[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 32 (Monday, March 21, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 21, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
      NATIONAL PARK SERVICE CONCESSIONS POLICY REFORM ACT OF 1994

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that we resume 
consideration of S. 208.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                         privilege of the floor

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Jim Beirne, 
Jim O'Toole, Jim Tate, Kelly Fischer, Carol Craft, Gerry Hardy, and 
Camille Heninger of the Senate minority staff be permitted the 
privileges of the floor during the pendency of S. 208.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, S. 208 as reported from the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee would reform the process by which the 
National Park Service awards contracts to private persons or 
corporations who seek to do business inside our national parks. The 
legislation has been before our committee in one form or another for 
many, many years. It has been the subject of numerous hearings, some as 
early as 1979, and has been considered at several committee business 
meetings. Throughout this process, under the leadership of the Senator 
from Arkansas, Mr. [Bumpers], who is the chairman of the Subcommittee 
on Public Lands, National Parks and Forests, we have crafted a very 
reasonable and progressive bill. This measure is a bipartisan measure. 
It was ordered reported by the committee by a vote of 16 to 4.
  Our colleague from Utah, Senator Bennett, worked very closely with 
Senator Bumpers to craft the compromise bill before us today. In fact, 
Senator Bennett, who is one of the renowned businessmen of this body, 
put a businessman's approach to the matter of concessions in national 
parks, and I think our result is one that utilizes the best of business 
principles, that is competition, so that the park concessions will be 
awarded to the very best of the applicants.
  Madam President, under today's law before this bill is enacted we do 
not have a competitive situation in our national parks. To the 
contrary, those that have the concessions are almost guaranteed that 
they will get a renewal of that contract. That is so because of two 
features of the present law. The first is what we call the possessory 
interest so that all of the improvements that are made in a national 
park are, in effect, the property of the concessioner so that when it 
comes time to renew the contract, anyone who wishes to compete must pay 
the full or ``sound'' value, what in effect is the fair market value, 
for all of the improvements made at that national park. Improvements at 
our big national parks total hundreds of millions of dollars. In 
effect, if you build a hotel at a national park, then there is no 
depreciation of that asset. Rather the concessioner gets to keep the 
assets, and at the termination of the contract anyone who wishes to bid 
for that new contract must pay the full nondepreciated value of that 
asset.
  The second basis on which it is almost impossible to compete is that 
concessioners get a preferential right to renew. That means that if 
someone goes to all of the expense, trouble, difficulty and time of 
putting together a bid for a concession, then the existing concessioner 
has the right to come in and equal or exceed that bid.
  So, on that basis, no one is going to go through the trouble and 
expense to make the bid and, indeed, have to put up all the money for 
the assets and then find that he or she is unable to get the contract 
because the existing concessioner equals the bid that they made.
  So what we have done, Madam President, is provide for a competitive 
selection process. It prohibits the preferential right of renewal 
unless the contract is less than $500,000. In those very small 
contracts, the Park Service is permitted to go ahead with the 
preferential right of renewal. In all others, it must be done on a 
competitive basis.
  With respect to the possessory interest, those who have assets, 
concessioners who have these assets at the present time, will be able 
to keep those assets. So, if an existing concessioner wishes to, or is 
not successful in getting a renewal of the contract, then the person 
who gets the contract would have to pay him the full possessory 
interest, the full fair value of those assets. However, if the 
concessioner is able to get a renewal of the contract, then he must 
begin to depreciate that asset on the basis of the number of years 
provided by the Internal Revenue Code, which, in today's code, would 
provide for 39 years.
  So, Madam President, what we have here is a bill that will ensure 
that national park concessions are managed not only in the interest of 
the taxpayers, so as to maximize the return to the taxpayer, but so 
that we will be able to get the best concessioner, the one who 
competitively is able to bid for the contract.
  I think, Madam President, what we have in this bill is national park 
policy which is realistic and combines the very best of park policy 
with the best of business policy.
  For that reason, Madam President, this bipartisan measure was, as I 
mentioned earlier, passed out of committee by a vote of 16 to 4.
  Madam President, the instant bill before us really is a tribute to 
Senators Bumpers and Bennett, who worked this bill out. They worked out 
complicated, difficult and, I might say, controversial provisions of 
this bill. In doing so, it was able to garner the overwhelming support 
of the Senate Energy Committee. Both of those Senators have my 
congratulations for an excellent job done in putting together a 
difficult bill.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WALLOP addressed the Chair.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I am sure it is a very rare occasion 
upon which I would disagree with the business judgment or the political 
judgment of my friend from Utah, Senator Bennett. And rarely have I 
been on the other side of a bill that the committee has brought to the 
floor from the Senator from Louisiana. In fact, the two of us, I still 
believe, passed the only really major piece of legislation in the last 
Congress, the national energy strategy.
  Madam President, I find, from talking to colleagues, the first thing 
everybody wonders is, what is all the fuss about? I mean, who can be 
worrying about a couple of hot dog stands? That is what the concessions 
are. They do not know, the average person in this body does not have a 
clue, what we are talking about. And possessory interest puts them 
straight to sleep. It is a word not often used in the rest of business.
  But, it is important I think to realize what the concessions are. 
They are the hotels, they are the dude ranches, they are the rafting 
operations, they are the gasoline and convenience stores, they are 
riding, guiding, sight-seeing operations, depending on the nature of 
the park; they are the bus systems, they are boating opportunities, 
they are what America has asked the private sector to do for it.
  The Senator from Louisiana said, quite correctly, that these assets 
run to hundreds of millions of dollars. Madam President, that is 
precisely correct, and the taxpayer did not pay a dime for it. Nor 
would the taxpayer have paid a dime for it; not even during the plush 
times of absolute abandon on deficits and Government spending, would we 
have ever funded what the private sector has funded.
  That, Madam President, was the whole point when Congress passed 
Concessions Policy Act of 1965. We intended, on purpose, to discourage 
the turnover of concession operations.
  As a matter of Federal policy--and a darn good one it has been, too--
we decided that the private sector should be encouraged to provide the 
visitor services. They would be regulated and they would be allowed to 
make a reasonable profit. In exchange, they, and not the Federal 
Government and not the taxpayers of America, would be required to raise 
the capital to construct and maintain facilities to standards set by 
the Federal Government.
  Continuity of good services at reasonable rates to our park visitors 
was judged to be more important than the collection of receipts. That 
was at a time when the national parks were to be considered public 
treasures for the benefit of the public. That was before reinventing 
Government tried to turn them into cash registers for the Federal 
Government.
  Madam President, I will talk for a minute about the right of 
possessory interest and the preferential right of renewal, along with 
the ability to award long-term contracts. These were all included in 
the Concessions Policy Act to provide the contractor with the necessary 
collateral to take to a lending institution--a bank or whatever; 
investors, even--so that moneys could be borrowed to fund park 
improvements for the visitor.
  We have gotten off on the idea, somehow or another, that these were 
processes for the concessionaires. The Congress made a specific 
decision--and a wise one it has been--that these moneys would be 
invested for the pleasure of the visiting public, the convenience of 
and the safety of. And this was consistent with our view that these 
types of improvements and services should be furnished by the private 
sector and not the taxpayer.
  The success of the program in concessions is obvious, if you look at 
the privately operated visitor facilities in America's national parks 
today. Under no set of circumstances--I defy anybody in either body to 
tell me that they believe that the Federal Government would have 
developed, would have constructed, and would have maintained the 
hundreds of visitor facilities throughout the park system without this 
private sector involvement and, more importantly, without making major 
trips to the Federal Treasury for buckets of money.
  Has it been entirely, 100 percent perfect? Of course it has not. But 
I will tell the Senate this: it has been more successful than darn near 
any Federal program that anybody can point out to me. And we are on the 
threshold of toying with it for a new idea.
  The situation in the parks has not changed and, in fact, has become 
gravely worse, given the budget constraints and our unending appetite 
to add more parks.
  One of the things we are about to do is add another park in 
California called East Mojave. This, after having accepted the 
Presidio, which is going to cost us more than Yellowstone, more than 
even Yosemite, and more than most of the rest of the parks in the 
system combined. But we are not going to add any more personnel and we 
are not going to add any more money. And guess what is going to happen?
  The Secretary has already taken 400 people out of the National Park 
System and put 301 of them in his office. And we are sitting around 
here taking the one thing that works, and my guarantee is that it will 
add somewhere between $150 and $200 million a year out of a budget of 
$1 billion to the National Park System's problems.
  These facilities that exist in our parks are, by and large, 
wonderful. There are facilities that still need to be developed, and 
there are some that need to be replaced and some that need to be 
maintained. It is unfortunate that the very fundamental building blocks 
of the successful and cost-effective program have been undermined and 
eliminated by the legislation reported by our committee. It is 
unfortunate the Appropriations Committee does not understand the 
magnitude of the expenses they will bear if this legislation is to 
pass.
  Let there be no misunderstanding; the parks will receive their money, 
although not all they need. Other programs will suffer as well.
  While I understand and do not quarrel with the proponents of this 
legislation, who believe their efforts will result in increased 
competition and revenue, it is my belief that, as reported, this 
legislation will exact an enormous price from the taxpayers, and worse 
still, will result in a degradation to the National Park System and a 
very specific degradation to the services provided to the visitors of 
the National Park System.
  The Senator from Louisiana said, ``It is going to maximize the return 
to the taxpayer. It gets you the very best franchisee.'' Madam 
President, the very best franchisee has nothing to do with this. It 
will get you the cheapest franchisee--who may or may not be a good 
franchisee--but he will darned sure be the cheapest. His effort to try 
to maximize the return of the investment that he is about to make will 
result either in lower fees from the National Park Service charged to 
the franchisee, or higher costs to the visitors. That is what this will 
get you.
  Under current law and under current practice, concessionaires are 
encouraged to make investments to the infrastructure to accommodate 
park visitors, and so they should. They obtain their own capital and 
comply with all Federal requirements. Title to all the facilities 
resides with the United States, and that is wherein this crazy word 
``possessory interest'' comes, because while there the title resides, 
the franchisee, if he is to lose that for reasons of malperformance or 
other reasons, then the Park Service and the Government owes him the 
fair market value of those improvements.
  Possessory interest is calculated as to the sound value of those 
improvements, and that possessory interest has to be either acquired by 
the Government or a new concessionaire if the current one does not 
obtain a renewal of his contract. That is the basis upon which people 
can go to borrow money. There is nothing strange in the business world 
about that. The guy goes to the bank. He says, ``Here is what my 
interest is. Here is what you can get from me should I collapse and 
fail. This is the reason I am able to come to you, Mr. Banker, and 
borrow money.''
  The new concessionaire is going to say, ``I have a contract from the 
United States Government. That guarantees me at the end of time I get 
half the value, a depreciated half of this thing. But I have no 
possessory interest in it. It is declining.''
  These changes will simply have to be reflected, and I am certain my 
colleague from Utah, as a businessman, will understand that. They have 
to be reflected. Nobody is going to absorb them by ignoring them. So it 
certainly eliminates the collateral basis upon which to finance 
improvements. My concern is the practical effect of failing to 
grandfather those existing possessory interests.
  The legislation as reported applies a schedule to reduce the value of 
any existing possessory interest if the present contract is renewed. 
That is a cute theory, but let us examine the implications of that in 
practice, in the actual business world in which these people are going 
to have to operate. Assume for the sake of argument this is an existing 
concessionaire who has invested in a modest facility which provides 
limited accommodations, meals, supplies, and fuel for visitors in a 
park with a very limited season. Not all our parks have the 12-month 
season of the parks in the chairman's State, or in Florida, California, 
or Arizona. A lot of them, as in my State and Alaska and the State of 
the Senator from Utah, have a limited season. The money they make, the 
return on their investment, has to be made in 4 months, 5 months--
certainly not 12.
  The possessory interest that exists today, of a concession the likes 
of which I described, could be in the neighborhood of $5 million, based 
on sound market value. The contract is coming up now for renewal. Let 
us assume the new contract will be for 10 years with a 20-year 
devaluation schedule. A concessionaire, who is the investor today, is 
faced with a choice. Should the concessionaire renew, he will directly 
forfeit approximately $2.5 million over the life of the contract under 
this legislation. So now he either makes that up in higher charges or 
gets it back from the Park Service in lower franchise fees, or he will 
simply leave and ask for his $5 million for some other enterprise. 
These people are not fools. They have a great affection for the 
national parks and they have a great affection for the jobs they do. 
But they are not fools and $5 million is better than $2.5 million. The 
latter is the more likely scenario.
  That possibility is even more likely if you consider the time value 
of the funds. If the concessionaire stays, the $5 million interest will 
be reduced to $2.5 million under the terms contained in this bill. If 
he were to take the $5 million and invest it at 7 percent over the same 
period, it would be worth $10 million. Do we really expect people to 
forgo $7.5 million for the privilege of being abused by the Department 
of Interior?
  There are family operations where the possessory interest represents 
a large portion of their estate, and keep in mind that a lot of these 
concessions about which we are talking are family operations. The 
former Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Mr. John Turner, his 
family has been operating in Grand Teton National Park since before it 
was a national park. So these are a portion of an estate.
  What responsible family is going to leave their estate to be divided 
in half by the Federal Government? Sadly and reluctantly, they will 
leave, the people who have been providing this kind of service to 
visitors to the National Park System. And you are telling me that you 
are going to get a better concessionaire than people who have been able 
to stay in business for 75 years as a family? They have been able to 
stay because they have been good, because they have run good 
businesses, because people like to come and have the guided nature 
tours, and to ride the horses that they have, and to go on the pack 
outfitting trips and run the river. They have been good for all this 
time. But this is their family's estate and they dare not leave it on 
the table; they just dare not.
  So assuming the existing concessionaire does what is likely, who gets 
to pick up the tab? Under current law, it would be the new 
concessionaire, who would then hold a possessory interest and, in fact, 
would use the possessory interest as collateral for the loan to pay off 
the existing concessionaire.
  However, under the legislation in front of us, any new concessionaire 
is faced with the same prospect of paying $5 million and watching that 
investment dwindle to $2.5 million over the contract term.
  Again, Madam President, these people are not fools, either the ones 
that are there or the ones that will be coming in. That investment will 
have to be recouped in higher charges to the national park visitor or 
lower fees from the National Park Service. Somewhere or another, it is 
not going to come just out of the tax advantages of being able to 
depreciate property. It will not.
  The statute that sits in front of us eliminates the value of the 
purchased interest as collateral. I do not know why that is hard to 
see. I really do not know why it is hard to see. These operations are 
not such gold mines in their entirety--there may be one or two--but in 
their entirety, they are small businesses yielding very little return. 
They are yielding livings to mom-and-pop operations. They are yielding 
the ability to create small estates, like the rest of America's 
businessmen and women have.
  The most likely result is that all the parties are simply going to 
let the Federal Government buy out the existing concessionaire and then 
bid on contracts without any possessory interest. That contract is not 
going to be of the same value. No businessman around is going to do it. 
The Park Service is going to hold an item that it has paid for with 
taxpayers' money that immediately has a diminished value as a 
consequence of the passage of this bill. Why is that hard to 
understand?
  It accomplishes the goal of the legislation, gets it out of the hands 
of the existing concessionaire, and it gets people to bid for it. It 
gets them to bid, I will grant you that. But it does so at the expense 
of a beleaguered national park system, and out of the limited funds 
available to the Appropriations Committee and ultimately out of the 
ability of the National Park System to take care of the national parks 
under its control.
  The entire budget for the National Park Service in 1994 is just over 
$1 billion. A lot of us are, with good reason, concerned about the 
present level of park maintenance and, even more so, Madam President, 
about the backlog in land acquisition. We should be concerned when 20 
percent of the Park Service budget or 15 percent over the next 10 years 
goes to paying off possessory interest when we have taken the property 
of Americans and refuse to pay for them.
  A lot of Americans do not realize that this Congress annually 
authorizes new parks, many of which have private property holdings. 
Congress has the biggest appetite in the world for parks. We use it to 
run for reelection. We use it to say great things about America. But, 
Madam President, we have absolutely no stomach in the world for paying 
for it. In the Chair's own State, in California, in Wyoming, in 
Indiana, in Utah and Florida, in virtually every State, there are 
Americans whose property has been declared national parks for which we 
have not paid.
  Now all of a sudden we are going to put concessionaires at the front 
of the line and virtually force them into the decision of saying, yes, 
pay for these. A, it is not right; B, it is bad business; and C, it 
further diminishes the capacity of the National Park System to pursue 
its mission. We are not going to add any more money to it. We 
absolutely are not. And we are already taking personnel away from it 
while adding more parks to it.
  There is something really silly about this operation, and I do not 
know how to get the attention of the Senate to say how absolutely silly 
it is. We have all the right words and all the right names: 
Competition; revenues to the Treasury; it will pay us more. But an 
examination of this bill shows us the opposite.
  There is fundamentally something wrong with this picture. On the one 
hand, we, as the Congress, and this administration, are advocating 
private ownership of lands and facilities within the former Soviet 
Union. On the other, we now seem to be striving to get more Government 
ownership of the private facilities which occupy our Federal lands.
  The cost to purchase existing possessory interests will be 
expensive--as the Senator from Louisiana mentioned the values of them--
and it is unnecessary and it is counterproductive. The appropriators 
ought to be paying attention. Somebody is going to have to pay. It is 
not going to come for nothing. It will not be the new concessionaire. 
It will be the taxpayer and a system that is underfunded and under 
siege.
  The legislation will do enormous harm to a system that has served 
very successfully, very handsomely the parks' visitor for over three-
quarters of a century. Visitors who have become accustomed to a high 
quality of service may some day ask us: ``What happened? Why did you do 
it?''
  We are not even going to try this thing before we put it in play; we 
are just going to do it.
  In the interim, revenues to the Treasury almost certainly will be 
decreased. Services in our parks will become too expensive for the 
average visitor to afford. Maybe that is the way we can limit the 
visitors to America's national parks, by making them just the 
playgrounds of the upper-middle class and the rich--no longer the 
playgrounds of the great touring American.
  The process of using concessions must go up. Somebody has to pay and 
it is going to be the visitor or it is going to be the Treasury, and we 
do not have it in the Treasury and we are not going to let the parks 
disappear. The private facilities will either begin to degrade or 
eventually be owned by the Government and then they will degrade, if 
history is any judge, and at some point in time, it is going to cost 
fortunes to rehabilitate what we have allowed to be destroyed.
  Guess how we are going to do it? We are going to go back to the 
system that we have today which grants a possessory interest so that 
people can get the capital to do it. That is the only way it is going 
to be. I promise you that nobody in Congress is going to give you money 
to rebuild the Lake Hotel in Yellowstone or any of the other wonderful 
facilities that exist. Congress is not going to do that.
  I really appreciate the efforts of the colleagues who have attempted 
to reform the Concessions Policy Act. I do not charge them with acting 
in bad faith. Far from it. I honestly believe that they think that this 
is going to be better than the system that exists. I thoroughly and I 
completely disagree. I have grown up in national parks. I have had 
friends and family who have worked in the national parks. I know what 
these things are about.
  If enacted, this legislation will produce practically no additional 
revenue if it works perfectly. And guess what? The revenue is not going 
to go to the national parks. The revenue, whatever little there is, is 
going to go to the Treasury. We tried. Senator Johnston and I and 
others worked very hard to get the entrance fees raised so that: First, 
they were worth collecting; and, second, that they could stay in the 
parks, but they were raised. It was no sooner passed and all that 
Americans got out of it was higher entrance fees. They sure did not get 
an improvement in trails or improvement in visitor facilities or sure 
did not get an increased number of America's acres that have been 
confiscated and paid for. Nothing happened good to the parks out of 
raising the fees, and we all tried very hard to see to it that that was 
the specific result of it.
  I have long advocated that concessions should be paying higher 
franchise fees. Madam President, that is not the fault of the system. 
That is the fault of the business managers of the National Park 
Service, and that can be changed. If people really want to put these 
things on a more business-like basis, all they have to do is write a 
better contract.
  Some of the contracts that have been written by the system are a 
joke, but that is not the fault of the act. That is the fault of 
incompetence in governing, and incompetence in governing is not a 
franchise of either party. It is the mark of both parties. It is the 
mark of Government. But you can do better, and there is no reason to 
tear down a system that has provided excellence from one end to the 
other in order to do better.

