[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 126 (Monday, September 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10636-S10640]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S10636]]
                     THE ADMINISTRATION'S POLICIES

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have requested to speak in morning 
business to talk about our President's policies, to talk about this 
administration and the policies that impact all Americans.
  As we know, the Senate has convened at a very interesting, unique, if 
not sad, day in the history of this Nation's Presidency. I will not 
dwell on that. It would be very inappropriate for me to do so. What I 
do want to talk about is an agenda that we have attempted to handle 
appropriately on the floor for the last several weeks; that is, to do 
the business of this Congress and to do the business of Government, to 
move the appropriations bills in an orderly fashion as our public and 
as the citizens of this Nation expect of us.
  For the last 2 weeks, we have attempted to deal with an 
appropriations bill appropriating money to the Interior Department and 
to its ancillary agencies, to in large part administer policy and 
manage the public land resources of this country. But anyone watching, 
and certainly the majority leader, who just left the floor, knows how 
frustrating it has been in an attempt to responsibly move this 
legislation, only to have our colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
largely oppose it. Oppose it because within the bill are corrective 
measures that reflect an attempt to adjust the misguided policies of 
this administration as it deals with our public land resources.
  We have made proposed changes. Why? Because the people of the public 
land West are saying, ``No longer does this administration reflect our 
interests or our concerns or our economies.''
  Why am I speaking uniquely to the West? The appropriations bill 
largely deals with western public land and States' interests. But in my 
State of Idaho, where 63 percent of the land base is owned by and 
managed by the Federal Government, public land policy is critical, and 
mine is only a 63-percent ownership. In other States, like Nevada, it 
is much higher. So goes the Federal Government, so manages the land, so 
goes the economy and the lifestyles and the character of those States.
  I would like to spend the next few minutes discussing those policies 
and our concern about the attitude of this administration as it has 
impacted our policies.
  The provisions that I am talking about in the appropriations bill, if 
we can ever get back to it, are necessary, in my view, and appropriate, 
because many of us feel this administration has gone around Congress, 
the States and the local officials in an effort to place broad 
restrictions on the use of public lands for productive economic use, 
such as mining and forest products and grazing and even recreation. 
Recreation, a relatively benign use of the public land, is now being 
shaped, directed and oftentimes characterized by new policies of this 
administration. We believe strongly that the provisions that we have 
placed in the Interior appropriations bill are necessary, as I 
mentioned earlier, to block the administration's arrogant abuse of 
power and its failure to acknowledge that our States ought to have a 
say in the use of our natural resource bases.
  During the past 175 years, the United States has undergone an 
astonishing period of physical and economic growth. We acquired the 
Louisiana territory, bought Alaska from the Russians, and fought a war 
with Mexico over the Southwest and California. During that time, 
Americans moved westward, pursuing dreams of economic independence and 
the opportunity to raise their families in a new land.
  Our Government encouraged the westward movement of these hardy people 
by creating opportunity through the Homestead Act or the Timber and 
Stone Act or the mining law of 1872. These statutes, and others, were 
designed to encourage people to seek a new life, to build the wealth of 
a nation by developing its vast store of natural resources. And the 
effort was successful beyond any nation or any people's wildest dreams 
and imaginations.

