Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator makes a good point. I will not argue with the Senator about which century it is. I do believe that next year is the first year of the next century. I join him in that. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of any time I may have.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this is a continuing resolution to give us until the close of business Thursday to complete the activities of this Congress. That is a large order, but I think it can be done if all Members of the House and Senate will cooperate. We have in conference the major bill, the Health and Human Services bill, which we were prepared to act upon, but there were four basic differences in the conference that we could not resolve with the White House before the election. We are working on that. I can report to the Senate that our majority leader has just given us information about the meeting that he and other leaders had with the President last evening. I can tell you from my perspective, based on the report of the majority leader, I believe it is possible to finish by Thursday night if there is a will in both the House and Senate to do so. It is my judgment--I am sure we are going to hear from the distinguished Senator from West Virginia that he shares this opinion-- that the work of this Congress should be finished by this Congress. We put a lot of time and effort into these bills that are still pending in conference. I do believe it is possible for us to finish if all Members will cooperate with us. The President has consented to making some reductions in the amounts proposed in these bills before the election. We are working on that with the staff of the House now in the appropriations process. I believe we will be able to report back sometime before the close of business today if the progress has led us to the point where we could file, or ask the House to file, a conference report tonight so it could be taken up by the House tomorrow. Again, I will be pleased to report later. For now, it is my urging that Members of the Senate work with us to try to finish the business of this Congress, including the passage of all of the remaining appropriations bills, by the time given in this continuing resolution, which is the close of business Thursday. I reserve the remainder of my time and suggest the absence of a quorum, the time not to be charged until the Senator from West Virginia claims his time.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I join with Senator Byrd on most of the comments he made. I am constrained to point out that I did argue with the White House at length not to put us through the process of having 1-day CRs. It is true this is the 17th one, but the bulk of them were for 1 or 2 days. And it takes us 2 days to pass one resolution, 1 day in the House and 1 day over here. As a consequence, we haven't been able to get anything done because we have been busy passing continuing resolutions, so we work the next day on another continuing resolution. I share the frustration of the Senator from West Virginia with this process. The Senator is absolutely right; we are going into another year in just a matter of days, a time when this body will be split, 50 votes on each side of the aisle. In our Appropriations Committee, we work basically on a bipartisan basis. What we are asking is for the Senate and the House to work together now in these next 2 days and let us wind up this business. The State-Justice-Commerce bill is finished, for all intents and purposes. The Treasury-Postal and legislative bill, that was ready to be signed--and it wasn't signed because of a disagreement over the Health and Human Services bill--we were told would have been signed. So as a practical matter, we have one bill that is really in controversy, and that is the Health and Human Services bill. As I reported to the Senate before the Senator returned, I tell my good friend, Senator Byrd, our leaders reported that the President has indicated a willingness to agree to some changes in that bill to meet the objections that were raised to the version of the bill prior to the election. I think we can do that today. Unfortunately, once again we are in a situation where both Houses are involved in elections for the coming Congress. We will be involved tomorrow in indoctrination of new Senators for the next Congress. I am told that if we don't finish by Thursday, we will have to finish by Saturday, which means we will have to spend all day Thursday working on another continuing resolution to be able to stay until Saturday. This foolishness has to stop, if we are going to wind down this Congress and finish the business of this Congress in this calendar year. I think we can. We are waiting now, Senator Byrd and I, to get together with Members of the House. Both Houses are involved in meetings for organization of the next Congress. I plead with Members to help us wind this down. We are within literally just two or three issues to be resolved on the Health and Human Services bill, and I think we can put them all together. I hope we will bring one resolution before the House and the Senate to approve all three bills. That can be done by Thursday night if there is goodwill here and the comity Senator Byrd has asked the Senate to show at this time. For myself, I look forward to the challenge of working with a 50-50 balance in the Senate. It is going to be a great challenge for all of us, and it is going to be an opportunity for us to demonstrate to the American public that the Senate is still the basic portion of our Government that deals with resolution of conflicts. This is supposed to be a debating society, a debating body. I think it will be for 2 years to come. We are going to be doing our business right here on the floor, to a great extent. With the help of the Senate, we will finish this bill. Does the Senator wish any more time?

