[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3650-3651]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                  PORK

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, today the Citizens Against Government 
Waste issued their 2001 Pork List. I am here to discuss that briefly.
  Five items on the first page of this list were requested in the 
President's budget as part of the Corps of Engineers regular program, 
but they are charged to be pork. Those were requested by President 
Clinton and his administration, not by me. Also, $11 million listed as 
pork in the Interior Department budget was also requested by the 
President, not me, to manage fish and game in Alaska. It shows the 
accuracy of this list.
  Other items listed on this ``waste'' list include runway lights. It 
so happens that 80 villages in Alaska have no roads or hospitals. They 
depend on medical evacuation by aircraft when people have babies, 
suffer a heart attack, or have to have medical assistance. Those same 
villages have no runway lights at all.
  North of the Arctic Circle, the Sun doesn't even rise beginning in 
mid-December until the end of the following January, making it 
impossible for an evacuation plane to land without lights. In fact, 
this is a persistent problem for us all winter throughout Alaska. After 
a Native man in Hoonah, AK, suffered a heart attack and sat on the 
tarmac for 3 days waiting for medical evacuation, the mayor wrote to me 
and asked for runway lights. We looked into it and found that it was 
true. I really did not realize there were so many of these small 
airports that had no lights.
  I not only am proud that the Senate acceded to my request for runway 
lights in last year's appropriations bills, I want to put the Senate on 
notice that this year I am going to seek funds so that every village in 
Alaska has runway lights. Under the current procedure for allocation 
aid for improvement of airports, they are not eligible.
  I believe if it is wasteful to make sure a woman in hard labor can 
deliver her baby in a hospital with a doctor attending, instead of in 
an airplane hangar with the help of a mechanic, then I am guilty of 
asking the Senate for pork and proud of the Senate for giving it to me.
  The Citizens Against Government Waste listed funding to aid in the 
recovery of the endangered stellar sea lion as pork. The Senate and the 
whole Congress remember the battle over the sea lion at the end of the 
last session. That issue threatened to shut down the pollack fishery in 
Alaska, which supplies most of the fish for fast food and frozen 
products nationwide. The Office of Management and Budget estimated the 
closure of that fishery would cost the national economy as much as a 
half billion dollars annually. By making a Federal investment to assure 
sound science to protect the sea lions, we will avoid that loss in our 
fisheries, families will not lose their jobs, and the Federal 
Government will continue to collect corporate and personal income taxes 
far in excess of the money we put up to assure sound science is used in 
addressing that problem.
  Likewise, the list includes transportation vouchers so welfare 
mothers can get to their jobs and get off welfare. By making another 
small investment in public transportation--$60,000 in this case--women, 
particularly in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in our State, can work, 
pay taxes, and save the Government thousands and thousands--hundreds of 
thousands of dollars in welfare benefits. If that is pork, again I am 
guilty.
  Alaska has the highest rate of alcoholism in the Nation. Alaska is 
No. 1 in child abuse, No. 1 in domestic violence, and No. 1 in suicide, 
particularly among young men in the Native villages. Working with our 
Governor and State legislature, and faith-based institutions such as 
Catholic Charities that utilize volunteers, and an enormous number of 
volunteers, some of this pork brought the Federal Government in as a 
partner to address these problems that are persistent in our State. 
Those projects, along with homeless shelters, are listed as shameful 
pork in this list. For me, not addressing these crying human needs 
would be what would be shameful, and I am ashamed of the people who 
made the list.

[[Page 3651]]