  Thousands of American farmers and shopkeepers and clerks and grocers 
and professionals took up the challenge and moved West. They busted the 
sod of the central plains and established an agricultural wonder, the 
breadbasket of the world, never known before by man. They established 
enormous cattle and livestock operations from Texas to Kansas and 
Montana and throughout the Rocky Mountain States, including my State of 
Idaho.
  Thousands of prospectors fanned out across the West in search of 
gold, silver and other minerals. What these early miners found at 
Sutter's Mill in California or at Telluride in Colorado or at Silver 
City in Nevada or in the Boise Basin of Idaho, and hundreds of other 
boomtowns across the West, galvanized the Nation.
  Thousands more ordinary Americans got caught up in the gold rush, 
too. Most were not successful in finding their bonanza. Instead, they 
formed the backbone of the new West because they brought other skills 
and talents with them. These are the people who built the great cities 
of Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, Helena, Houston and San Francisco. 
They became the merchants, the bankers, the doctors, and the educators 
who helped ensure the success of the intermountain and the coastal 
west.
  These Americans built the great transcontinental railroad to bring 
additional settlers into the growing cities and towns and to move the 
exploding basket of western-produced goods to the markets of the East.
  Throughout the balance of the 19th century, as well as the 20th 
century, both Federal and private lands in the West contributed 
mightily to the economic success of our great Nation. In addition to 
gold and silver, deposits of lead, nickel, molybdenum, iron, and other 
minerals were discovered and developed.
  In the 1920s and 1930s, oil and natural gas deposits were found in 
Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah and New Mexico. And, of course, the 
forest products and the livestock industries continued to grow and to 
prosper providing building materials and food for our growing Nation.
  These achievements were not realized by the U.S. Government but by 
the women and the men who accepted the challenge who had the vision and 
who had the courage. They took enormous risks. And with their lives and 
with their fortunes they built new businesses, opened mines, started 
ranches and farms, and began new lives and created a new culture, a 
tradition, a western culture tradition, based on wise and sustainable 
use of the land and its resources.
  Mr. President, I can talk about this firsthand. My own family is a 
part of that tradition of independence and determination. One hundred 
years ago next year, my grandfather set foot in Idaho and took 
advantage of the Homestead Act and began to build a ranching operation 
that flourished and raised a family with that ranching operation to be 
passed on to a future generation.
  The western tradition recognized the value of land and its resources 
and the need to husband those resources carefully and sustainably. No 
one can honestly believe that we who live on and depend on these 
precious lands would seek to strip them of all of their values and deny 
their use and their beauty to the rest of Americans. You see, my 
granddad taught my father that tradition; and my father taught me that 
the land was a sacred resource that should be managed wisely.

  Indeed, with forest products, mining, oil and gas production, and 
other forms of resource-intensive multiple uses in place, recreational 
opportunities began to flourish, began to increase. More and more 
Americans are coming to enjoy the natural beauty and the resources of 
the intermountain West. They come to enjoy our hunting and our fishing, 
our sightseeing, our camping, our mountain climbing, and to just be 
plain quiet; in other words, to search for and find solitude.
  These opportunities were once available only to those of us who lived 
in these great States of the West--the Idahos and the Wyomings and the 
Montanas and other Rocky Mountain and Pacific States--or to the wealthy 
who could afford the time and expense associated with recreational 
journeys to our States.
  Now our recreational-based economies have grown greatly and are 
supplementing our traditional economies devoted to forest products 
harvest, mining and agriculture. In fact, last year about 8.1 million 
visitors came to my State of Idaho alone. That

[[Page S10637]]

is more than six times my State's population of 1.2 million.
  Federal law acknowledges and encourages the diverse activities that 
take place on the lands about which I have talked. It has formalized 
the concept in a policy called multiple-use which was defined in the 
Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 to mean managing the natural 
resources in our public forests for the combination of uses that best 
meet the needs of the American people. It has long been recognized that 
multiple-use policy is in the best public interest because it enables 
the resources to continue to produce benefits while conserving the 
value of that resource.
  Mr. President, while all of this suggests the western public land 
States are enjoying a life of beauty and economic success, I want to 
let my colleagues and the rest of America know that we in the West are 
facing a terrific threat. Unfortunately, that threat is our own Federal 
Government and the policies of this administration.
  When the current administration took office, the Federal agencies 
responsible for managing Federal lands began an all-out assault on the 
concept of multiple-use in favor of preservation and limited use. They 
have relentlessly pursued a philosophy of returning these lands to 
something they call ``presettlement conditions.''
  They have shut out local governments from land use planning 
decisions. They have reduced Federal land managers to messengers 
delivering land use policy decisions from Washington, DC, down to the 
local level, as if Federal authorities here know best how to manage 
specific tracts of Federal forest or other Federal land units.
  This arrogant behavior is not occurring just in Idaho but it is 
represented and reflected across the public land States of the West. 
The Forest Service is proposing to limit boating experiences on the 
Snake River in Idaho. The Service is trying to remove from use 
thousands of acres of grazing land in Arizona and New Mexico through a 
concept and a contract with environmental groups, ignoring current 
permittees and State governments and the historic laws and policies 
formulated and passed by Congresses and by this Congress.
  Also, having been denied the opportunity to shut down the mining 
industry by Congress' refusal to accept punitive changes in the mining 
law of 1872, Secretary Babbitt has stopped new mining activities on 
public lands by slowing the permit process to a crawl. And when he must 
operate within the context of the current law, he hops on a soapbox on 
Wall Street and demagogues the very action that the laws require him to 
take. As a result, no new jobs are being created and no new revenues 
are coming to either the States or the Federal Treasury.
  Mr. President, some Federal use managers and national environmental 
groups also have stymied local efforts to resolve disputes over how to 
manage Federal lands. A group called the Quincy Library Group, 
encompassing forest product company employees and local authorities and 
environmentalists, developed a plan to protect roadless areas and old 
growth areas in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests in northern 
California while still allowing selective cutting on about 240 million 
board feet of forest products.
  The Forest Service dragged its feet, would have nothing to do with 
the concept or the idea. It had to be changed here by the legislative 
effort. And let me tell you how popular it was. It passed the House by 
a 429-1 vote. It is pending here in the Senate. The administration was 
dragged into it kicking and screaming because the public outcry for the 
support of this balanced policy was so great.

