The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WHY AFRICA MATTERS: EMERGING DISEASES” mentioning the Department of Interior was published in the Senate section on pages S9009-S9015 on July 29, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WHY AFRICA MATTERS: EMERGING DISEASES
Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, when I became chairman of the Subcommittee on African Affairs in 1981, I was asked what I knew about Africa. I responded, ``Not much.'' But since that time, either as chairman or ranking member, I have spent considerable time working on African issues and have developed a deep affinity for the continent.
It is a region that is beset with many difficulties, but it also holds great promise and possibilities. I am not going to speak today, Mr. President, about current tragedies in Burundi or Rwanda or other places on the continent. But I have been questioned more and more, as I get ready to retire and will leave this chairmanship of the African subcommittee, why should we care about Africa? In this era of budget difficulties and domestic challenges, why devote resources and diplomatic energies to a region of great needs, unfamiliar cultures, and limited strategic value to the United States?
Mr. President, I, for one, believe that Africa does matter to Americans, and perhaps in ways that we do not necessarily think about when we see the current headlines that emerge regarding Africa.
The United States does have significant national interests on the continent. The events in Africa directly affect American citizens. In this age of instant communications, international travel, and world trade, we simply cannot afford to ignore a continent of over 660 million people and 54 countries.
From infectious disease to environmental destruction, narcotics trafficking to terrorism, we live in a world where boundaries have less and less meaning. As a world leader, the United States has a responsibility--and a self-interest--in promoting peace, stability, and development in Africa.
Mr. President, over the next few weeks, I will deliver a series of statements on United States interests in Africa. As I travel around the country I find a great amount of skepticism among the American public regarding foreign policy and international engagement. Those of us who believe that events on the African Continent affect United States interests must begin to make the case for why Africa matters.
Today, I will begin with an issue of particular concern to me--
emerging infectious diseases. Last year, I chaired a hearing of the Senate Labor Committee on Emerging Infections: A Threat to the Health of a Nation. The focus of the hearing was on domestic vulnerability to disease, but international issues--especially those involving Africa--
surfaced again and again.
It is impossible to isolate the domestic epidemiological situation from a larger global context. Microbes simply do not observe political boundaries.
Mr. President, the sheer volume of human contact at the approaching turn of the century creates a situation in which no country or class is immune from the threat of disease. In 1993, over 27 million people traveled from the United States and Canada to developing countries. The incubation period of most epidemic diseases far exceeds the duration of most international flights. No state can test all entering persons for every known disease. Even secure borders cannot stop contaminated water, food, or animal vectors from transmitting microbes across boundaries.
For example, international trade was the mechanism by which a strain of the Ebola virus, previously confined to central Africa, surfaced in Reston, VA, in 1989, and in Texas in 1996. The devestating effects of Ebola's hemorrhagic fever, and the mysteries surrounding its transmission, have created a sense of fear and insecurity around the world since the 1995 outbreak in Zaire. Yet Ebola represents only one of a number of new diseases which present a threat to all of mankind--
at least 30 new infectious diseases have emerged in the last 20 years.
Even more familiar diseases like malaria present a cause for concern, as poor medical practices in Africa result in new, antibiotic-resistant strains of previously treatable infections. Consider this: each year, over 1,000 Americans return to the United States with malaria after spending time abroad. The mosquito that transmits malaria is still present on both coasts of the United States. Moreover, precisely because malaria has not been endemic in our country or in Europe in the late 20th century, it will be far more lethal in those regions than it is in Africa today should it be reintroduced.
Our national interest in Africa's emerging and reemerging diseases extends beyond the most immediate and urgent concern of international transmission.
AIDS in Africa exemplifies the economically draining impact of disease. It primarily affects young adults, the most productive segment of society, leading some experts to estimate that AIDS could cause a 2- to 3-percent reduction in the growth rates of developing countries' economies over the next 20 years. In turn, diminished purchasing power in developing country will result in diminished trade revenues and economic opportunities here at home.
