Bob Smith

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, first, I want to make my colleagues aware I have a resolution regarding the Holy See. This resolution would block any effort to remove or demean the nine-member permanent observer status at the United Nations held now by the Catholic Church. I want my colleagues and the American people to know this is being blocked from being heard by the other side of the aisle, which is a very interesting story considering the controversy on the House side regarding the Chaplain. It is interesting that this simple resolution that says we will not block or demean in any way the nine members of the permanent observer status at the United Nations by the Pope and the Catholic Church is being blocked on the other side of the aisle. I want the American people to know I can't get this to the floor because of holds on this bill on the other side. When we hear the stories about who is anti-Catholic and who isn't, we ought to shine the light where the light should be shined.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 2163, a bill to provide for a study of the engineering feasibility of a water exchange in lieu of electrification of the Chandler Pumping Plant at Prosser Diversion Dam, Washington, and that the measure be referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 288, submitted earlier by Senator Lott.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that S. 2343, the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000, as introduced on April 4, 2000, be star printed to add text that was inadvertently omitted in the original bill. That is a request of Senator Murkowski.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until the hour of 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 13. I further ask consent that on Thursday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then begin a period of morning business until 12:30 p.m., with Senators speaking up to 5 minutes each, with the following exceptions: Senator Crapo, or his designee, 10:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.; Senator Tim Hutchinson, 10:45 a.m. to 11 a.m.; Senator Bob Smith, or his designee, 11 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; Senator Harry Reid, 20 minutes; Senator Dodd, or his designee, 30 minutes; and Senator Conrad, 10 minutes.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. I further ask unanimous consent that at 12:30 p.m. the Senate remain in morning business with regard to the marriage tax penalty until 2 p.m., with the time equally divided between the two leaders, or their designees, and the Senate then proceed to the cloture vote with regard to the amendment to H.R. 6 at 2 p.m., with the mandatory quorum waived.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be read a third time and passed, en bloc, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to these resolutions be printed in the Record.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of the following Senate joint resolutions: S.J. Res. 40, S.J. Res. 41, and S.J. Res. 42, and I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to these resolutions en bloc.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of the following concurrent resolutions and, further, that the Senate proceed to their consideration en bloc: H. Con. Res. 278, H. Con. Res. 279, and H. Con. Res. 281.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with the above occurring en bloc. The concurrent resolutions (H. Con. Res. 278, H. Con. Res. 279, and H. Con. Res. 281) were agreed to.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. On behalf of the leader, I further announce, tomorrow morning there will be an opportunity in morning business for Senators to make general statements and for bill introductions until 12:30 p.m. Following general morning business, Senators will begin statements with regard to the marriage tax penalty issue during a morning business period. By previous consent, at 2 p.m. there will be a cloture vote on the pending amendment to that important legislation. It was hoped that an agreement would be reached to complete this measure after the Senate considered relevant amendments. Unfortunately, a consent could not be granted and, therefore, the 2 p.m. cloture vote is necessary. If cloture is not invoked on the substitute, there will be a second cloture vote on the underlying measure. Therefore, a second cloture vote may occur. With April 15 fast approaching, this issue is of the utmost importance to many married couples and, therefore, it is essential that we vote tomorrow on moving forward with the bill. Following the cloture votes, the Senate is expected to consider the budget resolution conference report. Therefore, additional votes will occur tomorrow afternoon.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, we did spend some time today debating the elimination of the marriage penalty tax. This is something I have been working on for all the years I have been in Congress in the Senate. I look forward to the day we can repeal it. I was hoping we would have this vote in the near future. I very much regret the delay that was imposed upon us by the minority because by putting nongermane amendments on this, we slow down what we could accomplish here in the very near future, which is finally to eliminate the marriage tax penalty. I have an amendment prepared to implement elimination of the marriage tax penalty a lot sooner. I am contemplating offering that. I will see how much support there is for it. Before I do that, however, instead of the proposed phase-in period of 6 years, which is the underlying proposal, my amendment would eliminate the marriage penalty tax immediately, bringing working parents tax relief right away. According to the Congressional Research Service, as this graph shows, the additional savings my plan would bring married couples over the Roth plan would be almost $3,000. If you look at the years, we go from $69 versus $879 in 2002, all the way over to 2008, where it evens out. The point is, these