[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 63 (Wednesday, May 9, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2031-H2049]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The Chair would remind 
persons in the gallery that they are here as guests of the House of 
Representatives, and signs either approving or disapproving of any 
speaker's remarks are against the Rules of the House.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Pelosi).
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I was congratulating the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Mrs. Jones) for getting more substance into 1 minute than I have 
heard in the Congress before.
  Mr. Speaker, as you know, today the Congress has a very important 
decision to make. We are voting on our budget. Many of us believe that 
our Federal budget should be a statement of our national values. What 
is important to us should be what we commit our resources to.
  Clearly, this Republican budget before us is not. It 
disproportionately gives a tax break to the top 1 percent in our 
country at the expense of our children. All scientific research shows 
us that children do better in smaller classes and, indeed, yes, in 
smaller schools.

                              {time}  1115

  The American people have made education their highest priority. Why, 
then, does this budget just play lip service? It talks the talk, but it 
does not walk the walk for education.
  Children are smart. If one tells them that education is important, 
the key to their future, important to the competitiveness of our 
country internationally, and then not commit the resources to education 
and send them to school in dilapidated schools that are not clean, 
well-lighted places, wired to the future, they get a mixed message from 
us.
  So let us reject this budget which rejects the notion of school 
modernization by not committing funds for smaller classes and more 
teachers. This budget only gives an increase of inflation for 
education. It does not even recognize student growth and the growth in 
our population of our students.
  So let us ask the question: Is it a statement of our national values 
to give a tax break at the high end at the expense of our children? Is 
it a statement of our national values to ignore the infrastructure 
needs of our children and their needs for qualified teachers to give a 
tax break to the high end? I think not.
  I urge our colleagues to reject this budget and to get real about it. 
This is a charade. We want a real budget that addresses the needs of 
the American people and serves our national values.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith), a distinguished member of our 
conference.
  (Mr. SMITH of Michigan asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, through the Speaker to everybody 
that might be listening, how does one make the best decision on how 
much to spend and how high taxes should be? It would seem reasonable 
that the first thing policymakers might do is say, look, how much, how 
high, should taxes be for the American people?
  Right now, the average American taxpayer pays about 41 cents out of 
every dollar they earn. Here at the Federal level, our budget, in terms 
of total income, is approaching 21 percent of GDP.
  So if we are going to have a reasonable budgeting process then we 
say, look, at what point are taxes so high that it discourages economic 
expansion in our free market economy? It is the system that has made 
this country great, rewarding those people that try, that start new 
businesses, that get a second job?
  But we have sort of evolved into a tax system of penalties and 
punishment for some of those people that really try and save and 
invest. That young couple that, maybe, goes out and gets a second job; 
we not only tax that person on the additional income, but we say, in 
effect, if you are going to earn more money, we are going to increase 
the rate of taxation.
  I would suggest to my colleagues to consider that we should not have 
Federal Government spending that exceeds 18 percent of total income or 
GDP in this country. We are now approaching 21 percent.
  I applaud the Committee on Rules. I congratulate the Committee on the 
Budget for moving ahead with the most reasonable budget we've had in 
years, even though this budget increases spending twice the rate of 
inflation. We have gone in past years as high as five times the rate of 
inflation as we expanded the Federal Government.
  Just imagine for a moment a graphic projection of what inflation is 
every year and the fact that the Federal Government is increasing the 
size of the Federal Government two to five times the rate of inflation. 
Someplace out there, it is going to catch up with us.
  So let us not talk and suggest that this program could use more money 
or that program could use more money. Let us decide what is reasonable 
and fair to those people that are working and decide how much money 
they should be allowed to keep in their pockets to decide how they want 
to spend it.
  The big spenders in Congress can always say we need more money for 
this program or that program or we need more programs. But the fact is 
that government spending through the appropriation process is not free. 
It is not magic. Somebody is working hard, getting up and going to 
work, whether

[[Page H2032]]

they feel like it or not, to earn that money, to send part of it to 
Washington.
  I think as we review what has happened in taxes in this country and 
the fact that our taxes now are the highest they have ever been in the 
history of the United States except for 1 year during World War II, it 
should make us all very conscious of the importance of trying to be a 
little more efficient, trying to prioritize spending in government. Let 
us move ahead with supporting this rule and this budget and hope we 
have the intestinal fortitude to stick with this spending level through 
the appropriations process.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Filner).
  Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, the veterans of this Nation ought to march on this 
Capitol in protest to this budget. I heard from a Member from the other 
side of the aisle that this budget over the next 10 years helps 
veterans. This does nothing of the sort. This budget barely keeps up 
with inflation.
  This does not honor our Nation's veterans. Our veterans are waiting 2 
years to have their claims adjudicated. They are waiting months and 
months for appointments with doctors. Our research is lagging in all 
the diseases that have come out of the Gulf and Vietnam. Yet, this 
budget does not even keep up with inflation.
  Even the Republican Members of the House Committee on Veterans' 
Affairs said this number is insufficient to keep up with the needs of 
the veterans. I challenge the Republican members of the House Committee 
on Veterans' Affairs to vote no on this budget. They said in the 
committee that this number was insufficient. I want them to stand up 
for what they said to the veterans in committee and vote no on this 
budget.
  I might add that this budget took away a great victory in the Senate 
for our veterans, something called concurrent receipt where a veteran 
who had a pension and disability payments could get both. Now they have 
an offset, and this budget keeps that offset. It is a disgrace to the 
veterans of this Nation.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), a new Member that we 
welcome.
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule, and I thank the 
distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) and the Committee on 
Rules for their excellent work.
  The passage of the budget today in the House is a victory for all 
Americans who, after 4 months of hard work, have finally earned enough 
to pay their taxes this year. It is written: If one owes debts, pay 
debts. If honor, then honor. If respect, then respect. This budget pays 
our debts, honors our veterans, and respects the right of hard-working 
Americans to keep more of their own money.
  Mr. Speaker, under the current system, taxpayers today send a higher 
percentage of their income to Washington than any time since World War 
II. I am pleased that, for the first time since 1981, this Congress 
will provide substantial tax rate reductions for all American families 
that pay taxes.
  Washington is sending America a pro-growth message that helps 
families, small businesses, and family farms. It is refreshing, Mr. 
Speaker, that Congress is recognizing that the wealth of this Nation 
and the size of our surplus is not our creation but a product of the 
work of every American. This budget is an extraordinary step in the 
right direction. The best news of all is that this is only the 
beginning, Mr. Speaker.
  In a little over 100 days with a Republican President in Congress, we 
have prepared a budget that provides $1.35 trillion in tax cuts, repays 
historic levels of public debt, strengthens Social Security and 
Medicare, and bolsters our national defense. Most important of all, we 
have shown fiscal discipline by reining in the growth of our Federal 
Government and spending.
  I would like to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) for 
all he has done to build this budget. I urge my colleagues to support 
this rule.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains 
on each side?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentlewoman from New 
York (Ms. Slaughter) has 9\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Goss) has 7\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Turner).
  Mr. TURNER. Mr. Speaker, this budget fails to account for the fact it 
will return us to deficit spending and it will spend money already 
committed to Social Security and Medicare. That is why the fiscally 
conservative Blue Dog Coalition voted yesterday to oppose this budget.
  Democrats want the largest tax cut we can afford; but, frankly, this 
budget is unrealistic. It fails to provide for defense spending that we 
support and that the President will propose. It fails to protect Social 
Security and Medicare by putting us on a course to raid both programs. 
It turns our back on our commitment to lockbox Social Security and 
Medicare surpluses. It fails to fund education even at the lower level 
the President proposed much less the higher level the Senate agreed 
upon.
  This budget fails to account for the slowing economy and the 
resulting loss of revenue. It denies America's families and our 
children the best tax cut we could give them and that is paying off our 
national debt which would not only lower interest payments in the 
Federal budget, but would lower interest payments for every American 
family.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Berry).
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, there is a great country music song by Merle 
Haggard called Rainbow Stew. It says: ``When the President goes through 
the White House door and does what he says he will do, we will all be 
drinking that free Bubble Up and eating that rainbow stew.''
  This budget is rainbow stew. Now, to make rainbow stew, the recipe 
calls first for a rainbow. That is what we have got with this budget is 
a rainbow.
  In the last campaign, the President and the Republicans promised 
prescription drugs for our seniors. Medicare and Social Security will 
be protected. We are going to pay off the debt. We are going to take 
care of education, national defense, agriculture. The list goes on and 
on.
  This is a buckeye. Folklore in Arkansas tells us about if one carries 
this buckeye. It is a relatively worthless little nut that grows on a 
bush. I do not know that humans ate it and not too sure that any 
animals eat it. But I can tell my colleagues that one is supposed to 
carry that in one's pocket and rub it, and it will bring one good luck 
and take care of rheumatism. That is what the prescription drug plan by 
the Republicans are going to amount to.
  I urge my colleagues to realize what a ridiculous document this 
budget is.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair advises the gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Berry) that the buckeye grows on a tree, not a bush.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Hill).
  (Mr. HILL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I, like many of my colleagues, would like to 
support this budget, because who would not want a tax cut along the 
lines that had been proposed. It is politically popular to support the 
tax cut, and I would like to do it. I believe that we can offer some 
kind of tax cut, but this is not realistic. This is something that 
cannot be done.
  I know the American people must be quite confused as to who is right 
and who is wrong. But let me pull out this chart. Maybe this will clear 
it up. This is from the President's budget proposal that outlines what 
the budget surpluses are going to be over the next 10 years.
  As my colleagues can see, this tax cut is predicated upon the fact 
that these surpluses are going to materialize. I do not know of any 
American family that would go out and buy a new car or a new house 
based upon income that he was told that he was going to receive for the 
next 10 years. No common sense person would do this. But, yet, that is 
what we are about to do in the Congress of the United States, Mr. 
Speaker.

[[Page H2033]]

  I think if my colleagues know this fact, they have to conclude that 
this is a bad idea and that we ought to vote against it.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Sandlin).
  Mr. SANDLIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me 
this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose this budget conference report. As 
we near the end of the school year, we expect our children to put forth 
their best effort in school and pass the final exams. The American 
people have the same expectation of this Congress. As we put forth our 
finishing touches on the budget agreement, they expect us to pass. 
Unfortunately, this report earns a failing grade.
  I hoped the conference would reach an agreement that I could support. 
Unfortunately, there was no conference. There was no bipartisanship. 
The alleged bipartisanship was nothing more than a sham. Not everyone 
was included. Had there been a true bipartisan effort, we would have 
met our obligation to our most vulnerable citizens and earned a passing 
grade from the American public.
  We have an obligation to our children. In this country, that 
obligation requires us to provide them with the best public education 
that is possible. But this conference report fails to meet that 
obligation. It does not increase education spending. It does not 
increase investment in education to our children. In fact, it provides 
$21 billion less than President Bush requested for education spending.
  We have an obligation to our parents for prescription drugs. This 
conference report does not provide funds for a prescription drug 
benefits. In fact, it raids the Medicare fund to pay for money already 
set aside. That is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
  I urge my colleagues to oppose this report.

                              {time}  1130

  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Doggett).
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, every aspect of this budget and the way 
that it has been crafted and presented to this House indicate that the 
same folks who ran this House during the Gingrich years, their same 
spirit has dominated every aspect; they are still calling all the 
shots. Bipartisanship has been all pretense and no reality.
  Cutting our commitment to educational opportunities for our children, 
even to a level lower than the limited commitment that President Bush 
recommended, represents that mean-spirited approach and a true 
shortchanging of our Nation's future. The full implementation of this 
budget will mean that we will consume entirely the Medicare Trust Fund 
and we will deplete significantly the Social Security Trust Fund, 
returning to a path of using Social Security contributions to pay for 
non-Social Security purposes, and that is wrong.
  If my colleagues do not understand anything else about this budget, 
remember that those two pages that were supposedly lost in the middle 
of the night last week did two things: for education, monies that had 
been added with the support of even a Republican Member, Mr. Jeffords, 
they were cut. Educational opportunities were cut in order, in those 
same two pages, to have massive tax cuts for those at the top of the 
economic ladder.
  A budget is supposed to be a statement of our national priorities. 
And this irresponsible budget invades the security of our seniors and 
those who will be retiring in the future; this budget rejects 
opportunities for our children. All of this results from an unrealistic 
tax cut to shower benefits on those at the top of the economic ladder. 
Vote no!
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the ranking member of the 
Committee on the Budget.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is recognized for 4 minutes.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House for more than 18 years, and in 
those 18 years I have served on a lot of conference committees; but I 
have never been so completely excluded, so totally shut out as in this 
particular conference. I hope at the end of it all, my colleagues on 
the other side will allow us at least one thing, and not call this 
bipartisan. It is by no stretch of the imagination bipartisan. It is 
the very opposite. And it does not augur well for bipartisanship in the 
House for the future.
  But bad as the process has been, the substance is even worse. Because 
what is missing from this budget are not two pages, what is missing are 
real numbers. And let me give the most salient example: the largest 
account in the discretionary budget, national defense. We pass 13 
appropriation bills. The defense bill is as big as all 12 others put 
together. In this budget there is a number for defense of $325 billion. 
That is a place-holder number. That is not a real number.
  Now, how do we know that? Number one, we know Mr. Rumsfeld is busy at 
work doing a top-to-bottom review of defense. And once he has finished 
that review, he is going to send us a huge plus-up in the defense 
budget. Number two, read the text of this resolution and my colleagues 
will find that we give unprecedented unilateral authority to the 
chairman of this committee to increase the allocation for defense by as 
much as nearly $400 billion over the next 10 years. None of us has a 
say in it. He can add that to the budget.
  Let us just make that adjustment, as this chart does, to the reality 
of this budget, the defense budget we all know that is coming. Let us 
assume it is $20 billion to $25 billion initially and builds up over 
time. Let us also add back to the budget what the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. Nussle) was wise enough and right enough to put in it to start 
with, some allocation for emergencies we know based on experience are 
going to happen.
  When we add those two lines, as we can see from this chart, every 
year for the next 5 or 6 years the amount of money we need for 
additional defense spending and the amount of money we need for 
emergencies exceeds the contingency fund that is left over after we do 
the puts and takes that are included in this conference agreement.
  Now, what does that mean? Let us take education. This budget zeros 
out education. The Senate had three votes. They added $300 billion to 
defense and passed a resolution with that plus-up in it. This budget 
was then taken behind closed doors in a conference and all of the money 
for education was excluded; not only the Senate's added to education 
but also the President's request of $21.4 billion for education. All we 
provide for education is inflation.
  Now, some may say on the other side that education's day will come. 
We have a 302(b) allocation process; we will have another occasion when 
we can plus up for education. Not after we adjust for defense and 
emergencies. There is nothing left over.
  So, Mr. Speaker, that is why I say this is the substance, this is the 
reality, and this is why we should vote against this rule on grounds of 
process and substance. Vote against this budget.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would advise the gentlewoman from 
New York (Ms. Slaughter) she still has 1 minute left, should she choose 
to use it.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I advise my colleague from New York that it 
would be my intention to yield at this time a few minutes to the 
distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Budget and then go to 
the rotation for her to close and for me to close.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Budget.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time; and I also thank the gentleman for his leadership, for having to 
come out here on the floor a number of times over the last few days in 
order to manage us through this final budget vote. I appreciate his 
patience and the patience of the Committee on Rules and also his 
leadership. I also appreciate the chance to speak on this.
  I would like to respond briefly to my friend and someone I consider a 
partner on the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spratt). Bipartisanship is his concern