  Mr. President, another example of the arrogance of this 
administration's approach to land use policy is its decision to declare 
by proclamation a new unit in the protection category of Federal lands, 
the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. If you haven't heard 
about this, you haven't been listening to the cries coming from the 
West. The President unilaterally took 1.7 million acres of Federal and 
State land and included these acres in a new monument without 
consulting any of Utah's elected officials--not one, not Senator 
Bennett nor Senator Hatch nor Utah's three Members in the House, not 
Utah's Governor. In fact, no one--well, except a few local 
environmental groups--knew of the President's plan, the plan that we 
only heard about when he stood on the banks of the Grand Canyon to 
proclaim it on the eve of his last election.
  Now, as chairman of a Public Lands Subcommittee here in the Senate, I 
held hearings on a Utah wilderness bill. The State of Utah had worked 
to incorporate all interests, from the grassroots to the very highest 
levels of their Federal delegation, to try to preserve this area. They 
had been working on the way that public policy should appropriately be 
formed. Yet the President, with the sweep of a pen and the denial of 
local input, decided that he alone would lock up this land.
  At a hearing on May 1, 1997, on legislation introduced to make sure 
that the President keeps his promise he made to Senator Bennett, Louise 
Liston of Garfield County, UT, the local community elected commissioner 
said:

       We feel that the creation of this monument was deliberately 
     fabricated behind closed doors without consulting or 
     notifying any member of the Utah congressional delegation, 
     the Governor, or any local official. I have no doubt that 
     history will single it out as the best or perhaps I would say 
     the worst example of the entire Clinton Presidency of 
     irresponsible and indefensible policy making in the natural 
     resource area. I certainly would hope that we do not see 
     anything worse in the next 4 years.

  I could go on and on with examples, and there are many. However, 
several of our colleagues have now joined me. I know they have other 
topics to visit that demonstrate the misguided positions of this 
administration.
  Mr. President, I turn to Senator Sessions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from Idaho for sharing this 
information with us. I have, of course, in the course of my tenure as 
Senator in the last 2 years, had some of the same experiences in 
Alabama with plans for managing Federal lands. I believe we can do a 
better job of it. I thank him for sharing that with us.
  This morning, the President has appeared at the United Nations and 
spoken to that body. While he is there, I hope he will take the time to 
take a second look at his proposal to build a new United States mission 
office at the United Nations.
  The Environmental and Public Works Committee, on which I serve and 
which deals with public buildings, had hearings last week and was asked 
to approve a resolution which would allow funding to be provided to 
design a new Federal building to house the U.S. mission to the United 
Nations. The Clinton administration's proposal makes clear that 
frugality and respect for the taxpayers' money is not a part of this 
plan.

