Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2065

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the highway reauthorization bill recently passed the Congress. It was several years in the making and the result of a compromise. Now one of our colleagues feels it is his responsibility to rewrite portions of that bill to achieve his goals, not those that are expressed in the law itself. Unfortunately, the manner in which the Senator wishes to do this has no impact on his constituency or any other constituency except Alaska. I fought for statehood as a member of the Eisenhower administration. I have been here now almost 37 years. This is the first time I have seen any attempt by any Senator to treat my State in a way differently from any other State. It will not happen. It will not happen. I can remember many times when other Senators have stood on the floor and used parliamentary devices that kept people up for 2 to 3 days. This is not the way to treat a State. We are a sovereign State. If the Senate wishes to take part of the highway money and share it with New Orleans, we would be happy to join any other State. We would be happy to make a fair contribution in any other program. We have already notified our State that many of the things we have been able to get funding for in the past may not be available now for a period of time until we build the area affected by Katrina or Rita. Our State suffered the largest disaster in America preceding Katrina, the 1964 earthquake. I remember it well. I remember being a young lawyer and being forced to borrow money to keep the doors of our law firm open; to borrow money to repair my home that was destroyed by that earthquake partially; to borrow other money to help in terms of the concepts of rebuilding in that area. Our State faced that recovery, and I think we understand what the people of New Orleans and the Katrina and Rita areas face. We now have another such storm coming upon us. The amendment that is before us now will affect only Alaska. It will help Louisiana. We want to help Louisiana but not solely at the expense of Alaska. That is not a way to treat a sovereign State. This is something on which I think every Senator must examine his or her own conscience. What would they do if they were faced with the proposition that only their State's allocation of funds under a protective program would be taken and given to another State at the time of disaster? This is not the way to meet a disaster need, to turn to the smallest--we have the smallest allocation per area of any State in the Union for roads. We only have a very small road system. The reason is that so much of our State has been withdrawn, and it is not possible to build roads through the Federal lands that are set aside for parks, wildlife refuges, wild and scenic rivers, wilderness areas. We are limited, and we must build bridges so that we can tie together two areas that are inaccessible otherwise. That is because of withdrawals and set-asides of lands in our State that are owned by the Federal Government. I ask my friend--and he is my friend--from Oklahoma, how would he explain to his people at home, if he went home after the Senate had taken money away from his State previously authorized by law and signed by the President? That is not the way to treat a sovereign State. These funds that are necessary for bridges in Louisiana must be provided. That is a given. After the disaster in Florida, when I was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, notwithstanding the opposition of the administration, I assisted the delegation from Florida to obtain money to rebuild their bridges and roads. That was from the General Treasury. That may have caused a deficit. We tried our best to offset it, and I think to a major extent we did offset it. The request that has been made now to offset gulf coast spending using the highway bill money, only that allocated to the State of Alaska, is unacceptable to this Senator. I am now President pro tempore of the Senate, the second oldest Member of the Senate, the fourth in service in the Senate, and I again say to my friend from Oklahoma I have never seen it suggested to single out one State and say, You pay for a disaster that happened 5,000 miles away. We want to shoulder our fair share of the burden. We will do so. Those who want to look at this amendment as some sort of amendment that should be adopted because of misleading stories in the press, I warn you, it could happen to you, too. These bridges are necessary. Just take the one across the Knik Arm near our largest city of Anchorage. Anchorage is surrounded by water on two sides and by a military reservation on one side and a national forest on the other. There is no way to expand. Across this Knik Arm is land owned by the State and by private people that we could expand to. We have been trying to get a bridge across there for as long as I can remember. But because we are a small State, it is hard to do. The time came when one of the Members of our delegation was chairman and he kept pressing and pressing and finally convinced his colleagues that bridge should be funded in a way that takes a sizable portion of our State's funding under formula money, and a portion of the so-called above-the-line money, money for grants for special projects, and made it possible that the Knik Arm bridge could be built. The other bridge is in the southeastern area. It is the largest forest in the United States and is practically all withdrawn, practically all owned by the Federal Government and set aside for wilderness areas or nonpublic uses. There is one portion available to us, but it takes a bridge to get to it. That is State land and private land, the only land, really, in that kind of area that can be developed because all the rest of it is owned by the Federal Government and set aside, with the exception of some Native lands that are a little bit farther away. We can argue about the needs. That argument should have been made at the time the highway bill passed. The highway bill allocated money for those. It comes out, not from the Treasury, but out of funds paid by people who buy gasoline and people who buy parts for cars, people who buy various things that require them to contribute to the highway fund. I have come quite often to the floor and described my State to the Senate. I remind the Senate, we have half the coastline of the United States. We are one-fifth the size of the whole United States. We have more withdrawings for parks, wildlife refuges, wild and scenic areas, wilderness areas than all the rest of the States put together. We need bridges because we need to get from one private area to another private area. When I first came to the Senate, funds were allocated to a State based on the amount of land that was Federal land in a State that was withdrawn. That was dropped after Congress, in its wisdom, withdrew so much of Alaska. If we had the old formula, I can tell you, the Senator from Oklahoma wouldn't even understand the money we would get because more than half of the Federal land in Alaska is withdrawn, and the Federal Government