S6584 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 12, 1995

politics to suddenly take away our capacity to free both of our candidates,

or any major party candidate, from

having to go out and raise these extraordinary sums of money which most

Americans have come to agree distort

the American political process.

That is not the only issue raised in

this budget, and we will have ample

time in the days ahead to discuss it.

Mr. President, I see that the majority leader is in the Chamber. I do not

know if he had an announcement or a

procedure.

Mr. DOLE. Announcement. I would

like to get back on the bill.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me

just say to the majority leader, I had

asked if there were any amendments.

There were no amendments, and I allowed whatever amendments were

there to be done before speaking. If

there is an amendment that is ready to

go forward, I am not trying to delay

the process or hold up the Senate, but

I thought I would call attention to this

issue in the absence of that.

Mr. DOLE. I do not have any problem

with that.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

Mr. DOLE. If the Senator will yield.

Mr. KERRY. I would like to retain

the right to the floor, but I will yield.

INTERSTATE TRANSPORTATION OF

MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE ACT

fThe Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.

Mr. DOLE. I have just seen a list of

amendments—10, 12, 13, 14 amendments. I do not know why people are

not here offering the amendments. We

are going to be here today, and we are

going to vote today, if we have to have

Sergeant at Arms votes. People who

wish to offer their amendments better

come to the floor and offer their

amendments. We want to finish this

bill.

I do not have any problem with the

Senator speaking, because, as the Senator from Massachusetts said, there is

nobody here to offer an amendment.

But I say to my colleagues who have

amendments, if you are going to offer

them, come to the floor and offer your

amendments. We have two managers

here who do want to do business. They

were here late last night. They were

here early this morning. So I hope we

can accommodate Senator BAUCUS and

Senator CHAFEE and others who have

primary responsibility for this legislation. It is important legislation. We

ought to finish it, and I hope that by 4

or 5 o’clock we will be finished with the

bill.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank

the majority leader.

LOOKING AT THE FEDERAL

fBUDGET

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would

like to say to my colleagues that the

last time I looked at the Federal budget, which has been many times in the

last few days, I did not notice that

spending was increasing significantly

in the discretionary domestic side of

the budget. I did not notice that Americans were coming up to any of us and

saying to us, Senator, we have too

much drug treatment in America; we

ought to cut it so fewer addicts can get

treatment.

I did not notice that a lot of people

were coming up and saying, it is already easy enough for me to send my

kid to school, so why not cut the tax

deduction to send our kids to college

and make it harder for us to send our

kids to school.

I did not notice people were suggesting that our train system is comparable to the Japanese or the Germans or the French, and therefore we

ought to be reducing the investment in

our railroads.

I did not notice that our colleges and

universities were so fat with money

that their laboratories, which are 20

and 30 years old in many cases, are

state of the art and so they do not need

additional Federal funding to increase

the science capacity or research of

America.

I could run down a long list of things

that I do not think Americans are asking us to cut, but, Mr. President, we

are cutting them. We are cutting them.

And I respectfully suggest we are cutting out of this country the guts of our

ability to be able to remain a great

country and guarantee that our kids,

who are increasingly growing up in a

vacuum, are going to have the best

education system in the world, the

kind of opportunity that we have

promised through these years.

We had a period of know-nothingism

in America once before, and I am not

sure that we are venturing close to a

new period of sort of put your head in

the sand and pretend—pretend that a

15-year-old kid who has an abusive parent or a drug addict parent and whose

other parent is absent, pretend that

that kid, who is already at risk and

dropped out of school, is somehow suddenly going to be saved by cutting access to the YMCA, YWCA, the Boys and

Girls Clubs, Youth Build, the City

Years, the AmeriCorps of this country.

That is what we are doing. The one

part of the budget that is increasing is

entitlements. It is the only part of the

Federal budget that is really increasing in real dollars. And the truth is

that you are not going to solve that

problem just by whacking away at a

fixed amount of money when more and

more Americans are turning 65, more

and more Americans are living longer,

and more and more Americans have a

right to expect that they are going to

get quality medical care.

