Congressional Record, Volume 145 Issue 32 (Tuesday, March 2, 1999)

[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 32 (Tuesday, March 2, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2071-S2084]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

INCREASING FUNDING OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON THE YEAR 2000
TECHNOLOGY-RELATED PROBLEMS

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the hour of 2:15
having arrived, the Committee on Rules and Administration is discharged
from further consideration of S. Res. 7, and the Senate will proceed
immediately to its consideration.
The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

A resolution (S. Res. 7) to amend Senate Resolution 208 of
the 105th Congress to increase funding of the Special
Committee on the Year 2000 Technology-Related Problems.

The Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time for debate
on the resolution shall be limited to 3 hours, equally divided between
the Senator from Utah, Mr. Bennett, and the Senator from Connecticut,
Mr. Dodd.

Privilege of the Floor

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the
duration of this debate, the following members of the staff detailed to
the Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problems be granted
the privilege of the floor: Frank Reilly, John Stephenson, Paul Hunter,
J. Paul Nicholas, Ron Spear and Tom Bello.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Unanimous Consent Agreement

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the consent
agreement with respect to the consideration of S. Res. 7 be modified to
allow one technical amendment to the resolution, to be offered by
myself and Senator Dodd.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 30

(Purpose: To make a conforming change)

Mr. BENNETT. The technical amendment is now at the desk, and I ask
for its consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Utah [Mr. Bennett], for himself and Mr.
Dodd, proposes an amendment numbered 30.

The text of the amendment follows:

On page 1, line 5, strike ``both places'' and insert ``the
second place''.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
amendment be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon
the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment (No. 30) was agreed to.
Mr. BENNETT. Thank you, Mr. President.
As I have said somewhat facetiously, today is ``Y2K Day in the
neighborhood.'' We have had a series of events with respect to Y2K
legislation, starting with the debate this morning on the Small
Business Administration bill offered by Senator Bond of Missouri. We
then went into a closed session where it was my privilege, along with
Senator Dodd, to make a presentation to Members of the Senate with
respect to the impact of Y2K on our national defense and our
intelligence capabilities. And now this afternoon, we have 3 hours to
discuss the funding request for the Special Committee on the Year 2000
Technology Problems and, in that process, take the opportunity of the
debate to lay out for the Senate and for the television public exactly
what we are dealing with.
To summarize ``Y2K in the neighborhood,'' I have a single chart that
we used in the press conference earlier that outlines what it is we are
talking about.
Specifically, as you see, Mr. President, it says, ``Y2K--What is
it?'' There are some who think it is a rock band and we will make that
clear. And then, Why are we vulnerable? Where are the greatest risks?
What is being done? What should we be doing next? And what can we
expect? It is in the framework of those questions that I will be making
my presentation today.
In the closed session, we talked about national defense issues,
international assessments country by country and the preparedness of
the U.S. intelligence community. I report to the Senate as a whole, for
those Senators who were not able to be there, that we announced these
conclusions to the Senators who were there and, I might say, Mr.
President, we were very gratified by the number of Senators who did
appear. The room was full, and the Senators were very attentive, which
I think is appropriate given the significance of this issue.
We believe that there is a low-to-medium probability of exploitation
of Y2K by any terrorist groups. People in the press conference asked
me, ``Well, can you be specific?'' And the answer is no. We know of no
intention on the part of terrorist groups to exploit Y2K uncertainty,
but these groups are there, they are up to mischief, and so we say
there is a probability, but it is at the low end of things.
There is a low probability of a nuclear launch coming by accident as
a result of Y2K. Again, we cannot rule it out absolutely, but we think
the probability of it is very low.
There is a medium probability of economic disruptions that could lead
to civil unrest in various parts of the world, and we will discuss that
here in the open session as we outline for you how vulnerable some
parts of the world may be to Y2K interruptions.

[[Page S2072]]

There is a high probability of an economic impact with consequences
unknown. Here we can only guess, but I think there is a high
probability that Y2K will, in fact, produce some kind of economic
dislocation that we will feel.
As far as U.S. preparedness is concerned, the U.S. Armed Forces will
not lose their mission-critical capability, their war-fighting
capacity. The United States will remain the world's superpower, and the
U.S. intelligence community will not lose its capability to carry out
its duties.
To go to, first, the question--What is Y2K?--in case there is anyone
who really doesn't understand what we are talking about here, it goes
to the inability of a computer to recognize the difference between 1900
and 2000 as a date if that computer is programmed for only two digits
for the date field for years. This goes back to the 1960s, maybe even
the 1950s when memory space was very, very expensive, very, very
crucial and, in order to save space, programmers said, ``Well, we can
just drop the ``19'' off the year and go to ``69'' for 1969, ``70'' for
1970, and so on. And when someone said, ``Well, what happens when you
get to the year 2000 and you get two zeros and the computer will think
it is 1900?'' The answer on the part of those programmers was, ``This
program will be obsolete and abandoned long before we get to the year
2000.''
They didn't realize the ingenuity of programmers. They figured out a
way to preserve those ancient programs and to lay other layers of
programming on top of them in such a fashion that the old programs look
like the new ones, but deep down in the bowels of all of that
programming, you have programs that are scheduled to fail when they get
to the crucial time when they go over from 99 to 00.
There are many other manifestations of it, going down to embedded
chips, computers no bigger than my little fingernail that nonetheless
have in them the capacity to fail over this issue. But basically that
is the issue. That is what Y2K is. The failure of computers, when they
have to transition from 1999 to 2000, those computers that are
programmed with two digits for the annual date may fail--some of them
certainly will fail--and that is what Y2K is all about.
By the way, people ask, What does ``Y2K'' stand for? ``Y'' stands for
year, ``2'' stands for 2--that is fairly easy to follow--and ``K,''
from the Greek, standing for kilo, meaning 1,000. It is computer speech
for the year 2000. My wife says to me, ``Why do you use that acronym?
You just confuse people. Why don't you say `year 2000' instead of
`Y2K.' '' And I say, ``Well, it's quicker.'' She says, `` `Y2K,' `year
2000,' you only save one syllable. What is the point? You just do it to
confuse people.'' But I guess I have been in Government long enough now
that confusing people is part of the program.
So what is Y2K? I think that is the answer to the question.
Why are we vulnerable? We are vulnerable because at virtually every
point of importance in the modern economy and modern activity there
stands the computer--whether it is on a chip or in a huge mainframe--
with the capacity to fail.
Let's take an event that we hope never happens to any of us, but that
is a demonstration of a true emergency--a fire in a building--and see
what happens. Here is a picture of a burning building.
In order to muster the firefighting capability to deal with this
emergency, you have a number of people and a number of systems that are
involved. There is the computer-aided dispatching system to send the
firefighter to where the challenge is. There is the telecommunications
system where the telephone calls go back and forth to send the message
from the dispatching system; the building security and fire detection
systems that make the phone call back to the dispatching system.
The firefighters jump in their cars or their trucks. The trucks have
to be filled with fuel. And the pumps that control the fuel supply that
goes into the firetrucks all have computers in them--embedded chips.
The traffic control system that controls the ability of the fire engine
to get through town all has computers in it. The water supply, when
they get to the hydrant, is regulated by computers. And, of course, the
personnel management systems that get the firefighters into the fire
station in the first place now are all managed by computers.
A single event we take for granted, all of the things that are done
to bring to bear on this event--some firefighting capability, but there
are computers at virtually every step of the way.
Now, just another example of how interconnected we are in this world.
Let's take a single transaction that takes place this time across
international lines. This will be, perhaps, a little hard to follow
because the chart is relatively smaller and less dramatic than a
burning building, but just let me walk you through this as to what
happens when there is a commercial transaction that goes across
national lines.
An import-export kind of transaction. Every red arrow that you see
there on the chart, Mr. President, is a transmission of information by
computer. Every single time something takes place with the purchase and
delivery of an item across national lines --you start the contracts,
the negotiations by the Internet, a checking of credit, the contract by
the Internet--all the way through. The white arrows on the chart are
where something physically moves, when you are moving a piece of
merchandise out of a factory onto a ship or out of the truck into a
retail store or whatever.
Without going through all of the steps, I just point out that there
are more red arrows than there are white ones. There are more
opportunities for computer failure to ruin the ability of this
transaction to go forward than there are physical opportunities for it
to fail. We are so heavily interconnected in this world now that we are
completely vulnerable to a computer failure. And at every red arrow on
that chart right now there is a computer with a potential Y2K problem.
Someone once said to me, This problem is really very simple. You just
get into the computer and find out where the date is and fix it; change
it from two digits to four digits. And I say, yes, that is very simple,
very simple problem, very simply solved. The only problem is, you do
not know where that date field is, particularly in those old programs
that I talked about.
It has been likened to this kind of a challenge: Suppose someone said
to you, Mr. President, the Golden Gate Bridge has some bad rivets in
it, and if you do not replace those faulty rivets, the Golden Gate
Bridge will fall down. All you have to do is very simple: Knock out the
bad rivet, put in a good rivet, and the bridge is made secure.
Now, one out of seven of those rivets in the Golden Gate Bridge is
bad, and we cannot tell you which ones they are. You have to go through
the Golden Gate Bridge and check every rivet to see which seventh rivet
has to be fixed. And by the way, if you do not get every single one,
the bridge will collapse, and you do this remediation work at rush hour
while the bridge is being used. That is roughly comparable to the
challenge that we face here. And that is why we are vulnerable. OK.

The next question is, Where are the greatest risks? Well, we can
answer that two ways. On our committee, we have decided to rate the
greatest risks in terms of which sectors of the economy have the
greatest importance to us. And when you rank risk by importance, No. 1
immediately leaps to the top of the list; and that is power.
If the power goes off, it does not matter if your computer works
otherwise. The only computers that will work in the world, if the power
goes off, will be those that have batteries, and that is about 2 or 3
hours, and they are all gone. So we have put our first focus on power.
Second, telecommunications. If the telephone goes off, the power grid
fails, because many of the signals that keep the power grid functioning
go over telephone lines. So once again, everything stops.
Third, transportation. If transportation fails, you cannot get coal,
for example, from coal mines into power-generating plants. If the
switches on all of the railroad lines fail--and they are controlled by
computers--there is no coal in the powerplants. The power grid fails,
everything fails.
You begin to see, again, how interconnected everything is.
Fourth, finance. If the banks cannot clear checks, if there can be no
transfer of funds, if the financial system collapses, then business
collapses. Once

[[Page S2073]]

again, the chain starts, and you end up ultimately with no power, all
the rest of it.
Then, general government. We are so dependent on government services
to keep the economy running that if the general government services
were to fail--in the Federal Government, for example, if the Health
Care Financing Administration were to fail and be unable to make any
Medicare reimbursements, it would ultimately destroy the health care
industry, because 40 percent of the health care reimbursements are
Medicare reimbursements. And you simply could not keep a health care
facility going if you cut their cash by 40 percent and left it that way
for a while.
Finally, general business.
Those are the ranks of importance that we have looked at in our
committee.
Let me take this opportunity to make this statement about what we
found. The committee has been operating for roughly a year now, and in
that process people who have looked at the list I have just recited
have gotten very excited. Indeed, they have begun to create a cottage
industry of panic.
You can get on the Internet and you can look up any kind of web site,
and they will take the possibility of computer failure in any of the
areas I have just outlined and translate that into what has come to be
known in the world of Y2K hyperbole as TEOTWAWKI. Now, TEOTWAWKI is the
acronym that stands for ``The End Of The World As We Know It.'' They
use that phrase so often, they created an acronym. Now you can get on
the Internet and they will talk about TEOTWAWKI.
Mr. President, I am here to announce that TEOTWAWKI is not going to
come to pass. We are satisfied, as a result of the hearings we held,
and the interviews we held, and the investigations we have undertaken
on the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem,
that the world is not, in fact, going to come to an end over this
problem--certainly not in the United States. We will have problems.
There is no question, given the ubiquitous nature of the problem, that
it will cause interruptions and difficulties in the United States, but
it will not bring everything to a halt. It will not cause the shutdown
of vital services. In our opinion, it will be a bump in the road for
the United States.
Now, people say: What does that mean? How serious a bump and how long
will it last, Senator Bennett? I don't know, and I don't know anybody
who does, because this is a moving target, there are so many potentials
for challenge, that we cannot quantify it with the kind of accuracy
that the press always searches for when they ask you these questions.
It will have an impact. It will be felt. But how long it will last and
how deep it will go I don't know. That is why the committee is going to
continue, so that we can continue to study it, and as we get closer to
it, we will be in a better position to make that kind of assessment.
Now, if we ask the question, Where are the greatest risks? --not in
the pattern of the impact on the economy that I have talked about, but
on our current state of readiness--we find that the greatest impact,
based on what we now know in the committee, is probably going to be in
the health care field. This is the field that we think is the least
prepared to deal with the year 2000 problem in the United States.
One of the reasons for that is it so fragmented. There are so many
hospitals. There are so many separate doctors' offices. Some of them
have done nothing to prepare for the year 2000. Frankly, some of them
can solve their problem in an afternoon. Some of them that are
operating off of a single PC can get a patch downloaded from the
Internet that can solve their problem. Some of them are going to
require substantially more than that. And some of them, frankly, are
far enough behind the curve, if they are not on top of it by now, it is
too late and they ought to start thinking about contingency plans. We
simply do not know. What we do know causes us to believe that health
care is vulnerable.
Senator Dodd, I am sure, will be addressing this in greater detail
because he is the one who has focused on this to a greater extent than
any other member of the committee.
Another area of readiness that we are concerned about is local
government. I gave this Y2K speech at a Rotary Club meeting in a small
town in Utah and people asked me, ``What should we do to get ready for
Y2K?'' I gave them the same answer I always give them, which is, you
should take charge of your own life; you should check with your own
bank to make sure they are going to be Y2K compliant; you should check
with your own employer to be sure he or she is getting things under
control; and, among other things, I said, call your mayor to make sure
your water system is going to be all right in your local community.

I have done that in Salt Lake City. I have had some long discussions
with the mayor of Salt Lake, and she assures me it will be safe for me
to be in Salt Lake on New Year's Eve because the water system will
work.
After I gave the speech, a man came up, shook my hand, and said,
``You have caused me some problems.'' I asked why, and he said, ``I am
the mayor.'' I said, ``Mr. Mayor, is your water system going to be all
right?'' He said, ``I don't have the slightest idea but I am sure going
to find out.'' He said, ``It never occurred to me that we had computer
problems in our water purification plant.''
We have held hearings on this issue. I have been in a water
purification plant. While I think most local governments are
responsible enough and will be on top of it, I am concerned that there
will be local governments where there will be critical emergency
response systems that will fail--fire departments, ambulances, and so
on, water systems, federally funded services. Many of the federally
funded services are administered at the local level. Welfare checks are
mailed out by county governments, not by the Federal Government, in
many instances. And in these communities, there can be serious
disruption even while the Nation as a whole is doing fine.
In the economy as a whole, the area that is at the greatest risk is
where we find medium-sized businesses. The big businesses are probably
just fine. Citigroup announced when we first got into this they were
going to spend $500 million fixing their year 2000 problem. That went
up to $650 million by the time we got around to drafting the report.
Now, the day the report is issued, we are told they are spending closer
to $800 million to get this solved. But Citigroup will get it solved.
They have the money and the muscle and the will to get it taken care
of.
The very small businesses will probably get it solved because, again,
for them, they are dealing with a single computer that runs their
payroll and maybe does their taxes, and they do everything else by
hand. They can solve that problem in a short-term period of time. The
middle-sized businesses that don't have the money of a Citigroup and
that have a much bigger problem than a mom-and-pop store are running
into difficulty. The surveys we are conducting tell us that these
companies are where the problems are going to be.
Now you may say, so what? We should really care if an individual
business here or an individual business there should fail or should
have serious problems. In today's economy, we live in a world of
outsourcing and just-in-time inventory. That means that General Motors
has literally tens of thousands of suppliers. General Motors does not
make everything themselves; they outsource. That is a fancy name for
buying it from somebody else. They are dependent on these medium-sized
businesses for their parts. One of the scary things is that many of
these medium-sized businesses on which General Motors and other big
manufacturers are dependent are overseas.
I used to run a very small business, so small that it wouldn't really
attract anybody's attention, but the key component of our business,
without which we had no product, was manufactured in Taiwan, and if we
were unable to get that from Taiwan because of Y2K problems in Taiwan,
we were out of business. We sold our product to a much bigger company.
They were dependent upon us. They could have all of their computers Y2K
compliant and be unable to get product from us and therefore have to
drop a major product line for them. We couldn't supply it because we
couldn't get this product from Taiwan. You see the chain of suppliers
that runs throughout the economy in this just-in-time inventory world.
When I say I am concerned about medium-sized firms as an area of high

[[Page S2074]]

risk, it could affect big firms and could affect the economy as a
whole.
Now, the next question after where is the greatest risk: What are we
doing about it? What is being done? Here, I think, it is time for the
Senate and the Congress, if I might, to be a little bit self-
congratulatory. When this problem first came to the attention of the
Congress, Senator Burns of Montana has said he held hearings on this
issue, or had been involved in hearings on this issue back in the early
1990s. He said we couldn't get anybody interested; nobody paid any
attention. He was on the Commerce Committee. He said the thing just
kind of dropped without a trace.
We first became aware of this on the Senate Banking Committee in
1996. That is where Senator Dodd and I became zealots on this
issue, and we began to work on this with respect to the financial
services area. The more we got into that, the more we realized that it
encompassed all of the things that I have described here this
afternoon.

One example demonstrates what I am talking about when I say that
Congress can be a little bit self-congratulatory about the question of
what is being done. My son-in-law works for one of the major banks in
this country. He said at a family gathering, ``You know, I don't know
what's happened, but the bank examiners from the Federal Reserve who
come into our bank now have only one thing on their minds, and that is
Y2K, and they have made it the top priority in the bank.'' I thought,
you know, we have finally done something in Congress that has produced
a result because, at Senator Dodd's suggestion, we got the bank
regulators before our subcommittee of the Banking Committee and we
raised this issue with them; we discovered several things. No. 1, they
were not raising it as part of the safety and soundness examination
they were doing in banks. No. 2, their own computers weren't going to
work in the year 2000. They would not be able to conduct their
regulatory activities if we didn't get it fixed. The mere act of
holding a hearing and bringing these people forward produced a salutary
result that actually got out into the economy and changed the way
things are being done.
Well, now, I think we can take some credit for having raised that
alarm. Senator Moynihan wrote to the President and urged him to appoint
a Y2K czar or coordinator. The President did not respond. I wrote to
the President after we had our hearings in the Banking Committee and
recommended it. He did not respond to me, either. But in February of
1998, he did, in fact, appoint a Y2K coordinator. I think the track
record says it is the Congress that possibly spurred that. And we now
have a President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion, headed by John
Koskinen, working very diligently to make sure the Federal Government
and the economy as a whole is ready for this. We are doing everything
we can to create awareness of the challenge. At the same time, we want
to be sure, in words that we have used before, that while we are ``Paul
Revere,'' we are not ``Chicken Little.'' We have to get everybody
aroused to the fact that the British really are coming. They have to
get out of their warm beds and pick up their muskets and get ready for
this; but the sky is not falling and it will not be TEOTWAWKI; it will
not be the end of the world as we know it.
Well, I see that the vice chairman of our committee, Senator Dodd,
has come on to the floor. Soon I will reserve the remainder of my time
and give him an opportunity for a statement about this.
Other members of the committee have expressed an interest to come to
the floor and talk about this issue. I want to acknowledge the
tremendous support we have had on this committee. This is a unique kind
of committee in that we have had tremendous bipartisan support. My
staff and Senator Dodd's staff function almost as one on this
committee. We have made every effort to keep any kind of partisanship
out of it. We go out on field visits together. Senator Dodd has been
indefatigable in his effort to keep this thing going, and he prods me
in areas where I need it and keeps the committee focused in areas where
sometimes I stray in other places. It has been one of the most
satisfying legislative experiences that I have ever had.
Other members of the committee, the same way. Senator Moynihan was
into this issue before we even discovered it and came onto the
committee with great enthusiasm. Senator Smith of Oregon, who came to
the Senate as a businessman, took charge of dealing with business and
Y2K's impact on business and has been tremendously helpful. We have had
Senator Bingaman, who we have asked to focus on the national defense
issues. Senator Collins, as a representative of the Governmental
Affairs Committee, has held hearings in that committee based on what
she has come up with out of our committee. Senator Kyl did all of the
heavy lifting on the committee for last year's bill on disclosure and
has been enormously valuable.
And then we have, unlike any other committee in the Senate, two ex
officio members, Ted Stevens of Alaska and Robert C. Byrd of West
Virginia; and the fact that the Federal Government received literally
billions of dollars in emergency funds in the last supplemental, which,
I think, have dealt with the true emergency. I think we are responsible
for our being where we are in many of the government agencies. I don't
think that would have happened if the chairman and ranking member of
the Senate Appropriations Committee were not involved directly and
particularly in the work of this particular special committee.
So, with that tribute to my fellow Senators on this committee and the
work that has been done, I will reserve the remainder of my time, Mr.
President, to allow the vice chairman of the committee and the ranking
Democrat, Senator Dodd, to make his statement.
Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. Without breaking into the colloquy, I wonder if I can
have 5 seconds to introduce a bill.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator
from Alaska be recognized for the purpose of introducing a bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mr. Murkowski pertaining to the introduction of S.
501 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on introduced
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. DODD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
Mr. DODD. Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, let me begin these remarks by seconding everything
that my colleague from Utah has said about the other members of this
committee. I will add, as I know he has expressed on numerous
occasions, the tremendous work done by our respective staffs. They have
done a tremendous amount of work in providing us with the kind of
detailed information that we have been able to produce at this juncture
in our interim report, which we released today.
Let me also, on behalf of other members of the committee, say to you
and to our colleagues here that we have been truly fortunate to have
Bob Bennett lead this effort. I have said this on numerous occasions.
He has literally been the leader on this in the Senate. He began early
on and insisted that the Banking Committee have a subcommittee that
would look at the implications of this year 2000 ``bug,'' as it is
affectionately referred to, on financial institutions. It was as a
result of his efforts that my curiosity was piqued.
As a member of that committee--not as the ranking Democrat, but as a
member of that committee--I attended a number of hearings we had on
financial services, and I quickly learned through that process that
this issue went far beyond the individual institutions that had to do
their own assessments. What Senator Bennett discovered very early on
and what others of us who sat in on those committee hearings soon
learned, was that it wasn't enough to be a financial service and have
your own house in shape when it came to the Y2K issue, and that the
bank, or the savings and loan, or the stock brokerage, or any other
financial service, insurance agent, or company--if they were in good
shape internally, that wasn't enough. They had to also determine
whether or not suppliers and customers, all sorts of contractors with

[[Page S2075]]

whom they do business, would also have to be in good shape.
That obviously drew us to the conclusion that this was an issue that
deserved broader attention than just looking at the financial services
sector. As a result, Senator Bennett and I went to our respective
leaders and asked and urged them to support this special committee that
has no legislative authority. We have no authority to pass any laws or
do anything, but merely try to make an assessment as we now approach
the millennium date 304 days from today.
As a result of those efforts, beginning last year, Trent Lott, our
majority leader, and Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate,
supported our efforts to form this committee. We owe them a great debt
of gratitude, as well, as leaders for giving us the kind of support
that has been necessary to do our jobs.
Today, at the conclusion of this discussion, there will be a vote on
a matter that would provide an additional $300,000 over the next year
for us to complete our work as we now enter this second phase of this
assessment of how the Nation and the world is responding to this issue.
So we hope that our colleagues will be supportive of that effort to
allow us to complete our work.
Again, at the outset, I want to thank my friend and colleague from
Utah whose own background in business--and a successful business, I
might add--has brought some wonderful awareness and knowledge to all of
this. It has been truly enjoyable to work with him and his staff over
these past number of months which has brought us to the place we are
today.
The Senate special committee, which formed in April, as I have said,
has been working hard to assess a variety of industry sectors. Some
sectors have been very cooperative. We should tell you that in this
kind of effort so much information and so much news is focused on what
is wrong. We need to take some time to tell you about what is right,
too.
There is a lot that is going on that is right when it comes to this
issue. It doesn't get the same attention. The old axiom that the media
doesn't report about planes that fly is certainly true in the Y2K
issue. The headlines are going to tell you about where the problems
are. That is the nature of the news media and what gets covered. But
there are a lot of planes that are flying, if you will, both literally
and figuratively when it comes to the year 2000 issue. Those that have
been doing the work getting the job done deserve to be recognized as
well. Others have needed more persuasion, unfortunately. We will get to
that.
After 10 months of research, we have now completed our report, which
I have referred to already, which gives you the status on seven major
sectors. It is not an all-conclusive list. But we came up with this
list. Senator Bennett did. He came up with a list of seven critical
areas that we thought most people would have questions about and
legitimate concerns. I will get to that in a second. I know Senator
Bennett has already discussed that to some degree.
The report was intended to provide as comprehensive as we could an
analysis, and described as thoroughly as we could in a single document
how ready we are to face this millennium issue that is going to be upon
us in 304 days; in some cases before.
Reflecting on what we have learned from our research and hearings, I
think it would be an understatement to say that Y2K is an important
issue. Expert opinions on the subject have ranged from denial to the
coming of Armageddon.
While we don't foresee any major disruptions, anyone who hasn't begun
to consider the ramifications of this problem should do so immediately,
in our opinion. Some businesses within different industries have been
extremely forward thinking in their year 2000 preparation efforts.
George Washington Memorial Hospital, right in our own Nation's Capital
in the city of Washington, began its remediation efforts a half a
decade ago in order to be ready for the year 2000 issue. State Street,
an international financial service in Boston, MA, began fixing its year
2000 problem 6 years ago and is projected to spend some $200 million on
remediation efforts. The cost has been significant. For some it will
continue to rise as companies continue to discover problems and work
through them.
Consider for a moment, if you would, Mr. President, the cost of not
being ready, especially with regard to exposure to litigation.
Projected litigation costs have ranged from $500 billion to $1
trillion. You can be sure that these costs in one way or another will
be passed on to consumers in other groups.
Let me just mention the litigation issue. As my colleague from Utah
knows, and others know, I have been a strong advocate of litigation
reform. Senator Gramm of Texas, Senator Domenici, myself, and others
authored the securities litigation reform bill, and then last year we
passed the uniform standards legislation to reduce the proliferation of
computer-driven complaints where mere stock fluctuations would generate
lawsuits. I think it was a good effort and was endorsed by the
Securities and Exchange Commission, and overwhelmingly supported by our
colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I am a supporter of litigation
reform in this area, too. I think it is going to be very important that
we do something in this area to reduce the potential costs of
unwarranted litigation.

Having said that, however, Mr. President, I also want to say that
there should be no mistake out there that this committee and this
Congress are not about to create some firewall that protects businesses
or industries when they should have known better and done better and
didn't do so. If you are sitting back and saying, I hear Congress is
about to pass some legislation that is going to insulate me and protect
me from consumers and businesses and others that would have a
legitimate complaint against a company that did not do its Y2K work,
you would be mistaken. I think I am speaking for most of us here who
feel that way. That is not to say we will not be able to pass a bill. I
hope we can. But we shouldn't leave the impression that this is going
to be somehow an abolition of tort law in this country.
There is a reason why we call these problems bugs or viruses. Like a
disease, this issue can corrupt the functioning of vital systems, can
cause damage, shutdown, and can bring the flow of work to a halt. They
can take a business out of business very quickly. They can stop the
flow of information and communication.
As concerned as I am, let me make the point that we believe the
United States is one of the most prepared nations in the world. We have
the resources we need both in terms of economics and expertise.
However, most countries lag behind the United States in the year 2000
preparation.
I cannot stress to you enough, Mr. President, the serious nature of
this topic. This is not an imaginary problem just because we can't at
this time quantify as exactly as we would like, or forecast as exactly
as we would like, the extent of this problem. We don't know for sure
what is going to happen, and where it is going to happen. So we must
prepare, in our view, for a bad situation. We hope it doesn't occur.
There is no information we have that it is likely to occur. But we
don't know. We just don't know with the kind of certainty we would like
to share with our colleagues and share with the Nation.
Some chief executive officers and government leaders assume because
this is a technical problem and they lack technical expertise that
their hands are somehow tied. This is not the case. There is no
singlehanded resolution to this crisis. A successful resolution will
call for cooperation across the board. This is not just a technology
problem. It will require managers who are willing to get involved at
all levels. It will take leaders in business, in the U.S. Congress, and
at the executive branch level to take the initiative and find out where
companies and organizations, nonprofits and for-profits, are in their
Y2K remediation and contingency planning.
Large, medium and small businesses must cooperate to find solutions.
Chief executive officers must be aware of the extent of their
companies' Y2K exposure. Companies must develop contingency plans. In
fact, this is a critical issue right now. It doesn't mean you ought to
stop remediation, but if you are concerned that you are not going to be
able to get ready in 304 days, you ought to be actively involved in
looking at contingency planning.

[[Page S2076]]

If there were no other message I could leave our colleagues with, or
others who may be following this discussion today, the most important
point I would like to make is the need for contingency planning. I
can't think of anything more important. You ought to know how important
contingency planning will be.
They also must insist that vital suppliers and vendors resolve their
own problems and have their own contingency plans in place. The true
heroes on January 1, 2000, will be those organizations, private and
public companies--small, medium and large--that have found a way to
adapt to this potential problem. A business owner who wants to prosper
in the new millennium must prepare for the Y2K problem in such a way
that the business--that their business, his or her business--does not
skip a beat come New Year's Day.
As of today, as I have said repeatedly now today, we have 304 days
remaining, but much can still be done in that time, as short as it is.
If you have lived in the Southeast of our country where there are
hurricanes on almost an annual basis, or the Midwest and South where
tornadoes are common, you may have heard warnings that gave you little
time to make survival decisions. The year 2000 is a storm on the not-
too-distant future horizon. It is a disaster, in some cases pervasive
throughout the First World and beyond, but is one for which we can
prepare.
It is one that we can work to neutralize. We on this committee have
been assessing all that we can to understand more about this coming
storm, and we have learned a great deal. Small businesses do not have
any compliance plans in place.
Preparation for the continued health of our Nation's businesses and
industries is vital, but paramount is the health of our health care. It
is not an exaggeration to say that lives could be lost as a result of
this crisis. I point to disturbing examples of what could happen
relative to health care and the Y2K issue not to be an alarmist, quite
the contrary, but to shed light on something that needs the attention
of everyone in this country. Sixty million people are dependent on
medication for the treatment of health problems from cancer to heart
disease. Some require daily doses of life-sustaining medicines to keep
their bodies from rejecting transplanted organs or to prevent cancers
from spreading.
Let me just cite one example of what I am talking about of which this
committee has become keenly aware. Laurene West is a registered nurse
and a computer expert. She brings together some wonderful talents. And
if you were to meet her, you would see a seemingly healthy woman. Were
it not for the fact that I tell you now, you would never guess that her
state of health will put her more at risk than any of us when the year
2000 arrives. Ms. West had a tumor removed from her brain and requires
daily medication to prevent the regrowth of that tumor.
During her first of 13 surgeries, she developed a staph infection
that does not respond to any known oral antibiotic. She is dependent on
IV antibiotics which she cannot store because they have no shelf life.
Any disruption to the supply of these antibiotics could be fatal to
her. She knows health care. She knows computers. And she knows all too
well the impact that the year 2000 could have on her health care.
Ms. West has been the most proactive voice calling upon us to take
action. She worries that HMOs and physicians, to a certain extent, view
the impending crisis with a degree of disbelief and apathy. Many health
insurance organizations will not pay for the storage of even the most
critical of drugs. We now are aware that as much as 80 percent--80
percent--of the ingredients of drugs manufactured in the United States
of America come from overseas.
Let me repeat that. As much as 80 percent of the ingredients of drugs
manufactured in this country come from overseas. Foreign companies
account for 70 percent of the insulin market in the United States.
Unfortunately, patients have been prevented from stocking lifesaving
drugs because of restrictions placed on pharmacists by insurers and
physicians who may not fully understand the magnitude of this problem.
Ms. West has brought this to our attention. We applaud her efforts, and
we are going to try to do something about her case and cases like it.
Health care is this Nation's single largest industry. It generates
$1.5 trillion annually. There are 6,000 hospitals in America, 800,000
physicians, and 50,000 nursing homes, as well as hundreds of biomedical
equipment manufacturers, health care insurers, suppliers of drugs and
bandages that may be unprepared for the year 2000. According to the
Gartner Group, 64 percent of our Nation's 6,000 hospitals have no plans
to test their Y2K preparedness. About 80 to 85 percent of doctors'
offices are said to be unaware of the Y2K problem.
Struggling compliance efforts by the Health Care Finance
Administration and unaddressed concerns about medical devices are major
roadblocks to the industry's year 2000 readiness. In short, the health
care industry is one of the least prepared with 304 days to go for
dealing with the Y2K problem and carries, in my opinion, the greatest
potential for harm at this juncture. Due to limited resources and a
lack of awareness, rural and inner-city hospitals are particularly at
high risk.
Each industry we have examined is critical to the functioning of our
society. We have all heard the analogies about making a phone call on
December 31 around midnight and getting the bill the next month with a
charge for 100 years of long-distance calls. But what if the phone
doesn't work at all; what if you lose contact with your work, your
family doctor, your 911 dispatcher. Think what would happen if the
ability to communicate was taken from governments, militaries,
businesses and people.

The U.S. has never experienced a widespread telecommunications
outage, yet the telecom network is one of the most Y2K-vulnerable
systems. And while 95 percent of telephone systems are expected to be
compliant in time, there is no industry-wide effort to test data
networks, cellular and satellite communications systems or the Nation's
1,400 regional telecom carriers. Despite telecom infrastructure
readiness, customer equipment and company switchboards may experience
some problems, leaving no guarantee of getting a dial tone on January
1.
A forum that included the Nation's largest telecom companies was
formed in 1997 to address the year 2000 concerns and was early, to
their credit, in formulating a compliance plan. We are awaiting a final
industry report which is expected early this year.
With all of our assessment, research and hearings, we have learned a
great deal about many sectors of our infrastructure. We have learned
who is compliant and who is making headway, who is lagging behind, and
who has failed to disclose their status. We discuss and recommend
legislation to move the process forward, and we must look hard into the
mirror. The Federal Government should be setting an example, in our
view, for the rest of our country in preparing for the Y2K issue, yet
the Federal Government's Y2K preparations vary widely.
The Social Security Administration, for instance, got an early start
and is well prepared--we commend them for their efforts--while other
agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Health Care Finance
Administration are lagging somewhat behind. The Federal Government will
spend somewhere, we are told, between $7.5 billion--and I apologize for
the disparity --and $20 billion. I would like to make that number more
definitive for you, but we are getting wide-ranging cost figures here.
Those are the numbers we are being told just for the remediation at the
Federal agencies, but it will not be able to renovate, test, and
implement all of its critical missions in time. After a late start, the
Federal Emergency Management Administration is now engaged in national
emergency planning in the event of year 2000 disruptions, but many
State and local governments are not prepared to deliver critical
services such as benefit payments, 911, and emergency services.
Both Senator Bennett and I have had a particular interest in small
businesses. This is because small businesses fulfill such a crucial
role in our Nation's economy, providing 51 percent of the total private
sector output. Small businesses are absolutely vital to the economic
well-being of our Nation. There are approximately 14 million small
businesses in the United States today and, according to the NFIB
Education Foundation, nearly a quarter of

[[Page S2077]]

these 14 million businesses haven't spent a dime on year 2000
remediation. Fifty-five percent of them correspond with suppliers via
electronic interaction and 17 percent say that they would lose at least
half their sales or production if automated processes were to fail.
Many of these companies are playing wait and see--in reality, gambling
that the problems are small, or at least they will be able to repair
the damage before they go out of business.
In our February 5 hearing, we heard testimony from Mr. Ken Evans,
president of the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation. Part of the
responsibility of his organization is to look out for a type of small
business that is literally the bread and butter of our country--the
family farm. Some reports have indicated that these small businesses
may not be affected by the year 2000 problem since few of the systems
used by family farms are automated. However, as Mr. Evans pointed out
before our committee hearing, smaller farms rely heavily on vendors,
telecommunications services, bankers, and transportation companies that
are all highly automated.
I know the Presiding Officer in the Chair comes from one of our rural
States and knows better than most about just what I have said here,
that people have sort of a mythological perception about the family
farm and how it works. But today to succeed as a family farmer you have
to be connected with these other vehicles to provide the services you
need and to get your products and produce to the consumers.
The smooth functioning, as Mr. Evans pointed out, of day-to-day
business on the small farm requires that phones work, the refrigeration
is in service, and the transportation services are available.
In general, we think the level of preparedness seems to be determined
by the relative size of the business or by how much the business is
regulated by State and Federal agencies. While the heavily regulated
insurance, investment, and banking industries are the furthest ahead in
the Y2K compliance efforts, health care, oil, education, agriculture,
farming, food processing, and the construction industries are lagging
behind.
The cost to regain lost operational capability for mission-critical
failures will range, we are told, from $20,000 to $3.5 million per
business, depending upon the size of your company. It is estimated that
it will take an average of 3 to 15 days to fix the problems. Large
companies with greater resources, of course, are better able to deal
with the year 2000 problem. Small and medium-sized businesses, however,
are the most vulnerable to the year 2000 disruptions. One survey shows
that more than 40 percent of 14 million small businesses do not have
any compliance plans in place.
Mr. President, I am only going to speak briefly about the problem of
litigation. I already mentioned my concerns about this and my desire
for legislation. I think the price tag of $500 billion to $1 trillion
speaks for itself. That would be a staggering cost to our Nation, not
to mention to the individual businesses that may be the subject of
litigation. It would be contrary, in my view, to our goal of
preparation, to walk blindly into the next year without taking into
consideration the question of litigation reform.
Any reform would have to be, in my view, specific. It ought to be
bipartisan, especially considering this is a very unusual circumstance.
There is no established precedent upon which to rely in making
recommendations for reform. Reform would have to be narrowly tailored,
in my view, for a very specific purpose. It would have to encourage
businesses and organizations to seek solutions and disclose progress
without fear of litigious retribution. At the same time, companies and
organizations must not be allowed to choose to do nothing and escape
responsibility. We will be looking at this in the coming weeks.
Clearly, much is left to be resolved.
Again, Senator Bennett has spoken about the interconnected
relationships of governments, all organizations, all companies and
people. To say that everything is connected is to put simple words to a
very complex reality. To those chief executive officers who have told
us that their Y2K exposure is nonexistent, due to early planning and
remediation efforts, I would only ask: What will you do if power is
disrupted on the grids? What will you do if you cannot ship products?
What will you do if your vendors are not Y2K compliant? To government
leaders at the local and State level who have not planned for this, we
would ask: What will you tell the people you serve if their government
cannot function? To those HMOs and physicians who are not anticipating
a Y2K-related problem, my question to you is: What will happen if you
are wrong and you do nothing?
Even if our country solves this problem, the fact that many of our
industry sectors are tied closely to international businesses and
economies will have an unknown effect on all of us. Plants grown
overseas affect the supply of pharmaceuticals here. America imports
goods ranging from produce to electronic equipment. How will our
economy be affected if some of these products do not arrive on our
shores? The fact is, what I am saying here, and what Senator Bennett
has said over and over again, is we are all in this together. You are
not protected by geographical boundaries, by political entities, or by
lamenting what is not happening offshore.
There is a storm on the horizon. We have seen the warning signs. The
question is, do we have the ability to weather this storm? We think we
do, but we have to work hard and all of us need to work together. In
weathering this potential storm, we need to continue to look closely at
the sectors of infrastructure that we have reported on in this interim
report. We need to work closely with our international neighbors who
are of particular interest to the United States, both economically and
politically, in order to better assess their problems and better
anticipate the effect that problems in their countries will have on us.
Our list of priorities for the coming months include the following:
We need to revisit the domestic industry and infrastructure sectors
first examined last year. As I indicated, we need to place increased
emphasis on international Y2K preparedness. We hope to identify
national and international security issues and concerns, some of which
we have been briefed on even as late as today, as Members of this body,
by the respective agencies of our Federal Government. We will continue
to monitor Federal Government preparedness, but also turn our attention
more to State and local government preparedness. Evaluating contingency
emergency preparedness and planning is a high priority for this year.
We need to determine the need for additional Y2K implementation or
delaying implementation dates of new regulations.
I should have made note, by the way, when speaking about our paying
attention to local governments and to municipalities, our colleague
from New York, who I think is going to come shortly to the floor, has
raised the issue.

Here he is. He has already raised the issue of how we might help the
municipalities and State governments, and I commend him once again for
bringing to this chamber the kind of vision he historically has brought
on so many other matters. I leave it to the Senator from New York to
discuss his ideas in that regard, and I leave him to comment on those
matters.
In closing, I want to reiterate the words of our colleagues when they
said we must work together. We must not let our differences keep us
apart. If we are going to cooperate, if we are going to keep this from
becoming a larger problem than it has to become, then the finger-
pointing and name-calling and recriminations that can often be
associated with this kind of an issue need to be eliminated entirely.
Again, I commend my colleague from Utah who has led this effort so
well over the past year or two--several years, now. I am very, very
confident that, whatever else may happen, we will be doing our very
best in these coming 10 months to keep our colleagues and the American
public well informed about this issue, raising concerns where we think
they are legitimate, not engaging in the hyperbolic kind of rhetoric
that can create a panic which poses its own set of problems, but to be
realistic with people, backup what we say with the kind of evidence we
think is important for the American public and others to have as we try
to work our way through this issue.

[[Page S2078]]

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time and am glad to yield to
my colleague from New York. I apologize, I didn't see him come in
earlier or I would have yielded to him earlier.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). The senior Senator from New York.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise in the first instance to
congratulate the chairman of our committee and his vice chairman for
the extraordinary work they have done in less than a year. I make the
point, it is a point of Senate procedure, that it is rare there is a
chairman and vice chairman, not chairman and ranking member. This has
been a wholly bipartisan effort from the first, and I think we can see
that from the results in so brief a span.
The issue has been with us for some while, and it would be derelict
of me not to mention that it was brought to my attention by a dear
friend from New York, a financial analyst, John Westergaard, who began
talking to me about the matter in 1995. On February 13 of 1996, I wrote
to the Congressional Research Service to say: Well, now, what about
this? Richard Nunno authored a report which the CRS sent to me on June
7 saying that ``the Y2K problem is indeed serious and that fixing it
will be costly and time-consuming. The problem deserves the careful and
coordinated attention of the Federal Government, as well as the private
sector, in order to avert major disruptions on January 1, 2000.''
I wrote the President, on July 31 of that year, to relay the findings
of the CRS report and raise the issue generally. And, in time, a
Presidential appointment was made to deal with this in the executive
branch, to which I will return. But last spring--less than one year
ago--the majority leader and the minority leader had the perception to
appoint this gifted committee, with its exceptional staff, and now we
have its report before us.
Two points, followed by a coda, if I may. Shortly after the committee
s establishment, Senator Bennett and I convened a field hearing--on
July 6--in New York in the ceremonial chamber of the U.S. Federal Court
House for the Southern District of New York at Foley Square. We found
we were talking to the banks, the big, large, international banks in
the city, and the stock exchange. And we found them well advanced in
their preparations regarding this matter. I think my colleague from
Connecticut would agree. They were not only dealing with it in their
own terms, they had gone to the Bank for International Settlements in
Basel where a Joint Year 2000 Council had been established at our
initiative. They were hard at work on their own problems. They were
worried about others.

One witness told us that 49 Japanese banks planned to spend some $249
million as a group on Y2K compliance; 49 banks are thinking of spending
in combination $249 million. Citicorp was planning $600 million, and it
already expended a goodly share of that.
Indeed, it was not all our initiative, but certainly it was
serendipitous, if I can use that term, that the security industry
commenced massive testing just a week later--on July 13, 1998. The
tests went very well. The industry was on to this subject. The point
being, if you are on to this, you can handle it. It is those who aren't
who will leave us in the greatest trouble. There will be another
industry-wide test later this month. So much for private initiative.
We should be grateful for what we have learned, here and abroad. As
the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Connecticut have made clear,
there are countries that have understood this, as we have done, and are
on top of this. But there are too many other countries that don't know
the problem exists or might as well not.
As a sometime resident in India, I was interested to find that Indian
enterprises, concentrated in the Bangalore area, are very much involved
in doing the computer remediation. If you would like to know something
about the world we live in, Mr. President, the work for the day is sent
to them from San Francisco or New York or Chicago; they do it
overnight, which is not overnight for them, it is the daytime, and it
is back on our desks in the morning. It is that kind of world we live
in.
Hence, to the second subject, which is the nuclear one. There is
potential here for the kind of unintended disaster of an order we
cannot describe in terms of medical care or financial statements or,
for that matter, air travel at New Year's--which is to say that the
failure of computer systems in Russia to give the correct information
about early warning systems, such that 6,000 nuclear warheads still in
Russia are not inadvertently launched. They could be, you know. They
are in place--not all--but enough. A hundred would do. Three would be a
calamity. Two were dropped on Japan and ended the Second World War.
These are all huge weapons, far above the tonnage and of a different
chemical composition than the early atomic bombs, as we have come to
know them.
The Russians seem to know they have a problem--or they may have a
problem. Or they don't know whether they do or they don't. In that
situation, ``we didn't quite catch it'' could bring incomprehensible
catastrophe just at the moment when we thought that long, dark half a
century was ended, the half century that began in 1946, when the
Soviets exploded their first nuclear device.
We have a danger here and we have an opportunity, and we ought to
respond to the one and seize the other. We are given to understand that
our Department of Defense officials have begun some negotiations,
discussions in Moscow to invite a Russian team to Colorado Springs--
where it happens our facilities in these regards are located--to let us
watch each other's nuclear launches, nuclear alerts, false alarms.
We can think, Mr. President, that this was something behind us,
surely a matter of passing. It wasn't. We have learned just recently
that in 1983, one Soviet officer, a Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old
lieutenant colonel, was in the Serpukhov-15 installation where the
Soviet Union monitored its early warning satellites over the United
States, and all of a sudden the lights began to flash ``Start,''
because the warning time is very short.
He made a decision on his own: they only supposed that they had
picked up a launching; the equipment picked up five ICBMs. Mankind was
spared by one lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Army who knew enough
strategic doctrine to know that the United States would never launch
five. It might launch 5,000. So as the information went up, by the
nanoseconds, through the chain of command, it was decided not to launch
a counterstrike.
That is how close we came, probably never in a more mortal way. He is
still alive and has told his tale. I ask unanimous consent that at the
end of my remarks David Hoffman's account of this in the Washington
Post be printed in the Record.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See Exhibit 1.)
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I suggest that we seek to reach an
agreement for the Russians to come and bring with them all their codes
and their classified communications modes, learn what our early warning
system is, tell us what they will of theirs, perhaps be open about its
own weaknesses, which are so great. These are the people who still have
the fate of mankind in their hands, and they haven't been paid in 6
months. What they talk about, evidently, is the need for money. How in
God's name we cannot provide it I fail to see. The maintenance of our
nuclear system in the course of a half century cost $5.5 trillion. I
sometimes forget this, but in my years on the Finance Committee, I have
learned that a billion minutes ago, Saint Peter was just 30 years dead.
A billion is a large number. A trillion is beyond our capacity. They
are asking thousands of millions. Very little.
I hope Beijing might want to join. I would invite Islamabad and New
Delhi, places which are unstable and have nuclear devices. Out of that,
Mr. President, out of this immediate crisis, we might find a longrun
institution or institutions--they need not be here, exclusively--they
can be in many places--in which we would monitor one another's nuclear
activity while, pray God, we develop it down, and relearn the
confidence-building measures that were so important in the cold war.
That telephone between the Kremlin and the White House made more of a
difference than we probably know. It is this kind of thing.

I note to my dear friends--and I will get complete agreement--this
body has

[[Page S2079]]

known fewer persons with a greater understanding of the cold war than
Senator Sam Nunn and the late Senator Henry Jackson who, in the early
1980s, brought up the concept of a joint early warning system. And then
the MX was deployed, and we moved from essentially a deterrence
position on nuclear matters, a second-strike, if you will, to a first-
strike capacity, such that the Soviet systems had to be constantly
alarmed.
Now, maybe that idea of Senators Nunn and Jackson will come, come at
last. I would hope for two things. And I do not want to impose, and I
do not want to presume, but I will do. This is not a time for too much
delicacy.
I would hope that our chairman and vice chairman--I make that point:
the Intelligence Committee and, I believe, the Ethics Committee have a
chairman and vice chairman; all the rest is majority rule around here,
which is fine, but this is bipartisan--if they might find it possible
to visit Moscow and talk with members of the Duma there where the START
II treaty, which we took all the 1980s to negotiate, lies unratified.
And our plans for START III are, accordingly, on hold. They might go or
they might invite--some action from the Congress, I think, is in order.
And it would be no harm to point out to the Russian Government that
they now have a legislative branch. And if it acts in ways that are not
always agreeable to the executive, well, that is not an unknown
phenomena. It has been going on for two centuries in the United States.
It is an important and necessary initiative we ought to somehow pursue.
One final point. I hope my friends will not feel I am trespassing on
their--our concerns, as I am a member and am honored to be a member of
the committee--the Pentagon is too much disposed to discuss this matter
in secret session. This is a time for more openness. This is a time the
American people can be trusted with information which the Russian
authorities already have.
One of the phenomenons of the cultural secrecy which has developed
over the last century is that the U.S. Government is continuing to keep
information from us which our adversaries know perfectly well. It is
only we who do not know. This has done a perceptible harm to American
democracy. We have no idea how distant it is from the beginning of the
century when Woodrow Wilson could proclaim, as a condition of peace to
conclude the First World War, ``open covenants openly arrived at.''
Now, mind you, that same President Wilson, to whom I am devoted, in
the day after he asked for a declaration of war, he sent a series of 17
bills, which were rolled together and called the Espionage Act. It
provided for prior restraint, as lawyers call it, censorship of the
press. First Henry Lodge, on this floor, the chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee, said, ``Yes, I think that is a good idea.'' The
next day he came back and said, ``You know, I don't think it's a good
idea. The press should be free in this country.''
President Wilson wrote the bill manager on the House side, and said,
``Please keep it.'' It was not kept. But it was assumed it was kept, so
much so that when the Pentagon Papers were released, the executive
branch of our Government just assumed that was a crime and proceeded to
prevent their publication and find out more about the person who had
released them. And the next thing you know, we had an impeachment
hearing in the Federal Government--a crisis that all grew out of
secrecy and presumptions of secrecy.
I would hope--I doubt there is anybody in the Pentagon listening, but
I see the chairman and vice chairman listening--I would hope they would
say we could have an open briefing. The American people will respond
intelligently to dangers of which they are appropriately apprised. And
this surely is one.
But, sir, I have spoken sufficiently. I beg to say one last thing. On
the House side, our colleague and friend, Representative Stephen Horn
of California, has been very active producing ``report cards'' on the
status of the different departments of the Government and keeping it up
regularly. As the Senator from Connecticut observed, the Social
Security Administration got A's all along. Others have not.
It would not be a bad idea for the chairmen and ranking members of
our standing committees to review Representative Horn's report cards
and keep an eye on the departments that report to them.
Other than that, I think I have spoken long enough. I do not think,
however, I have sufficiently expressed my admiration and at times awe
of the performance of our chairman and vice chairman. The Senate is
grateful, is in their debt. So is the Nation. The Nation need not know
that; it just needs to pay attention to their message, sir.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

[From the Washington Post, Feb. 10, 1999]

``I Had a Funny Feeling in My Gut''--Soviet Officer Faced Nuclear
Armageddon

(By David Hoffman)

Moscow--It was just past midnight as Stanislav Petrov
settled into the commander's chair inside the secret bunker
at Serpukhov-15, the installation where the Soviet Union
monitored its early-warning satellites over the United
States.
Then the alarms went off. On the panel in front of him was
a red pulsating button. One word flashed: ``Start.''
It was Sept. 26, 1983, and Petrov was playing a principal
role in one of the most harrowing incidents of the nuclear
age, a false alarm signaling a U.S. missile attack.
Although virtually unknown to the West at the time, the
false alarm at the closed military facility south of Moscow
came during one of the most tense periods of the Cold War.
And the episode resonates today because Russia's early-
warning system has fewer than half the satellites it did back
then, raising the specter of more such dangerous incidents.
As Petrov described it in an interview, one of the Soviet
satellites sent a signal to the bunker that a nuclear missile
attack was underway. The warning system's computer, weighing
the signal against static, concluded that a missile had been
launched from a base in the United States.
The responsibility fell to Petrov, then a 44-year-old
lieutenant colonel, to make a decision: Was it for real?
Petrov was situated at a critical point in the chain of
command, overseeing a staff that monitored incoming signals
from the satellites. He reported to superiors at warning-
system headquarters; they, in turn, reported to the general
staff, which would consult with Soviet leader Yuri Andropov
on the possibility of launching a retaliatory attack.
Petrov's role was to evaluate the incoming data. At first,
the satellite reported that one missile had been launched--
then another, and another. Soon, the system was ``roaring,''
he recalled--five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic
missiles had been launched, it reported.
Despite the electronic evidence, Petrov decided--and
advised the others--that the satellite alert was a false
alarm, a call that may have averted a nuclear holocaust. But
he was relentlessly interrogated afterward, was never
rewarded for his decision and today is a long-forgotten
pensioner living in a town outside Moscow. He spoke openly
about the incident, although the official account is still
considered secret by authorities here.
On the night of the crisis, Petrov had little time to
think. When the alarms went off, he recalled, ``for 15
seconds, we were in a state of shock. We needed to
understand, what's next?''
Usually, Petrov said, one report of a lone rocket launch
did not immediately go up the chain to the general staff and
the electronic command system there, known as Krokus. But in
this case, the reports of a missile salvo were coming so
quickly that an alert had already gone to general staff
headquarters automatically, even before he could judge if
they were genuine. A determination by the general staff was
critical because, at the time, the nuclear ``suitcase'' that
gives a Soviet leader a remote-control role in such decisions
was still under development.
In the end, less than five minutes after the alert began,
Petrov decided the launch reports must be false. He recalled
making the tense decision under enormous stress--electronic
maps and consoles were flashing as he held a phone in one
hand and juggled an intercom in the other, trying to take in
all the information at once. Another officer at the early-
warning facility was shouting into the phone to him to remain
calm and do his job.
``I had a funny feeling in my gut,'' Petrov said. ``I
didn't want to make a mistake. I made a decision, and that
was it.''
Petrov's decision was based partly on a guess, he recalled.
He had been told many times that a nuclear attack would be
massive--an onslaught designed to overwhelm Soviet defenses
at a single stroke. But the monitors showed only five
missiles. ``When people start a war, they don't start it with
only five missiles,'' he remembered thinking at the time.
``You can do little damage with just five missiles.''
Another factor, he said, was that Soviet ground-based radar
installations--which search for missiles rising above the
horizon--showed no evidence of an attack. The ground radar
units were controlled from a different command center, and
because they cannot see beyond the horizon, they would not
spot incoming missiles until some minutes after the
satellites had.
Following the false alarm, Petrov went through a second
ordeal. At first, he was

[[Page S2080]]

praised for his actions. But then came an investigation, and
his questioners pressed him hard. Why had he not written
everything down that night? ``Because I had a phone in one
hand and the intercom in the other, and I don't have a third
hand,'' he replied.
Petrov, who was assigned to the satellite early-warning
system at its inception in the 1970s, said in the interview
that he knew the system had flaws. It had been rushed into
service, he said, and was ``raw.''
Petrov said the investigators tried to make him a scapegoat
for the false alarm. In the end, he was neither punished nor
rewarded. According to Petrov and other sources, the false
alarm was eventually traced to the satellite, which picked up
the sun's reflection off the tops of clouds and mistook it
for a missile launch. The computer program that was supposed
to filter out such information was rewritten.
It is not known what happened at the highest levels of the
Kremlin on the night of the alarm, but it came at a climactic
stage in U.S.-Soviet relations that is now regarded as a
Soviet ``war scare.'' According to former CIA analyst Peter
Pry, and a separate study by the agency, Andropov was
obsessed with the possibility of a surprise nuclear attack by
the West and sent instructions to Soviet spies around the
world to look for evidence of preparations.
One reason for Soviet jitters at the time was that the West
had unleashed a series of psychological warfare exercises
aimed at Moscow, including naval maneuvers into forward areas
near Soviet strategic bastions, such as the submarine bases
in the Barents Sea.
The 1983 alarm also came just weeks after Soviet pilots had
shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and just before the
start of a NATO military exercise, known as Able Archer, that
involved raising alert levels of U.S. nuclear forces in
Europe to simulate preparations for an attack. Pry has
described this exercise as ``probably the single most
dangerous incident of the early 1980s.''

Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator from New York for his generous
remarks. He is always generous and gracious. I never deserve all the
nice things he says about me, but I am always glad to have him say them
nonetheless. I am grateful on this occasion as well.

Privilege Of The Floor

I ask unanimous consent that Tania Calhoun, a detailee to the
committee, be granted floor privileges for the balance of the debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BENNETT. Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. Chairman, would you allow me to request a similar
privilege of the floor?
I ask unanimous consent that Jason Klurfeld of my staff, a designee
on the committee, have privileges of the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Utah is recognized.
Mr. BENNETT. Thank you.
In the list of questions I laid out at the beginning of my
presentation, we are now at the point where we are asking the two
questions: What should we be doing next and what can we expect?
The Senator from Connecticut talked about the liability bill. I agree
with him absolutely that we cannot take this particular emergency and
turn it into a stealth operation to slip through other legislation,
even though I would be for it. The Senator from Connecticut would be
opposed to it. I would love to do that. But I think that would be an
inappropriate thing to try to do.
It has just come to my attention a demonstration of why we need some
kind of limited liability relief tied to this. I had an interview with
an individual who is following Y2K matters, and she said, ``What are
you going to do about insurance companies that are canceling policies
over Y2K?'' And quite frankly, I was skeptical. I said, ``I don't know
of any insurance companies that are canceling policies.''
Well, she sent me one. And here it is; it arrived today. I think that
is appropriate since this is the day we are talking about Y2K. Here--in
an area that the Senator from Connecticut has pioneered, health care--
is an insurance company that has sent out an endorsement on one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight different health care policies
that they write.
They say:

The following exclusion is added to Section III [of these
policies]:
This Policy does not apply to, and the Company will not pay
any DAMAGES or CLAIM EXPENSES . . . arising out of, or in any
way involving any actual or alleged failure of any . . .
``equipment'' . . . [relating to]:
(A) any date or time after September 8, 1999;

The reason for that, Mr. President, is because the 9th day of the 9th
month of the 99th year could trigger four 9's in a computer program and
cause it to fail.

(B) any date, time, or data representing or referring to
different centuries or more than one century;
(C) the change of the Year 1999 to the Year 2000;
Or,
(D) the Year 2000 as a leap year.

The reason for that, Mr. President, is that the algorithm used in
computers to compute dates--for reasons I won't take the time to
explain--will not recognize the 29th of February, a leap year, in the
year 2000; it recognizes it in every other leap year but it does not
recognize it in the year 2000.
Here is an insurance company that says, ``We will not pay any claims
arising from these predictable Y2K kinds of problems.'' So you have
that added burden to a company that is doing its very best to get the
Y2K thing under control and suddenly finds that their insurance policy
is being unilaterally canceled.
Now, as I have said on this floor before, I am unburdened with a
legal education, so I don't know quite how to deal with this one, but I
am sure this is something that ought to go in the mix of what we might
do with respect to some kind of legislation this year.
Another thing we should be doing next--should be doing now--has to do
with more disclosure. Here we are working very closely with the SEC.
Chairman Arthur Levitt of the SEC has been in close touch with the
committee, with Senator Dodd and me, as we have gone through this. The
SEC is working very hard to get more disclosure. Unfortunately, we
haven't had the kind of disclosure that I think shareholders are
entitled to in this area. This is one thing we ought to keep pushing
for. We ought to have more hearings. The Senator from New York talked
about that.
The authorizing committees, committees of jurisdiction, should take
up the burden of conducting oversight hearings of the Departments that
they have responsibility for. This has already happened. The Armed
Services Committee of the Senate held a very useful hearing last week
with the level of preparedness of the Secretary of Defense. I won't
repeat all the information that was developed there because it is
already in the Record, but there ought to be more of that going on as
we get closer to this. The burden of paying attention to what is going
on in the executive branch should not fall exclusively on John Koskinen
and the President's Council on the Year 2000. It should be shared by
the Congress. We should have more activity rather than less, as the
Congress stays involved in this.
Finally, we have suggested to Senators that they should meet with
their own constituents. Senator Dodd has done this in Connecticut, as I
have in Utah. Senator Smith has done it regularly in Oregon and as part
of his own education as a member of this committee. But other Senators
who are not members of the committee have been working in this way. We
on the committee are prepared to help them in this effort. We are going
to put together, in addition to the report that has been released
today, talking points and guidance information for Senators who decide
they want to hold town meetings or other meetings while they are back
in their own home States.
That is very worthwhile. It helps accomplish the twin goals of the
committee: No. 1, to calm down the panic so that people are not Chicken
Little; and, at the same time, raise the awareness in a responsible
way. Individual Senators speaking in their individual States have a
higher profile than speeches on the floor of the Senate. That is
something we ought to be doing and something that our committee will do
its very best to facilitate.
Now, this is a moving target, as we have both said. One of the areas
that has just come to light that we are going to need more information
on is the chemical industry. We were assured that everything was all
right in the chemical industry, and now we are discovering that maybe
that is not the case. The chemical industry might replace the health
care industry as an industry that we look at. This is going to require
us to pay attention through the

[[Page S2081]]

remainder of this year, which is why the resolution funding the
committee for the coming year is the subject of this debate.
There have been some questions, by the way, raised as to: Where is
this money coming from, and how is Senator Bennett going to pay for it?
Where is the offset? I can assure all Senators, this is part of the
overall allocation of Senate business. This is not new money; this is
money that is already in the budget. It is just being allocated to this
committee as opposed to some other use. We do not have to come up with
an offset for it under the Budget Act. For those who are concerned
about that, I assure you that is not of concern. It is a little
heartening and indicates that Senators are indeed watching this on
their television sets in their own offices. They are making these phone
calls. If they weren't calling the cloakroom asking this, then we would
know they were not paying attention.

The final question which we get all the time with respect to Y2K--
Senator Dodd gets it, I am sure; I get it almost everywhere I go--What
can we expect? Are we going to be all right? We addressed this in our
opening remarks in saying yes, we are probably going to be all right,
generally. The United States is going to have some problems, but it is
not going to be the end of the world as we know it.
I want to now focus on what I think we can expect outside of the
United States, because that is the area of greatest concern as we have
gone through this situation. There are far too many countries in the
world where Y2K has not been given the kind of attention it deserves.
Recently, to his credit, John Koskinen, the President's Y2K czar,
working with officials at the United Nations, helped put together a Y2K
Day at the United Nations and invited the Y2K coordinators from all of
the countries around the world to come to New York and participate in
this discussion at the United Nations. I went to New York, along with
Congressman Horn, to represent the legislative branch there and
demonstrate that it was not just the executive branch of the Government
that was concerned about this.
There was a very heartening turnout. A large number of countries sent
Y2K coordinators. It was a very useful day. That is the good news. The
bad news is that many of these Y2K coordinators didn't know anything
about Y2K up to about 2 weeks before they were appointed coordinator
and given a ticket to New York. They had no idea what this was about.
The fact that the United Nations was holding a day and they were
invited to come, their government said, ``Maybe we need a Y2K
coordinator to go; you go; name somebody''--he or she got on the
airplane, flew to New York, and didn't have the slightest idea what we
were talking about. That is the bad news.
The other bad news is that some of them simply could not afford a
ticket. The World Bank funded the airline tickets for some of these Y2K
coordinators, which raises the demonstration of the problem we have in
many countries around the world. As our consultants have spanned out
and talked to these people, many of them say, ``We recognize we have a
problem; we recognize it is very serious. We are completely broke. What
do you suggest we do about it? We simply can't afford the kind of
remediation that you are going through in the United States.''
We just had a team of consultants that came back from Russia and they
did a very valid job of assessing where things are in that country. But
they said every official that they spoke to began the conversation by
asking for money. Every single one said, ``We have a problem. Now, can
you help us solve it, because we can't afford to do anything about
it.'' Senator Moynihan was talking about the Russian military not
having been paid for months and months, and they say, ``If we haven't
got any money to pay to our military, we don't have any money to deal
with the Y2K problem.''
What will be the impact? There will be economic dislocation in many
countries as a result of this. In some countries it will be more
serious than others. The unknowable question is, What will be the
impact on the United States? I cannot quantify that for you, but I will
give you this overall assessment. I think Y2K will trigger what the
economists call a ``flight to quality.'' That is, I think investors
around the world, as they decide that infrastructure problems are going
to arise in certain countries, will decide as a matter of prudence on
their part, to withdraw their financial support for economic activity
in that country, which will cripple the country further. The speed with
which money moves around the world is now very different than it used
to be as recently as 10 or 15 years ago. It used to be when there was
foreign investment in a country, getting that investment out meant
couriers going through airports with attache cases filled with crinkly
pieces of paper handcuffed to their wrists.

Senator Dole assigned me to work on the Mexican peso problem in early
1995 when the Mexicans devalued the peso. The flight of foreign
investment from Mexico took place in a matter of hours, and it was all
done electronically--a few keystrokes at a keyboard and the money was
gone. The speed with which foreign investment fled Mexico stunned a
number of economists who had no idea that the foreign money would
disappear virtually overnight.
I think you are going to see that kind of thing repeated as foreign
investors say: Our Y2K assessment says Country X's infrastructure is
going to fail, their power system is going to go down, their
telecommunications system will fail and they won't be able to function.
Even though we are confident in the management of the company we are
backing in that country, we can't run the risk of having them shut down
because of an infrastructure failure. We are going to call the loan,
sell the stock, and do whatever is necessary to get our money out
before it really hits.
This ``flight to quality'' may very well mean that the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer as a result of Y2K, which raises the
other two unknowables, but that we need to be concerned about: One,
civil unrest in some of these countries and what that might mean to
their economies and their place in the world markets; second,
humanitarian requirements.
I say, somewhat facetiously, that we have foreign policy by CNN in
this country. That is, when the CNN cameras go into a particular area
of the world and send images back to the United States, we then
respond. CNN cameras showed starving children in Somalia and George
Bush sent in troops. I am not criticizing that decision to send in
troops, but I wonder if there might not have been starving children in
other parts of Africa that CNN didn't get into and that was the reason
we didn't intervene in those countries as well. I have a nightmare of
CNN cameras in villages or cities where there is no power, no
telecommunications, the banking system is broken down, widespread
rioting, and then the request is: What is the United States going to do
about it? The United States has its Y2K problem under control--the
richest country in the world--and we will be faced with the
humanitarian challenge of some real hardship in some real areas.
So, again, Mr. President, that is one of the reasons why the special
committee on year 2000 should be funded and continued, so that we can
monitor these things in the way we have in the past and provide
information and guidance to policymakers who have come to depend upon
us as a repository of information in this whole situation.
Mr. DODD. Will the chairman yield?
Mr. BENNETT. Yes, I am through with my formal statement.
Mr. DODD. I see that our colleague is here, and I won't be long.
First, I want to commend Senator Moynihan from New York for an
excellent statement. He has been a real value to us on the committee.
He brings such a wealth of knowledge, information and experience. I
thought his observation about at least some of the material the Defense
Department has is a worthwhile suggestion. We might want to explore how
to make more of that information available to the general public. I
think those who are skeptical about whether or not there is legitimacy
in pursuing this committee and making the information available as we
require it, their concern would be further dispelled were they to have
the ability to share some of the information we have come across.
I commend my colleague from Utah. I think this memo where he has left
off the name--and I will respect that as

[[Page S2082]]

well here, although I will point out that it is not a Connecticut
company. Most people would assume that since it is an insurance
company, it is probably located in Connecticut; but it is not. We may
want to compose a letter to send to the industry as a whole. I would be
very curious as to whether or not this is a unique, isolated case, or
whether or not it is being duplicated by others.
For those who may not have heard this, we have come across a memo
which details a number of different kinds of health care policies that
would be significantly affected. In fact, they would be excluded from
payment if, in fact, the damages occur ``as a result of failure of any
machine, equipment, device, system, or component thereof, whether it is
used for the purposes or whether or not the property of the insurer to
correctly recognize, accept, and process or reform any function: any
date or any time after September 8, 1999, to January 1.''
Clearly, this is the insurance companies saying ``we are not covering
you here on this one,'' which is a very important piece of information.
I think we ought to examine and look at that.
This is an early version of OMB's March report that we have been
given which rates the Federal agencies in terms of their year 2000
compliance. Basically, there is good news here, Mr. President. An awful
lot of agencies are doing pretty well. Some have a long way to go here.
I think this may be a worthwhile item to be included in the Record.
I ask unanimous consent that Predictions by Country and Worldside
Predictions by Industry be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

PREDICTIONS BY COUNTRY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rate (percent) Country
------------------------------------------------------------------------
15............................... Australia, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada,
Denmark, Holland, Ireland, Israel,
Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom,
United States.
33............................... Brazil, Chile, Finland, France,
Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea,
Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru,
Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan.
50............................... Argentina, Armenia, Austria,
Bulgaria, Columbia, Czech Republic,
Egypt, Germany, Guatemala, India,
Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia,
Poland, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia,
South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand,
Turkey, U.A.E., Venezuela,
Yugoslavia.
66............................... Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh,
Cambodia, Chad, China, Costa Rica,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia,
Fiji, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos,
Lithuania, Morocco, Mozambique,
Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan,
Philippines, Romania, Russia,
Somalia, Sudan, Uruguay, Vietnam,
Zaire, Zimbabwe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

WORLDWIDE PREDICTIONS BY INDUSTRY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rate (percent) Industry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
15............................... Aerospace, Banking, Computer
Manufacturing, Insurance, Investment
Services, Pharmaceuticals.
33............................... Biotechnology, Chemical Processing,
Consulting, Discrete Manufacturing,
Heavy Equipment, Medical Equipment,
Publishing, Semiconductor, Software,
Telecom, Power, Water.
50............................... Broadcast News, Hospitality, Food
Processing, Law Enforcement, Law
Practices, Medical Practices,
Natural Gas, Ocean Shipping, Pulp
and Paper, Television,
Transportation.
66............................... City and Town Municipal Services,
Construction, Education, Farming,
Government Agencies, Healthcare,
Oil.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. DODD. Lastly, I don't have this with me, but I am going to ask
unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record as well, Mr.
President. I spent a couple of hours yesterday in my State with the
Garner Group, a successful firm that represents 35,000 clients
worldwide--public and private entities--and has a pretty good fix on
what is happening at home and abroad. They have a new assessment, an
updated assessment, an industry-by-industry assessment worldwide,
national assessments, and for major nations around the globe as to
where they are in all of this. I thought it might be worthwhile for the
public and our colleagues to see that most recent information.
I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

GOVERNMENT-WIDE SUMMARY--YEAR 2000 STATUS MISSION-CRITICAL SYSTEMS
[In percent]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All systems Systems being repaired transpose
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agency status Y2K complaint Assessment Renovation Validation Implementation
\1\ complete complete \2\ complete \3\ complete \4\
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tier Three:
NASA, FEMA, Education, OPM, HUD, Interior, GSA, VA, SBA, 96 100 100 99 96
EPA, NSF, NRC, SSA.......................................
Tier Two:
Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Justice, Labor, 77 100 94 83 74
State, Treasury..........................................
Tier One:
U.S. Agency for International, Development Health and 63 100 98 79 42
Human Services, Transportation...........................
All Agencies.................................................. 79 100 96 87 76
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Percentage of all mission-critical systems that will accurately process data through the century change; these systems have been tested and are
operational and includes those systems that have been repaired and replaced, as well as those that were found to be already compliant.
\2\ Percentage of mission-critical systems that have been or are being repaired; ``Renovation complete'' means that necessary changes to a system's
databases and/or software have been made.
\3\ Percentage of mission-critical systems that have been or are being repaired; ``Validation complete'' means that testing of performance,
functionality, and integration of converted or replaced platforms, applications, databases, utilities, and interfaces within an operational
environment has occurred.
\4\ Percentage of mission-critical systems that are being or have been repaired; ``Implementation Complete'' means that the system has been tested for
compliance and has been integrated into the system environment where the agency performs its routine information processing activities. For more
information on definitions, see GAO/AIMD-10.1.14, ``Year 2000 Computing Crisis: An Assessment Guide,'' September 1997, available at http://cio.gov
under year 2000 Documents.

Mr. DODD. I point out to my chairman that one of the industries they
point out that is not doing very well--it is not doing badly, but not
very well--in terms of being Y2K compliant; it is the broadcast news
industry, and particularly television. So when my colleague refers to
``foreign policy by CNN,'' he is accurate, but one of the problems is
that CNN may have a problem--and I am sure they will respond very
quickly. But I thought it was interesting when I went over this last
evening detailing some of the industries identified as ones that have
work to do, and broadcast news was one that is lagging behind.
I also see our colleague from Oregon. Before he shares his thoughts,
I want to thank him as well. He has been a tremendous asset to our
committee. He has brought a wonderful perspective since he joined this
body, and comes from the public sector as well as the private sector.
He served in the legislature in his own State with great distinction,
but also he comes with a private sector perspective, which has been
tremendously helpful throughout the hearings. And I thank him for his
attention and for the time he has brought to this issue as well.
I yield the floor.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I join my friend from Connecticut in
thanking the Senator from Oregon for his diligence on this committee.
He comes to the hearings and he contributes. He pays attention. He has
blazed a way with the meetings he held in his home State. As I say, I
would encourage all other Senators to follow his example. I am happy to
yield to him such time as he may require.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Thank you, Mr President. I thank Chairman
Bennett and Senator Dodd. It has been a great pleasure and a real
privilege for me to participate in this committee with them.
I can tell you that I sought membership on the committee when I heard
about its creation. I sought membership not because I am some computer
whiz--in fact, my kids are always trying to teach me new things we can
do with it--but, frankly, because I recognized that my State, as well
as yours, is very much focused on the development of the high-tech
industry. Oregon has grown in high-technology in a remarkable fashion
in the last decade. So I thought it would be important. I didn't
realize how important it would be until feeling my oats as a member of
this new committee.
____
[[Page S2083]]

Last year, I held a town hall meeting in Medford, OR. We published
notice of it. Usually at a town hall you get 20 or 30 people to show up
who want to talk about some public policy. But we said it was going to
be about Y2K. There were over 1,000 people who came to that meeting. I
realized we were on to something here.
If any of my colleagues are listening to me at this time, I would say
to them that no matter what State you are from, if you want to get the
attention of the people you are trying to serve, call a Y2K town hall.
You will be amazed. And you will perform a great public service to the
people who are becoming aware of this, mindful of it, some afraid of
it, some panicked by it.
What I have found in Oregon is that by going home to meet with my
constituents and saying, ``Look, don't panic, but begin to be
prepared,'' has had a calming effect on my State. I thank these two
leaders in the Senate, these men who led this committee, because when
they first began talking about this issue --and I know in the
Republican caucus Bob Bennett was sort of Chicken Little; he is Paul
Revere now, and I honor him and salute him as that. I think, frankly,
Chris Dodd has done the same thing in the Democratic caucus. We all
look to them with renewed respect, and deserved respect, because they
have been the Paul Reveres for this country on this issue. It has been
a great pleasure to serve with them.
I encourage my colleagues to vote for this bill that will allow the
committee to continue to do its wonderful work. I was proud to vote
this morning for another bill that would allow the SBA to help small
businesses become Y2K compliant.
Chairman Bennett asked me to focus my service on the committee on the
whole business industry. Having come from the private sector, I will
tell you that businesses have a ways to go, but they are making great
progress, because the motive of the business man or woman is to make a
profit. I found that for a food processor, for example--whatever the
Government standard was, it was an important standard. It was always
the floor and was never the ceiling. And when I wanted to sell frozen
peas, I wasn't trying to sell it to the Government, I was trying to
sell it to Campbell Soup, whose standard is much higher than those of
the Government.
So for me as a business person, when Y2K would come to my desk, I
would say, ``How does this affect my ability to sell my product and
make a profit?''
So I say to all business people, this could affect your ability to
stay in business and make a profit. So if you are interested in a
profit, get interested in Y2K and figure out how it is that this
computer glitch might affect either your energy supply, your financial
services, your transportation, and your ability to communicate with the
world. These things are all interconnected.
I never realized as fully as I do now as a member of the committee
just how interconnected we are as a country, and now as an entire
world. I would predict, as others have, that our problems in this
country will be theirs. This is real. But it will not be of a
millennial nature, like some fear. But in some parts of the world it
may well be. And a business man or woman is going to have to figure out
how to deal with an international trade world that is having to adjust
to these Y2K problems.
I want to also say, to comfort the people out there, that the United
States is prospering right now relative to the rest of the world in a
remarkable way, in part because during the 1980s and the 1990s American
industry began to retool. As we have retooled and restored our
industrial base, we have done so with Y2K-compliant equipment and
computerization. This will all make the bump in this country much
smaller than it otherwise would be.
So there are lots of reasons for optimism. But there is still much
work to be done.
I am just pleased to participate with my colleagues today, and I know
that a vote is pending. So, Mr. President, without further delay, I
encourage all of my colleagues to vote for this legislation. Today, I
think has become something of a Y2K Day, and it does a great service to
our whole country to alert them to the real dangers and not the
mirages.
In a hearing I recently held in my State, I heard a tragic story
about a gentleman who had listened to some literature that caused him
to panic. He went out and took all of his savings from his personal
account, roughly $30,000. But somebody heard that he had done it and
went and robbed him of his life savings.
So don't panic; just simply be prepared. Find a reasonable level of
storage for food and water for your family, take some copies of your
financial statements, check your own computers, but don't do things
that are unwarranted, because that will be something of a self-
fulfilling prophecy. We are not here to be self-fulfilling prophets; we
are here to be Paul Reveres, as Senator Bennett and Senator Dodd have
shown us how to be.
Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time. I urge an ``aye''
vote on this bill.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am prepared to yield back all time,
both for myself and Senator Dodd, and call for the yeas and nays on the
underlying question.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to S. Res. 7, as
amended. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the
roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) is
necessarily absent.
Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Byrd)
is absent attending a funeral of a family member.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
who desire to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 92, nays 6, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 29 Leg.]

YEAS--92

Abraham
Akaka
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bayh
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Boxer
Breaux
Brownback
Bryan
Bunning
Burns
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Coverdell
Craig
Crapo
Daschle
DeWine
Dodd
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Edwards
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Fitzgerald
Frist
Gorton
Graham
Grams
Grassley
Hagel
Harkin
Hatch
Hollings
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McConnell
Mikulski
Moynihan
Murkowski
Murray
Nickles
Reed
Reid
Robb
Roberts
Rockefeller
Roth
Santorum
Sarbanes
Schumer
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thompson
Thurmond
Torricelli
Voinovich
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden

NAYS--6

Allard
Gramm
Gregg
Helms
Hutchison
Thomas

NOT VOTING--2

Byrd
McCain

The resolution (S. Res. 7), as amended, was agreed to.

S. Res. 7

Resolved, That section 5(a)(1) of Senate Resolution 208,
agreed to April 2, 1998 (105th Congress), as amended by
Senate Resolution 231, agreed to May 18, 1998, is amended
by--
(1) striking ``$575,000'' the second place it appears and
inserting ``$875,000''; and
(2) striking ``$200,000'' and inserting ``$500,000''.

Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would like to take just a moment to once
again express my appreciation to the leaders on the subject matter just
passed overwhelmingly. The Senator from Utah, Senator Bennett, and the
Senator from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, have done outstanding work.

[[Page S2084]]

I think they have served not only the Senate but the country well by
highlighting the problems in this area with Y2K, but doing it in a way
that does not cause undue alarm or panic. But it has been very helpful
to Senators to hear what they have had to say, both in the closed
session and also here on the floor this afternoon. I believe they have
contributed mightily to the prospect of us dealing much more with the
problems adherent in this area and getting some results before we face
the turn of the century. So I commend them for their fine work.

____________________