Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, there are other Senators coming with amendments. I urge Senators to come and take advantage of today. It is the right period of time to clear an amendment that any Senator wishes us to agree to without debate.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator is very generous. I am awaiting two amendments I have drafted that I wish to put in. If I can get the time, I will do it today; if not, tomorrow. I was not sure we would be in tomorrow. I understand now we probably will be.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I seek the attention of the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island for a moment. Mr. President, I am about ready to send an amendment to the desk. Amendment No. 1976 to Amendment No. 1676 (Purpose: To reauthorize the ferry discretionary program)

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we are down to the point where this Senator wants to get some information. I don't serve on this committee, so I want to serve notice to the managers that I have a series of questions I want to ask them. I keep being told that the money under this bill is allocated, that there is no way at all to consider any amendments that might deal with the marine highway system. So, in the course of the next few hours, I intend to find out what has happened to the money that is in this bill and why there is no money to fulfill the needs of our State. I suggest the absence of a quorum, until I get the information that my staff is bringing.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that three members of my staff be permitted to have access to the floor for further consideration of this bill.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Who controls the time?

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I am constrained to come here in two roles. One is as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. And I am certain everyone will understand that problem. This is, obviously, a situation in which we negotiated a very tightly wrapped package, and it will eventually come to our committee. The distinguished Senator from West Virginia and I will allocate money under it. The real difficulty I see with the amendment of the Senator from Florida is, having reached an agreement of what to do with the 4.3 cents of the tax revenue, now that we have transferred it to the highway trust fund, it would be repealed. I just cannot understand an attempt to do that at this time, I say respectfully to my friend. I do understand people who are insisting that the donor States ought to be totally recognized to get 100 percent of their money back, and this obviously would be one way to do that. I am here in the second role as a Senator from the largest State in the Union, 20 percent of the landmass in the United States. I repeat for the Senate, we have a thousand miles more of roads now than when we became a State almost 40 years ago. We are completely locked out of this highway program. I wonder what Dwight D. Eisenhower, the person I consider to be one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, would feel about the concept that roads would only be built by those people who lived within the State. The national concept of highways was, in fact, the Eisenhower dream, and it has been fulfilled in the Interstate Highway System, but the difficulty is it does not reach our State. Furthermore, this concept that people who drove from Florida to Alaska would suddenly stop at the border and be told, ``Sorry, we don't have tax revenues, so we can't build you any roads,'' or you drove to Seattle and went to the dock where we currently maintain the ferries for citizens of the United States and others to come to Alaska by Alaskan-owned and operated ferries--you would find out they wouldn't be there any longer. The concept of highways in this country has always been a national concept, and I have always thought, as I paid my gasoline taxes as I drove across the country--and I have driven across the country and up to my State many times--as we drive even into our neighboring country of Canada, we pay a Canadian gasoline tax. It never entered my mind that the Canadians somehow would think I was a Canadian citizen paying taxes in Canada. Nor do I think that all the people who travel on the roads in Florida or any of the rest of these roads around the country are necessarily residents of that State. The States collect the taxes, but they certainly have no right to collect the taxes from people from outside their State who are traveling through that State to come to mine. The idea of repealing this gas tax at this time is just completely abhorrent to this Senator's way of thinking. But beyond that, I am here, once again, to say to the sponsor of this amendment, the amendment is unfair, basically, to the States that do not have the highways totally constructed yet. This is a bill to improve existing highways, not to continue the idea of making sure that there are highways in this country to reach every portion of this great continent that Americans who travel with their families, travel in RVs, travel in their personal automobiles want to go. I just can't believe we are going to abandon the concept that there is one national system of highways. And if there is a national system of highways, some of this highway money has to trickle into Alaska. Somehow or another, we have to find some way--I see the Senator from Oklahoma smiling. I wonder what would have happened if I just returned from Philadelphia, and suppose we put in the Constitution that there would be no money spent coming from the original 13 States beyond the confines of the 13 States. That is what you are saying--you cannot spend money beyond our State if it was taken into the Treasury through our State. Again, I say to the Senate advisably, we send 25 percent of the oil of the United States to the United States, to what we call the ``south 48,'' every day--every day. It is the oil that