[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 119 (Tuesday, September 14, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10807-S10809]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FISCAL YEAR

  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, this morning I got up and, as is typically 
my habit, I opened up the Washington Post to see what was there. I 
turned first to the sports page to see how my Baltimore Orioles 
performed. I got good news there. That was a welcome addition to my 
morning.
  On the front page of the Washington Post I was very surprised to see 
this headline: ``GOP Seeks to Ease Crunch with 13-month Fiscal Year.''
  I have heard of some gimmicks in my time. Now we see our friends on 
the other side, who are not able to meet the legal requirement that 
they pass the appropriations bills on time by October 1, have resorted 
to a new concept. Instead of having a 12-month year, we will have a 13-
month year.
  I think our friends are going off on a tangent that should not be 
pursued. I think this would be a profound mistake. The last thing we 
need to do is solve our fiscal problems by creating a fiction of a 13-
month year. That isn't what we need to be doing. We need to address 
directly and forthrightly the problem we face in trying to avoid 
raiding the Social Security trust fund. Let's do it honestly. Let's do 
it directly. Let's not engage in the fiction of creating a 13-month 
year in order to resolve the fiscal challenges facing this country and 
this Senate.
  That is what the Republicans have come up with. They point out in the 
story:

       By creating this fictitious 13th month, lawmakers would be 
     able to spend $12 billion to $16 billion more for labor, 
     health, education and social programs than they otherwise 
     would be permitted under budget rules.

  What are we doing? We are going to create a 13th month to deal with 
the fiscal problems of the country? I don't think so.
  Senator Specter is apparently one of the backers of this idea.

       ``We all know we engage in a lot of smoke and mirrors,'' 
     said Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate 
     Appropriations subcommittee, ``But we have to fund education, 
     NIH, worker safety and other programs. It's a question of how 
     we do it.''

  I agree with it being a question of how we do it. The last thing we 
ought to do is create a 13-month year. If we want to cause a lack of 
respect of people in the country for the Congress, this is the way: 
Adopt the Republican proposal that the way to solve our fiscal problem 
is to create a 13th month.
  I began looking at the calendar to try to figure out where we would 
add this 13th month, what we would call it. One thought that we had is 
that maybe we could have January, February, and then ``Fictionary''--
kind of a fictional 13th month. Maybe that could be the month: January, 
February, and Fictionary.
  Or maybe we ought to have ``Spend-tember,'' after September, or maybe 
before September. We could have ``Spend-tember'' for the 13th month.
  There is something wrong with what our colleagues on the Republican 
side have come up with. Thirteen months? I don't think the American 
people are going to buy this. Everybody knows there are 24 hours in a 
day, 7 days a week, and there are just 12 months in a year. Search as 
we might, here is the calendar; there are only 12 months; there is no 
13th month. That is not the solution to our problem.
  If we started thinking of where we would add this month, some would 
advocate two Decembers. That would have a certain attractiveness. We 
would have two Christmases, all the retail sales twice. That is not a 
bad idea.
  On this idea the Republicans have come up with for 13 months to solve 
our fiscal problems, my choice is to see 2 Octobers. I am a baseball 
fan. I could have the World Series twice. Others might have a different 
idea of where we could add a month.
  I must say to our Republican friends, why stop at 13 months? If this 
is the way we are going to solve the fiscal problems of our country, 
let's go to 14 months, maybe add 15. Somebody in my office suggested we 
go to 24 months. That way, we would be able to double everybody's 
income in a single year. We would be able to have twice as much 
spending in a single year if we went to 24 months. I think we have real 
opportunities. If we keep adding enough months, we can completely avoid 
the Y2K problem altogether. Now this is a real opportunity, and I don't 
think we want to miss it.
  Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator, if he yields for a question, if we 
can extend the year to avoid the tough decisions on the budget and not 
only avoid Y2K, but we can repeat the month of December and have 
Christmas sales and inject in the economy a lot more life--and of 
course kids enjoy Christmas--perhaps the Republican leadership is onto 
something by extending the year an additional month for budgetary 
purposes.
  Mr. CONRAD. There are lots of good ideas coming out on this idea to 
extend the concept that our Republican friends have come up with to go 
to 13 months in a year in order to solve our budget problems. The last 
time we made a major change in the calendar, it was made by the Pope. I 
am not sure what that says about those putting forward this proposal, 
other than I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
  I don't think this is the solution to the fiscal problems of America; 
13 months is not the answer.
  Going back to the headline, it really is kind of stunning: ``GOP 
Seeks to Ease Crunch with 13-month Fiscal Year.''
  One person who has commented on this in this morning's paper is 
Robert Bixby, head of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group. 
He says they are degrading themselves and we degrade the budget process 
by resorting to these budget gimmicks.
  The only disagreement I have with that is, this goes way beyond 
gimmick when all of a sudden we are going to take a 12-month year and 
make it 13 months to address the budget problems of the country. I 
think our Republican friends have gone off in the weeds. I hope they 
reconsider. This is a mistake.
  If we start going in the direction of adding months, where is this 
going to stop? We have 12 months. Thirteen months? Fourteen months? Are 
we going to be able to solve all the problems of the country if we 
start to engage in fiction? That is not the direction we ought to take. 
Does my colleague from North Dakota agree?
  Mr. DORGAN. If my colleague will yield, this is remarkable. I was 
eating Grape Nuts, actually, when I read that this morning. That is not 
always a pleasant experience unless you have plenty of sugar. And then 
you get the newspaper and you read a headline that says, ``GOP Seeks to 
Ease Crunch With 13-Month Fiscal Year.''
  I am thinking to myself, I have been around this place for some time 
and have grappled with a lot of fiscal policy problems. If we had 
thought of this a long while ago, we would not have all of these 
problems. If you have a problem, just change the calendar.
  That would raise of course the question of what to name this new 
month. I suppose if they were really serious they could do what all the 
sports stadiums do, and just sell the name. How much money could you 
raise with a Microsoft month or a US Airways month? I suppose there are 
all kinds of possibilities along this line. But I think most people 
would look at this and say that it is not very serious governance--when 
you have a problem you cannot fix you create another month and then 
pretend you fixed it.
  Some State legislative bodies have a rule that they must adjourn by a 
particular time. So what they do occasionally, is to take a black cloth 
and cover

