Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask that we have the vote on the amendment.

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

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. STEVENS. It is my intention, Mr. President, to move to table this amendment at a later time.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. May I ask that the cloakrooms check that out and get us a time that is agreeable. The timeframe is agreeable to me, but I think some Members may be out of the building now, and we want to get the time set. But why doesn't the Senator take the floor now? I will yield the floor. As soon as we can get worked out between the leadership on the two sides the timeframe that can be agreed to as to the vote on this amendment and on the D'Amato amendment----

Mr. STEVENS. That is correct.

Mr. STEVENS. It is my understanding that the Parliamentarian will rule that the other two amendments are not properly drawn under the process of cloture for those to be considered. I will state, though, that the suggestion made by Senator McCain was a good one. When we get to conference, if we do with this provision, I intend to find some way to accommodate his suggestion that we ask the Secretary to come forward with a proposal to be debated that might set the policy for future utilization of these rights-of-way throughout the West. We will pursue that in conference. But there will be no other amendment, my friend. Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. There is no sensible way for an edict to come from Washington denying the right of a State under Federal law. I am not seeking a more sensible way. I am telling him No! No! No! You cannot do this. If we cannot get that between us, then you do not understand me. You cannot do this. This is a right of our State.

Mr. STEVENS. I want to talk to you about that, in particular, if the Senator will yield.

Mr. STEVENS. That is initiation of a highway. You move a few rocks, you cut down the right-of-way, you eliminate--it does not say ``weed''--the brush, and you start to build a highway. The question before Hodel at the time was, what is the initiation of highway, not what is a right-of-way? I say to my friend that highways today came from wagon trails. In my State, some of our highways came from dog sled trails, from the trails that were cut by people who did use horses in those days, or by people who use snowshoes when they were delivering mail on their backs with packs. Some of them were developed in the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, until 1976. They are today, but we have not had the money or capability to extend the highways because there are other problems of getting to those areas before we turn them into highways. They are not different from the roads that lead to Arkansas or, as I remember my youth, the slow train through Arkansas. That is a highway now. Maybe they leave Arkansas now rather than go in as they did in those days, but what I am telling you is we are asking for nothing more than what was the process of modernization throughout the West. It was by foot, by wagon, by horse trail. Then when there were vehicles, there were vehicles. But in our State, we have areas where vehicles have not yet been on the ground. A substantial part of our State cannot be reached by road. You know that. It can only be reached by air. We still have the process of extending those roads out into those areas so we can have surface transportation. You cannot turn R.S. 2477 into a right-of-way over which a vehicle has gone and protect our rights.

Mr. STEVENS. That was Federal lands.

Mr. STEVENS. That is the very basis of the western highway system today, those rights-of-way that went across Federal lands. The whole West was Federal land.

Mr. STEVENS. In 1976, Alaska was 18 years old. We were just trying to get in the Highway Act.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield just for one second and answer one question?