is used to produce the gasoline that your States tax. The taxes are derived from that oil. They do not come back to our State. How about we put in a provision that says 100 percent of the revenue of the United States from the development of any resource in any State comes back to that State? Would that be agreeable? Would the Senator from Florida like to see that? We have the store house of the United States as far as resources are concerned. We would be able to build roads then, Madam President. As long as we base this concept that the money has to go back to the very State in which it was collected from any citizen of the United States traveling through the United States, no matter where they are from, it goes back to the State that collected the money, then we won't have a National Highway System. I am against this concept of repealing this tax. I hope that the Senate will find that the point of order is well taken. I congratulate the Senator from Virginia for making it. Mr. MACK addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. They are on this amendment. I am in opposition to it.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, my amendment will extend and provide a modest increase for the national ferry program under section 1064 of the previous ISTEA bill. The old ferry program provided $18 million a year nationwide in contract authority for ferry boat and ferry terminal construction. We have raised that to an average of $30 million per year in contract authority and in addition have authorized $20 million to be appropriated. The amendment would require that $12 million per year of the $30 million of contract authority be used for ferries, ferry terminals, and approaches to ferry terminals within marine highway systems which are part of the national highway system. As many of my colleagues know, the Alaska Marine Highway System is unique in this nation in that Congress has deemed it important enough to designate it as part of the national highway system. Alaska is by far the largest state in the union. We possess half of all the coastline, twenty percent of all the border, and almost half of all the federal lands in the United States. For these and other reasons, the amendment is of particular importance to Alaska. Alaska has very few roads. In fact, our State capitol lies within an area of Alaska the size of West Virginia which contains no intercity roads at all. Practically all of this land is federally-owned, and the present Administration has made it very difficult for us to build roads on federal lands in Alaska. Ferries are the only form of surface transportation for Alaskans in this area. The ferries currently serving Alaska are almost thirty years old. The oldest ones have been in service since the Kennedy Administration. These vessels must be replaced soon. I would also like to point out that twenty percent of the nation's oil comes from Alaska. Our oil produces 25 million gallons of gasoline each day. This translates to $1.6 billion dollars in gas taxes going straight to the federal Treasury, for which Alaska gets no credit whatsoever. This money is on top of the income taxes paid into the Treasury by the oil companies and their employees in my state. Alaska gets no credit in the highway formula for fueling the nation's cars. While this amendment does not help us build more roads, it will improve transportation for many Alaskans. A number of Senators (Inouye, Akaka, Lautenberg, Breaux, Murray, Faircloth, Kerry, Kennedy, Snowe, Collins, Moynihan, Helms, and Reed) had joined Senator Murkowski and me in an earlier amendment that would have provided $50 million per year in contract authority for ferries. While this compromise does not provide all of the funding needed for ferries nationwide, it is an improvement over the existing program. Mr. President, again, this will amend the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act reauthorization for the ferries and ferry terminals. It has been under discussion here for some time. I am delighted that we now have an allocation of contract authority that could be applied to this. It also provides for an authorization for appropriations for the balance of the months we needed for the circumstances I described previously.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I might say to the leader, I am one of those who is disturbed over this ``donor'' or ``donee'' designation. As I said the other day, my State is in neither circumstance because we don't have the roads yet. I don't know what this does to us as far as the process is concerned. May I inquire, before this cloture vote, will we have a breakdown and analysis of the bill on what each State would be entitled to? I have been trying to get that, and I have seen several different versions of what each State is entitled to under the bill. But beyond that, I have some questions about what happens to States that don't have roads. We have the situation in our State where we are trying to build roads. This bill basically deals with the improvement of existing roads. I think this donor/donee thing sort of means maybe we ought to have a referendum to see whether the State of Alaska can become independent rather than Puerto Rico, because we would be much better off with the money we send to the Treasury. We send money to the Treasury in terms of the revenue from 25 percent of the oil that is produced in the United States. We try to get some of that back in terms of highways and find out we can't do it. I find that it's getting a little serious, as far as we are concerned. Mr. Leader, I looked, and we have increased the number of miles of roads in our State by 1,100 miles in 40 years. But we had none to start with. Alaska is one-fifth the size of the United States. I am afraid what this means, suddenly, is that we are shut out again for another 6 years. The leader may remember that I had a little bit of an argument 5 years ago on this. We are right back there again. I am at a loss as to what this means to us.

