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   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the technical continuing resolution, H.J. Res. 133.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution by title.

   The legislative clerk read as follows:

   A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 133) making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2001, and for other purposes.

   There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the joint resolution.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be read the third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, all without intervening action, motion, or debate.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The joint resolution (H.J. Res. 133) was read the third time and passed.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I have one further clarification. It seems there is an objection, notwithstanding the receipt of the papers, that we have a vote and then go to debate, but we are working on an arrangement that will allow us to proceed with debate and get some certainty about how the vote will be dispensed with. We should be able to get that clarified in a few minutes. I would hate to ask the Senator to yield again in a few minutes, but in view of the importance of the issue, I might do that. For now, that is all the business Senator DASCHLE and I have.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from New Jersey has the floor.

   Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Chair. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Massachusetts, again with it understood that I retain the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Massachusetts.

   Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Jersey. He is very gracious in doing so. I know he wants to make some important comments that summarize his 18 years of work and commitment on this issue. He is generous to allow us to intervene.

   I join in thanking the majority leader and the minority leader, Senator DASCHLE, Senator REID, particularly Senator BYRD and Senator STEVENS for responding to the request of a number of us from our region. I thank Senator BIDEN and Senator LAUTENBERG for their leadership again on this issue.

   There was a lot of passion in our caucus earlier this afternoon, and the minority leader listened to all of us very carefully. Our caucus, I must say, was united in its commitment to the notion that those of us who cared about this issue needed to have some kind of response on the floor that indicated where we will go. I am grateful for this response.

   The commitment on the floor openly, as it has been given, to proceed as we will proceed, particularly from the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee and the chairman, is as good a commitment as one can get in the Senate.

   We have 56 sponsors of this legislation today in the Senate. With the new Senators coming in, I am absolutely confident we will have more than 60 sponsors of this legislation. I look forward to building on the legacy of Senator MOYNIHAN and Senator LAUTENBERG and completing what is absolutely essential for this country, which is a rail system of which the Nation can be proud.

   I am very grateful to all those who have made this effort. I particularly say about the Senator from New Jersey and the Senator from New York, the two of them will be so missed with respect to their leadership and the vision they have expressed with respect to transportation issues as a whole, but particularly for those of us in the Northeast, what voices they have been in the Senate with respect to their vision for how we can more inexpensively and capably move people from here to

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   Mr. President, I know that every member of the Congress is anxious to end this session and get back to our states. We all have work to do and families waiting to celebrate the holidays. However, my colleagues Senator LAUTENBERG and Senator BIDEN are right to be angry and frustrated with this legislation.

   There is a small but extremely significant item missing from this legislation--the High-Speed Rail Investment Act. The Act would allow Amtrak to sell $10 billion in bonds over the next decade and provide tax credits to bondholders in lieu of interest payments. Amtrak would use this money to upgrade existing rail lines to high-speed rail capability. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the bill would cost just $95 million over 2 years. Over 5 years, the bill would still cost only $762 million.

   The High-Speed Rail Investment Act has 56 co-sponsors in the Senate. This is not a partisan issue. It is not a regional issue. It is not an urban issue. The High-Speed Rail Investment Act has the support of the National Governors Association, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nineteen newspapers, from the New York Times and Providence Journal, to the Houston Chronicle and Seattle Post Intelligencer, have called for the enactment of this legislation.

   Let me explain why so many people and organizations support this legislation:

   It is in our national interest to construct a national infrastructure that is truly intermodal. Rail transportation helps alleviate the stress placed on our environment by air and highway transportation. It is a sad fact that America's rail transportation, and its lack of a national high-speed rail system, lags well behind rail transportation in most other nations--we spend less, per capita, on rail transportation than Estonia, Myanmar, and Botswana.

   There is a compelling need to invest in high-speed rail. Our highways and skyways are overburdened. Intercity passenger miles have increased 80 percent since 1988, but only 5.5 percent of that has come from increased rail travel. Meanwhile, our congested skies have become even more crowded. The result, predictably, is that air travel delays are up 58 percent since 1995.

   In the air travel industry, bad weather in one part of the country very often results in delays in other parts of the country. There is consumer demand for more flights. But we know that our skyways and air traffic control systems are finite and that the system is overloaded.

   Amtrak ridership is on the rise. More than 22.5 million passengers rode Amtrak in Fiscal Year 2000, a million more than the previous year. FY 2000 was the fourth consecutive year that ridership has increased. We should welcome that increased use and support it by giving Amtrak the resources it needs to provide high-quality, dependable service.

   High-Speed Rail Investment Act is critical to the future of Amtrak. For half the cost of constructing the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge linking Maryland and Virginia, we can create 10 high-speed rail corridors in 28 states. For the cost of the St. Louis Airport expansion, we can improve intercity transportation in 28 states. In October we passed a $58 billion transportation appropriations bill for this fiscal year. What we are talking about today is an additional $95 million over the next two years, which will leverage $2 billion in funding. This is a sound investment.

   There is an alarming misconception among some members of this body and around the country that Amtrak is a money pit, where taxpayer dollars simply disappear. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the federal government has invested $380 billion in our highways and $160 billion in airports since Amtrak was created. By contrast, the federal government has spent only $23 billion on Amtrak. We have spent just 4 percent of our transportation budget on rail transportation in the last 30 years.

   Those who criticize Amtrak for not ``turning a profit'' employ a double standard--a double standard that is misleading, unfair and unwise. Between 1985-1995, this country spent $17 billion more on federal highways than it raised through the federal gas tax and highway trust fund. During the same period, the nation spent $30 billion more on aviation expenditures than it received through the aviation trust fund. By their misguided logic, there can be only one solution: since neither of those trust funds operated at cost, we should eliminate these programs. That's nonsense. So why are we failing to adequately invest in rail transportation?

   Mr. President, high-speed rail is a viable transportation alternative. There is a large and growing demand for rail service in the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak captures almost 70 percent of the business rail and air travel market between Washington and New York and 30 percent of the market share between New York and Boston. High-speed rail will undoubtedly increase that market share.

   These new trains, like the Acela Express that debuted in the Northeast this year, currently run at an average of only 82 miles per hour, but with track improvements, will run at 130 miles per hour.

   As a Nation, we have recognized the importance of having the very best communication system, and ours is the envy of the world. That investment is one of reasons our economy is the strongest in the world. And we should do the same for our transportation system. It should be equally modern and must be fully intermodal. And in order to do that, we must invest in rail transportation, invest in Amtrak and be certain to include this inexpensive legislation in the last bill of the 106th Congress.

   Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, before I yield, and I will continue to do so throughout the night, I say to my friends, my colleagues from Massachusetts and Delaware, that I am grateful for their comments. I am sure we will see, and I am particularly grateful to the majority leader and Democratic leader, an Amtrak bill on the floor early in the next session. I am sorry I will not be here, but in the meanwhile, I will yield to the majority leader.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, again I thank the Senator.

END