are savings for a married couple--about $810 in the first year, 2002--if we put it into effect immediately. With today's cost of living exploding, education, tuition, high prices at the pump, that is a substantial savings for an ordinary working family. I think we ought to make this effective today, as soon as it passes, and not implement it over a 6- or 7-year period. Married couples have been waiting for a large number of years, since this ridiculous provision was put in the IRS Code. It is not often we have the opportunity to right a wrong around this place, but this is an opportunity. I sincerely hope we take advantage of it. Today, however, not only do we have the opportunity to turn back a tax, we also have an opportunity to turn back an unjust tax that punishes an institution that is the very backbone of society, at least in most of our minds. You hear some people say that it isn't. But marriage is the backbone of our society, the essence of our families. One of the reasons why we are having a lot of cultural problems today is a lack of emphasis on the family and marriage. Twenty-five million couples are subject to the marriage tax penalty in America and, frankly, those of us who have not had the courage to overturn that tax over the past several years deserve some of the blame because it punishes married people. In New Hampshire alone, almost 140,000 couples will be hit with a marriage tax penalty. In a small State such as New Hampshire, which only has a little over a million people, this tax is antimarriage, antifamily, and antichild. Children reared in two-parent homes are more likely to succeed in school, stay away from drugs, and not become involved in crime. We should not penalize married couples. It doesn't make sense. A way for couples to avoid the marriage tax penalty is they could file for divorce and save money or they could not get married and save money and just live together. That kind of tax policy doesn't make sense. The average marriage penalty is $1,400, or more, in additional Federal income taxes, which is more than $100 a month. That is an extra $1,400 that could be used to buy school clothes for kids, pay for a home computer, perhaps, or a little health insurance, or maybe take a family vacation. The point is, you would have control over an additional $1,400 to do with what you want, and not have the Government taking your money whenever it wants. I have received a lot of mail on this issue over the years asking for relief--I might say, begging for relief, for the Congress to do something. Just one example. A gentleman by the name of Roy Riegle from Derry, NH, wrote this: I am a software engineer working in Merrimack and living in Derry. Via the Web, I just learned of the House Passage of the ``Marriage Tax Cut'' bill. (I think it is H.R. 6). I want to heartily encourage you to vote for this bill when it reaches the Senate. We are one of the classic middle class families (I'm an engineer and my wife teaches in Chester) who are trying to pay for our kid's college education. Our cost to send our second daughter to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, next year is expected to be $20,000. We need assistance of some sort, and this will help. Thank you for your consideration. Roy Riegle. That is so true of many families trying to meet expenses and pay education costs. For all these millionaires and billionaires you read about and hear about all over the country making all this money, maybe $100 a month isn't important. But it is real important to people such as the Riegles and so many others who have written me on this issue over the years. Since 1970, the number of dual-income couples has risen dramatically and continues to rise. It is these families who will benefit from the repeal of this tax. What an outrageous tax this is, to discriminate against people who are married. It is just un-American, and how it ever got in the code is beyond me. Why it hasn't gotten out in all these years is beyond me. I think we should understand that the reason why, as we stand here now, we have not been able to pass this on the floor of the Senate today is because of delays, because the other side wants to offer nongermane amendments to slow it down, to say we have to pick and choose which family gets a break. You have to be in a certain income tax bracket, or you have to be a certain type of person to get a break, and all this nonsense. Everybody should get the break. The marriage tax penalty itself is unfair. It is not more or less fair for one family or another, depending on the income. It is an unfair tax. Let's get rid of it, period. There is nothing complicated about that. This year, Americans will give 39 percent of their income to the Federal Government. As tax levels rise, women who might otherwise stay at home are forced to enter the job market. The percentage of single-worker households in the U.S. has plunged to 28.2 percent, compared with 51 percent in 1969. However, the harder parents work to keep pace, the greater their chances of moving into a higher tax bracket and winding up giving more to the Government. Mr. President, in conclusion, these families are right. These taxes do penalize. If we are going to penalize the sacred institution of marriage and offend our sense of decency and morality, if that is what is going on in the Tax Code, we need to correct it. We should be encouraging the makeup of the family, not the breakup of the family. We should bring tax relief to married couples today--not tomorrow, not next year, not 6 years down the road, but today. They have waited all these years with this discriminatory tax. We can never make it up to them, so let's start today and make it effective today. We can bring tax relief to these couples by passing my amendment and, if not mine, at least we should get started with the underlying bill. It is better to do it down the road, over the course of 6 years, than not at all. With my amendment, we can do it immediately and save all of this money each year for each of these families. (Mr. ALLARD assumed the Chair.)

