[Pages S9450-S9485]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT,
1998
The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the unanimous-consent agreement, there
will be 90 minutes, equally divided, on the pending business before the
Senate. In addition, there are no second-degree amendments to be in
order.
The Senator is recognized.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, may I inquire, does it require a unanimous
consent to set aside the pending amendment for purposes of
consideration of this proposed amendment?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending
amendment be laid aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair.
Amendment No. 1205
(Purpose: To reduce funding for Forest Service road
construction and eliminate the purchaser credit program)
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I offer an amendment and submit it for
immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Bryan], for himself, Mrs.
Boxer, and Mr. Torricelli, proposes an amendment numbered
1205.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 65, line 18, strike ``$160,269,000'' and insert
``$150,269,000''.
On page 65, line 23, after ``205'' insert ``, none of which
amount shall be available for purchaser credits in connection
with timber sales advertised after September 30, 1997, unless
the credits were earned in connection with sales advertised
on or before that date (and no purchaser credits shall be
earned for the construction or reconstruction of roads on the
National Forest transportation system in connection with
timber sales advertised after that date (but the foregoing
disallowance of purchaser credits shall not affect the
availability of the purchaser election under section 14(i) of
the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (16 U.S.C.
472a(i)))''.
On page 127, between lines 15 and 16, insert the following:
SEC. . TREATMENT OF ROAD CONSTRUCTION COSTS ESTIMATED FOR
TIMBER SALES AS MONEY RECEIVED FOR THE PURPOSE
OF PAYMENTS TO THE STATES FOR SCHOOLS AND
ROADS.
During fiscal year 1998, the term ``money received'', for
the purposes of the Act entitled ``An Act making
appropriations for the Department of Agriculture for the
fiscal year ending June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and
nine'', approved May 23, 1908 (35 Stat. 260, chapter 192; 16
U.S.C. 500), and section 13 of the act of March 1, 1911 (36
Stat. 963, chapter 186; 16 U.S.C. 500), shall include--
(1) the amount of purchaser credits earned in connection
with timber sales advertised on or before September 30, 1997;
and
(2) the amount of specified road construction costs
estimated in the agency appraisal process in connection with
timber sales advertised after that date.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I am always pleased, when I have the
opportunity, as I do this afternoon, to support, and in this instance
actually propose, legislation that benefits both the American taxpayer
and the environment.
The amendment I am offering today eliminates a subsidy used primarily
by large timber companies that not only has negative consequences for
the taxpayers but also a detrimental effect on the environment.
Each year, American taxpayers spend millions of dollars to subsidize
the construction of roads needed for logging on national forest lands.
[[Page S9451]]
The appropriations bill before us today contains a $47.4 million
appropriation for the Forest Service to assist in the construction and
reconstruction of timber roads in our national forests. In addition,
the bill, and accompanying report, provide affirmative direction to the
Forest Service instructing them to continue the purchaser credit
program without limitation.
The purchaser credit program allows the Forest Service to subsidize
the road construction costs of timber companies by granting credits to
them equal to the estimated cost of the roads that they need in order
to access their timber. The timber purchasers can then use the credits
to pay for the timber being harvested. Last year these purchaser
credits were valued at nearly $50 million.
In the House-passed version of the Interior appropriations bill a
limit of $25 billion was placed on the value of purchaser credits that
may be offered by the Forest Service in fiscal year 1998. The bill
before the Senate today eliminates this cap completely, and the report
accompanying the bill makes it clear that ``The committee has not
specified a ceiling for the amount of purchaser credits which can be
offered'' to timber companies. The result of this language is an open-
ended subsidy for the timber industry.
My amendment stands for a very simple proposition. If a timber
purchaser needs to build a road to harvest timber, the timber purchaser
should have to pay for it. The amendment which I am offering eliminates
the purchaser credit program and cuts $10 million from the Forest
Service timber road construction and reconstruction account.
In addition, my amendment provides that road construction costs
incurred by timber purchasers are to be treated as timber revenues for
the purpose of payment to States for use on roads and schools in the
counties where national forests are located. The result of this latter
provision is that counties will be held harmless as a result of the
elimination of the purchaser credit program.
For those of my colleagues who are not familiar with this program,
let me give a brief description of how the purchaser credit program
operates. When the Forest Service wants to use purchaser credits to
build the road to a planned timber sale, and parenthetically that is
about 90 percent of the time, it must estimate the cost to build the
road, the value of the timber in the sale area, and the road right-of-
way. Prospective purchasers go through a similar process of estimating
their roadbuilding costs and their estimated value of the timber they
must pay for to the Forest Service.
Considering all of these factors, the prospective purchasers submit
their bids accordingly. When a purchaser is awarded the contract for
the timber sale the Forest Service establishes the dollar value of the
purchaser road credit attached to that sale and credits the account in
that amount to the timber contract holder as the road is constructed.
The contractor, therefore, has immediate access to the credits to be
used in place of cash deposits and the agency, the purchaser, is also
given discretion to use the credit on any timber sale contract that it
holds in the forest. The Forest Service allows the transfer of
purchaser credits between timber sales located within the same national
forest.
Now the ability to transfer credits aids a purchaser's ability to
manage its timber sale portfolio cash flow. Since road construction
often delays timber harvest, purchasers who can rapidly transfer road
credits to another sale from their portfolio can attain lower portfolio
management costs. The result is analogous to an interest-free loan for
timber purchasers.
The opponents of this amendment contend eliminating the purchaser
road credit will devastate the timber industry. Their claim could not
be further from the truth. The Bureau of Land Management in several
States is successful at selling timber and getting the necessary roads
constructed without the use of the purchaser road credit that is
exclusive to the Forest Service. The effects on the Forest Service
timber sale program of eliminating the purchaser credit program and
requiring that roads be constructed pursuant to specified standards as
the BLM and the States require would be environmentally and
economically beneficial.
Eliminating road credits will force purchasers to internalize the
cost of road construction into their bid price for the timber. The
result is a more balanced system that provides equal treatment for all
purchasers of publicly owned timber, BLM and Forest Service lands.
Without the purchaser credit program it is likely that fewer roads
would be built and less habitat would be fragmented. Purchasers are
less likely to want to build extensive road networks if they have to
pay cash for them.
Consequently, timber sales with high road building costs will be less
attractive to purchasers than timber sales with low or no road building
costs.
Another important aspect of eliminating the purchaser credit program
is that it will shift responsibility for estimating road costs from the
Forest Service to purchasers. If markets are competitive, such a shift
should provide a more accurate and an efficient road cost accounting
system.
An independent study of timber sales in the Pacific Northwest found
that the Forest Service estimates for road construction costs can be as
much as 30 percent higher than actual costs for the industry to build
those roads. A recent report from the General Accounting Office
discovered that Forest Service estimates of road costs include a profit
margin for purchasers. It also found that the Forest Service lacked
accountability for the accuracy of their road cost estimates because
purchasers are not required to report actual costs of construction and
reconstruction. So if actual road costs are overestimated, the extra
purchaser credits awarded and subsequently traded for timber represent
a windfall profit for the purchaser, a profit that comes at the
public's expense. This inefficient situation would be eliminated if
purchaser credits were abolished.
Contrary to what you will hear from my opponents of this proposal, my
amendment will not end logging in the national forests. Requiring
timber purchasers to pay for road construction costs will likely reduce
timber sales in roadless areas where the environmental and economic
costs of logging are the greatest. I believe this is sound public
policy. Roadless areas are not good places to produce commercial timber
because they tend to be a high elevation, steep, and inaccessible. The
timber sales in these areas are the ones that cause by far the most
environmental problems and the ones which are the biggest money losers
because of the high cost of road building.
Let me invite my colleagues' attention to an excellent article
entitled ``Quiet Roads Bring in Thundering Protests,'' an article that
ran earlier this year in the New York Times that illustrated the
environmental damage caused by road construction. A biologist with the
Idaho Fish and Game Department, Chip Corsi, notes in the article that
researchers have found that as little as 1.7 miles of road per square
mile forest have the effect of reducing the complement of fish species
in an area. Mr. Corsi added that in Idaho, in Coeur d'Alene National
Forest we have from 4 to 10 to 15, up to 20 miles of road per square
mile, so it is extreme. That is his direct quote.
Many scientists have found that road building threatens wildlife
because it causes erosions of soils, fragments intact forest
ecosystems, encourages the spread of noxious weeds and invasive species
and reduces habitat for many animals needing a refuge from man.
It has been found that when the roads wash out they dump rocks and
soil on lower slopes into stream beds and even when they remain intact,
roads act as channels for water and contribute further to the erosion
of lands and streams.
Let me invite my colleagues' attention to one example of that. This
is the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho. At the top of the picture
one can see a road cut through the forest. This is the erosion that has
occurred as a result of a road having been logged and the runoff
sedimentation that has occurred as a consequence of that. That is a
major contributing problem to the environmental degradation that is
occurring in our national forests.
Scientists say the overall effect is that the streams and rivers fill
with silt, and the shallower waters mean degraded fish habitat and more
flooding. Many of my colleagues are aware that
[[Page S9452]]
the declining water quality of lakes, rivers, and streams in our
national forests is a serious problem.
The USDA Undersecretary Jim Lyons has stated that our No. 1 water
quality problem in the national forest system is roads. According to
the Forest Service, 922 communities get their drinking waters from
national forest streams that are frequently adversely affected by
building logging roads. In Idaho, over 960 streams are rated as water-
quality limited by the EPA because of contamination. Over half of these
streams are degraded by logging and roadbuilding. In addition, after
the winter storms of 1995 and 1996 in the Pacific Northwest, the Forest
Service found that in Idaho 70 percent of the 422 landslides were
associated with logging.
In my home State of Nevada, the road network through Lake Tahoe has
been identified as a major contributor to the degradation of water
quality and decline in the clarity of the lake. Mr. President, I know
this firsthand, having spent a decade of my life as a resident of
northern Nevada and having over the last 50 years visited the Lake
Tahoe basin frequently.
During the President and Vice President's recent visit to Lake Tahoe
the President announced that the Forest Service would decommission or
obliterate roughly 290 miles of old logging roads in the basin over the
next 10 years.
At Lake Tahoe, Mr. President, we have seen a rapid and radical
decline in water clarity. One of the most pristine lakes in North
America and the entire world, marveled at by Mark Twain and all of the
early pioneers at one time, a little more than a decade ago, you could
see 100 feet into the bottom of parts of that lake. In less than 30
years there has been an environmental degradation of more than a third.
So today you can actually see, in terms of clarity of the water, less
than 70 feet. A primary cause is the logging of that basin, initially
during the Comstock Lode and the mining discoveries of the mid-to-late
19th century.
I observed firsthand, not as a scientist but as a layman, looking at
the roads and seeing the runoff that occurs. The siltation that occurs,
that goes into the lake, has been a serious environmental problem. It
has been estimated that it will require several hundred millions of
dollars in order for this clarity and the environmental degradation
that is occurring on an ongoing basis to be reversed. There are no
guarantees, even at that.
My point, Mr. President, is we may have been ignorant in the past as
to what caused the problems. Those of our forebears a century ago were
less knowledgeable than we are of the environmental consequences. But
it certainly cannot be an excuse for our generation because we know
what the costs are, and the costs are not just in the new road
construction itself. The costs lasts for generations thereafter as we
pay as American taxpayers to try to abate or minimize or mitigate the
damage that will occur.
Now, opponents of this amendment will claim that forest roads need
money to be maintained and that the cuts contained in my amendment will
allow roads to deteriorate, causing further environmental damage. I
want to speak to this point. The amendment which I offer does not
affect the Forest Service road maintenance budget. I want to repeat
that: The amendment which is offered this afternoon does not affect the
Forest Service road maintenance budget. This amendment only eliminates
the subsidy of new timber roads. These are entirely separately funded
accounts within the Forest System.
As a matter of public policy, I would argue it makes more sense to
maintain roads that we already have than spending a great deal of money
building new roads. Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck has stated
that there is a $440 million backlog of maintenance needed on 232,000
miles of national forest roads. Addressing this need would have
considerable environmental benefits such as reducing erosion from roads
and stormproofing existing culverts. It is important to remember that
the timber industry's responsibility for maintaining logging roads ends
with the sale of timber and its subsequent harvest, leaving all future
maintenance costs to the American taxpayer.
I want to emphasize once again, as I did a moment ago, the
distinction between road reconstruction and road maintenance. Opponents
of this amendment will seek to measure the distinction but road
construction means starting with an abandoned road which may have trees
growing in it and may be partly contoured and rebuilding it for the
purpose of entering an area to conduct logging activities.
Reconstruction is only undertaken for access to timber sales.
Maintenance is keeping any forest road, timber, recreation, or general
purpose, in good repair. The average cost of maintaining a mile of road
is about $543. The average cost of reconstructing a mile of road is
more than $12,000 a mile. Consequently, cutting funds for
reconstruction will not hurt road maintenance.
Now, another erroneous claim I want to address involves whether
logging roads are needed for recreational activities in the national
forest. The answer, Mr. President, is no. According to the Forest
Service, logging roads are built at a lower standard and cost less than
recreation and general purpose roads. Logging roads are usually unpaved
dirt and are often usable only by high-clearance vehicles, while
recreation and general purpose roads generally are either paved or
gravel and are usable by all passenger cars.
On average, purchaser credit logging roads cost $15,000 per mile in
1996, while recreation roads cost $63,000, and general purpose roads
cost $65,000 per mile. The Forest Service plans to construct over 130
miles of recreation and general purpose roads in fiscal year 1998. My
amendment would not reduce funding for either of these two accounts.
Mr. President, let me be perfectly clear on what my amendment does
not do. It does not--I repeat, it does not--prohibit logging or road
construction in roadless areas. There is no provision in this amendment
that even references roadless areas. Many interest groups opposed to
this amendment have circulated erroneous information claiming that road
construction would be prohibited in roadless areas. I can assure my
colleagues that is not the case. In any event, roadless areas are only
a small portion of the timber base in our national forests, and the
national forests provide only 4 percent of the Nation's overall wood
for paper products.
Let me illustrate that point, if I may, Mr. President. One can see
what has occurred in terms of the timber harvest in the country and on
the national forests. This chart begins in 1950 and continues through
1995. We can see that the overall U.S. timber harvest, both national
forests and otherwise, has by and large increased over the last 45
years. It would appear to be in the area of about 18 billion cubic feet
a year. You can also see what happened with respect to the national
forests. The amount that is harvested there has been declining in
recent years, and I believe that is because there is a recognition that
there are other important values that the National Forest Service
provides to the American people: recreational opportunities, esthetic
values, habitat protection, all of which seem to be reflected in this
trend line.
So my point is that the National Forest Service timber harvest
represents about 4 percent of the Nation's overall harvest and, in my
view, will not have an economic consequence that will, in any way, make
it impossible for the United States to meet its harvest requirements.
Now, my amendment does not eliminate all funding for timber road
construction either. A similar amendment was offered in the House by
Congressman Porter and Congressman Kennedy, which would have eliminated
virtually all funding for timber road construction. That amendment,
incidentally, was very, very narrowly defeated on a vote of 211 to 209.
Let me make the point again. The Porter-Kennedy amendment would have
eliminated virtually all funding for new timber road construction.
My amendment would reduce the amount of the current appropriation, as
proposed, by $10 million, reducing it from a $47.4 million budget.
Opponents of this amendment are somewhat disingenuous when they claim
that it will decimate the timber road construction program.
Finally, Mr. President, I want to make my colleagues aware that this
[[Page S9453]]
amendment has the strong support of the Clinton administration. I want
to introduce into the Record a copy of the letter from the Secretary of
the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Dan Glickman.
I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
Hon. Richard H. Bryan,
U.S. Senate, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
Dear Dick: As we discussed on the phone last night, the
Administration strongly supports the amendment you plan to
offer to the fiscal year (FY) 1998 Interior appropriations
bill to eliminate the Forest Service's purchaser road credit
program and reduce funding for road construction in the
national forests.
There are nearly 380,000 miles of roads on the national
forests. Roads represent one of the greatest environmental
problems on the forests because of the extensive damage they
cause to soils, water quality, and fish and wildlife habitat.
A recent Forest Service study indicated that forest roads
increase the likelihood of landslides, thus creating a public
safety problem in urbanizing areas in the West. For these
reasons, rather than building new roads, the Administration
is refocusing its efforts on repairing damage from the
existing road network, eliminating thousands of miles of
unneeded roads, and proposing the policies reflected in your
amendment.
The President's FY 1998 budget proposed elimination of the
purchaser credit program because it reflects an outdated
policy that permits timber purchasers to exchange national
forest timber for road construction costs, providing them an
unwarranted subsidy, thus facilitating entry into roadless
areas and causing the environmental problems noted above.
Consistent with the Administration's policy, we support the
provisions in your amendment to protect payments to counties
and small businesses. Purchaser road credits are now included
in the calculation of payments to counties associated with
timber sales. Your amendment ensures that there is no net
loss of payments to counties despite elimination of purchaser
credits. In addition, through protection of the purchaser
elect program, your amendment ensures that small businesses
which may not have the capital to pay for road construction
can continue to compete with larger companies for Forest
Service timber sales.
Although the $10 million reduction in road construction
funding proposed in your amendment is below the
Administration's budget request, through efficiencies and the
expanded use of existing road infrastructure the Forest
Service can still achieve the fundamental objectives of its
management plans. Recent Administration budgets have
reflected this trend in reducing road construction funding,
and your amendment is consistent with this trend.
Thank you for your leadership in seeking to reduce
unnecessary road building on the national forests and your
support for eliminating the purchaser credit program. I look
forward to working with you to achieve passage of the
amendment.
Sincerely,
Dan Glickman,
Secretary.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, Secretary Glickman's letter is in strong
support of the amendment that I am offering this afternoon. I also add,
Mr. President, that the amendment is also strongly supported by a broad
coalition of environmental and taxpayer organizations, including the
Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Friends of Earth, U.S. PERG, Taxpayers
for Common Sense, and Citizens Against Government Waste. In addition,
more than 60 newspapers across the country have editorialized in
support of the amendment.
I simply close by making this observation, and I ask my colleagues to
consider this one important point. If the purchaser credit program is
not a subsidy for the timber purchasers, as the opponents of this
amendment claim, then why are they fighting so hard to preserve it?
Mr. President, I hope my colleagues can join with those advocates of
the environment, those advocates of responsible governmental fiscal
practices and support this amendment, because it is a win for the
environment and a win for the American taxpayers.
Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of the time. I yield the
floor.
Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the Senator from Nevada states that it is
not the purpose of this amendment to terminate harvesting in our
national forests. He also states that it is the intent of the amendment
to reduce harvesting in our national forests. He recognizes that the
impact of the amendment will be to lower the gross income of the Forest
Service from timber sales because, obviously, bids will reflect the
cost of constructing roads. He says that the amendment will not
terminate the construction of roads in roadless areas, but that the
construction of roads in roadless areas is wrong.
Now, I guess the question that one must ask of the Senator from
Nevada, and the outside organizations that back his amendment, is, what
is their view toward the harvesting of forest products in our national
forests? The Senator from Nevada has graced us with a set of graphs and
a chart that indicates increasing harvests on private lands and rapidly
decreasing harvests on public lands. In the 1980's, nearly 12 billion
board feet a year were harvested from Forest Service lands--a harvest
smaller in board feet than the regeneration of those lands. Today, that
level is below 4 million board feet. In other words, harvests on those
lands have been reduced by more than two-thirds. How much more
reduction does the Senator from Nevada propose?
The organizations that he proudly announced are supporting his
amendment, by and large, have as their articulated policy that there
should be no harvest on public lands anywhere, at any time, under any
circumstances. And while this amendment, standing alone, will not have
that effect, it is clearly designed as a part of a campaign to end all
such harvests.
At the present time, again, as indicated by the chart that the
Senator from Nevada has there, only about 5 percent of the Nation's
softwood comes from Forest Service lands, but 50 percent of the volume
is located on those lands. Since the policies that have resulted in
that dramatic decrease have taken place, the average price of an 1,800-
square-foot new home has gone up about $2,000. Almost $3 billion from
the pockets of American home purchasers is the result of those efforts
to save the spotted owl and to meet other of the priorities so
eloquently set out by the Senator from Nevada.
Interestingly enough, when an outside organization--Price
Waterhouse--filed a report entitled ``Financing Roads on the National
Forests,'' it reached this conclusion:
The forest roads program does not contain a subsidy for
timber purchasers. It provides an efficient and effective
mechanism for financing road construction and reconstruction.
Interestingly enough, the administration, at least as recently as
January and February, agreed totally with that position, and it
indicates no savings associated with the elimination of the forest
roads program.
Moreover, the appropriation for forest roads that we are defending
here today is the administration's own proposal. This is not a budget
that increases that appropriation; it is a budget that reflects that
appropriation. Is the Senator from Nevada seriously presenting to us
the proposition that this Clinton administration is engaged in
irresponsible forest harvest contracting, that it is ignoring
environmental and fiscal concerns and causing our forests to be
harvested at an unsustainable or environmentally harmful rate? He must
be making that proposition. He wants the two-thirds reduction that has
taken place over the course of the last decade to be a more-than-two-
thirds reduction. He wants this administration to stop what he
considers irresponsible contracting for forest harvesting in our
national forests.
Mr. President, no one who is concerned with any kind of balance in
the management of our national forests can possibly reach the
conclusion that the Clinton administration's Forest Service management
and supervision is recklessly and irresponsibly harvesting our national
forests. Almost all of the criticism is on the other side, except for
the organizations that are backing this amendment, whose position is
that the only good harvest is no harvest at all.
Now, if the Senator from Nevada believes that, I think it would be
more forthright simply to propose that and see whether or not the
Members of the Senate agree. But this forest roads program, the way in
which it was set up, is designed to see to it that the roads are built
efficiently and well, according to Forest Service standards, and
appropriately paid for. Simply to take money out of one pocket and put
it into another will not, in any way, enhance the Federal Treasury.
Bids will
[[Page S9454]]
be lower--probably considerably lower--as the risk of costs have
shifted from one side to another and the quality of roads will be
lower. But let's look at the entire program that we are talking about
here.
In fact, of this entire appropriation for 1996, only a very modest
amount is for the construction of roads; the great bulk is for
reconstruction. From the credit system, from the appropriation,
practically none is for construction, and a modest amount is for
reconstruction. But three-quarters of the amount is for the
obliteration of roads, about which the Senator from Nevada spoke so
eloquently. Eighty percent of all of the reconstruction that is so
important is paid for by purchaser credit, not by appropriations on the
part of this body. In fact, Mr. President, the net result of passing
this amendment will not only be a further reduction in harvest, it will
be a dramatic reduction in the availability of our forests from a wide
range of recreational activity. It will be the de facto creation of
more tens of billions of acres that cannot effectively be enjoyed by
the vast majority of the people of the United States.
I want to emphasize that in this case we are defending the
recommendations in the budget of the President and of the Forest
Service--a Forest Service that has designed the reduction and harvest
as far as it has gone. And I believe that the most appropriate points
for the proponents of this amendment to make are having reduced our
Forest Service harvest by two-thirds, having shifted almost 95 percent
of all of the harvesting of forest products onto private lands that
contain 50 percent of the resource. How much further do they wish to
go? Their supporters say no harvest at all. This amendment is one
dramatic step toward that goal.
Mr. President, I yield such time as the Senator from Idaho may wish
to take.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coats). The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me thank my chairman for yielding. Let
me also congratulate him for the clarity with which he spoke to this
issue.
Mr. President, I rise in opposition today to the amendment of the
Senator from Nevada. I hope that in the course of what I have to say,
Mr. President, that my opposition is clear. This comes to the issue the
chairman and the Senator from Washington put so clearly.
The Sierra Club some months ago, the Inland Empire Public Lands
Council from the inner Pacific Northwest some weeks ago, and other
organizations have come out with a policy for zero cut of timber on
public lands. This is a national position that is well articulated by
some of the more extreme environmental groups.
I think the Senator from Washington is absolutely correct. I believe
this is step 1 in a 5- or 6-year plan. This amendment cuts about one-
fifth of the resource for road building. If this is accomplished, then
next year they will try for a little more, and the next year even more,
and the incremental game that has been played over the last several
decades that has significantly changed the character of public land use
is accomplished--in this instance, the elimination of timber harvest on
public lands.
The Senator from Nevada spoke of subsidies. Let me say as loudly and
as clearly as I can that there are no subsidies. He is wrong. He talks
about saving the taxpayers' money. He is wrong. The Price Waterhouse
study that I have in my hand says so. Many others who have analyzed the
program of purchaser credit also agree. The rhetoric of purchaser
credits being subsidies may sound good when you suggest larger timber
companies get money--taxpayer money. If this were the case, then that
is subsidy, and that is wrong. It has no intent, and it doesn't improve
in this instance the environment, or the ability of our forested lands
to be ongoing and productive in their production of fiber for the
citizens of our country.
So let me say very clearly that Senator Bryan's amendment does not
speak to subsidy because it does not exist. And it does not speak to
saving money because it would not happen.
In addition, the amendment would eliminate beyond an actual cut of 20
percent of the $47 million that is in this budget for proposed new
timber roads. It would cut, of course, the purchaser credit. And that
is where the argument on subsidies rests. This program was crafted by a
Democrat Congress in 1964. It doesn't mean they were right. It doesn't
mean they were wrong. At the time using the best analysis they could
and an appropriate decision as it relates to how stumpage fees could
best be utilized for the benefit of the taxpayer, they came up with
this method. It was thoughtful legislating at that time, and I think it
remains so today. It is a good policy. Let me try to explain why it is
good policy and not a subsidy. Let me also explain why I challenge the
Senator from Nevada on his arguments, because if I make a challenge I
ought to be able to prove it. It is only fair and right that I do so.
The purchaser road credit system has been utilized for more than 20
years. It allows purchasers to earn credits equal to the estimated cost
of constructing roads specified in a timber sale contract. The
purchaser can then use the credit to pay for the timber harvest. As
with the regular forest road program which utilizes appropriated funds,
the purchaser road credit program primarily supports the reconstruction
of existing roads. The Senator from Washington has already very clearly
spoken to that diagram effectively in the chart that he has before us.
Of the total number of miles of timber sales roads built nationwide in
fiscal 1995, about 90 percent were done with purchaser road credits.
Approximately 80 percent of the purchaser road credits were used for
the purpose of reconstructing.
I thought it was important to mention this because the Senator from
Nevada spoke passionately about the Tahoe Basin, an area which I am
very familiar with the way it has been harvested or rather not
harvested. This lack of harvest has attributed to the fuel buildup that
goes on in that region, affected the wellness of the trees, and most
importantly created a potential catastrophic environment that could
exist in a drought situation causing massive fire. He speaks of roads,
road conditions, and road maintenance. Purchaser credits have gone
toward maintaining and improving, through reconstruction, more roads
than hard dollars do. Every one of those roads is built to
environmental standards which actually improves the environmental
situation.
In my State of Idaho last year--an exceptionally wet year--we had
road blowouts; land and hillside blowouts in our national forests where
man had never been. But the biggest problem occurred in areas where
roads had not been reconstructed or effectively maintained.
