[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 122 (Wednesday, October 4, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9869-S9873]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                   2001--CONFERENCE REPORT--Continued

  Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. President, at this time I would like to return to 
our discussion of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, which is a 
project in the Interior conference committee report that we have been 
discussing from time to time throughout the day.

[[Page S9870]]

  I spoke earlier, for several hours, about concerns I have had with 
the language in the conference committee report. The language 
authorizes $50 million in Federal expenditures for the library in 
Springfield. It says that the purpose of those expenditures would be 
for the construction of the library, for planning, design, acquiring, 
and constructing the library. But it is interesting; the actual 
language in the authorization does not say who is getting the money. It 
says that the $50 million would be going to an entity that would be 
selected later.
  So the Senate and the House have a conference committee report before 
us with a $50 million authorization for the library in Springfield, IL, 
but we do not know to whom we are going to give the money.
  When I saw this language earlier on, when the authorizing bill came 
from the House to my Senate committee, I saw that as a problem. I saw 
it also as a problem that there was no requirement that the 
construction project be competitively bid.
  I thought, what if this money falls into the hands of a private 
entity? The entity in the bill could apparently be private or public. 
There is no restriction in the bill that it can only go to a public 
entity. There is no suggestion in the bill that the money has to go to 
the State of Illinois.
  I thought, we have to take care to make sure that we have protections 
in there for the taxpayer, so that this money cannot be spent 
improperly.
  Senator Durbin came in and spoke earlier. He said that he supports a 
bidding process with integrity, as do I. I appreciate Senator Durbin's 
support and the support I have had from all of my 99 colleagues in the 
Senate, where we have gone on record by passing legislation over to the 
House that says the Senate thinks it is a good idea that this $50 
million authorization for the Lincoln Library in Springfield, IL, 
requires that the project be competitively bid in accordance with the 
comprehensive Federal competitive bid guidelines. I thank all my 
colleagues in the Senate for their support on that proposition.
  I talked to many of my colleagues in the last couple weeks about this 
issue, and every single one of them agreed: Isn't it a good idea that 
we restrict that money so it cannot be misused? After all, it is not 
even clear where the money is going.
  It is possible that the money would go to the State of Illinois. If 
it does go to the State of Illinois, I think that would be preferable 
to it being given to an individual or to a private corporation.
  I described earlier in the day how there is a private not-for-profit 
organization out there that has recently been organized known as the 
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, and that I do not 
think it would be a good idea to give the taxpayer's money to a private 
not-for-profit organization in which case it would be up to the board 
of directors of that corporation as to how the money would be handled. 
We would not have safeguards for the public.
  But I also pointed out that if the money went to the State of 
Illinois, and the State of Illinois directed the money to its Capital 
Development Board, there was a real problem.
  The State of Illinois has a procurement code that was amended a few 
years ago. It does, in general, seek to ensure competitive bidding. It 
is an improvement over old laws that the State of Illinois used to 
have.
  When I was in the State senate in Springfield, in 1997, I voted for 
the current State procurement law. But we pointed out that there is a 
loophole in there, and I regret that I missed that loophole. The 
loophole is that the Capital Development Board has a way to opt out of 
competitively bidding projects. It is a highly unusual and irregular 
loophole.
  A letter from the Capital Development Board to Senator Durbin stated 
that the project would have to be competitively bid because they would 
require it. They said they couldn't do things that were not 
competitively bid. That is nice they put that in their letter, but 
their letter is flatly contradicted by their statute. The statute that 
governs the Capital Development Board has a clear opt-out so that the 
State can just opt out of competitively biding this project. Fifty 
million dollars in taxpayer money is a lot of money.