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the vote regarding the continuing resolution, the majority leader be recognized to offer a motion to proceed to the motion to reconsider the cloture vote relative to the bankruptcy bill. I further ask that the motion to proceed on the motion to reconsider be agreed to and the Senate then proceed to 10 minutes equally divided between the majority leader and Senator Wellstone, and following that time the Senate proceed immediately to the motion to invoke cloture on the conference report to accompany H.R. 2415, the bankruptcy bill.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, after my remarks yesterday on the Steller sea lion decline, members of the press corps asked me for proof. This article provides a good summary of the research behind the sea lions' decline. I would also point out that the burden should be on the plaintiffs and the agency to prove that fishing has caused the sea lions' decline. I ask that an article from the Pacific Fishing magazine be printed in the Record. The article follows. [From Pacific Fishing, Nov. 2000] The Wrong Cure? Now that an unproven hypothesis has beached the North Pacific trawl fleet, environmental litigators have what they want. Are they honest enough to support research on whether their ``reasonable and precautionary'' solution really helps sea lions? (By Jeb Wyman and Brad Warren) When Judge Thomas S. Zilly banned trawling in 50,000 square miles of water designated as critical habitat for Steller sea lions, he issued a legal finding that groundfish fisheries off Alaska posed ``a reasonably certain threat of imminent harm'' to the endangered animals. That phrase means plenty in court, but it doesn't carry much weight in the world of science, where evidence of the supposed threat from fishing has been repeatedly characterized as ``tenuous.'' Significantly, even the judges stopped short of endorsing any particular theory about what's shrinking the sea lion population. Instead, he focused on a legal principle established by prior courts' interpretations of the Endangered Species Act: If government and industry can't demolish the contention that fishing threatens the Stellers, then they must assume it does and restrain fisheries accordingly. (See ``Who Killed the Stellers?'' Pacific Fishing, October 2000, page 20.) This converts a merely plausible threat to the Stellers into a legal mandate. Thus the three environmental groups that filed the lawsuit never had to prove that fishing is killing off sea lions. Nor did they need to show even that fishing is a more likely suspect than the other culprits that scientists are investigating. Those culprits include thoroughly documented changes in ocean climate and shifts in the available prey base for Stellers; they also include killer whales that have been videotaped devouring sea lions-- a diet that one study calculates to account for most of the Stellers' recent rate of decline. a weak heart In fact, the environmentalists' case is weakest at its heart. It depends upon the theory of ``localized depletion.'' This theory contends that trawl nets temporarily scoop out holes in schools of fish, or disperse them, for long enough so that Steller sea lions can't find enough food and thus are going extinct. No matter how it plays in court, in the harsh light of scientific inquiry the evidence and the logic behind this theory still are viewed as shaky, and other theories carry greater credence. For starters, the only field research to find evidence for localized depletion focused entirely on the Atka mackerel fishery, and even there the study's methodology and conclusions have been challenged by other scientists. Some scientists point to the complete absence, so far, of published field studies on whether pollock or cod fishing causes localized depletion. ``That's all basically a hypothesis,'' says Dr. Dayton Lee Alverson, a senior scientist who served on a federal panel investigating the Steller sea lion decline. Scientists have many misgivings about the localized depletion hypothesis. For one, it appears that Stellers eat different fish than trawlers catch. Alverson points out that the Stellers' known foraging depths are much shallower than the waters where most pollock trawling occurs. Scientists also agree that the Stellers forage on smaller fish than trawlers target. Another point of dispute is just how long any supposed ``hole'' or ``dispersal'' in schools may last. The assertion that ``depletion'' persists for long enough to strave sea lions relies on assumptions that few scientists or fishermen with any sea time can credit: that nearby fish don't swim into the gap left behind a trawl, and that fish don't migrate. (It's hard to show depletion after a fishing season when you know the fish would normally move on anyway.) If schools didn't ``in-fill,'' why would trawlers keep towing the same patch of water over and over? If migration didn't occur, why would fish seasonally pass through various fishing locations? ``conjectures,'' not ``facts'' The National Marine Fisheries Service has drawn sharp criticism in the scientific community for allowing the tenuous hypothesis of localized depletion to drive fishery management. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee, which includes scientists from universities and fisheries agencies around the country, has roundly condemned NMFS's new draft environmental assessment of cod fishery impacts on Stellers, which basically extends the depletion assumption to cod fisheries. The document relies on a ``flawed'' analysis to support that assumption, and it ``fails to clearly differentiate between conjectures and facts,'' the committee wrote in September. Calling for research to ``find out what works and what doesn't'' in protecting Stellers, the committee wrote: ``No one would object to the adoption of reasonable measures to arrest the decline if there was some assurance that they would lead to some improvement.'' But the scientists observed that the present lack of convincing evidence to balame fishing puts the council in a bind: ``If there is a connection between current fisheries and Steller sea lions and no action is taken, the council would be derelict in its responsibility to conserve resources under its domain. If other factors are responsible and the council imposes stringent measures, then the council would deprive individuals and even communities of their livelihoods with no justification.'' But the theory of localized depletion is crucial to the trawlers' foes, because it is clear that the U.S. fishery has not caused large-scale depletion of pollock stocks off Alaska. Between 1980 and 1990, when Steller numbers dwindled most rapidly, total pollock biomass in the Bearing Sea averaged 13.3 million metric tons, nearly twice the average of the previous decade. Catches averaged 1.1 million mt, representing a harvest rate between 5% and 15% of the total biomass. With 12 million tons of pollock remaining in the water, on average, how likely was it that the 40,000 or so Stellers in the endangered western population couldn't find enough pollock to eat? Between 1970 and 1980, when Alaska's western and eastern Stellers combined numbered between 200,000 and 250,000 animals, average pollock biomass was just 6.9 million tons. So for most of the years of Steller decline, more pollock has been available for them to eat than during the previous 20 years, when the sea lion population was an order of magnitude larger. As biologists say, it's a ``negative correlation.'' What's more, attempts to link population crashes at Steller rookeries with commercial fishing have come up short. A 1989 paper by NMFS biologists Richard Merrick and Tom Laughlin found only a handful of correlations, which turned out to be both positive and negative. A 1996 study by David Sampson showed a big decline in Steller numbers at rookeries near heavy pollock winter fishing and in places where no winter catches had occurred at all. In other words, the animals did badly whether anyone fished near them or not. Still, the theory of localized depletion remains the focus of the Steller debate. The only attempts to measure localized depletion have tried to show declining Catch Per Unit of Effort (CPUE) over time. If localized depletion is occurring, the density of fish schools will decrease as vessels soak up the fish. As total catch accumulates, every hour of trawling should produce fewer and fewer fish. Studies chasing this reasoning, however, rely on a key assumption that many scientists say just doesn't make sense: These studies assume that the schools are closed systems, with no fish entering or leaving the ``box,'' either by migration or mortality. They assume that only fishing removes fish. repeat that, please? Repeated efforts to prove localized depletion by demonstrating a decline in CPUE have had mixed results. Only one field study supports the notion of localized depletion: NMFS biologist Lowell Fritz's research on the Atka mackerel fishery in 1998 found a ``statistically significant'' CPUE decrease in 16 of 26 areas. Martin Smith, a graduate student at the University of California at Davis, reworked data in a March 1999 report and concluded that depletion had occurred in five of six locations. But similar studies on the pollock and cod fisheries have produced less conclusive results. Plots of daily cod catch in 1998, measured as catch per hour of towing, produce an untidy geography of dots, with peaks and valleys and plateaus. Localized depletion, as shown by declining CPUE, isn't at all clear. It takes a statistician's determined hand to massage the data into a gently sloping line. What does that gently sloping line indicate? If fish don't move, a gently sloping line is what you'd expect: after all, fish are being pulled into boats. But as many fisherman and scientists point out, it's unreasonable to assume that fish don't move. Fishermen follow fish to stay on top of them; witness this year's pollock A season, when trawlers roved into, through, and out of the Bering Sea's Catcher Vessel Operational Area, shadowing the pollock. Allen Shimada and Daniel Kimura, who tagged 12,396 cod between 1982 and 1990 and charted their movements around the Bering Sea, amply documented the fact that cod migrate. A central problem in studies of localized depletion is the quality of the data. None of the localized depletion studies have used data that adequately account for variations in boat and net size. More horsepower means a bigger net; a bigger net means more fish per hour of towing. The slightly lower CPUE toward the end of the 1998 cod season, for example, might only reflect the departure of big boats with big nets from the fishery. It could also reflect cod incidentally caught by boats in other fisheries, or normal seasonal movements that make cod harder to catch. Terry Quinn, a statistician and population dynamics professor with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and also a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee, has begun a two-year stud of localized depletion data. ``There's a great deal of frustration among us