Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I withdraw my unanimous consent request for the time being, and I ask unanimous consent that my right to be recognized to call up the report remain the same.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I also concur with the statements of the chair and ranking member of the Agriculture Committee about the intent of provisions included in this conference report related to the CSP. It was not our intention, in any way, to modify the operation of this program prior to the beginning of fiscal year 2008. I join Senator Cochran in my determination to resolve this matter in an appropriate conference report this year. He has my commitment to work with my colleagues to assure that the Senate acts at the earliest possible date this year on a conference report that is expected to become law that will assure that the CSP operates as established and intended in the 2002 farm bill for the duration of that bill.

Mr. STEVENS. My friend from Hawaii is correct. The bill language is the law and controls the operation of the provision. I regret that the Statement of Managers was incorrectly drafted. It should have reflected that three cruise ships will be allowed to reflag under U.S. registry.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this is probably a historic occasion because we are presenting to the Senate--as my colleague, Chairman Bill Young, presented to the House--11 appropriations bills in one omnibus bill, a bill that covers the balance of this fiscal year, fiscal year 2003. We are in this position because of considerations of the last Congress. I will not take the time of the Senate to try to discuss why we did not pass those bills last year, but when we commenced this year and I became chairman of the Appropriations Committee once again, it was my determination that we should proceed with those bills and make sure we had them completed and to the President for his signature before we were forced to enter into the budget process for fiscal year 2004. It was a very difficult process. I want to thank my good friend and Chairman Bill Young in the House, who did as we requested to get the Senate to adopt two continuing resolutions. One we passed and it has extended the time for consideration of these bills. That time will expire on February 20. We will soon get another continuing resolution to take us over to, I believe, February 24, so the President will have a chance to review these bills before he must sign them. I do believe the President will sign this bill when it is received by him. It was early this morning that the conference report on H.J. Res. 2 was filed in the House. I was discussing with other Members of Congress as early as 2 a.m. this morning some of the provisions of this bill. It is a very controversial bill, I know. There are many portions of this bill that if I were alone and had the sole right to write the bill, I would not incorporate in this bill. This bill includes 11 separate appropriations bills. The conference report includes 16 divisions. It is a long bill. I see my friend from Arizona in the Chamber. I acknowledge it is a very difficult bill to go through in a very short period of time. I appreciate the consideration he and his staff are giving to the bill, as he usually gives to our appropriations bills. I see my colleague from West Virginia is in the Chamber, and when he is ready we will ask that the Senate turn to the consideration of the bill. I want to talk about some of the background of the bill before we begin making statements on the bill and what is in it. This has been a very difficult process for all of us. I want to say to the Senate that following the election, I outlined to our staff, and our staff director Steve Cortese, a process I hoped we would follow to get these bills passed. The Senate Appropriations Committee staff has been working on these 11 separate bills since the end of the year. We have had bipartisan cooperation. The process we followed in the Senate was that we had 11 teams. They were made up of the 11 subcommittees that would have handled the bills had they been handled individually. These bills were primarily the result of the interaction of the staff director of each of those subcommittees with the staff and the membership of the subcommittee. We took the product of those 11 teams and put them together into the omnibus amendment I offered to H.J. Res. 2, the one that was brought before the Senate. I might add that in addition, the conference report contains $10 billion in addition to the funds for the Department of Defense and intelligence community for the global war on terrorism. These were added to the bill. This was a reserve that was set aside by my great friend from West Virginia when he was chairman, a reserve for Defense pursuant to the request of the President as he presented the budget for the fiscal year 2003. It would be my intention to ask the Senate to proceed with statements pertaining to H.J. Res. 2 before it is actually received, before we go on the bill. I hope that meets with everyone's approval. Right now it is a matter of discussing the various provisions of the bill. There are several other legislative initiatives in the bill. They include $3.1 billion for drought and other agricultural disasters. These funds are offset by reductions in mandatory programs. Medicare and the TANF short-term extensions would give the Finance Committee time to address their matters in a reconciliation bill later this year. There is a .65 percent across-the-board cut to all discretionary accounts in this bill to assure that the total remains within the top line that was agreed to by myself, House Chairman Bill Young, and the President. That is a an arbitrary line, I will admit, but in order to get the bill signed, if we joined them together, it was my judgment we could not risk a final