Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I would like to thank my colleagues for their statements and indicate my support for the agreement that we have reached. Title X, of Senate Amendment 2917, will address an immediate need to stimulate our Nation's research and development in innovative technologies and attempt to resolve any remaining uncertainties on the causes of climate change. Title XIII will provide the mechanisms to better assess coastal vulnerability from climate variances and improve climate monitoring, observing and prediction. The Barrow Arctic Research Center, authorized in Title XIII, is intended to replace the decades old and poorly equipped Naval Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow and will perform the desperately needed scientific research on climate change that is already impacting America's Arctic.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I had a commitment to offer an amendment to the energy bill dealing with the right of the Eskimo people of Alaska to proceed with oil and gas development on their lands. This weekend I conferred with them and their representatives, and they would prefer not to raise that issue at this time and to allow the process to go forward in terms of the energy bill and in terms of their rights which they may wish to raise at another time but do not wish to have me raise at this time. Under the circumstances, I want the manager of the bill to know we will not offer the amendment that would permit drilling on the lands in the Kaktovik area that are owned by the Kaktovik Eskimos, and the subsurface rights owned by the North Slope Borough. I believe the decision is a right one, and I am going to honor their request not to introduce the amendment at this time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I withdraw amendment No. 3133.

Mr. STEVENS. I yield to the Senator such time as he wishes.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am delighted the Senator from New Mexico has indicated his support for the Alaska natural gas pipeline. I hope we can proceed during this Congress to carry out that commitment. The gas we will transport is from State land, not Federal land. Obviously, we are going to have to have some changes in Federal law to permit the construction of the largest project in the history of man. It will take some incentives. I tried to provide some incentives to that through the second-degree amendment. That is obviously not going to be adopted by the Senate. I will speak for a moment about the defeatist attitude of the Democratic Party. The Senator from New Mexico has said we have 75- percent dependence on foreign oil coming. Why? We closed all the coast lines in the United States to oil and gas exploration--except the gulf and a little bit in Alaska on State lands. Those are State lands where oil and gas drilling and production take place. The Federal lands, because of the demands of the Sierra Club and other radical environmental organizations, are closed to oil and gas leasing, almost. The administration is going to try to reopen some of them in the Rocky Mountain area. We will see how the Democratic Party reacts to that. But as a matter of fact, the Clinton administration closed NPRA. The Senator from New Mexico talks about opening it. It is closed. We tried to open it several times. I welcome the attitude that we are going to open up the reserve set aside for Alaska in 1925 by President Coolidge to try to make up for the Teapot Dome scandal. It has been closed since that time. We had one well drilled during the war by the Navy. By the way, it was a pretty good well. It was very shallow, but it was good. The Sierra Club and all the radical organizations have brought about the closure of offshore drilling, the closure of Federal lands drilling, the closure of Alaska lands now. What more do they want? If we follow this defeatist attitude that we are going to face 75-percent imports in the future as far as our oil energy is concerned, it is going to happen. It will not happen if we decide we are going to use our technology base to do what President Truman wanted to do, go offshore and research the seabed. Two-thirds of the world's surface is covered by water and there is very little production in that water around the United States. Half of the Continental Shelf--probably even more than that--off the United States is off our State. Not one well has been drilled out there. Why? The environmental organizations oppose it. We will have 75-percent dependence on foreign oil if the Democratic Party has its way. It is part of the platform of the Democratic Party to oppose drilling on these lands. So it is a political issue, and it is high time we faced up to it. We think we have a right to transport that gas. As a matter of fact, in the State of the Senator from New Mexico, the Indians in his State can drill on their lands. They are producing gas on their lands. They are producing oil on their lands. What happens in our State? They cannot drill on privately owned Native land, Eskimo land that is within the 1002 area in the Alaska Coastal Plain, the 1.5 million acres. There are 92,000 acres owned by those Eskimos, and they cannot drill. Why? Because the administration at the time they got the lands, the Clinton administration, demanded that they agree to a provision that they could not drill until we were able to drill within the 1002 area itself. Talk about discrimination. Not only is the State discriminated against but our Natives are discriminated against. We are going to have an amendment before we are through with this bill. That amendment will be to allow the Alaskan Eskimos to drill on their own land, to stop this discrimination against our people. It is bad enough to discriminate against the State, but to discriminate against Alaskan Eskimos who own that land is just atrocious as far as I am concerned. I welcome the support of the Senator from New Mexico, as I said, for the Alaska natural gas pipeline. It is going to take some incentives. If we want that gas down here--the equivalent, by the way, of a million barrels of oil a day--if we want that gas down here before 2030, 2050-- when they talk about the real demand for energy--if we want it, even then, we are going to have to start now. If we started right now to build the Alaska natural gas pipeline it would be finished in 2011; 9 years minimum. That is nonsense. It is nonsense that we cannot drill on our lands. It is nonsense they will not keep the commitment that two famous Democratic Senators made. I have learned a lesson from this in the last 21 years and that is this, something that every Senator should know: Do not depend on future Congresses, particularly future Senators, to keep commitments that were made by a previous Congress and President. In 1980, the commitment was made that this area would be subject to drilling, if it did not--if the environmental impact showed there was not going to be permanent harm to the area as far as the fish and wildlife was concerned. We relied upon that commitment in December of 1980 to go ahead with this whole idea of withdrawing 104 million acres. We relied on a commitment made by an administration and Congress, in law, that we would be able to do that. In subsequent Congresses the House has carried it out, strangely enough. The Senate has not--except for twice when we sent it down to the President and President Clinton vetoed it. So if you want a continuum of what is causing the 75-percent dependence upon foreign oil that the majority says is inevitable, then follow the Democratic Party. Follow them to dependence upon foreign oil, the exporting of U.S. jobs, and the total dependence upon the philosophies of foreign nations in order to keep our Nation going. Just think of that. We are saying it is inevitable, in order to keep this country going--this country, the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen--we have to be totally dependent upon foreign oil; 75 percent is total as far as I am concerned. The Senator from New Mexico says this will not affect the price of gas. How would you like to make a bet? Do you want to make a little bet? I bet before the end of the year, the price of gas is up again 25 cents at least. As a matter of fact, as the trendline goes up on dependence on foreign oil, the price is going to go up. That happens every time we have seen that line go up in terms of dependence on foreign oil. If you do not believe that, go back and look at the price of gas before the embargo in the 1970s and then see that as that embargo was lifted, we increased our dependence on foreign oil. It was less than 35 percent in 1973, and it is now 57 percent, they say. If it is going up to 75 percent, just follow the trendline of the price of gasoline. It may be so. As a matter of fact, it is so. If we pass our amendment, it would not change the price of gas now, but it will change the price of gas in 6 years. We will be more dependent upon foreign oil in 6 years if we do not open up the Arctic Plain.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the article goes on to say: No allies of industry, they have become industries themselves, dependent upon a style of salesmanship that fills mailboxes across America with a never-ending stream of environmentally unfriendly junk mail, reduces the complex world of nature to simplistic slogans, emotional appeals and counterfeit crises, and employs arcane accounting rules to camouflage fundraising as conservation. It goes on to say: Six national environmental groups spent so much on fund- raising and overhead they don't have enough left to meet the minimum benchmark for environmental spending--60 percent of annual expenses--recommended by charity watchdog organizations. Eleven of the nation's 20 largest include fund-raising bills in their tally of money spent protecting the environment, but don't make that clear to members. The direct mail costs that we have seen can go up to 74 percent of the total money received and is being reported to members as money spent to protect the environment. Are these the people the Senate ought to believe? They are the ones the people on the other side have been quoting all day. That is why we are raising it. They have been quoting them as the sources for the information they present to the Senate--all these things are going bad in Alaska, all these tragedies that have happened to Alaska. What they do not mention is the human tragedy that has happened to Alaska. This article was printed on April 23, 2001. I hope Senators will read this and all other Sacramento Bee articles in this series. In fact, I think the Sacramento Bee ought to receive an award for them. They are enormous in terms of their reach. The Sierra Club, for instance, one time said: By this time tomorrow, nearly 100 species of wildlife will tumble into extinction. They sent that to retired people and to working people who believe in protecting the environment. This says, as a matter of fact: No one knows how rapidly species are going extinct. The Alliance's figure is an extreme estimate that counts tropical beetles and other insects--including ones not yet known to science--in its definition of wildlife. And the Defenders of Wildlife are raising money. This article says: We will fight to stop reckless clear-cutting of the national forests in California and the Pacific Northwest that threatens to destroy the last of America's unprotected ancient forests in as little as 20 years. As a matter of fact: Clear-cutting the forests has stopped. It is down 89 percent from 1990, and yet they wrote that letter after the timber cutting stopped. Again, I urge Members of the Senate to read these articles written by the Sacramento Bee. It is high time someone started looking into them, and we will do that later. Mr. President, I have another series of articles from the Sacramento Bee. This time it is called ``Litigation Central.'' It says the ``flood of costly lawsuits raises questions about motive.'' I refer to this article of April 24, 2001. It says, in part: Suing the government has long been a favorite tactic of the environmental movement--used to score key victories for clean air, water and endangered species. But today, many court cases are yielding an uncertain bounty for the land and sowing doubt even among the faithful. ``We've filed our share of lawsuits, and I'm proud of a lot of them,'' said Dan Taylor, executive director of the California chapter of the National Audubon Society. ``But I do think litigation is overused. In many cases, it's hard to identify what the strategic goal is, unless it is to significantly reshape society.'' The suits are having a powerful impact on Federal agencies. They are forcing some government biologists to spend more time on legal chores than on conservation work. As a result, species in need of critical care are being ignored. And frustration and anger are on the rise. It goes on: During the 1990s, the government paid out $31.6 million in attorney fees for 434 environmental cases brought against Federal agencies. The average award per case was more than $70,000 [for attorneys fees alone]. One long-running lawsuit in Texas involving the endangered salamander netted lawyers for the Sierra Club and other plaintiffs more than $3.5 million in taxpayer funds. It is a growth industry, suing the Federal Government for an environmental cause, mythical or otherwise. Lawyers for the industry and natural resource users get paid for winning environmental cases. As a matter of fact, the environmental groups are not shy about asking for money. This is from this article: They earn $150 to $350 an hour . . . In 1993, three judges on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington were so appalled by one Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund lawyer's flagrant overbilling that they reduced her award to zero. The lawyer had claimed too much money. I see the Senator from Iowa is in the Chamber. Does he have a timeframe problem?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I got an e-mail from my oldest son, who told me he was surprised by the comments of the Senator from Minnesota concerning this issue being a political issue and politics as usual. I am not surprised. But I did tell him I think the Senate has changed. Before I go to my other remarks, I would like to relate to the Senate what happened to me as a young Senator, a young appointed Senator. I came here in 1968, and by the springtime of 1969, Senator Gordon Allott of Colorado, who was a friend from the days when I was in Washington at the Interior Department. When I left I was Solicitor, and I was very close to Gordon Allott. He was a personal friend as well as the person I worked with in the Eisenhower administration. He said he thought it would be good if I would meet with some of the older Senators and talk about life in the Senate. So I said I would, and a day or two later, Senator Allott said they were going to gather up in Senator Eastland's office. At that time it was on the third floor. I think it was room 306, just above what has been one of the leader's offices on the second floor. As I walked in, I found that I was facing eight of the senior Senators. I hadn't been around long. I had been familiar with Senate activity. But it was a very interesting meeting: Senator Eastland of Mississippi, Senator Allott of Colorado, Senator Cotton of New Hampshire, Senator Paul Fannin of Arizona, Senator Hruska of Nebraska. I believe the others were Senator Long of Louisiana, Senator Randolph of West Virginia, and Senator Talmadge of Georgia. Those were different days. They were days when there was a different feeling in the Senate. These were eight senior Senators, four from each side. Obviously, they enjoyed one another's company. Those were the days when, late in the afternoon, there were a few refreshments on the table in Senator Eastland's office. He said to me: Why don't you help yourself, son. I did, and I sat down. And Senator Allott said to me they just thought they ought to talk to me a little bit about how it was easy to get along in the Senate if one understood the Senate. For instance, the conversation went to the point of the fact that we were a new State, a young State that had only been in the Union for 10 years. They wanted to make sure I understood the Senate. Senator Allott told them I had been around during the Eisenhower days. I had been with the liaison to the Senate. They said they wanted me to understand relationships in the Senate. We talked about senatorial courtesy and what it means to have a right to be consulted concerning appointments to your State. We talked about just the idea of the aisle as a separation between individual Senators; this is a place where, if you are going to be here, you ought to know who you are working with, and they welcomed a newcomer, an appointed Senator, to visit with them on how they felt about the Senate. It was one of the most interesting conversations of my life. The point got around to a new State and the prerogatives of a new State. One of the things they told me was very simple: If you and your colleague agree on an issue that affects your State, for instance, land in your State, you let us know because we believe you know more about your State than we do, and we are going to rely on you; we are going to rely on you to make the judgments on Federal actions that affect your State, and only your State. I thought about that last night. I have listened to people here over the years talk about the rights of their States and what has happened to their States and what might happen to their States. I don't think any State has lived through what we have lived through in the first years of our statehood. We have been denuded of jobs--I will talk about the people who have done it--by a group that takes advantage of the division of the country in order to achieve objectives they could not achieve but for the divisions that exist in the Senate today. It is truly a split Senate. Relationships between the majority and minority are strained more than I have ever seen them. We have a situation where the two of us, since 1981, have sought the fulfillment of a commitment made to us in 1980, and it is apparent now that it will be denied--not permanently; we still will have a chance to come back at this again. This bill will not forever forbid the concept of oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Plain of Alaska, but it will not happen until there is an act of Congress to authorize it to proceed. In terms of the relationships