Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I believe all in government in Washington, DC, and in every State, need to ask ourselves: Do our legislative acts, the public policies that we create, enhance or nurture our better instincts as a people? Are we conducting activities and passing laws that further benefit the better instincts of our Nation as a people? A payment to somebody or some institution is an incentive to them, for whatever reason, that incentivizes and encourages that activity that got them the payment. A tax, likewise, is a penalty. It discourages, it penalizes, it hurts. It sanctions certain kinds of behavior. That is so basic as to be without dispute. Frankly, our Founding Fathers knew this. Professor Sindell, at Harvard, has written a book. I have not read the book, but I read the article, I believe in the Atlantic Monthly, about how in the first 150 years of our Nation's history, if you look at the debate that occurred in Congress, the Senate and the House, they were constantly debating what to sign and what to veto and what bills to support; they were always debating this principle. (Mr. KYL assumed the chair.)

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senators from the other side of the aisle made comments about the Republican Presidential primary, taking sides in those primaries. I think it is somewhat odd they would want to debate some of the issues here. With regard to the concerns over contributions that are going to independent groups--I believe New York was complained of--to run TV ads, money was given by a small number of people who made large contributions to run those ads. It was said that this is a justification for passing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. My best understanding of what that bill is all about is that this would not be covered. Fundamentally, the McCain-Feingold bill covered contributions of larger sums of money to political parties but it did not prevent people giving large contributions to an independent environmental group, an independent pro-choice group, or an independent pro-life group so they could run ads during a campaign season and say: Candidate Jeff Sessions doesn't agree with our views, vote against him. The problem I have had with campaign finance reform is it was not in this McCain-Feingold bill. Why? Because this is America, these are political campaigns. Is the Senate going to pass a law that says individual American citizens can't raise money and run an ad and express their view as to how the American public should or should not vote on an issue? It is frustrating to have the moneys come in. I certainly believe they ought to be disclosed. I was, I believe, a victim or target of one of these ads when I ran for the Senate 3 years ago. It came under the guise of an environmental group, but I know the money came mainly to beat up on me. How can anyone say that is wrong? How can we say a group cannot raise money and run ads during an election campaign season about issues? I am troubled by that. I am frustrated not having a lot of money myself, facing two candidates in my primary, both of whom spent over $1 million of their own money, most of it beating up on me. I was struggling with $1,000 maximum contributions per person to try to fight back. I was able to do so. Fortunately, the American people don't vote on who has the most money. There are other issues. We have seen that time and time again. They are pretty sophisticated in how to evaluate this. I am troubled by this idea that we can, out of some sort of vision of good government, blithely walk in and say candidates are not going to be able to raise money; they are not going to be able to spend money to express their ideas during an election campaign. When do we want to do it? They say just accept certain guidelines for 6 months prior to the election. When do we want to speak out, if it isn't when people are getting ready to vote?

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of our Energy Committee for the remarks. They are not new. He is not making a political statement. Chairman Murkowski is here because he has spoken out for years, virtually since this administration has been in office, about discouraging--through so many rules, regulations, and taxes--the domestic production of oil and gas. He has warned we would be at this point. Here we are. The best way by far to deal with this is to make sure we have more domestic production because it will help keep the prices down, and it will also help ease our balance of payments. I thank the Senator for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will use 2 minutes and then yield.

Mr. SESSIONS. He has the floor. He can use his time or not. I believe the Senator from Minnesota can use his time or not.

Mr. SESSIONS. I object. I don't believe it is time.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from California and appreciate being able to work together with the Senator on this important piece of legislation and with the others who are cosponsoring it. I think this Senate will come together, both sides of the aisle. The time has come. We know social promotion, the concept of moving kids along when we have failed to make sure they have learned the basics of the course level in which they should be operating, is the wrong thing to do. I believe that very strongly. I think the American people understand it and care about it. We need to identify, at the earliest possible time, children who are falling behind. If we do not have a core curriculum, if we do not have standards, and we cover up or we deny what is happening when we know students are not getting the required amount of knowledge in school, it is time to confront this. In some ways we are utilizing that psychiatric principle called ``enabling.'' We are enabling bad behavior to successfully continue unacceptable behavior, unacceptable performance by a school system, unacceptable performance by students. It is time to confront that, not because we want to be mean or harsh but because we love these children. We care about the children. If we love them and if we care about them, we will set reasonable and tough standards; we will insist they adhere to them. When we find out they are not consistently adhering to them, we find ways to get them to the level they need. Maybe their parents need to be more involved. Some say: I didn't know Billy was that far behind. If we end social promotion, they will know; if there is testing, they will know. Maybe they need a member of the family to help with the homework. Maybe a tutor would be appropriate. Something has to be done. The school systems are going to have to participate better, also. We had an incident in Alabama not long ago where a former all-pro football player could not pay his child support and could not get a job. He said the reason he couldn't get a job was because he couldn't read and write. Such a sad statement. Too often in America we are passing kids along who have not learned how to read and write effectively. They are not going to be able to perform effectively in the commercial sector, and they are not going to be able to care for their families effectively. Alabama has adopted one of the toughest programs in the Nation. The Fordham Foundation says it is the toughest. They have tested the 4th, 8th and 11th grades. We will do that this year. We want to know at what level the children are operating. A 60-person commission is undertaking right now a detailed study on how to implement the end of social promotion. It is something that ought to be done around this country. We want our education system in Alabama to be better. I want it to be better all over America. I know we can do that. There are a number of things we have to recognize when we ask: Is this really a problem; do we need to confront this? American 12th graders rank 19th out of 21 industrial nations in mathematics achievement and 16th out of 21 nations in science. Our advanced physics students rank dead last. Since 1983, 10 million Americans have reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. Over 20 million have reached their senior year unable to do basic math. Almost 25 million have reached the 12th grade not knowing the essentials of