INTERVIEWER: I'd like to start by thanking you for taking the time to speak with us today. You were a Marine in World War II and you were headed to the Pacific towards the end of the war.

SEN. BUMPERS: We just sailed from North Island in San Diego on a sort of a miniature aircraft carrier. I didn't realize how luxurious that was until I came home on a troop transport. But in any event, the war ended about the time, just about halfway between San Diego and Hawaii. And so we pulled into Hawaii and that's where I spent the rest of the time. The war was over and I stayed there about ten or 11 months I guess, before I got to come home.

INTERVIEWER: But you were scheduled to be part of the invasion of Japan, had it been necessary.

SEN. BUMPERS: We were on our way to the invasion of Japan. I don't know how many men would have been involved in that, my guess is, you know, certainly millions on both sides, but my guess is the United States alone was prepared to commit over a million men in the first onslaught.

There isn't any question in my opinion. I've seen various statistics on how many men they thought we'd lose and about the smallest one I've ever seen was in the vicinity of 800,000 to a million people. But the truth of the matter is the Japanese had been so sapped, their strength had been so sapped by the bombings. Back in those days, you know, most civilian targets were just as good as military targets. Nowadays, we talk about civilian targets, but back -- you know, avoiding them at all costs. But back then, for example, the fire bombing of Tokyo cost 100,000 lives in one evening and that was more than either the Nagasaki or the Hiroshima bomb cost.

But the people in Japan were hungry. They had a big food shortage; they had every kind of a shortage under the shining sun, so they were already pretty strapped. We'd been bombing their munitions plants, they weren't nearly as strong as they had been. But I don't think there's any question we'd have lost at least a million men if we'd have had to go through that invasion.

INTERVIEWER: So after the war, you returned home and you were a private citizen for a number of years. What was it that you got you interested in the idea of public service and public life?

SEN. BUMPERS: Oh, that was at a very tender age by my father. My father, in this little town of about 800 people at the time, my father expected me to be on the courthouse lawn when the politicians came through town. He served in the legislature and so we were a political family. We discussed state, national, international politics and affairs at the dinner table every evening. When candidates for governor, senator, congressman, whatever, came through town, my father expected me to be there from the time I was eight years old on. And he also expected me at the dinner table to be able his questions about who I liked, why I liked them, if I didn't like them, why didn't I like them.

And we were taught that when we died, we were going to Franklin Roosevelt because when -- we were all, you know, poor. My father was not -- we were not poor compared to an awful lot of people in town and there was no snob value to being poor because everybody was. But Franklin Roosevelt was the first president ever to really pay much attention to the South. We'd been living as a conquered nation. But in this little town we lived in, we didn't have gas, we didn't have electricity, we didn't have running water, indoor plumbing, paved streets. We had nothing until Roosevelt became president and we began to get all of those things.

But as I say, I grew up in a household where my father taught us religiously that politics was a noble profession. My mother wanted me to be a Methodist preacher; my father wanted me to be a politician. He took us to see Franklin Roosevelt when I was, I guess I was 12 years old, and told me on the way home -- I asked him why the president had these two men holding him up on the back of the train. My father said, "Well, son, it's because he had polio, he has 12 pounds of steel around his legs, braces. And let that be a lesson to you two boys," my brother and me. "If President Roosevelt can be president and can't even walk, you two boys have good minds and good bodies. There's isn't any reason why you can't be president." I thought he was appointing me to the position right then.

But he really instilled a deep sense of responsibility in us about public service and our civic responsibilities and I've done that with my children. And unhappily, my father may be the last man who ever lived who encouraged his children to go into politics.

INTERVIEWER: Well, you, yourself, have had some comments in reflecting on your plan not to seek reelection about how politics has replaced statecraft in electoral government. To what do you attribute these changes?