So, if the Senator from Nevada wants to talk about maintaining roads
and improving road environments that create less sedimentation and a
better water quality in Lake Tahoe, then he ought to be coming with
more money. Because money does not exist in the budget, money does not
exist to improve road conditions. Therefore, environmental conditions
is the very thing that he is trying to eliminate.
But back to the issue of subsidy. I brought this chart along to
demonstrate the point. The point is really quite simple. If you are
going to log the trees off the land, you have to get to the trees.
There are Federal trees on Federal land. Who ought to build the road?
The Senator and I come from large ranching States. You have cattle out
in the corral in the back of the ranch, and you want to sell them to a
cattle buyer. He has to get the trucks to the corral. You say, ``Build
the roads to the corral, cattle buyer, and you can have the cattle.''
He will say, ``OK. And I will bid you $5 less a head because I have
to spend money to build the road.''
Or, you can say, ``No. I will get the road built. I will pay for the
road. Therefore, bid me the market price on my cattle.''
That is the same scenario that goes on with public timberlands
because, as the Senator from Nevada said, the timber company leaves and
the road is still there. Yes, it is. It is a Federal road paid for by
Federal money, owned by the Forest Service, utilized by the citizens
once it is used for logging.
Here is a good example. If the market value of the timber on a timber
sale is $100, and you use the purchaser credit, it costs you $40 to
build the road. You have a purchaser credit of $40. So you bid the
market price for the timber. You bid $100. The net receipts are $60
because the purchaser road credit was
[[Page S9455]]
constructed. If you do not have purchaser road credits it is still
going to cost $40 to build the road. The logging contractor bid to the
Forest Service less money because he is going to sell the trees to pay
for the road he will build. So the purchaser credit is zero. He bids
$60. He doesn't bid $100. He bids $60, and the net receipt is $60.
Is that a subsidy, or is that a method of building roads that in 1964
this Congress and this Senate decided was appropriate? Call it a
subsidy? I don't think you can. Try it, if you might. Price Waterhouse
says no. Economists say no. The reason they say no is because of this
exact chart.
The Senator from Nevada says, ``Well, BLM does it differently. They
just sell the timber, and the logger builds the road.'' Yes. They do.
Price Waterhouse would analyze that, and every economist would analyze
that and say on the ONC--Oregon and California--lands in Oregon, where
the BLM has the bulk of the timber from all of their landholding across
the country, they do as the Senator from Nevada suggests. But the
economists would say the quality of that timber value is depressed in
stumpage because the logger takes the price of the road out of the
sale.
Why is that important for Idaho, then? Why am I standing here
concerned? Well, the Senator knows why. The Senator knows that in
current law a share of the stumpage value is returned to local counties
for schools and for roads. In his State of Nevada, down on the Toiyabe,
it looks like they get a few dollars. They do not get anywhere the
amount of money that Idaho, Oregon, Washington, or northern California
gets. Why? If you are from Nevada, you know why. It isn't a timbered
State, in large part. It is a high desert State--not a lot of trees,
except in very few areas; primarily in the north, where the Senator is
from, and down on the tip in the south.
The bottom line is when you bid a timber sale you and bid $60 rather
than $100 because you are taking $40 out for the road. The Federal
Treasury receives the same amount of money but payments to counties
decrease.
What the Senator knows is that by this action, he is dramatically
cutting the money that flows to counties for schools and for road
construction--their own road construction, not this road construction,
not Federal road construction. Why have we payed the counties over the
years? I tell you why we have done it--because my State is 63 percent
federally owned, and those are landlocked communities. They have no tax
base from which to fund their schools and their local roads.
The Senator from Nevada knows from which I speak. His State is much
more owned by the Federal Government than is my State. Nevada is 84
percent.
It is interesting that the Senator from Nevada hasn't mentioned a
thing about the annual net proceeds tax that his State gets from
Federal mineral resources. Last year, the State of Nevada got $613
million in severance tax from Federal mineral resources.
I say to the Senator from Nevada. Why does he work so intently to
destroy the money that my schools, the schools in Montana, Washington,
and Oregon get, and speaks nothing about that intent in his State,
masked in the name of the environment? Let me suggest to you that it is
not so masked. It is open. It is direct, and the impact would be
dramatic. In many of my counties, school funding is 60 to 70 percent
funded by this base, and he would take, in many instances, 25 or 30
percent of it away immediately. If the plan of national environmental
radical groups, the kind that advocate zero logging on timber forested
lands, had their way the remaining funds would soon be wiped out
altogether.
I guess another thing that clearly is worth discussing, and it is
terribly frustrating to me, the Senator mentioned that he had letters
from Secretary Glickman as it relates to the position of this
administration when it comes to their support of his amendment. The
Secretary before the House of Representatives said, interestingly
enough, not very long ago that the elimination of purchaser road
credits would hurt mostly small timber purchasers who have less access
to credit.
Now, the Senator from Nevada talked about sticking it to the big
boys. I think in reverse, if he studied it with some intent, he would
find that this is not quite the case.
I have another chart here that speaks to what Secretary Glickman was
talking about--purchaser credit use: ``Who buys the Federal timber?''
The dark blue represents small business, the red represents large
business by definition. As we can see by the chart itself, in almost
every instance, they are buying better than 50 to 60 percent of the
timber.
Small business timber purchasers would be adversely affected because
the potential financing problem they would encounter if they had to
operate by doing exactly what the Senator said, going out up front and
getting the money to construct the roads before they could harvest the
trees, take them to market and get their return. The alternative is the
purchaser-elect program which does not protect the small business that
are have the most threat. According to Price Waterhouse, a small
business still has to pay cash for the full amount of the timber. This
would explain why the purchaser-elect program has been rarely used by
small business timber purchasers. Of course, that is what the Senator
is advocating.
Mr. President, I recently noticed that the administration is having a
bit of difficulty with what they tell us here in the Congress, and that
is why I wonder about the letter the Senator has that he put in the
Record. I have a copy of that letter. I say that because last year I
asked about potential legal and financial liabilities associated with
canceled timber sale contracts. The Forest Service provided a response,
and the Department rescinded that response within just a few days.
Earlier this year the Department properly rejected a position for a new
policy on qualifications for timber purchasers, and 2 days later the
Under Secretary claimed that an unauthorized individual had used an
autosigning machine and the letter should never have been sent.
Well, it seems as if the Secretary had tried to place himself
squarely on both sides of this issue. I suggest that he put greater
control on his autosigning pen. Maybe we would more clearly understand
what the Department of Agriculture is all about here--whiplashed by an
environmental interest that does not serve this program well, does not
serve the rural forested communities of our States well and, most
importantly, does not address this issue in a fair and balanced way.
During the summer of 1966, there were several incidents where
impassable roads resulting from washouts and wind-thrown trees hampered
firefighters' ability to respond to fire emergencies, requiring fire
crews to turn around and find other access to fires.
Why do I just instantly bring fires into this argument? Because the
affected responsive maintenance of roads that is done through this
program is what allows the Forest Service to manage our forests and
fight fires. There are also roads that are used by off-road-vehicle
people of the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from Idaho. There are
our hunters, our fishermen, our berry pickers, our recreationists, our
tourists. Those are the roads that were initially built to harvest
timber. I would suggest to the chief of the Forest Service that if he
has $440 million worth of road maintenance and backlog, he is achieving
most of it today through the program that the Senator from Nevada is
trying to eliminate.
So I hope that my colleagues this afternoon, recognizing the
importance of this program, the way it is used effectively--it is not a
subsidy. It benefits the taxpayer. It certainly benefits the small
community that is the recipient of stumpage fees that fund schools and
roads. It is a program well balanced and considered by the Congress
over these years, and I hope they will reject the amendment of the
Senator from Nevada. I do believe it is not well thought out. It
certainly does not meet the arguments that he himself made as it
results to the need for effective road maintenance to provide
environmental quality, water quality and the kinds of things that we
appreciate from our public land.
I yield the floor.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased once again to join my
distinguished colleague from Nevada, Senator Bryan, in identifying
another egregious expenditure which is a perennial waste of the
taxpayer's money: the
[[Page S9456]]
timber road subsidy. Several years ago, my able friend and I joined
forces to eliminate the wool and mohair subsidies. And in the last
Congress, together we jettisoned the subsidies for the mink industry in
the market access program. In fact, Mr. President, I think our
opposition to the entire market access program has become quite well
known in this body.
Mr. President, the amendment we introduce today calls for the most
modest reduction of a flagrantly wasteful subsidy which is helping
denude our national forests and providing an outrageous taxpayer-funded
give-away to the private sector. The Senator from Nevada and I are
asking for the Senate to reduce this timber subsidy by $10 million.
This money would come from the $47 million budget of the U.S. Forest
Service's logging and construction program. Our amendment also prevents
the Forest Service from using ``purchaser road credits'' to trade
valuable Federal forest resources for environmentally destructive and
costly timber roads. In essence, Mr. President, this amendment will put
an end to the practice of awarding free trees in exchange for the
industry paying its own road construction costs. This amendment also
holds harmless counties that receive Federal payments from the sale
value of federally owned timber, so it contains a mechanism to maintain
a neutral fiscal impact on those counties. There is clearly much to
complain about when it comes to timber sales--which routinely cost the
Treasury and the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollar each year--
but the issue before us is much narrower.
Under current U.S. Forest Service management, logging access roads
are built in national forests using either taxpayer funds or assets to
subsidize logging companies harvesting timber. The taxpayer subsidizes
the construction and reconstruction of logging access roads by the
Government either paying directly for the building of the roads or by
trading trees when the timber company builds the road. The system known
as the Purchaser Credit Program essentially gives timber purchasers
``free trees'' and, according to the GAO, includes a profit margin for
purchasers. In both instances, timber companies receive subsidies at
the expense of taxpayers for activities that should be incorporated as
a cost of doing business.
Mr. President, this amendment does not reduce funding for road
maintenance and it does not affect the construction or maintenance of
recreation and general purpose roads. This amendment does not alter the
infrastructure management budget or the reconstruction and construction
budget of the Forest Service. This amendment contains no rider or any
other language dealing with roadless areas of our national forests.
This amendment does not prohibit timber companies from building their
own roads in the national forests where that is permissible under
existing laws and regulations, nor does it deter timber sales and
harvesting. It merely eliminates taxpayer-funded logging road
construction which should be the responsibility of the timber
companies. It is a specific, concise amendment which will not only
allow us to reduce our deficit but also prevent pollution of municipal
water supplies and save fish and wildlife habitats.
Originally, Mr. President, road building was subsidized by the U.S.
Forest Service to encourage economic and community development. There
was a time, especially after World War II, when the nation was rapidly
expanding, that the government help for the Northwest timber industry
made sense. But those days are over. We have learned that once areas
are logged and logging companies move to new areas, communities cannot
survive. Indeed they become ghost towns. There are no long term
economic and community benefits to the public--only to private
industry. If economic development is still the justification for this
program, it flies in the face of some basic economic data. Mr.
President, between 1950 and 1994, timber harvests increased by 64
percent, while employment in the wood and paper industry fell 4
percent. Other factors are at play in this subsidy. The fact is, Mr.
President, the road-building subsidy--like the mink subsidy and the
wool and mohair subsidy--is an anachronism.
The degradation of forests over the last few decades has led to a
wide variety of environmental and health problems, including dramatic
increases in species extinctions, global warming--due in part to
deforestation in both tropical and temperate zones--and the
deterioration of water quality. Jim Lyons, Undersecretary of
Agriculture, admits as much. He has told us, Mr. President, ``Our
number one water-quality problem in the National Forest System is
roads.'' In northern California, road building creates silt which clogs
our State reservoirs and lessens water quality. Logging roads in
national forests increase environmental degradation by contributing to
the destruction and fragmentation of species, habitat, water pollution
and landslides. In addition, Mr. President, since the 1940's, studies
by the Forest Service and other fire scientists have found that more
than 90 percent of all wildfires in the United States are human-caused,
and 75 percent of these start within 265 feet of a road.
We have a tremendous backlog of unmaintained forest logging roads
that are now unsafe. Maintenance of these roads is expensive--if there
is no money to maintain existing roads, how will we take care of new
roads? The Forest Service reported in March 1997 that there is a $440
million backlog of road maintenance needs for its existing roads. Where
is the fiscal sense in constructing new roads?
Mr. President, there are currently 378,000 miles of roads throughout
the national forest system, which is eight times the mileage of the
U.S. interstate highway system. That's enough to circle the earth
nearly 15 times. In some parts of our Pacific Northwest, one square
mile is laced with up to 20 miles of road. Supporters say these roads
open the forest to recreation. But, Mr. President, I can assure you
many of these roads are not passable--I have seen studies on this issue
which show that these roads are built for truck use with little concern
for passenger vehicles or travel comfort. These are not recreation
roads. In any case, Mr. President, the General Accounting Office has
found that 70 percent of the Nation's subsidized logging roads are used
almost exclusively by private timber companies and their contractors.
Mr. President, while the environment suffers and the timber industry
enriches itself, the taxpayer picks up the tab. In fact, the taxpayer
pays toward the costs of each road three times: first to build the
road, second to maintain it, and third to fix the environmental damage
caused by road-induced fires and flood.
This proposal to reduce the account by $10 million and eliminate the
purchaser road credit is modest, rational common sense by any measure.
I urge our colleagues to support it.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the
Bryan amendment. I rise because this program has proven very successful
over the years that it has been in existence. This is a positive
program that promotes cooperation between public and private
enterprises, which are the types of agreements we should be supporting
on the Senate floor and not opposing.
In addition, this program has been found that it costs the government
no money. Price-Waterhouse did an economic analysis and determined that
``the Forest Roads program does not contain a subsidy for timber
purchasers.'' This program is an efficient and effective mechanism for
financing forest road construction. And, since net payments to the
Treasury will remain the same, Price-Waterhouse concluded there is no
subsidy to the timber purchaser.
Finally, I want to stress a point that I feel is of utmost
importance. Many do not realize that 25 percent of the proceeds from
timber sales go directly to the counties to be used for roads and
schools. In Arkansas, where the per capita expenditures on students
rank 46 out of 51 states and the District of Columbia, our children
cannot afford to lose this vital source of funding.
Mr. President, I want to reiterate my strong opposition to this
amendment to strike funding for the Forest Roads Program.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I will oppose the Bryan amendment to reduce
funding for Forest Service road construction, reconstruction and
obliteration, and to eliminate the purchaser
[[Page S9457]]
credit program, because the amendment will make two activities more
difficult to accomplish in the pursuit of the goal of ending new road
construction in inappropriate areas. These two activities are
obliteration of improperly placed, environmentally damaging or unused
roads and reconstruction of those roads that serve regenerated stands.
The administration has indicated that this amendment would cause the
Forest Service to construct fewer new roads, yet the administration
already has the power to construct fewer new roads without this
amendment.
Eliminating the purchaser credit program may make sense. Certainly,
the public lands management agencies of the Federal Government should
have consistent policies on appropriately allocating the costs of
building roads for timber access and other uses. But, the program's
elimination will not necessarily save taxpayers' money. There are many
policy and budget issues that should be sorted out at a Committee
hearing on the matter before Congress acts on this.
Mr. President, I could support an amendment written to limit the
number of miles of new roads in environmentally sensitive areas,
however, the flaws in the Bryan amendment make its impact on this
objection uncertain.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to address my
views on the Bryan amendment regarding timber road construction in our
National Forests. I am very concerned about environmental protection
and safeguarding our Nation's forests, providing there is an
appropriate balance for economic development and job opportunities.
On Senate floor votes in 1986 and 1989, I supported reductions in the
direct Federal spending no road construction by the Forest Service. If
this amendment had been limited to road construction, I would have
voted for it.
However, I am concerned about the impact of the elimination of all
funding for the purchaser road credit program. From what I have seen
and heard, during my August visits to the Allegheny National Forest in
Elk, Forest, McKean and Warren counties, elimination of the purchaser
road credits would constitute a significant hardship.
Accordingly, that provision of the amendment causes me to vote
against it.
I do so on the assurances which I have received that the
administration is currently reviewing the timber road construction
program and may make substantial revisions which would provide for
appropriate environmental safeguards.
This vote, for me, is a close call. If there is not adequate
environmental protection from changes in the purchaser road credit
program in the administrations continuing review, I would be prepared
to reconsider my vote on this issue on next year's Interior
appropriations bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. BURNS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that the
Senate resume the debate on the Ashcroft amendment following the
expiration of the debate on the pending amendment offered by Senator
Bryan.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Chair hears none, and
it is so ordered.
Mr. BURNS. I make that request because we are going to go over the
time when we are supposed to be back on that amendment.
Mr. President, I rise today to speak against the amendment from the
junior senator from Nevada. I urge my colleagues to oppose a
drastically reduced forest road budget, an end of purchaser road
credits, and a change in the county payments formula. This amendment is
unworkable and unnecessary in the face of a road construction budget
that is already declining.
The amendment offered by Senator Bryan would reduce the proposed
budget for new timber road construction by $10 million. This amendment
does nothing more than carry out the extreme agenda of certain radical
environmental groups. As they have acknowledged, their objective is to
shut down the Forest Service Timber Program.
Mr. President, Forest Service timber sales are sold using an open,
competitive auction system process. All sales are sold at fair market
value, with costs associated with the timber sales, including road
work, apportioned and built into a minimum bid price, which sets the
floor. There is no subsidy associated with timber sales or road
construction.
According to a recent economic analysis released by the Price
Waterhouse accounting firm, ``the forest roads program does not contain
a subsidy for timber purchasers--it provides an efficient and effective
mechanism for financing road construction and reconstruction.''
Owners of private lands often provide access to their lands to
purchasers of their timber. They can either construct the roads
themselves and then charge more for the timber, or they can require the
timber purchaser to construct roads and thereby receive less money for
their timber. Landowners who require the timber purchaser to construct
roads have developed many systems to compensate the purchaser for road
construction activities.
Purchaser road credits are a fairly common method for building roads.
Many private landowners, as well as the State forestry agencies of
Idaho and Oregon, have similar systems to build roads on their lands.
No matter which system is chosen, the value of the timber sold will be
reduced by the cost incurred by the purchasing party.
The Bryan amendment, however, calls for the elimination of the Forest
Service purchaser road credits program. Eliminating purchaser road
credits would have serious implications.
Under the purchaser credit program, timber sale contracts require the
purchaser to reconstruct or construct roads and bridges. Purchaser
credit is an off-budget means for the Forest Service to rebuild and
repair existing roads and occasionally to build new roads at a
significant savings to the taxpayer when compared with appropriated
funds.
There are many costs associated with the purchase and harvest of a
timber sale, including bonding, road construction, road maintenance,
logging, and trucking. When a company analyzes what it can bid for a
particular timber sale, it considers all the costs and values
associated with manufacturing forest products from the trees to be
purchased. If the company is given credits for the road work, the bids
will be higher because it is not a cost.
As with the regular forest road program which uses appropriated
funds, the purchaser road credit program primarily supports the
reconstruction of existing roads. Of the total number of miles of the
timber sales roads built or rebuilt nationwide in fiscal year 1995,
about 90 percent were done with purchaser road credits.
As funds for road construction have been reduced in recent years,
purchaser credit has become a vital tool to accomplish road work in all
regions of the country, especially reconstruction. About 80 percent of
the program used each year for reconstruction on roads, especially for
safety and environmental improvements. Congress and the administration
must reject all efforts to eliminate or reduce purchaser road credits.
Mr. President, Federal timber sales have declined precipitously,
primarily from limitations placed on the Forest Service by
environmental considerations and species protection efforts for spotted
owls, marbled murrelets, and various species of salmon. In 1987, the
timber sales program provided nearly 12 billion board feet of timber.
Ten years later, less than 4 billion board feet were sold.
It does not take rocket science to understand the dangerous
consequences the Bryan amendment has for local communities. Small
businesses account for two-thirds of all timber harvested in national
forests. Those small operations are located in the rural areas,
providing jobs and stability to their communities.
The Bryan amendment would dramatically limit the forest road program,
putting additional pressures on the timber sale program. Most
supporters of the Bryan amendment are unaware that the Forest Service
will spend many times more on reconstruction and repair of existing
roads as they will on the construction of new forest roads.
Most of the roads in the national forests are single-lane, dirt roads
which
[[Page S9458]]
are open to all forest users. Each year these roads allow millions of
Americans to visit the national forests. Access is provided to wild and
scenic rivers, national scenic byways, wilderness areas,
and recreational facilities, including campgrounds, boat ramps, and
picnic areas. These roads provide access for cutting firewood and
Christmas trees, berry picking, hunting, fishing, and camping.
The primary use of the national forest road system is recreation. All
told, about 97 percent of the road system in any given national forest
is open to recreational use. Ten years ago, recreation use on the
national forests was less than 250 million visits. Today, recreation
use is approaching 350 million visits, an increase of 40 percent.
The Bryan amendment would also reduce the construction of roads in
roadless areas. Road construction in roadless areas of the national
forests is for the most part limited to emergency situations. Indeed,
few if any miles of roads have been built in roadless areas of the
national forests in recent years. However, building some roads in
roadless areas is necessary on occasion to allow access to treat insect
and disease outbreaks, to monitor forest health, or for wildfire
management.
Mr. President, the Bryan amendment would have a debilitating effect
on the management of the national forest. I urge my colleagues to
defeat this effort to further limit logging in roadless areas, to
terminate the purchaser credit program, and to cut an already reduced
forest road budget. This amendment is simply bad forest policy.
The environmental groups who have drafted this amendment have only
one purpose. It is to shut down the Forest Service Timber Program. I
urge my colleagues to defeat the amendment.
Before I yield to my friend from Oregon--we are running down on time
here--I just want to put my little plug in here.
Mr. President, we have set records on recycling in this Senate. This
old debate has been recycled every year since I have been here. We tend
to forget in this country that we are dealing with a renewable
resource. It is just like corn flakes on your table or the shirt on
your back. All of these come from renewable resources.
There has been one group of persons who have been left out of this
debate, and it is the consumers of America. Has anybody priced any
lumber lately, what it costs to build a house? Does anybody deal with
the homeless in their States on how do we find housing and what it
costs for affordable housing?
There are people in this country who are in charge of producing not
only food and fiber but also the shelter for America. That is what we
are talking about here. You can mask it any way you want, but the way
that we make a sale is pretty much time tested. It has worked, and it
works every day, not only for the harvesting or the growing of a
renewable resource. We see that great miracle of renewal every spring
and every year.
However, we also see the economic backbone of the economy of rural
America being eroded by people who have forgotten what it takes to
produce food, fiber and shelter. I tell you, you can go out there and
look at that mountain all you want and, if it is a religious experience
and you do not want it touched, that is fine and dandy. But at the end
of the day you are going to go get a hamburger because you are hungry.
It is the basic of life in this country. That is the first thing, or
the second thing, we do every day when we get up.
So I ask my colleagues just one question. In promoting what some
think of as a ``green world,'' is that going to feed us and sustain us?
Probably for a lot of us around here it fed us a little too good. Maybe
we are caring a little too much. But I ask those who are not hands-on
natural resource providers to just pay heed to what you are doing here,
because everything we enjoy --our standard of living, our quality of
life--starts with a little seed in the ground. That is where it starts.
Every one of us goes about our way every day in feeding and in
clothing--every one of us without exception. Yet we want to make that
tougher because we do not think it is important. So after housing and
shelter, I think we are talking about a bona fide serious problem here,
and it is not fair to change the rules. It is not even right to those
who grow and those who are in charge of the harvest. It is not fair to
those who have to take a raw product and add value to it so that it
serves all of us in this great country.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
The Chair advises the Senator from Montana that there remains 10
minutes on his time.
Mr. SMITH of Oregon. I thank the Chair.
I thank my colleague from Montana and my colleagues from Washington
and Idaho who have joined me in resisting the Bryan amendment. The
Senator from Nevada is my friend, but I believe on this issue he is
very wrong. If he were to prevail, this would force great injury on my
State.
Mr. President, I would like to take just a couple of minutes to speak
against the amendment from the junior Senator from Nevada. This
amendment calls for a $10 million reduction in funds for new road
building, the elimination of the purchaser credit program, and a
further reduction on logging in roadless areas. I strongly oppose these
provisions.
Timber sales are vital to the long-term viability of local
communities throughout the West. Under existing law, 25 percent of the
gross receipts from Federal timber sales go to local communities. These
funds are used for local schools and roads programs. Without a viable
forest road maintenance, repair, and construction program, the timber
sale program would be significantly limited. The big losers will be
local communities.
Shared receipts are an integral part of local government revenues in
the West. There is no practical way to separate these payments from the
other payment programs without having dramatic negative consequences on
local communities. The necessary dollars to offset the loss of revenue
caused from the reduction in timber sales would not be forthcoming.
Mr. President, Federal timber sales have declined precipitously,
primarily from limitations placed on the Forest Service by
environmental considerations and species protection efforts for spotted
owls, marbled murrelets, and various species of salmon. In 1987, the
timber sale program provided more than 12 billion board feet of timber;
10 years later, less than 4 billion board feet were sold.
It does not take an accountant to determine the serious implications
this has had for the budgets of rural communities. Two-thirds of all
timber harvested in national forests come from small businesses. Those
small operations are generally headquartered in the rural areas,
providing jobs and stability to their communities, not to mention
needed revenues to sustain local programs and services.
The Bryan amendment would dramatically limit forest
road construction, putting additional pressures on the timber sale
program. Since 1991, total new road construction built by the Forest
Service or by timber purchasers has declined by two-thirds. Spending on
both new road construction and reconstruction has been cut in half over
this same period.
Most supporters of the Bryan amendment are unaware that the Forest
Service will spend many times more on reconstruction and repair of
existing roads than they will on the construction of new forest roads.
Indeed, most of the funding appropriated by Congress each year goes
toward the reconstruction of existing roads. In 1996, more than 2,800
miles of roads were reconstructed, while only about 450 miles of new
roads were constructed.
Reconstruction activities protect watersheds through improved road
design, road placement, and sediment control. Road construction funds
are being used for watershed protection as part of the President's
forest plan for the Pacific Northwest. According to the Forest Service,
forest roads allow critical access needed for the suppression of up to
10,000 wildfires per year and reforestation of the burned-over lands.
The Bryan amendment will quite simply prevent the President from
keeping the environmental and economic commitments made in the
Northwest forest plan.
The Forest Service has invested significantly in technology transfer
applications for road building. Examples
[[Page S9459]]
cited in this year's Forest Service budget proposal are: wetland
development and riparian restoration through modification of culverts
and other drainage structures, retaining soil through innovative design
of gravity walls, and lower water crossings for roads to minimize
disturbance, provide fish passage, and avoid damming and channeling
during peak flows.
Mr. President, the Forest Service is continuing its efforts to reduce
the number of roads. In recent years, the Forest Service has annually
reduced more than three times as much road mileage as compared to new
construction. In 1996, the Forest Service reduced 1,400 miles of roads.
For the past 6 years combined, the Forest Service has reduced over
18,000 miles of roads.
The Bryan amendment also calls for the elimination of purchaser road
credits program. Eliminating purchaser road credits would have serious
implications for local communities.
