[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 104 (Tuesday, July 22, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7803-S7812]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 DEPARTMENTS OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND 
             INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1998

  Mr. BOND. What is the pending business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business currently is S. 1034.
  Mr. BOND. This is the Veterans Affairs, HUD, independent agencies 
appropriations measure?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is making appropriations for the 
Departments of Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and for 
sundry independent agencies, commissions, corporations, and offices.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1034) making appropriations for the Departments 
     of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and 
     for sundry independent agencies, commissions, corporations, 
     and offices for fiscal year ending September 30, 1998, and 
     for other purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Mr. BOND. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I see that our colleague from Arkansas is present. He 
has a very important amendment. I invite the attention of all Members. 
We are planning on moving on this bill. There are a number of 
amendments, and we look forward to dealing with them expeditiously 
today. So we are open and ready to do business. We appreciate having 
the matters brought to our attention. As I said yesterday, we hope, if 
there are amendments or proposed colloquies, they will be brought to 
the ranking member and me so that we can give them our personal 
attention and continue the progress that

[[Page S7804]]

this body has been making on the appropriations measures.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.


                           Amendment No. 944

  (Purpose: To reduce the appropriation for the implementation of the 
   space station program for the purpose of terminating the program)

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Bumpers], for himself, Mr. 
     Kohl, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Bryan, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Leahy, Mr. 
     Wellstone, and Mr. Feingold proposes an amendment numbered 
     944.

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 70, strike lines 17 through 18, and insert in lieu 
     thereof the following: ``sion and administrative aircraft, 
     $3,826,500,000, to remain available until September 30, 1999. 
     Provided, that of the funds made available in this bill, no 
     funds shall be expended on the space station program, except 
     for termination costs.''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, this is the sixth year that I have stood 
at this desk and lamented the fact that we have become inured to 
projects which have massive cost overruns if it means a few jobs in our 
State or if it means you can cast a cheap vote and not pay a price for 
it back home.
  Now, I have been here for 22\1/2\ years, and I have watched this body 
time and time again proceed continuously to vote for such things as the 
space station whereas if it were a secret ballot it would not get 25 
votes. The facts and the evidence are absolutely overwhelming against 
going forward with the space station, and yet because of the issue of 
jobs back home, it is very seldom that anyone casts a vote against it.
  Also, there is no political price to pay, even if you do not have 
jobs back home, hinging on going forward with the space station. There 
is no political price to be exacted against you for voting for 
something that people know very little about and have never honed in 
on.
  My wife, Betty Bumpers, a woman I admire very much for her courage, 
started a peace organization in 1981, and I said, ``What you have done 
is just assured your husband's defeat in the next election.'' She said, 
``Yes, and you men are going to get my children killed.'' And so I had 
to dance around that issue until I ran the next time fully expecting to 
be confronted by my opponent about my wife's activities in the peace 
movement.
  Now, isn't it a strange dichotomy in America, that one has to be 
defensive about being for all the things that would promote peace. That 
is how strange this place is at times.
  Of course, Betty has been active in childhood immunizations all of 
her life, and all of my political life--she had started a program in 
1972 to immunize all the children in my State, which had one of the 
lowest immunization levels of any State in the country. We immunized 
300,000 children one Saturday. She was known then and is still known as 
the one of the foremost leaders in immunization programs in this 
country. I remember one day in 1973 some smart reporter said, 
``Senator, do you think your wife's activities''--he was referring to 
peace, of course--``Do you think your wife's activities are going to be 
a big detriment to you in your campaign?'' I said, ``Well, it will be 
among all those people who favor war and not immunizing children.'' And 
I never got asked another question about it.
  I do not mean to sound arrogant about being willing to stand up 
occasionally for something I strongly believe in, but occasionally I 
chastise some of my colleagues who could save the taxpayers billions of 
dollars and hasten the day we balance the budget, but who refuse to do 
it because there is no political accounting for voting for the space 
station, particularly now when the rover is roving around on Mars. As a 
matter of fact, I know this is pure coincidence, but if you want to go 
over to the Dirksen Building, it just so happens that, at the same time 
we are considering the space station and the entire space budget in the 
Chamber, NASA has a thrilling show in the Dirksen Building for all the 
Senators to see of the rover roving around on Mars sniffing rocks.
  Let me say--and I have said this for 6 straight years--I favor the 
space program. I have never once lamented the fact that we have a 
shuttle program and that we have the ability to place all kinds of 
scientific and communications satellites in orbit. And in sending the 
rover to Mars, NASA is doing exactly what it should do, because that 
proves another point. We do not need a manned mission to do science on 
Mars.
  Mr. President, almost all the scientists in the country, virtually 
every Nobel physicist, virtually every scientific group in America, 
opposes the space station. Unfortunately, they don't have enough 
political clout to fill a thimble. I admire them, I respect them, but 
the truth of the matter is, they have very little impact on this body 
or the House of Representatives on what they favor or don't favor.
  One day on this floor, I said even Carl Sagan was opposed to the 
space station. Carl Sagan, whom I had known for several years--we 
weren't close friends, but I had been thrown in contact with him a few 
times--called to say that I had misstated what he believed. What he 
said was, ``I believe the space station is a legitimate thing, a highly 
desirable thing, as a way station to get to Mars. But,'' he said, to 
follow that up, something that I have always strongly believed, ``it is 
not--it is not a wise expenditure of money if you are talking about 
scientific experiments to be conducted on the space station.'' That is 
one of the reasons the American Physical Society and so many other 
groups oppose the space station.
  People around here are sometimes influenced by how somebody feels 
about it. I will tell you who strongly opposes going forward with the 
space station: The Concord Coalition, which was headed up by our now 
deceased, highly respected colleague, Paul Tsongas and by Warren 
Rudman, also our former colleague from New Hampshire. The Concord 
Coalition, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Cato Institute, the 
Progressive Policy Institute, the National Taxpayers' Union, and 
Citizens for a Sound Economy.
  Then, in the scientific community, listen to this: the American 
Physiological Society, the American Society for Biochemistry and 
Molecular Biology, the American Society for Pharmacology and 
Experimental Therapeutics, the American Society for Investigative 
Pathology, the American Institute of Nutrition, American Association of 
Immunologists, American Society of Cell Biology, the Biophysical 
Society, the American Association of Anatomists.
  Who comprises the American Physical Society? It is 41,000 physicists. 
Dr. Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland 
at College Park, has testified time and again here about the folly of 
justifying the space station by alluding to the kind of scientific 
experiments they are going to do on it.
  Mr. President, my amendment says we will terminate the space station 
at a cost of $600 million and we will save $1.5 billion to put on the 
deficit. Sometimes my staff presents me with some alternatives. ``Why 
don't we say we are going to put this $1.5 billion in savings into some 
other popular program?'' I said, ``I have been there and done that.'' I 
remember when I first got into trying to torpedo the space station, I 
would have transferred the money over to Veterans Affairs. That is 
usually an item that causes Senators to jump under their desks. If you 
are going to give it to the veterans, most people around here will look 
very cautiously before they vote no. But I didn't get any more votes 
than I have been getting since.
  We have become so inured to cost overruns, we just simply cannot stop 
a big project once it is started. Only two things that come to mind 
that we finally did stop. One was the Clinch River breeder reactor, 
which incidentally was also my amendment. Howard Baker was majority 
leader. Maybe you think that wasn't an uphill battle. But the American 
scientific community began to rise up in arms, and the 
environmentalists threw a fit. So, finally we decided that we did not 
want to follow the breeder reactor method of generating electricity in 
this country and

[[Page S7805]]

we finally killed it after I spent 4 years standing at this desk, 
talking about the folly of that project. We had already started digging 
ground down in Clinch River to build it.
  The other thing we terminated was the super collider. That's another 
one of my amendments. I guess the reason they happen to come to mind is 
that I happen to be the architect of killing both of them. The super 
collider, this massive hole in the ground in Texas, nobody really 
talked much about the science of the super collider. All they talked 
about was all the jobs it was going to create in Texas, which indeed it 
would have.