U.S. history. In 1992, a Department of Education survey found between 21 and 23 percent--more than 1 out of 5--or 40 million of the 191 million adults in this country were in the bottom 5th of literacy assessment proficiency categories. We are saying we do care about education. That is not always reflected in how much money we spend. I hope we can continue to spend more. We increased the budget this year substantially over last year, and we will increase the education budget next year. Kansas City brought their per pupil spending up to $11,700 and brought down the student teacher ratio to 13-1 without seeing any increase in test scores. What is it that we are about? I think children respond to challenges. I think children reach up to the level they are asked to reach, that they are expected to reach. If we set reasonable standards and we challenge students to meet them, and the teachers are motivated to make sure the children reach certain standards, and parents get engaged because they know what the tests are going to be like and they want to be sure their children meet those standards, this will increase learning more in this country than any other thing we can do. I am pleased to support this legislation with the Senator from California. I think it will have broad support in this body. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the concern of the Senator from Minnesota, but I say to the Senator, parents would get a lawyer and sue: You can't hold my child back; you didn't call me enough times. The amendment doesn't say how many times. Or my child didn't have an opportunity to receive a high-quality early childhood education. Well, you had kindergarten; that was not enough. This amendment does not say what it is. It will turn it into a conglomeration of things that are not healthy. I note, as Senator Feinstein from California so eloquently said, we are not saying what the standards are. The States can set standards that require parental involvement. I hope they do. I hope they do a lot of things that are not mentioned by the Senator from Minnesota in setting a fair, objective standard for testing. However, we do need some objective standards for testing. If we do so--as Chicago has found, as California will be moving toward, as Alabama will move very soon to accountability and the end of social promotion--we will find that students are learning more because they are challenged. There is an incentive there. Parents are going to know certain standards must be met. Teachers and principals will know it. The children will know it. They will respond and meet the challenges. We will end this slide in which we spend more and more money and get less and less productivity. From 1960 to 1990, we tripled the amount of money spent on education in America. It went up every single year. But SAT scores declined 73 points. In Kansas City, they spent $11,700 per pupil. They raised education figures consistently to reach this very high level; they had a teacher- pupil ratio of 13-1, without raising test scores for the kids. We have to challenge children because we care about them. We care about America. We cannot continue to move children through the system when they do not know how to read and write and perform effectively in this society of which we are a part. I wish we could do it kindly, without having to tell people: Sorry, you didn't meet the standards; you have to take this course over again. Oftentimes that is what we have to do. It is the way life is on the football field or in a military unit. You have to meet certain standards. We are in a world that demands first rate competition. If we are not prepared, we will lose out. I am concerned about it. All of America is concerned. I think we can make progress toward that goal. I believe we should reject this amendment to the underlying amendment proposed by Senator Feinstein and myself. With that, we can send a message to America that we will have some accountability, that we will encourage children to improve. When we recognize that large numbers of students are not meeting those standards, we can redirect resources to find out exactly what that problem is and rectify it. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. SESSIONS. What is the balance of my time?

Mr. SESSIONS. I reclaim my time.

Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator does not define it in the statute. They won't know what the Senator said on the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I conclude by explaining why this amendment is so impractical. It says children have to have multiple opportunities for parental involvement. I don't know what that means.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the second-degree amendment provision of this section--that is, the end of social promotion--shall not apply to any child who is not afforded by the State educational agency an opportunity to learn the material necessary. I don't know what that means. That can mean almost anything to anyone. One of the requirement that has to be in the amendment or this bill does not apply is that a child has the opportunity to receive high- quality early childhood education. What does that mean? It means anything anybody says it does. The President of the United States says it is time to end social promotion. The overwhelming majority of American people believe so. Certainly the people on this side of the aisle believe so. I believe a majority on that side of the aisle believe so. Let's not go with some meddling second-degree amendment that will, in effect, undermine the import of the amendment Senator Feinstein has offered. Let's not do that. Let's send a clear message that we care about children and we want to confront them at an early age and find out whether or not they are meeting basic standards. If they are not, let's start helping them. We are not going to put them in jail if they are not meeting standards. We ought to set about to find out who is not meeting those standards and start helping them. That is what it is all about. That is what we need to do. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will speak in opposition to the second-degree amendment proposed by the Senator from Minnesota. First and foremost, as everybody knows who has been participating in this debate and can understand how the system works, the second-degree amendment, as proposed, would gut Senator Feinstein's and my first- degree amendment. It would simply make it impossible to enforce. Of course, that is what the Senator from Minnesota desires. He is not for testing or accountability or the end of social promotion. I respect that position. But his President, the President of the United States, in his State of the Union Address, to a cheer from the audience, called for an end of social promotion. It is something whose time has come and gone. It is time to care about children and to care about the billions of dollars we are spending on education. And we are going to spend more next year than we did this year. But if we care about what is happening with it, we have to ask if there is some accountability. We can't simply allow children to go on and on, be promoted, and end up being an all-pro football player who can't read and write. That is happening in America, to a lesser degree mostly, but to a sad degree too often throughout this country. We are not making sure children are meeting minimum standards. When we do so, problems arise. They have to be confronted. Right now, we are denying the problem. We are enabling an inefficient system to continue. We refuse to do what is required to point out to everybody who is not meeting minimum standards. Once we find that out, then we can all get together and do something to fix it. There is plenty of money in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--soon to be passed, I hope--that will provide a continual flow of money for disadvantaged schools throughout America, so we can improve that system. This amendment is nothing more than a gutting and an elimination and a wiping out of the total intent of the Feinstein-Sessions amendment. It will not allow an end to social promotion in America. Our amendment will. But it will allow the States to decide how to do it. If the States decide