of the Senate, I raised the question: What about other Senators? Are we to presume that the concept of the Senate relying upon the two Senators from that State, if they agree on an issue pertaining to their State, the Senate will listen to them? I don't think so. I think we have seen really a split in the Senate intentionally caused by the radical environmental organizations of the country that think they really control the country now. I will show you; they probably do. They probably do much more than the public believes. Senator Wellstone said today that he had meetings with the Gwich'in people because of the pristine wilderness, and they live in the area. I beg to correct the Senator. The Gwich'ins live on the south slope of the Arctic range. They are Canadian Indians, at least part of a Canadian tribe of Indians called the Gwich'ins. They have land in Alaska. They opted not to participate in the great land settlement of the Alaska Native lands settlement. They opted out. They took their land and did not want to rely in any way on the Federal Government. As a matter of fact, right after they took their land, rather than participate in the land claims settlement, they put their land up for oil and gas leasing. No one wanted to lease it. They put their land up for coal leasing. They do have a lot of coal. And no one wanted to lease it. As a matter of fact, we hardly ever heard from the Gwich'ins about this issue until they were hired by one of the environmental organizations, and they have become the spokesmen for the environmental organizations as a representative of the Alaska Native people. But they are Canadian Indians who live in Alaska. The Alaska Native people, the Alaska Federation of Natives, and particularly the great Eskimo community on the Alaska North Slope, support drilling in the 1002 area of the Alaska Coastal Plain. They live in the area. The Gwich'ins do not. The people who own land within this area at Kaktovik, the Eskimo people, violently support this. They want it to happen. They have been denied the right by Federal order to drill on their own land, and our bill removes that impediment. I have tried my best to explain why we went into the concept of looking at the steel legacy program. One Senator said he thought my effort was not real, not authentic, and I sought to take advantage of the hopes and pains of his people. If I had been here, I would have taken a point of personal privilege. That is an accusation of immoral conduct on the part of a Senator--were it true. It is not true. Who made that linkage? The people who don't want to work with us. They know my amendment would provide a cashflow to the steelworkers who are currently going to be denied their medical care that they thought they were going to get. One Senator said: It is only $1 billion. It is only $1 billion. Well, we are getting $1.6 to $2.7 billion, we believe, in the bonus bids. And they only get $1 billion. Between now and 2005, they only get $1 billion. They get $8 billion over 30 years. If it is cynical, it is cynical because of the people who don't want to face up to their own responsibility. We need that steel. We can't build this gas pipeline from Alaska, 3,000 miles from the North Slope to Chicago, unless we have steel. We can't have steel unless the steel companies of this country survive. They are not going to survive under the current circumstances. As I said yesterday, 30 steel companies have gone bankrupt in the year 2000. Do the people who represent those areas understand their State? I understand mine. My State is bankrupt because the last administration closed down our mines, our timber operations, oil and gas activity, and our cruise ships. They have closed us down and want us to be a national park. I am trying to represent my people, but I just hope these people here don't come in and accuse me of having taking action to take advantage of the hopes and pains of people. I hope I am here then. I hope I am here then. We will have a discussion then. One said that drilling can't help because they thought that the legacy fund could not be solved by the moneys that would come from drilling in ANWR. I never said they would be solved. I never said they would be solved. I said we could provide a plug in that fund to keep them going until we got production from the Arctic Plain, and then we could go up to a total of $18 billion in 30 years to make that fund sound. Now, it is one thing to not agree with a Senator who is trying to put two things together. By the way, let me remind the Senate that the great civil rights legislation of this country was introduced by Everett Dirksen of Illinois as a rider to another bill. It was a rider to another bill. It was the military structure and school bill. He added the civil rights legislation. From some people on the other side, you would think the Democratic Party started civil rights in this country. The person who introduced the major bill was Everett Dirksen of Illinois, working with Lyndon Johnson when he was majority leader. Johnson called up the bill so that Everett Dirksen could offer that amendment. It was in February 1960. In terms of other debates, when we were talking about the Foreign Military Sales Act of 1970, John Sherman Cooper of Connecticut and Senator Frank Church of Idaho offered an amendment to limit military operations in Cambodia. That became a substantial change in that bill. It became two bills, and, because they were joined together, they passed. In 1982, we joined the Trade Reciprocity and Dividend Withholding Acts, and the proponents of both succeeded in bringing them together in the Senate. It is not unknown for a Senator to suggest that two separate pieces of legislation ought to be joined together in order to make a coalition of Senators who believe in an objective. I take umbrage to some of the comments made by those people who don't have the guts to come forward and represent their own people. I would represent my people here until I die. We have done that. We have gone to the wall. I am accused of being the pork chief, or the chief porker around here. Why? Because my State is almost dead due to the actions of the last administration in shutting down our timber industry, oil and gas industry, mining industry, and the cruise ships' total opposition to the State of Alaska in terms of any kind of development on Federal land, whether it was within or without the great withdrawals we have been talking about. When we entered into that agreement in 1980, person after person-- Senator Murkowski and I read them--including the President, said we have reached an understanding so that the land can be preserved that needed to be preserved, but Alaska can go forward with development of oil and gas and timber and mining. They said that. They acknowledged it in public that there was a deal--a deal. A deal, to me, is not a bad word. Up our way, when we make a deal, we shake hands. We don't have to have an act of Congress if you give a man your word, your promise. As Robert Service said, ``A promise made is a debt unpaid.'' Congress made a promise to Alaska that this land would be opened to oil and gas. It was shown in that environmental impact statement that there would be no permanent harm to the fish and wildlife area. Now along comes this environmental group that has to be the most horrendous thing that I have gotten into. I wish I had more time for this, and some day I will take a lot more time for it. I think, because of these people, we have lost that ambiance on the floor. In the days of Senator Mansfield, we used to have dining groups. Mansfield encouraged us to get together. As young Senators from both sides of the aisle, we would invite people from the other side of the aisle to our homes for dinner. At least three times a year we used to have dinner with other Senators in each other's homes. We got to know one another. We took them to our States. We would travel with each other. We disagreed here on the floor and we did our job representing our people; but we were friends. Many Senators right now are not going to have many friends in the Senate after this year is over. It is because of what is happening now--this great division, turning everything into political issues. We are told that on every issue the President has to have 60 votes--not a majority, but every one of the President's programs has to have 60 votes in order to stop the opposition of the majority. That is not like the days of Mike Mansfield or Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson cooperated with President Eisenhower. Mike Mansfield cooperated with President Nixon and President Ford. Where is the spirit of cooperation from the majority? I think it is high time people understood what is going on here. It is going to have a long-term impact on the Senate, as far as this Senator is concerned. I still have my friends over there, and I love them. By the way, they are still my friends. They understand what we are doing. They are the Senators from the old days who understand that when two Senators agree concerning an issue in their State, they ought to be listened to by the Senate. They don't always agree, but they certainly should not be attacked. Let's talk about the fundraising groups. We have some charts. Fundraising groups started off as philanthropic organizations that raise money to help achieve conservation objectives. They have been the subject of a review by the Sacramento Bee. Why do I look at that? They happen to own our largest newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News. We came across some of these articles that I will ask to put in the Record. The Institute of Philanthropy suggests that fundraising expenses not exceed 35 percent. This is the percentage of environmental groups' donations used to raise more money, not for environmental protection. The National Parks Conservation Association uses 41 percent of the money they raise to raise more money; the Sierra Club, 42 percent; Defenders of Wildlife, 50 percent; Greenpeace, 56 percent; National Park Trust, 74 percent. So 75 cents out of every dollar goes to raise more money, not to help the parks. Are these philanthropic, eleemosynary institutions? Are they? No. They are organizations that are now there to participate in the management of them. Let me show you, for instance, the annual income of these groups. This is just income of the presidents of philanthropic organizations. They are not the President of the United States, but you will see that several make more than the President of the United States. All but one makes more money than any Member of Congress. They are out raising money from people. They send them letter after letter, and they spend more money to go out and get more money, and they raise more money than they do for their objectives. Look at what they do with what is left. The median household income in the United States in 2000 was $42,148; that is the income of a husband and wife in a household in the year 2000. The Sierra Club's executive director makes $138,000, which is conservative. All they really do now is raise money. That is a pretty good income. The president of the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund makes $157,000. They raise money so they can sue--not in terms of doing anything for the conservation; they are protesters. Defenders of Wildlife, $201,000. The president of the Wilderness Society, $204,000; that is Fred Gaylord Nelson. He has graduated to a better salary. President, National Audubon Society, $239,000. World Wildlife Fund, $204,000. National Wildlife Federation, $247,000. What is eleemosynary about that? Are these volunteers to save the world? These are people in it for what they can get out of it, and what they get out of it is both money for themselves and money to contribute to people who support them. We will get into that, too. This is the amount of mailings sent annually by these groups. These are mailings, in the millions, for more fundraising, not money to notify people of a problem: the Audubon Society, 7 million; Greenpeace, 8; the Sierra Club, 10.5; Defenders of Wildlife, 11; the National Wildlife Federation, 12.5; National Parks and Conservation, 17; World Wildlife, 19; Nature Conservancy, 35. They mail about 160 million mailings a year. The response is 1 to 2 percent. I wonder who owns the mailing companies. I have to look into that. Somebody is making money on just the mailings from these people. What are they doing? One hundred sixty million mailings, how many trees does that take, Mr. President? They are stopping us from cutting our trees in Alaska. From where are they getting that paper? They are not recycling it all. This group has in mind controlling what the Government does with regard to Federal lands in particular. Who spends more to protect the environment? This is from the ``Environmental Benefits of Advanced Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Technology'' published in the Clinton administration. This is not this administration. This is the Clinton administration. It is clear that the oil and gas industry spent $8 billion, in this 1 year, 1996. That is more than EPA's entire budget for 1996 and 333 percent more than all environmental groups put together. The oil and gas industry spends more to protect the environment by the Clinton administration's findings than all environmental groups put together. The environmental groups spent $2.4 billion in 1996. That is their total spending, and we have seen most of this is spent to raise more money--this is from environmental groups--not to protect the environment, but to raise more money and pad their own wallets. It is amazing, as I look at law firms around the country. They are advertising to get contributions to protect the environment, and what they are really doing is taking contributions and paying themselves to represent protest groups. It is an interesting connection to the environment. I am not sure that is advancing the cause of the environment. In any event, they are really soliciting money for their own salaries, which in my day in practicing law would have been thought to be unethical. It is not unethical now, I guess. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a series of articles from the Sacramento Bee be printed in the Record. They were written by a Bee staff writer in April of last year. The first is called ``Green Machine.'' Tom Knudson's article says: Dear friend, I need your help to stop an impending slaughter. Otherwise, Yellowstone National Park--an American wildlife treasure--could soon become a bloody killing field. And the victims will be hundreds of wolves and defenseless wolf pups.'' So begins a fund-raising letter from one of America's fastest-growing environmental groups--Defenders of Wildlife. The article goes on: In 1999, donations jumped 28 percent to a record $17.5 million. The group's net assets . . . grew to $14.5 million, another record. And according to its 1999 annual report, Defenders spent donors' money wisely, keeping fund-raising and management costs to . . . 19 percent of expenses. But there is another side to Defenders' dramatic growth. Pick up copies of its federal tax returns and you'll find that its five highest-paid partners are not firms that specialize in wildlife conservation. They are national direct mail and telemarketing companies--the same ones that raise money through the mail and over the telephone for nonprofit groups, from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the U.S. Olympic Committee. You'll also find that in calculating its fund-raising expenses, Defenders borrow a trick from the business world. It dances with digits, finds opportunity in obfuscation. Using an accounting loophole, it classifies millions of dollars spent on direct mail and telemarketing activities not as fund-raising but as public education and environmental activism. Sounds like another Enron to me. Again, I ask unanimous consent this series of articles be printed in the Record. There being on objection, the material was ordered to be printed in