  Let me just, while I am on the subject of jobs, point something out. 
The space station--if you want to make it a jobs program go home and 
tell the chamber of commerce that it costs $140,000 for every job it 
creates. Take the same proposition to General Motors or anybody else: 
You come into our community and we will give you $140,000 for every job 
you create. They will be standing on line from here to New York to try 
to take you up on that offer.
  You think about the fact it costs $10,000 to $12,000 a pound for 
every pound of material we send to the space station. And now there is 
an estimate, if you have four astronauts on board, they can only devote 
4 hours a day each to research-related activities. So, if you have four 
American astronauts, that's 16 hours a day that they could put into 
science. Do you want to know how expensive that is? Well, NASA says it 
will cost $1,300,000,000 a year to operate the station. So, it will 
only cost the taxpayers $230,000 for each hour the astronauts put in 
actually working on scientific experiments on the space station. Do you 
want to hear one better than that? The space station is to have a 10-
year life and it will cost all-told about $100 billion. Figure that one 
out: $25 million a day is going to be the cost of keeping the space 
station up there.
  Do you have any idea, when we sit in the Agriculture Committee 
talking about research, how we have to grovel and fight and scratch and 
claw for every dime we get for research? Do you have any idea what $25 
million will do? Do you know the National Institutes of Health can only 
fund one out of every four good scientific projects that are brought to 
them? And we are talking about honest to God research. Research on 
cancer, on AIDS, on arthritis--every conceivable kind of disease that 
afflicts mankind is handled through the National Institutes of Health, 
to which we give about $13 to $14 billion a year. And they can only 
fund one out of every four experiments. That is real science. You can 
book it. Do you know what real medical research could be done if we 
simply gave them the cost of one space shuttle flight? They could fund 
one out of every three proposals.
  Last week I conducted a hearing on immunizations. There is going to 
be a big to-do over at the White House tomorrow on the remarkable 
success we have had on immunizations. In a hearing last week it was 
revealed by some pharmaceutical companies, and the Centers for Disease 
Control in Atlanta, that we now face the possibility of eliminating 
measles worldwide, as we are about to eradicate polio worldwide. We now 
have new vaccines, even for children's earaches; even for dysentery. 
Last year we had 50,000 hospitalizations last year of children with 
dysentery, and 20 children died--but worldwide those figures are 
nothing. Worldwide, dysentery kills so many children--but not as many 
as measles. Does that shock you? Measles is still the biggest killer of 
children in the world; 1 million children a year die of measles.
  At the hearing they told us about all these new vaccines. For 
example, for infants--put a little something in each nostril of the 
nose and they will never get flu. You can also use that in combination 
with another vaccine which, as I say, will keep them from getting 
dysentery.
  I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll stand on my head on the top of this 
Capitol if you ever get anything even remotely close to those kinds of 
advances after you spend $100 billion. For 6 years I have listened to 
Senators come over here, they are my friends and colleagues and I don't 
denigrate their feelings about it, but when you start asking, ``What 
are the scientific experiments we are going to conduct?'' ``Well, we 
don't know. We have to get up there and find out what we are looking 
for.''
  It was Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen, of Harvard, who made the best 
statement I ever heard about research on the space 
station. Incidentally, he is adamantly opposed to it. I'll come back to 
that. I'm going to take about 20 minutes just reading quotes from the 
top physicists, medical doctors, you name it, about the space station, 
before I sit down. Do you know what he said about microgravity 
research, which is the big thing everybody talks about; that is 
research you do in weightlessness? He said, ``microgravity is of 
microimportance.'' That says it all. Why else would we be sending a 
station up there to do scientific experiments except it is a weightless 
situation?

  Another great physicist whom I will quote in a moment said, ``It is 
the worst place to do microgravity research with men on board or women 
on board.'' That is because, if you are looking for an experiment that 
requires weightlessness and you have people tromping around in the 
station and vibrating it, you lose the benefit. You would expect a 6-
year-old to understand that.
  Mr. President, let me just bring you up to date. In 1996, the General 
Accounting Office to do a report on the space station. It was not the 
most devastating report I ever read in my life, and of course I was 
looking for something that I might hang my hat on that just might jar 
this place into action. But there were really no bombs in the 1996 GAO 
report, except they predicted that unless certain things happened 
certain other very undesirable things were going to happen, namely 
unless the Russians came through with their part of this project the 
cost was going to skyrocket.
  One Senator came to me in 1994 and said: ``Dale, I think this 
cooperation with Russia is a tremendous idea. We can keep their space 
scientists busy and they won't be off in Iraq and Iran, building 
missiles for some of the rogue nations.'' And he said, ``You know, we 
have to help the Russians all we can. They have big problems.''
  I said: ``That's right. But if we are going to send them $200 million 
for openers, just to say they will be a part of the international space 
station, I say send it to them in economic aid or food. That is what 
they need. They do not need to be participating in one of the biggest 
boondoggles ever conceived. What they need is something to help their 
people with their infrastructure, build industry, feed their people.''
  So what has happened, as predictable as night following day, is 
Russia has reneged. We gave them close to $200 million for openers to 
build the first section of the work they were supposed to do. We gave 
them that money.
  They were supposed to build the service module. There are nine 
modules on this space station. They were supposed to build the third 
one, but a very important one, called the service module, and they have 
not been able to come up with all the money, nor are they likely to. I 
will return in a moment to some of the consequences of that.
  But back to the GAO report. Congressman Dingell and I asked the GAO 
to update their 1996 report. Here is the update, which we received last 
night and which anybody else who wants it can get this morning. Here is 
what the GAO update says. If there is anything people around here 
detest, it is somebody going around telling them, ``I told you so,'' so 
I won't say it.
  Listen to this:

       The prime contractor's--

  That is Boeing's----

     cost and schedule performance on the space station, which 
     showed signs of deterioration last year, has continued to 
     decline virtually unabated. Since April 1996, the cost 
     overrun has more than tripled.

  Let me repeat that:

       Since April 1996--

  A little over a year ago--

     the cost overrun has more than tripled and the schedule 
     slippage has increased by almost 50 percent.

  Does it not take nerve to come in here asking us to go forward with a 
$100 billion project in the light of that?

       Financial reserves are dwindling with up to 6 years 
     remaining until on-orbit assembly of the space station is 
     completed.

  That is what we are looking at now. We still have 6 years to go 
before we

[[Page S7806]]

even get that sucker assembled in space:

       . . . with up to 6 years remaining until on-orbit assembly 
     of the space station is completed. NASA has already 
     identified actual and potential resource demands that exceed 
     the station's remaining financial reserves.

  As the French say, here comes the piece de resistance:

       NASA transferred $462 million from its science budget to 
     the space station development budget in fiscal years 1996 
     through 1998.

  Why did NASA transfer $462 million from its science account to the 
manufacturing of the space station? To cover the cost overruns. And the 
$462 million comes out of the science budget. Either you are going to 
reduce the scientific experiments on this thing by $462 million, or 
NASA is going to come back to Congress and say we need $462 million 
more. Which do you think that is going to be? We all know what it is 
going to be, and this is just the beginning:

       It is also planning to transfer another $70 million in 
     fiscal 1999 from the science fund to the station development 
     budget.

  Mr. President, NASA says that to assemble and build the space 
station, the cost will be $17.4 billion, and within that are these 
scientific funds. They are taking money from Peter to pay Paul, but 
they are taking money out of the account that they say is absolutely 
essential to justify the space station, namely, the science that we are 
going to get. You can't have it both ways, or you can, too, in the U.S. 
Senate.
  Congress approved the transfer of $200 million this year. We approved 
a $200 million transfer from the space shuttle. I just told you that 
they have transferred $462 million from their science account over to 
the space station account. Now we are giving them authority to transfer 
money from the shuttle account, the manned space program that most 
people around here applaud, and are putting it into the space station. 
Why? To cover the cost overruns on the space station. It is the most 
traditional, time-honored shell game that any of us know anything 
about, and that is to cover the cost incurred because the Russians have 
been so late in coming up with their money.