Under the purchaser credit program, timber sale contracts require the
purchaser to reconstruct or construct roads and bridges. Purchaser
credit is an off-budget means for the Forest Service to rebuild and
repair existing roads and occasionally to build new roads at a
significant savings to the taxpayer when compared appropriated funds.
Timber companies receive credits equal to the value of the road work
required under a timber contract. The credit can be applied against the
price paid to the Government for the timber harvested. These companies
reflect the cost of building roads in their submitted bids.
As funds for road construction have been reduced in recent years,
purchaser credit has become a vital tool to accomplish road work in all
regions of the country, especially reconstruction. About 80 percent of
the program is used each year for reconstruction on roads, especially
for safety and environmental improvements.
Proponents of this amendment project positive Federal budget effects
from the elimination of purchaser road credits. Elementary economics
tells us that purchasers will simply bid less for the timber than they
would of the credit were in place in order to offset their increased
costs, while the Federal Government will net virtually the same amount.
The Bryan amendment would further restrict the construction of roads
in roadless areas. Road construction in roadless areas of the national
forests are, for the most part, limited to emergency situations.
Indeed, few if any miles of roads have been built in roadless areas of
the national forests in recent years. However, building some roads in
roadless areas is necessary on occasion to allow access to treat insect
and disease outbreaks, to monitor forest health, or for wildfire
management.
Finally, Mr. President, there is no subsidy associated with timber
sales or road construction. For new road construction and
reconstruction associated with timber sales, costs are fairly
apportioned. These costs are fully offset by timber revenues, resulting
in net profits averaging more than $400 million per year over the last
6 years.
According to a recent economic analysis released by the Price
Waterhouse accounting firm, ``the forest roads program does not contain
a subsidy for timber purchasers--it provides an efficient and effective
mechanism for financing road construction and reconstruction.''
Forest Service timber sales are sold using an open, competitive
auction system process. All sales are sold at fair market value, with
costs associated with the timber sales, including road work,
apportioned and built into a minimum bid price, which sets the floor on
the value of the timber sale.
Mr. President, I would like to close by quoting from a September 9
editorial in Oregonian which addresses the merit of Senator Byran's
amendment.
We think timber sales should be based on good plans and
sound scientific analysis of their effects. This amendment,
however, more closely fits the agenda of those
environmentalists opposing all commercial timber sales in the
national forests than it does the interest of good planning.
Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote against the Byran
amendment.
In the interest of time, I will summarize so we will leave to Senator
Kempthorne some time. I am reminded of the statement I heard from one
Senator--everything that can be said has been said but not everyone has
said it. So I guess it is my turn. I would like to let Senator
Kempthorne have a chance to be on record also.
I could focus on the many points Senator Craig laid out very well as
to why this is not a subsidy, why this all nets out in the end for the
advantage of the forest, for the advantage of the taxpayer and for the
advantage of local communities in the rural Northwest. I suggest to you
that President Clinton came to my State, held a big timber conference,
made some promises as to the level of historic timber harvest that
would occur, along with a whole lot of environmental protection.
Part of that promise was that inclusion of these purchaser road
credits would continue, that roads would be maintained so that there
are not big blowouts, that there would be the ability to suppress
fires, that there would be the ability to continue to harvest where it
is economically and environmentally responsible to do so.
I was very heartened the other day to find two of my State's leading
newspapers--these are not conservative newspapers; these are liberal
voices in my State, the Oregonian and the Register-Guard out of
Eugene--said the Senate should maintain the funds on these roads.
Well, let me quote from the Oregonian. They said Forest Service road
funding, ``which consists of road resurfacing, culvert replacement and
other environmentally vital drainage improvements, these
environmentally responsible activities are badly underfunded. It would
be perverse to cut these budgets in the name of stopping new roads.''
I agree. If you just focus on the economics, this washes out to the
taxpayer. If you focus on the environment, we are not talking about
much new road building. We are talking about maintenance of roads for
people to use, for forest health to be provided, for the environment to
be protected against washouts of these roads. We are talking about
people who want to hunt in our national forests. All of these things
are critical to this debate.
But, in the end I want to emphasize what the Senator from Montana
said. There is a human element here, for crying out loud. There are
people who breathe air and have blood in their veins and have children
and have dreams and who want a future, who love to live in the country,
who understand what it means to be stewards of the land and who also
understand that this is a chain saw at their way of life. This is a
chain saw aimed at the heart of Northwestern rural communities. It has
to be stopped.
I care about protecting the environment. I just happen to believe
that people like wood products, too. I happen to believe there can be a
balance between the environment and our economy; between providing for
animal and human needs. This goes at the heart of stopping that kind of
balance.
I plead with my colleagues. You have interests in your States where I
need to learn. I want to know what it is that helps your people, your
human element. But if you want to know what affects mine, this does.
Even the leading liberal papers of my State agree with me. The New
York Times doesn't understand the issue. They are on the other side.
Today I stand with the people of Oregon, who understand the balance of
the environment and our economy.
I yield the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I yield the Senator from New Jersey 10
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey is recognized to
speak for 10 minutes.
Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I thank Senator Bryan for yielding
this time. I rise in support of the amendment of the Senator from
Nevada.
There is not a Member of the Senate who has not shared with our
colleagues, or their constituents, the extraordinary need to end both
waste in this Government and corporate welfare in particular. This is
the moment for those Members to give meaning to all those speeches, all
those comments, and all those interviews, because the Bryan amendment
is to corporate welfare what welfare reform in the last Congress was to
social welfare. This is the moment.
[[Page S9460]]
The scale of corporate welfare in the Federal budget is
extraordinary. The Cato Institute estimates some $86 billion in
expenditures. The Progressive Policy Institute estimates the number at
$265 billion. This new age of fiscal discipline in which we live, when
the Federal budget is being balanced, requires some sacrifice from
everybody. In the last Congress it was people and families on welfare.
In this Congress, at long last, it is time to have corporate welfare
make its own contribution.
The Bryan amendment deals with one specific part of this network of
corporate welfare, the construction of timber roads. The Green Scissors
Coalition estimates that, over a 5-year period, the Federal Government
will spend $36 billion, not only on these expensive and potentially
wasteful construction projects, but projects which at the same time
have an extraordinary cost in environmental terms. The simple truth is,
even if we could afford this construction, which we cannot, the
environmental costs are enormous.
These roads through our Nation's forests remove ground cover, create
a channel for water to flow through--a cause of major soil erosion.
Hillsides are weakened, streams are fouled, destroying the foundation
of our recreational fishing industry--extraordinary--and some of the
most important vistas and recreational properties in our Nation. It is
believed that many of the channels created by these roads and the
runoff are a major nonpoint source of pollution. According to the
National Forest Service, 922 different communities in our country rely
for their drinking water directly on streams that are impacted by the
runoff of these roads in our national forests.
The Bryan amendment is a chance to end this corporate welfare,
preserve the quality of the water, and end the damage to these forests.
It is a subsidy that may be $100 million to individual corporations,
but that underestimates the true scale of the problem. Over the last 15
years, direct Government expenditures for construction and
reconstruction of forest roads may total $3.2 billion. It is estimated
that for the national forest road system alone, over the years, this
has resulted in the construction of 380,000 miles in forest roads. For
any citizens of America who have marveled at our Interstate Highway
System, they can only understand the scale of this construction by
recognizing there is enough mileage through our national forests to
circle the globe 15 times. Indeed, we have built 8 miles of road
through pristine national forests for every 1 mile that has been
constructed in the National Interstate Highway System.
The result of all these years of construction is that now we face
$440 million worth of backlog of road maintenance. So we are continuing
in the construction of millions of dollars' worth of new highways
through new forests while the old highways are not maintained. They
fall into disrepair with further erosion, damaging more streams, more
drinking water--erosion of more forest.
For those who are serious about the deficit, corporate welfare, and
environmental protection, in a single vote for the Bryan amendment you
are given a chance to make a statement about each. This is not a
question of ending the foresting of trees. It is not a question of not
making our resources available. It is a question about industry, like
every other American, paying their own way. If these roads make sense,
then they make sense for corporations to pay for them themselves. If
they are to be built, then they should be built properly and maintained
by the companies who want access to the resources. If companies want
access to the resources, and it makes economic sense, then it should be
reflected in the product, not by the taxpayers. It is that simple. The
logic and the economics is no different than when we face individual
spending programs for citizens, students, or senior citizens. At some
point these programs need to be evaluated on their own merits, on their
own economics. That is what Senator Bryan challenges us to do today.
I enthusiastically support his amendment on budgetary grounds,
because of the economic logic of his argument and, finally, and in my
own judgment most compellingly, on environmental grounds. We preserve
these lands for a reason. We should open them up, provide access to
them for their destruction, judiciously and carefully. We failed to do
so in the past. Senator Bryan gives us a last chance to make a proper
judgment once again.
Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time to Senator Bryan.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. BURNS. I yield 5 minutes to my friend from Idaho, Senator
Kempthorne.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognize for 5
minutes.
Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Mr. President, has it become politically incorrect to
cut a tree, or even to walk in the woods? I don't think we want to go
down that path. But then, if this amendment passes, we may not have a
path to go down at all. My State of Idaho is 63 percent Federal land,
and the majority of that is Forest Service. Not surprisingly, timber is
a major industry in the State, and outdoor recreation is growing. Both
depend on access to these Federal lands.
Mr. President, 97 percent of the roads on Federal forest land are
open for recreational use. That includes camping, hiking, hunting,
fishing--activities which a recent study by the administration found
make up three-fourths of all the use of Federal land. Take away the
roads and you take away the public's ability to access their Federal
lands, and the economic diversity that recreation provides to rural
western communities.
Besides recreation, those roads provide access for environmental
management--to, among other things, monitor wildlife, and bring
wildlife under control. Without the budget to construct or reconstruct
these roads, managers will lose vital access. There is also the danger
that these roads will become unstable, and pose an environmental threat
to watersheds.
Do we have too many roads on Federal land? That is a good question--
how many is too many? Compared to other road systems, the Forest
Service does not even come close, with a mile and a half of road per
square mile, compared to 8 miles per square mile on private timber
land.
This is the crux of the point: there are many demands placed on
Federal forest land, only one of which is to provide the solitude that
true wilderness offers. No one will dispute the importance of
wilderness, and that is why so many States have passed wilderness
bills.
We have designated wilderness for a reason--so that some areas meet
the public's expectation of a solitude experience, and allow the rest
of Federal timber land to serve the public's other needs: to provide
timber to build our homes, and to allow for other types of recreation
that include access on some type of vehicle.
My State of Idaho is already home to the largest continuous
wilderness area in the continental U.S.--the Frank Church-River of No
Return Wilderness.
The administration's own study of the Interior Columbia Basin found
that the majority of Americans using Federal land in the Pacific
Northwest like to be able to access it using a car or some other type
of vehicle. My colleagues, we need a safe, accessible road system.
This amendment would undermine that goal. And because it would also
increase the cost of timber activities, and decrease revenue to rural
counties, the amendment would pull the rug out from struggling,
resource dependent communities. These rural communities are the base
for the values that we hold dear--where the work ethic is taught as a
part of daily life to kids who learn to respect the world around them.
We can't afford to force these communities into oblivion, because we
will lose what is best about ourselves.
These cuts will hurt the very people we are working for back here. I
am talking about the small business owner, the laborer and even the
firefighter. Groups such as the International Association of Fire
Fighters, the Pulp & Paper Workers Resource Council, the United Paper
Workers International Union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters &
Joiners of America, and many others have all come out against this
amendment.
The Forest Service designed the purchaser credit program to be an
off-
[[Page S9461]]
budget means to provide the access Americans expect. It does so at a
significant savings to the taxpayer when compared to how much it would
cost to use appropriated funds. In return for providing a public
service, the bidder on timber contracts receives a credit applied to
that or another sale.
Seventy-five percent of these bidders are small businesses. I fail to
see a subsidy for big business--what I see is the Forest Service
finding a way to do its job and save taxpayer dollars, an advantage for
small companies, and jobs in small communities. Is this what we want to
eliminate?
I urge colleagues to vote against this amendment. It is not about
wise management of our Federal lands--it is about making those lands
available for only one use, and that is unacceptable.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. BURNS. How much time do we have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 2 minutes 10 seconds.
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, if I could be
granted 5 more minutes in order to accommodate the chairman of the
Energy and Natural Resource Committee.
Mr. BRYAN. I do not object to that, I suggest to the distinguished
acting floor manager, if I can get an additional 5 minutes as well?
Mr. BURNS. That's perfectly all right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BURNS. I yield Senator Murkowski from Alaska 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized to speak for 5
minutes.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I think there has been a little
misunderstanding on the concept of road purchaser credits and the
allegation that somehow this is corporate welfare. Logic will dictate
that if we don't have purchaser credits for the construction of roads,
those who are going to log in the forests, the Federal forests of this
country, are simply going to bid less for the timber because they have
to offset the costs of getting the timber out. They basically have to
build the roads themselves.
When the Government in this case builds the roads, as it has through
the purchaser credit program, the Government has been benefiting by
getting higher bids for its timber. Take this away and the Government
will simply get less. That is the reality. That is the economics. It is
not a matter of corporate welfare. It's a matter that the Federal
Government owns the forest and has traditionally dictated the terms and
conditions that the roads will be built on, so they are built to their
standards. And the benefit of those roads to the States, for
recreational purposes, is obvious.
I rise to speak against the amendment of the junior Senator from
Nevada. Not only does the amendment eliminate the purchaser road credit
program, but it transfers $10 million out of road construction. I must
strongly oppose the provisions. I think the amendment is bad policy. It
would have a catastrophic impact on the management of the national
forests. I urge my colleagues to defeat it.
The Forest Service in my State has finally completed a land
management plan for the Tongass. It took 10 years and $13 million to do
it. I am, frankly, less than enthusiastic about the plan, and most of
my colleagues are aware of my distress.
It reduces timber sales by half. The two largest manufacturing
employers in the pulp business in my State have closed their doors in
the last 2 years. They have gone out of business. We have closed their
doors. We have lost thousands of jobs in the last 2 years, and these
have had a dramatic effect on our small communities in the southeast.
Nevertheless, I have decided to set my lack of enthusiasm aside and
focus my oversight responsibilities on implementation.
At the September 10 hearing, I asked the Forest Service if it could
achieve even the severely reduced allowable timber sale quantity in the
Tongass if the Bryan plan were adopted. The answer was:
If we don't have the money to support the roads program, we
will not be able to deliver the economic sale program.
They further stated that the Tongass depends heavily on the
construction of new roads to deliver timber to the communities in
southeastern Alaska. One might say, ``Why don't you go to the private
sector?'' We don't have private timber. The Federal Government and the
Forest Service own southeastern Alaska. There are cities and people
there: Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Juneau, Skagway, on and on and
on.
The theory was, through multiple use, those interests would be
protected with a balanced timber industry. Therefore, according to the
Forest Service, the Bryan amendment would render null and void the
goals of the Tongass plan.
It is kind of interesting, in a letter sent to the Senate only one
day before the testimony, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman
supported the Bryan amendment because roads pose the ``greatest
environmental problems on the forests.'' You can't have it two ways.
The roads provide recreation in the forest, they provide environmental
benefits by providing access to stop fires, and I could go on and on
and on. It is fairly inconsistent with the administration support for
implementation of the Forest Service's final Tongass land management
plan, but I have grown accustomed to the flip-flops of the
administration on these issues. But Secretary Glickman isn't holding a
position long enough to make it warm.
Finally, the Bryan amendment is nothing more than an attempt to
eliminate sales on the national forests. At least we have seen some of
the groups like the Sierra Club come out in opposition to any
harvesting of the national forest. That is basically what this
administration is attempting to do, and this is how they are attempting
to do it.
The amendment isn't about subsidies, the amendment isn't about saving
money, the amendment does nothing more than carry out the agenda of the
extremists.
I will conclude by pointing to this chart, Mr. President, which
simply shows where the money has gone and the decline in road miles. In
1985, we had 8,000; in 1998, 2,652. It shows reconstruction taking up
the major portions. We maintain the roads that we have previously
built. There is very little for new construction, roughly 18 percent.
So there is the picture, Mr. President. It says it better than I
could relative to what is happening with this program with the
necessity of maintaining it and maintaining the forest products
industry as we know it today and the appropriate role of the national
forest in providing a renewable resource in the timber that grows so
profusely, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
I thank the Chair, and I thank the floor managers. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from
Pennsylvania.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair informs the Senator from Washington
that there is 1 minute 46 seconds time remaining on this watch.
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Bryan
amendment for a lot of reasons. But the one I want to focus on is what
I believe is the fiscally irresponsible nature of this amendment.
This is being put out as a budget-cutting measure. But the fact of
the matter is, by having a fund that says we are going to hold the
counties harmless--and I appreciate being held harmless. We have a
national forest in Pennsylvania and our counties rely upon that money.
That is going to cost money in the sense that by reducing the amount of
roads built, you are going to reduce the revenues in the fund. That
money is no longer going to be there to fund those counties in the
money that they traditionally have received, and the Federal Government
is going to have to come up with that money in exchange to fund the
counties.
That is, in a sense, almost a welfare payment from the Federal
Government because we have eliminated the funding source of timber
harvesting from those counties and those communities. So not only have
we hurt them economically, hurt their counties economically, but we are
now creating welfare for those counties by giving Federal dollars to
them in place of the
[[Page S9462]]
jobs they have. This is not only bad, I think, from a policy
perspective, but also bad from a fiscal perspective.
Despite the assertions of the amendment's sponsors, the timber sales
program and the purchaser credit program are not subsidies. Since 1964,
roads needed for timber harvest have been built by timber purchasers
and the U.S. Forest Service has permitted the use of purchaser credit
for road building. In fact, this program is entirely off-budget and
this appropriations bill contains no funding for it. In President
Clinton's budget request to Congress, elimination of the program
results is no savings to the Federal government. Rather, the costs of
the credits are explicitly absorbed by timber purchasers in the
contracting and bidding process. According to a report by Price
Waterhouse, ``Economic analysis shows that the forest roads program
does not contain a subsidy for timber purchasers; it provides an
efficient and effective mechanism for financing road construction and
reconstruction.''
Second, eliminating the Purchaser Credit Program would harm local
communities near national forests--including Warren, Forest, McKean,
and Elk Counties in Pennsylvania. Counties containing forest lands
receive 25 percent of gross Forest Service receipts. In 1996, these
counties received a total of $6.2 million, three quarters of which went
directly to local school districts.
Finally, the amendment would effectively cripple efforts to meet the
stewardship needs of our national forest land by cutting the funding by
which we maintain its infrastructure. Eliminating this program would
not only cut funding for road construction, it would cut funding for
road reconstruction and maintenance to fix environmental and safety
problems remaining from an era when construction standards were far
less rigorous. A well-developed road system is indispensable to forest
plan implementation, fire suppression and forest health.
As many of my colleagues know, the General Accounting Office has just
released a report which identifies questionable policies and practices
that nearly caused the Forest Service to default on revenue sharing
payments to rural counties in fiscal year 1996. The report raises
fundamental accountability issues for both Congress and the Forest
Service, and I believe that these issues will be exacerbated by the
Bryan amendment.
Specifically, the GAO found that reductions in Federal timber sale
receipts, coupled with increased obligations to spotted owl counties,
and an apparent lack of sound financial controls over the National
Forest Fund resulted in a shortfall in revenue-sharing funds available
to rural counties.
Receipts from the resource sales are deposited in the National Forest
Fund, which is a receipts-holding account from which the Forest Service
obligations are distributed. After normal county payments were paid,
the Forest Service used the National Forest Fund in fiscal years 1994
and 1995 to make additional spotted owl guarantee payments in certain
counties in California, Oregon, and Washington. This caused two
problems. First, there were insufficient moneys in the fund to pay
counties because of the dramatic drop in timber sales receipts. Then,
the Forest Service was forced to borrow from other funds and the
Treasury to pay the obligations to the counties in a fashion that GAO
found ``was an unauthorized use of the funds.''
It is my understanding that Congressman Bob Smith, chairman of the
House Agriculture Committee, has written Secretary of Agriculture Dan
Glickman requesting a full accounting of the specific steps he will
take to ensure that the Forest Service advises Congress when such
shortfalls occur and properly manages these funds in the future.
Mr. President, the amendment before us will only make this dire
financial situation worse for the Forest Service. Senator Bryan's
amendment will again modify the formula for sharing Forest Service
receipts with the counties. I understand that it is the sponsors'
intent to protect counties from fiscal harm as the result of this
amendment. Included in the amendment is a provision to make up for the
inevitable shortfall in payments to counties that will occur as the
direct result of a $10 million reduction in spending for new forest
road construction and the elimination of the purchaser road credits.
Since Pennsylvania has four counties that benefit from timber sale
receipts, I commend Senator Bryan for his concern about the effects of
his amendment. But I must point out, Mr. President, that the concern of
the Senator from Nevada betrays the folly of this amendment. You see,
should this amendment be enacted into law, timber sale receipts will go
down sharply at the same time that our payments to counties will be
held constant or even increase. This is the very same tortured
accounting formula that helped to lead the Forest Service to brink of
default recently over the spotted owl payments.
In fact, let me point out for the benefit of my colleagues that the
GAO found the Forest Service had shifted money originally intended for
trust funds for reforestation and forest health in order to cover the
deficit in the National Forest Fund. While I hope the Forest Service
will be successful in addressing the serious accounting shortcoming
that led to the crisis, I must caution my colleagues that passage of
the Bryan amendment makes it more likely that the National Forest Fund
check will bounce again during fiscal year 1998.
The amendment directs the Forest Service to compute the costs
associated with road construction by timber purchasers and give the
counties an equivalent of 25 percent of these costs from the National
Forest Fund. This is ludicrously impractical. First, we do not have
enough money in the National Forest Fund to meet our current
obligations to the counties. Second, the task of calculating private
sector costs is a complex accounting task for an agency. Further, the
amendment directs the Forest Service to collect private sector costs,
that in many cases, are proprietary.
In view of the GAO's very critical report, this is not the time to
add to our obligations to the counties. Nor is it appropriate to burden
the Forest Service with additional financial responsibilities. I urge
my colleagues to defeat this fiscally irresponsible amendment. It is
imperative that we maintain funding for Forest Service road
construction and maintenance and the Forest Service's Purchaser Credit
Program. It remains the most efficient and cost-effective method we
have to help maintain our national forests and serve the needs of the
surrounding populations.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. BRYAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time that I might have.
I was somewhat astounded by the debate because those who oppose the
amendment try to frame an issue that is not part of our discussion or
our amendment today. I think in so doing they are trying to obfuscate
the issues we are dealing with. This amendment is not about eliminating
all timber harvests on the national forests. That may be an appropriate
subject for a debate on another day. But there is not one word in this
amendment that would have that effect or seeks to accomplish that
purpose.
The other argument that has been made to obfuscate the issues is
somehow a suggestion that there is an attempt here to eliminate all new
road construction in the national forests. That is not true as well.
Let me just respond to the comments that the distinguished Senator
from Pennsylvania just made. We have crafted this amendment to protect
and to hold the counties who receive revenue from this program to hold
them harmless. We do so by saying, look, in the bid that is offered by
the prospective timber harvest bidder, that we factor a separate amount
that would be attributable to the construction component and use that,
as well as the bid price, in the calculation to determine what moneys
will go to the individual counties that will be affected. So we were
sensitive to the needs of the individual counties that would be
affected and this amendment holds them harmless.
Let me talk about what the thrust of this amendment is. The thrust of
this amendment is to eliminate a subsidy. It is to eliminate corporate
welfare. It is to eliminate food stamps for the timber industry. That
is not just an assertion the Senator from Nevada makes.
[[Page S9463]]
That is why groups such as Citizens Against Government Waste, which
have identified this as a costly subsidy to the American taxpayer,
support the Bryan amendment. That is why Taxpayers for Common Sense,
also a taxpayer watchdog group, has supported the Bryan amendment,
because they recognize that this is a subsidy. That is why 60 leading
newspapers across America from coast to coast--the only two notable
exceptions that I am familiar with are the two that were referenced by
the Senator from Oregon in his comments--all recognize this to be a
subsidy and have urged its elimination.
Why is it a subsidy? It is a subsidy because individuals who have
analyzed it and see how the Purchaser Credit Program worked finds that
a windfall tax break occurs in terms of the profits that are permitted
under this. Let me describe that in more detail, if I may.
The Forest Service makes a determination as to what they estimate the
road costs are to be when a bidder bids on a tract of timber that
requires road construction, and that is made available immediately to
the successful bidder--immediately. That is a credit that is made
available.
Those who have looked at the way the Forest Service calculates that
have indicated, No. 1, the Forest Service is calculating a profit into
that estimate and, No. 2, those who have focused on it independently
found that in some instances, the purchaser road credit exceeds by 30
percent the actual cost that the timber harvester incurs in building
the roads. Because, Mr. President, there is no accounting or
accountability, the amount of money that is saved by the timber
harvester that would be substantially less cost to him than the
purchaser credit makes available is retained by the timber bidder, and
that becomes a windfall profit. That is what the various groups, the
taxpayer groups, as well as the 60 or more editorial writers across the
country, have focused on--that it is a subsidy and a subsidy that ought
to be eliminated.
Third, let me talk for a moment about the environmental consequences.
We have 380,000 miles of roads in the National Forest System. That is
about eight times the length of the interstate system. We have an
enormous backlog of maintenance on existing roads. It is clear that new
road construction, particularly in those environmentally sensitive
areas that are steep, that have serious drainage and grading problems,
cost the American taxpayer not just the initial cost for the road
construction, but in some instances for generations thereafter. We deal
with the problems of erosion, sedimentation and siltation into the
rivers, streams, and lakes in the national forests. That is why the
Assistant Secretary has commented that the greatest threat to the water
resource in the national forest system is roads and new construction
which is a major factor in that.
Finally, let me set at rest the notion that somehow these forest
roads that will be built for new timber harvests are somehow a great
benefit to the outdoor recreationalists. There are different categories
of roads.
Typically, a road that is involved in a construction to access
harvest timber is a dirt road. It is accessible only by all-terrain
vehicles. It is not accessible by passenger vehicles. It is unpaved. It
is ungraded. It doesn't have gravel on it. Whereas, recreational roads
are roads of a higher quality that are accessible by passenger and
general recreational vehicles.
Let me say that one of the groups that is a watchguard for outdoor
recreational users is the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association,
which is part of the Outdoor Products Council. Mr. President, here is
what they have to say about this subsidy and the purchaser road credit
and the Bryan amendment:
Our national forests are a recreational attraction because
of their wild unspoiled areas. We feel that taxpayer
subsidies for logging road construction has led to an
extensive logging road network that can actually place at
risk the very resources upon which recreational users of our
national forests depend.
The recreational users and their interest groups support the Bryan
amendment because they recognize that the Purchaser Credit Program is,
in fact, a corporate subsidy, corporate welfare and they recognize the
environmental consequences of senseless and unnecessary new road
construction.