  To think differently is basically to think and to subscribe to the 
administration's views that this great national park system is for 
amusements to be run for money and not for the purpose of setting them 
aside to preserve them and protect them for the future and provide for 
the current enjoyment of Americans. That is why they were put together. 
They are not to be a coin machine for the Treasury, especially when the 
Treasury refuses through the offices of the Congress to provide the 
money to run those parks well, and now we are going to take on the 
additional load of buying concessions and operating them until we get 
new concessionaires?
  It is a joke, Madam President. The current system is the best example 
I know of how a private/public partnership should work. It provided 
millions and millions and millions of dollars in vital infrastructure 
and services to the visitors to the parks all at no cost to the 
taxpayers and all with the result of good, solid facilities for 
America's parks visitors to enjoy when they are in the parks.
  The committee chose to change the conditions of the right to 
possessory interest and in so doing, in my judgment, will initiate the 
biggest buyout that the Park Service has ever had. Existing concession 
operators will have no alternative but to leave their businesses on 
termination date unless they are very, very big and they can write 
these things off in other ways.
  What you may see is just a swap of ownership; that which TW Services 
now owns will go to the market and ARA will buy it, and that which ARA 
now owns TW Services will buy, all of them trying to recoup a capital 
situation which they now understand and which they entered into with 
good faith. And their new judgment is going to be, I trust, the 
Congress not to change it again when they go to the bank for more 
capital.
  In my judgment, existing concession operators have no alternative but 
to leave their businesses on the termination date, and in my judgment 
that will result in a Government buyout because successor interests 
will have the same problem--unless, of course, it can be acquired more 
cheaply, and the only way you can acquire it more cheaply is to buy it 
from the Park Service, which will be forced to buy them out.
  Now, unfortunately, not all the concessions are small in size. This 
legislation will be an extraordinarily expensive piece of business. 
There is no accurate record of how much the total possessory interests 
held by concessionaires is worth in today's dollars, but one has only 
to look at the hotels and the lodges and the restaurants and marinas 
and other facilities around the service to realize that as concession 
operators opt out for more lucrative pastures, the cost to the 
Government could run into billions.
  In all fairness, there will be some concessionaires who do elect to 
stay in business, but they will be few and they will be corporate 
interests, certainly not family interests--corporate interests that can 
move these kinds of investments.
  Sheer economics will dictate others to leave. It just does not make 
any sense. They can simply leave their present contract, pocket 
taxpayer funds which the legislation so graciously gives them and then 
go right back in and bid. They will be richer, the Federal Government 
poorer, but we will have satisfied the need to look very fine in front 
of those who say that we do not have enough competition in the current 
system. They will never judge us. We will not be around to be seen when 
this turns out to be as I predict.
  I will have a couple of amendments to offer today, one which will 
provide a standby option to deal with possessory interest, which would 
leave the Secretary with his current discretion to continue it on 
renewal or negotiate a different arrangement should my views prove to 
be correct.
  My second amendment is, lest we lose track of all of this and become 
anonymous, as we so often do, will mandate certain reports to Congress 
so that our successors may judge if we were right or wrong in our 
actions today.
  I hope I am wrong. It will be good for the park system. It would be 
very good for the park system if I am wrong. But I do not think I am. 
We have not gotten around to figuring out how to try this. We are just 
going to go do it even though we have in hand a system which has worked 
and we know it to have worked. But there is something that bothers 
people about people being successful when they have franchises from the 
Government. There is something that makes us as legislators feel very 
uncomfortable that somebody is making money without ever realizing what 
the somebody making money is providing for the citizen. He is providing 
the best visitor facilities of any national park system that exists 
anywhere in the world.
  I have been all over the world, Madam President. I have been on the 
African Continent, been in China, been in Japan, been in Europe, been 
in Britain, been in South America. I have been to parks in all of these 
places. They do not hold a candle to what we have done, and I tell you 
we deal with it carefully or we abandon it.
  The intent of the amendment is to allow the Secretary the discretion 
to allow any concessioner the right to retain his possessory interest, 
and only to the extent that the continuation of such interest advances 
the policy objectives of the act. By passing this amendment we can 
possibly avoid a cost to the Government that will be in the billions of 
dollars.
  Possessory interest is a right under current law and in many cases 
worth a substantial amount of money. If Congress chooses to eliminate 
the right of possessory interest the owner of the right is entitled to 
just compensation.
  By maintaining possessory interest in a facility a concessioner will 
be expected to continue to invest their own money in capital 
improvements. If the existing concessioner changes he or she would be 
reimbursed for their possessory interest and the new concessioner would 
have the possessory interest if the Secretary has determined that 
continuation would advance the policy set forth in the committee 
amendment. Voting for this amendment gives us a way out of coming up 
with money we do not have, and in addition our counties will not be 
impacted quite as soon.
  For example, the Park Service eliminated possessory interest at 
Yosemite National Park. This means that Mariposa County will have a 
$700,000 short fall--1993 dollars--to its tax base. This is something 
that the residents of Mariposa will have to make up from other sources.
  Madam President, another point that I must make is to describe the 
situation facing an existing concessioner. If for a moment we assume 
that at a park in your State there is a concessioner we will call ``A'' 
with a possessory interest of $1 million in real property. ``A'' faces 
a renewal of a 10-year contract with an assumed 20-year schedule for 
reducing the value of the possessory interest. At the present time, A's 
possessory interest is worth $1 million and can be used as collateral. 
The real property's value as collateral is devalued upon enactment of 
the legislation because the legislation would reduce the value over 
time. The value is also minimal for any new concessioner upon enactment 
of this legislation.
  For A, however, the cost of renewal is not simply the decrease in 
value over the 10-year contract period of $500,000--$1 million times 
length of contract divided by reduction schedule. Instead, the cost of 
renewal to ``A'' is the difference between that value--$500,000--and 
the time value of the $1 million over the same period. $1 million 
invested at 7 percent compound interest would be worth $2 million at 
the end of 10 years, so the actual cost of renewal to ``A'' is $1.5 
million at the end of 10 years. Coupled with the loss of the interest 
as further collateral, this legislation should discourage present 
concessionaires from continuing, unless the Park Service buys them out. 
And it discourages a new concessioner from coming in, until the Park 
Service buys out the current concessioner. Either way, business 
decisions dictate that the Federal Government must buy out the current 
possessory interest.
  My amendment simply allows the Secretary the discretion to avoid the 
problems presented in this scenario. If he so chooses, he can continue 
possessory interest for the purposes of fiscal responsibility and 
integrity. In addition to the cost of concessionaires leaving and 
taking the value of their real property with them, we must consider the 
potential cost of the concession bill on appropriations. The 
Congressional Budget Office estimates that within the next 5 years, 90 
percent of all franchise fees will be going into the new fund 
established by this legislation. Assuming that perhaps 90 percent of 
the contracts will have been renewed, I present this plausible 
scenario--Concessioner ``A'' has a possessory interest. If ``A'' 
chooses to renew, which is not likely based on what I just told you, 
``A'' knows that the value of the possessory interest will be reduced 
over a period of years.
  If ``A'' does not renew, either the Park Service or a new 
concessioner would have to pay ``A'' the full value of the real 
property in the possessory interest. A likely scenario is that existing 
concessionaires will decide to capture their possessory interest and 
reinvest it elsewhere. This scenario is particularly likely where the 
possessory interest is significant, or represents the major assets of a 
firm or family. For a family, that possessory interest may represent 
funds for children's education, retirement, or inheritance.
  If the existing concessioner walks, other potential concessionaires 
may very well wait until the Park Service pays concessioner ``A'' so 
they do not have to absorb the cost. Only then will all future bids on 
the concession be free of the expense of the value of the possessory 
interest.
  We do not have a firm estimate on the total amount of possessory 
interests outstanding in the hands of current concessionaires. However, 
a brief survey of some of the existing concessionaires has yielded 
figures of over $500 million, with individual figures ranging from 
$100,000 to almost $150 million. And, this is only a partial inventory 
with the value of some major concessions unknown. If the final figure 
winds up around $1 billion, and one assumes that 90 percent of the 
contracts will come up over the next 5 years, as CBO did, then Interior 
and related agencies will assume a potential indebtedness of about $180 
million each year. That $180 million will come at the expense of 
National Park maintenance and other programs funded by Interior and 
related agencies. The other alternative is that the Secretary will 
reduce fees to enable the concessionaires to recapture his investment. 
That would reduce Federal revenues and increase the deficit.
  The easy way to avoid the possibility of present concessionaires 
leaving, and taking the value of their assets with them is to provide 
the Secretary with some discretion on all current possessory interests. 
Over time, the Park Service may be able to buy out existing interests, 
but that is something that can be controlled in appropriations.
  I need to stress again that my amendment cures the problems presented 
in this scenario by allowing the Secretary the discretion to continue 
possessory interest if it meets the policy objectives of the act.
  In this manner the Secretary has some control over the maintenance of 
fiscal responsibility during the appropriations process. We have 
discussed the likely scenario that existing concessionaires may decide 
to capture their possessory interest and reinvest it elsewhere. And, we 
have discussed the undesirable effect to this legislation on the 
appropriations process. If passed as currently written, there is the 
potential that the need for appropriated funds will be totally 
unpredictable, and possibly overwhelming.
  My amendment reserves the options of the Secretary to meet the policy 
objectives of the act without further direction from Congress.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I share in some of the concerns that my 
good friend from Wyoming voiced when he began his presentation. I am 
uncomfortable opposing the Senator from Wyoming on a business or 
political matter, and I have great respect for his judgment and his 
predictive powers. I think his analysis of what is going to happen is 
right on most of the time.
  At the same time, I must rise to disagree with him on this occasion. 
He says he hopes he is wrong about his predictive powers. Obviously, so 
do I. But I would like to respond to some of the issues that he has 
raised and make it clear why I am supporting this particular 
legislation.
  First, I must agree completely with the Senator from Wyoming in his 
discussion about the wisdom of the past with respect to national parks. 
I agree that our decision--ours, that is, the Congress--was a wise one 
in setting up the system that we have at the moment. I agree that the 
Federal Government would undoubtedly not have put the amount of 
investment into the national park concessions that has been put there. 
And I applaud the past Congresses for the action that they have taken. 
The one thing with which I disagree with the Senator from Wyoming is 
his statement that the situation has not changed. As I look at it, I 
think there has been significant change that requires some kind of 
change in the underlying statute. The change has been in the number of 
visitors going to the national parks and the demand that has been made 
on the concessions and, as a consequence, in the attractiveness of a 
concession to an investor.
  I can understand that where there are a limited number of visitors to 
a national park and where there is a limited season in the national 
park, unusual inducements are going to have to be offered to a 
businessman or business woman to get him or her to go in and take the 
risk involved in that circumstance. But let 10 years pass and the 
number of visitors double, triple, or quadruple, and all of a sudden 
you have a situation where the concession is an extremely valuable 
economic asset.
  And we are saying, ``Well, if you happened to have been lucky enough 
15 years ago to be the one to get the concession, you now have a 
lifetime right, an eternal right, to hang onto that and reap the 
benefits from it regardless of what may have changed in the 
marketplace.'' Then we would protect that eternal right to the point of 
freezing out any competitor that might be able to service the park 
visitor better than the person who was there 15 years ago.
  I agree with the Senator from Wyoming in his statement that the 
primary purpose of these concessions is to service the park visitor. 
There is no question in my mind but that the driving consideration in 
all of the decisions was what is best for the park visitor and not what 
is best for the concessionaire and not what is best for the Park 
Service--indeed, not what is best for the Park Service and its view of 
how the park should be administered--but what is best for the park 
visitor. Ultimately, that is why we have national parks. If we did not 
have national parks for the purpose of helping the visitor, we might as 
well turn them off to the visitors, keep them out except for the 
backpackers.
  However, we have decided, wisely, to open them, ask people to come, 
and make them available to the widest possible group of visitors, and 
while the visitor is there we will provide services --food and other 
amenities--that make the visit a worthwhile experience.
  I submit that the present system is not the best for the park visitor 
however well it may have served us in the past.
  I offer as an example of how many people would be interested in 
providing the very best possible services in a competitive situation. 
There was a statistic given by a present concessionaire who was arguing 
in favor of the present system and unwittingly, I think, undercut that 
argument himself. He said, ``Senator, it is not true that the present 
system discourages bidding. The last time our contract came up for 
renewal, there were 15 bidders against us. Naturally, we kept them all 
out as our right of refusal.'' I asked how long ago it was, and he 
said, ``About 90 days.'' This is not ancient history. This is current 
history.
  I submit, given the size of this particular proposal, the 15 bidders 
were very much aware of potential changes on this floor in this 
legislation and were prepared to accept the risks contained in the 
current version of S. 208 because they were very, very much in the 
marketplace of ideas at the time the bids were made. They were all 
frozen out under the present circumstance, and if we continue in the 
present circumstance, we guarantee that there will be no competition on 
the part of new operators who might have better concepts as to how to 
service the park visitor.
  I must address the issue raised by my friend from Wyoming with 
respect to bankers willing to loan on these kinds of investments. I 
have had some experience going to bankers trying to get money from 
them. I discovered, as one banker told me very early in my career, the 
bank does not care about your collateral. The bank wants to know how 
you are going to pay the loan back.
  I said, ``I have a house. It is a wonderful house. Come see it.'' He 
said ``No. I don't want to come see it.'' I said, ``It is worth more 
than the amount I am asking here in loan. Let me pledge my house so 
that I can have this loan so that I can go into this wonderful business 
that I will be glad to tell you all about.''
  The banker gave me some of the best advice I have ever had. He said, 
``The bank does not want your house. The bank does not want to be in 
the real estate business. If we wanted to be in the real estate 
business, we would have organized a subsidiary to be in the real estate 
business. We want to know how you are going to pay it back, not what we 
are going to get when you don't pay it back. We are interested in the 
cash flow from your business.''
  Well, then I had to start dancing pretty nicely by the banker's desk 
because my business plan was based on a lot of hope and no real 
indication as to how I was going to be able to pay the bank back. 
Fortunately for both the bank and myself, the bank turned down my 
application for a loan, and I never got into that business and never 
had the opportunity to lose all of the money that I would have lost 
because it was not the right business for me to have been in. The 
banker was smart enough to see that. I was not.
  As someone goes to the bank to say, ``I want to finance the purchase 
of facilities at a national park in order to get into the park 
concession business,'' the banker, like my old friend, will say, ``How 
are you going to pay this back?'' Not, ``How much is it going to be 
worth on the back end?'' The banker will look at cash flow, not 
collateral, in order to make the loan unless it is a different kind of 
banker than any of those that I have dealt with.
  Well, we are told, without anything on the back end, the cash flow 
will not sustain any kind of investment. You have to have a promise 
that you can cash out at the end of the contract or you will not take 
the risk. At least no reasonable businessman will.
  I hesitated whether or not to share this example with the Members of 
the Senate. But I decided that like any concrete example from the 
concessionaires--I will talk about that in a moment--I might as well, 
because this is the best example I can find, and it strikes a little 
bit at the heart of the argument of the Senator from Wyoming because it 
has to do with a piece of property in Wyoming.
  Since I came to the Senate, I was informed by the Ethics Committee 
that I could no longer be involved in any of the businesses in which I 
have my investments except as an investor. And under the advice of the 
Ethics Committee, I have created a managed asset trust. I have turned 
all of my assets over to that trust, and the trustees are making all 
the business decisions.
  One of the investments that was offered to our trust has to do with a 
piece of property in Wyoming. I looked at it and said to my trustees, 
``You are going to make the decisions under the terms of the trust. But 
under the terms of this lease, once the lease is over, all of the 
leasehold improvements that we have put into this property will revert 
to the landowner, and, to use the language of this debate, possessory 
interests will be zero. And I do not think we can make enough money in 
order for this to work. I do not think it is going to work.''
  The trustees said, ``Well, thank you very much, Senator. Now we are 
running the trust, and we will run the numbers and tell you whether or 
not the cash flow over the life of the contract is sufficient to 
service the contract.'' They came back to me and said, ``Guess what?'' 
I said ``What?'' They said, ``We ran the numbers. We have done the 
analysis. We are going to go ahead with the purchase of the lease even 
though there is no interest at all at the end of the lease. We think we 
can make enough money on the cash flow that will not only justify the 
investment but make you some reasonable return along the way.''
  They have gone to a bank in Wyoming and presented the lease, and the 
bank said, ``We would be delighted to fund that lease because we can 
see from the cash flow how you are going to be able to pay us back.''
  So I accept the judgment of the trustees of my managed asset trust. 
They may be wrong. I may end up seeing that asset lose money, seeing 
that go down the drain, but at least the very hard-nosed trustees who 
are looking after my assets, as well as the Wyoming bank that has 
examined the lease, have said it is worth making the investment even 
though the possessory interest at the back end will be under the terms 
of the contract.
  Again, Madam President, this is an illustration of the fact that the 
bank is not interested in collateral. They are interested in cash flow, 
and as an investor so am I.
  I said I hesitated to use that example. I would have much preferred 
to have some real numbers out of the concession world to deal with in 
making this analysis.
  Indeed, as we were formulating the legislation in the committee, I 
said to the representatives and concessionaires who came to see me from 
time to time: Can you give me some numbers? You are giving me 
philosophy, you are giving me for instances, you are giving me 
hypotheticals. Can you give me some firm numbers, actual numbers out of 
the concessionaire's world in which you live? As a businessman, I am 
always interested in real numbers. They said: Yes, we can give you some 
real numbers. But somehow the real numbers never materialized.
  Finally, after the bill passed the committee, one of the 
concessionaires came in and said, ``Here are the numbers.'' They had 
some very interesting numbers about the size of their operation, in 
terms of total volume, about the number of taxes they were paying in my 
State of Utah, property taxes, sales taxes, and franchise taxes. That 
was all very interesting. But there was one number that was missing. 
They never told me about return on investment. They never told me how 
much money they were making under the present circumstance, which, if I 
were to be a bidder against them, I would want to know. If I were to be 
a bidder against them, I obviously would not want any confidential 
information out of their files. I would construct these numbers myself 
if I were to be a bidder against them. They would be closely guarded.
  I promised these people I would not disclose their return on 
investment here or anyplace else. I just wanted to know how badly they 
were going to be hurt in terms of cash flow. And they would not tell 
me.
  Again, as a businessman, I have to have that kind of data before I 
can say with certainty that the dire consequences they are predicting 
are going to come forth. Their failure to provide that kind of data, 
Madam President, leads me to believe that they are not confident that 
that data would convince me that the dire consequences predicted would 
come to pass. So, as I say, I have gone to the example out of my own 
circumstance to show that it is entirely possible to have an investment 
where the possessor goes back to zero and still does quite well.
  Let us talk about the issue raised by the Senator from Wyoming with 
respect to the best franchisee versus the cheapest franchisee. We have 
heard that argument a great deal. Once again, in the context that I 
have approached this, it is a persuasive argument. All of our 
consideration must be based on the question: What is best for the park 
visitor? Obviously, the best franchisee would be best for the park 
visitor.
  Who is the best franchisee? The best franchisee, by definition, is 
the one who knows the most about the business--the one who brings the 
greatest expertise and background to the table at the time of the 
bidding. Who will that be when these contracts come up for renewal? 
Obviously, the prejudice is that it will be the existing 
concessionaire, as the existing concessionaire will bring to the table 
years and years of experience, years and years of understanding, not 
only in the top management, but all the way down through the middle 
management and the people who meet the public directly. That kind of 
experience, in any kind of competitive bidding, will be enormously 
valuable to the existing concessionaire.
  As I have said to many of them who had said, ``We are afraid we are 
going to lose our contract to somebody else'': ``You must not have very 
much confidence in the expertise that you have built up over the years 
while you have been running this operation, if you think somebody else 
can come in and knock you out of the box with a complete start-up 
operation.''
  I have had the experience--as every businessman has--of having 
existing suppliers come to bid on a renewal of their contract. In 
almost every case, I go with the existing supplier because of that 
expertise. But I want the right to pick a new one just in case the 
existing one is falling down. That is what competition is all about. 
And it is the existence of that right, created by this bill, S. 208, 
that will sharpen the performance of the existing concessionaires and 
thereby improve the experience of the park visitor.
  Back to the reference I made earlier, an existing concessionaire with 
15 bidders against him, under the present circumstance, can turn those 
15 aside with the wave of his hand and ignore the competitive pressure 
of those bids. Under our bill, the existing concessionaire, faced with 
15 bidders, probably will still get the contract, but he will sharpen 
his performance to make sure he gets the contract against those others.
  There are a few other items that I think need to be referred to in 
the Record. The Senator from Wyoming talked about most of these being 
``mom and pop'' operations that have been in the family for 
generations, and that is true. He indicated that it would be unfair, in 
many of these circumstances, to take away that which has been the sole 
livelihood of these families over several generations; and I agree, 
which is why I prevailed upon the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Bumpers, 
to raise the cutoff point from $250,000 a year to $500,000 a year, and 
to exempt river runners and trail guides from the provisions of S. 208, 
so that those people who are not in the kinds of circumstances that we 
have been talking about with respect to huge investments, have the kind 
of protection that the present legislation gives them.
  I agree with the Senator from Wyoming entirely about the success of 
the present legislation in those areas, and I do not want to upset it. 
We are talking only about activities in excess of $500,000 a year. We 
are talking about a relatively small percentage of the concessionaires 
that will be affected by this circumstance of S. 208 regarding 
possessory interest. We are talking about those that will attract the 
highest number of bidders and competitors and produce the increased or 
the best result for the park visitor by virtue of the power of 
competition.
  So, Madam President, in spite of reluctance to disagree with my good 
friend from Wyoming, I stand here in support of S. 208, as it has been 
reported by the committee. I believe that it is the best business-
oriented approach to this particular challenge. I conclude, as I began, 
by saying to the Senate and to my friend from Wyoming that I agree with 
his analysis of the past. My only disagreement comes with his statement 
that the situation has not changed. I believe it has. I believe the 
legislation must be updated to reflect that change. I agree with him 
that we will both have to wait now and see whether his predictive 
powers are better than mine, and if it turns out he was right and I was 
wrong, I stand prepared to make whatever changes we might have to make 
and whatever apologies we might have to make. But there comes a time in 
every argument within a corporation as to the next business step to 
take, when somebody must say: All right, I have heard all of the 
arguments on both sides, and both seem to have merit, but a decision 
must be made, and we must proceed in one direction or the other. I am 
one, having heard all of those arguments, who has decided to proceed in 
the direction outlined in S. 208.
  Parenthetically, or as an aftercomment, Madam President, I indicate 
that I have great interest in the amendments that the Senator from 
Wyoming has outlined here and would like to go over them carefully. At 
first blush, I see no reason why I could not accept and support them. I 
would like to confer with the chairman of the committee and get his 
reaction to them before making any final commitment.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Feinstein). The Senator from Arkansas is 
recognized.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I think I would be remiss if I did not 
spend a minute to laud my distinguished colleague from Utah, Senator 
Bennett. He came here last year and, I think in perhaps the shortest 
period of time I have ever seen, has established his credibility with 
virtually every Member of this body. I know this is an accolade that he 
would not care to hear and would just as soon I omit in my opening 
statement, but the truth of the matter is, after 16 long years that I 
have labored on this legislation, we would not be where we are today 
without Senator Bennett.
  I would not presume to say anything in addition to what he has 
already said, but he has obviously been successful in business. He is a 
man of unquestioned integrity, and that goes to intellectual integrity 
as well as all other kinds that you can conjure up.
  But when we were debating this bill in the Energy Committee, without 
repeating it, he made one of the most eloquent statements I ever heard 
in the 19 years I have been in the Senate. We come from opposite sides 
of the aisle, but I can tell you, when people like Senator Bennett and 
I can sit down and reason together, as we did on a number of occasions, 
trying to hammer out a bill that he thought was reasonable and that I 
thought was reasonable, when we do that, the people's interests are 
best served.
  I think that while Whitewater rages across this city--not so much 
across the country, but across this city--there are a lot of 
hardworking Senators who continue to sit down and reason together and 
do the people's business.
  This was not, in my opinion, all that easy for Senator Bennett. But 
even though I put in 16 years of hard work on this bill, he deserves, 
after being here a year, equally as much credit for crafting this bill 
and its passage out of committee, on a vote of 16 to 4, as I do.
  Madam President, I will talk more about this bill in just a moment. 
But I say that another reason Senator Bennett's membership in this body 
has alleviated the frustration level somewhat for me is because it 
seems as though every single thing I get involved in either is never 
going to pass, or it takes forever to pass. I probably speak for every 
other Senator, perhaps every Senator, that has this absolutely 
unbelievable skyrocketing level of frustration. It is not a very happy 
place; let us face it. You go to the Cloakrooms; you talk to Senators 
in private; it is not a happy place because of the frustration level 
and the ``inability to get anything done.''
  I know that my friend from Wyoming and other western Senators 
sometimes think I am a Johny-one-note: If it does not hurt the West, I 
am not interested in it. I see the Senator nodding his head in 
agreement. But I remember when I went to work trying to make the 
Federal Government lease oil and gas lands belonging to the Federal 
Government on a competitive basis, and I was considered a pariah for 
having done that. That only took 8 years, Madam President; 8 years to 
change a fraudulent lottery system for awarding oil and gas leases on 
Federal lands that were worth millions. We were letting them go for $1 
an acre because that was the way we did it in 1920.
  I am going to save my mining reform speech until later, because 
everybody has heard that so many times, and that is a place where 
Senator Bennett and I will differ. But I can tell you that we honestly 
differ.
  In any event, when it takes 16 years to do something as patently 
correct as S. 208, you can see why the frustration level is maddening.
  I do not want to denigrate any Senator, because I have indulged in it 
myself, but we sometimes make the most arcane arguments in this body 
because we have--not a hidden agenda, but we have perhaps a constituent 
back home that has 100 employees and he has written saying he is going 
to have to shut the plant down; he is going to have to lay people off. 
And we come over here and we do not say an employer in my State with 
100 employees is going to have to lay half of them off. We use all 
these little arcane nuances, trying to give people who either want to 
vote no or yes against their better judgment, something to hang their 
hats on.
  I have just recently introduced a bill which allows the States to 
levy use taxes or sales taxes on merchandise coming into their State 
from mail-order houses. It is a business which is mushrooming in the 
country. We could never do anything about it because of the Supreme 
Court decision until 1992. Now the ball is in Congress' court. But you 
cannot get a vote from any Senator who has a fairly sizable mail-order 
house in his State. I will have a very, very tough time with this 
legislation.
  But I just make this point, and I am not here to debate that bill. 
People should ask themselves a simple question: What if everyone in the 
country bought merchandise from the mail-order houses? Incidentally, 
they are heading in that direction. What would the State do? Or imagine 
other State services. The sales tax is their No. 1 tax. They pay for 
it. L.L. Bean pays the sales tax in Maine because that is where they 
are located, and they have no problem in doing it. But they and others 
similarly situated will say: If you make us pay taxes to the State of 
Arkansas, we will have to lay off 500 people, or shut down; or we will 
do something else.
  In this particular case--and I am not applying this to the Senator 
from Wyoming, because I think the Senator from Wyoming genuinely 
resisted the passage of this bill because of a strong belief that the 
present system was working fine. But here is the way I look at it: When 
I go home and talk to the Chamber of Commerce, and more especially when 
I went to the people of my State when I ran for Governor and later 
Senator, do you know what I said? ``I will run the State of Arkansas 
like you run your business. We will husband the money; we will not 
squander your tax money.''
  When I came to the Senate, I felt that I had performed sufficiently 
well on that commitment as Governor of my State. I said, ``I promise 
you these things,'' and then I did them. ``When I go to the Senate, if 
you will send me there, I will do my very best to see to it that the 
U.S. Government is operated in a more businesslike way. We will stop 
unnecessary spending, if I have anything to do with it, and we will 
stop giveaway deals to protect this group or that group, and try to 
treat everybody fairly.''
  So shortly--to be precise, in March of 1979, 4 years after I came to 
the Senate--I became chairman of the Subcommittee on Public Lands, 
National Parks and Forests. And the first thing I did was to hold a 
hearing on why park concessioners in this country, people who run all 
the concessions were paying such an infinitesimally small amount for 
the privilege of operating a concession on lands belonging to the 
taxpayers of the United States.
  The first hearing was held in March 1979. And we are here almost 16 
years to the day after that, 15 years, getting ready to pass a bill.
  Madam President, in 1992 658 park concessioners--those who operate 
everything from canoes on national rivers to the operation of hotels 
and restaurants in Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park 
and Grand Canyon--took in $650 million. That was in gross revenue. From 
that $650 million, the taxpayers of America got the princely sum of $18 
million, or 2.7 percent.
  And the opponents would say, ``Yes, but you don't understand. They 
built this hotel. They built this lodge. They built this new 
restaurant.''
  And that is true. That is inarguable. They had built facilities 
inside the parks at the insistence of the National Park Service and 
they are entitled to compensation for that.
  But one of the problems with that was, those possessory interests--
that is what we call them--once they build a hotel at Yosemite or some 
other national park, when their contract expired, they could do either 
of two things: they could bid to renew their contract, in which case 
they had what is called a preferential right; and, second, if they 
chose not to bid to renew the contract, they were entitled to what was 
called sound value for that improvement they had built in that park--
like a hotel.
  For example, if the concessioner at Yosemite spent $10 million on a 
new hotel and 15 years later, when his contract expired, he chose not 
to bid again--I cannot think of an instance where that ever occurred, 
because they love these contracts; they always bid for them and they 
had a bird nest on the ground because nobody could take it away from 
them--but he was entitled to what was called sound value. So for that 
$10 million hotel that he had built 15 years before, he was entitled, 
not to its depreciated value, but essentially to its fair market value, 
and the fair market value of that possessory interest could very well 
be $15 million, or $5 million more than he paid for it, even though, 
for tax purposes, he had depreciated about half the cost.
  So when they argue possessory interest, almost without exception, 
that possessory interest is worth more when his contract expired than 
it was when he built it.
  Madam President, in 1990, the Interior Department's Inspector General 
did an audit on 29 concession contracts. Of the 29, 28 were awarded 
without any competition. Why? Because the law provided that if you had 
a contract, the only way it could be taken away from you was to refuse 
to match a competing bid.
  Witness this: Let us assume that you are bidding on a contract and 
you bid $100,000 a year. You have the contract now and it is expiring 
and it is coming up for renewal.
  Let us assume you want to pay $100,000 a year and the Park Service 
says, ``That doesn't sound quite reasonable to us.'' So they go out and 
find other bidders. And somebody comes in, after doing a lot of work, 
trying to decide for themselves what this contract is really worth. Let 
us assume an outsider comes in and says, ``I'll give you twice that, 
$200,000.'' Under existing law, do you think the Park Service gives 
that to him because he offered twice as much as the existing 
concessioner? Why, no. They go back to the original contractor and say, 
``Look. We have a bid for $200,000. Do you want to match it?'' He says, 
``Yeah, I'll match it.'' Do you know where that leaves the guy that 
made the first offer of $200,000? Out in the cold.
  TW Services, one of the biggest operators in the United States--I 
believe it may be a subsidiary or parent company of TWA--testified 
before our committee on two separate occasions and said:

       Why would I spend a half million developing a bid on a 
     contract, knowing that all the guy who has the contract now 
     has to do to keep it is to match my bid? So why would I go 
     out and spend money bidding on a contract, knowing that all 
     the guy that has it has to do is match my bid and I am out in 
     the cold?
  Madam President, you cannot go home and tell the Chamber of Commerce 
how eager you are to spend their money as though it were their own, or 
that you are going to spend their money as if it were your own, or that 
you are going to conduct business at the Federal level like a business, 
you cannot make those speeches and champion that kind of a situation.
  I told you about the inspector general auditing 29 concession 
contracts; 28 of the 29 were awarded without competition. And the Park 
Service says that competitors do not even bother to bid. And why would 
they? Out of 1,900 contracts awarded, only in 100 cases out of 1,900 
were competing bids offered.
  Madam President, I am chairman of the Small Business Committee and a 
former small businessman. That does not say a lot. I was a lawyer. I 
was a small businessman. I had a farm. I had three kids. I would do 
anything. I even owned a cemetery at one time to keep bread on the 
table and make some arrangements for my children's education.
  But the small business community came to see me and said, ``Senator, 
we just take in $100,000 a year or $300,000 a year. We have 75 canoes 
on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. And, you know, nobody is going to 
make any money out of this thing.''
  In order to accommodate what I considered to be fairly legitimate 
concerns of small business, we have exempted five-sixths of all the 
concessioners in this country. Of all 658 of them, we have exempted 
five-sixths of them from the elimination of preferential right and we 
left them with a preferential right.
  But, we also give the Secretary some discretion in determining 
whether they are entitled to a renewed contract or not. They have to 
perform and perform satisfactorily and the Park Service has to believe 
that they have been performing very well before they are entitled to 
the so-called preferential right of renewal.
  Madam President, my notes here take me through some of the 
fundamentals of the provisions of S. 208.
  For example, S. 208 establishes a competitive selection process for 
the awarding of contracts, directs the Secretary of Interior to prepare 
a prospectus identifying the minimum contract requirements and to 
select the best proposal.
  In determining what the best proposal is, he still does not have 
carte blanche. He has to decide that the proposal is responsive to the 
minimum requirements, that the proposal protects and preserves park 
resources and provides necessary and appropriate facilities and 
services at reasonable rates. That is the first thing he has to 
do. Then he has to determine that this person is experienced, has a 
background for it. And, finally, he must consider the franchise fee 
offer--although the bill makes crystal clear that the consideration of 
how much money you are going to get out of the contract is subordinate 
to the objectives of preserving the park and the park's esthetics and 
the park values.