  There is another $100 million pending in Congress for the year 1998. 
That is in the House bill; that is not in the Senate bill. But, in 
addition to allowing them to take $200 million out of the shuttle fund 
and put it into the space station, now the House has said, ``We will 
give you another $100 million to transfer to the space station.'' This 
is actually outside the $17.4 billion. The $462 million in science 
funds is inside the $17.4 billion and can only be classified as a 
whopping cost overrun.
  This is one of the most interesting things that the GAO report said:

       When NASA redesigned the space station in 1993. . . .

  You remember, President Clinton looked at a whole list of them and 
finally came up with what was finally called International Space 
Station Alpha:

       When NASA redesigned the station in 1993, it estimated that 
     Russia, as a partner, would reduce program costs by $1.6 
     billion because the station's assembly would be completed 
     sooner.

  It would be finished in June 2002 instead of September 2003, the 
proposition being that if the Russians came through, we would build it 
faster and, therefore, save $1.6 billion.
  Mr. President, those are not my figures, those are NASA's figures, 
those are NASA's statements. And this is what GAO said about it:

       NASA has recently acknowledged that completion of the 
     station's assembly would indeed slip to 2003. . . .

  Fifteen months later than we have been told since time immemorial 
this thing would be finished.
  While NASA has not acknowledged the 2003 date, they have yet to tell 
us what the new milestone will be. And the GAO says:

       Consequently, most, if not all, of the reduced costs 
     claimed by accelerating the schedule by 15 months would be 
     lost by slipping the schedule by a similar amount.

  In short, now we are back to the old time schedule, and the $1.6 
billion that NASA said they would save by bringing Russia into the 
program and, therefore, building it 15 months sooner than we would 
otherwise have built won't be saved.
  NASA has not told us yet precisely when they expect to have this 
thing finished, nor precisely what a 15-month slippage at this point is 
going to cost, though I can tell you, based on the conversations I had 
with people who know more about this program than anybody else, it is 
$2 billion.
  Mr. President, I tried to torpedo the space station since the memory 
of man runneth not. I have tried in almost more times than there have 
been design changes, new partners, and new promises by NASA, and until 
this very moment, NASA is trying to con the Senate by showing this 
magnificent film about Mars over in the Dirksen Building and still 
smoothly promising that everything is running on target, on schedule, 
and the only reason we know that isn't true is because GAO has done two 
studies that contradict NASA 180 degrees.
  We don't need a space station. The Mir is the seventh Russian space 
station. The Mir has been in orbit, how long? Eleven years. The Mir has 
been up there 11 years, and now it is in big trouble. I am not saying 
that is predictable. I will say this, and this is not to bash Russia--I 
believe in doing everything we can to help their economy and keep them 
viable--but their space program is not as sophisticated as ours. While 
I understand all the arguments for bringing Russia into this, I am not 
sure scientifically and from a safety standpoint it is good to do it.
  But the point I wanted to make is, again, I have stood on this floor 
for 6 long years and said show me, tell me what are the scientific 
achievements Russia has achieved in 20 years of having a space station 
in orbit. And I have been met by a deafening roar of silence. There are 
none. The only justification for a space station is as a way station to 
Mars.
  Mr. President, look at this chart, and I will say that in 1984, 
Ronald Reagan, I think it was in a State of the Union Address, said we 
were going to build a space station--that was in 1984; that has now 
been 13-plus years--we were going to build a space station for $8 
billion and deploy it and operate it. That was the initial promise of 
the President. At that time, here were the justifications. Look at 
them.
  It was going to be a staging base, presumably to go to Mars.
  It was going to be a manufacturing facility. We were going to 
manufacture a new kind of sophisticated crystal in a microgravity 
atmosphere.
  It was going to be a space-based observatory.
  It was going to be a transportation node.
  It was going to be a servicing facility, presumably for people on 
their way to Mars.
  It was going to be an assembly facility, again, to assemble the parts 
of a space station to go to Mars.
  It was going to be a storage facility.
  And, finally, it was going to be a research laboratory.
  You can see from my chart how many of those exist today. Seven of 
them have been torpedoed, and only one remains standing.
  Go back to the original $8 billion that President Reagan said it was 
going to cost. Here is an update on that. I tell you, I cannot keep the 
grin off my face as I go through these things. You just cannot believe 
it, you cannot believe it, and yet Senators will come in here and vote 
for this thing.
  The President said $8 billion. Here is what we spent on the Reagan 
plan--$11.2 billion. That is gone. What we got out of that is so 
infinitesimal you might as well have thrown the money off the 
Washington Monument. It would have helped a few poor people.
  So when Bill Clinton became President, he said this thing is out of 
control, we have to have another look at it. So we have a big design--a 
design-off I guess you would call it. And they look at dozens of plans 
over at the White House about what kind of a space station it ought to 
be.
  Obviously, the first one was much too grandiose, going to be much too 
costly. So they come up with the International Space Station Alpha. And 
we are going to participate with Europe and Canada and Japan, and now 
of course Russia.
  And here is what the construction cost was going to be between 1994 
and 2002--$17.4 billion. I have alluded to that figure several times 
already.
  Now, anybody who believes that the construction and development of 
the international space station is going to be $17.4 billion, you go 
ahead and vote for it. You have my permission. You

[[Page S7807]]

certainly will not lose my friendship, if you actually believe that. 
But if you actually believe that, you haven't got enough you-know-what 
to be a Member of Congress. But if you believe that, go ahead and vote 
for it.
  The GAO had just gotten through issuing a report this morning saying 
that is nonsense. And here is the operating costs for 10 years, $13 
billion.
  Mr. President, do you know the cost of this program and the cost of 
all the 83 shuttles it is going to take to get it up there and supply 
it? The cost is going to be staggering. You know, the cost of gold is 
$325 an ounce today. That is peanuts compared to what a pound of water 
will cost to supply these astronauts, just peanuts. It is like 33 times 
more to send a pound of water. Maybe not that much. I do not want to 
exaggerate too far. So here is your operating cost, $13 billion.
  Here are the shuttle flights needed to launch, service and use the 
station in space--$50.5 billion. Mr. President, let me tell you 
something about that. At present, that is 83 launches that are going to 
be necessary to deploy it and supply it for 10 years after it is 
deployed--$50.5 billion. That is calculated I think on the basis of the 
space shuttle, the flights running around $475 million each.
  I can remember when I used to get teary-eyed seeing that shuttle take 
off when they first developed it. Such a magnificent thing to see. One 
day somebody told me each launch cost almost $500 million, and my eyes 
dried up almost immediately.
  Here are just the related costs of the space station--$1.9 billion on 
these shuttle flights. Let me tell you, if you believe that 83 shuttles 
will leave within a 5 to 7 minute launch window without a hitch over 
the next 15, 16 years, you vote for it, if you believe that every 
shuttle is going to go up without a hitch, rendezvous with the space 
station without a hitch, take the needed supplies to the astronauts, 
all of that, and every launch launched within a 5 to 7 minute 
timeframe, which is absolutely necessary. And if you do not make it 
within that 5 to 7 minute envelope, you delay the launch and the costs 
soar.
  I have a chart here, Mr. President, about the cost of gold. I guess 
we can all relate to gold. Here it is. The present cost of the space 
station is estimated by GAO--incidentally, this is not Dale Bumpers; 
this is GAO--$94 billion. That is 25 times its weight in gold. And, as 
I said earlier, that is $25 million per day of operation.