to have different standards for children who have difficulties, or disadvantaged or special education kids, they can do so. We are not saying how they ought to do it. But if we care about those children, we have to know, ourselves, whether or not they are learning. If they are not learning, we have to confront that fact. We can't enable this unacceptable behavior to continue. Some of it is on the part of the kids, some of it is on the part of their parents, and some of it may be a poor school. We have to end that. We care about our children. I think Senator Feinstein has made it clear that she cares about them. I do. I want to see the system improved. I am convinced that we must move to eliminate the passing along of kids who are not meeting the most basic of standards. That is why I will oppose the Senator's second-degree amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the time has come to end social promotion. The Feinstein-Sessions amendment does that. It does it in a way that allows the States to set the standards they believe are appropriate for each level of achievement. We are pouring more and more money every year into education. If we care about those children, if we really are concerned about children, we will find out if they are meeting at least minimum academic standards. If they are not, we will be intervening, in a failing system, and will force the system to deal with them and help them through the process. It gives the States complete freedom to set these standards. President Clinton supported this in the State of the Union message. The people of this country overwhelmingly support it. Over 10 States have already gone to it. My State of Alabama is in the process of going to it. The Republican Party has favored it. Senators Feinstein, Lieberman and Byrd are cosponsors of this amendment. It is time for us to pass it. But we must not pass the Wellstone amendment. It will eliminate the ability to make this system work effectively.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, on May 6-8, 2000 more than 1200 students from across the United States will be in Washington, D.C. to compete in the national finals of the ``We the People . . . The Citizen and the Constitution'' program. I am proud to announce that a class from Sparkman High School from the city of Harvest will represent my home state of Alabama in this national event. These young scholars have worked diligently to reach the national finals and through their experience have gained a deep knowledge and understanding of the fundamental principles and values of our constitutional democracy. The ``We the People . . . The Citizen and the Constitution'' program is the most extensive educational program in the country developed specifically to educate young people about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The three-day national competition is modeled after hearings in the United States Congress. These hearings consist of oral presentations by high school students before a panel of adult judges. The students testify as constitutional experts before a congressional committee, that is, the panel of judges representing various regions of the country and a variety of appropriate professional fields. The student testimony is followed by a period of questioning during which the judges probe students for their depth of understanding and ability to apply their constitutional knowledge. Columnist David Broder described the national finals as ``the place to have your faith in the younger generation restored.'' The student team from Sparkman High School is currently conducting research and preparing for the upcoming national competition in Washington, DC. I am extremely proud of the students and teacher and wish them the best of luck at ``We the People'' national finals. I look forward to greeting them when they visit Capitol Hill.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to join in support of this amendment. I think it is a brilliant idea and something that is overdue. I think Senator Hatch has commented quite clearly why the present state of the law is ineffective to assist teachers who are working steadily and giving of themselves sacrificially for their classrooms and why the current tax law benefits them not very much, or almost none at all. I taught one year. I recall that we had expensive readers paid for by the government. I tried to get the disadvantaged children in the classroom to read those readers. They hated it. But there are a bunch of books there on the walls--Daniel Boone, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and those kinds of books. I noticed that if I could get them to read those books, they liked it. Some of them read 30, 40, 50, or 60 books. When I went to the used bookstores, or places such as that, I would pick up books on my own and bring them back to the classroom because there was a lot of satisfaction in seeing those children actually enjoying reading a story. I think sometimes we need to review the quality of the material we are asking our children to read. It may be scientifically sound, but most of it is boring. They don't like it; it is work to them. If you can make reading a pleasure, I think it helps. My personal experience with that indicates to me we ought to encourage teachers to not hesitate. A teacher may bring them to Washington, and they may see prints of historical events or artwork they want to buy right then. The school board isn't going to be available to approve that. They know it will fit right within their classroom and the course they will be studying. They invest their own money in that. I think that ought to be encouraged. My wife taught for a number of years in public schools. She was continually buying things for her bulletin board to share with the elementary classes and to help her teach the lessons she had for that class. There is no way some bureaucrat in Washington or even some school board member or principal is going to be available at the right time to approve that expenditure for a teacher. We do not appreciate our teachers enough. If you haven't been in a classroom to know how hard it is, how frustrating it can be, and how burdensome the regulations are, adding the fact that the days are long and children may not be so well disposed to behave on a given day, you can't know what it is to be a teacher. One of the most frustrating aspects is the little things teachers need that they cannot get unless they pay for them out of their own pocket. They do that continuously. But it is a source of irritation to them. They sense we are not supporting them fully in their mission. I think this is a great amendment, I say to Senator Collins and Senator Kyl. I think it is right on point. I could not be more pleased with it. I would like to be added as a cosponsor to it. I think it will help us in the classroom. The most important point in the education process is what occurs in a classroom, that magic moment when a teacher and child can come together and learning occurs. This will help enhance that. I am pleased to support the amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to thank the Senator from Georgia for his leadership and dedication to education reform. I also appreciate the comments of the Senator from Rhode Island. Really, we are sort of talking about two different games. Senator Reed is talking about tennis and we are talking about baseball. We have, in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which I am a member, a dedicated effort ongoing right now to reauthorize for 5 years the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It contains issues dealing with teachers and poverty and disadvantaged children and how to get money down to the teachers and the people who know our children's names. That will come up later this spring, or as soon as we can possibly get it out. ESEA is where most of the issues that the Senator from Rhode Island and his Democratic colleagues have raised should and will be dealt with. I have been in probably 15 schools in Alabama since the first of this year, and I am not hearing people say they want the Federal Government to take control. Rhode Island is one of the more wealthy States in the Union, they might want school buildings, but in