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I want to talk on a subject that has been in the news a lot. I will take a few minutes of the Senate's time. I have been involved in a lot of issues. I have debated just about everything known to mankind on the floor of the Senate, as have most of us. I am in my tenth year in the Senate, and I have never been involved in an issue that has gotten to my heart more than the Elian Gonzalez case--never. Last night, on the Geraldo Rivera show, a poll was shown saying 61 percent of the American people said Elian Gonzalez should go back to his father, and 28 percent of them said he should stay here in America. Here is this little boy who floated in the ocean on an innertube after his mother died trying to bring him to America. So we are now going to conduct policy about what to do about Elian by reading polls. Where is the leadership in this country when we need it? This is not about polls. I don't care what the polls are. I could care less what the polls are. If Lincoln had taken a poll on slavery, we would probably still have slavery because the majority of the people in America at that time supported slavery. But he didn't take a poll or put his finger to the wind. He did what was right. Again, I plead with my colleagues in the Senate to grant Elian Gonzalez and his family permanent residency status so this issue can be handled by a Florida custody court. This should not be an immigration matter. Elian Gonzalez did not get on a yacht and cruise into Miami Harbor. He and two other people almost drowned while everybody else on the boat--10 or 12 other people --lost their lives. And his mother's dying wish was to ``please get my son to American soil.'' I have heard a lot about the father's rights. I have nothing against him. He could be the nicest guy in the world. I have met Elian. I didn't get a chance to meet Elian's mother because she didn't make it. If she had made it, we would not be here talking about this because, under the law, she and Elian would be allowed to stay here. So because she died, Elian has no rights. Those of you listening to me now who think this is a father-son issue, I want you to listen carefully to what I have to say because it is not a father-son issue. That is a totally bogus argument. There are reports in Miami that Elian is reluctant to travel to Washington to see his father. He is a frightened little boy. Wouldn't you be after you survived that? Has anybody listening to me now ever gone through an experience like that--floating on an innertube on the high seas for 3 days, after you watched your mother die, and everybody else on the boat is gone except two others he didn't know were alive because they were drifting off somewhere else. And then to be sitting in a home in Miami, with people who love him, who have taken care of him, and to wonder if today, right now, tonight, tomorrow morning--he doesn't know when-- maybe noon tomorrow, in comes the large, sweeping hand of the Justice Department and Janet Reno, and they yank him from the arms of these people who love him and drag him back to Cuba. That is what he is sitting through now and worrying about now. He is a frightened little boy. When are we going to be concerned about this frightened little boy? I am tired of hearing about everyone else's rights in this debate. I am sick of it. I am sick of the fact that I can't get a vote on the floor of this Senate because the people do not have the guts to vote. They do not want to be recorded. I am sick of it because this little boy is going to be dragged back to Cuba, and he is going to be used as a pawn in Castro's--God knows what--forsaken land over there. And we have to live with it. We ought to be recorded, and we ought to be on record. We ought to stand up and be counted. I am sick of it. I have been quiet too long. I am not going to be quiet anymore. He is fearful of returning to that country. I talked to him. He said: Senator Smith, please help me. Don't send me back to Cuba. I said: Elian, do you love your father? Do you want to go back with your father? He says: Yes. I want to be with my father. I don't want to go back to Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez, if you are listening to me, why don't you defect? It is a heck of a lot better here. I am going to tell you that there is one shining example of why it is not about father and son. It is not about father and son. I am sick of it. Listen to me--one shining example of the human rights violation of Fidel Castro. Where are all the human rights people who care about this? Where is the Catholic Church that sheltered all of these Communists during the Nicaraguan and El Salvador issue? Where are they? Silent. Let me tell you about Fidel Castro and what little boys such as Elian look forward to, and what Elian will have to look forward to when he is dragged back to Cuba--for his father. Give me a break, Ms. Reno. On July 13, 1994, 72 Cuban men, women, and children boarded the 13 de Marzo, a tugboat, trying to sail for freedom to the United States, just like Elian did. Less than 3 hours later--3 hours later--32 of them would be forced to return to Cuba--they were the lucky ones--while the other 40, 23 children among them, were left by the Cuban authorities, their bodies scattered at sea. At 3 o'clock in the morning, 22 men and 30 women boarded a recently renovated World War II tugboat in the Bay of Havana. With them were over two dozen children, one an infant, and several others between 5 and 10 years old. I am going to show you some pictures of the children who boarded that boat who never returned. I want to show you pictures of children who died such as these children right here: Caridad Leyva Tacoronte, dead, 4 years old; Angel Rene Abreu Ruiz, dead, 3 years old; Yousel Eugenio Perez Tacoronte, dead, 11 years old. Let me tell you how they died with this dictator who tells you that he wants to welcome this little boy back to Cuba so he can be with his father. If Castro had caught him, he would be dead. All of them would have been. He would have killed them. But he didn't catch them. They drowned. Now Elian has to be told that he has to go back. His father said the other day, ``Four months I have been waiting for my son.'' Where have you been, Mr. Gonzalez? Nobody is stopping you from coming here, except Castro. We don't have any policy that says you can't come here. Let me tell you what happened to these kids. This little tugboat was detected, and it was approached by the Cuban coast guard. The government boat did not attempt to stop the 13 de Marzo, the boat. It didn't try to stop it. Instead, it stalked it for 45 minutes along the coast of Cuba, 7 miles out at sea--stalked it, intimidating it. The U.S. Coast Guard protects life. The Cuban coast guard exterminates life. It was then that the government vessel, beyond the sight of any witnesses