SEN. BUMPERS: I think the biggest change has been that campaigns are prohibitively expensive now. When I ran for governor the first time, there were eight Democrats in the Democratic Primary and I got into the runoff. And at the time, I had spent $90,000.00 and really, the rest of it was pretty much a walk. I think we probably spent maybe $200,000.00 for the whole year in a gubernatorial race against Win Rockefeller who was, you know, a very wealthy man. And today, that would be laughable, for somebody to consider running for president -- for governor for $200,000.00 or running for the United States Senate. My Senate race in 1974 cost me $300,000.00 and if I had run again this year, it would have cost me a minimum of three and a half to four million.

And what I'm saying is with the cost of running for office, most of which is television -- about 80 percent of most people's campaigns go for television, which just keeps getting more and more expensive -- people are going to have to be very careful about how they vote. Because if you vote wrong and against the monied interests too many times, you're not going to raise three or $4 million dollars. If you're from New York, you're not going to raise 15 or 20 million or in California, you're not going to raise 20 or 25 million. So you have to be looking over your shoulder in every vote to see where the money's coming from. That's not intended to be a pejorative statement or a condemnation of my colleagues; it is a simple political fact.

INTERVIEWER: As senator during your 20 some odd years here, you've been a leader on a number of important issues. For example, you've been active, very active in efforts to cut the world's nuclear arsenal. As we were talking earlier, you mentioned that you thought that the use of the atomic bomb in Japan may have saved millions, tens of thousands of lives, including your own, and yet, you've become a leader in efforts to eliminate these weapons. What brought about this transition for you?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, I've always believed that the numbers game -- I can remember my wife, Betty, was a third grade teacher and she refused to teach her children duck and cover. Now she's not a chemist or a physicist or a scientist, but she had enough sense to know that duck and cover was the silliest thing anybody ever thought up. You know, if you were anyplace close to where an atomic bond drops, you can duck and cover all you want to, but you're still going to be fried. And it was designed to convince people that nuclear war was eminently survivable and particularly if you had more nuclear weapons than your opponent had. And so the Russians, the leadership in Russia were trying to convince their people of the same thing.

And so this game began and the escalation of the number of nuclear weapons had continued to escalate and it was absolute madness. And yet, the American people and the Russian people each believed that whoever had the most nuclear weapons was going to prevail in the next war. And the more I thought about this kind of madness the more I realized somebody ought to be speaking for sanity, somebody ought to be talking about getting rid of these things or at least reducing the number, you know, exponentially.

And as I began to raise my family -- I had three children, you know, and parents love their children more than life itself. And I thought, you know, if I'm going to be a responsible public citizen, I ought to be saying what I really think about these things because, you know, you have to put your faith in the American people. If you say things to the American people that make eminent good sense to them, they will usually opt for it. Harry Truman told me one time the only time this country ever gets in trouble is when there's some lying you know what sitting in the Oval Office.

And it's just tragic that the military-industrial complex in this country, they have a public relations operation that's second to none, and they help, as well as -- you know, some politicians actually believe this, I guess, and others find it to their political advantage to keep people scared to death all the time. And so instead of trying to address that fright and the ominousness of an all out nuclear war, people found it to their political advantage and the military-industrial complex found it to their economic advantage to continue frightening people. And so when I came here, I came here with the express intention of doing everything I could to bring some sanity to the nuclear arms race.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned the role of the military-industrial complex both in shaping our policy in terms of planning and procurement. How do you feel we need to address the situation in order to balance out their influence?

SEN. BUMPERS: Are you talking about the military-industrial complex?

INTERVIEWER: Sure, yes.

SEN. BUMPERS: You know, that's a very difficult thing to do because they also contribute lots of money in campaigns and I've already said, you know, the role that plays and how important it is. So people who don't have money to contribute to campaigns are really at a decided disadvantage in trying to convince people that the military-industrial complex has a very -- it's an economic agenda that's quite different oftentimes from reasonableness and sanity.

You know, I have a speech I used to make sometimes, that Robert E. Lee was not very crazy about the idea of the Civil War. But when it was over and he was gone from Appomattox back to Richmond, he stopped one day and he said, "You know, this war could have been avoided," and he said the politicians caused it. And he goes through this sort of soliloquy about how the war should and could have been avoided. But my thought is why was Robert E. Lee not out on the cutting edge saying that at the beginning of the war, instead of at the end?

Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech was not made in his first inauguration; it was made in his exit from the presidency after two terms. How beautiful it would have been with all the power that he carried into that office, the respect and the esteem that he was held in, if he'd have made that speech in his first inauguration.

So it's very difficult -- and Vietnam. If you listen to the Johnson tapes, which I recommend to everybody incidentally, you'll find that the Vietnam War was not designed to save the world from communism, it was not designed because there was a domino effect going to bring all of Southeast Asia under communist control. It was designed to save the hides of some politicians. And so that's what happens when you start trying to deal with the military-industrial complex. They've got a lot of money, they've got a lot of influence here. They contribute a lot of money to campaigns.

And so I don't know, that's the reason I vote for everything on education I can find. Education is the key to everything, you must teach people to think. Otherwise, we're going to keep on -- Churchill said one time, it was a really funny statement, he said, "You can always depend on the American people to do the right thing after they've explored all the other possibilities." And if people are well educated and taught to think, you can bring a lot of this stuff under control. We're not doing a very good job of that.

INTERVIEWER: One of the other aspects of the functioning of the military-industrial complex, as you've pointed out, is in promoting sales of U.S. weapons to foreign countries. And in fact, I believe you said that our weapons have a habit of outlasting our friendships around the world. What steps do you think we need to take to reduce the amount of emphasis that our corporations put on exports to foreign countries?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, I've done everything I know to do in the past 23 years. Because in this room right here, the admirals and generals come and they sit before us and they say, "We can build this airplane for $50 million, but you know, if we can sell this airplane abroad and instead of making a thousand, make 2,000, sell the other thousand abroad, we can make them for 40 million." I may have said "thousand"; I meant millions. And so that's very appealing. Well, we can get these planes $10 million cheaper by selling them abroad. Now that's one of the traditional classic ways that the industrial complex uses to get a weapon built, that we're going to sell it abroad and therefore, it's going to cut our costs. See, my thought has always been if it's that good a weapon, why do we want to share it with the rest of the world?

One of the first taxpayer rip-off junkets I took after I came to the Senate was to Iran. And I went out to this airport, this air force base in Iran, and here are all these F-14s on the tarmac and we're selling them to them right and left. So what happened? The Shah falls and who inherits the F-14s? One of our mortal enemies. We left Vietnam the third most powerful nation on earth, that's how much equipment we left in Vietnam.

But what we do is essentially compete with ourselves. We sell these airplanes and then they come before Congress and say, "Look, these people have this airplane." Well, it's our airplane, we sold it. But that's the rationale they used then to build the F-22 plane, you know, we've got to have something much better than that. So that's the way these arms sales --

I just recently wrote President Clinton about the decision to sell these weapons in South America. There's no earthly reason, no justification whatever to be selling these sophisticated weapons in South America.

INTERVIEWER: This is a reversal of a standing policy, longstanding policy.

SEN. BUMPERS: A longstanding policy and we're breaking it. And we're doing it because of the military-industrial complex influence.

INTERVIEWER: I'd like to shift gears just a little bit and talk a bit about Pentagon planning and policy. As you know, last year, the Pentagon released the quadrennial defense review which is the new centerpiece of Pentagon planning to take us into the next century. And it focuses to a large extent on the requirement for us to be able to fight two wars simultaneously, virtually simultaneously, without assistance of allies. Is this a realistic requirement? Because it is the cornerstone of Pentagon planning for about the next ten years.

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, let me say first of all, I didn't think much of the quadrennial review. As you know, it was made up of former military officers, and so I mean I knew, once they were appointed, what we could expect out of that review.

But having said that, the two-war concept never has made any sense to me. Now in all fairness to the quadrennial defense review, I'm not sure that this particular group are the ones who said we ought to be able to fight two wars. I think what they did was put their stamp of approval on it, but that had been done back when Les Aspin was Secretary of Defense and what they called the bottoms up review.