  Really, about the only place the Senator from Utah and I had to sit 
down and really work this thing out was on how long should a contract 
be. My bill provided you could get a 10-year contract, and at the 
discretion of the Secretary it could be extended for 5 years. Senator 
Bennett said--and I really had no objection to this--the Secretary 
should have the right to extend it to 20 years. The Secretary, 
depending on all the considerations that he would use, may extend it 
for 5 years or he may extend it for 10 years. But to give him that 
authority, where somebody has a major investment and is doing very well 
and the Government is doing well too, I had no real quarrel with that.
  In addition to all this, the Secretary is required to grant a 
preferential right of renewal to any concessioner with a contract, 
where the Secretary estimates that the annual gross revenue will be 
less than $500,000. The Secretary would have to find the concessioner 
was operating satisfactorily during the previous contract and that the 
proposal for the new contract satisfied the minimum requirements 
established by the Secretary.
  I think that pretty well sums up what we have done. I take a great 
deal of pride in the fact we are finally standing here, after 16 years, 
doing something important. You will not read about it in the Times or 
the Post. You will not read about it in very many publications. 
Unhappily, that is one of the problems in this country, people have a 
difficult time determining what is chaff and what is wheat. But I can 
tell you, this is a very important bill. It is not single-handedly 
going to restore people's confidence in Congress, but for the people 
who watched this bill all these years, they are going to applaud. They 
are going to say those guys are finally getting their act together. I 
again want to applaud my distinguished friend from Utah.
  I say to my good friend from Wyoming, he offered some amendments in 
the committee. He has a couple here I think are acceptable. He has been 
very helpful in trying to work out getting to the time when we could 
get on the floor with this bill, and I want to thank him very sincerely 
for his cooperation also.
  When I became chairman of the Public Lands Subcommittee in 1979, the 
very first oversight hearing I held was on concessions reform.
  Since that time, numerous congressional oversight hearings have been 
conducted, including hearings last Congress and this Congress. In 
addition, this issue has been the subject of numerous studies, reports 
and analyses prepared by the Congress, the General Accounting Office, 
the Department of the Interior inspector general, the National Park 
Service, and a variety of private research organizations. All of these 
studies have identified problems with the current Concessions Policy 
Act which need to be addressed.
  Even more troubling than the low franchise fees are provisions in the 
existing law which effectively eliminate any competition for 
concessions contracts in National Parks. For example, one provision of 
the existing law grants existing concessions a preferential right to 
renew their contracts. Because an incumbent concessioner can simply 
match any higher bid, there is little incentive for a potential 
competitor to spend time and the money required to submit a serious 
bid.
  According to the National Park Service, since the passage of the 
Concessions Policy Act in 1965, only seven of the approximately 1,900 
contrasts entered into have been awarded to a competitor where the 
incumbent concessioner bid to retain the contract, and none of the 
seven cases involved a contract in excess of $1 million annual gross 
revenues.
  A 1990 audit report prepared by the Department of the Interior's 
inspector general audited 29 concessions contracts; of those, 28 were 
awarded without competing offers. The Park Service indicates that 
competitors have submitted offers in only about 100 of the 1,900 
contracts awarded.
  This year, following the subcommittee hearing, my colleague from 
Utah, Senator Bennett, and I worked out what I believe is a very good 
compromise agreement. That agreement, which is reflected in this bill, 
eliminates provisions in the existing law which have proven to be so 
anticompetitive, while ensuring that the Park Service will select the 
best concessioner, and recognizing the different needs of outfitters 
and other smaller operators. The bill allows five-sixths of the 
concessioners to keep a preferential right of renewal, yet ensures that 
the large contracts, which account for 93 percent of all concessions 
revenues, are opened to competition.
  Over the years, the issue of concessions reform has been extremely 
controversial. Yet last month, the Energy Committee reported S. 208 by 
a vote of 16 to 4. Much of the credit for this margin goes to Senator 
Bennett, the coauthor of the substitute amendment.
  I am also pleased that the administration strongly supports enactment 
of this bill. Last year, the Department of the Interior adopted new 
regulations and standard contract language that contain many of the 
elements included in S. 208.
  I believe that members of the Senate will agree that this legislation 
is a balanced, bipartisan measure that will ensure that both the 
American public and our National Parks benefit from this increased 
competition.
  Madam President, I would like to briefly summarize the major 
provisions of S. 208, as reported by the Energy Committee.