  It is a jobs program. I said 140,000 jobs. Each job costs $147,000. 
Three States--California, Texas, and Alabama--they get about 78 percent 
of all the money. The other 22 to 24 percent goes to virtually every 
other State. There are only a handful of States that do not have a 
little piece of the action. NASA is not stupid. They took a leaf out of 
the Pentagon's book. And they put those contracts into almost every 
State. I think there is a little $50,000 contract in Arkansas on the 
space station. That is just not quite enough to influence me. It 
provides no commercial value. And it costs $12,880 to transport one 
pound of material to the station.
  Mr. President, let me now go to what some of the scientists say about 
this project.
  Before I do that, here is another little overrun. You cannot compute 
the cost on this--this is manhours--but I want you to think about this. 
In 1993, NASA said that the assembling of the space station would 
require about 311 hours of EVA--extravehicular activity. It is space 
walking. In 1993, they said it would take 311 hours of space walks to 
assemble it. Then they decided they miscalculated, and they moved it up 
to 434 hours. And then they decided they miscalculated it again, and in 
1996 they said, ``We miscalculated, and it's going to take 1,104 hours 
of space walking to assemble the station.'' And now, just very 
recently, believe it or not, 1 year from the time the first launch is 
supposed to occur, they say it is going to take 1,519 hours. NASA has 
only miscalculated by 500 percent the number of hours it will take to 
assemble the space station. And their calculations on everything else 
are running pretty close.
  Mr. President, let me tell you what people who know a lot more about 
the science than I do are saying.
  Incidentally, I watched Senator Glenn yesterday. He is not just one 
of my very dearest friends, he came to the Senate with me in 1975. He 
is one of the finest men--I think just the finest, most decent man I 
have ever known. We do not disagree very often, but we disagree 
strongly on this. We battle back and forth in the cloakroom about it.
  He has circulated a brochure that ties the space station to research 
on aging. God knows, I ought to be interested in that. Well, ironically 
one space shuttle flight to the space station will cost almost as much 
as the entire $454 million budget of the National Institute on Aging. 
One space shuttle flight would finance the National Institute on Aging 
for 1 year.
  Now, you ask yourself, do you think you are really going to get 
anything about aging out of the space shuttle? What you are going to 
get is an expensive $450 million, and you are going to get nothing. If 
you gave it to the National Institute on Aging, you at least have an 
outside chance of something happening.
  Here are the editors of Discovery Magazine from May 1997, 2 months 
ago. Listen to this:

       There is no use belaboring the point. Only the naive or the 
     vested still maintain that there is any good pragmatic reason 
     to spend the tens of billions of dollars it will take to 
     complete what started out in the early 1980s as Freedom and 
     now endures as the International Space Station. . . . Is it 
     possible to imagine a technological undertaking so enormous 
     that could garner less respect from the scientific community?

  That says it all, but I am not going to quit.
  Here is what Marsha Smith, who was interviewed in Aerospace America 
in June 1995, said I visited with her in my office yesterday. She is 
the brightest person in this country on this subject. She does not try 
to tint it one way or another. She just calls it like it is. She is not 
unalterably opposed to the space station, for that matter. But I say 
this simply to demonstrate publicly my intense and high regard for her.

       I don't know of any breakthroughs that have come out of 
     [Russian] space station programs in terms of new or cheaper-
     to-produce materials or scientific discoveries . . . . Mostly 
     they have learned how to operate a space station for long 
     periods of time.

  Now, Mr. President, I again issue the call. What have the Russians 
got for 20 years of having the space station in orbit that is worthy of 
the name ``scientific''?
  Listen to what Tim Beardsley of Scientific American said in June 
1996, a little over 1 year ago.

       The value of biological and health research in orbit has 
     been challenged by Elliott C. Levinthal, a former program 
     director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 
     [that is called DARPA over at the Defense Department] . . . 
     Levinthal, who has been a professor of genetics and 
     mechanical engineering at Stanford University, asserts that 
     no neutral committee handing out funds for basic research in 
     biology would support microgravity studies.

  And that is all the scientific justification you can find for the 
space station--microgravity research. Anything else obviously you can 
do here on Earth. As a matter of fact, you can do this in the shuttle. 
You can even do it in unmanned flights.
  James Ferris of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Scientific 
American:

       Nothing has come out of microgravity research to convince 
     me that a material can be fabricated in orbit that is going 
     to be better than what you can make on Earth.

  Why do we want to spend $100 billion to manufacture something we can 
do just as well on Earth, and for a fraction of the cost?
  Here is what the German Physical Society said. And incidentally, 
Germany is involved in paying for some of the costs.

       Except for investigations carried out on humans themselves, 
     all experiments in this area of research can be carried out 
     unmanned, without loss of precision. This also applies to 
     microgravity. Therefore it is improper [it is improper] to 
     use microgravity as an effective argument in favor of manned 
     spaceflight.

  That statement was endorsed by the European Physical Society, all the 
physicists in Europe, the Physical Society of Japan--our physicists' 
counterpart in Japan--the Canadian Association of Physicists and the 
American Physical Society.
  So, Mr. President, there you have it. International space station 
Freedom, partly being paid for by the Japanese, by the European Space 
Agency, by

[[Page S7808]]

Canada--forget Russia for the time being. And how do their physicists 
feel about it? There is the European Physical Society, the Japanese 
Physical Society, the Canadian Physical Society and the American 
Physical Society, and that takes just about every physicist in America, 
who says this is improbable nonsense. It reminds me of going to a 
doctor and saying, ``Doctor, I have this hurting in my chest,'' and he 
x-rays me and says, ``It looks to me like you have cancer.'' And I say, 
``Well, it may be, but I will go find a Senator to validate this. I'm 
not taking your word for it; I want to take the word of the U.S. Senate 
and see if I have cancer of the lung.'' That is not far off. The 
scientists all oppose the space station. Yet, as I said in my opening 
remarks, it is so impossible to convince the Senate.
  Incidentally, when it comes to the American Physical Society, its 
spokesman in the past, as I said a moment ago, has been Dr. Park. Dr. 
Park said, in July 1993:

       It is the view of the American Physical Society that 
     scientific justification is lacking for a permanently manned 
     space station in Earth orbit. We are concerned that the 
     potential contribution of a manned space station to the 
     physical scientist has been greatly overstated and that many 
     of the scientific objectives currently planned for the space 
     station can be accomplished more effectively and at a much 
     lower cost on Earth.

  Unmanned robotic platforms or on the shuttle. All he represents is 
41,000 physicists in this country. He goes on to say, quoting Professor 
Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard--and I said earlier I thought he was a 
Nobel laureate, and he is, in physics--Dr. Bloembergen of Harvard, a 
Nobel laureate and physicist, summed it up bluntly in testimony before 
a Senate committee 2 years ago: ``Microgravity is of microimportance.''
  How is it we know so much more here? After all, we are throwing $2.1 
billion of the taxpayers' money at this project every year, and you saw 
the figures and where we are headed-- $94 billion today, Lord knows how 
many billions ultimately.
  I think there is an assumption, says one physicist, that any program 
that spends $15 billion per year is bound to produce something that 
society can use, but few of NASA's claims stand up. Indeed, an interim 
NASA study of technology transfer which became public in January 
acknowledged that NASA spinoff claims were exaggerated. That is an in-
house memo that NASA's claims were exaggerated, including such famous 
examples as Velcro, Tang, and Teflon. Contrary to popular belief, the 
study found NASA created none of these. They merely publicized them.
  Here is what Carl Sagan said: ``A space station is far from an 
optimum platform for doing science.'' And the Space Sciences Board said 
it ``sees no scientific need for this space station during the next 20 
years,'' and went ahead to say, ``Continued development of Space 
Station Freedom . . . cannot be supported on scientific grounds.''
  Mr. President, I have two or three other scientists I will quote and 
then I will turn it back to the managers of the bill. Incidentally, I 
listened yesterday and I listened again today to all these gigantic, 
frankly, highly specious, spurious claims about how we will find a cure 
for this and a cure for that. If the doctors in the scientific 
community say that is hogwash, who are we to question them? Somebody to 
keep a few jobs in our State.
  Here is what Dr. Rosenthal said on cancer research:

       Statements have been made and published to the effect that 
     vital cancer research would be done in space, and that is 
     cited as a reason for supporting space station funding. We 
     cannot find valid scientific justification for these claims 
     and believe it is unrealistic to base a decision on funding 
     the space station on that information . . . Based on the 
     information we have seen thus far, we do not agree that a 
     strong case has been made for choosing to do cancer 
     research in space over critically needed cancer research 
     here on earth.