on land, rammed this defenseless boat. This is 1994. This isn't 1959. This is 1994, 6 years ago. Defenseless people were in a little tugboat which was rammed by the Cuban coast guard. According to the testimony of several of the survivors, two Cuban government firefighting boats appeared and began to pummel the passengers with high pressure firehoses. You can imagine how horrible that was. Although the passengers repeatedly attempted to surrender to the government officials--even women holding their children up on deck, saying, please, my children; it is my child; don't kill my child. They were begging for their lives, but they were relentless, this wonderful Castro who is so concerned about getting this little boy back to his father in Cuba. The force from the firehoses you can imagine. One survivor, Mayda Tacoronte Vega, told her sister that she witnessed children sprayed from the arms of their mothers into the ocean waters. Other children were swept over the deck by the firehoses into the sea and drowned. Desperate to protect their own children, the women carried the remaining children down into the boat's hold. Gerado Perez Vasconcelos, whose ex-wife and son perished that day, told of how the firehoses were filling the hold with water. The boat sank, and she didn't see anybody coming out of the hold. With most of its weaker passengers already drowned inside the hold, or in the sea, the tugboat filled with water, cracked in two, and was rammed again just to be sure, and it sank. Over the course of a few minutes that day, Maria Victoria Garcia lost her husband, her 10-year-old boy, her brother, three uncles, and two cousins. For what? For trying to get out of Cuba, this place that we are going to send Elian back to, maybe tomorrow. Her poignant testimony revealed what happened to her and her son once they were in the water. ``We struggled to stay above water by clinging to a floating body.'' I wonder what Fidel would have done if Fidel had found Elian floating in the tube rather than these two fishermen. ``We struggled to stay above the water by clinging to a floating body,'' this woman said. ``I held onto this body because I just didn't have the strength to go on. But people fell on me, and my son slipped from my grasp,'' just as Elian's mother slipped from his grasp. The young boy could fight the huge waves created by the Government vessels, and his mother was forced to watch helplessly as her baby drowned only 5 feet away. Angel Ruiz, 3 years old, Fidel Castro, that wonderful, little child- loving dictator over there, took care of her. There is Yousel, he is 11. Nineteen-year-old Janette Hernandez Gutierrez also courageously attempted to save the life of a child just before the boat was fully submerged. ``We went to look for the other child. Just as I was about to get off the boat, I felt the child * * * had caught my foot. And when I was about to grab him, my shoe slipped off and down he went. I couldn't reach him. That was horrible * * *.'' Hernandez went on to describe the scene of the massacre: ``There was a child who was inflated like a toad, inflated with so much water.'' The merciless attack left 23 children and 17 adults dead in the Florida Straits. You say: Oh, well. That was just a bunch of Castro's goons who got a little excited; no big deal. This is not about that. Elian's father loves him. He should go back. Here is what Castro says about Elian, in case you want to know: ``The team is ready,'' Castro said, referring to when Elian comes back, ``to proceed without losing 1 minute with the rehabilitation and readaptation of Elian to his family.'' Yes. Absolutely. You talk about psychological trauma. You don't know what psychological trauma is until you deal with what this little boy has to deal. Not one person in the Justice Department has asked Elian one question about what he wants. I have been there. I have talked to him. The 32 survivors--maybe they were lucky. Maybe they weren't. They were taken to a prison where they have to endure life separated from their surviving relatives. Not only did the agents refuse to search for the dead, they mocked the survivors and the relatives of the deceased and laughed at those who asked the state security to reclaim the bodies, said Geraldo Perez in a tearful press conference. The officials said the drowned were nothing other than counterrevolutionary dogs. Will we send this ``counterrevolutionary dog'' back to Castro? Is Elian a counterrevolutionary dog? Elian had a taste of freedom. What if he resists the lack of human rights in Cuba? Will we hear about it? I don't think so. We will not hear about it, but Elian will hear about it. What do you think his father will be able to do about it? I ask some of my critics on the 61 percent, pick up a book about Fidel Castro's Cuba and look up the word ``pioneers.'' Let me tell you about the Pioneers. Elian was a Pioneer before he escaped. What do Pioneers do? They have a little indoctrination school. Here is one of the little drills they do for the children at the age of 3: Hold your hands out--put on a blindfold. Hold your hands out, ask God for some candy, and wait. No candy comes. Close your hands, put them down. Put your hands back up again, ask Fidel Castro for some candy, and watch it pour into your hands. That is what Elian has to look forward to. It is called brainwashing--nothing complicated about it. The Union of Communist Pioneers is a compulsory political organization for children and adolescents created by the government for youngsters in kindergarten to 12th grade. It functions as the first step toward joining the Union of Communist Youth. Approximately 98 percent of the children in elementary school are enrolled. It is not presided over by a child or adolescent, as one would expect, but by a high-ranking adult member of the Union of Communist Youth. Don't give me this stuff about him going back to his father. He is not going back to his father. What about his mother? Why does she not have rights, too? She had custody. She was taking care of him. The dirty little secret which Mr. Gonzalez will not talk about, because he can't, because of the long arm of Castro--where is he? He is in Bethesda, in a Cuban diplomat's house. He has a lot of free time to talk there. He can speak freely there, can't he? Reno has the nerve to say: We talked out there, we talked alone, and he didn't say anything about defecting. Come on, give me a break. Attorney General Reno, you could have stopped it 4 months ago, and you can still stop it today. Let it go to a custody court. Get out of it. It is not an immigration matter. He didn't immigrate here in the way we define immigration. Let it go to the custody court in Florida, and let them decide, if they need to. Let the family sit down alone without Fidel Castro, without any government officials, and let them talk about it. If they can't work it