Craig Thomas

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the clerk report each treaty by title prior to the vote on each treaty, and further I ask for a division vote on each resolution of ratification.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following treaties on today's Executive Calendar. They will consist of Nos. 20 through 53. I further ask unanimous consent that the treaties be considered as having passed through their various parliamentary stages up to and including the presentation of the resolutions of ratification; all committee provisos, reservations, understandings, declarations be considered and agreed to; that any statements be printed in the Congressional Record as if read; further, that when the resolutions of ratification are voted upon, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, the President be notified of the Senate's action, and that following the disposition of the treaties, the Senate return to legislative session.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business.

Mr. THOMAS

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. THOMAS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. I thank the Presiding Officer, the Senator from West Virginia, and the clerk. By the way, just for information, these treaties were all approved by the Foreign Relations Committee on October 4 and 5.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I want to express my views on a more parochial issue--not entirely parochial, as a matter of fact; it has to do with access to national parks. I have served over the last 6 years as chairman of the National Parks Subcommittee. We have been very involved with where we are going and have hopefully some idea where we want to be with parks. Everybody recognizes the value of the national assets. It is one of the neat things. In the United States, we have 379 national parks that work in conjunction, of course, with State parks and local parks. The reasons for having a park, it seems to me, are, No. 1, to preserve the resource, of course, and, No. 2, to allow that resource to be enjoyed by the people who own it --the taxpayers. We have a little difficulty from time to time with both of those things. We passed a bill, Parks 2020, last year which puts more emphasis on inventory, taking care of the resources. We need to put more effort into that, and we are working on that. We have had a lot of talk about infrastructure in some of the larger parks and the things that need to be done, the money that needs to be spent for preserving the resource, such as on sewers. In the last budget that came from this administration, there was more money for acquisition of new parks than there was for maintenance of the parks we have. To me that is a problem. If you want to enjoy it, you have to have access. One of the things that is controversial in our part of the world--in Yellowstone, Teton Park--which is equally true in New England and other places, is access for snow machines. For 3 years we have had an ongoing study in Yellowstone Park prompted by a lawsuit. Today they are coming out with their report on the environmental study and their recommendations as to what we should do. It is out for public comment for 30 days. I am going to ask that the 30 days be extended to 60 so people have an opportunity to review it. There are difficulties with snow machines. There is difficulty with the noise. There is some difficulty with the pollution. The problem is the Park Service for 20 years has not sought to manage that growing industry and has simply avoided doing anything with it. Then suddenly there is a lawsuit filed against them, and there are some things that need to be changed. Instead of seeking to manage it, instead of seeking to find some remedies, instead of seeking to make some changes, they simply want to eliminate it. That is a mistake. There are ways the Park Service can manage those things. They can separate cross-country skiers from snowmobilers. They can limit the number if there are too many. But the EPA and the Park Service have never looked toward establishing standards for these machines. I have visited a number of times with the manufacturers, and they are willing to change those machines. They did some experimental work in Jackson Hole, WY, last year and had machines that are only as loud as normal voices. Of course, no one is going to invest in those unless they have some idea that there are standards, and if they comply with them, they will be useful. I hope we can change the idea of either nothing or no management and give some time to move toward the adjustments that can be made, toward some management in the parks so people can continue to enjoy them. I see my friend from Kansas. I yield to the Senator from Kansas.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I certainly commend the Senator on his moving tribute to Bruce Vento. Certainly we can tell how emotionally attached the Senator was to that gentleman. I knew him also. I served with him on the Resource Committee in the House. Certainly he was a fine gentleman. The Senator has described him well. We are all very sad at this loss.