  That was David Rosenthal, Harvard Medical School, testifying on 
behalf of the American Cancer Society.
  Dr. Shaun Ruddy, on behalf of the Arthritis Foundation:

       Space station proponents have indicated that the Space 
     Station . . . will provide a ``first class'' laboratory . . . 
     We used to have ``first class'' laboratories in universities 
     and medical schools across the country . . . Reports by the 
     National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation 
     have indicated that over 51 percent of the biological 
     laboratory research is deemed inadequate for the conduct of 
     research . . . Furthermore, the National Science Foundation 
     report estimated that the capital construction backlog is 
     approximately $12 billion . . . Should our priorities now be 
     a ``first class'' laboratory in space, or correction of a 
     longstanding deficiency in laboratories throughout this 
     Nation?

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. BUMPERS. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I bring to the Senator's attention that it is 12:10.
  Mr. BUMPERS. I appreciate the Senator.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. My question is, does the Senator wish to continue 
before we adjourn at 12:30?
  Mr. BUMPERS. I apologize for going longer than I intended. I was 
having such a good time. As I told the Senator earlier, I do have a 
little thing I need to tend to during the noon hour. Let me just 
suggest I be permitted to leave while people on your side speak on the 
other side of this issue, and then perhaps we can rejoin the issue 
around 2:30 after the caucuses.
  However, I understand there may be something else coming up.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I bring to the Senator's attention that at 2:15, the 
Senate will go to consideration of military construction. Upon 
completion of that, we will return to the bill.
  Perhaps before the Senator leaves for his other Senate commitment, 
you and I can talk about that.
  Mr. BUMPERS. I am delighted to do that. I am sure we can reach an 
agreement on a time certain to vote and even a wrap-up time for each 
side, if that is possible.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. We would like very much to be able to do that for the 
Senator. We go to MilCon at 2:15 for 30 minutes, and from there we will 
first have a vote on MilCon. Then we resume consideration of the bill. 
At such time, I believe Senator Wellstone wishes to talk about 
compelling needs of veterans, and you have to be in an agricultural 
markup. We wonder if then around 4 o'clock, you could go to wrap-up and 
we could have a vote?
  Mr. BUMPERS. Let me suggest we agree on this without getting a formal 
agreement. That we start on this again at 4 o'clock, and I promise, 
say, 15 minutes would do me to wrap it up, maybe 15 minutes on your 
side, and we could vote at 4:30.
  Mr. BOND. If my colleagues will yield, first, let me enter into the 
Record a unanimous consent to go to the MilCon measure, so we will get 
that, and we can have that taken care of, and then I will speak with 
the proponent of the amendment, my ranking member, and I hope we can 
work out an accommodation acceptable to him.


                 Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.R. 2016

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:15 today 
the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar 117, H.R. 2016, the 
military construction appropriations bill. I further ask unanimous 
consent that the committee amendments and the manager's amendment be 
agreed to, no other amendments be in order to the bill, there be 20 
minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form, with an 
additional 10 minutes under the control of Senator McCain. I finally 
ask unanimous consent that at the expiration or yielding back of time, 
the bill be read the third time, and the Senate proceed to a vote on 
passage of H.R. 2016.
  I further ask unanimous consent that immediately following passage, 
the Senate then insist on its amendment and request a conference with 
the House, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part 
of the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. BOND. I further ask unanimous consent that Floyd DesChamps, a 
detailee from the Department of Energy, with the Commerce, Science, and 
Transportation Committee, be given access to the floor during the 
Senate discussions on the VA-HUD-independent agencies appropriations 
bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 944

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, if the ranking member will accommodate me, I 
will make just a few remarks in opposition to the amendment and then we

[[Page S7809]]

will attempt to establish a timeframe for further proceedings on this 
bill.
  Mr. President, we have had a very eloquent statement by the Senator 
from Arkansas about questions that have been raised about the 
international space station. Needless to say, this question has been 
addressed time and time again on this floor. There are those scientists 
who have questions and objections. Nevertheless, the vast body, I 
think, of scientific knowledge and scientific expertise indicates that 
the space station is a tremendous opportunity for us to expand our 
knowledge not only about space but to develop new processes, new 
pharmaceuticals, medical advancements, and items that can be of 
tremendous benefit for us here on Earth.
  Yesterday, for example, I note that the distinguished Senator from 
Ohio, our only space astronaut-Senator, talked at some length about the 
tremendous number of advances in scientific knowledge that have come 
from exploration in space. The bioreactor produces artificial human 
tissue potentially useful in treating colon and prostate cancer, 
production of kidney tissue and the cartilage tissue for implants. 
Fluid physics, which can be observed in space, help us understand the 
processes on Earth, such as how the soil behaves during earthquakes. 
There is research in microgravity to develop new pharmaceuticals and 
neurological research, important to patients with multiple sclerosis. 
The list goes on and on, and I will not go into that here because there 
are a number of other Senators who have expertise in this area who wish 
to be heard on the measure.
  Let me say that the international space station will be a world-class 
scientific laboratory, with the unique feature of a near-zero gravity 
environment. While it is impossible for us to know in advance, all of 
the results of this scientific research, I think the vast body of 
scientific expertise believes that microgravity research will lead to 
new and pure pharmaceuticals, medical advancements, and the production 
of new materials for use here on Earth.
  With the imminent demise of Russia's Mir space station, the 
international space station will be the only facility where these types 
of research can be permitted.
  The international space station will also provide operational 
experience necessary for operating lunar outposts on Mars bases if and 
when the Nation should decide to proceed with such bold plans.
  Moreover, Mr. President, the international space station is a 
hallmark of international cooperation between the United States and 
other countries. Europe, Japan, and Canada have been involved with the 
program since its inception, and the addition of Russia in 1993 
enhanced the international participation. There is no greater symbol of 
the end of the cold war than the United States and Russia--arch rivals 
in space for decades--working together to build a space station for the 
21st century.
  Despite the challenges the program has had to overcome in the past 
year--particularly the schedule delays resulting from Russia's failure 
to complete the service module on time--the space station partnership 
remains intact.
  Russia has faced great financial troubles and uncertainties, and it 
is impossible to say that all these troubles are in the past. But this 
spring the Russian Government, though strapped financially, fulfilled 
its promise to provide 800 billion rubles, and NASA reports that work 
is progressing on the service module.
  American taxpayers have invested significantly--$19 billion--in the 
space station. We are now within a year of the first launch, which will 
provide the benefits and the scientific advancements into that 
research. Certainly, this is no time to give up on an experiment that 
offers such potential.
  The shuttle-Mir program, the first phase of the international space 
station, is successfully underway. The experiments have led to 
improvements in the design of the international space station, and we 
have trained the crews. We are ready for tremendous scientific leaps, 
and I trust that a significant majority of our colleagues, on a 
bipartisan basis, will agree that the money we have invested has been a 
wise investment, not only for science, technology, and the exploration 
of the universe now, but for the developments in the scientific 
advances that will come tomorrow for our children and our 
grandchildren, who are fascinated by the opportunities of space. The 
exploration of this frontier can deliver tremendous benefits. This is 
not the time to abort the mission and say that we have gone nineteen-
twentieths, or 95 percent, of the way toward the discovery of a new 
world and we are going to turn back now.
  Mr. President, I hope that my colleagues will once again 
overwhelmingly support the continuation of the space station.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, this is, once again, a bipartisan 
agreement that we should continue to fund the space station Freedom. 
This dazzling scientific endeavor was created under the Reagan 
administration, sustained under the Bush administration, and maintained 
under the Clinton administration.
  Now, why have three Presidents of the United States all supported 
space station Freedom? They have done it for several reasons. One, 
because it accomplished significant science in space. Second, it is a 
model for what the new world order will look like in which no one 
nation dominates space, but each nation is best at what it best can do. 
The United States of America, Canada, Japan, Europe, and now the 
Russian involvement does show what the space program of the future will 
be. It will be multilateral, multinational cooperation for multiple 
gains.
  Mr. President, I would like to speak more on why I support the space 
station Freedom, but I note that on the floor is the Senator from 
Arizona. It had been our agreement to let him speak before the 
conference.
  I want to say, before we break for the party conferences, that there 
is no break in bipartisan support for the space station. We are going 
to ensure that the space station does produce sound science, have 
maximum international cooperation and, once again, make both our Nation 
and the world proud of what we do. I will have more to say about the 
space station and why I am an enthusiastic, unabashed, and unrelenting 
sponsor of this later on this afternoon.