as a husband and wife can't work out custody of their children, go to court, and let the court make the determination based on all of the facts. There is a dirty little secret about Mr. Gonzalez. Yes, there is. Did he know Elian was coming? Sure, he knew. He knew they were leaving. He was called when the child was picked up and went to the hospital. The doctors wanted to know whether he had medical problems or history they needed to know about, so they called him in Cuba while the family was there. He said: Take care of my son; I will be there soon. We are not hearing about that, are we? We will not hear about that because we don't want to do anything to make Fidel Castro angry at the United States. After all, Bill Clinton wants a legacy of breaking down the barriers between Cuba and the United States. That is what this is about. Let's get real. God knows, he needs something to save his legacy, so we will take it out on Elian Gonzalez. After all, he is an expendable little kid. We don't care about him. That is just one kid. Let him go back to his father. If your son was lost at sea for 3 days and everybody on the boat drowned and somebody found him, I don't care who it was--it could be a convicted murderer who found him, who cares--if he found him and brought him home, wouldn't you ``thank him?'' Wouldn't you say ``thank you''? Wouldn't you thank those who took care of him, if you loved your son? Let me state what happened. There was no thank you. When he got off the plane, he said: They were a bunch of kidnappers. I want my kid back. They kidnapped my kid. Kidnapped my kid? I am not passing judgment on this guy. He could be the greatest father in the world for all I know, but he will not get a chance to be a father because the Cubans have already said this boy is the property of Cuba, not Mr. Gonzalez. Mr. Gonzalez will do what he is told. I want your kid. OK; when do you want him? Where do I take him? Where do I drop him off? As recently as April 2, Fidel Castro called the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez, Elian's unpunished kidnappers. Do you think little Elian will go back and tell his classmates and his father and those people in Cuba that these people were kidnappers who took care of him, who saved his life, the fishermen and the family who took care of him? I don't think so. What will happen? We can't afford to have little Elian running around saying bad things about Cuba or good things about America. No. Elian will pay the price. We don't have the guts to stand on the floor of the Senate as a Senate, all 100 Members, take a vote and say he should go back to Cuba or the case should go to court. Some say we might lose. Yes, we might. I think the vote count is probably 45--maybe. So what? We could take a walk on a number of issues before this body such as whether or not we should go to war in the Persian Gulf. We could have taken a walk on that and let the President go ahead and do it, but we took a vote. It was a tough vote. We take a lot of tough votes around here, and a lot of people die as a result of votes, especially when we vote to go to war. The headline in ``Granma,'' the Communist Party newspaper, after the incident was: ``Tugboat Stolen by Antisocial Elements Loses Stability and Sinks.'' On August 5, 1994, Fidel Castro declared that the roots of the accident were manifested in the conduct of the United States; it was the United States' fault that these kids drowned. Dr. Marta Milina, a Cuban psychiatrist who escaped Cuba in August of 1999, stated: If Elian Gonzalez is returned to Cuba, he would have severe psychological trauma. Is that in the best interest of Elian? Is it about Elian? Or is it about his father? The answer is, a custody court would know that because a custody court, if the family could not agree, would listen to the facts. They would make that determination. But they have never spoken, and the Justice Department has never spoken to Elian. This is one smart little boy. Meet him. And I am sorry the Attorney General does not believe it is important enough to meet him, but I will never forget him. He carried around a little statue of the Virgin Mary in the home where we were. I said: Who is that? He said: Virgin Mary. He said: I saw her while I was on the raft. Another story that is not recorded, and the fishermen will tell you, when they found him, he was floating in that little tube, asleep. You can substantiate this by talking to the family if you don't believe me. He was in the ocean for 3 days in the bright sunshine, didn't have a sunburn, and he was surrounded by dolphins, and dolphins will ward off sharks. This little boy is a very special little boy in more ways than one. The fact that we allow him to go back to Cuba under the auspices of uniting a father and a son is the most outrageous decision this country will ever make. Frankly, I do not want that blood on my hands. I know that is tough talk, and I mean every word of it. I don't want it on my hands. I have seen too much of it. I am not going to read all the names, but they will be printed in the Record. The children in that incident, 4 years old, 11 years old, 11 years old, 6 months old fire-hosed out of the arms of her mother, 2 years old, 3 years old, 10 years old, 4 years old, 3 years old, 11 years old, 2 years old--that is the age of the children. Let me close on a couple of points. Edmund Burke once said: All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men [and women] to do nothing. Today we can do something. We can grant Elian Gonzalez and his family permanent residency status, which will send this case to the family court where Mr. Gonzalez can make his case without any Castro influence. We should have done it the day Elian got back, but we did not. We decided to make this a big political issue between the administration and Castro. So Castro starts whining, and suddenly this administration thinks the case has to be in INS's jurisdiction. We could not kowtow to a Communist dictator. What does Castro care about the interests of this little boy? I told you what he thinks of this little boy. There are no parental rights in Cuba. The children are taken away into these training camps. They are taught all kinds of drills. They are taught how to take an AK-47 apart, blindfolded, at the age of 6. Luis Fernandez, a Cuban diplomat, said as recently as yesterday: The boy [Elian] is a possession of the Cuban government. Cuban children, my colleagues, do not belong to their parents, they belong to Fidel Castro. Article 39 of the Cuban constitution--it would be nice if some of the 61 percent of the people who say this had the facts. It would be nice if the pollster gave them the facts before they answered the question. Article 39 of the Cuban constitution, adopted in 1976 and revised in 1992, declares: . . . the education of children and young people in the spirit of