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we are in a situation where one provision of our bill--it is in our amendment and in Senator Murkowski's underlying amendment--grants the Kaktovik village the right to drill on their land. They have land that is owned by their Native village. It was part of the 1971 settlement. Their people settled their claims against the United States by accepting conveyance of lands that were due to them. Each village was given the township in which it was located and further lands depending on population. But for this village only, in the State of Alaska, there is a Federal law in another provision of basic law that says they cannot drill on their land, I believe it says, until the 1002 area is authorized to be drilled by the Federal Government. In the old days we would have said that shows the forked tongue of the Federal Government. It told them they had a settlement. It told them they got the right to their lands. It gave them fee title to the surface. It gave the subsurface to their regional organization. But they cannot use it. Why? Because of the policy with regard to the 1002 area. But even there, it was, again, an imposition on the private structure of our State. I think the great problem I have here is what is going to happen now to the steel industry. I have raised the issue, and, apparently, I may have done more harm than good, according to some people, at least if you listen to the Democratic Senators; that is what they are saying. I don't know what good they are doing for them. I challenge the Democratic Senators to come up with a proposal to find a funding stream to save the rights of the steelworkers and the coal workers and be within the budget and not subject to points of order and the possibility of being passed. With their help, this would pass. With their opposition, it is not going to pass. I know that. But what happens to the steelworkers? What happens to the future of our gas pipeline if there is no steel industry in the United States? You can't even plan ahead. You can't order ahead. I said yesterday, you have to order ahead a piece of that big 52-inch diameter, one-inch- thick pipe, and test it to see if this new concept of a chemically treated pipe will withstand the pressures it has to withstand in order to have gas pumped 3,000 miles to the market. That is not going to exist. The assets of the steel industry are going to be burdened by the claims of the working people who have retired and who will be put out of work between now and 2004. And it makes no sense. It makes no sense that there are over 600,000 who are out of their health care. And the Democratic leadership is promising a vote on steel legacy costs with no source of money. Where is the money? Where are the bucks? Where are the dollars? They have a solution, but no one has mentioned from where the money is going to come. Where can they find a cash stream that will come in from a new source, replacing the money we send out to Saddam Hussein? We would take that money and use a portion of the moneys that come to the Federal Government from that activity in the Alaska Coastal Plain and solve the problem of the steel industry and the steelworkers and let them proceed to reorganize the steel industry of the United States. Two weeks ago, I am told, 82,000 retirees of LTV Steel lost their health care benefits. Another 100,000 are coming. Bethlehem Steel and U.S. Steel-- chapter 11--could go in chapter 7 bankruptcy. No other steel company, other than Bethlehem Steel, could have rolled the steel to repair the U.S.S. Cole after it was attacked by terrorists. It is in bankruptcy facing extinction. And I am criticized for trying to find some way to solve the problem that might lead them further down that road to extinction. I am happy to tell the Senator from those States that I will vote for any plan they can come up with which is funded and within the budget and does not raise taxes that will solve the problems of their retirees. I challenge them to come up with that program. They have criticized my suggestion, a legitimate, bona fide attempt to meld two basic issues that should be before this Senate. We used to call that win-win. It is lose-lose now. We lose; the steelworkers, the coal workers lose, too. They are not voting one way or the other in my State. I have coal workers, but there is no steel in my State. I am not involved in that. It is not a political issue, as far as I am concerned. I have not told very many people, but I worked in a steel mill once. I spent 8, 9 hours a day lifting pieces of rolled steel off the belt. Others were lifting the other side. I had one side I was lifting--8\1/ 2\ hours a day. That was just before I entered the military to become an Army Air Corps cadet. But I have had a lot of jobs. I have had union cards, and I am proud of it. It offends me greatly that some of these people, some of these people who never did a day's work in their life--they never dug a ditch; they never lifted steel; they never lifted concrete bags; they really never did any real manual work--don't know laborers. They appeal to them politically, but they don't know them. The laboring people want a check. They want a job. They do not want a bunch of BS from the people who represent them. They want their benefits to be secured. They depend upon their Government to see it is done. I do not think they are offended at me for suggesting this. I have not had one call from any steelworker or coal worker saying: Hey, guy, what are you doing messing up our future? No way. The people are accusing me of being crass. And opportunists are afraid of their own future, these Senators who won't face up to representing their people. I am tired of being accused of doing something wrong by trying to help them. This is the testimony of a Leo Gerard of the U.S. Steelworkers. He opposes this amendment because of his commitments in the past, but he gives the story of what happened to the health care and pension benefits of the great steel industry. It is quite a story. He points out that there are subsidies in other countries for these. We subsidize agriculture. We subsidize so many things through entitlements. We don't face up to the problem of what we do about retirees who lose their benefits because of the failure of the economic system. I don't think it is wrong to think about how to use new revenues that come to the Federal Government by virtue of legitimate Federal action and seeking development on Federal lands, how we can use those revenues to meet this crisis as outlined by Mr. Gerard. I will not include this testimony because he agrees with me. He doesn't agree with me, but he does point out the plight of these people he represents. Many of them are retirees who--how can I say this gracefully--are approaching my age. They are at the point where they are going to need help by the Federal Government one way or the other. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print the testimony of Mr. Gerard in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. STEVENS. I say to you in closing--I won't be talking on this amendment again, I don't think--the Senators who represent coal and steelworkers have made their own choice. The environmental movement is more important to them than the unemployed workers and retirees who lose their benefits in their States. That is the fact. They don't like it, but that is the fact. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 Testimony of Leo W. Gerard, President United Steel Workers of America Before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, March 14, 2002 Madam Chair and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for your invitation to appear before you today to discuss the health care and pension crisis facing several hundred thousand steelworkers across the nation. By every measure, the American steel industry is in crisis. As of today, 32 U.S. steel companies representing nearly 30 percent of U.S. steelmaking capacity have filed for bankruptcy. Twenty-one steelmaking plants are idled or shutdown representing the loss of 25 million tons or 19 percent of this nation's steelmaking capacity. Some analysts mistakenly believe that minimills (which produce steel by melting scrap in electric are furnaces) haven't been hurt by unfair trade and record low prices, it is noteworthy that fifteen of these 21 shutdowns are minimills. In fact, shut down steel capacity is almost evenly divided between integrated steelmakers and minimills. Steel prices have fallen to the lowest levels in twenty years. The December, 2001 composite average of steel prices published by Purchasing Magazine had declined by $140 per ton or 33 percent from the average between 1994 and 1997. The industry posted a combined operating loss of $1.3 billion during the first nine months of 2001. How did this happen? The USWA warned our policymakers as early as 1997 that the Asian economic crisis and the collapse of the Russian economy would, if not dealt with correctly, lead to a flood of imported steel. The delay by our own government in responding to the crisis made matters considerably worse. The events of 1997 and 1998 were only the latest in what the U.S. Department of Commerce has identified as thirty years of predatory unfair trading practices and government subsidies by many of our trading partners. Some today suggest that the American steel industry must be restructured, as if this had not already happened before. Between 1980 and 1987, the American steel industry underwent a painful restructuring, eliminating 42 million tons of steelmaking capacity. Over 270,000 jobs were eliminated. Many workers were forced to take early retirement based on the promise of a pension and continued health care benefits. The tax base in steel communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Minnesota, and elsewhere shrank as workers went from earning paychecks to collecting unemployment benefits. Some local communities have never recovered from the last steel crisis. Yes at the same time that our American steel industry has been contracting and downsizing our foreign competitors have been adding additional steelmaking capacity. OECD data indicates that foreign steel producers had excess raw steel production capacity amounting to over 270 million metric tons. That is more than twice the total annual steel consumption in the United States. Recent multilateral talks in Paris on reducing global overcapacity have revealed that despite the reductions in U.S. capacity, our trading partners fully expect the U.S. steel industry to continue to downsize even further. The Paris talks are instructive for they illustrate yet again that multilateral negotiations are no substitute for strong enforcement of our own trade laws, including Section 201 and our anti-dumping laws. The testimony which you have heard today from steelworkers and retirees from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota illustrates the depth of concern across the nation by our active members and retirees. They have worked hard and given the best years of their lives to this industry. Now, they are simply asking that promises made become promises kept. At the end of 1999, American steel's retiree health care benefit obligation totaled an estimated $13 billion. Health care benefits for 600,000 retired steelworkers, surviving spouses, and dependents annually cost domestic steel producers an estimated $965 million or $9 per ton of steel shipped. Another 700,000 active steelworkers and their dependents rely upon the domestic steel industry for health care benefits. The average steel company has approximately 3 retirees for every active employee--nearly triple the ratio for most other major basic manufacturing companies. Several steel companies have retiree health care costs that are substantially higher than the industry average. Our active members and retirees are concentrated most heavily in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Maryland, Illinois, West Virginia, Minnesota, and Michigan, but they live all across the nation. In the U.S. up to now, we have made a public policy choice in favor of employment-based health insurance coverage rather than guaranteed national health insurance. This means that when an employer goes bankrupt or liquidates its operations, absent a social safety net, workers are at risk of losing their health insurance and access to health care services. Regrettably, thousands of steelworkers from Acme, Laclede, Gulf States, CSC, Northwestern Steel and Wire, and various other steel companies are now facing this terrible prospect. The USWA is very proud of its record in negotiating decent health care coverage for both its active workers and its retirees. In 1993, our union made history when we negotiated pre-funding of retiree health care in the iron ore industry. Benefits provided to steel industry retirees are equivalent and, in some cases, more modest, than benefits provided to retirees from other basic manufacturing companies, such as Alcoa, Boeing, and General Motors. These plans typically include cost containment provisions, such as deductibles, co-payments, pre-certification requirements, coordination with Medicare, and incentives to utilize managed care. Most of our retirees pay monthly premiums from 25 to 40 percent of their retiree health care benefit, plus several hundred dollars a year in deductibles and co-payments. Retiree premiums from major medical coverage vary by employer due to differences in demographics, regional health care costs, utilization, and design of the plan. The USWA estimates that the average major medical premium during 2001 was approximately $200 per month for a non-Medicare eligible couple and $150 a month for a Medicare-eligible couple. American steel's international competitors do not bear a similar burden. In one form or another, foreign producers' retiree health care costs are offset by government subsidies. In Japan, the government provides government-backed insurance programs. Government subsidies cover some administrative costs and contributions to Japan's health care programs for the elderly. In the United Kingdom, the UK's National Health Service is 85 to 95 percent funded from general taxation with the remainder coming from employer and employee contributions. In Germany, health care is financed through a combination of payroll taxes, local, state, and federal taxes, co- payments, and out-of-pocket expenses, along with private insurance. Insurance funds with heavy loads of retired members received governmental subsidies. In Russia, de facto government subsidies exist. While Russian steel companies theoretically pay for workers' health care, the national and local governments allow companies not to pay their bills--including taxes and even wages. At the end of 1998, Russian steel companies owed an estimated $836 million in taxes. According to the Commerce Department report, the Russian government's ``systematic failure to force large enterprises to pay amounts to a massive subsidy.'' The U.S. is the only country in the industrial world in which the health care benefits of retirees are not assumed by government to facilitate consolidation in one form or another. It is now very clear that American steelworker retirees stand to be hit twice by the collapse of the steel industry since a majority of them were forced into retirement (350,000)--many prematurely--during the massive restructuring of the steel industry during the late 1970s and the 1980s. First, they lost their jobs before they were ready to retire, and now they may lose their health care and a significant portion of their pension now that they are ready to retire. Our own government's inadequate enforcement of our trade laws is the principal reason that steelworkers and steelworker retirees' health care benefits are now at risk. Because our government has allowed this unlevel and unfair trade environment to develop and consume our industry, government now has a responsibility to our steelworkers and retirees and to the steel industry to help craft a solution to this problem. Why is action needed? Retirees under age 65 and older active employees who have been displaced by plant shutdowns are not yet covered by Medicare. They cannot purchase COBRA continuation coverage because companies are not obligated to provide COBRA coverage when they no longer maintain a health care plan for employees actively at work. Steel companies which have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (i.e., liquidation) have already moved to terminate health care plans for their workers and retirees. They cannot afford COBRA premiums even when such coverage is available. They cannot afford commercially-available health insurance coverage. Many cannot meet insurability requirements (and may not have continuous coverage under HIPAA). Many have difficulty in finding new jobs that pay similar wages or benefits. Why is action needed for retirees age 65 and over? Because Medicare has significant gaps in its coverage. Medicare also has significant deductibles and co-payments. There is no coverage for expensive outpatient prescription drugs. Also, health care providers often do not accept Medicare reimbursement rates as full payment, at which point they go after the retiree for full payment. Medicare Supplemental Insurance (``Medigap'') is available, but it is costly and has limited prescription drug coverage. The most comprehensive of the Medigap supplements (Plan J) covers only 50 percent of prescription drug costs and limits drug benefits to $3,000 per year. The average retiree receives a monthly pension benefit of less than $600 to $700 per month. Most surviving spouses receive monthly benefits under $200 per month. Finally, Medicare HMOs (or as they are sometimes referred to ``Medicare+Choice'') are available only in limited areas of the nation. Some who have looked at this problem, particularly with respect to access to prescription drugs, have said the Bush Administration's proposed ``Medicare Prescription Drug Card'' might be a possible solution. The proposed card would provide discounts of 10 to 25 percent from retail drug prices. But low income drug assistance is limited to people below 150 percent of the Federal poverty level. That's an individual with an annual income of $12,000 or a couple with a combined annual income of $15,000. In fact, more than half of Medicare beneficiaries would not qualify for Low-Income Drug Assistance. The Low-Income Drug Assistance proposal does not describe how premiums would be set nor does it describe the level of out-of-pocket expenses (i.e., deductibles or co- payments) to be paid by Medicare recipients. Also, states would be required to assume 10 percent of the cost of the Low-Income Drug Assistance proposal at a time when nearly every state is facing budget deficits because of the recession and sharply-rising costs for their Medicaid programs. The Bush Administration is also considering tax credits as a device for helping the uninsured. Under this proposal, a refundable tax credit of $1,000 to $3,000 (depending on family size) would be made available to individuals without employer-provided health insurance. The problem here is that the tax credits are too small to make health insurance. The problem here is that the tax credits are too small to make health insurance affordable. A ``Family USA'' study found that a healthy 25-year-old woman pays an average of $4,734 per year for coverage under a standard health plan, compared to the $1,000 tax credit offered. Until the steep increases in health care costs can be contained, the real value of any refundable tax credit will diminish year by year. A recent report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, says that health care costs are expected to grow at a rate of 7.3 percent annually between now and 2011. That means that by 2011, Americans will be spending $9,216 per person on health care, or about double what they spent in 2000. The nation's health care bill could reach $2.8 trillion, or 17 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, by 2011. Clearly, this problem is not going to go away. While the United Steelworkers was pleased that the President took a step toward reigning in steel imports by imposing variable tariffs on steel products in the recent Section 201 case, the President pointedly chose not to address the matter of the retirement and health security of steelworkers and our retirees. He is apparently leaving this unfinished business in Congress' hands. Let me state this very clearly. It is the view of the United Steelworkers of America that the pension and health care commitments made to our active workers and retirees must be honored. These issues are every bit as important to us as the recent Section 201 determination on restraining foreign steel imports. Our active members as well as our retirees look to you for action. We will work with you and your colleagues in both the House and Senate continuously until this problem is solved and we will not relent in our efforts.