veto from the President of the United States after working so hard to put them all through in one package. So we have worked as closely as possible with all concerned to try and make certain that the bills will be in a form the President could sign it. I have to admit I am sure he will be as disturbed about some of the provisions as I am myself, but I do believe all in all the bill is one the President should be able to sign because we have kept the agreement. We have stayed within the line of the requests made by the President of the United States for funds for fiscal year 2003. I will take a moment to address the total spending levels in the bill. Last November, Chairman Bill Young and I met with the President to discuss how we might complete the work on these fiscal year 2003 bills. At that time, the President asked that we would hold to the total provided in his budget request, as amended by him. We asked that funds needed for the western firefighting be added to that total to address that emergency. We also agreed at that time there would be no emergency money per se--no amounts added to the bill above the President's request. The President agreed to our request that he would send in a supplemental request for the monies needed for the western fires. In addition, we discussed the need to fund the election reform bill enacted by the last Congress and respond to the severe drought facing Midwestern and Western States. To accommodate all these competing pressures, the bill I presented to the Senate in the form of an amendment to the second continuing resolution sent to the House included a 1.6 percent across-the-board cut to ensure the total spending did not exceed the new total we then faced, which was $751.325 billion. During consideration by the Senate, amendments were adopted that necessitated increasing that across-the-board cut to 2.85 percent of the total of the bill. That level could not be sustained, and it became a driving factor in our conference with the House and with the administration. We understood that as we went to conference. We took those across-the-board cuts so in conference we could discuss all the programs with the House and with the administration and work out an acceptable compromise. The challenge facing the conferees was to integrate all the priorities of both the Houses and the administration within the top line of the total requested by the President of the United States. Each of the subcommittee chairmen and ranking members managed to negotiate to resolve their portion of the bill. In other words, as they got to conference, the 11 teams were still involved with working primarily with their portion of this bill. Both the House and the Senate worked to accommodate a set of allocations that would ensure we stay within our fiscal goals. By allocations, I mean the amount of money available to each subcommittee for the portion of this bill and the portion of the budget that pertained to matters under their jurisdiction. During the course of these negotiations, we turned on several occasions to the Vice President for his counsel, consideration, and leadership in bridging the gaps between the Congress and the administration. This has been one of the most interesting periods of my life as a Senator, being able to work this closely with the Vice President, who undertook, despite the problems facing the Nation, to give us his attention whenever I called and whatever time I called. In every case, the Vice President worked hard with us to find solutions to the problems that beset this conference. The conference report, based on the give and take between the House and the Senate, between the Congress and the White House, meets the fiscal targets agreed to by both the House and the Senate. Discretionary spending for fiscal year 2003 will be a total now of $762.713 billion. That total reflects our original base of $751.325 billion, in addition to $1.5 billion for election reform, which the President endorsed over the base request, and the $10 billion for the defense reserve. The White House also accepted $2.241 billion in advance appropriations for the 2004 education programs, which was an initiative we began on the floor as we tried to increase the moneys allocated to education under the President's No Child Left Behind education program. In short, we set a target which was the total amount requested by the administration. We met the target and we bring this bill to the Senate, reflecting the priorities of the administration, the House, and the Senate. A great deal of hard work went into this final agreement, with all parties making compromises--and, I must say, sacrifices--to get the job done. On my own account, as I mentioned earlier today, I was disappointed that a more complete resolution of the Alaska timber problem could not be included in this bill. There have been comments made about my trying to add something behind the scenes and some sort of dark way of moving an amendment that should not have been considered by the conference. There was a provision in this bill as it went to conference dealing with the Tongass Forest in Alaska. We tried to resolve the total dispute over that forest. That has not been possible. As I said this afternoon, I will address the Senate again and again and again until it is resolved. At the conference meeting, I was compelled to ask Senator Bond to withhold a more comprehensive proposal on the Missouri River, a goal he has sought, and sought very hard, and on which he has worked very hard. I know it was a very difficult thing for my great friend from Missouri. The House advocated language on coal company compensation that the Senate could not agree to. The House also accepted compromises on Amtrak from the positions advocated by the subcommittee chairman. The toughest portion to resolve was the drought relief package. I am deeply grateful to the efforts and leadership of Senator Cochran in resolving this matter and meeting the needs of those farmers devastated by recent droughts. His joint role as chairman of the agriculture subcommittee and the authorizing committee made him a pivotal figure in this process and brought before the Senate a proposal which I hope will be acceptable to all involved in farm matters. I know many others wish to speak at this conference report, and I will reserve any time that might be allocated to me. I thank the distinguished ranking member and our former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd, for his partnership and assistance in preparing this bill for the Senate. I know he did not agree with the process. I know he wished we had more time to deal with these individuals bills. But without the work undertaken by Senator Byrd in the committee, reporting all the 13 bills last year, we could not have completed our work under the timetable we faced. It was because of the work he led last year that gave us the ability to deal with 11 different bills that had a prior approval by the Senate and past Congress and gave a jumping off point to play catchup with this process. I have the deepest respect for the House chairman, Congressman Young, and the ranking member, Congressman Obey. Their constructive approach and determination to finish the work, these 2003 bills, were vital to the conclusion of this conference. It is with a great deal of humbleness that I come before the Senate and ask the Senate to approve this conference report because I know it is a difficult process. We will approve the largest appropriations bill in the history of the United States because there are 11 together in one package. It is very difficult. There will be portions of this bill with which some people disagree; they could disagree with 1 and love the other 10. But the process here is such that if we are to do our work for the remainder of this year, if we are going to be able to address the year 2004 appropriations bills, if we are going to be prepared to deal with the possibility of a supplemental for our men and women in uniform who are being deployed throughout the world, if we are going to be able to be partners with the administration in dealing with the crises that face this country in Iraq and Korea, we have to clear this deck. We have to make up our mind to vote for this bill. I urge every Member to search his or her soul about this process. It is not a perfect process. It is absolutely not perfect. This bill is certainly far from perfect, but it is the best we can do under the circumstances that face us. There are many people here disappointed, as I am, about provisions that affect their own personal State. All I can say is, there will be another day and perhaps we can address some of those provisions on an individual basis as the year goes by. I deeply thank the staff of the Appropriations Committee on a bipartisan basis. I will later ask to put all their names in the Record because every one of them has been involved. My staff director sent me an e-mail last night at 2:45. I am surprised he thought I was still awake to get it--but I was. But the real problem is this has been a product of hard labor. I hope the Senate realizes that as we proceed tonight. It is my deep hope that we will vote on this bill tonight because it will add 1 more day to the time that the President has to review the bill. It will take at least 2 days, maybe 3 days, for the enrolling process of this bill to take place. In all probability the President cannot receive this bill, if we pass it tonight, until Monday night or Tuesday of next week. He is entitled the time to review this; all of the staff have to review this before he will sign it. Having been part of the administration one time, I know what they call the ``enrolled bill process'' in the administration. Each department gets its time to review a bill passed by the Congress and present their recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget to be put together and given to the President for his consideration before he will sign a bill. That process must have time. We should accord the President of the United States the respect due his office, to give him time to review this bill. I regret deeply I did not get more time for my friend from Arizona to review the bill. As the years have gone by, we have come to appreciate each other more in terms of the roles we play in this process. The Senator from Arizona is the watchdog of the Treasury as far as this process is concerned. I admire and respect that as far as the Senator is concerned, and I look forward to comments he will make tonight.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consider the conference report to accompany H.J. Res. 2 under the previous agreement.

Mr. STEVENS. I yield back all time.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his nice comments. I can only say I regret deeply that I will not have the privilege he will have tonight, to go home to that beautiful young child. We know he protects children because of his great interest in children at this time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed, according to the previous order, to the consideration of conference report to accompany H.J. Res. 2, that it be considered under the following limitation: 15 minutes under the control of Senator Boxer, 20 minutes between the chairman and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee; further, I ask that following the yielding back or use of the time, the Senate proceed to a vote on the adoption of the conference report with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. STEVENS. That is all?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am not ready to lay down the bill. I have no objection to the Senator having 15 minutes, as the rest of us have, in terms of morning business.

Mr. STEVENS. That's correct.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. Certainly.

Mr. STEVENS. Is there some limitation?

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, the Saltonstall-Kennedy (S-K) Grant Program is a competitive program administered by the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Department of Commerce. The S-K program was established by the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act of 1954 to promote U.S. seafood products around the world and generally support our Nation's fisheries. For the first time in 1979, S-K receipts from import duties on fishery products were transferred to NOAA's base budget to fund an industry/government partnership. However, without my amendment in fiscal year 2003 NOAA would transfer $75 million to it's base budget, leaving only $220,000 for the original purposes of this program-- promoting domestic seafood production. This provision ensures that a little less than 15 percent of those receipts transferred to NOAA will be used for their intended purpose--promoting domestic seafood from Alaska, home to half of the U.S. domestic seafood production. This bill includes $10 million from the S-K program to market Alaska seafood products and creates the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board to administer these funds. This program will help develop and promote high-value fresh and fresh-frozen Alaskan seafood products, allowing Alaska fishermen to better compete in the global and domestic markets. The Secretary of Commerce will appoint the members of the board and the executive director. In appointing members to the board, the Secretary shall fully consult with and seek recommendations from the Governor of Alaska. The membership should reflect the various aspects of seafood production, distribution, State oversight and the retail of Alaska seafood products. This would include three individuals with experience in harvesting Alaska seafood, two individuals with experience in fish processing, one individual from the Alaska transportation industry, one individual from the Alaska State legislature -preferably with experience on the State of Alaska's Salmon Task Force, one individual with experience in mass market food distribution, one individual with experience in mass market food retailing, one individual with experience in niche marketing of Alaska seafood products, and one individual recommended by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. The board will solicit grant proposals for marketing Alaska seafood from the public, review them, and fund those that will do the most to help reinvigorate struggling sectors of the Alaska seafood industry. These proposals can promote region-specific or species-specific marketing programs that do not undermine existing statewide ``Alaska Seafood'' marketing efforts. The board may choose to promote the development of new processing technologies to insure the commercial viability of Alaska seafood and improve related transportation costs in delivering these products to market, and will work to improve the overall marketability of Alaska seafood. I look forward to working with the Secretary of Commerce on establishing the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board and helping the Alaska seafood industry get its message out to the world.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, it is my understanding the House will not get to the bill until quite late tonight so I presume we will not receive it until tomorrow.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the appropriations bill, the omnibus bill, as we call it, will be here soon. I wanted to comment about stories pertaining to a provision I have in the bill and the change I sought to make in it. The Tongass language in this omnibus bill that will come back to the Senate is the same language in the bill when it passed the Senate. It was not challenged in the Senate. The language provides that the record of decision for the 2003 supplemental environmental impact statement for the 1997 Tongass Land Use Management Plan shall not be subject to administrative appeal or judicial review. During the consideration of the omnibus bill, I did suggest some modification of that language. It led to considerable discussion in the press. I might add there are a whole series of provisions in this bill as it comes back that were modified in conference by many Senators, many Members of the House of Representatives. The process by which we do that in many ways has been discussed by other Senators. At a later time I want to discuss the process by which Senators comment upon the work of other Members of the Senate. In any event, for instance, in the Los Angeles Times, Senator Boxer said: The stewardship proposal could allow logging of 10 million acres in California if the riders remain in the bill. I intend to discuss them at great length on the Senate floor. My amendment did not apply to California at all. The Senator from California also is reported as saying in another release I have that: This is a dangerous backdoor attempt to silence the public, states, and localities, and to stop our citizens from going to court to protest these destructive riders. The provision to stop going to court was in the Senate bill. In another article in the Grand Forks Herald, there is this statement: The riders would remove Alaska's Tongass and Chugach forests from protection under the national roadless policy and require the Forest