[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 108 (Monday, July 28, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8175-S8180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  A BALANCED BUDGET ACT AND TAX RELIEF

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I have just returned from my home State 
and I can certify that the issue of a balanced budget act and tax 
relief is on the minds of a lot of Americans. Everywhere I went, 
whether it was stepping out for lunch or meeting with various groups, 
somebody would come up and say: Get this done. Hold firm. Stay the 
course.
  America wants this to happen. America wants a balanced budget act to 
pass and be signed by the President. It will be the first one in nearly 
30 years. That is hard to believe, that we have so abused our financial 
health that this will be the first balanced budget we will be passing 
in 30 years. And they want the tax relief. I don't think I have met a 
citizen that didn't, in some way, start calculating, like the young 
county commissioner I met who is a farmer and a full-time county 
commissioner, and he has two children. He said, ``If that measure 
passes, that's going to save my family $1,000, $500 per child.'' Or the 
elderly couple who are concerned about maybe selling their home and 
relocating, who are concerned about the capital gains tax that 
currently rests against that property. Or the family that talked about 
the onerous nature of death taxes in America, the kinds of decisions 
and pressures it puts on small businesses and family farms. They really 
do want this done. I hope, as I said last week, the President will set 
aside the partisan nature of this issue, and trying to one-up somebody 
else, and just get it done.
  I was reading in today's Washington Post, it says:

       Congressional Republican leaders said last night they were 
     on the verge of a final budget and tax agreement with the 
     White House after making a major concession on the proposed 
     $500-per-child family tax credit and dropping their 
     insistence on ``indexing'' a reduction in the capital gains 
     tax.

  Or, in the New York Times, Monday, July 28:

       Budget Deal Down To ``Small Issues,'' Gingrich Declares. 
     Spokesman for President Says Assessment Is Premature--
     Meetings Continue.

  This is something that both the leaders of our House and Senate and 
President should really come forward on, get it done, and make a 
statement that we have, in a bipartisan way, produced major policy. I 
would revisit, once again, the fact that if the leadership of both 
parties in the Senate, the leadership of the Finance Committee, both 
parties, the leadership of the Budget Committee, both parties, if they 
all could find a balanced budget act and a tax relief act on which they 
could agree, it ought to send a pretty powerful message to the 
President and his administration. Remember that 73 Members of the 
Senate, a majority of both parties' conferences, voted for the Balanced 
Budget Act, and 80 of them voted for the Tax Relief Act.
  I don't know what more proof you could have that these proposals are

[[Page S8176]]

well-founded, evenly distributed, and essentially fair. Perfect? No. 
That's not possible in this environment. But anything that can get that 
kind of support of the leadership, as I said, of both parties, that is 
a powerful statement and I hope the President would take note of it.
  I would like to take just a few minutes and put these two major 
pieces of legislation in context. I think it would explain why 
somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of the American public wants this 
to happen. Let's just go back to the beginning of this decade, 1990. In 
1990, under the Bush administration, a historically high tax increase 
was passed in August 1990. In round numbers, about $250 billion of new 
tax burden were put on American workers and their families. A lot of 
people feel that had much to do with President Bush being defeated in 
the following election, in 1992. I think there were a lot of issues 
involved, but many feel that was the turning point.
  On top of that, his opponent, soon-to-be-President Clinton, was 
campaigning across the country that he was going to lower taxes, 
pointing to that tax increase of 1990. ``The middle class needs a 
break,'' he said. He was elected in 1992 and came to Washington as the 
new President. However, before he had moved into the White House, he 
had discarded that promise, and, by August 1993, in his first year in 
office, instead of lowering taxes on the middle class, he raised them. 
He raised taxes to an all-time--in an all-time historical--in the size 
of the tax increases, it was even larger than the previous one which 
occurred in the Bush administration. It was over $250 billion. So, 
between 1990 and 1993, the American workers and their families suddenly 
were carrying a half a trillion in new taxes, and they were paying the 
highest tax levels they had ever paid.
  It is little wonder there is so much anxiety in middle America and 
their families. Even with the economy in reasonably good shape, the 
enthusiasm is less than wondrous. I decided about 2-years ago to take a 
look at that family. That family in Georgia, and I think this would be 
true in most of our States, earned about $40,000 a year in gross 
income. Typically, both parents work today, as you know. And when 
President Clinton came to Washington, they were only keeping about 53 
percent of their paychecks. After they paid for State taxes, local 
taxes, and Federal taxes, cost of Government and their share of higher 
interest rates because of a $5.4 trillion national debt, they were 
keeping 53 cents on the dollar. Unfortunately, today they are only 
keeping 47 cents on the dollar. The decline in their disposable income 
marches on.