[[Page H2034]]

and it is my concern. However, we may differ slightly on what 
bipartisanship means. If bipartisanship means we have to agree on 
everything all of the time, that is a goal we probably cannot achieve.
  This is a country of 260 million-plus people. We are from rural 
areas, urban areas. We represent districts that have people that farm, 
that work in factories, that have kids, that are seniors; some who are 
highly educated, some that maybe do not have as much education. We have 
many minorities: black, white, Hispanic. What a diverse Nation. How 
could we possibly all of the time agree on every single thing?
  That is not what the founders wanted us to do. They wanted us to come 
into this Chamber and have a debate. They wanted us to come into this 
Chamber and send their representatives here to debate the grand issues 
of the day, and we have a number of them; and we are not going to agree 
on every single one. But what we try and do is we offer both sides, if 
in fact there are sides, the opportunity to present their plans.
  We did that. And what ``we'' means now, of course, is that the 
Republicans control the House. We, at least under somebody's 
definition, control the Senate, the other body, excuse me, and we 
control the White House. And so we have an opportunity to present our 
vision for the country. The loyal opposition has the opportunity to 
present their plan; and we did so this year, respectfully, in a 
bipartisan way. But we did not come to agreement.
  And so at some point in time we have to have a debate, and we have to 
have a vote on which vision to accept. Now, because we do not agree 
does not mean that we are being partisan. In fact, the other side has a 
number of good ideas within their plan, ideas that they have worked on 
for many years. But I must say that they are not shared even by the 
majority of the Democrat caucus.
  Let me just give an example of what we do not agree on with the last 
plan that was presented by President Clinton. In his last year, just as 
an example, during these next 10 years, compared to our big major tax 
decrease that everybody is out here lambasting today, and that is fine, 
that is where the other side is coming from, my colleagues do not 
believe we ought to cut taxes, but let us compare that to the other 
plan. President Clinton's last budget had $237 billion of tax 
increases. Now, I am sorry we do not agree.
  I am not going to be partisan about that. The opposition party can 
fairly present their side of it. Now they have moved to the other side 
of the coin. They are saying now we ought to have tax decreases, not as 
much as the Republicans want; but at least they have moved in that 
direction, from tax increases to tax decreases.
  But just because we still do not agree does not mean that it has to 
be partisan. We can have a fair debate. It does not have to be 
personal. I would say by and large it has not been personal; that we 
have not heard some of the rancorous debate where people have come out 
here accusing people of throwing children in the street that we heard 
maybe 3, 4 years ago. I would hope that continues. But it does not mean 
that we are not being bipartisan because we do not agree. It is fair in 
this country to present plans and to allow for the debate.
  So let me just briefly go through what it is that we are presenting 
here today as a result of this rule. I believe that we have a plan that 
meets the priorities of this country. Let me just run through a few of 
them.
  This is the fifth balanced budget in a row. This is something we 
believe very strongly in, that our budgets should be balanced, that 
they should be responsible. And there is still money left over after we 
balance that budget. We have $2.4 trillion of debt reduction over the 
next 10 years, the largest decrease of our national indebtedness that 
we have had in our country's history over this same period. And we 
still have resources left over. We are saving the entire Social 
Security Trust Fund. Only since 1999 has that been a bipartisan 
agreement here in this House. There is still money left over. The 
entire Medicare surplus is set aside for modernization and a 
prescription drug benefit, and there is still tax surpluses left over. 
We are budgeting for our priorities at 4 percent, and there is still 
money left over to provide $1.35 trillion worth of tax relief for the 
American people. There is still money left over.
  There are still resources left over after we have balanced the 
budget, provided the most debt relief in history, set aside Social 
Security, set aside Medicare for modernization, provided for America's 
priorities at a 4 percent growth in spending, and provided for tax 
relief. And, believe it or not, there is still resources left over to 
provide for contingencies in the future.
  Now, my colleagues may not agree with that budget. I invite them to 
vote against it if they do not. But just because they are voting 
against it, I will not call them partisan. I will suggest that they 
have a different view of America and our future. That is not partisan; 
that is what it means for them to be in the opposition.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for closing.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, let me quickly respond to my friend, the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), that if he wants an example of model 
bipartisanship, 1997 is a good year to refer to. That year the White 
House was controlled by Democrats, the Congress was controlled by 
Republicans, and we sat down and had a process that lasted several 
months and then came up with something called the Balanced Budget 
Agreement of 1997. I think what we learned from that experience is that 
regardless of the outcome, just putting it through the process, where 
everybody participates, develops a better product.
  The gentleman does not have to go back to Mr. Clinton's proposals. We 
did not bring his budget to the floor. He is no longer President. We 
had a budget in the well of the House just a few weeks ago which called 
for an allocation of a third of the surplus to tax cuts. We were 
supporting that. We came forth with the idea in our resolution for a 
tax stimulus this year and next year using the surplus we know we have 
in hand. That has come out in this final product.
  The other side could have had the same sort of result if we had had a 
real give and take. We could have had a real free market of ideas. We 
would not have let our colleagues get away with coming to the floor 
with nothing for education in their budget. We would have insisted the 
defense number be realistically represented in this budget. I think we 
would have had a better budget and we might have had an opportunity, 
one of those rare opportunities, for a bipartisan budget for the next 
10 years.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to make 
some closing remarks.
  I think this has been actually a very good warm-up for the next 
debate that is coming on this. Sure, we have heard some of the scare 
stories and we have heard some of the rhetorical questions we have 
expected. And I think that we are going to continue to hear those 
because rhetorical questions perpetuate shibboleths and shibboleths are 
what you do when you do not have anything else to do.
  I am sorry that there is not a feeling that this has not been a 
carefully thought-out effort. I believe it has, and I think it has gone 
through conference and had a great deal of discussion not only in the 
Congress of the United States but in the executive branch and across 
America. And I certainly have found that in my district when I have 
gone home.
  I know we have done scare tactics before, and I guess some people 
think scare tactics are an excuse not to vote for tax relief; and that 
is okay if you really do not believe in tax relief. I remember very 
well that scare tactics do not last very long. I remember experiencing 
them some years ago; that somehow our party was going to stop school 
lunches and then we were going to stop Meals-on-Wheels for elderly. And 
all that did was cause anxiety for a lot of Americans, and it was never 
true. Now I guess we are going to have school lunches that are going to 
have arsenic and salmonella in them, listening to some of the latest 
opposition party ads about what we are doing.
  I do not think the falling-sky scenario does very well for America or 
is positive in getting the program or the business of government done. 
I think even The Washington Post editorialized a few years ago that 
Mediscare was a tactic that was not worthy of the honorable Democratic 
Party when we were trying very hard to find ways to

[[Page H2035]]

resolve the trust fund issues, which in fact we did on a bipartisan 
basis, just like we found a way to protect Social Security. And I would 
say that that was under a Republican-led Congress, but it was certainly 
at a time when there was a Democrat in the White House.
  So I think when we do work together, we come out with a pretty good 
product. And I think in this case we have a pretty good product. I do 
not think we ignore our veterans, and I do not think we ignore any 
Americans. This is an honest effort, and I urge everybody's support for 
the rule so we can continue this debate.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 218, 
nays 208, not voting 5, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 103]

                               YEAS--218

     Aderholt
     Akin
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baker
     Ballenger
     Barr
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bereuter
     Biggert
     Bilirakis
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (SC)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Cannon
     Cantor
     Capito
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Coble
     Collins
     Combest
     Cooksey
     Cox
     Crane
     Crenshaw
     Culberson
     Cunningham
     Davis, Jo Ann
     Davis, Tom
     Deal
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Diaz-Balart
     Doolittle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     English
     Everett
     Ferguson
     Flake
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Fossella
     Frelinghuysen
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Graves
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Grucci
     Gutknecht
     Hansen
     Hart
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hilleary
     Hobson
     Hoekstra
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Isakson
     Issa
     Istook
     Jenkins
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Keller
     Kelly
     Kennedy (MN)
     Kerns
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kirk
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaHood
     Largent
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     LoBiondo
     Lucas (OK)
     Manzullo
     McCrery
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McKeon
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Miller, Gary
     Moran (KS)
     Morella
     Myrick
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Osborne
     Ose
     Otter
     Oxley
     Paul
     Pence
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Platts
     Pombo
     Portman
     Pryce (OH)
     Putnam
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Rehberg
     Reynolds
     Riley
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Roukema
     Royce
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaffer
     Schrock
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Simmons
     Simpson
     Skeen
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Souder
     Spence
     Stearns
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Tancredo
     Tauzin
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Tiahrt
     Tiberi
     Toomey
     Traficant
     Upton
     Vitter
     Walden
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weller
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                               NAYS--208

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Allen
     Andrews
     Baca
     Baird
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Barcia
     Barrett
     Becerra
     Bentsen
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Blumenauer
     Bonior
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardin
     Carson (IN)
     Carson (OK)
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Condit
     Conyers
     Costello
     Coyne
     Cramer
     Crowley
     Cummings
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     Deutsch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doyle
     Edwards
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Ford
     Frank
     Frost
     Gephardt
     Gonzalez
     Gordon
     Green (TX)
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Hall (TX)
     Harman
     Hastings (FL)
     Hill
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hoeffel
     Holden
     Holt
     Honda
     Hooley
     Hoyer
     Inslee
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jefferson
     John
     Johnson, E. B.
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     Kind (WI)
     Kleczka
     Kucinich
     LaFalce
     Lampson
     Langevin
     Lantos
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lucas (KY)
     Luther
     Maloney (CT)
     Maloney (NY)
     Markey
     Mascara
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McIntyre
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller, George
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moore
     Moran (VA)
     Murtha
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Payne
     Pelosi
     Peterson (MN)
     Phelps
     Price (NC)
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Ross
     Rothman
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Sanchez
     Sanders
     Sandlin
     Sawyer
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Scott
     Serrano
     Sherman
     Shows
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Solis
     Spratt
     Stark
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stupak
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Taylor (MS)
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Thurman
     Tierney
     Towns
     Turner
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Wexler
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Wynn

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Cubin
     Pomeroy
     Rivers
     Stump
     Weldon (PA)

                              {time}  1211

  Messrs. INSLEE, MEEHAN, and DEUTSCH changed their vote from ``yea'' 
to ``nay.''
  So the resolution was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  Stated for:
  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 103, I was outside the 
Electronic Paging Zone. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 136, I call up 
the conference report on the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 83) 
establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government 
for fiscal year 2002, revising the congressional budget for the United 
States Government for fiscal year 2001, and setting forth appropriate 
budgetary levels for each of fiscal years 2003 through 2011.
  The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). Pursuant to House 
Resolution 136, the conference report is considered as having been 
read.
  (For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of 
May 8, 2001, at page H1957.)
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) and the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) each will control 30 
minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle).
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
New Hampshire (Mr. Sununu), the distinguished vice chairman of the 
Committee on the Budget.
  Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by commending the members of 
the Committee on the Budget, the conferees, for putting together what I 
think is a very strong budget proposal, the most realistic and 
certainly the most enforceable budget resolution that we have had come 
through this body since I have been a Member of Congress. It does not 
include everything that every Member of the House would like to see in 
a budget resolution, but I think it reflects real balance and a real 
sense of priorities.
  We will balance the budget with this resolution for the fourth year 
in a row. That is a historic achievement in and of itself. And we are 
doing it without using any of the Social Security surplus. Members on 
the minority side can find fault with just about any document that 
comes to the floor, but let us step back and at least recognize that we 
are doing the right thing for the American people by balancing the 
budget, by setting aside funds for Social Security, and by paying down 
debt.