  The one issue Senator Durbin mentioned concerned the attachment of 
Federal competitive bid guidelines to this project in Springfield, to 
make sure it was properly applied and that we didn't have political 
influence in the awarding of the many contracts that would be given 
out. There is, after all, $120 million of taxpayer money, when you 
include the State of Illinois money, the Federal money, the city of 
Springfield money, and any private money that is contributed to the 
project. That is a lot of money. You would think you would want careful 
safeguards in that law. It is hard for me to think of any reason 
anybody would oppose the strictest possible exceptions on how we spend 
taxpayer money to ensure that there is competitive bidding.
  Senator Durbin wondered how would it work if Federal requirements 
would apply; the State of Illinois wouldn't know how to handle it if 
Federal guidelines were applied. I don't think that is correct. As I 
pointed out to Senator Durbin, it is very clear the State contemplates 
that Federal guidelines will frequently be attached when the Federal 
Government gives money to the State of Illinois. If you get Federal 
money from somewhere or you get money from somebody, it is not unusual 
that strings are attached.
  Article 20 of the Illinois procurement code, source selection and 
contract formation, at 500/20-85, contemplates the attachment of 
Federal strings. Section 20-85, Federal requirements: A State agency 
receiving Federal aid funds, grants, or loans shall have authority to 
adopt its procedures, rules, project statements, drawings, maps, 
surveys, plans, specifications, contract terms, estimates, bid forms, 
bond forms, and other documents or practices, to comply with the 
regulations, policies, and procedures of the designated authority, 
administration, or department of the United States in order to remain 
eligible for such Federal aid funds, grants, or loans.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print this statute in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

  West's Smith-Hurd Illinois Compiled Statutes Annotated Chapter 30. 
 Finance Bonds and Debt Act 500. Illinois Procurement Code Article 20. 
                Source Selection and Contract Formation

       Sec. 20-85. Federal requirements. A State agency receiving 
     federal-aid funds, grants, or loans shall have authority to 
     adopt its procedures, rules, project statements, drawings, 
     maps, surveys, plans, specifications, contract terms, 
     estimates, bid forms, bond forms, and other documents or 
     practices to comply with the regulations, policies, and 
     procedures of the designated authority, administration, or 
     department of the United States, in order to remain eligible 
     for such federal-aid funds, grants, or loans.


                     historical and statutory notes

       Section 99-5 of P.A. 90-572, Article 99, approved Feb. 6, 
     1998, provides:
       ``Effective date and transition. This Article, Sections 1-
     15 through 1-15.115 of Article 1, and Article 50 take effect 
     upon becoming law. Articles 1 through 45 and 53 through 95 
     take effect January 1, 1998, solely for the purpose of 
     allowing the promulgation of rules to implement the Illinois 
     Procurement Code. The Procurement Policy Board established in 
     Article 5 may be appointed as of January 1, 1998, and until 
     July 1, 1998, shall act only to review proposed purchasing 
     rules. Articles 1 through 45 and 53 through 95 for all other 
     purposes take effect on July 1, 1998.''
       For applicable effective date of laws provisions in 
     Illinois governing Sec. 99-5 of P.A. 90-572, Art. 99, see 5 
     ILCS 75/0.01 et seq.

  Mr. FITZGERALD. Clearly, the State of Illinois contemplates that for 
many grants from the Federal Government, they will have to comply with 
the Federal Government's requirements. That is not unusual. The Federal 
Government has requirements for education money, for Medicaid money, 
and the like. For this project, I think it is reasonable.
  We don't want to unduly hamper it. But Federal competitive bidding, 
who would oppose that? I don't think Democrats would oppose it. I don't 
think Republicans would oppose it. Certainly no Democrat, no Republican 
in the Senate wished to go on record opposing it. It is a simple, safe 
precaution for the taxpayers.
  Again, this statute, which we have talked about on and off all day, 
conclusively demolishes the letters that are

[[Page S9871]]