                repeal of concessions policy act of 1965

  As reported, S. 208 repeals the 1965 Concessions Policy Act while 
providing that the validity of contracts entered into under the 1965 
act will not be affected.


                     competitive selection process

  S. 208 establishes a competitive selection process for the awarding 
of concessions contracts and directs the Secretary of the Interior to 
prepare a prospectus identifying the minimum contract requirements, and 
to select the best proposal. In determining the best proposal, the 
principal factors to be considered include the responsiveness of the 
proposal to protecting and preserving park resources and providing 
necessary and appropriate facilities and services at reasonable rates.
  In addition, the Secretary would be required to grant a preferential 
right of renewal to any concessioner with a contract that the Secretary 
estimates will have annual gross revenues of no more than $500,000, 
regardless of whether the concessioner had a possessory interest or 
not. In both cases, the Secretary would be required to find that the 
concessioner had operated satisfactorily during the previous contract 
term and that the concessioner's proposal for the new contract 
satisfied the minimum requirements established by the Secretary, before 
granting a preferential right of renewal.
  In addition, the bill includes language directing the Secretary, in 
selecting the best proposal, to take into consideration the experience, 
expertise, and related background of the applicant in providing the 
same or similar services as required by the prospectus.


           preferential right to provide additional services

  S. 208 prohibits the granting of a preferential right to a 
concessioner to provide new or additional services at a park.


                          possessory interest

  S. 208 states that any concessioner who currently has a possessory 
interest will retain that interest, as defined under the 1965 act--
either as provided in the concessions contract or sound value--for the 
duration of the current contract.
  A concessioner who is covered by the 1965 act, and who does not renew 
the contract, would be entitled to receive the value of the possessory 
interest, in most cases sound value as defined in the 1965 act.
  A concessioner who is covered by the 1965 act and renews the contract 
under this act, would be required, as a condition of entering into the 
new contract, to begin reducing the value of the possessory interest--
as of the termination of the previous contract--using straight line 
depreciation over the useful life of the asset. Such depreciation 
period may not exceed the depreciation period used for Federal income 
tax purposes for such asset--which is currently 39 years.
  A concessioner who enters into a contract under this act and builds a 
structure would have an interest in such structure equal to the actual 
original cost of construction, with the value to be depreciated over 
the useful life of the structure, not to exceed the depreciation period 
used for Federal income tax purposes for such asset.
  A concessioner who is not awarded the subsequent contract would be 
entitled to receive from the United States or a successor concessioner 
the depreciated, or book value, of the structure.


                  franchise fees for similar services

  If multiple contracts are to be awarded to provide the same or 
similar outfitting, guide, river running, or other similar service at 
the same approximate resource or location within a park, the bill 
requires the Secretary to establish an identical franchise fee for all 
such contracts, based on fair market value, as determined by the 
Secretary.


                         use of franchise fees

  S. 208 provides that franchise fees are to be used for resource 
management and protection, maintenance activities, interpretation, and 
research. Fifty percent of the fees are to be allocated among the parks 
on the basis of need, as determined by the Secretary, and 50 percent 
are to be made available to parks in the same proportion as the 
percentage of total franchise fees collected by the park.


                         park improvement fund

  The Secretary would be directed, where practicable, to require a 
concessioner to establish a park improvement fund in lieu of receiving 
all or a portion of the franchise fees. The fund would be used to 
finance activities and projects within the park consistent with the 
park's general management plan, and other applicable plans.


                         congressional findings

  As introduced, S. 208 contained congressional findings which stated 
that facilities should be provided within a park only when the private 
sector or other public agencies could not adequately provide such 
facilities within the vicinity of the park. The committee reported bill 
deletes this provision, restates provisions from the 1965 act, and adds 
language making clear that concessions facilities should be provided by 
the private sector, if possible.