But in any event, the idea that we have to fight two wars simultaneously I think is a real stretch in today's world. There might come a time when things are so unstable in the future that that might make sense. Right now, it makes no sense whatever. And so what are we doing? We're spending, we're spending -- the United States alone spends twice as much, you think about this, the United States alone spends twice as much as Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cuba, I forget who else, what we call the eight rogue -- they're not rogue nations, that we just call the eight most likely enemies that we're able to face. We're spending twice as much as all of them combined. We're certainly not likely to have to fight all of them at one time.

And when you add NATO to that -- we spend $268 billion this year, 1998, we'll spend $268 billion. If you add NATO to it, it's 503 billion. Now that's 14 times more than the so-called rogue nations. That does not include China and Russia. If you add China and Russia to the mix, NATO and the United States together are spending four times as much as virtually the rest of the world combined.

Now you know, who favors a weak defense? Nobody favors a weak defense. But the problem here is -- you asked, this sort of goes back to an earlier question. People in the Senate are very reluctant to oppose the B2 bomber or the F-22 or the Sea Wolf submarine or to vote against the defense budget for fear their opponent in the next election will accuse them of being weak on defense. Sometimes, it's a very legal argument and yet, it's never bothered me very much, you know. I've gotten almost 60 percent of the vote every time I ran. I shouldn't say that, that sounds a little bit arrogant, I don't intend it to be.

What I'm saying is when you talk sense to people, they respond sensibly. You talk nonsense to them, oftentimes they respond nonsensically. But when you think about how bloated that defense budget is and how much more we're spending than the rest of the world, it's just absolutely unfathomable and we continue doing it.

INTERVIEWER: And yet, when you look at polling data of the American, a cross section of the American public, you find that on the issue of military spending, if you ask them are we spending too much, are we spending too little, are we spending about right, they tend to come back with the answer, "We're spending about right."

SEN. BUMPERS: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Is that a misunderstanding or a lack of understanding about the issue?

SEN. BUMPERS: Oh, sure. Oh, sure. And this is not to denigrate the public, you know. Most of them are busy making their car payments and trying to educate their children and making their house payments and paying their grocery bills. They don't have time to delve deeply into are we spending too much or too little on defense. In the first place, it's a very complex argument and it should be, that argument should be made in the Senate in a very sensible debate. But we never really get a chance to debate it in a sensible way because we're just too busy getting it all passed and getting it out of the way.

I'm on the Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations and I can tell you, when you start fighting in there about some of these weapons systems, I mean you know, you just get run over like a Mack truck hit you. It's what you'd sort of call a freebie. You can vote for all the defense spending you want to and it will never cost you a vote. It certainly will never cost you a vote from somebody who otherwise would have voted for you. It's just one of those things that if you say, "I have voted for a strong defense, I want American to be second to nobody in defense, in our strength," who's going to vote against that? So the debate, the real debate is put off to one side and we just keep adding billions and billions.

You know, one of the things we're doing right now, I'm kind of roving at your expense maybe, but we're decommissioning ships that when they were built, we were told had a 35-year life expectancy. Now we're decommissioning dozens of ships, dozens of perfectly good ships, even the USS ARKANSAS, my home state, being decommissioned after 18 years, has almost 20 years left on its life expectancy. It's state of the art, $300 million when it was built, carries cruise missiles, guided missiles, it's a nuclear ship. And we're doing away with I don't know how many frigates, 20 or 30 frigates that have anywhere from 15 to 25 years left on their life expectancy. You know why? So we can build other ships, so we can keep the shipyards open. It is just the most insane thing I've ever seen in my life, it drives me crazy.

INTERVIEWER: What, then, do you think it's going to take to bring sanity to the system, is there a way?

SEN. BUMPERS: I'll tell you, the President of the United States, any president who's willing to take this issue on and raise the debate to the level that the people of America can understand can have a very, very dramatic effect on military spending.