  These families, in my view, have been pressed to the wall, and we 
have made it exceedingly difficult for these families to do what we 
have always depended on the American family to do, that is, educate, 
house, provide for health, transportation, get the country up in the 
morning and off to work and school, and prepare their families and 
children for stewardship when it is their time to lead. In a situation 
where they are paying more in taxes than housing, education, and food 
combined, we have a problem in America. If the forefathers were here 
and could see what we have been confiscating and taking out of the 
checking accounts, and taking away from those who earned their income, 
they would be stunned. They would think this was a violation of the 
essential premises upon which the Nation was founded, which included 
economic freedom.
  Let me put this in another context. My mother and father, born in 
1912 and 1916, kept 80 percent of their lifetime paychecks to do the 
things I mentioned a moment ago: raise the family--me and my sister--
educate, house, provide for health and prepare for stewardship. My 
sister is 10 years younger than I. She will keep about 50 percent of 
her lifetime paycheck, and her daughter, my niece, who has just begun 
her career under the current scheme of things, will only keep about a 
third of her lifetime paychecks.
  My niece is not going to be free, by the American definition I 
understand, if 70-plus percent of her paycheck is going somewhere else 
and she is left with a third of the money she earns to do her job in 
life. Her options have been severely constrained from those of her 
grandmother and grandfather. Those options that my dad and my mom had 
are the very things that made America what it is.
  My dad began his career as a coal truck driver. Had he been born in 
the sphere of the Soviet bloc, I am convinced he would have died a coal 
truck driver. But, instead, he lived a life of entrepreneurial spirit 
and dreams and visions, creating businesses and jobs, the very things 
that economic freedom have done for our country. The genesis of all 
American glory is our freedom, and one of the cornerstones of that 
freedom is economic freedom, economic choices that families and workers 
in America can make that families and workers in many countries around 
the world could not.
  Which brings me to the point I am trying to make about the importance 
of this tax relief proposal. Keep in mind what I said a moment ago. In 
1990, $250 billion in new taxes were laid on the backs of American 
workers and families. In 1993, though promised tax relief, they got 
another $250 billion in taxes. So we now have, in 3 years, a half a 
trillion in new taxes. This proposal we are talking about is really 
only a first step. The net tax relief is $85 billion and you have to 
stand that against the $500 billion new tax burden.
  It really only represents relief of about 20, 25 percent of the taxes 
that have been put on the backs of these people in the last 36 months.
  In the last Congress, the new Republican majority tried to refund the 
President's tax increase. We sent the President a tax relief package, 
about $245 billion, but he vetoed it. So he kept that tax burden in 
place and on the back of every worker and every working family.
  We have been through another election. We had a President who said 
the era of big Government is over. We had a Republican majority in the 
Senate and the House committed to reining in the size of Government, 
committed to balancing our budgets, committed to lowering taxes and, 
finally, the convergence of these two agree to a minimalist--what this 
is--a minimalist tax relief. But nevertheless, it is moving in the 
right direction. It is moving in the right direction, and it will be 
significant to millions of American families. I hope that it is but the 
first step and that a healthier economy would produce yet a new 
opportunity to lower the tax burden.
  From my perspective, a worker in America ought to, at a minimum--at a 
minimum--keep two-thirds of their paycheck. Just two-thirds. It ought 
to be more. Getting to a position where they can keep two-thirds is a 
herculean task. They are currently keeping 47 to 50. On an average 
basis, that means this Congress, this President ought to be working to 
keep $8,000 per year--$8,000 per year--in the checking account of every 
average family across America.
  Just think what those families could do with that resource in the 
context of education, health insurance, housing, recreation, savings. 
American families don't save anything. They can't save for the rainy 
day. They can't save for education upfront. They are having a hard time 
saving for retirement.
  What can you save, Mr. President, after the Government has marched 
through your checking account and walked off with over half of it? Talk 
about freedom. I sort of look at it this way. If somebody marches 
through my checking account and takes over half of what I earn, they--
it--has more to do with my life than I do. In family after family 
across our land, that is what is happening today, and that is why this 
tax relief proposal is on target and correct, and the President needs 
to come forward, meet, as is being endeavored here of the leadership of 
the Congress trying to meet him halfway--just like what happened 
between the Democrat and Republican leadership here in the Senate --and 
get this done. Get this done for those average checking accounts and 
start finding a way to get that $8,000 back into the average checking 
account of the average working family across our country.
  There is one feature in the Senate proposal that we sent across to 
the House. We added it in the debate here. As you know, the President 
has called for $35 billion of the tax relief should be in tax 
advantages that occur against tuition and higher education and tax 
credits that occur for families who