scientists,'' he says. ``As the resource manager, the council has the responsibility to manage the fish population for fishermen, as well as the whole health of the ecosystem. But the evidence for a strong relationship between the fishery and the Steller sea lion is tenuous at best. It focuses attention away from other theories, such as ecosystem change, that also deserve attention. If you focus only on a single issue you might blow it.'' In this case, the single issue that environmentalists have litigated into the status of orthodoxy rests on a slender pedestal of scientific evidence. No scientific publication has accepted a paper analyzing localized depletion. Who Swiped Lunch? In contrast, the scientific literature teems with papers describing the profound climatic regime shifts of the North Pacific. Following the regime shift in 1976-77, after roughly a 20-year ``cool'' period, the stocks of dozens of fish species experienced drastic changes. Small-mesh surveys of the Gulf of Alaska conducted by NMFS since 1953 have accrued more than 90,000 individual catch records. They record the precipitous decline of shrimp, capelin, Tanner crab, red king crab, herring, greenling, and Atka mackerel during the current ``warm'' period. While these stocks withered, others surged: pollock, sole, arrowtooth flounder, jellyfish, halibut, and others. As fish stocks rearranged themselves, so did higher predators. The Stellers took a nose dive: an annual 24% decline between 1980 and 1990 followed that regime shift in the late 1970s. As the rich, oily prey species declined, so did the marine mammals that eat them. The Steller's pinniped cousins, harbor seals, lost 80-90% of their population in that same decade; Northern fur seals are at about 50% of their historic population. Populations of kittiwake and murres, coastal seabirds that forage on the same fish as Stellers, also plunged. So, was it Mother Nature that swiped the sea lions' nutritious lunch, giving them nothing but a horde of groundfish full of empty calories to eat? The ``junk food'' theory says so. This theory suggests that Stellers now eat too much low-fat pollock and cod because of their superabundance, and eat too few fat-rich species like herring, sandlance, capelin, and smelt because there aren't enough around. The premise relies on 50 years of studies on the diet of Stellers, based on stomach contents and scat analyses. But scat analyses are imperfect because the bones of forage species such as capelin don't usually endure the digestive process. In other words, if Stellers eat a lot of them, the scat might not show it. It's also uncertain whether Steller sea lions eat opportunistically or selectively, whether they eat a different meal every dive, whether they eat different foods during different seasons. Nonetheless, a number of respected researchers are convinced that the Steller diet includes a far greater percentage of pollock since the regime shift. Among them is Andrew Trites, the head of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia and the director of a multi-university research consortium in the U.S. and Canada that has been trying to sort out what's happening to the Stellers and the ocean ecosystems where they live. Trites says the data show that Stellers in the Gulf of Alaska have steadily increased their diet of pollock, from 32% in 1976-78 to 85% by 1990-93. After the same time, consumption of fatty fishes decreased from 61% to 18%. Besides the evidence of sea lion diet changes, nutritional stress has for years been a favorite explanation for the Stellers' decline because of other observations. Stellers are smaller than they once were, and reproductive success has dropped by about a third--classic signs of an ecosystem with reduced carrying capacity. Still, not everyone believes in the junk-food theory. ``The junk-food theory is junk,'' says Vidar Wespestad, a biologist formerly at NMFS and now a consultant for the whiting fishery. ``The genus name for pollock is Theragra, which means `animal food.' When the species was named at the start of the 19th century, I'm sure it was based on the fact that it was noted as a major food item of sea lions. The whole food thing is tenuous. There has never been shown to be a food problem with Steller sea lions in the wild. You don't find emaciated Stellers washing up on the beaches.'' Whether or not Stellers always ate pollock, Trites's empirical work is widely considered a solid showing that Stellers cannot live on pollock alone. In a paper published this year in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, Trites and his colleague David Rosen present results of dietary experiments with six juvenile Stellers. The sea lions received alternating diets of herring and pollock, as much as they wanted to eat, for periods of 11 to 24 days. The animals individually lost between 1.4% and 16.4% of their body weight, an average of more than half a kilogram a day, on the all-pollock diet. Trites and Rosen attribute the results to the measured lower nutritional value of pollock than herring, and the higher energy cost to digest it. Clearly it is ``much more difficult for Steller sea lions to thrive on a diet consisting primarily of pollock,'' he writes. ``Steller sea lions would have to consume an average of 56% more pollock than herring to maintain a comparable net energy intake.'' It happens that, in the Bering Sea, nature lately has set the Steller's table with a diet mainly of pollock. Other scientists have also found evidence that this may be unhealthy for Stellers. A study by NMFS biologist Richard