[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 64 (Thursday, April 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5278-S5282]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HOUSE

  Mr. SANTORUM. I want to commend the Senator from Wyoming for his 
continued effort to bring the freshmen here to the floor on a regular 
basis to talk about where this Senate is going and how we are living up 
here in the Senate to what the country said on November 8, and what the 
House is obviously very successfully doing in living up to their 
promises to the folks that they made when they ran for office back last 
year.
  The first thing I want to do is congratulate the House, having voted, 
pretty strong showing last night, for a tax reform bill and a tax cut 
bill--both a tax cut bill and a tax reform bill. It is a progrowth 
bill, a bill that is going to create more jobs, it will help families, 
eliminate the marriage tax penalty that has existed--which is a 
tremendous break--an encouragement for people to marry, an 
encouragement to supporting families.
  It is a bill that says to seniors that we believe seniors have value 
and worth, that seniors can, in fact, work past the age of 65 and earn 
a modest amount of money--$20,000, $15,000--and not lose your Social 
Security benefits, if you are age 65 to 70.
  We think that that is important. It is an important sign to seniors 
that we understand that they have value to give to the communities and 
to give it their businesses, and that we do not want to discourage 
seniors out of the work force and penalize them at a rate of over 50 
percent in taxation if they make over $9,600 a year as a senior. We 
think that that is a very positive thing that occurred in that tax bill 
last night.
  The adoption tax credit provision which encourages adoption, we 
believe, is also a very, very positive profamily kind of tax change. 
And the list goes on.
  I want to commend them for the great work that they did in paying for 
the program. It is not a tax cut that will increase the deficit. They 
offset it, more than offset it, with spending reductions in order to 
pay for the tax reductions.
  That is the kind of decision that we will have to be making, whether 
it is, in fact, better to have a person keep their money or is it 
better to have a person send their money here and for Washington to 
figure how best to spend it, and of course take the cut for bureaucracy 
and write rules and regulations that make no sense, then send it back. 
That is the difference.
  I think it is a pretty easy call for most Americans. I am not 
surprised that it passed over in the House, and I will not be surprised 
when it passes over here in the Senate.
  On a larger scale, I want to congratulate the House for the great 
work that they have done. In 91 or 92 days they passed nine major 
pieces of legislation, nine major bills. The amount of work that they 
did in working--and I know a lot of folks around do not believe that 
Members of Congress and the Senate work very hard. I will say if we 
look at what the House of Representatives has done in this first 90 
days, and the amount of hours they put in legislation in committees and 
in working groups and putting this stuff together to pass this kind of 
massive change that they promised, I think a person might think 
[[Page S5279]] again as to whether Members of Congress do in fact earn 
their keep.
  Let me suggest that the most important thing--I ask this question all 
the time--the most important thing that came out of the House of 
Representatives was not the tax bill, was not the balanced budget 
amendment, was not the line-item veto.
  The most important thing was they kept their promise. They kept their 
promise. They ran and they said, ``If you elect us, we will do 1, 2, 3, 
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10--we will do these 10 things. We promise you we 
will bring them up and we will get a vote and we will work our darndest 
to try to make that happen.'' They could not promise passage because 
you never know. But they promised they would try their best.
  Do you know what? They introduced bills exactly the way it was 
written in the contract. They did not change it. They did not say, 
look, I am going to cut taxes for middle-income people and then pass a 
tax increase. They did not say they were going to be for a balanced 
budget amendment and then pass big spending increases. No, they did 
exactly--exactly what they promised the American public. And they 
succeeded on 90 percent of it.
  They are batting .900. Ted Williams would be proud--.900; 90 percent 
of what they said they would try to do, they did.
  The only one they failed on was the constitutional amendment, which 
as most people know takes two-thirds of the body to pass, which is well 
beyond the number of Republicans that there are in the House of 
Representatives. So: The first ever vote on term limits. They failed, 
but 85 percent of the Republicans supported it. They got a majority of 
the House to support it. It is building. It is on the track to 
eventually pass, probably after the next election. So I think the 
country should look at the House of Representatives.