Finally, if I may, to clarify the point that in the Forest Service
accounts there is a separate category for maintenance of existing
roads. The Bryan amendment, which could reduce by $10 million the
amount of money appropriated for new road construction, does not--does
not--in any way affect or reduce those moneys that are set aside for
the maintenance accounts. So no one ought to be misled that in some way
the reduction that we are talking about would in any way impact those
ongoing activities of erosion control and maintenance of existing
roads.
To conclude, Mr. President, this is a win-win. It is a win for the
American taxpayers because we eliminate a costly subsidy that simply
cannot be justified and to provide windfall profits for some of the
largest timber harvesters in America. Common sense suggests that,
indeed, it must be a very powerful and a very substantial subsidy, or
why else would we have the opposition to the Purchaser Road Credit
Program if it did not provide such a subsidy? If it has been suggested
by those who oppose the amendment it is a wash and an offset, I do not
see why they would be raising the concerns and objections they have.
Second, it is a great win for the environment, because we know one of
the leading causes of environmental degradation is the kind of erosion
and runoff that we have as a result of these roads that have been cut
through our national forests, and we ought to be very, very careful and
sensitive when we construct new roads.
Mr. President, for the American taxpayer, for the American people,
this is sound policy. Your vote will be appreciated.
May I inquire of the Chair whether or not the amendment reflects the
cosponsorship of John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and Senator Bob Torricelli?
If it does not, I ask unanimous consent that they be added as
cosponsors.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I commend Senator Bryan for introducing
this important amendment. This amendment does three critical things:
helps to protect our environment, eliminates an unnecessary Government
subsidy, and reduces our Federal deficit.
The Bryan amendment will reduce road construction funding by $10
million, eliminate the Purchaser Credit Program which gives timber
companies trees in payment for road construction costs.
The amendment will not affect recreation and general purpose roads,
and it will not reduce the money for maintenance and road obliteration.
Under this amendment, if timber companies want to build logging roads
with their own money, they can continue to do so. They simply won't be
paid by the American taxpayers.
Year after year, American taxpayers have spent millions of dollars to
subsidize the construction of roads needed for logging in our national
forests. This is millions of dollars that could have been spent on
cleaning our air and water.
Road building wreaks havoc on our national forests. Currently, there
are nearly 380,000 miles of roads dissecting our national forests--
that's eight times the length of the Interstate Highway System. My
State of California has 44,000 miles of logging roads in its national
forests. Each mile of road can have a devastating impact on water
quality, stream ecosystems, fish habitat, and wildlife. Roads lead to
sediment loading in streams and destroy habitat for fish and other
aquatic species. Furthermore, the Forest Service has determined that
922 communities get drinking water from National Forests streams that
are adversely affected by logging roads.
I would like to raise an additional point. Earlier this year, the
Forest Service began the Recreation Fee Demonstration Project. Under
this Congressionally mandated pilot project, the Forest Service is now
charging recreational visitors a fee to enter national forests. Now I
ask my colleagues, how can we continue to any timber companies to enter
and harm our national forests, while at the same time we require
recreational visitors--who come to hike, picnic and enjoy our national
forests--how can we require them to pay for their visit? Does that seem
like a wise-use of taxpayer money--I think not.
[[Page S9464]]
Under the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program there is no charge for
those individuals and companies who come to harvest timber. Quite the
opposit--we pay them to do so. In California, there is now a $5-per-day
fee for recreational use of the Angeles, Cleveland, or Los Padres
National Forests. These forests used to be open and free to
recreational visitors. The Forest Service estimates that this new Fee
Program will raise between $8 to $10 million this year, and somewhere
between $15 to $20 million in future years. This is $10 to $20 million
from the American public to visit their own national forests while the
Federal Government pays over $47 million for timber companies to
construct roads which are destroying those very locations the public
comes to enjoy.
As U.S. Senators we have the responsibility of priortizing--making
decisions about how best to spend our taxpayer dollars in a way that
will maximize benefits to the American people. We all know that there
are times when that can be a very difficult task--choosing between many
projects and activities that all seem equally worthy. This is not one
of those times.
I urge my colleagues to support Senator Bryan's amendment.
Mr. BRYAN. If there is time remaining, I yield back the remainder of
my time.
Mr. GORTON. Would the Senator withhold that?
Mr. BRYAN. I withhold.
Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Wyoming has been waiting patiently and
wanted 2 minutes. I do not have quite 2 minutes. Would the Senator from
Nevada mind yielding his opponent that 2 minutes?
Mr. BRYAN. The Senator from Nevada will do so. I think the Record
will reflect that I have been generous beyond measure to accord to my
opponents more time than the time agreement we entered into. But I will
accord the Senator from Wyoming 2 minutes.
Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Nevada has been indeed generous.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kyl). The Senator from Wyoming is
recognized.
Mr. THOMAS. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
The business of timber and timber harvest is very important to my
State. I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator
from Nevada. I think the amendment is not about subsidies; it is about
the elimination of the timber program in our national forests.
The timber program is part of a healthy forest. Somehow there has to
be some changes made in a forest that either burns or is harvested or
is eaten by insects. This would terminate that kind of thing.
Furthermore, this is a policy issue that I believe ought to be talked
about in our committee of jurisdiction, ought to be talked about in the
forest plan, not one that ought to be talked about here in terms of
doing it on an appropriations bill.
Let me just say, the Senator has suggested there are winners and
winners. There are losers. Those losers happen to be schools, school
districts, counties, small family businesses, and recreationists.
This, I think, has been called a subsidy. It is actually not a
subsidy. Purchaser credits are an accounting method used by the Forest
Service. If the cost of the road was not in there, the bid, of course,
for the timber would be less. If the cost that they have appropriated
and allocated to it is more than it should be, that ought to be fixed
by the Forest Service.
But, Mr. President, let me just say finally, because I know there is
not much time, that this amendment really does not have anything to do
with the critical issues facing the Forest Service. It is just the
opposite, by depleting desperately needed road funding while reducing
essential money to county road programs and school districts, as well
as thousands of jobs and recreational opportunities for all Americans.
I urge my colleagues not to support this amendment.
I thank you very much for your time.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I do have a letter by the National
Association of Counties that I ask unanimous consent to be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
NACo, September 12, 1997.
The Bryan Amendment Hurts Timber Counties and their
economies!!
The National Association of Counties opposes the Bryan
Amendment on forest roads to the Interior Appropriations bill
(H.R. 2107). Eliminating the purchaser road credit system,
and reducing funding for the forest roads program can have
only one purpose--weaken the viability of the Forest
Service's timber sale program. A viable timber sale program
is vital to America's timber counties and the forest road
program is an important part of such a program. Reducing the
ability to access timber not only hurts counties, but the
thousands of families that rely upon the income from their
timber jobs. In FY 1995 a total of $257 million was returned
to local communities adjacent to national forests throughout
the United States. Two-thirds of all timber harvested in
national forests come from small businesses--those small
operations are generally headquartered in the rural counties,
providing jobs and stability to their communities, not to
mention needed revenues to sustain county programs and
services for the citizens. It does not take an accountant to
determine the serious implications this has for the economies
of rural timber counties.
Proposed provisions to lessen the impact of these cuts on
these rural communities and counties do not meet their stated
objective. Attempting to hold county governments harmless
from these cuts, discounts the other significant economic
impacts on the people in the counties' communities. A
significantly better way to address the needs of natural
resource dependent counties is to support increases to the
Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program. This program in
combination with timber revenues, help public land counties
provide such vital services as law enforcement, solid waste
disposal, search and rescue and fire fighting on public
lands. This is considered a major ``underfunded mandate'' and
it is extremely important to the 1,789 public land counties
in 49 states that rely upon the PILT program to provide some
equity for the services they provide.
Please oppose efforts to eliminate the purchaser road
credit program and reduce the forest roads program by
attempting to hold counties harmless. It does not achieve its
goal. Instead, support efforts that really help public land
counties--support the PILT program.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Randy Johnson,
President.
Mr. BRYAN. May I inquire of the Chair how much time the Senator from
Nevada has?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 6\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Mr. BRYAN. I assure my colleagues I will not take the full 6 minutes.
But let me respond to the concern that the Senator from Wyoming has
voiced with respect to the county schooling.
We have crafted into the amendment a hold-harmless provision that
recognizes that indeed this is an important revenue source for local
governments. I can assure my colleagues that the purpose of this
amendment, or its effect, will in no way affect that program. We
specifically incorporated that in there.
Let me just again return to the issue of the subsidy because I think
that is central to the issue. I mean, if this is not a subsidy, why do
we go through all of the incantation of calculating a separate
purchaser credit, making that available? Why don't we simply just
eliminate that and say, as do BLM harvesters, and in some State forest
programs, the individual who is bidding on a tract of timber would
factor into his or her, or its or their, costs what their road
construction cost would be. That creates a competitive market, a level
playing field. Why go through all of this incantation of developing the
purchaser road credits?
Mr. President, I think the answer is clear. This has conferred an
enormous benefit to the timber harvester. For one, the GAO has
indicated that the Forest Service itself, in calculating the purchaser
road credit, factors in a profit--factors in a profit. That is not a
wash. That is not a recovery of costs. That is cost plus a profit.
If we are advocates of truth in budgeting, let us just eliminate that
gimmick and simply say to all who harvest in the national forests,
submit your bids, and included in your bid will be the cost that you
will incur in accessing the tract of timber, or for those that involve
new road constructions, you will factor that in.
Second, with the exception of the Forest Service industry itself,
virtually every outside analyst, the taxpayer groups, editorial writers
across the country, those who have been commissioned to do independent
surveys, have all concluded that, indeed, when one examines the cost of
the credit
[[Page S9465]]
that is provided to the timber harvester and examines the cost incurred
by the timber harvester, in some instances the timber harvester's costs
are 30 percent less than the credit that is provided to the timber
harvester.
Those are taxpayer resources. Those are taxpayer assets. That is
clearly the definition of a subsidy. It goes far beyond what the cost
incurred by the timber harvester is and provides him or her, it or
them, with a costly subsidy at taxpayer expense.
That is why from the west coast to the east coast, from north to
south, editorial writers, commenters, and analysts have looked at this
and said, ``This is a program that we cannot support.'' If we are
talking about being fair and honest with the taxpayers' money, how can
we support a program that is under a very convoluted, difficult-to-
explain and, I am sure, difficult-to-understand purchaser credit
program where in effect what we are doing, however we disguise it, is
providing additional profits to a timber harvester?
That simply is not right. I believe any responsible budgetary
analysis reveals that that is in fact what has occurred. The Forest
Service itself recognizes that practice. That is why they support the
amendment.
Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support the Bryan amendment. I
yield the remainder of my time.
Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mr. GORTON. That concludes debate on the Bryan amendment.
Amendment No. 1188
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, we now have 145 minutes on the Ashcroft
amendment. I think I can announce, on behalf of the majority leader,
that there will be a vote on the Ashcroft amendment at the end of that
145 minutes or whenever time has been yielded back.
We will also plan to have a vote on the Bryan amendment immediately
after the Ashcroft amendment, probably with the usual 1 minute per side
for summary. But that has not been shopped to all Members to the point
at which it can be the subject of a unanimous-consent request yet.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, if I might inquire of the floor leader, the
floor leader indicated that there would be time since we are going to
have an intervening debate?
Mr. GORTON. Yes. The usual way is 1 minute for each side.
Mr. BRYAN. Fine. That will be acceptable.
Mr. GORTON. When we clear it, we will ask for it. That will be the
plan.
After that, Mr. President, there are three other amendments that have
been debated on the National Endowment for the Arts--Abraham, Sessions-
Hutchinson of Arkansas, Hutchison of Texas. We are going to attempt to
get 30 minutes equally divided additional debate on those amendments,
as Members have been able to speak to them previously, and, of course,
Members during this period of time can speak to them. That is not in
concrete yet, but from the perspective of planning for the afternoon
and early evening, this would be the intention of the managers.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after Senator
Ashcroft completes at least the first part of his presentation, that I
be immediately recognized to use the time on our side up to 20 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there is no objection. Without objection,
it is so ordered.
Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, thank you very much.
Mr. President, I am pleased to have this opportunity to address an
important issue before the American people.
It is an issue about the nature of Government, the purpose for
Government, what we have Government for and alternative uses of
resources of the taxpayers in this country.
Data this year announced, not by Government itself but by independent
studies including the best of the business journals, that the American
people this year are paying more in taxes than any other year in the
history of this Republic. The gross tax load is gross.
As a matter of fact, the Second World War, First World War, the
Korean war, and the war in Vietnam did not cause us to have to pay the
kind of elevated tax rates that we pay today, nor did previous wars of
previous centuries.
The average U.S. citizen now pays the highest tax load, the biggest
portion of his or her income that we have ever paid.
One of the questions that we must face, and which we must answer, is
the question of whether or not we should take the hard-earned resources
of American citizens, people who get up early, work hard all day, go
home late seeking to help their families, whether we should take that
resource to spend it on what the Government identifies as art or calls
art or wants to encourage as art.
There will be some who say that this will be a debate about whether
or not we support art or do not support art. I think it is important to
note that art as an aspect of our culture has flourished since the very
beginning of the United States as a nation and prior to that time.
Since the time we began our culture, from Plymouth Rock forward, we
have had an expression of art in the United States--great literature,
we have had great paintings, we have had tremendous capacity on the
part of the American people to express themselves and to communicate
noble ideas and high aspirations through our artistic devices.
But the debate which we are about to embark upon is a debate about
whether the Federal Government should subsidize art and should identify
in the art community some things for subsidy and some things for
special treatment and some things to be singled out for approval while
other things have to survive or fall based on their quality in the
marketplace.
So it is with that in mind that I rise to say, in regard to the
appropriations bill that is now before the Senate, that we should not
spend the resources earned by taxpayers to encourage one artist over
another artist, to say that some art is good and other art is bad, and
particularly given the record of the National Endowment for the Arts.
For the National Endowment for the Arts has a questionable record of
fostering artistic expression which has countered the expression of
values that most Americans cherish and the values which have provided
the basis for the greatness and character of these United States of
America.
The first point that I make is that the arts have plenty of money
without the National Endowment for the Arts.
Let me just point to a set of statistics reflected in this particular
chart. This compares NEA spending to private, State, and local arts
funding.
Here you have private funding, the orange portion of the chart; local
contributions, the green portion; the State contributions is the purple
portion; and the NEA as proposed is the yellow portion.
It is pretty clear that that withdrawal of this very small portion of
funding, 1 percent of the funding, is not going to cause a collapse in
the arts. As a matter of fact, there are many individuals who are part
of the arts community who feel this is an incentive to the wrong things
in art.
So, first of all, we need to understand that the arts will survive.
This is not a death knell for the arts. It is, in some respects, a
contaminant to the arts to the extent that we continue to fund artistic
endeavors of specific kinds, especially those things which are
concededly politically correct or drive the agenda of the National
Endowment. That is where the small yellow wedge comes in.
Just take a look again. Private giving to the arts and cultures and
humanities is up. We have had some reduction. We have moved in the
right direction. We used to give more to the arts through the National
Endowment for the Arts than we do now. As we have had a reduction in
the dollars that are spent by Government for art, we have had this
substantial increase, especially recently, in private giving to the
arts so that the private sector is totally capable of sustaining the
arts.
I just add at this point that the kind of art that sometimes gets
funded here is not the art of the great masses.
I tend not to be an individual who has invested a great deal of my
life in the opera.
Now, the opera gets a subsidy from the National Endowment for the
Arts,
[[Page S9466]]
but by and large, Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks don't. Those of us
that drive our pickups to those concerts don't get a subsidy; but the
people who drive their Mercedes to the opera get a subsidy.
Now, it seems to me what is clear here is that the folks who
patronize the opera don't deserve a subsidy any more than those of us
who enjoy the Ozark opera instead of the other kind of opera--although
I don't purport to say I couldn't enjoy both kinds.
The first point I am making here is that the arts are not in trouble.
Second, the arts funding from the Federal Government is 1 percent or
so. Third, the private share of contribution to the arts is up
dramatically. State and local governments dominate giving to the arts.
The Federal Government contributes a low portion of that.
Employment in the arts in the 1990's is up. So we have a vigorous
arts community and it is an arts community which continues to grow.
This has been an upward trend at a time when we had a decline in the
amount of Federal funding for the arts. If people are interested in
more people coming into the arts, they could say that as we have
decreased the funding, we have had more people going in. We are not
threatening the arts.
Median household income for artists is up. It exceeds the income for
the rest of the labor force. It seems to me we are not threatening the
art community or questioning whether the United States is going to have
art.
Art attendance is up in every category, from jazz, classical music,
opera, musicals, plays, ballet, art museums. We had more people
participating in the arts in 1992 than in 1982. I don't believe that is
a trend that will be reversed. These things are a function of the fact
that people have leisure time and the people have disposable net income
and are not dependent on whether or not we have a National Endowment
for the Arts. Artists are increasingly college educated as well.
Total receipts for performance arts events are up and are approaching
the receipts for spectator sports. This gap is narrowing. The arts,
indeed, are flourishing in the United States. They are getting closer
and closer to matching the same kind of receipts as for spectator
sports.
The point I make is that the arts have an abundance of funding. They
don't need to take the resources from families that the families need
to spend on themselves. We are now taxed at the highest rate since the
onset of this Republic, since we have been in existence. We frequently
have both parents in the work force, one to pay for Government, the
other to support the family. We have governmental programming that is
taking resources, saying we can spend this money better on your family
than you can spend it on yourself. My own view is that is not something
that we need to support. The arts do not require it, and I believe
people are entitled to additional tax relief.
The second point is whether the arts and the NEA need the money.
According to the sponsors, this kind of an appropriation is not an
issue. The arts do not need the money. They say what is needed here is
sort of--the Federal Government telling people what is good and what is
not good in the arts community. They call this the Good Housekeeping
Seal of Approval argument. On several occasions individuals have come
to the floor of the U.S. Senate here and said whenever the NEA comes in
and puts its so-called stamp of approval on items that it somehow makes
it possible for those artists to survive because people need the NEA to
develop a way of helping people understand what is good art and what is
bad art.
I don't think the NEA has been very good at developing good art. They
have some good art, they have some art that is atrocious. It is clear
to me that whether it has the NEA stamp of approval on it does not make
a difference.
I go back to an earlier example. This is an item of art which the NEA
has paid for in the past. It is a poem, or so we are told it is a poem.
It was part of an anthology. This was an anthology for which money was
paid, hundreds of dollars paid, to support this ``L-I-G-H-G-H-T'' as a
poem in the anthology. Now I suppose you might say most people would
not recognize this as great art just looking at these letters. I was
not extremely well educated. I went to the public schools, and,
frankly, I have to confess I did not see that this was great art when I
first saw this. As a matter of fact, I thought it was a misspelling--
but it could be great art.
The argument is if you put the seal of approval on it by the NEA,
somehow it will make it possible for everyone to agree it is great art,
so if you somehow tack the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on it--it
has Good Housekeeping and here is the National Endowment for the Arts,
a combination of what proponents of this legislation say--the National
Endowment symbol becomes the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for
this, I suppose folks around the country will now recognize this word
as great art, that this is great poetry. I hardly think so.
The truth of the matter is you do not convert art into great art by
putting some governmental seal of approval on it. It doesn't change the
character of it. As a matter of fact, it doesn't help us at all in many
respects.
One of the individuals that I talked to earlier pointed out to me
that in regard to this poem a Congressman called the author of the
anthology, the one who had developed the book that included this and
for which the Government paid, and asked the developer of the anthology
to explain it. The author of the anthology said, ``You are from the
Midwest. You are culturally deprived, so you would not understand it,
anyway,'' no use to explain to you why this misspelled word or
apparently misspelled word is great art.
Well, I suppose people could say that we need the NEA so this sort of
Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval could convert misspellings into
great art and people would know how to invest their money. I hardly
think so. I have to make that argument with my tongue in my cheek. I
wonder how those who made the argument kept their tongue out of their
cheek in that respect?
The mere fact that something has the National Endowment for the Arts
on it--and this particular stamp of approval is there--doesn't make it
good art or doesn't make it bad art. The American people are still left
to make their own judgments. The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval
doesn't really tell us much, although it does tell us something about
the theory of Government that people have.
Some people think that the American people can't make good judgments
about value themselves and they need Government to identify those
things which are worthy of their support, and our Government's absence
of an identifying seal would be something that is not worthy of your
support. I think they have inverted what is important to understand
about democracy in that the genius of democracy is not that the
Government would identify the great values of the world and impose them
on the people. That is the idea of the monarchy, where somebody up high
in some remote place would tell everybody what to think and do. The
genius of a democracy is just the opposite of that. It is not that
someone up high in some remote place tells everybody what to do. It is
that the people, together, have a set of values, and instead of having
values imposed on them by the Government, the people impose their
values on the system. That is the genius of a democracy. The idea that
somehow we need the National Endowment for the Arts to impose values on
this culture is a bankrupt idea, in my judgment.
Of course part of the argument that says we need the National
Endowment for the Arts is that it identifies where people should invest
in the arts. You don't have to tell people what they should like and
not like, but this helps artists who are fledgling going around and
saying you should invest in me as an artist because I have the seal of
approval from the National Endowment for the Arts--sort of the idea you
could have a central planning agency for the allocation of artistic
resources.
Now, central planning for the allocation of resources is not a novel
idea. As a matter of fact, some countries tried it, not just for art.
Some countries have tried it for all of their economic endeavors. That
is really the definition of communism or socialism, that you have some
head of planning in the economy that tells you what is good, bad, where
you should invest and where you shouldn't invest as a culture. So you
decide to grow this many acres of
[[Page S9467]]
potatoes, this many acres of corn, and you make this much steel, and it
is all planned at the center of things. It is supposed to be a good
system, in theory.
It took about 80 years around the world to figure out what the theory
was, but it was a theory of collapse. We only have two fully confessed
Communist regimes left in the world now, North Korea--and most of the
rest of the world is trying to send them aid so their children don't
starve to death--and Cuba, which is teetering on the edge of its own
demise. The truth of the matter is central government planning to
allocate the resources in the arts community isn't any more effective
or any more to be desired than central governmental planning and
allocation of resources in the industrial communities, the
manufacturing community or the agricultural communities.
The genius of the marketplace is that it rewards those things which
are valuable in the absence of planning in Government, not that it gets
signals from Government or some planning agency or some guru in some
bureaucracy that says, ``This is my beloved artist in whom I am well
pleased, put all your money here.'' As a matter of fact, some of the
things that have been designated as those things to be supported like
this poem--this is not the title for the poem, Mr. President, this is
the poem. This is it, the whole nine yards. This is it.
There is a dispute about whether the actual payment was $1,500 or
$750. You can do the quick math. It is $107 a letter if it was $750,
and $214 a letter if it was $1,500. I make this copy as a bargain to
you, and just give you the $107 rate if you think your marketplace
would sustain it. Of course, I am not sure whether this is the French
version of the poem, the English or the German version of the poem,
because I have looked in the dictionaries and I don't find it in the
English dictionary, the French dictionary or the German dictionary, but
who knows. I know one thing, putting the seal of approval on this would
not increase its value to me, and I don't think it does for the
culture.
The truth of the matter is there are other reasons why we shouldn't
be wanting to subsidize speech. Those reasons include the fact that the
subsidization of speech results in the corruption of the arts. Jan
Breslauer of the Los Angeles Times wrote eloquently that the National
Endowment for the Arts results in the corrosive effect on the arts,
that as a matter of fact that effect on the arts was prompted by the
fact that National Endowment rewards politically correct art and art
expression. She says, ``The Endowment has quietly pursued policies
rooted in identity politics.'' The National Endowment for the Arts is
conducting a political effort, ``a kind of separatism that emphasizes
racial, sexual and cultural differences above all else.''
This is art subsidized by Government and specifically designed to
separate us one from another based on racial differences, sexual
differences and cultural differences. She says these policies have not
``excited much controversy, but they have had a profoundly corrosive
effect on the American arts.'' Here is a clear indication by an art
critic that the subsidy of arts, based on political preference, based
on subject matter that is designed to divide the American people based
on sexual, cultural and racial lines, pulls us apart rather than
unifies us, has a corrosive effect on the arts. Not only a corrosive
effect on the arts, it has a corrosive effect on the culture.
I wonder if we ought to spend our resources on something which
produces that kind of an impact on the culture?
Mr. President, there are a number of other reasons and things I would
like to say about this. We will have debate on both sides. I know the
Senator from California is eager to speak. I want to give her an
opportunity. So I sum up by saying there is no crisis in funding for
the arts. People of America are taxed at their highest rates in
history.
There is no reason to require that there be a Good Housekeeping Seal
of Approval from the Government to try to dignify art that is not art,
or to make decent those things which are indecent and unacceptable.
Good art will be good art whether or not you label it with an NEA seal.
An artistic statement, as a matter of fact, that came before the onset
of the NEA, and will survive long after it, is that ``A rose is nothing
but a rose no matter what you call it, and by any other name, it is
still a rose.''
With that in mind, I think it is time for us to say we have spent
more than enough in subsidizing politically correct activities under
the guise of promoting the arts.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California is recognized.
Mrs. BOXER. Thank you so much, Mr. President. Now, I have heard the
Senator from Ohio very eloquently express his views. I think it is time
that we hear from the other side.
I am very pleased to be a member of this Subcommittee on Interior
Appropriations, and I was very pleased that we were able to resolve the
question of the native Americans. I felt very strongly that had we not
done that, we were going to do a grave injustice to native Americans
and turn our backs on history, justice, fairness, and the Constitution.
So I was very pleased to support Senators McCain, Campbell, and the
others. They convinced the chairman of our subcommittee to put that
fight off until another time.
I thought we were going to be OK on the National Endowment for the
Arts. It comes to the floor of the U.S. Senate funded at about the same
level as last year, and here we are faced with an array of amendments
to wipe out the National Endowment for the Arts. Now, this is the most
extreme one. It would totally do away with the National Endowment for
the Arts. I think it is a very radical and very serious step for us to
take.
I want to comment, because I think it is important to correct the
Record, or at least straighten it out a little bit, on the poem that
the Senator from Ohio continues to hold up in this debate. It is a one-
word poem. I agree, it doesn't make much sense to me either. And, yes,
the NEA has made some mistakes. I'm sorry, I mean the Senator from
Missouri, not Ohio. What the Senator from Missouri, Senator Ashcroft,
does not tell us in his eloquent debate is that the one-word poem he
holds up was funded 30 years ago; it was funded in 1968. He holds it up
on the floor of the U.S. Senate as if these are the kinds of grants
that are being made today.
Now, if we are going to have an honest debate, why don't we be honest
with each other? I saw that poem and I said, ``That doesn't make much
sense.'' Then I found out it was funded 30 years ago. Now, there are
many reforms that have been put into place in the National Endowment
for the Arts. Does it mean there might not be a mistake or two in the
future? No. There may be some out of the thousands and thousands of
grants. But to hold up a poem funded 30 years ago, when I was just a
kid--as a matter of fact, 30 years ago, I became a mother for the first
time, and now my kids are having kids. So, yes, there was a mistake
made, I agree. You know, there are mistakes made in life, but we don't
just take a meat ax to the problem. And we didn't; we have made
reforms.