Mr. STEVENS. What the Secretary is doing now concerns taking action under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and section 701(h) of the law is specific ``All actions by the Secretary concerned * * * shall be subject to valid existing rights.'' By what power does he redefine now what was a valid existing right in 1976? He wasn't Secretary in 1976. What happens to the women who are out there in those small villages and cities today? They have to be flown into town to go to the hospital. It is going to take a few miles to get the roads to them. And we are going to get the roads to them, as long as we have the right to build the roads. We have the ability to deliver mail by road rather than by air. The Senator from Arkansas and others have been telling us, ``Stop that subsidy for Alaska.'' And for their mail, it costs $100 million more a year to deliver mail in Alaska because it all goes by air rather than similar places in the southern 48 because there it goes by road. By what right does this Secretary of the Interior determine what was a valid existing right in 1976?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have been involved in this issue now for a substantial portion of my life. I was in the Interior Department during the Eisenhower administration, 1955 to 1961. At the end of that period, I was the Solicitor of the Interior Department. During that period, we obtained statehood for Alaska. The whole question of what our rights would be as a State was debated at length, not only in the Congress but in the White House and the old Bureau of the Budget. The Revised Statute 2477 was the basis for really the modernization of the West. And when we came to the period of the seventies--and I was here as a Senator--when the proposal was made to repeal R.S. 2477 in 1974, I had a very long debate with Senator Haskell of Colorado at the time, and we subsequently did not pass the bill in that Congress. In 1976, when the rights-of-way bill was brought up again, we discussed at length the protections that would assure that the commitment that was being made to the Western States, in general, and Alaska, in particular, would be ironclad. So at my insistence, the 1976 act contained three specific statements. The first one is in section 701(a): Nothing in this Act, or in any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed as terminating any valid lease, permit, patent, right-of-way, or other land use right or authorization existing on the date of approval of this Act. Again in section 701(f): Nothing in this Act shall be deemed to repeal any existing law by implication. And in section 701(h): All actions by the Secretary concerned under this Act shall be subject to valid existing rights. Starting in 1993, the Secretary of Interior attempted to ignore all of those guarantees and say that as manager of the Federal lands, he has the inherent right to ignore that law and to issue regulations to change this concept, so that the valid existing rights will be determined by Federal law and not by State laws as they have for 130 years. There has never been, before this administration, any attempt to define the rights-of-way across Federal land by Federal law. They have been determined by the general law of each State, and ours are no exception in Alaska. But very clearly, we have three times now spoken here in the Congress to try and stop this move by the Secretary of the Interior and his Department to change this tradition. We did it in the National Highway System Designation Act, we did it in the Interior appropriations bill for 1996, and the Interior appropriations bill for 1997. Now, however, what we are trying to stop is his announcement of a policy which will govern all Federal lands. It is not regulation, it is a statement of policy now. Congress prohibited the use of funds, we prohibited the issuance of regulations, but now he says he is going to announce a policy, a new edict, and that is that there is a Federal law pertaining to rights-of- way and they will define that and it will not be based on State law at all. What we are talking about, as my colleague from Alaska has said and the Senators from Utah have said, is the process by which all of the West obtained the rights-of-way that ultimately became the road system of the West. In Alaska, because of our situation prior to statehood, the Federal Government built the highways when we were a territory, and it built one main road. It was really built for the aid of the war effort. The Alaska highway came up through Canada, and then came down through Alaska at our eastern border, and came to our major city of Anchorage. It came through Fairbanks and then down into the Anchorage area. That was one main road. Since then, we have built some arterials off that. We had a long time convincing the Congress that we were a State and we ought to have equal treatment under the National Highway Acts. Now we have that. Now we come to the period where this administration wants to assert, by virtue of Federal supremacy, a concept that, on over 100 million of acres of land that were reserved by the Congress in 1980--and, incidentally, they were specific in terms of recognizing valid existing rights at that time, too--now this administration wants to say none of these rights under the Revised Statute 2477 shall be recognized on Federal lands in Alaska, period. The Federal Government owns more than 68 percent of Alaska's land. As my colleague has pointed out, the State of Alaska is a checkerboard with Native land, Federal land, and State land and very little private land. But the right of access to the private land through the State land and the Native land is of necessity such that rights-of-way across some Federal lands are required if we are to have a road system to serve the State as a whole ultimately. This is not a simple question for Alaskans. What it really comes down to is a question of can we trust the Federal Government? We had a long debate here that went on for 3 years. The record is absolutely clear that the Congress, at that time, agreed that we had these rights and that they had to be protected if Revised Statute 2477 was to be repealed. I have to say, from 1976 to 1993, there was no question about it. But now, because of the onslaught of a direct mail advertising campaign by extreme environmental groups who have painted us as being the arch devils of management, they claim that we are trying to establish some new rights across Federal lands. By definition, none of the rights that could vest after 1976--they are all prior to 1976, and they were protected by Congress and they were across lands that were not reserved in 1976. I think the real problem here is the people who are doing this are unwilling to accept the decisions made by Congress. Every Congress has said we are not going to interfere with valid existing rights. Again, these rights are vital to a State such as ours. I really cannot deal with it without going back over a whole history of what has been done in our State. Let me say, our amendment is simple. It continues the same policy the Congress has voted on three times now, and it says this new policy concept of the Department of the Interior--not a regulation, not a rule, both of those were prohibited by past actions, not an order that was also prohibited--but this new concept of a policy, they can't do it in any way. If they want to do it, they can send up a proposal to Congress, let us debate it, and we will see what the law will be for the future, and we will see as a result of what they are doing if there is any compensation due to the people whose rights are condemned by Federal action. This is a way around the whole concept of trying to compensate people for the absolute extinguishment of rights that were created and protected by