  In the meantime, as a courtesy and collegiality to move our bill, I 
yield the floor now and look forward to resuming my comments on the 
space station later this afternoon.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the Senate is making unprecedented 
progress in considering the appropriations bills for fiscal year 1998. 
We have completed action on five spending bills, with the expectation 
that we will finish at least five more prior to the August recess. I 
must congratulate Chairman Stevens and Senator Inouye, as well as the 
subcommittee managers of the bills, on their efficient management of 
these measures on the floor. On this bill, I want to congratulate my 
colleagues from Missouri and Maryland, Senators Bond and Mikulski, for 
the outstanding job they have done on this legislation.
  I don't intend to unduly delay the Senate in completing consideration 
of the pending appropriations measures. But I want to ensure that, in 
our haste to act on these important spending bills, my colleagues are 
fully aware of the funding recommendations that are contained in this 
bill.
  I don't enjoy returning to the Senate floor for the sixth time in a 
little over a week to talk about the wasteful spending in these bills.
  Mr. President, this is a very important measure. It provides $40 
billion to fund programs for our Nation's veterans, who have served 
their country and need and deserve our respect and attention. It 
contains $25 billion for our Nation's housing needs, including low-
income housing programs, housing assistance for native Americans, low-
cost mortgage assistance, housing for the elderly, and much more. It 
provides funding for our space program, programs to protect and restore 
the health of the environment, disaster assistance, and the activities 
of many other agencies. This bill totals over $90 billion.

[[Page S7810]]

  Yet, at the same time we are struggling to balance the budget and 
adequately fund necessary Federal programs, I find it somewhat 
disheartening that the committee spent so much time and effort to 
identify and protect Members' special interest items.
  Mr. President, I have here a nine-page list of earmarks in this bill 
and the accompanying report--nine pages of set-asides for specific 
institutes, centers, projects, and even museums. These projects have 
not been considered in the normal process of prioritizing among 
competing requirements. They have simply been earmarked to receive 
funds because a Member of this body wanted to bring it home.
  I ask unanimous consent that at this time this nine-page document of 
objectionable provisions in the bill be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   Objectionable Provisions in S. 1034, the Fiscal Year 1998 VA-HUD 
                          Appropriations Bill


                             Bill Language

       $10 million of HUD funds earmarked for housing demolition 
     and replacement at Heritage House in Kansas City, Missouri.
       Earmark of HUD funds for an economic development test 
     program, including at least one Native American area in 
     Alaska.
       $40 million earmarked for the Economic Development 
     Initiative within HUD, ``to finance a variety of efforts, 
     including those identified in the Senate committee report'', 
     namely:
       $2.5 million for enlarging Scarborough Library at Shepherd 
     College in West Virginia.
       $2 million for brownfield activities in Baltimore, 
     Maryland.
       $2 million for economic redevelopment of Ogden, Utah.
       $2 million to renovate Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 
     Buffalo, New York.
       $400,000 for a regional landfill in Charles Mix County, 
     South Dakota.
       $2.5 million for a construction project related to Bushnell 
     Theater in Hartford, Connecticut.
       $2.5 million for exhibit and program development at 
     Discovery Place in Charlotte, North Carolina.
       $600,000 for the West Maui Community Resource Center in 
     Hawaii.
       $1.5 million for renovation of Paramount Theater in 
     Rutland, Vermont.
       $1 million for Lake Champlain Science Center in Burlington, 
     Vermont.
       $2 million for renovation of Tapley Street Operations 
     Center in Springfield, Massachusetts.
       $2 million to develop abandoned industrial sites in Perth 
     Amboy, New Jersey.
       $2.5 million for New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Center.
       $400,000 for Riverbend Research and Training Park in Post 
     Falls, Idaho.
       $2.5 million for University of Missouri for a plant 
     genetics research unit and the Delta Research 
     Telecommunications Resource Center.
       $2 million for Cleveland Avenue YMCA in Montgomery, 
     Alabama, to build a cultural arts center.
       $1 million for Covenant House in Anchorage, Alaska.
       $7.1 million of HUD funds previously earmarked for an 
     industrial park at 18th and Indiana in Kansas City, is 
     instead earmarked for rehabilitation and infrastructure 
     development associated with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum 
     and the Jazz Museum at 18th & Vine.
       $150 million of EPA funds earmarked for construction of 
     high priority water and wastewater facilities in the area of 
     the U.S.-Mexico Border, including $50 million for grants to 
     Texas for improving wastewater treatment for colonias.
       $15 million of EPA funds for grants to Alaska to address 
     drinking water and wastewater infrastructure needs of rural 
     and Alaska Native Villages.
       $82 million of EPA funds earmarked for grants to construct 
     wastewater and water treatment facilities and groundwater 
     protection infrastructure as specified in the report, namely:
       $7 million for Burlington, Iowa.
       $7.15 million for Lake Tahoe, California.
       $5 million for Richmond and Lynchburg, Virginia.
       $7 million for Ashley Valley, Utah.
       $1 million for Ogden, Utah.
       $4 million for Jackson County, Mississippi.
       $50,000 for Kinloch, Missouri.
       $1.2 million for Las Cruces, New Mexico.
       $5 million for Virgin Valley Water District, Nevada.
       $2 million for Epping, New Hampshire.
       $4.3 million for Queen Annes County, Maryland and Pocomoke 
     River, Maryland.
       $6 million for Bingham County, Rupert, and Rosell and 
     Homedale, Idaho.
       $5 million for Missoula, Montana.
       $1.7 million for Essex County, Massachusetts.
       $3 million for Milton, Vermont.
       $5 million for Fayette and Fallowfield Township, 
     Pennsylvania.
       $6.3 million for Pulaski County and Kingdom City, Missouri.
       $8 million for Abbeville, McCormick, and Edgefield 
     Counties, South Carolina.
       $3.3 million for Jackson, Washington, and Cleburen 
     Counties, Alabama.