The other point that I think is interesting for the Senator from
Missouri to imply is that the music funded by the National Endowment
for the Arts is all for the elite, the upper crust, and he talked about
the opera and how he doesn't go to the opera much, and yet, the opera
is funded. Well, I tell the Senator from Missouri that many groups
across the country are funded by the NEA: The Carter Family Memorial
Music Center in Hiltons, VA, supporting a weekly series and annual
festival of old-time traditional music, played on acoustic instruments.
There is the Western Folklife Center in Nevada, dedicated to the
preservation and presentation of the cultural traditions of the
American West. There is the Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program, fostering
the growth and evolution of Mississippi's traditional arts by bringing
master traditional artists together with promising apprentices.
So, again, we have a misleading presentation here that doesn't square
with the facts. This is 1997, not 1968. Mistakes were made, but many
revisions have taken place and reforms have been implemented to
straighten out the problems.
In 1993, the NEA initiated a complete overhaul of the agency's grant
review
[[Page S9468]]
and monitoring process. All subgrants to private nonapproved groups
have been eliminated. Since 1996, all fine arts grants to individual
artists have been eliminated. Since 1996, all grants to organizations
must be for projects specifically described in the application, further
increasing accountability of grantees. Since 1994, all grantees must
file interim and final project reports. The final one-third of all
grant payments are withheld pending the NEA's approval of grantees'
interim reports. In addition, grantees must now seek written permission
in advance to change grant activities proposed in the organization's
application. The National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act
of 1965 requires a rigorous multistep review process of all
applications. Diverse panels of citizens, representing wide geographic,
ethnic, and cultural points of view, review all applications. Following
panel consideration, all applications are then reviewed by the National
Council on the Arts, which is a body of 26 private citizens nominated
by the President and, yes, confirmed by the U.S. Senate to 6-year
terms. Do we have so little faith in what we have already done to
straighten out some of the problems with the NEA that we would, with
one vote, do away with the NEA? I hope not. By the way, applications
recommended by the council for support are forwarded to the chairman of
NEA for a final decision. The chairman may not approve an application
with respect to which the council has made a negative evaluation. So we
have even put a rein on the chairman.
Some of my colleagues have spoken on this floor expressing concerns
that projects receiving funding from the NEA are obscene. Anybody who
says that should know that Federal law ensures that artistic excellence
and artistic merit are the criteria used to evaluate applications. The
law expressly prohibits the award of financial assistance to any
project or program determined to be obscene. If a mistake is made in
judgment, yes, we should ensure that it is corrected, just as we must
do in any Federal agency or just as we must do in our own lives. If one
postman is obnoxious as he or she delivers the mail, we don't stop
delivering the mail. We get rid of that person. If one military officer
sexually harasses another, we don't shut down the military; we hold a
hearing and we hold the perpetrator accountable.
We have had an extraordinary number of military planes crashing, and
not one person would suggest that we don't build any more military
planes. Clearly, we are going to take the problems as they come to us
and deal with them. And, surely, we are capable of doing that with the
National Endowment for the Arts. This body ought to be very pleased
that it has made tremendous progress.
Now, speaking of the military, we spend more on military bands than
we spend on the National Endowment for the Arts. I support spending
money on military bands. I also support spending money on the National
Endowment for the Arts. We spent $176.2 million on military bands in
1997, which is almost twice the $99.4 million spent on the NEA. Let me
tell you something. If a military band played an inappropriate song, or
someone was dressed inappropriately or, in any way, degraded that
cultural event, we would address the situation. By the way, it is very
important to our country that we keep the culture of the U.S. military
and that we keep the music of patriotism that fills our souls every
time we hear from it. But if there is a mistake made and
an inappropriate song chosen, or someone is acting in an inappropriate
way, we don't walk away from funding the military band. Do you know
what we spend per person for the NEA? When this Senate voted $10
billion more for the military than the military asked for, I stood on
this floor in disbelief, because I heard all these speeches about how
much money we are spending in taxes. I agree, I don't want to spend
money we don't need to spend. I want to give the military what it
needs--not $10 billion more. But now we are going to save the Federal
budget because we are going to cut out less than $100 million, 38 cents
per person in this United States of America?
I was called to a meeting in San Diego. In terms of politics, I would
say you would call it a Republican county. I had people there from the
business community, I had people there from the arts community, I had
people there from nonprofit organizations, and we had elected officials
there of both political parties. Do you know what their message to me
was? Go and fight this thing, because every time we get a dollar from
the NEA, we get matched $12. ``It is important,'' they said to me,
``for our community.'' As a matter of fact, they said to me, ``Can't
you fight so that we can spend 50 cents per person in a year? If we
spend 50 cents per person a year, we would get that much more leverage,
that much more job creation, that much more tourism, and it would help
us.'' So it is very interesting. In San Diego, CA, I get called to a
meeting and I am told to fight for more. Here I find myself fighting
just to keep what we have.
So when we talk about tax load, don't be fooled about that. Don't be
fooled. In essence, what we have here is a grant program that is far
lower than it was under George Bush and Ronald Reagan who, by the way,
signed all those bills for the NEA--and it costs 38 cents per person.
Public funding of the arts is good for the economy. Now, there was a
recent study by McKinsey Consultants for New York City and they said in
their study that funding of the arts generates taxes, which brings down
the deficit, jobs and economic growth far in excess of the amounts
invested.
I used to be a stockbroker. When you look at recommending a stock,
you look at whether or not it is a good investment. Does it bring back
dividends? When you put in a dollar, what do you get out? This is
clear. Republicans in my State, Democrats in my State, Independent
voters in my State--this is the place where they cross over party
lines. They want us to save the NEA. They think it is good. They know
mistakes will happen, yes, when you give thousands of grants. I think
they are willing to forgive a grant made in 1968. An investment of $100
million in the NEA is relatively small. We are talking about less than
one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the nearly $1.5 trillion Federal
budget.
Now, I want to share with you some pictures because I think they are
worth many times a thousand words. Let me talk about Leon Bates, a
world-class, highly respected concert pianist, who has appeared with
major orchestras throughout the United States, Europe and Africa. By
the way, my colleagues have talked about Communist countries and have
somehow linked what we are doing here to communism. You know, if you
look at every capitalist country in the world, every democracy and
capitalist country in the world, they spend a far greater proportion of
their budgets on the arts than we do. So I don't get how communism,
socialism and capitalism comes in here, because in fact every
capitalist democracy in the world spends more on the arts than we do.
So I don't see how that gets into the debate.
Well, here is Leon Bates. He has traveled in Europe, Africa, and the
United States. He was hired by the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra to
perform a piano concerto in January of 1996.
As part of this week-long residency of rehearsals and public
appearances, Mr. Bates performed for an audience of 250 members of the
Long Beach Boys and Girls Club.
Everyone in here stands up and talks about the children--everyone of
us. And we should.
I wish you could see the faces on these kids at the Boys and Girls
Clubs watching this creative genius perform his work with an NEA grant
enabling him to go to the Boys and Girls Clubs, be a role model, and
give them a love of music. He is the perfect ambassador for classical
music to an audience of children, parents, and counselors who are not
exposed to the world of performing arts that often. He brought with him
a full-sized concert grand piano, and in between anecdotes from his
life as a musician he answered questions and played excerpts from
several classical composers. The event was a spectacular success.
He was supported in part by the NEA. Without continued support of the
NEA, the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra would not be able to bring in
top-quality artists like Mr. Bates.
I want to show you another photograph which I think is wonderful. The
Senator from Missouri holds up a poem from 1968. I am talking about
what is
[[Page S9469]]
going on now. This is a group called We Tell Stories. It is a
performance group based in Los Angeles--a troop of actors which travels
to museums, parks, schools, and libraries to perform stories for
children. Its goal is to enhance cultural awareness, communication, and
awaken a taste for theater and children of all cultures.
We Tell Stories received an NEA grant to support the creation and
presentation throughout the United States of work by Carl Sandburg, a
great American.
We Tell Stories began in cooperation with the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art in 1981. Now in partnership with several organizations
and agencies, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, and
the troupe has performed for over 2 million people. In 1996, the troupe
presented performances for 270,000 children.
I am coming to the conclusion of my remarks, much to the delight of
several of my colleagues who are here to speak. But I want to show you
one last photograph. This is one of the audience members who was
watching a recent performance in Westwood, CA, by We Tell Stories. Look
at her face. It captures the promise of the arts. The great
expectations of the arts, the creativity, the imagination.
Will there be art without the NEA? Of course. I say to my colleague
from Missouri, there will always be the arts. Why wouldn't there be?
One of the things we do in this country is to give a very small
amount--38 cents per person in this country to be matched 12 times by
the private sector, the nonprofit communities, the State governments.
Why would we do that? To bring these opportunities to the people of our
country--and, yes; to the children of our country--because that is what
the NEA has been focusing on recently.
I just want to say that I know we have disagreements in this body. I
respect those disagreements, and I respect my colleagues who come at it
from a different way. But I think for the sake of this debate the
American people--and I know the people in my State of every political
persuasion--again, in my State, there are three issues that unite
people along party lines. This is California, and I can't speak for
Missouri, and I can't speak for any other State, but there are three
issues that make people cross over party lines.
One of them is the environment. People cross over, and they say,
``You know, I don't care if you are a Democrat or Republican. I want
clean air. I want clean water. And I want my kid to grow up without
getting environmental cancer.''
So there are no politics in that issue, in my opinion, in my State.
Another issue is a woman's right to choose. It's the same thing--
people from both parties come to me, and they say, ``Please. This is a
private personal matter, and it has nothing to do with Government. Stay
out of our lives.''
And the third issue is funding for the arts. I have letters. I have
phone calls. I have gone to meetings. I have never seen such bipartisan
audiences as I have with those three issues.
On this issue, they all agree that we need to put the facts on the
table. This isn't some political issue. This is a really important
issue for our people. Will we stand up and say, ``For a modest amount
per person, 38 cents a year, we will work with the States, the local
groups, the local symphonies, the local Girl Scouts, the groups that
benefit from this to bring the arts to our people, to help them
leverage that investment?''
I can't imagine why anyone would think that it is dangerous for us to
have this very modest program that sparks such enthusiasm. Are there
mistakes? Yes. Are there mistakes in everything we do in life?
Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we destroy the idea of the spark.
Senator Kennedy and Senator Jeffords across party lines have worked
out an agreement on this. They would block grant up to 40 percent of
the NEA funds and send it back to the States. That is a good
compromise. That would be up from 35 percent.
I hope we can come together across party lines because we need to do
that.
I hope we will reject this amendment. I hope that we will support the
Jeffords-Kennedy attempt to resolve this matter. And let's make sure
that we fulfill our responsibilities, it seems to me, to have a small,
dynamic, flexible program that responds to criticism but continues to
give a modicum of support--let's use it to support dance and the arts
in this Nation.
Thank you, very much, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
I reserve the remainder of our side's time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
I thank the Senator from California for correcting the fact that I am
not from Ohio. I didn't want people from Ohio to be too upset. It
reminds me of my having been introduced as having been an individual
from Missouri but who was born in Illinois. I say, ``Yes, both States
claim me. Missouri claims I am from Illinois, and Illinois claims I am
from Missouri.''
The truth of the matter is that I would like to address some of the
issues which the Senator from California has talked about.
She mentions the fact of a poem--for which we paid $214 a letter--
which was paid for earlier in the history of the National Endowment.
She is correct. But it is incorrect to suggest that there are not
abuses now that are even more egregious.
This is one of the more decent egregious abuses of National Endowment
money.
I have excerpts from a book in my hand which very proudly bears the
imprint, the so-called good seal of approval, of the National Endowment
for the Arts. This book was published in 1996 after all the supposed
improvements, after all of these wonderful safeguards to make sure that
our money is well spent. I think it is instructive to read just what
the authors say about their own book. This isn't some attack upon the
book. This is the bragging of the authors.
I read:
The blood of the Mugwump clan of Catholic gender-shifting
vampires has become infected by decadent words and confused
memories.
It talks about a man trapped inside a body that is always changing
from male to female, and dealing with his polysexual sister.
I asked my staff to just take a couple of pages of the book. And this
book was written because the National Endowment for the Arts felt that
the American people needed to have this capacity to identify good art
so they could invest in it under the ``Good Housekeeping'' or ``good
art'' seal. I asked them just to get a couple of pages of the book and
Xerox them. But I said, ``Be sure to mark out the things that would be
not suitable to be shown on C-SPAN in the middle of the day.''
This is what a typical set of pages looks like. This is what the
American people are paying for. This isn't something from 30 years ago.
This is something from 30 minutes ago. This is something that is
current. This is something from 1996.
No. 1, the so-called reforms have been ineffective. And, if we had an
abuse which was at least not obscene--our abuses have not gone uphill.
They have gone downhill.
I have a list of current abusive things funded by the National
Endowment for the Arts. I could go through them time after time. I will
not bother to give them to you. Hundreds of thousands--hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted in the current
selection of grantees. They are not as easy to describe, and they are
not as suitable for television as the 30-year-old abuses are.
Unfortunately, they are not as easy to use on television.
The Senator from California pled for honesty and integrity in talking
about whether or not we would have any funding--that somehow there is a
matching grant program. There is no matching program. We are not
talking about matching funds here. We are just talking about other
money spent on the arts--most of it in the private sector. And when
they have that kind of an expenditure, sure enough, they could say,
``For every dollar we have in Federal money we have $12 in private
money.'' That doesn't mean the private money wouldn't have been spent
anyhow. After all, what happened before 1965 when Lyndon Johnson
concluded in the Great Society that we had to have funding for the
arts? For several
[[Page S9470]]
hundred years America had great artists, and we weren't devoid of
expenditure. We had great museums. We had tremendous collections. We
had artists who thrived. We had novelists, and poets.
So it is pretty clear to me that art is not dependent upon some
matching fund system.
Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. How much time do we have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa has 40 minutes and 41
seconds.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. President, first of all, the Senator from Missouri has repeatedly
talked about the poem ``Lighght.'' He has held up this little piece of
paper, and he has talked about this poem and castigated it as one of
the great spending holes of the U.S. Government, we spent money on the
poem ``Lighght.''
Well, I saw that and I recognized it. Believe it or not, I recognized
that poem. And so I thought I would take some time since I have a
history in this to shed a little light on ``Lighght''.
Now, again, I am glad that the Senator from California brought this
up because the Senator from Missouri never did mention this until the
Senator from California, Mrs Boxer, brought it up. This poem
``Lighght'' was published in 1969. The Senator from Missouri did not
say that. He admitted it after the Senator from California pointed that
out. But in listening in the last couple of days to the Senator from
Missouri, one would have assumed that this grant was just made, not in
fact made in 1969, when it was.
Mr. President, the debate on the NEA, National Endowment for the
Arts, has set a new standard for debate in the Senate. First of all,
suggesting that we should eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts
in 1997 because of a grant that was made in 1969 begs incredulity. That
would be like saying the State of Missouri, since it had laws on its
books that allowed segregated schools until the 1960's, will not be
eligible for Federal education programs. Or saying that the University
of Alabama will be prohibited from participating in Federal student aid
programs because it was segregated prior to June 1963, or the schools
in Little Rock, AR.
Times change. Conditions change. Well, now, the Senator from Missouri
said, oh, OK, fine. ``Lighght,'' this was 1969, but then he held up a
piece of paper which he was reading something from--I didn't catch it
all, but it was from a book called ``Blood of Mugwump,'' which I never
heard of until today, but I remembered someone had said something to me
about it and I looked it up. My staff gave me this. Lo and behold, the
Senator from Missouri is wrong again. ``Blood of Mugwump'' did not
receive any NEA funding. How many of these misrepresentations will we
hear from the Senator from Missouri in debate on funding of the
National Endowment for the Arts?
Now, I have here a letter, Mr. President, from People For The
American Way. It said:
In a letter to Congressional Members dated June 25, 1997,
the Christian Coalition urged Members to ``vote against any
amendments to increase NEA funding'' and asserted that the
NEA is now ``funding the proliferation of pornography,''
citing specifically two films, ``Sick'' and ``Age 12,'' and
one book, ``Blood of Mugwump.''
Fact 5: The Christian Coalition is wrong. The NEA did not
fund any of the three examples used.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this material from the
People For The American Way be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Claim: In a letter to Congressional members dated June 25,
1997, the Christian Coalition urged members to ``vote against
any amendments to increase NEA funding'' and asserted that
the NEA is now ``funding the proliferation of pornography,''
citing specifically two films, ``Sick'' and ``Age 12'' and
one book, ``Blood of Mugwump.''
Fact: The Christian Coalition was wrong. The NEA did not
fund any of the three examples used.
Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator from Missouri would like, I am sure that
we could sign him up for People For the American Way, and he could get
the correct information as to what is going on and not the false
information that he got from the so-called Christian Coalition.
And so again the Senator from Missouri has brought up something that
simply has no basis in fact. And I have here again, Mr. President, a
letter dated March 17, 1997, from Karen Christensen, general counsel of
the National Endowment for the Arts. It is written to Mr. Curtis White.
I will not read the whole thing. It just said here:
The progress report which you filed with this agency
erroneously included ``Blood of Mugwump'' as among those
volumes partially supported by a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts; this is not the case.
In any future publications, including promotional materials
and reprints of FC2 volumes, please remove any reference to
the National Endowment for the Arts from any publication
which is not supported by an NEA grant.
I would appreciate prompt attention to this matter.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
The Nancy Hanks Center,
Washington, DC, March 17, 1997.
Re Grant #96-5223-0091.
Mr. Curtis White,
Co-Director, Fiction Collective 2, Unit for Contemporary
Literature, Illinois State University, Normal, IL.
Dear Mr. White: It has come to my attention that the
National Endowment for the Arts has been credited with
supporting a number of books published by FC2 that were not
funded by a grant from this agency. As you know and as the
Endowment's grant letter makes clear, funds are released for
the specific project described in the grant letter and
specified in the grant application. The Endowment's logo
should be used only on those publications for which a grant
was received.
Grant #96-5223-0091, which will conclude on June 30, 1997,
awarded funds for the following books: S&M, by Jeffrey
DeShell; Mexico Trilogy, by D.M. Stuefloten; A Spell for the
Fulfillment of Desire, by Don Webb; Memory Wax, by Alan
Singer; and Aviary Slag, by Jacques Servin. The progress
report which you filed with this agency erroneously included
Blood of Mugwump as among those volumes partially supported
by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; this is
not the case.
In any future publications, including promotional materials
and reprints of FC2 volumes, please remove any reference to
the National Endowment for the Arts from any publication
which is not supported by an NEA grant.
I would appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Karen Christensen,
General Counsel.
Mr. HARKIN. Again, Mr. President, if the Senator from Missouri was
really serious, I am sure that he could have found out that in March of
this year the National Endowment for the Arts wrote a letter to the
director, who put out this book, I guess, under this grant, that it
wasn't supported by the NEA. And the Senator from Missouri would not
have stood in this Chamber today and said that ``Blood of Mugwump'' was
another example of bad taxpayer spending by the National Endowment for
the Arts.
I caution my friend from Missouri that he simply check his facts.
That is all. And I am certain that if he just wanted to check his
facts, if the Senator from Missouri just simply wanted to check whether
or not what he was saying was factual, a simple call to the National
Endowment for the Arts--they are not hard to get hold of. They are
right down here in Washington, DC. Their phone number is 682-5400. I
would suggest to my friend from Missouri that he simply pick up the
phone and call them, ask them: Is it so that ``Blood of Mugwump'' was
funded by an NEA grant? And he would have been told the facts.
So I think we have an obligation when we debate here on the Senate
floor to be, at least, somewhat careful. I know we make mistakes around
here. But, at least, try to check our facts out.
In that regard, Mr. President, I would like to talk a little bit more
about the poem ``Lighght.'' Now, the reason this came to my attention
is because this was an issue in my first campaign for public office in
1974 when then incumbent Congressman Bill Scherle in the House had gone
after the National Endowment for the Arts on the same basis, that they
had funded this word, one-word poem ``Lighght.''
[[Page S9471]]
And so I want to set the record straight, and I want to talk a little
bit about it to get the facts out, the latest facts out. Mr. President,
here are the facts. The National Endowment for the Arts sponsored a
three-part series entitled ``American Literary Anthology.'' This was
the idea of George Plimpton and also Roger Stevens, that they would
seek out writers, poets around the country who were not well known, who
maybe had published in small literary journals that had small
circulation, to have a contest to put them together and to pick what
judges decided were the best of these new writers and to put them in an
American anthology to give them a wider berth so that more people could
read them.
The purpose again was to support small literary magazines and their
contributors. After all, most writers, Mr. President, don't start
writing for Esquire or the New Yorker or the big magazines. They start
with small literary journals around the country. And so that was the
idea of George Plimpton and Roger Stevens, to get some of these new
writers out there and bring them in and give them a wider circulation.
I spoke just the other evening with George Plimpton about this. He
and Peter Ardery were the directors of the ``American Literary
Anthology.'' He told me that the NEA grant in 1966 had three goals.
First, to provide wider distribution for literary works which first
appeared in magazines with limited circulation. Second, to supplement
the small stipend the magazines used to provide to the authors.
As Mr. Plimpton told me, in many cases these writers got nothing
except four or five copies of the magazine in which they were
published.
So, it was to supplement it. And here was the supplement: $1,000 for
prose material, $500 for poems. That was to the contributor, the
writer. And, third, to reward the magazines which published the
literary works in the first place: $500 for prose, $250 for poems. The
total was $60,000 for the second volume. So the Senator from Missouri
is wrong again. Again, I ask the Senator from Missouri, please check
your facts. The amount of grant for this one-word poem was not $1,500,
it was $750: $500 to the writer, $250 to the magazine.
I am certain the Senator will say that $750 is still too much for
this poem, but nonetheless I thought it important to set the record
straight, that it is not $1,500, it was $750.
I got a copy of the American Literary Anthology, volume II. Actually
I read some of the poems in it. It is interesting that the Senator from
Missouri picked out a poem written by Aram Saroyan, the son of William
Saroyan, by the way. I don't know Aram Saroyan. I have never read his
poetry before and I have not since. But I looked in volume II of the
American Literary Anthology to see who else was published: people like
Robert Penn Warren, John Ashberry, Jim Harrison--I say to the Senator
from Missouri, Jim Harrison, who later wrote ``Legends of the Fall,''
which has been made into a movie, I guess; W.S. Merwyn, Pulitzer Prize-
winning poet who also attended the Writers Workshop at the University
of Iowa, and I will say more about that in a second; James Tate, one of
our foremost poets in America; Joyce Carol Oates, also in volume II.
That is just a sampling. Why didn't he pick out some of those? No; he
picked out this one-word poem, just to show people how it appeared in
the book. Here it is, volume II, a one-word poem, on one page.
This is called calligraphic poetry. Calligraphic poetry is poetry
where it's not just the content of the poem, but it is how it is laid
out on the page that also sends a message, or conveys a thought or a
feeling. I might point out to the Senator from Missouri that
calligraphic poetry is not new; it is very old. In fact, some
calligraphic poetry goes back to the 18th century, some in religious
poetry. These religious poetry might be shaped in the form of pulpits,
crosses, churches, saints, icons, things like that, to convey a
religious image by the way the poem looked as well as the words that
the poem contained.
I must say, I think the Senator from Missouri, if I might just say--I
think the Senator from Missouri picked the wrong poem. There is a poem,
it starts on page 273 of the second volume of the American Literary
Anthology. It is ``The Last Will And Testimony of Art Evergreen,'' and
it goes on for 17 pages. If the Senator had picked that poem, he might
have a little more sympathy from this Senator. I say that tongue in
cheek.
But why did the Senator not also pick the poem on page 339 by James
Tate called ``Stray Animals''? No; he picked this one-word poem
because, obviously, he doesn't like it. Frankly, I am not certain I
like it either. It doesn't say much to me. But some calligraphic poetry
I like, in the way the words are shaped and put on a page. That one
doesn't say much to me at all. But, nonetheless, it is legitimate
poetry. And there are a lot of other poems in there.
Again, the Senator may not care for this type of poetry, but that is
no reason to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts. Over its 32-
year history, the NEA has made 112,000 grants. To date, about 40 that
we have been able to find have caused people some problems--about 40
out of 112,000. I think that is a pretty good record. Again, the
Senator did not mention all of the other people who have gotten grants
from NEA.
A little while ago I spoke on the phone with Jorie Graham. She is at
the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. Last year, 1996, she
won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. I had a long talk with her. Here is
an individual who received an NEA grant, and she told me without that
she would not have been able to take the year off and write poetry
because she had a young child. So that grant enabled her to do that.
I might also point out with some sense of pride that in 1996, last
year, the three nominees for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, Charles
Wright, Donald Justice and Jorie Graham, were all from the Writers
Workshop at the University of Iowa. It is interesting to note that it
was the student, Jorie Graham, who won the prize. All three were
recipients of NEA grants.
Why does the Senator from Missouri not talk about that? Why doesn't
he go after the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa?
Here, I will be glad to give it to my friend from Missouri. Here is a
whole packet of pages, going clear back to 1970, of writers and poets
who have received grants, who were at the Writers Workshop. Who will
the Senator find in here? People like Robert Penn Warren, he'll find
people like Kurt Vonnegut, he'll find people like Tennessee Williams--
he may not like Tennessee Williams.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield? The Senator asked me a
question.
Mr. HARKIN. I will be glad to yield to the Senator in just a second.
He'll find people like John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Tennessee Williams,
Flannery O'Connor, Jane Smiley, who just wrote the wonderful book ``A
Thousand Acres'' and won a Pulitzer Prize for it. It is now being made
into a movie. Writers Workshop. NEA recipients.
No, he didn't mention those.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. HARKIN. Now I will be glad to yield for a question.
Mr. ASHCROFT. The Senator has asked why I didn't cite all these
others. Is it the Senator's position that none of these people would
have been writers absent these grants? That absent the ability to have
the Federal subsidies we could not have literature like this in the
United States?
Mr. HARKIN. I will just answer my friend from Missouri. I just had a
long conversation on the phone with Jorie Graham, the poet from the
University of Iowa Writers Workshop, who won the Pulitzer Prize last
year. She told me without that NEA grant--she had a little child--she
would not have been able to take the year off to develop her talents as
a poet that enabled her to win the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, she absolutely
stated that to me.
Some of these, maybe not. But I can tell you some people like Kurt
Vonnegut and some people, when they first started out--no. They needed
these grants to get up to a level.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Did Kurt Vonnegut start out with an NEA grant?
Mr. HARKIN. I don't know. He got an NEA grant at one point, I
believe.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I see. It seems to me, will the Senator concede we had
a lot of great poets and a lot of great artists in America between the
time of the
[[Page S9472]]
founding of this culture and the time in the mid-1960's when we started
NEA grants.
Mr. HARKIN. I will respond to my friend this way. That is true. We
have had a lot of great poets and writers who received no NEA grants.
How many more, though, were out there in the little towns of Missouri,
in the fields of Iowa, around the coal mines of Kentucky and in the
hills of Kentucky, who wanted to develop their writing skills and their
talents but did not have the support to do so? How many were left lying
fallow in the ground because we wouldn't even come up with the two
pennies, the two pennies per taxpayer per year, to help them to develop
their talent?