Congress through past actions. Some have suggested that almost a million new miles of roads and claims would be asserted by virtually anybody, anyone. Mr. President, I tire at trying to answer false statements like that. As my colleague has said, we have 18,000 miles of roads in an area one-fifth the size of the United States now. We can only build those roads with highway funds that are available, and at the cost of roads, it is just not possible for us to contemplate a million miles of road. We are not contemplating even doubling what we have now. We are contemplating just some small roads to connect various villages and communities that are near the road system that exists now, and even that will be over a period of years. This is a process that we believe that the Congress ought to recognize. We create no new rights-of-way across Federal land. We only recognize those that were in existence before 1976, and we preserve those rights once more on the same basis that they have been available throughout this country for 130 years based upon State law. The courts have asserted, past administrations have asserted--I don't know of anyone, as I said, in the past who has asserted that there was a Federal law that determined how rights-of-way were created across Federal land. There is the specific right-of-way concept where people are coming and asking permission to cross Federal land to build pipelines or build transmission lines for various uses of Federal land, and that is what the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Right-of-way Act was all about. But we believe that in terms of what we are doing now, I am told--I don't know if Senator Murkowski mentioned this--we asked the Department of Natural Resources of Alaska to tell us what rights-of-way might be capable of being asserted. There were 1,900 originally reviewed, and 700 were found to be on State land. Of the remaining 1,200, about 560 appeared to qualify as potential rights-of-way. The State deferred 400 of those because they crossed Federal withdrawals. That is to be looked at at a later time, and we are now proceeding with very few of them. I have been told that so far, we have used about 10 of these rights-of- way in the time that we have been a State, which is now almost 40 years. Mr. President, you don't use them until the highway system gets to the point where you can use them to extend it on out. So Congress protected those rights-of-way for the future so that when the highway system starts to expand, it will be possible to get to those communities. My last comment to the Senate will be this. My colleague and I labor here for land that is so far away that we are closer to Tokyo than we are to Washington, DC. We spend a great deal of our time trying to convince the Congress to keep the commitments that were made to us as we sought and fought for statehood because we wanted to be partners in the Union. Now it seems that people from other States are doing everything they can to turn us back into a federally dominated territory. That is why we are here on the floor. We wanted to be a State to protect our rights. That is our No. 1 duty, to see to it that the commitments made to our State are kept by the Federal Government. And it is very hard to do right now. It is very hard to do when there are people in the administration who want to just be those who dictate to our State. I cannot emphasize this enough to the Senate, this is not a new subject. We have done in this bill what we did three times before. We have acted to prevent the Secretary of the Interior continuing on this course of trying to change the law that guarantees the protection of valid existing rights under Revised Statute 2477. Mr. President, I mentioned my own background on this subject. But I have to say, one of the reasons that I am concerned about it is because, as a young lawyer in the Interior Department, I remember some of the fights that existed in the 17 Western States that had public lands before we became a State. This same battle took place before, but in different ways, where agencies of the Federal Government just tried to block the use of lands. But no one ever thought of creating a Federal rights system and taking unto themselves the power to determine what rights existed prior to that time. That is what the Department is trying to do now. They are trying to say, ``Wait a minute. We're the managers of this land. All this land is still under our domination and, therefore, we're going to tell you how you cross this land.'' The Department of the Interior has done something--I used to tell our people in the Interior Department when I was there: ``We do not own this land, you and I. We are the stewards of this land. It's owned by the people of the United States.'' But if you hear these people talk now in the Department of the Interior, it is their land. They own it. I have to tell you, Mr. President, it will be a cool day in Hades when Alaskans will allow them to do that. I hope that the Senate will stand by us in this battle, which is just a continuation of battles we have fought here on many other issues to protect our rights as a State. These rights ultimately will be used by the State of Alaska to build public highways. We do not have a county system. Our population base is small. We have a borough system, but basically the roads in Alaska are built by the State. So in our State the rights are basically protected by the State and the State nominates those areas where it wants to proceed to utilize the rights-of-way that were created prior to 1976. I do think, Mr. President, that if there is anything that I would like to leave with the Senate, it is that at some time or other every Senator is going to have to come out here and say, ``In the days gone by, a compromise was reached regarding an issue in my State, and the decision was made and put into law.'' All I want you to do is recognize an act of a prior Congress in committing the United States to a course of action that must be followed now if States rights are to mean anything. This is a basic States rights issue to me, to have the ability to provide the expansion of the transportation system to meet the growing needs of people in a frontier area. If the Senator's amendment is adopted, the Secretary of the Interior will be free to issue an edict that future rights in Alaska will be determined by the Secretary of the Interior. What does that do? It returns us back to 1958, to the territorial days. We would not be a State. No State is dominated by a Cabinet officer. We were as a territory. We had an Office of Territories in the Department of the Interior when I was at the Department of the Interior. And Alaska was one of the desks in the Office of Territories. That person carried all of the decisions of the Secretary of the Interior with regard to Alaska. As a matter of fact, Alaska used to call him the ``Great White Father.'' Well, there is not a Great White Father for Alaska now. There are 100 Senators here and 435 people over there who have something to do with making decisions regarding what happens to the rights of the people of the State of Alaska. I urge the Senate to stand by us and maintain the course, that we will live by the law and not by edicts of changing personnel in changing administrations as the years go by.

Mr. STEVENS. I was going to go to this other desk and see if I could get the Senator from Arkansas into a colloquy regarding the timing of the votes that we might have.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we had 5 minutes before that vote. I ask unanimous consent that there be 1 more minute added so that we have 4 minutes on this one.

Mr. STEVENS. I yield 1 minute to the Senator from New York. I think every Senator would like to hear the Senator from New York on this one.