Traditionally, U.S. interest in tropical infectious disease has varied according to the extent of our political and military involvement overseas. It seems clear that today's heightened volume of civilian human contact makes this an obsolete strategy. We should all be conscious of the risks that are presented to us.
Yet in 1989, a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene revealed that neither American agencies nor the World Health Organization were adequately prepared for an epidemic emergency. Prepackaged disease hospitals and overseas high-security laboratories do not exist, nor does a clear chain of command in such an emergency. In the 1990's, a review of CDC surveillance systems determined them to be woefully inadequate within the United States, and so haphazard as to be nonexistent abroad.
Yet, information is one of the most critical elements of our epidemiological security, and surveillance and monitoring mechanisms on the African Continent are crucial to American interests.
Mr. President, at the Labor Committee hearing last year, Dr. David Satcher, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, indicated that CDC received the first report of the 1994 Ebola outbreak in Zaire in May of that year, but the first case probably occurred in January.
Early warning systems simply did not exist. Likewise, the National Science and Technology Council reported that African doctors saw ``slim disease,'' probably a herald of the AIDS epidemic, as early as 1962, but the dearth of technical and financial resources, as well as an absence of engaged, international cooperation, prevented the disease from being identified before the AIDS epidemic in the United States was well underway.
For all of these reasons, the emergence and proliferation of disease on the African Continent should concern Americans. Population shifts, urban overcrowding, eroding health and sanitation infrastructures, inadequate public education initiatives, and environmental mismanagement all contribute to disease proliferation in Africa, and in turn, that proliferation affects the United States
Mr. President, in this post-cold-war era, many in the policy and academic community are reassessing American vulnerabilities and global priorities. For example, I have strongly believed that nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons proliferation presented a clear threat to our Nation and have supported efforts to combat those dangers.
But traditional perceptions of national security do not encompass many of the new threats facing our nation. As I have argued, emerging infectious diseases in Africa are one such threat--presenting serious dangers to United States citizens abroad and at home.
American engagement, both explicitly through international disease prevention and control initiatives, and indirectly through encouragement of stability, social service reforms, and environmental responsibility, helps fight these emerging diseases, keeping both Africans and Americans strong, healthy, and secure as we prepare to enter the 21st century.
This is just one reason, Mr. President, why Africa does matter to us. I suggest it is a security threat, as well as a personal threat, and one that we should care about with interest and compassion, as we look to our own budgets, and as we look to our own strategists.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1997
The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, together with the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, I came to the floor today to help deal with any proposals or amendments that might come up during the course of today's activities. In fact, I was in the President's chair last Friday when the majority leader asked for a unanimous-consent agreement listing almost an entire column in the Congressional Record of amendments that might be proposed to this bill. A handful were debated on Friday afternoon. All of the rest must be offered between now and noon, or between 2 and 5 this afternoon.
Obviously, we have not dealt with a lot of business at this point. It seemed to me appropriate to speak about this bill and about its importance in general terms and, perhaps, to ask for some comments from the chairman, my friend from New Mexico, who knows so much about it, to whom it is so vital, both for his own State of New Mexico and for the entire country, and for our national defense and for our infrastructure.
Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. GORTON. I am happy to.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I want to state one more time for Senators that we did receive 46 amendments. The Senator was alluding to them. The unanimous-consent agreement recognized these amendments as the only amendments that can be offered in the first degree, and many, many of them are to the water resources portion of this bill--we are beginning to ascertain, that is--the Bureau of Reclamation or the Corps of Engineers. We very much want to attempt to work out some of these amendments.
I just say to Senators who have amendments that the time is going to run out, and I know come 4 o'clock this afternoon, or even tomorrow, there are going to be Senators who will be somewhat upset. But we have now, through the good graces of the leader in this unanimous-consent request, had time since 9:30 this morning until 12. There are 2 hours, 1 hour on each side, on some additional matters, unrelated to this. We will come back at 2 on this bill, and we will have 3 more hours. At 5 o'clock, we are off this bill. So anybody who has not offered their first-degree amendments will have no opportunity. The Senate has just agreed that they are out.