[[Page S8177]]

have students in higher education. That is a huge piece of the $85 
billion, I might add. He and his colleagues are arguing that this tax 
relief for families that have students in higher education is the most 
important component of it, in his mind.
  There are some critics of that. I can support that, because it at 
least is leaving those dollars in the checking accounts of those 
families. I personally believe it should be broader based. I think if a 
family wants that tax relief to buy a new home, if a family wants that 
tax relief to deal with other problems--health--they ought to have the 
option. It ought not to be just tax relief only if you are a family 
that has a child confronting the cost of higher education. That is 
fine, too, but it ought to have been broader. But in the series of 
compromises with the President, we will probably come very close to 
honoring his request.
  In my view, while cost of higher education is critical, the problem 
in American education is in grades 1 through 12. It is at the 
elementary level. It is in high school. Look at the data. Somewhere 
between 50 and 60 percent of the students coming to college this 
September will not be able to read proficiently.
  Look at the comparison of our reading skills, our math skills, our 
science skills against the other industrialized nations. And I am 
talking about the students that are coming out of our elementary and 
secondary schools getting ready for college, and we don't look very 
well. Everybody knows it. We are at the bottom of the list time and 
time again. One through 10, we will be 10.
  So I think the President's proposal was weak on the failure to 
address issues at the elementary level, and I offered an amendment, 
along with our colleagues, which said that the savings accounts that 
were created also for higher education, in the version that came from 
the Senate Finance Committee, said you could take after-tax dollars, up 
to $2,000, and put them in a savings account and the buildup would be 
tax-free.
  So when you took it out to pay for costs of higher education, you 
would not pay taxes on the interest that had accrued. That is a good 
idea. But my amendment took it down to grade one and said you could use 
the buildup to pay for costs associated with elementary and high 
school. We said you could take it out for home schooling. We said you 
could take it out for transportation. We said that you could take it 
out for computers or tutoring. We said you could take it out for 
tuition. If you, the family, decided that you wanted your child to go 
to some other type of school, you could use these funds to help pay for 
that.