What will happen if we just lop off

several hundred billion out of Medicare? Sure, we will cut out some waste.

And, yes, some good entrepreneurs will

respond and there will be an increase in

managed care and HMO’s, and so forth.

But you will take the guts out of

teaching hospitals. You will take the

guts out of research and development.

And those things that have provided

the United States with the most extraordinary advanced technology and

medical care in the world will suddenly

begin to diminish, just like deferred

maintenance on a building. Sure, we

can cut the maintenance today, and we

have been doing that, I might add, in

many different sectors. But 5 and 10

years from now, after 10 years of cuts

and deferred maintenance, the buildings begin to crumble, the bridges

begin to fall down, the sewer systems

fall apart, the water treatment facilities are not there.

Mr. President, we have to stop and

recognize that there are three deficits

in this country. There is a fiscal deficit, but there is also an investment deficit, and there is a spiritual deficit.

And we are not going to address the investment deficit, which is critical to

dealing with the spiritual deficit, unless we treat all three of them simultaneously. And all this budget that we

will be presented does is deal with the

fiscal deficit.

What do I mean when I say an investment deficit? Well, Mr. President, let

me give you one example: railroads.

The United States is ranked 34th in the

world in our investment in our railroads. We are just behind Ecuador and

Bolivia and just ahead of Bangladesh.

And there are only seven countries I

think with railroads that are behind

us—34th in the world.

Now, I can tell you that in Boston, in

New England, along most of the eastern seaboard and much of the west

coast now, and in other parts of this

country, rail transportation is essential to moving millions of people to

their jobs, taking the burden off of our

highways, and yet, we are disinvesting

in those railroads, Mr. President.

France has its TGF, Japan has a bullet train. And instead of thinking

about how we are going to provide millions of jobs for Americans building an

adequate transportation system, we

are disinvesting.

No country on this planet has a railroad system that does not have a subsidy. There is not a country in the

world that does not subsidize its railroad system. And yet the House of Representatives has zeroed out—zeroed

out—money for support of railroads.

Now I can give you dozens of other

examples like that. Global climate

change. We do not know all the answers. We know that there is a phenomenon taking place. We do not have

a complete understanding of it. We

need to have an understanding of it, because the consequences could be cataclysmic. And yet we are cutting that

research.

The Coast Guard, the admiral in

charge of the Coast Guard told me they
May 12, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S6585

have a $600 million capital expenditure

requirement just to keep their ships

running properly to stay current with

the demand—Cuba, Haiti, fishing enforcement, drug trafficking. But, Mr.

President, we are not providing that

money. We have cut significantly the

amount that they need.

Science and research. There is not a

public university in this country that

is not struggling to have the capacity

to be able to raise the standards of

learning for our children. And yet, we

are going to have a harder time than

ever before in providing the wherewithal for those universities and for

those entities to carry on to meet that

high standard.

Mr. President, there are so many examples like this that it defies the

imagination.

The last time I looked, this was a

very rich country. And not only is it a

very rich country, but it is a country

that is increasingly seeing a huge division growing between those who have

and those who do not.

From 1940 to 1950 to 1960 to 1970,

Americans all grew simultaneously, at

every sector of American society. If

you were at the lowest quintile of earnings in America, your income grew in

10 years by 138 percent. If you were in

the next two quintiles from 1940 to 1980,

for 40 years, if you were in those middle two quintiles, you grew at 98, 99

percent over a 10-year period. And if

you were in the top quintile, Mr. President, you grew at about 98 percent.

In the last 12 years in America, the

bottom quintile went down 18 percent,

the next quintile went down 4 percent,

and the top quintile went up 105 percent.

