[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 67 (Friday, May 22, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5391-S5400]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE HIGHWAY BILL

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I want to announce that the 
Appropriations Committee will hold a meeting at 2 o'clock to discuss 
ISTEA, and until that meeting is over, I will object to any proceedings 
on ISTEA.
  Mr. LOTT. Let me say, because I know everyone is interested in this, 
this is a critical moment on a very important bill. The managers of the 
ISTEA II legislation have labored late into the night and all morning 
trying to make sure Members are aware of what is in the bill. I think 
they have done a good job. It might not be perfect in anybody's eyes, 
but we need to get it done. We need to get it done this afternoon.
  There will be an opportunity for Members to express themselves, but I 
believe for all concerned the wise thing to do is to go to this bill as 
soon as we can, have a limited debate, and vote. It won't be easier on 
Sunday afternoon at 4 o'clock. It won't be easier in a week or a month.
  I think we need to complete this legislation. We will work on both 
sides, as we have all along, to make sure that Members are satisfied 
with what we try to do.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I concur with the remarks just made by 
the majority leader. We have 20 or 25 Senators, all of whom have planes 
to catch this afternoon, who don't want to miss this vote. I certainly 
hope that we wouldn't inconvenience a third to half of the Senate as we 
get to this crucial time.
  I hope everybody will cooperate and work with us. We have to get this 
legislation done. My hope is that we won't leave until we get it done. 
I hope we could seek cooperation on both sides.
  Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. LOTT. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. STEVENS. Where is the report?
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, we have the managers here on the floor that 
have worked on this legislation who are prepared to begin to discuss 
the legislation, to answer questions, and be prepared to go to a vote 
when the Senators are ready to do that.
  I don't know the physical location. I presume that will be available.
  Mr. STEVENS. As I understand, no one lives further from the Senate 
than I do and I have a wife waiting for me halfway home.
  However, I am also a conferee. I have not seen the conference report. 
I was not given even the privilege of deciding whether I should sign 
the conference report. I do not know for sure what is in the bill as 
far as the jurisdiction of the committee I happened to chair at the 
time. I have not waited almost 30 years to be the chairman of this 
committee to see it emasculated in 5 minutes because people have to get 
a plane home.
  Mr. LOTT. In response to the Senator from Alaska, I understand that 
he wants to see what is in it. I think he will like what he sees in it, 
both for him and his constituency and the country as a whole.
  This is over a $200 billion bill that is needed in this country for 
safe, decent roads, bridges, and mass transit. We have drug it out for 
weeks and months and it is time to act.
  Now, does every Senator deserve a right and an opportunity to see the 
formula and see how each State does and look at what it means for the 
Appropriations Committee and every committee? Yes, let's do it. Let's 
do it now. You will have an opportunity to look at this, and others 
should. But it is time that we get serious and get it done in a 
reasonable time in the best interest of America.
  My father died on a narrow, two-lane road that wasn't safe and I am 
not going to stand any longer for us having inadequate roads and 
bridges in this country and for money to be sometimes spent in other 
places.

  I am bending a little bit here, but I think everybody in this Chamber 
knows I tried to listen to everybody's needs, concerns on both sides, 
on tough legislation this week and this year. I am sympathetic. I 
wanted to look at the numbers. I have. I haven't seen the report. I 
don't know whether it is perfect. But it has been a laborious, tough, 
involvement and it is time that we bring it to a conclusion. Help me do 
that.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. Leader, I regret deeply the death of your father. I 
have similar feelings when cancer comes before the Senate because my 
grandfather, father and brother all died from cancer. I understand 
those feelings.
  However, I also understand that our committee has responsibility for 
the controllable expenses. This bill reduces controllable expenses, if 
I am told right, by at least 2\1/2\ to 3 percent. It further will 
require, if I am informed right, that if there is an increase in the 
highway tax revenues, we must spend them, even if it means changing the 
budgets for other subcommittees. If there is a decrease and the 
estimates are not met, I am told we will take the money from 
controllable accounts and put it in this account to pay for highways at 
the cost of all the other functions that are controllable.
  Now, I think that is something that I have a right to look at and 
Senators have a right to debate if they want to do that. I regret 
deeply being in a position of apparently opposing my leader who I do 
support and am committed to, but I feel this process needs to be 
understood.
  Again, I am only reporting what I have been told because I have not 
been privileged to have a copy of this yet, despite the fact that I am 
on that conference committee. Now, I have been here almost 30 years, 
and I have never seen this happen before. Never.
  Mr. LOTT. If I could respond.
  Mr. STEVENS. And it is not going to happen now without me seeing that 
report.
  Mr. LOTT. I have been here 25 years as a Member of the House and 
Senate and 4 years before that as a staff member. I have never seen a 
highway bill that was done any differently than this. Maybe this one is 
even a little better.
  I was getting calls at my home last night until 11:30. Senators were 
involved, Congressmen--negotiations going on right downstairs. There 
have been staff members and Senators and Congressmen coming in and out 
of there.
  I know the Senator from Alaska, as chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee, has seen the computer runs previously.
  Mr. STEVENS. Not one. You had my staff's estimate of that run. I 
asked repeatedly for a copy of it and the Senator from Rhode Island 
will tell you, he told me the other day they were not available yet. We 
had an estimate of the run, and it was run on our own computers.
  Mr. LOTT. I would like you to meet Senator Chafee.
  Mr. STEVENS. I met him at Harvard Law School in 1947.
  Mr. LOTT. And Senator Warner. We would like you to get together and 
look at the numbers and the language and I believe you will be happy.
  Mr. STEVENS. Respectfully, Mr. Leader, there have been meetings all 
over this Congress for the last 2 weeks and I have tried to get into 
them and I was not allowed in. Now, we are going to have a meeting of 
our committee to find out how this affects the appropriations process. 
Until we know how it does, I hope you will understand, I respectfully 
object to proceeding with this bill until we have seen a copy of the 
report.
  Mr. LOTT. I think the easiest thing to do to resolve this problem is 
for you all to go meet, stop talking about it, get what you need, and 
then we can go ahead.
  Mr. STEVENS. Parliamentary inquiry. Is the report before the Senate 
yet?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The report is not before the Senate.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Will the majority leader yield?
  Mr. LOTT. This applies to the Senator from Rhode Island. While the 
appropriators are meeting and having a chance to review the documents, 
I think this would be a good time for the managers to begin to talk 
about and explain what is in the bill, what the policies may be, answer 
questions of Senators. We can begin the process