  If you put the maximum contribution in, by the time the child was 
ready for first grade, you would have $15,000 in that account to help 
deal with decisions that were important to that family regarding 
education at the elementary level and high school level.
  Mr. President, the administration has voiced concerns about this, and 
they are beyond me. What would be the logic of denying a family the 
opportunity to have this savings account and to draw on it for 
computers, home schooling, tutoring, transportation, or tuition? I find 
it most difficult to understand how we could object to that at the 
elementary and high school level.
  Do we not have confidence in these parents that they can make 
decisions about how to improve the situation for their children at the 
level of education that is certifiably the most troubling in America, 
that is producing data that has every American across our land worried 
and bothered, that we are not competing at this level with students of 
the industrialized nations around the world? Why wouldn't we want to 
focus, why wouldn't we allow that tax credit to go into a savings 
account once it has been put in place, which you could also add to this 
savings account?
  Mr. President, as I said, there have been objections raised regarding 
this very simple and, I think, straightforward and clean proposal. I am 
pleased to say that as of the hour of 4:30 on Monday, July 28, after a 
series of conferences, first between the Senate and the House to come 
to a congressional agreement, which has been done and that is 
important--the House and Senate have met and concurred and they have 
agreed that this position shaped by the Senate should be in the 
congressional proposal, and it is. I thank the conferees, and I thank 
the Speaker, in particular, for fighting to keep this proposal in the 
mix.
  So we are now down to a point that the only opposition to this 
concept would be the President, who would be, I guess, saying it's not 
a good idea for families to be able to have savings accounts that 
accrue resources that would allow families to make prudent decisions 
about how to help students, their children, confront the one arena in 
American education that is so troubling, that is having so much 
difficulty, that is sending youngsters to college who are having 
trouble with the basic skills of reading and writing and arithmetic. 
The ABC's, the things that every student who is going to be successful 
in college, who is going to be successful in their career must know. We 
are not getting that job done. This is but a small step in allowing 
this kind of opportunity or this one more option, one more ability to 
deal with this troubling arena in American education.
  So I am very hopeful, and I call on the President and his 
administration to agree to the education IRA to be used for a child's 
education, grades 1 through 12, and leave this in the tax relief 
package that we hope will ultimately be done and hopefully done this 
week.
  What a great message to send America as it enters into the final 
month of the vacation summer to begin the aggressive era of the fall to 
say, ``We, the Congress and the President, came together and have 
secured a balanced budget the first time in 3 decades, and we, Congress 
and the President, have obtained a tax relief act first in a decade and 
a half.'' It would be a powerful message to send to our country and the 
world at this time.

  I have a little bit more to say about that, but I see that we have 
been joined by the distinguished Senator from Washington. And I yield 
as much time as the Senator requires to comment on these subjects of 
balanced budgets and taxes.
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, we here in the Congress and the White 
House seem at this point to be on the verge of an agreement which will 
pay two magnificent dividends to the American people.
  The first is the promise of a balanced budget, not just one time, not 
just on a touch-and-go basis, but perhaps with a sufficient number of 
reforms on spending policies so that we can reasonably expect a 
balanced budget for a considerable period of time in the future.
  Even the promise of that balanced budget, Mr. President, a promise 
made 2 years ago by the first Republican Congress, has been largely 
responsible for interest rates, on average, to be 1\1/2\ percentage 
points lower than they were when that Congress came into being. For a 
middle-class family with an $80,000 mortgage and $15,000 automobile 
loan, that means $100 more a month for the family to use or to save or 
to spend on its own rather than on interest payments.
  Beyond that, Mr. President, it means that the United States will have 
substantially ended the practice of spending money that it did not have 
year after year after year, borrowing that money and sending the bill 
to our children and to our grandchildren.
  The second wonderful dividend which we seem about to present to the 
American people is tax relief. Just 4 years ago, perhaps to the month, 
we were here debating--and on this side of the aisle opposing 
unsuccessfully--what turned out to be the largest tax increase, 
measured in dollars, in the history of the United States.
  Today, that debate, that idea is buried, if not forgotten. And we 
have changed the entire direction of the debate here from how much more 
can we spend and how much more can we tax to how can we limit the 
spending habits of the Government of the United States and what kind of 
dividend in the form of tax relief can we return to the American 
people.
  We now talk about tax relief rather than about tax increases. The 
debate over what kind of tax relief, Mr. President, has obscured the 
profound nature