being put out by the Capital Development Board saying they must use 
competitive bidding and that there is no way competitive bidding won't 
be used.
  Let me reflect on that argument again. They are saying that clearly 
competitive bidding will be used. This project now is the focus of a 
lot of attention around the State of Illinois, and many people have 
said it will definitely be competitively bid.
  If that is the case, why such stiff opposition to attaching the 
Federal competitive bid guidelines? If they are going to bid it 
according to the book and there won't be any problems with the 
contracts, then why is anybody opposed? Why is it? I don't know.
  Clearly, the Office of the Governor of Illinois believed strongly 
enough that these guidelines, these restrictions, not be attached. 
Instead, they chose to go around the Senate and try to get the language 
snuck into a conference committee report, stripped of the competitive 
bidding language, and in a way so that it would be rolled into an $18 
billion appropriations bill that is a must-pass bill. That conference 
committee report cannot be amended or recommitted. They went to a lot 
of trouble. In fact, they were practically doing anything and stopping 
at nothing to avoid the competitive bid guidelines which they are 
essentially saying they are going to do anyway. That doesn't make a lot 
of sense to me. Why the objection? Why the fierce fight over requiring 
Federal procurement laws be followed?
  Now, throughout the day, I have set the context in which this debate 
has been occurring. I believed it necessary because for those who 
aren't from the wonderful land of Lincoln, the great State of Illinois, 
they may not be fully familiar with the politics.
  Sometimes our politics have become famous. Chicago has famous 
political traditions. The State government probably hasn't been as well 
known as the city of Chicago's government. But I believed I needed to 
set the table, to lay the foundation and give the Senators from other 
States the context in which I was concerned that this money would be 
provided in a way that would permit unfettered discretion on the part 
of whoever might get this $50 million authorized appropriation.
  I read a number of articles into the Record this morning that talked 
about problems that have occurred in State government in Illinois, not 
just under Republican administrations but under both Republican and 
Democratic administrations, where, because of a lack of competitive 
bidding, because of lax, weak procurement laws that left too much to 
the subjective preferences of State officials on awarding contracts, we 
have had of a sad history of procurement problems in the State of 
Illinois. Hopefully, the State's new procurement law will cut down on 
future problems such as that. But as I have pointed out, it has a few 
loopholes that I hope will get cleaned up.

  We have talked about leases of buildings. We have talked about 
construction projects. We have highlighted a number of instances in 
which those leases at that time were not competitively bid, where there 
were a lot of questions about the amounts taxpayers were paying for the 
State to lease buildings. And certainly the people involved in leasing 
the properties to the State seem to be very involved in the political 
process, which raises a lot of questions in one's mind.
  I also talked about the hotel loan, which involved a loan to a 
politically connected developer to build the Springfield Renaissance 
Hotel. It was a $15 million loan from the State of Illinois. It 
appeared also, as we read some of those articles, that Federal money 
was involved in that, too, and that that loan was never repaid to the 
State of Illinois. Some payments were made. I don't know what the 
unpaid balance is today, but I think it is quite substantial. That 
developer still has that hotel, too. This hotel is very close, about a 
block and a half, maybe two blocks away, as we saw, from the proposed 
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
  If the library is built and it becomes the wonderful attraction we 
hope it will be for citizens from all over the country to come and 
enjoy and learn about Abraham Lincoln in the hometown of Abraham 
Lincoln, certainly it will generate a lot of tourist revenue for the 
city of Springfield. I imagine the Springfield Renaissance Hotel would 
benefit from the projections of increased tourism. I hope that would be 
the case. I hope that perhaps at that time the hotel, the partnership 
that runs it, would think about whether they couldn't make more 
payments to the State on that $15 million taxpayer loan that goes back 
to the early 1980s.
  I know that State officials released personal guarantees and waived 
the State's right to foreclose on that hotel loan. It is clear there 
probably isn't much of a legally enforceable note anymore. You would 
have to wonder if those people would think about whether it wouldn't be 
a good idea for them, the right thing for them to do, to try to make 
payments when they could. They probably would argue that the notes are 
worthless now and that the State's rights as lender were waived while 
the loan was in default. It is kind of unusual. In fact, I have never 
really heard of a lender, when they have a bad loan, waive all their 
rights. It seems kind of odd to me.
  In any case, there is another episode in our State's recent history 
that I was very vocal on when I was in the State senate. That was on 
how riverboat licenses were given out.
  Back in about 1990, the State created 10 riverboat licenses. The 
first six of them were fairly site specific in their statute on where 
the river boat licenses had to go.
  That always raised questions because there were questions of whether 
in drawing up the statute the State was actually attempting to steer 
these riverboat licenses to certain individuals. It just so happened 
that an investor in the first riverboat license awarded under the 
Illinois gaming law was the very same individual, Mr. William Cellini, 
about whom we have read some articles, who got the hotel loan, didn't 
have to pay it back, had the leases of the State buildings, and has 
been involved in politics in Illinois for a long time.
  I would, if I could, like to continue on in an examination of what 
happened when the State didn't competitively bid the riverboat 
licenses, and I always believed they should have been competitively 
bid. You had licenses that turned out to be phenomenally lucrative. In 
some cases, very small investments made many people very rich, very 
quickly. There was always a question as to how the State determined who 
got the licenses. The people who wound up getting the first six 
licenses, which were fairly site-specific, tended to be people who were 
very much involved in State politics in Illinois. They were what I 
would call ``insiders'' in the State capitol. Of course, they always 
encouraged the perception that it was just a coincidence that these 
very lucrative licenses fell into their hands. And they got real rich, 
real quick.
  In fact, a riverboat was put up in Joliet, IL. I remember when I was 
in the State senate, that boat was called the Joliet Empress. We could 
not find out the financial results of these boats. It was an exception 
to the freedom of information laws in Springfield, and even though 
these boats got a license from the State, they didn't have to give out 
financial information to the public. But the Joliet Empress decided to 
do a public bond offering, as I recall. In order to do that public 
offering of its debt securities, it had to file a registration 
statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the process 
of filing that statement, they disclosed their investors and disclosed 
some of the financial results of the riverboat.
  I am going to suggest that the original investment was somewhere in 
the neighborhood of $20 million. In the first 18 months, as I recall, 
the nine people who owned the riverboat took in something like $87 
million in cash dividends. It kind of makes the Internet firms that we 
are reading about in the soaring NASDAQ index seem like nothing. This 
was really a bonanza for the people who wound up with these riverboat 
licenses.
  When I read on the floor of the Illinois State Senate how lucrative 
these licenses were, I thought it was wrong that the State wasn't 
competitively bidding those licenses. They were setting up a process by 
which people who wanted these licenses could go through the politicians 
who could give it to them on a no-bid basis. And in so doing, the State 
was leaving an awful lot of money on the table. In fact, they were 
literally lighting a match to millions of dollars they could have 
reaped