Mr. STEVENS. What does that do to the banking provision then? Will everything in the banking amendment then have to be germane?

Mr. STEVENS. The leader has already set a cloture vote for when?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I was in a meeting and I heard a unanimous consent request that I didn't quite understand. Was that granted?

Mr. STEVENS. The leader has always been with us. But I have to find a way out of this hole we are in right now, both on building ferries and building roads. I don't have that answer yet. I will be here again and again, Mr. President. Thank you very much.

Mr. STEVENS. What I am disturbed about is this concept of 91 percent of the money paid into the Treasury on the gas tax will be returned to each State. How about 91 percent of the money paid into the Treasury from any oil-producing State? We send more money to the Treasury every day than any one of these donor States do. We are not getting it back and we are not getting any roads. I am really getting disturbed. I must say, Leader, I asked to be notified so I could come and deal with the objection. I understand there is nothing to object to over the cloture vote. But somehow or other, we have to find some way to recognize the plight of States that do not have revenue going into the gas tax fund because they don't have roads. But we are sending more money to the Federal Treasury than any State in the Union with regard to resource production. How about some of that coming back to us? Let us build highways with part of our own tax revenues. Somehow, that has to be worked out. I don't want to be at cross purposes with the leader, but I shall have to vote against cloture once again. I don't like to do that with the leadership, but it seems to me that there ought to be some way to work out this donor/donee business with relationship to how much money is the State paying into the Treasury from its activities. These are State lands, Mr. President. We own the lands that the oil is produced from. We send 25 percent of the domestically produced oil to the United States. We could sell it in the world market for a lot more money. But it is getting to be a great problem to me to figure out how to deal with the future for my State. If we can't build roads, we are no longer going to be able to get subsidies for mail transportation, and we have many more of our communities becoming totally isolated now because of the Federal policies that forbid us from building roads across Federal lands in the first place.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I just want to take a few minutes here, and I won't object in a few minutes to that request, but I think some consideration has to be given to some aspects of the highway and mass transportation problem. It has been very difficult for some of us to deal with. Neither my colleague nor I serve on any of the committees dealing with this subject. I do call attention to the fact that I will be chairing the committee that will deal with it later. I am a little disturbed about what is happening in terms of small States--in particular, my State. I brought for Members to look at a comparison of my State and the whole United States and the delineation of the highways that exist in my State now. Those little gold dots are the villages and communities in my State that are not served by a highway or road yet. We have been a State now for 40 years and what do we find? If you look at the southeastern part, it looks like a panhandle on the right-hand side of this chart. That is the area of the marine highway system. We now are told we can't build any roads through the Forest Service land, and that is all Forest Service land down there except for a few communities and small areas of Native lands. We are not considered a part of the mass transportation system although we haul about 2 million of your constituents per year through that area on our ferries. When we built those ferries 30 years ago, the price of them was a lot less than it is now. Today, the cheapest boats that you can buy of this type--they have to be ocean-going ferries--are built overseas, except we can't buy those because the Jones Act says we can't use foreign-built vessels from port to port in the United States. So, we can't use the land to build roads, we have to build our own ferries, and now we have to pay five times as much for those ferries than if we could buy them overseas. Now, it is mass transportation but this bill doesn't recognize ferries of this size as being any part of mass transportation. I have some concerns that I have mentioned to my great friend from West Virginia about where the money is coming from when we do get to the process of financing that. I know he has some comments. I hope he won't get into that right now. We will work that out, I'm sure. But I want to point out to the Senate that we are going to have to work out a lot of things to finance this bill. This Senator wants to be a little happier with this bill. Right now I'm unhappy with the bill. Take, for instance, the border money that is in this bill. We have analyzed that Border States Road Program. Our State at the present time has 1,538 miles of border with our neighbor, 20 percent of the total border of the United States, and