[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 60 (Friday, May 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4666-S4668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE GAS TAX

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will add a few comments to the comments 
offered by Senator Pryor from Arkansas and the comments offered by 
Senator Daschle, the minority leader. We have this morning seen a work 
crew of seven U.S. Senators trudge to the floor of the Senate and 
dutifully describe that all ills in America, present, past and future 
should be laid at the doorstep of the current President of the United 
States, President Clinton.
  I listened to see if I could find the ultimate charge, maybe that 
would be that the President is responsible for the Andromeda Galaxy 
that is racing at 4,500 miles an hour toward the Milky Way, of course, 
which is where we live. A galaxy three times the size of ours is racing 
at us 4,500 miles an hour, and most estimate, I think there is no 
disagreement, that when it hits us it will destroy our galaxy and us in 
about 4 to 5 billion years. Perish the thought. But if there is a 
Senate at some point in the future, someone will come and probably try 
to lay that at the footsteps of the current incumbent President. They 
did not quite get that far this morning, but close, close enough.
  The proposal this morning was we should cut the 4.3-cent gas tax. 
That may get done. I am not crazy about the gas tax because I come from 
a State that is a large State with very few people. The gas tax costs 
us twice as much per person as it costs people who live in New York 
because they do not drive as far as we do for much of anything. I 
mentioned the other day I have a friend from New York who described for 
me once she and her family were going to leave Yonkers, NY, I think, or 
Brooklyn, or one of those areas, and drive to New Jersey to see an aunt 
and an uncle. It was 60 or 80 miles, I guess. So they packed an 
emergency kit for their trunk and put blankets in the trunk, took food 
along and got all squared away to take the 70 mile drive, because those 
who live in New York do not drive 70 miles very often. It is a big

[[Page S4667]]

drive to see the relatives. In North Dakota, we drive 70 miles at the 
drop of the hat and think nothing of it.
  I am not a big fan of the gas tax. It affects us twice as much as it 
affects New Yorkers. However, the question seems to me, if we are going 
to repeal the 4.3 cents, how about repealing the 10-cent previous to 
that that Senator Dole had supported? Why not make it 14.3 cents? Or if 
you repeal the 4.3 cents, ask the question, in whose pockets will the 
4.3 cents go? The consumers, taxpayers, the people that drive to the 
pump to buy gasoline, or in the pockets of the oil industry?
  When we vote on whatever this proposal will be, and we may pass a 
4.3-cent gas cut--we may do that--we also will vote on an amendment 
that I offered that says let us guarantee, if we will do this, 
guarantee that this goes in the right pocket. There is a big pocket and 
there are small pockets, high pockets and low pockets. Make sure it 
goes in the right pocket.
  I can see what could happen and you can too, I am sure. You cut the 
gas tax 4.3 cents a gallon, drive to the gas pump to fill up your car, 
and the price is the same. What happened? The oil companies pocketed 
the difference. Anything wrong with that? No, they can do that under 
the current circumstance. It does not matter what the gas tax is. They 
can price gas the way they want to price tax. If we are going to do 
that and do this because we decide we do not want to build roads or 
improve bridges or reduce the deficit, if we are going to do it, make 
sure the money goes in the right pocket. We will have a chance to vote 
on an amendment and see whether we are doing it to put it in the right 
pocket or whether some do it and not care which pocket it goes in.

  This is not an idle issue. I do not blame anyone who wants to come to 
the floor and talk about taxes. It would be nice if taxes were lower 
for everyone at all times. I have some disagreement with a Senator who 
came to the floor yesterday to say until the day I was free of paying 
taxes I am not doing anything for myself. I have some problem with that 
because what does he think he is doing with the money he is paying to 
send his kids to school? Part of his tax bill is to build the school 
and pay the teacher and help send his kids to get educated. Is that not 
an investment for him and his family? Part of the tax is to pay for the 
captains, cruisers, jet airplanes and others in the Defense Department 
to protect the country. Is that not an investment in himself or this 
country? Part of his investment is in Social Security and Medicare and 
Medicaid.
  I just described the four biggest areas of public spending: 
Education, Medicare, Medicaid, health care, and defense. The four 
biggest areas of public spending. The question is, how much of each do 
you want? How much do you want to spend on defense? How much are you 
willing to spend and do you want to spend on Medicare and Medicaid? How 
much do you want to spend to have a Social Security system that works? 
That is the question for Members of Congress to answer. Should we try 
to minimize the tax burden at all times? Absolutely. Should we 
reconcile the amount of money we have with our appetite to spend it? 
Yes. It is one thing to say stand up here and talk of cutting taxes, 
but another thing to talk about what the taxes are being used for and 
what we want the Federal deficit to be.
  Now, if they propose to cut the gas tax, the first step would be to 
make sure it does not increase the Federal deficit. I think all of us 
believe that we ought to keep ratcheting down the Federal deficit, and 
it has come down for whatever reason one might want to ascribe to that. 
The Federal deficit has decreased rather dramatically in the last 3 
years. We ought to keep it going in the same direction.