[[Page S9872]]

had they auctioned off those licenses and created some kind of bidding 
process and not allowed political favoritism to ever be a question in 
the awarding of those licenses.
  In fact, there was a lot of opposition to ever competitively bidding 
those licenses. Certainly, the people who wound up owning or wanting 
the licenses never wanted those competitively bid. Instead, what 
happened, in order to raise revenue in the early 1990s, on a few 
occasions the State raised income taxes on everybody else.
  Mr. President, let me go, if I may, to a couple of articles that 
describe how the State gave out the no-bid riverboat licenses. Again, 
this is all in the context of examining what happens when State, 
Federal, or local government--any government at all--don't put 
restrictions on money they are giving out for contracts, or on benefits 
that they are giving out, when they don't make sure there is a 
competitive bidding process involved. Questions always arise as to 
whether there is political favoritism.
  This article is from the Chicago Sun-Times of February 26, 1993. The 
byline is by Ray Long. The headline is, ``Developer Hits Riverboat 
Jackpot; Stock Sale Windfall Steams Treasurer.''
  I ask unanimous consent that this article from the Chicago Sun-Times 
be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 26, 1993]

   Developer Hits Riverboat Jackpot; Stock Sale Windfall ``Steams'' 
                               Treasurer

                             (By Ray Long)