[[Page S5392]]

right now. I believe Senator Daschle thinks that would be a wise move. 
I believe that would be the thing to do at this point.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Senator from Rhode Island is 
recognized.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, we have charts here and we will make them 
available for anybody who wishes to see them. I know that most of the 
Senators' staffs have been briefed already today on this. Those 
Senators who have not, we certainly would be delighted to meet with 
them and go over this chart and give them a copy. I think that is the 
way to do business. It is true that the report is not yet before us, 
and that was understood when we commenced this discussion, with the 
idea to save as much time as we could. The report will be along. 
Certainly, it is a massive report. People are going to have difficulty 
absorbing it, but those are the time exigencies we are working under at 
this time.
  Mr. President, pursuant to what the majority leader said, at this 
time I will discuss the philosophy behind this legislation and some of 
the difficulties that we encountered as we proceeded. The philosophy we 
had in this legislation was to repeat what took place, as far as the 
general philosophical approach in ISTEA I, which passed in 1991. Now, 
in 1991, the first time, we passed a measure that was truly a 
transportation bill rather than solely a highway bill. In other words, 
the philosophy in 1991 was to do the best we could to devise a system 
to move people and goods from point A to point B in the most efficient 
and safe manner. So, as I say, it was more than just a highway bill; it 
was a transportation bill.
  Mr. President, so thus we have this legislation, which deals not 
solely with highways, as I said, it deals substantially with mass 
transit. Likewise, indeed, it encourages what they call 
``intermodalism,'' which is the blending of various methods of 
transportation. That is where the ``I'' comes from in Intermodal 
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. That is where the original ISTEA 
acronym came from. We believe we followed out that philosophy in 
connection with this legislation, which sometimes we call ISTEA II.
  Mr. President, we then came to the always-difficult part of 
determining how to divide up the funds. You have a limited amount of 
funds, and how do you divide them? So we have a formula that is worked 
out. In that formula, you take into account vehicle miles traveled, 
number of lanes, mile lanes in the State, you take into account bridge 
problems, and a host of other factors, and that becomes the formula.
  When you run something like that, you frequently end up with 
difficulties. Not everything comes out just the way you want it. So we 
made adjustments to the best of our ability. One of the points that was 
cardinal in our approach on this legislation was that all the donor 
States--that is, the States putting in more than they get back--should 
at least receive-- originally, we strived for 91 cents back on the 
dollar. In other words, every dollar a donor State put in, the effort 
was made to get 91 cents back because, in ISTEA I, we have a series of 
States who received back 88 cents, or even less than that in some 
instances.

  Now, when you try to bring States up from below 90 cents or 88 cents, 
wherever it might be--for example, California, under ISTEA, was at 89 
cents. You would think just bringing California up 3 cents for every 
dollar put in would be a simple thing. Well, mechanically, it is; but 
cost-wise, it is very expensive. So despite our sincere efforts to get 
everybody 91 cents back on the dollars contributed, the best we could 
do was 90.5 cents. Therefore, if you look down the list of those 
receiving moneys, you will find there is no State below the 90.5, and 
that is a very, very significant achievement. Now, do we have some 
States who are getting back more than a dollar? Of course, we do. Those 
are the donee States. But we believe that, taking into consideration 
all the factors, we ended up with a fair deal.
  The average increase that was received across the country was 43 
percent. That is the increase over ISTEA I. In some instances, States 
go to more than that. Alabama is at 60.6 cents in increase, for 
example. Some States were less. But that is what comes about when you 
strive to reach as much fairness as possible.
  Let me say, there are frequently distorting factors that get into 
these equations. What would be an example of a distorting factor? A 
distorting factor would be a State that had received very, very 
significant additional amounts in a prior year--that is, when the 
formula was worked out under ISTEA I. Pursuant to that, that State 
received either a monstrous amount of projects, or very significant 
amounts of other moneys coming from various sources that distorted the 
picture of that State, so that you could not take that State with the 
very high additional amounts that it had received through projects, 
grants, project moneys, and expect to get a 40-percent increase on top 
of it. So that accounts, in some instances, for the fact that some 
States would be considerably lower than the 43-percent increase over 
ISTEA I.
  So, Mr. President, I am prepared to talk with anybody about this. As 
I say, I think many staffs have been briefed. We have tried to keep 
certainly the conferees from the Environment and Public Works Committee 
briefed as we went along. We had a whole series of meetings to try to 
keep them briefed. It is true that when you do negotiations like this, 
you don't have 65 people from each side in the room. There has to be a 
limited number of negotiators in order to get moving along. We were 
fortunate in our negotiations. We always included, every step of the 
way, the ranking member and representatives from his side of the aisle. 
Likewise, I was tremendously assisted in this by the chairman of the 
subcommittee dealing with this subject. That is, the Infrastructure 
Subcommittee of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator 
Warner of Virginia. It so happened that the ranking member of the full 
committee is also the ranking member on that Infrastructure 
Subcommittee. So that Senator Baucus was, in fact, wearing two hats.
  Mr. President, I think the result is not everything all our way. No; 
it isn't. But that is what happens when you get into negotiations.
  One of the things I am very glad about is that some of the language 
that was in the House bill was not accepted. In other words, it was 
dropped. Of course, there are some things that we had that were 
likewise dropped. But some of the provisions--for example, the so-
called ``mid-cost correction''--which would reopen this whole subject 
in 3 years we felt was not constructive. To go through all of this 
another 3 years from now would not be something we would countenance.
  Mr. President, I am glad to yield to the distinguished ranking member 
and have him address his remarks to what we have been undertaking.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I want to first compliment the chairman of 
our committee, Senator Chafee, who has done, I believe, an 
extraordinary job. I wish Members of the Senate who were not in the 
conference committee could have watched the proceedings. They would 
have seen the chairman set a very civil, gracious, and respectful tone. 
That was the tone of the conference. Sometimes conferences get pretty 
acrimonious. This one was not at all.
  Just a brief summary of the bill, Mr. President, on where we are.
  This is truly a historic bill. That is a term that many Members of 
Congress use somewhat loosely around here. But this one really is. And 
I think even compared to the last ISTEA bill, this is historic. Let me 
tell you why.
  For the first time, all the dollars that we as citizens pay in fuel 
taxes when we put gasoline in our cars, or diesel fuel in our pickups, 
will go into the highway trust fund. And all the dollars that come out 
of that trust fund will go back in the form of highway allocation, or 
mass transit allocation. We are not changing the distribution between 
mass transit or highways. But, again, all the dollars that come into 
the trust fund paid for by gasoline taxes will come out of the trust 
fund through to the State's allocation for their various highway 
programs, or, in the case of the mass transit account, to

[[Page S5393]]

the mass transit account. That is a major change from the current 
practice. The current practice, for those of us who fill the gas tank 
and put dollars into the highway trust fund through our gasoline taxes 
and are not sure that those dollars are going to come back in the form 
of highway allocations, sometimes those dollars at the will of the 
Congress and the President are used for other purposes. That will no 
longer be the case. Dollars in, dollars out.
  We also wrote into this legislation a guarantee called a ``firewall'' 
to make sure that happens. It is not totally 100 percent guaranteed, 
but for all intents and purposes, it might as well be.
  After that huge increase, we have a lot more highway dollars coming 
out, not only because of the guarantee I mentioned but also because 
just recently Congress enacted legislation to ensure that the 4.3 
cents-per-gallon gasoline tax previously used for deficit reduction is 
now going into the highway trust fund, which means 4.3 cents more than 
previously was the case. The rule of thumb basically is that 1 penny of 
gasoline tax--about $1.6 billion, or $7 billion--goes into the highway 
trust fund. This is a big increase. On average, States will receive 
about a 43-percent increase in highway funds for each of the next 6 
years compared with what they have received in the past 3 years. It is 
again for those reasons.

