Gordon Smith

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, today the Senate will resume consideration of the pending Wellstone amendment with 1 hour of debate remaining under the previous agreement. After all time is used or yielded back, the Senate will proceed to a vote on the Wellstone amendment, which will be followed by a vote on the Moynihan amendment No. 2663. Therefore, Senators can expect two back-to-back votes to begin at approximately 10:30 a.m. It is hoped that further progress can be made on the appropriations process during today's session, and therefore votes can be anticipated throughout the day. It is also hoped that an agreement can be reached regarding the remaining amendments to the bankruptcy reform bill so that the Senate can complete the bill prior to the impending adjournment. I thank my colleagues for their attention.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I appreciate the chance to talk so the American people can hear this. The problem we are talking about is that, for agriculture, we are not going to create just an antitrust division that ought to be going to work every day evaluating these things, but now we are going to create a whole new role for USDA to make judgments about the marketplace. I don't trust Government to make those judgments about the marketplace; I really don't. I think we mess it up more than we help it. So I really don't think that satisfies my concern.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I am all for the rules Teddy Roosevelt created. If they were enforced, we would not need to develop more Government. I guess I would understand the Senator's amendment more if he didn't exempt agricultural cooperatives. I don't understand that. It is a different forum of how you do agribusiness. It is farmer-owned. But, frankly, it is unfair to other farmers who do not process for nonfarmer cooperatives. I just think if it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander. But it is not in this amendment. It is unfair, and it isn't right. Treat them all the same or, frankly, let's defeat this amendment. I sincerely hope the Senate will not interfere in the marketplace as proposed by this amendment. Allow the Judiciary Committee to go forward and hold its hearings, and let's ask the antitrust department and Justice Department to go to work and enforce the laws we already have.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise to respond to Senator Wellstone, not with any personal animus at all, but to give a perspective on this issue that perhaps I uniquely can give because, I say to Senator Wellstone, before I came into politics, I was a pea processor. I say to the Senator, his amendment covers everybody I know in the industry, save those who are in farm cooperatives.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. I ran a stock company, a food processing company. But its ownership was not by farmers but by stockbrokers.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. I come to the floor, I say to Senator Wellstone, with the same interest that he has in farmers. I care very deeply about the rural economy. I note, with great concern, what is happening to my farmer friends and the rural economy. And I simply come here, in respect, and say, while as well-motivated as I believe the Senator from Minnesota is with his amendment, it is too broad and too wrong when it comes to what we believe in in this country, which is a free market. I look at what has affected the farmers in my area and much of rural Oregon. I know in Oregon the Asian flu had a great deal to do with a loss of markets and low commodity prices. I have watched, in horror, as this administration has attacked the grazing industry in my State, going after their grazing rights, making sure the little guy can't utilize public lands anymore. I have watched, with amazement, that in the Columbia Basin there is actually serious talk about taking out transportation systems provided by hydroelectric dams that are able to transport hundreds of millions of tons of wheat and grain inland from Idaho all the way to the Port of Portland and out into the Pacific rim. What happens to those farmers? This bill does not help at all. I look at the Food Quality Protection Act being administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. While I support the Food Quality Protection Act, I have been one who has pled with this administration to employ good science as they review chemical tolerances. As they take away the pesticides, the herbicides that these farmers have depended upon--which have greatly contributed to their ability to be good farmers and to produce high-quality crops with low production costs-- they leave farmers with no effective alternatives. This bill does not address these farmers' concerns. I have to say that the way the Senator from Minnesota has described this day of decision with respect to farmers, I think he has forgotten that we in this Congress have already voted out $8.7 billion in emergency assistance to farmers to help tide them through this very desperate season. Many of us have gone to the U.S. Trade Representative and pled that this time, in Seattle at the WTO meetings, agriculture not be left out. One of the predicates of the Freedom To Farm Act was that we would increase markets and we would decrease regulations. We have not done either of those things. We have diminished markets, and we have increased regulation. We have, I am afraid, perhaps cut the farmer too short a deal. That is in part why we had to send another $8.7 billion in assistance this year. In addition to that, I have tried to help farmers with the whole issue of immigrant labor, trying to reform the H-2A program. I am amazed at the things that are said about those of us who actually believe immigrant workers should have some legal stature to be here, to do labor that they want to do and that agricultural employers need them to do if they are going to have a harvest. I have been amazed at the way that we, who are trying to improve their legal standing, are characterized by those who are in the labor shortage business. If you want to hurt a farmer, just make sure he does not have the ability to have his crops harvested. The amendment of the Senator from Minnesota does nothing for these farmer's concerns. I want him to know, and anyone else interested in this issue, that Senator Hatch, of the Judiciary Committee, has announced that there will be hearings on agricultural concentration so we can examine the instances where perhaps the Federal light ought to be put on a few mergers and acquisitions. We have laws to take care of those things. They need to be enforced. Perhaps they are not being enforced to the extent some would prefer. Senator Hatch's hearings I believe will get at that issue. But the thing I would really to impress upon my colleagues in the Senate is that Senator Wellstone's amendment exempts farm cooperatives. I have nothing against farm cooperatives. They do a lot of business in my State, and they do a lot of good in my State. They play a very important role in agriculture. About one-third of the farmers in this country have a farm cooperative for the outlet of their production. How about the other two-thirds? The other two-thirds grow their products for stock-owned companies. What the Senator's amendment is proposing to do is to say that in this 18-month moratorium, no market conduct, no mergers, no acquisitions can occur among stock-held companies. However, this same activity, among farm cooperatives, is no problem. That makes no sense to me. In fact, a lot of farm cooperatives buy stock companies. To me, this is just patently unfair. If we should do something this un- American, this countermarket, we should do it to all. But, frankly, let's not do it to any. There are many ways to help the farm community without this kind of market intrusion by the Government. This really is an amendment that will ask every Senator what they believe about the free market system, not what they believe about helping farmers. My Heavens, there is almost nothing you could bring to this floor that would actually help a farmer that I would not vote for or have tried to vote for and have taken a lot of heat for because I have voted for things that really do help a farmer to survive. But to go in and say one class of farm processors is exempt but two-thirds of you cannot participate in the free market, frankly, strikes me as strange. I will tell you another thing that really is troubling based on my experience. I have seen many farm cooperatives be very good at producing lots of food, lots of surplus. In some instances, some have not been as good at marketing that surplus. So in a backhanded way, what we are saying is, if you organize yourself in this way, you get the benefit of the free market, but if you organize yourself as a stock company, you are limited as to how you can merge, sell, and acquire. What does that mean to two-thirds of the farmers in this country? What does that mean to them, if their output goes to a stock food processor? It means the food processor, if he or she is in trouble, has one option because they can't sell. They can't merge. They could go bankrupt. So what have you done to help the two-thirds of the farmers in this country, if you put their outlet of production in that kind of jeopardy? This amendment is a shotgun blast at the marketplace. I plead with my colleagues, I appeal to their commitment to free enterprise not to interfere in the marketplace in this way. This does not work. This is not fair. This is not the American way. If there are antitrust problems, we have laws for that. If there is illegal conduct, we have laws to go after crooks. But why penalize all of the agricultural community that organizes themselves in stock companies as opposed to farm cooperatives? It makes no sense. I, frankly, don't know of a precedent for that in our Nation's history. Perhaps someone can show me one. This is not the way to help farmers. This is wrong. This penalizes hundreds and thousands of food processors who are trying to deliver to the farmer a good outlet for their product and to pay them a fair price. I am aware of one farm cooperative this year that has said to their growers, the dollar you put in for a crop, we are going to pay you 75 cents this year. And, in this instance, all of the stock food processors are paying 100 cents on a dollar, plus the profit that they guaranteed by the contract. So we are going to punish the processor that is delivering 100 cents and more on the dollar? We are going to advantage those who are delivering less than that? This amendment is misguided and must not pass, or we will be punishing farmers and food processors that simply do not deserve this kind of treatment from the Senate. I rise in opposition to the amendment being brought forward by the Senator from Minnesota. While I recognize the concern among farmers in his state and mine over agribusiness concentration, I believe we would be making a profound mistake if we were to respond to the current situation by adopting this amendment today. I, too, am concerned about the future of family farmers and American agriculture. Agriculture is one of the largest industries in Oregon. It represents more than 140,000 jobs including on-farm employment, food processing, marketing, and all the other factors that go into bringing fine Oregon produce to restaurants, grocery stores, and dining room tables around the country. It is the dominant industry in many Oregon counties, and it flourishes just a short drive from the urban centers of Portland and Eugene. So when farmers are concerned about something, I am too. I am well aware that many people in farm country are suffering these days from another year of low commodity prices. Most of the farmers that have spoken to me about this current farm crisis believe it is mainly due to the lack of overseas market access, expensive environmental and labor regulatory burdens, and in some areas, natural disasters. For a state like Oregon that exports much of its produce across the Pacific, the recent Asian financial crisis has had a devastating impact on farmer's bottom lines. Moreover, in the Northwest especially, I have been witness to an Administration that has not been particularly friendly towards the interests of rural communities by continuously threatening long-standing grazing rights and the essential grain transportation network afforded by the lower Snake River dams. So I have tried to be very sensitive and responsive to the needs of farmers in rural America that have fallen into something of a mini- depression