                              {time}  1215

  Balancing the budget for 4 consecutive years, that is something this 
House should be very proud of.

[[Page H2036]]

  We control the growth in government spending. We increase 
discretionary spending by about 4 percent. There are many that would 
like to see government explode, 8, 10, 12 percent growth in spending. 
That is not sustainable. It would be nice to be able to fund every 
program, to double the funding for every program we have at the Federal 
level, and go home and tell the American people we are spending money 
on good deeds; but the fact is that is not sustainable.
  It is not fiscally responsible and this body has refused to do it. 
Four percent growth, that is about what the average household budget 
will grow this year.
  We have cut taxes. It is a compromise. The President proposed a $1.6 
trillion tax cut. We have compromised at a little bit more than $1.3 
trillion. It is realistic to expect that after we have increased the 
size of government, after we have set aside for Social Security and 
balanced the budget, after we have funded important priorities, we give 
what is left over back to the American taxpayer that sent it here in 
the first place.
  We have balanced the budget, controlled the growth in government 
spending, cut taxes to make the Tax Code more fair, and we have funded 
the right priorities: an 11 percent increase for education; more 
funding for men and women in uniform; increased funding for basic 
scientific research.
  This reflects a compromise, sure, but it also reflects a budget that 
we should all be proud of that sets the right priorities for the 
country and continues the process of retiring debt and keeping our 
economy strong.
  If one wants to explode the size of government, this is not for them. 
If one is opposed to tax relief, this resolution is not for them. But 
if one wants to set the right priorities, lower taxes and keep our 
country going in the right direction, I ask my colleagues to support 
the resolution.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Combest), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on 
Agriculture.
  Mr. COMBEST. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle) for yielding the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference report to the 
fiscal year 2002 budget resolution.
  When I became chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, I pledged 
that Congress would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America's farmers 
and ranchers, to see them through tough times and to strengthen U.S. 
farm policy. This conference report is the cornerstone of that 
commitment.
  I thank President Bush and the House and Senate leadership for their 
commitment to U.S. farmers and ranchers. Mr. Speaker, I especially 
thank the chairman of the Committee on the Budget. The gentleman from 
Iowa (Mr. Nussle) knows what our farmers and ranchers are up against so 
he rolled up his sleeves and he did something about it. The fruit of 
that labor is what we consider today, and its timing is crucial.
  Conditions in farm country are serious. Net cash income over the last 
3 years has fallen in real terms to its lowest point since the Great 
Depression. The magnitude of this problem reaches beyond farms, 
ranches, and rural America. It is a national problem.
  The ad hoc help Congress has provided each year since 1998 has 
helped, but it is only a year at a time. A long-term farm policy is 
what this country needs. The conference report gives the Committee on 
Agriculture the tools to make it happen and, as chairman of that 
committee, we will get it done.
  I urge my colleagues to support this report.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the minority leader.
  (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise to vote and speak against this 
conference report and ask Members on both sides of the aisles to do the 
same thing. This is not a good budget for America.
  We did not get to vote the other night because we did not have two 
pages, but now that we have seen all of the pages, the problem was not 
the lack of the right pages. The problem with this budget is that it 
does not have the right numbers. It does not fulfill the priorities of 
the American people. It is a budget that is deficient in terms of 
fiscal responsibility and in terms of the right priorities that I think 
people have.
  In many ways, this budget is a definition of what we want the country 
to be in the next 10 years. So it is a momentous decision that we are 
making.
  I believe this is a day that we give up on fiscal responsibility. I 
thoroughly believe that if this budget is followed, that in the days 
ahead we will return to deficits.
  First of all, there is no cushion. The cushion that looks like is 
here is not here, and when the tax cuts go up, as they inevitably will, 
when other tax cuts that are not contemplated in this budget are 
actually passed, the deficits will start. We will invade Social 
Security and Medicare, which we said we did not want to do.
  We have had innumerable votes here on lockboxes, but I predict that 
if this budget is passed we will be into Social Security and Medicare.
  This is the day that we return to high deficits and high interest 
rates. Why in the world would we want to do that? For 20 years in this 
country all we ever talked about was deficits and what deficits meant 
to our ability to fund anything that people wanted to fund; what it did 
to high interest rates; what it did to high inflation. Now, with this 
budget, I believe we are back into deficits and back into invading 
Social Security and Medicare.
  This is the day that we give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest special 
interests in the country, and we cannot seem to figure out how to get a 
decent tax cut to the middle-income Americans who really need it. 
Again, half of the tax cuts contemplated here go to the top wage 
earners in our country, and there is not enough for the hardworking 
families that really need tax relief.
  This is a budget that turns its back on education. This is probably 
the most remarkable trade-off in this budget. The President sent a 
budget that asked for $21 billion over 10 years above inflation for 
education programs. The budget that the Democrats here on the House had 
asked for was $150 billion over 10 years above inflation for education. 
In the Senate, in a bipartisan way, they added $300 billion above 
inflation for education, for after-school and pre-school; give us more 
teachers, repair the school buildings, all the things that Americans 
are asking for across the country to improve public education. Yet, 
this budget takes out every cent of the increases that the President 
asked for or we asked for or the Senate asked for. We are at a flatline 
budget for education if this budget is voted for.
  How in the world do we explain to anyone what we have done on 
education? We are right back to where we started, after a long trip of 
public relations saying to people we want to help education, and now we 
are not doing that.
  Then I think if this budget is passed, there will not be a Medicare 
prescription drug program. In fact, I do not think there will be a 
prescription drug program of any reasonable kind that will affect the 
people in this country. When I go home now on weekends, people come up 
to me and say, ``Hey, where is the prescription drug program?'' 
Everybody had ads in the campaign, Republicans and Democrats alike. We 
all said we wanted a prescription drug program. I defy anyone to find 
that program in this budget.
  Why do I say that? I say that because I think the budget tries to get 
to $300 billion over 10 years for a prescription drug program. The 
problem with that is it spends the Medicare surplus. It is really 
taking the money out of the Medicare surplus to give it to prescription 
drugs. I do not think we are going to do that. I do not think we are 
going to have a prescription drug program if this budget is our budget.
  I did not even get to low-income energy assistance, COPS on the beat, 
conservation and renewable programs for energy. If one goes out in 
America today, all anybody can talk about is $3 gasoline and not having 
enough electricity. If one goes out on the West Coast, they are having 
brownouts and blackouts.
  People are focused on energy and there is nothing in this budget to 
deal with the energy issue, which is on the lips of every American 
today.

[[Page H2037]]

  Let me sum up by saying just one thing. This budget is a farce and it 
is a fraud. At the end, America deserves better than that. We can do 
better than that. I would pray we could send this budget back to the 
committee. Let us have a real bipartisan process where ideas from both 
sides are incorporated into a final product. Let us give America a 
budget that is worthy of this great country.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond.
  Mr. Speaker, the legacy of the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) 
when he was the majority leader is as follows: tax increases, 
underfunding special education, absolutely no energy policy for this 
country, raids on the Social Security Trust Fund, and no prescription 
drug policy. So to come to the floor here today and to call this a 
fraud, when for years as the majority leader he did nothing to promote 
the policies he now comes to the floor and lambastes, is an atrocity.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman 
from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle) for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, after listening to the last two exchanges, I am reminded 
of what John Adams told us over two hundred years ago: Facts are 
stubborn things. I think the more the American families learn about the 
facts of this budget, I think the more they are going to like it.
  Let us look at what it really does. This is a budget that works for 
every family. The maximum debt elimination; we are going to pay off the 
redeemable publicly held debt over the next 10 years; tax relief for 
everybody who pays taxes; improved education for our children, an 11.5 
percent increase. Some of us think maybe that is a little too much. A 
stronger national defense; health care reform that modernizes Medicare. 
Is it not about time?
  We set aside $300 billion to start a prescription drug plan for those 
people who fall through the cracks.
  Finally, we are going to save Social Security not only for today but 
for the future.
  Our friends on the left are going to say, well, this is 
irresponsible. Well, Mr. Speaker, this was said already today, that 
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average family budget 
will go up at a rate of about 4.2 percent.
  This budget increases the Federal budget by less than that number. I 
think that is great news for American families.
  Some people say we cannot afford this tax relief. Well, Mr. Speaker, 
if we look at the economy today, we look at energy prices today, I say 
we cannot afford not to give tax cuts to the American people.
  Let me just share a couple of numbers. Last year, when the economy 
was growing at 5.5 percent during the first quarter, we generated a 
surplus of $40 billion. This year, with the economy slowing to about a 
1 percent growth rate, we generated a surplus of $74 billion. Mr. 
Speaker, we cannot not afford to give tax cuts this year.
  I would also suggest that the numbers we are using are incredibly 
conservative. In fact, I asked Mr. Daniels of the Budget Office, and 
these are the words: ``So if revenue growth just equals the 40-year 
average, we will actually have revenues in excess of $2 trillion more 
than we are currently using in your budget projections, is that 
correct?''
  His answer was, ``Yes, sir, that is correct.''
  We can afford this budget. It makes common sense. It is good for 
American families. It is good for our future.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
  Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that we have never said we 
should not have tax cuts. We said when we brought our budget resolution 
to the floor, unlike theirs, that we should have some this year, take 
the whole surplus this year and rebate it to the American public, and 
we set aside $800 billion to $900 billion for additional tax relief.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Stenholm).
  (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the budget today, 
but with a sense of disappointment. I am disappointed because I do 
recognize the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) made an outreach, but 
his leadership chose not to abide by it.
  In the spirit of compromise, we in the Blue Dogs were prepared to 
support a tax cut higher than the budget we proposed, providing there 
was a strong enforceable commitment to debt reduction. This budget we 
vote on today does nothing for debt reduction, and I defy anyone to 
show how it does.
  This resolution we vote on today literally bets the ranch that the 
surpluses will continue to grow. If they do not grow, or if they are 
off just a little bit, we will be forced to dip into the Medicare Trust 
Fund before we even start dealing with increases for defense or other 
needs the resolution does not address.

                              {time}  1230

  This resolution sets an unrealistic spending level. Based on the 
history of the majority over the last 6 years, I predict we will have 
another train wreck. But that is up to the majority.
  I rise in the strongest opposition to this budget resolution today 
because it does not accommodate Social Security reform. I sent a letter 
to our President commending him for the Social Security Commission. I 
have worked for the last 5 years with the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Kolbe) on the other side and others in a bipartisan way in setting the 
groundwork for Social Security reform. This resolution provides zero 
funding for Social Security reform.
  If I need one reason to strongly oppose this and why I am so proud of 
the Blue Dog Democrats for voting to oppose it, as it takes a two-
thirds vote for us to oppose anything, to take any position, we took 
that position, and I am so proud of our Blue Dogs because we are still 
standing for the same principles of debt reduction, saving Social 
Security and Medicare first, providing for the needed spending in the 
area of defense, health care, education, our veterans. I agree on the 
agriculture numbers, they are much better.
  This is a borrow-and-spend resolution. It borrows from our children 
and grandchildren in order to pay the political needs of today. I 
suggest you select carefully your words, my friends on the majority, 
because tomorrow you will either enjoy them, or you will eat them.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Smith), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on 
Veterans' Affairs.
  (Mr. SMITH of New Jersey asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I would like to engage in a 
colloquy with the distinguished Chair. I would like to commend the 
chairman and commend him for his determined advocacy on behalf of our 
Nation's veterans.
  As the chairman knows, the House-passed budget resolution included a 
significant increase compared to 2001 levels in total spending for 
veterans' benefits and services. The total increase for this function 
was $5.6 billion over the fiscal year 2001 budget authority level, 
providing a total of $52.3 billion for fiscal 2002. It is my 
understanding that the conferees accepted the House-passed mandatory 
spending level for function 700, a total of $28 billion, which assumes 
a phased-in increase in the Montgomery GI Bill and other benefit 
improvements contained in H.R. 801.
  Is that the chairman of the Committee on the Budget's understanding 
as well?
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, before I respond, let me thank the gentleman 
for his leadership. There is no one in this House that stands ahead of 
the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs when it comes to 
advocating for our Nation's veterans.
  In response to the chairman's questions, yes, the conference report 
reflects the House levels for mandatory spending, and it also includes 
the House proposals for increases above current law levels.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me

