Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand in recess until 10 minutes after 2.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. No, he doesn't. The law is the law. There were laws in place in 1976 which defined those rights. He is now going to try to redefine the law to determine whether they were existing rights in 1976.

Mr. STEVENS. I am glad the Senator asked that question of me. If you want to look at what happened, Secretary Hodel approved in 1988 a series of proposals that came to him from the Bureau of Land Management, the Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service within his Department. He did not write that. He approved the work of a series of bureaus in his Department. It was not what this Secretary is doing. This Secretary is coming along as the Secretary and issuing an edict to change all of that. This, in 1988, was the work of long-term public servants who had great experience in managing. As a matter of fact, if you want to look at the 1993 report to Congress on R.S. 2477 by the Department of the Interior--I have it right here--you will see that there was consultation with the Governors, there was consultation with the State directors in Utah and Alaska, the areas where there was a substantial amount of R.S. 2477 claims. One of the things that I might add to this, my friend, is our Governor, who is a member of the party of the Senator from Arkansas, sent word to the current Secretary of the Interior that he was disturbed because he was not consulted before this was done. In the prior time, when the tables were turned and there was a Democratic Governor in the State of Alaska, Secretary Hodel did consult with him. He consulted with him. They had memos from the State. They had memos from Utah. They had memos from the BLM, Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, from throughout the West. That is what Hodel approved.

Mr. STEVENS. Hodel approved a series of papers that were presented by those agencies, and said--his statement is a one-page statement, which the Senator has been reading. So the words that the Senator was reading were not Hodel's words. The Secretary's approval is on a memorandum from the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife, Assistant Secretary for Minerals and Management, the BLM, and it is an approval of the policy statement concerning R.S. 2477. Hodel did not develop that policy. The Department developed it. All the agencies developed it in consultation with the States involved, and with the State offices of the various portions of this Department. So the Senator is overlooking that.

Mr. STEVENS. All Hodel had to do was sign his name to one page. He did not do it. It was the Department that developed this policy after consultation with a series of States and a series of agencies.

Mr. STEVENS. That sounds like something people accuse me of. I have been threatened with death.

Mr. STEVENS. Hodel did not consult with these Senators because the management of the Congress was under the party of the Senator from Arkansas at that time. If there was any complaint about what Hodel did, that should be in the Record. At the time, the Congress did not object to what Hodel did because it was the process that came through consultation with Western States, Western Governors, with the agency's State offices throughout the West and was sent up to him by the Assistant Secretaries for Fish and Wildlife and the Bureau of Land Management up to the Secretary for approval. That is not what is happening now.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield right there?

Mr. STEVENS. Does the Senator recall who was in the majority in the Congress at that time?

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield for just a second? This has nothing to do with whose ox is being gored. I am surprised there are only 3,000. After all, all they have to do is press a button, and say, ``Send out another 3 million direct mail pieces to all of these people that are involved in this extreme environmental movement in this country.'' And I would be surprised if it was only 3,000. But those people aren't the Governors of the Western States. They aren't the Senators that represent Western States. And they are not the people within the BLM and others who are professionals in this field. This is coming at us now as edict on high. This is supremacy of the Federal Government. I have to tell you. I have dedicated my life against that. I think the Senator should remember that. We have been out here before saying you can't make laws from the executive branch. It must come through Congress.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield for just a second?

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. STEVENS. No. No. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:10 today there be 5 minutes equally divided in the usual form prior to a vote on or in relation to the D'Amato amendment No. 145, to be immediately followed by a 4-minute time period equally divided in the usual form prior to a vote on or in relation to the Bumpers amendment No. 64, and that further, prior to the votes, no other amendment be in order to these amendments or to the language proposed to be stricken.

Mr. STEVENS. There is 5 minutes equally divided on D'Amato. That was the request of your side, I might say to the Senator, and then a vote on the D'Amato amendment. And then there will be, after that vote, 4 minutes equally divided on the Senator's amendment to strike, and there would be a vote on the Senator's amendment. Neither will be subject to amendment after this agreement.

Mr. STEVENS. At 2:10 p.m.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if I get the agreement, I will ask later that the second vote will be a 10-minute vote, but I cannot do it yet. I thank the Senator. Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. I want to remind the Senate now, and I will do so later just prior to the vote, in this year's Interior appropriations bill, signed by the President last fall, after serious negotiation with the administration, conducted by the previous chairman of this Appropriations Committee, at my request this section was put in that bill, section 108: No final rule or regulation of any agency of the Federal Government pertaining to the recognition, management or validity of a right-of-way, pursuant to Revised Statute 2477, 43 U.S. Code 932, shall take effect unless expressly authorized by an act of Congress subsequent to the date of enactment of this act. Now, that was the compromise last year as we began this fiscal year. We believe it is an emergency when we return to Washington to find that the Secretary of the Interior has issued a policy, a statement, edict, fiat, whatever you want to call it, but he has in effect changed the law, in his opinion, purported to change the law in a way that he believes is not covered by that very strong statement: No final rule or regulation of any agency of the Federal Government pertaining to the recognition, management or validity of a right-of-way, pursuant to Revised Statute 2477. . . shall take effect unless expressly authorized by an act of Congress subsequent to the date of enactment of this act. That is this Congress. We have very clearly said, and the President of the United States agreed, that any change regarding the validity of rights-of-way shall be authorized by an act of Congress, and yet if we do not take this action that is in this bill that policy statement will guide all members of the Interior Department with regard to approval of the applications of Western States for rights-of-way under the law, a law that was agreed to in 1976 and expressly reserved all existing rights-of-way. I think it is a very clear issue, notwithstanding all of the flak that is out there in these direct mail pieces that are stimulating every newspaper from here to Washington State. It is just too bad that editors have not learned how to read because if they would read what the law is, I do not see how they can come to the conclusions that they do in some of the editorials I have read today. I hope the Members of the Senate are not swayed by those editorials because they certainly are not based upon the law or the facts of the situation. Mr. President, I will suggest the absence of a quorum awaiting my friend. We do have some matters that we can take care of. I might state for the information of the Senate that we have an indication from the Parliamentarian that only 33 of the 109 amendments that were filed are proper under cloture. Members should consult, if they wish to do so, the staff of either side to find out the situation with regard to their amendment. Senator Byrd and I have agreed that if we can we would like to cooperate with Members on matters that are true emergencies, particularly for those people who are from the disaster States, and there are 33 of those, Mr. President. But we are compelled to rely upon the actions of the Parliamentarian under the rule unless we can find some way to accommodate the changes that would be necessary to validate the amendments involved. So I urge Members of the Senate to determine whether the amendments they have filed prior to cloture are now valid after cloture. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. 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. We have no objection.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay it on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendments Nos. 232, 233, and 234, En Bloc

Mr. STEVENS. I am informed another Senator involved in that cannot be here before 10 o'clock.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, under the circumstances, under the informal agreements we have entered into before, I ask the vote on that motion to table be carried over until 10 o'clock in the morning; is that agreeable?

Mr. STEVENS. The vote will not occur tonight, and we will try to work in another amendment and take up this vote on this motion to table at a later time.

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