communism is the duty of all society. Law No. 16 of the ``Children and Youth Code,'' adopted in 1978, says the state's goal is the creation of ``Communism's new generation'' and requires all adults to help mold a child's ``Communist personality.'' If the parents do not bring up the children to be good Communists, then the neighborhood spy will report them to the authorities and they will be taken away and ``reeducated.'' Talk to some of the Vietnamese who escaped Vietnam and ask them what a reeducation camp is. If anybody thinks little Elian Gonzalez will not be put under a severe and thorough Communist indoctrination when he goes back, then they are blind. He is going to suffer. He is going to pay--big time. For what? Surviving a near drowning, surviving a wreck on the open sea. That is why he is being punished, because his mother did not live. She has rights, too, but we don't know about them. But somebody could represent her in a custody court and put her rights on the record. But not Janet Reno. Let me give a little idea of what he is going to do some summer when he gets back. He is going to be in a ``voluntary" labor or military drill camp. He will learn there is no religion but communism. He was put in a church a few days after he arrived. He had never been in a church before in his life. He didn't know what the inside of a church was. He will learn that Fidel is God. He will learn the Communist Party is of more value than his father or anybody else in his family. He will be told his Miami relatives who cared for him and loved him, including his surrogate mother, Marielysis, are nothing more than traitors and worms and kidnappers. That is the language they use. Marielysis Gonzalez, 21 years old, has been hospitalized off and on for the past 2 weeks because this little boy clings to her every day. He will not leave her alone. Every time somebody knocks on the door, every time somebody comes in the yard, every time the phone rings, he wonders if somebody is going to take him away. And he asks her: Marielysis, are they going to take me today? How would you like to live like that? That is what Janet Reno has put this boy through for 4 months, and I am sick of it. I am not going to defend it. She has put him through it. It is her responsibility and the President's. These people have been vilified, these good people, these decent people in the Cuban-American community in Miami--good, decent people who have shown a lot of self-restraint, frankly, under the circumstances, but especially Lazaro and Marielysis and other members of that family who have taken such good care of this boy. All they care about is the best interests of the boy. It is funny, I did not hear some of those people saying anything about the rule of law--these same people today who are saying, the rule of law says he must go back with his father. It is funny, though, those same people when their President, the Chief Executive of our country, was impeached for repeatedly breaking our law, not one of them had the courage to step out and say: He broke the law; he lied to me. It just depends on whose law it is, doesn't it, and whose law you break. That is what matters. I believe in the rule of law, but can you understand why they do not want to send Elian back to a totalitarian state? I have talked to the family about this. They love Juan Gonzalez. He is a family member. There is no difficulty between these family members. The reason Mr. Gonzalez did not come here is that he could not come here. The reason Mr. Gonzalez can't defect is that he is afraid to defect because he knows what is going to happen to some of his family who are still back in Cuba. We are playing the game. We are just giving them all the cover. ``I spoke to Mr. Gonzalez, and he didn't indicate to me he wanted to defect.'' Do you remember learning about the Fugitive Slave Law of the 1840s and 1850s? It made northerners return escaped slaves back to their masters. Would anyone begrudge abolitionists who opposed that law? Picture this: A little black child in 1840, Anywhere, U.S.A., in the South, picked up by his mother. His father says, ``No, get away, I'll cover for you.'' She takes the Underground Railroad and makes it to the North and is caught. She dies. Same logic--send him back to the father. Send him back to slavery. This kid is going back to slavery. He is not going back to his father; he is going back to slavery. So all of you out there, all 61 percent, including many of my colleagues, when you watch him paraded around the streets of Havana as they teach him to become a pretty good little Communist, think about it. Think about how you might have stood up and prevented it. In 1939, the U.S.S. St. Louis arrived from Germany with 937 refugees aboard. Do you know who they were? Jews fleeing from Hitler. The ship was denied entry because the law did not allow it. The refugees went back to Europe and Hitler and to their deaths. Was it right to uphold the law in that case? The fact is, no law governs this case. Janet Reno is not telling you the truth. She has total discretion. There is no law that is dictating to her that she has to send this boy back. No law. Show it to me. Somebody come to the floor and read to me the law that says the Attorney General must return this boy. There is no such law. There is nothing in the law that says it. There is no age restriction. There is nothing. What it says is that she has discretion. So her discretion is to send him back, but do not tell me it is the law because it is not. She made the wrong decision. With this simple bill, on which I have been trying to get a vote for a month, Senators can be on record as saying it is wrong to make this an immigration case. He has rights. He is only a 6-year-old boy, but he has rights. His mother had rights. Let's let the family sit down and talk about it without the Justice Department. Let them meet alone. If they cannot work it out, they can go to the Florida custody court and decide what is in the best interest of Elian. That is the way it should be. Will evil succeed, as Mr. Burke said? That could be Elian. That could have been Elian and might still be Elian. My conscience is clear.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, under S. 2285, lost revenues to the highway trust fund would be made up dollar for dollar from the on-budget surplus. Let's not forget that we are in this position because the President of the United States does not have an energy policy. We cannot continue to risk both the well-being of the American people and our national security. This policy of relying on overseas energy has left us vulnerable to the whims of foreign countries. Passage of S. 2285 will bring relief to working families and protect our highway trust fund. I urge my colleagues to support the legislation.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. How much time remains?