  I might also say that the attempt of the conferees, which I think was 
met, was for regional balance. This process started in the Senate about 
a year ago. Senator Warner from Virginia, myself, Senator Chafee, and 
Senator Moynihan, also for all intents and purposes, introduced 
separate bills representing different parts of the country, each part 
having generally a different point of view. Senator Warner was 
essentially concerned proportionally more about the donor States; that 
is, those States which historically have been receiving from the trust 
fund considerably fewer dollars than they have been putting in.
  Then there are the Western States, and small States which have unique 
circumstances because of low population density, and sometimes wide 
spaces, which also have a certain point of view.
  Then, third, there are the Northeast States by and large--I grant you 
these are very rough estimates and a very rough explanation. But the 
Northeast States, which are more densely populated historically, 
receive quite a bit of highway funds as well as mass transit funds.
  We try to give balance in this bill, first by ensuring that the donor 
States, those that would put so much into the highway trust fund but 
receiving a lot less, are guaranteed essentially 90 cents on the 
dollar--90.05 cents. There are some adjustments. That is basically it.
  In addition, small States receive what small States believe would be 
a fair share. It is true that the Northeastern States don't get the 
same, on average, percent increase. But that is, to be honest about it, 
because those States in the previous ISTEA bill got quite a large chunk 
of money compared with other portions of the country.
  So this is a guarantee to even things out.
  For those who are concerned about the environmental provisions, let 
me say that this bill is environmentally sound.
  There is the congestion mitigation account, which has more dollars in 
it than the previous ISTEA bill.
  So the dollars are there for cities which do not meet the Clean Air 
Act standards--additional dollars--to undertake the various 
expenditures to reduce air pollution in their cities. That is there.
  The enhancement provision is still fully funded. Those who are 
concerned about bike paths and trails are also going to be, I think, 
happy with the provisions in this bill.
  We also rejected in the final hours some provisions which I think 
would have been very harmful to the environment.
  There has been some talk about the PCB problem in New York. That was 
rejected. It is not in here.
  I can list other attempts. I know some of the environmental 
conservation committees are worried about what was attempted to be put 
in this bill and the conferees rejected.
  I might also just outline and remind us that each of us, as a 
Senator, is worried about fighting for our respective States. That is 
our job, that is what we ran for office for, and that is what we hired 
out to do--to represent our States the best we possibly can.
  As you know, Mr. President, most Senators are not wallflowers. Most 
Senators are good advocates for their States. They are fierce advocates 
for their States, which obviously means that it is hard to get 100 
points of view all accommodated, particularly when each State thinks it 
has a unique point of view that makes it a little bit different from 
other States. Add to that the further complication that there is 
another body; there is a House of Representatives. We in the Senate 
pass what we think is the best legislation for our States. The highway 
bill that passed the Senate passed by a very large margin. Senators 
liked the bill. It was good for our respective States and was a good 
compromise for all our States. But House Members have a very different 
view on the highway program compared to Senators. It is, very simply, 
because we Senators represent entire States; House Members don't 
represent entire States, except for a very few. There are about five or 
six very-low-populated States, like my State of Montana, which has only 
one Member of Congress. But most Members of Congress, who tend to be 
from populous States, such as New York, California, and Florida, for 
example, are really much more interested in their districts; what is 
the highway bill going to do for their districts, rather than for their 
States? Of course they care about their States. They care deeply about 
their States. But I dare say they probably care a little bit more about 
their district. After all, they run for reelection every 2 years. They 
want to show, legitimately and properly, to their constituents, the 
people who voted for them--or perhaps didn't vote for them--that they 
are doing the best job they possibly can for their district, which 
means the formulas, as the allocations, somewhat clash.

  Senators are worried about Senate distribution. Senators are worried 
about State distribution. House Members are worried a little bit about 
State distribution, but quite a bit about how much their districts get. 
Hence, we have this phenomenon called demonstration projects. It is 
difficult to meld these two competing points of view together.
  I mention all of this because as we in the Senate are here, now, 
voting on this conference report which is about to be before us--as we 
look at it, we might find it is not exactly what we would have 
preferred. It is not exactly the bill that passed the Senate. But when 
Members of the Senate look closely at what is in this conference 
report, I think they will find it is very close to the provisions that 
passed the Senate and should not be distressed. Certainly, it is 
important to point out that every State but for one, which is a very, 
very special case, will receive a significant increase in dollars per 
year allocated to the State. The average increase, and I must underline 
the word average, is about a 43-percent increase for all the States. 
That is not a small number. It is a large number. It means, for 
example, that it is increased from 28----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The time of the Senator has 
expired.
  Mr. BAUCUS. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BAUCUS. So it, the current program, is roughly $18 billion, the 
current ISTEA which expired. This bill is $26 billion, roughly; hence, 
roughly a 43-percent increase. And a State, on average, will receive 
that 43-percent increase. So, while there are little ``i's'' that are 
not dotted properly according to some Senators, or ``t's'' that are not 
crossed properly according to some, I submit this is a good bill. It is 
good for the country. It repairs a lot of needed repairs. There are a 
lot of roads in our country that need repair and curves that need to be 
straightened out--in addition to our very good environmental programs 
in this bill. I just hope the Senate, when we see the conference report 
from the House, acts on it very quickly because then we will have 
finished our business, people home will be proud of what we have

[[Page S5394]]

done, and we can get on to other business when we come back after 
recess.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the distinguished senior 
Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I would like to speak on this highway 
bill. Seeing there is no one else here, I will not limit time. But I 
want to, first of all, congratulate the chairman of the committee and 
the Senator from Montana, the ranking member, at having done what I 
think is an excellent job with a most difficult issue, an issue where 
you take a vast amount of money that comes in from gas taxes and seek 
to put it into a formula that is fair to all the States, and yet 
adheres to the purpose of the thing, which is an interstate highway 
program that runs from coast to coast, that runs from Mexico to Canada, 
and that does all the things that an interstate program is supposed to 
do. So there does need to be some adjustment, in terms of the dollars, 
with respect to the various States.

  It is most difficult. I am here to support the bill. I think it is 
well done. Also, to remind Members that this committee has been working 
in this area for more than a year. This bill was brought to the Senate 
more than 2 months ago and passed, I think almost unanimously, and this 
proposition that comes before us today is very similar to what was 
passed here in the Senate.
  One of the difficult parts, procedurally, of course, is that 
something quite different was passed originally in the House. In order 
to get this done, there has to be some conference. There has to be some 
communication. There has to be some allocation of differences between 
the House and Senate, and they were extreme, those differences, 
particularly in the area of the so-called demonstration projects, all 
above the formula line.
  So it has been a very long process and one that has been tedious, one 
that has been difficult. I sympathize, I think, with the chairman of 
the Appropriations Committee in his feeling of not having been as 
involved as he would have liked to be. I suspect that is probably true 
of all of us. This is a large bill. It will be out here soon. We are 
saying, my gosh, we are being asked to vote in an hour or two on a bill 
of that kind? But the fact is, the real issues have been known for some 
time. The real issues have been talked about. The real issues have been 
in the daily reports. The real issues have been done by our staffs. So 
it is not a surprise.
  Of course we don't know all the details, and unfortunately I have to 
say: How many of these bills that are 18 inches high has everybody read 
on the other issues? But the principles are there. And the principle is 
to try to spend about the amount of money that comes in on gas tax for 
highways; that is fairly reasonable--or for transportation. The idea of 
guaranteeing that each State will have 90.5 percent of what they paid 
in, that is pretty basic. We know that.
  We have some things in there that I think are very important to all 
of us. We have increased the money that goes to national parks. All of 
us have national parks. And certainly if we don't have them in our 
State, we all use national parks and enjoy national parks. They have no 
other source for funding, and that is good. For Federal lands, of 
course, to the Presiding Officer and I, representing a State that is 50 
percent Federal ownership--and some others are substantially higher--
Federal land money is very important.
  So these are the principal things that are there. These are the 
things that we know about. I think we have to remember that the 
deadline for reauthorization has passed. It passed last January. We had 
a temporary bill that went into place until the first of May. This is 
something that makes it impossible, if we do not have a bill, for 
States to go ahead and plan. And that is particularly true for those of 
us who live in the northern part of the country where we have a 
relatively short construction time, and States need to know what kind 
of money they will have to deal with. So I think it is vital that we 
get into this bill, that we find out the basic points that we need to 
be informed on, and that we move forward and, frankly, do this before 
we go on this recess.