                        duties of the Secretary

  S. 208 requires the Secretary to set forth in any prospectus the 
facilities or services to be provided by the Secretary for the 
concessioner. In addition, the Secretary is directed to promulgate 
regulations to establish a method or procedure for the resolution of 
disputes between the Secretary and a concessioner in those instances 
where the Secretary has been unable to meet the conditions or 
requirements, or is unable to provide the services contained in the 
prospectus.


                       congressional notification

  S. 208 provides for congressional review of any concessions contract 
with anticipated gross receipts of excess of $5 million or a duration 
of 10 years or more, indexed to 1993 constant dollars.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, certainly I will send the two amendments 
to the desk of which I spoke and about which the Senator from Arkansas 
spoke. I think it is important for the purposes of concluding the 
debate to respond to a couple of things I have heard.
  The Senator from Utah says, quite correctly: The situation has 
changed, the national parks are enormously popular--and indeed they 
are. One of the reasons they are enormously popular is because of the 
visitor facilities that have been provided under the Concessions Act.
  The type of concession, of which the Senator spoke, is generally 
speaking the largest hotels, the largest kinds of operations, which 
have the ability to absorb some of the increased visitorship. The 
average concession is not such a thing. They work, indeed, under the 
control of and direction of the park superintendent and the National 
Park Service. So they cannot, if visitorship quadruples, they cannot 
put an extra 40 boats on the river if they are now running 10. They are 
limited in the responses they can have.
  I have to say I am going to go to Utah and do my banking where I can 
find bankers who do not insist on collateral. Every time I go to the 
bank for a loan, notwithstanding the business plan, they tie up my 
ranch, they tie up my house, they tie up my family cars, they tie up 
anything they can get their hands on. And I have been in the habit of 
being successful in the businesses--not always, but generally--in the 
businesses I have undertaken.
  Again, we have the ability in Congress to think of everything in the 
abstract, as though all of these little concessionaires are lined up 
and up here is a National Park Service and the National Park Service 
somehow or another is getting ripped off by all these people. We have 
to do something. All these people are little pigs at the bosom of the 
great Federal sow, in line sucking away at money that is made by the 
Federal Government for them.
  That simply is not the case. It is not like doing business outside 
the National Park Service. You have to do what they tell you to do. 
Indeed, one of the things the Senator from Arkansas was talking about 
is these concessionaires have to perform and perform satisfactorily in 
current law. A concessionaire can be driven out of his concession by 
malfeasance or lack of performance. It happens, and it happens rather 
regularly. But what is missing here is the idea somehow what it is like 
to do business in a park.
  My concessionaires in Yellowstone--not just TW Services, but the 
others--all had to shut down for the entire summer of 1988. It does not 
matter if there are four times as many visitors going to the rest of 
the national parks, that park was shut down by the fires. Business 
plans go awry, and that is OK if you have an interest that can continue 
on. But that is not so OK if you have a 10-year contract and 1 year is 
taken out of it. All the plans of which the Senator from Utah spoke 
about--cash flow and other things about how you are going to pay for 
it--get ripped. They get ripped right away. And that is part of it. 
Because in fact in the National Park Service you are not allowed to 
defend your properties the way you can if you are in Canyon Ranch, Big 
Horn, WY, or Salt Lake City. You can do things fighting fires that you 
are not allowed to do in the parks. It is a different way of doing 
business. It is not all these little piglets at the breast of the great 
Federal sow.
  I have another example: Callville Bay, Lake Mead. An enormous storm 
blew it away with 3 years to go on their current contract, and the only 
reason they were able to raise money from the bankers was because they 
had a possessory interest; they had a preferential right of renewal; 
and a long-term contract. They got money and they rebuilt the marina. 
But it would not be there today had those things not been existence. 
They could not have gotten the money to refinance that from any bank, I 
do not care whether they wanted collateral or not.
  The only complaint about this is coming from Congress. It is not 
coming from the users of the system. The users of America's parks like 
the concessions that exist there. I will say to my friend from Utah, 
people without expertise will still more often than not be the lowest 
bidder. No matter how many skills the local concessionaire brings to 
the table, that according to the terms of this bill is not something 
that the Secretary is going to take into account. Indeed, if he does he 
will be criticized by--guess who? The people sitting in this room, at 
an oversight hearing. I understand that so-and-so bid X for this 
contract and yet you awarded it to Y. ``Oh, my goodness, Mr. Secretary, 
Mr. Director of the National Park Service, why would you possibly have 
done that to the taxpayer?''

  Well, just think about a few of the things. Supposing you are in 
Indiana Dunes. That is one of the parks I have not been in, so I speak 
of it in the total abstract. Supposing you have a spa up there of some 
kind where people go to enjoy, can exercise, have massages, go out to 
the dunes and look at the lake, come back and do all those other kinds 
of things. Supposing your contract is coming up for renewal, and 
supposing there is a corporation in America called ``Spas R Us.'' Does 
anybody doubt that Spas R Us can, for the life of a given 10-year 
contract, outbid a single small businessman and operate that at a loss 
merely to get in the door, and then, thereafter, be able to keep at 
bay, merely because of size, all other competitors, not because of 
preferential rights of renewal or possessory interest?
  I do not know. I can see where this bill is going. I think the vote 
in the committee was there. It does not necessarily mean that it was 
the right vote, and it does not necessarily mean that it was the wise 
thing to do, but it does mean that we have generally conceded to the 
desire to do something.
  We, as a Congress, do not like people making money off Federal 
facilities. It is as simple as that. The Senator from Arkansas spoke 
about how long it has taken to get rid of the bidding process that used 
to exist for the right to drill for oil and gas. We were giving that 
stuff away for a buck an acre, says he. And it is true. What was not 
spoken is that several thousand people were bidding for the chance to 
get it at a buck an acre in the lottery. So we got more per acre then 
than we do now.
  The State of Wyoming had lack of wisdom to follow the Federal 
Government on that, and we are making considerable less on our oil and 
gas leases than we did when we had the lottery. But we get more per 
acre and the statistic looks better, and somebody did not get rich as 
quickly as they might have had they been able to get this little 
concession for a buck an acre.
  I believe, Madam President, with all my heart that is what we are 
doing here. I know it sounds better. I know it sounds especially good 
to say that we are going to have competition where none now exists. I 
know it sounds very good that this will bring us expert 
concessionaires. I do not for a minute believe that we are going to get 
as much money as we do now. I do not for a minute believe that we are 
going to have the best concessionaires merely because we have the 
cheapest. But that is going to be the direction in which the Congress 
seeks to go.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, no program of true Federal-private 
partnership has been more successful than the National Park Service 
Concession Program. Needed visitor facilities and services have been 
placed in national parks at a minimum of cost to the taxpayer. The 
private sector has willingly borne the burden of development.
  Over the years, the Concession Program has addressed the needs of 
park operations, complete building improvement programs, and has 
consistently contributed to infrastructure improvements that were 
required to ensure that the needs of the park visitor were met.
  S. 208 will change all this.
  Let me present two examples of the potential impact of changing the 
Concessions Program.
  The concession operator of a small marina at Lake Mead had only 2 
years left on his contract when a storm destroyed the marina. Because 
his concession contract had possessory interest, right of renewal, and 
a long term, he was able to obtain financing to rebuild the marina. 
According to his banker, the bank would never have lent the money for a 
complete replacement if there had not been a more than reasonable 
expectation that the concessioner would be able to obtain the next 25-
year contract and retain his possessory interest. Under S. 208, the 
marina would be no more than a patchwork of boards and pontoons.
  A second example is the experience of the operation of the two grand 
hotels in Yosemite National Park, the Ahwahnee Hotel and the Wawona 
Hotel. The concessioner operating the Ahwahnee has possessory interest 
and the hotel is in great shape. The Grand Old Historic Wawona Hotel, 
on the other hand, has been in decay and disrepair for years. The 
difference is because the Wawona contract does not have the same 
possessory interest provision in the contract. The Government cannot 
even pay for repairs and the minimum upkeep. The Federal Government 
simply cannot run a service business as well as the private sector.
  I could list many more successful concession operations. In fact, the 
effort to reform the Concession Program is overlooking one very 
important element. Overall, the concessions in our national parks are 
doing a good job of serving the visiting public. I do not hear 
complaints from park visitors. Visitors are offered a variety of 
concession services at a fair price. So why is there a move to reform 
the Concessions Program?
  We do not need to pass wholesale changes to the program. 
Concessioners are accused of making vast sums of money from monopolies 
within the national parks. This administration wants more returned to 
the Treasury. Let me assure my colleagues that this is not necessarily 
the case. Successfully operating a concession in a park can be a very 
difficult business. In Alaska, the tourist season is only 3 months 
long. There is no time for mistakes. The Park Service very carefully 
regulates all prices. It usually takes several years for a new 
concessioner to make any profit at all.
  Having said this, I believe there is room for a reasonable increase 
in concession fees. However, fees should not be so high as to drive the 
concessioner out of business. And I would remind my colleagues that the 
Secretary has the ability to negotiate higher concession fees under 
current law.
  I have serious concerns about S. 208. I am convinced that if S. 208 
passes as reported out of committee, the overall value each and every 
contract will be decreased. Many operators will simply opt to be bought 
out by the Federal Government. Where will the money come from? 
Financing will be impossible to obtain. Why would a bank lend money 
with shorter contract length, devalued possessory interest, and no 
preferential right of renewal?
  Where does it leave the visitor?
  Fewer services, offered at lower standards, and at a higher cost. 
This may well be the goal of some who would like to see our national 
parks placed off limits; effectively closed to the majority of those 
who would like to visit a national park. Fewer people will be able to 
enjoy our parks. The elite will truly have the parks as their private 
playground. In Alaska, this will be a disaster. Our parks are remote 
and underdeveloped. This bill will make it even harder to provide much 
needed visitor services.
  Concessions are important to the experience the visitors have in the 
national parks in my State. S. 208 threatens to destroy an effective 
and efficient program that has faithfully served millions of park 
visitors. I will not support a bill that replaces private sector 
investment and efficiency with Government bureaucracy.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose S. 208.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I rise in support of the pending 
legislation to inject competition into the awarding of concessions 
contracts in our national parks.
  This reform is good both for taxpayers and for the parks. It would 
replace a protective Government subsidy with the guiding forces of the 
marketplace.
  Let me make clear that, in my view, this legislation is not an attack 
on those concessioners now operating in our parks. Rather, it is an 
effort to eliminate a wasteful Government subsidy. Businesses in our 
parks play by the Federal Government's rules. Our job today is to 
ensure that those rules are fair to everyone involved--including the 
taxpayers.
  Business profits should be controlled by market forces, not by 
market-skewing Government regulations. Under current law, concessioners 
in our parks are shielded from certain market forces and enjoy certain 
preferential rights. The result is that they pay the Federal 
Government--their landlord--less in fees than the market dictates for 
franchises in our parks. In essence, they are subsidized by the 
taxpayers. The numbers tell the story.
  In 1992, concessioners grossed $650 million and paid about 2.6 
percent of that--$17.2 million--in fees. The automatic granting of a 
preferential right to incumbent concessioners to renew their contracts 
has virtually eliminated competition among eligible businesses for 
concessions contracts. Companies that would like to bid for a franchise 
in the parks frequently decline to do so because the deck is stacked 
against them.
  As a result of the market-driven competition that this legislation 
will create, it is estimated that concessioners will return to the 
Government about 10 percent of their revenues in fees, or about $65 
million. Let me emphasize that point--if this measure becomes law, the 
resulting competition is expected to increase annual payments to the 
Treasury from $17.2 million to $65 million, which is the level the free 
market would dictate. These added funds will be used to maintain our 
parks, reducing the need for tax dollars from general revenues.
  This is precisely the sort of good-government reform we should 
encourage by eliminating an unnecessary and wasteful subsidy. I applaud 
those Senators of both parties who worked hard to fashion the 
reasonable compromise that today is before the Senate. I was 
particularly pleased with the provisions designed to assist small 
vendors, and I urge my colleagues to support this reform.


                           Amendment No. 1552

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask 
that it be stated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Wallop] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1552.

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam 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:

       On page 32, on lines 14 through 21, strike paragraph 3 in 
     its entirety and insert in lieu thereof the following:
       ``(3)(A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), with 
     respect to a concessions contract entered into on or after 
     the date of enactment of this Act, the provisions of 
     subsection (b) shall apply to any existing structure, 
     fixture, or improvement as defined in paragraph (a)(1), 
     except that the value of the possessory interest as of the 
     termination date of the first contract expiring after the 
     date of enactment of this Act shall be used as the basis for 
     depreciation, in lieu of the actual original cost of such 
     structure, fixture, or improvement.
       ``(B) If the Secretary determines during the competitive 
     selection process that all proposals submitted either fail to 
     meet the minimum requirements or are rejected (as provided in 
     section 6), the Secretary may, solely with respect to a 
     structure, fixture, or improvement covered under this 
     paragraph, suspend the depreciation provisions of subsection 
     (b)(1) for the duration of the contract: Provided, That the 
     Secretary may suspend such depreciation provisions only if 
     the Secretary determines that the establishment of other new 
     minimum contract requirements is not likely to result in the 
     submission of satisfactory proposals, and that the suspension 
     of the depreciation provisions is likely to result in the 
     submission of satisfactory proposals.