will own, in any event, almost two-thirds of Alaska no matter what happens in the future. To have a representative of the Federal Government say Alaska doesn't need bridges, take them away from them and repair those bridges that went down in the disaster is absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong. I remember as a young man in California when someone suggested there ought to be a bridge, what we call the Golden Gate, over the San Francisco Harbor. People said: You can't do that. That is a bridge to nowhere. I remember those words, ``a bridge to nowhere,'' a bridge up in Marin County where hardly anybody lived. It was a place for cows and ranchers. Today what is it? It is a thriving part of the great State of California. How about the bridge from New Orleans to Baton Rouge--absolutely going into wilderness. No one ever expected it to develop. That is part of the area that suffered from the disaster because it was so heavily developed. How about the bridges that cross island to island going down the Keys in Florida? I remember as a young man going overseas, going to the edge of that area. You couldn't travel by road. You had to have a boat like you do in Alaska. You still have to do that in Alaska. There are no bridges between Alaskan islands. But go to Florida and where are they? It is a beautiful drive. Every one of those bridges was paid for by highway money. There were those who said at the time: That is a waste of taxpayers' money. It wasn't taxpayers' money anyway. It is highway-user money, and highway-user money should be used for disasters only on the basis considering what the impact is on the highway system itself. I have a unique role in my State because I not only served in the Eisenhower administration, trying to urge the admission of Alaska to enter the Union, but it was my honor to come here after Alaska had only been a State for 10 years. In December I will have been here 37 years, as I said. I come to warn the Senate, if you want a wounded bull on the floor of the Senate, pass this amendment. I stood here and watched Senator Allen teach the Senate lesson after lesson after something was done to Alabama that he didn't like. I don't threaten people; I promise people. I came here and swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I came here to represent a State that is an equal member of this Union. Notwithstanding how many people are there, we are to be treated the same as any other State. On the floor of the Senate we are equal to any other Senators, my colleague and I. This amendment is an offense to me. It is not only an offense to me, it is a threat to every person in my State. We came here to have the same rights, the same privileges that were made available to any other State and to the people who live in those States. While we are one-fifth the size of the United States, we only have 13,485 miles of road. That is less than King County, WA. Why? Because the Congress, in its wisdom, has withdrawn so much of our land, as I said, that you can't build roads. Oklahoma is one-eighth the size of Alaska. It has almost 10 times as many roads. If the concepts involved in this bill were applied to States as the Nation moved westward, we would still have wilderness beyond the Mississippi. I really cannot understand this. Roads are the lifeblood of this country. That is what made us free, having the ability to move, having the ability to use individual transportation, having the ability to drive from Oklahoma to Alaska if you want to. I urge the Senator from Oklahoma to try to do that. When I first came here I drove home when I went home every year because I couldn't afford to fly. In those days we got about seven trips, I think, annually. That didn't apply to our families at all. The problem I want to leave with you is this: 70 percent of our State is accessible only by air or by sea. Within our State we have to have different types of transportation. My colleague, Senator Murkowski, has pioneered now a concept of trying to build some rural roads to connect villages so we will reduce some of the Federal costs of supporting those individual villages. Each has an airport, each has a school, each has a clinic. These are redundant facilities. We can build better ones. One could have a good school, one could have a good airport, one could have a good fire department. We could do better for them and save money if we had more road money. But we do not get it. We do not get it because of the donor theory that came to this Senate about 15 years ago, which says for the people who pay in these taxes, it goes back to the States in which they paid the money--not where they live, but where they paid the money. So the States that are fortunate enough to be on interstate highways where people stop to buy gasoline, they get more money than the States where they don't stop for gasoline. It makes less sense than anything I have ever known. In any event, we live under that system. We have needs. We are still a developing area. We are the last frontier of the United States. These bridges may go nowhere, as far as some people here are concerned, but they are very important to our future. I think it was the Memorial Bridge in Milwaukee that was first called the bridge to nowhere, the Daniel Webster Hoan Bridge. That now serves as a major north-south connector between downtown Milwaukee and the neighborhoods in that city. The Astoria Bridge on the Columbia River was referred to as a bridge to nowhere. It connects Astoria, OR, to what was once an empty shore. It now carries 6,000 cars a day, over 2 million people a year. We deserve the same right to grow. Currently, the bridge will serve military families who live in the Anchorage area and pay very high costs. Because of the cost of land, the rent is very high. That is because of the lack of land to expand. They will go across to the Matanuska Valley and have a better place to live. All I want to do is put the Senate on notice. I have been asked several times today if I will agree to this version or that version of the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma. No. No, I will not, unless it treats all States the same way. We are here to ask you, those of us from Alaska, to believe that fairness is fairness; equality is equality. Being a member of the 50 States is being a State with the right to be treated equally to any other State. That is why the two of us are here, to assure that happens. Praise God I have the energy to do what I may have to do, to prove to the Senator from Oklahoma I mean what I say. This amendment is not going to pass. The Senate is warned. It is wrong to do this to any State. It is wrong to put colleagues in a position where we have to go home and explain why we couldn't prevent an amendment in which what is being done to our State has never been done to another State--never. This is not the time to start this process. I urge my friend from Oklahoma to reconsider this, reconsider what he is getting us into. The amendment may pass, but if it does the bill will never be passed. If it does, I will be taken out of here on a stretcher. I yield the floor.