  I guess, as a practical matter, we can go on the recess and we will 
not know a great deal. The issues will still be about the same when we 
come back. The issue is not so much a matter of understanding as it is 
a matter of not everyone is going to be perfectly happy. In 
Massachusetts, for example, they had a huge allocation before, for a 
special project, so their formula this year looks a little strange 
because they don't have that huge project in.
  So there is an effort to make it that way. So I hope we move forward. 
We have really been through this business of talking about whether we 
are going to spend the gas tax on highways or not. We went through 
that. We voted on that. We are ready to move forward. This is a very 
complicated program. I believe it is a good one. I believe the 
committee has done very well, and I urge my friends in the Senate to 
move forward and complete this discussion today.
  I yield the floor. 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. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I have been a member of the conference 
committee on the ISTEA bill, and I want to express my appreciation to 
all those who played a leadership role in writing this legislation.
  North Dakota is profoundly dependent on Federal support to maintain a 
strong road system in our State. As all of my colleagues know, we have 
a big area and we have a sparse population. If we are going to have a 
national road system, we have to have a national program.
  I can tell my colleagues, it would be pretty grim going across North 
Dakota without the Federal Highway Program. Instead, we really have an 
outstanding network of roads across our State, although they are in 
deteriorating condition. You cannot drive around my State without 
noticing that the condition of our highway network is deteriorating, 
and deteriorating markedly. That is why it was so critically important 
that there be additional resources for the road and bridge program in 
the country and why I am so pleased at the result of the conference 
committee.
  We have seen a very significant increase in funding. On average, 
States will receive a 44-percent increase. I am pleased my State will 
do somewhat better than that, but it is very much needed. Our State 
will receive $171.5 million a year. Under the previous program, we have 
been getting $111 million a year. So that is a substantial increase. It 
is very much needed in order to catch up with the maintenance 
conditions that currently exist in the State.
  I will say, Mr. President, that there is a part of this funding 
mechanism that does concern me, and that relates to the question of the 
funding. I am concerned about that part of the funding that comes out 
of the veterans' program. There is a group of us who opposed that 
funding mechanism in the Budget Committee and who opposed that funding 
mechanism on the floor of the Senate when we had an amendment to try to 
change it. I assure veterans in my State that we will take further 
steps to try to redress the wrong that is done with respect to that 
funding source in the highway legislation.
  With that one exception, I think it is very important to thank those 
who have been the leaders on this matter. The Senate bill was far 
superior to the House bill, and we should thank Senator Chafee and 
Senator Baucus for their very strong leadership in allowing us to have 
a bill that is much closer to the Senate bill than to the House bill.
  I thank our colleagues who were members of the conference committee, 
and I especially thank Senator Chafee and Senator Baucus. I thank the 
Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from North 
Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I add my congratulations and my thanks to 
Senator Chafee and Senator Baucus especially. My colleague, Senator 
Conrad, has described how important this piece of legislation is. I 
know both the chairman and ranking member

[[Page S5395]]

worked very hard for a long, long while to make sure that the result 
was a result that is fair to all parts of this country.
  A lot of people don't think much about road issues. Not many people 
think about roads when they are driving on a good road. They don't 
think about roads much until they hit a bad road. They don't think 
about bridges until they read a story or see a bridge that is in 
disrepair or has fallen down and caused a loss of life.
  The investment in this country's infrastructure--roads and bridges--
is critically important. In a State like North Dakota, that is 10 times 
the size of Massachusetts in landmass, yet with only 640,000 people 
living in the State, it is very difficult for us to maintain a broad 
network of roads and infrastructure without the kind of investment that 
will be made possible in this legislation.

  The Senator from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, mentioned the increase 
in funding that will exist with this legislation--from $111 million a 
year to about $170 million a year, just in excess of a 50-percent-per-
year increase. That comes from the gas taxes that people pay when they 
drive up to the gas pumps and fill their car. That gas tax is used to 
invest in this country and invest in its infrastructure--roads and 
bridges. That is what makes possible this kind of legislation.
  This is a wonderful step forward. I know some debated the size and 
debated the formula, but the fact is, this is the kind of investment 
that makes you feel this is a better country because of it. If you go 
to other countries--I won't mention them--if you go to a half-dozen or 
dozen other countries and drive on their roads, you immediately 
understand that they have trouble financing their infrastructure. Their 
roads are in disrepair, full of potholes, some barely built, some not 
graveled.
  All you have to do is look at a country's infrastructure to see what 
kind of country it is. Is it a country which devotes the resources to 
roads and bridges and the things that make transportation possible and 
the transportation of grain and commodities and items of commerce back 
and forth possible? The answer is yes. One of the important things 
about this bill is, we decided long ago that transportation should be 
national in scope. If you are going to haul fresh fish or frozen shrimp 
from the State of Washington to the State of Maine, you are going to 
need roads across the center of the country, even if it is not very 
populated. Yes, you might drive through Wyoming and North Dakota. There 
aren't many people there. It is a lot less crowded than New York and 
California. But the roads to get from here to there are just as 
important as a mile of road in New York City. That is what the need of 
a national highway program is all about.
  When Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to build an interstate highway 
system, he didn't say, let's spend all that money just where people 
live; he said, we are going to build an interstate highway system and 
we are going to build it to connect the entire country, and we are even 
going to make that investment in sparsely populated States because that 
is what allows people to move around this country.
  That is the long way of saying this is a good bill and advances the 
interests of our country.
  Let me make one final, quick point.
  I have worked 5 years on a small piece of legislation that probably 
will not mean much to some, but it is in this piece of legislation we 
will consider this afternoon. In five States, it is perfectly legal in 
America to put one hand on the driver's wheel of a car and another on a 
fifth of whiskey. Drink and drive and you are perfectly legal. You just 
can't be drunk. No problem drinking while you drive. In 22 States, if 
the driver can't drink, it is fine for the people in the back seat or 
the person in the front seat next to the driver to drink while you 
drive.
  For 5 years, I have tried to get that changed. Some say I have no 
right to tell some State that they have to have a prohibition on open 
containers in their State. Maybe they think I have no business doing 
that. I have a right to say to anybody anywhere in this country who 
drives into an intersection in any city, any State, that they ought to 
have some reasonable expectation they are meeting a car in which the 
driver isn't drinking or in which there isn't alcohol being consumed in 
the car. We have a right to aspire to that in this country as a sense 
of national purpose.