You know, to give you some idea of why I know that most of the people who champion this so-called bloated defense -- they don't call it bloated, but that's what it amounts to -- the people who champion this bloated defense are the same ones that if you'd asked them in 1988, 1989, while the Soviet Union was still numero uno enemy, if you'd asked those people then, "If the Soviet Union were to disappear today, how much could we cut the defense budget" -- oh, you know, nobody dreamed that that was actually going to happen -- you'd have gotten a figure anywhere from 50 to $150 billion. The Soviet Union disappears and so what happens, in real dollars, defense spending has gone down just marginally.

But the truth is, this year, 1998, the defense budget is $268 billion. Now you think about that, you think about that and allow the fact that there's not an enemy in sight. The Soviet Union's gone. The Soviet Union's defenses are in shambles. It's not that the Soviet Union won't come back; they will.

That's one of the reasons I have a problem with NATO, I don't know whether I'm going to vote for NATO or not, because I can tell you, the Russians are very apprehensive about what we're doing.

INTERVIEWER: Do you mean NATO expansion?

SEN. BUMPERS: NATO expansion, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Well, since the end of the cold war and the sort of dissolution of the Soviet Union, what was once the focal point of our foreign policy, as you've pointed out, has really disappeared. Beyond the impact of the military-industrial complex in shaping policy, what do you think are really the forces driving the way we view the rest of the world and dictating our foreign policy today?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, I'll tell you, we have a very difficult time in America not having somebody to hate. I don't know that we're unique, I think maybe other nations suffer that same kind of schizophrenia. But you know, the Soviet Union was so handy for us for so many years, 70 years, and we spent so much of our political capital convincing the world that communism was terrible and that the Soviet Union was intent on world domination. And it's very difficult for us to go back on that now.

We're looking desperately for a new enemy, somebody to hate. My guess is China's going to be elected. But you know, you have to have somebody for a number of reasons. Psychologically, it comes in handy; number two, the military-industrial complex can't operate very well, unless they've got somebody to say, "There's the threat."

INTERVIEWER: Is there a role in the future for a United Nations or another international organization in responding to --

SEN. BUMPERS: We don't need another international organization, the United Nations is just fine. I'll tell you, some of the mail I get, you know, I can always tell when some lunatic has been on talk show radio and my mail starts coming in, you know, about the United Nations.

Isn't it interesting, it was the United Nations who approved Desert Storm. It was the United Nations, virtually every nation in the United Nations who fought with us in Desert Storm, including the Russians. If you think about for 70 years, we had convinced the world how terrible the Russians were and then all of a sudden, two years after the Soviet Union falls, they're fighting beside us in Iraq. They voted to go to war in the United Nations. Everybody in the United Nations voted to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait.

I don't know what more people want. You know, it's like religion; if you didn't have religion, you'd have to invent it. It's the same way with the United Nations; if you didn't have a United Nations, a world organization of nations, you'd have to invent one. And really, it embarrasses me that the United States is the deadbeat in the United Nations. The House very irresponsibly cut the provision that was in the Appropriations Bill to pay $900 million in back dues the United States owes the United Nations. So I don't know how much longer the United Nations can go without the 25 percent of their budget coming from the United States and I'm hoping that Bill Clinton will take that on as one of his first priorities when we go back into session.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, in reading over some of the material I did in preparing to sit down and talk with you, I came across an article that discussed a visit you make every year to the Governor's School in Arkansas.

SEN. BUMPERS: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: It's a summer program for gifted high school seniors.

SEN. BUMPERS: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: This obviously seems to be very important to you. Do you want to explain why it is that you feel --

SEN. BUMPERS: This is a program that then Governor Clinton institute in Arkansas and it's a six-weeks course for gifted and talented students from all over the state. There are about four or 500 of them that come to what's called Governor's School. And they have speakers in; I think I've spoken -- I think I have not missed a single year speaking at Governor's School since it started. And it's very important to me because they're tomorrow's leaders and the things you say to them they will remember and relate to longer than the ordinary student would.

