[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16956-16957]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         LEGISLATIVE DIRECTION

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to have a 
discussion as to where we are going in these remaining, I guess, less 
than 20 days we have before us. Certainly, we have a great deal to do, 
as the leader has pointed out. We have 13 appropriations bills and just 
2 that have been passed. So we have the responsibility, probably first 
of all, to deal with that to keep the Government moving forward in 
doing the kinds of things we must do to ensure that programs in place 
now are funded.
  There are a number of other things, of course, that will be talked 
about, a number of issues each of us, I suppose, have heard a great 
deal about when we were in our States. I come from a State in which 
nearly half the land belongs to the Federal Government. So you can 
imagine a good many of the things I heard about, and I am sure my 
partner in the Chair heard about, have to do with the public lands 
issue, the idea of access, multiple use.
  We, of course, have had the great unfortunate experience during this 
time

[[Page 16957]]

of lots of forest fires, which, of course, have been very destructive. 
We need to take a long look at that, starting, of course, in commending 
the people who have worked so hard and risked so much to be able to 
control those fires and have done the very best job that could be done.
  On the other hand, we have to take a look at the policy that has to 
do with the control and the management of resources, in this case 
particularly the management of forests. I submit to you there does need 
to be management; unless we want nature's way of reducing forests by 
fire, then we have to do it in some other ways that can be used. So I 
do hope we will have an opportunity there, of course, to not only take 
a look at the necessary funding that will be required in order to give 
the utmost protection to those activities, but also to seek to avoid 
this kind of repetition in the future.
  We will be talking, of course, about normal trade relations with the 
People's Republic of China and additionally, shortly thereafter, WTO 
entry for Taiwan. I hope both of those things can happen, and happen 
shortly. We have postponed this activity for a very long time.
  I think most people understand that if we are going to move forward 
in today's world, we are going to have to move forward to seek to make 
some changes in mainland China. The best way to do that is to have some 
rules laid out for them to be part of a world organization, such as the 
WTO, and begin to move forward to increase the number of changes that 
have, indeed, been made there.
  I think that is very important. It is very important for our economy, 
but probably more so, it is important for the kinds of things we would 
like to have take place in China with regard to human rights, with 
regard to economic freedom, which are things we want to have happen 
today. So we will be moving forward certainly on that.
  We will have an opportunity to take another look at tax reductions 
for the taxpayers of this country in a couple of areas that seem to me 
to be largely based on fairness. For example, the marriage penalty, it 
is really very difficult to understand how we can be opposed to making 
that fair. Two people who are single, if you combine their incomes, are 
at a certain level, but if they were married, with the same level of 
income, they would pay more income taxes. That does not seem to be 
right. Fairness ought to be one of the areas vital to taxation.
  The same could be applied to the estate tax. As I suggested, our 
State of Wyoming has lots of small businesses, lots of farm and ranch 
families who have spent their lives--as did their predecessors--
developing these kinds of assets. Under present law, when those assets 
are subject to the death tax, we find they have to sell those lands in 
order to make it work out.
  Mr. President, I sense that you are about ready to rap the gavel, as 
you should. I just end by saying I hope we can address ourselves to the 
issues that are out there and not put ourselves off creating issues 
rather than resolving them. It seems to me that is our challenge. We 
have the opportunity to do that in the next several weeks.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from North 
Dakota.

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