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Mr. LAUTENBERG. As I understand it, the intent of this language is to allow for the purchase of specific parcels of wetland habitat in the Raritan
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Mr. HOLLINGS. The Senator is again, correct on both points. As the Senator from New Jersey has stated, the intent of this provision is to allow NOAA to work with the State of New Jersey to acquire lands along the Raritan Bay for inclusion in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the ranking member for clarifying the meaning of this provision.
CARA
Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I have a question about a last minute change in language of the appropriations measure establishing a Coastal Impact Assistance program as section 31 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The Coastal Impact Assistance program, with relatively few changes, is identical to language referred to and reported by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources as part of H.R. 701, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 2000, commonly referred to as CARA. The last minute change I am concerned about places the Secretary of Commerce in charge of the Coastal Impact Assistance program rather than the Secretary of the Interior. Both the House of Representatives, when it passed CARA, and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, when it reported CARA to the Senate, placed responsibility for Coastal Impact Assistance with the Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary of the Interior has the overall responsibility under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act for the leasing program that creates the impact on our coastal communities that Coastal Impact assistance seeks to address and is also the source of revenues to fund not only such assistance but also various conservation programs that were included under CARA. I do not understand why the change was made, but I want to make certain that the change has no effect on the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources over the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and especially exclusive jurisdiction over the Coastal Impact Assistance program established under section 31 of that act.
Mr. LOTT. I can assure the Senator that the change has absolutely no effect on the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources over that program. As the Senator knows, at one time there were discussions about adding the entire CARA package to the Interior appropriation bill. The allocation of funding required us to add this portion, which includes Coastal Impact Assistance , to the Commerce appropriation. The change made in what Secretary disburses the funds does not alter in any manner the nature of the program, the purposes of the program, or the exclusive jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources over the program.
Mr. DASCHLE. I fully agree with the response from the majority leader. Whether the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Commerce or the Secretary of the Treasury makes the disbursements has absolutely no effect on the exclusive jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources over this program. The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has jurisdiction over the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and was the committee that originally
reported the Coastal Impact Assistance program as part of the CARA legislation. The fact that we have funded the first year through the Department of Commerce has absolutely no effect on the exclusive jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources over the Coastal Impact Assistance program, including oversight and any future changes.
Mr. STEVENS. Let me add as chairman of the Committee on Appropriations that we were not in any manner attempting to alter the jurisdiction of the authorizing committees over any programs. As a result of the agreement made on the Interior appropriations bill, we were forced to fund the Coastal Impact Assistance program on the Commerce appropriations measure. To do that, we needed to include authorizing language. We took the language that had been reported by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with only minor alterations. There was a last minute change to insert a definition of ``Secretary'' for the purposes of the new section 31 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to be the Secretary of Commerce. All that change does, is alter who will disburse the funding to the coastal States. I can assure all my colleagues that there was no intent to alter the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources over the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act or its exclusive jurisdiction over the Coastal Impact Assistance program that is established as a new section 31 of that act.
Mr. BYRD. I also agree with these comments. The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has jurisdiction over ``Extraction of minerals from oceans and Outer Continental Shelf lands'' under Rule XXV(g)(1)6. of the Standing Rules of the Senate. Pursuant to that authority, it has jurisdiction over the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation continues to have jurisdiction under Rule XXV(f)(1) over ``Transportation and commerce aspects of Outer Continental Shelf lands''. The Coastal Impact Assistance program, which will now be section 31 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, is an important and necessary component of our leasing program on the Outer Continental Shelf and is certainly within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. How we choose to route the funding for this program is incidental and has nothing to do with the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. As the minority leader noted, it is immaterial whether the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Commerce or some other officer is responsible, the program remains exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I want to thank the managers of this bill for their hard work in putting forth annual legislation which provides federal funding for numerous vital programs.
This bill provides funding for fighting crime, enhancing drug enforcement, and responding to threats of terrorism. It further funds the operation of the District of Columbia, addresses some of the shortcomings of the immigration process, funds the operation of the judicial system, facilitates commerce throughout the United States, and fulfills the needs of the State Department and various other agencies.