Now, I know there are four or five amendments that address issues that are not water resource issues. I think I know what all of those amendments are, although I have not seen them. I ask, especially, that the Senators who have these serious amendments, let us see them as soon as possible. So if Senators have amendments that are not water resource amendments that they are going to offer, we ask that the Senators' staffs and their offices attempt to get us those amendments so that we have an opportunity to work with the Senators on them, or to adequately make our presentations.
I thank the Senator for yielding the floor. I am delighted that he wants to talk about the importance of this bill in many, many aspects of our future life in this country.
(Mr. COCHRAN assumed the chair.)
Mr. GORTON. I thank my friend from New Mexico. Mr. President, each of these appropriations bills with which we deal is long and very much detailed. Sometimes it is difficult even for Members, much less the general public, to have a true understanding of what is contained in them.
For this reason, I have asked my staff to prepare a series of charts or graphs on the appropriations for those subcommittees of the appropriations bills on which I serve.
Unfortunately, I only have a page-size one here for energy and water. It is for the bill for the current year, 1996. Due to the efforts of the Senator from New Mexico, we now have an allocation for 1997 that is roughly equivalent of that for 1996. So the distribution of the money for the current year is, I think, relevant to what we are dealing with.
Mr. President, I am sure your eyes may not be quite good enough to see anything on this chart other than the colors. But the red and pink portion of the chart show that the lion's share of this bill goes to the Department of Energy, which is not surprising. This is the energy and water appropriations bill. What, perhaps, is not visible to you is the fact that only about a quarter of it appears on the top of the chart, and that goes to the civilian activities of the Department of Energy for energy supply research and development--obviously important to our future--and for general science research and development. The Federal Government, through the Department of Energy, is one of the most important single sources of research for both energy purposes and for some other purposes as well.
All of the rest, close to three-quarters of this red and pink line, goes to defense activities, because it is the Department of Energy that is in charge of our nuclear defense. Curiously enough, of that defense activity, Mr. President, half really goes to the past. Half is continuing to pay for the triumph of the United States of America in World War II and in the cold war against the Soviet Union, because we built so rapidly our nuclear capacity, our nuclear defense capacity, that we did not learn at the time the dangers that nuclear waste would impose on this country. And we have stored most of our nuclear waste in a way that clearly is not permanent in nature and, clearly, threatens the environment--very particularly, in my own State of Washington, where at Hanford, the great majority of this nuclear waste is located, and all across many other nuclear facilities in the rest of the country as well.
So a good portion--maybe a third of this entire appropriation--really looks to the past, to taking care of the nuclear waste that we have already created, and that which will be created in the future. That is a very important part of this appropriation. It is a payment for past triumphs of this country, and it is a payment which is obviously due to those who are concerned with the environment of the United States and to those locations in which it is found. I spoke at greater length on Friday on the subject of Hanford and the beginning of a very real success on the part of the engineers and the others who work there at doing something about this waste.
Once again, Mr. President, this Department of Energy portion here is maybe a quarter for research into the future for the energy needs of the country, almost three-quarters for defense work, of which roughly half is really a payment for the past, rather than for our present security. This much shorter green line, Mr. President, is the Army Corps of Engineers. I believe I can say that every single Member of this body will have some interest in the work of the Army Corps of Engineers, as it works on all of our river systems, most notably in the State of the present occupant of the chair, my State, and all other States as well, in projects to control floods, to conserve water, to use it for agricultural purposes and the like.
Yet, this entire green line here includes not only the operations and maintenance activities of the Corps of Engineers, but a very small portion for our future. The top tiny little green line here is Mississippi flood control, Mr. President. But look at that in comparison with all of the other activities of this appropriations bill--an an extremely modest investment in a vitally important activity. But some of it, a portion that all of us are interested in, is for the construction of future projects on the part of the Corps of Engineers to make our ports deeper and safer; to create new areas in which we can conserve water for various public purposes, and the like.