       Politically powerful Springfield developer William Cellini 
     has sold $5.3 million in riverboat casino stock as part of a 
     deal that prompted the state treasurer to call for a windfall 
     tax on such transactions.
       Argosy Gaming Co., owner of the Alton Belle riverboat, 
     reported that Cellini sold 277,778 shares, netting him $4.9 
     million after fees, in last week's first public offering of 
     Illinois riverboat stock.
       Argosy sold a total of $76.6 million in stock, and the 
     original shareholders collected $29.5 million, the company 
     said.
       Cellini remains the largest single shareholder, and his 
     remaining shares could be worth more than $50 million, based 
     on the value of the public shares.
       Argosy plans to use money from the sale to pay start-up 
     debts, fund a new riverboat and develop gambling in Louisiana 
     and Missouri.
       State Treasurer Patrick Quinn, a Democrat, said, ``I've got 
     steam coming out of my ears'' from anger over the Argosy 
     deal. ``It's downright obscene.''
       A probable gubernatorial candidate in 1994, Quinn said 
     Cellini should have been denied his piece of the Alton 
     riverboat license because of questions about his role in a 
     state loan to build the Springfield Ramada Renaissance hotel.
       ``I don't think if you take the taxpayers to the cleaners 
     once, you should get a second chance to put more money in 
     your own pocket,'' Quinn said while taping ``The Reporters,'' 
     to be aired at 9 p.m. Sunday on WMAQ-AM (670).
       The state should impose a windfall tax on investors in 
     riverboat gambling ventures that start private and later go 
     public, Quinn said.
       In a separate interview, Cellini, a top Republican fund-
     raiser and friend of Gov. Edgar's, said the Springfield hotel 
     arrangement was proper.
       As for the riverboat transaction, he said he had been 
     ``obligated at one time for an amount approaching a million'' 
     dollars. He said federal regulations about new public 
     offerings prevented him from discussing details about the 
     company or stock sale.
       The Ramada Renaissance received a 1982 state loan for $15.5 
     million at 12\1/4\ percent interest. After recurring payment 
     disputes, the loan was restructured in 1991 for $18.6 million 
     at 6 percent.
       Cellini said he was one of 80 partners in the hotel. ``I 
     have never taken out or realized one penny from the hotel,'' 
     he said.
       Quinn's staff said the lenders defaulted in 1987 under 
     former state Treasurer Jerry Cosentino and former Gov. James 
     R. Thompson, a Republican and friend of Cellini's.
       But Cellini disputed this account. ``During the time of the 
     loan,'' he said, ``I don't believe we were ever declared in 
     default--except in order to refinance and restructure, there 
     may have been needed language implying such.''
       Quinn said: ``A lot of folks, I think, are pretty upset 
     about getting taxed to the limit and then seeing government 
     operate . . . as a personal piggy bank for insiders. This is 
     wrong.''
       Mike Lawrence, spokesman for Edgar, said the Gaming Board's 
     initial approval of the Alton riverboat project was granted 
     before the governor took office. The final license approval 
     came in 1991 after Edgar took office.
       William Kunkle, Gaming Board chairman, said Cellini passed 
     the agency's background check.
       Meanwhile, Thursday, the Gaming Board met in Chicago and 
     failed to reach agreement on how to implement a legal limit 
     of 1,200 gambling customers per riverboat.

  Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. President, there are a number of other articles 
that have been written over the years about how the State gave out the 
riverboat gambling licenses in Illinois. The record is replete with 
problems that the State had, or questions that were raised about how 
the licenses were awarded. They just happened to be awarded to people 
who seemed to be involved in the political process.
  That was something I was concerned about at the time. I was in the 
State senate at that time; this goes back to 1994. There is an article 
in the Chicago Sun-Times that discusses how I was seeking competitive 
bidding on those State riverboat licenses.
  This is an article from April 10, 1994, entitled, ``Riverboat Deal is 
Plum For Insiders,'' by Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Sun-Times:

       The agreement between Mayor Daley and Gov. Edgar to bring 
     riverboat gambling to Chicago should make a lot of people 
     happy: Chicago taxpayers and schoolchildren, who will benefit 
     from the additional revenues, and the thousands of casino/
     entertainment center employees.
       But the folks who should be the happiest are the well-
     connected insiders who are already raking it in from the 
     state's 10 suburban and Downstate riverboats and who stand to 
     make hundreds of millions more from the Chicago riverboats.
       That would be thanks to a little-noticed part of the 
     agreement changing the law that bans owners of one riverboat 
     license from having more than a 10 percent interest in a 
     second. If approved by the Legislature, they could own a 
     second license and up to a 10 percent interest in a third.
       So folks such as Eugene Heytow, chairman of the politically 
     connected Amalgamated Trust & Savings Bank, where William 
     Daley, the mayor's brother, once was president, could keep 
     his stake in a riverboat in Galena while buying a chunk of 
     one in Chicago. And William Cellini, a powerful friend of 
     Edgar and former Gov. James R. Thompson, could buy into 
     Chicago big-time while keeping his lucrative interest in the 
     Alton Belle. So could Gayle Franzen, the Republican candidate 
     for DuPage County Board chairman. And so on.
       You could argue that they should get a piece of the Chicago 
     action because the state is changing the rules of the game, 
     that when they invested in the suburban and Downstate boats 
     they believed they wouldn't face any competitive risk from 
     Chicago.
       However, it's not a very convincing argument in the face of 
     the obscene profits that they have already harvested from 
     their state-protected monopolies. State Sen. Peter G. 
     Fitzgerald (R-Inverness), a banker, has calculated that the 
     profits have been great enough to cover initial investments 
     in only a matter of months--the kind of return that might 
     make Hillary Rodham Clinton envious. In the case of the Alton 
     Belle, a $20 million or so capital investment (and a paltry 
     $85,000 for a state licensing fee) seeded a company that now 
     has an estimated market value approaching a half billion 
     dollars.

