look forward to working with my colleagues to see that aid to sub-Saharan Africa is protected in the conference report.