Now, while income has become

tougher and tougher for the average

American to earn, they have been witnessing the phenomenon of

globalization and technology, where

more and more the labor of human

hands and hearts is not applied to

work. You have automation, robotics,

artificial intelligence, and technology

advancements which are what provide

most of the productivity increases of

this country.

It is very clear that America is not

going to compete, by and large, except

for niches here and there with lowwage, low-scale jobs. Increasingly,

Americans are being forced into lowwage, low-scale service sector jobs. And

we are not increasing the manufacturing base of this country in a way that

creates the high value-added jobs that

allows an American to earn more

money and be able to move up the ladder.

That, Mr. President, accounts for

most of the anger that we feel in America today; that, coupled with the accompanying disintegration of families

and communities.

Now that gets you to the spiritual

deficit.

Mr. President, in 1965, our colleague,

PAT MOYNIHAN, warned us about what

happens in America when children are

having children out of wedlock—children born into a single-person family.

In 1965, Senator MOYNIHAN told us of a

27-percent-out-of-wedlock birth rate in

the inner city. He was accused of being

a racist. Most of America put its head

in the sand and did not pay much attention.

Today that 27 percent is 80 percent.

Thirty-six percent of all American

children are born out of wedlock.

And I ask my colleagues how they

think they are going to deal with a 15-

or 16-year-old kid who has already

dropped out of high school, who does

not relate to their home, who has no

organized religion, who does not have

in his or her life any of the normal ingredients of teaching values—family,

church, synagogue, school—how are

you going to reach that 15-year-old in

order to prevent that 15-year-old from

becoming the next inhabitant of a

$50,000-a-year jail cell?

I am not proposing to my colleagues

that Government ought to do it or that

Government is the solution. But I do

know that Government can make a difference in helping to create a framework which will allow those kids to

have a shot. And that framework can

be the support that we give to nonprofit entities, the support that we

give to a boys club, a girls club, support we give to the YouthBuilds, the

Americorps and other efforts that try

to intervene where there has been such

a total failure otherwise.

As I listen to my colleagues in the

House and elsewhere, they say, ‘‘Well,

it is the family’s responsibility. Cut it

off and people are going to have to take

care of themselves.’’

The problem is, Mr. President, that

this country already has a track record

of doing that. In the 1920’s, 1930’s,

1860’s, 1870’s and 1880’s, we saw what

happened when everybody was left to

their own devices. That is when we had

sweatshops. That is when we had slums

and squalor. That is when we had no

ability to cure half of these things.

The truth is, Mr. President, that over

the course of the last years, in the last

40 years, particularly, in America, we

have learned that some of these interventions truly make a difference in the

lives of our communities and of our

kids.

I respectfully suggest that the U.S.

Senate, the House, the Congress, the

country, are on their way to creating a

clash unlike any we have ever known

before in this country.

The summer job money has been cut.

Let me ask you: What are those kids

going to do this summer in the heat of

New York City or Los Angeles or Detroit or Chicago or Boston when they

have no job? The Government said,

‘‘We don’t care. We’re taking the

money away. Go fend for yourself.’’

But we all know that the economy,

historically, carries 6 percent unemployment or more. So even though we,

the leadership, know that America is

going to have at least 6 percent of its

country unemployed, are we still going

to say, ‘‘Go take care of yourself,’’ and

cut them off? What are they going to

do?

So I think, Mr. President, we are

heading for a cropper. I remember the

1960’s, when I came back from Vietnam. I can remember people out in the

streets with guns. I remember cars

being overturned. I remember bombs. I

remember firestorms of automobiles

burning. I respectfully suggest that we

better stop and think carefully about

the consequences of the steps we take

and the choices we make.

Those children that PAT MOYNIHAN

talked about in 1965 turned 15 and 16 in

1980. All you have to do is go and look

at the increase of juvenile violence in

America in 1980, and you can begin to

project what those children born today

in the 80-percent category are going to

do in the year 2010 when they turn 15

and 16.