Unfortunately, for the second time in a month, I must express my dismay over the process whereby the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act (LIFA) has been considered by this Congress. Like many Americans who believe policies that reflect compassion and family values should apply to immigrants and U.S. citizens alike, I welcome inclusion of the Legal Immigration Family Equity (LIFE) Act in this bill. But I had hoped that this legislation would supplement, rather than substitute for, the Fairness bill, which is far broader. I am disappointed that members of my party refused to include LIFA in this bill. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of hard-working, tax-paying members of our society will be denied the amnesty, parity, and family-unification protections of LIFA. I will continue to work for passage of the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act and trust that, next year, we can pass it on the Senate floor.
Regretfully, I must oppose this measure.
There are hundreds of millions of dollars in pork-barrel spending and the legislative riders that are riddled throughout this bill. The multitude of unrequested earmarks buried in this measure will undoubtedly further burden the American taxpayers. While the amounts associated with each individual earmark may not seem extravagant, taken together, they represent a serious diversion of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars at the expense of numerous programs that have undergone the appropriate merit-based selection process.
For example, under funding for the Department of Justice, some examples
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Under funding for the Department of Commerce, some of the earmarks include: $500,000 for the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii; $855,000 for weather radio transmitters in Kentucky; $2.5 million for the Center for Spatial Data Research at Jackson State University; $500,000 for the South Carolina Geodetic Survey; and $500,000 for the California Ozone Study.
And the list of questionable spending goes on with even more funding for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. For example: $3 million for the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command to implement the public safety master plan for the Olympics; $5 million for the Utah Communication Agency Network for enhancements and upgrades of security and communication infrastructure to assist with law enforcement needs of the Olympics; and $590,000 for the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Regional Prediction at the University of Utah to implement data collection and automated weather station installation in preparation for the Olympics.
There are many more projects on the list that I have compiled, which will be available on my Senate Website.
I also want to address the legislative riders in this bill. In particular, I want to express my disappointment that legislation restricting low-power FM services has been added behind closed doors to this appropriations conference report. The addition of this rider illustrates, once again, how the special interests of a few are allowed to dominate the voices of the many in the back-door dealings of the appropriations process.
Low-power FM radio service provides community-based organizations, churches and other non-profit groups with a new, affordable opportunity to reach out to the public, helping to promote a greater awareness within our communities. Low-power FM is supported by the U.S. conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the Consumers' Union and many religious
organizations, including the U.S. Catholic Conference and the United Church of Christ. These institutions support low-power FM because they see what low-power FM's opponents also know to be true--that these stations will make more programming available to the public, and provide outlets for news and perspectives not currently featured on local radio stations.
But, the special interests opposed to low-power FM--most notably the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio--have mounted a vigorous behind-the-scenes campaign against this service. Their stated objection to this service is potential interference, of course, not potential competition. They claim that a 10 or 100 watt low power station that can only broadcast a few miles will ``bleed into'' and overpower the signal of nearby 100,000 watt full-power radio stations that broadcast about 70 miles. Interestingly, the FCC, the expert government agency that evaluates such radio interference claims, does not share this claimed concern. To the contrary, after developing an extensive record and evaluating these alleged technical concerns, the FCC proceeded with licensing and established procedures to address any interference issues that actually arose.
Moreover, competitors' speculations about potential interference from low-power stations were given a fair hearing not only in the FCC, but also in this Congress. Earlier this year, Senator KERRY and I introduced the Low Power FM Radio Act of 2000, which would have struck a fair balance between allowing low-power radio stations to go forward while at the same time protecting existing full-power stations from actual interference. Under our bill, low-power stations causing interference would be required to stop causing interference--or be shut down--but non-interfering low power FM stations would be allowed to operate without further delay. The opponents of low-power FM did not support this bill because they want low-power FM to be dead rather than functional.
Congress should not permit the appropriations process to circumvent the normal legislative process. Every time we do this, the American people lose more faith in us. And in this context, they will become even more cynical when they learn that special interests like the NAB were able to use the appropriations process to highjack and overturn the sound technical decisions by the government radio experts that would have authorized new outlets for religious and political speech--and new outlets for their local churches and community groups.