I think that is the appropriate question to ask, is how many were out
there who didn't get the nourishment who, if they had the nourishment,
could have been great writers and poets in our society today?
Mr. ASHCROFT. I can name----
Mr. HARKIN. I will yield for a question.
Mr. ASHCROFT. In response to that question, I can name at least one
who didn't have that kind of grant, who was a poor fellow from a small
town in Missouri. His name was Samuel Clemens. He wrote under the name
of Mark Twain. He seemed to do pretty well. In the name of artists
whose works are arrayed in this Capitol, George Caleb Bingham, who is
considered to be the American Rembrandt, who was a Missouri State
treasurer, who did not have a public subsidy to do it. We could go
through the list. Obviously you could always say there may have been
lots more. There may have been some who would have been great artists
in the last 25 years but, because they didn't get the seal of approval,
weren't able to market as successfully their artwork, now that the arts
community has been so oriented to the Federal approval or disapproval.
It seems to me, how many would be here or how many would be there is
not a question that would be very productive in leading us to good
policy.
Mr. HARKIN. I only responded because the Senator raised the issue. He
was saying, questioning me, that was I saying all these great ones all
received NEA grants. I would say no. But I think the question I asked
was how many more were out there that could have risen up?
He mentioned Samuel Clemens. That was the last century and of course,
again, we had great musicians and we had great artists and poets in the
past. But again, I challenge my friend from Missouri to think about
this. The few that we talk about in the past century were so few in
number. I mean, they were absolutely the pinnacle, absolutely the best.
How many more who didn't quite make it up there could have been very
good? Maybe they wouldn't have been the top echelon, but they might
have been very good writers and purveyors of senses of the esthetics of
different regions of this country that weren't there.
Sure, you can point to Samuel Clemens and a few others. But how many
more might have come along, might have been great, might have been
maybe not at that pinnacle, but maybe up in that level who died
aborning because they had no support whatsoever?
I might also, tongue in cheek, ask my friend from Missouri, who has
gone after some writings that he claims are not quite appropriate for
readers to read--you know, old Samuel Clemens wrote some things that
were pretty risque. I wonder if the Senator from Missouri has ever read
``Letters From Heaven''? If the Senator from Missouri has never read
``Letters From Heaven'' by Samuel Clemens, I ask him to read it and
bring it on the floor and read it. I doubt he would want to read
``Letters From Heaven'' on the floor of the Senate.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. HARKIN. I will be glad to.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank you for raising the extent to which I have read
Samuel Clemens' work, Mark Twain. I find him to be an interesting
author, and I think some of his works are better than others and some
of them are very helpful and some of them moved society in the right
direction--I think move us all and inspire us all.
The point is not whether or not a writer has the ability to write
things that might be appropriate in one setting or not appropriate in
another setting. The point is, what do you do by way of subsidy and
whether the Government decides to endow any particular writer with a
special stamp of approval and discriminate in favor of that writer and
thereby discriminate against every other writer? Had Samuel Clemens
been a writer 100 years ago and had there been the current NEA and had
the fellow from down the river in St. Louis gotten the grant and Samuel
Clemens been discriminated against and shunned by the arts community
because the other guy had gotten the grant, we might never have known
about Samuel Clemens.
The point is, when you start with Government identifying and
establishing the value for one artist over another, picking
and choosing between the levels of free expression, free expression in
the free society, pushing people toward politically correct expression,
there are risks involved there that might result in stifling other
people who are not favored by the Government. So, it seems to me there
are equally--it's equally possible that there are great writers who are
being stifled by the current system--there are art critics who say
there are--just as much as there might have been people in previous
years who didn't rise to the level of being able to write because they
lacked the Federal subsidy.
Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Missouri, he couldn't be further
from the truth. This is the American Literary Anthology in which the
poem ``Lighght'' appears. No Government agent or employee decided what
went into this book. I can't for the life of me figure out what the
Senator from Missouri is talking about.
For example, who decides whether a writer gets published? It is the
editor of a magazine, the publisher of the magazine. Who decided what
poems and what fiction, essays, went into this anthology? Editors and
publishers of magazines. They all got together and went through all of
their different magazines and decided who they thought ought to be in
here. It wasn't Government. No Government agent did this. No Government
employee did that.
Does the Senator think that writers just sort of spring up and,
because they are so good in the beginning, that right away they appear
in the New Yorker Magazine? Of course not.
They appear in these small literary magazines around the country, and
it is the editors of those magazines and the publishers who decide what
gets published. They were the ones who decided what went into this
anthology. There is no Government agency. I don't know of one
Government agent who decided on an NEA grant. It has all been done in a
peer review process.
That would be like saying, I say to my friend from Missouri, that we
should cut out research at the National Institutes of Health because it
is Government money, and why should the Government pick which research
to do, whether it is cancer or heart, whether it is diabetes or
Alzheimer's? The present occupant of the chair knows a lot about this.
Should the Government be picking the researchers because we put the
money into the NIH? We put a lot of money, as the occupant of the chair
knows, into NIH. We don't tell them what to pick. They do it through
the peer review process, through scientists in the field who decide
what is legitimate, good research to do.
The same is done in the National Endowment for the Arts. We don't sit
there. No one in the Government sits there and says we pick this and we
pick that. They set up boards, commissions, they set up peer review
entities that decide what is going to be. You can disagree with them,
and sometimes I have disagreed with them, too, but that is no reason to
end the National Endowment for the Arts.
So I repeat, Mr. President, I had a lengthy conversation yesterday
with Mr. George Plimpton and today, again, with Jorie Graham, who, I
repeat to my friend from Missouri, won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for
poetry. She was emphatic that she and so many of her colleagues would
not have been able to develop their talents were it not for the NEA
grants they received, and then go on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
She said the NEA took a risk, I say to my friend from Missouri. She
said it was a gamble. They didn't know if she
[[Page S9473]]
was going to be a good writer, poet or not. But she said the cost to
the taxpayers for the creative fellowship was 2 cents, two pennies.
That is what we are putting into supporting writers and poets around
the country--2 cents per taxpayer.
Again, if I may use the analogy of the National Institutes of Health,
we don't expect that all $13.5 billion that we have put in every year
at NIH is going to produce a medical miracle. Not at all. A lot of that
research is dead end and nothing ever happens, but we believe in doing
the research.
So, again, NIH is not right 100 percent of the time, and we shouldn't
expect the National Endowment for the Arts to be right 100 percent of
the time and that every writer that is picked through this process is
going to be a Pulitzer Prize winner or another Samuel Clemens or
another Jorie Graham. No, some of them won't make it, but at least we
are getting them out.
As Jorie Graham told me, she said, ``You know, there is a market out
there. The American people aren't stupid. If they read the poetry and
they read the literature, like cream on milk, the best will rise to the
top.'' But until you put that milk together and put it in the bottle,
forget it. That is what we are doing through the NEA grants; we are
bringing these people together and giving them an outlet for their
creative abilities. Some will make it, some won't. Some will write a
one-word poem that is calligraphic. It may mean something to somebody.
It doesn't particularly to me. Or some people like the poet I just
pointed out will write a 17-page poem, which also didn't mean much to
me either.
But I can tell you that there are some writers in here that have
meant a lot to me and a lot to a lot of other people. People like
Robert Penn Warren, John Ashberry, Jim Harrison, W. S. Merwyn, who, by
the way, was also at the Writers Workshop and received the Pulitzer
Prize in poetry, and James Tate, Joyce Carol Oates. They were in this
anthology, too. So I guess that is what we are saying. It is not an
elitist institution. The creative writer fellowships are made to
writers with no other means to support themselves. These grants don't
go to the wealthy; they don't even go to the middle class.
Second, I might point out to my friend from Missouri, these grants
also are awarded geographically, not just to a few areas. Since these
grants are awarded on a geographical basis, the writings that we get
reflect the regional and aesthetic values of those regions. How else
could we get the flavor of what it means to be born and raised in Iowa
on a farm unless perhaps we read something by Jane Smiley, ``A Thousand
Acres,'' and what it means today about what is happening to the farmers
in Iowa. Or what would it mean if we didn't have a flavor of what was
happening in the West or in the South with writers who can understand,
who feel and are sensitive to the aesthetics of that State or that
region or that area? That is why NEA grants go out to regions and
geographically so it doesn't just go to one certain area of America.
The critics many times focus only on those from the cities, but as I
have just pointed out, many, many, many rural writers have also
received awards and many have gone on to do great things.
So, the Senator from Missouri can get up all he wants. I just wish he
would be straight with the facts. First of all, he or his staff should
have checked and let us know--let everyone know--that this poem was
awarded a grant in 1969.
Second, I wish the Senator from Missouri had further checked his
facts and found out that the book ``Blood of Mugwump'' received no NEA
grant. A letter from NEA March 17, 1997, points out that ``Blood of
Mugwump'' did not receive an NEA grant.
As I said to my friend from Missouri, all he has to do, if ever he
has a doubt about what NEA is doing, is pick up the phone and call
them--they are here in Washington--and ask them and they will be glad
to set you straight on what they are doing.
I will wind up by saying, Mr. President, for 2 cents from every
taxpayer in America--just 2 pennies--we can go out and lift up some of
these young writers and poets all over America, artists who may be like
Jorie Graham and have a young child but they have innate talent, to be
able to get across to people, as she did with poetry, what it is like
in small rural towns or small communities of rural Iowa. She said
without those 2 cents and with a small child, she wouldn't have been
able to do it.
The Senator can get up and say he doesn't like ``Lighght''; that is
fine. There is a lot of poetry I don't like either. As I said, I am not
partial to this particular poem, although there is a lot of
calligraphic poetry I do like.
I will say one other thing. I was looking at some information that
came out from Mr. Frank Luntz. I don't know Mr. Frank Luntz, but he has
been in the news a lot lately. He wrote a book on how the GOP can use
language to manipulate people. His book is called ``The Language of the
21st Century.'' I guess it was presented to the Republican conference
before the August recess. I was looking at some excerpts from Mr.
Luntz' book. He is saying how people should talk about things. Oh,
there is addressing the gender gap. There is health care. How to talk
about Clinton. Education. And then he has here, ``Prolog: Luntz's 12
step program to make Republican language more soothing to voters.''
Here is a quote from his book:
Every time Republicans get into a conflict with the
President, you begin to shout, mistakenly believing that if
you speak loud enough, your message will get through. But the
American people aren't deaf. They simply don't understand
what you're saying, nor understand its relevance to their
day-to-day lives. Linguistically, you're out of touch with
the American people.
So he has 12 principles. I will not read them all, obviously, but I
will read the seventh principle of Mr. Frank Luntz, who is writing this
for the GOP: ``Abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.'' That is
what he is saying Republicans should say: ``Abolish the National
Endowment for the Arts.''
``This makes sense,'' Mr. Luntz says, ``for strategic reasons as well
as on principle.'' I will give him that benefit. ``Napoleon spoke of
the importance of feeding your army if you expect the soldiers to go
off to battle. You must deliver some nourishment to the true believers.
You need a symbol that both differentiates the two parties and stirs up
the troops.''
No. 7 in his book of the 12 principles.
If you want to stir up the troops, that is fine. Again, I hope they
will be clear on the facts and that we understand what this is about. I
don't believe it is really valid, and, again, I happen to like the
Senator from Missouri, he is a good guy and I like him, but I think he
has gotten mixed up on his facts. But then, again, we all do
periodically around here. But I just wish that he would be a little bit
more careful in looking at what the National Endowment for the Arts
really does and how it operates in Missouri and Iowa and the Midwest
and to think about whether or not we would want to throw out all
funding for the National Institutes of Health because some of the money
we gave them might have gone for bad research or something we didn't
like. I don't think so.
We may not like all the things the NEA does, but on the whole, out of
112,000 grants in its history, this Senator only knows of 40 that has
been raised as issues on the floor of the Senate or the House in the 22
years I have been privileged to serve here.
So, again, Mr. President, the National Endowment for the Arts is much
too important to us as a nation, much too important for America, for
our diversity, for understanding who we are and where we have come from
and perhaps even where we are going to have maybe one example of one
poem disliked by one or two or three Senators be the cause of not
funding the entire National Endowment for the Arts. It has done an
outstanding job. We should make sure we continue to fund it, not so
that Government can pick winners and losers and all that, but to make
sure that those who are out there in the field, those budding writers
and poets will at least have some hope that they, too, can become the
next Jorie Graham at the Writers Workshop in Iowa and win a Nobel Prize
for her or his poetry. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak for a few minutes also
in support of the National Endowment for the Arts and a strong Federal
role in
[[Page S9474]]
supporting the arts. I am honored to follow the eloquent Senator from
Iowa. I think he has made a very strong case for continued Federal
support in this area. I also believe the Senator from Utah, Senator
Bennett, made a very eloquent statement in support of the NEA and
demonstrated great common sense in much of what he said there.
Over the past few days, several of my colleagues have attacked the
NEA, and one of the attacks has been that NEA funds are concentrated
too much in big cities--six big cities in particular. I want to make it
clear at the beginning of my comments that none of those big cities are
in New Mexico, but still the NEA does support a very wide spectrum of
arts in my State of New Mexico.
NEA funds come to my State and support everything from opera to
cowboy poets. In my hometown of Silver City where I grew up, we have an
annual event where cowboy poets come from all over the country to
participate. It is my understanding--and I can be corrected on this--
but it is my understanding that the first cowboy poetry convention or
conference that occurred in this country was in Elko, NV, and was
sponsored by the NEA. And they have continued with that tradition in
Elko, NV, ever since.
So clearly the funds go to a broad range of arts. There have been
more than 20 national competitive grants in my State in 1996.
NEA National Heritage awards have gone to individuals in my State.
NEA has supported the arts in education strongly in my State.
This year, the NEA provided the New Mexico State arts agency with a
$380,000 block grant. So some of the Federal funds that come from the
NEA do come in block grant form so that the State can make the
judgment. Those funds are matched on a 2-to-1 basis with State funding.
They enable our State agency to make 125 awards, both small awards and
large awards.
NEA's goal is to support the arts that enrich the lives of everyone
in our country. I have seen that in my own State of New Mexico over the
14, 15 years that I have served here in the Senate, Mr. President. I
have seen arts councils established and grow in virtually every
community in New Mexico.
There was a time in my State when the arts were essentially Santa Fe
and Taos. If you started talking about the arts, whether they were
paintings or chamber music or the opera or any of a variety of arts,
you talked about Santa Fe and Taos. But that is no longer true in my
home State of New Mexico.
At the present time in New Mexico there is an arts council in
virtually every community, every community of any size in the State.
And those arts councils are bringing into those communities artists who
contribute a tremendous amount to the lives of the people who live
there. I am very proud of the rich tradition of arts that we have in my
State and in the Southwest in general.
New Mexico has a wealth of artists and musicians, museums and arts
centers. NEA support over the last several years has strengthened the
arts and strengthened arts education in New Mexico in very important
ways. It has benefited the children in my State.
Research has shown that art and music education is extremely
important to the development, the proper development of a child.
Healthy brain development in very young children is aided by arts
education and by exposure to art and to music. Problem-solving skills
are enhanced. There is improvement even on math tests as a result of
exposure to music. That has been demonstrated in various tests in
recent years.
I recently attended a program in Albuquerque which was inspirational.
It was called ``Starts with the Arts.'' It was a conference for
children with exceptional needs at the Very Special Arts Center in
Albuquerque. Clearly, this is making a great contribution to the lives
of those children.
In 1997, $90,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts came
through our State arts agency to assist with that type of program.
This has benefited not only children, young children, but it benefits
students, programs like the Working Classroom in Albuquerque. This is a
free year-round art and theater instruction program in the Broadway
section of Albuquerque in southeast Albuquerque.
Disadvantaged, at-risk children starting in their early teenage years
participate in this. There is reduced dropout rates as a result of this
work. There is substantial beautification of some areas of downtown
Albuquerque through the painting of murals. That program has been
supported by NEA funding as well.
In 1997, they received $15,000 from the NEA through a State block
grant. So the decision was made by the State to put that money into the
Working Classroom Program, but it was funding that came through the
National Endowment for the Arts.
There have been benefits to many of the communities in our State, as
I indicated, that not only benefits to the cultural lives of those
communities but also to tourism, to economic development, to job
creation.
Mr. President, I do not have exact figures to provide to the Senate
today, but I can tell you that the arts are a substantial part of the
reason why tourists come to my State. Whatever we do to strengthen the
arts also strengthens our economy and helps to strengthen the economy
of all those communities. It benefits a wide audience.
We benefit a wide audience by giving recognition to local artists,
artists such as Ramon Jose Lopez, who is a santero and is a master
metalsmith. He won an NEA National Heritage Fellowship last year. He
was involved with the Smithsonian Institution in an exhibit that
attracted national attention. And this type of recognition enriches the
lives of many of our artists and of visitors that come to our State.
I fought very hard in the last Congress to maintain the program of
heritage grants to outstanding individuals. But despite all these
benefits that I have gone through here we have Members of Congress,
Members of the Senate, who continue to campaign to eliminate the
National Endowment for the Arts. I believe we need to resist that. We
need to also resist turning this into a block grant program.
On July 23 of this year the Labor Committee marked up and passed the
NEA's reauthorization. Even though the measure has not come to the
Senate floor, people here in the Senate need to know the outcome of the
committee's deliberations.
Like most of us in the committee, I concluded that the NEA now
strikes the right balance, the right balance between national
involvement, State and local involvement.
NEA has been criticized as inefficient. But under the leadership of
its present chairman, the NEA has established numerous accountability
and streamlining measures that ensure responsible use of Federal
funds--consolidating administrative operations of the NEA and the NEH,
the National Endowment for the Humanities; reducing administrative
costs of both.
There are peer review panels that are chosen from all sections of the
country under this language that we adopted in this reauthorization
bill. We ensured that all sections of the country would be represented.
We ensured also that on the peer review panels that no State would be
unduly represented.
Some groups continue to spread what I believe are misrepresentations
about NEA support for obscene art projects. Most of those stories turn
out to be half-stories. Many of those stories involve subgranting of
NEA dollars for objectionable projects. It is my understanding that the
chairman, the present chairman of the NEA, has eliminated the practice
of subgranting NEA awards except to State arts councils.
I am convinced that the arts and arts education contribute enormously
to the cultural life of our country. I strongly believe we should
maintain it.
I had the good fortune, Mr. President, last night to attend a
reception and dinner at the Library of Congress and to see there the
program that they have developed and put on the Internet for anyone in
this country to dial up who wants to dial up Thomas--``www.Thomas.org''
I believe is how. But you can get into Thomas. And when you do, you can
get access to all of the photographs that were taken in this country
during the 1930's under the Federal Writers Project which was part of
the Works Progress Administration, the WPA, at that time. That was
money well spent.
[[Page S9475]]
We are not here through the NEA having the Government choose who to
support and who not to support. That is done by peer review panels. But
I think it is anomalous to suggest that the Federal Government has no
interest in this issue or to suggest that Federal Government should not
be able to lend its support to a richer cultural life for this country.
So I very much hope that we will resist all efforts to eliminate the
NEA and to drastically change its structure.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the
Ashcroft amendment. This amendment would eliminate the National
Endowment for the Arts [NEA], an organization which has come under
unfair attack in the past few years.
Funding for the NEA has consistently dropped. Funding last year was
$99.5 million, a 39-percent decrease in 2 years. Now, many of my
colleagues want to abolish the endowment completely. I disagree with
this approach.
For every Federal dollar invested in the arts, our citizens receive
an enormous return. My state of Maryland received $1.4 million in arts
funding last year. This means that the Baltimore Childrens Theater
Association is able to thrive. It means that the Baltimore Museum of
Art can bring world renown exhibits to the citizens of my State. And it
means that local communities throughout Maryland have access to
community festivals, arts centers, and galleries.
There is a myth that the arts are for the elite. However, I believe
the arts are about three things: Jobs, economic development, and
families. The arts attract jobs. The arts help create economic
development in communities. The arts are family first.
The cost of Federal funding for the arts is 35 cents for every
citizen. The arts are a sound investment. The rewards are great.
Federal funding for the NEA has led to the flourishing of arts
organizations in small cities and rural areas across the country. In my
State of Maryland, local arts agencies are able to leverage Federal
dollars for their fundraising efforts.
Without Federal support, Marylanders wouldn't have the Puppet Co. in
Glen Echo, the Bluebird Blues Festival at Prince George's Community
College, the Writers Center in Bethesda, or the University of Maryland
music programs.
I am committed to protecting the Federal role in the arts. We should
not become the only civilized country in the world that does not
support the arts.
I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the Ashcroft amendment.
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, for years during consideration of the
Interior appropriations bill, the Senate has debated the fate of the
National Endowment for the Arts. Those debates have had mixed results.
On one hand, NEA funding has been severely reduced. On the other hand,
the NEA has made changes in its policies and operation to safeguard
against providing Federal dollars to distasteful and, yes, perhaps,
inappropriate projects. So, some bad and some good has come from our
discussions here.
Now, we are in the midst of another such debate. The House voted to
eliminate funding for the NEA. It even rejected a proposal to provide
$10 million in close down costs. There are Senators who support the
House and have offered amendments to eliminate funding for the NEA
altogether. Others would eliminate the Endowment by providing all of
the appropriated dollars directly to the States in the form of block
grants based on State populations. Still others would allow the
Endowment to continue but would vastly diminish its role by sending the
lion's share of funding to the States as block grants.
Earlier this summer, I introduced legislation with Senators Jeffords
and Kennedy to reauthorize both the National Endowment for the Arts and
the National Endowment for the Humanities for 5 years. The Labor and
Human Resources Committee marked up the bill and reported it from the
committee on a bipartisan basis. According to our bill, 40 percent of
funds would go to State arts agencies, 40 percent would be used by the
Endowment to support projects of national significance, 10 percent
would be for direct grants, and the remaining 10 percent would go to
arts education in underserved communities. All funds appropriated
beyond the current level of $99 million also would go to arts
education.
My colleagues might wonder: Why this emphasis on arts education? All
across the Nation, arts education is being integrated into the core
curriculum of schools. This integration is the result of the
realization that an arts education can help students to develop better
skills in analysis, problem solving, and just plain thinking. This is
in addition to nurturing and developing the child's imagination and
creativity.
A study by the College Entrance Examination Board found that students
who have studied the arts regularly outperform students who do not have
an arts background on SAT exams. According to the study, students who
have studied the arts for 4 years score 53 points higher on the verbal
SAT exam and 35 points higher in math than do students who lack arts
education.
Senator Gorton recognizes the importance of continuing to fund the
National Endowment for the Arts. The bill he has brought before us even
provides a small increase to the NEA, from $99 to $100 million. The NEA
costs each American less than 38 cents per year. My colleagues might be
interested to know that a recent Lou Harris poll showed overwhelming
support among the American people for arts funding, even if it meant a
tax increase. For this minute investment of 38 cents per year, the
American people get orchestras, chamber music ensembles, children's
festivals, operas, poetry readings, concerts in the parks, music
festivals, Shakespeare festivals, artists visiting schools, museum and
gallery exhibits, dance troupes, and much more. For this tiny
investment, local communities in rural areas far from our Nation's
cultural centers are able to experience our rich artistic traditions.
According to BusinessWeek magazine, the arts support 1.3 million
jobs. The arts contribute $36.8 billion annually to our economy, and 6
percent of the GNP is attributable to nonprofit arts activities.
In Rhode Island, we count our artists among our State's natural
resources, among the resources that are contributing to a wonderful
revitalization, particularly evident in Providence. We are very
fortunate to be home to one of the most prestigious art schools in the
Nation, Rhode Island School of Design. RISD draws young artists to
Rhode Island from around the globe. Perhaps because of our State's
marvelous quality of life or perhaps because of the efforts of
community leaders and State officials to develop an atmosphere in which
the arts can flourish, many of these fine art students stay and
contribute to our community and to our economy.
Let me share a few excerpts from a letter I received earlier this
summer from Roger Mandle, President of RISD. Mr Mandle writes:
Federal support for the arts and humanities is more than a
symbolic matter, and helps to leverage strong state and local
private sector support for operas, dance companies,
symphonies and museums. Students of schools and colleges gain
access, some for the first time, as performers or audiences
for these cultural activities. Cities and towns benefit from
the tourism generated by the institutions and events they
sponsor. Federal inspiration to maintain and support
America's cultural heritage comes at a small price to every
citizen. The existence of these Endowments helps to compare
ourselves favorably to other nations whose governmental
support for the arts exceeds that of the United States by
many times.
Some critics of the NEA suggest that supporting the arts should be
left up to the private sector. They contend that there is no purpose
for Federal support and that the arts would do just fine without it.
Mr. President, you may be interested to know that since the creation of
the NEA 30 years ago, the number of nonprofit theaters has grown from
56 to more than 400; the number of orchestras has quadrupled to more
than 200; the number of opera companies has grown from 27 to more than
100; the number of dance companies has increased from 30 to about 250;
and today there are more than 3,000 public arts agencies in small
cities and towns throughout the United States. There is no doubt in my
mind that the NEA, whose budget is seven-tenths of 1 percent of federal
spending, has had a
[[Page S9476]]
sizable contribution in making the arts accessible to all Americans,
rather than to an elite few.
I was curious about the idea of providing block grants to the States.
Surely, that would mean more money to the State arts agencies, and they
would be all for it. But, of course, that is not the case at all. I
asked Randall Rosenbaum, executive director of the Rhode Island State
Council on the Arts, what he thought of either providing the entire
appropriated amount for the NEA directly to the States in the form of
block grants, or increasing the size of the State block grants by
scaling back NEA grants to projects of national significance. Here is
what Mr. Rosenbaum had to say:
While the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts might, on
appearance, benefit from such a move (we would not), the
Nation as a whole would suffer immeasurably. The Federal
Government's leadership in arts funding has been critical to
State and local efforts to raise matching dollars from public
and private sources to support the arts. Stacks of research
support this point . . .
More to the point, if the money is just block granted to
the States, we will lose one of the most precious things the
NEA has to offer, leadership in development of public policy
in support of the arts. A strong federal presence through the
arts endowment has changed the nature of an arts field I have
worked in since 1976. Through its consensus building, policy
making, and yes, financial support, I have seen more emphasis
on access for all Americans to the arts. NEA-supported
projects in Rhode Island ensure that everyone, from toddlers
to seniors, experiences the arts on a personal level.
The NEA supports the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, and I have
heard from many of its musicians writing in strong support of continued
funding. It provides funds to the Trinity Repertoire Co., to RISD and
to Brown University. But it also provides funds to smaller, less well
known theater and dance companies, such as ``Lydia Perez and Ensemble''
whom I was privileged to hear at a gathering in Providence in July. Ms.
Perez specializes in bomba'' music. Grants have gone to the All
Children's Theater Ensemble in Providence, to the Blackstone Valley
Tourism Council, to the Capeverdean American Community Development
Center in Pawtucket, to the Children's Museum of Rhode Island, to the
Festival Ballet of Rhode Island, to the Island Arts Center in Newport,
to the Ocean State Light Opera, and to literally dozens of other
community arts groups.