The increase of murder among juveniles is up 250, 260 percent. There were

29,000 juveniles murdered in America in

the last 10 years, and 4,000 juveniles are

currently under arrest charged with

murder. The highest level of murders

in America today are juveniles between

the ages of 14 and 25 who are murdering

other juveniles between the ages of 14

and 25.

I absolutely guarantee you, it is inescapable, unavoidable, incontrovertible

that if you have a kid born today in a

country that is providing less work, in

a country where information and education are more important to your

ability to work than ever before, in a

country where it will be harder for

these kids to get that education, not

easier, there is an absolute predictability to what those kids will be like

15 and 16 years from today.

Mr. President, I used to prosecute

some of those kids. I used to be a prosecutor, and I talked to some of them

back then. It was OK, you could have a

conversation and you could learn something about what they felt and about

their anger. In the last 2 years, I have

spent time going to some of the at-risk

programs that we are now running,

which are the last link between these

kids and total loss. I have never, ever

in my life heard such a level of anger

that is without explanation. They cannot explain it to you. They do not

know where it is coming from. But you

can hear those kids talk about being

runaways in Florida or New York,

about how they left their families at

age 10, 11, 12.

Mr. President, do you know that the

median age of handgun ownership, or

gun ownership, in America today, the

median age of first-time gun ownership

is 121⁄2 years old?

So as we think about the budget

choices that we are going to face over

the course of this next 11⁄2 or 2 weeks,

it is my prayer that we are not going

to put our heads in the sand and ignore

the other two deficits this country

faces: The investment deficit and the

spiritual deficit.
S6586 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 12, 1995

In the end, I have no question that

Government is not even the right entity to ‘‘deal with the spiritual’’ or attempt to. But Government needs to understand the connection with those entities that should be doing it, or can be

doing it, and their capacity to do it, in

the world that we are creating.

Government needs to be an

empowerer of the local community to

reach these children. For example, in

Brockton, MA, there is a Boys and

Girls Club, but only 10 percent of the

kids in that community get access to

that club. Simple question: What happens to the other 90 percent of those

kids? They are out on the streets, nobody is there, there is no connection.

That is our responsibility, it seems

to me, to try to empower the communities to be able to help create the

civic reaction that will begin to deal

with these children. And the ultimate

response will come from churches and

synagogues, spiritual organizations,

nonprofit agencies, schools, and parents, but you have to have a place to

begin. You have to start somewhere. It

seems to me, that if you have a kid sitting in front of you who is 12 or 13

years old and they are already dabbling

in drugs, and they are already in trouble at home, and they are already disconnected to the school, we have a fundamental choice: Are we going to turn

our back on that kid and cut that kid

off, or are we going to try to channel

that child toward some group or organization that will bring the child in,

embrace the child with a notion that

the child has a stake in the community

and the community cares? I think this

budget is draconian with respect to

those efforts. I am not sure how in the

next days, given the choices we have,

we are going to fix it.

Mr. President, none of what I am saying should be interpreted to mask over

the deficit that we do face on the fiscal

side. I am prepared to make tough

choices about cuts that we ought to

make and even reordering priorities to

try to balance the budget, which I

think we ought to do. But nobody has

ever convinced me of why we absolutely have to do that in 6 years versus

8 or versus 10 years. Nobody has convinced me that there is some economic

virtue in picking a target date that is

so arbitrary that may wind up cutting

capacity to meet other needs that we

have.

One other point, Mr. President. Increasingly in America, we are seeing

the cash economy of this country grow.

It is now, I am told, about a $600 billion

economy. That means that we are losing annually about $100 billion of revenue because people just choose not to

pay taxes. In fact, as a nation, we have

gone from voluntary compliance in our

income tax of 96 percent down to 81

percent. Each loss of a point of voluntary compliance is the loss of $5 billion of revenue. So your good taxpaying, hard-working family that is

earning $25,000, $30,000 a year and paying their taxes is slugging it out to

make ends meet, to pay for fire, police,

schools, roads, everything we do, while

an increasing number of American citizens are getting away with not paying

their taxes.

