May 12, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S6583

AMENDMENT NO. 1070

(Purpose: To include in the definition of

‘‘out-of-State municipal waste’’ waste that

is generated outside the United States)

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator LEVIN and Senator

ABRAHAM, I send an amendment to the

desk 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. LEVIN, for himself, and Mr.

ABRAHAM, proposes an amendment numbered

1070.

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:

On page 49, strike lines 1 through 8 and insert:

(3) The term ‘‘out-of-State municipal solid

waste’’ means, with respect to any State,

municipal solid waste generated outside of

the State. Unless the President determines it

is inconsistent with the North American

Free Trade Agreement and the General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the term

shall include municipal solid waste generated outside of the United States. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, generators of municipal solid waste outside the

United States shall possess no greater right

of access to disposal facilities in a State

than United States generators of municipal

solid waste outside of that State.

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, our side

has reviewed this amendment and we

find it acceptable.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there

further debate on the amendment? If

not, the question is on agreeing to the

amendment.

The amendment (No. 1070) 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. 1071

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I send

an amendment to the desk 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. WARNER, proposes an

amendment numbered 1071.

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:

On page 65, line 6, insert ‘‘or related landfill reclamation’’ after ‘‘services.’’

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we have

reviewed this amendment, as well, and

also urge its adoption.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there

further debate on the amendment? If

not, the question is on agreeing to the

amendment.

The amendment (No. 1071) 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.

Mr. CHAFEE. I thank the Senator

from Massachusetts. If he wants to proceed, this is a good time to do it.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask

ORDER OF PROCEDURE

funanimous consent to proceed as if in

morning business.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr.

CRAIG). Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, last

THE BUDGET RESOLUTION

fnight the Budget Committee, in the

wee hours, passed the budget resolution for the U.S. Senate on which we

will shortly go to work. There are

many, many questionable choices within that resolution. There will be a

time, a very fixed time obviously, a

minimum number of hours that we

have to debate it here on the floor,

with a finality for that debate, and it is

predetermined. But I would like to just

talk for a moment, if I can, about a

couple of aspects of that budget as we

frame the debate about where we are

going in this country.

First, I would like to call the attention of my colleagues to one provision

that is in this budget that this Senator

finds profoundly disturbing, and that I

hope other colleagues will think hard

about before we ratify it in the course

of the budget process.

A lot of things are being proposed in

America today under the banner of deficit reduction. I think there is a unanimity here that we obviously have to

reduce the deficit. We are going to be

bankrupt if we do not. We cannot continue down the road that we are going

on. But there also ought to be an application of common sense to the choices

that we make as we do that. Reducing

the deficit does not predicate that we

simply come in with a machete or a

pickax and chop away at things that

make sense, while simultaneously leaving out there the things that do not

make sense.

One of the items that has fallen

under the budget committee’s ideological approach to this issue is the Presidential campaign fund. For whatever

reasons—I can give you the descriptions that are given, but I think the

agenda is considerably different—the

committee has chosen to eliminate the

mechanism by which Americans for the

years since Watergate have funded

Presidential elections. That method is

to have a checkoff on your tax form

with which you decide to give money

to the Presidential election fund. It is

a voluntary mechanism in America.

But it has been a most important

mechanism by which we have freed

Presidential politics from the demeaning process of requiring our candidates

to raise hundreds of millions of dollars

from special interests all across this

country.

It has worked, Mr. President. The

system has worked. President Ronald

Reagan used it. President George Bush

used it. I believe President Bush in the

course of his career as a Vice President

and as a President, used something in

the order of $200 million in order to run

for the highest Federal office in this

land.

The majority leader, ROBERT DOLE,

has used it in the past. Other Presidential candidates in this Senate have

used it, Republican and Democrat

alike. No one has suggested that system is wrong, corrupt, not working, or

not freeing the Presidential process

from the rather terrifying money chase

that we in the U.S. Senate have to go

through. Yet, this Budget Committee,

in an effort to try to whack away at

the deficit, is going to do away with

this campaign financing mechanism.

Mr. President, for the life of me I

don’t understand why—but I understand the argument that will be made.

The argument will be the soft, easy,

political sloganeering arguments that,

‘‘Gee, politicians should not be getting

welfare.’’ It sounds really catchy. And

the American taxpayer should not necessarily be paying. That is the argument you are going to hear. But I will

bet you that four members of the Republican caucus who are running for

President are prepared, in a matter of

weeks, to ask for that money and will

take it and will use it.

Now, it seems to me, Mr. President,

if we cannot remember the lessons of

Watergate and remember the degree to

which this country felt a revulsion at

what happened during that period of

time, when stacks of cash and enormous sums of money were changing

hands in an effort to try to curry favor

and votes in America, if we do not remember that lesson, then we have not

learned much about what was wrong

with American politics in the course of

the last years.

So I hope that before we just accept

what the Budget Committee has done,

Members will think hard about what is

really good for this country in the context of political campaign finance reform. This Senate has twice passed

campaign finance reform in the last

years. We passed it in 1992, and the

House passed it, but President Bush vetoed it. We then passed it again in 1994,

but it died mostly because the House of

Representatives did not want to take it

up.

The bottom line, I think all colleagues will agree, is that we saw a period of scandal in America that

brought reform, and it would be irrational now in the face of the extraordinary impact of money in American
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