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I bring to the Senate's attention a summary of the bill. This act provides for a total of $112.7 billion for all the programs within the bill, which is $4.8 billion or 4 percent over the fiscal year

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   What this bill essentially does is meet compelling human need. It meets compelling human need in terms of our veterans, in terms of the poor, meeting the day-to-day needs of the working poor. It helps rebuild our neighborhoods and communities. Through its funding for FEMA, it protects our homeland security. And it invests in science and technology

   through NASA and the National Science Foundation.

   For our veterans, we have increased veterans health care by over $1 billion from last year, bringing it to a total of $21.3 billion. This would allow the VA healthcare system to serve 4 million patients through 2002. This conference agreement also provides the VA the ability to open 33 new outpatient clinics. It would also continue to allow research and treatment of chronic disease; diagnosis and treatment for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's; look at the issues again of special populations, such as stroke and spinal cord injury; and continue its groundbreaking research in the area of prostate cancer.

   In terms of our veterans, we also make a substantial effort to reduce the claim time for how long a veteran has to wait in order to get their disability benefit. They had to often stand in line when they were in the U.S. military. But after the way they serve their country, they should not have to stand in line for almost a year in order to see if their disability claim can be processed. We are working on a bipartisan basis to shorten that.

   As to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, we had three goals: Expand housing opportunity for the poor, rebuild our neighborhoods, and help special-need populations. To do that, we have renewed all the section 8 housing vouchers. We have funded this program at $15.6 billion. This is $1.7 billion over last year.

   At the same time, we restored cuts proposed by the President to the critical public housing capital program by funding it at $2.8 billion. We have increased funding for the public housing operating cost by $250 million over last year for a total of $3.5 billion.

   Knowing that many of our colleagues believe the decisions are best made locally, we wanted to keep our commitment to the community development block grant money, and we have increased that by over $200 million. This year CDBG will be funded at $5 billion.

   For other HUD programs, we have continued at last year's level the funding for brownfields, housing for the elderly, and housing for the disabled. But we have, in order to create home ownership, included language to raise the FHA loan limit for multifamily housing by 25 percent this year. This came from the private sector, home builders, as well as the AFL-CIO. I believe this will mean more rental property will be available. We cannot voucher our way out of our housing crisis. We need a new production program.

   This has long been a position held by my colleague, Senator BOND. I look forward to the recommendation of the Millennial Housing Commission and the Commission on Senior Housing. We look to those in the private sector and the nonprofit sector to give us guidance on what a 21st century HUD should look like, which will create real hope and opportunity. We provided the inspector general with no less than $5 million, and this will also be going after predatory lending.

   Let's move on now to EPA. For EPA, the conference agreement provides $7.9 billion, an increase of $587 million above the budget level. This is $75 million above what we funded last year. What do we get for our money? First of all, we get EPA enforcement. This is funded at last year's level of $465 million. We can keep the current level of enforcement.

   The conference agreement also keeps our commitment to clean and safe water by fully funding the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund at $1.35 billion, which is an increase over the President's budget request. We also fully fund the Drinking Water SRF at $850 million, an increase of $27 million over the President's budget request.

   This country is facing an enormous backlog of funding for water infrastructure projects. Every single one of my colleagues talks to me about sewer or water infrastructure projects, failing septic tanks, how to comply with the new arsenic requirement; we have aging systems in my own region, as do New Orleans and Chicago. I could give every single Senator a billion dollars to take back to their State , and it would be just a drop in the bucket for this need.

   I hope, as we look at the stimulus package, we look at how we can fund clean water and safe drinking water projects because, at the end of the day, I believe we will stimulate the local economy and create jobs but have value for our dollar.

   We also kept our commitment to cleanup. We provided $1.27 billion for the cleanup of Superfund sites. This also includes $95 million for brownfields. We have included $22.6 million for the National Estuary Program. Again, we have worked closely with the administrator.

   For FEMA, we maintain our commitment to protecting our homeland by providing FEMA with $3 billion. We provide $2.1 billion for disaster relief to ensure that we are ready to respond to any future disaster. We have also worked very closely with Joe Allbaugh, the FEMA Director, to be sure we respond to the needs of New York and local communities and, at the same time, are ready for those natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes that could affect us.

   We also wanted to support America's heroes, our firefighters, and in this bill we fund the Fire Grant Program at $150 million in order to be able to fund the firefighters' need of protective gear and equipment. This program is authorizing $3 billion. We would prefer to do more and look forward to doing more in the stimulus package. We understand Senator Byrd is going to work closely with us to do this.