Service to offer timber sales to meet market demand regardless of the effects on habitat and the forests' other resources. I could go on and on with these articles that are in the papers and in the news releases throughout the country. What I want to do is set the record straight on what the situation is in the Tongass and how we got where we are today. It is a long saga. It takes a little while to relate to the Senate. In 1997, after 10 years of planning and $13 million of the taxpayers' money, the Tongass Land Use Management Plan was completed. I opposed that plan because it contained drastic reductions in the timber harvest. I thought the levels were much lower than they needed to be. There were numerous scientists who found the Tongass could sustain far greater development support than what was included in the report. Today, just 6 years later, that plan seems like the golden age of the Tongass timber industry. I now find myself defending that plan, which Democrats and environmentalists then supported because those same extreme environmentalists and their friends from the previous administration have done so much damage to Alaska's timber industry since that time. The Tongass Land Use Management Plan reduced the allowable sale quantity (ASQ), for the Tongass to 267 million board feet. That is the plan I am talking about that we are now defending. Of the allowable 267 million board feet of timber, less than 220 million board feet would be economically harvestible under the plan. It provided access to only 676,000 acres of the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest. Furthermore, it established that timber harvesting on Federal land would be managed over 100-year and 120-year rotations. These rotations provided more than enough time for forest revitalization. The Tongass is the only forest in Alaska in which timber may be harvested. I call the Senate's attention to this. Our other forest, which is 5.5 million acres, the Chugach, is under a forest management plan which has reduced timber harvesting to zero. This renders the Chugach forest almost completely closed to logging. There are some small inholding tracks that could be logged, but none of them are being logged, to my knowledge. Last year less than 1 million board feet of salvageable timber ravaged by disease was sold from the Chugach. There is no real commercial harvest there. Many groups and individuals frame the current debate about the Tongass as an argument about whether or not the forest should be saved. The terms of the 1997 plan made by the Clinton administration make it clear that framing the issue this way is very misleading. The 1997 plan set aside 93 percent of all forested areas in the Tongass National Forest in my home State. Under the Tongass amendment I asked Congress to approve, that land will remain completely untouched. It will not touch any of the land, 93 percent, that is reserved, set aside. It would remain completely untouched. Clearly the vast majority of the Tongass has already been saved for future generations. Yet they want more. There is 7 percent of the forest that is still open to logging under the agreement made in 1980. My State's timber industry has experienced a swift decline, threatening thousands of Alaskan families who depend upon that industry for their livelihood. Today timber communities in southeast Alaska have been devastated by unemployment due in large part to jobs lost in the timber industry. I point out to the Senate this bill we will vote on tonight will contain $3.1 billion for the farm community that has been devastated by about a 15 percent reduction in income. My timber industry will receive nothing even though it has been totally devastated by the actions taken by the Clinton administration. The Tongass once supported 4,000 timber jobs. Today two-thirds of those jobs have disappeared, and all of them will disappear if the roadless policy is applied to the area set aside for logging in the Tongass format and the Tongass Land Use plan. In the last 10 years, diseased supply and frivolous lawsuits waged by extreme environmental groups have led to the closure of all of our pulp mills. There is not a single pulp mill left in Alaska. When those mills closed, they took southeast Alaska's best jobs with them. I hasten to point out, as I said, when farming fell 15 percent, Congress declared a disaster. That is $3.1 billion we put up for the farmers. They are no different than loggers. The only difference is, loggers have been affected by actions of the Department of Agriculture. It is the Department of Agriculture that asks us to protect the farmers. The situation in the Tongass has not only cost us thousands of jobs, it has also cost the Government valuable tax dollars. The Government may soon have to pay the Alaska Pulp Company $750 million for the Clinton administration's illegal cancellation of timber contracts in the Tongass. That money should be paid to Alaska's workers. The rapid decline in Alaska's timber industry is due to two main causes: the Clinton administration's policy barring logging and roadbuilding on 58.5 million acres of national forest, including the Tongass, and frivolous lawsuits brought by the multibillion-dollar environmental lobby in an effort to lock up public resources on public land. First, let me talk about the plan implemented by the Clinton administration's final days in office. When Congress passed the Tongass Act in 1947, we set what we called the ASQ level for the Tongass