Merrick in 1997, for instance, determined that Steller populations with the least diet diversity--those eating the highest percentage of pollock--suffered the greatest decline. If, in fact, too much pollock is harming the Stellers, there's a peculiar irony afloat: fishing may actually help the Steller population. Adult pollock (three year and older) are cannibals, voraciously feeding on smaller juvenile pollock, which are the preferred prey of Stellers. Trawlers target adult pollock, reducing their consumption of juveniles. Year-by-year graphing of adult pollock biomass compared to juvenile biomass neatly shows the inverse relationship of adult to juvenile pollock. Even so, don't expect Stellers to rebound just by increasing fishing effort. According to John Piatt, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Biological Research Center, large predatory groundfish currently eat 10 to 100 times more forage fish than seabirds, marine mammals, and humans combined. It may be, as Andrew Trites says, that ``the solution to restoring the numbers of Steller sea lions is probably out of human control.'' But whether it's hunger or some other cause of death, the reaper has been selective. Population studies by Anne York of NMFS's Alaska Fisheries Science Center found that adult survival was essentially stable; juveniles, however, declined 10-20%, and her work is widely cited. So what's killing the young?

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, there is no reason to interrupt this fishery. There is great reason to try to find out why the steller sea lion is declining. We have a massive effort to try to determine that. We will cooperate in any way we can to save this population. But we do not want to lose this massive biomass in the process. If this trawl fishery does not continue, it will decline back to where it was before the trawl fishery was started. I think those who criticize us would do well to study the science and talk to people who know something about these steller sea lions and the fisheries, and quit listening to these extremist political people who are involved in this process, as far as the environmental groups are concerned.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have been criticized in the national media and many of the local media here about the Steller sea lion rider that is on the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill. Riders are really emergency items of legislation that are necessary because of the time of year. We are about ready to end our deliberations and this is the only piece of legislation to which we could attach this provision. I want to take time now to explain why this is necessary. The Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill still contains this provision. The difficulty is that the National Marine Fisheries Service has shut down the Nation's largest fishery, and it does not even know why. In response to a lawsuit filed by extreme environmental groups, the National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to show any relationship between fishing and the Steller sea lion, which it considers to be endangered. These procedural failures have led a Federal judge to shut down all fishing in the 100,000 square miles which encompass the prime fishing grounds for pollock off Alaska. This is an area larger than the State of Oregon and twice the size of New York. It is a coastline which would stretch from the District of Columbia to Florida. The National Marine Fisheries Service continues to blame fishermen for the sea lion decline. Right now, Alaska fishermen and Alaska coastal communities are losing $1 million a day. If fishing does not resume in January, Alaska coastal communities will be ghost towns by the end of the year. The Alaska groundfish fishery accounts for 40 percent of America's commercial fish harvest. Alaskan cod, pollock, and other species are sold in grocery stores and restaurants throughout our Nation. Besides fishermen, the injunction that is in place impacts airlines, shipping companies, regional ports, and transportation labor. Alaska seafood exports contribute almost $1 billion towards our annual trade deficit. Most of that is exports to Asia. Incidentally, that is where we get most of our imports. Alaska's annual seafood processing payroll is about $240 million. That is the processing of this product alone. Seafood exports offset the transportation cost of consumer goods imported by at least 15 percent. Dutch Harbor and Kodiak, two large seaports in my State, are the No. 1 and No. 4 fishing ports of the United States. Fishing in those communities pays the cost of teachers, police, firemen, and other public servants. The fishing industry is the only industry in those areas. This was all brought about because of biological opinions that have been issued by the Fisheries Service. The National Marine Fisheries Service found that fishing did not harm sea lions on five separate occasions in the last decade: Twice in 1991, twice in 1996, and again in March of 1998. In April of 1998, extreme environmental groups filed suit to shut down these fisheries. The National Marine Fisheries Service's next biological opinion reversed the position of that agency 180 degrees. It reversed the prior five decisions and found that fishing had caused jeopardy to these sea lions. There was no scientific breakthrough that led to that decision. In fact, what happened was they changed the person who wrote the decision. The Federal judge rejected the scientific analysis in that biological opinion as inadequate. Today, the