[[Page S8178]]

of the change in this debate. It is all too easy to forget that it has 
only been for the last 2 years that we have seriously been debating tax 
relief. My friend and colleague from Georgia just pointed out, quite 
accurately, that this will be the first tax relief for the American 
people in more than a decade and a half.
  Mr. President, many may say that this tax relief proposal is modest. 
And modest it is. It is perhaps one-third as large as the 1993 tax 
increase. And so it is only a first step, at least as far as we here on 
this side of the aisle are concerned. But there will be very real tax 
relief for hard-working, middle-class citizens of the United States, 
families with children, very real tax relief from the burden of capital 
gains taxation, a form of tax relief which will certainly increase 
savings and investment and career opportunities for Americans today and 
for future generations of America as well, with tax relief in the field 
of estate taxation, a particularly vicious form of taxation that 
penalizes success, breaks up small businesses, requires farms to be 
sold and undercuts some of the most important bases upon which a 
successful American economy has been built.
  No, Mr. President, since we began this campaign, this crusade with 
the new Republican Congress just a little bit more than 2 years ago, 
interest rates have declined, real hourly wages are moving up after 2 
years of decline at the beginning of the first Clinton administration, 
millions of new jobs are in existence, unemployment is as low as it has 
been in decades.
  Mr. President, it is appropriate to say that we are on the verge of 
success because we have been able to work together. We have listened to 
the demand that the American people made by their votes less than a 
year ago that a Republican Congress work with a Democratic President in 
order to see to it the budget was balanced and tax relief was made 
available to the American people.
  We, on this side of the aisle, are delighted at our success in 
changing the nature of the debate from how much more Government shall 
we have and how much more shall we pay for it, to how can we discipline 
the Government's demand for money and how can we provide tax relief for 
the American people.
  One success, however, Mr. President, I submit, has a real opportunity 
to lead to another. And so I trust that this quiet Monday will lead to 
a challenging week, and that by the end of the week a promise made more 
than 2 years ago on a balanced budget and tax relief for the American 
people will have been fulfilled.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington for 
his comments regarding these important topics.
  At this time I yield up to 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator 
from Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, thank you very much.
  And let me thank the Senator from Georgia for bringing us to the 
floor this afternoon to discuss what hopefully by the end of this week 
will be a bit of history. And I believe it will be the right kind of 
history, written by the House and the Senate and the White House, that 
deals with significant tax relief for the American taxpayer and some 
very major budget reform.
  I have had the privilege of now serving in the Senate a good number 
of years and also in the U.S. House. And since the early 1980s, I 
became an outspoken advocate for a balanced budget. I watched as our 
debt and deficit grew, becoming increasingly alarmed that somehow we 
would pass on to our children and their children a legacy of debt that 
would be almost insurmountable, that could cripple the economy of this 
country and lead us down a road to economic deterioration and a second- 
or third-rate Nation.
  Because of concern, shared by many here in the Congress, and by a 
growing number of American taxpayers, throughout the decade of the 
1980s and into the early 1990s, we continued that drumbeat to where it 
is without question a majority sentiment among the American people 
today, such an overwhelming majority sentiment that in 1994 they 
changed the character of the U.S. Congress, and they significantly 
altered the attitude of a President who came to town not to balance the 
budget and not to give tax relief but to be able to do quite the 
opposite, to increase the Federal dominance over the American 
character, to raise taxes, and to continue a liberal Democratic legacy 
of an ever-increasingly larger Government taking an ever-increasingly 
larger chunk of the American worker's paycheck. Thanks to Americans, 
thanks to Republicans, thanks to conservatives, that message got 
altered.
  Throughout the last several weeks, because of a budget proposal and a 
tax proposal put together by the Republican leadership and this 
President, voted on with the substantial bipartisan support of the U.S. 
Senate, the White House, the Finance Committees, the Budget Committees, 
along with the leadership, have been in internal negotiations to bring 
that about, again, reducing the overall size of Government, moving us 
toward a balanced budget, and for the first time in 16 years giving tax 
relief to the American people.
  That agreement is not at hand yet, but we are told that that could 
well become the case this week. And I hope it is. I hope it gives to 
the American working family the kind of relief they deserve during a 
period when they are being taxed at the highest rate ever, that it 
gives to the American investor an opportunity to change the character 
of his or her investment to create even more jobs, to keep the economy 
even stronger than it is today for a longer and a more sustained period 
of time and that says to the less fortunate in our country, you too 
will benefit, you too will benefit by being able to keep more of your 
hard-earned dollars. And it says to those who are concerned about 
education, you can put a little more away to provide for that day when 
you will want to help your children gain a higher level of education so 
they can advance themselves in our society.
  All of that is historic. We may, while serving here on a day-to-day, 
year-to-year basis, lose that perspective, but I do not think the 
American people will, because we are saying to them, we heard you, we 
heard you loudly and clearly. And while a marathon race is not won by a 
single lap around the track, or the Super Bowl is not won by a single 
victory at the beginning of the season, this is in itself a victory, a 
significant victory in that long march away from an ever-larger 
Government that takes more and more away from the average taxpayer, 
both in his or her earnings and in his or her freedoms.
  So I hope that the work that has gone on the last 2 weeks, in fact, 
bears fruit. I am excited about the opportunity to debate these issues 
on the floor of the Senate this week and to vote by week's end on a 
historic budget package that continues to bring us toward a balanced 
budget and a historic tax package that offers tax relief to the average 
taxpayer again for the second time in 16 years.
  So let me again thank the Senator from Georgia for his continued 
leadership on this issue, coming to the floor day after day to inform 
the American people about what we are about and what we are striving to 
achieve, oftentimes behind closed doors because of the nature of the 
kind of negotiations that have gone on, but must require ultimately in 
the end to be made public. So let me thank my colleague from Georgia.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from Idaho for the contributions 
he has made, not only here today but throughout this Congress, with 
regard to balancing budgets and tax relief.
  At this time I yield to the distinguished Senator from Texas for up 
to 10 minutes on the subject of the balanced budget and tax relief.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia for 
wanting to talk about this very important issue, because, as we speak 
on the