   In order to be protected by the firefighters, we need to protect them and make sure they have the protective gear, respiratory gear, and the technological tools to go into horrific situations. In order to be able to protect us, they need to have the right equipment. Many firefighters in America are volunteers; we ask them to do it on their own time and on their own dime. We can't protect our firefighters and give them the equipment they need based on bingo and fish fries at the local level--although, I sure like those bingo games and fish fries. They are fun things to do, but they are not a

   reliable funding stream. We have to back them.

   Let's go to NASA. We provide $14.8 billion for NASA programs, which is $500 million over last year. Our top priority remains the safety of our astronauts. We made a significant investment in shuttle upgrades, including $207 million allocated for safety upgrades to the space shuttle. By improving the safety of the shuttle, we reduce the risks to our astronauts.

   We fully fund the rest of the shuttle program at over $3 billion for fiscal year 2002. For the space station, we redirected $75 million to other pressing needs such as safety upgrades to the shuttle and other science and aeronautics programs. We know that former astronaut Tom Young is taking a look at our space station. We like it; we think it is very important to our country and to the world. But we also believe that the management of the space station has had a fiscal permissiveness that has allowed unacceptable cost overruns. They had over $4 billion in overruns. We can't let that stand.

   This independent review team, chaired by former astronaut Tom Young, has given us a new roadmap for the station. I can assure the Senate and our taxpayers that we will be holding hearings and meetings to be able to ensure that we keep our commitment to the space station, do our research, keep our astronauts safe, but at the same time have fiscal responsibility.

   For the National Science Foundation, the conference agreement provides $4.8 billion, an increase of 8.4 percent over last year. This represents a downpayment on an effort initiated by Senator Bond and myself to double the NSF budget. We want to do that in 5 years. I think we might have to wait 6 years to do it, but we are convinced it is in the Nation's long-term interest that funding for basic research in all science and engineering disciplines must increase substantially.

   We have increased the funding in several areas for research, such as information technology and nanotechnology

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   We have also maintained the Corporation for National Service. Voluntarism is our national trademark, and this agreement maintains our commitment to AmeriCorps and other agencies within it.

   There are also 25 other agencies, but I am not going to go through all 25. We have kept our commitment to them. I thank the President for giving us the opportunity to work with very excellent Cabinet people. Again, we were under very difficult circumstances, with a late start, but there was an orderly transition.

   I think we have met our charge to the compelling needs of our constituents, the long-range needs of our Nation and done it with fiscal stewardship, which I believe the taxpayers require from us.

   Mr. President, that concludes my summary of the bill.

   I thank Paul Carliner, Gabriel Batkin, and Joel Widder of my staff for giving me the support that I needed. I thank John Kamarck and Cheh Kim from Senator Bond's staff for their cooperation and collegiality.

   Mr. President, I hope that at the conclusion of our debate, when we take the rollcall, the Senate will support this conference report. They can go back and talk to every single one of their constituents, whether it is a veteran from the ``greatest generation,'' or the firefighters, the warriors of this generation, or the scientists who are giving us the ideas to keep America strong and safe, or the poor who depend on us even at this time. We have a great bill and I hope that this bill will pass.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

   The Senator from Arizona is recognized.

   Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank the conferees of this bill for their hard work in completing this conference report for this legislation.

   The report provides critical Federal funding for the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies. The conference report spends at a level of 4.1 percent higher than the level enacted in fiscal year 2001.

   In real dollars, this is $2.1 billion in additional spending above the amount requested by the President, and a $4.4 billion increase in spending from last year.

   Once again I find myself in the unpleasant position of speaking before my colleagues about parochial projects in yet another conference report. I have identified over $1 billion in earmarks, which is greater than the cost of the earmarks in the conference report passed last year. Last year, it was $970 million. So far this year, the total of appropriations pork-barrel spending has already hit a staggering $9 billion.

   Before I go into some specifics--and it will not be many on this bill--I would like to quote from an article by Deroy Murdoch of the Scripps Howard News Service that was published on October 14, 2001. He says:

   Each dollar spent on pork-barrel projects is one less dollar that can be devoted to the War on Terror. This inescapable fact somehow has escaped members of Congress. While senators and representatives swiftly and wisely approved $40 billion in recovery and defense funds after the Sept. 11 massacre, they quickly relapsed into old habits.

   Congress again is spending money as recklessly and foolishly as it did on Sept. 10. Even as U.S. warships steam toward the Persian Gulf, Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based fiscal watchdog group, has calculated in military terms the opportunity cost of business as usual.

   Sidewinder missiles sell for $41,300 each. ..... Tomahawk Cruise missiles are $1 million apiece while one F-15 fighter jet costs $15 million. Pork projects chew right through cash that could purchase these and other weapons the Pentagon will need to crush the international terror network and its state sponsors.