And since they are tomorrow's leaders, I don't mind telling you, you know, I try to convince them of their civic responsibilities, of the necessity that they be involved in the political process, and sort of shame them in a way, you know, say, "If you don't do it, who's going to do it," and remind them that democracy is participatory, if you don't participate in it, it's not going to survive. I do all those things to --

INTERVIEWER: When we finish up where we were, go back to that, and then I'll ask you a couple of questions, just --

SEN. BUMPERS: What were we on? We were talking about young students today.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

INTERVIEWER 2: What's on the minds of kids today?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, when the future leaders of this country talk to you, what are their concerns, what do they express to you as the things that they view as the problems they're going to have to face in the future?

SEN. BUMPERS: They're concerned about their education and they're not so concerned about economic matter or military matters as they are about getting an education so they'll at least have a shot at the piece of the rock. But they are all, they're all much more wired into politics than the ordinary student. I mean they're interested in voting, they're interested in who's in office now and who the president is, those kinds of things. And they're genuinely concerned. Virtually every one of those kids will get involved in the political process, I can tell you.

INTERVIEWER: Going back for a minute to what we were discussing earlier, why is it you that feel that the bloated military-industrial complex is such a problem? What are the ramifications for us as a nation if the current trends in spending and planning continue?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, this country has unbelievable problems and most of the problems cost a lot of money. And when we're spending as much as we are on defense, which in my opinion, you know, is billions and billions more than is necessary, what you're doing is you're slurping up money that could be spent in ways that would make the country actually greater. Your defense budget ought to be enough to make sure that you have enough military spending to implement your foreign policy and to protect this nation against all comers, foreign and domestic. That's fine. We have much more than that now.

So what do we have in education? We have a terrible shortfall in education. What do we have in medical research? The Institutes of Health can only fund about 27 percent of all the good applications they get for medical research. And when I think of the roughly million to two million homeless people on the streets of this country that we're not doing anything about because we don't have the money -- the President is now addressing child care which is so important to working moms and you know, most of those working moms don't make enough to pay for child care; if they don't get subsidized child care, they can't work, and their children are going to be left with one person and another person.

So all I'm saying is when you consider the unmet needs in this country, our national parks -- take the national parks. I've been on that committee ever since I came to the Congress. It would take $7 billion today to bring our national parks up to the standards we'd all like them to be at. We can't do it. As I say, the military gets theirs first; everybody else gets what's left.

And so when you ask me why is this such a momentous thing to me, about how bloated the military budget is, it is simply that there are other things that go to the heart of the greatness of this country other than how many tanks and planes and guns you have. And it's what kind of people we are, how well educated we are, how civilized we are, how we treat each other, all of those things, and health, the good health of the nation. And so we're sacrificing those things to a large degree in order to accommodate the number one thing on everybody's mind, that's defense. So that's one of the reasons I'm so violently concerned about it, is I see the strength of the nation can be sapped in more ways than not spending money on defense.

You're looking at a guy who went to school on the G.I. Bill, my brother and I both went to school on the G.I. Bill. If I were President of the United States, I would introduce a bill the first day of this next Congress for another G.I. Bill, only I would include every kid in America, not just the people who fought in World War II. So I can tell I'd never have been governor, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you as a United States Senator if it hadn't been for the G.I. Bill. And my father almost would have stolen to make sure that his children got a good education.

I got an education, but my brother and I both went to very prestigious law schools and courtesy of the taxpayers of this country. We had Pell grants and we had student loans and they were very effective.

I talked to a bunch of students from a small Baptist university in Arkansas the other day and I said, "How many in this room . . .," there were 20 there, ". . . either are on Pell grants or student loans?" About 17 of them; only three of the kids out of that 20 had parents who could afford to send them to that school. I'm just saying that college education, four years past senior high school ought to be a given, it ought to be -- and frankly, it ought to be mandatory.

But we are one of the most unsophisticated nations, politically, in the world. Now that's a tough thing for me to say because it sounds like I'm putting people down. But oftentimes, the people in this country are swayed by one television ad on one issue and they vote for you or against you on that sort of thing. What education does is teach you to ferret out that kind of nonsense and you vote for somebody you think has good core values, that will make the nation stronger. And the only way you're ever going to get people tuned in like that is to educate them.