Alabama, they are not telling me that. I have met with teachers, principals, and school board members, the head of the teachers union, and the State Superintendent of Education, talking to them about what the Federal Government can do to improve learning. What we are here for and what we want to do is facilitate children learning. And for the record, that only occurs in the classroom, where a teacher and a child come together at that magic moment when good things happen. It doesn't happen in Washington, DC, or with bureaucracies and policies like that. Senator Wellstone wants to spend it on early childhood. The Senator from Rhode Island wants new teachers. I might add, that we did hire 100,000 new teachers last year. Twenty-five percent of that money can be used for professional development of teachers. This Congress spent about $300 million to $500 million more on education last year than the President asked for and more than the Democratic leadership asked for in their budget. So we are not chintzy on education. The question is, what do we do? The bill in front of us deals with some inequities and problems with the tax code which prevents people from going on and paying for their education. Everybody has to do that, whether it is in public schools or private schools. For example, a big part of this legislation is a bill, S.13, which I offered; called the ``CLASS Act.'' That act is the Collegiate Learning Students Savings Act. What we found was that 39 States in this country right now--and probably 42 or more by the end of this year--have programs to encourage prepaid tuition savings. People would prepay tuition for higher education; they set aside the money today for tuition tomorrow. What we found out is that although the States make the interest on those contributions tax free, the accumulation of that money in those accounts is still taxed by the Federal Government when it is withdrawn. Now, what is wrong with that? I say that is not good public policy. It is not good public policy at its most basic level because what we are doing is taxing good behavior. We are taxing people who do the right thing and go about saving for higher education. At the same time, this Congress over the last number of years has enhanced steadily the subsidies we give to people who borrow money to go to college. There are a lot of subsidies--interest deferments and other tax changes--that encourage people to borrow. In the last decade, we have had more debt incurred for college expenses than we did in the previous three decades. Good public policy ought to say that if you care enough to set aside money on a regular basis to pay for your child's education, the tax man ought not to penalize you for it. As Senator Coverdell himself said earlier, we are getting such leverage from this money. We will probably save, in my opinion, more on the back end by having less loans that we have to pay and subsidize by this Congress than we would by allowing the tax deduction to begin with. I want to share some things about this idea that these tax changes are just for the rich. Of course, you never know how they define rich. You may have a man and a woman who are both working hard and are making $75,000, $80,000, and some intend to call them rich. Those are people doing what we hope every American is doing--working hard, making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, and we burden them consistently with taxes. They have to pay, pay, pay. The breaks always seem to go for somebody else because people would say they are rich. I don't agree with that. Let's look at the numbers we have on who is taking advantage of prepaid tuition plans. We have quite a track record around the country of those. It is middle-income families that are taking advantage of these plans, not the rich. In Florida, 71 percent of the participating families in the Florida prepaid college program have annual incomes of under $50,000, and 25 percent have incomes of less than $30,000. They are steadily putting money aside every year, every month, every week to help pay their children's education--a dream they have. Maybe they didn't get an education. My parents didn't get to go to college. They did everything they could to see that I could go to college. They didn't have a lot of the things that you have today that would help. Mr. President, 72 percent of the tuition contracts in the Alaska Advance College Tuition Payment Plan--a similar plan--have been purchased by families with incomes of less than $47,500; 81 percent of the contracts in Wyoming's plan have been purchased by families with annual incomes of less than $34,000; 62 percent of the contracts in the Pennsylvania plan have been purchased by families with annual incomes of less than $35,000; 36 percent of the participating families in the Texas Tomorrow Fund Program have annual incomes of less than $50,000. The average monthly contribution to a family's college savings account during 1995 in Kentucky was $43 a month. Just $43 a month. According to the Joint Tax Committee's score, the cost of this bill is $174 million over 5 years. That is all it costs. But I promise you that it will increase savings. In fact, not too long ago, I saw an article in one of these financial advisory magazines that wondered whether or not they considered it sort of a wash, whether it was a good investment to put your money in a college savings plan if they are going to tax the interest on it. I can see why this would be an inducement to make absolutely clear that it is a smart investment to invest in savings accounts while your children are young. Mr. President, I believe in education. I taught in a public school for one year. I got to do something easy after that, I went to law school. Anybody who hasn't taught doesn't know how difficult it is. My wife taught for a number of years in public schools. I have been there when she came home at night in tears over the frustrations and difficulties of teaching. Teachers care about their kids. It is tough in those classrooms day after day. It is frustrating. So often what I am hearing when I talk to teachers is that Federal regulations are making their lives more difficult than they would be otherwise. They are telling me that if you would give us freedom to use some of the money you are giving, we could do more with it. You don't know in Washington. What do we know in Washington? We can't write a law that can appropriately provide in a sensible way precisely what is needed in schools that are different--schools in the Northwest, schools in the big cities, schools in the small towns. Each State has different systems of education. Some are desperate for new teachers. Some need more buildings. Some need more computers. The Senator from Minnesota said Minnesota didn't have textbooks. Minnesota ought to have textbooks. They have enough money to pay for textbooks. Alabama has textbooks. Another thing we need to know and remember very clearly--I think it is so important--is we need to do everything we can in this Congress to improve learning. We know, despite the fact we are second only I believe to Israel in per capita spending on education, that our test scores are not good. We finished 19th out of 21 industrial nations in math and science test scores, and 21 out of 21 for physics test scores. Somehow something is not working in our educational programs. I believe the answer to it--from my travels and from talking to teachers and close friends of mine who are teachers--is that we need to focus our attention on the individual schools, even down to the individual classrooms because that is where learning occurs. We need to empower the people who know our children's names. The Federal Government simply does not have the clout to tell schools how to run their systems. In case many of you may not know, the Federal Government provides only 6 percent of the cost of education in America. Historically, education has always been a State and local enterprise. We have local school boards. We have local superintendents. We have principals who participate in the civic clubs of our community, who know our parents, teachers who know our parents, and PTA associations. Education is local. One of the best speeches I have ever heard on this floor is the