                            Report Language

       Veterans' Administration:
       Earmarks and directive language:
       $12.4 million add-on for a patient privacy/environmental 
     renovation project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
       $900,000 add-on for the National Veterans Cemetery in 
     Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
       Directs the VA to proceed expeditiously with the expansion 
     of the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, 
     Missouri.
       Directs the VA to move expeditiously to complete the third 
     floor of the Jackson, Mississippi regional VA office. 
     Sufficient funds are included in this appropriation for the 
     completion of the third floor should the VA be ready to 
     proceed in fiscal year 1998.
       Directs VA to give priority consideration to construct a 
     new dietary complex and boilerplant at Southeastern Veterans 
     Center in Spring City, Pennsylvania.
       Words of encouragement and support:
       Urges or encourages the Veterans' Administration to 
     consider establishing or expanding Community Based Outpatient 
     Clinics in Vermont, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and southern 
     and western Maryland.
       Urges additional funding to start up and test the coal-
     fired incinerator at the Lebanon, Pennsylvania VAMC.
       Urges VA to consider procuring a mobile clinic to be 
     operated from the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania VAMC.
       Language supporting a joint VA-DOD effort through the 
     Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts to apply 
     methods to improve detection capability for those prone to 
     diabetes.
       Encourages the VA to continue the VA-DOD Distance Learning 
     Pilot Program to transition clinical nurse specialists to the 
     role of nurse practitioners, which is established at the 
     Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences at 
     Bethesda, Maryland.
       Urges the VA to continue the demonstration project 
     involving the Clarksburg, West Virginia VAMC and the Ruby 
     Memorial Hospital at West Virginia University, with funding 
     up to $2 million.
       Urges VA to provide adequate support for seven-site 
     National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
       Language expressing continuing support for the 
     establishment of a partnership with a private, not-for-profit 
     research and treatment center that could deliver new cancer 
     therapy to veterans; directs the VA to expedite efforts to 
     establish such a partnership, and mentions that Garden State 
     Cancer Center in New Jersey is internationally recognized in 
     this field.
       Urges the VA to provide support for a cooperative program 
     with the Diabetes Institute of Norfolk, Virginia to develop 
     protocols for the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic 
     neuropathy.
       Language noting the need for expanding the columbarium at 
     the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, and 
     urges the VA to allocate necessary funds, estimated at $1.5 
     million for this project.
       Urges favorable and expeditious review of the construction 
     applications for State veteran homes in Cameron and 
     Warrensburg, Missouri, which would require $13.2 million and 
     $13.6 million in federal funds.
       Requests the VA to thoroughly and expeditiously consider 
     applications for cemetery sites for Springfield and 
     Higginsville, Missouri, which would require almost $4 million 
     in federal funds.
       Housing and Urban Development:
       Set-asides from Community Development Block Grant funds for 
     a variety of projects and activities in various locations:
       $2 million for revitalization of Los Angeles, California.
       $1 million for science and mathematics programs at Morgan 
     State University in Baltimore, Maryland.
       $2 million for expansions of the Business Development 
     Center at Hofstra University in New York.
       $1 million for St. Louis University for community 
     development program in LaClede Town, Missouri.
       $1 million for University of Colorado Health Sciences 
     Center.
       Environmental Protection Agency:
       Earmarks for a myriad of add-ons:
       $8 million to establish up to five university-based 
     research centers to address the most pressing unanswered 
     questions involved in the air particulates field.
       $2 million for Water Environment Research Foundation 
     cooperative research program.
       $3 million for American Water Works Association Research 
     Foundation.
       $1.75 million for National Jewish Medical and Research 
     Center for research on the relationship between indoor and 
     outdoor pollution.
       $2 million for Lovelace Respiratory Institute to establish 
     a National Environmental Respiratory Center coordinate 
     research on airborne particulates.
       $1 million for Center for Air Toxic Metals at Energy 
     and Environmental Research Center.
       $1 million for Texas Regional Institute for Environmental 
     Studies.
       $1 million for Institute for Environmental and Industrial 
     Science.
       $1.5 million for Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene 
     and Public Health to establish a National Center for 
     Environmental Toxicology and Epidemiology to study the effect 
     of urban toxics on human health.

[[Page S7811]]

       $1 million to establish the Center for Estuarine and 
     Coastal Ocean Environmental Research at the University of 
     South Alabama.
       $1.5 million for Integrated Petroleum Environmental 
     Consortium.
       $3 million to continue a demonstration project involving 
     leaking fuel tanks in rural Alaskan villages.
       $250,000 for the Nature Conservancy of Alaska for 
     protection of the Kenai River watershed.
       $3 million for the Southwest Center for Environmental 
     Research and Policy.
       $1 million for the Sacramento River Toxic Pollutant Control 
     Program.
       $500,000 for continuing of the small water system 
     cooperative initiative at Montana State University.
       $500,000 for a small public water system technology center 
     at Western Kentucky University.
       $2 million for the New York City watershed protection 
     program.
       $750,000 for the Chespeake Bay program to initiate a small 
     watershed grants program to implement the cooperative 
     tributary basic strategies.
       $1 million to continue the sediment decontamination 
     technology project in the New York-New Jersey harbor.
       $500,000 for the Treasure Valley, Idaho, hydrologic 
     project.
       $2.5 million for King County, Washington, for a molten 
     carbonate fuel cell demonstration project at the Renton 
     wastewater treatment plant.
       $800,000 for the National Center for Vehicle Emissions 
     Control and Safety to establish an On-Board Diagnostic 
     Research Center.
       $500,000 to continue the Small Business Pollution 
     Prevention Center at University of Northern Iowa.
       $500,000 to continue the Compliance Assistance Center for 
     Painting and Coating Technology.
       $200,000 to complete cleanup of Five Island Lake.
       $500,000 for the Ala Wai Canal watershed improvement 
     project.
       $400,000 to continue the Maui algal bloom project.
       $100,000 for the Design for the Environment for Farmers 
     Program to address the need to develop and adopt sustainable 
     agricultural practices for the fragile tropical ecosystems of 
     the American Pacific.
       $1.5 million for the Lake Champlain management plan.
       $600,000 to complete the solar aquatic wastewater treatment 
     demonstration in Burlington, Vermont although the report 
     language goes on to state that ``The Committee does not 
     intend to recommend funding for additional solar aquatic 
     wastewater treatment demonstrations in view of EPA's 
     assessment that this technology does not appear to offer any 
     economic advantages over conventional technologies.''
       $1 million for the Alabama Department of Environmental 
     Management to coordinate a model water/wastewater operations 
     training program.
       $150,000 to establish a regional training center at the 
     Kentucky Onsite Wastewater Center.
       $550,000 for the Idaho water initiative.
       $1 million for Lake Weequahic cleanup.
       $1.75 million for the Three Rivers watershed protection 
     demonstration project in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
       $1.25 million to design an innovative granular activated 
     carbon water treatment project in Oahu.
       $500,000 for a small public water system technology center 
     at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
       $2 million for a Missouri Watershed initiative at the Food 
     and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.
       $500,000 for a study of dioxin levels in the Ohio River 
     basin.
       $300,000 for the California Urban Environmental Research 
     and Education Center.
       $1 million to continue a wetlands-based potable water reuse 
     program for the city of West Palm Beach.
       $700,000 for the Long Island Sound office.
       $2 million for the University of Missouri Agroforestry 
     Center to support a floodplain initiative.
       $300,000 for the Northeast States for coordinated air use 
     management.
       Directive language:
       Language directing EPA to consider testing ground water 
     remediation technology developed by the International 
     Research Center for Groundwater Research.
       Language directing EPA to fund the water quality testing 
     program along the New Jersey and New York shorelines at no 
     less than current levels.
       Language directing EPA to conduct a feasibility study for a 
     potential pilot project to demonstrate innovative 
     alternatives to the existing haul-water drinking water and 
     honey bucket human waste disposal systems in the Northwest 
     Arctic Borough.
       Language directing EPA to assess whether the Edison 
     Laboratory should be replaced and, if appropriate, to include 
     funding in the FY 1999 budget submission.
       Words of encouragement and support:
       Language urging EPA to give strong consideration to funding 
     a proposal by the Hawaii Institute of Tropical Agriculture 
     and Human Resources to further the commercialization of 
     agriculturally based environmental remediation technologies.
       Urges  EPA  to  give  priority  to  soil aquifer treatment 
     research program for indirect potable reuse of highly treated 
     domestic wastewater being conducted in California and 
     Arizona.
       Encourages EPA to undertake a demonstration project at 
     North Dakota State University comparing satellite data to 
     field-gathered data on farming practices in the Oakes 
     irrigation test area in southeast North Dakota.
       Urges EPA to support the Houston Air Excellence and 
     Leadership program which seeks to identify ways in which air 
     pollution control policy can be targeted toward the most 
     dangerous pollutants.
       Directs EPA to strongly consider funding a proposal by Fort 
     Scott, Kansas for additional tertiary wastewater treatment 
     via a constructed wetland which will improve the Marmaton 
     River.
       Urges EPA to give careful consideration to the 
     establishment of a Small Public Water Systems Technology 
     Assistance Center at West Virginia State University and the 
     University of New Hampshire.
       Urges EPA to look at the sister lake partnership between 
     Lake Champlain Basin and Lake Orchid in the former Soviet 
     Union as a model for its own program.
       Language stating that funding within the National Estuary 
     Program should be provided to Sarasota Bay, Buzzards Bay, and 
     Massachusetts Bay.
       Urges EPA to provide support to exploring new ways to 
     control zebra mussels in Lake Champlain.
       Urges EPA to provide assistance to the city of Gainesville, 
     Florida, for an innovative stormwater management project to 
     protect the Floridian aquifer from stormwater runoff.
       Urges EPA to support the Sokaogon Chippewa community's 
     efforts to assess the environmental impacts of a proposed 
     sulfide mine project.
       Language stating the Committee would entertain a future 
     budget request by EPA to construct a solid oxide fuel cell/
     gas turbine power system demonstration plant at EPA's Fort 
     Meade research facility.
       Language stating that EPA should provide adequate funds to 
     continue the Dover Township, New Jersey, cancer cluster 
     studies.
       Urges EPA to provide $3 million from the border 
     infrastructure fund to El Paso for use in its Rio Grande 
     environmental monitoring program and $2 million for the 
     federal share for construction of the Jonathan Rogers plant.
       Federal Emergency Management Agency:
       Words of encouragement and support:
       Recommends FEMA consider using the State of Maryland's 
     western Maryland flood task force as a model for work in 
     other states in identifying disaster mitigation 
     opportunities, and states that FEMA should work with the 
     State of Maryland to fund mitigation measures identified by 
     the task force.
       Urges FEMA to continue efforts, in cooperation with the 
     National Institute of Building Sciences and the University of 
     South Alabama, to establish a universal methodology capable 
     of predicting damages and loss of life caused by natural 
     hazards.
       Urges FEMA to support the Pittsford, Vermont, Fire Academy 
     effort to expand training to rail and toxic material 
     accidents, as recommended by the Committee in prior years.
       Encourages FEMA to support the Coastal Region Development 
     Center's efforts to develop a new model plan for southeast 
     Georgia and other coastal states for hurricane evacuation 
     mitigation preparedness.
       National Aeronautics and Space Administration:
       Earmarks and directive language:
       Earmarks an additional $10 million for Origins ATD for 
     additional astronomy test beds that contain significant 
     investment by U.S. institutions; directs that, in selecting 
     the new sites, one site permit search from the southern 
     hemisphere for candidate stars which show clear evidence of 
     planetary systems, and a second site use a large ground-based 
     interferometer that demonstrates new adaptive optics and 
     nulling interferometry technologies essential for the direct 
     detection of Earth-like planets of other stars.
       Directs NASA to use $15 million to fund up to 
     five consortia to develop specific regional applications 
     with the use of EOS data; each consortium much include 
     academic institutions and end users as partners and 
     demonstrate a value-added application of EOS data to a 
     regional problem of significant consequence.
       $20 million increase earmarked for the bantam flight 
     demonstrator.
       $1.5 million earmarked for MSE-Technology Applications, 
     Western Environmental Technology Office.
       $2.5 million for a science learning center in Kenai, 
     Alaska.
       $500,000 for the Discovery Science Center, Santa Ana, 
     California.
       $2 million earmarked for continuing development of a 
     national prototype space education curriculum by the Center 
     for Space Education at the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii.
       $5 million for facilities enhancements at the Stennis Space 
     Center.
       Words of encouragement and support:
       Commends the efforts to the Stennis Space Center in 
     commercial remote sensing and encourages that these 
     activities continue.
       Urges NASA to use a portion of the $10 million earmarked 
     for the next generation internet initiative to develop new 
     internet technologies to improve interconnection to areas 
     such as Alaska and Hawaii; also recommends Montana as an 
     appropriate participant area in the next generation internet 
     initiative.

