Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I have no objection.

Mr. STEVENS. What happens to the time limits?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I say the same thing, you cannot limit this process to one concept of a breast-cancer concept. It will lead to Congress getting back into the micromanagement of the Postal Service. It is plainly wrong, and it should not become law. I yield the floor.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask that I be yielded about 7 minutes.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. For the information of all Members, Monday from noon until 3 p.m., the Senate will be in a period of routine morning business. By previous order, at 3 p.m., the Senate will begin consideration of the HUD-VA appropriations bill. Under the previous order, at 5:15 p.m., the Senate will resume consideration of S. 1023, the Treasury and General Government appropriations bill, with a series of votes occurring on the remaining pending amendments to the bill, including final passage of S. 1023. Following passage of the Treasury and General Government appropriations bill, the Senate will resume consideration of the VA-HUD appropriations bill. As a reminder to all Members, the Senate will not be in session on Friday. The next rollcall will be a series of votes, commencing at 5:15 on Monday afternoon.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I further ask unanimous consent at 5:15 p.m. on Monday, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1023, the Treasury and General Government appropriations bill, with a series of votes occurring on the remaining pending amendments, including a vote on final passage of this bill, S. 1023.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that at 3 p.m., the Senate begin consideration of the VA-HUD appropriations bill.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until the hour of 12 noon on Monday, July 21st. I further ask that on Monday, immediately following the prayer, the routine requests through the morning hour be granted, the Senate then immediately proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield for one comment?

Mr. STEVENS. Although we will not be in session tomorrow, we will have a markup of a series of bills for the Appropriations Committee starting at 9:45.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, before he leaves, I do want to thank the majority leader and the minority leader for their cooperation with our committee. This has been a historic week for the Appropriations Committee. With the cooperation of my good friend from West Virginia, Senator Byrd, and the chairman of the subcommittees and the ranking members, we will now complete debate on five separate bills in 4 days. They have all passed by sheer weight of bipartisanship and cooperation and willingness to work together to work out problems. I am hopeful that we will see the same thing next week when we again want to bring before the Senate at least five bills. We will have them ready to go before the Senate next week, and we will try to work them in according with the schedule. But it is imperative, if we are going to avoid the problem of an enormous continuing resolution that we passed in the last Congress, that we get these bills to conference before we go off on the August recess so that the work can be done. Not all of the staff will have to stay here for the whole month. But we will have them at least ready to go to conference when we come back. They will be preconferenced during the period of August, and I think we will avoid any continuing resolution. So I am, again, grateful to everyone here. But I hope the Senate itself is making history, and it is doing so in really the best spirit I have seen in the Senate for many years. Mr. CAMPBELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. I object. I wish to discuss the amendment tonight.

Mr. STEVENS. The amendment of the Senator from New Mexico would eliminate from the bill a provision that I requested be inserted because of a conference I had with a former staff member of the Commerce Committee, as a matter of fact. He pointed out to me that the basic law, the National Energy Conservation Policy Act, requires the competitive process. According to the Office of Technology Assessment, Federal agencies spent about $4 billion annually on power, light, water and other utility bills, and that that could be cut by 25 percent, about $1 billion a year, if we required agencies to improve energy efficiency. That led to this new law. Our provision does not call for new funding. It does not change existing law. It restricts the use of appropriated funds unless procurements are made through the competitive process. The language in the bill that I requested effects no change in that law, the existing law. The existing law does require a full competitive procurement to be used by Federal agencies to obtain energy-efficient goods and services. It is within the jurisdiction of our Appropriations Committee. It is primarily because it limits the expenditure of funds. Our language really does no more than direct Federal agencies to abide by the law, to follow the law which requires specific procurement procedures. It will not disrupt any existing contracts. It will not prohibit any utility or nonutility provider of energy-efficient services from competing for Federal contracts. It simply directs the Federal agencies to use the competitive process for procuring services for all energy efficiency providers as current law directs. Mr. President, my problem with striking it is it will mean that we will continue to not receive the savings that we are supposed to receive as a result of the basic law of the land which is the Energy Conservation Policy Act. I do believe that this is a law which ought to be pursued. I call the Senate's attention to that act, which is basically the 1978 act. It has been improved on several times since that time. I might say, the person who talked to me was part of the staff at the time that basic law was devised, and pointed out to me how it has not been enforced. What we are talking about is basically the provision that is required under Section 551(4) of Title I of the National Energy Conservation Policy Act which basically says this: The term ``energy conservation measures'' means measures that are applied to a Federal building that improve energy efficiency or are life cycle cost effective and that involve energy conservation, cogeneration facilities, renewable energy sources, improvements in operation and maintenance efficiencies, or retrofit activities. That is the law, Mr. President. Senator Bingaman's amendment would strike from this bill my amendment which requires and--prevents the use of funds under this bill for those activities unless they follow the law regarding competitive procurement practices. I know Senator Bingaman will have a minute when he comes on Monday. I wanted to take this time now to explain it. I ask unanimous consent we have printed in the Record at this point the relevant provisions of the National Energy Conservation Policy Act, Section 201 of the Federal Property Administrative Services Act, which is what we require.