one Senator Byrd from West Virginia shared about the one-room schoolhouse he went to. I didn't go to a one-room school. But it was a country school. They brought water from the spring in a bucket and we drank from a single dipper. It seems he has done rather well. There is not a more educated person in this Senate than Senator Byrd. There is little doubt about that. I believe we need to look at what we are doing. What is this legislation about? This is not a cure-all to educational problems. This is simply a proposal to allow tax policy to encourage people to save for education. What is wrong with that? The cost of it is infinitesimally small compared to what we are spending in this Congress on education. It is minute. But it would increase substantially parental involvement in making money available to educate children according to the wishes of the parent. It is a good idea, I believe, and a healthy idea. I wish to say again how much I appreciate Senator Coverdell's leadership with this effort. Senator Roth, who chairs the Finance Committee, is committed to improving education, Senator Bob Graham from Florida, who has been a steadfast supporter of making prepaid tuition plans tax-free, and my good friend Congressman Joe Scarborough of Florida who has sponsored the House companion to the CLASS Act. I think this is a solid first step toward encouraging people and affirming people to care enough to save for the education of their children. Who can be against that? I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I want to join the occupant of the chair on his remarks in support of this legislation, which is far too long overdue and which has cost the taxpayers money because your efforts to see it passed have been frustrated. The leadership you, and others have given to this bill has made a compelling case for its passage. I believe we ought to move forward with it, and hopefully we will this time. I do not agree with some who say this is not an important piece of environmental legislation. It clearly is. We have nuclear waste all over this country in nuclear facilities in less than ideal conditions. That waste can be moved to an ideal location approved by the Federal Government. This is a bill which would help make that happen and clean up the environment. I would like to share some thoughts. I come at this with a little bit of a different view, as I am sure others do. I don't speak for anybody else, and certainly not the chairman who has advocated this legislation so ably. I would like to share a personal insight into where I am coming from with regard to this legislation. During his State of the Union Address, President Clinton remarked: ``The greatest environmental challenge of the new century is global warming. The scientists tell us that the 1990s were the hottest decade of the entire millennium. If we fail to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases''--that comes from burning fossil fuel--``deadly heat waves and droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will flood, and economies will be disrupted. That is going to happen, unless we act.'' But just because the President declared it so does not necessarily make it so. Science surrounding climate change is very complex. In fact, NASA has found through satellite data that the upper atmosphere has not warmed at all over the last 20 years. But, regardless of that, we don't know what is happening out there. Change is always about. The notion that our coastlines will flood or that heat waves will plague the world is a view that is shared by a lot of radical environmentalists, non-growth people in this country and around the world. Some scientists have actually studied the matter, however, and concluded that there are many beneficial changes that occur when carbon dioxide levels increase. If there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, plants grow better. They suck in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen in the process of life that all plants go through. Regardless of who is right and the status of this debate, all of us should look forward to working together in developing a plan to reduce air pollution. In doing so, we will at the same time reduce these greenhouse gases, many of which are not damaging to our health. But we will do that anytime we reduce pollution, as a general rule. The largest component of greenhouse gases, of course, is carbon dioxide, CO2, which is not an unhealthy gas. President Clinton and Vice President Gore have already tried to commit our country, through the Kyoto global warming treaty, to an agreement which would call on the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent below the 1990 level by the year 2002. That was a goal of Kyoto. The Vice President was adamant about committing the United States to reducing emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, just 12 years from now. And the United States already produces greenhouse gas emissions that are 8 percent over 1990 levels. The Energy Information Administration predicts that the United States, however, will need about a 30-percent increase in electricity by the year 2015. We are talking about reducing greenhouse gases in the next 12 years by 15 percent from current levels during a time when we need a 30-percent increase in power. It is going to be very difficult to do under any circumstances. But at the same time we are faced with these difficult choices, this administration has surprisingly and openly opposed the use and continued development of the only options we have to realistically meet the emissions reduction goals--nuclear power and natural gas. Nuclear power currently provides over 20 percent of the electric power in this country. Given the state of energy technology today, a critical component of our emissions reductions plan should be the safe use of nuclear power. We must maintain this energy source, perhaps making it a larger source of our energy mix, and not dismiss its future use outright by opposing this critical legislation. As an example of the environmentally friendly capacity of nuclear power, consider this: Between 1973 and 1997, nuclear power generation avoided the emission of 82.2 million tons of sulfur dioxide, and more than 37 million tons of nitrogen oxide, which would have been released if that electricity had been produced by fossil fuel plants. In 1997 alone, emissions of sulfur dioxide in 1 year would have been about 5 million tons higher, and emissions of nitrogen oxide would have been 2.4 million tons higher had fossil generation plants replaced this nuclear generation. In addition, literally billions of tons of carbon and millions of tons of methane emissions--believed to be the most significant greenhouse gas--could have been avoided by the sensible use of nuclear power in this country. Even though we are still fighting health problems associated with pollution, a problem that is measurable and real, the safe use of nuclear power in this country and elsewhere has helped all of us to breathe easier. In fact, there has not been a single incident in this country of a person being significantly injured or losing their life at a nuclear power plant in the entire history of US nuclear power production. That wouldn't have been true at plants burning coal. How many coal trucks have had wrecks and killed people? How many coal miners have been injured or killed? How many people have been killed in moving gas through pipelines and that kind of thing? Nuclear power has actually been much safer than those options. Indeed, other countries are far ahead of us. In France, 76 percent of their power is nuclear. And soon, 50 percent of the power in Japan will be generated by nuclear plants. Nuclear powerplants provided some 16 percent of the world's energy production in 1998. Yet the United States hasn't proposed to build a new plant in over 23 years. One reason is the cost is rising and is being driven up by our inability to dispose of even small amounts of nuclear waste. On November 8, 1997, just after signing the Kyoto greenhouse gas treaty, Vice President Gore stated: There are other parts of the Earth's ecological systems that are also threatened by the increasingly harsh impact of thoughtless behavior: The poisoning