INTERVIEWER: Over the next year, you're going to have an opportunity as you finish out your term to look back at some of the things that you've been able to do and maybe not do during your 23 years here. As you look back, what do you consider to be some of your greatest achievements and perhaps some of the things you're disappointed you weren't -- haven't seen come through?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, it's very difficult to say. My accomplishments have been mostly in the environmental field. I have done everything I could to establish as many national parks as I could, to make sure the parks were funded as much as I could get them funded for because I think it's extremely important that we preserve those parks. I've championed these wilderness bills to set millions and millions, really hundreds of millions of acres of forest lands aside that could not be touched, just to preserve them forever, in my own state and national wildlife refuges and so on, simply because those will have the most enduring qualities, that is they should last forever. I probably take more pride in that than anything, unhappily.

Some of the things I felt strongest about I lost. I've tried to reform the mining laws of this country which allow the biggest mining companies in the world to take billions of dollars worth of gold and silver off federal lands that belong to the taxpayers of this country and they don't pay a dime in royalty for it. And I've tried to --

Ultimately, the space station. The space station is going to be -- is going to go down in history as one of the most wasteful expenditures in the history of the country. It's going to cost a hundred billion dollars when it's all said and done. The Russians have had space stations up, I think they've had seven space stations since 1971, and we act like international space freedom is something unique and it's going to cure warts and moles and cancer and AIDS and everything else. It isn't going to cure anything; it's going be a hundred billion dollar sump hole. As a matter of fact, I anticipate it'll cost more than a hundred billion dollars when it's all said and done. And yet, I've consistently lost that battle.

The things like mining, the mining laws and the space station, trying to get the defense budget under control, I used to think I would ultimately win those battles. I kept losing, but I kept thinking I would win.

And I'm not quitting because of that; I'm quitting because it's time, I'm burned out and at my age, it's time to move on and do something else. But I can tell you that I concluded that I was not going to win those battles. So maybe I will teach at the University or Arkansas or someplace, I've had several teaching offers, where I maybe can influence some young minds and hopefully, some day, somebody else can accomplish those things that I didn't get accomplished.

INTERVIEWER: So if you can project yourself into the future for a couple of years and look back, what would you like to leave behind as your legacy, not necessarily as a senator, but as a person?

SEN. BUMPERS: As a person who spoke out on issues that I thought really went to the very heart of this nation's existence, our continued existence, and the quality of lives that my children and grandchildren can expect from this nation. More than anything else, I think I have cast a lot, I've probably cast as many unpopular votes as anybody in the Senate. And by the very definition, an unpopular vote is a courageous vote because if it were popular, it wouldn't be a courageous vote. I've been one of four or five a lot of times and that's never bothered me in the least.

If I were going to look back, it would be because I have stood up for what I believed. I was the only southern senator to vote against the prayer in school amendment, which would have been a disaster for this nation. I always ask these kids what nation that has a religious state, like Iran or Iraq or any of the rest of them, "Which one of those countries do you want to live in?" And yet, that's where this so-called sponsored prayer in schools takes you, down that road. And I could go through a whole list of constitutional amendments.

I have defended the Constitution at every chance. I voted against 37 constitutional amendments since I've been in the Senate and for one and that one was a mistake, I wish I hadn't cast it. But people around here trivialize the Constitution. It's the document that's made this country great, it's made us free, the longest living organic law in the world, and yet, people around here treat it as though it's just a rough draft.

So as I look back, as I say, I cast courageous votes, I stood up for what I believed, and I've tried very hard to mind my ethics and my integrity to make sure that nobody could ever question either one of them. If you lose those or if those are under question, then you lose all your effectiveness here. I never have all that much effect, but I certainly wouldn't have had the effect I did have if I hadn't openly stated my mind and told people the truth as I saw it. So if I were going to look back on my career, that's what I would want people to remember me for.

INTERVIEWER: Senator Bumpers, thank you.

SEN. BUMPERS: Thank you.

(End of interview.)