  Alaska has the highest unemployment rate in our Nation. Some 
communities have unemployment rates four times the national 
unemployment rate during the Great Depression. We have unemployment as 
high as 80 percent in some of our cities and villages. I addressed that 
issue with job training programs to help get people off welfare rolls 
and into productive employment where they will pay taxes. That, too, is 
listed as pork.
  Despite the nationwide shortages of nurses, teachers, and pilots, 
those training programs which we instituted in our State are listed as 
pork. In a State where only a handful of communities have doctors, let 
alone nurses, our health needs are tremendous. By utilizing cost-
effective telemedicine for our veterans and Native people, we offer 
basic health care services using community health aides in areas that 
have no doctors, no clinics, and no hospitals. Those programs, again, 
are listed as wasteful, even though they are the most cost-effective 
programs in the country, delivering health care service to people who 
are literally hundreds of miles from the doctors who provide the care 
through telemedicine.
  Alaska, also unfortunately, is failing in educational achievement. In 
some of our school districts, not only will the schools receive a 
failing grade, but not one of the students in those schools can pass 
the State exit exam in order to graduate. But summer reading programs 
that we put in place to address those needs, and similar programs to 
address the problems of education in a State that is one-fifth the size 
of the United States and has such a small population, all of these 
things are listed as pork. The criterion seems to be if President 
Clinton requested it, it was not pork. If I requested it or a member of 
our committee requested it, it is pork.
  Our State has 70 percent of the lands in national parks, 85 percent 
of the lands in national wildlife refuges, over one-third of the 
national forest lands, and receives less money for improvements and 
utilization of those lands than any other State that has such parks or 
wildlife refuges or forests. We have 50 percent of the coastline of the 
United States, and we harvest over 50 percent of the fish that are 
consumed in the United States. We have more than half of the Indian 
tribes in the United States. I challenge anyone to look at the dismal 
record of the executive branch in stewardship of either the Natives or 
these lands or fisheries areas, and compare that to what we have done 
here in the Congress.
  My amendments last year were not pork. Not one of them will enrich 
any person or any community. They meet needs in my State. We don't 
build tunnels under rivers for $8 billion. We don't build sports 
stadiums with tax advantages. We are a sovereign State, and so long as 
I am here, we will receive a fair share of Federal spending in order to 
meet our needs.
  I criticize those who made this list. I wish they would come out and 
face us. I will have a hearing, let them come and face us. It is high 
time these people who are issuing these lists have some responsibility. 
They issue the lists in order to get contributions from our citizens to 
try to prevent so-called pork. It is not pork at all. It is meeting the 
needs of the people in my State, and I for one am pleased, pleased, 
very pleased that my colleagues have supported my request to meet those 
needs.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. STEVENS. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. BYRD. Let me thank the Senator from Alaska for being a good 
servant of his people. He was selected as the Alaskan of the Century--I 
believe that was the title, the Alaskan of the Century--last year.
  Mr. STEVENS. That is correct.
  Mr. BYRD. He knows the needs of its people. He knows who sends him 
here.
  I welcome the Senator to the club. I have been in the same boat with 
the Senator in many ways, and I have no apologies to make for serving 
my people. I know who sends me here. I grew up in West Virginia when we 
had only 4 miles of divided four-lane highway in the whole State. There 
were only 4 miles in the whole State when I was starting out in the 
West Virginia Legislature.
  I know West Virginia, and what is one man's pork is another man's 
job.
  I hope the Senator will just turn the back of his hand to those who 
criticize him for helping his people. His people recognize that he 
deserves the kind of award they gave him. I join them.
  As long as I am here I am going to remember the people who sent me 
here. This money isn't going overseas. The money--so-called pork--
doesn't go overseas. It goes to help people in West Virginia--their 
schools, their highways. People need highways on which to get to work 
or just to go to the grocery store or go to the schools or to the 
doctor or to the hospital. Those highways I helped to build with that 
kind of ``pork'' have saved a lot of lives. It is much safer to drive 
on those four-lane highways in West Virginia than down through the 
curves and hollows, and along the deep ravines where one can't see up 
ahead beyond that next curve.
  Let me pay my respect to the Senator for doing a good job, being a 
good Alaskan, and a good representative of the people of Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. LEAHY. Will the Senator yield to the Senator from Vermont?
  Mr. STEVENS. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Senator from Alaska and the Senator 
from Vermont represent, population-wise, two of the smallest States in 
the Union. There are differences, of course, as the Senator from Alaska 
represents a State greater than much of the continental United States.
  I have always thought the genius of the founders of this country, as 
the Senator from West Virginia has pointed out on many occasions, was 
when they set up the Senate and they said every State will have equal 
representation. Vermont has two Senators--not determined by landmass, 
because if Alaska had two Senators based on landmass no other State 
would have any Senators. California, larger than many countries, has 
two Senators. The Senate is one place where States are equal.
  Frankly, I have never heard the Senator from Alaska--I have served 
with him for 26 years, and I served with him on the Appropriations 
Committee during that time--ask for something for himself, never. I 
have heard him fight for his own State, the same way I hope I fight for 
my State, or the Senator from West Virginia fights for his State, or 
the Senator from Nevada for his.
  I point out to those who may be critical of the Senator from Alaska 
fighting for Alaska that never has the senior Senator from Alaska gone 
in there and sought anything for himself. But he has fought for the 
needs of his State. Those needs are great. Nobody--I visited Alaska on 
several occasions--can possibly conceive of the enormous needs of a 
State such as Alaska because of its size and diversity. I think of the 
horrendous winters we sometimes get in Vermont. They cannot begin to 
match what they have in Alaska.
  Frankly, I have always been proud to serve with the Senator from 
Alaska. We are of different parties. We are in many areas of different 
political philosophies. But I consider him one of the closest friends I 
have in the Senate. I have been proud to serve with him on the 
Appropriations Committee.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I thank each of the Senators for their 
comments. The other night someone asked me how big Alaska really is. We 
got out the statistics book and examined it. I will bet no one present 
realizes that my State is larger than Spain, plus France, plus Germany, 
plus Italy.
  I would be willing to bet that we send more money to those areas than 
we spend in Alaska to meet the needs of the Americans who live there.

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