of too many places where people--especially poor people--live, and the deaths of too many children--especially poor children--from polluted water and dirty air. Perhaps the Vice President should heed his own rhetoric and stop the thoughtless behavior put forth by his own administration that has discouraged both the use of nuclear power and the production of our cleanest fossil fuel--natural gas. On September 3, 1999, Vice President Gore pledged to stop the new leasing of oil and gas sites offshore. It is really a stunning thing. We are producing natural gas mainly in the Gulf of Mexico at unprecedented rates. And we have the opportunity, through recent discoveries there, to produce even more. Producing more natural gas in this country will reduce our burden on coal and it will reduce our burden on oil, which is more polluting. It will reduce our trade imbalance and debt to foreign producers in the Middle East where we are shifting huge amounts of our wealth. Vice President Gore said we are going to stop natural gas production. He went on to state his intention to shut down even existing gas wells. Near my home in Mobile Bay, I fished around the oil and gas rigs there. It is some of the cleanest water you can find. We are having no problems with those wells. The Vice President said: If elected President, I will take steps to prevent any drilling on the older leases that were granted during previous administrations . . . He is even committing to shut down current natural gas wells that are producing the cleanest form of fossil fuel energy we have today. These comments and the policies of this administration on pollution and the environment just don't mesh. There simply is no way to meet our pollution reduction goals while simultaneously stopping the production of clean natural gas and blocking the development of a healthy nuclear power industry in this country. The Senator from Idaho earlier said we have no energy policy in this country. We are drifting from poll to poll. Well I think he may be right. Some say wind, solar, and biomass technologies are the way to meet our air pollution goals. I know of some good research projects. One in my home State uses switch grass and coal to help produce electricity. It is an environmentally friendly project and I hope it will be successful. While a lot of progress has been made in this area, we must face the reality that these new technologies are good steps--but they are small steps; they simply cannot be relied upon to meet our energy needs over the next 40 to 50 years. Every day, new ideas, new procedures, and new techniques cut fuel use, allowing citizens to get energy with less pollution. Refrigerators today are using less than half the electricity they did 15 or 20 years ago. That is good progress. The fact is, electricity consumption is up in the last 8 years despite these huge increases in efficiency. World demand also will rise. The theory of global warming does not hinge solely on pollution in the United States. The theory suggests that global air emissions are creating, so the theory goes, a greenhouse effect that might raise the temperature around the world. I know people have become absolutely convinced this is a scientific fact; my staff and I have been doing research and I am not yet convinced. Again I repeat: NASA has monitored the temperature of the upper atmosphere for over 20 years using satellites, and they find the upper atmosphere has not warmed. Originally, the greenhouse gas theorists believed that this part of the atmosphere would be where the warming would first occur. It has not. I point out that even members of President Clinton's own administration have recognized that nuclear power must play a large part in our energy mix. In March of 1999, Ambassador John Ritch, President Clinton's appointed Ambassador to the North Atlantic Assembly, an assembly of parliamentarians to the North Atlantic countries, commented on this issue we are debating today. He said: The reality is that, of all energy forms capable of meeting the world's expanding needs, nuclear power yields the least and most easily managed waste. In October of 1998, Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat remarked: I believe very firmly that nuclear [power] has to be a significant part of our energy future and a large part of the Western world if we are going to meet these emission reduction targets. Those who think we can accomplish these goals without a significant nuclear industry are simply mistaken. However, we cannot have this industry if we cannot dispose of the waste. By passing sensible nuclear waste legislation, we have the greatest opportunity to reduce air pollution since the passage of the Clean Air Act. Nuclear power produces virtually no air emissions and generates an extremely small amount of solid waste. In fact, relative to the amount of power generated per ton of waste produced, nuclear power rates among the cleanest of all energy technologies. My judgment, which has been formed over time, is that we have to develop policies which will encourage the future development of nuclear power in this country--not build roadblocks to its use. How can we continue to maintain 20-percent power production from nuclear plants if these plants are now going to reach an age where they will have to be closed down? What will we do? The only choice is to burn fossil fuel if we don't use nuclear power. Currently, there are tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at 71 sites in 34 States around this country. Most of the spent fuel is stored onsite at nuclear plants. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 established a nuclear waste storage fund and required the Department of Energy to begin accepting nuclear waste from these plants all over the country by 1998. The fund was paid for by a user fee imposed on customers of electricity--that is, American citizens. That is, in effect, a tax on American citizens that has been paid for quite some time to store this nuclear waste. To date, the fund has grown to over $15 billion, as the chairman has pointed out. Not a single ton of spent nuclear fuel has been accepted by the Department of Energy. That is an outrage. As a result of the Department's failure to meet the 1998 deadline, the Department is currently facing multiple lawsuits which could cost the Federal Government--and taxpayers--tens of billions of dollars for their failure to produce a safe storage spot and make it available. The Department of Energy has spent over $4 billion to study the safety and environmental impact of storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain site. That is $4 billion. The general fund budget of the State of Alabama, with 4 million citizens, is $1 billion. Four billion is a lot of money that has been spent. The Department's findings indicate that Yucca Mountain is ideally suited for the long-term storage of nuclear power. Despite the rhetoric put forth by those who oppose this bill, the fact is, Yucca Mountain is located in the heart of a remote Nevada nuclear test range where nearly 1,000 nuclear devices have been detonated and tested over the years during the cold war. It is a desert. It is not located near any population center and would pose no threat to the surrounding areas. The safe long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel--which has no potential to blow up--is a problem we can and should have solved. By passing S. 1287, we will set in motion a well-researched plan to safely solve this problem once and for all and allow America to move forward in meeting our goals: Cleaning up the environment of nuclear waste and reducing air pollution by continuing to allow the nuclear industry to function. The Clinton-Gore administration has suggested it may veto this bill if it arrives on the President's desk. The effect of this announcement is to frustrate a $15 billion plan agreed to years ago. To say ``no'' to nuclear power use in this country is to say ``no'' to our best chance to significantly reduce air pollution and save the environment. A vote against this bill is a vote against the environment, a vote against common sense and a vote against fiscal sanity. We have dawdled and delayed far too long. Now is the time to store this