  Drunk driving is a major problem in this country. Every 30 minutes, 
another family receives a call. My family received the call. A loved 
one was killed in a drunk-driving accident. Every 30 minutes, every 
hour, every day. This is not some strange and mysterious illness for 
which we do not have a cure. We know what causes it, and we know what 
cures it.
  This piece of legislation today includes a provision that States will 
enact a prohibition on open containers, and it has a sanction if they 
do not. The sanction is not quite as strong as I proposed, but, 
nonetheless, it is still a sanction.
  This advances some things that I have felt strongly about and worked 
on for 5 years. The Senate voted on this provision. It was somewhat 
controversial, but it passed the Senate, and I am very pleased that, in 
the conference with the House, we were able to keep this provision. I 
also know that because this provision exists and because this Congress 
took this step, lives will be saved. I commend those who worked with me 
to fight for that piece of legislation.
  Finally, let me say thanks again to all of those who worked so hard. 
A lot of folks worked around the clock a couple days on this. Their 
names probably will not be called on the Senate floor, but thanks to 
them for their commitment.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we are only going to have an hour when the 
bill comes over, if that. I know many of my colleagues are eager to 
start the Memorial Day recess. I thought I might do a good turn for 
some people who have tickets to go ahead and speak now on the highway 
bill rather than waiting for my assigned time, which has been 
previously reserved under a unanimous consent request, to speak on the 
bill. So as a matter of courtesy to my colleagues, I wanted to go ahead 
and speak now.
  Mr. President, we have before us a highway bill that will have a 
profound impact on our country. I am very proud of this bill. I am 
proud to have played a small role in making this bill happen.
  I started 2 years ago in an effort to convert our tax system on 
gasoline into what I would call honesty in taxation. We had a situation 
where for almost a decade Americans were being told that when they 
bought gasoline and paid taxes, that that money was going to build 
roads.
  And yet last year, roughly 25 cents out of every dollar of gasoline 
taxes ended up going to general government to fund everything, except 
highways.
  And yet, when Americans went to the filling station and stood there 
pumping gas in their car or truck, they could read right on the 
gasoline pump the bad news, that a third of the price of a gallon of 
gasoline was taxes, and the good news, that at least the taxes went to 
build roads. The only problem, as is often true with government, the 
bad news was true; the good news was not true.
  I was able to get an amendment on the Finance Committee bill cutting 
taxes last year that shifted all revenues from gasoline taxes into the 
highway trust fund. Senator Byrd and I started a crusade at that moment 
to guarantee that the money collected in gasoline taxes that went into 
the trust fund was actually spent on highways. That crusade has reached 
a successful conclusion with the adoption of this bill. Under this 
bill, every penny collected in gasoline taxes over the next 6 years 
will be obligated to be spent on highways and on mass transit in this 
country.
  The net result is a dramatic increase in resources to build new 
roads, to maintain the roads we have, and it is literally true that 
thousands of lives will be saved as a result of the adoption of this 
bill and the increased resources. It is true that millions of hours 
that people would have spent snarled in traffic will be saved so that 
they can spend more time at work earning a living, so they can spend 
more time with their families doing the things that

[[Page S5396]]

parents want to do, spending time with their families and enjoying the 
fruits of their labor.
  A second achievement of this bill is that we have taken a long step--
big step--toward eliminating inequity in the distribution of funds. We 
have a National Highway System. And I would not have it any other way. 
But part of the problem with the National Highway System is that when 
you are building certain sections of interstates or you are building 
big projects, it produces a situation where some States are donor 
States, that is sending more money to Washington than they are getting 
back, and other States are beneficiary States, getting more money spent 
in their State during that time period than they received back.
  My State in recent years has been a donor State. When we were 
building the big east-west interstate highway systems, we were briefly 
a beneficiary State. But under the last highway bill, which lasted for 
6 years, Texas averaged getting back only 77 cents out of every dollar 
we sent to Washington in taxes.
  One of my goals--and a goal that was championed in this bill by 
Senator Warner--has been a goal of trying to guarantee that no State in 
the Union will ever get back less than 90 cents out of every dollar 
they send to Washington to be spent on highways, no matter what 
national project is being undertaken. We actually did slightly better 
than that in this bill. But that was our objective. I think it is a 
major improvement in highway construction, and I think it is fairer to 
our States than the old system.

  I am, obviously, proud of a provision of this bill which provides 
money for border infrastructure and for international trade corridors. 
We have entered into an international trade agreement with Canada and 
Mexico. It has literally filled up my State with trucks hauling goods 
and services back and forth. The good news is that it is creating jobs 
on both sides of the border. It has brought great prosperity to my 
State. The bad news is it has literally pounded our roads and highways 
into dust in many parts of the State. It has made I-35 in my State a 
parking lot for hundreds of miles. And we are looking at a doubling of 
the truck traffic over the next 7 years.
  So one of my major priorities in the bill was to begin to provide 
funding to develop international trade corridors and border 
infrastructure. We provide $700 million in this bill for that purpose. 
I really see it as the beginning of something bigger.
  If you look at a map of America and you look at our Interstate 
Highway System, and you stand back from that map, the plain truth is 
that we, with just a few exceptions, we have an east-west interstate 
highway system. And what we need to do over the next 50 years is to 
build a north-south interstate highway system to go with it. NAFTA will 
require that we do that. And I think this $700 million will be a major 
step in that direction.
  There are many other provisions of the bill that I could talk about 
that I am pleased with--greater flexibility for mass transit in my 
State, other provisions that are of a parochial interest. But I will 
talk about basically the big picture on the bill. The big picture on 
the bill, in trying to sum it up, is every penny collected in gasoline 
taxes in the next 6 years will be spent for transportation 
infrastructure--by dramatically reducing discrimination against donor 
States, at least within the level you can achieve it, and have a 
National Highway System. The combination of those two factors--honesty 
in taxation and dramatically reducing the inequity in the distribution 
of funds--will mean that Texas will get 61 percent more money under 
this highway bill than we did under the previous highway bill. Our 
total level will be $11.3 billion.
  That money is desperately needed in my State, as I am sure the money 
from the bill is needed in every State in the Union, to build the 
highways we need, to maintain the roads we have, to rebuild bridges 
that are structurally unsound. And obviously this is a very important 
day for me.
  I want to especially thank Steve McMillin, who has been my staffer 
working on these issues. It is literally true that his involvement and 
dedication and the hours he has worked, the quickness of his wit, has 
really been the difference between many of these provisions being in 
the bill and those provisions not finding their way into the bill. I 
have been constantly amazed at how well he knows the details of these 
issues.
  I would also like to say that I appreciate the assistance and the 
work of two staffers who work for Senator Byrd--Jim English and Peter 
Rogoff. I do not think we have any staffers who knew more about the 
substance of this issue or did more than they did.
  Often people who serve in the Senate get great credit for work we do. 
And often much of that work is done by our staffs. I wanted to be sure 
to single out these two staffers for Senator Byrd, and Steve McMillin 
on my staff who has rendered great service to my State and to the 
country.
  Let me also say it has been one of the great privileges that I have 
had in public life in working with Senator Byrd on this issue.
  When we joined forces here I felt it was like having a team of good, 
solid, strong mules attached to a wagon that has been stuck in the mud 
for a very long time, stuck in the mud as funds were taken out of the 
gasoline tax and spent on general government, really cheating the 
taxpayer and deceiving the taxpayer in terms of where money was going.
  We have worked together for over a year, literally had dozens and 
dozens of meetings with our staffs, together with outside groups. We 
have worked together to build a nationwide coalition. We have 
undertaken, I believe, the only true bipartisan effort in this 
Congress. We have been successful.
  Senator Byrd obviously was a critical part of that. It has been a 
great privilege for me to have been partners with him on this issue and 
to have an opportunity, at least in this way, to link my name with the 
premier legislator of our generation.
  Mr. President, I want to congratulate Bud Shuster on this bill. This 
bill, I am sure, in many ways is the culmination of his successful 
career in the House. I am sure he hopes to have many other successes. 
But for the chairman of the Transportation Committee in the House to 
have put together a bill which achieves one of his lifelong objectives 
as a legislator, to assure that funds that are collected in gasoline 
taxes end up being spent for the purpose they are collected, this has 
to be, at least to this point, the seminal achievement of his career.
  I want to thank Senator Chafee for his leadership and his help in 
this bill. I want to thank Senator Domenici for working to see that we 
guaranteed money for highways, but that we didn't start a new 
entitlement program in the country.
  Finally, I want to thank Senator Lott for his leadership in pushing 
this effort forward. I do think this is an important bill and will 
certainly go down as one of the most important things we have done in 
this Congress, one of the most important things we have done in many 
Congresses.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I just wanted to say where you thank me, 
for whatever you did, I want to add to that statement to the best of 
our ability we have not sacrificed the other appropriated accounts to 
the increases in the highway bill. We have found offsets and other 
things. They could suffer at some time in the future, but what we put 
before the Senate when we approved this with the offsets already in 
there, even with the new programs for veterans that are in here, $600 
million, we will not take the extra money out of the NIH and other 
accounts of government.
  I told you I wanted to do that and you did not object on the floor, 
but this is the first time we could actually do it in the bill. We 
could think about it on the budget resolution, but we could do it on 
the bill.
  Mr. GRAMM. My point, and I will yield the floor on this point, our 
objective was to guarantee that we spent money on highways, but we 
didn't want to start a new entitlement program. I think when you try to 
do something that has not been done before, it is often very difficult. 
But I think we can take pride in the fact that we do have all of the 
offsets in the bill. We are not going to bust the budget. We didn't 
start a new entitlement.