Finally, the tiny orange line over here, insofar as the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation for a similar project; and, lastly, a handful of independent agencies like the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delaware River Commission, the Interstate Commission on the Potomac, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the like.
Yet, we tend to think of all of these things in the sense of equivalents. They are not equivalents with respect to the amount of money that we put into it. A very, very large portion, probably close to half, of this entire appropriations bill is for defense activities both past and future, and much of it is for research.
As a consequence, it is important. It is a matter of interest to all of the Members of this body. It is probably the reason, as the chairman pointed out, that we have some 46 theoretically pending amendments to the bill even though the chairman has been very careful to listen to messages and requests from Members on behalf of their constituents. A significant number of projects, both in the research area and in the Corps of Engineers' operating area, are designed to build the infrastructure of this country, and, Mr. President, at a time in which we are properly and justifiably concerned with bringing our budget into balance, a duty that we owe to our children and to our grandchildren, a moral duty to pay today for the kinds of services and projects we want in government.
As significant as that is, as significant as the views of this chairman are to that purpose, as he is, after all, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, it is important that we continue to invest in the infrastructure of this country, whether it is a physical infrastructure from the point of view of energy and water projects or a research infrastructure in better and more efficient and more effective ways in which to use all of the energy resources that we have in the United States of America--one or the other. These investments in infrastructure are vitally important.
So this is a really significant bill, Mr. President.
I see the chairman returning to the floor at this point. I wonder if he would explain, for the Members who are still considering whether or not to come to the floor to offer their amendments but even more significantly for the people of the country as a whole, something of the dynamics of this bill.
I say to the chairman of the committee, I believe that, due to his efforts, there is somewhat more money in this bill than there is in the bill passed by the House of Representatives. I also believe that this bill stays within the allocations which his subcommittee has been given, which in turn are a part of a set of allocations which could lead us to a balanced budget by the year 2002, if, but only if, we also show the courage and have the support from the President of the United States to deal with the overwhelmingly expensive entitlement programs of this country.
So, if the chairman could tell us a little bit about how he made his choices in connection with this bill and emphasize the fact that it is a part of bringing the budget into balance and say what he thinks the differences between us and the House of Representatives are and how we propose to settle those differences, I would appreciate it. I think both our other Members and the country at large would appreciate having that knowledge as well.
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me first say to my friend from Washington that I thank him very much for the efforts he puts forth in every appropriations bill that he works on, but in particular I thank him for his knowledge and his effort in this one.
The Department of Energy, obviously, is very misunderstood. I am not here defending mismanagement or any of the things we read about that we do not think would be in the best interests of maintaining this Department and maintaining a Cabinet position.
But, first, in that regard with reference to the management of the Washington headquarters and the top-end governance of that Department, we have cut it 15.9--round numbers 16--percent. We believe, coupled with last year's reduction, that we are sending a very strong signal that the Department of Energy has too many people at the top end and, as a result, has an awful lot of regulations that are forthcoming with reference to the efforts out in the field that are duplicative, that are unnecessary.
In fact, one of the major studies with reference to the laboratories that are owned by the Department of Energy and run under different management schemes--some run by the universities such as Livermore and Los Alamos, some run by management teams of the private sector such as Lockheed Martin, which runs Oak Ridge and Sandia--but one of the major reports was issued by the former chief executive officer of Motorola, Mr. ``Bob'' Robert Galvin. In that report the indication was that the laboratories are having a great deal of difficulty being efficient because there are too many rules and regulations.
We are looking forward to the Department of Energy, which continues to say they are working at that, we are looking forward to their quantifying at some point and saying that laboratories can run without this enormous labyrinth of rules built one on top of the other.
But in the end, what people must understand about the Department of Energy that I think is of utmost importance is that a very large piece of the Department of Energy is defense activities. There are some in this body, some in the other body, and some within the Department of Defense, and some former Cabinet people within the Department of Defense who frequently make the case that the Department of Energy does not do its defense work as well as some of them would like.