  One of the big concerns I had when I came to the U.S. House, 4 years 
now, now here in the Senate, is I think the public has lost trust in 
our institutions. They do not believe that we mean what we say or say 
what we mean; we are here and all we care about is getting reelected 
and having some power and being able to throw our weight around. What 
the public really wants does not really matter. It is just this big 
game down here.
  Is it not nice to know that promises can be kept; that people do 
sometimes mean what they say? They made some hard decisions. A lot of 
this stuff was not easy to do. A lot of it came, as you probably heard 
in the last few weeks, with a lot of criticism raining down on how 
mean-spirited this Contract With America is.
  I know it is mean to cut off a lot of bureaucrats here in 
Washington--that is mean--and to give that money back to you. That is 
very mean to the people who are here to protect the bureaucrats. I know 
it is mean to say people who are on welfare have to work at some point. 
That is terrible. It is terrible that we should require people to work. 
It is just unbelievable to me that argument was made on programs that 
were trying to help people. We are trying to give more responsibility 
and freedom and choices back to people, but that is the way things are 
in this town. If we do not keep the power then it is mean, because of 
course we are the only ones who actually care about people. You do not 
care about your neighbor, we do. You do not care about your family, we 
do. We care about it more than you do.
  I am sitting right behind the desk of the Senator from Texas, Senator 
Gramm. I will never forget a statement he made on one of these talk 
shows. Ira Magaziner was on and they were talking about the health care 
plan of Clinton's a couple of years ago and Magaziner was making the 
point he does care about children, he does care about the young people 
in this country and the folks who are uninsured. He says, ``I care for 
your children as much as you do.'' That is what he said to Phil Gramm, 
and what Phil Gramm said, I think, was classic. And that is: ``OK, what 
are their names? What are their names?"
  You see, we all care. But do we really care about that one person? Do 
we really understand what their needs are? Not what ``the needs'' are, 
but ``their needs?'' What ``their concern'' is? See, that is the 
problem. We cannot deal with ``a concern.'' We deal with ``the 
concerns.'' The problem is ``the concerns'' sometimes do not beat ``a 
concern.'' And the closer we get to ``a concern'' and the closer we can 
tailor and allow the people who have the feeling and the relationship 
to deal with that concern, the better our country and the ``gooder'' 
our country is.
  This line has been used a lot around here and it is so true, the de 
Tocqueville line. ``America is great,'' he wrote in Democracy In 
America, ``America is great because America is good.''
  The people are good, they care about each other. They reach out to 
their fellow man. There are volunteer organizations that developed here 
in the 1800's and 1900's that just did not exist anywhere else in the 
world because Americans cared about each other and felt that 
relationship and kinship. And he said America is a great country 
because it is a good country. ``And when America ceases being good it 
will cease being great.'' We are ceasing to be good because we have 
delegated everything to this massive bureaucracy here in Washington to 
be good for us.
  You hear the people, as you will over the next few months, get up and 
talk about: How can you be so mean as to not give money to--this or 
that. Folks, it is not my money. See, I am taking that money from 
somebody else who worked darned hard to make it. And who says I know 
best how to spend their money to help somebody else? That is the basic 
premise of what is going on here.
  If you want to talk about the revolution that is going on, that is 
the basic premise. I care as much--I believe more--but I do not 
necessarily think I am the best person equipped to make those decisions 
for everybody. We can best make those decisions one-on-one, local 
communities and groups, as opposed to here in Washington, DC. That is 
the fundamental argument.
  So, when you look at the first 100 days and you see what has happened 
in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I believe what will happen in 
the U.S. Senate, if you look at what we have accomplished and the hope 
that we have given to Americans that we in fact can change, that 
America, again, can be good, that America can be great, I think it is 
an inspirational story.
  We have done something in the House--and I believe the Senate will 
follow--we have done something that is more important than any one 
particular thing, and that is, I hope, we have restored the faith that 
the American public used to have in their institutions. Because if they 
do not believe in us, if what we say is irrelevant, if they do not 
believe in anything we say on the campaign trail, that we are just a 
bunch of folks who say what we need to say to get elected--if they do 
not have any faith in what we stand for, if they think all we are going 
to do is change our minds when we get down here, then democracy itself 
is in danger.
  If people do not believe in us anymore, if we do not stand for 
anything anymore, if all we are is symbols of a corrupt institution 
that does not respond to what the will of the public is, then democracy 
fails. It falls from within.