   For instance, on Sept. 13, the Senate adopted the fiscal 2002 Commerce, Justice, State , and Judiciary Appropriations Bill. Consider just several items the Senate approved while the Pentagon and Ground Zero still smoldered:

   --$2 million for the Oregon Groundfish Outreach Program and $850,000 for Chesapeake Bay Oyster Research.

   Cost: 69 sidewinders.

   --$6 million for the National Infrastructure Institute in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

   Cost: Six cruise missiles.

   --$204 million for the Advanced Technology Program, a quintessential corporate welfare boondoggle, for which the Bush administration requested only $13 million.

   Cost: Thirteen F-15 fighters.

   Even more maddening is a brand-new bill to expand farm subsidies one year before the existing spending plan expires. The Farm Security Act would increase agricultural pork by $73.1 billion over the next 10 years. Added to the $96.9 billion budget baseline, Uncle Sam would plow $170 billion into the ground through the year 2011.

   This bill authorizes $101 million for honey producers. The once-terminated wool and mohair program rises again, $202 million strong. Peanut farmers can expect $3.48 billion. This bill would also revive a $37.1 billion in ``counter-cyclical assistance'' which was scrapped in 1996.

   I talked about this at another time.

   The U.S. Agriculture Department released a study last month that describes these subsidies as spectacularly wasteful and fundamentally unfair. Forty-seven percent of agricultural payments go to commercial farms with average household incomes of $135,397, more than 2 1/2 times the average American household's $51,855 in earnings.

   According to the Associated Press, just 10 percent of farm owners shared 63 percent of last year's $27 billion in federal agriculture payments.

   Media tycoon Ted Turner received farm aid, as did Portland Trail Blazer Scottie Pippen. Modestly paid waitresses and school bus drivers pay twice for largesse--first through taxes, then again as agricultural price supports hike their grocery bills.......

   These legislative hijinks are bad enough in peacetime. America is at war. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are kissing their loved ones goodbye and shipping out to face a vicious and bloodthirsty enemy lurking in foreign shadows. Right now, Congress should grow up and stop treating the domestic budget as a political Toys R Us. Americans already are making huge sacrifices. Weak tourist revenues have lowered the curtains on five Broadway shows. Hotel beds have gone empty as conferences have been canceled, and weddings have been scaled back or postponed. Major U.S. airlines have fired 87,000 employees since terror struck.

   Amid such national belt-tightening, it is beyond ugly to watch public servants loosen their belts as their pork-laden bellies swell. If the American people must live with less, so must their representatives.

   I would like to read the words of OMB Director Mitch Daniels who said that in time of war:

   Everything ought to be held up to scrutiny........Situations like this can have a clarifying benefit. People who could not identify a low priority or lousy program before may now see the need.

   Mr. President, we obviously have not seen the need in this conference report, and I intend to clarify some items stuffed in the bill. Let us take a look at this year's porkbarrel spending projects in the VA-HUD conference report before us.

   No. 10: $1 million for Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL, for construction of the Regional Library Resource Center;

   No. 9: $175,000 for the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, CA, for construction needs of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum;

   No. 8: $1 million for Dubuque, IA, for the development of an American River Museum;

   No. 7: $300,000 for the Central Missouri Lake of the Ozarks Convention and Visitor Bureau Community Center;

   No. 6: $750,000 for the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University;

   No. 5: $1 million for the Mid-Atlantic Aerospace Complex in West Virginia.

   You will notice, Mr. President, each one of those is earmarked to a specific location. For example, in my State of Arizona, we just voted a bond issue to expand our convention facilities. They are not going to have to do that in the Central Missouri Lake of the Ozarks because they are going to build a convention center, and we are going to give them $300,000 to do so.

   Again, No. 5, $1 million for the State of West Virginia, which seems to pop up quite a bit.

   There is an additional $250,000 to Maui for the control of nuisance seaweed accumulations on the beaches of Kihei, Maui, HI;

   $100,000 for the Memphis Zoo in Memphis, TN, for the Northwest Passage Campaign;

   $140,000 for the city of El Reno, OK, for development of a trolley system;

   And $190,000 for the city of Spartanburg, SC, for the Motor Racing Museum of the South.

   Mr. President, we are in a war. Isn't this really unconscionable? Isn't it

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   We are now about to have a big fight with the President and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle about increased spending. How can my colleagues on this side of the aisle go into that battle with clean hands when we continue to add porkbarrel project after porkbarrel project--$9 billion so far of unrequested, unauthorized items that are specifically earmarked for certain powerful members of the Appropriations Committee. That is not right, Mr. President.

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