Mr. President, I wholeheartedly support Senator Gorton's efforts to
continue to fund the National Endowment for the Arts and the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and I support Senator Jeffords as he
works to reauthorize both Endowments for 5 years. I urge my colleagues
to reject efforts to eliminate the Endowments, either by cutting
funding or by creating block grants to the States.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, the Senate today is considering the
Ashcroft amendment to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. I
oppose the amendment. There are also several amendments that seek to
restrict, censor, or block grant the NEA.
Mr. President, in my view, the arts play an enormously important role
in shaping our national culture and our local communities. The question
is what is the best way for the Federal Government to fund the arts, if
at all.
nea is a success
Since the NEA's creation in 1966, there has been an explosion of
community arts in local communities throughout the country. There are 8
times more nonprofit theaters, 7 times more dance companies, and 4
times more orchestras and opera companies. The impact of the National
Endowment is far reaching. Through sponsorship of the arts, the NEA can
stimulate expressions of our national character in many localities and
guide our young people and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into
local economies. Mr. President, if it were not for the strong
leadership of the NEA, many rural areas and impoverished communities
would be denied the opportunity to experience artistic presentations,
performances, and education.
academic benefits
Exposure to the arts has academic benefits. According to College
Entrance Examination Board, students with more than four years of
course work in the arts score 59 points higher on the verbal and 44
points higher on the math portions of the SAT. Children with a
background in piano have also scored better in math.
economic benefits
The National Endowment for the Arts contributes to our national
economy. For every $1 spent by the NEA, $34 are returned to the U.S.
Treasury. Because of the Endowment's support of the arts, the arts
industry has boomed. Every $1 spent by the NEA attracts $12 to the arts
from other sources. The nonprofit are industry now generates $37
billion annually in economic activity. The nonprofit arts industry also
employs nearly 1.3 million Americans and represents nearly one percent
of the entire U.S. work force.
block grants
Some of my colleagues believe that all of the NEA's funds should go
to the states in the form of block grants. Under current law, states
have direct control over 35% of NEA funds in the form of block grants
and state arts agencies believe this is the appropriate federal-state
balance.
losses under block grants
If further block granting is successful, states will lose hundreds of
national grants that benefit all Americans. For example, according to
the NEA, under block granting shows on public television like Great
Performances, Dance in America, American Playhouse, and American
Masters will be lost. 98% of American homes have access to public
television--a great example of one grant having a huge national impact.
Programs of this large scale are best run, are most efficiently run, on
a national level. Most states cannot take on a project of this
magnitude. Another national program that the NEA says will be
eliminated under block granting is the Mayor's Institute on City
Design, in which over 300 of the nation's mayors have had the
opportunity to meet with planners and architects to discuss urban
design issues. This single grant benefited over 300 American
communities.
privatization of nea
Other members of this body would like to privatize the National
Endowment for the Arts. I believe this would be a grave mistake.
According to Independent Sector's 1996 Giving and Volunteering survey,
households giving to the arts, culture, and humanities has decreased by
29 percent since 1987. ``Giving USA'' found that total donations to the
arts and humanities declined by $270 million between 1992 and 1995 and
private donations to the arts and humanities decreased by 7.7 percent
in 1992 and to 6.9 in 1995. These statistics do not bode well for arts
without the support of a federal endowment.
controversial nea grants
I have heard some Senators criticize the questionable content of past
NEA grants. I agree there have been mistakes. Yet, throughout the NEA's
30-year history, ``objectionable'' grants have amounted to only 45 out
of more than 112,000 grants. This figure translates to approximately
four-one-hundredths of 1 percent of all grants. Few other federal
agencies can claim the same small proportion of error or high rate of
success.
new reforms
NEA grantees must now adhere to strict guidelines to ensure quality
content: all grants to individual artists have been eliminated, all
grants to organizations must be for grants specifically described in
the application, all grantees must file interim and final project
reports, and all grantees must seek written permission in advance to
change grant activities proposed in the organizational application.
In conclusion, Mr. President, I remind my colleagues that most great
civilizations are remembered primarily for their arts. Already, the
United States spends nearly fifty times less on the arts than any of
its major allies. The National Endowment for the Arts represents a
national commitment to our nation's culture, history, and people. If
the NEA were to be privatized, block granted, or eliminated, not only
would we suffer a great economic loss, but more importantly Americans,
particularly those living in rural and low-income areas, would suffer a
great loss. The NEA benefits our young people, our communities, and our
economy. We cannot deny our citizens this national treasure.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I rise before you today to express my
support
[[Page S9477]]
for the NEA and to articulate the importance of preserving the arts in
America. I would like to take this opportunity to briefly describe to
my colleagues how the NEA, in it's unique capacity, has strengthened
the values and cultural education of the people in my state.
Specifically, it has played a critical role in enhancing the local
talent and in funding community education activities for all Louisiana
families and children. Mr. President, not only has the NEA provided
access to the arts for the less advantaged in all of the 64 parishes,
reaching a total audience of 7.5 million Louisianians by funding
programs like philharmonics, ballets and training for young talented
inner-city artists, but NEA has also played a vital role in supporting
cultural tourism. The NEA-funded arts programs have remained a
consistent source of economic revenue for Louisiana with our rich
musical and cultural history. We have a brilliant history of talented
local artists and renowned musicians that people from all over the
world come to Louisiana to experience. Mr. President, as a nation that
values the promotion of individual creative talent and these
contributions to our cultural fabric, I encourage and respectfully ask
my colleagues not to abandon our national responsibility and to support
an equitable balance of grant distribution to the NEA. We have all seen
the NEA adhere to the valid concerns of my colleagues, Senator Helms
and Senator Sessions. I give Jane Alexander her due credit for putting
in place a new organizational structure--including the elimination of
all sub-grants and grants to individual artists. Yes, there are clear
examples in the past where the NEA should have used better judgment,
but I ask my colleagues to concur that this is by no means grounds to
deny our children the right to access the arts--and not just on the
state level in the form of block grants--but with a national
commitment. Mr. President, I do not want to debate the past nor do I
think I can define what is art and what is not art. However, there are
clear examples across the nation where NEA funding has supported the
very talented and worthy people we all represent. I support my
colleagues' efforts to continue to fund the NEA and to establish a
permanent endowment fund that, matched with private funds, would
continue the successful private/public partnerships the NEA has
created. I look forward to the opportunity to work with my colleagues
to find an agreeable funding formula that will show the American people
that this Congress values and supports American culture, our creative
talent and the arts.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, how much time remains if there is time
allocated on my side on this issue?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Faircloth). All the time in opposition to
the amendment has expired.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I yield myself so much time as I might
consume.
I do want to be responsive to some of the comments that were made by
those in opposition to this amendment.
They have suggested over and over again that difficulties are
isolated, that they are misrepresented. And I want to bring some sense
of authentication to the kinds of things in which I have been involved.
In talking about the poem ``Lighght,'' if that is what this poem is,
the one-word poem, there was a question about the documentation for the
payment of $1,500 for the poem. The documentation we have is from
Policy Analysis, August 8, 1990, No. 137, ``Subsidies to the Arts:
Cultivating Mediocrity,'' by Bill Kauffman. And I quote:
The NEA has been more patronizing than patron to the towns
and villages of Middle America.
So that is interesting to me, and especially in light of the remarks
of the Senator from Iowa as if the NEA has been a savior to middle
America.
An example: In 1969, NEA grantee George Plimpton, editor of the
American Literary Anthology/2, confounded observers by paying $1,500
for a poem by Aram Saroyan consisting of a single misspelled word,
``lighght.''
That is interesting. We have been through this particular poem. This
is the entirety of the poem for which taxpayers paid. I suppose you can
say it is a better poem if you put it on a bigger piece of paper so
that you have a sense of the calligraphy involved. I will be willing to
concede that, although I think the Senator from Iowa says it did not
mean much to him anyhow.
But it is kind of an interesting thing, when an assistant to an Iowa
Congressman asked this grantee about the meaning of the poem, here is
what the person to whom we gave the Federal funds for the distribution
among other authors in the assemblage of this work said. The editor
replied, ``You are from the Midwest. You are culturally deprived, so
you would not understand it anyway.''
When the representative of the agency that is doling out grants
treats American people who ask that kind of question, about whether or
not this is an effective expenditure of tax dollars, that way, I do not
think that is really such an enriching experience for our culture so
that we need to continue that kind of subsidy.
There has been a persistent stream of suggestions additionally from
those in opposition to this amendment that there is no problem in the
way the grants are awarded, and that as a matter of fact these are done
by independent groups and they do not have any particular slant. That
is simply not the way the world looks at it when the world reviews
these things.
From an article by Jan Breslauer, in a special to the Washington
Post--and certainly the Washington Post is not some sort of
conservative journal. Jan Breslauer is from Los Angeles and I believe
is normally a critic for the Los Angeles Times in their arts
department. She puts it this way, that the NEA has had a bad impact on
art. It has--according to her--``. . . quietly pursued policies rooted
in identity politics--a kind of separatism that emphasizes racial,
sexual and cultural differences above all else.''
So in choosing people to assemble anthologies or in choosing
publishers to favor or in choosing artists to favor, here is an
independent individual who writes for the Los Angeles Times, writing in
the Washington Post, and here is what she says about it on March 16,
1997.
Perhaps this poem that I used as an example is a poem from years gone
by. It happens to be a lot cleaner than any of the other examples which
are objectionable now. There are a lot of materials that I simply could
not bring to the floor in good conscience. I held one up a moment ago
that showed what we had to mark out in order to bring it to the floor.
But she puts it this way, that what has happened here is that the NEA
``. . . has quietly pursued policies rooted in identity politics--a
kind of separatism that emphasizes racial, sexual and cultural
difference above all else.''
I would expect that to be something that hurts the culture. When the
Government spends $100 million to favor people who will emphasize
racial, sexual and cultural differences, that is bad for America. My
colleague and friend from Iowa can hold up 2 pennies and say this is
what it costs. Well, he can show me the line on the appropriations, if
he chooses, that says it costs 2 cents, but the truth of the matter is
we are debating $100 million in expenditures here, $100 million in
expenditure that, according to this independent observer, says it
emphasizes our racial divisions. We don't need anyone to emphasize the
divisions in this country racially, our divisions sexually, or our
cultural differences.
America needs to get beyond our differences. We need to be one nation
united. We don't need to be a place where we emphasize these
differences.
She says, ``The art world's version of affirmative action, these
policies haven't excited much controversy, but they have had a
profoundly corrosive effect on the American arts.'' Now, here is the
real trigger. She states a condition which would make this very serious
and adverse to our culture, and then she says, the truth of the matter
is this hurts the arts. Then she goes on to say how it hurts the arts,
``pigeonholing artists and pressuring them to produce work that
satisfies a politically correct agenda rather than their best creative
instincts.''
You have a situation where an independent observer says, all of what
the
[[Page S9478]]
NEA says aside, she says they emphasize things that divide us in race,
culture, and sexual matters, and that they pigeonhole artists by
getting them to know, if you want a grant from whomever it is that the
NEA allows to make these designations, you have to satisfy a
politically correct agenda.
It is interesting to note that there are those who are eager to
satisfy a politically correct agenda, and in a list of projects that
was favored with funds just this year, $60,000 was given to the
American Conservatory Theatre Foundation in San Francisco in order to
put on a play by Tony Kushner. Here is what Tony Kushner said about
art: Art should be used to ``punish Republicans.'' I suppose you can
say that the funding of his plays is not a problem. You might say that
more eagerly if you sat on the other side of the aisle than if you sat
here, but frankly, I don't think anybody on any side of the aisle
should want a Government subsidy that goes to people who say one of the
purposes of art--and especially a subsidy for their art--is to punish
any political party.
I would be ashamed if I were hearing arguments in favor of a subsidy
for some sort of literature which was designed to punish Democrats. I
disagree with Democrats, but I don't think they are to be punished
because they don't agree with me. I don't think we need a subsidy for
artists or authors or poets who would punish them or otherwise speak
against them.
I think that is what Jan Breslauer was talking about when she said we
are driving artists into a politically correct agenda. If you want to
get the grant, you have to say things like the playwright whose plays
are being subsidized in San Francisco, that art should be used to
``punish Republicans.''
Incidentally, there is a list of things here of similar sorts of
grants, the kinds of things that I don't think any of us would really
want to support.
I should mention that Jan Breslauer, in her special to the Washington
Post, of the Los Angeles Times, is not the only art critic who says we
have been wasting money on politically correct art. William Craig Rice,
from Harvard University, put it this way: ``The marketplace, with its
potential for democratic engagement and dissemination, is hardly the
enemy of the arts. The burgeoning American theater of the 19th century
owed nothing to Washington. In fact, any system of selective, expert-
dictated Federal support for the arts would have been anathema to the
rollicking impresarios of that era.''
Here you have a poet who says, ``Wait a minute, we had great art. We
had great poetry. We had great drama. And we had a system of selecting
and supporting on a selective basis art during that era. It would have
been an anathema, an enemy, a corrosive impact on those who were
involved in the art community; creative people expressing, and
audiences receiving, without the independence or the confidence to pit
their taste against those critics, performers, and artists.''
The point I am making, is the U.S. Government has no business
spending $100 million--you can talk about it being 2 cents if you want;
I guess you can talk about it being 2 cents. The truth is $100 million
is $100 million. To me that is significant. Most people in my State
realize $100 million is significant.
More important is the fact that Government should not be favoring one
kind of speech or one kind of expression over another kind of speech or
another kind of expression. We should not be highlighting someone's
idea of what is good or what is bad.
I move to another individual, Hilton Kramer. This was published in
the Indianapolis Star, in 1993. Kramer believes that the NEA has
``gutted the initiative of private patronage.'' He says that private
donors lack the confidence of their own taste. Now they ``wait to
piggyback on NEA certification before they commit.'' So they wait to
see who the Government says ought to be favored and who the Government
says shouldn't be favored, and then the private donors pile on. I think
that is inverted. We have distorted the marketplace by putting
Government funding into the marketplace.
Now, back again, to the first question of the Senator from Iowa about
the one-word poem. He says we only paid $107 a letter for this poem. I
say we paid $214 a letter for this poem based on the article in the
Policy Analysis, but let's just reduce the price. I will give it to you
cheap, Mr. President, $107 a letter for this poem. Yes, it was 30 years
ago, but have the abuses been corrected? Absolutely not.
I talked about a book, ``Blood of Mugwump.'' He says it was disavowed
by the National Endowment for the Arts. Here is what the National
Endowment for the Arts says in its letter to the publisher, massively
subsidized in publishing this book: ``The progress report which you
filed with this agency erroneously included `Blood of Mugwump' as among
those volumes partially supported by a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts; this is not the case.'' I want to know who
knows what book was supported when they got the grant. Would the
publisher know? If you were the businessman running the printing press,
would you know how you spent the money? Apparently the people who
publish the book thought they spent the money that came from the
Government on the ``Blood of Mugwump'' book.
That is why on the book itself they put the seal of the National
Endowment for the Arts. That is what the publisher thinks the money
went for. It may be that the National Endowment for the Arts decided
they didn't want to claim credit for the book when they saw what they
had gotten, although I am puzzled by that, too, because of a letter I
have seen from Jane Alexander, the Chairman for the National Endowment
for the Arts, to the U.S. House of Representatives some 2 months after
disavowing this book. In March they say we don't want to claim credit
for ``Blood of Mugwump,'' and we think you have mistakenly or illegally
or inappropriately--in a letter from the general counsel--we think you
have mistakenly, illegally, or inappropriately included the fact that
you spent the money.
It looks to me like the author or publisher knew where they spent the
money. What do they say about a publisher who does this later on? Here
is what Ms. Alexander says about that publisher. She says, ``The
[American Family Association] also criticized the agency for supporting
Fiction Collective 2 (FC-2), a small publisher at the University of
Illinois, which has introduced some of our newest minority writers of
quality to the American public. Over the years, FC-2 has sustained a
commitment to intellectual challenge, and some of America's greatest
writers have supported it.''
She goes on to endorse the publisher. We provide the funding for
which the publisher says part of what we got for it was ``Blood of
Mugwump.'' Here is a letter saying you better not say we helped publish
``Blood of Mugwump,'' and then they endorse the publisher and say what
a fine group they are.
You don't have to read too far between the lines to find out what is
going on.
Incidentally, the ``Blood of Mugwump'' volume is one which is frankly
so repugnant to the values of America--it talks about a clan of
Catholic, gender-shifting vampires who get infections, viruses, by
reading prayer books. The virus comes in through the eyes. I really
cannot imagine this is the kind of thing we want to suggest to the
American people, that the way you get the kind of fatal diseases or the
way you really get involved in things that are counterproductive is to
somehow be involved with religious artifacts or read a prayer book that
will get you infected so you start eating your own flesh or the flesh
of others.
I had my staff look at the book and just Xerox a couple pages. I told
them I didn't want anything that would offend the conscience of the
American people if I showed it on television, to mark out that which
should not be shown on Senate TV, and that is what came from the book.
It carries the so-called Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval of the
National Endowment for the Arts.
It is kind of interesting, though. Here is another set of individuals
who have been careful about their statements, and I think they are
appropriate. There have been a lot of suggestions here that this is
important or we will not have anybody who is not well to do who can
appreciate art or participate in art. I think that is nonsense.
They talked about Robert Penn Warren having been included in the
anthology of poetry. The truth of the matter
[[Page S9479]]
is Robert Penn Warren wrote his famous ``All the King's Men'' in 1945,
20 years before the National Endowment for the Arts came into
existence. He was a nationally known, world-renowned author.
The truth of the matter is we have had great individuals who have not
received NEA grants. The suggestion that because a few people have
succeeded or a number of people have succeeded after they have received
a Federal subsidy and that they somehow could not have succeeded
without a Federal subsidy, I can't really follow that logic.
America has been full of good people who have written well and have
produced well artistically. I don't think there has been any suggestion
they have all been born to rich parents or even predominantly born to
wealth. I don't think the ability to express one's self correlates to
whether or not you have wealthy parents. It certainly doesn't correlate
to whether or not you have been favored with a Federal grant.
One thing that does correlate is the fact that most Federal grants,
or a large portion of them, go to support institutions that the wealthy
patronize far more than the poor do.
I am quoting again from Policy Analysis in an article by Mr.
Kauffman, No. 137, ``Take art museums, a favorite NEA beneficiary.
Eighty-four percent of art museum visitors have attended college; less
than a third of the entire population has.'' So people who are getting
that subsidy are people who are very well educated. He said ``Blue-
collar workers constitute 47 percent of the workforce but just 7
percent of the art museum audience.''
So you have basically one-seventh of the art museum audience that is
blue collar.
I am not saying we should not have art museums, but I am saying we
ought to be careful, when we talk about subsidies, that we don't
suggest to people we are subsidizing things for people who cannot
afford them when in fact we are subsidizing programs for people who can
very well afford them.
Robert J. Samuelson, a well-known, outstanding economist and
commentator, put it this way, calling subvention of the arts ``highbrow
pork barrel,'' and ``an income transfer from middle-class taxpayers to
affluent museum goers.''
Now, I think the point is that to suggest that the National Endowment
for the Arts is some way that we somehow open a door for everyone who
is poor to become a great artist is simply to misinterpret what is
happening here. All too frequently, the National Endowment for the Arts
is subsidy for well-to-do individuals to be able to do what they would
do anyhow. I believe that our responsibility to tax Americans is not
related to providing subsidies for people to do what they can do on
their own. Maybe Abraham Lincoln said it better than anybody else, when
he said that ``The role of Government is to do for people what they
cannot do well for themselves.'' I think these are things that can be
done well.
There has been some suggestion on the part of those who would oppose
this amendment, also, that the existence of good authors who have
received help shows that we should have been subsidizing the program. I
don't think that proves anything at all. You can have a good baseball
player who got some help from the Government; does that mean we should
have a program to subsidize baseball? You have to look at what happens
in the absence of a subsidy and what happens in the presence of a
subsidy. I think if you look at the first 200 years of this Nation's
existence, basically where we had no subsidy, the quality of art was
very good. As a matter of fact, it may have been better than it is
today.
In many respects, whenever you provide a subsidy, you pay for
something that the public would not pay for. Now, usually the public
won't pay for things that are not as good. In business, for example, if
you have a subsidy for something and it won't exist unless you
subsidize it, it means that the market doesn't really believe that it
is worth what people would be asked to pay for it and it simply doesn't
survive. So that subsidies themselves become a way for picking up
things, in many respects, at the bottom end of quality. I won't deny
that there may be fledgling artists who may be beginning and might want
to try and find somebody to provide them a stake so that they can get
started. But people who find their way into other professions don't
have a means of getting started in their writing, in their music, and
in their paintings. For my music and for my writing, I have never had
that kind of subsidy. I have done it on my own. It is not that I resent
those who do. But I think it is important for us to understand that
when the Government chooses one and denies another, it expresses a
special set of values. In my view, that special set of values is
something that we ought to be careful about, especially when that
special set of values is found in books like ``Blood of Mugwump,''
where you have people who are sexual deviants and vampires, who involve
themselves in cannibalism and other things as a result of their
problems, which come to them because they were involved in religious
experiences. I think that is an affront. I am not a Catholic. I am
grateful for my Catholic friends and for the influence of the Catholic
Church in this culture. But if I were, as a Catholic, to look at the
book ``Blood of Mugwump,'' about a Catholic family group of vampires
with all this deviance and were to learn that it suggested in the book
that many of their problems come as a result of a virus that infects
them because they are involved in prayer, I don't know if I would think
that was a very appropriate book. I don't think the Government needs to
be in the business of approaching this culture of literature and
subsidizing this literature, if it is going to pull the spiritual
underpinnings of America from beneath us.
I know there is a dispute about whether this publisher was the one
that got the assistance, or whether this specific book got the
assistance. The publisher seems to be representing the fact that he
used the money to publish this book. The National Endowment for the
Arts, having learned that people are distressed about this, now wants
to say that the publisher should not have used the money for the book.
But then, later on, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
indicates that this is one fine publisher and it ought to be credited
for what it has done to bring on line exciting new authors who would
have novel approaches to the world. Some of those novel approaches
would certainly be best left without a Federal subsidy, in my judgment.
I observe the presence in the Chamber of other individuals, such as
the senior Senator from North Carolina. I reserve the balance of my
time at this moment and suggest the absence----
Mr. GORTON. Will the Senator withhold that?
Mr. ASHCROFT. Yes.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I believe the senior Senator from North
Carolina wishes to speak. I understand that the senior Senator from
Illinois would like to speak and doesn't have any time left on her
side. I ask, how long does she wish to speak?
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Thank you very much. I was going to ask my
colleague if it was possible to have 5 minutes to speak, obviously, in
opposition to the amendment. I know there is no time for the opponents
left. If my colleagues would so indulge me, I would be grateful.
Unanimous-Consent Agreement
Mr. GORTON. I am certainly not going to have any objection to that
request. I wanted to find out where we are in order to announce what I
can announce, and this would not be inconsistent with the request of
the Senator from Illinois.
It looks like this debate will be concluded at about 4:45. There will
then be a vote, I believe, on the amendment. I certainly do not propose
to table the amendment.
I now, with the permission of the minority leader, ask unanimous
consent that immediately following the vote on the Ashcroft amendment,
there be 2 minutes of debate, equally divided between Senator Bryan and
myself, to be followed by a vote on or in relation to the Bryan
amendment No. 1205.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ASHCROFT. May I inquire as to the current state of business in
the Senate then? What has been done? Has the Senator from Illinois been
granted time to speak?
Mr. GORTON. I don't think the request has been formally made yet.
[[Page S9480]]
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Illinois.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Reserving the right to object, and I will not
object, necessarily. I wanted to know if the Senator from Washington
would be prepared to allow me to speak.
Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Washington is not going to object to a
request by the Senator from Illinois.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Could the unanimous-consent request be amended to
provide 5 minutes for the Senator from Illinois before the vote?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. May I
inquire as to how much time is left for debate on this?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 18 minutes 14 seconds for the
Senator from Missouri and 5 minutes for the Senator from Washington.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Is it my understanding that the Senator from Washington
is yielding his 5 minutes to the Senator from Illinois?
Mr. GORTON. That understanding would not be correct.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is not the case.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Then is it my understanding that the Senator from
Illinois is asking that the proponents of this amendment, who have 18
minutes left, yield to the opponents an additional 5 minutes from their
time?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. No. The request, as I understand it, of the
Senator from Illinois was simply for an extra 5 minutes--to delay the
voting time 5 minutes to give her an additional 5 minutes.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, again, as a matter of deference to
my colleagues, if they are prepared to give 5 minutes of debate to the
opponent, I would be grateful to accept that. Alternatively, if the
proponents of the amendment would agree to add an additional 5 minutes,
I would be grateful for that. Really, I am not concerned as to the
source of the time. I would like to have some time to speak to this
before a vote takes place.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Is there objection to the request of the Senator from Illinois?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, is my unanimous-consent agreement on the
stacked votes agreed to?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That has already been agreed to.
Mr. GORTON. One other point, for the convenience of colleagues. When
those 2 stacked votes have been completed, we will go to the Abraham
amendment and, after that, on the other two amendments that have
already been extensively debated on the National Endowment for the
Arts, I believe there will be 30 minutes equally divided agreed to on
each of those. Whether or not those votes will be stacked to occur all
at the same time or not is yet undecided. But there will be more votes
this afternoon. There will be more debate on the National Endowment for
the Arts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Illinois.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. I thank the Chair. I am going to try to be brief.
I have a lot to say and I will try to summarize. Some friends of mine
were having a conversation over dinner, and their 5-year-old was
sitting at the table. They were talking about this issue, the funding
for the National Endowment for the Arts. And midconversation, the baby
looked up and said, ``Mommy, do Republicans hate Big Bird?'' The answer
is obviously that Republicans don't hate Big Bird and, in any event,
``Sesame Street'' is only indirectly supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts. But there is little question but that some have
made this issue one of those wedge issues to inflame passions about
cultural values and the role of Government, to pit people against each
other and, again, to make us angry at each other as Americans, and
focus in on those things that make us different from one another, on
the things that separate us instead of the things that bring us
together.
Public support of the arts ought to be one of those points around
which we as Americans can come together, because it is one of the ways
in which we define ourselves as Americans and in which we communicate
the richness of our American culture.
The NEA follows in a noble tradition of publicly supported art
initiatives. Just last night, we were over at the Library of Congress,
and there we had an opportunity to see firsthand what public support of
the arts can do. That building is one of the more magnificent treasures
of this country. I hope every American can have the opportunity to see
it. I was particularly impressed by the room in which we held our
meeting, which had been built by American craftsmen--publicly
supported, following the end of the Columbian Exposition in my hometown
of Chicago--who brought a variety of skills to bear on its creation,
the woodworking, plaster work, painting, ceramics--some so beautifully
done that it lifted spirits just to look at them.
Some of them were so refined that, frankly, the talents, skills, and
art involved are in danger of being lost to us forever.