  Whether you agree with what the House of Representatives has done, 
whether you agree 10 percent, or 90 percent, or 100 percent, you have 
to stand back and say ``Well done. You did what you said you were going 
to do. We may not like it but, darn it, you did. And you have to tip 
your hat to that.''
  Hopefully here in the Senate, while we did not sign the Contract With 
America, and no one in this institution did, and that is often 
repeated, we have an obligation to do something. We have an obligation 
to follow through and let the country know that elections do matter; 
that when the country speaks, we here in Washington, in both the House 
and Senate, listen.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I yield time to the chairman of our 
freshman group, the Senator from Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The Senator from Oklahoma is 
recognized.
   [[Page S5280]] Mr. INHOFE. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the 
Senator from Wyoming for giving me some time to talk about this.
  I do not think there is any subject nor any issue in America right 
now that people are more concerned about than what is happening with 
the budget and with the deficit.
  I just had an experience a minute ago with two very dear people, and 
I would like to deviate a little. It fits very well into this. Two of 
the most beautiful women in America are Yvonne Fedderson and Sara 
O'Meara. They started many years ago an effort to address the problem 
of child abuse. This blue ribbon is in recognition of Child Abuse 
Prevention Month that is taking place right now. Here is a bumper 
sticker. They started many years ago a program outside of Government to 
do something effectively about the problem of child abuse in America.
  We saw just yesterday a bill which passed the House of 
Representatives that also recognizes that the problems of this country 
are not going to all be addressed by Government. In fact, in many 
cases, Government is the problem.
  This particular program, which was started by Sara O'Meara and Yvonne 
Fedderson many years ago, has a hotline throughout the Nation. Anyone 
who has an idea about or knowledge of child abuse can call 1-800-4-A-
CHILD.
  The reason I bring this up, Mr. President, is because this is a 
national problem. It seems to me that in the last 40 years the very 
liberal Congress in both Houses has felt that you had to respond to 
these problems by starting some new Government program. I suggest to 
you that most of the programs which address the problems in the Nation 
today are not Government programs, they are programs in the private 
sector. This program is a perfect example. They have in every State and 
every contiguous State--and perhaps the others too--a program where 
people can call a hotline and do something about one of the most 
serious problems in America, which is child abuse.
  The Government has a number of programs. But I suggest to you when 
you look at the effectiveness of these programs it is far more 
effective to have one that is run by the private sector, that is 
staffed by volunteers, than having one that is a Government program. 
Our problem is we have become accustomed to assuming that the problems 
can be addressed by the Federal Government better than by the private 
sector.
  In the bill that was passed yesterday in the House of 
Representatives, there is a tax incentive for families to take care of 
their own children as opposed to Government taking care of them. There 
is a tax incentive--not many people are aware of this--of $500 for 
people to take care of the elderly. This is something that many people 
did not know was in that bill, which just passed yesterday. The idea is 
families in this country can take on a lot of responsibilities that 
Government has learned to assume.
  I read something with interest the other day. It is an article by 
Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell is an editorial writer. The name of his 
article is ``A Dishonest Slogan.'' This ``Dishonest Slogan'' is the one 
that is called trickle down. It seems as if the liberals feel that with 
Government, higher taxes are the answer to our problems--and this was 
said, by the way, on this Senate floor by the distinguished Senator 
from West Virginia, Senator Byrd--that we need higher taxes in America. 
Then when they talk about the fact that they are giving tax reductions, 
they try to use slogans like ``trickle down.''
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, at this point in the 
Record, this article by Thomas Sowell be printed.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                           A Dishonest Slogan

                           (By Thomas Sowell)

       If there were a prize for the most dishonest phrase in 
     politics, the competition would be fierce and the outcome 
     very uncertain. However, my nomination would be the phrase 
     ``trickle-down economics.''
       The trickle-down theory is supposedly the notion that the 
     way to benefit the poor is to have the government provide 
     benefits to the rich, which will then trickle down to the 
     poor. But there is simply no such theory--not in Adam Smith, 
     not in John Maynard Keynes, not in Milton Friedman. Not in 
     anybody.
       My specialty within economics is the history of economics 
     theories--but there is no history of any such theory.