agency has still not justified the sea lion mitigation measures it wants to impose. Because of the agency's repeated failure to justify its own proposals, the judge shut down all fishing for pollock in this critical area. The new biological opinion is based upon a concept called ``localized depletion.'' This is the hypothesis of the biologist who put together the last biological opinion that the judge refused to accept. This is based on the idea that fishing vessels take food away from sea lions. There is no science to support that conclusion or that theory. In fact, the trawling that takes place for pollock occurs at depths below which the sea lions forage for food. Pollock schools are much larger than the entire fleet. They cover an area far beyond what a fleet could cover. I have a chart that shows the concentrated fishing efforts of the pollock fleet in a period of 4 weeks in 1995. The total efforts of this fleet failed to disperse the massive school of pollock. Beginning the 26th of January, the pollock was concentrated. The next week it was still concentrated. The third week it was concentrated. The fourth week it was concentrated. Despite the fact the fleet was there on top of that pollock the whole time, the pollock did not move. In fact, the fishing effort did not disperse the pollock. The concept the biologist used was the fishing effort in an area is localized, and it depletes the pollock locally and, therefore, there is no food for the sea lions after the trawling takes place. That is absolutely not true. Pollock move around in natural migration patterns, not as a result of fishing effort. Few people realize this is the largest biological mass of fish in the world. It is an enormous fishery, and it has grown because of our fishing practices--it has not been depleted because of fishing practices. The National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to study the impact of predators on the sea lion population. We now see in Alaska soaring numbers of killer whales and falling numbers of sea lions and other species upon which the killer whale preys. Science shows that killer whales feed on juvenile sea lions, the same age class of sea lions that is causing the overall decline in that species. Recently, a killer whale washed up on a beach in Alaska. When it was examined, there were 14 steller sea lion tags in its stomach. One killer whale had eaten 14 sea lions. In addition, I hope Members have seen video footage of killer whales in our State that take sea lions right off the beach. It is a monstrous video that shows how these enormous killer whales come right up on the beach and take the sea lions off the beach. The National Marine Fisheries Service admits the killer whale is a predator and is a major cause of the declining sea otter population in our State, but it is unwilling to accept the fact that killer whales are involved in the decline of the sea lion. This is hard for us to understand, very frankly. There has been a shift in this decision, as I said, 180 degrees. We fail to understand why this monstrous agency, which I normally support, could be swayed by the decision of one man because of a lawsuit that was filed by extreme environmentalists. Most scientists now believe that sea lions are declining as part of their natural population cycle. I have another chart that shows this cycle. As the temperature and other conditions in the North Pacific have changed, the sea lions have declined and the pollock have increased. One of the things that has happened in the North Pacific is the abundance of high oil content fish, such as herring, has fallen while the low oil content species, such as pollock and cod, have increased. Published research shows that sea lions need to eat high oil content fish to survive. For instance, in southeastern Alaska where high oil content fish are still plentiful, a different subpopulation of steller sea lions is increasing in size while its western cousins are decreasing. We believe it is a problem of diet, as far as the sea lions' decline is concerned, and that those who assert that sea lions can survive on pollock alone are absolutely wrong. Some scientists believe pollock fishing in critical habitats actually helps sea lions. This is because the pollock off my State are highly cannibalistic. Adult pollock eat juveniles in very large numbers. Trawlers target adult pollock which are over 3 years of age, whereas sea lions eat the smaller juvenile fish that would otherwise be eaten by the cannibalistic adult pollock population. The net result of these ocean changes is that as our pollock population has increased, the sea lion population has decreased. Yet the decision of the biologist was that the reason for the sea lion population decline was the lack of availability of pollock. The National Marine Fisheries Service should know better than to shut down the largest private sector employer in Alaska without a good reason. Right now they do not have a reason based upon science. Their conclusion is based entirely upon a lawsuit filed by an extreme environmental group, which also has no science behind it. This is absolutely wrong. That is why I have insisted on keeping this rider in place which will allow the fishery to continue on the basis of the protections that were already in place to protect the sea lions. We have agreed not to invade the sea lion rookeries. In fact, we have set up protection areas around them. Our industry has contributed $1 million toward sea lion research to help find out some of the reasons for their decline. We have