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

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

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, this amendment is quite simple. It saves $40 billion that is now in the budget which we don't have to spend because the Smith-Allard amendment costs nothing. It is revenue neutral. It provides no increase in premiums for seniors. It takes effect as early as 2001, rather than 2009 under the President's plan. It covers 50 percent of prescription drugs, up to $5,000. For every dollar spent, 50 cents is covered, up to $5,000, and the prescription drug goes toward the deductible. So if we want to save money on the budget and allow seniors to have prescription drug coverage at no cost to the Government--revenue neutral, no increase in premiums to seniors--it is a good deal. I encourage my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3031.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. I thank my colleague for yielding this time. I have an amendment, No. 3031, called prescription drug amendment, along with my colleague, Senator Allard. Three or four minutes does not give much time to explain a complicated amendment, but I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle it meets the criteria of the Democrat plan with a couple of additions for improvement. It is revenue neutral. It eliminates the need to spend $40 billion in the budget. It takes effect as early as 2001, and there is no premium increase for seniors. It is voluntary. It is accessible to all Medicare beneficiaries. It is designed to provide meaningful protection. It is affordable for all beneficiaries. It is administered using the private sector. It is consistent with broader Medicare reform. It is revenue neutral. It does not increase premiums. It provides full prescription drug benefits as early as 2001. The cost to the trust fund under Smith-Allard is zero; the cost to the trust fund under the Clinton proposal is $203 billion over the next 20 years. It is supported by Mr. King, the former HCFA Administrator, in a letter. Monthly premiums under the Clinton plan, $51; Smith-Allard, zero for drugs; Part B, $45.50, versus $45.50; Medigap, $134 versus $88. The total is $230 versus $133. The Smith-Allard premium savings is $96.83 a month. It works simply. The annual deductible under Clinton is $876--$776 plus $100. Under Smith-Allard, the combined deductible is $675. And prescription drugs are in part going toward the deductible. In conclusion, this is a very good approach. It saves $40 billion out of this budget resolution, with which we could do a lot of things. It is revenue neutral. It takes effect as early as 2001. There is no premium increase for seniors. I encourage my colleagues to support my amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire

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

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I am very pleased that the Senate is taking up today an important piece of legislation that will enhance our ability to protect the Nation's most valuable shoreline habitats. This bill, S. 835, the Estuary Habitat Restoration Partnership Act, is a great tribute, I think, to not only our leadership in the Senate but also to our late colleague, Senator John Chafee. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and move it forward quickly, to get it into law. S. 835 is an example of environmental policy based on partnership and cooperation--not on this top-down mandate, overburdensome Federal regulation, but a partnership and a cooperative effort. It shows you, when you have a partnership and have a cooperative effort and don't try to impose regulations, what you can do. This bill is a good example of that. It promotes working together in a partnership situation with the States, with local programs, and with the private sector. This bill will make it possible to restore 1 million acres of habitat with almost no cost to the taxpayer. Environmental success is what this is, and it is the kind of environmental success that I am very proud to support. This bill is yet one more of the many legacies of our friend and late colleague, Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island. He was the principal sponsor and a longtime champion of the estuary system in this country. Last October, under his chairmanship, the Committee on Environment and Public Works reported out S. 835 by a voice vote. For the past 5 months, his son, Senator Lincoln Chafee, has carried forward the effort in the Senate and helped me immensely to get where we are today with this legislation. I am grateful for his leadership. I know it was a special matter for him to lead on this issue and on this bill because of what his father had done on its behalf. So I am pleased to be a part of this effort, pleased as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee to bring this matter to the Senate for final passage. To understand how important this act is for protecting the environment, one has to understand what estuaries are and how valuable they are to our society. An estuary is a bay, a gulf, a sound, or an inlet where fresh water from rivers and streams meet and mixes with saltwater from the ocean, or put simply, it is where the river meets the sea. Examples of estuaries are coastal marshes, coastal wetlands, maritime forests, sea grass, meadows, and river deltas. Estuaries represent some of the most environmentally and economically productive habitats in the entire world. Estuaries are critical for wildlife. Approximately 50 percent of the Nation's migratory songbirds are linked to coastal estuary habitat, while near 30 percent of North American waterfowl rely upon coastal estuary habitat for wintering grounds. Threatened and endangered species depend upon estuaries for their survival. Estuaries also play a major role in commercial and recreational fishing as well. Approximately 70 percent of the commercial fish catch, and 80 to 90 percent of recreational fish catch, depend in some way on estuaries. Obviously these fish swim up into those estuaries and spawn, and those small fish work their way back into the oceans. You may not realize it, but estuaries also contribute significantly to the quality of life that many of us enjoy as Americans. Over one- half of the entire population of the United States lives near a coastal area. Traditionally, a great majority of Americans visit estuaries every year to swim, to fish, to hunt, to dive, to bike, to learn, or just to view the beauty of the marshes and the wildlife. For many States, this tourism provides enormous economic benefit, and it does in New Hampshire, as well as almost every State in the Union. In fact, the coastal recreation and tourism industry is the second largest employer in the Nation serving 180 million Americans each year. These many attributes of estuaries are especially important to me because of the rich coastline of New Hampshire. We only have 18 