[[Page H2038]]

just ask, it is my further understanding that the conferees agree to an 
overall level of discretionary spending that would allow veterans' 
discretionary spending to go as high as $26.2 billion in budget 
authority for fiscal years 2002, a level consistent with the Senate 
approved level. This level would accommodate major increases in 
spending for VA health care and for claims processing and could be as 
much as $3.6 billion above 2001. In any event, the increase would be no 
lower than the House-passed $1.7 billion.
  Is that the chairman of the Committee on the Budget's understanding?
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, again, 
the answer is correct. The increase was not explicitly reflected in the 
budget function for veterans because the discretionary increases in the 
conference report were distributed across all budget functions. As the 
distinguished chairman knows, it is the Committee on Appropriations 
that makes the final determination of exactly how those resources are 
distributed, and the gentleman and I will be visiting the Committee on 
Appropriations to make sure that they hold to the highest possible 
level for our veterans.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I want to 
thank the chairman for those clarifications. I congratulate the 
chairman on an outstanding budget.
  Mr. SPRATT. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee, 
Mr. Tanner.
  (Mr. TANNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I want to rise in a sense of disappointment 
also. I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle). It is too 
bad his leadership has chosen the route it has chosen today, because 
there were some of us that wanted to reach out, do a bipartisan budget 
for this country that, albeit the tax number was a little higher than 
we thought and there was not enough debt retirement as the Blue Dogs 
thought, but the real kicker in all of this is the House leadership has 
not only taken us out of play, they have taken their own Members out of 
play. It does not matter what the House does.
  Do you know if you read the budget document, the House will not even 
agree to reconcile to the same number that their White House agreed to 
with the Senate. I have never seen a conference report like that 
before. But if you read it, it is there. The intransigence of this 
House leadership is destroying the House of Representatives when it 
comes to public decisions made for and on behalf of this country.
  Let me say one other thing. When I came here 12 years ago, all I 
heard was, John, do something, please, about the horrendous debt of 
this nation that we are passing on to our children, a 13.5 percent 
mortgage on this country.
  Every dime of debt reduction that they talk about comes from the 
Social Security surplus money. You know what that is like? That is like 
you or I paying off our Visa charge with a MasterCard. It alone does 
nothing to reduce the obligation that the next generation has to pay 
and has to come up with, and that is plain and simply morally, 
generationally bankrupt.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Kirk), a distinguished member of the Committee on the 
Budget.
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the service of my 
chairman, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), and also my ranking 
minority member, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the 
soul of discretion in this debate. But I do want to correct the record.
  There were two pages missing in this budget. They are now here. But 
what else is missing from this budget? Last year President Clinton 
proposed a $237 million increase in taxes between 2000 and 2010. That 
is missing from this budget. This year, leaders on the other side 
proposed a one-third plan, calling for $740 billion in new spending, 
with little details. That is missing from this budget. Last year 
President Clinton proposed the creation of 84 new Federal programs and 
the expansion of 162 others, and that, Mr. Chairman, is missing from 
this budget. Their one-third plan would pay millions of dollars in 
prepayment penalties from working taxpayers to the most wealthy 
bondholders. That is missing from this budget.
  So what is in this budget? What is in this budget is that we are on 
track for doubling resources to the National Institutes of Health; what 
is in this budget is the President's immediate Helping Hand 
prescription drug plan with the flexibility to expand that plan; what 
is in this budget is an 11 percent increase for education; and what is 
in this budget are the 1999 reforms that we did for the budget that 
protect Social Security.
  So, for me, I rise in strong support of this budget. There are 1,000 
reasons why you could argue against a budget from all sides, but this 
is an historic agreement where we complete the Congress' action, and we 
do it on time.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, in response to the gentleman, I would say what is 
missing from this budget is any sense of priority that education is the 
number one challenge facing our country. There is not an 11.4 percent 
increase. That is what Mr. Bush claimed when he was offering $21.4 
billion. That increase is not included in this budget. The Senate added 
$300 billion. It is not there.
  The only thing in this budget for education is inflation, the same 
thing everything else gets. So the dominant priority here is not for 
education, that is for sure.
  Mr. Speaker, to back up what I have just said, I yield 5 minutes to 
the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), to talk about education, 
the missing piece in this budget.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding me time.
  Mr. Speaker, our budget reflects our values, and Democrats want to 
provide tax relief. We also want to take care of other priorities, like 
paying down the debt and strengthening Social Security and adding 
prescription drugs to Medicare and making the investments we need in 
education and research and the environment, safe communities, 
affordable housing, military readiness. Quite simply, this Republican 
budget falls short on all of those counts, but nowhere more than in 
education.
  We need to be reducing class size in this country and building and 
modernizing schools and recruiting and training teachers and boosting 
Title I aid for disadvantaged districts, closing the achievement gaps 
between majority and minority students and increasing Pell Grants and 
meeting our obligation to special education students and expanding Head 
Start.
  This budget falls short even of what the President asked for, and 
that was already inadequate. For example, with this budget, President 
Bush and the Republicans break their promise to increase the maximum 
Pell Grant to $5,100. Candidate Bush promised to do that for freshmen. 
Unfortunately, President Bush and the Republicans have fallen at least 
$1.5 billion short of the amount needed to fulfill that promise.
  The President's budget provides only enough funding to raise the 
maximum award of $3,750 by a mere $150, far less than Pell Grant 
increases in recent years, and the budget before us today does even 
less than what the President proposed.
  Mr. DAVIS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. DAVIS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is terribly important that we 
debate the facts here, and the fact which has been stated over and over 
again, which has not been rebutted, is that the House is adopting today 
a budget that is $21 billion less than what the President proposed for 
education. What does that say about our priorities?
  In my home State of Florida and in many growth States throughout the 
country that leaves us high and dry in dealing with the growing problem 
of school construction. We need that to reduce class size so we can 
return control of the classroom back to our teachers.
  We are left with having to raise property taxes or raise sales taxes 
that are much too high in Florida and many other States. There is a 
solution at hand if we will get our priorities straight. It is the 
Johnson-Rangel bill that provides tax credits to school districts to 
fix crumbling schools, to build new schools the right size the first 
time, where we can provide Federal funding to fix that problem.

[[Page H2039]]

  We are missing a golden opportunity. If we simply will return to 
where the President was, at least $21 billion higher, we can pay down 
the debt, we can have a tax cut, but we can get our priorities straight 
and begin in Florida and other States to fix crumbling classrooms and 
reduce class size.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank 
my colleague for underscoring the need to get our kids out of these 
trailers and into modern effective classrooms where they can learn and 
where teachers can teach.
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from New 
Jersey.
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and 
pointing out that each day this debate goes on, education is losing 
ground. We started off with a number that was not as good as the 
President had proposed. Now it comes back from conference committee 
with even less than that. So whether it is Pell Grants or school 
modernization, we are just not keeping up.
  An area that concerns me greatly is teacher recruitment. We need 2.2 
million new teachers in the next 10 years just to stay even. Whatever 
incentives we use to recruit those teachers, whether it is debt 
forgiveness or other financial aid, it is not here. And we will pay. 
Schools all across the country will pay.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, in my 
State alone we are going to need 80,000 new teachers in the next 10 
years. We do not know where those are coming from. The gentleman is 
correct, this budget has no investment in recruiting and training and 
improving the preparation of teachers.
  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, and for 
the continuing professional development of existing teachers.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon, 
a great champion of special education.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the things you do in a budget is you set 
priorities. That is what a budget is all about. One of the things you 
do when you set priorities is you put money where you say your 
priorities are. I mean, we do that in our home budgets; we need to do 
it in this budget.
  Again, this budget has been cut. It is even less than what the 
President asked for. The President's budget was inadequate.
  We have an opportunity at this time to fund special education. We 
promised about 26 years ago to our schools and to our children that we 
would provide up to 40 percent of the funding for special education. We 
have not done very well. We have only provided 14.9 percent.
  This is an opportunity to provide the funding we need for special 
education, and, in doing that, we help every single child, every single 
school district. But we need to make sure that our priorities are 
funded, and this budget does not do that.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, is it 
not true that our colleagues in the other body actually put additional 
funding in the budget for special education, and now as this budget 
comes back to us, those funds have been stripped out. Those funds are 
gone. This is an obligation which our local districts feel very 
acutely.
  Mr. Speaker, without new resources, these crumbling classrooms cannot 
be repaired, new schools cannot be built, teachers cannot be hired and 
Pell Grants cannot be increased. We must do better. We must defeat this 
budget.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond.
  Mr. Speaker, if it was spending that we needed to solve education in 
this country, the District of Columbia schools would be the best in the 
Nation. This is not a county sale barn, where we are bidding on a prize 
heifer. Spending more money on education is not the only thing we need 
to do. I stipulate the fact that you will spend everything you want 
here. That does not mean it is a responsible budget. We got to have 
reform. That is what is in this budget.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Collins), a distinguished member of the Committee on the Budget.
  Mr. COLLINS. Mr. Speaker, the people of the State of Georgia strongly 
believe that the Federal budget policies should be based on guidelines 
of limited government, lower taxes, and increased local control of 
local affairs.

                              {time}  1245

  The budget resolution before us today closely follows those 
guidelines.
  First, this budget plan establishes a limit on the growth of Federal 
spending that closely follows the rate of inflation. Second, we provide 
real reduction in taxes for wage-earners. Third, the budget resolution 
makes room for future consideration of reform bills such as education 
reform that will focus on returning more control to the local level.
  Mr. Speaker, why is tax reduction important? In developing a budget 
plan, we must answer the question, what makes up the economy? It is not 
the government. The Federal Government does not manufacture, it does 
not have a product for sale, it is not and should never try to be the 
engine that runs economic growth.
  The economy is made up of people, workers, taxpayers. They are the 
ones earning the wages and spending or investing portions of their 
paycheck. Each time they do, they create economic activity. The more 
they spend or invest, the more economic growth we have. In many ways 
the budget debate is about cash flow, the cash flow of the government 
and the cash flow of individuals and families.
  The Federal Government has a cash flow which is funded by the 
paychecks of working people. It creates its own income by collecting a 
portion of all private sector earnings. Today, that collection level is 
excessive. Over the next 10 years, the government will collect from 
wage-earners over $3.1 trillion more in non-Social Security taxes than 
it needs to fund the operation of government.
  The budget resolution takes a responsible look at the Federal books 
and recognizes the fact that it is time to slow down the collection of 
the government cash flow and return those excess funds to the cash flow 
of individuals and families. In the words of the President, the 
taxpayers have overpaid their bill; and this budget resolution will 
provide a refund on their collected earnings that they so well deserve.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Menendez).
  (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, this is the people's House, not the 
special interests' House, not the billionaires' House, not the oil 
companies' House, but the people's House. The budget we pass tells the 
people what this House stands for.
  The problem is, this Republican budget tells them we want to return 
to the days of budget-busting deficits and away from investing in our 
future. This budget shortchanges the agency that keeps our air clean 
and our water pure, while President Bush gives a free pass to oil and 
gas companies who want to rob our public lands for private profits; and 
it raids the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to pay for new 
tax breaks for millionaires while denying many working families even a 
dime in tax relief.
  Budgets represent values. They tell the American people what we stand 
for. This House must stand for more than just doling out tax breaks to 
the wealthy. This budget does not represent the values of the American 
people; it represents the values of a few special interests. It is a 
sham, it is a disgrace, it is the real atrocity, and it should be 
defeated.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Crenshaw), a distinguished member of the committee.
  Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support this budget 
resolution, and there are an awful lot of good reasons why we ought to 
all support it. Again, it lets the taxpayers keep more of what they 
earn; and it begins to pay down the national debt, a great legacy to 
leave to our children and our grandchildren. It sets aside Social 
Security and Medicare to make sure that they are in a lockbox, that 
they are off the

[[Page H2040]]