We have a choice. I read in the newspaper the other day that we are going

to have a new thing called a lifestyle

audit, and people in America are now

going to be able to anticipate the IRS

jumping into their driveways and asking them why there is a certain kind of

car in their driveway, how they manage to go ski somewhere, what their

vacation style is, why they eat at certain restaurants, and that is the way

we are going to supposedly enforce the

Tax Code. I do not think Americans are

going to tolerate an IRS gestapo-like

entity of people intrusively moving

into their lives.

So, Mr. President, if we are really

going to make this system work and

recapture that cash economy, we have

to talk about changing the tax structure of this country and moving away

from a dependency on income and into

consumption where it is the only place

that you can begin to shift to a reflection of what the cash transaction is

while simultaneously, I think, increasing people’s savings and moving in a

new direction.

Mr. President, I see that the manager

of the bill is on his feet. If he has an

amendment, I am prepared to conclude.

Mr. CHAFEE. Yes, Mr. President, we

have a couple of amendments we would

like to have accepted, then the Senator

is free to continue.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, what I

would like to do—the Senator from

Wisconsin has been waiting patiently. I

talked longer than I told him I intended to—I will just conclude my

comments. I will have more to say on

this in the course of the next weeks.

But I believe we are at a crossroads,

and I think that the choices that I

have outlined are only a few of the

choices. But we cannot look at the

needs of this country exclusively in

terms of an arbitrary approach to the

deficit reduction. We have to look at

the other two deficits that the Nation

faces.

There is such a thing as investment,

and there is such a thing as a return on

investment, and there is such a thing

as multiples of return on investment. I

think that most people in the Senate

understand that. The question is

whether or not we are going to make

those wise judgments.

I thank my colleague from Wisconsin

for his patience, and I thank the distinguished managers for their courtesy. I

yield the floor.

INTERSTATE TRANSPORTATION OF

MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE ACT

fThe Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

AMENDMENT NO. 1072

(Purpose: To require the Administrator of

the Environmental Protection Agency to

conduct a study to determine the quantity

of hazardous waste that is being transported across State lines and the ultimate

disposition of the transported waste)

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I send

an amendment to the desk on behalf of

Senator BREAUX and ask for its immediate consideration.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

clerk will report.

The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Rhode Island [Mr.

CHAFEE], for Mr. BREAUX, proposes an

amendment numbered 1072.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that the reading of

the amendment be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

The amendment is as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. . STUDY OF INTERSTATE HAZARDOUS

WASTE TRANSPORT.

(a) DEFINITION OF HAZARDOUS WASTE.—In

this section, the term ‘‘hazardous waste’’ has

the meaning provided in section 1004 of the

Solid Waste Disposal Act (42 U.S.C. 6903).

(b) STUDY.—Not later than 3 years after the

date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection

Agency shall conduct a study, and report to

Congress on the results of the study, to determine—

(1) the quantity of hazardous waste that is

being transported across State lines; and

(2) the ultimate disposition of the transported waste.

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we have

examined the amendment and find it

acceptable.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there

is no further debate, the question is on

agreeing to the amendment.

The amendment (No. 1072) was agreed

to.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I move

to reconsider the vote by which the

amendment was agreed to.

Mr. BAUCUS. I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was

agreed to.

AMENDMENT NO. 1073

(Purpose: To require the Administrator of

the Environmental Protection Agency to

conduct a study to determine the quantity

of sludge (including sewage sludge) that is

being transported across State lines and

the ultimate disposition of the transported

sludge)

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I send

an amendment to the desk on behalf of

Senator BREAUX and ask for its immediate consideration.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Rhode Island [Mr.

CHAFEE], for Mr. BREAUX, proposes an

amendment numbered 1073.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. 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: