[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 164 (Thursday, November 18, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14786-S14790]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    BYRD-McCONNELL MINING AMENDMENT

  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. CRAIG. Yes.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I forgot to mention the specific names of 
two Senators cosponsoring this amendment. The two are Nevada Senators, 
Mr. Reid and Mr. Bryan. I wanted to mention their names for the Record.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am glad the Senator from West Virginia 
has included our two colleagues from the State of Nevada. Today, Nevada 
is probably the lead mining State in our Nation as it relates to the 
production of gold.
  For the last hour you have heard probably some of the most eloquent 
statements spoken on this floor on the issue of coal mining. The Byrd 
amendment does not deal only with coal, although it is extremely 
important, and the public attention of the last week has been focused 
on a judge's opinion about coal, coal mining in West Virginia, 
Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and up and down the Appalachia chain of this 
country.
  But the amendment also has something else in it that my colleague 
from West Virginia and I agreed to some time ago: When we talk on this 
floor about mining, when we talk about the economy of mining, the 
environment of mining, and the jobs of mining, we would stand together; 
that we would not allow our political differences to divide us. Because 
if you support the economy of this country, you have to stand together.
  I am absolutely amazed that the Speaker of the House or the senior 
Senator from West Virginia would get a letter from the White House of 
the kind to which both he and the Senator from Kentucky have referred. 
Lying? I hope not. Uninformed? I doubt it. Here is the reason I doubt 
their lack of information.
  For the last 7 years, this administration has been intent on changing 
current mining law. I am referring primarily to the law of 1872. I am 
referring primarily to hard-rock mining on public lands, because the 
laws that the Senator from West Virginia referred to that were passed 
in 1977, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, have become 
law, and established the principles and the policies under which we 
would mine the coal of America.
  Then, on top of that, came the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, 
and the National Environmental Policy Act--all of them setting a 
framework and a standard under which we could mine the minerals and the 
resources of this country and assure our citizens it would be done in a 
sound environmental way.

  As the laws of West Virginia, which are the laws of America, which 
are the laws this Senate passed, apply to coal mining, at least in the 
instances of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, they, too, 
apply to the mining of the west--to hard-rock mining, to gold mining, 
to silver mining, to lead and zinc mining, and to open-pit gravel 
operations of America.
  Yet there is an attorney--not a judge, not an elected U.S. Senator, 
but an attorney--who sits at a desk at the Department of Interior and 
upon his own volition 2 years ago decided he would rewrite the mining 
law of this country--a law that had been in place since 1872, tested in 
the courts hundreds of times, and that in every instance one principle 
stood out and was upheld. That was the principle of mill sites and how 
the operating agency, primarily the BLM, could, upon the request of a 
mining operation under a mining plan uniform with its processes, ask 
for additional properties under which to operate its mine. 
Consistently, for over 100 years, the Federal agencies of this country 
have granted those additional mill sites.
  The attorney I am referring to, prior to his job with the Secretary 
of Interior, was an environmental activist. In the late 1980s, he wrote 
a book. His book decried the tremendous environmental degradation that 
the mining industries of America were putting upon this planet. In that 
book, he said there is a simple way to bring the mining industry to its 
knees. ``If you can't pass laws to do it, you can do it through rule 
and regulation.'' Those are his words. He wrote it in the book, which 
was well read across America.
  When I asked that solicitor to come before the subcommittee I chair, 
which is the Mining Subcommittee, I quoted back to him his own words 
and said: If that is not what you said, then what are you doing now? He 
didn't say yes, but he didn't say no. Here is what he did say. He said: 
I have reached out to every State director of every BLM operation in 
this Nation, and I have asked them if the process I have overruled by 
my decision is a process that has been well used by the agency. He said 
they responded to him: Not so--very lightly used and only used in 
recent years.
  The tragedy of that statement is that it was a lie because the 
Freedom of Information Act shows that every State director wrote a 
letter to the solicitor a year before I asked him the question and 
every State director of every State office of the Bureau of Land 
Management said this is a practice in our manuals and has been used 
consistently since the 1872 law was implemented.
  What did solicitor John Leshy do before the Mining Subcommittee of 
the Senate? He perjured himself. That is what he did. And the Freedom 
of Information Act shows that.
  I would say to the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from 
Kentucky, my guess is that the informational mind that wrote the letter 
that John Podesta sent to you came from an agency that had already 
perjured itself before the U.S. Senate. I know that as fact. I give 
that to you on my word and with my honor.
  Therefore, in the Byrd-McConnell amendment is a provision that said: 
Mr. Leshy, you cannot arbitrarily or capriciously overturn over 100 
years of mining law. That is not your job. You are a hired attorney. 
You are not an

[[Page S14787]]

elected Senator or a President. That is our job--to change public 
policy and to do it in a fair and sound environmental way.

  We are all environmentalists. The senior Senator from West Virginia 
said it so clearly. I say what I mean. And we all know as politicians 
and public people that none of our colleagues have ever run on the 
dirty air or the dirty water platform. We are all proud of our 
environmental records. We want the air and the water to be clean.
  But have you ever driven to the mountains of the west or the 
mountains of West Virginia? They are rugged and steep. We must craft 
unique policies and procedures to mine the wealth from underneath those 
mountains. It is a tough struggle. We know it. We have learned in the 
last decades to do it in a much better way than our forebears. That is 
called good environmental policy and good stewardship.
  Every one of us is an environmentalist. But we are not radical 
preservationists who would deny the thousands of working men and women 
in West Virginia and Kentucky no food for their table, no money in 
their pocket, or no education for their children. If you don't like the 
environment here, get in a car and drive down the road. To heck with 
your job and to heck with you.
  I understand the young person in urban America today sitting at his 
or her keyboard, working the high-tech economy of our country, saying 
to the Senator from Idaho, West Virginia, and Kentucky: What are you 
talking about? Does it make much sense? We want a clean environment. 
Save the mountains of West Virginia, Idaho, Nevada, and Kentucky, and 
the plains of Texas.
  Let me say to that marvelous young American sitting at his or her 
keyboard: As you touch that keyboard tonight, and it lights up for you 
and it energizes, it is the electricity generated by the coal of West 
Virginia that gave you the power to reach the Internet and to reach the 
stars beyond. That power surge through connections created of gold and 
silver came from the mines of Idaho, from the mines of Nevada, and from 
the Western States.
  Please, America, broaden your vision of what it takes to make the 
leading economy of the world work so well.
  It is our clean air, it is our clean water, and that we are proud of. 
But 60 percent of America's electricity is generated out of the coal 
mines of America, and the connections that create the fluidity of the 
flow of that electricity so there is less restriction is the gold and 
the silver of the West. That is what makes our country work so well. 
That is what makes our country the cleanest country in the world.
  Our leadership, our policy, our clean coal technology, our ability 
not to tear up the Earth anymore--but when we do, we replace it, we 
reshape it, we change it--that is our law that causes it to happen. 
That is the law that this Senate crafted. So, no, we cannot be extreme 
nor can we be radical. We have to offer balance and we will offer that 
in the context of the best environment we can create.
  I will not forget, when I asked Alan Greenspan to come before the 
Republican Policy Committee this spring to talk about surplus and how 
we handle them, afterwards I said: Mr. Greenspan, you watch our economy 
everyday; why is it so good? Why is it literally pulling the rest of 
the economy of the world with it? Last month, unemployment in this 
country was 4.1 percent; average wage, $13.39 an hour, the highest 
average wage ever and the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years. And we 
do it with the cleanest of the environments of the developed nations of 
the world. Why do we do it? Mr. Greenspan said it well: We just know 
how to do it better than anybody else. We know how to mine better than 
anybody else. We know how to create economies better than anybody else 
and, in almost every instance, we do it with the minimal form of 
government regulation.
  The Senator from West Virginia makes a very clear case. It isn't that 
West Virginia was trying to do it better. They were. It is that this 
White House won't support this effort. They have not chosen to follow 
the route of the environmental community. They have chosen to follow 
the word of a few radical preservationists who would ask young 
Americans to turn on their computers tonight to the light of a candle. 
If it is the light of a candle that will lead this world, computers 
will not turn on, the economy will not energize, and the men and women 
of West Virginia will go hungry.
  I support the Senator from West Virginia because he supports mining, 
as I do. It is time our Senate and the House bring balance to this 
issue. I hope they support attaching this critical amendment to the 
continuing resolution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). The distinguished Senator from 
West Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I note the presence of the Senator from Louisiana on 
the floor. I inquire if the Senator wishes to speak at some point on 
this subject.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator. I do wish to speak. I am happy to 
wait until the Senator has completed his remarks, if he could let me 
know how long he will be.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I will speak, then the Senator from Texas will 
speak, and then I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Louisiana 
be permitted to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank my distinguished senior colleague who has 
been daunting and relentless in his pursuit of his amendment, which is 
a very good amendment, an amendment which deserves to be passed.
  What is fascinating to me has been said before by others. I will go 
back to the letter from John Podesta at the White House, the Chief of 
Staff to the President. He said that any solution that would undercut 
water quality protection under the Clean Water Act, or under SMCRA, the 
Surface Mining Control and Recreation Act, simply is unacceptable, and 
that the President's opposition to appropriations riders that would 
weaken or undermine environmental protections under current law would 
be unacceptable.
  I emphasize as strongly as I possibly can he is wrong in that 
statement. The fact that he is wrong in that statement is of the utmost 
importance to our colleagues if they or their staffs are listening as 
they come to a decision about this amendment. If he were right, that 
would be an entirely different matter. However, he is not right. To 
make it perfectly clear, we have included that in the legislation that 
Senator Byrd and Senator McConnell put forward. I will read it again 
for those who may not have been listening before: Nothing in this 
section modifies, supersedes, undermines, displaces or amends any 
requirement of or regulation issued under the Federal Water Pollution 
Control Act or the Surface Mining Control Reclamation Act of 1977.
  It would be law. It is the case, in any event. We added this not 
because we thought it would be fortuitous to add it, not because we 
needed to add it, but because it was true at the outset. We did it to 
make the point even clearer for those who would raise this point.
  Senator Byrd made the points most clearly and most powerfully. This 
amendment, on which we are asking for support, simply puts into law the 
memorandum of understanding which I hold in my hand, which has been 
signed off by the Environmental Protection Agency, by the Office of 
Surface Mining in the Department of Interior, and by the Corps of 
Engineers. The signatures are here--the signature from the 
Environmental Protection Agency, a very high senior official, the 
signature from the Regional Director at the Office of Surface Mining, 
the signature from the brigadier general of the U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers, and the signature from an official in West Virginia.
  The point is the Environmental Protection Agency has approved, and 
the OSM and the Corps of Engineers have approved and given their 
official written stamp of approval in writing, right here. This equals 
this amendment. There is no difference therein. I am not one who either 
baits or ridicules the environmental movement nor do most of my 
colleagues.
  This country is constructed under the republican nature of its form 
of government as a system of checks and balances. I have a tremendous 
interest in health care public policy. I spend a lot of time being 
upset with the Health Care Finance Administration called HCFA. There 
are people, obviously, who are upset by EPA. By and large, I

[[Page S14788]]

think EPA tries to do within its own understanding the best job it can. 
By and large, I think one of the reasons the environmental condition of 
our country is gradually improving, although slowly, is because some of 
those people take positions which are not popular with members of this 
body or the other body or with Governors or with the public. I do not 
ridicule what they do.
  However, I do think they know in their hearts that what Senator Byrd 
and Senator McConnell and some of the other Members are trying to do is 
completely consistent with the intent of Congress, in fact, in the case 
of SMCRA, for over the last 20 years.
  Let me say this before I talk about the importance of mining in West 
Virginia and the problems of simply potentially eradicating coal 
mining--not just across West Virginia and Kentucky but, if this were to 
be extended and this were to catch fire, eradicating the potential for 
the 57 to 60 percent of electricity which is fueled by the use of coal 
across this country--that there is a balance. I recognize, sometimes 
when people say that, people say that is a word they use to get out of 
this situation or that situation. But this country has to run on a 
balance. One cannot simply say to southern West Virginia, to central 
West Virginia, to northern West Virginia, to other parts of our 
country: We are going to make these enormous changes, very radical in 
their content today because tomorrow will be a new day, because 
transition in America somehow just simply happens, and we move from one 
sort of a core industry type of economy in West Virginia to a modern, 
totally smokeless type of economy, and there does not need to be any 
interruption. So we will come in and we will stop this business called 
mountaintop mining.
  In the process of that, we are probably, unless this amendment is 
agreed to, going to stop much of the underground mining of West 
Virginia and Kentucky and the 13 to 16 States in this country that 
produce coal because the effect under the law, under the judge's rule, 
says this can happen.
  I want my colleagues to understand something about my State of West 
Virginia. We are not on the coasts. We do not have the advantage of the 
trade that flows to the Atlantic coast or the Pacific coast. We do not 
have the advantage yet, entirely, of the access that comes from the 
interstates that cut through our mountains and would allow us to become 
part of the flowing economy that so much of the rest of the Nation 
simply takes for granted. But most importantly, let me say to my 
colleagues, and let them hear this, please, with understanding: Only 4 
percent of the land of West Virginia is flat. Only 4 percent of the 
landmass of West Virginia is flat. All of the rest of it is going 
uphill or going downhill, either at great steepness, very great 
steepness, or somewhat lesser steepness; it is not flat. Only 4 percent 
is flat.
  Imagine, then, trying to construct an economy, an economy developing, 
much less the life of schools, the life of families, the life of 
recreation, the life of a State, on 4 percent of the land and then 
moving up the side of hills, where one can do that, and hoping the 
winter will pass quickly because it is very hard to plow those roads. 
It becomes a very difficult situation in the southern part of our 
State.
  You cannot simply say we mine coal today and we do biotechnology and 
information technology tomorrow. You cannot walk across the Grand 
Canyon in one step.
  Senator Byrd and the junior Senator from West Virginia, together, in 
different ways, have been trying very aggressively, over the last 
number of years, to modernize the economy of West Virginia. We have 
been doing so with a respect for our basic industries--steel, 
chemicals, coal, wood, natural gas, et cetera--but also understanding 
that the world is changing, that we are globalized. This Senator has 
spent the last 15 years making trips back and forth to various Asian 
countries, trying to globalize the economy of West Virginia through 
reverse investment and through the increase of exports. Indeed, the 
increase of exports in the last 5 years has gone up by 50 percent in 
West Virginia. So we are making progress.

  But we do not start from the base that so many other States have. So 
what happens in southern West Virginia if the Senate or the Congress 
turns its back on this amendment is something I would like people to 
think about. We would lose approximately $2 billion in wages. Senator 
McConnell, in his very good remarks, mentioned 4.1 percent of people 
are unemployed in this Nation. That is not true in the part of the 
State that we are talking about, in West Virginia. The counties I would 
mention would be six. In McDowell County there is over 14 percent 
unemployment today. The reason it is not higher is because so many of 
the people who were there have left. If they had stayed there, the 
figure would be much higher.
  In Mingo County, which has a lot of coal reserves of very high 
quality--that is high Btu, low-sulfur-content coal--it is over 14 
percent, over 14 percent. The national average is 4.1 percent--that is 
terrific, in Connecticut, Colorado, other places. I am proud of that, 
happy for that. But in Mingo County it is 14 percent. In Boone County 
it is less than that; it is 13.9 percent. A lot of our low-sulfur, high 
Btu, highly desirable for the making of steel coal is produced in that 
county; Logan County, 13.5 percent; Lincoln County, almost 11 percent; 
Wyoming County, almost 11 percent.
  Can one understand what that means to me as a human being, much less 
as a U.S. Senator, when one struggles in land which is so steep, so 
desperately steep, land which used to be, many millions of years ago, 
higher than Mt. Everest? Because that is what the Appalachians were; 
they were the tallest mountains in the world. Over these millions of 
years, they have been ground down, but they have not been ground down 
to a level where economic activity is readily accessible. We cannot put 
the great big highways so easily into that kind of terrain.
  Senator Byrd has done a remarkable job in trying to do that. But not 
all those roads have been built, and only a couple of those have been 
built in southern West Virginia because the cost per mile is so 
prohibitively high. Even if the Federal Government provides the money, 
the State can't match it. So progress is slow.
  I also want to say something that is very important to me personally. 
This Surface Mining Act goes back to when I was Governor. The Senator 
from Idaho made those comments. I did not agree with everything the 
Senator from Idaho said, incidentally, about either the Environmental 
Protection Agency or other things, but I agree with the thrust on what 
he wants to do with this amendment. But I was Governor of West Virginia 
at that time. We were faced with this question of what we were going to 
do about surface mining and the Federal act.
  I will say two things. One is that I have known for a long time, and 
I have been told by many people in and out of government, that a good 
deal of the Federal act was based upon what it was that we were doing, 
what it was I was causing to happen as Governor in West Virginia, in 
the way that surface mining was carried out. In other words, West 
Virginia, I will then say from that statement, has a higher level of 
requirements of surface mining than do other States and higher, in 
general terms, I might say, than the Federal Government.
  But I also want to say Cecil Andrus, who is from the West and was 
tough--he was a tough Department of Interior Administrator, Secretary 
of the Interior--gave West Virginia something called primacy on surface 
mining.
  All of this we are talking about--surface mining being the opposite 
of underground mining; anything that is not underground is surface; 
whether it is mountain mining or surface mining, it is all up above the 
ground--he gave us primacy. We were the first State in the Nation and 
the only State for quite a period of time to receive primacy.
  What he was saying by that is that you in West Virginia do your 
surface mining reclamation so well that we are going to give you the 
authority to go ahead, and we will back out of it completely; we have 
no jurisdiction anymore; you have jurisdiction unless you start to do 
things which are wrong. Then we will take it back.
  I was very proud of that. That caused me to have some of the views I 
have today.
  When we talk about not gutting the Clean Water Act or not gutting 
SMCRA, we in West Virginia cannot afford to gut, so to speak, those 
Federal