  Some will say, the President ought to get the blame for everything 
that is wrong but not get the credit for something that is right. That 
is probably not a fair assessment of what should happen to a President. 
The fact is, the deficit has come down and some of that is to the 
credit of this President and to those in Congress who in 1993 voted to 
both cut spending and raise some additional revenue in order to bring 
that deficit down.
  If someone now proposes that we should have a tax cut of one type or 
another, then it seems to me we ought to make sure that tax cut does 
not increase the Federal deficit, first of all. Maybe that can be done. 
Second, we ought to make sure that the benefit of a tax cut goes to 
those that we talk about here on the floor of the Senate.
  It is interesting, we talk about middle-income people, a lot of folks 
talk about the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, the folks 
in the middle, middle-income Americans. I brought to the floor a 
discussion about middle income that I thought was the most interesting 
discussion last year. We were talking about safety nets and investments 
and spending programs and education and all the things, and how it 
affects various groups, and who is proposing to cut taxes and who 
benefits from that.
  A Member of the House of Representatives, in a newspaper said the 
following about middle-class, and his salary of $135,000 plus the 
$50,000 he gets in a police pension, ``does not make me rich, that 
doesn't make me middle class. In my opinion, that makes me lower middle 
class.'' This is a GOP Congressman from over in the House. He said, 
``When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000 a 
year, that's middle class. When I see anyone above that I think that is 
upper middle class.'' So, I read this, I scratch my head, and I think, 
here is someone serving in Congress that defines middle class as 
someone who makes between $300,000 and $750,000 a year. Then I 
understand why the policies this person proposed, he can claim are to 
benefit the middle class. I guess they are policies to benefit those 
who make from between $300,000 and $750,000 a year.
  In my hometown, I guess we do not have any middle class. We do not 
have anybody that reaches $300,000 to $750,000 a year in income. That 
is not middle class. He knows better than that, I am sure. He said it 
in the middle of this debate about who you are trying to help. Some of 
the discussion on the floor of the Senate with respect to the gas tax 
and others is that we need to make sure that those at the lower end of 
the economic ladder or those in the middle class are helped. There is 
anxiety out there, and I understand that. Here is a newspaper clipping 
that says, ``CEO's at Major Corporations Got a 23 Percent Raise in 
1995.'' So we have an economic ladder, and if you reach the top of the 
economic ladder, apparently, you get to keep floating up, because at 
the top you get a 23-percent salary increase in 1995. At the bottom of 
the economic ladder, if you are working for the minimum wage, you are 
part of 40 percent of the people who work for the minimum wage, and you 
are the sole income for your family, you have no raise and you did not 
get 23 percent. You did not get 15 or 10 percent--you did not get 1 
percent. You sure did not get the 23 percent that the CEO's of 
America's corporations got. You got zero.

  That is part of the reason some of us have said, ``Let us, this year, 
talk about an adjustment in the minimum wage.'' Is it not fair for 
those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder to also have an 
adjustment of some type? We are not saying make a dramatic wholesale 
change in the minimum wage. We are saying that when the bottom rung has 
been frozen for 5 years, without a 1-percent increase, it is time to 
make a reasonable, thoughtful adjustment for the bottom rung of that 
ladder.
  I mentioned, when I began to discuss the gas tax briefly, that you 
have some of the same circumstances with respect to the economics of 
that circumstance. The major oil companies have done really quite well. 
Chevron had a 34-percent gain from last year; Amoco, up 39 percent; 
Texaco, up 30 percent, Mobil, up 16 percent. I do not begrudge them 
that. I want them to do fine. I want them to find more oil, and I want 
more oil to be available. I want us to be able to have oil prices that 
are reasonable for drivers in this country. But when you see this, and 
you see prices spike up at the gas pump by 20 cents, and you see folks 
busting in the door of the Senate and saying the problem is apparently 
a gas tax that was applied 3 years ago, it seems to me there is a 
disconnection. If 4.3 cents is some magic figure because that is what 
President Clinton proposed in 1993, why not up it another dime and make 
it 14.3 cents?

[[Page S4668]]

 That includes President Clinton's and Senator Dole's gas tax 
proposals, and what they voted for. Just do the whole 14.3 cents, and 
while it is being done, make sure of two things: First, do not increase 
the deficit; and second, make sure it goes in the right pockets.
  I am also going to offer another amendment I hope the Senate will 
accept somewhere along the way. As long as we are going to talk about 
taxes--it is hard to offer an amendment on taxes because we do not get 
bills dealing with the revenue code on the floor of the Senate very 
often. Normally, when you offer it, you have to offer it to something 
else because you do not have the vehicle. If we are going to have a tax 
bill on the floor of the Senate, it would be my intention to offer, 
again, a very, very simple piece of legislation, and that is, let us 
end deferral in the Tax Code to allow corporations to move their jobs 
and their plants overseas, make the same product they made while they 
were here in America, and ship the product back to our country, and in 
our Tax Code they now have the opportunity to pay zero in income taxes.