[[Page S8179]]

floor here today, I hope that the negotiations are about to come to an 
end and we will give the American family the first tax break they have 
had in 16 years.
  I think it is an incredible thing to say that we haven't had a real 
tax cut in this country for 16 years. As hard-working Americans have 
tried to improve their quality of life, it just seems like their 
expenses have gone up so much that we now find that the spouses are 
working more, sometimes just to pay taxes. That is not what we want in 
this country. We want spouses to have the option of staying home, if 
they want to, and not make them work because they can't make ends meet. 
If we are going to continue the American dream of increasing our 
quality of life with each generation, we are going to have to pare 
Government down, balance the budget, make sure that people are not 
paying any more taxes than we have to have to run a Government.
  I think the time has come for us to take a leadership role. In fact, 
that is what Congress is trying to do. We came into power in this 
Congress, starting after the elections of 1994, with very clear goals: 
to make Government smaller; to let people keep more of the money they 
earn; to stop talking about money in Washington as if it belongs to us, 
but to understand that, no, it belongs to the people who work so hard 
to earn it, and let's let people have that money back to spend the way 
they would like to, rather than the way people in Washington dictate. 
These are the things that we came in to do.
  We are very close. I hope we will be able to close this loop by the 
end of this week so that the people of America will be able to feel 
that they have more of the money they earn in their pocketbooks, rather 
than writing a check to the IRS in Washington.
  Fifty years ago--just 50 years ago--Americans sent 2 cents of every 
dollar to Washington. Today, they send 25 cents of every dollar they 
earn to Washington, and that is just the Washington part. If you add 
their State and local taxes on top of that, most Americans pay 40 
percent of what they earn; 40 cents of every dollar goes to the 
Government.
  Now, Mr. President, I think that is wrong. I think that means 
Government is too big, and I think the time has come to do something 
about it. I hope the President will agree with us, agree with the 
leadership that Congress is providing on this issue and has been 
providing for the last 3 years, to try to correct the inequity in our 
tax laws.
  The bill that we have passed in Congress, which we hope the President 
will sign, will give tax relief to Americans who are paying income 
taxes; if they have children, a $500 per child tax credit--not 
deduction, but credit. That is something that they will get right off 
the top--$500 per child. If you have two children, you would get $1,000 
right off the top. That is going to cut most people's taxes in this 
country by a lot.
  When I have asked my constituents in newspaper articles what they 
would like to see changed, No. 1 is death tax reform. Most people don't 
think that death taxes are American, because the American dream is 
that, if you work hard, you should be able to pass what you have 
accumulated on to your children to give them a little bit better start. 
That is the American dream. Why should people be taxed on money they 
have accumulated and already paid taxes on? Why should they be taxed 
again when they pass what they have worked so hard for to their 
children?
  The worst thing is when their children have to sell part of the 
family farm, or all of it, just to pay inheritance taxes. That is not 
right, Mr. President, and we are trying to change that. In the 
agreement we are trying to get with the President, we would raise that 
inheritance tax credit to $1 million. We are going to try to keep 
people from having to sell assets that are not readily salable, because 
when you tell people that family farm is worth $500,000 or $1 million, 
but they can't earn enough to feed their family or to make life better 
for their family, it is very hard to tell them that they have inherited 
$1 million when it is land that is really unproductive. So we are 
trying to raise that, so that you will not have to sell equipment in a 
small business or a family farm that you could not possibly sell on the 