we figure we are not even included in this. If you want to know why, it is because, for instance, money is made available for contract authority to grant States to improve international gateways, but, by definition, the gateways are groupings of border stations. Well, if you go along our border, you will find one border station; there is no grouping. We have $18 million in this amendment for States for multistate corridor analysis. Well, we don't share the border with any other State, so obviously we are not involved in that allocation of money either. Then there is $750 million authorized to be awarded by the Secretary, based upon commercial traffic volume, comparison of other traffic volume. Our State has a volume in just 4 months of the year. We can't compare with anyone for 12 months of the year in terms of traffic volume. Mr. President, I don't have any objection to this; we are increasing the amount of money in a substantial way. As we do so, it seems that people are forgetting there are some places that don't have roads yet. In this bill, the whole philosophy here is, how do you improve existing roads or how do you really find a way to handle more traffic on the existing corridors that serve our country? I have no problem about that, but what is it going to do for a State like mine? Those roads that we need--we need to connect some of the villages to share schools, so we can share all of the services available from the State, local, and Federal Government. We are told now we can't go through parks, wildlife refuges, and other lands that are owned by the Federal Government. So in order to build them, we have to build longer roads to connect them. I argued last year about RS 2477, and we lost that battle. We cannot use the original rights-of-way. Along the Kuskokwim and Yukon, in order to build the roads, instead of using the rights-of-way that traditionally have been used the last 100 years, we have to go far inland and build the roads back and then come back to the river again. You can't follow the traditional roads because RS 2477 rights-of-way are no longer valid. Do we have any recognition for the increased costs of building roads where Federal policy prohibits us from using Federal lands in Alaska that would be available in any other State, particularly any other Western State? No, we don't have any. We do believe we have to have some analysis on a national basis. Other States use ferries. I went over with my good friend from Hawaii, Senator Inouye, and traveled on one of their brand-new ferries. It was a wonderful experience. I urge every Member of the Senate to do it. They have some ferries that are based on a new concept of suspension, and we were traveling 35 knots in a 6- to 7-foot sea. That is really very good. But those increased island ferries won't do any good for us. We have to comply with the Federal and international laws concerning safety of life at sea. We have to build enormous vessels in order to cross the Gulf of Alaska. Now, again, the concept of ferries and of the marine highway system, of recognizing that my State is not going to build roads across land, it will use ferries and it will use the marine highway system for our connections, has to be thought about in terms of this bill. So far, I've not been able to get that consideration. I want to see what we can do about dealing with that. The marine highway system, by the way, several Congresses ago--and I think my good friend from West Virginia will remember this--we made it part of the National Highway System. We thought that was a great advantage. But the money is in the interstate highway system and in the mass transportation system in this bill. So that is not going to do us much good for our marine highway system. That is not where the money is being increased. I also call the attention to the Senate of the fact that some of these ferry laws--there is a provision of existing law that deals with the requirements for crew, the requirements for other things that apply to the offshore States--in Alaska and Hawaii are burdensome and increase the cost of ferries. I have talked to the Senator from New York about trying to get some understanding of that. We also have a problem about the Indian reservation roads, the parkway and park roads, the National Wildlife System roads. All of those are covered by this bill. However, we have 70 percent of the parklands, we have 60 percent of the wildlife refuge lands, we have 50 percent of the Federal lands, and we are getting 4 percent of the money that is involved in those. Do you know why? We are prohibited from building roads through those systems, so we have to build roads around the systems, but we don't get any consideration of that cost as we try to face the cost of building a highway system. I remember sitting in the gallery once right after we became a State, and one of my predecessors, Senator Gruening, was here on the floor speaking about roads in Alaska. That was 1959. I have to tell the Members of the Senate, the map he used was this map. We have not been able to build roads in Alaska because of the obstinate position--this is not partisan, it is not this administration--of the Federal Government. We have not been able to get access to build roads to connect our