appropriated a sizable amount of money to the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Alaska SeaLife Center to continue the research to find out why sea lions are declining. For myself and most of us who have spent our adult lives on the oceans around our State, I believe it is the overabundance of orcas, the killer whale population, that is causing the decline in the sea lions of the western population. I repeat. Under the rider, fishing will continue until July 1, 2001 under all the restrictions that were in effect. These protective measures include restrictions on trawl fishing near sea lion rookeries, haul-outs, and foraging areas. There are no-entry zones for fishing vessels near sea lion rookeries and haul-outs. We have limitations on the harvest levels inside critical habitat. We have split the pollock season into four different seasons to reduce the impact on the areas where the sea lions are. We have reduced the daily catch rate through cooperative fishing. We have a very conservative process for setting the total allowable catch level, which actually is 13 percent lower than what would have been projected in 2001. We require Federal observers to monitor harvest levels, including harvests inside any critical habitat area. And there are additional sea lion mitigation measures that are in effect. We do not, however, believe there should be a complete cessation of this enormous fishery. This is an enormous fishery. Two and a half billion pounds of fish are brought ashore from this massive population every year. Yet as we show, as we take mature pollock, the pollock biomass continues to grow. If we do not take that mature pollock from this biomass, it will once again go back to eating its own young and decrease. So this rider is absolutely necessary to preserve the most massive and valuable fishery off our shores. I do hope those who criticize it will take time to read the opinions I am going to place in the Record. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record summaries of the opinions that were written, the conclusions and opinions written before the extreme environmentalists entered this issue, and the summary of the one that has been filed now by those who came on the scene after that lawsuit was filed.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I send a concurrent resolution to the desk providing for a conditional adjournment of Congress until November 14, 2000, and I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. I ask that the clerk read the resolution.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have to inform the Senate that if we finish the Health and Human Services bill today--we are in good-faith negotiations, and we expect to be quite late today--that bill could not be finished in terms of its reading out and printing and being available to both sides until Monday afternoon at the earliest. I hope we can get some consideration from the administration and from everyone to understand that. We would have two sessions--one on Saturday and one on Sunday. Some people work on their sabbath and some people do not. We have a staff who will be working, in spite of that, around the clock to read the legislation. There are some 40 pieces of legislation, in addition to the bill itself, that will be in the Health and Human Services bill; at least that will be our recommendation. I urge that somehow or another I be allowed to offer an amendment to this continuing resolution and make it Tuesday night. I have told the White House and OMB that there is no way, even if we finish tonight, that we can take it up tomorrow or take it up Sunday. We will not be able to take it up until Monday night. The White House should know that, OMB should know that, and I hope the minority agrees with us. We cannot vote on this bill, the major wrapup piece of legislation, until, at the earliest in the Senate, Tuesday. The House may be able to vote on it Monday night. To argue over a CR that takes us to tomorrow and to argue over one that takes us to Sunday and one that takes us to Monday, when there is nothing we can do about finishing up this Congress, is just demonstrating our inability to deal with reality. I hope the leader will allow me some time today to offer a motion to amend that CR and make it Tuesday. I have discussed it with the House, and they are in session. They can adopt it and send it to the President. Somehow or another, this idea we can only go day to day and we can produce something tomorrow that we have not finished today, when we have just one bill left which itself cannot be finished until Monday night, I think is foolhardy. I am prepared to challenge the President and all of his people to come to reality. The discussions are being held with his people. If we do not finish them tonight, we will finish them tomorrow. If we do not finish them until tomorrow, it will be Tuesday morning before it is read out. Maybe people do not understand what we do. Each side has a copy of the final provisions. Each reads it through, and we call in the people from the committees involved to be sure the provisions are correct. Then we get together and our staffs read it together, and each makes certain the other has not made any changes in it. And that will not be finished. It will take at least 20 hours of reading to do that. It will not be finished until Monday night.

Mr. STEVENS. I am supposed to bring you out of the lamp.

Mr. STEVENS. My name came up as a magician. I am Aladdin. I rub the lamp.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield for a moment?