[[Page S10808]]

the clock. Now we have budgeteers who think the way to solve a fiscal 
problem is to add another month to the calendar.
  I don't know. We hear a lot of Byzantine and bizarre suggestions in 
this Chamber from time to time. But this one has to rank right up 
there. As a young schoolboy in the southwestern ranching country of 
North Dakota, I learned the days of the months through a little ditty. 
We all know it. Perhaps now it should be changed:

       Thirty days hath September,
       April, June, and November,
       All the rest have 31,
       Except the Republicans,
       They have an extra month.

  This is going to be confusing to a whole generation of schoolchildren 
if the GOP decides they are going to mess with the calendar.
  We have had the lunar calendar, the solar calendar, the Gregorian 
calendar--I assume my colleague explained much of the history of the 
calendar. Perhaps the creative minds here in the Senate will make 
history when they try to find their way out of the corner into which 
they have painted themselves.
  Let me yield the floor at this point to my colleague from North 
Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. The Wall Street Journal, back in July, had this headline: 
``The GOP Uses Two Sets Of Books.'' Now we are going to have a new 
headline: ``The GOP Uses Two Calendars.'' We have the one with 12 
months, which I guess will run all the rest of our lives, but for 
budget purposes we will have 13 months.
  The second part of the story in the Washington Post today said: 
Senate Republican leaders embrace a longer fiscal year to ease spending 
woes. They want to spend the money, but they want to make it appear as 
though there is less spending in this year, so they add a 13th month. I 
don't think that is going to fool anybody. It certainly should be 
outside the rules of this body, if we are going to be serious about 
maintaining the fiscal discipline that has done so much to restore the 
fiscal integrity of this country.
  For the first time in 30 years, we have been able to balance the 
budget, largely as a result of the 1993 budget plan we passed. We 
received no help from our friends on the Republican side--not a single 
Republican vote, not one. That was a plan which put us on a path to 
reduce the deficit each and every year of the 5 years of that plan. In 
1997, we added a little bit. That was done on a bipartisan basis. That 
was good. We did something together.
  But now our Republican friends are retreating to the notion that the 
way to solve the fiscal problems of the United States is to add a 13th 
month. That cannot be a serious proposal. I cannot believe our 
colleagues are going to engage in that kind of charade and that kind of 
game and that kind of gimmick in order to address the serious fiscal 
problems facing the country. After all, this progress has been made--
getting our fiscal house in order--having the lowest inflation rate in 
30 years, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the longest 
economic expansion in our history. We are now going to resort to budget 
gimmickry to address the additional challenges that we face? That is 
not the way a great country does its work.
  Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a question.
  Mr. CONRAD. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have had an opportunity to discuss this 
a bit, the gimmickry of doing all of these things. I was talking to my 
colleague, Senator Byrd, who has spent a great deal of time on the 
floor telling us about Roman history. We were just discussing the front 
page of this morning's newspaper with the headline about the easing of 
the fiscal crunch by creating a 13th month. Senator Byrd indicated that 
Julius Caesar in trying to reconstruct the calendar, somewhere around 
46 B.C., decided he was going to have a 15-month year. Senator Byrd 
knows about all of these things. He has given wonderful lectures on the 
floor of the Senate about the rich history of the Roman Empire.
  I just now learned this from our distinguished colleague. So 
apparently, I would say to Senator Conrad, what we are discussing today 
has been done before. Julius Caesar did it, and he added 3 months to 
the calendar, apparently.
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. Certainly.
  Mr. BYRD. He was assassinated 2 years later, though.
  Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield, it seems to me that lends 
credibility to the question of whether or not this ought to be done. 
Those of us who wonder whether this is a good idea might take lessons 
from the history that is offered by Senator Byrd.
  Mr. CONRAD. Can you imagine? I wonder what is going to happen in the 
schools of America now that the Republicans have said there are 13 
months. Can you imagine the confusion of the elementary schools as they 
are teaching children their months? Where is this month going to fit? 
What is it going to be called?