  The current building, which is just 40 years old, is located at 799 
United Nations Plaza, just across the street from the U.N. building in 
New York. The prospectus, the proposal, of the General Services 
Administration, who had managed the building of the new structure, 
requests our committee to approve a plan that would call for the 
demolition of the existing building and the construction of a new 
building which would be the most expensive office building per square 
foot the U.S. Government has ever built.
  I asked Ambassador Burleigh and the representative from GSA about 
this. They did not dispute my assertion that this would be, in fact, 
the most expensive office building in history. According to the General 
Services Administration, the U.N. mission building total project costs 
for the 141,000-square-foot building would amount to $53 million, or 
$378 per square foot.
  However, this estimate does not tell the whole story. The rest of the 
story is that there is another part of the Federal Government that will 
be contributing to this situation. The State Department is seeking an 
additional $24 million to spend on security, telecommunications, and 
the overall State Department oversight of this construction. These 
additional costs will bring the total project costs for this United 
States mission--which is really an office building--to the United 
Nations to at least $77 million, or a whopping $548 per square foot.
  To put $548 per square foot into perspective, consider that the 
Islip, NY, courthouse, complete with all kinds of

[[Page S10638]]

security features to keep judges and juries and defendants separate 
within its halls, came in with a total project cost of $262 per square 
foot, and that was extraordinarily expensive.
  The Foley Square Court House in New York City, accused by many to be 
grossly overpriced and a waste of taxpayers' money, has a record 
project cost of $440 per square foot.
  Now, courthouses are somewhat expensive. They are and should be 
august buildings. Courtrooms have to have high ceilings. You don't want 
a big courtroom looking like a little office space. You do need to have 
some marble, good paneling, big courtrooms. Every judge needs a 
courtroom to try the case and do the people's business. So courthouses 
are not really good comparisons to an office building because they 
ought to be more expensive. But this $548 exceeds any Federal 
courthouse expenditures we have.
  Now, they say, this is in Manhattan and real estate is expensive 
there and that explains the cost of this building. But that is not so 
because we already own the land. This land was given to the United 
States for the U.S.-U.N. mission office by the Rockefeller family many 
years ago. So we have no real estate costs in this project.
  The U.S. mission to the U.N. building would be 141,000 square feet; 
the occupiable square footage, according to General Services 
Administration and the Department of State, would be 107,000 square 
feet for its 292 current employees. Now, that would amount to 366 
square feet for each employee. My colleagues should note that in our 
offices here in the Russell, Hart, and Dirksen Buildings, we have a 
number of employees and we have a lot of visitors. Our occupiable 
square footage--and we have checked it for my staff and myself--is 131 
square feet per employee. That is about one-third of what they are 
asking for in New York, and they are spending $548 per square foot.
  Before we move ahead and authorize the construction of the most 
expensive building ever constructed by the taxpayers that I am aware 
of, a mere office building, we need to be certain that this tremendous 
expense is justified and that all other options--including maybe 
releasing some space nearby for certain parts of the operation, if they 
need more space or renovation, if that is the appropriate thing, they 
have been examined closely and have proven not to be workable, and that 
there is no other way to build this building for less cost. I can't 
imagine there would not be. Just because the staff at the United 
Nations are involved in important issues does not mean they are masters 
of the universe and does not mean that they are entitled to palatial 
accordance.