       Still, no political campaign is complete without liberals 
     accusing conservatives of applying trickle-down theories to 
     benefit the rich, instead of having the government give 
     benefits directly to the poor. With Republicans likely to 
     raise the issue of reducing the capital gains tax in the next 
     Congress, Democrats will no doubt cry that this is a ``tax 
     break for the rich'' based on ``trickle-down economics.''
       Let's go back to square one. There is no investment income 
     to tax until after an investment has been made and people 
     hired--and after it all works out successfully, which is by 
     no means guaranteed. In short, the benefits to investors come 
     after the benefits to those they employ, not before.
       When investments finally pay off, perhaps years later, it 
     would make no sense to call the eventual profit simply income 
     for the year in which it is received. That is why capital 
     gains are taxed differently from ordinary income.
       Often there is no real capital gain at all, except on 
     paper. If you bought an asset back when the price level was 
     half of what it is today, and you sold the property for twice 
     what you paid for it, then you have just kept up with 
     inflation. If you sell it for 50% more than you paid for it, 
     you have actually lost part of the real value.
       Even when your capital ``gain'' does not keep up with 
     inflation, the government still taxes you on it. Moreover, 
     these kinds of ``gains'' go into the statistics supposedly 
     showing that ``the rich are getting richer and the poor are 
     getting poorer.''
       Despite tilting against the windmills of a nonexistent 
     trickle-down theory, the last thing the liberals want to do 
     is to give benefits directly to the poor. They may not have a 
     trickle-down theory, but in practice they make sure that any 
     benefits to the poor trickle down through layers of 
     bureaucracy and are siphoned off to pay the salaries, 
     consulting fees and research grants of all sorts of 
     ``experts'' with degrees.
       That is why studies have shown that every man, woman and 
     child in America could be raised above the official poverty 
     level by direct transfers of money, at less than half the 
     cost of all the government's antipoverty programs. Lots of 
     people who are not poor by any stretch of the imagination 
     have to be taken care of out of antipoverty money.
       Proposals to replace public housing programs, 
     ``retraining'' programs and other social experiments with 
     hard cash given directly to the poor have repeatedly run into 
     a buzz saw of opposition from liberals. They don't mind more 
     money being given to the poor--or to anybody else--but not at 
     the expense of programs that employ bureaucrats and 
     ``experts.''
       These anomalies are not accidental. The welfare state is 
     ultimately not about getting more money into the hands of the 
     poor but about getting more power into the hands of 
     government. In program after program, the poor are to benefit 
     only insofar as they allow themselves to be directed and 
     manipulated by their self-anointed saviors.
       When people get private sector jobs instead of government 
     handouts, the situation is completely different. Capital 
     gains tax reforms are needed simply to stop the government 
     from discouraging the investment that provides employment.
       It is nonsense to call this ``trickling down'' because the 
     investment has to happen first, and workers have to be hired 
     first and paid first, before the investor has any hope of 
     reaping any gains. Since capital gains come last, not first, 
     they do not ``trickle down.''
       Obviously, the higher the capital gains tax rate, the less 
     the incentive to invest and hire. If you want more Americans 
     employed, you don't punish people for employing them. 
     Otherwise, the investors have every incentive to invest their 
     money in some other country that doesn't have such high 
     capital gains taxes--or doesn't have capital gains taxes at 
     all.
       But the liberals are so politically dependent on class 
     warfare, and on their own role as saviors of the poor, that 
     they are very slow to admit that there wouldn't be so many 
     poor for them to save if there were more jobs created by the 
     economy. On the other hand, if they are not playing the role 
     of saviors of the poor, how are they to get re-elected?

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, the idea is that nobody benefits from a 
capital gains tax or some of these tax reductions until they have 
actually provided a stimulus to the economy. For example, if you have a 
capital gains tax, the individual who will eventually benefit from that 
tax cannot benefit until he has already started a company, already 
invested his money, already met a payroll, and already hired people. 
What the liberals in Congress refuse to recognize is that for each 1 
percent increase in economic activity in America, it produces an 
additional $24 billion of new revenue.