table. They are going to be there for not only our senior citizens, but 
for their kids and their grandkids.
  But maybe most important about what this budget resolution does is it 
recognizes that we need to make America strong again. The only way to 
keep America safe is to keep America strong, and that is not the case 
today. We have watched the last 8 years while our military has been 
hollowed out, overdeployed and underfunded; and this budget recognizes 
that and puts more money into the military. It puts it in a place where 
we need it. Because there are so many young men and women in our 
military today who have really kind of lost their sense of direction. 
Their morale is lower than it has ever been. This budget puts 
additional money to give pay increases to our young men and women in 
uniform. It says that we are going to provide additional benefits in 
terms of health care for those young men and women in uniform, and it 
says that because so many of our young men and women live in 
substandard housing, we are going to make the housing better for them 
to give them a sense of respect and honor.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not a safe world in which we live today. The 
Cold War is over; but we still have nuclear proliferation, we have non-
State terrorist groups, we have criminal elements with worldwide 
tentacles, and we need to recognize that.
  So if there is just only one reason, and again, there is an awful lot 
of reasons to vote for this budget, but just the reason alone to make 
America strong again is reason enough. I urge adoption of this budget.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from 
North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton).
  (Mrs. CLAYTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her 
remarks.)
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time. Some of us, including myself, take the budget process seriously; 
and we also take the budget as an important document.
  We consider the Federal budget an important document because it is 
the document that we use to speak to the needs and the priorities of 
the American people, whether that is defense, education, Social 
Security, environment, agriculture, any of these. Also it is an 
important document because it says where we are getting the resources 
from, whether it be taxes, will it be trust funds like the Social 
Security trust fund, or what programs will we reduce. Indeed, it is an 
important document that when we have a surplus, we should use it to pay 
down the debt.
  In all of these areas, we indeed do not take the process seriously; 
but we say that the budget indeed is an important document. The 
chairman says it is a guide. A guide for what? A guide for new 
priorities or simply a statement to get it out on the floor?
  Mr. Speaker, I say we failed miserably, but in no more important 
place than education. Indeed, the commitment to education is 
undergirded by taking away not only what the President asked for, but 
also the additional funds.
  I say we ought to reject this budget. We can do much better for the 
American people. We can say we are serious, and the budget itself is an 
important document.
  Mr. Speaker, today I would like to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' 
on H. Con. Res. 83, the conference report on the budget.
  As a senior member of the Budget Committee, I take the budget process 
seriously. If the two pages had not been missing from the budget, this 
blunder never would have been exposed, and we would not have allowed us 
to see the reality of this process and what was really being concealed.
  Some of us, including me, take the budget process seriously. We 
consider the federal budget to be an important document that provides 
for the priorities and needs of the American people. This document 
should show how and what activities the government will support (i.e. 
defense, prescription drugs for seniors, environment, medicare, social 
security, education, and agriculture). A serious budget would clearly 
indicate how we are going pay for these priorities. It would indicate: 
What are the resources? What are the tax cuts? What programs are 
reduced? And yes, a serious budget should help pay down the national 
debt when in surplus, and we do have a surplus. This conference report 
on this budget resolution fails miserably on being a serious or 
important document for many reasons.
  Education. The most important and serious priority to American people 
clearly is education. However, this conference report on the budget 
does not reflect this commitment. It completely eliminates the $294 
billion in education that the Senate approved. In fact, the budget 
reduces the education budget below the President's request by $21 
billion. We take seriously the commitment and statements of the 
President, and the majority that ``no child should be left behind''. 
These cuts in education are egregious.
  Health. The health needs of American people are also serious. This 
budget makes a mockery of our commitment to help senior citizens secure 
prescription drugs and help prevent HIV or care for AIDS patients or 
respond to other health care needs. Most Members in both Chambers 
clearly know that it will take at least $300 billion or more for a 
meaningful prescription drug program. The budget provides $61.4 billion 
less than the Presidents requested for appropriated health care 
programs such as Ryan White AIDS treatment grants, maternal and child 
care grants, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug 
Administration.
  National Debt. Instead of paying down the national debt, this budget 
has left a margin of error so narrow that we very well will raid the 
Medicare and Social Security Trust funds in order to pay for the tax 
cuts as early as next year. Do we really want to be accused of gambling 
with our nations resources? We are literally betting on our projections 
and hoping that the numbers turn out right.
  This agreement also includes the amount of the contingency reserve in 
its claimed totals for debt reduction. This budget is a sham and a 
farce because they are utilizing ``double counting'' when considering 
the contingency reserve fund. This means that every dollar of the 
contingency reserve that is spent also diminishes the amount of 
debt that is reduced by a dollar, plus the cost of interest. This 
conference report obviously places a low priority on debt reduction. 
Presuming assumptions and projections prove to be correct, the 
conference report would pay about $300 billion less than the amount of 
debt reduction provided by the House Democratic budget alternative 
budget resolution. A budget process that would have included Democrats, 
would have allowed for such deliberation rather than tapping into the 
Medicare and Social Security surplus funds.

  Tax Cuts. The final budget and tax package calls for tax cuts in the 
amount of $1.269 trillion for the years 2002 through 2011, and allows 
for an economic stimulus consisting of $100 billion in outlays that may 
occur any time from 2001 through 2011. Due to the two pages mission, it 
was disclosed that the Republicans had stripped $70 billion from the 
``so called bipartisan deal announced by the President two days 
earlier--which cut education--the President's ``number one'' issue that 
was to ``leave no child behind''. This ten-year tax cut is larger than 
the $1.25 trillion cut Republicans publicly accepted earlier this week 
because of the revenue affects of the reduction of the bill recently 
passed on the Securities and Exchange fees included in that package. 
Believe me, this is the beginning of many tax bills to come that will 
slowly prey upon the Medicare and Social Security trust funds, and 
threaten our economy. The true cost of the tax cut with its impact on 
the surplus over a ten year period, including added spending for 
interest on the national debt, realizes a grand amount of $1.668 
trillion.
  This budget is a fraud, and an empty shell leaving out inevitable tax 
cuts and spending proposals publicly announced by the administration 
and Republican leaders. This agreement does not provide for the funds 
needed for the administration's national missile defense proposal or 
any other increases in the defense budget that may be recommended as a 
result of the administration review of defense policy and requirements. 
Nor, does it include almost $1.0 trillion in tax cuts beyond the $1.35 
trillion reconciled, including terms left out of reconciliation and 
proposals like the $300 billion to fix the AMT, extension of the R&D 
credit, a variety of health-related tax cuts, the Portman-Cardin 
pension/IRA bill that the House passed, a capital gains tax cut and 
small business tax cuts that Republicans want to pass with an increase 
in minimum wage. Last week's budget faux pas was an attempt at 
procedurally rushing through a dishonest and deceptive budget shell 
that would ease the passage of excessive tax cuts. The deception 
backfired and allowed the American people to at least examine the 
conference agreement and to uncover its many flaws. Repeating the 
mistakes of the past would be foolish for this body knowing the 
predictable outcome of increasing the public debt and triggering a 
deficit.
  To pass this budget means breaking our commitments to our senior 
citizens by robbing the Social Security and Medicare trust funds; 
denying our youth and children the best educational opportunities 
possible; and depriving the poor the money and resources needed to 
provide for their welfare.

[[Page H2041]]

  We must make hard choices about how to allocate the resources of the 
American people. We need a conference agreement, that provides sensible 
tax relief for all Americans, pays down the national debt, and adopts 
the priorities of the American people. My fellow colleagues, I urge you 
to vote ``no'' on the conference report on H. Con. Res. 83. It is not 
the right decision for most Americans, and we will all pay a dear price 
if it is passed.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher), a member of the committee.
  Mr. FLETCHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  I appreciate the opportunity to rise and speak in support of this 
conference committee, the budget conference committee. As we can see, 
it helps us set the priority of paying down the national debt at record 
levels to ensure that we do not leave our grandchildren and children in 
debt.
  Tax relief for every taxpayer. Improved education. It gives us the 
opportunity to not just put more money into education, but actually 
make some structural changes that will improve the education for our 
children. Stronger national defense, health care reform and 
modernization of Medicare, with up to $300 billion for Medicare reform, 
including prescription drugs which is needed for our seniors.
  Last year in the House, we passed the first prescription drug bill 
for our seniors out of this House, and we are going to continue to work 
to make sure that happens so that no senior has to choose between their 
food and medicine. We are going to save Social Security in the sense 
that we are setting aside Social Security and Medicare and making sure 
we are keeping that in a lockbox.
  The other side talks a lot about putting more money into priorities. 
What does that do? We have held the spending at 4 percent. They would 
like to increase it 5, 6, 8 percent, we have heard, depending on who 
speaks. What is that? Now we have heard they want tax relief; but let 
me tell my colleagues, any increase in spending as it goes above 
inflation is a taxation on the next generation, because that becomes 
the baseline for next year.
  We have all heard in our accounts of compound interest and how that 
works, how we can double our money over a period of years. Well, what I 
call the increased spending above inflation, what the other side would 
like to do is compound taxation on our children and grandchildren, 
because we require future revenues to be increased in a compounded way 
to increase the spending, or to fund the increased spending that they 
want every year.
  Mr. Speaker, that is not good for America, it is not good for our 
children, and it is certainly not the kind of tax relief and freedom 
that we need to return to our American families.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that there is 
no money set aside in this budget for Social Security and Medicare, 
except for the money that is set aside for a prescription drug benefit, 
but not to make the program solvent; and there is certainly no lockbox. 
It is not in this bill at all.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Capuano).
  Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this budget. It has 
a lot to do with philosophical issues, but it really has a lot more to 
do with telling the truth to the American public.
  The budget that we passed out of committee, though I disagree with 
many philosophical issues, at least told the American public where we 
stood. The budget we are about to vote on today does not, and it does 
not because at the end of the budget, there is something I have never 
seen before, a negative slush fund of $67 billion because we could not 
get it all in. We could not make the numbers add up. What that means is 
that we will be back later on this year to straighten these numbers 
out.
  This is the first time I believe that we have heard before a lot of 
talk about the President's budget we had a Democratic President and a 
Republican House being dead on arrival. This budget is dead on exit. We 
will be back in the fall to straighten it all out. The numbers will be 
meaningless, and we will be back here arguing about what the numbers 
should be. That is in addition to all the philosophical arguments. We 
will be back in the fall; we will be telling the people the truth about 
how much money we put into education and research and the defense 
department. Right now, no one can answer those questions.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady).
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Mr. Speaker, as we can see, Washington hates to 
change, and this Congress and this President is intent on making 
Washington change the way it works. Look at its impact on the American 
people today. Tax Freedom Day just occurred May 3. That means for most 
of our families, we have worked from New Year's Day to May 3, just 
recently, just to pay our State and local and Federal taxes. That is 
the highest, that is the longest date ever; and that means that for 
most families, because we are not working for ourselves until the fifth 
month, we pay more in taxes than if we put our house payments, all of 
our groceries and our clothing together. We pay more than that in 
taxes. No wonder it is hard for families to make ends meet.
  We wonder, how much of the money we send here actually gets to the 
people who really need it. Washington recently has funded, and we have 
read about it, we funded $1 million that the Park Service used to build 
a two-hole outhouse. We spend $5 billion a year to help salmon swim 
upstream. In fact, we spend so much we could buy each of those fish a 
first-class ticket on a plane, fly them to the top of the river and 
save money doing it. Not only that, we paid one group $350,000 a year 
to kill the same salmon. We waste dollars up here day and night.
  This President is intent on Washington not going on a spending spree, 
on tax relief that grows as we pay off the debt and as our surplus 
grows, tax relief grows. This President is intent on helping education 
between the teacher and the student and the student and the parent 
where it really counts. Washington needs to change, and this budget and 
this President is intent on doing it.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding me this time.
  In the time that remains I would hope the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle) would explain a few things to the American people. Number one, 
how is a Nation that is $5,661,347,798,002 in debt, how does that 
Nation have a surplus? How does a Nation that owes its Social Security 
Trust Fund $1.103 billion of unfunded liability, money that has been 
taken from people's paychecks and squandered on other things, how can 
we say we have a surplus? How can a Nation that has taken 235.5 billion 
of people's tax dollars, promised to spend it towards Medicare and 
spent it on other things, and tell people we have a surplus? How can a 
Nation that has taken $160.5 billion out of the military budget over 
the past 15 years, set it aside with the promise that we are going to 
spend it on our military retirees, but spend every penny of it on other 
things, how do we have a surplus?
  Finally, for Federal employees, how do we take $497.6 billion out of 
their paychecks, promise to set it aside for their retirement, spend it 
on other things, and then look them in the eye and say we have a 
surplus and therefore we have to cut taxes and, therefore, we cannot 
fund defense and therefore the fleet will keep shrinking? How can we 
say that when we cut the shipbuilding budget this year by almost $4 
billion that we are taking care of national defense?

                              {time}  1300

  Since the Republicans have taken over Congress, the fleet has shrunk 
from 392 ships to 313. And my colleagues are cutting the shipbuilding 
budget, but yet they keep saying this is good for defense.
  I say to my colleagues, if they are looking for waste, the most 
wasteful thing we do is squander a billion dollars a day on interest on 
the billings we already owe. If my colleagues are serious about 
addressing that waste, then we should take every penny that we have and 
address it to national defense and paying down the national debt.
  This budget does not do that, and therefore I am going to oppose it.

[[Page H2042]]