Nonetheless, I must remind everyone that one of the things we can be most proud of by way of government doing a good job is how well we have succeeded throughout the confrontation with the Soviet Union in keeping the world from having a nuclear holocaust. What has happened is we created a stalemate, and we created such a vast array of information in these laboratories, the three that are the big ones that are determined to be in that business, along with Oak Ridge as a fourth one, we were always a step ahead. But all of the nuclear defense activities have been in the Department of Energy, or its predecessor, the civilian department, throughout the entire episode of the conflict with the Soviet Union. They have not been in the Department of Defense. They have been in the Department of Energy, or ERDA, its predecessor, or even the predecessor to that.
In this bill for weapons activities and other defense activities--
there is $3.46 billion, more or less, for weapons activities in the budget request of the President, and we have funded that at $3.9 billion, about $500 million higher than the President's request.
Frankly, we believe that in funding that at about $500 million higher than the President, we have attempted to make sure that the goals and objectives of this President and his Department of Energy and his Defense Department, the goals and objectives with reference to a totally new way to handle our nuclear weapons is appropriately funded.
Now, those who are critical of the Department of Energy should know that there is a very large portion of this budget that is Defense Department oriented. And is it an important function? This Senator assumes--and I think my friend from Washington supported this--that when we provided in the big budget $12 billion additional money for the Defense Department--and we did that, and we are willing to take the heat from that. That is an ongoing debate. We prevailed here, and we are funding defense overall at a higher level than the President asked for by about $12 billion. We assumed throughout this DOE defense function, which has to do with our nuclear weapons and the maintenance of them, which I will explain in a moment, we should give them a slight increase as we did the rest of DOD's work, so we assumed a comparable 4.3 percent increase in those activities because that is how much we increased the Defense Department. Frankly, I believe every single bit of that is going to be used in an advantageous way with reference to our nuclear stockpile and our nuclear cleanup which I will talk about in a moment.
Mr. GORTON. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. DOMENICI. Yes.
Mr. GORTON. That $12 billion increase in defense as a whole is over how long a period of time?
Mr. DOMENICI. That is fiscal year 1997, 1 year.
Mr. GORTON. So $500 million is in this bill, and the remainder of it is in the bill that has already passed?
Mr. DOMENICI. That is correct. Two bills, military construction, commonly known as MilCon, and the defense appropriations bill. The rest of it is in there. But $500 million of the $12 billion went to DOE defense. And that can include nuclear weapons activities, but it can also include nuclear cleanup, which, incidentally, the Senator has so described here that everybody should look at.
Mr. GORTON. I thank the Senator.
Mr. DOMENICI. In 1989, this pink portion of the Senator's chart called ``Defense Environmental Restoration and Waste Management'' was
$800 million. It is now in excess of $5.5 billion. And actually, everybody understands that we must clean up the leftovers in the Senator's State, in the Savannah River area, in a couple of other areas in the United States, we must clean them up because that is our responsibility, and it is a leftover defense activity. So we pay for it here. So whenever we talk about defense money, unless somebody wants to take that out and say it is no longer a defense function, in which event I assume we would reduce defense spending by that amount and put it in some other civilian funding, that amount is in this appropriations bill and in every other one.
Now, I want to comment on two other things.
When we were involved in the confrontation with the Soviet Union, we had a number of things that we have since decided we would not do. First, we did underground testing. For some--and I am not attaching any quality to this debate--we should have stopped them a long time ago. But for those who have to be accountable for the quality of the weapons, they were very reluctant to give up underground testing. We finally voted that in here in the Senate. It was a Hatfield amendment to stop nuclear testing other than in case of an emergency, subject to the certification of the President, it might start again.
I am not going to talk much about why testing was important to those who make bombs and keep them safe. Let me say those are goals without any serious contention. Almost everybody says that was a benefit in that regard.
Now, this Department, starting about 2\1/2\ years ago, is involved in a whole new way to maintain our nuclear weapons. And as I have said before, when we talk about keeping this new inventory of nuclear weapons, it would be wonderful to come to the floor and say we do not need them anymore; we are not going to have any. But we are going to have them for quite a long time, and it is a rather large number--not nearly as large as before. It is coming down dramatically in number.