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

Mr. STEVENS. I do not want to keep the Senator waiting. I have a lot more than that to speak. I ask unanimous consent that I be able to yield to the Senator from Iowa for 10 minutes without losing the floor.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, last night at the Library of Congress I ran across this ad. I was going to talk about it later, but I wanted the Senator to see this. This is an ad on one of the displays in the Library of Congress. Millions of acres in Iowa and Nebraska were put up for sale by the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company. I will develop later that the West was opened, really, because President Lincoln offered $1 million and every odd section of the right-of-way for the first railroad to link the east and west coasts of the United States. We don't think in terms of that now. Once those railroad companies got a hold of the land, they put it up for sale. They put it up for sale at $2.50 an acre and let people have 10 years' credit to pay for it. That is what stimulated the development of the West. That is what stimulated the expansion of the United States. What have they done in my State, one-fifth of the land mass in the United States? They have blocked us at every turn, withdrew lands with economic potential, blocked us from using our own lands that had economic potential, closed our mines, closed our pulp mills, closed our timber mills, canceled the permits of the wildcat well drillers for oil and gas. We have lost the American dream of private ownership of lands in Alaska. I thought the Senator might be interested in that. It is a very interesting exhibit at the Library of Congress. It includes some of the artifacts of the history of our great country, including the great move to make land available to those people who developed the transportation system. Talk about blending. Here is the transportation system of the United States, the first railroad to go from east to west across the United States. Persons who built that obtained every odd section along the right-of-way of the railroad, and from that came the expansion to the west. People complain about my suggestion that we join together oil development in the Arctic Plain and the future of the great steel industry of the United States. I am pleased to have received this letter addressed to me: We write as members of the House with a strong interest in the steel industry to convey our strong support of your efforts to resolve the legacy cost burden of the domestic steel industry, and especially your efforts to assist the steel industry's retirees and their dependents. As you know, the domestic steel industry has significant unfunded pension liabilities as well as massive retiree health care responsibilities that total $13 billion and cost the steel industry almost $1 billion annually. These pension and health care liabilities pose a significant barrier to steel industry consolidation and rationalization that could improve the financial condition of the industry and reduce the adverse impact of unfairly traded foreign imports. It has come to our attention that a unique opportunity has arisen in the Senate to remove this barrier to rationalization while assisting the retirees, surviving spouses, and dependents of the domestic steel industry. It is our understanding that you have offered an amendment to the energy bill this week which will break the impasse on the legacy problem. Once again, we would like to extend our wholehearted support to you in this endeavor. We look forward to working with you to find a viable solution to bring a sense of security to the over 600,000 retirees, surviving spouses, and dependents before the end of the 107th Congress. I ask that that letter be put on every desk. It is a bipartisan letter signed by an equal number of Democratic Members and House Members in the House of Representatives. I go back to the comments about the Sacramento Bee articles. On August 19, the article by Thomas Knudson, titled ``Old Allies Now Foes in Alaska's Oil Battle'': Environmentalists come under fire for their impassioned efforts to bar drilling in a wildlife refuge. It details the problems. For instance, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who voted for oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and sided with the Bush administration. This article points out that in the House the pro- drilling side won 223 to 206. The Senate is expected to take up the matter this fall. The [environmental] rhetoric has been an insult to us, Clyburn told an energy trade journal. A lot of us don't feel obliged to be purists on this issue. How many times can you cry wolf and have your audience still believe in you? said Mark Buckley, a commercial fisherman and member of the National Audubon Society in Kodiak, Alaska, who opposes Audubon's anti- drilling stance. This article goes on to point out, in terms of environmental groups' advocacy against this, advocacy mail-in campaigns on roadless areas, national forests, and genetically modified crops. At least eight major groups are circulating letters on the single topic of the Arctic Refuge drilling. It is a very meaningful article about the way these environmental groups really single out those who support drilling in the Arctic Plain. It is, one of the balanced articles that deals with the question of this drilling. As the Senator from Iowa said, 2,000 acres out of 1.5 million acres is not very much. It is 3 square miles. Here is a nice one: Yours Free When You Contribute $10 Or More . . . our polar bear tote bag. It's the perfect way to show you're working to Keep the Arctic Wild and Free. If you complete the enclosed reply form and return it with your membership gift of $10 or more, you get a little tote bag. It says: Keep The Arctic Wild & Free. It is available only to NRDC members, but it is a concept of what we are looking at. For that membership, you can join the club. They do not tell you that 75 percent of their money is not spent for conservation. The next article I want to talk about was published on November 11 of last year. It talks about the people who live on the slope, on the North Slope. It says: Like detectives, the two Inupiat Eskimos gathered all the information they could about the Alaska Wilderness League, a relatively new arrival to the environmental community far away in Washington, D.C. From Bloomberg News, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and other sources, Tara Sweeney and Fenton Rexford read about a group that was passionate, self-assured and actively working to halt oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with a blend of environmental activism--such as street theater and letters to the editor--and lobbying politicians. But when they examined the league's federal tax return, they discovered a group that portrayed itself in a different manner: as a tax-exempt charity focusing on science and education. ``The Alaska Wilderness league sponsored two educational trips to the Arctic refuge . . .'' its tax form says. ``The Alaska Wilderness League supported the `Last Great Wilderness' slide show, seen by thousands of people to educate them'' about the refuge. Rexford, a leader of the Eskimo village of Kaktovik--the only permanent human settlement on the refuge--was astonished. ``What they do and what they tell the IRS they do are two different things,'' said Rexford, who favors oil drilling. Last month, he made his views known to the IRS itself, filing a complaint in which he and other village leaders allege the League is violating tax law by ``devoting substantially all of its resources'' to lobbying. In filing the complaint, Rexford did more than challenge the Alaska Wilderness League. He also struck at a vital support system for environmental groups: their 501(c)(3) tax status. [We are going to go after that too, Mr. President.] That status saves nonprofits millions in corporate and other taxes, makes them eligible for foundation funding and allows contributors to deduct donations from their own income taxes. Rexford and Sweeney said they got the idea from IRS audits of the Heritage Foundation and other conservative nonprofits during the Clinton administration. In June, they watched with interest as the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a pro- business think tank, filed an IRS complaint against Rain Forest Action Network, a tax-exempt group that scales skyscrapers to protest logging. The League's executive director responded angrily to the Inupiat attack. ``The Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation either has been misinformed by its friends in the oil industry about the law or it has deliberately distorted the facts in a cynical attempt to intimidate America's conservation groups,'' said director Cindy Shogan. ``We have a right to represent the interest of our members . . . so long as our legislative advocacy activities stay within specified IRS limits,'' Shogan said. ``We fully comply with all IRS laws.'' But Rexford--who hunts whales, seals and caribou for subsistence--said it is Shogan who is misinformed. He said the Inupiat corporation ``has not solicited information from the oil industry, nor will we. It is apparent that the AWL simply cannot fathom that a native-owned organization has enough intelligence and talent to think independently and .. file a complaint of this nature.'' Most environmental groups are 501(c)(3)'s, which means they can receive tax-deductible contributions but can spend only a small portion on lobbying. The spending limit varies. But in many cases, it ranges from 12.5 percent to 20 percent--and cannot exceed $1 million. A handful of others, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, are 501(c)(4)'s, which means their contributions are not tax-deductible but they can spend what they want on lobbying. Based on its federal tax return for 2000, the Alaska Wilderness League does not run afoul of spending limits on lobbying. On that return, the League reported spending $81,283 to influence legislation, well under its legally allowable limit of $130,623. The essence of the Inupiats' complaint is that the League spends most of its money on lobbying but disguises it as education and science. As evidence, they cite League letter- writing and phone campaigns targeting federal lawmakers in several states, testimony before Congress and League- sponsored ``junkets'' for members of congress to the Arctic refuge. Another one of these articles on December 9 said: Log onto the Web sites of the National Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness Society and other environmental groups and you learn that the struggle to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska from oil drilling is about more than protecting the environment. ``It is also a human rights issue since the indigenous Gwich'in Indians rely on this important area for their subsistence way of life,'' say the Wilderness Society's Web site: www.wilderness.org. But this fall, Petroleum News Alaska--a trade journal-- reported a story that environmental groups have not publicized: Over the border in Canada, the Gwich'in Tribal council joined forces with an oil firm to tap into energy resources on their lands. This very same tribe that is paraded around as being the spokesman for Alaska Native people, they drilled on their lands in Canada for oil and gas. They formed a partnership. ``It's time for us to build an economic base,'' said Fred Carmichael, president of the tribal council in Inuvik, Canada. That is the Gwich'in tribal council. Two Senators said they talked to the Alaska Native people who opposed it and said they just assumed all Alaska Natives opposed it. It is not true at all. The Eskimos have an opposite point of view, this article says. They say drilling can be carried out in concert with the caribou. But their position is discounted by environmental groups because the Inupiats have extensive ties with oil companies through their own tribal business: the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. ``The national debate has placed us as caricatures--us, as the tools of the oil industry, and them--the Gwich'in--as caretakers of the environment,'' said Richard Glenn, vice president, lands, for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. ``It's unfortunate. And it's not accurate.'' I believe these articles ought to be written by those people who are visited by the Gwich'in. It says: But in Alaska, most Alaska natives actually support drilling. In 1955, the Alaska Federation of Natives, which represents 400 of the village corporations and is the state's largest native organization, passed a resolution in favor of tapping the refuge's energy resources. It says simply: ``Environmental groups are using the Gwich'in to advance their own agenda. That's as simple as I can put it,'' Tetpon said. That is John Tetpon, the federation's director of communications. I hope Senators will read some of these things that have been written about these people who are bringing these stories about what is going on in our State. It is a very difficult problem. I particularly call the attention of the Senate to the article on April 24 of last year because it points out that litigation central, these lawsuits, are not only costing the defendants a lot of money, they are costing the Federal Government a lot of money and they are taking a lot of people who should be working on the environment into courtroom after courtroom after courtroom to defend against these lawsuits that are brought. For what? In order to get the attorney's fees paid by the winning side in the environmental litigation. In some instances, they do not have to win. These environmental groups are currently raising $9.5 million a day, $3.5 billion a year, and you can see where it is going by our charts. It is not going to improve the conservation, it is going to pay salaries--it is going to pay very large salaries--and it is going to make mailings to raise more money. I commend the entire series of Sacramento Bee articles to Senators for further reading from April 22, 2001 through April 5, 2001. Further investigative articles were printed on November 11, 2001, December 9 and December 18, 2001. They are excellent articles and they expose what is really happening in the environmental movement in America today. I don't know how to say it other than to say I am appalled that so many people in the Senate rely on them as presenting facts. They do not present facts. They present positions and look for arguments to support them. I think it is time that we tried to get back to the concept of reliance upon the people from the State. I said that before. If the Senate would listen to the two Senators from Alaska concerning what is going on in Alaska, the country would be better off, and so would Alaska. We live there. Most of the people who criticize us have never been there and won't go there. Particularly, they won't go there in the wintertime. I told the Senate yesterday