villages, our communities. We have depended until this time on air transportation to even ship bricks and hay. Now the Postal Service, very wisely, is saying, ``Look, the ratepayers pay the subsidy for Alaska transportation and we are not going to do it anymore.'' Think of that now. Here is another county, as my grandmother used to say; we are hearing from someone else and they are saying, we are not going to continue to subsidize the transportation of goods in Alaska. We should do the same thing, they say, as everyone else--ship it by road. I remember one of them suggested we ought to be able to ship it somehow by Kodiak, by road. It would be an awful long bridge. Anyone that wants to, I would like them to ride that ferry. We call it the Dramamine Express. When you talk about my State and the way we function under this bill, it's unfortunate. Maybe we should shift our committee assignments just before the highway bill passes so we can be heard in committees. I am becoming aware of the fact that every 5 years I come here to the floor and I complain. This year, I am going to do more than complain. This year, I am going to make some promises. I am not going to insist on carrying out the functions of this bill unless it becomes fairer. I understand that donor States want back 91 cents out of every dollar their people pay into the road system. We wish we had more roads so we can pay more into the system. We can't increase that payment into the system until we can build some of these roads. Currently, we are using air-cushioned vehicles in some parts of Alaska to deliver mail. Good idea, right? We are getting no assistance whatsoever in any way to prepare the rights of way for air-cushioned vehicles. It would be a lot cheaper than running trucks over that land and cause a lot less environmental damage than running trucks over the land. But guess what. Rights of way for clearance for air-cushioned vehicles is not covered by this bill. Now, Mr. President, it is not easy for us to come and really represent a State that is so far away. That is why I have developed such a fondness for my friends from Hawaii, because they go almost as far to get home as my colleague Senator Murkowski and I do. What you don't realize is that, after we get home, we travel farther in our State to get from community to community than many of you travel to get home. We want to have some ability to come into the next century with a basic highway system that will at least meet the needs of some of the rural areas in terms of massing them together, connecting them together, so they can get the advantage of scale in dealing with their problems. That is particularly true of our problem now with regard to schools and villages and communities that are isolated through that vast area we call ``the bush.'' I could go on a little longer. We are going to go ahead with this bill, and I hope some Members who are working on it will think a little bit about what we are doing. As I said, we have the longest international border in the whole Nation. Under the trade corridor and border-crossing program, we qualify for little or none of the $775 million that deals with border-crossing problems. At least we should be able to deal with these increases. Again, the donor States problem--we have faced that problem. My good friend from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, has worked out a way of dealing with that in terms of increasing money so that there isn't any damage to the existing allocation. I congratulate him, Senators Gramm, Chafee, Baucus, D'Amato, all of those who worked on this, so that we can have more money available to deal with the highway problems. The ``surface transportation problems'' is what we ought to really call this bill, a bill to solve surface transportation problems. My State is at least one-fifth of the land mass of the United States, and it is not recognized in this bill as being a State that needs highways, a State that needs assistance in dealing with the areas where we can't build highways in the marine highway system. Particularly, we need assistance in dealing with how do we get our ferries built under the Federal law that requires them built in this country and recognize them as mass transportation? If you go into the corridors where they are putting money into mass transportation, you will find we are buying rights of way, laying track, building terminals. We are doing a lot of things. Those same people who go to Seattle and then go up to Alaska on our ferries can travel all the way across the country under mass transportation, but when they get on our ferries to go up into Alaska, it's no longer mass transportation. If you ask the people on the ferries, they believe those are part of the mass transportation system, but it is not under this law. I withdraw my objection to the request of the Senator, but I am going to be around here for a few days until we get some of these issues settled to our satisfaction and know that we can come into the 21st century along with everybody else as far as a new surface transportation program. Thank you very much. Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. If the Senator will yield for a moment, I thank the Senator from West Virginia. That help would be meaningful.