open market for $1 million.

  So we are going to try to make a dent in that death tax. We are going 
to try to make it easier for people to sell their homes, which is most 
people's biggest asset, without having to pay the huge taxes that they 
now do. We are going to try to cut the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
  Today, 41 percent of American families own stock. They own stock in a 
pension plan or a mutual fund. That is how they are investing for their 
retirement security. We want people to be able to have a capital gains 
tax cut so that if they need to sell a stock, they will not have to pay 
a 28-percent tax rate on the capital gain. In fact, more than 83 
percent of capital gains are reported by households with less than 
$100,000 in income; 56 percent of capital gains are reported by 
families with less than $50,000 in income; nearly one-third of capital 
gains are reported by senior citizens. This will help the senior 
citizens, particularly those that are having a hard time getting by. If 
that senior citizen could sell their home or sell their stock without 
being penalized so heavily, it would give them a little bit better 
quality of life.
  We are trying to give more help to people who want to save for their 
retirement futures with individual retirement accounts. A lot of people 
say an individual retirement account is not really a retirement plan. 
But I want to just give you one example, because I worked very hard for 
homemakers to be able to set aside $2,000 a year for their retirement 
security, and they can do that now. They are able to set aside $2,000 a 
year, just as those who work outside the home. I want people to know 
that if a couple starts, at the age of 25, setting aside $2,000 a year 
per person, by the time they are 65, they will have over $1 million in 
their retirement nest egg. That is a retirement plan. If a couple can 
just save $2,000 a year per person, starting at the age of 25, they can 
have $1 million for their retirement security. That is another reason 
that we want to do away with that death tax, because we want middle-
income people to be able to save enough for real retirement security 
and not have it taxed away when they die, so that their children will 
not be able to have that little bit extra.
  Our bill will even make IRA's better because it will make them 
deductible in most instances, and it will make it easier for people to 
set aside this $2,000 a year. So if we can do that, if we can have a 
better savings rate in this country, if we can make people more secure 
in their retirement, if we can give a capital gains tax cut and a death 
tax cut and $500 per child tax credit, not only will we have kept our 
promise to the American people, but we will have provided, for middle-
income Americans who are working so hard to do better for their 
children, an opportunity in which they can say, yes, I can see the 
difference, I can see this tax relief. That is what we are working for 
in this Congress.
  I hope the President will not stop us from giving tax relief to hard-
working, middle-income Americans, because if he does, he will be making 
a great mistake for the prosperity of our country.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for 
outlining the various important aspects of this proposed tax relief. At 
this point, I turn to my colleague from Michigan and yield him--how 
much time do I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has just over 4 minutes remaining.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I yield the remainder of that time to the 
distinguished Senator from Michigan.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I may not use all of that time. I thank 
the Senator from Georgia. This is not the first time in which he has 
come to the floor and led a special order to discuss these issues that 
are now before us, which we hope will be resolved this week. I think it 
should be noted that, for the better part of the last 3 years, it has 
been with the leadership of the Senator from Georgia and the Senator 
from Texas who just spoke. Others have spoken today from the leadership 
on the Republican side, which has been advancing the cause of tax 
relief for the working families of our country.