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I wanted to go back to the remarks of the Senator from North Dakota as he talked about some of the issues that all of us are concerned about, issues such as pharmaceuticals--how we make that work; issues such as Medicare--which needs, after these years, some real, examination, some changes so over time we can ensure provision of health services to all who are beneficiaries. No one argues with that. He also mentioned the Patients' Bill of Rights, which is interesting. I do not know of anyone in the Senate or the other body who is not for some form of the bill of rights. The unfortunate part is that there are some defining issues within that subject, defining issues that mean a lot in terms of where it goes in the future. The Senator failed to mention that. This is sort of the technique of those who favor more government. That is to simply talk about the title without talking about what is involved. We have had in the Senate for a good long time--the Presiding Officer has participated--in a conference report, language designed to bring out a Patients' Bill of Rights that we could pass. Frankly, the Senator from North Dakota and others have opposed that. One of the questions that is very important is whether or not it is going to be a bill of rights for patients or whether it is going to be a bill of rights for tort lawyers. If you have to go to court whenever there is a controversy, that is, of course, not what we seek to do. So I want to make the point that you can talk in general terms about many issues. Everyone embraces those issues. But when you talk about the kinds of things that are important, within those issues, to implement them in a manner in keeping with the philosophy that you have over time, then that becomes quite a different matter. Of course, that is why we find ourselves at some loggerheads from time to time. I have spoken before, and will again, about the amount of effort we have seen from the other side of the aisle to put obstacles in front of these issues and to, really, be more interested in making an issue rather than a solution. I am sorry for that. We are, of course, down now to the end, and we need to do something. Let me talk for a moment or two about some of the things I think we face, not only in this body right now but that we will face in the future, we will face in this election. We need to make decisions as to where we are going. The key to those decisions in my view, regardless almost of what the decisions are--whether they are business decisions, whether they are personal decisions, whether they are political decisions--is to get some idea of what we want the result to be and where we are going to go over a period of time, and then measure whether or not what we are doing in the interim leads us to the accomplishment of those goals. It seems to me that is one of the most important things we can do. So we are going to find ourselves, I think--I half hope, maybe--with some different philosophies from this past year, and we are going to have to choose. I just returned from my State. I am going to get back, I hope, pretty soon and spend some time in schools with a voting program to get kids involved in politics, involved in elections; to talk about the issues and begin to get some feel about what it means to have a government of the people and by the people and for the people. I am excited about that because there are differences in philosophy. Sometimes we find it difficult to define them, as we have these debates, as we will have tomorrow night. It is true; politicians have a little affinity for making things a little bit blurred. But it is up to us, then, as voters, to really separate those things and decide where we want to go; do we want more Federal Government in our lives or do we want less? It is up to us to define what we think the role of the Federal Government is and how it impacts us as citizens. What is the role of local and State governments? What is the role, then, really of individuals? That is what it is all about: individual freedom-- opportunities for success. We talk about taxes. Do we want more taxes and more Government? Do we want less Government so people can keep more of the money they earn? The real issue, of course, is Federal control down into communities, down into counties, down into schools. Or, indeed, do we want county commissioners and school boards and State legislators to make decisions that fit the decisions made by the people who have to live with them. There is a great deal of difference between the needs we have for the delivery of services in Philadelphia and in Greybull, WY. So those are the kinds of things that are taken into account. We have talked about a surplus. There are reports of a surplus, certainly. I might say, it is more difficult to control the size of Government when you have a surplus than it is when you do not because, regardless of what the issues are, why, where we have a surplus we ought to spend the money. The other side of that, of course, is if we have a surplus there are certain priority things we ought to do but maybe we ought to put some of those surpluses back with the people who own them. They will be very important there. We have different plans to deal with them. One of the plans that is out there takes about half of those surpluses and puts them into Social Security. One of the real issues before us is young people who are in their first jobs and pay 12.5 percent of their income, along with their employer, into the Social Security fund. In 40 years, are they going to have any benefits accruing to them? Not unless we make some changes. The options are just to continue what we are doing and take more tax money to put into it, or to make some changes--for instance, to give some opportunities, based on the choice of the recipient, to put some of that money into the private sector, to get the return on that investment up from 2.5 to 3 percent, up to 4 percent or 5 percent or 6 percent, which certainly would make it more likely that those benefits are going to be there when their benefits are earned and ready to serve them. When the Senator from North Dakota talked about tax cuts for the top 1 percent, that is not what is being proposed. Indeed, regarding the proposal that is out there that has caused all the 1 percent talk, the people who make the 1 percent, who make the most money in this country, will have a higher proportion of taxes on them than they have had before. Those taxes are for everyone who pays taxes. I think that is an excellent way to do that, to have marginal cuts and double the