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, the intent of this amendment is to allow 
the Secretary some discretion to allow a concessionaire the right to 
retain his possessory interest and only to the extent that the 
continuation of that interest advances the policy objectives of this 
act. By adopting it, we can possibly avoid the cost of which I have 
been here warning.
  It is not meant in any way to be devious, but to give us one small 
look backward should it be that this does not work.
  I have shown it to the distinguished chairman and the Senator from 
Utah and the Senator from Arkansas. It is my belief that it is 
acceptable.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, the amendment is acceptable. It has 
been worked out with the Senator from Utah and the Senator from 
Arkansas. We do not think the amendment will be necessary, because we 
believe that there will be bidders out there for these contracts, and 
the situation where a possessory interest goes without a bid will not 
occur.
  Nevertheless, Madam President, this is a sound amendment in that it 
gives insurance that, if the proponents are not right, then this 
amendment will offer protection to avoid such a situation.
  So we are glad to accept the amendment, and I congratulate the 
Senator from Wyoming for having worked this out.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? 
There being none, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 1552) was agreed to.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the 
amendment was agreed to.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 1553

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I send another amendment to the desk and 
ask that it be stated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Wallop] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1553.

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam 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 new section:
       Sec.   . Beginning on June 1, 1997 and bi-annually 
     thereafter the Inspector General of the Department of the 
     Interior shall submit a report to the Committee on Energy and 
     Natural Resources of the United States Senate and the 
     appropriate Committees of the House of Representatives on the 
     implementation of this Act and the effect of such 
     implementation on facilities operated pursuant to concession 
     contracts and on visitor services. Each report shall
       (a) identify any concession contracts which have been 
     renewed, renegotiated, terminated, or transferred during the 
     year prior to the submission of the report and identify any 
     significant changes in the terms of the new contract;
       (b) state the amount of franchise fees the rates which 
     would be charged for services, and the level other of 
     services required to be provided by the concessioner in 
     comparison to that required in the previous contract;
       (c) assess the degree to which concession facilities are 
     being maintained using the condition of such facilities on 
     the date of enactment of this Act as a baseline;
       (d) determine whether competition has been increased or 
     decreased with respect to the awarding of each contract;
       (e) set forth the amount of revenues received and financial 
     obligations incurred or reduced by the Federal Government as 
     a result of the comparison of the Act for the reporting 
     period and in comparison with previous reporting periods and 
     the baseline year of 1993, including the costs, if any, 
     associated with the acquisition of possessory interests.

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, this amendment will require the 
inspector general of the Department of the Interior to report to the 
appropriate committees on the implementation of this act and the effect 
of such implementation on facilities operated pursuant to concession 
contracts and on visitor services.
  This is a biannual report, and it will allow us some oversight 
capability to chart the progress of the concession program to ensure 
that the objectives of this legislation are being met.
  I think it is important. It is clear, I hope, to people that I 
passionately do not believe that this bill will accomplish what its 
proponents suggest it will. They believe, as passionately, that it 
will, and that is what we gather on the floor of the Senate for. It is 
theoretically an arena and not a stage. But this will give us the 
ability to look back and see.
  Too often what the Senate does, what the Congress does is toss off a 
proposal that seems to have public popularity, and then we never look 
back until way down the road and it is too late.
  We have seen what happens when concessions fail, and we have seen 
that it is not possible to get that kind of money out of this Congress, 
and it is going to be worse in the future than it has ever been in the 
past.
  This will do nothing more than give us a report that could give us a 
possible headline that there are rough roads ahead. We may be able to 
see that road and may be able to react. I will not be here, but I hope 
that those who see these reports will read them carefully. If I am 
wrong, they will have the privilege of asking that they do not need to 
be made anymore. If I am right, maybe, Madam President, they will be 
willing to take some action and say that the Park System is more 
important than the reputation of the people who passed the legislation.
  I also will say that it is my understanding that this amendment has 
been accepted by the proponents of the legislation.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I agree completely with the 
description of the amendment by the Senator from Wyoming and commend 
him on not only the amendment but the spirit with which it is offered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? If 
not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 1553) was agreed to.
  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote by which 
the amendment was agreed to.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I have spoken my piece. I have the 
belief, as I have stated, that the legislation is ill-founded and 
unwise. It has passed the committee. It will most certainly probably 
pass the Senate. But my opinion on it is now recorded.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I have nothing further except to, 
again, commend the Senator from Arkansas for his long and finally 
successful quest to reform something that I think not only needed 
reforming but has been, in this bill, reformed in a very constructive 
way.
  I want to echo the words of the Senator from Arkansas and 
congratulate the Senator from Utah, who, in a 1-year period of time, 
has come with a businessman's touch and has helped us reform something 
that has defied reformation for, I think, something like 17 years. I 
hope he is equally successful in helping us resolve some of the other 
difficult issues before our committee. We welcome his constructive hand 
in mining law reform, grazing, and some of our other difficult issues.
  So I wish to thank him and commend him and congratulate him for 
excellent work. Both he and the Senator from Arkansas have really done 
very well.
  I must say, Madam President, that the Senator from Wyoming, although 
he will not be voting for the bill, has been a guiding force in molding 
the bill. To be sure, not all of his amendments were accepted, not all 
of his suggestions were accepted, but the shape of the bill now 
reflects the direction in which he helped move this bill and move the 
committee. So I congratulate him for helping make this bill a better 
one.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further discussion on the committee 
substitute?
  Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank the chairman and the Senator from Arkansas for 
their kind words. I am very appreciative of the spirit behind them. I 
hope it does not hurt me too much in Utah to have some of these people 
saying nice things about me on the floor of the Senate, given the kinds 
of clashes that we have had in the past. But I am grateful for the 
spirit of cooperation that is behind these expressions and want 
Senators to know how grateful I am.
  I say to the chairman, I would be happy to work on mining reform and, 
indeed, will be involved in that as well as grazing. I think it is safe 
to predict that I will be more closely allied with the Senator from 
Wyoming on both of those issues than I have been on this one. But to 
the degree any expertise I might bring will be listened to, I certainly 
will be involved.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the committee 
substitute, as amended?
  There being no further debate, all those----
  Mr. WALLOP addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, it is my understanding the Senator from 
Arizona, [Mr. McCain], has some amendments, of which I have no 
knowledge. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, if the Senator will withhold, as I 
understand it, aside from those amendments, is there a unanimous 
consent agreement covering this bill?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a unanimous-consent agreement 
covering the bill.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Reserving of the Cohen amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a requirement that all amendments be 
relevant to either the subject matter of the bill or the committee 
substitute.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. And when those amendments are offered, when will the 
bill be ripe for passage?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. No votes occur in relation to the bill prior 
to Tuesday.
  When no Senator wishes to offer further amendments or debate, the 
bill will be put to a vote.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. And so we could pass the bill today without a rollcall 
vote once all the amendments are considered?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I will suggest the absence of a quorum 
in a moment, but we invite Senators who have amendments to please 
contact us, and we will consider those at some time this afternoon. I 
hope we would be able to pass the bill without a rollcall vote later 
today. So we invite those Senators to please contact us, and we will 
consider their amendments.
  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I will insist on a rollcall on the bill, 
I say to my friend. But more to the case, I think those Senators who 
have amendments owe it to the managers of the bill to show up shortly 
if they wish to have the opportunity to amend. I am perfectly willing 
to go to third reading on it. There is no reason for us to sit here and 
wait for people who have not the courtesy to come down when the floor 
is open and nothing else to do.
  So I say to my friend that I will cooperate with him in moving the 
bill to third reading and putting the vote to tomorrow as it was 
suggested by the majority leader.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The absence of a quorum has been suggested. 
The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Dorgan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1554

  (Purpose: To improve concessions policy affecting the National Park 
                                Service)

  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, on behalf of the Senator from Arizona [Mr. 
McCain], I send an amendment to the desk and ask that it be stated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Wallop] for Mr. McCain 
     proposes an amendment numbered 1554.

  Mr. WALLOP. 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:
       On page 34, lines 24 and 25, between ``Federal State and 
     Local regulatory agencies'', and ``If the Secretary's 
     performance'', insert the following, ``, and shall seek and 
     consider the applicable views of park visitors and concession 
     customers.''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, this has been cleared with both managers. 
It is a relatively simple requirement that the Secretary use the 
visitor reports in assessing the quality of the concession.
  Mr. BUMPERS. We have no objection to the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment?
  If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 1554) was agreed to.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 1555

   (Purpose: To improve the concessions policy of the National Park 
                                Service)

  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I send another amendment to the desk and 
ask that it be stated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Wallop] for Mr. McCain 
     proposes an amendment numbered 1555.

  Mr. WALLOP. 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:
       On page 21, line 25, after ``to the public at a park'', 
     insert the following, ``except that the Secretary shall take 
     all reasonable and appropriate steps to consider competing 
     alternatives for such contract.''.

  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, this has also been cleared with managers 
on both sides, and it is a helpful and relatively simple amendment.
  Mr. BUMPERS. We have no objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment?
  If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 1555) was agreed to.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, but for an amendment that we understand is 
coming from the Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen], and the possibility of 
a budget point of order, that wraps up the known amendments to this 
bill.
  I would, therefore, ask unanimous consent that they be the only 
amendments in order, those by the Senator from Maine and the budget 
point of order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WALLOP. I would also ask that the staffs of those Senators to ask 
those Senators to come down here as a matter of courtesy and as a 
matter of convenience of the Senate. There is no reason for them to be 
carrying on.
  And at some moment in time--I have talked with the committee chairman 
and the subcommittee chairman--we will move to third reading, 
notwithstanding that those amendments have not been offered. There is a 
limit to the patience that can be expected of the managers.
  Mr. BUMPERS. 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. WALLOP. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


              Order to Vitiate Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
unanimous-consent agreement entered into with regard to the amendment 
of the Senator from Maine and the budget point of order be vitiated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, let me try to restate the agreement, with 
the Senator from Arkansas paying heed. It is that should the budget 
point of order to be offered by the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Brown] 
be sustained, necessarily a perfecting amendment to get rid of the 
budget point of order would be required, and, therefore, it should be 
included as part of the unanimous-consent agreement.
  So, therefore, I ask unanimous consent that among the items to be in 
order is a budget point of order to be raised by the Senator from 
Colorado and a subsequent amendment to correct the deficiency should 
that point of order be sustained.
  Mr. BUMPERS. And if I may add to the Senator's request, that a motion 
to waive the point of order would also be in order.
  Mr. WALLOP. Would also be in order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair will request of the Senator from 
Wyoming whether he is including in his unanimous-consent request 
second-degree amendments which are relevant.
  Mr. WALLOP. In the instance of the budget point of order and 
perfecting amendment, second-degree amendments germane and directly 
related would be, and that the amendment from the Senator from Maine 
[Mr. Cohen] be the only other amendment in order and that that would be 
required to abide by the requirements of the consent order under which 
we are operating now, in other words, that it be relevant and germane.
  There are two amendments, and that they be able to sustain second-
degree amendments that are relevant and germane but that each of those 
be subject to the requirement established by this majority leader under 
the unanimous-consent agreement that those amendments be relevant and 
germane to the issue at hand.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the Senator's unanimous-
consent request?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WALLOP. 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. FORD. 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. FORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in 
morning business for 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. FORD. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Ford pertaining to the introduction of S. 1953 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1556

   (Purpose: To provide for review of concessions operations by the 
               Comptroller General of the United States)

  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, on behalf of the Senator from Maine [Mr. 
Cohen], I send an amendment to the desk regarding recordkeeping 
requirements and ask that it be stated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Wallop], for Mr. Cohen, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 1556.

  Mr. WALLOP. 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:

       On page 35, line 21, through page 36, line 5, strike 
     section 14 in its entirety and insert in lieu thereof the 
     following:

     SEC. 14. RECORDKEEPING REQUIREMENTS.

       (a) In General.--Each concessioner shall keep such records 
     as the Secretary may prescribe to enable the Secretary to 
     determine that all terms of the concessioner's contract have 
     been, and are being faithfully performed, and the Secretary 
     or any of the Secretary's duly authorized representatives 
     shall, for the purpose of audit and examination, have access 
     to such records and to other books, documents and papers of 
     the concessioner pertinent to the contract and all the terms 
     and conditions thereof as the Secretary deems necessary.
       (b) General Accounting Office Review.--The Comptroller 
     General of the United States or any of his or her duly 
     authorized representatives shall, until the expiration of 
     five calendar years after the close of the business year for 
     each concessioner, have access to and the right to examine 
     any pertinent books, documents, papers, and records of the 
     concessioner related to the contracts or contracts involved.