  As we come into the final stages of these negotiations, we are very 
optimistic that we will be able to realize

[[Page S8180]]

the objective that many of us came here to achieve: to finally bring an 
end to higher taxes in Washington and begin, finally, to roll back some 
of those taxes on the American people.
  In recent years, the percentage of the Nation's income, our gross 
domestic product, consumed by Washington in the form of taxes has gone 
up and up and up. Indeed, today the percentage is virtually as high as 
it has ever been in the history of this country--as high as it was 
during World War II, as high as during Vietnam, as high as during the 
Depression, and as high as it has been during any of the sort of crises 
that you might expect to produce record levels of taxation. Today, in 
the absence of such crises, we nonetheless have had a tax rate reach 21 
percent above the Nation's income.
  So, Mr. President, the Republican efforts to reduce the tax burden 
are timely, they are needed, and they are on target. As the Senator 
from Texas just indicated, whether it is the spousal IRA or the family 
tax credit of $500 per child or the growth incentives to create jobs 
and opportunities, such as reducing the capital gains tax rate, the 
Republican tax plan that was passed in this Chamber by a 80-18 vote 
addresses the concerns of America's taxpayers in a targeted way that 
will produce both a chance for working families to keep more of what 
they earn and be able to do more for themselves, on the one hand, and 
an opportunity for those who create jobs and opportunities to create 
more such jobs, higher paying jobs, and more opportunities as we move 
into the next century.
  So for all of those reasons, we are optimistic that our 3-year-long 
effort is about to pay dividends and that, by the end of this week, 
with a little bit more effort, we can bring this tax cut to the 
American people.
  To all of those who have been in the leadership of this effort, I 
offer my thanks because, a few years ago, I don't think anybody in my 
constituency in Michigan would have expected they would see their taxes 
go down. This week, we have the best chance in decades--literally, 15 
years--to see that occur. So I want to thank and congratulate the 
leaders on our side who have kept the pressure on. I hope that, by the 
end of the week, we will achieve our goals, and I hope we will go one 
step further and prevent any extraneous revenues generated by these tax 
cuts from being used for anything but more tax cuts or to reduce the 
national deficit.
  We just saw, as the budget negotiations began, that the revenues to 
the Federal Government were exceeding that which had been projected by 
the budgeteers in recent years. We were bringing in over $225 billion 
beyond what had been projected just a few months ago. Well, I think the 
same is going to happen as a result of the tax cuts included in this 
budget resolution and in the tax bill we pass.
  Mr. President, I think it is imperative that any additional revenues 
raised beyond that which we expect here in Washington ought to go back 
to the American people, either in the form of reducing the deficit or 
more tax cuts for the working families. If we do that, then we can make 
this tax bill extra special, Mr. President, by truly making it a long-
term tax reduction plan for the American people.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, is there any time remaining on our hour 
of control?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All of the Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. COVERDELL. In that case, Mr. President, I yield the floor and 
suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SHELBY. 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. SHELBY. What is the pending business?

                          ____________________