  I am so sick and tired of sitting on the floor here listening to the 
liberal Members of Congress talk about how it did not work in the 
1980's, how we tried tax reductions in the 1980's and look what 
happened to the deficit. Well, the deficit went up during that decade, 
but 
[[Page S5281]] it did not go up because we had tax reductions. It went 
up because the Members of the House and the Senate have an insatiable 
appetite to spend money that is not theirs and are borrowing it from 
future generations.
  I will give you an example. Back in 1980, the total revenues that 
were derived from the marginal tax rates in America were $244 billion. 
Then, in 1990, the total revenues that were derived from the marginal 
tax rates in America were $466 billion. What happened during that 10-
year period? During that 10-year period, we had the greatest tax 
reductions in this Nation's history. Remember, the highest rate went 
down from 70 percent to 28 percent. We had capital gains tax 
reductions. We had reductions all the way down so that people knew they 
could keep more of the money that they made. This stimulated people to 
invest in equipment, in company, in employment, and it did, to borrow a 
phrase that is often abused by our President, it did ``grow America.'' 
So we almost doubled the revenue during that 10-year period when we had 
the largest tax reduction.
  I would like to mention one of the things that I told the Senator 
from Wyoming, Senator Thomas, that I would make a reference to; that 
is, the moral issue that we are dealing with right now. I gave a talk 
not long ago where I had the pictures of two beautiful children on an 
easel behind me. Those two beautiful children I identified in the first 
hour as being my two grandchildren, Glade and Maggie. Each of them will 
be celebrating their second birthday this month. They are beautiful 
little children.
  When people talk about the programs they say are going to be cut when 
we have passed a balanced budget amendment--and we will try to reach a 
balanced budget--and they try to pull on the heartstrings of America 
and say that all these great, wonderful Government social programs are 
going to be cut, they neglect to tell you who is really going to be 
punished by these programs, who is really going to be punished if we do 
not do something to bring the budget into balance, which we are going 
to do. And I do not want to sound partisan here, but by Republicans 
taking over the House and the Senate, you are going to see some cuts. 
You are going to see come growth caps. But you will see our budget come 
back into balance, and we are targeting right now the year 2002.
  Let us look at what is going to happen if we do not do this in 
America. According to the CBO and all the other analysts, where are we 
in America today if we do not have some type of a change in the program 
that we have had? They have said that, if we continue to go on as we 
have gone in the past, if we do not pass a balanced budget amendment, 
if we do not bring it into balance, that a person who is born today, 
during his or her lifetime, will have to pay 82 percent of his or her 
lifetime income for taxes to support the Government programs. Stop and 
think about that.
  The other day, we had an interesting visitor. We had a number of 
visitors from all over the world. This was during the National Prayer 
Breakfast. We had people from all over the world there. I was in charge 
of a group of the national visitors from the Ukraine, from Eastern 
Europe and some of that area. One man was here from Moldavia. He asked 
me a very interesting question. He said, ``Senator Inhofe, here in the 
United States, how much can you keep?''
  I said, ``Pardon me? I do not understand what you are saying.''
  He said, ``Well, when you earn something, how much do you have to 
give the Government?''
  I said, ``Well, that is a real interesting question.'' I kind of 
established a guess because there is not really a very simple answer to 
that question when you stop and think about what the Government really 
absorbs.
  But he said, ``We are celebrating in Moldavia. We are so thrilled 
that finally, after all these years of communism, we now have a free 
economy. We now have a free society. We now can own property. We now 
can buy businesses and we can work hard and pass on to future 
generations that which we reap.''
  I said, ``In your country, how much do you have to give the 
Government?''
 He said, very proudly, ``We get to keep 20 percent.'' I said, ``How 
does that work?'' He said, ``Well, when you earn money, if you earn a 
dollar, you have to give 80 cents of that dollar to the Government.'' 
They do not wait until year end, Mr. President. This is something that 
is ongoing. And then we looked around at each other and thought, here 
are these people, seeking their freedom, so excited about this, they 
are all through with communism, and they can benefit and they can 
enrich themselves and future generations and how happy they were, and 
yet they have to give to Government 80 percent of what they have.

  Mr. President, that brings it really to the surface of where we are 
today. If we do not do something to change this path, we will be behind 
Moldavia. It will cost our future generations 82 cents on the dollar.