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acts in a far more intense way than most other States because if we do, 
we are hurt by them much more than other States because of the 
enormously mountainous, hilly nature of our State, with only 4 percent 
of it being flat. All the rest of it goes up or it goes down at one 
level or another. We have to respect the laws.
  Mountain mining has changed a bit over the years in the sense that it 
has gotten rather larger in the area it covers. Most of us in Congress 
understand that mountaintop mining in West Virginia is never going to 
be the same. In fact, the congressional delegation in the House and the 
Senate wrote an article in the West Virginia papers in which we said it 
is true, it never is going to be the same.
  It may be possible we cannot afford to have, as far as the mountains 
are concerned, these enormous areas that are mined all at once. But 
when somebody comes along and says, oh, you should do that, you should 
restrict the size because you can't fill valleys, they are wrong. Under 
the Federal law, they are wrong. The Federal law specifically provides 
for that. I will not read it. I will simply hold it up. Here it is in 
SMCRA. It specifically provides for being able to do valley fill.
  If the Federal judge who made this decision in West Virginia wants to 
eliminate that--but then again, in his opinion recently, he said: 
Nothing I am saying here is anything on the basis of merit; it is all 
on the basis of saying we want a little peace and calm so that the 
Federal Government, the Congress, can litigate on this matter and 
decide what needs to be done, which is why Senator Byrd, Senator 
McConnell, and a number of us went ahead with this amendment.
  We did have a system whereby the two sides--I do not even like to use 
the words ``two sides''--the environmental community and the industrial 
community, could come together and work together. We had a system in 
which one of the people who works with me spent 5 weeks in the coal 
fields working with the environmental people, working with the State 
people, working with the mining people, working with the union people. 
They came very close to almost a total agreement on what should be 
done. There was only one area on which they could not reach final 
agreement. It was something called a buffer zone. They could have 
reached a final agreement. Then the Corps of Engineers came along and 
blew the whole thing out.
  I appeal to my colleagues to understand there is a role and a place 
for reason, compromise, balance, and sensible action in all of this. 
This world is not divided between people who are strictly environmental 
in their purposes and people who are strictly for jobs in their 
purposes. There has to be that balance.
  Global warming is a fact. I do not dispute the science. I look around 
me; I feel the temperature; I understand what is going on. On the other 
hand, at the same time I have those feelings in my bosom, having to 
speak grown up as an adult, as a VISTA volunteer in the southern coal 
fields of West Virginia, that these people who are mining coal--the 
coal miners Senator Byrd talks about so eloquently--are doing what they 
know how to do and doing it the best way they possibly can.