while watching their urban counterparts enjoy an economic boom. Here in the Congress, we have decided to direct billions of taxpayer dollars in assistance to help tide farmers over during these lean years--another $8.7 billion was sent out to farm country this fall. I have voted for these assistance packages knowing that they are short-term fixes and that much work remains to be done to improve the long-term outlook. Part of this is improving the demand side of the equation through the expansion of trade opportunities. I have been very supportive of unilateral sanctions reform, tearing down agriculture trade barriers through the WTO, and full funding for the promotion of American commodities overseas utilizing the Market Access Program. These efforts are all vital to induce a rebound in world demand, and, eventually, a rebound for our farmer's prices here at home. An equally important part of the equation is to reduce costs of production for farmers that come in the form of excessive federally-mandated regulations. I have worked hard to overhaul the currently impractical H2A guest worker program and free farmers from INS and Social Security Administration intimidation by giving them a legal workforce. I have consistently pushed for a science-based implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act, and an even-handed review of pesticide tolerances. I believe that continued work to open market opportunities for farmers while fulfilling our promises to ease regulatory burdens-- in other words keeping the Congress' promises under the Freedom to Farm bill--will be necessary in order to get the farm economy back on track. With that said, I am also aware that many farmers in my state and around the country have reservations about the pace of change and consolidation underway in certain agriculture sectors. The meat packing and grain processing industries have seen a number of headline-grabbing mergers and acquisitions in recent years. Critics of these mergers often cite the 3% rise in consumer food prices that has come over the last 15 years while the farmer's percentage of the food dollar has simultaneously dropped 36%. Others note the high profits attained by large agribusinesses at a time when many farmers continue to suffer from historically low commodity prices. Certainly, the pace of the concentration and how it affects the bargaining power of average producers and the overall future of family farming warrant careful review by appropriate federal agencies and continued study by the Congress. I note that this issue of concentration and competitiveness in agriculture was the subject of a recent hearing in the House Judiciary Committee just a few weeks ago. In addition, Chairman Hatch just announced last week that his Judiciary Committee will be looking into this issue in a comprehensive way early next year. I also want to point out that we in the Congress, largely in response to concerns about the competitiveness within the meat packing industry, just passed a provision to the FY 2000 Agriculture Appropriations bill that requires mandatory price reporting for meat packers. So I want farmers to know that the issue of agribusinesses concentration has not gone unnoticed by the Congress. I concur with the Senator from Minnesota that this is an important issue. However, I must respectfully disagree with his conclusion that an outright moratorium on agribusiness mergers is the right response. His amendment would impose a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions among agribusinesses with annual net revenue or assets of more than $100 million for one party, and $10 million for the other. This would affect agriculture brokers, commission merchants, commodity dealers, agricultural suppliers such as seed and chemical producers, and food processors. This moratorium would remain in effect for 18 months or until Congressional legislation on this issue is enacted. In addition, this amendment would create a new 12 person federal panel to investigate the issue and report back to the Congress and the President. I find it remarkable that one week after tearing down barriers to mergers and increased efficiencies in the financial sector, we are now considering doing the opposite for agribusiness, an industry in part responsible for delivering the safest and most economical food supply in the world. What kind of message for American competitiveness would we be sending to the business world by placing such an arbitrary 18 month moratorium on only certain actors within a particular industry? Unlike most people here in the Senate, I have actually run a food processing business. I have had to meet a payroll, efficiently produce a high quality product, endure all of the bureaucratic government regulations--and do it all at a competitive price the consumer was willing to pay. I had to go out there and compete in the marketplace. From my experience, I can tell you that it is a lot more competitive, at least in the frozen vegetable business, than proponents of this amendment would have you believe. I am afraid that the Wellstone amendment, which has not been subject to Senate hearings or markup in committee is overreaching and blatantly unfair to many honest business people in the agriculture sector. We all know that revolutionary innovations have developed in technology, marketing, and food production and processing over the last one hundred years. Our country has shifted from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy to an information technology and service economy. Today American agriculture has become part of a global marketplace. This is a far cry from the turn of the century when many if not most Americans were directly employed in food production and many producers distributed their goods largely within their own local area. The agribusiness sector--from processors and brokers to suppliers and grocers--has changed with the times as well; just like the small farmer buying land from his neighbor to add production acreage, many food processors and agribusinesses have found it helpful, if not imperative, to band together to meet the challenges of the new economy and, ultimately, the demands of the consumer. It is demand of the consumer that I believe is a large reason for the growing disparity between the food dollar paid at the retail level and the cash received by farmers for their crops. Today's consumer is demanding greater convenience, enhanced nutritional value, choices in packaging, low fat and nonfat products, faster and easier to prepare items--all values usually added to the product after it leaves the farm. In addition, all of these new products have to be marketed in some way so that the customer knows they are available and attaches values to the brand names. And, of course, these products must be offered at a price the consumer is willing to pay. There are a host of reasons why companies find it in their best interest to merge or why one company agrees to be acquired by another. Certainly, any of my colleagues that have experience in the business world understand that there are occasions when businesses, searching for the greatest efficiencies and competitive advantage, find the need to sell an underperforming or unprofitable division. There may be another business out there with the right mix to take these divisions on and make them efficient and profitable. In some instances, businesses that are failing would have to close their doors altogether if there is no willing buyer to come in and restructure the company. If there is no buyer for these businesses, the alternative is simply to see these jobs lost. This ability to adjust to the market and the changing demand of consumers is a fundamental component of our free enterprise system. Now, I am aware that a provision of the Wellstone amendment might allow businesses in severe financial distress to request a waiver from Janet Reno, but that option strikes me as especially bureaucratic and time-consuming. Despite their portrayal as the oppressor of family farmers, many agribusinesses are family-owned operations or small businesses. Although $10 million in assets or annual sales sounds like a lot, when considering the capital-intensive nature of many of these food processing and support businesses, it is not an uncommon threshold to surpass. Many of these business-owners and entrepreneurs are depending on their businesses to serve as their nest egg for retirement. The Wellstone proposal would prevent an unknown number of families in these circumstances from selling their business to whom they pleased. Even worse, the Wellstone proposal only applies to certain agribusinesses--it specifically exempts agriculture cooperatives. Many co-ops are large agribusinesses in their own right that have also acquired smaller companies in recent years. Yet, under the Wellstone amendment, they would be in direct competition with other agriculture businesses and free from the requirements of this moratorium. Mr. President, with this proposal, you would be led to believe that the Justice Department has failed to uphold our federal antitrust laws. However, that has not been the case. In the case that set off much of the concern in the first place, the Cargill-Continental Grain acquisition, the Department of Justice allowed the deal to go through only after the companies divested four port elevators, four river elevators, a rail terminal, and made a number of other concessions to enhance competition. The Justice Department intervened and required similar divestiture before approving the Monsanto Corporation's acquisition of DeKalb Genetics Corporation, ensuring continued competitiveness in the genetically-modified seed industry. Another announcement came just last week with respect to the merger of New Holland and Case Corporations, major farm equipment suppliers. I know the definition of supplier in this amendment exempted farm equipment, but many farmers were concerned about the potential implications of this merger, nonetheless. In this case, the Justice Department again required divestitures on the part of both companies. So, so I think the evidence is clear that the administration is looking at these merger proposals, and looking fairly carefully at what impacts they may have in the market, and enforcing federal antitrust law. Coming on the heals of last Friday's well-publicized victory for the Antitrust Division, I find it astounding that there are those that would imply this is an agency that is sleeping on the job. In closing, I believe the matter at hand is a simple one. Mr. President, the Wellstone amendment is the wrong answer to the wrong question. This isn't the key to farm recovery--that lies with expanding trade opportunities, government regulatory relief, and fulfilling our promises under Freedom to Farm. And this is not even the way to solve any flaws that may exist with our current antitrust laws. Those solutions must be developed with the scrutiny and public hearings of the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees. Do we want to set a precedent today by placing this kind of moratorium on business activity for one particular industry and treat them differently than all other businesses? Do we want to take a sweeping and unprecedented step of pushing a merger moratorium on an unknown number of businesses that play key roles in our food chain? I hope my colleagues will agree with me that the correct answer to both questions is no and that the prudent step to take here is to accept Chairman Hatch's offer to have comprehensive hearings on the matter early next year and take subsequent appropriate action in a way that is fair to our farmers, our businesspeople, and our consumers, alike. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposition to the Wellstone amendment. I yield the floor. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I want to pay tribute to and recognize the contributions Native Americans and Indian tribes have made in the United States and in particular in the State of Oregon. Native Americans have a unique and important relationship with the United States, and Indian tribes continue to persevere in upholding their sovereign governments, economies, culture and heritage. I am pleased to join Senators Campbell and Inouye in submitting this resolution to designate this month as American Indian Heritage Month, and I appreciate their efforts on behalf of all Native Americans. There are nine federally recognized tribes in the State of Oregon. Each of these tribes has successfully collaborated with State and Federal agencies and continues to develop active partnerships with the surrounding communities. Five of Oregon's tribes are located in Western Oregon: The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw, Coquille Indian Tribe, and the Cow Creek Band of Umpquas. Each of the tribes has made its own extraordinary contribution in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest region. The five tribes of Western Oregon have been successful in recent years in restoring their Federal recognition as Indian tribes, and they continue to work to stabilize and revitalize their social, cultural, and economic ties with the State and local communities. There are four tribes located east of Oregon's Cascade Mountains. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, in Easter Oregon, have been successful in their conservation and restoration of salmon and water back into the Umatilla River. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, in Central Oregon, with their Kah-Nee-Ta Resort, have been making significant contributions to Oregon's tourism industry. The Burns Paiute and Klamath Tribes have renewed a foothold in the local economy. Mr. President, I commend the contributions Native American people have brought to my State and this nation. American Indian Heritage Month is an important recognition to the accomplishments and contributions of Native Americans in our country. I urge my colleagues to join us in support of this resolution and I look forward to its prompt consideration.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise with Senators Graham, Craig, Cleland, McConnell, Coverdell, Mack, Cochran, Helms, Grams, Crapo, Bunning, and Voinovich to encourage support of S. 1814, the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits and Security Act of 1999. Our bill will reform the agricultural labor market, establish and maintain immigration control, provide a legal workforce for our farmers, and restore the dignity to the lives of thousands of farmworkers who have helped make the U.S. economy the powerhouse that it is today. I am sure you are aware of the problems that have arisen within American agriculture. For many years, employers in the agricultural industry have struggled to hire enough legal workers to harvest their produce and plants. As one of the most rapidly growing industries in this country, we can only expect the demand for agricultural labor jobs to continue to rise. When coupled with the lowest unemployment rates in decades, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and increased Social Security audits, the agriculture industry--and ultimately its consumers--face a crisis of devastating proportions. Contrary to some media accounts, these labor shortages and the need for a revised H-2A temporary foreign worker program exist around the country. Mr. President, my colleagues all agree with the General Accounting Office's (GAO) statement that while the labor shortage is not caused by one single problem, regional shortages stemming from region-specific problems do exist. We have a shortage of legal workers in this country and the GAO estimates that there are in excess of 600,000 self-identified illegal aliens currently employed in U.S. agriculture. Another survey done by the Department of Labor also revealed that more than 70 percent, or about 1 million, of those hired to work on U.S. farms are here illegally. Due to the highly sophisticated fraudulent documents in circulation and strict U.S. laws prohibiting employers from scrutinizing these documents too carefully, thousands of illegal workers have been unknowingly hired as a result. This situation leaves many agricultural employers vulnerable to potential labor shortfalls in the event of concentrated or targeted Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) enforcement efforts or Social Security Administration audits. Immigrants are also severely impacted when they must work as undocumented workers. These foreign workers risk their lives paying human ``coyotes'' $1,200 to be smuggled across the desert border in the trunk of a car to work in this country. Because of the risks these foreign workers face in coming here and the difficulty of returning if they leave for a visit home, many go for years without seeing their spouses and children, some never return home. These illegal workers are extremely vulnerable to these ``coyotes'' and other dark elements of society that prey upon them, prohibiting the basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A recent survey published by the William C. Velasquez Institute demonstrated that a vast majority of registered Latino voters support a new farmworker program. In addition to supporting higher wages and unionization for farmworkers, the overwhelming majority of registered Latino voters--76% in California and 67% in Texas--supported a program where ``illegal immigrant'' farmworkers were allowed to become permanent residents in exchange for several years of mandatory agricultural labor. This poll clearly demonstrates that the current farm labor system serves no one well. Farmworkers support changing an illegal system that victimizes them and their families. This issue is not new to Congress. Our government's H-2A agricultural guest worker program was designed in part to help solve the labor problems facing our farmers. Instead of helping, the H-2A program--the only legal temporary agricultural worker program in the United States-- it merely adds bureaucratic red tape and burdensome regulations to the growing crisis. And it is failing those who use it. The H-2A program is not practicable for the agriculture and horticulture industry because it is loaded with burdensome regulations, excessive paperwork, a bureaucratic certification process and untimely, inconsistent, and hostile decision-making by the U.S. Department of Labor. This program is over 50 years old. To illustrate, Mr. President, this is the application I filled out to run for the United States Senate. It is one page, front and back. This is the Department of Labor's 325-page handbook, from January 1988, which attempts to guide employers through the H-2A program's confusing application process. The GAO itself found that this handbook is outdated, incomplete, and very confusing to the user. Even the December 1997 GAO report illustrated the burdensome H-2A process with which employers must comply in order to bring in legal, foreign workers. A grower must apply to multiple agencies to obtain just one H-2A worker. This process is further complicated by the multiple levels of government, redundant levels of oversight and conflicting administrative procedures and regulations. Also, as reported by the recent Department of Labor Inspector General, the H-2A program does not meet the interests of domestic workers because it does a poor job of placing domestic workers in agricultural jobs. We are looking for solutions to not only make it easier for employers to hire legal workers to harvest their crops, but also to ensure that U.S. workers find jobs and are treated fairly in the process. Our bill is a win-win-win for farmers, farmworkers, and immigration control. It reforms the agricultural labor market and establishes and maintains immigration control. It gives farmers the stability of a legal workforce and the certainty that the crops will be harvested in a timely manner. It gives farmworkers the ability to earn the right to legal status, avoid the risks of undocumented status and receive U.S. labor law protections. It addresses a status quo that persons on both sides of the issue agree is indefensible, but until now, has been too easy to ignore. It is a balanced bill that seeks both short and long-term solutions to the crisis in farm labor. Our bill will allow farmworkers who have a proven history of agricultural employment to eventually adjust to legal status in this country. Serious agricultural workers who are willing to commit to work several years in agricultural employment will receive nonimmigrant status and the rights that go with it. If employment requirements are met, workers can eventually adjust to permanent resident status, allowing them to remain in the U.S. year- round. Utilizing the skills of the existing farmworker workforce, a majority of whom are undocumented status in the United States, would reduce the number of temporary H-2A workers needed. It allows hardworking farmworkers seeking to better themselves and their families the opportunity to earn the right to legal status. At the same time, the current temporary farmworker program--called H- 2A--will be reformed to make it more responsive, affordable and usable by the average family farmer who needs temporary help to produce and harvest agricultural crops and commodities. The need and risks of illegal immigration are removed. Our bill provides a system or registry where our unemployed U.S. workers can go to find out about job openings on our U.S. farms. Any legal U.S. resident who wants to work in agriculture will get the absolute right of first refusal for any and all jobs that become available. After the Department of Labor determines that a shortage of domestic workers exists, farmers would be able to recruit adjusted workers. If a shortage of adjusted workers is found, farmers could then utilize H-2A workers. This ensures that employers hire workers already in the U.S. before recruiting foreign guest workers. Our bill also improves the conditions of the farm workers' lives and provide them the dignity they deserve. These needed benefits include providing a premium wage, providing housing and transportation benefits, guaranteeing basic workplace protections, and extending the Migrant and Seasonal Workers Protection Act to all workers. To add more protections for the health, safety, and security of farmworkers, our bill establishes a commission that would study problems with farmworker housing. Our bill also directs the Department of Labor and Department of Agriculture to study field sanitation, childcare and child labor violations, labor standards enforcement and to ultimately make recommendations for long-term changes and improvements. I am very concerned that workers are protected, but let's not forget that growers have been victimized by this process too. In order to feed their families--and yours--the growers need to harvest their crops on time, meet their payroll, and ultimately maintain their bottom line. Without achieving those things, farms go out of business and the jobs they create are lost along with them. So it is in all of our best interests--workers, growers, and consumers alike--that growers have the means by which to hire needed legal workers. While I don't have a crystal ball to predict the future of the indefensible status quo, I can tell you that we will have a major economic and social crisis on our U.S. farmlands if there is not an improvement over the current process. Let's not keep making fugitives out of farmworkers and felons out of farmers. I urge my fellow colleagues to join Senators Graham, Craig, Cleland, McConnell, Coverdell, Mack, Cochran, Helms, Grams, Crapo, Bunning, Voinovich, and me in support of this important bipartisan legislation.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise today with Senators Graham, Craig, Cleland, McConnell, Coverdell, Mack, Cochran, Helms, Grams, Crapo, Bunning, and Voinovich to introduce the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits and Security Act of 1999. Our bill will reform the agricultural labor market, establish and maintain immigration control, provide a legal workforce for our farmers, and restore the dignity to the lives of thousands of farmworkers who have helped make the U.S. economy the powerhouse that it is today. Indeed, these people, the farmers and farm workers, are much of the reason you and I are able to go home to a table full of food. In all of my legislative career--7 years now--I have never found an issue that as quickly moves off the merits and on to name-calling than the issue of immigration. I was amazed and astounded at the things that were said to me and my colleague from Oregon, Senator Wyden, as we pursued this issue with the very best of motives last year. Those things are said still. But I challenge anyone who wants to see a better life, I challenge them to defend the current system we have in this country for agricultural workers and farmers. We take for granted when we go to the grocery store all the abundance that there greets us, but we seldom take the time to think of those who helped produce it and bring it to the market. There is a shameful story to be told in this country when it comes to agricultural workers. What I am offering with all of my colleagues--my bipartisan colleagues--is a good-faith effort to make a bad situation much better and to get this country off an illegal system and on to a legal system so farmers no longer need be felons and farm workers no longer need to live in our shadows as fugitives. A few years ago, the GAO issued a report. They said there is no worker shortage in agriculture. They said there is no worker shortage because we have all these illegal aliens here. As a consequence of depending on an illegal system, these people who come--many from south of the border--are subject to the most inhumane treatment by coyotes in human form. These are people who prey upon their fears. These are organizations--even some who profess to be advocates--that hold them up for money, subject them to physical abuse and even rape, and do so in the name of providing labor. They are in business as long as we keep this shameful system illegal. How many people are we talking about? By some estimates, there are 1.6 million illegal workers in agriculture in this country. These are the people who are so often victimized. They will always be victimized as long as we keep them illegal. Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I have tried to devise a way to help workers and farmers in three distinctive ways in the bills we have introduced today. First, we provide an opportunity for an adjustment of status so when this bill becomes the law, any worker who can demonstrate he or she has been in this country working in agriculture for some period of time in the previous year can apply for an adjusted status which will give them immediate legal rights and put them on the course over the next 5 to 7 years to work in agriculture and earn permanent legal status, a green card. Their change of status from illegal to legal actually occurs immediately. It was my experience as a person in business that those who got amnesty immediately got a voice. As soon as they had a legal right to be here, their conditions began to improve. The people who will argue against this bill somehow benefit--even profit--by keeping these people illegal and by being their voice. I don't think that serves their interests based on what I saw in the private sector in the middle 1980s. What we are proposing is not amnesty. Some have said this is indentured servitude. The indentured servitude is the status quo. The indentured servitude are those who simply say keep them illegal, keep them down, make sure they don't have the benefits that other workers in America do, and we will somehow suggest we are on their side. The way out of indentured servitude is to give them a legal path to follow. That is what Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are doing. The second part of our bill is to actually reform the H-2A program. To demonstrate that, I have an application I filled out to become a Senator. It is two pages. I filled it out fairly quickly and persuaded 51-plus percent of the people in Oregon to elect me to the Senate. If I am a farmer and I need help, this is the manual that explains how to fill out the application for one worker: It is hundreds of pages long. The manual is unnumbered and covers a multitude of agencies in the Federal Government, all of which have to sign off on every single foreign migrant worker. I am simply saying this program, H-2A, as we have it now, is a manifest failure. It is a manifest failure because very few people utilize it. All of the benefits promised by the current H-2A program go unfulfilled because everyone evades the law because the law doesn't work. What Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are proposing to do is to create a national registry that does not even kick in until all domestic workers have right of first refusal. What it does is connect workplaces and employers with employees who want to work on farms. It will provide an opportunity even for organized labor to go to one place, find out who wants to be there, who wants the job, and even assist them in organizing if they choose to do so. I am not here to oppose organized labor. I am trying to help them, to say there is a legal way to do this that will better serve the interests of real people, and not the imaginary, hoped-for things that some are claiming are possible, which are not possible. Third, Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are providing enhanced worker protections. Specifically, in this program, workers will get no less than the minimum wage, the prevailing wage, or the adverse effect wage rate which is 5 percent above the prevailing rate. This is our attempt to say that these people are due the basics of what American citizens have. In addition to that, they will have transportation benefits, housing benefits, and they will now be covered under the Migrant Seasonal Agricultural Protection Act in ways they were not before. All of this is done because we are here to help. We reach out to all who are in this disadvantaged situation who want to be legal, who want a future, who want to pursue the American dream, and who want to do farm work. Some have suggested we are trying to flood this country with more illegal problems. I say on the floor of the Senate, I don't want one additional worker, but I want those who are here to have a legal way to be here. This isn't as if they are coming; they are already here. It is a shameful situation when we can do nothing for them under law. As this bill goes forward, lots of name-calling will go on, lots of mischaracterizations will be made. However, I ask my colleagues, I ask anyone interested in this issue, to read the bill this time and then tell the truth about it. Do not make it up because we have a problem. It is a human problem. It affects farm workers and farmers and we owe them something better than they have under U.S. law today. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise today with Senators Graham, Craig, Cleland, McConnell, Coverdell, Mack, Cochran, Helms, Grams, Crapo, Bunning, and Voinovich to introduce the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits and Security Act of 1999. Our bill will reform the agricultural labor market, establish and maintain immigration control, provide a legal workforce for our farmers, and restore the dignity to the lives of thousands of farmworkers who have helped make the U.S. economy the powerhouse that it is today. Indeed, these people, the farmers and farm workers, are much of the reason you and I are able to go home to a table full of food. In all of my legislative career--7 years now--I have never found an issue that as quickly moves off the merits and on to name-calling than the issue of immigration. I was amazed and astounded at the things that were said to me and my colleague from Oregon, Senator Wyden, as we pursued this issue with the very best of motives last year. Those things are said still. But I challenge anyone who wants to see a better life, I challenge them to defend the current system we have in this country for agricultural workers and farmers. We take for granted when we go to the grocery store all the abundance that there greets us, but we seldom take the time to think of those who helped produce it and bring it to the market. There is a shameful story to be told in this country when it comes to agricultural workers. What I am offering with all of my colleagues--my bipartisan colleagues--is a good-faith effort to make a bad situation much better and to get this country off an illegal system and on to a legal system so farmers no longer need be felons and farm workers no longer need to live in our shadows as fugitives. A few years ago, the GAO issued a report. They said there is no worker shortage in agriculture. They said there is no worker shortage because we have all these illegal aliens here. As a consequence of depending on an illegal system, these people who come--many from south of the border--are subject to the most inhumane treatment by coyotes in human form. These are people who prey upon their fears. These are organizations--even some who profess to be advocates--that hold them up for money, subject them to physical abuse and even rape, and do so in the name of providing labor. They are in business as long as we keep this shameful system illegal. How many people are we talking about? By some estimates, there are 1.6 million illegal workers in agriculture in this country. These are the people who are so often victimized. They will always be victimized as long as we keep them illegal. Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I have tried to devise a way to help workers and farmers in three distinctive ways in the bills we have introduced today. First, we provide an opportunity for an adjustment of status so when this bill becomes the law, any worker who can demonstrate he or she has been in this country working in agriculture for some period of time in the previous year can apply for an adjusted status which will give them immediate legal rights and put them on the course over the next 5 to 7 years to work in agriculture and earn permanent legal status, a green card. Their change of status from illegal to legal actually occurs immediately. It was my experience as a person in business that those who got amnesty immediately got a voice. As soon as they had a legal right to be here, their conditions began to improve. The people who will argue against this bill somehow benefit--even profit--by keeping these people illegal and by being their voice. I don't think that serves their interests based on what I saw in the private sector in the middle 1980s. What we are proposing is not amnesty. Some have said this is indentured servitude. The indentured servitude is the status quo. The indentured servitude are those who simply say keep them illegal, keep them down, make sure they don't have the benefits that other workers in America do, and we will somehow suggest we are on their side. The way out of indentured servitude is to give them a legal path to follow. That is what Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are doing. The second part of our bill is to actually reform the H-2A program. To demonstrate that, I have an application I filled out to become a Senator. It is two pages. I filled it out fairly quickly and persuaded 51-plus percent of the people in Oregon to elect me to the Senate. If I am a farmer and I need help, this is the manual that explains how to fill out the application for one worker: It is hundreds of pages long. The manual is unnumbered and covers a multitude of agencies in the Federal Government, all of which have to sign off on every single foreign migrant worker. I am simply saying this program, H-2A, as we have it now, is a manifest failure. It is a manifest failure because very few people utilize it. All of the benefits promised by the current H-2A program go unfulfilled because everyone evades the law because the law doesn't work. What Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are proposing to do is to create a national registry that does not even kick in until all domestic workers have right of first refusal. What it does is connect workplaces and employers with employees who want to work on farms. It will provide an opportunity even for organized labor to go to one place, find out who wants to be there, who wants the job, and even assist them in organizing if they choose to do so. I am not here to oppose organized labor. I am trying to help them, to say there is a legal way to do this that will better serve the interests of real people, and not the imaginary, hoped-for things that some are claiming are possible, which are not possible. Third, Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are providing enhanced worker protections. Specifically, in this program, workers will get no less than the minimum wage, the prevailing wage, or the adverse effect wage rate which is 5 percent above the prevailing rate. This is our attempt to say that these people are due the basics of what American citizens have. In addition to that, they will have transportation benefits, housing benefits, and they will now be covered under the Migrant Seasonal Agricultural Protection Act in ways they were not before. All of this is done because we are here to help. We reach out to all who are in this disadvantaged situation who want to be legal, who want a future, who want to pursue the American dream, and who want to do farm work. Some have suggested we are trying to flood this country with more illegal problems. I say on the floor of the Senate, I don't want one additional worker, but I want those who are here to have a legal way to be here. This isn't as if they are coming; they are already here. It is a shameful situation when we can do nothing for them under law. As this bill goes forward, lots of name-calling will go on, lots of mischaracterizations will be made. However, I ask my colleagues, I ask anyone interested in this issue, to read the bill this time and then tell the truth about it. Do not make it up because we have a problem. It is a human problem. It affects farm workers and farmers and we owe them something better than they have under U.S. law today. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I extend my sympathies to the family of John Chafee. It has been my privilege to serve with John Chafee for but 3 of the years of his long and distinguished career in the Senate. But I will miss him. I do miss him. I want to say publicly how much I appreciate the many times he came up to me and told me how much he appreciated me and how glad he was that I was here. I thank him publicly for the many times he came to me and talked about environmental issues and told me he had a good environmental bill that he wanted me to be on. Many times, I was on them with him. I appreciated his looking out for me in that regard, and in so many other ways. It was a great pleasure and a high privilege to serve with him in the Senate. I wish his wife and his family my very best and pray God's comfort be with them in this time of their bereavement.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I would like to announce that on Thursday, October 28th, the Subcommittee on Water and Power of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will hold an oversight hearing on the Federal hydroelectric licensing process. The hearing will be held at 2:30 p.m. in room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. For further information, please call Kristin Phillips or Howard Useem, at (202) 224-7875.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that S. 1723, ``A bill to establish a program to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to plan, design, and construct facilities to mitigate impacts associated with irrigation system water diversions by local governmental entities in the Pacific Ocean drainage of the States of Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Idaho,'' has been added to the agenda of the hearing that is scheduled for Wednesday, October 20, 1999 at 2:30 p.m. in room SD- 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. Because of the limited time available for the hearing, witnesses may testify by invitation only. However, those wishing to submit written testimony for the hearing record should send two copies of their testimony to the Subcommittee on Water and Power, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, 364 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, 20510-6150. For further information, please call Kristin Phillips, Staff Assistant, or Colleen Deegan, Counsel, at (202) 224-8115.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the passage of this very important bill for American agriculture. I want to thank Senator Cochran and his staff for all of their hard work to produce this legislation under very difficult circumstances. Although I feel much more needs to be done to address the problems in the farm sector in my state, I will be supporting this conference report today in the hopes that it will provide immediate help to agriculture producers across the country still reeling from the combination of low prices and poor weather this year. Although the underlying bill provides some $60 billion for domestic nutrition programs, food safety, agriculture research and extension, and other important programs administered by the Department of Agriculture, I would like to speak specifically to the farm relief package component of this conference report. This bill contains $8.7 billion in emergency farm assistance for producers hard hit by recent plunges in commodity prices and, in many parts of this country, weather disasters. Of this total, nearly $5.5 billion will go to program commodity producers in the form of increased AMTA payments to help compensate for lost markets. In Oregon, we produce a considerable amount of wheat for export to Asia, especially in the Pendleton area where I am from. For many Oregon wheat producers reeling from collapsed markets and prices, I know these increased AMTA payments may make the difference between keeping land in production and having to sell the farm. Since the beginning of this farm crisis, we have used this mechanism to deliver ad-hoc market loss payments to keep program commodity farmers afloat, and it may be the best and most efficient tool available to us in the short term. However, I believe the only long-term solution is to expand overseas market opportunities for our commodities. Although unilateral sanctions reform was taken out of this bill in conference, I hope we will have an opportunity to revisit this issue before the end of this session so that we may begin to address some of the root causes of our commodity price problems. This farm aid package also provides $1.2 billion for weather-related disaster assistance. Severe droughts, both in the Mid-Atlantic States and in parts of my state, have caused tremendous agricultural losses this year. In addition, as we all know, flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd brought severe farm losses to the Carolinas this fall. Rising waters are also a problem for the second consecutive year in the Malheur-Harney Lakes Basin of Southeastern Oregon, an issue which the conferees have noted in this conference report. Certainly Mother Nature has not been kind to many of our farmers this year, and I am concerned that the $1.2 billion set aside in this conference report to address these weather-related losses may be inadequate. Should this turn out to be the case, I hope that my colleagues and the Administration will be willing to provide the resources to address these needs in a future supplemental appropriations vehicle. Perhaps the biggest reservation I have with this farm assistance package is that it does not provide any funding to address the problems of the so-called minor crops. When the bill passed the Senate last August, it contained a $50 million earmark for fruit and vegetable producers. While these farmers have persevered with virtually no federal assistance in the past, they have not been immune to the Asian financial crisis and the historic downturn in the agriculture sector that we have seen in recent years. Nursery and potato producers are just as much a part of Oregon agriculture as wheat and cattle, yet they are not represented in this relief package. I am especially concerned about the future of Oregon's tree fruit industry. A number of producers in my state may be forced to tear out apple and pear orchards due to the deadly combination of international market collapse, frost and other weather problems, and mounting domestic regulatory and labor costs. I did note that the conferees made fruit and vegetable producers eligible for the $1.2 billion in weather-related disaster assistance money. However, I am afraid that none of this funding will reach Oregon tree fruit producers, considering that this same pot of money will be stretched to the limit to assist producers impacted by weather problems this year. I believe specialty crop farmers deserve a place at the table alongside our program commodity producers, and I hope we will better address their needs in future appropriations legislation. Mr. President, despite the reservations I have about this conference agreement, I find that the few negatives are, in the end, outweighed by the many positive aspects of this bill for the Oregon farm sector. While I look forward to the opportunity to work with my colleagues on the pressing farm issues that have not been spoken to in this conference report, I will be casting a vote in favor of the bill. I hope that we will act affirmatively on this legislation today and not further delay the delivery of this needed relief to family farmers across the country.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise before the Senate today to introduce legislation which would facilitate two exchanges of public and private lands in my home State of Oregon: the Triangle Land Exchange and the Northeast Oregon Assembled Land Exchange (NOALE). In terms of acreage, approximately 54,000 acres of BLM and Forest Service land is proposed to be traded for nearly 50,000 acres currently held by private landowners in northeast Oregon. As a result of 4\1/2\ years of delays with administrative process, there is enormous support from my constituents for a legislative resolution to the exchange. Both the government and the public have deeply rooted interests in this exchange. Federal agencies are seeking to acquire sensitive river corridors which will improve the efficiency of their protection efforts for threatened and endangered fish. Currently, many of these selected lands are intermingled with private parcels and make resource management difficult for the agencies. As you know, the improvement of fish-bearing streams and riparian areas is critical to the survival of many struggling species of fish in the Northwest. Communities and landowners will also benefit from these exchanges. Each and every aspect, from the consolidation of ownership patterns to the release of previously inaccessible timber stands, will boost local economies and enhance the ability of the private sector to manage its own lands. In addition, these land exchanges have received the strong collective support of several Oregon Indian tribes; conservation groups such as the Oregon Natural Desert Association, Oregon Trout and the Sierra Club; the Governor and scores of concerned citizens at large. While these exchanges hold enormous benefit for all interested parties and for Oregon's natural resources, it is apparent that the only sure means of completing them is through legislation. Mr. President, I am hopeful that the Senate will take this opportunity and support my colleague from Oregon and me in the swift passage of legislation to facilitate the Triangle and Northeast Oregon Assembled Land Exchanges.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise before the Senate today to introduce legislation which would facilitate two exchanges of public and private lands in my home State of Oregon: the Triangle Land Exchange and the Northeast Oregon Assembled Land Exchange (NOALE). In terms of acreage, approximately 54,000 acres of BLM and Forest Service land is proposed to be traded for nearly 50,000 acres currently held by private landowners in northeast Oregon. As a result of 4\1/2\ years of delays with administrative process, there is enormous support from my constituents for a legislative resolution to the exchange. Both the government and the public have deeply rooted interests in this exchange. Federal agencies are seeking to acquire sensitive river corridors which will improve the efficiency of their protection efforts for threatened and endangered fish. Currently, many of these selected lands are intermingled with private parcels and make resource management difficult for the agencies. As you know, the improvement of fish-bearing streams and riparian areas is critical to the survival of many struggling species of fish in the Northwest. Communities and landowners will also benefit from these exchanges. Each and every aspect, from the consolidation of ownership patterns to the release of previously inaccessible timber stands, will boost local economies and enhance the ability of the private sector to manage its own lands. In addition, these land exchanges have received the strong collective support of several Oregon Indian tribes; conservation groups such as the Oregon Natural Desert Association, Oregon Trout and the Sierra Club; the Governor and scores of concerned citizens at large. While these exchanges hold enormous benefit for all interested parties and for Oregon's natural resources, it is apparent that the only sure means of completing them is through legislation. Mr. President, I am hopeful that the Senate will take this opportunity and support my colleague from Oregon and me in the swift passage of legislation to facilitate the Triangle and Northeast Oregon Assembled Land Exchanges.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak briefly as in morning business.