Low-power FM is an opportunity for minorities, churches and others to have a new voice in radio broadcasting. In the Commerce Committee, we constantly lament the fact that minorities, community-based organizations, and religious organizations do not have adequate opportunities to communicate their views. Over the years, I have often heard many members of both the Committee and this Senate lament the enormous consolidation that has occurred in the telecommunications sector as a whole and the radio industry specifically. Here, we had a chance to get out of the way, and allow non-interfering low-power radio stations to go forward to combat these concerns. Instead, we let special interests hide their competitive fears behind the smokescreen of hypothetical interference to severely wound--if not kill--this service in the dead of night.
This report also contains legislation establishing a rural loan guarantee program intended to help bring broadcast signals to the most remote areas in this country. While I support this legislation, and I commend my friend, Senator BURNS, for his leadership in this area, there is one aspect of this legislation that still causes me concern.
This legislation would let incumbent cable monopolies qualify for U.S. taxpayer subsidized loans in the name of ``technology neutrality.'' Unfortunately, this approach will fail to achieve any real ``technology neutrality'' while simultaneously expanding a limited loan guaranty program into an unnecessary corporate welfare program.
In a perfect world, a loan guaranty program would be equally available to every competing industry segment because this would ensure that no industry segment would benefit from a government-sanctioned advantage in the marketplace.
Unfortunately, telecommunications law has already departed so significantly from principles of ``technology neutrality'' that ``neutrality'' in the narrow field of taxpayer-subsidized loan guaranties will only increase the cost of the program for the benefit of previously favored technologies. Indeed, my experience has shown that in telecommunications technological neutrality has been sacrificed by a misplaced focus on protecting competitors at the expense of competition and the American consumer. For example, the broadcast industry has been given 70 billion dollars of free spectrum, yet the wireless industry must compete for spectrum at auction. And certain industry sectors, such as cable, have been given government-franchised monopolies. In the telecommunications world, some are already more equal than others.
It is against this reality that any claims of ``technological neutrality'' must be evaluated. In the real world, cable companies not only have a government-sanctioned advantage--they have a government-franchised monopoly. Monopolists, almost by definition, need no more government protection against competition. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, and not due to a lack of competition, but cable companies have been able to raise their rates approximately three times the rate of inflation (for about a 30 percent total increase) since the 1996 Telecommunications Act. This scenario hardly requires the helping hand of the U.S. taxpayer.
``Technology neutrality'' is a fine phrase, but not if it means that the American taxpayers must further subsidize industries that have already received undue and unnecessary market advantages sanctioned by the government.
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In closing, I urge my colleagues to curb our habit of directing hard-earned taxpayer dollars to locality-specific special interests and our inclusion of legislative riders which thwart the very process that is needed to ensure our laws address the concerns and interests of all Americans, not just a few who seek special protection or advantage.
Mr. GORTON. Madam President, one of my priorities in this bill was to make sure that Washington seniors continue to have access to their Medicare+Choice program and to expand choices for other seniors who have been dropped from the program due to low payment rates in Washington state. We need to make sure Medicare+Choice is a stable option in the Medicare program for our seniors.
I am concerned, however that the new requirements on the submission of adjusted community rate ACR proposals for 2001 may interfere with my goal of ensuring the stability of this program for seniors in my state. Under this bill, plans that have ensured seniors have consistent access to the Medicare+Choice program cannot use the increased funds to stabilize the benefits they already provide or to ensure adequate payments to providers such as doctors and hospitals--even if they are losing money on providing those benefits right now.
In Washington State we have plans that are operating at a deficit every year but they continue to stick with this program and offer health care to our seniors. They need this money simply to stabilize and maintain current benefits. Without these funds, there will be no basic programs for seniors at all. Plans cannot offer enhanced benefits or lower premiums if there is no program in existence, in Washington state, that is what we are facing--the possibility of no Medicare+Choice programs at all.
I don't disagree with the intent of the provision to ensure that seniors benefit from this new funding in the form of reduced premiums or increased benefits. My point is that there are more ways to help out seniors and one way is to ensure that their plan will not only be there this year, but the next year and into the future. One way to do that is to simply add a provision to the current language that allows plans to stabilize or enhance patients access to providers such as doctors and hospitals.
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