  Let me read that again.
  This is from Dennis Byrne, ``Riverboat Deal is Plum for Insiders.''

       In the case of the Alton Belle, a $20 million or so capital 
     investment--and a paltry $85,000 for a State licensing fee.

  The guys who got the riverboats gave the State $85,000. The State 
gave them a license and ceded a company that now has an estimated 
market value approaching $.5 billion.
  Not a bad deal if you are giving the $85,000 and they are giving you 
the license. It is worth, at that time they say, $.5 billion. What did 
the taxpayers get out of this with no competitive bidding? They had 
their income taxes raised during that time.

       For an initial outlay of just a couple hundred grand 2\1/2\ 
     years ago, investors now would own tens of millions of 
     dollars worth of stock. Cellini himself plucked $4.9 million 
     when he sold some of his stock when the company went public, 
     but still retains some $60 million worth of stock.
       And if they invest in Chicago boats? Using the city's 
     figures, Fitzgerald calculates that annual net income on each 
     boat could approach $50 million, and that the market value of 
     each boat (at five times earnings) could exceed a quarter of 
     a billion dollars.
       Thankfully, though, they'd have to sink more into the 
     Chicago boats, because, unlike the license for suburban and 
     Downstate boats, the city licenses would be competitively 
     bid. Who gets the license will depend, in part, on how much 
     the bidder is willing to give to the city in admission, 
     franchise and other fees. Unfortunately, though, the state's 
     20 percent gaming tax on gross receipts will not be raised, 
     for the Chicago or Downstate boats. Nor do we know if other 
     municipalities that are granted new boats will be able to 
     demand competitive bidding.
       Fitzgerald believes that even if the 20 percent state tax 
     were raised significantly, to as high as 60 percent, the 
     owners still would make a nice profit. So if we truly believe

[[Page S9873]]

     that the boats are a public good, maybe we should allow the 
     public to rake off at least as much as some politically 
     connected pals.

  Mr. President, I understand that the Presiding Officer has an 
obligation, so I will try to focus my remarks and enable the Presiding 
Officer to meet that obligation.
  We have introduced a number of articles on this point all during the 
day to lay the context in which my concerns were raised about this very 
large project in Springfield.
  I guess now we are down to the point where we have to ask the big 
question: Is the proposed Abraham Lincoln Library in Springfield, IL, 
another insider deal? I certainly hope it doesn't become one. This may 
or may not be now. We will not know until it is done. But we should do 
our very best to prevent it from becoming one.
  We have said if we don't have careful controls, the money could wind 
up in private hands. It wouldn't have to be competitively bid under the 
language in the conference report. If the money winds up in State 
hands, then under the language that passed out of the House in the 
conference report, and which the Senate has basically said they don't 
like because it doesn't have Federal competitive bidding in it, if the 
money went to a private entity and went to the State--we have seen the 
State without competitive bidding. I would hate to see the monument to 
``Honest Abe'' discussed in one of these many articles that have been 
written by investigative reporters. Competitive bidding could be opted 
out if it were the Capital Development Board that were doing the 
project.
  As I pointed out, it is not unusual for the State to have to live 
within Federal competitive bid guidelines. This is not an unusual 
request. Then there is the State code. The State procurement code 
specifically contemplates the application of Federal guidelines such as 
these Federal competitive guidelines.
  Are there red flags on this project? I want to sum those up again. We 
talked earlier in the day about some of the red flags.
  We had the cost of the project increasing as the project has been 
talked about over the last few years. It started out as a proposed $40 
million project in February of 1998. It went to a $60 million project 
13 months later, in March of 1999. When I first came to the Senate, it 
was a $60 million project. Then one month after that, the next report 
said it was a $148 million project--up from the most recent $60 million 
estimate on advice from ``designers and fiscal advisers.'' That raised 
the red flag in my mind. I thought we had to bird-dog this project. 
After all, that is a big expenditure in any city, and it is certainly a 
big expenditure in the city of Springfield, our State capital.
  The estimated cost, adjusted for inflation, of our State capitol is 
only $70 million compared to the $148 million that we saw referred to 
there, and now the $120 million that they are talking about for this 
library.
  The cost of other buildings in Springfield: the Willard Ice Building 
is a $70 million building; the Prairie Capital Convention Center is a 
$60 million building.
  We are really talking about a very visible project in Springfield. We 
discussed the location as well of this library. We noted its proximity 
to the Springfield Ramada Renaissance Hotel. We talked at length about 
the history of the Springfield Renaissance Hotel. We noted that this 
project is intended to and will stimulate tourism, if it is done right, 
in the city of Springfield. That hotel stands to benefit from that. It 
would be nice if we could get some payments on that $15 million State 
loan from back in 1982 to build that.
  We have not yet noted, and I think we need to note, that Mr. Cellini, 
whom we have discussed, has been active in seeking to raise money for 
the private foundation that is connected to the library. Let me see if 
I can focus on that for one second and find a citation for you, Mr. 
President. There are newspaper articles, I believe, that suggest he has 
been out actively trying to raise money for the library. I would like 
to find that citation.
  Incidentally, I should also mention that the Ronald Reagan 
Presidential Library cost $65 million.
  It is a State Journal Register article from September 5, 1999, a 
little over a year ago:

       William Cellini reported to be heading private fundraising 
     drive for the project.

  So we are beginning to connect this all back into some of the 
projects we have read about throughout the course of the day. These are 
connecting threads, and set against the backdrop of procurement history 
and controversy in Illinois, I think there is good reason for Congress 
to be careful with this project. I think it is reasonable to look at 
all these red flags and say, this $50 million in Federal money, we 
better make sure it is buttoned down; better be careful, we don't want 
to happen to this money what has sometimes happened in the past. We 
don't want this project ever to be the subject of one of these 
investigative reports in one of our State's fine newspapers.

  In light of the time restraints we are running up against tonight, 
the hour is late and I recognize that, I thank my colleagues again for 
all their support, for going on record in favor of competitive bidding 
in accordance with the Federal competitive bidding guidelines. I 
certainly hope the House will reconsider the position that has come out 
of the House in opposition for buttoning down this money and having 
tighter controls on it, to make sure that none of it winds up being 
involved in an insider deal, and that Springfield gets $120 million 
worth of value out of the $120 million that is intended to be spent on 
this monument for Abraham Lincoln.
  Some may wonder why I have sought to filibuster the Interior 
appropriations bill over this matter. They would note $50 million is a 
substantial amount, but as a percentage of the entire appropriations 
bill, it is relatively small in comparison. There are literally 
countless projects throughout the country that are contained in that 
bill. I believed it was important to come to the floor and to lay out 
this case because it goes to the very heart of the appropriations 
process in Washington.
  I understand those who oppose the competitive bidding will eventually 
have a good opportunity to move their bill and make sure the 
competitive bidding isn't in there. But I hope we are going to have 
illumination here. I think the people of Illinois can know who their 
government is and what it is about. I think that the people of this 
country may see, through the prism of Illinois, how serious and 
consequential the ethical foundations of their government can and must 
be.
  This issue of whether we make sure this money is competitively bid 
goes to the very heart of the appropriations process. We ought to take 
great care of the people's money. The people's money represents 
precious hours of hard work, sweat, and time away from family. The 
American people are fundamentally generous, and they will permit 
reasonable expenditures for the good of their country, their 
communities, and their State. However, Mr. President, don't abuse them. 
Do your best to make sure that there are sufficient safeguards so the 
people can know that their taxpayer dollars will not simply be trampled 
on by political insiders. That is what bothers me personally, eats at 
me--the people who oppose provisions such as this act, as though $50 
million in taxpayer money is a quarter. How can we ever put too many 
controls on taxpayer money? Why would anyone not welcome even more 
stringent competitive bid rules? Why would anybody oppose that? I can't 
think of a good reason.
  The backdrop of problems we have had in the State of Illinois for a 
long time, which I illuminated today, and the legacy of insider dealing 
make me very reluctant to turn over this particular $120 million 
without doing everything I can to protect it.
  I thank all of those who have stayed with me tonight, and I yield the 
floor.

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