  So I would like to think that this is not a fiscal issue. It is a 
moral issue. We are going to see in the next few weeks the Republicans 
coming out in the House and the Senate with a program, with a budget, a 
proposed budget that would eliminate the deficit by the year 2002. I 
disagree with the way we are doing it. I hate to be the one who 
disagrees with my own party. I have talked to different people who are 
on the Budget Committee, and I say I think we are making a mistake when 
we come out with a budget and say exactly where we are going to cut 
programs, where we are going to expand programs. Why not do what we 
know would work? Let us put spending caps on. If we initiate a 
resolution that says we are not going to let any Government program 
increase more than 2 percent, we would not touch one program, not have 
a reduction in one program, not have elimination of one program, and we 
would be able to balance the budget by the year 2002.
  That is because--and most people do not realize it and you are not 
going to hear it said by a lot of the liberals here in Congress--our 
problem is not where to cut programs but how to stop the accelerated 
growth. And when you hear people like the President standing up and 
saying proudly, ``We are cutting the deficit,'' that is garbage.
  There is an article everyone should read. It was in the Reader's 
Digest last year. It was called ``Budget Baloney.'' And in it they 
described how Members of Congress say they are cutting the deficit. 
They described it this way: They say let us say you have $5,000 but you 
want to buy a $10,000 car. All you have to say is I really want a 
$15,000 car, but I will settle for a $10,000 car and I have cut the 
deficit by $5,000.
  That is the way they do things around here.
  Let me suggest to you that there is going to be a come-home-to-roost 
time. There is going to be a time when these individuals who have 
habitually voted for expanded Government into our lives and are not a 
part of the revolution of November 8 are going to have to come back and 
take the consequences.
  I would like to show you just two charts that we put together back 
when we were debating the balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution.
  This chart shows the characterization of those Members of the Senate 
who were voting for an amendment called the Right To Know Act. Now, 
what this was was an amendment to the balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution, and it said show us exactly where you are going to cut 
every program. Obviously, you cannot do that 7 years in the future. But 
we analyzed the voting behavior of the 41 Senate cosponsors of this 
bill. We find that every one of them voted yes on the $16 billion 
President Clinton tax stimulus program which was the largest increase 
in spending that we have had in one bill, I believe, in the history of 
the Congress; that every one of the 41 who had signed on as cosponsors 
to this amendment was ranked by the National Taxpayers Union as either 
a D or an F. In other words, the people who were behind this were the 
people who were the big spenders in Congress.
  Then the most revealing chart is the one that shows what is going to 
happen to a lot of these people by showing what did happen to them in 
the revolution of November 8.
  On November 8, there were either defeated or retired in the Senate 
eight Senators. Of the eight Senators, all eight voted for the spending 
increase. This was the spending increase that put all kinds of 
subsidized programs in 
[[Page S5282]] there, supposedly to stimulate the economy. All of them 
voted for the tax increase. The tax increase was the 1993 tax increase 
that President Clinton had. It was characterized as the largest single 
tax increase in the history of public finance in America or any place 
in the world, and those are not the words of conservative Republican 
Jim Inhofe. Those are the words of Patrick Moynihan, who at that time 
was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
  Further down here they all had either D or F ratings by the National 
Taxpayers Union. In other words, they were the big spenders, and those 
are the ones who were defeated. They are not here. Look around. They 
are not here.
  In the House of Representatives, 66 of them went out. Almost all of 
the 66 voted yes on the stimulus bill, voted yes on the tax increase, 
and had a D or F rating by the National Taxpayers Union.
  So I just suggest to you, Mr. President, that we make it abundantly 
clear to the liberals in Congress, the few liberals who are left, 
because most of them were wiped out in the November 8 revolution, there 
is going to be another wave coming up in 1996, and this is the 
opportunity for us to be fiscally responsible, for us to be able to 
stand up and say no to some of these useless programs that have 
outlived their usefulness and say yes to future generations, including 
my two grandchildren, Glade and Maggie Inhofe. This is what is going to 
work for America, and this is probably the centerfold of the revolution 
of November 8.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will please call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I understand that the parliamentary 
situation is that we are in morning business; is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Technically speaking, the Senate is on H.R. 
1158.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, if no one else is seeking recognition, I 
ask unanimous consent to proceed as though in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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