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, last week I spoke in this Chamber of the damage that has been inflicted by this administration upon the people and communities of rural Oregon. I spoke specifically about communities such as John Day and Roseburg, communities where the failure of this administration to keep its word with regard to timber harvests has brought great harm to families, communities, schools, and to their roads. I am grateful to this Senate and the Senator from Washington for his leadership on this issue and voting last week to put the interests of children and families above a survey of fungus, snails, and slugs. I return to the floor today to share with my colleagues a story about another rural Oregon community, one that is facing an uncertain future because of possible actions by this administration. I traveled this past weekend to the community of Burns, OR, in Harney County. Harney County is small in population and large in area. About 8,000 people live in this county. It is roughly the size of the State of Massachusetts. It includes part of the largest Ponderosa pine forest in the whole Nation. It includes over 100,000 head of beef cattle on vast open ranges. It includes the Steens Mountain. I would like to speak to you about the Steens Mountain and what this administration proposes to do with it. Let me begin by saying that to fly over the Steens Mountain, and to tour it on the ground and from the air, as I did last Saturday, is to see some of the most breathtaking scenery in this country or any other; and to stand on the ridgetops of the Steens is to view unspoiled vistas of the Kiger Gorge, the Alvord Desert, and other true national treasures. From its peak you can see the States of Idaho, Nevada, California, and nearly all of Oregon. It is a very special place. The Steens Mountain has remained unspoiled for one simple reason: The people of Burns and Harney County love Steens Mountain. Through unique partnerships between the Bureau of Land Management and private land owners, who own almost 30 percent of the mountain, they have found a formula that has worked. Harney County residents take great pride in their stewardship of the mountain that one rancher referred to, to me, as a ``tough old girl.'' At the heart of their stewardship is the commonsense principle of multiple use. Their pride is very justifiable. According to the Bureau of Land Management, over the past 30 years essentially 100 percent of upland and riparian conditions on the Steens Mountain that needed improvement has, in fact, been improved. I traveled to the Steens in response to a trip that Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt made there several weeks ago. After touring the mountain and praising what had been accomplished by local citizens, Secretary Babbitt also announced that only Uncle Sam could be trusted with the future of the mountain. He said that before this administration left office, he wanted to designate the mountain as a national conservation area or as a national monument; no matter what had been done before and how well it looked, still we cannot trust local citizens; we need to trust those with the wisdom of the bureaucracy in the beltway. Such a designation, as he proposed, would have far-reaching impacts, not only on the future of the mountain but on the future of those who live and work in its shadow. Such an announcement would run counter to the significant efforts of the Southeastern Oregon Resource Advisory Council. It is known locally as the RAC. The council is made up of individuals from conservation groups, resource groups, public bodies, and Federal agencies that have assumed the responsibility of exploring the proposal for a Steens Mountain National Conservation Area. This cooperative approach is the type of open and public process that I support and one that should be supported by this administration. But this group now labors under the certainty that, no matter what they decide, a decision has already been made here that the administration will make a designation. I plan to meet with Secretary Babbitt in the very near future. I hope to do it with my colleague from Oregon and Congressman Walden who represents this area. When we do, we will share the frustrations expressed to each of us by citizens of Harney County when we have visited there. They have asked me why this administration is trying to impose a solution where there is no problem. The old adage that this is ``a solution looking for a problem'' has never been more true than when applied to the Steens Mountain. They asked me why this administration does not trust them to continue with their excellent management techniques and innovative practices that have been at the heart of their stewardship. They asked me why this administration would be promoting a designation that would undoubtedly bring more visitors to the area, thereby harming the very environment they supposedly seek to protect. And they asked me if the Secretary's promise to work with them in the months ahead was real or whether this administration has already made up its mind. I would also like to put on the Record the taunting that is being made to the administration by some members of the environmental community from organizations that support more Federal involvement on the Steens Mountain. It was said in the open, in the presence of the media, that Secretary Babbitt and this administration were being urged to find a legacy other than the impeachment scandal. They were literally saying: Grab private land, and you can grab a better legacy for yourself. They were urging a version of a domestic ``wagging of the dog.'' I pray that this is not so because this is not the basis for good land management. Oregon does not need such an insult as was being urged upon this administration by some in the environmental community. The bottom line is that I believe the future of the Steens Mountain in Harney County is in much better hands with the folks who live there--folks such as County Commissioner Dan Nichols and ranchers such as Fred Otley and Stacey and Elaine Davies--than it is, than it ever will be, in the hands of Federal bureaucrats who reside within the beltway. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that a hearing has been scheduled before the Subcommittee on Water and Power. The purpose of the hearing is to conduct oversight on the practices of the Bureau of Reclamation regarding operations and maintenance costs and contract renewals. The hearing will take place on Wednesday, September 29, 1999 at 2:30 p.m. in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. Because of the limited time available for the hearing, witnesses may testify by invitation only. However, those wishing to submit written testimony for the hearing record should send two copies of their testimony to the Subcommittee on Water and Power, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, 364 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, 20510-6150. For further information, please call Kristin Phillips, Staff Assistant, or Colleen Deegan, Counsel, at (202) 224-8115.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the motion to strike Section 329 of the Interior appropriations bill. This section is necessary to counter an extremely adverse ruling by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which has just been described by my colleagues, as well as a preliminary injunction recently handed down by Judge Dwyer in the U.S. District Court. The case before Judge Dwyer involves the implementation of the Clinton-Gore Northwest Forest Plan, which was unveiled in 1993. At the time, President Clinton said that it ``provides an innovative approach for forest management to protect the environment and to produce a predictable and sustainable level of timber sales.'' The real travesty here is that the supporters of Section 329 are trying to fulfill the commitments made by this Administration in 1993, and we are now doing so over the objection of the Administration. The Northwest Forest Plan was supposed to be the Clinton Administration's historic compromise between timber harvesting and the environment. For National Forests covered by the Plan, timber harvests were reduced by 80 percent. Apparently, that wasn't enough for those who want no timber harvests, because they are again challenging implementation of the Plan in Court. While Judge Dwyer issued a preliminary injunction against the sales directly challenged in the case, the effect of his August 2, 1999, ruling is much broader. The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have made a decision not to award any previously-auctioned sales until the lawsuit is resolved. Further, the agencies do not plan to offer any additional sales until their supplemental EIS on survey and manage is completed and approved. While the Forest Service claims this will be completed by February of 2000, history tells us that this EIS will be appealed and litigated. In fact, the Forest Service hasn't produced a region-wide EIS for the Northwest for 10 years that hasn't been litigated. The current or planned sales affected by Judge Dwyer's ruling contain about 500 million board feet of timber. Since there will be no future sales until the EIS is completed, the total volume affected could be 3 times that high. Further, because many of these sales have already been awarded, if they are enjoined and operations are delayed, or if the government is forced to cancel these sales, the government will be potentially liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Because so little volume has been sold to date, and is therefore available to purchasers, the injunction of this volume will lead to immediate mill closures, increasing the government's liability for damages. The issue in this case involves the Administration's implementation of one part of the Clinton-Gore Forest Plan, concerning surveys for 77 rare species of fungi, lichens, mosses, snails, and slugs, and for a small mammal called the red-tree vole. Six years into the 10-year plan, the agencies still do not know how to conduct surveys for 32 of the rare species. None of these species is threatened or endangered. Although these surveys are only one piece of the Plan, the consequences of the case are potentially enormous. The real fallacy of the survey and manage requirement is that we are only going to survey on those lands where ground-disturbing activities--such as recreational improvements and timber sales--are planned. In the National Forests covered by the President's Plan, this amounts to about 12 percent of the total forest base that is still available for multiple use. This is not going to tell us about the overall health of these species, since we aren't going to be looking for these species in the remaining 88 percent of the land base. Unfortunately, it could also apply to needed forest restoration activities such as prescribed burns and reforestation on other selected parts of the forests, thereby delaying these activities and increasing their costs. It is unfortunate that the Clinton-Gore Administration ever included this provision in the Northwest Forest Plan. But having done so, it is a travesty that the Administration's failure to effectively implement the plan has resulted in another injunction that will further erode our timber communities. With respect to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, it requires surveys for all ground-disturbing activities. This means not only timber sales, but recreation improvements and forest management activities. Some preliminary cost estimates put the nationwide implementation of the Eleventh Circuit court ruling at $9 billion. It is a Trojan horse rolled in by candidate Clinton to destroy an industry. Therefore, we should make the public policy decision that we will allow forest managers to use the best available commercial data in amending or revising resource management plans, as Section 329 stipulates. This is the standard for data under the Endangered Species Act. The language in Section 329 does not preclude the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture from gathering additional data. It simply gives the Secretaries more discretion to meet land management objectives in a timely manner. Section 329 is designed to give the Clinton administration officials exactly the flexibility in land management that they argued for in court. I am deeply saddened that in the face of the economic crisis about to be visited on my constituents, the President isn't 100 percent behind retaining this language. This isn't an agonizing choice for me at all. If I have to choose here between surveying for red tree voles or keeping hundreds of Oregonians employed in family-wage jobs, I will vote for families. I know that there are those who don't think the language in Section 329 is the best language possible. I will commit to