that when I took my great friend, the late Postmaster General, up there one time, we pulled up to the postal substation at Prudhoe Bay. The digital thermometer showed minus 99. There was a wind chill factor. I didn't have the courage to tell him it wouldn't go below 100. That was as far down as it would go. It was digital. The wind chill and the temperature had a factor greater than minus 100 degrees. How many people want to go up there and go around up there? The old people live there. The Eskimos live there year-round in that climate. We have learned how to exist and how to care for ourselves in our environment. I have not really been in that too long myself, frankly. I am not that acclimated to it. I think the real problem is that no one here understands that we don't drill in the Arctic in the summertime. It is not a summertime operation. You can't get vehicles across the tundra. We wouldn't want to do it. It would leave scars. We don't leave scars. They did in times gone by, but everybody learned from the mistakes of the past. We wait until it is frozen. We take water in, spray water, create an ice road, gravel the top of that, and put more water on top of that to make a compact ice road. We use it until the springtime when it starts to break up, and they don't bring things across that road anymore. As a matter of fact, most in the State don't use gravel. They only place gravel is used is where they have to have some traction going up the hills. There are not many hills, by the way. I want to go back again to this problem of steel. I want to first take the occasion to thank the great labor leaders of this country who took time to join us yesterday in a press conference across from the doors of the Senate. We had Terry O'Sullivan of the Laborers; Mr. Sullivan of the Building Trades Department; Marty Malonie of the Pipefitters; Frank Handly of the Operating Engineers; Joe Hunt of the Iron Workers; Terry Turner of the Seafarers; Mike Sacco, President of the Seafarers; Mano Frey, President of the Alaska AFL-CIO; Jerry Hood, President of the Alaska Teamsters and special assistant to President James Hoffa of the National Teamsters Union. They came to speak to the members of their unions through the press to urge them to contact their Senators and ask them to support the drilling in the Arctic Plain. They know it means jobs. I just heard the Senator from Massachusetts say that at most it is only 1 percent of the world's reserves--only 1 percent. These are the same people who not 6 months ago were saying ANWR could only produce oil that would sustain the United States for 6 months. The projection they have on this is the projected estimated reserve. The projected reserve in Prudhoe Bay was 1 billion barrels. We have already produced 13 billion barrels, and we believe there is another 15 years there-- about a third more. We will have produced 20 billion barrels when the estimate was reported that the world's reserves were 1 billion barrels. So much for reserves. The real issue is jobs. That is why these labor leaders were with us--jobs. They know we are talking about jobs. When we send our money to Saddam Hussein to buy oil from Iraq, we don't involve American jobs. We have to find some way to sell something abroad to bring those dollars back or we have an imbalance of trade. We have had that for a long time. It harms our economy and currency. But we are exporting jobs as we import oil. That is why they were there. They were there in order to get us to understand that they want to help us deal with the creation of jobs that would come from pursuing the oil and gas potential of that area. They were great friends of Scoop Jackson. They understood, as he understood, the Arctic from the point of view of jobs. Jackson did not oppose drilling in the Arctic. As a matter of fact, he and Senator Tsongas made it possible for us to be here today arguing to proceed as was intended in 1980. We have added to this the idea of the pending second-degree amendment--the amendment I offered which the Senator from Minnesota said is a sham amendment. Raising the visibility of the needs of the steelworkers and the coal workers is not a sham amendment. You may not agree with it, but it is offensive to call it a sham amendment. It is only sham because they won't support it. If they supported it, it would be very valid, even from their point of view. The question is, Can we find a way to reverse the trend that prevents the building of the pipeline necessary to bring the already discovered and measured gas from Prudhoe Bay to the Midwest? We know it is there-- 50 to 70 trillion cubic feet. I don't have the exact figures because it was reinjected into the ground. It was estimated to be 50 to 70 trillion cubic feet of gas produced from the oil since 1968. The gas has been reinjected into the ground. We need a 3,000-mile pipeline. We are trying to find some way to ask people to address the question of how to maintain a steel industry that can support a pipeline of that size--1,500 miles of gathering pipelines, thousands of valves, hundreds of trucks, hundreds of backhoes, and hundreds of pieces of road- building equipment to build access to these areas. It is enormous. It is the largest gas delivering plan in the world. It is projected to be the largest private enterprise project in the history of man--totally financed by private enterprise. But if private enterprise doesn't survive in the steel industry, we are not going to have that pipeline in the timeframe that we need it. If we started it in 2003, the first gas would be coming through in about 2010 or 2011. Knowing that the environmental opposition will sue, that will add 6 years to that. We are talking about between 2015 and 2020 making that gas available to the U.S. That is why I brought that poster here, to ask people to think ahead. Lincoln, one of our greatest Presidents, thought about how to connect the east coast and the west coast of the United States. He conceived the idea himself to offer a bounty incentive to the railroad industry to build the railroad from the east coast to the west coast. He got Congress to approve it, and they paid for it. One million dollars was to be paid to the first railroad that completed a coast-to-coast railroad. Every section along the right-of-way was loaned by the Federal Government. The problem of the country today is the people living in these States don't know the policies that led to their private enterprise as compared to the policies that led to our serfdom under the Federal Government. We thought when we became a State that we had a right--and we did have a right--to 103.5 million acres to be selected from vacant, unappropriated and unreserved Federal land. To us, that meant as of the day we became a State in January of 1959. To the people in the Congress, in 1980, it meant those lands that were left after they had reserved 104 million acres for special purposes for these elite areas. You can't get to them. As I said before, only three of them can be reached by road. Most of them don't have an airport. You fly in by float plane, or you hike in. They are recreational areas for the elite few of the world. But, in any event, they withdrew them, preventing the State from getting lands it was going to select, preventing the Natives from getting the lands they were going to select from the Alaska Native Lands settlement. People ask: Why were people disturbed? That 1980 act took away from the 365-million-acre pool of lands that were available to be selected for the State and Native settlements, and reserved them--directly contrary to the historical policy of the United States to make Federal lands available for sustaining the private enterprise economy. By what these people are doing now, we are going to be a dependent colony of the United States. We are going to be dependent upon having someone, in a position such as mine, who can add to the budget the moneys that are necessary for survival in Alaska. The real problem about this is that, when you look at the basic law, it is July 1, 1862, that led to that. It led to that. Following that, in 1984, the Federal Government issued a table of grants to States. I want to put this in the Record because it shows what every single State has received. There is no question that, as the Nation moved West, the policies of the United States were to enhance the development of the private sector, as I have said before. We end up with a situation, where as of 1983, 3 years after that act was passed, the Federal Government still owned 87.9 percent of Alaska. The part that we own is subject to control through acts such as the 1980 act. So it really does not matter. I think that the development of these lands, and the use of Federal lands, is a question we ought to explore sometime in the future. But for now I would like to put in the Record the table that shows the grants to the States, from 1803 to 1984, showing what happened in the other 49 States--48 States. Hawaii had the same problem. Hawaii really was not treated properly in terms of their lands. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the table be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, with the understanding I may resume the floor later this afternoon, I will yield the floor to these Senators.

Mr. STEVENS. A real problem is the people who really take advantage of the Nation when we are evenly divided, the minority of the population--2 percent--which represents these radical environmentalists. The Democratic Party sees fit to seek to win elections by preventing us from proceeding with the prospect of discovering oil on the Arctic Plain, but it has not been a traditional position of that party because, obviously, the two people who reserved this area were, in fact, Democratic Senators--Senator Jackson and Senator Tsongas. They were Democratic Senators. They entered into a commitment with us that this area would be explored, and if it proved to be not a situation where irreparable harm would occur on the Arctic Plain, this area would then be faced with a request from the President and the Secretary of the Interior to proceed with oil and gas leasing. Oil and gas leasing is prohibited at the present time. We know that. It is prohibited by law. The 1980 act prohibited oil and gas leasing in this area until the procedure is followed. This is the procedure. It has taken us 21 years to get to this point. This is the ``Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain Resource Assessment Recommendation to Congress and Legislative Environmental Impact Statement'' required by the law of 1980. It demonstrates that there would be no irreparable harm to this area if oil and gas leasing would proceed. I have some real problems with what is going on here. I want to talk about them at length later. I understand the Senator from Texas wishes to speak, so I will be glad to yield to her when she is ready. These people, the Eskimos, the Inupiats who live on the North Slope, seek this decision by Congress. They want this area to be explored. Their schools, their roads, and their future depend upon jobs. This is their area. They believe it can be done safely. They even own some of the land up there. Mr. President, did you know they are prohibited from drilling on their own land, land they received from the Federal Government in settlement of their claims? There is no question--no question--that these people want to proceed. The Senator was referring to this land as wilderness. Those people live right there. This is the village that is within what the Senator from Massachusetts calls wilderness. This is not wilderness. This is the home of the Inupiat people, the Eskimo people of Alaska. There are some Alaska Natives who live on the South Slope who really are part of the Canadian Indian nation known as Gwich'ins. They oppose this. We know that. They are probably up in the galleries now. They oppose it, but the Alaska Eskimos do not oppose it. They live there, and they want this development. They want to see it developed. The first time I went up to the North Slope, it was a very sad visit. It was back in the fifties. I tell you, they had a very small runway. Wiley Post crashed just north of there. We landed at this little village in which the people lived in terrible circumstances and conditions. They had no modern conveniences at all. I invite you to go up and take a look at Barrow--five-, six-, eight-story buildings with elevators, beautiful schools, a wonderful airport, tremendous people enjoying their lifestyle. They like the Arctic. That is their home. They like their opportunities now to have their feet in both the present and the past. They are wonderful people. They make tremendous citizens of the United States, and there is no question they want to proceed. I have a letter that went to Senators Daschle and Lott in April of this year from the Kaktovic Inupiat. This is a photograph of some of their children. They say they want the promises given to them. They want this area open. They are the only residents of the 19.6 million acres that were recognized within the boundaries of that refuge. They own some of the land. They own 92,160 acres of the land, and they are currently prohibited by the Federal Government from drilling on their land because of the situation in the 1002 area. They were told to wait until the approval was given by Congress to proceed in the whole area. They seek--and I hope before we are through, we will recognize their request--to use their own lands to determine whether or not beneath those lands there are oil and gas resources. That is another matter we will go into. They say: We don't have much, gentlemen, except for the promises of the U.S. Government that the settlement of our land claims against the United States would eventually lead to control of our destiny by our people. That is denied now by the opposition of the majority party to this amendment that is before us. We believe this will be the largest oilfield on the North American Continent, somewhere in excess of 40 billion barrels of oil. We do not build paved roads; we build ice roads in these areas. It is true that on State lands, where Prudhoe Bay was discovered--those are State lands--they are subject to the construction of roads by the permission of the State of Alaska. It is an entirely different situation than being within the 1002 area which is subject to total control by the Federal Government. The House has already limited the use of this 1002 area, 1.5 million acres, to 2,000 acres of surface--2,000 acres out of 1.5 million acres. That is what we are being denied the right to use. I do believe it is unfortunate that we have the concepts now of so many people who enjoy life and make so many studies from afar. They are making studies from all of these scientific organizations that are supported by these environmental organizations. I am going to talk about those later, Mr. President. I see two other Senators are in the Chamber.

Mr. STEVENS. I will have a dialog when the time comes.