  I know the Senator from North Dakota has children in school. Have 
they been advised of this change?
  Mr. DORGAN. They have already weighed in. They would prefer it fall 
in the summer. My children are in seventh and fifth grades, and if 
there is to be an extra month, they would prefer it fall somewhere in 
the summer.
  Mr. CONRAD. Did they have any idea for a name of the month?
  Mr. DORGAN. No. In fact, I was thinking this morning when I read this 
that we probably should have some kind of a contest, to create a name. 
Then too, as I indicated earlier, almost everyone today is selling 
names. If this is institutionalized as a month without a name, clearly 
one could offer it for sale.
  Mr. CONRAD. Something like Federal Express month?
  Mr. DORGAN. That's right, or Microsoft month or U.S. Steel----
  Mr. CONRAD. Microsoft month. That might be a lucrative thing, to 
auction this off. That might be a way to solve the budget problem, 
instead of going to the 13-month plan the Republicans have, is to 
actually auction off a month. I think kind of the leading alternative, 
at least in my office, is ``Spendtember.'' That has gone over pretty 
well.
  Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield, there is nothing to stop the 
Senate at 13 months. This relates to the whole aging process, which I 
think would be of great interest to a number of Senators. If this 
Senate enacted a longer year, and perhaps went to 15, 18, or even 19 
months, we would have folks running for election who are 75 years old 
but who could claim they are only 68.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. CONRAD. I will.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the Senator for bringing up this headline. I, 
too, was struck by this new concept of adding a month to our calendar 
in order to solve the problems of the country. I agree, it has to be 
humorous; otherwise, we would all be crying. Because, truly, when I go 
home what my constituents tell me is what I think everyone is hearing: 
We have priorities in this country, particularly education. They are 
worried about preschool. They are worried about Head Start. They are 
worried about whether or not their child is in a class that is small 
enough that they get the individual attention they need. They are 
worried about whether or not their teachers have the kind of training 
they need to teach their children. They certainly are worried about 
school construction and the ability to send their child to a safe 
school.

  We had a whole hearing this morning about school violence. But 
teachers have not come to me and said: How do we add this to our 
curriculum, explaining a whole new month that has been added by the 
Senate?
  I know my colleague has worked with me on the Budget Committee for 
the last 7 years. We have worked very hard to reduce the deficit. There 
was a $300 billion deficit when we arrived here in 1993.
  We worked hard to be real. Despite the humor we have in this debate 
today, we need to get real about the budget; we need to get real about 
our priorities; we need to recognize we cannot put a priority on 
education verbally and put it at the end of the pile when it comes to 
the budget and then come up with gimmicks to pay for it.
  I ask the Senator to comment because we worked on this together for 
many years.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington. She 
is exactly right. We do face a problem

[[Page S10809]]

this year, and the problem is we have these budget caps that were 
agreed to in 1997, and now things have gone better than anybody 
anticipated. We have been able to get our fiscal house in order. The 
question is how we maintain that discipline and at the same time fund 
the urgent priorities of the American people, especially education.
  As was said by budget expert, Robert Reischauer, the former Director 
of the Congressional Budget Office, this notion the Republicans have 
come up with to just add a 13th month does not solve the problem; it 
avoids the problem. We will have spending caps in 2001 and 2002 as 
well, so all we have done is postpone and magnify the problem. We will 
have actually made the problem worse.
  There is humor in this. I think we all see almost a theater of the 
absurd in the notion that our Republican colleagues have come up with 
as a way to solve the problem, which is to add a 13th month.
  I say on a serious note, let's not do that. We have had success in 
getting our fiscal house in order by being straight with the American 
people, by passing legislation that fits our spending to our income. 
Let's not create a fix such as this in order to support a massive, 
risky, radical, reckless tax cut scheme which our friends on the other 
side have come up with that threatens the fiscal discipline that has 
been put in place, that has put us in such a strong position.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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