work with my colleagues and the Administration to see if we can improve this language. But I will strongly oppose efforts to strike it. I urge anyone who has a National Forest in their State to support retention of Section 329. If the Eleventh Circuit Court ruling is ever applied nationwide, we will have tied the hands of professional land managers with an expensive, time-consuming and ineffective requirement. I believe my colleague from Virginia has the best of motives, but I only wish he could go with me to rural Oregon and see the human consequences of what he proposes. I began my political career in 1992 running for a rural seat in the Oregon State Senate. It was the same election year that now-President Bill Clinton sought the Presidency. I watched as an opponent of his campaign with admiration for the skill with which he came to my State and reached out to those in the rural communities and made some very dramatic promises, some promises which he said would protect the environment and ensure a sustainable harvest of timber. He carried my State. He carried your State, Mr. President, with these same promises because a lot of people wanted to believe in him. I have noted with great interest that recently the President --and I applaud him for this--has gone to rural Appalachia. I don't know whether he went to parts of the State of the Senator from Virginia. I know he went to West Virginia, and he decried poverty levels that are lamentable and awful. But there are parts of my State as a result of his forest policies which are in worse shape than those he visited in Appalachia. I rise today with a lot of emotion in my heart because I think the truth has not been told and promises have not been carried out. I have recently come from a town hall meeting in Roseburg, OR, where people are finally looking at oblivion because their jobs are directly dependent upon the sales that have now been enjoined by Judge Dwyer in the district court of the Ninth Circuit. I hope I can reach the heart of every one of my colleagues because this stuff matters in human terms. I wish they would have a more honest approach and say: We don't want any more harvest of timber; let's shut it all down. At least that would be honest. This isn't. I wish they could see the kids in John Day, OR, who go to school 4 days a week because they can't afford to open the school for 5. I want my colleagues to understand what they are voting for. If you distill this down, this is about pitting a survey of fungus, snails, and slugs against children and families who need streets and schools. Now, lest you think the last pine tree in Oregon is about to go down, I am sorry to disabuse you. You can't stop timber from growing in my State. We went to the CRP area not far from where I live. There are wheat fields that formerly were in wheat that were left to go to nature, and there are Ponderosa trees going up everywhere. They are 12 feet high now. I know what the New York Times says. I know what the Washington Post says. But like some of my colleagues, they have never been to my State. They have never looked into the eyes of the schoolchildren who, frankly, don't have an adequate education because the Federal Government made promises to them and their county officials and their school officials that are being denied to them in a very dishonest and disingenuous way. I am angry. It is not right. It is not right to go win an election and then supposedly put up a program that is to provide for the environment, to provide a sustainable yield, and then through subterfuge make sure it doesn't happen, when you have a year to go in your term, when you are decrying poverty elsewhere in this country, but you are creating it in my backyard. I don't think the Senator from Virginia would offer this motion to strike if he could go with me to Roseburg, OR. It has been a long time, has been a lot of heartache, a lot of pain, but it is getting old. It is almost over. Here you and I are defending the President's plan, trying to help him live up to his promises. I want the American people to know that the Clinton-Gore forest plan, at the beginning at least, was honest enough to say: The traditional harvest you have had, we are going to cut it by 80 percent, by 80 percent. The reality is, it is not even 10 percent of what is delivered, and now what we are seeing is there is going to be nothing delivered. That isn't right. A sustainable yield of 20 percent is all that was promised, and yet even that apparently is another mirage. Well, I know the President wishes we didn't have to do a rider, but it is the only tool left because we are running out of time. Your proposal is for a year to allow the Federal courts to allow these sales to go forward. Without the Clinton-Gore forest plan, these sales would be fine; these meet the Endangered Species Act, but somehow in the creation of this plan, they have put in a survey system that isn't economical. It isn't going to happen. It isn't even necessary. It is a fraud. It is a way to undermine their own promises. Well, history tells us this is not going to happen now. I regret to tell the people of rural Oregon that the Clinton forest plan is a failure to them. Another irony. I heard my colleague from Virginia say he read a letter from the Forest Service about their new-found position on this issue. Why didn't they argue that in court? If it was an argument to be made a month ago, why isn't it still a good argument. They have reversed course. Why? Is it only about politics? I think people are sick of that. I think people are ready to be told the truth, and they thought they had been told the truth by the President, at least when it came to his forest plan. I regret to tell them that apparently they have not been. What is at stake? In Judge Dwyer's ruling, about 500 million board feet of timber. By the way, to my colleagues on the other side, if you think by killing the forest industry in this country you are somehow saving the environment, you are the best friend the Canadians and the New Zealanders have ever had because the U.S. demand and use of timber is not going down. It is going up. We have just exported those jobs. So we pat ourselves on the back that we somehow have taken care of our forests, even though it is growing at record rates and subject to catastrophic fire. Even though we pat ourselves on the back, we are pillaging our neighbors' land. I am simply saying, the promise of the President to have a sustainable harvest and a good environment are possible, but it isn't possible with this. We are trying to help the President make it possible. I am saying what is being asked for by the courts now, as required by the Clinton-Gore forest plan, is a survey for 77 rare species of fungi, lichens, mosses, snails, slugs, and for a small mammal called the red tree vole. Well, the agencies don't know how to conduct these things. They don't even know some of these species. The amount of land that is at issue is 12 percent of 100 percent of the land, so 88 percent of the land is not going to be surveyed, only the area where they are digging around. No one contends that any of these things are endangered at all. What is endangered is rural people, creating a new Appalachia with chronic poverty. We are doing it in my State while he decries it in his State. That isn't right, not when they have been promised something better. I conclude my remarks by pleading with my colleagues not to put in an artificial requirement that we will not fund, which is not necessary and which can be adequately provided for, by the way you described it, by giving to the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture the power to do what they already do under the Endangered Species Act, by giving them that power and allowing these things to go forward and keeping some promises. Why don't we keep some promises around here? I want my colleagues to know this is about a survey versus families. It is about snails and slugs versus streets and schools. I ask you to oppose the motion to strike this amendment. What is being done here is wrong. It has human consequences, and we in this Senate ought to be bigger than that. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. BURNS addressed the Chair.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President and Members of the Senate, next week our Nation will pass an important if unnoticed anniversary--the anniversary of one of the first official notifications we were given of the atrocities of the Holocaust. On August 8, 1942, Dr. Gerhart Reigner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, sent a cable to both Rabbi Stephen Wise--the President of the World Jewish Congress--and a British Member of Parliament. In it, Dr. Reigner wrote about ``an alarming report'' that Hitler was planning that all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany ``should after deportation and concentration * * * be exterminated at one blow to resolve once and for all the Jewish question in Europe.'' Our Government's reaction to this news was not our greatest moment during that terrible era. First, the State Department refused to give the cable to Rabbi Wise. After Rabbi Wise got a copy of the cable from the British, he passed it along to the Undersecretary of State, who asked him not to make the contents public until it could be confirmed. Rabbi Wise didn't make it public, but he did tell President Roosevelt, members of the cabinet, and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter about the cable. None of them chose to act publicly on its contents. Our government finally did acknowledge the report some months later, but the question remains: how many lives could have been saved had we responded to this clear warning of the Holocaust earlier and with more vigor? The questions of how the United States responded to the Holocaust and, specifically, what was the fate of the Holocaust victims' assets that came into the possession or control of the United States government, is the focus of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, of which I am a member. This bipartisan Commission--chaired by Edgar M. Bronfinan--is composed of 21 individuals, including four Senators, four Members of the House, representatives of the Departments of the Army, Justice, State, and Treasury, the Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and eight private citizens. The Commission is charged with conducting original research into what happened to the assets of Holocaust victims--including gold, other financial instruments and art and cultural objects--that passed into the possession or control of the Federal government, including the Federal Reserve. We are also to survey the research done by others about what happened to the assets of Holocaust victims that passed into non-Federal hands, including State governments, and report to the President, making recommendations for future actions, whether legislative or administrative. The Commission was created last year by a unanimous Act of Congress, and has been hard at work since early this year. Perhaps the most important information that the Commission's preliminary research has uncovered is the fact that the question of the extent to which assets of Holocaust victims fell into Federal hands is much, much larger than we thought even a year ago, when we first established this Commission. Last month, at the quarterly meeting of the Commissioners in Washington, we unveiled a ``map'' of Federal and related offices through which these assets may have flowed. To everyone's surprise, taking a sample year--1943--we found more than 75 separate entities that may have been involved. The records of each of these offices must first be located and then scoured--page by page--at the National Archives and other record centers across the United States. In total, we must look at tens of million of pages to complete the historical record of this period. Furthermore, to our nation's credit, we are currently declassifying millions of pages of World War II-era information that may shine light on our government's policies and procedures during that time. But, this salutary effort dramatically increases the work the Commission must do to fulfill the mandate we have given it. In addition, as the Commission pursues its research, it is discovering new aspects of the story of Holocaust assets that hadn't previously been understood. The Commission's research may be unearthing an alarming trend to import into the United States through South America, art and other possessions looted from Holocaust victims. Pursuing these leads will require the review of additional thousands of documents. The Commission is also finding aspects of previously known incidents that have not been carefully or credibly researched. The ultimate fate of the so-called ``Hungarian Gold Trains.''