Mr. STEVENS. We say that no funds can be used for the purpose of these measures unless they comply with the law. That is entirely within the jurisdiction of our committee, and I hope the Senate will not pursue the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico. I have not decided whether to make a motion to table that amendment. As I understand the procedure, the motions to table were not waived and therefore I reserve my right to make a motion to table this amendment should the Senator from New Mexico seek to pursue it further on Monday.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Would the Senator repeat his request?

Mr. STEVENS. May I inquire, how many Senators are involved?

Mr. STEVENS. I will not object if it's just 10 minutes past the half- hour.

Mr. STEVENS. Does the Senator yield back any time he might have?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask that we proceed with the regular order.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield? I was hoping to have a little discussion with the Senator. What is the time situation, Mr. President?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I know there is a Senator waiting here, but I would just like to ask my friend about the national parks, if he would respond. I can remember so well, I helped, worked with, President Eisenhower for what we called Mission 66, a 10-year period to improve the parks. I think, if the Senator would look at that period, at the end of 1966 the parks were in the best condition they have been since the turn of the century. Since that time, the vision of the Park Service has been to add acreage to the parks. Today we see the parks in the worst condition they have been in in my lifetime. Maintenance of the parks, the accumulated maintenance that has been deferred, is just overwhelming. I think it would take the total annual appropriation of the Park Service to catch up just on deferred maintenance at the historic park sites, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and all of those that are in the south 48. But my question to the Senator is, we have now almost 80 percent of the land that is in the Park Service in my State and we have about 1 percent of the Park Service money. I don't think anyone has looked at what has happened to the parks, in terms of this rush to add acreage to the parks instead of maintaining discrete park areas that are absolutely beautiful and need to be preserved. One of my predecessors, Senator Gruening, introduced a bill to establish parks in the State of Alaska. I did, too. Those parks that we sought were ignored and, instead, we have vast areas of parks that are out there. All they have in them is Park Service employees, accommodation for Park Service employees, no roads into them, no airports in them, but they are listed as national parks. I ask you, if there is to be a rational park system in the country, don't you think we ought to have accessibility to areas that are set aside as national parks? Don't you think we ought to be concentrating now on maintaining the parks that are there so visitors can use them? The answer now to people who are in charge of the parks is to close the parks, to limit the number of people that go into the parks because the maintenance is so bad that they think the people coming in the parks will now destroy them. I agree, maintenance is very bad. But parks are for people, I thought. I would like to have the Senator speak up. I do hope one of these days we can have a long discussion about the National Park System and how it has changed. It has changed to people who want to control land from people who want to preserve the very best and most beautiful portions of our country, and that disturbs me greatly.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I congratulate the two managers of this bill, Senator McConnell and Senator Leahy, for accomplishing almost the impossible-- to have the foreign assistance bill passed in this manner. We had a meeting at the beginning of this year when I became chairman and talked about trying to have a program of crisis avoidance, and this is a good example of it. These two Senators have worked with all Members who had amendments and tried to accommodate them, at least dealt with most of them, and the result is on the floor being able to pass this bill, and it is a great bill. What was the final vote?

Mr. STEVENS. I can remember the days when this bill was filibustered for days and days and days. It is really a tribute to the two managers for having accomplished this, and I congratulate them very much.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the last time congressional salaries were given a cost-of-living adjustment--and this is not a pay raise--was in 1993. The pay raise for Federal employees that year was 3.7 percent, the COLA's for Congress were 3.2 percent. In 1992, the cost-of-living adjustment for Federal employees was 4.2 percent, and for Members of Congress it was 3.5 percent. We are now in a situation where, in my judgment, if we don't take this cost-of-living adjustment for this year, I am sure we will not take it next year being an election year. That means we will not take it until 1999. Since that is the year before a Presidential election year, we will not take it then either. We will not take it in the year 2000, which is a Presidential election year. I suggest we are going into the next century with this maladjustment, as far as congressional salaries. It does not make any difference to me. It does not make any difference to any of us. We are here. We made our commitment. What about those out there who should come and serve their country by being part of the legislative branch of this Federal Government? We have raised the salaries of the people who are Federal civilians downtown. We have raised the salaries of the Federal employees. We have raised the payments made to Federal retirees. We have raised Social Security recipients. We have not raised for Members of Congress, and I predict we will not do it unless we face up to the problem now. The problem is not ours. The problem is what is going to be the judgment of the people who want to serve in the Congress when they start looking at the income levels here in Congress compared to their own income levels. Now, Mr. President, in 1970--and I was here then--my wife and I had just bought a home here in Washington the year before for $65,000. At the time, our pay was $42,500. That house has now sold--we sold it some time ago--but I know that it sold for $450,000. Our pay here is roughly--not quite, but roughly--three times the salary we had then. What I am trying to make people in the Senate think about is, what will be the decision made by young people who are thinking about coming here when they look at the cost of living in Washington, DC, which is the highest now in our Nation--the cost of property here, the cost of renting a home or a condominium. I am talking about family people. When we came down here, we came down here with five children and had to have a home that five children could live in. There is no way a person can come here now at the salary level we have now and buy a home for that, where five children can live with their mother and father, unless they are extremely wealthy. What the Senate is doing, in my judgment, is setting the course to assure that the people serving in this body will either be multimillionaires or they will be the people who are not capable of earning over $100,000 anyway. Now, maybe I am being too tough about this, but I think it is time to get tough about this issue and have people understand that the cost-of-living adjustment is less than the Consumer Price Index increase--less. In other words, it means for people living here now, we are adjusting their salaries now with a cost-of-living adjustment, for the cost increase, really, for the period starting 18 months ago until 6 months ago, and we are trying to adjust it now for what the costs were back then. It is not a salary increase. This is for the cost of living in this area. Now, people talk to me, well, you can live in Minnesota or maybe you can live in Kansas, maybe you can live somewhere else for a lot less money. It happens to be, in my case, my cost of living in Alaska is just slightly higher than this. But as a practical matter, the judgments made by future generations will be: We, as a family member, cannot take that job. Now, we get a lot of demagogic type of letters--they come in from my constituents, too--``You are not worth that money; why don't you come home?'' The real question is, what would they do if the people were here that they believe should be here? The people would either work for nothing, because they are so rich they can, or the people that could not make the money that they would make here would come for the pay. Now, Mr. President, we have to make up our mind what kind of a body we want in the Congress. From my point of view, we want people with capabilities who can perform jobs that are needed to be performed. Take my colleague from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, the only accountant in this body--the only accountant in the Senate. What are we dealing with now? Massive, complex tax issues, complex problems of accounting. The people that are going to come here are going to be motivated by trying to do a job. The ones who cannot come here, despite that motivation, will be the ones who cannot afford to live a family life in this town at that salary. Keep in mind something else. We don't come here permanently. As a matter of fact, most people who would vote for this do not want us to come for more than two terms anyway. But as a practical matter, we all maintain a home in our home States. We have expenses there and we have expenses here. There is no one in the employment scene today that has that situation other than Members of Congress. Now, I voted--it was a voice vote--but I voted against it and I would vote against it on a recorded vote because we were taking an action to deny Members of Congress, for the fifth time, a cost of living, which is a structural change. What it will mean is, downstream someone will have to have the courage to make the adjustment. Incidentally, we have had three times when that happened. In 1977, the Congress made a 28.9- percent change. That was a salary increase, but it was to make up for the fact that in 6 of the previous 7 years Congress had not taken the cost-of-living adjustment. Again, in 1982, we took a 15-percent change. It was because in 3 of the previous 4 years Congress had not taken a cost-of-living adjustment. In 1987, we again took a change. It was because, again, we had in 2 of the previous 4 years not taken the cost- of-living adjustment. Again, in 1991, we had a 27.1-percent increase. What I am saying is, you kid yourself as much as you want, the time will come when Congress will have to recognize that this structural change in the salary, vis-a-vis the salaries of comparable jobs in the economy, that the salary increase must come. So instead of recognizing this as a cost-of-living adjustment and treating it as such and providing that we take a minimum amount--and by the way, in most instances we have taken less than was available. For instance, in 1979, the Federal employees got a 7-percent increase, Federal retirees got 11.1, Congress gave itself 5.5. We kept the cost of living down each time. But when we did it, we did not have the total structural impact of denying it altogether. Now, the structural situation will be, if I am right, that we will not have a cost-of-living increase next year or the next 2 years. We will go into the 21st century with a salary