[[Page S5397]]

  Mr. STEVENS. You said that for the third time. What is it, if it is 
not an entitlement program?
  Mr. GRAMM. What it is is an earmarking of funds to be appropriated 
for the purpose that the tax was collected. The Appropriations 
Committee must still act for the money to be spent, but we have a 
guarantee that the money cannot be spent on anything else.
  Mr. STEVENS. If the Senator will yield further, there are lots of 
programs where the taxes are collected for a particular purpose.
  Take the airports and airways funds, for instance. There is a whole 
series of them. Those funds come from the appropriations process and 
they are appropriated.

  You have created an entitlement in this bill, the most massive 
entitlement other than the Medicare trust fund entitlement, that I 
know. There is no discretion for anyone to change that except by an act 
of Congress, a subsequent act of Congress. There is no individual 
allocation of those moneys to meet needs.
  The President will submit a budget in January. It will lay out what 
the highway department believes will be the return as estimated to have 
been brought into the Treasury from the year before and it will be 
spent. It will be spent according to this bill. There will be no review 
of what has happened in the year before, and we in the appropriations 
process would go over the budget request through the year and in 
September send a bill to the President to spend the money as we 
believe--that Congress believed, not the Appropriations Committee, but 
Congress believed--it should be spent.
  That will not occur because this money will be spent according to the 
budget received from the Federal Highway Administration every year. 
That will be done by the Federal Highway Administration under their 
understanding of this law for 5 years. It will not be changed except by 
an act of Congress.
  To this Senator, that is the most stringent entitlement that we have 
on the Federal laws in this country, that we have ever had.
  Mr. GRAMM. Let me say this. We had a long, running battle over this 
issue. We had a long, running battle over this issue. Senator Byrd and 
I put before the Senate the proposition that the money collected in 
gasoline taxes ought to be spent. We thought it was wrong to have it 
diverted to other uses. We had a choice. The Senate voted 
overwhelmingly for it. We had two ways we could go. As the Senator 
knows, the House wanted to do an entitlement to take it completely out 
of the appropriations process and out of the budget. We rejected that.
  We tried to find a compromise that would solve both objectives. One, 
not to take it out of the budget process, not to take it off budget, 
not to take it out of the appropriations process. But on the other 
hand, to be faithful to the commitment we made that the gasoline tax 
would be spent.
  I think, given the commitment the Senate made overwhelmingly on the 
amendment that I offered with Senator Byrd, we did as well as we could 
do in meeting everyone's concern. I am proud of what we have done. I 
think it is a good compromise.
  I conclude by again saying what a great privilege it was for me on 
this bill and my small involvement to work with Senator Byrd.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I appreciate what the Senator from Texas 
has said. This Senator supported the concept that moneys which come in 
through gasoline tax should be spent for the purposes the taxes were 
collected. We have not had an argument over that.
  Where we have the argument is over whether there should be a bill 
passed every 5 years that sets absolute corridors for the spending of 
money, with no discretion on the part of appropriators or the Congress 
itself to change--6 years, I beg your pardon. That is even worse.
  The real problem we have with it is flexibility. I still haven't seen 
the bill. I have come to tell the Senate that I have visited with the 
chairman of the Budget Committee, for whom I do share with the Senator 
from Texas our admiration of the Senator from New Mexico as the 
chairman of the Budget Committee. Based upon his understanding of the 
bill, there is not a great problem, at least in the first 2 years of 
1999 and the year 2000 with regard to the nondiscretionary funds that 
are within the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Committee being 
reduced because of the expenditure of more moneys to highways that are 
currently estimated.
  Now, that is our understanding. We haven't seen the language yet. To 
my knowledge, no one in the Senate yet has read that language. Under 
the circumstances that we have, I have come to this conclusion after 
having the meeting with our committee members and listening to the 
staffs of the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee with 
regard to the impact of this bill on the appropriations process.
  I will not insist upon the delay of this bill. However, I believe it 
may set a new unfortunate course with regard to the flexibility and 
expenditure of taxpayers' money and the ability to use the money for 
the purposes that have the most need at the time the bill is passed 
annually. This is going to lock us in for 5 years. Again, I am saying 
to the Senate, with I hope at least the understanding of my great 
friend from West Virginia, this Senator, who is chairman of the 
appropriations bill, intends to look at this bill, examine it very 
closely, and if it does constrict us so that we do not have the 
flexibility we should have, we will bring before the Senate this year 
an amendment to this bill and we will have it out.