  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle) for yielding the time to me.
  Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to say to the gentleman from 
Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), my good friend, that I agree that under the 
Clinton administration in the last 8 years, a lot of these things have 
in fact been devastated, like military spending and shipbuilding 
programs and so forth, but we are going to rebuild some of these things 
through a very smart budget.
  The way we are going to do this is we are going to first put our 
priorities on top, Social Security, Medicare, education. Then we are 
going to take care of the normal functions of government, our 
obligations for roads and bridges, and for all of the departments, 
National Parks and Fish and Wildlife. Then what we are going to do is 
pay down the public debt.
  This, Mr. Speaker, is the first debt that we have been able to pass, 
I believe, that actually does pay down the public debt to a zero level, 
which I think is extremely important. Then we get to that leftover 
amount.
  Mr. Speaker, let me explain it to my colleagues this way: In Johnson 
High School, Savannah, Georgia, a couple months back, I was speaking to 
a group of seniors, and I asked them, how many of you have a job? 
Sitting in the front row, a blonde-haired Julie Lawhon said, I have a 
job. Julie, how much do you make? Seven dollars an hour. Seven dollars 
an hour? Then if you work for 2 hours, you made $14, right? No, sir. 
Obviously, you have not had a job; I only get to take home about $11.
  Oh, where does the rest go, little 17-year-old, Julie? It goes to 
taxes. Okay, let us talk about that, the $4 that you pay on your $7 an 
hour in taxes for 2 hours of work, the $4 an hour my friends in 
Washington take and we pay for education, we pay for roads, we pay for 
health care. You do not begrudge that, do you? You know those functions 
are needed. She said, yes.
  Well, Julie, what if you found out I do not need $4, that my friends 
and I can do all of this great stuff for $3.75, what would you do with 
the extra quarter? Seventeen-year-old blonde-haired Julie Lawhon, 
Savannah, Georgia, says, give it back to me, it is my 25 cents.
  That is all we are doing. God bless Julie Lawhon, the 17-year-old 
high school student. God bless the children of the next generation, 
because they get it.
  Mr. Speaker, I am on bended knee, begging my colleagues across the 
aisle to get it as well. It is their money. It does not belong to one 
single person in here. It belongs to the taxpayers. Let us return the 
overcharge back to those who earned it.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I heard the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Kingston), my friend: Let us not give them 25 cents back and add 75 
percent to their debt. That is what the gentleman from Mississippi 
said.
  Mr. Speaker, our Republican friends have turned the annual budget 
resolution into a rite of spring.
  Remember what the Washington Post said last year? The Republicans 
seek not to just cut taxes but to increase defense and selected other 
categories of spending while maintaining the appearance of fiscal 
discipline.
  Does that sound familiar?
  The year before that, The New York Times said the Republican 
Congressional leadership appears to prefer radical tax and spending 
cuts to reasoned accommodation on the budget.
  The tone may be different, but the substance is not.
  Three years ago, of course, the majority plumbed the depths of 
budgetary gridlock. It could not even pass a budget resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, to that poor soul who accidentally lost two pages in the 
budget resolution on the way to the House floor early last Friday, let 
me say, do not be too hard on yourself.
  Mr. Speaker, that oversight is just a tiny blip on a fiscal radar 
screen, full, frankly, of Republican pretense.
  The substance of this budget resolution is shameless. It is not a 
plan for our future. It is a stalking horse for Republican tax cuts 
that would mainly benefit the wealthy.
  I am for a tax cut, a tax cut that is responsible and will fit 
defense and domestic discretionary spending and will help pay down the 
debt and save Social Security and Medicare.
  Who would bear the brunt of the proposed spending cuts? The millions 
of Americans with no health insurance; the kids who go to school in 
crumbling buildings, zero-funded education in terms of any increases; 
the seniors who cannot afford prescription drugs not provided for.
  My colleagues are either going to steal from Medicare, from Peter and 
pay Paul, but neither Peter nor Paul are going to be able to be funded.
  Meanwhile, the President is pushing a missile defense system. It may 
be a good policy. He has no idea how to fund it, no idea how to pay for 
it.
  He is pushing his plan to privatize Social Security, no idea and no 
plan in this budget how to pay for it; unless that is, of course, we 
continue to plan on raiding the Social Security surplus.
  This budget resolution is not real any more than last year's, the 
year before, or the year before that. The chair of the Committee on 
Appropriations in the other body thinks that as well. He is a member of 
the party of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), not mine.
  Mr. Speaker, we ought to reject this budget resolution. We ought to 
go back and do some real work for real Americans for a real future.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, the Chairman of our Committee on 
Appropriations thinks it is a real number.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Ganske).
  Mr. GANSKE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, for doing a great 
job on this budget.
  We will end up at the end of the day with a significant tax cut. We 
will have additional funds for education and many other of our 
priorities, agriculture; but I do want to point out something that 
Members of both sides need to be aware of, and that is the projected 
high costs for the prescription drug benefit.
  If my colleagues look at the policies that looked relatively 
inexpensive just a year ago, we had a $6,000 stop loss, and we can see 
the area in green above that for the costs above that.
  In just 6 months since we debated that, we have seen a 30 percent 
increase in the baseline, which means a 500 percent increase in the 
stop loss area. What that means is that in just 6 months, if we look at 
the projected costs for the Republican plan last year, it would go from 
$150 billion to $320 billion.
  If we look at the projected costs of the Daschle bill, it would go 
from $300 billion to $505 billion to $600 billion, and that does not 
necessarily include a low-income senior benefit; because if we then 
look at that cost, these are the senior citizens existing on Social 
Security just above the poverty level, so they are not in Medicaid.
  If we look at that and we go up to, say, 175 percent of poverty, you 
now have $600 billion. If we go up to 135 percent, phase it out as in a 
bill that I have before Congress, we are looking at $400 billion. Some 
of that is already picked up by Medicaid, maybe half of that. If we add 
that amount to the bill that we had last year, we come up with a 35 
percent cost share, about $500 billion. That is only up to the 2011.
  In the year 2012, the baby boomers start to retire. We can afford a 
helping hand right now, but we need to structure prescription drugs in 
the context of Medicare reform.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Bentsen).
  (Mr. BENTSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, all of the bipartisan 
things that were supposed to be in this budget. The bipartisan things 
in the House seem to be lost from this balanced budget, whether it is 
our commitment to education, whether it is our commitment to increasing 
funding for basic science research, whether it is our commitment not to 
spend the Medicare trust funds.
  I want to go to comments of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston)

[[Page H2043]]

about little Julie Lawhon from Savannah. In fact, the way this budget 
is structured, she would not get any of that tax cut back, because she 
does not make enough money to qualify for the tax cut that they want to 
provide.
  Second of all, what would happen is this budget would spend so much 
of the Medicare Trust Fund that by the time little Julie was able to 
get Medicare benefits that she is paying out of that $4, the benefits 
would be cut so low and probably the payroll taxes raised so high 
because we raided it through this budget, that she would not get much 
for that.
  So I am afraid little Julie from Savannah, Georgia would end up 
paying a lot more under this budget than less.
  Mr. Speaker, the problem with this budget is contrary to what 
Congress voted on this year and last year. This budget spends about 
$300 billion of obligated Medicare trust funds to help pay for the tax 
cut and to help provide some sort of prescription drug component and 
some form of Medicare reform, whatever that may be.
  In fact, in the budget there is no specific reconciliation 
instruction telling the committees to report a prescription drug 
component to the full House or the full Senate. So we do not know if 
there is going to be a prescription drug program or not.
  I would urge the Members to vote down this budget, let us write a 
real bipartisan budget as opposed to one that abandons our bipartisan 
commitments.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Brown), a member of the Committee on 
the Budget.
  Mr. BROWN of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, today we declare victory 
for every taxpayer in America. Finally, a tax refund is on the way. The 
government has overcharged the American people, and it is time to 
return their money.
  This budget will provide long-term tax relief of $1.35 trillion over 
the next 11 years. This includes an immediate, much-needed hundred 
billion dollars this year.
  When Americans have more money in their pockets, the Nation's economy 
will benefit.
  This agreement on the budget resolution between the House and the 
Senate will also repay a historic $2.4 trillion on the debt by 2011, 
which is the maximum that can be repaid without penalty. This, too, 
will benefit our economy by lowering interest rates.
  Do not be misled by political rhetoric. Let us look at the facts and 
support this budget resolution. This budget is good for America and a 
victory for the taxpayers of this great Nation.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Moran).
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, we are all entitled to our own 
opinion but not to our own set of facts. The fact is, contrary to what 
the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) said earlier, it was not 
President Clinton that cut the shipbuilding program, it was actually 
President Bush that first did that. I want to clear that up for the 
Record. The facts will bear that out.
  Mr. Speaker, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated last year 
that economic growth would increase by two-tenths of a percent on 
average over the next 10 years, we were faced with a historic choice. 
When they told us that the surplus estimates would increase by 75 
percent up to $5.6 trillion, we had to decide, are we going to use this 
unprecedented opportunity to sustain the American legacy of leaving a 
better quality of life to our children than we inherited from our 
parents, or are we going to take care of ourselves first?
  The problem with this budget resolution is that it does the latter 
and not the former. It breaks that American legacy, because we had a 
historic opportunity to pay off the debt that we incurred during the 
1980s. When $3 trillion matures by the end of this decade, that should 
be our first priority, get rid of that debt. The second priority should 
be to take care of the baby boomers' retirement.
  I am a baby boomer. I was born in 1945. I do not want my kids having 
to pay for my retirement, but this budget resolution is going to force 
them to, and that is unfair, to leave them with trillions of dollars of 
debt and the responsibility to pay for our Social Security and Medicare 
costs. That is wrong. That is what this budget does. That is why it 
should be defeated.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Young), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee 
on Appropriations.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. Nussle), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, for yielding 
the time to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle) for having done an outstanding job, in my opinion, of bringing 
this budget resolution through the process. That job is not always 
easy.
  I would like the Members to know that the Committee on the Budget and 
the Committee on Appropriations probably has a better relationship and 
better communication between each other this year than we have had in a 
long, long time.

                              {time}  1315

  I want to say, in the few remaining seconds, that this is a good 
budget. There are those who think that it does not spend enough money. 
But there are always Members in Congress who think budgets do not spend 
enough money. There are also those who think it spends too much. 
Somewhere in between is where we ought to be; and that is where we are 
today, somewhere in between.
  I would remind my colleagues that this budget provides for $60 
billion more than we had last year at this same point in the process. 
So for those who think it is not enough money, understand, there is $60 
billion more than we started with last year.
  So I commend this budget resolution to the Members. I also want the 
Members to know that there are 61 working days basically left before 
the end of the fiscal year. We have 52 specific appropriations events 
that must take place in that 61-day period. None of them can take place 
at the same time. Fifty-two separate events that all have to have their 
own block of time.
  So we need to pass this resolution today. The 302(b) process is next. 
Then we will start bringing appropriations bills to the floor. Again, I 
compliment the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle). He has done a really 
great job, and I encourage the Members to support this budget 
resolution.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Andrews).
  (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina 
for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, the choice before us today is whether we choose the 
future or the present. In the present, the smart political thing to do 
is go home and tell everyone you cut their taxes. People like to hear 
that. It makes for good political patter.
  But the future demands that we do something very different. It 
demands that we relieve our children of the $5 trillion debt that we 
have placed upon them. A family would never make the choice the 
majority is about to make. When a family has some excess income and a 
huge debt, they would pay off that debt, not pass it on to their 
children. So should we. The appropriate vote for the future is to vote 
no on the budget resolution before us because unlike the Democratic 
plan, it does not pay down the debt.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Gary G. Miller), a distinguished member of the 
committee.
  Mr. GARY G. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman 
from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) for this time, and it is a fine job he has 
done this year.
  The Members on the Democratic aisle talked about telling the truth. 
Let us tell the truth. Last year, Republicans proposed a $373 billion 
tax cut for the American people, and they did not support it. In fact, 
the President vetoed it, and they upheld his veto.
  Then they held the budget up till December. Why? Because they wanted 
to spend more money, and we did. Shamelessly, we did. And that spending 
increase alone will cost us $572 billion over 10 years. They had no 
problem spending $572 billion of the people's money, but they could not 
give those same people the $373 billion tax cut.

[[Page H2044]]

  On average, since 1990, the Federal revenues have grown 9.1 percent 
each and every year on average. How many of you at home got a 9.1 
percent increase in pay every year since 1990? Nobody I know of.
  My colleagues on that side of the aisle talk about cutting education. 
The fact is, read the budget. We are spending 11.5 percent more this 
year on education than we did last year. How many of you at home got an 
11.5 percent increase in pay this year? Nobody I know.
  Every time we set aside funds, the problem is my colleagues do not 
want to give them back to the people. They want to spend those dollars. 
We are paying down 100 percent of the debt that we can pay down over 10 
years. We can pay no more than is due.
  We are saying we are going to set aside 100 percent of the Social 
Security money. We are going to set an additional $300 billion aside to 
reform Medicare and prescription drugs; yet my colleagues say we are 
not dealing with the problem.
  The problem is they want to feed the cow. We tell the cow owner that 
he deserves more of the revenue from the milk coming from that cow.
  The problem is we are never going to agree. The facts are very clear. 
They are in the record as far as the tax cut last year. They are in the 
record as far as the tax cut this year.
  We can afford it. The American people earned these dollars. They 
deserve to spend their dollars. We talk about it is for the children. 
Why do we not let the American family keep more of their hard-earned 
money so they can provide for their children. They know the needs of 
their children. We do not.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, we have, as I understand it, 2 minutes 
remaining on our side; and we will close with that, I would just inform 
the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has 6 minutes remaining.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary 
Miller) who just spoke that it is as a matter of record we overspent 
the President's request last year. While there were some things the 
President got that were over and above what we were willing to give him 
before the negotiations began, we were already beyond the President's 
request for spending, and we added $4 billion among other things to his 
request for national defense.
  We added a huge sum to transportation precipitated by the Speaker's 
request that we take care of Chicago's mass transit.
  So there was a mutual effort to add to spending last year. We ought 
to really come clean and say we all were part of that process last 
year, the President, the Congress on both sides of the aisle.
  Let me direct our attention to this budget. I have said from the 
start that my concern with this budget is, first of all, it is a 
watershed budget. It will affect what we do, not just in 2002, it will 
frame what we can do for the next 10 years, because we are making 
fundamental watershed decisions in this budget.
  In dealing with a budget of that gravity, that importance, the 
numbers ought to be real. I am not worried about a couple of missing 
pages. I am worried about plugs and placeholders and numbers that I do 
not think are real. Let me tell my colleagues which ones.
  First of all, defense spending, the largest account in the budget 
other than Social Security, the largest appropriation bill that we 
handle on the floor every year. $325 billion is a number inserted for 
defense spending in the year 2002. But we all know that is not the 
number. That is the Clinton-coined budget number. That is a 
placeholder.
  We also all know that Mr. Rumsfeld has been working for months now 
behind closed doors, 18 different committees, making a comprehensive 
review of our national security requirements. We have seen leaks in 
recent weeks in all kinds of publications and some directly from him by 
way of television, indicating that his request will be substantial, I 
mean 2 to $400 billion a year over the period that we are talking 
about. $25 billion a year at least in the way of an increase in defense 
spending over and above what this budget provides. That is why the 
defense number is patently unreal.
  In fact, we have given the chairman of this committee unprecedented 
unilateral authority, once he gets the numbers from Mr. Rumsfeld, 
without consulting with anybody else, to come over and adjust the 
allocation to defense by up to $400 billion.
  I cannot recall any kind of authority like that that we have given 
any single individual before, but that shows us we explicitly recognize 
in this budget that the defense number is not a real number. It will be 
jacked up considerably before this fiscal year is over.
  Emergency spending. To his credit, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle) tried to deal with this spending. He tried to put it in the 
budget because, historically, we know from experience every year we 
have emergencies. Hurricanes, tornados, you name it, we have them. And 
we pay for it out of this budget through FEMA.
  The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) provided $5.6 billion after a 
tussle with the appropriators that was taken out. But if we add it 
back, that is $60 billion that is not in the budget but ought to be 
provided in the budget.
  Discretionary spending. This budget purports to have a tight limit, a 
tight tether on discretionary spending. In the outyears, 2003 to 2011, 
the purported rate of increase is 2.6 percent. That is not even 
inflation. Over a 10-year period of time, for nondefense discretionary, 
this provides less than inflation, $50 billion less than inflation.
  Now, that is a tough challenge to the appropriators at a time when we 
have a massive surplus. It used to be we could say we have got this 
deficit, and you could deter people from pushing their spending 
request; but now we have this surplus, it is a lot tougher to beat back 
the people who want to add this and add the other.
  Does one think that we are going to hold discretionary spending to 
$2.6 percent at the same time we are taking the budget and favoring 
things like transportation? We have allowed transportation a special 
niche in the budget, giving them substantially more than inflation. We 
have allowed NIH and other favored activities like that a much bigger 
than inflationary increase. When we allow those favored programs their 
extra share of the budget, it means we have got to cut everything else.
  That is the reason, Mr. Speaker, when we look at this budget, we 
should realize that all the numbers down to function 920 called 
allowances are not real. If we look at function 920, we will see a 
number called $67 billion. That is $67 billion in unspecified cuts.
  The conference labored hard to come to a final conclusion, but they 
effectively threw in the towel. What they effectively adopted as the 
spending level for every function was just an inflationary rate of 
increase.
  My colleagues know and I know that is not the way the appropriations 
process works. But if they cannot resolve at the function level where 
the cuts are going to hit, how in the world will we resolve it and 
bring in total spending at a 2.6 percent rate of increase for 10 years? 
I do not believe it will happen. I do not believe this is a real 
number. Function 920 is the ultimate tip-off.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that the tax cuts are real. As 
soon as the compromise at $1.35 trillion for tax reduction over 10 
years, as soon as it was announced, Senator Lott said there are other 
ways to do tax cuts. This is round one.
  Secretary O'Neill was on the Hill. He testified that this is more of 
a floor than a ceiling, that there are other ways to skin this cat and 
provide additional tax relief. Look at what is on the cutting room 
floor. Once we trim this $1.6 trillion request to $1.3 trillion tax cut 
bill, it will have to be increased.
  Look at the charts and realize that the bottom line here will soon be 
gone. It puts the bottom line in jeopardy. Two numbers I would say to 
my colleagues. $342 billion invasion of Medicare, $255 billion invasion 
of Social Security is the arithmetic. That is where this budget leads 
us.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.
  Mr. Speaker, this is an opportunity to vote for either excuses or 
opportunities. That is what we are faced with