  Most of us in our personal lives have to deal with housing that is 
less than we desire. Our offices have to be less than we wish we could 
afford. Families and businesses all over America have to make tough 
choices. Working Americans do it every day. They ask whether they 
should buy a house with that one more bedroom so their children won't 
have to share a bedroom. They worry about that kind of thing, and 
rightly they should. They are frugal, they work hard, and they have a 
huge tax burden. Our people have to work until April, or later, every 
year just to pay their taxes--before they even start making money for 
their own families.
  I think we have a responsibility. I ran for office just 2 years ago 
and I traveled all over my State of Alabama and talked to people. They 
are willing to pay some money up here and send tax money up here, but 
they want it used wisely. They want it to be used--if we have a 
surplus--to strengthen Social Security and pay down our debt. They want 
us to give them some tax relief. They don't want us to be spending this 
kind of money on office space when we don't need to. I believe it is a 
very important issue. And I see other buildings of that kind.
  We have the Patent Office Building that is coming in and coming 
through our committee at an extraordinary cost in itself, and it is 
right here in Washington, DC. I think we are going to have to give a 
real hard look at the Patent Building. A lot of people are concerned 
about that.
  People have raised a lot of concern about the $400 million cost 
overrun on the big Reagan Office Building here in Washington, DC. It is 
a magnificent building, but it was expensive. I just had the numbers on 
it. It is right here, three blocks from the White House, which is some 
of the prime real estate in America. In this Reagan International Trade 
Center Building, which will house nearly 7,000 Federal employees, the 
concrete used in the building would pave 106 miles of a two-lane 
highway. The atrium ceiling, with 1,240 pieces of glass, is 125 feet 
high. The basement is 7.7 acres. That building comes in at $264 per 
square foot, which is less than half of what they are talking about for 
a little office building in New York City, and it would house 7,000 
employees.
  So, Mr. President, these are matters that symbolize to the American 
people whether or not we in this Congress are managing their money 
wisely. It is a solemn commitment, a deep commitment that I have, and I 
hope every Member of this body has, and the President ought to have--
how we are going to manage their money, and manage it wisely, is a 
responsibility that is deep.
  I wish that all Americans could have a nice home. I wish every 
American could have a mansion. They won't have it in this life, but I 
wish it were possible. But we have to make compromises with reality. We 
don't have enough money to do everything we would like to do.
  Mr. President, I will just say this. The President is in New York 
today. I hope he has had an opportunity to review this proposal that is 
being sent forward. I believe our committee, which may be voting on it 
this week, needs to give it a very hard look. I, for one, have not been 
convinced at all by our hearing last week that this is justified. I 
intend to do all I can--and I think others will join--to make sure we 
don't rush into this kind of boondoggle and take money from decent, 
hard-working Americans to fund a palace at the site of the United 
Nations.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I want to tell Senator Sessions how well he 
serves the taxpayers of our country and this Congress for bringing 
these issues to the floor. We do not, at a time of fiscal austerity and 
attempting to balance the budget and stabilize Social Security and 
strengthen it for the future and give some tax cuts, need to be 
committing ourselves to the building of palaces. I appreciate him 
bringing that issue to the floor, again, in the theme that there are 
other practices of this administration that deserve to be brought to 
the forefront for the American people to understand.
  Let me turn to the Senator from Ohio, Senator DeWine.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking my friend and 
colleague from Idaho, Senator Craig, the chairman of the Senate 
Republican Policy Committee, for arranging this opportunity to address 
some of the key accomplishments of the 105th Congress.
  In just a matter of weeks, we will close the curtain on a productive 
and arguably historic Congress. Certainly, our most significant 
achievement was passage of the first balanced budget plan in a 
generation. Few pundits took us seriously when the Republican Congress 
came to power pledging to balance the budget by 2002. We were not only 
serious, but we're on the verge of success. A strong U.S. economy, 
spurred in part by a Congress committed to ending runaway deficit 
spending, has brought us to a balanced budget four years ahead of 
schedule. Now, for the first time, we're having debates on government 
surpluses, not government deficits.
  We've changed the debate on taxes as well. Last year, we passed the 
first real tax cut in 16 years. We provided a $500-per-child tax credit 
for working families; inheritance tax relief; capital gains tax relief; 
flexible individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to encourage savings; 
and Alternative Minimum Tax relief for all businesses--large and small. 
And we're far from finished. We're on the verge of putting an end to 
the marriage penalty, and giving small business owners and family 
farmers the ability to fully deduct health insurance--something that is 
long, long overdue. And I know the current occupant of the Chair has 
been very much involved with that throughout the years.

  We've not only changed the Tax Code, we've also reformed the tax 
collector. Our IRS reform bill will put a

[[Page S10639]]

stop to IRS abuses against law-abiding citizens, create an improved 
management structure for the IRS, and establish new protections and 
rights for all taxpayers.
  Ours has been an agenda designed to make a difference in the lives of 
ordinary Americans. I'd like to talk about three achievements I have 
focused on--issues that will improve and save lives, and further move 
our country forward.