[[Page S7812]]

       National Science Foundation:
       Earmarks and directive language:
       $40 million to support a competitive, merit-based 
     initiative, which may include one or more university-based 
     research center, to enable the development of a U.S.-led 
     public/private research initiative supporting research into 
     plant genomes
       $25 million earmarked for an incoherent scatter radar, 
     which the Committee directs be used only to construct the 
     radar collocated with the Department of Defense ionospheric 
     research site (i.e., the HAARP project in Alaska)
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, what concerns me most is the growing 
practice of earmarking funds for a myriad of projects in the report 
language but then incorporating that report language by reference in 
the bill itself. For example, on pages 32 and 33, the bill language 
states:

       Of the amounts made available under this heading, $40 
     million for the Economic Development Initiative (EDI) to 
     finance a variety of efforts, including those identified in 
     the Senate committee report, that promote economic 
     revitalization that links people to jobs and supportive 
     services.

  The report identifies 17 separate projects, in specific amounts and 
at specific locations, totaling nearly $30 million. The effect of this 
bill language is to require HUD to spend three-fourths of this economic 
development money for these particular projects without any assessment 
of the relative needs of the communities which would benefit from these 
projects compared with many other American communities. This is a very 
bad practice, Mr. President. It is one of the worst that I have seen in 
a long time.
  Another section of the bill incorporates a similar list of earmarks 
into the bill language. On page 62, the bill reads:

       . . . $82 million for making grants for the construction of 
     wastewater and water treatment facilities and groundwater 
     protection infrastructure in accordance with the terms and 
     conditions specified for such grants in the report 
     accompanying this Act. . . . 

  It just so happens that the only terms and conditions contained in 
the report are earmarks for particular projects for the entire $82 
million set aside in the bill. Again, this is back-door earmarking and 
it's the worst form of pork barrel spending that I have seen in a long 
time.
  As I have said, this bill also contains earmarks for museums, 
particularly, $7.1 million for the Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues 
Baseball Museum in Kansas City, MO.
  The bill also earmarks $150 million for water and waterwaste 
facilities along the United States-Mexico border. While this earmark 
could conceivably benefit my own State of Arizona, I cannot understand 
why we cannot, instead, provide funding based on need and established 
criteria, rather than setting aside millions of dollars for certain 
States or areas of the country.
  The report is replete with earmarks. One of the most interesting 
reads as follows:

       $600,000 for the final year of funding for the solar 
     aquatic wastewater treatment demonstration in Burlington, VT, 
     to be cost-shared by the participants.

  Get this, Mr. President:

       The Committee does not intend to recommend funding for 
     additional solar aquatic wastewater treatment demonstrations 
     in view of EPA's assessment that this technology does not 
     appear to offer any economic advantages over conventional 
     technologies.

  So we are going to spend $600,000 more on a project where, in EPA's 
assessment, the technology doesn't offer any economic advantages over 
conventional technologies. It seems a little bit ridiculous to me.
  Mr. President, I won't go through the nine-page list I mentioned, but 
there are some fascinating earmarks in here. I will tell you, it's 
really interesting. Here is $1 million for renovation of the Paramount 
Theater in Vermont. It urges or encourages the Veterans' Administration 
to consider establishing or expanding community-based outpatient 
clinics in Vermont, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and southern and 
western Maryland. You are going to have to help me out here, Mr. 
President. Why not in Maine, California, or Texas? Instead, it is 
encouraging the VA to establish expanding community-based outpatient 
clinics in Vermont, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, southern and western 
Maryland. The only thing I can say is in common there is that they are 
low-growth States. Why would we not want to establish or expand 
outpatient clinics in high-growth States--Nevada, California, Texas, or 
Arizona? I don't know. I don't understand.

  Mr. President, we don't want to do these things. I think, as I have 
said on many different occasions, it doesn't help us with the American 
people, and we waste millions of taxpayer dollars on projects that 
serve our own narrow interests rather than those of the Nation at 
large. It makes it harder for us to whittle away at the $5.3 trillion 
debt.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I know the order was for the Senate to 
adjourn at 12:30. I now ask unanimous consent that there be a period 
for morning business, in which Senator Ashcroft be permitted to speak 
for 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Missouri is recognized.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to proceed as in morning business until the completion of my 
remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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