level of 1993. In that year, again, we had a 3.2-percent COLA and Federal employees had 3.7 percent. If you look at my charts that are included in the Record, using the CPI in this period of 27 years, which has been 315.7 percent, we have taken a 214.4-percent total cost-of-living change. Social Security recipients had 421.3 percent; postal workers, 370 percent; the military, 360 percent; Federal retirees, 328 percent; private-sector employees, 265 percent; Federal civilians, 334 percent. We are at least 100 percent structurally below the comparable salary base in this 27- year phase. What does that say to young people about serving in the Congress? Even if it is on a two-term basis limit, to be here for 12 years and take a structural level of 15 years to start with and serve with people who will not take the cost-of-living adjustment while you are here anyway, I think this is destroying the system that we have today of citizens who commit themselves to be part of a great democracy. We have not done this to the people who work downtown for the President. Presidential salaries have changed and so have the salaries of the executives on a Presidential appointment level. We have, by the way, impacted the Judiciary, and I think that is something other people will talk about and I will talk about later, too, because the Federal Judiciary, while it does have a better system in the sense there is no contribution for a Federal judge for his or her retirement, as we contribute, it is lifetime pay. When they retire, they get the full amount of their salary, not a percent as we do based on the number of years we have been here. But as a practical matter, with the three branches of Government, the only part, through self- flagellation, that destroys the future of the body is the Congress itself. It is a great mistake. It is a great mistake. I think we all make sacrifices to come to this job, anyway. I can tell the Senate that when I came to the Senate, I was making more than three times my salary as a private lawyer in Alaska. Many people come here and take a reduction in income. There are others who come here and it makes no difference, because of either their great wealth or their inability to earn the same amount of money before they got here. Many people take a sizable decrease in income to come here. But what we are telling the younger people now--and we are trying to attract younger people. When I came here, the average age was almost 70; today, I think it is down to almost 50. We are still trying to attract younger people. This is a dynamic society and we should do that. But can you do that, Mr. President? Can you look a young man or woman in the eye and say: You can move to Washington, you can afford to live there and serve for 2 years in the House or 6 years in the Senate, or maybe two terms. You can keep your family there, and you can keep your house at home, and you can be able to return to your life when you finish the service, without having lost your future as far as your career is concerned. This is not right. It is not right. I have made this speech before and it doesn't seem to make any difference to anybody. But I am compelled to do it again because I have served here longer than any Member of our side of the aisle on the committee that has jurisdiction on this subject. I cannot believe we would continue to make this error. I believe that Members have left this body--and there are some leaving it now --not because they have served too long, or they don't like the job, or they haven't done a good enough job, but they cannot plan for their future. At one time, I had five children in college. At that time, thank God, there were jobs they could get during the summer, and we were able to help them and they all got through. But, today, a Senator with five children, with the cost of housing, and five going to college, why, that person would have to vote from the poor house, Mr. President. This job ought to pay what it is worth to society. This is the job of the continuity of the American system. We serve for 6 years. We volunteer for that job and we are the institutional memory of the American democracy. I am alarmed that there are not enough people on this floor that realize that. I am truly alarmed at the number of people that, for political reasons, or other reasons, or campaign promises, would harm the future of the Senate, would harm the democracy by telling the American people that you will either turn the Senate over to the very, very wealthy or those who could not earn as much anywhere else. Now, the time will come when we will face up to this. It will probably be in 2001. As I add it up, roughly, the percentage of pay increase then to recover the structural balance will be in the vicinity of 35 percent. How many people are going to want to do that in their first term? How many people are going to want to do that, who are just up for election? I have just mentioned two-thirds of the body then. So I say the demise of the American democracy is here. That is why the Constitutional Convention argued about who should determine what Members are paid. They were talking about citizen legislators then, not people who came here and stayed 7, 8 months a year. They are talking about people who could go home, people who lived within the original 13 States. My home is closer to Beijing than it is to Washington, DC, and this is a 50-State Union now. My colleague from Hawaii lives almost as far away. If anyone wants to look at costs, they ought to look at the cost of representing those two States. But the main thing is, we think about the structural salary level for the future. I am not going to be around here that long--maybe longer than some people think. But, Mr. President, we will witness the decline in the value of the Congress and the American society if we don't have the guts to stand up to the demagogs and tell them that pay for the Congress ought to be sufficient to attract the most capable people in our society. The capability is what counts. I am disturbed that, once again, we will deny the economic cycle that causes an adjustment being necessary, and we will say, as soon as we balance the budget in 2002, if I am hearing right, it may be 2003 before it is changed. That would be 10 years. How many people will decide not to come because of that, Mr. President? How many brilliant minds will be denied the American Congress because of that? I think it is wrong. I am going to speak at length when the time comes, and I am going to show what has happened to other countries when they followed and pursued this course and how they have deteriorated. The deterioration of America is something that we should worry about in terms of democracy. My predecessors used to go take the train across the country and then take a steamship up to Seward in our State and a railroad up to Fairbanks and go home once a year. I go home 15 to 30 or 35 times a year. It is a different society. I am telling the Senate, unless we are willing to recognize this different society and the dynamic society that needs people who are family people, who must make sacrifices to start with, but should not have to make this kind of sacrifice, to accept a structurally imbalanced salary caused by the inability of each successive Congress to face up to reality. Exhibit 1