Mr. STEVENS. I find myself in a strange position, as I indicated to the Senator from Oklahoma. Earlier today, I indicated to the Senator that I would suggest a series of second-degree amendments. I had under consideration second-degree amendments. It is my understanding now the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma is filed as a second-degree amendment to the Bingaman amendment, am I correct?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have a small Bible to start reading, a few editorials from my State concerning this bridge and some of the comments that have been made in other States. I am willing to try to work out a system so that all States contribute to assisting our sister State in Louisiana and recognize their prior need for money, but I am entirely unwilling to take money from Alaska only. I think the Senate ought to have that on notice. I will suggest the absence of a quorum, and I will object to taking it off until we have some way that the Senate might consider an alternative to the Senator from Oklahoma or until a quorum is present and the Senate decides otherwise than what I have decided. I will put the Senate on notice--and I don't kid people--if the Senate decides to discriminate against our State and take money only from our State, I will resign from this body. This is not the Senate I came to. This is not the Senate I devoted 37 years to. If one Senator can decide he will take all the money from one State to solve a problem of another, that is not a union. That is not equality and is not treating my State the way I have seen it treated for 37 years. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, it is my understanding the first amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma will be considered first. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 2165, as Modified

Mr. STEVENS. How much time remains?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I would add to my colleague's comment to say this concept is a concept that every State should think about because if it can be done on a bridge, why not do it on any type of event where a Senator would like to have money for their State, but they say take it from another State because they do not need it. I made a statement earlier today that in my 37 years I have never seen this. I have never seen a request that money for a disaster be taken solely from a project in one State to help a disaster in other States. We are a disaster-prone State. We have more disasters than any other State in the Union. Remember our 1964 earthquake. We have tsunamis. We have all types of disasters. But we have never tried to take moneys from other States to meet our costs. I urge the Senate not to start this process. I yield back the time.

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

Mr. STEVENS. The time hasn't expired yet.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Wasn't there time on both sides for that amendment?

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I understand the concerns that my colleagues have regarding poorly understood illnesses that have affected military personnel in nearly every conflict since the Civil War, and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. As chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I want to lend my support to this important research. AM2 and coatings removal technology

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3971, which was received from the House.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent that the substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 271, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3765 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 272, submitted early today by Senator Schumer.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment until 2 p.m. on Monday, October 17, contingent upon the Senate's action on the adjournment resolution from the House; that if we do not agree to the adjournment resolution, the Senate reconvene at 12 noon on Tuesday, October 11. I further ask that following the prayer and pledge on October 17, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved, and that there be a period for morning business until 3 p.m. equally divided. I further ask that the Senate then proceed to consideration of H.R. 3058, the Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill, under the previous order.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, when the Senate reconvenes on Monday, October 17, we will begin consideration of the Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill. As we consider the bill, I remind my colleagues to work with Senators Bond and Murray, the bill managers, and to offer amendments early in the week. I alert my colleagues that the first vote during Monday's session will occur at 5:30 p.m.