  We are not arguing over whether the highway tax money should be spent 
for highways; we are arguing how it should be allocated and when the 
determination should be made as to what the priorities are for the use 
of that money. This bill will set it for 6 years now. If it went 
through the appropriations process, we would determine that annually.
  I see my great friend here, Senator Daschle, who just went through 
that horrible flood up in his area. We have disasters in this country. 
We have earthquakes and floods, and we have enormous tornadoes. We have 
to have discretion to allocate funds in a way that meets the best needs 
of our people as a whole.
  I do not think that the bill that is going to come before the Senate 
can be followed without an enormous spillover into the areas of other 
nondefense discretionary funds, which must be allocated by the 
Appropriations Committee annually. What I mean is, I think the effect 
of this bill will be that we will have to constrain other nondefense 
discretionary spending in order to accommodate the extraordinary demand 
here that if the revenues from the gas tax money exceed the caps, 
exceed the estimates, it is going to be spent anyway. And we have a 4-
percent leeway, what I call a ``fudge factor.'' But if they go up to 10 
percent, we are going to have to absorb 6 percent of that from other 
nondefense discretionary accounts. That is going to affect every single 
State in the Union adversely. It is going to affect the operations of 
this Government adversely.
  I can't tell the Senate it will happen now. I can only tell the 
Senate that, as I understand the way the bill has been written, it 
could happen. And if it does, I do think that would be a disaster. 
Again, to a certain extent, I sense a feeling here, particularly from 
my friend from Texas, that the Appropriations Committee has not 
provided funds for highways. We have exceeded the amount that came in 
from the gas tax in the period of the last 5 years. We have spent more 
money through the appropriations process for highways than would be 
spent under this bill for highways, if we had had the allocation of 
funds that the Budget Committee has generously brought back into this 
process and made available for this entitlement.
  This turf battle that I sense is not coming from our committee. All 
we are saying is that there is not flexibility here. If the authorizing 
committee wants to pass a law saying you are going to allocate this 
money, then pass a law saying you are going to allocate it every year. 
But don't sit around and tell people you have done a good job for the 
country when you have allocated for 6 years, based upon an estimate 
that the two organizations that really are most concerned--OMB and 
CBO--

[[Page S5398]]

disagree, as you know. They have about a $10 billion difference in the 
estimates of expenditures. We are taking the high one, of course; we 
are going to follow the high one. If we were wearing our budget-cutter 
hats, we would take the low one. But here we are spenders, so we are 
taking the high one.
  The problem is that one section of this bill says--and I have not 
seen this yet--if the money doesn't come in, we have to make it up. I 
was just told by one of the staff that that probably is not true. He 
used the words ``flexible guarantees.'' I am going to be anxious to 
read how we write a bill that is flexible every year based upon the 
variations of one anticipated and estimated revenue, as opposed to 
estimated actual revenues, when either one is any more than an 
estimate. I have to adjust the budget and meet a total cap level under 
the budget agreement and be subject to a point of order if we are not 
right.

  I say to my friends who have been involved in this, I wish you luck. 
Don't feel surprised if this Senator is back out on this floor this 
year with amendments to this bill to do it right.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from New 
Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I will not be long.
  Mr. KYL. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask that the Senator from Arizona be 
permitted 1 minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may be 
recognized after the Senator from New Mexico. The Senators speaking now 
are more directly involved in the action going on here. Therefore, they 
will explain to the rest of us what is occurring. I wanted to ensure 
that they had an opportunity to speak. I would like the opportunity to 
speak after the Senator from New Mexico.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me first say that I think everybody 
knows that I have the highest regard for the distinguished Senator from 
Alaska, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. There should be 
no doubt in this body of my very, very high respect and honor for the 
Senator. Let me repeat. Everybody knows I have the highest honor and 
respect for Senator Byrd, also. He has known that for a long time. I 
have to say that Senator Gramm started off to do something and he 
didn't mince any words. He said what he was going to do. Joining 
together with Senator Byrd, he has done that.
  Now, frankly, I believe I can say to my good friend, the chairman of 
the Appropriations Committee, that this is not what I would have done 
with reference to trying to minimize the way this fund looks. Does it 
look more like a real appropriations bill, or does it look somewhat 
like a mandatory program? I guess I would have to say, for all the 
accolades of trying to keep it from being an entitlement, it probably 
is a bit more on the mandatory side than it is on the appropriations 
side. But at least it does get appropriated every year. There is a 
firewall, much like the trust fund established for crime by the same 
distinguished two Senators. If you look in that appropriation bill 
where we set aside some of the savings that would be forthcoming from a 
reduction in Federal employees, as I recall, you will find it every 
year listed as an entrusted amount. If you don't spend it in that 
bill--Senator Judd Gregg's bill now --you can't spend it for anything. 
So it is there every year.
  On the other hand, there is some concern that if you put a 5- or 6-
year program on track and it is not subject to appropriations review, 
which I submit--be it the most in-depth or not--is the only annual 
review we have around here. Others are done willy-nilly and some don't 
get reviewed for 10 years, and some do often. The truth is that you 
can't get away without appropriations review every year, because you 
have to appropriate every year. This is going to have to be 
appropriated every year. So that part is still there. But essentially, 
in the quest to see that every penny of the 4.3 is spent, there is a 
recognition and a very strong position by the House that the resources, 
the taxes that are estimated could be up or down from the obligational 
authority we attribute to them, because if we assume we are using them 
all and then the tax comes in higher, we haven't used them all. If we 
assume they come in lower, then we are spending taxes that didn't come 
in.

  Essentially, what the Senator from Alaska, chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee, is concerned about is--and I think Senator 
Byrd and Senator Gramm, who was an appropriator for part of his life in 
the Senate, would be concerned--if, in fact, you were obligated to 
spend an amount that represented an increase, because the reality was 
that the tax was higher and by doing that you had to cut other 
appropriation committees, which would make that excess a mandatory 
demand on you--well, I told my friend that I didn't read the language 
when it was last drafted. I haven't seen it yet. In fact, for that 
eventuality, if it is higher than expected and you have to spend it, it 
holds the appropriators harmless. We don't need to talk about what that 
means. If you want to say what that does to the caps, you say that, I 
say to the Senator from Texas; but for the time being, I am saying it 
holds them harmless. I would not have spent the extra amount based on 
estimates. I think we are accurate and I would have used them like we 
have done in the past.
  Having said that, obviously, a lot of Senators are not going to be 
pleased with the allocations and other things. I didn't have anything 
to do with that. It is not my assignment. I felt somewhat 
uncomfortable. I don't have authorizing authority or appropriation 
authority. Nonetheless, it fell on me to try to make this a fair bill.
  When it comes to the appropriations process, I am going to put in the 
report right now the offsets that are in this bill. It is not bill 
language, but we insisted early on that we offset the increased 
expenditures from the appropriated accounts, so that by spending more 
money, we wouldn't be cutting the appropriated amounts which we have 
set in place by operation of law for a number of years. So we used the 
word ``offsets,'' and we found some.
  Maybe there will be a further debate on the offsets. I am prepared to 
debate them. I don't like to be responsible for all of the offsets. 
Some are found by us. I am more than willing to say I think they are 
fair. We have committed ourselves to increasing the expenditures for 
highways and mass transit and not to diminish the amount of money 
available for the remainder of domestic expenditures under the overall 
agreement that we made with reference to the budget. That is the best 
that we can do.
  That does not mean there will not be added pressure for the 
appropriators because of this. It does mean if you wanted more 
flexibility in the highway programs, you won't have that much. But I 
surmise that before we are finished there will be some flexibility, 
because there are needs.
  I also want everybody to know, when we have departed significantly 
from the obligational authority for highways and mass transit and 
increased it dramatically in the appropriations bill, for the most part 
it was when we had an emergency. All that money went to freeways that 
went to highways. It didn't come out of the regular trust fund, nor 
would it come out of these dollars that are in this bill. You would 
have an emergency just like you had in the past.
  I send that little summary to the desk and ask unanimous consent that 
it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       ISTEA CONFERENCE RESOLUTION
                     [1998-2003 outlays in billions]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 Category                     WODI     Add-ons    Total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Highways..................................    $139.2     +14.5    $153.7
Mass transit..............................      27.7      +3.0      30.7
                                           -----------------------------
      Total...............................     166.9     +17.5     184.4
------------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                Net of
                                                  Add-ons      offsets
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Offsets required for add-ons..................      +17.500  ...........
         Potential Offsets to Add-Ons:
Veterans tobacco (OMB Scoring)................      -16.969        0.531
Veterans add-backs (Montgomery GI)............       +1.602        2.133
                                               -------------------------
      Veterans net savings....................      -15.367        2.133
Student loan extension 3 month................       +0.090        2.223
Reduce Social Services block grant............       -2.423        0.200
                                               -------------------------
      Net total offsets.......................      -17.700        (\1\)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Not applicable.