But a new charge was placed on the laboratories by the Department of Energy and agreed to by DOD. It is called the science-based stockpile stewardship. We are now being asked to maintain a stockpile of a given number of thousands of weapons in a trustworthy, safe, secure, and deliverable mode without any testing underground and without manufacturing any weapons, for we are not making any new nuclear weapons. In this bill, we do not have money to make new nuclear weapons, and all the money for nuclear weapons is in this bill. If it is not here, it is nowhere.
But the stockpile stewardship program based on science will require new facilities, new science techniques to make sure that we know whether, in some of these weapons which are 25 and 30 years old, certain parts have to be replaced. And they are not all nuclear related. There is a huge number of parts that are just related to the mechanics of a good weapon, of a weapon that is appropriately safe and trustworthy. To do that we need more resources, and we need to convert our major laboratories to that work.
We believe it is a real challenge. We believe it is imperative that we give these scientists the same kind of recognition that we give to our defense people. When we say we need the best defense people, we need to pay our military men and women the best, we need to give them the best opportunity to serve us well, we have to, in my opinion, say the laboratories that are preserving this healthy situation are akin to our military people.
They are not military people. And I think many say, thank God, they have not been, for we have never since Harry Truman's time wanted to put the maintenance of a nuclear weapons compound and all that goes into it in the Defense Department. We said you give us the criteria; we will deliver them; you make sure that in fact they are what we say they are but let civilians do that. So we chose in this bill to put more money in various functions of the stockpile stewardship program.
Mr. President, none of us are thrilled with the efficiency of the nuclear cleanup activities. The distinguished Senator from Washington, who has millions of dollars being spent to clean up Hanford, has regularly indicated his great displeasure at how long it is taking and how we are standing in place instead of running. But the point of it is we have to put money in that. We have $200 million more in that overall program than the House did. We will have to defend that in conference. We are going to maybe defend it on the floor. I do not know of an amendment yet, but I can see in that amendment a reduction in the cleanup. There is an amendment offered by Senator Bumpers which would cut back on the stockpile stewardship in its broadest sense as I understand the amendment.
Now, I want to make one last observation. I said I had two. We have put together in the national laboratory systems of the Department of Energy a huge labyrinth of great equipment to do research projects. And probably it is fair to say that over 40 years there was assembled in the nuclear deterrent laboratories and the others, including Oak Ridge, the biggest science talent in a group in an institution, science and engineering talent of anywhere in the world. And certainly in America with 7,000 or 8,000, 9,000 scientists with all those that support them at some of these institutions, we were always able to get the very best, phenomenal in terms of their research. So there developed within that system research on major deep science and physics issues, and in this budget we have maintained an effort in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, biological and environmental research second to none in the world. It is not a huge portion, as my colleague pointed out, but high-energy physics and nuclear physics are among the premier efforts at finding out the nature of matter, the real nature of atoms and every part of atoms, the atomic structure and everything within it, to find out clearly what is in this universe of ours. We should never stop that research. America is the leader there, and we should continue to be the leader.
We do biological and environmental research. Incidentally, the greatest wellness health research program, one-third of it, is in the Department of Energy. That is the program called genome research, which will map the entire chromosome structure of the human body, map it and hand it to the scientific community so they can then proceed to effect cures over time of the great diseases. That is in here for about one-
third of $189 million, whatever that number is, for national programs, about $189 million, and we have a third of it here.
We have geothermal and fusion research. We have solar and renewables. There will be an amendment on the floor to add some money to solar and renewables. That amendment will add about $23 million. The Senator asked what some of the amendments are about. That has been put together, we understand. Senator Jeffords has been the leader on that, and we will try to work that out with him.