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, at a time when the public's confidence in 
the Government's ability to manage its financial affairs on behalf of 
the taxpayer is dismally low, Congress continues to fuel the public's 
cynicism by failing to make even the most simple common sense reforms 
that would enable the Government to act in a more business-like manner. 
Moreover, taxpayers have said they are willing to make sacrifices as 
long as the Government lives up to its end of the bargain and sends the 
message that Washington is serious about changing the way it does 
business.
  Taxpayers have a reasonable expectation that, before we ask them to 
send another nickel to Washington, the Government demonstrate its 
ability to maximize revenue from Federal assets like public lands. 
Today, the public correctly observes that the Government too often 
fails to operate in a business-like manner.
  As proof that the Federal Government is failing to operate 
efficiently, one only needs to examine how the Federal Government 
manages concessionaires operating on Federal land. From the parking 
deck at Arlington National Cemetery, to the elaborate Ahwahnee Hotel at 
Yosemite National Park, to the picturesque Scottsdale Tournament 
Players Club Golf Course in Arizona, the Government collects absurdly 
low rents and franchise fees from the operators of these facilities--
who in turn have the exclusive right to promote goods and services on 
Federal property.
  In some cases, the Government collects nothing. For example, at the 
Scottsdale golf course, the Federal Government leased property to the 
city of Scottsdale for 75 years. The city in turn subleased the land to 
a developer who built the golf course and an equestrain center. These 
facilities generated some $24 million in revenue over a 3-year period 
out of which the city of Scottsdale received 6.25 percent of the gross 
receipts or about $1.5 million. But for the next three quarters of a 
century, Uncle Sam will not see a dime.
  There are literally hundreds of examples where concessionaires, 
thanks to the Government's poor management practices, are not paying 
fair market value for the use of Federal land and facilities, resulting 
in the Government's failure to collect $200 million in annual revenue. 
Although the legislation we are considering today, S. 208, the National 
Parks Concession Policy Reform Act, does not address the management of 
all Federal concessions, it is a good first step on the road to 
reforming Federal concession policy.
  There is a clear need to reform the concession policy at our national 
parks. Current law almost always results in deals which are exceedingly 
good for the concessionaire operators, but are exceedingly bad for the 
taxpayer. These concessionaires should be made to compete for the 
exclusive right to offer goods and services to park visitors.
  Specifically, competition should be based on: which goods and 
services the concessionaire is willing to provide; the prices charged 
for the goods and services offered; the concessionaire's ability 
and track record; and what the concessionaire is willing to pay the 
Government for what is, in effect, a monopoly over a ready-made 
customer base. By competing on this basis, I believe that the visitors 
to our national parks will benefit, service will improve, and the 
taxpayers will realize a better return on their investment in our 
National Parks.

  While visitors to National Parks are paying high prices to 
concessionaires for their hotdogs, sodas, and parking, the Federal 
Government often gets little or nothing. For example, visitors to 
Alaska's Denali National Park spent on average about $17 per person on 
concessions--$16.72. At the same time the Government collected less 
than 14 cents from that $17 sale for the concessionaire's use of 
Federal buildings and the exclusive right to peddle its goods and 
services to the 504,000 people who visit Denali every year.
  At the Grand Canyon, the concessionaire who runs the luxury hotel, 
charging between $102 and $252 a night, took in more than $63 million 
but paid the Government a mere $1,250 a month in rent and a $1.7 
million franchise fee. The same concessionaire took in almost $5.3 
million in sales from its operations at California's Death Valley 
National Monument and Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park. 
However, the Government's share was less than $125,000 or 2.3 percent. 
While, I do not find fault with the concessionaire for seizing a 
business opportunity, the Federal Government should not be in the 
business of enriching companies on the backs of the taxpayers.
  There are many other examples. At California's Sequoia National Park, 
a concessionaire collected more than $11 million and paid the 
Government only about $82,000. At Montana's Glacier National Park one 
concessionaire took in more than $9 million, but paid the Government 
only about $133,000. The Lake Mead Resort in Nevada annually took in 
$4.3 million but paid the Government less than $135,000. Willow Beach 
Resort also at Lake Mead brought in more than $1.8 million but paid the 
Government just over $18,000. At Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, 
the Crater Lake Lodge collected about $3.6 million from park visitors 
and paid the Government a total of $695 in annual rent for the building 
and another $65,793 in franchise fees. Unfortunately, examples of these 
types of arrangements within the National Park Service are the rule 
rather than the exception.

  In many cases, the States make out better than the Federal 
Government. State tax revenues often exceed revenues generated to the 
Federal Government in the form of rent and franchise fees. For example 
the concession operation at the Mount Vernon Inn generates more than 
$20,000 more for the State of Virginia in sales tax than it makes for 
the Federal Government.
  Compared to the management of concessionaires at state parks, the 
Federal Government is literally giving the store away. According to a 
1988 GAO report States receive an average concession fee of 12 percent 
of gross sales. This is in sharp contrast to the 2.6 percent the 
Federal Government received from its concessions 1992. Even if the 
Federal Government were simply to collect from concessionaires what 
States collect on average, we could collect an additional $60 million--
or about 3\1/2\ times what the Park Service is currently receiving from 
its concession operations.
  Yet the argument continues to be made that the taxpayer must 
subsidize Federal concession operations to ensure that reasonably 
priced concessions are available to visitors at our national parks. 
This argument holds little water. Low franchise fees do not necessarily 
translate into low prices for visitors to our national parks. More 
often, they simply mean higher profits for concessionaires. In fact, 
the concessionaire at Mount Vernon charges about 20 percent more than 
an ice cream store in nearby Alexandria for a 16-ounce coke. This 20 
percent difference is significantly more than the 4 percent franchise 
fee the concessionaire pays to Government for the exclusive right to 
sell cokes to the 5.7 million annual visitors to Mount Vernon.
  For the last several months, my staff on the subcommittee on 
oversight of Government Management has been investigating the 
Government's mismanagement of the concessions which operate on Federal 
land. Although we will be releasing the results of our investigation 
shortly, consideration of S. 208, the National Parks Concessions Policy 
Reform Act, provides an opportunity to share some of the subcommittee's 
findings and is a good first step in the effort to reform the 
Government's management of concessions.

  Mr. President, I would like to commend Senator Bumpers, Senator 
Bennett and Senator Johnston for their hard work in crafting a balanced 
proposal for reforming concessions policy at the National Park Service. 
This legislation is a good first step toward changing the management 
culture which for too long has resulted in the Government's failure to 
charge fair market rents to these concessionaires.
  However, I am concerned that, to some degree, this legislation 
reinvents the wheel by requiring the Secretary of the Interior to 
develop separate competitive procedures for soliciting proposals from 
concessionaires. For this reason, I considered offering an amendment to 
S. 208 which--consistent with the intent and substance of the bill--
would have ensured that the competitive process for selecting 
concessionaires parallel existing law governing competition in all 
executive branch agencies. My amendment would have ensured that the 
Park Service competes its concessions contracts in the same manner as 
other Federal agencies competitively procure goods and services.
  Mr. President, my amendment would have required the Secretary of the 
Interior to promulgate regulations for competing concessions contracts 
consistent with the principles of full and open competition as outlined 
in existing law. The adoption of the existing process would in no way 
preclude the Secretary from determining the source selection criteria 
used by the Department.
  The existing process is in fact flexible. The existing competitive 
process as outlined in title III, section 303A.(a)(1)(C) of the Federal 
Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, specifically states 
that the agency shall ``develop specifications in such a manner as is 
necessary to obtain full and open competition with due regard to the 
nature of the property or services to be acquired.'' It also requires 
at section 303A(b)(1), that, ``each solicitation for sealed bids or 
competitive proposals * * * shall at a minimum include * * * a 
statement of (A) all significant factors * * * which the executive 
agency reasonably expects to consider in evaluating sealed bids of 
competitive proposals; and (B) the relative importance assigned to each 
of those factors.'' The current process as outlined in section 
303B(d)(4) 41 U.S.C. 253b, goes on to say that when selecting the best 
proposal that the award shall be made to the responsible source whose 
proposal is most advantageous to the United States considering only 
price and other factors included in the solicitation. Clearly, the 
existing process provides sufficient flexibility to ensure that the 
intent of the bill is retained. Specifically, the Secretary, when 
writing the implementing regulations will have sufficient flexibility 
to ensure, citing language from S. 208, that ``the consideration of 
revenue generated is subordinate to the objectives of protecting and 
preserving park resources and of providing necessary and appropriate 
facilities or services to the public at reasonable rates.''

  As the Senate author of the Competition in Contracting Act which 
became law in 1984, I have a keen interest in furthering a competitive 
environment for government contracting. This interest extends not only 
to the Government's acquisition of goods and services, but to the 
Government's contracts with concessionaires who bid for the right to 
provide goods and services to the millions of people who visit our 
national parks every year. The Competition in Contracting Act 
established statutory guidance for the process and procedures that 
agencies should adopt to ensure full and open competition. that is what 
this bill before us is about--competition.
  However, I have decided not to offer my amendment because of concerns 
that its provisions will result in multiple referrals which would 
effectively kill S. 208. The effort to reform the Government's 
management of its concessions is far too important to have the effort 
thwarted although I do believe this amendment should be adopted. 
Nevertheless, in the interest in achieving meaningful reform, I have 
agreed to withhold my amendment.
  Mr. President, I am pleased that my second amendment, which was 
adopted by the Senate, will increase the accountability of the Park 
Improvement Funds created by this legislation. Specifically, the 
amendment grants the General Accounting Office an explicit right to 
access all books and records associated with the management of these 
funds. Under current law, GAO has access to all books and records of 
any fund generated or created from money generated by concession 
operations. S. 208, would remove GAO's explicit right to access these 
books and records. My amendment explicitly grants GAO access to all 
pertinent books and records by including the language of the existing 
law to S. 208.
  Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate passed my amendment to 
maintain the accountability of concessionaire funds. And although I am 
not offering my amendment to direct the Secretary of the Interior to 
comply with the provisions of the Competition in Contracting Act, I 
urge my colleagues to support S. 208 so we may begin to reform 
concessions at the National Park Service and rethink in general, how 
the Government manages and oversees its concessionaires.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, the Senator from Arkansas and I have 
looked at this amendment of the Senator from Maine with regard to 
reinstating the policy of the 1965 act and find it very useful. The 
minority is at least prepared to accept it.
  Mr. BUMPERS. We have no objection to this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate? If not, the question 
is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 1556) was agreed to.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the 
amendment was agreed to.
  Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ford). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, members of Ansel Adams family operate 
the Best Studio/Ansel Adams Gallery at Yosemite National Park. It is my 
understanding this is the oldest family-owned business in the National 
Park System, operating since 1902. The family understands the 
preferential right of renewal is being eliminated, and is concerned 
about how the new selection criteria will affect them.
  All of us are familiar with Ansel Adams' magnificent photographs of 
Yosemite. His name is nearly synonymous with the park. Given the 
family's long association and history with the park, it seems to me 
that all things being equal the National Park Service would want to 
keep the Ansel Adams Gallery even if the preferential right of renewal 
is eliminated.
  Is it not the case that under this bill the Secretary of the Interior 
will consider the experience and related background of the person 
submitting a concession proposal, including past performance, and that 
the franchise fee will be subordinate to the objectives of protecting 
park resources and providing appropriate services?
  Mr. JOHNSTON. The Senator from California is correct. Additionally, 
the bill allows the Secretary to consider secondary factors as he deems 
appropriate.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I think we are ready to go to one final 
unanimous-consent agreement and third reading.
  Does the Senator from Wyoming agree with that?
  Mr. WALLOP. The Senator does.
  Mr. BUMPERS. With that, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the Senate vote on final passage of S. 208, the national park 
concessions reform bill, occur without any intervening action or debate 
at 2:30 p.m., on Tuesday, March 22, and that paragraph 4 of rule XII be 
waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on final 
passage.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a 
sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Third reading, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the committee substitute is 
agreed to.
  So the committee substitute was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the engrossment and third 
reading of the bill.
  The bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read 
the third time.
  Mr. WALLOP addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. WALLOP. Mr. President, I am glad we got to the point of third 
reading. I reiterate my unhappiness with the bill and my understanding 
of where it is going. I have spoken my piece on it.
  I would just say that the Senator from Arkansas and I, and the 
Senator from Utah, have been here for 1 hour and 45 minutes, while our 
colleague was downstairs having lunch and who decided, at the end of 
having lunch, not to offer an amendment that kept us waiting here for 1 
hour and 45 minutes.
  The Senator from Arkansas, in his opening remarks on the bill, talked 
about what an unhappy place the Senate has become. There are many 
reasons for that. But the lack of consideration becomes one that raises 
the level of unhappiness unnecessarily.
  I am sorry that my colleagues had to sit and wait. I am sorry that it 
turned out that way. I am glad that we are to the point where we are on 
the bill.
  But, for future reference, I think all of our colleagues would do 
well to try to remember the sensibilities of the rest of those serving 
with them during the course of the days. It is contentious enough 
around here, with partisanship and other kinds of things. A little 
consideration would go a long way toward making the Senate a less 
unhappy place than it currently is. I regret having said that, but I 
did feel compelled to take note of it.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.

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