Mr. STEVENS. I did not interrupt the Senator.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have listened with great interest to the Senator from Massachusetts. He is a friend. I have visited his home and I have great love for his wife. I find it very interesting that the Senator from Massachusetts has discussed about every other creature of the world but has never talked about the people of the Arctic Slope. He never talked about the Eskimo. In fact, despite repeated requests to go to the area, he has never been there. He has never been there. As a concept, I find it hard to understand my friend's continued reference to the ``wilderness area'' and drilling in a ``wilderness area.'' The 1\1/2\ million acres of the Arctic Coastal Plain is not a wilderness area and was never designated as a wilderness area. Drilling there would not be drilling in a wilderness area. It is unfortunate that the Senator, and others, continue to say that because it represents a breach of faith. Paul Tsongas, in fact, did offer four amendments to the 1980 act. One of them he withdrew. It was on the Coastal Plain. There was a compromise on the Coastal Plain. I, too, am sad that Senator Paul Tsongas and Senator Scoop Jackson are not here because, were they here, they would say a deal is a deal. We passed out the letter that Senator Jackson authored with Senator Hatfield, which is on every Senator's desk, which says: One-third of our known petroleum reserves are in Alaska, along with an even greater proportion of our potential reserves. Actions such as preventing even the exploration of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, a ban sought by one amendment, is an ostrich-like approach that ill-serves our Nation in this time of energy crisis. That is the letter signed by Senators Jackson and Hatfield in 1980. Fair is fair. I will talk about the senatorial courtesies and the prerogatives of the past. Right now I want to answer my friend. At one time during his comments he said British Petroleum does not seek to explore in ANWR. Am I hearing right? There has been no such announcement by British Petroleum. It is one of the major producing entities in the North Slope now and, as far as I know, it has never been the concept of seeking the right to proceed with the commitment to explore the 1\1/2\ million acres covered by the section 1002 in the 1980 act. The Senator talked about jobs. That is wonderful. We like that. The Senator talked about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and he wants to develop the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska. He has had that opportunity since he has been in the Senate. Nobody has proceeded at all with that. We have tried to get that done. We have not been able to do it. It is like the rest of Alaska. People say it is wilderness because it is undeveloped. It is not wilderness in the legal sense, unless it is classified as ``wilderness.'' So far as I know, it is not possible for that statement to be made on the floor of the Senate--that we would drill in wilderness if we were to drill in the 1002 area of the Arctic Coastal Plain. The Senator from Massachusetts belabored, I think, the CAFE standards concept. It would be three times the savings, he says, of ANWR. Well, ANWR doesn't persist in savings; ANWR is production. Beyond that, CAFE standards deal with gasoline. We are dealing with oil. Mr. President, 44 percent of a barrel of oil becomes gasoline; 56 percent is refined for other products. You can have all the CAFE standards you want. If you want the other products, you have to refine a barrel of oil. There is too much talk here about gasoline being oil. One time the Senator from Massachusetts said 70 percent of the oil goes into transportation. That is not so at all. Maybe 70 percent of the gasoline goes into transportation, but it is not oil. In fact, the bulk of the oil goes for a lot of things, including home fuel, jet fuel, kerosene, and lubricants. I wonder how far our aircraft would fly if we stopped refining a barrel of oil to get jet fuel. You would still have the part of the barrel that would make gasoline. I remind those who are looking at this chart that these are items made from oil--from toothpaste to deodorants, footballs, lifejackets, pantyhose, lipstick, dentures, and they all come from a barrel of oil.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. This is dated July 3, 1980, signed by Henry M. Jackson, chairman, and Mark Hatfield, ranking minority member, of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It says: In this year of sharply heightened national concern over the economy, energy and national defense, the Senate is about to consider Alaska lands legislation--an issue which would have a profound effect on each of these vital subjects. We write to ask for your full support of the Alaska lands bill approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. After extensive hearings, study and mark-up, the Committee approved this bill by an overwhelming and bi-partisan vote of 17-1. The Committee bill is a balanced, carefully crafted measure which is both a landmark environmental achievement and a means of protecting the national interest in the future development of Alaska and its vital resources. The bill more than doubles the land area designated by Congress as part of the National Park and National Wildlife Refuge systems; it triples the size of the National Wilderness Preservation system. It protects the so-called Crown Jewels of Alaska. At the same time, it preserves the capability of that mammoth state to contribute far beyond its share to our national energy and defense needs. A series of five major amendments to the bill and an entire substitute for it will be offered on the Senate floor. The amendments in total would make the bill virtually an equivalent of the measure approved last year by the House. Each amendment in its own way would destroy the balance of the bill. While the bill is a gigantic environmental accomplishment, it also is crucial to the nation's attempt to achieve energy independence. One-third of our known petroleum reserves are in Alaska, along with an even greater proportion of our potential reserves. Actions such as preventing even the exploration of the Arctic Wildlife Range, a ban sought by one amendment, is an ostrich-like approach that ill-serves our nation in this time of energy crisis. That was 1980. Continuing: Instability of certain nations abroad repeatedly emphasizes our need for a stronger domestic supply of strategic and critical minerals. Each of the five proposed amendments would either restrict mineral areas from development or block effective access to those areas. Four of the seven world- class mineral finds in Alaska would be effectively barred from development by the amendments. That simply is too high a price for this nation to pay. Present and potential employment both in Alaska and in the other states would be significantly damaged if the committee bill is amended. Cutting off development of the four mineral finds discussed above would alone cost thousands of potential jobs, many of them in the Lower 48 states. The amendment on national forests would eliminate up to 2,000 jobs in the southeast Alaska timber-related economy. We urge you to focus on the central fact that the Alaska lands bill is not just an environmental issue. It is an energy issue. It is a national defense issue. It is an economic issue. It is not an easy vote for one constituency that effects only a remote, far-away area. It is a compelling national issue which demands the balanced solution crafted by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. We look forward to your support. Cordially, Mark O. Hatfield, Ranking Minority Member. Henry M. Jackson, Chairman. Madam President, do you know why I read that letter? Three of the four amendments that they urged for the Senate not to adopt were, in fact, adopted. The environmental people, at that time, were growing in strength, as I said before. They won every issue but one--every issue but one. There was only one issue that the State of Alaska prevailed on that was a major issue. There were some minor changes of boundaries that we argued about, whether this part of this town should be in that withdrawal or another part in some other area. But there were four major issues that the chairman and ranking member raised, and Alaska lost three of the four. We won one. We had a solemn commitment from the two leaders. Senator Tsongas had those four amendments that Senator Jackson and Senator Hatfield talked about. Senator Jackson and Senator Hatfield had the committee bill. They melded it. They took three of the Tsongas amendments. But they left one out. They left us access to the Coastal Plain for oil and gas exploration and development. One wonders whether history should have anything to do with subsequent action by the Senate of the United States. One Congress cannot bind another Congress. But one Congress can enact a law that it takes another Congress to enact and have a President sign it. This is one of the things that was required, and it was the great error of my career in agreeing that the area would be open only if a subsequent law was passed by Congress approving the process which was set up. The process was that an area would be available for oil and gas leasing. There would be an environmental impact statement. There would be seismic research to see if there was a possibility of recovering oil. If both of those proved positive, then there would be a request of Congress to authorize the use for exploration of oil and gas. Senator Jackson later that year, on August 18, addressed the Senate. On page 21651 of the Congressional Record of August 18, 1980, he said: Mr. President, I rise in support of the substitute offered by the Senator from Massachusetts. During the past several weeks, Senator Tsongas and I, as well as Senators Roth, Hatfield, and Cranston, have attempted to draft a compromise substitute amendment. We have before us an amendment which we believe represents an equitable solution to the Alaska lands issue. He goes on to say later in that same timeframe: The substitute retains the Senate Energy Committee's language relative to an oil and gas exploration program on the Arctic Coastal Plain in the existing Arctic Wildlife Range. Several changes in the committee's provisions were incorporated regarding the wildlife portion of the Arctic Slope study. The timing of the seismic exploration program and the Secretary's report to the Congress regarding further oil and gas exploration on the plain were also modified slightly. . . . Taken together, this approach provides adequate protection for the affected wildlife in the area--including the Porcupine caribou herd--while insuring that an assessment of the area's oil and gas potential is undertaken. We won one issue, and now the majority party wants to deny us that compromise. It is an interesting area, the Arctic. Did you know, Madam President, following the great Teapot Dome scandal in 1923--the year of my birth, incidentally--the President, President Harding, withdrew 25 million acres of Alaska as a national petroleum reserve to salve the national conscience about the Teapot Dome scandal. That is what it was. That area has never really been explored for oil and gas. It was set up in 1923. In 1943, during the conduct of the war, Abe Fortas, who many of us knew, the then-Acting Secretary of the Interior, withdrew all lands in the State of Alaska--all lands in the State of Alaska--about 20 miles south of the Circle. All of that land was withdrawn. Nothing at all could be done up there by Alaskans, the people who lived there and stayed there. He withdrew other lands--the so-called public land order 82--in the Katagkak region down here--it was a broad-scale thing--and in the Cape Lisburne area. This is the area we are talking about now that was withdrawn in 1943--not from oil and gas but from any kind of activity. That persisted until we got to the Statehood Act. And just prior to the Statehood, the Kobuk gas field was discovered just south of the Alaska Range, in that area right there. While I was at the Interior Department, the Secretary of the Interior, Fred Seaton, amended public land order 82 allowing oil and gas exploration to take place in the Kobuk gas field. As a matter of fact, later in 1959, after we obtained statehood, Secretary Seaton further modified it to affect lands up around the national petroleum reserve of Alaska created by President Harding. And then, in December of 1960, he in effect repealed that land order. He really did it by amending the previous land order and making it possible for Alaska to select lands in that area because under the Statehood Act the State of Alaska could not explore north of the Arctic Circle without prior approval. He gave the State the authority to select the lands. The area they selected was Prudhoe Bay. That was really divine guidance that took us to that place because that was the only place we could drill in the Arctic at the time. Alaskans found the largest supply of oil on the North American continent at that time--on State lands, not Federal lands. Those Federal lands have never been opened to oil and gas, as intended by Secretary Seaton or by President Eisenhower. Subsequent administrations have found some way to frustrate access to the oil and gas resources of that area. I have talked for a long time. I will talk a while longer because I will go into this amendment I filed in the second degree. I will speak more about the Arctic wildlife area and what it means. I filed an amendment in the second degree because, as I looked at the House-passed bill, it approved ANWR and it limited the amount of land that could be used to 2,000 acres out of that 1.5 million acres. All that can be used is 2,000 surface acres. But it postulates that there will be a series of bonus bids for the right to lease the land, somewhere between $1.6 billion and $2.7 billion. The House bill channels a portion of that money to what I would call a little carrot--a little conservation restoration of the areas already withdrawn from parts of the refuge. I thought about that, and I thought about where the drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge area--ANWR area, the 1002 area--would take us. It takes us a step further toward building the Alaska natural gas pipeline--something the American public should learn about, something on which I hope the great unions of this country and the steel industry and others will start educating the public. At the time Prudhoe Bay oil was discovered, we found that gas was associated with the oil. There was no means to transport the gas, so a series of reinjection facilities was constructed and, as the oil and gas is produced, the gas is separated and it is reinjected into the ground. There are now 50 trillion to 70 trillion cubic feet of gas known to exist under State land in the Prudhoe Bay area. We now propose that we build a natural gas pipeline to take that gas to the midwestern part of the United States. It is the largest amount of gas we know of that is not transportable so far. It would transport, when built, a pipeline 52 inches in diameter, 1 inch thick, running 3,000 miles from the North Slope to Chicago, down the Alaska Highway, through Canada, and into the Midwest. Along with that, it takes 15,000 miles of gathering pipelines and adjunct lines. Originally, they thought about bringing the pipeline through the pristine part of Canada. That has been abandoned. The State wants it to come this way. This is the area here. We are going to follow, partially, the Alaska pipeline right-of-way and come down the Alaska Highway and go through Canada, along the route of the current pipeline through Canada. People said: What does that have to do with drilling in the Arctic region of the Alaska Coastal Plain? Mr. President, there is no source of funds that I can see, with the existing economic situation, in the foreseeable future to help get that Alaska gas pipeline started other than funds from the production of oil in the Arctic Plain. The more I study, the more I find we have a really interesting situation in steel. Obviously, I am not from steel country. I don't know a lot about steel. But I have been learning a lot about it since we started this effort. Since the year 2000, approximately 30 steel companies in the United States have entered bankruptcy, and 60,000 workers are already out of jobs in those places. In 1980, there were more than 500,000 U.S. steelworkers. By the year 2000, there were 224,000. That was 2 years ago. Since that time, we have had, as I have indicated, 30 more steel companies fold. One of the contracts that exist between the steel companies and their workers is the benefits program--a promise that was made for the contribution to their past work in our society. It was an agreement to pay health benefits for the retirees. There are presently estimated to be 600,000 of those retirees, at a minimum. The companies they worked for are going bankrupt. There is a plan to try to consolidate the U.S. steel companies, but there is a little hitch. These workers have the right to put a lien on those assets before they are consolidated. So a plan was devised, and it is a difficult one to follow through. But it is a plan to use the fund to pay the cost of the health care delivery for the retirees and let the assets go into a consolidated steel industry that would be capable of contributing to major projects such as our Alaska natural gas pipeline. The plan is the legacy plan, and the legacy would be to keep the commitment made to the retirees. It requires a cashflow for 30 years of $18 billion. If the steel industry does not find $18 billion, it is my judgment they will not be able to consolidate. If they do not consolidate, we will not have a steel industry capable of meeting our needs. I do not know if you know it, Madam President, but recently Robert Miller, chairman and CEO of Bethlehem Steel, testified that: Bethlehem Steel was the only domestic company with the capability to provide the special steel plate that was required to repair the U.S.S. Cole. One steel company left in the United States could meet our national defense needs--one. I told the union group today I believe there are three things that keep a democracy alive: One is food, one is oil, and one is steel. That gives us the ability to maintain our economy and to defend ourselves. We have taken very ample care of the farmers, I have to say that. In going through this, I found that in the last 10 years we have spent $656 billion on the farm community in regular bills and $17 billion in the last 10 years on special emergency bills for the farm communities. How much have we spent for steelworkers? How much have we spent for oil? Nothing. They are part of the private enterprise system and must survive themselves. How can they survive if Congress gets in their way? We are supposed to facilitate the development of this country and maintain our economic viability. We are supposed to provide for our national defense. As a matter of fact, that is one of our constitutional duties--to provide for the national defense and promote the general welfare of this country. I find it hard to believe we are getting so much criticism of the amendment that I have suggested. What it does is it takes part of the money that would come to the Federal Government and channels it into a fund which will address the health care costs for those retirees, enable the industry to be reconstituted, revitalized, provide money to the Department of Commerce to help with some loans and grants to those steel companies to get them going again, and provide money to the Department of Labor to train people to do some of the work we are going to need. It is a gigantic project. There are two steel mills in the world today that are capable of rolling the pipe for the Alaska gas pipeline--two. The design of that pipeline will require one-half of the world's capability to produce steel pipe for a period of over 5 years. One project. In order to get it started by 2010, the orders have to be placed by next year. It is not possible to place those orders unless we know where there is a cashflow to take care of the problems of the retirees. This project of ours will take 5.2 million tons of steel. It will involve $3 billion to $5 billion in initial steel orders alone. We are not talking about the 15,000 miles of gathering pipe. We are not talking about the hundreds of trucks that will carry that pipe down that long 3,000-mile road. We are not talking about the trucks and equipment that will improve the roads so the trucks can run on them. Most of those areas do not have roads that can hold trucks that size. This is a gigantic project, and one must ask himself or herself: Is gas essential to our economy? Is gas essential to our national security? Is this something on which we should have a partisan dispute? Is this something that we should be here debating about a procedural issue, an issue designed to permit a group of Senators to delay action on a bill until the rest of the country can learn about it? Actually, I am grateful to them for their filibuster against our amendments and their threat of requiring a cloture vote to terminate our debate because it means we are going to be here for a while talking about this subject. As we talk about it, I hope more and more people learn about it. We establish in my amendment a trust fund for conservation, jobs, and steel reinvestment. It would provide $155 million for conservation programs. It would provide $232 million for commerce grants to retool industries to get ready for the gas pipeline. It would provide approximately $900 million to reestablish and make solvent the Coal Miners Health Fund. It would provide $7 billion over 30 years to provide for the Legacy Benefits Program I described. This is not the only money that goes into the legacy fund. The President has already put in effect the tariffs on imported steel. That money goes into the legacy fund. The companies are in the process of agreeing, as I understand it, to pay $6 per ton on steel produced in the United States into the fund. But it is woefully short of money to meet the needs for those 600,000-plus retirees. That is not enough money to make it work. How do we get our gas pipeline started? We try to find a way to put together the exploration and development of this continent's largest oilfield with the problems of developing a gas pipeline to transmit gases already there. We do not have to look for it. It is known gas. It is just not transportable because there is no mechanism to transport it. I believe we can do that. I am intrigued with some of the statistics as to this pipe. As I said, it is 52 inches, 1 inch thick, and it is called X-80 pipe. It has never been tested before. In order to make it available, a portion of it will have to be rolled to test to see if the theory that has been worked out on computer is correct: That this is the type of pipe that can withstand the pressure necessary to move that gas over 3,000 miles. Alaska now has the Alaska oil pipeline. It is a 750-mile pipeline. We call it 800, but it is 750 miles of the really big pipe. That weighed 1.2 million tons. Roads had to be specially created for that pipe to be put in place. Alberta now has a 1,435-mile pipeline. It weighed 2.1 million tons and cost $1.8 billion delivered. We are looking at, as I said, an enormous amount beyond either of those. The pipeline will be almost as long as the Great Wall of China. One of the interesting things about it is, eight pipe-bending machines will cost more than $1 million each and a 2-year lead time will be needed to get that pipe into place. They estimate they are going to need 115 backhoes, 27 D-10 bulldozers, 90 D-9s, and 16 to 20 of the large, magnum class chain trenchers. In terms of manpower, the workforce in Alaska alone would be 2,300 jobs; in Canada 3,400 jobs. But there are jobs throughout the United States into the hundreds of thousands to build the valves, gathering the pipelines and the various pieces of equipment that are necessary to construct this pipeline. I am saddened to say a lot of people say: That is a crass and cynical thing to do. You are just looking for votes. That is right. We are looking for votes to open this area to oil and gas exploration so we can get the money to start this pipeline. If taking care of and helping the steelworkers and coal workers is necessary to reconstruct the American steel industry so it can participate in it, we should do it. I think the real problem I have is to try and figure out how we can put this into real context. With due respect to the Democratic Senators, they are shilling for a bunch of radical environmentalists who control the country now in many ways. Tomorrow I am going to speak at length about the articles that were in the Sacramento Bee about the way these people seek to control what the Sacramento Bee called ``the fat of the land.'' They document it in a series of articles. I have those articles and I will read some of them tomorrow to make sure we know who our enemy is. It is not the Senators from these various States. They are responding to constituents. They represent 2 to 3 percent of the constituency in most House districts, a little less than that in most elections statewide. They are very powerful, and at times such as we are in right now, look at--we were balanced 50-50. Until Senator Jeffords changed his mind, we were 50-50. We are a nation divided. That is when these minorities sneaked in and took control, and that is what the radical environmentalists have done. I intend to go into that at length tomorrow. I will go further tomorrow into some more statistics about the steelworkers' problems and the reasons I have persisted, even though I must say I do not know so far any Senators who represent the steel States or the steelworker States who have agreed to assist us in this matter. I challenge them to find another cashflow area, another stream of money that will save their workers' retirement benefits. I challenge them. This is not new. We did it for the black lung disease people in 1992. We have done it a series of times, where we have taken money from one cashflow and put it into an objective where we could not get the money otherwise, but we had a new cashflow and before it was committed, we committed it to good things. I say it this way: Take the airport development fund. All of those taxes do not go into the Treasury. They go into the fund and they pay for airports, they pay for the runways. As to the highway fund, those highway taxes go to pay for a great many things. Take the emergency agricultural appropriations. Where do they go? They pay the John Deere bill. They pay for the medical insurance for the employees and the farmers. They pay the grocery bill when farmers have trouble. But somehow or another that is normal, right? When we bring in an emergency bill for agriculture, we do not argue about that at all. We only ask how much more can we raise it because they are farmers. My farmers love them. I voted for those bills; I am not criticizing. I am saying why only the farm community when there are two other streams that we must maintain to keep this democracy alive? One is oil and one is steel. I want a bill that matches them both. I thank the Chair for her patience, and I thank my friend from North Dakota. I mean no personal offense in any way in what I say, but I think I have a right now to be disturbed. I have argued this matter in the Senate for more than 21 years. It actually started 31 years ago in December of 1971. I have been in the Senate that whole time. There has not been a year gone by we have not had an issue concerning these reactionary radical environmental groups and what their demands are on our State. Why? There are only three of us. We are way up there. When Senator Murkowski and I are at home, we are closer to Beijing than we are to Washington, DC. These environmentalists raise money by telling people the harm we are liable to do to that land, but less than one-half of 1 percent of Alaska is occupied by man. It is almost the least populated area in the world; yet it is threatened. It is threatened every day. There is another ad on the TV, another ad in a major paper about how this terrible bunch of people are about ready to destroy this land. Less than one-half of 1 percent has been occupied by man. It is an amazing thing for me to get involved in this, but I intend to stay involved in it. Let's see if the process works. Let's see if the theory of extended debate for the education of our people still has meaning. Do people listen to us? Are they interested in what the labor leaders in the country say? Are they interested in the plight of the steelworkers? Are they interested in the plight of the coal workers? Are they interested in the future of building that gigantic pipeline that will bring the equivalent of more than a million barrels of oil and gas a day to the central part of the United States? It would assure that the central part of the United States would have all the gas it needs for 40 years. Is that worth thinking about, worth taking some time of my colleagues to listen to me shout a little bit? I think it is, and I hope the system works. I remember as a young man seeing ``Mr. Smith Comes to Washington.'' I am not Mr. Smith, but I think the issue is more acute than the one he faced. The issue we face is survival. Do we go on increasing our dependence on foreign oil? How much more are we going to import? The report I had today was it is at 57 percent in terms of imported oil. I thought it was lower than that. During the crisis that led to an embargo in the 1970s, it was less than 35 percent. What about steel? During World War II, we produced steel for the world. We produced the steel for the allies. We rebuilt Europe. We built the tanks in the United States, and the planes and the ships that saved the world. Could we do it again? Are we willing to contemplate doing it even to save our own system? I yield the floor.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I will read portions of it. It says: ``A waste of energy?'' Pity the poor caribou. There they are, minding their own business, roaming silently in the snow and soft tundra of the desolate Arctic landscape. Then, suddenly, they're everywhere: migrating through green Web sites worldwide, their survival the subject of urgent concern. If Big Oil starts drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, environs say, the lovely reindeer are at risk. Antlers, unite! Enough already. The caribou are fine. In fact, since exploration started around Alaska's Prudhoe Bay in 1968, the local herd has thrived. And in case you're interested, the polar bears roaming ANWR are doing nicely, too. But don't get confused: This fight over 2,000 Arctic acres is not about wildlife. It's not even about oil. It's about political theology--and a small piece of land that has become a huge symbol and great fodder for fundraising. ``We need a poster on the wall, and here it is,'' says Bruce Babbitt, ex-Clinton interior secretary, who opposes drilling in ANWR yet keeps a certain perspective on it. ``Why do we spend so much time quarreling over this tiny sliver that has no real implications for energy independence?'' Good question. Here we are, in a war likely to expand throughout the world's oil-producing region, and we're importing 57 percent of our oil--including 790,000 barrels a day indirectly from our buddy, Saddam Hussein. Remember that this is U.S. News & World Report, not Senator Stevens. Has this focused the nation on a serious plan for both conservation and production? Hardly. Competing energy plans are stuck in Congress, which is oddly bent on choosing either conservation or production--and could get nothing as a result. ``Energy policy doesn't have to involve either-or choices,'' says Tony Knowles, Alaska's pro-development Democratic governor. Then again, he hasn't spent much time in Congress lately. To wit: The Senate disgraced itself recently when it killed a gradual increase in gasoline mileage standards for cars that could save as many as 1 million barrels a day. Soon it will most likely kill any drilling in ANWR, which might have provided a small start in the right direction. ``We shouldn't let this debate paralyze a real debate over energy policy,'' says John Holdren, an environmental policy guru at Harvard, who opposes ANWR drilling. But it has. ``People have given up on the really big issues'' like clean-air policy and climate control, he adds. That's because ANWR is too easy to spin. Consider the numbers: Drilling proponents say that ANWR will produce a tremendous amount of oil; opponents counter that it's a mirage, less than a six-month supply. If there was ever a lie, that is a lie. The trust is that no one really knows. Kenneth Bird, leader of a U.S. Geological Survey project that studied the potential for oil in the refuge, says the range of ``technically recoverable'' oil is somewhere between a relatively modest 4.3 billion and 11.8 billion barrels. It goes on. I wanted to get to that because I want to get back to Prudhoe Bay. Prudhoe Bay's estimate was 1 billion barrels. When they looked at that, we had the fight over whether or not Prudhoe Bay should be opened and whether the oil could be transported through the Alaska oil pipeline. The estimate was approximately 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. We have produced now over 13 billion barrels. If this estimate is similar to the other conservative estimates in terms of oil and gas, this is more oil than is dreamed of. Why can't we drill it? Why can't people here understand that the commitments that were made ought to be kept by the Congress? It is a commitment in the law--not just a promise. It was a hard-fought battle for 9 years, as I said. I remember that night when Senator Gravel blocked the 1978 act. It was really a bill that we passed out of conference. But the House had already passed it. We were ready to adjourn. The Senator from Alaska asked that the bill be read after the adjournment resolution could be agreed to. He couldn't read that bill in the time left for that Congress, and it died. It died. I went home with a group of people called the Citizens for Management of Alaska Lands, and we decided we would start raising money for the next Congress. We chartered a plane to go from Juneau to Anchorage, and it crashed. I was on it with my wife Ann and five people. Only one other person--our former Ambassador, Tony Motley--and I survived. We picked ourselves up from that disaster, went back and reorganized. We started working again in 1979 and 1980 and committed ourselves to try to get the issue settled. Do you know why? We couldn't select our Alaska State land. There was what we call a freeze on it. The Interior Department refused to process the State's request for the lands it was entitled to under the Statehood Act until this issue was settled. The Natives couldn't get their hands on it until this issue was settled. We had to agree to the 1980 act. We had no alternative. We are a land-poor society. We are a resource-based State. So we entered into the agreement. We said: All right. There were a few little tweaks and things made here. There are some interesting things. The occupant of the chair might be interested in this. We call this the foot of the gate of the Arctic. That withdrawal was not there in 1978. It was put there to block this road from going over to that mining district. They did not want to withdraw that area, so they just blocked the access. There is a similar block of access here--the road into Seward. There is a similar block of access here, and a block of access in here, and a total block of access in the southeast--no roads. That is what that 1980 act meant. There will never be, as long as those withdrawals persist, roads to connect the State of Alaska from point to point. We depend on airports and on water courses. We have only one road system that goes from Anchorage into Fairbanks and down the Alaska Highway to Canada. I hope people listen to these things. I am not sure they do. I will tell you a little aside. When I lost the leadership election in 1984, my friend from Kansas Bob Dole became leader. He asked me if I would help bring television to the Senate. It was then opposed by my friend Russ Long and a couple of other Senators. I conferred with them. We and the distinguished current President pro tempore decided we would allow it. We worked out bringing television to the Senate. I do not know whether that is educational or not. We are going to have a chance this week to find that out. At least for me, this is the first time I have used the concept of the public coverage by television of the proceedings on the floor of the Senate to try to interest people from other States in an issue that affects my State so vitally. That is why I mentioned the labor leaders' meeting in the front of the Capitol today and the invitation I received this morning to speak to the building trades convention of the AFL-CIO, which I was pleased to do. It is because people are thinking about jobs. When I started thinking about this bill--let me go back to this. It is a good idea to go through this again. I want to make sure people understand what we are talking about. We are talking about section 1002 of the Jackson-Tsongas amendment of December 1980, signed by President Carter after he lost the election in 1980. This is the provision drafted by the two Democratic leaders at the time on this legislation. It said: The purpose of this section is to provide for a comprehensive and continuing inventory and assessment of the fish and wildlife resources of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; an analysis of the impacts of oil and gas exploration, development, and production, and to authorize exploratory activity within the coastal plain in a manner that avoids significant adverse effects on the fish and wildlife and other resources. That is not an inconsistent position by Senator Jackson. Where is a copy of that letter? Madam President, I ask unanimous consent a copy of this letter be placed on every Senator's desk.