hazardous waste under a mountain, at an old nuclear test range in the Nevada desert, at Yucca Mountain. I thank the chairman of this committee for his courageous, steadfast, and determined effort to bring this outrage to an end and to get this matter settled. I appreciate his leadership, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Feingold has again presented an amendment involving landlords and eviction cases. It is one of the biggest problems we have in the bankruptcy code. He has made some progress from his original amendment, but it still basically makes a Federal case out of eviction proceedings. Under Senator Feingold's amendment, when a lease has expired, tenants can go to bankruptcy court to delay and file motions and have hearings that can draw out the case even longer than the time that the Senator has suggested would normally occur. That ought to be done in State systems where eviction cases are traditionally litigated--not in Federal Bankruptcy court. Every State has a procedure and remedies and rights for tenants being evicted. That is where those cases ought to be handled, not in bankruptcy court. We know that 3,886 people filed bankruptcy in Los Angeles County in 1996 simply for the purpose of defeating eviction. We have seen advertisements in newspapers saying, ``hire us as your bankruptcy lawyer and we can delay your eviction for 7 months.'' This is the kind of thing that is not healthy, the kind of thing that has disrupted and distorted bankruptcy law. I believe bankruptcy law upsets legitimate landlords, many of whom are retirees and people who have only a few apartments or a duplex that they manage, when they can't get a tenant out. So this amendment that he proposes, in effect, continues the process of allowing the tenant to take his eviction case to bankruptcy court. This is what has been happening and what will continue to happen if the Senator's amendment is adopted. A tenant contests an eviction in State court, and as he moves toward the conclusion of that case, he then has his bankruptcy lawyer file bankruptcy. An automatic stay would occur even with this notice Senator Feingold proposes, at least for 2 weeks. Then they would be eligible for a hearing in bankruptcy court on the certification that had been submitted, and then that would delay things. After the landlord eventually wins, for example, in a case in which the lease has expired, the case still then has to go back to State court and has to be revived because it is at the bottom of the judge's docket. The landlord has to go back to the State court lawyer to proceed with it. I think that is a completely unworkable proposal. I do understand the Senator's concern. We ought to do all we can to help those who are homeless. We have many provisions for dealing with homeless people, but mandating private landlords to provide housing for people who do not have a valid lease is not the right approach, in my view. Mr. President, with regard to the gun issue, I think we need to think clearly about what we are doing. We are talking about removing bankruptcy protection from two kinds of judgments: Judgments incurred by people who ``potentially'' violate the law near an abortion clinic and judgments incurred by firearms manufacturers or dealers when some third party breaks the law by using a firearm to injure another person. Each of us has a special responsibility, I believe, to this Senate and our constitutional responsibilities to create a coherent, fair justice system for allowing citizens' debts to be discharged. That is what bankruptcy is. Every time someone declares bankruptcy, someone whom he or she justly owes is not paid--a store owner, a doctor, a bank, or whoever. So most of us are here to achieve honest bankruptcy reform. These amendments, however, involving the abortion clinic exception and the gun manufacturers exception have all the earmarks of partisan injection of politics into the bankruptcy code and an attack on people who are unpopular, particularly groups or institutions that are unpopular with the political left. These political attacks come at the expense of the integrity and consistency of our bankruptcy system. We should not allow these kinds of attacks to happen. It is our duty to create a legal system for all Americans and not just to pursue special interest politics. One Senator who proposed this amendment said, well, if it is political, it is popular. I do not believe it would be popular if we had a group of citizens and we explained exactly with regard to the abortion clinic or with regard to the gun manufacturers how they were being targeted specifically in ways that similar businesses and institutions were not being targeted and were not being given an exemption from bankruptcy. I suggest that this is not a targeting of violence. These amendments are basically targeting political enemies. The amendments create an exception to the generally applicable bankruptcy protections for two specific classes: Pro-life activists who are overzealous and may violate Federal law, and firearms manufacturers that in general adhere to the law with great attention and, as a matter of fact, do what they are supposed to do and sell firearms according to Federal regulations. Remember that by the established rule of law, any debt that arises from ``wilful or malicious'' conduct by any institution today is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. In other words, if you commit an action that is malicious or willful and you go into bankruptcy court, you can't wipe out that debt; you still have to pay it. If we remove the general bankruptcy protection for court judgment against these targeted groups, why aren't we eliminating these protections for other types of debtors whose acts other people may not like in this country? If the goal were to stop violence and protect children from exposure to bad products, you might expect my colleagues who support this amendment to offer amendments that remove generally applicable bankruptcy protections from other entities. For example, I don't see them proposing to remove protections for union leaders who may acquiesce in strike violence around a plant, or environmental terrorists or their organization who may damage the equipment of logging companies. They are not proposing we provide special protections for Hollywood production companies that inundate our children with smut and violence. Take, for example, the Hollywood entertainment industry. Through pornographic, violent movies and other activities, this industry pumps violent images into the minds of our people, especially children. Michael Carneal, the high school student in Paducah, KY, who killed several of his classmates, stated that the violent Hollywood movie, ``The Basketball Diaries,'' which featured a disaffected high school student who shoots a gun into a classroom of students, influenced him to commit his horrible crime. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold--the killers in the Littleton, CO, Columbine High School--were avid players of the video game ``Doom'' in which they hunted down and shot their victims. As the New York Times stated, ``the search for the cause in the Littleton shootings continues, and much of it has come to focus on violent video games.'' Will there be lawsuits against those companies? Who can forget Ted Bundy, a serial killer who preyed on young co-eds, who was convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair? He confessed that he became addicted to pornography and that pornography played a major role in developing his homicidal fantasies that led to his violent and horrific crimes. As Senator Hatch's recent Report entitled, ``Children, Violence, and the Media'' noted: ``The debate is over,'' begins a position paper on media violence by the American Psychiatric Association, ``[f]or the last three decades, the one predominant finding in research on the mass media is that exposure to media portrayals of violence increases aggressive behavior in children.'' In the words of Jeffrey McIntyre, legislative and federal affairs officer for the American Psychological Association, ``To argue against it is like arguing against gravity.'' But Hollywood and other activist groups are not targets of these bankruptcy