--for example--a set of trains containing the art, gold, and other valuables of Hungarian victims of the Nazis that was detained by the liberating US Army during their dash for Berlin has not been carefully investigated. In another area of our research, investigators are seeking to piece together the puzzle of foreign-owned intellectual property--some of which may have been owned by victims of Nazi genocide--the rights to which were vested in the Federal government under wartime law. For all of these reasons and more, I am introducing today with Senators Boxer, Dodd and Grams the ``U.S. Holocaust Assets Commission Extension Act of 1999.'' This simple piece of legislation moves to December, 2000, the date of the final report of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, giving our investigators the time to do a professional and credible job on the tasks the congress has assigned to them. This bill also authorizes additional appropriations for the Commission to complete its work. I strongly urge all of my colleagues to join me in support of this necessary and simple of legislation. As we approach the end of the millennium, the United States is without a doubt the strongest nation on the face of the earth. Our strength, however, is not limited to our military and economic might. Our nation is strong because we have the resolve to look at ourselves and our history honestly and carefully--even if the truth we find shows us in a less-than flattering light. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States is seeking the truth about the belongings of Holocaust victims that came into the possession or control of the United States government. All of my colleagues should support this endeavor, and we must give the Commission the time and support it needs by supporting the U.S. Holocaust Assets Commission Extension Act of 1999.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. If I may have 1 final minute.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. I thank the Chair, and I thank the chairman and his committee for the work they have done on this bill. I rise to encourage my colleagues to vote yes when this vote is taken. I have had the privilege of sitting in that Chair, Mr. President, for a good part of this debate and have seen, with very clear eyes, two different philosophies on the floor of the Senate. One is a philosophy that says that Government spends money better than people can. That philosophy would grow Government. The other philosophy says we trust people; we don't trust Government as much. That philosophy, which trusts people, says let's grow families. Let's trust them to spend it for their needs because they can do it better than we can imagine it here inside the beltway. As I look at this plan that has been produced by our Finance Committee, and through this conference process, my conditions for voting for this have been met. I see both sides allocating the same amount to Social Security. I see both sides allocating the same amount to Medicare, save that we do not expand Medicare, but we dedicate a great deal of money to Medicare. I see both sides making the same commitment to debt reduction. In fact, this Republican proposal conditions the tax cuts upon the actual realization of the surpluses. So people that say we are spending the surplus or spending it without it actually being realized, we will not do that. We will not spend it in the sense of tax cuts if, in fact, these surpluses are not realized. So the question really becomes, Who is going to spend the surplus? Our friends on the other side would do it to grow this Government. We, on this side, would spend it to grow families because we trust people more than we trust Government to spend it wisely. I tell you, as I look at the things that are provided in this tax package, I like what I see. When I look at reducing estate taxes, I say yes because, as a philosophical matter, I do not believe that it is the Government's business to tell you and me how we allocate our estates when we die. It is about redistribution of economics, which is what they are proposing, which is the law. I don't think that is the Government's role. I think we should trust people to distribute their money as they see fit. I look at the marriage penalty reduction. I don't think there should be a bias in our Tax Code against people marrying. I think it is terribly unfair when you have two working spouses, one has a high income, and the other may have a lower income; one is a corporate executive, the other is a schoolteacher; but the schoolteacher, the one with the lower income, gets taxed at the higher rate. What is fair about that? That is wrong. That is a bias against marriage that we should eradicate. If President Clinton wants to veto that, I will let him justify it. I look at the reduction of capital gains taxes, and I wonder, frankly, why we are taxing this capital twice. We should not be taxing it. We should be reinvesting it. That brings me to an important point. I am extremely frustrated every time I hear President Clinton or any other politician take credit for creating jobs. You and I, as politicians, as public servants, do not create jobs, unless we own the stock or unless we buy a bond, unless we invest in the free enterprise system that allows labor to go to work. When you hear President Clinton or any other politician claim they have created jobs, the predicate of that claim is that we are a centrally planned economy. And we are not. We are a free market republic. I think if my party has any contribution to make to this country, it is to make sure we do not become a socialistic, democratic welfare state, because if we become that, we will suffer the kinds of economic consequences that, frankly, our friends in Europe and Asia are suffering, which is little or no growth, high inflation, high interest rates, enormous unemployment rolls. That is the kind of system I don't want to be part of creating.

Mr. SMITH of Oregon

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President and Members of the Senate, next week our Nation will pass an important if unnoticed anniversary--the anniversary of one of the first official notifications we were given of the atrocities of the Holocaust. On August 8, 1942, Dr. Gerhart Reigner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, sent a cable to both Rabbi Stephen Wise--the President of the World Jewish Congress--and a British Member of Parliament. In it, Dr. Reigner wrote about ``an alarming report'' that Hitler was planning that all Jews in countries occupied or controlled Germany ``should after deportation and concentration . . . be exterminated at one blow to resolve once and for all the Jewish question in Europe.'' Our Government's reaction to this news was not our greatest moment during that terrible era. First, the State Department refused to give the cable to Rabbi Wise. After Rabbi Wise got a copy of the cable from the British, he passed it along to the Undersecretary of State, who asked him not to make the contents public until it could be confirmed. Rabbi Wise didn't make it public, but he did tell President Roosevelt, members of the cabinet, and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter about the cable. None of them chose to act publicly on its contents. Our government finally did acknowledge the report some months later, but the question remains: how many lives could have been saved had we responded to this clear warning of the Holocaust earlier and with more vigor? The questions of how the United States responded to the Holocaust and, specifically, what was the fate of the Holocaust victims' assets that came into the possession or control of the United States government, is the focus of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, of which I am a member. This bipartisan Commission--chaired by Edgar M. Bronfman--is composed of 21 individuals, including four Senators, four Members of the House, representatives of the Departments of the Army, Justice, State, and Treasury, the Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and eight private citizens. The Commission is charged with conducting original research into what happened to the assets of Holocaust victims--including gold, other financial instruments and art and cultural objects--that passed into the possession or control of the Federal government, including the Federal Reserve. We are also to survey the research done by others about what happened to the assets of Holocaust victims that passed into non-Federal hands, including State governments, and report to the President, making recommendations for future actions, whether legislative or administrative. The Commission was created last year by a unanimous Act of Congress, and has been hard at work since early this year. Perhaps the most important information that the Commission's preliminary research has uncovered is the fact that the question of the extent to which assets of Holocaust victims fell into Federal hands is much, much larger than we thought even a year ago, when we first established this Commission. Last month, at the quarterly, meeting of the Commissioners in Washington, we unveiled a ``map'' of Federal and related offices through which these assets may have flowed. To everyone's surprise, taking a sample year--1943--we found more than 75 separate entities that may have been involved. The records of each of these offices must first be located and then scoured--page by page--at the National Archives and other record centers across the United States. In total, we must look at tens of million of pages to complete the historical record of this period. Futhermore, to our nation's credit, we are currently declassifying millions of pages of World War II-era information that may shine light on our government's policies and procedures during that time. But, this salutary effort dramatically increases the work the Commission must do to fulfill the mandate we have given it. In addition, as the Commission pursues its research, it is discovering new aspects of the story of Holocaust assets that hadn't previously been understood. The Commission's research may be unearthing an alarming trend to import into the United States through South America, art and other possessions looted from Holocaust victims. Pursuing these leads will require the review of additional thousands of documents. The Commission is also finding aspects of previously known incidents that have not been carefully or credibly researched. The ultimate fate of the so-called ``Hungarian Gold Trains,''--for example--a set of trains containing the art, gold, and other valuables of Hungarian victims of the Nazis that was detained by the liberating US Army during their dash for Berlin has not been carefully investigated. In another area of our research investigators are seeking to piece together the puzzle of foreign-owned intellectual property--some of which may have been owned by victims of Nazi genocide--the rights to which were vested in the Federal government under wartime law. For all the reasons and more, I am introducing today with Senators Boxer, Dodd and Grams the ``U.S. Holocaust Assets Commission Extension Act of 1999.'' This simple piece of legislation moves to December, 2000, the date of the final report of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, giving our investigators the time to do a professional an credible job on the tasks the Congress has assigned to them. This bill also authorizes additional appropriations for the Commission to complete its work. I strongly urge all of my colleagues to join me in support of this necessary and simple piece of legislation. As we approach the end of the millennium, the United States is without a doubt the strongest nation on the face of the earth. Our strength, however, is not limited to our military and economic might. Our nation is strong because we have the resolve to look at ourselves and our history honestly and carefully--even if the truth we find shows us a less-than-flattering light. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States is seeking the truth about the belongings of Holocaust victims that came into the possession or control of the United States government. All of my colleagues should support this endeavor, and we must give the Commission the time and support it needs by supporting the U.S. Holocaust Assets Commission Extension Act of 1999. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.