                              Job Training

  Let me begin with our long-overdue--and far-reaching--reform of our 
job training system.
  Since coming to the Senate in 1995, I have devoted a great deal of my 
time to job training reform. Last month, these efforts paid off when 
the President signed our bill into law. I am convinced that its 
enactment came not a moment too soon.
  Our economic future depends on a well-trained workforce. Employers at 
every level are finding it increasingly difficult to locate and attract 
qualified employees for high-skilled, good-paying jobs--as well as 
qualified employees for entry-level positions.
  Right outside Washington, DC, in northern Virginia, 19,000 high-tech 
jobs remain unfilled because individuals lack the skills to fill them. 
However, even with this shortage here, I hear radio ads during my 
morning drive urging people to move to North Carolina to fill high-tech 
jobs there.
  My home state of Ohio faces a similar challenge. Manpower 
Incorporated recently released a poll which indicated that the Dayton 
area had a bright future in terms of job growth: 42 percent of area 
companies plan on hiring more manufacturing workers. However, the 
availability of skilled workers to fill those jobs remains low.
  And, according to the Manufacturers Alliance's Economic Report 
published in January, the mismatch between available jobs and available 
skilled workers is growing. While wages have increased for those who 
have the skills in demand, many jobs still go unfilled and the median 
duration of unemployment for those who lack the skills remains at 
recession levels.
  Nationwide, the number of unfilled high-tech jobs is estimated to be 
350,000. The increasing labor shortage threatens our Nation's economic 
growth and productivity.

  Clearly, we need to do much more to prepare America's workers for 
tomorrow's jobs. The problem is our job training system is not simply 
up for the challenge. That is what our bill aims to address.
  The current system is a fragmented and duplicative maze of narrowly 
focused programs, administered by numerous Federal agencies that lack 
coordination, lack a coherent strategy to provide training assistance, 
and lack the confidence of the two key consumers who use these 
services--workers seeking training, and businesses seeking to hire 
them.
  That's why our reform bill is so important. It will fundamentally 
reform our ineffective job training programs, transforming them into a 
coordinated, accountable, and flexible workforce investment system.
  The historic 1996 welfare reform bill was based on the principle that 
power ought to be devolved to States, communities, and individuals. It 
should go back to the local community. Our job training bill represents 
the final, essential chapter of welfare reform, by empowering States 
and localities--giving them the tools and flexibility they need to 
implement real reform, reform that will allow them to move people off 
welfare and into good-paying permanent jobs.
  The bill promotes free market competition, eliminates government 
bureaucracy and promotes personal responsibility. It provides training 
assistance through individual training accounts or vouchers, in order 
to allow individuals seeking assistance to have a say about where, how, 
and what training they will receive. These programs should be tailored 
to individual needs, not to Washington bureaucracies.
  This legislation will help real workers and real businesses build 
America's economy. One major Ohio newspaper called it ``a bill that 
works.'' That's exactly right. The Congress can be very proud of this 
legislation.


                              saving kids

  Let me now turn to a second piece of very important legislation this 
Congress can be proud of.
  I might say this is a piece of legislation that my colleague from 
Idaho, Larry Craig, was so very instrumental in getting passed. I don't 
think it is really a stretch at all to say that but for Larry Craig 
this bill would not have been law--would not have been passed by this 
Congress, and would not have been signed by the President.
  Let me tell the Members a little bit about it.
  Last November, we passed a bill that will enable more of America's 
children to grow up in safe, stable, loving, and permanent homes.
  Far too many children are spending their most important, formative 
years in a legal limbo that denies them their chance to be adopted--
that denies them what all children should have--the chance to be loved 
and cared for by parents.
  We are also sending too many children back to dangerous and abusive 
homes. We send them back to the custody of people who have already 
abused and tortured them.
  Every day in America, three children actually die of abuse and 
neglect at the hands of their parents or caretakers. That's over 1200 
children every year. And almost half of these children are killed after 
their tragic circumstances have come to the attention of child welfare 
agencies.
  Why is this happening? Obviously, many factors are to blame. There 
are many excuses. But as we were working on our bill, it became 
increasingly clear that some of the tragedies in the child welfare 
system are the unintended consequences of a small part of a 1980 
Federal law. Under this law, for a state to be eligible for federal 
matching funds for foster care expenditures, the state must have a plan 
providing that ``reasonable efforts will be made (A) prior to the 
placement of a child in foster care, to prevent or eliminate the need 
for removal of the child from his home, and (B) to make it possible for 
the child to return to his home.'' These are ``reasonable efforts.''
  In other words, no matter what the particular circumstances of a 
household may be--the state had to make reasonable efforts to keep it 
together, and to put it back together if it falls apart.
  There is strong evidence to suggest that in practice, reasonable 
efforts have become extraordinary efforts. Efforts to keep families 
together at all costs.
  Our bill changed the law in order to change this practice, to make it 
absolutely clear that the best interests of the child come first. This 
new law simply states: ``In determining reasonable efforts, the best 
interests of the child, including the child's health and safety, shall 
be of primary concern.''
  With this new law, Congress put children first. This is a law that I 
believe will truly save young lives. It is a law that Congress should 
be very proud of.