penalties. Why? Because they are friends of some of the people proposing these amendments. After criticizing Hollywood in public for violent movies and video games that could be responsible for tragedies such as the one at Columbine High School, President Clinton that same day went to a fundraiser in which Hollywood contributors gave $2 million to the Democratic Party. Supporters of this amendment say they want to stop those who peddle violence to children; that is, punish gun manufacturers, they say. But what about these others who could be sued and have judgments against them? I could say let's provide an exception to them. But, really, that is not the right approach for us to take. We ought not to be carving out exceptions and protections and targeting groups we don't like. We need to create a basic bankruptcy law that treats all lawful businesses the same. It certainly strikes me as odd that we would want to target people who feel deeply about an issue such as abortion and who, through perhaps excess zeal, may potentially violate the law when protesting against abortion. But what about other groups? Union leaders are also picketing. Civil rights groups, ACLU groups--why aren't they being singled out by this amendment? These amendments do not represent a high-minded, moral stance against the marketing of violence or against violence itself. Instead, the real reason behind these proposals, it appears to me, is to attack political enemies of certain people. I could consider offering amendments to include groups such as pornographers, but I don't think that is the right approach. I believe we ought to stay with the historic general principles of law that say those who are willful and those who are malicious cannot discharge their debt. I would like to say a couple of things about the gun manufacturer lawsuits.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. You got it right. Mr. President, I must register my strongest opposition to this amendment. It continues the one thing that causes so much grief. It makes a Federal case out of eviction proceedings. We know that in Los Angeles 3,886 bankruptcy cases were filed in 1996 simply to delay the eviction cases that were pending in the State court. In other words, if you file for eviction, under the current law when a person files bankruptcy, that eviction case is stayed. It then goes to bankruptcy court. The landlord, many of whom are individual people without great wealth, have already hired a lawyer to handle the eviction and now has to hire a Federal court bankruptcy lawyer to go into Federal court. After they win, as they always do because an expired lease is not an asset of the estate and cannot be subject to the control of the bankruptcy judge, they have to then go back to State court, ask the State judge to pick up the litigation, and proceed. The 15-days that the Senator suggests is better than his first amendment, but it does in no way deny the person from going to Federal court. They can then have a hearing after the 15 days. They can contest whether the tenant used drugs or not in Federal court. They are evicting them from the apartment because of drug use or other reasons. We simply should not do this. The true fact is that eventually all these contests in bankruptcy court are eventually lost. Why go through the process? Let the State court eviction proceedings hold sway and make the decisions where they have always been made.

Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator from Alabama yields the floor and thanks the Chair.

Mr. SESSIONS. I trust we will remember next time. The argument was made previously that we target and provide an exception in the bill for drunk drivers and drunk boaters. Yes, the current law does do that. But drunk drivers and drunk boaters are the people who conduct themselves in a reckless and endangering way. They ought to be punished. It is legitimate for us to give them a different treatment. But the proposed amendment dealing with gun manufacturers does not target the illegal or irresponsible gun user. It targets a responsible, federally licensed, law-abiding gun manufacturer. That is a big difference. I have not heard any of my colleagues across the aisle argue that automobile and boat manufacturers should have their product liability debt classified as ``nondischargeable.'' And they should not be. Because those manufacturers, as firearm manufacturers, are not at fault. It is the irresponsible driver or the irresponsible shooter. Briefly, I will say this. With regard to the suits against gun manufacturers, I think it is very instructive to note the Department of Justice, the Presidentially appointed Attorney General, has not agreed to file these lawsuits. The reason is there is no legal basis for them. Two of them have already been dismissed. They have conjured up a political appointee in HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to come up with this idea that if you sell a gun precisely according to Federal law, with all the regulations and do everything you can possible, and then the buyer goes out and uses it illegally, the seller or manufacturer is liable. That is not going to hold up in a court of law. If they want to make that law, let's pass a law, let's put it on the floor and vote for it. We have to stop utilizing the litigation process to set public policy in this country. And that is what this is. It is a dangerous trend. Indeed, a number of institutions which you would not expect, and individuals, have commented on this. The Washington Post, which is absolutely committed to gun control in America, as much as any institution I know of, wrote this recently, on the threats of HUD to file a lawsuit. The Post said: It seems wrong for an agency of the Federal Government to organize other plaintiffs to put pressure on an industry-- even a distasteful industry--to achieve policy results the administration has not been able to achieve through normal legislation and regulation. They went on: It is an abuse of a valuable system, [the legal system] one that could make it less valuable [the legal system could be less valuable] as people come to view the legal system as nothing more than an arm of policymakers. I remember a number of years ago, Hodding Carter, who used to serve President Jimmy Carter, said on a national TV program, we liberals have gotten to the point where we want to use the legal system to carry out our agenda we can no longer win at the ballot box. Robert Reich, President Clinton's former Secretary of Labor, has characterized these tactics as: . . . blatant end-runs around the democratic process . . . and nothing short of a faux legislation, which sacrifices democracy to the discretion of administrative officials operating under utter secrecy. . . . Mr. Reich goes on to say: The way to fix everything isn't to turn our backs on the democratic process and pursue litigation as the administration [his former administration] is doing. That is precisely what we are doing. A lawsuit by lawyers who file these actions to set public policy is dangerous because they were not elected to set that policy. They are not accountable to the people, as we are. If we want to pass a law to burden gun manufacturers further, so be it. We are accountable to the American people and we are responsible for the law. But who are these people who, through lawsuits and secret negotiations, are going do that? That is how we got into this. I don't think these lawsuits are going to be successful, but I certainly do not believe we ought to provide a particular exception, that if somehow they are successful and judgments are rendered so the companies have to go into bankruptcy, somehow they cannot even go into bankruptcy and discharge their debts. That is what we are talking about. With regard to both of these amendments, they are targeted. They have the earmarks of having a political agenda behind them. They interfere with the objectivity and fairness of the bankruptcy code. We ought not pass them. We ought to reject them both, and we ought to reject the Feingold amendment on rent because we do not need to continue to provide a Federal court trial of matters involving eviction. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Presiding Officer from----