[[Page H2045]]

here today. First the excuses: ``we cannot,'' ``we should not,'' ``it 
will not work.'' Those are the excuses.
  The excuses have been going on for years why we cannot return the tax 
surplus to the American people. First is do not have a tax cut until we 
balance the budget. We balanced the budget. Then it was do not cut 
taxes until we have saved Social Security. We have saved all of Social 
Security. Then it was do not cut taxes until the Medicare trust fund is 
set aside. We set aside the Medicare trust fund.
  There was still money left over, but they said do not do it until you 
significantly increase spending. We increased spending for important 
priorities. They say do not cut taxes because it is the wrong time. 
Then it was the wrong way. Then it was the wrong process. Then they 
said it was too big.
  Today there has even been Members who have come to the floor and have 
suggested that the tax cut will not work because it is too small.
  Now, look, we have all heard the story about the three bears and the 
excuses. The excuses stop today with a budget that provides for 
opportunities: the fifth balanced budget in a row, maximum debt relief 
of $2.4 trillion, saves Social Security, provides for a Medicare 
surplus for modernization, budgets for Americans priorities at 4 
percent for education, 11.5 percent increase. Agriculture is increased. 
Defense is increased. Veterans priorities are maintained. The National 
Institutes of Health, the largest increase in history. There is still 
money left over.
  It is at that time that we have to recognize who does this money 
belong to. It is the American people. The budget that they negotiate 
around their kitchen table is more important than the Federal budget. 
So let us stop making excuses about the Federal budget. Let us 
recognize where those tax dollars come from. Let us take the 
opportunity to provide tax relief for the American people. Vote for a 
budget of opportunities. Vote for the conference report.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, when we first debated this budget 
resolution in the House, I opposed it because I thought it would risk 
the opportunities of the future on the outcome of a riverboat gamble.
  The original resolution was based entirely on a long-range forecast 
about the economy--a forecast that predicts good economic weather and 
budget surpluses for a full decade ahead. How prudent is that? If you 
want to know, ask any rancher in Colorado, or anyone who watches for 
fires in our forests, or anybody who has watched the stock market 
lately. They will tell you how risky it can be to bet too much on 
forecasting the weather or the economy for one year, let alone for a 
decade.
  The original resolution ran the risk of shortening the solvency of 
Social Security and Medicare, while neglecting other important needs in 
order to pay for the President's tax plan. And it would not have done 
enough to reduce the publicly held debt and would have shortchanged 
education, seniors, research, and the environment.
  I had hoped that after the Senate considered the resolution and there 
had been a conference between the two bodies, it would improve.
  Unfortunately, that hasn't happened--in fact, in some important ways 
the conference report is not even as good as the original resolution 
passed by the House.
  It's still a gamble, all right. But while the original resolution was 
like a high-stakes poker game on a riverboat, this conference report 
makes me think of a rigged roulette wheel in a mining town gambling 
hall--complete with the false front.
  On the gambling hall, the false front gave the illusion of a full-
sized building, concealing the incomplete structure that lay behind.
  Here, the label of ``budget'' conceals what is not in the conference 
report. It conceals that the conference report doesn't include a way to 
pay for a realistic Medicare prescription drug benefit. It conceals 
that the conference report doesn't include enough for education. It 
conceals that the conference report doesn't include enough to 
adequately protect the environment. It conceals that the conference 
report doesn't include enough for scientific research. It conceals that 
the conference report would not do enough to reduce our debt.
  And, like the false front on the gambling hall, the ``balanced 
budget'' label on this conference report conceals the real game here.
  That game is to get the President's tax plan over to the Senate under 
rules that will shorten the time for debate and that will make it 
harder to make adjustments so it would be less of a gamble with our 
fiscal future.
  Once that has been done, I expect that this unrealistic budget has 
served its purpose--and I am tempted to hope it will then be 
disregarded. I would like to think that its false front will be 
replaced by a sounder structure that will accommodate doing what should 
be done to bolster Social Security and Medicare and to make needed 
investments in education, health, and other vital needs.
  But banking on that would be another gamble--and I am afraid that the 
odds are not very good. What is much more likely--almost a sure thing, 
in fact--is that the imbalance will be made worse when the 
Administration completes its defense-policy review and seeks increases 
in defense spending that are not accounted for in this budget.
  What will be the result when that happens--as I expect it will? What 
will result when Congress acts to relieve middle-class families from 
the problem of the Alternative Minimum Tax--as it definitely should? 
And what will result when Congress extends other tax provisions, like 
the credits for research and development--as it should?
  The answer is that the approach of this budget will lead us to 
further weaken Medicare and fall further short of meeting the test of 
fiscal responsibility.
  I do not want to play that game. And so I cannot support this 
conference report.
  Mr. COYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the conference report 
on the fiscal year 2002 budget resolution.
  The compromise that was crafted in conference and in consultation 
with the White House--and finished, apparently, just hours ago--suffers 
from the same failings as the budget resolution passed by the House in 
March.
  The conference report on the budget resolution calls for an 
irresponsible $1.25 trillion tax cut over the next ten years, and a 
number of Republican Representatives and Senators have already 
expressed an interest in enacting additional tax cuts. How can the 
members of the House Majority in good conscience pass a budget that 
they have no intention of following? We shouldn't be surprised--we've 
seen the same actions in previous years.
  The unrealistic tax cuts are only one of the problems with this 
budget. Unrealistic spending levels are another. The discretionary 
spending levels specified in the conference report are, I believe, 
inadequate to address the many domestic challenges facing this nation 
over the next ten years. Moreover, if previous years are an indication, 
many members of the House Majority want higher appropriations levels as 
well. This budget plan does not include the additional discretionary 
spending that would be needed for President Bush's proposed ballistic 
missile defense system, nor does it include the increased defense 
spending that the President will probably request once Secretary 
Rumsfeld completes his review of our current defense policies. It 
doesn't do enough for education, nor does it provide enough money to 
enact a decent Medicare prescription drug benefit or address the 
problem of Americans without any health insurance.
  What is even more troubling is the fact that under this budget plan, 
Congress would most likely be forced to dip into the Medicare surpluses 
in order to pay for the tax cuts and new spending that we can already 
anticipate. Throwing fiscal caution to the wind is not my idea of 
conservative government.
  And finally, and the most troubling of all, I am concerned that this 
budget plan leaves no room for error or unanticipated bad news. If some 
of the projected surpluses fail to materialize over the next ten years, 
the federal government could easily start running deficits again--or 
dipping into the Social Security Trust Fund.
  I'd like to see the House's so-called conservatives show a little 
more interest in responsible fiscal policy. I will oppose this 
conference report, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this budget which 
shamefully does not fund education, health care, and housing programs 
that this country so desperately needs. The meager 3.6 percent increase 
in this budget's education funds is simply not enough to modernize our 
crumbling schools and institute programs to retain teachers and improve 
student aptitude nationwide. There is simply not enough money in the 
budget to fund the education rhetoric coming from the Administration.
  The basis of this budget is a massive tax cut that does not come for 
free. It has a price. In my district in Alameda County, California we 
are having an affordable housing crisis at all income levels but 
particularly affecting low and moderate income people. To pay for this 
tax cut we will cut 1.7 billion in real dollars from the federal 
housing budget, including cuts to the drug elimination program, the 
community development block grant, and empowerment zone funding.
  We are also having a health care crisis in this country. Many of us 
have been pushing for a Medicare prescription drug plan for our seniors 
who cannot afford costly drugs. Because of this tax cut our seniors 
will continue

[[Page H2046]]

to pay the highest cost for drugs among developed nations. This is the 
cost of the Bush tax cut.
  This budget eliminates the COPS program which practically any law 
enforcement official will tell you made our streets safer and crime go 
down during the past several years. Another cost of the Republican tax 
cut.
  A vote for this budget and the Bush Administration's mega tax cut is 
a vote against most Americans and their rights to decent shelter, 
healthcare and safety. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this 
budget.
  Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, as Democrats and Republicans it is our job 
to work together on a budget that reflects the issues that the voters 
sent us all to Congress to address. The nation's priorities are clear. 
Americans want a balanced federal budget that meets our health, 
education, retirement and infrastructure needs while paying down our 
national debt and providing for a reasonable tax cut.
  Unfortunately, the Republican budget abandons the fiscal 
responsibility that has resulted in the budget surpluses we are 
presently enjoying. The sum of the Republican tax cuts reach almost $2 
trillion and are completely based on a projection for surpluses that 
may or may not materialize over the next ten years. I support 
responsible tax cuts that are targeted to working families and ensure 
our seniors will continue to have retirement security.
  In fact, the Republicans controlling Congress spend more on tax cuts 
for the wealthiest one percent of Americans than they spend on every 
other need in this budget. Worst of all, the Republican budget uses 
Medicare and Social Security as a slush fund that will be raided if the 
projected surpluses are not realized.
  Today's budget resolution shortchanges education and provides even 
less money than the President asked for in his budget plan. It 
threatens Medicare by raiding the trust fund, jeopardizing the benefits 
to which seniors are now entitled and does not guarantee that any 
portion will go toward a prescription drug benefit. In addition, it 
cuts back on energy programs that we should be strengthening to help 
our constituents deal with the energy crisis and cope with sky-high 
prices.
  This budget resolution should balance all of our priorities--from the 
need for tax cuts to investments in public schools, our national 
defense to prescription drugs. Most of all, America's budget should do 
nothing to break faith with the millions of seniors who rely on Social 
Security and Medicare.
  Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the Budget 
Resolution Conference Report presented to us today. That opposition is 
based on the substance of the budget as well as the tactics used by the 
Republican majority to force this bill to the floor of the House of 
Representatives with no input from those of us on the Democratic side 
of the aisle.
  I guess it doesn't matter that Democrats have not had real input into 
the budget process because the overall document is a sham anyway. It 
does not reflect the total cost of the tax cuts that Republicans plan 
to pursue this year. Nor does it reflect the total defense spending 
increases that will become law before this year is over. And, this 
budget resolution still fails to account for additional cuts that will 
have to occur in many domestic programs in order to make room for the 
bloated tax cut and defense spending increases. Finally, it fails to 
protect Medicare and Social Security and falls far short of 
guaranteeing the funds necessary to add a prescription drug benefit to 
Medicare.
  On the tax cut front, the House has already passed tax cut 
legislation totaling more than $1.54 trillion. That is more than this 
budget resolution would even allow. Yet, the House-passed bills and 
this budget resolution still fail to address many tax issues that we 
know will be included before the year is over. Such tax changes 
include: a business tax package that will ultimately be part of any 
proposal to increase the minimum wage, tax extenders like the Research 
and Development Tax Credit, adjustments to the Alternative Minimum Tax, 
and various tax incentives for health care and education.
  I applaud my Senate colleagues for fighting to lower the amount of 
dollars dedicated to tax cuts in this budget resolution conference 
report from the $1.6 trillion requested by the President to 
approximately $1.215 trillion (and the $100 billion stimulus package 
for fiscal years 2001 and 2002). However, that appreciation is strongly 
dampened by the reality that even $1.25 trillion is too high and the 
tax cut number in this budget resolution is going to grow still larger. 
We will surpass these dollar limitations for tax cuts; in fact, we 
already have. And we will pay the price in more ways than one when we 
are forced to reduce expenditures in vital domestic programs that mean 
much more to a wider array of Americans than the tax cuts ever will.
  We can and should be increasing our investment in education. 
President Bush has made education one of his highest rhetorical 
priorities, but rhetoric alone won't fund education improvements. This 
budget fails to follow through with the resources necessary to make 
great strides on education.
  My colleagues in the Senate were able to dramatically increase 
funding for education by $294 billion in their version of the budget 
resolution. This conference report strips those increases from the 
package. The total funding level for education in this budget 
conference report is even less than the amount the President requested 
and the House approved this past March! That's moving backward on 
education--not forward.