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we have just had a marvelous experience across from the Capitol grounds. We had a press conference attended by the leaders of organized labor, many Senators, a great many members from organized labor, and members of the Alaska Native community. We ought to take time to see whether that settles in with the American public. Three of the greatest labor leaders in the country were there and another representing the fourth. They say they want this project to go forward. They want this area to be drilled. The concept of extended debate is to give a chance for the public to listen to debate on an issue and to determine whether they should contact their Senators about the issue. I hope that can happen. I hope it is still possible to have the country listen to the leaders of organized labor, listen to the leaders of the State of Alaska and consider whether or not it is safe to drill in the area set aside 21 years ago for just that purpose--to drill in the 1.5 million acres on the Arctic Coastal Plain. I have been through this before. I asked myself today: Why are we here? Why are we doing this now? The normal process for handling this legislation, which has been passed by the House of Representatives, would be to go to the committee, come to the Senate, be assigned to a committee, be considered by that committee, and report it back to the floor. This bill does not do that. It went to the committee. The committee voted to include the drilling of the Arctic Coastal Plain, ANWR, and the leadership said: No, you cannot report that bill to the floor. Instead, we will draft our own bill. The majority of the committee that has jurisdiction over this bill voted to report it in the manner we would like to see it approved. We don't get that chance. It comes on the floor, it is a different bill, drafted by the leadership of the majority side of the Senate. We are told: Take it or leave it. Get 60 votes for your amendment or forget about it--as though we are filibustering. They are filibustering our amendment, but we have to have the 60 votes in order to stop them from filibustering our amendment. This is a point of frustration for someone who has lived through this continuum dealing with Alaskan lands. I talked about it before and I will talk about it ad nauseam until we get the point across that the State of Alaska made a commitment to the Federal Government in 1980 that we would accept the bill that had been outlined by the leaders of the Democratic Party in the Senate, Mr. Jackson in particular, God rest his soul, but he was a great friend. He opposed us in many ways. We reached a consensus on the issue of this Arctic Coastal Plain. So everyone understands, we are talking about 1.5 million acres on the Arctic Coastal Plain that was set aside in 1980 for the purpose of oil and gas exploration. Anyone who comes to the floor and says this is wilderness is a liar--a liar. Anyone who tries to pretend that somehow or another we are violating the law is a liar. If it was back in the old days, I would challenge them to a duel. I am up to my ears in what I have been hearing about this that is absolutely untrue. The ANWR area was set aside by the Jackson-Tsongas amendment for the purpose of allowing exploration. It does not become a working part of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge until that is complete. The difficulty is, people say it is wilderness. This area, the ANWR Coastal Plain, is not wilderness. The area of the Arctic Wildlife Range south of that, in the light brown, is 8 million acres of wilderness. But that 1.5 million acres is not wilderness. Reading the Wilderness Society publication one would think we are invading the most pristine place on Earth. It is hell in the wintertime--60 below. I took the Postmaster General there and the digital thermometer said minus 99 because of the windchill factor. This is not some pristine place that should be protected. It should be protected at a time when it needs protection, which is the summer. And we do that. We do not drill for oil and gas in the summertime. Why are we here? We are here because some people on that side of the aisle, the majority side of the Senate, have decided they will block this. They do not honor the commitment made by the United States and the President of the United States when the 1980 act was signed. That was a commitment to our people in Alaska. In 1980, these areas that are marked and checked were withdrawn by the act of Congress called the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. All of that was withdrawn in 1978. My colleague, Senator Gravel, blocked a bill to do this because they could not build up there. In 1980, he still objected, but I reached an agreement with Senator Tsongas and Senator Jackson that I would help get this bill done in exchange for an absolute commitment in the law that that area would remain open to oil and gas acres, the 1.5 million acres, and the bill was signed by the President of the United States. Now they are saying that is a pristine area; you cannot do it. And the Democratic Party has put this in their platform, ``Don't drill in Alaska's Arctic,'' as though the Democratic Party owns Alaska. Someone asked: Who owns Alaska? The public owns Alaska. The public owned all those places, too, but they were set aside for the elite few. There are no roads there, no airport in there, no way to get there except through guided tours, twin-engine planes with guides and millionaires visiting those areas of Alaska. Eighty percent of the parklands in the United States are there. There are only three parks you can get to by road. What we are talking about is coddling to the radical environmentalists of this country. We have half the coal of the United States in Alaska. Did you know that? One time when Ed Muskie was running for President, he decided he needed some environmental votes and he came up with an amendment that said: If you mine for coal in the State of Alaska, you must restore the natural contour after you are through. In Alaska, coal comes with ice lenses, permafrost. When you put the steam points down to melt it, the water runs off. Take the coal off and there is no way in God's Earth you can restore the natural contour. Since Ed Muskie's amendment, not one new coal mine has been opened--30 years, with half the coal in the United States. No, no, we cannot do that. When I first went to Alaska, I worked on the Rampart Dam on the Yukon River. It would have been the largest power project in the United States. It would have provided my whole State with electrical power. It was economically feasible. There is no question about it. The environmentalists said, ``No, you cannot build that dam,'' and they blocked it. It is gone. We had, when I came to the Senate, the great forests of Alaska. Forests here, here, and here: The largest forests in the United States. We were cutting 1.3 billion board feet of timber a year on a cutting cycle of 103 years. We would not cut the same place twice in 103 years. As part of ANILCA, that was lowered to 450 million board feet a year. Last year, we cut 47 million. Why? The environmentalists have decided that timber in Alaska should not be cut. Notwithstanding the sustained use/yield concept that was in place, they just blocked it. When we passed this bill in 1980, we had six world class mines--six. They are all closed now but one. Why? Environmental litigation. You cannot mine in Alaska now. We have 32 of the 37 strategic and critical minerals and metals of the United States. None of them are being mined except one mine up in the Kotzebue area, the Red Dog Mine, the zinc mine, the largest in the world. Why are they closed? Environmental litigation from radical conservationists, environmentalists. We get down to the question of oil and gas. When we argued this bill in the period of the 1970s and 1980s, there were 50-odd wildcat operators in Alaska drilling for oil and gas. There is not one today. Not one. Do you know why? The last administration closed it all down. There are no permits to go out and explore for oil and gas on Federal lands, outside of the great Prudhoe Bay--which is State land. It is not Federal land at all, it is State land. The continuum of what we have been through as a State makes a lot of us wonder if we were right to seek statehood. Were we right? Many of our people wanted to be a commonwealth. Canada was then a commonwealth to the British empire. Some of our people wanted to be a commonwealth in the U.S. system. We said no, we want to be a State. We are Americans. We believe in America. The highest level of enlistment in the U.S. military in World War II was from Alaska, the highest level of veterans per capita today in the United States is in Alaska, from all periods of wars in this past century. The question is, Why are we here? We are here because an elite few have decided that Alaska should be their playground. The working people today woke up. That meeting outside, across from the Capitol, is a bell tolling for the Democratic Party, and it better listen. It better listen because the working people want jobs. This is a jobs bill. We will provide jobs. Instead of sending our money over to buy Saddam Hussein's oil, we will produce it on our own shores. We will produce it from Alaska. There are 15 sedimentary basins in Alaska. We have drilled three of them. This will be the fourth. No one knows whether it has oil or gas. We believe it does. We have still a lot left to drill in Alaska, provided some future generation removes some of those lines. Those lines were drawn to prevent development. We are at the crossroads now with this bill, of whether or not we listen to the President of the United States and, because of the interests of national security and economic security we proceed as was promised in the 1980s to develop this land. You cannot really understand the 1980 act unless you go back in history. When you go back in history, you go back to the Statehood Act. I was in the Interior Department at the time of statehood. Part of that Statehood Act was section 4. It was a commitment to the Alaskan Native people that once Alaska became a State, Congress would address the question of the claims of the Native people against the United States-- not against the State but against the United States, their claims as aboriginal people. We did that. As a matter of fact, I helped prepare some of that when I was still with the Eisenhower administration. After that came to an end, I went back to Alaska, worked on many things, came back here in 1968, and one of the first things we started working on when I became a Senator was the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act. That became law in 1971. It was the only time in history that Congress has settled claims against the United States of aboriginal people--of our continent. It was necessary because of the very diverse number of tribes in Alaska and the size of Alaska. I forgot to mention it earlier today, but let me mention it now: Alaska is 20 percent of the land that the American flag flies over. The State of Alaska is one-fifth of all the land of the United States. On that land were a series of tribes that had claims against the United States. We worked for 3 years and finally, in December of 1971, passed the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act. One of the conditions of that act was section 17(d)(2). That condition said: Before the Native people of the State of Alaska take their lands-- Alaska was guaranteed some lands as it became a State; the Native people received some lands in settlement of their claims against the United States--there must be a study of what land should be set aside in the national interest, in Alaska. That was 1971. For 9 years we argued over that, 9 full years. It became a slogan in Alaska, the (d)(2), 17(d)(2). We called it the ``(d)(2)'' issue; (d)(2) meant how much of the State was going to be set aside, and the State was prevented from taking it so it could be used to support the economy of the State. How much of it is going to be set aside to prevent the Alaskan Native people from getting the claims they really claim because it is set aside by these people who sought these withdrawals? In fact, the (d)(2) issue is what built the empire of the radical environmentalists in America. For 9 years they raised money, advertised, went throughout the country, if not the world, to raise money to ``save Alaska.'' Save it from what? There was not any development proposed in any of those areas. There are no roads in there. There are fewer roads in Alaska than there are in King County, WA. Those are diverse people, living in five different sectors of the largest State in the Union. But, no, it was an issue to withdraw them to prevent the State from getting them--prevent the Natives from getting them; because if we got them, we might develop them. The one area that was not set aside was that area; the 1.5 million acres was set aside for us to use to keep the pipeline filled. In the time of the Persian Gulf war, I went to the oil industry and I said: You have to increase the throughput of the pipeline. It was designed for 1 million barrels per day. It was running at about 1.9 million barrels a day. They looked into it and reported back they could do it. They increased it to 2.1 million barrels per day in the interests of national defense because we were shut off from a lot of access to oil at that time of the Persian Gulf war. Today, it is 950,000 barrels a day. We do not have enough reserves to keep the oil pipeline, the 48-inch in diameter, half-inch-thick pipeline, 800 miles from the North Slope to Valdez--we do not have enough oil to keep it filled now. Where do we get the oil in between time? My colleagues say we are getting the oil from Saddam Hussein. The only oil increase we have gotten since our throughput went down is the increase in imports from Saddam Hussein. We do not buy it directly from him; we buy it from the Food For Oil Program, and he gets the money from that. So we are not really giving him American dollars; we are going through some other exchange. We are washing the money going into Iraq because we don't want people to think we are dealing with Iraq, but it is Iraqi oil and we all know it. What does he do with it? He is rebuilding his military. Senator Inouye and I have just gone around the world, really--went into Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and we talked to people over there about what is going on over there. We went to China, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines--looking at what is happening with terrorism in the world. Who is supporting them? Who do you think? Saddam Hussein is supporting them. It is known he is supporting them. Where is he getting the money? From everybody who buys oil in those States that Senator Murkowski showed, where the oil is going. We paid Saddam Hussein $6.5 billion in 2001--$6.5 billion went to Saddam Hussein for his oil. The only way we can replace that is to produce our own. We are some sort of people who listen to these obstructionists who tell us to not keep the commitment Congress made to Alaska in 1980: Forget about that. We don't need that oil. Let me tell you that we need a lot more than that oil. There was an interesting article in U.S. News & World Report on April 1 of this year. It was called ``A waste of energy?'' I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes. I don't know how long.

Mr. STEVENS. I am happy to do that.

Mr. STEVENS. I send to the desk an amendment to the Murkowski amendment No. 3132.