  If we are not able to get our amendment accepted, if the judge lifts 
the stay, if his decree goes into effect, mining will more or less 
cease to exist in West Virginia because nobody will invest; nobody will 
say: All right, let's just wait for a couple of years and then we will 
come back and look at West Virginia. That will not happen. It will be 
more or less the end of mining in West Virginia, not just in southern 
West Virginia, but it will probably be all over West Virginia because 
everywhere there are effects of the judge's opinion.
  We have to have both. We have to have a way for people to provide the 
electricity the Senator from Idaho talked about to turn on those 
computers. We have to have a way to light up this Senate and to light 
up the homes of people all over America. As I indicated, 57 to 60 
percent of all the electricity in this country is made by coal. It is 
not made by nuclear power. It is not made, at this point, by natural 
gas. It is made by coal. It is a fact of life. Reasonable people 
understand that.
  You cannot just obliterate that and pretend there are not going to be 
consequences. Nobody wants economic devastation. I do not think any of 
our colleagues want economic devastation on the State of West Virginia. 
I do not think that is in their hearts; I do not think that is what is 
in their minds; but that is what is in the process of happening unless 
this Byrd-McConnell amendment is, in fact, agreed to and becomes part 
of the national law. All it will do is put into law precisely what the 
Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Surface Mining, and the 
Corps of Engineers have officially signed off on as policy.
  The stakes are tremendously high in West Virginia, and the stakes are 
tremendously high not only in Kentucky but all across this country. 
This is kind of a watershed decision we are about to make. Are we going 
to find some kind of a compromise, a way of working things through, or 
are we going to deem each other to be enemies, one to another, one on 
one side, one on the other--one environmentalist, who either feels or 
is deemed to feel they have no interest in jobs--which I doubt because 
environmentalists are people, too--or on the other side coal miners who 
then turn on environmentalists as being totally hostile people. All 
that does is degrade the content of public discussion and degrade the 
possibility of a reasonable resolution.
  I hope very much this amendment will be adopted. I regret very much 
the White House has been so difficult on this whole matter, having 
given their word to the senior Senator from West Virginia and then 
reversed it the next day, having given their word on matters of steel 
during the course of a campaign in the northern part of our State and 
then reversed their view on that. One almost wonders whether or not 
there is an assault that is taking place on West Virginia.

  But we are struggling. We know that along with two or three other 
States, we have more economic problems than any other State in the 
country. We live with that. We live with that every day. We try our 
very best. Senator Byrd, and this Senator, and our congressional 
delegation, try our very best every single day to try to improve the 
economic situation of our State, bringing in new industry that does not 
create any kind of pollution or industries that are entirely smokeless 
and entirely of a new order. But it cannot be done, as Senator Byrd 
said, overnight.
  So you cannot have a crashing decision which descends on the good 
people of southern West Virginia and northern West Virginia that 
deprives them not only of their self-respect but of their ability to 
eat, to get medical care, or to exist as human beings.
  We have not distinguished ourselves in this country in taking men or 
women in their 40s or 50s or 60s, and saying: All right. You are 
finished as a coal miner. Now we are going to train you to do something 
else. We talk about it all the time, but we do not do it. We do not 
know how to do it. The Canadians do; we do not.
  So to banish people into oblivion is not something which is common 
with the practices of the soul of America, any part of the soul of 
America, or any part of the soul of this body. That is what would 
happen, however, were this amendment to fail.
  I commend to my colleagues the integrity of the Byrd-McConnell 
amendment; I commend to my colleagues the honesty and the environmental 
soundness of the Byrd-McConnell amendment; and I commend to my 
colleagues the enormous crisis which potentially will take place if it 
fails because, as has been said, what starts in West Virginia--because 
this has now been picked up by the national movement--will move from 
State, to State, to State, to State.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, would my distinguished colleague briefly 
yield for a comment in connection with something he said?
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I certainly will.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, when I went up to Rhode Island on Saturday, 
a few weeks ago, to attend the funeral services of the late Rhode 
Island Senator John Chafee, the national press people--the Washington 
Post, the New York Times--who were right on that plane indicated that 
the administration was supportive of that amendment. That was on 
Saturday.
  I had run the language by the administration's representatives, who 
come

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to this hill often. I hoped the administration would support the 
language. So I was quietly running the language to the administration 
and certainly getting the support of the administration--if not openly, 
at least they were not opposed to it. We were working with them 
tacitly.
  The very next day the tune changed, and the newspapers announced the 
administration was against the Byrd amendment. So they flip-flopped 
over night; they made a 180-degree turn over night. One day I had the 
confidence of them. They were looking at the language, making any 
responses they wished to make to express their viewpoint. The next day 
they were 100 percent on the other side.
  So I say this amendment is a test. I say to the working men and women 
of America, do not believe the pretty words you may hear. Pretty words 
are easy. And I have heard pretty words myself. Watch what happens with 
this amendment, I say to the working men and women of America. Watch 
what happens to this amendment. See if the actions of those who say 
they are your friend do match those pretty promises.
  I thank my distinguished friend and colleague. I am pleased to 
associate myself with his remarks. Well done, my friend.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank my senior colleague and I yield the floor, 
Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Texas is recognized.

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