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Let me add as chairman of the Committee on Appropriations that we were not in any manner attempting to alter the jurisdiction of the authorizing committees over any programs. As a result of the agreement made on the Interior appropriations bill, we were forced to fund the Coastal Impact Assistance program on the Commerce appropriations measure. To do that, we needed to include authorizing language. We took the language that had been reported by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with only minor alterations. There was a last minute change to insert a definition of ``Secretary'' for the purposes of the new section 31 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to be the Secretary of Commerce. All that change does, is alter who will disburse the funding to the coastal States. I can assure all my colleagues that there was no intent to alter the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources over the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act or its exclusive jurisdiction over the Coastal Impact Assistance program that is established as a new section 31 of that act.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Senator Craig has an amendment at the desk, and I ask for its consideration.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Agriculture Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2773, and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent the amendment be agreed to, the bill be read for the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements relating to this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask consent that following statements by Senator Kennedy and Senator Baucus ongoing now, the Senate proceed to the conference report to accompany the foreign operations appropriations bill, that it be considered as having been read, and time be limited to the following: 1 hour equally divided between Senators McConnell and Leahy or their designees, 10 minutes equally divided between myself and Senator Byrd or our designees, and 30 minutes under the control of Senator Graham of Florida. I further ask unanimous consent that following the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote on the adoption of the conference report without any intervening action.

Mr. STEVENS. I thank Senator Kennedy.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read for the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and the title amendment be agreed to, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, it is my understanding Senator Daschle and others have an amendment at the desk and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, speaking on behalf of the leader, for the information of all Senators, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 12:30 p.m. today, with Senators Durbin and Thomas in control of the ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I wish to make a statement about the discretionary spending caps that will be coming before the Senate on the foreign assistance appropriations bill. There is a provision on that bill which is required to adjust the spending caps because of the limitations in the 1997 Budget Act. Subsection (a) of the amendment that will be before the Senate increases the discretionary cap for budget authority under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 from $541.1 billion to $637 billion, and increases the discretionary cap for general purpose outlays under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 from $547.3 billion to $612.7 billion. When discretionary highway and mass transit outlays of $32.3 billion--separate cap categories--are added to this amount, we will have allowable discretionary spending of $645 billion under this raised cap. Subsection (b)(1) includes emergency spending already committed during this session under the new cap limits. Emergency spending is usually excluded from cap limits. In this instance, we have included such spending within the cap limits in order to be assured we will not invade the Social Security surplus. We have another subsection, (b)(2), that provides for adjustments under these caps to continue, as permitted by current law, for continuing disability reviews, CDRs: $450 million in budget authority; the earned-income tax compliance initiative, EITC, that is $145 million in budget authority, and adoption assistance of $20 million in budget authority; and for an outlay adjustment of 0.5 percent. Subsection (c) provides for a 0.5-percent adjustment for budget authority to cover the differences between CBO and OMB scoring methods. A similar adjustment was provided last year. These caps assure us that we will have the funds available to deal with the remaining two bills that are very contentious; the State- Justice-Commerce bill and the Labor-Health and Human Services bill. For each of those bills, we allocated portions of the 302(b) authority that was given to our Appropriations Committee under the budget resolution for the year 2001. However, after those bills had passed and gone to conference, we recovered portions of the 302(b) allocation and allocated that to Housing and Urban Development and the energy and water bill. The result is that these two bills that are in conference now do not have the full funding that would be required to bring them back across the floor to the Senate. This adjustment to the 2001 discretionary spending caps, as contained in the foreign assistance bill that will be before the Senate, I hope this afternoon, are necessary in order that those two bills can be reallocated funding sufficient to assure that they will be able to be considered and passed by the Senate. It has been a very difficult year for the Appropriations Committee because of the circumstances, because of the differences between the President's budget and the congressional budget resolution. There is a substantial gap between those two documents, and we have done our best to work with them. This action that we have taken now to lift the spending caps will give us the opportunity to work out the differences with the administration. I do believe that should and can be completed today. It is my firm hope we will complete action on the other two bills today so the House may commence consideration of them tomorrow and that the Senate will consider them Friday. That, of course, is going to take a lot of understanding and cooperation from all Members of the Senate, and I for one urge that take place. I have not been home since the first week of August. We, on the Appropriations Committee, have been working around the clock on this process since the second week of August. It is time this come to an end. The disputes and conflicts between the bills, and between the administration and the Congress, between the House and Senate, and between Members of each body and within each body, are the most intensive I have ever seen. But it is time we realize that at the end of this week we will be 1 week away from the elections. I do not think Congress ought to be in session in the week before the elections, and I am going to do my utmost to see that we finish these bills by Friday. If that is not possible, the leader will have to decide what we do. I, for one, intend to go home Saturday. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.