tax credits. Let's get rid of the estate tax. That doesn't do away with tax on the value, by the way, because that will be taxed when that asset is sold with the capital gains tax. But why should death cause you to have to sell the farm to pay the taxes? It should not. These are some of the decisions that are out there to be made. Certainly they are important ones. I will not argue about what is right. We hear a lot of this: Let's do the right thing. That depends on about whom you are speaking, what the right thing is, of course. So there are choices we have to make, legitimate choices. I hope all of us have a chance in this election to sort those out for ourselves and be able to do something with them. Medicare is another one. I mentioned that before. You know, what we have is a Medicare program that, unless it is changed, cannot continue either. There is something on which all of us can agree: We want to continue. If that is the goal, what do we have to do in the interim to ensure that happens? One of the things we have to do is give people some choices. The way it is now, when you are 62, 63, 65, you have to take what is there, and that is the only choice. There are people who have supplementary policies. My mother has a supplementary policy that provides pharmaceuticals. She is perfectly happy with that and wants to continue with that. There are people who do not have supplementary policies. They cannot afford them. They ought to have pharmaceutical coverage, and there ought to be choices in the way that is done. That is very possible. People ought to be able to choose. The alternative to what we suggested has no choice. Education: It has been a very long time since we have been able to do something quite different on elementary and secondary education. We talked about it. We have had 5 weeks of discussion in this Congress on education. Again, everyone is for education. I do not know anyone who does not want to make education more effective, who does not want to make it better for everyone. What holds it up is who makes the decisions. This administration has insisted on those dollars that go from the Federal Government to the States, regardless of what the needs are in a particular school district, that they either be for 100,000 more teachers or they be for buildings. Both of those are legitimate needs, but there are school districts that do not need more teachers and the school buildings are in pretty good shape. What they need is high-tech equipment, for example, and they should have an opportunity to spend that money as their needs dictate. That is the debate. Sometimes it is a little hard to cut through: ``Those guys are against education.'' That is not so. These are the choices and these are the choices of how we get around to resolving the problems. I hope we will soon. There are always going to be differences of view. That is why we vote. The problem is we have not been able to bring those things to the floor, and every time we bring up education, someone brings up one of the issues on which we have already voted three or four times--gun control, minimum wage, whatever--to make sure that what we are focusing on does not happen. Here we are now 1 week past our dedicated time to adjourn. Frankly, I am one who thinks that if we have business to do here, we ought to be here until we get it done. That is our job. We ought to get the bills out here, vote on them, move them on up. If the President wants to veto them, if he wants to try to use leverage to threaten and shut down the Government, let him do that, but he is the one who is going to shut down the Government. That is where we are. It is an interesting time, an important time. I am confident we will move more quickly to resolve these items this week than perhaps we have over the last couple of weeks.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. I thank the Senator.

Mr. THOMAS. This passed 2 weeks ago, Senator. Why hasn't it come up before this and not at the very end?

Mr. THOMAS. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I want to speak about energy, which seems to be one of the things I think is very important that people are talking about. But first I wish to comment a little on the progress, or lack thereof, that we are making in the Senate. It is not unusual that we come up to the end of the session and find ourselves kind of blocked up here, and things have been postponed until now. Of course, it is the appropriations bills that always end up in this category. We have 13 of them to pass in order to keep the Government going. The fiscal year expired at the end of September, of course. We have extended our time and will do it into next week again. One of the important roles of Congress is this allocation of funding. It is one that is very important and really needs to be given all the attention we can give it. I think we ought to move as quickly as we can to do that job. I hope we don't end up with huge omnibus bills at the end of the session. They are so large that people don't know what is in them. I would rather we deal with them individually as much as possible. Let me say that one of the things we ought to consider, which I have supported since I have been in the Congress--and from my experience in the Wyoming Legislature--is I think we ought to have a 2- year budgeting arrangement, which would alleviate this sort of thing every year. Nevertheless, we are not there. However, we need to move forward. When we are ready with the appropriations bills, we ought to do that. I favor the bill being talked about here. I think it is a good bill. I don't know why it wasn't brought up earlier in the week when we were sitting here and didn't have anything before us. Now we are down to the last hours of this week and we bring up something that stops the opportunity for us to pass legislation regarding appropriations. I think that is