                              War on Drugs

  Finally, let me turn to the third item of which I think this Congress 
can be very proud. I would like to talk about the progress Congress has 
made in saving young lives from the often fatal scourge of illegal 
drugs.
  Last year, I joined with my friend from Iowa, Senator Grassley, and 
my Ohio House colleague, Congressman Rob Portman to introduce and pass 
the Drug-Free Communities Act which supports community-based 
initiatives to educate children about the dangers of drugs. Youth 
substance abuse has more than doubled in the past five years. We must 
do more to protect our children from this threat to their health and 
safety. We believe that this bill will strike a major blow for our 
children's interests by empowering the people who work with our 
children on a daily basis, at the grass roots, at the community level 
in our neighborhoods.
  Drug prevention is an important element of any comprehensive 
children's health policy. And in the long run, treatment and education 
is our best investment in getting serious users off drugs. However, to 
be successful now and over the long term, we need a balanced anti-drug 
strategy. We must have a strong commitment in each of the following 
areas: prevention, treatment, education, domestic law enforcement, and 
international eradication and interdiction efforts.
  Over the last few years, our efforts to keep drugs from coming into 
the country have been lagging seriously behind the other components of 
our drug

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strategy. And the results of this imbalance--this lack of emphasis in 
international eradication and interdiction--has been devastating: A 
decline in cocaine seizures, a decline in the price of cocaine, and an 
increase in drug use. This alarming trend has to change, and requires 
leadership here in Washington. While drug education, treatment and 
domestic law enforcement are efforts done at the federal, state, and 
local levels, the Federal government is solely responsible to keep 
drugs from entering our country.
  That is our responsibility solely, and it cannot be shared. And if we 
in Washington fail to do our job outside the country, we're making it 
far more difficult and far more costly for state and local governments 
to do their part.

  This past July, Congressmen McCollum and Hastert, and Senators 
Coverdell, Graham, Grassley, and I introduced the Western hemisphere 
Drug Elimination Act--legislation designed to restore a balanced drug 
control strategy, and revive our sole responsibility to stop drugs from 
reaching our borders. This legislation calls for an additional $2.6 
billion investment in international counter-narcotic efforts over 3 
years. Specifically, the bill calls for a comprehensive eradication, 
interdiction and crop substitution strategy. The objective is to 
dramatically reduce the flow of drugs into the United States by driving 
up the price of drugs and hence reducing drug consumption. I believe 
that through this legislation, we can accomplish this very important 
goal.
  We have to make it far more difficult for drug lords to bring drugs 
to our nation, and make drugs far more costly to buy. We need to raise 
the cost of doing business for drug traffickers.
  Our bill would do this. It was passed by the House of Representatives 
just last week, and I have been working with my fellow cosponsors here 
in the Senate to increase funding for drug interdiction programs during 
the current appropriations process.
  This effort is one key example of how this Congress has made a huge 
difference in the lives of America's children.
  Mr. President, all of the measures I have just discussed have one 
thing in common: They are components of an overall vision of what our 
country can be--the kind of country our children deserve. I am very 
proud to have been a part of all these efforts, and I look forward to 
making further progress on these and other issues as we continue to 
make a positive, lasting difference in the lives of all Americans in 
the 106th Congress.
  Again, I thank my colleague from Idaho for arranging the time, and I 
congratulate him for the role he has played in all three of these bills 
and these efforts. I yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio for those 
kind remarks. If it had not been for his leadership in the key areas he 
mentioned, we would not be dealing with them in the way this Congress 
is now and should be. These are the kind of programs that directly 
impact the lives of many of our citizens, and Congress should be 
aggressively pursuing many of the projects and pieces of legislation 
that the Senator from Ohio has discussed.
  I now turn to Senator Grams from Minnesota who, I understand, wants 
to talk to us about tax cuts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

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