or 19 miles of it, but it is rich. New Hampshire estuaries contribute to dynamic habitat, and they contribute to the beauty of the State as well as the economy. Recreational shell fishing alone in New Hampshire contributes an estimated $3 million annually to the State and local economy. New Hampshire is in the forefront of the national effort to identify and protect sensitive estuary habitats. The New Hampshire Great Bay, Little Bay and Hampton Harbor, and their tributary rivers joined the National Estuary Program in July 1995 as part of the New Hampshire Estuaries Project. The Great Bay estuary has a rich cultural history. Its beauty and resources attracted the Paleo Indians in the area nearly 6,000 years ago. It was also the site of a popular summer resort during the 1800s, as well as a shipyard. As a Senator from New Hampshire, I am proud to be involved in this historical and ecological resource, and to preserve it for future generations. What we do in environmental matters we should do not for the next election, and not for somebody's business bottom line, but for the next generation--for the generations of our grandchildren and their generations to come. That is why we make these decisions to preserve these estuaries so that 1,000 years from now our descendents can say: We can see an estuary because those guys stood up when it counted and they saved them for us. That is a great legacy. Unfortunately, though, many of the estuaries around the United States, including those in New Hampshire, have been harmed by excessive urbanization of surrounding areas. According to the EPA's National Water Quality Inventory, 38 percent of the surveyed estuary habitat is impaired. S. 835 is a tremendous step to establishing a much needed restoration program. What does S. 835 do? It does not duplicate any existing efforts, but instead it builds upon current restoration projects by establishing a community-driven, incentive-based program while expanding EPA's ability to provide grants for conservation management plans. It has a national strategy because a national strategy is vital in order to coordinate current and future restoration efforts among both Federal, State, and local programs. Sometimes estuaries have no State borders. They move across the borders of States and towns. We have a collaborative council to accomplish this goal. S. 835 establishes this council. It is chaired by the Secretary of the Army with the participation of the Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, the Department of Commerce, the Administrator of EPA, and the Secretary of Interior. It will be authorized to distribute $315 million over 5 years to community groups to implement restoration projects. It establishes criteria to select projects; for example, quantity and quality of the habitat to be restored; criteria to minimize the Federal share; criteria to address sources of pollution that would otherwise again impair the restored habitat; and, criteria that fosters the development of cost- effective and innovative technologies. This bill encourages local communities and the private sector to develop partnerships to implement restoration activities. Decisions of how to restore these estuaries are made by the local communities. Another key feature of the bill is that it ensures accountability through ongoing monitoring and evaluation. NOAA maintains a database of restoration projects. Information and lessons learned from one project can be incorporated into other restoration projects. The council will publish the biannual report to Congress detailing the progress made under the act. It allows Congress and the public to know about the successes and failures of the projects and strategies under this section. S. 835 includes important provisions dealing with the National Estuaries Program, the Chesapeake Bay Region Program, and the Long Island Sound. I know that these provisions have been of particular importance to Senators Warner and Lieberman, and no doubt they will be addressing the importance of these programs on the floor very soon. However, I want to acknowledge the important role that the National Estuaries Program has played in raising national awareness on the value of these habitats. The National Estuaries Program, established in 1988, demonstrates what we can accomplish when the Federal Government, the State government, and the local government work together in partnership without all of the friction and without all the confrontation. Participation in the program is voluntary, and it emphasizes watershed planning and community involvement. I have met with so many people at the local and State level on so many of these environmental projects who are knowledgeable, smart, and well-educated people who know these issues very well. They don't need to be dictated to by the Federal Government. To date, 28 conservation plans under this program have been prepared for designated estuaries. I am pleased that New Hampshire is in the process of developing its own conservation plan. Unfortunately, though, the program does not have sufficient resources to adequately address all habitat restoration. Until now, in fact, only the development of a plan could be funded--not their implementation. S. 835 will change that. This bill will increase the authorization for the program from $12 million to $25 million annually for 2001 and 2002. Let me close by saying that there is overwhelmingly bipartisan support for this bill. It represents an approach to environmental policy that should be the basis for solving environmental problems by dealing with these issues through cooperation, not confrontation. And that is what this bill is all about. Decisions that affect local communities are to be made by local communities. They use taxpayer dollars wisely and effectively. This bill represents the sixth report by the Environment and Public Works Committee since I became its chairman just a few months ago. I include also the reauthorization of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Establishment Act, and a wetlands bill in Louisiana. It is only the sixth in what I hope will be a long line of good, solid, strong, bipartisan environmental bills. We all breathe the same air. We all like to drink clean water. We all like to walk the land and to have that land be clean and to enjoy the wildlife. I have never been able to figure out why Democrats perhaps would like to do that more than Republicans, or vice versa. This is nonpartisan. This is bipartisan. This is good legislation, and many of these initiatives were very important to our beloved former colleague, John Chafee. I thank Senator Baucus and my other committee colleagues, as well as Senators Lott and Daschle, for helping us to continue the tradition of bipartisan action on environmental matters. That is so much a part of the legacy of John Chafee. I urge my colleagues to support its passage.

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee amendment be withdrawn.