unfortunate. In any event, we ought to be doing that. Obviously, one of the difficulties with appropriations has been this idea of attaching to them the kinds of things that are not within the appropriations process because it is the end of the session, and because they have not been handled, or some refused to handle them earlier. That was wrong, in my opinion. I hope we consider a rule that would make that more difficult. Energy Policy Regarding energy, we ought to talk about that. We ought to talk, more importantly, about where we want to be, and what we think the role of the domestic energy program ought to be to achieve what we consider to be our goal. I have become more and more aware of the importance of that sort of thing in all the legislation that we address. Really, it became clear to me when we were talking about re-regulation of electricity. We got wrapped up in all the different kinds of details that necessarily go into it, but really I don't think we had a clear vision of where we wanted to be when we were through. We didn't have a clear vision of our goal. To a large extent, I think that is the case with energy. We have high prices, for gasoline, for natural gas, and we are going to have higher electricity and heating oil prices, and so on. Of course, that is the problem we see, but what do we see as the solution? I think certainly these high prices ought not to be a big surprise. This administration hasn't had an energy policy. We were very happy when oil was $10 a barrel. When it gets up to $35 a barrel, we are very unhappy, and I understand that. I don't recommend that, either. We ought to have intermediate pricing. You don't do that without an energy policy. We have lacked a domestic energy policy that keeps us from being entirely dependent and subservient to OPEC and the foreign oil producers. We have allowed ourselves to do that. It is not new that we don't have one. The Clinton administration has relied on short-term fixes. The most current one was to release crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was 30 million barrels, and I don't suppose that will change the world. That is a short-term kind of reaction, not a long-term solution to where we are going. That has been the latest short-term fix. I agree with increasing funding for Low-Income Housing Energy Assistance, and other short-term fixes. Those are good, and they have to be done because of where we are. But the fact is, if we are going to get out of that over time, then we have to do something different. We have to take a look at EPA's regulations that have had the effect of shutting down coal-fired powerplants in the Midwest. We have more coal resources probably than most anything. We can do more about the difficulties that have happened in the past. We have done a great deal because coal is now a clean source, but this administration has made it more and more difficult for that to happen. The fact that coal supplies 56 percent of the Nation's electric energy is very important, of course. I have a personal feeling about it because our State is the highest producer of low sulfur coal. We have had 36 refineries shut down since 1992. No new ones have been built since 1996, largely because the EPA pressed for continuing restrictions that make it much more difficult. This administration--particularly the Vice President--calls for green alternatives. I don't know of anybody who opposes that idea. Green alternatives, right now, provide about 2 percent of our energy needs. It is going to be a very long time before solar or wind energy moves in to do that. So that can't be our short-term/long-term policy. There are a lot of things that can be done and we are moving to try to do that. It has to do with domestic energy policy which would help increase domestic production so that we are not totally subject to the whims of OPEC. Since 1992, our oil production in this country has gone down 17 percent. Consumption has gone up 14 percent. Part of that is in States such as Wyoming in the West, where 50 percent of the State is owned by the Federal Government. Those areas of Federal land--not all-- are for multiple use. We found this administration making it much more difficult for exploration and production to take place for the multiple use of public lands. That is not a good idea. U.S. jobs were involved in the exploring and producing. We used to have 400,000 of those jobs. Now it is less than 300,000, which is a 27-percent decline. These imports are rapidly growing--up 56 percent now--and we need to move forward with that. This is really an issue we can do something about. We need to do something about it. I could go over a lot of things this administration has brought about that have helped to create the energy crisis we are in now. I am urging that we look at some of the things that are available to us and that we can do to reach the goal we want in order to be more self-reliant for our energy. We can do something about consumption, too, and I have no problem about that. However, that is not a short-term problem. A short-term problem is going to be the price to farmers, ranchers, truckers, and to people who use oil particularly for heating in the wintertime. Certainly we are not going to be able to solve this problem in the next few days. I hope we can move forward with our appropriations process, which is obviously before us now. I do think we ought to be giving a great deal of thought to establishing a domestic energy policy that will, in fact, help level out our dependency on foreign oil and be good for this economy and good for American citizens. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. I appreciate the opportunity to visit just a moment on a subject that is very close to my heart and very close to my interests. I am from Wyoming, a State that has open space throughout a great deal of the State. It is the eighth largest State in the United States and still the smallest population. I grew up near Yellowstone Park. Those are things I feel very strongly about. I want to do two things--one, to comment on the good proposal of the Senator from Louisiana and her passionate defense of it. I understand that. I respect that a great deal. There are some things that are disadvantageous about CARA that we have talked about. One, of course, is the idea it makes it mandatory spending for 15 years. This is an entitlement. As we look at our budget now, about a third of our budget is up to the Congress to allocate. The rest of it is entitlements. I came from serving in the Wyoming Legislature where the legislature now only has control over 25 percent of the dollars. I think that is a dangerous position, and entitlements become a real problem. Also, as we look toward the land acquisition, there are a number of things we need to be concerned about in this year's budget. From this administration, there was more interest on the purchase plan than the maintenance plan. We have 379 parks in this country, most of which are in desperate need of infrastructure help, but it seems as if the more popular thing to talk about is the acquisition of more land. Fifty percent of my State belongs to the Federal Government; 85 percent of Nevada in the west along the Rocky Mountain area, most of the land now belongs to the Federal Government. We asked in committee if we could have some kind of protection in this allocation of CARA of $45 billion, that we would not have any more Federal land; that, indeed, if Federal lands were to be purchased, we would have an opportunity to dispose of some Federal land so there would be basically no net gain. It seems to me that is reasonable. The supporters of CARA were not willing to talk about that. In conclusion, I think there is a great deal of merit in the bill before the Senate. It isn't, of course, what everyone wants. There are more expenditures to it than some like. It does reflect help however, for the losses that were incurred because of the forest fires--6.6 million acres in the West burned this year and the costs associated and the losses associated there. I am going to support this bill. I am pleased. I thank the chairman for his good work in getting this bill before the Senate. I will comment on the fact that not only in this bill but in a number of bills there are authorizations for things I think are inappropriately authorized in appropriations bills. In this bill there are some parks, for example, and set-asides which certainly ought to come from the authorizing committee, not from the Appropriations Committee. I understand what happens. We get toward the end of the year, and there are things there, people want something to happen and we are in danger of having a lot of that happen in the next week or so. I hope it does not. We have a system where there is an authorization and there is an appropriation. I don't think anyone in this place is more anxious to have dollars available to do something with conservation, to do something with preservation, to do something with easements, to do something with maintenance of the land we already have, but I think we have to make sure those bills, indeed, have the composition that makes them the kinds of things that we need to have in this Congress and that is to have them authorized yearly or at least in shorter spans than 15 years. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMAS. I ask to take the 4 minutes that was available to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. THOMAS. I ask unanimous consent to take the remaining time of the Senator from Arizona, which I believe is 4 minutes.

Mr. THOMAS. Go right ahead.

Mr. THOMAS. Go right ahead.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Reserving the right to object, I rise on behalf of the leader, who is working now with Members on the other side. I do not know of anyone who disagrees with what the Senator from California has said. No one I know of disagrees with the bill. I certainly do not. However, there is a process underway. I object to the unanimous consent request.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I think we are getting prepared, within a couple minutes now, to have a vote on the continuing resolution. I simply want to rise again to say I do not disagree at all with what the Senator from California is saying. But the fact is, there is a plan. There is a plan to operate under here. The Senate does not simply react because someone gets up and says it is time to do this. There are negotiations going on between the leader and Senators on the other side. I am sure this will indeed be done. We have a lot of things that need to be done. I would suggest that we ought to get the whole thing planned a little bit. I am a little surprised that this Senator is talking about objecting to moving forward because I think there have been quite a few objections coming from that side that has gotten us to where we are now. That is not really the point. The point is, we will handle this bill. The leader has prepared to do that.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I hope we can now proceed to the vote.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Energy Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 4583, and that the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, today the Senate will begin final action on the H-1B visa bill, with a vote on final passage scheduled to occur at 10 a.m. Following the vote, the Senate will proceed to executive session to debate four nominations on the Executive Calendar. Under the previous order, there will be several hours of debate, with votes expected on the nominations during this afternoon's session. The Senate may also consider any appropriations conference reports available for action. I thank my colleagues for their attention.