Obviously, since I spent the last 10 minutes talking about the Department of Energy, then I must spend a few moments on the other aspect of this bill. Because, as the Senator's chart so adequately depicts, this bill also covers the Bureau of Reclamation, the Corps of Engineers, the Appalachian Regional Commission, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Tennessee Valley Authority, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. These are nondefense activities that are in this bill that are very important. Almost all of the 47 amendments that I alluded to awhile ago that were at least reserved by Senators, almost all of them had to do with these functions that I just elaborated; in particular, the corps and the Bureau, for the most part. I did not say all of them, but for the most part.
So, when we have to fund this at a freeze for nondefense, it is not possible for us to grant an awful lot of new program startups and the like for the Bureau of Reclamation or the corps. We have done our best in the bill. If we can save some money in some of the amendments that are being offered in that area, we will try to accommodate some of the States' desires, as evidenced by the reserved amendments from Senators who are seeking to continue projects or to take an authorized project and fund it in this bill. I think that is very important.
Obviously, there are many who wonder about the Federal Government's involvement in flood protection--until there is a flood. Then everybody thinks the Federal Government should be involved. If that is the case, when there is a known flood potential, when there is a situation with a high propensity for floods, why shouldn't we be part of preventing it on some kind of a match basis? We have done that for a long time.
There is not as much money going into flood protection, but there is some, and there is a match required at the State level and a cost-
benefit ratio, meaning it must be found to be beneficial and that the risks far exceed the costs that we are going to put into the project. That is what we are trying to do there. So this is an interesting little bill. It is not the biggest appropriation bill, but it is pretty important.
I want to repeat for those who are very concerned about the defense of our country, I am trying my best, the Senator from New Mexico is trying his best, every chance that he can, to explain that there is a major defense activity in this subcommittee. It is not all in that Defense appropriation and MilCon bill. If we want to be certain about how we are handling the nuclear stockpile, we ought to make sure we are adequately funding the stockpile stewardship program. At the same time, we have to maintain some of the facilities that are not part of the stockpile stewardship, but rather part of ``if we have to go back to the old way,'' we have some facilities that are there on a conditional basis, ready to be used. That has been insisted upon by the defense leaders of our country. So that means we cannot abandon the State of Nevada's testing facilities because, in fact, what if we need to use them again?
I note today, as we speak, China is undertaking an underground test, as I read about it. They say it is the last, and they will soon sign a big international treaty. On the other hand, you do not have to believe, when they say that is the last one, that they are going to abandon all their facilities. I do not believe that is the case. Russia is trying to build down, but their facilities are not being abandoned. So there is a little bit of added expense there, but I think it is very important expense.
The last thought has to do with nonproliferation. It is related to what has been going on in our country in terms of the recent bombing and TWA flight 800 that fell out of the skies. The whole issue of nonproliferation is no longer simply a nuclear nonproliferation issue. But, in that regard, this bill espouses a concept. The concept is, if we can spend some money helping Russia make sure that their nuclear devices and the science that goes into them are not shipped around the world but rather are dismantled in an orderly manner and their scientists put to work at something else, it is in our security interests. That is not foreign aid. That is security aid for us.
The Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment, which was adopted here in the Senate in the armed services bill and partially funded in this bill, has a lot to do with trying to move ahead with making Russia's dismantlement more secure, more certain, and safer for the world. It has a couple of interesting projects--partnership with laboratories here and business in an effort to keep some of their great scientists from succumbing to the offer of money to move to other countries to become bomb builders.
The Nunn-Lugar-Domenici bill has some civilian defense in it with reference to disasters that might be forthcoming from chemical and biological incidents. There is a new interagency coordination, a new National Security Council position to coordinate responses to terrorism, international crime, and nonproliferation. There is a major effort, some of which is vested in the laboratories of the Department, to come up with the best approach to containing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction from the very bottom up: Identifying how they are made, identifying ways that they can be prevented in some generic ways. So we are slightly ahead of the curve in getting that started and getting it funded. That took a little of the extra money that is in this bill.
In summary, we have succeeded, in the U.S. Senate, in getting $200 million more in the nondefense parts of this bill than the House has in theirs, and $700 million more in all of the Department of Energy's defense activities from cleanup, which we call defense, to the science-
based safeguards new system, and other needs to maintain a dual track with reference to our nuclear weapons.