at 1.38 billion board feet per year. That level was slowly eroded. In 1980, the level was reduced to 450 million board feet per year under the Alaska National Interest Lands Act. In 1997, the Tongass land management plan further reduced the level to 267 million board feet. By 2001, the harvest level in the Tongass was only 48 million board feet-- from 1.3-plus billion board feet to less than 48 million board feet. When you talk about a disaster, clearly this drastic reduction is one of the most serious disasters for the timber industry. To give my fellow Senators some perspective, Southeast Alaska has more than 18 million acres of forest land, 95 percent of which is in a national forest and only 850 timber jobs left today. Arkansas has 19 million acres of forest land, 8 percent of which is national forest and 43,000 timber jobs. Pennsylvania has 17 million acres of forest land, 2 percent of which is in a national forest, and 82,000 timber jobs. New York has 19 million acres of forest land, 4 percent of which is national forest, and 51,000 timber jobs. Last year, while Alaska harvested 34 million board feet, New York harvested nearly 900 million board feet of timber. This history and disparity between how national forest lands are administered in other States and how they are administered in Alaska shows that reductions in the ASQ levels are unfair, unreasonable, and unlawful. The 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act provided the proper balance between protecting and preserving Alaska's heritage and providing economic and social opportunities to the people of the State of Alaska. That 1980 Act specifically prohibited the changes the Clinton administration made to the Tongass management plan in 1999. Section 708(b) of the 1980 Act specifically states that there will be no ``further statewide roadless area review and evaluation of national forest systems lands in the State of Alaska'' without the express authorization of Congress--none. We call that one of the ``no more clauses.'' That was the one concession Congress gave to us when it withdrew over a hundred million acres of our State for national interest lands and disallowed any type of development by the people of the State of Alaska. Section 1326 of that same act--again, deemed the ``no more clause''-- prohibits review of any future conservation area greater than 5,000 acres without congressional approval. Clearly, the study of the 18 million acre Tongass was not authorized; it was not previously reviewed by Congress. The roadless plan was first announced by the Clinton administration in 1999. I hope Senators will listen to this. In the fall of 2000, I received a call from the Clinton administration assuring me as chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the Senator from Alaska that the Tongass would be excluded from the roadless plan. The proposed rule upon which hearings were held specifically excluded Alaska. Let me consider that now, and I hope the Senate will consider it. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the Clinton administration sought my help on many issues in the year 2000 as we considered the 2001 appropriations bills. I was in a position then to hold them to their commitment on the roadless areas. After the election was over and the appropriations bills had passed, President Clinton personally applied the roadless plan to the Tongass by Executive order. It was not included in the proposed rule upon which hearings were held, but at the last minute the President personally added Alaska to the plan. In their rush to lock up Alaska on their way out the door, the administration ignored the concerns of my State, the Alaskan Natives, and our timber communities, and they specifically violated the law. Lawsuits brought by extreme environmentalists have created an equally troubling situation. The lawsuits have forced the Forest Service to keep revising its plans. The groups filing these suits are abusing the National Environmental Policy Act, an act which I cosponsored along with Senator Jackson in the 1970s. As a cosponsor, I believe I knew the original intent. When we passed that act, we intended it to be used to assess the environmental impact of major Federal decisions. Radical environmentalists have used it to create an absolute barrier to resource development or commercial use on any public lands. Each time we complete an environmental impact study, it costs the taxpayers up to $10 million and locks up public resources for years. In effect, this practice has created a class of professional environmental lawyers whose only practice is to prevent the utilization of resources on public lands. I have been a lawyer for 50 years and I have never seen such development. I have never seen such single-minded people who use a law designed to protect our environment to produce income for themselves, at a cost to the taxpayers and the people of this Nation. No one seeks to limit due process or debate on these issues, but the extremists have exhausted the time period for a reasonable review process. I ask colleagues to remember new roadless areas are illegal in Alaska under these clauses I have read, unless specifically approved by Congress. This would not even be an issue if the Clinton Justice Department had raised the ``no more clause'' when they defended the Tongass land management plan in Federal court. Neither did the Federal district court judge. Mr. President, I have a letter from the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, one of our major political subdivisions in Alaska. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this letter is from Roy Eckert, borough manager, concerning amendments relating to Tongass timber. I want to put into the Record another letter that has been written to the Secretary of Agriculture and signed by Petersburg city council member, of the Recreation/Wilderness Program manager of the Tongass National Forest, Bill Tremblay. It is a factual letter setting forth parts of the comments that I have made. I hope Members of the Senate will read it. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I go back to my original statement. I have been here going on 35 years now and I have never seen people make statements that are so unfounded and unfactual about things that I am doing. I am warning the Senate that if Members of the Senate accuse me of doing things that are not proper and they are absolutely unfactual, I intend to come here and, on a basis of personal privilege, bring those Senators to the floor and demand an apology. This has gone too far. Senators are saying my amendment covers 9 million acres. It does not. It protects 1.7 million acres. The reason we are discussing this here today is that at the last minute, the Clinton administration added my State to the roadless rule. Notwithstanding the fact that the Clinton administration called me personally and said Alaska would not be included in their roadless rule plan because they knew of the provisions of ANILCA. No hearing was ever held on the implications such a rule would have on Alaska, no hearing was held on the proposal, and no request to Congress to include Alaska in the roadless area was ever made. I have never seen anything more deceitful than the conduct of the Clinton administration in their pursuit of the roadless rule. I intend to pursue this now. I would hope that before my colleagues make statements on the floor or to the media, they review both the Tongass amendment and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. I am literally warning Senators that we are going to have it out here on the floor of the Senate if they keep accusing me of doing something which I have not done. That, to me, is a violation of the Senate rules. When Judge Singleton ordered the Forest Service to review 9.7 million roadless acres, the Forest Service complied. They reviewed the Potential wilderness and roadless areas even though it was in direct violation of ANILCA. There wouldn't even be a review if the Clinton Administration had not ignored ANILCA, which specifically prohibited such review. Alaskans seek two remedies to the current problems with Forest Policy in the Tongass. First, we want the Forest Service to uphold the law and declare the roadless rule in the Tongass an unlawful violation of ANILCA. Second, we ask that when the Forest Service issues its decision later this year on the Tongass plan, we declare that it is the final decision on this issue. Judge Singleton's mandate entitled The Environmental Groups to a Review, it did not entitle them to a Forest Service recommendation that is favorable to their position. It did not entitle them to hold up the use of public resources indefinitely. We have been through the process and we all must recognize and abide by the Forest Service's final ruling. And, if this issue goes before a Federal court again, I expect the Judges to uphold the law--especially the specific provision which we call the ``No More Clause.'' Alaskans understand the need to conserve our public lands and resources better than anyone else. We have protected more land than any other country on Earth and more than the other 49 States combined. We were the pioneers of the Nation's last great frontier and our lives have always depended on the sustainability of our natural resources. Our time in the great wilderness of our State has taught us that man forges a fragile pact with his surroundings. He needs the land and its resources, but he must also preserve them. That is why my State has fought so hard to make sure that our land and waterways and the species that inhabit them will be there for generations to come. Consistent with our commitment to the environment, we have designated over 58 million acres as pristine wilderness, which represents 55 percent of all wilderness areas in the United States. Because only 1 percent of Alaska's lands are privately owned, it is imperative that the Federal Government allow us to use some of our resources on the 235 million acres managed by the Federal Government. We will always manage our lands in a way that ensures their vitality. Timber is a renewable resource, it can be and will be managed this way under the measures provided in this bill. Much of my State will always be pristine wilderness. But, we need some degree of certainty that we will be able to harvest small portions of the forest that is not wilderness. We need to know that we will be able to sustain the timber industry we have today. We need assurances that our efforts will not be met with more lawsuits and more resistance. In the days ahead I will pursue this subject again and again. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letters from my constituents and communities who have been severely impacted by the lawless actions of the previous administration.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I yield the floor.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate return to legislative session.