Then in another part of the Library of Congress, there is a wonderful
exhibit of the Works Progress Administration that was started, as you
know, during the Depression, by President Roosevelt. President
Roosevelt started WPA to hire starving artists, and, frankly, every
American should be grateful that he did. The work that they did,
preserved for us the indigenous music out of the Delta of Mississippi,
folk music and blues--and oral histories that would have been lost to
us forever. We would not have the value of the photographs and the
paintings and the music and the original art that had been created all
over this country had it not been for the activities and intercession
of the WPA. And so they did all of this wonderful stuff and left it as
a legacy to all of us.
By and through the arts, the cultural fabric of our country was
reinforced during some of its darkest days. Now the National Endowment
for the Arts, which was created in 1965, is under attack again. I point
out what their charter says. It says: ``To foster excellence, diversity
and vitality of art and broaden public access to the arts.''
That is the charter; that is what NEA is supposed to do, and that is
what it in fact has done. Has it followed tradition? A look at the good
things it does for our country resoundingly answers that question. In
Illinois, it has supported the YMCA of Chicago, The Lyric Opera, the
Art Institute, and other large institutions that might have private
support, but then it also, most importantly, supports those smaller
institutions that would not have the help otherwise.
We have in Illinois received NEA grants for the Peoria Symphony and
the Little City Foundation, Glenn Ellyn Children's Choir--activities
that would not have the support and would not be able to leverage
private dollars were it not for the NEA.
These community initiatives educate children, provide adults with the
tools to socialize our young people, help communities to build on
positive values which art inspires.
I would like to quote from Tolstoy for a moment who defines art ``as
a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of
the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.''
Obviously, this amendment, I think, takes the position that if you do
not have private money, those positive values won't be available to you
or to your community.
Have there been embarrassments among the projects supported? Of
course there have. As with any art, some of it will at all times be
repugnant to somebody. There is 16th century art around that some of my
colleagues will find offensive. That is a matter of their personal
taste. But the truth is that in any republic such as ours the freedom
we enjoy starts with the proposition that individual expression is a
positive value. Instead of allowing for the fact that expression will
be of all kinds, the sponsors of this
[[Page S9481]]
amendment would shut down all expression because they don't like some
of it.
I urge my colleagues to reject this attempt to divide us as
Americans, and I urge their support of the NEA.
I thank my colleagues for their indulgence and thank the Chair.
Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished senior Senator from North
Carolina, Senator Helms, is recognized.
Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair. I hope the Senator will yield to me 5
or 6 minutes.
Mr. ASHCROFT. The Senator from Missouri is pleased to yield as much
time as the distinguished Senator from North Carolina desires.
Mr. HELMS. I certainly appreciate it. I would have been here earlier
but we had a meeting on China in the Foreign Relations Committee. I
couldn't leave. The witnesses were long-winded, as well as some others.
But I compliment the distinguished Senator from Missouri. I have been
in the same position that he has been in for several years. It is
pretty lonely. But the people all across this country will admire the
Senator from Missouri for it, and the Senator will hear from them--
people who believe in high principles and morality. I just want the
Senator to know that he is not being overlooked.
I want a few minutes this afternoon to reflect upon an Associated
Press report published Tuesday morning quoting NEA spokeswoman Cherie
Simon as claiming that ``legislative restrictions'' and ``internal
reforms'' have solved the NEA problem and that the NEA ``didn't fund
some of the programs as Helms condemned''.
Mr. President, isn't it interesting? You have a little lady --and I
know she is a nice lady because she is somebody's daughter, but I never
heard of her--make this statement, which is not true in the first
place, that the NEA is not furnishing taxpayers' money for a whole
plethora of rotten material. No other word will fit. This dissembling
has been going on, but every year they come up, and say, ``Oh, no. Not
us. We just fund nice things.''
It is sort of like the farmer who heard some noise in his chicken
house. He said, ``Who is out there?'' He heard a voice say, ``Just us
chickens.'' And that is all the NEA says. I like Jane Alexander. I have
met with her. But they are evading the issue every year. They are
getting money that they ought not to get every year.
If spokeswoman Cherie Simon, whoever she is, believes that
``legislative restrictions,'' as she put it, and ``internal reforms,''
as she put it, have, as she put it, ``solved'' the problem, she needs
to wake up and smell the coffee because she obviously didn't understand
the problem in the first place. The truth is that legislative
restrictions and internal reforms mean simply that the NEA has been
using subterfuge and sophistry to spend the taxpayers' money on
programs that every year outrage the taxpayers.
So the NEA wants to deny funding this filthy book, with all of their
double talk about who is paying for it, or who has paid for it. This
book, called ``Blood of Mugwump'' by a fellow named Doug Rice--the
saints have been good to me; I have never heard of him before--the most
filthy thing I believe I have ever read. And I have not read but about
half a page of it. But down here it says--what do you guess? The
National Endowment for the Arts. Up here it says that the National
Endowment for the Arts is furnishing the money through the English
Department for Contemporary Literature of Illinois State University,
Illinois Arts Center.
That is the way it always is--subterfuge about what is going on with
the taxpayers' money.
I am informed that while I was over in the Dirksen Building presiding
in the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Harkin inserted a letter
from the NEA disavowing NEA connection with the book. Yet, even the
letter acknowledges that it was published by FC2. That is the
publishing company, FC2. And FC2 put the NEA seal of approval on the
copyright page of this book. All I am doing is reading it to you.
The point, Mr. President, is this: The NEA and the FC2 can cook the
books all they want to, but they know what this publishing company is
all about, and they know about the filth that they have published,
particularly in this book. There is not a Senator in this body who will
take this book home and show it to his wife, or her husband, let alone
their children. It is filth. And the taxpayers paid for it. No matter
what Cherie Simon says about it, the taxpayers of America paid for this
book.
On June 24 of this year--long after the Senator from Iowa claimed
that the NEA disavowed ``Blood of Mugwump''--Jane Alexander wrote that
FC2--get this--``FC2 has sustained a commitment to intellectual
challenge. . .'' That is the lady who heads the agency. That is the
lady whom I like personally. She is a nice lady. But I don't know where
she is when all of these decisions are made. This book sure is an
intellectual challenge, isn't it?. I wish every citizen of America
would take a look at it; they'd want to throw it in the furnace.
Perhaps we should examine another example of how these legislative
restrictions and internal reforms work.
The other day on this floor I mentioned a grant--for fiscal year
1997--for a project by choreographer Mark Morris. This is the same guy
who once staged a version of The Nutcracker Suite complete with cross-
dressing and other unsavory themes.
If the folks at the NEA want to say that the taxpayers didn't fund
that piece of work, they might be accurate. But, knowing this fellow
Morris and his background, the NEA will nevertheless--nevertheless--
funnel $150,000 of the taxpayers' money this year to support his future
work.
That is what is going on. They come forth with obfuscation and
confusion, Mr. President, and they hoodwink a lot of Senators. They
didn't hoodwink them over in the House of Representatives.
The amendment of the Senator from Missouri deserves to be approved on
a unanimous vote. It won't be, because there are enough weak sisters
sitting around that will find some excuse for not voting for it.
But I commend the Senator, and I praise him for taking the time to
address this subject.
One final note. I think it is time to end the charade at the NEA and
just acknowledge to the taxpayers once and for all that Congress will
no longer waste money on this Federal agency. So the Senate of the
United States ought to do the right thing today by adopting the
amendment of the Senator from Missouri.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield back such time as I may have.
Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the distinguished Senator
from Washington.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, this should be charged to my own time on
this amendment.
Mr. President, I recommend to my colleagues the rejection of the
Ashcroft amendment with a degree of sympathy and understanding of the
purity and the sincerity of his motives. I don't intend to go into
great detail on it. Personally, I think there has been too much detail
spent on this amendment and this bill already.
Fundamentally, however, there are large numbers of people in the
United States who believe passionately in the mission of the National
Endowment for the Arts. There are millions more who benefit from it
directly or indirectly through the various institutions, musical and
otherwise, that it supports and the outreach in educational benefits
that they provide. At the same time, there is not the slightest doubt
but that the National Endowment for the Arts frequently follows the
most recent politically correct trends, that it has wasted some of the
money that has been granted to it and has financed other exhibits under
the broad definition of ``art'' that are fundamentally offensive to
large numbers--often to a majority of the American people.
I believe that the reforms of the last few years have to a
significant degree corrected that shortcoming but that no set of
reforms could correct them forever, simply because we have grants at
two different levels. The first are the direct grants from the National
Endowment itself over which we should exercise at least a degree of
control that we already have and about which the National Endowment
should be even more sensitive than it has been in the past.
[[Page S9482]]
The second level, of course, are what grantees do with grants that
they get from the National Endowment for the Arts. The process is more
difficult for us to control and often presents some difficulty to the
Endowment itself.
I have little doubt that there are those at the extremes of the art
community who deliberately go out of their way to use money to offend a
majority of Americans. But I want them to control the ultimate outcome
of this debate no more than I want it controlled by those who would
remove all limits from the National Endowment and spend far more money
on it than we are doing at the present time.
I believe that on balance it is a healthy influence in American
society and, therefore, I think agreeing with the House in abolishing
it, as this amendment would do, is inappropriate.
I have a somewhat greater degree of sympathy with those proposals
that would decentralize it and give more to State art entities,
although I must say I am not at all sure they are going to be less
politically correct than is the National Endowment itself. My own
opinion is that it is likely that we will come out of the conference
committee with a somewhat more decentralized system than we have at the
present time.
But, for the purposes of this debate, I don't believe that the Senate
is going to accept the Ashcroft amendment. There was no sentiment for
it on the 15-member subcommittee that I headed that reported this bill,
and I do believe this is a case in which we should strive for greater
improvement and greater public acceptability rather than destroy the
entity in its entirety.
I yield the remainder of my time.
I believe it is appropriate for the proponent of the amendment to
have the last word.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the distinguished Senator
from Missouri.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair. I thank the Senator from Washington.
I believe the 8 minutes that I have remaining will be sufficient for
me.
I want to begin by thanking Senator Helms for his understanding of
the fact that subsidized speech, the process of identifying for
Americans what they should value and what they should not in terms of
ideas, somehow selecting between one author and another, has been a bad
concept. It has been a bad concept which turned into a horrible concept
as we have literally wasted resources, and it has been a waste of
resources from the inception. I provided examples from the 1960's, and
I have examples from the 1990's.
Now, part of the activity on the part of the group that would seek to
praise the National Endowment and say that it is just fine is the
suggestion that the NEA disavowed involvement in the publication of the
``Blood of Mugwump'' book.
In March this year they said to the publisher: You shouldn't have
used the money on ``Blood of Mugwump.'' And this was brought to the
floor by the Senator from Iowa as testimony that the National Endowment
had nothing to do with the scandalous and literally revolting attack on
faith and on persons of spiritual values and upon morality that the
``Blood of Mugwump'' book represents. And obviously, the National
Endowment, having been caught in this indiscretion, feels bad about it
and seeks to repudiate it. But the Senator from Iowa did not provide
the additional documentation showing that 5 months before that the
publisher was submitting a reimbursement form that included ``Blood of
Mugwump'' as part of what was being subsidized.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this ``Request for
Advance or Reimbursement'' form to which I am referring be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the form was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
Request for Advance or Reimbursement
(Long Form)
Please type or print clearly.
Complete and mail the top three copies to: Grants Office,
National Endowment for the Arts, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue,
N.W., Washington, DC 20506-0001 OR-FAX one copy to 202/682-
5610. Do not do both.
If you need assistance, call 202/882-5403.
{time} National Endowment for the Arts
{time} Grant #96-5223-0091
{time} Type of payment requested
a. {time} Advance
{time} Reimbursement
b. {time} Final
{time} Partial
{time} Basis of request
{time} Cash
{time} Accrued Expenditures
{time} Payment request #2
{time} Grantee account or identifying #13-2957841
{time} Period covered by this request (month/day/year)
From 8-15-16 To 11-15-96
{time} Grantee (Official IRS name/mailing address)
Fiction Collective, Inc. Unit for Contemporary Literature
Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790-4241.
{time} Remittance address. Complete only if different from
#8.
For faster payment, complete #14 below.
{time} Computation of amount requested:
a. Total project outlays to date (As of 10-10-96)...........$18,000
b. Estimated net cash outlays needed for advance period.......7,000
c. Total (a plus b)..........................................25,000
d. Non-Endowment share of amount on line c...................... 0
e. Endowment share of amount on line c (c minus d)...........25,000
f. Endowment payments previously requested...................16,000
g. Endowment share now requested (e minus f)..................9,000
{time} Reminders:
a. Authorizing Official. This form must be signed by an
authorizing official who either signed the original
application or has a signature authorization form on file. If
necessary, submit an updated signature authorization form.
b. Labor Assurances. In signing below, grantee is also
certifying to the Assurances as to Labor Standards printed on
the reverse of this form.
c. Progress Report. Complete #12 the first time the
cumulative amount requested exceeds two-thirds of the grant
amount. Consult the Reporting Requirements document included
in your grant award package for guidance on the content of
this report.
{time} Progress report. Please respond in the space
provided.
{time} Authorizing Official: To the best of my knowledge and
belief, the data reported above are correct and all
outlays were made in accordance with grant conditions.
Payment is due and has not been previously requested.
Signature: Curtis White.
Name/Title: Co-director.
Contact Person: Curtis White.
Date 10-10-96.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, the situation is simply this. The
publisher in the previous year was claiming that it was publishing with
the grant the ``Blood of Mugwump.'' I think the record is clear. It may
be that the National Endowment for the Arts doesn't want to say that
the money, our money, your money, my money, taxpayers' money was being
used for what was obviously revolting or repugnant literature. But the
publisher knew what he was using it for and his request for
reimbursement submitted to the agency well before, during the previous
year indicated that the utilization of the resource was for ``Blood of
Mugwump.'' Nevertheless, the National Endowment for the Arts says that
its grant wasn't ``Blood of Mugwump.'' It was books like this one, ``S
& M.'' Frankly, I could not read a page out of this book that I have
seen to the Senate; I could not read it in my home, could not read it
anywhere else. It says on the front, ``It's funny. It's smart.'' It is
not, not at all.
Fellow Members of the Senate, the United States of America has been a
culture that's been rich in good art and has been rich in good culture
and has attained a level of being a world leader not because of
Government sponsorship, not because of Government telling people what's
good and what's not good and awarding scholarships or grants to one
group and not to another. We attained our level of greatness in the
absence of those things and in the presence of a free marketplace, in
the presence of freedom for art.
Less than a month before John Kennedy was assassinated, less than a
month before he died, he was asked to speak at Amherst College in
Massachusetts to praise American poet Robert Frost. John Kennedy talked
about art and about freedom and about how artists need to be free in
order to express themselves with integrity and how Government might
corrupt that process.
Now, you have to understand that there was no such thing as the
National Endowment for the Arts in the lifetime of John Kennedy,
President of the United States, assassinated in 1963. This program, the
National Endowment for the Arts, was part of Lyndon Johnson's
discontent with America, thinking we could make it a great society by
infusing Government money everywhere. And you know what he did to
[[Page S9483]]
the family; you know what he did with the welfare system, and you are
seeing what he did to the arts.
Here are the words of John F. Kennedy.
For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve
as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist, however
faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last
champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an
intrusive society and an officious State.
Let me just say that again and see if I can say it more clearly. John
Kennedy says that the artist becomes an individual who stands against
the intrusive society and the officious State. He sees the artist as a
line of defense against statism. He sees it as a bulwark of freedom--
John Kennedy. I wonder what he would have thought if the officious
State was to be guarded by an artist paid by the State.
He goes on to say:
The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as
Frost said, ``a lover's quarrel with the world.''
Then John Kennedy is eloquent and insightful.
In pursuing his perceptions of reality, the artist must
often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a
popular role.
Well, against the currents of your time is not what we find is
happening with the National Endowment for the Arts. They are directing
the current. We have gone over and over the article by Jan Breslauer
from the Los Angeles Times which reminds us that they are demanding
that artists be politically correct in accordance with what the
Government would dictate.
That is really not rising to the challenge of being against the
officious State. That is falling into the trap of being a participant
of the officious State telling citizens what to believe and how to
think. So when John Kennedy was praising Robert Frost, John Kennedy put
it this way:
In pursuing his perceptions of reality, the artist must
often sail against the currents of his time.
Perhaps he might even dare be politically incorrect, but were he to
do so, woe be unto his chance of being identified for a grant from the
NEA.
Kennedy spoke in praise of Robert Frost who, without subsidy from the
Government, wrote eloquently:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less
traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
America could have art that was subsidized, controlled by, directed
by Government. It can happen. You can look at the art of the Soviet
Union of the last 70 years. They had art. They took the artists that
weren't acceptable and they banished them. Solzhenitsyn was one of
them. We don't manage artists but we identify ones for approval and
others for subsidy, and some of those that don't get the subsidy and
don't get the approval are individuals that we ought to be looking
carefully at and they should not be discriminated against. A Government
which discriminates against artists by discriminating in favor of
others violates our fundamental responsibility of free speech. And when
it promotes morality, it undermines the very foundation and
underpinnings of a culture.
We should defund the National Endowment for the Arts. We should not
spend this $100 million of taxpayer resources.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. GORTON. Has all time expired? I assume that the Senator from
Missouri wishes a rollcall?
Mr. ASHCROFT. Yes. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the Ashcroft
amendment numbered 1188. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk
will call the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 23, nays 77, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 241 Leg.]
YEAS--23
Allard
Ashcroft
Brownback
Coats
Enzi
Faircloth
Gramm
Grams
Hagel
Helms
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Kyl
Lott
Mack
McCain
McConnell
Nickles
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Thompson
Thurmond
NAYS--77
Abraham
Akaka
Baucus
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Boxer
Breaux
Bryan
Bumpers
Burns
Byrd
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
Daschle
DeWine
Dodd
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Glenn
Gorton
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Harkin
Hatch
Hollings
Hutchison
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kempthorne
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lugar
Mikulski
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Murray
Reed (RI)
Reid
Robb
Roberts
Rockefeller
Roth
Santorum
Sarbanes
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thomas
Torricelli
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the
amendment was rejected.
Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Amendment No. 1205
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on amendment No. 1205
offered by the Senator from the State of Nevada, Mr. Bryan. Under the
previous order, there will now be 2 minutes for debate equally divided
between Senators Bryan and Gorton.
Mr. GORTON. Will the Presiding Officer bring the Senate to order?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will please come to order. This is
an important amendment.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is correct. The Senate
will be in order.
The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent
that Senator Carol Moseley-Braun be added as a cosponsor to the Bryan
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BRYAN. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, I want to tell you, first of
all, what this amendment is not about. This amendment is not about
timber harvesting in the national forests. It does not prevent it. And
it does not prevent the construction of new roads in the national
forests for purposes of timber access.
What it does is to eliminate a costly taxpayer subsidy that is part
of the Forest Service program, a subsidy that has been roundly
denounced, and correctly so, by virtually every taxpayer group in
America, such as Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for
Common Sense, because it cannot be justified.
Second, this is an important environmental vote, perhaps our most
important environmental vote to date because we reduce by $10 million
an amount of money that is appropriated for new road construction in
the national forests.
The amendment does absolutely nothing to reduce or to impede the
accounts that are provided for in the maintenance of roads in the
National Park System.
So Mr. President, I urge support of the Bryan amendment because it is
truth in budgeting and makes sense from a fiscal point of view and
because environmentally it is sound policy for the Nation.
Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized for
1 minute.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, harvesters in national forests have
declined by more than two-thirds over the course of the last several
years. This amendment is designed to cause them to decline still
further. Many of its principal sponsors outside of this body have as
their design the entire termination of any harvest on our Federal
lands. This proposal drives significantly in that direction.
The amount of money in the bill for Forest Service roads is the
recommendation of the Clinton administration. The Clinton
administration reflects no savings of money by the ending of the Forest
Service credit. It is simply another step in the desire to see to it
that there is no harvest whatsoever on our forest lands.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time for the debate on the amendment has
now expired.
[[Page S9484]]
Mr. GORTON. Have the yeas and nays been ordered?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. They have not been ordered.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a
sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. I have cleared this request with the Republican leader.
I ask unanimous consent that I may address the Senate for not to
exceed 10 minutes following this rollcall vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I would like to make a unanimous-consent
request that I think will inform Members of where we are going in the
next few minutes.
I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate considers the following
amendments regarding the National Endowment for the Arts--that will be
next--they be considered under a 30-minute time limit, equally divided
in the usual form: the Abraham amendment No. 1206; the Hutchinson of
Arkansas amendment No. 1187; the Hutchison amendment No. 1186. I
further ask unanimous consent that no second-degree amendments be in
order to these amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GORTON. I further ask unanimous consent that following the debate
on the Abraham and the Hutchinson of Arkansas amendments, the Senate
proceed to a rollcall vote on or in relation to amendment No. 1206, to
be followed by a vote on or in relation to amendment No. 1187.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. LEVIN. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object,
there is an effort to have the Armed Services Committee meet. I was
just speaking with the chairman. Would it be possible to have the votes
on those three amendments lined up together at the end of the debate
for all three? Was that part of the UC?
Mr. GORTON. The design of this request is that the votes on the first
two be stacked, and there would be an hour between the end of the next
rollcall and those two. The proponent of the third amendment does not
want to stack her amendment with them. But there will be more than an
hour for the committee to meet.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
unanimous-consent request is agreed to.
Under the previous order, the question now occurs on agreeing to
amendment No. 1205 offered by the Senator from Nevada. The yeas and
nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 49, nays 51, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 242 Leg.]
YEAS--49
Akaka
Biden
Bingaman
Boxer
Brownback
Bumpers
Chafee
Cleland
Conrad
D'Amato
Daschle
DeWine
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Glenn
Graham
Gregg
Harkin
Hollings
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Lieberman
Mikulski
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murray
Reed
Reid
Robb
Rockefeller
Roth
Sarbanes
Thompson
Torricelli
Wellstone
Wyden
NAYS--51
Abraham
Allard
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bennett
Bond
Breaux
Bryan
Burns
Byrd
Campbell
Coats
Cochran
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
Domenici
Enzi
Faircloth
Gorton
Gramm
Grams
Grassley
Hagel
Hatch
Helms
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Kempthorne
Kyl
Levin
Lott
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Mack
Murkowski
Nickles
Roberts
Santorum
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thomas
Thurmond
Warner
The amendment (No. 1205) was rejected.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
For the moment, there is not a sufficient second.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll to ascertain the
presence of a quorum.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on the motion to
reconsider the previous vote.
The yeas and nays are ordered and the clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 49, nays 51, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 243 Leg.]
YEAS--49
Akaka
Biden
Bingaman
Boxer
Bryan
Bumpers
Chafee
Cleland
Conrad
D'Amato
Daschle
DeWine
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Glenn
Graham
Gregg
Harkin
Hollings
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Lieberman
Mikulski
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murray
Reed
Reid
Robb
Rockefeller
Roth
Sarbanes
Thompson
Torricelli
Wellstone
Wyden
NAYS--51
Abraham
Allard
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bennett
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Burns
Byrd
Campbell
Coats
Cochran
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
Domenici
Enzi
Faircloth
Gorton
Gramm
Grams
Grassley
Hagel
Hatch
Helms
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Kempthorne
Kyl
Levin
Lott
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Mack
Murkowski
Nickles
Roberts
Santorum
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thomas
Thurmond
Warner
The motion was rejected.
Mr. GORTON. Madam President, there is an amendment that might have
caused a lot of debate that has been agreed to by Members on both
sides. I request the President recognize Senator Bumpers to offer that
amendment. Senator Byrd has graciously agreed to give us a minute
before his special order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I yield 1 minute for that purpose without
losing my right to the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is the Senator from Arkansas offering a first-
degree amendment to the bill?
Excepted Committee Amendment Beginning On Page 123, Line 9, Through
Page 124, Line 20
Mr. BUMPERS. I ask unanimous consent the pending amendment be laid
aside and the Senate proceed to the committee amendment beginning on
line 9, page 123 of the bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The text of the excepted committee amendment is as follows:
Sec. 339. (a) No funds provided in this or any other act
may be expended to develop a rulemaking proposal to amend or
replace the Bureau of Land Management regulations found at 43
C.F.R. 3809 or to prepare a draft environmental impact
statement on any such proposal, until the Secretary of the
Interior establishes a Committee which shall prepare and
submit a report in accordance with this section.
(b) The Committee shall be composed of appropriate
representatives from the Department of the Interior and a
representative appointed by the Governor from each State that
contains public lands open to location under the General
Mining Laws. The Committee shall be established and operated
pursuant to the terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act,
5 U.S.C. ap 21 et seq.
(c) The Committee established pursuant to subsection (b)
shall prepare and submit a report
[[Page S9485]]
to the Committees on Energy and Natural Resources and
Appropriations of the United States Senate and the Committees
on Resources and Appropriations of the United States House of
Representatives which (1) contains consensus recommendations
on the appropriate relationship of State and Federal land
management agencies in environmental, land management and
regulation of activities subject to the Bureau's regulations
at 43 C.F.R. 3809, (2) identifies current and proposed State
environmental, land management and reclamation laws,
regulations, performance standards and policies, applicable
to such activities, including those State laws and
regulations which have been adopted to achieve primacy in the
administration of federally mandated efforts; (3) explains
how these current State laws, regulations, performance
standards and policies are coordinated with Federal surface
management efforts; and (4) contains consensus
recommendations for how Federal and State coordination can be
maximized in the future to ensure environmental protection
and minimize regulatory duplication, conflict and burdens.
Amendment No. 1209 To Excepted Committee Amendment Beginning On Page
123, Line 9, Through Page 124, Line 20
(Purpose: To modify an antienvironmental rider to permit the Interior
Department to revise environmental regulations governing hardrock
mining on certain Federal land)
Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Bumpers] proposes an
amendment numbered 1209 to excepted committee amendment
beginning on page 123, line 9, through page 124, line 20.
Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
Strike all after ``Sec. 339.'' on page 123, line 9, of the
pending Committee amendment and add the following:
``(a) No funds provided in this or any other act may be
expended to develop a rulemaking proposal to amend or replace
the Bureau of Land Management regulations found at 43 C.F.R.
3809 or to prepare a draft environmental impact statement on
such proposal, until the Secretary of the Interior certifies
to the Committees on Energy and Natural Resources and
Appropriations of the United States Senate and the Committees
on Resources and Appropriations of the United States House of
Representatives that the Department of the Interior has
consulted with the governor, or his/her representative, from
each state that contains public lands open to location under
the General Mining Laws.
``(b) The Secretary shall not publish proposed regulations
to amend or replace the Bureau of Land Management regulations
found at 43 C.F.R. 3809 prior to November 15, 1998, and shall
not finalize such regulations prior to 90 days after such
publication.''.
Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, this amendment has not only been agreed
to, it has been microscopically fly-specked by all of the parties for
the past 24 hours. I urge its adoption.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no further debate, the question is
on agreeing to the amendment.
The amendment (No. 1209) was agreed to.
Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote. I move
to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on the underlying
committee amendment.
All those in favor, say aye.
Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. BUMPERS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I don't yield the floor for that purpose.
I yielded for 1 minute. I did not yield for that purpose.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia has 9 minutes,
under the previous order.
Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair. Madam President, may we have order in
the Senate?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order. The Senator from
West Virginia.
____________________