I thank my colleague very much for raising the issue about the bill and for the discussion that ensued. Since there is no one here to offer an amendment, I assume this was worthwhile.
I yield the floor.
Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments to comment on the bill which is before us.
First, I salute the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Louisiana who are the leaders on this particular measure. I think they have done, by and large, an outstanding job. I hope we can move ahead as quickly as we can to approval of the measure before us, although I am certain some amendments will be in order.
Once again, I emphasize that over the years, as has been alluded to by the Senator from New Mexico in his remarks, his excellent remarks just concluded, the Energy Department has played a much larger role in national defense and national security than is generally recognized.
One of the problems that I have seen in this area, of course, is that generally we refer to the $260 to $270 billion annual appropriations for national defense. To give us a true picture of that, we should add on the billions of dollars included in the Energy Department under the discretion of the appropriators who have, for many years, taken a very close look at the operations of the Department of Energy. I urge them to continue that effort, as we in the Armed Services Committee do.
Generally speaking, there has been excellent cooperation between the authorizers of these funds, the Armed Services Committee, on which I have the honor to serve, and the appropriators, working in close cooperation with the appropriators, especially in the Energy Department, with regard to a whole scope of international relations and international security.
I emphasize, once again, the excellent remarks made by the Senator from New Mexico with regard to the excellent job that is done by two of the national laboratories that are located in his State. Certainly, I agree with him completely that the new challenges that we have placed on the Department of Energy, and especially under the laboratories that they oversee, with regard to the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile is very important.
I have been one of the leaders from the very beginning to end, if we possibly can, nuclear testing of any type, but, of course, that remains to be seen as to whether or not we can get the rest of the nuclear communities around the world, other nations, to agree, because certainly, although I have pressed hard for the nuclear test ban treaty, I recognize and realize that we cannot go it alone forever, which brings me to a matter that I call to the attention of the Senate.
Today in Geneva, Switzerland, the world peacekeepers, the negotiators, in an attempt to end the testing of nuclear weapons, are going into a fateful 2 or 3 days. Evidently, although there has not been a great deal of attention paid to this, unfortunately, I think it is one of the most meaningful international negotiations that we have ever seen, and I believe the success or failure of those negotiations, which are reopening today in Geneva, Switzerland, will go a long way to assure, if we can get the nuclear test ban treaty extended and signed, man's humanity for mankind more than anything else that we can do.
I will say that I am very pleased to read in the newspapers this morning that evidently all nations that are considered nuclear states, or possibly nuclear states in the future, have agreed to sign on to a continuation of the nuclear test ban treaty with the exception of India. India, of course, is pursuing a course that is most difficult for most of us who have followed this with great interest to understand: Their continuing to say to the international community that they will not sign on to any kind of an extension of the nuclear test ban treaty so long as the nations of the world, the five big nations, primarily, and others, agree to dramatically reduce and get on a course to end the stockpile of nuclear inventory.
While that would, of course, be something that might be good for peace, on the other hand, it might not be. The whole drive today is not to eliminate nuclear weapons from those nations that now have it. The whole concept of a nuclear test ban treaty is to put roadblocks in the way for new states, particularly Third World nations coming aboard and being part of the nuclear inventory states.
That can only be very foreboding, as far as the future of peace is concerned, and especially the future of peace on the basis of not having and relying primarily--and I emphasize the word ``primarily''--
on nuclear inventories.
Suffice it to say, Mr. President, a lot of very important things are going on today. I happen to feel that, by and large, the measure that has been advanced to the floor of the Senate by the appropriate subcommittee, in this case energy, is a good bill. I think it is an important step in the right direction, with some modifications and lots of compromises.
In closing, I compliment, once again, the two Senators who are managing this bill on the floor for the excellent understanding that they have, the grasp that they have with regard to the whole complex matter of not only national security but international security. I thank them for their attention and thoughtfulness on this particular measure.
I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
____________________