[[Page S5399]]

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. KYL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe.) The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Thank you, Mr. President.
  First of all, let me say that I think it is a good thing that we are 
finally beginning to spend gas tax money on the purpose for which the 
tax was collected in the first place; namely, our highway and transit 
systems in this country. But I don't think it is a good thing that 
there are winners and losers in the process depending upon who you are.
  Mr. President, I have a hard time justifying this legislation to my 
constituents in Arizona who continue to ask me why it is that the 
fastest growing State in the country that sends $1 to Washington in gas 
tax continues to get less than $1 back. As a matter of fact, because we 
are a Western State, there is also supposed to be some consideration 
given to the fact that the wide open spaces require more highways, as 
is the case with many of the other Western States. But it is not to be. 
Instead, historically Arizona has gotten 86 cents on the dollar. And, 
under the original Senate bill, we were supposedly guaranteed that 
Arizona would receive the generous sum of 91.5 cents on the dollar. It 
now turns out that it will be 90.5 cents on the dollar.
  Mr. President, I am not here asking that Arizona receive something 
extra, unlike a lot of the people who are still negotiating in the 
cloakroom here. I am not asking for money for special projects. But I 
am asking why it is that the donor States--the States that send more 
than they receive--can't eventually hope to get some equity in this 
program. What we are doing here is locking in for 6 years a continued 
unfair program for the 18 or so States that contribute more than they 
receive.
  Mr. President, this reminds me a little bit of the ``Animal Farm'' 
story of George Orwell of 1946. It turns out that all the animals in 
the barnyard were equal, except that some were more equal than others. 
That is the way it is with the States of the Union here.
  As I said, you have a fast-growing Western State like Arizona, the 
fastest in the country, that receives, or would receive under this 
legislation, 90.5 cents for every dollar sent to Washington.
  How will some of the other States make out? The majority leader 
pointed out that Senator Stevens would probably be pretty happy with 
what Alaska got under the bill. Instead, I would be happy if I got $5-
plus for every dollar that I sent, which is what Alaska will receive. I 
would be happy if I were in Connecticut and I got $1.52 for every 
dollar I sent; or Delaware, $1.54. These are very small States, by the 
way. Montana, a large State--we are supposed to get a little extra 
consideration for the size--gets $2-plus back; my fellow Western States 
of New Mexico and Nevada each get more than $1 back--$1.14 and $1.18, 
respectively. The Senator from West Virginia, his State receives $1.41 
back. Another small State, Vermont, $1.76; South Dakota, $2; 
Pennsylvania, $1.20.
  It turns out that who you are matters more in this process of 
deciding how this money that everybody in the country pays-- that 
matters more than equity.
  Once we have an opportunity to review the bill--there has been one 
copy available, and everybody has had to try to sort through that one 
copy--I think there are going to be a lot of criticisms of how this 
money was allocated. There will also be a lot of questions asked, many 
of which have been raised here already.

  How about the offsets? This is all supposed to come out equally, so 
that we are not spending more than we are taking in. As the Senator 
from New Mexico pointed out, we are now going to use the more generous 
OMB figures than the CBO figures which we have always insisted on using 
in the past because we think they are more accurate. That would permit 
us, in effect, to exceed the budget caps.
  There is a significant question of the appropriators' authority, 
which Senator Stevens raised. There are questions about the earmarks. 
As far as I can tell from the information I have, they don't add up. 
When the bill left the Senate, the formulas for the individual State 
projects called earmarks were supposed to be included within the 
State's formula allocation. But apparently that is not true under this 
bill, at least to the extent of $200 million; I don't know beyond that.
  Mr. President, probably the most distressing thing about this is that 
most of the Senators who are going to vote on this will not know what 
is in the bill, and, therefore, they may have a bit of a hard time 
explaining to their constituents later on when problems are raised why 
they were in such a hurry to vote on this.
  We lose nothing by waiting until we have an opportunity to review 
this. There is authority for States to continue to spend and charge it 
against this allocation. That has expired. We can extend that for 
another 10 days, until we get back.
  But this bill is over $200 billion, one of the largest spending bills 
that this Senate, this Congress, will have ever authorized, and yet we 
don't know most of what is in the bill.
  As I said, what I do know I don't like, because it appears that once 
again a few States are being discriminated against in order that other 
States, which are represented heavily on the committees that make the 
decisions, will get more than their fair share.
  Mr. President, I regret to have to be this critical, but I think it 
has to be said very plainly.
  When I have an opportunity to find out a little bit more about it, as 
the staff is now being made available to us--they have been very busy 
working all through the night, as I understand it, trying to get this 
finally negotiated--as they are made available to us, we will be able 
to understand some additional information about this. I intend to then 
return and comment some more.
  But I did want to make the point right now that I think this is not a 
good process. We are hurrying too much. We are spending too much. We 
aren't going to be able to offset this, probably, under the estimates 
that have been provided. There are too many questions. And the numbers 
don't add up. To the extent that the States that are making 
contributions in excess of the amount that they receive back and are 
hoping to receive some ultimate relief, it appears that we are locked 
in for a 5- or 6-year period and that is not to be and, therefore, that 
our citizens will continue to be discriminated against.
  Mr. President, for all of those reasons I am going to be very 
disappointed to have to change the vote I cast when I supported this 
bill earlier because I thought we were making progress in changing the 
formula. I wanted to assist our leadership in moving toward the concept 
that the gas tax dollars will at least be spent on highway and transit 
needs, that I will reluctantly have to vote no on this and just hope in 
the future, in the interests of States that are donor States here, that 
we can get a more equitable distribution of these funds.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, first of all, I acknowledge the Senator from 
New Mexico who spoke just a few moments ago. Senator Domenici has been 
very helpful throughout this whole process. I appreciate the comments 
he has just made. I appreciate the way he worked with the authorizers 
in trying to develop this formula and to establish the policy for the 
future and to deal with the offsets. He has just been tremendously 
helpful, including working with the Appropriations Committee this 
afternoon. I thank him for his work.
  A lot of other people here put in effort on this. Senator Bond, 
Senator Gramm, Senator Warner, Senator Chafee, Senator Byrd, and 
Senator Kerry have been involved in this. There is a long list of 
Members on both sides of the aisle who have been involved in this and 
there has been a lot of give and take. And some of us were giving, even 
last night, on some projects for which we were very hopeful.
  But I want to remind my colleagues, when you might say, ``We could do 
better,'' this is the largest infrastructure transportation bill in 
history. The formula is more fair than it has ever been before. My 
State got 84 cents on a dollar in the past; it is going to be in the 
90s, like every other State this year. Most States will be getting more 
than they got over the past 5 or 6 years.
  So I think we need to get started. There are States in this country, 
in the

[[Page S5400]]

Midwest and the Northeast, they need to know that they have this money 
and how much so they can get started with projects now. The season is 
going to get away from them. So I hope every Senator will keep that in 
mind and allow us to get this to completion.

                          ____________________