  In other words, we have in our Tax Code a $2.3 billion incentive, in 
7 years, to say to people and companies, ``We will make you a deal. If 
you will close your American factory, get rid of your American workers, 
move overseas to a foreign country, make the same product and ship it 
back to America, we will give you a tax break, we will pay you to do 
it; we will pay you $2.3 billion to do it.''
  Now, if this country cannot take the first baby step in deciding that 
if there are incentives, there ought to be incentives for providing 
jobs in this country, and jobs should not be moving from this country 
to another country, paid for with incentives in our Tax Code that say 
to companies that if you do it, we will give you a break--if we cannot 
take a baby step to change that, nobody should dare stand up here on 
the Senate floor and say, ``I am for jobs in America.'' We ought not to 
be export neutral where jobs are concerned. You will not find much 
among academicians or economists on that point. So $2.3 billion exists 
as a reward for companies to move their jobs overseas. If we are going 
to have a tax bill on the floor of the Senate, let us have a tax bill 
that fixes that problem as well.
  I offered that last year on the floor of the Senate while debating 
another issue. And I lost on a near party line vote. It was 52 to 48, I 
believe. I indicated then I intended to raise this issue when a tax 
bill comes to the floor of the Senate, and I will raise this issue 
again, because I do not think it makes economic sense for our country 
to pay for moving jobs from America to foreign countries.
  Mr. President, this will be a year in which I assume there will be 
plenty of rhetoric on the Senate floor about a lot of things--some on 
our side, some on the majority side. There will be huffing and puffing 
on both sides. I understand that. There will be claims and 
counterclaims. Both sides will build word castles in the air about 
their particular program and how awful the other side is. The plain 
fact is that this place will work if we can find a way to sift through 
some of that and decide that there are things that we will agree on and 
advance those pieces of legislation.

  Last night, we passed an immigration bill. There were a lot of 
amendments to it. I supported a number of them and opposed others. But 
we passed it with very close to a unanimous vote. I think only three 
Members voted against it. We passed an antiterrorist bill a couple of 
weeks ago. We passed a significant health bill 100 to 0. As all of the 
positioning and jockeying goes on, there are things we can and should 
do. I am not coming here today to say that drivers in this country, 
taxpayers in this country, ought not to be relieved of some of their 
burdens. That is fine. I would like to find a way to bring the tax bill 
for all Americans down as far as we can reduce it. I would like to find 
a way to squeeze every single bit of Government waste out of this 
system--and there is plenty. I want to make sure that what we do is 
grounded in good economic sense. I want to make sure that what we do 
provides as their beneficiaries the American people. There are laws of 
unintended consequences in this Chamber, where we do a whole series of 
things that are alleged to accomplish one thing and end up 
accomplishing something very, very different.
  The gas tax is a very simple proposition. I do not know whether it is 
going to pass or not pass in this Chamber. I do know this: If it does 
pass, the only merit it has for the American people--passing a 
reduction of the gas tax--is if it goes in their pocket, not in the 
pockets of the oil industry. That is something all of us, as we debate 
this, ought to make certain will occur.
  I want to make one final point today. There have been seven speakers 
on the other side, and I understand that. That is the way the works. 
Senator Daschle and Senator Pryor and I are not coming to the floor 
simply to say it is all unfair. These are fair discussions of public 
issues, and where better to have them discussed than on the floor of 
the Senate. As we proceed down the road on the issue of trying to put 
together a budget for fiscal year 1997, I hearken back to the impasse 
and gridlock we had last year, and the gridlock that some predict will 
occur this year, and simply observe this. David Gergen, who worked 
first for Republicans and then Democrats--I think he served in 
President Reagan's administration, President Bush's administration, and 
the Clinton administration--wrote a piece for the U.S. News & World 
Report. In it, he said something I think is very important. I hope all 
of us can pay some attention to this year in order to avoid the 
gridlock we had last year. He said: ``Ronald Reagan, as President, 
insisted that there be a safety net, even as we cut Federal spending.'' 
He said, ``How soon we forget that, as President, Ronald Reagan 
insisted that seven key programs be in the safety net. Head Start, 
Medicare, Social Security, veterans, SSI, school lunches, and summer 
jobs for youth, would not be touched.''

  ``Now,'' Gergen says, ``six of those seven are under the budget 
knife.''
  The point is that, as we try to establish priorities, I hope all of 
us understand, as President Reagan understood, we need a safety net for 
some people.
  Summer jobs for disadvantaged youth. Is that important? Yes, I think 
it is. Let us measure that against some other things and decide that 
that is a safety net for vulnerable people.
  Head Start. Let us decide not to tell 60,000 Head Start kids that we 
cannot afford you anymore. Let us be able to tell 3-, 4-, and 5-year-
olds that there is a place in Head Start for you because we know that 
program works and improves your lives, and it saves this country money 
when it invests in young children. Let us take a look at what Ronald 
Reagan said in the early 1980's about a safety net, as we cut spending 
and chop spending in some areas where it deserves to be chopped. Let us 
also make sure that we have the right set of priorities with the people 
who need some help and need to have the comfort of a safety net because 
they do not have other opportunities.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor, and I make the point of 
order that a quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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