  This budget puts at risk the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds 
to finance other expensive components of this package.
  In 2011, the baby boom generation will start to become eligible for 
Medicare benefits. That begins a major demographic shift with far fewer 
workers supporting far greater numbers of seniors on Medicare. Today 
the ratio is approximately 3.4 workers per Medicare beneficiary. 
According to the Medicare actuary, that number is predicted to drop to 
about 2.1 workers per beneficiary by 2029. All of this cries out for 
protecting every cent that we have in the Medicare Trust Fund and 
making changes to law to ensure that more funds go into the Trust Fund 
in the future. But, the budget before us does the opposite. It raids 
the Medicare Trust Fund to fund an inadequate prescription drug benefit 
and makes the Medicare Trust Fund vulnerable for raiding for other 
purposes as well.
  Make no mistake about it. The dollars diverted from the Medicare 
Trust Fund in the budget before us today will never be returned to the 
Trust Fund. They are being spent elsewhere. That means that there are 
fewer resources dedicated to Medicare's future. We are robbing Peter to 
pay Paul. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
  It is past time for us to add a prescription drug benefit to 
Medicare. None of us would join a health insurance plan that didn't 
include prescription drug coverage, but Medicare does not cover these 
necessary medical costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 
Medicare beneficiaries will spend $1.5 trillion on prescription drugs 
over the next ten years.
  Instead of using a portion of the surplus to assure meaningful 
coverage, this budget resolution presents a Hobson's choice between 
covering prescription drugs or assuring available funds for future 
hospital, home health and nursing home services that are already 
covered. It diverts needed dollars from the Medicare surplus into an 
account that is labeled by the Majority for use on prescription drug 
coverage and so-called ``modernization.''
  I opposed the earlier House-passed budget for the same reasons that I 
am opposing this budget resolution conference report before us today. 
This version still fails to appropriately prioritize the needs of our 
nation. It could put us back in the economic ditch that the Reagan tax 
package created in the 1980s, and from which we only recently emerged.
  During this time of unprecedented surplus, we should be shoring up 
the federal programs on which people rely, we should be increasing our 
investment in education, we should be improving the quality and 
availability of child care in our nation, we should be covering 
prescription drugs through Medicare, and doing much, much more. 
Instead, this budget squanders projected resources on tax cuts that 
disproportionately benefit the most well-off and puts at risk our 
ability to finance important government priorities now and in the 
future. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the budget resolution 
conference report before us.
  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose the budget resolution 
conference report.
  It is not a fiscally responsible plan. It does not spend our surplus 
wisely nor make any additional reductions in the public debt. Instead, 
it sets out a course that may well result in huge deficits by the end 
of the 10-11 year period.
  When I was first elected to Congress in 1992, the annual federal 
budget deficit was close to $300 billion. But I joined many of my 
colleagues in making the hard-fought and difficult deficit cutting 
votes of the 1990s. I voted for the 1993 budget, Penny-Kasich, 
constitutional amendments to balance the budget and to limit tax 
increases. And I voted for the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, which finally 
produced the first federal surpluses in a generation.
  The budget before us could well restore that $300 billion annual 
deficit by 2011, undoing everything I fought for.
  It could return us to raiding the Social Security and Medicare trust 
funds--despite this chamber's repeated promise not to do so.
  And the budget retreats from making needed investments in our 
citizens. For example, it eliminates 98 percent of the increase 
proposed in the Senate's budget for special education--a program of 
critical importance to educators in my district and elsewhere.
  The budget before us has accounting margins so precarious that any 
small bump in the economy will result in a deficit. It spends, for

[[Page H2047]]

example, all but $1 billion of the FY01 $96 billion surplus. That 
surplus, however, was estimated in January--before the downturn in the 
economy and the freefall of the stock market.
  Mr. Speaker, a fiscally responsible budget should meet our nation's 
investment needs while using the surplus to reduce the public debt and 
enact responsible and affordable tax cuts. The framework I support--
fashioned by the Blue Dogs--would allocate the surplus 50%--25%--25% 
across these three budget categories.
  Most important, the Blue Dog framework earmarks half of the surplus 
to reducing the debt--the policy most preferred by my constituents and 
most Americans.
  The budget before us has none of these characteristics. It is 
imbalanced in its priorities, and predicated on budget surplus numbers 
that are ephemeral at best and illusory at worst.
  My constituents deserve better.
  Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H. Con. Res. 83, 
the conference report to the Fiscal Year 2001 Budget Resolution. The 
document before us is sham which purports to set spending and tax 
policy for the next fiscal year, as well as important parameters for 
the next ten years when, in fact, this is a highly flawed budget that 
is destined to fail when actual legislation is adopted to put it in 
place. Mr. Speaker, here we are again for part II of a budget debacle 
that defies all reason. Even if the conference report before us 
includes the two pages missing from last week's submission, it is still 
incomplete. This conference report abandons any commitment to improving 
education. This conference does not provide for the Administration's 
national missile defense proposal or the other increases in the defense 
budget that will be recommended as a result of the administration's 
review of defense policy and requirements. Further, this conference 
report claims a tax cut of $1.35, yet it leaves out such proposals as 
$300 billion to fix the AMT, extension of the R&D credit, and enact the 
Portman-Cardin pension/IRA bill that the House passed. Finally, this 
conference report does not set aside the requisite level of funds 
needed to pay for the President's Social Security privatization plan, 
approximately $1.0 trillion. Without that transition funding, the $1.0 
trillion would have to be taken out of the Social Security trust fund, 
benefit cuts or new debt generated.
  Mr. Speaker, I predict that this so-called compromise of tax cuts 
totaling $1.35 trillion over eleven years and spending held to 4% in FT 
2002 will be breached before the end of the year. This budget also 
turns its back on our commitment to paying off the national debt. If we 
were to stay the course, the nation could retire all of the debt held 
by the public for the first time since 1835, and add three trillion 
dollars to net national savings. This budget clearly indicates that the 
Republican Majority has no qualms about turning its back on budget 
process and policies that has served this nation so well and is readily 
willing to risk returning us to the budgetary turmoil of the 1980s and 
early 1990's to make room for the President's tax cut.
  The Republican Majority knows that their appetite for tax cuts will 
be too hard to control, just as their appetite for spending. Tax cuts 
are the overriding priority of the Republican budget. Over eleven 
years, their cut will cost anywhere between $2.2 trillion and $2.5 
trillion, including debt service and the inevitable cost of fixing the 
alternative minimum tax (AMT). Thus, this tax plan consumes nearly all 
of the $2.7 trillion surplus outside of Social Security and Medicare. 
The ``tax-cuts-at-all-costs'' strategy, employed by the drafters of 
this resolution, ignores logic and history to make room for this plan.
  Rather than take a long look at obligations on the horizon, the 
national debt, Social Security and Medicare solvency and the need to 
invest in education and research, the Republicans seek to push this 
resolution through the Congress before anyone has a chance to read it. 
The Republicans are bound and determined to push this budget through on 
a party line vote without telling the American people how they intend 
to live within the confines of their budget resolution or how they will 
pay back Medicare for the amount they seek to spend from the trust fund 
or how they will fund the recommendations from Secretary Rumsfeld's 
Defense review or how they will fund the national missile defense or 
even how they will fund the President's Social Security privatization 
scheme. And, now we find that the Republicans have dropped even the 
President's education initiative in the name of tax cuts. Hollow as it 
may be, the Republican Majority is desperate to claim victory here and 
drive the death nail into the coffin of the Budget Act. This budget is 
not about funding priorities. It's not about tax cuts or tax policy. 
It's certainly not about fiscal responsibility and it is most certainly 
not a product of bipartisanship. It's about politics.

  This budget is not so much the product of deliberation but rather 
arbitrariness. The Republican Majority arbitrarily set each of the non-
defense discretionary levels to the CBO baseline, thus failing to make 
any decisions about how to allocate these resources. Then, they dropped 
any assumption for natural disasters or emergencies. And, finally, they 
assume unspecified cuts in discretionary spending of $6 billion per 
year. Mr. Speaker, this budget's failure to list a meaningful dollar 
level for each budget function means that the Congress and the public 
can have no clear idea about what the budget really means for America. 
Aside from failing to articulate our current obligations, this budget 
also turns a blind eye to the looming costs of the President's agenda, 
such as missile defense, privatization of Social Security, prescription 
drugs for seniors and tax cuts.
  Mr. Speaker, not only does H. Con. Res. 83 fail to reflect any 
contemplation, it is seriously flawed. This conference report turns its 
back on all the fiscal policies that led to the greatest period of 
sustained economic expansion but sets us on the path back to ``spend 
today, borrow tomorrow.'' H. Con. Res. 83 eliminates the budget surplus 
in the non-Social Security, non-Medicare operations of the federal 
government, and spends at least $300 billion of already-obligated 
Medicare Trust Fund monies on other benefits. It's like spending the 
house payment on roof repairs and not acknowledging that you still owe 
on the mortgage. Thus, the conference report puts the Medicare and 
Social Security Trust Fund surpluses in jeopardy. The Republicans claim 
they want to fund a prescription drug program for senior citizens but 
they plan to raid Medicare to do it. They don't even require that such 
a plan be reported to the House. Any economic adversity or policy 
miscalculation could leave the government again spending out of the 
trust fund surpluses, instead of adding those surpluses to the nation's 
pool of savings for business investment to make the economy grow. At 
the very worst, H. Con. Res. 83 sets us on a course of returning to 
deficit spending.
  With the CBO reporting that its average projection error for a budget 
is about 0.5 percent of the GDP, or roughly $52 billion this year and 
rising to around $85 billion in 2011, the funding level for this 
conference agreement falls below that minimal level of security until 
the last two years of the ten-year budget window. Lest we forget that 
more than 87 percent of the projected non-Social Security, non-Medicare 
surplus under the conference agreement would occur in the last five 
years of the ten-year budget cycle. History has taught us that it is 
far better for our national interest to pay down debt and make our 
economy grow than consume surplus funds on new spending or tax cuts. If 
fully implemented, the Republicans use none of the on-budget surplus to 
pay down debt and spend a portion of the Social Security surplus for 
their tax cut. If history is any judge, and the Republican Majority 
fails to make huge discretionary spending cuts, it will spend even more 
of the Social Security surplus.

  Mr. Speaker, this budget finances its large tax cut by assuming that 
non-defense appropriations will be held to unrealistically low levels 
over the next ten years. This budget ignores the fact that it is very 
unlikely that this Congress will execute the cuts prescribed under the 
budget. The Republican Majority claim that the funding level for all 
appropriated programs will be increased by about 4.0 percent. When 
advance appropriations made last year on a one-time-only emergency 
funding basis are discounted, the total overall increase is around 3.8 
percent, which is just about the amount necessary to maintain 
purchasing power at the 2001 level. With most of the 3.8 percent 
increase devoted to defense, international affairs, that leaves an 
increase of only about 1.8 percent over the CBO baseline in 2002 for 
domestic discretionary programs. Among non-defense discretionary 
programs, most will see cuts of, on average, 1.2 percent, including the 
SBA, NASA, flood control, drug enforcement, alien incarceration 
programs and the COPS in school program. This budget does not merely 
limit the growth of domestic spending, as the Republican Majority 
asserts, it cuts domestic programs. Are the Republicans really 
advocating that we cut the FBI, INS or DEA?
  The conference report claims to increase our bipartisan commitment to 
double funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) but it turns 
its back on the bipartisan commitment to double funding for the 
National Science Foundation. Further, the budget cuts so many health 
programs it will pit the NIH against such things as Community Health 
Centers and child and maternal health programs. But worse, Mr. Speaker, 
the Republican budget fails to adequately invest in education, one of 
the President's own priorities. This partisan budget ignores the strong 
bipartisan support for education funding, retreating from this 
commitment. This measure not only strips the $294 billion in increased 
education funding provided for by the Senate, but also provides $21 
billion less education support than provided for under the President's 
budget. It eliminates all of the

[[Page H2048]]

Senate provision to increase the federal share for special education 
costs absorbed by local school districts, as mandated under IDEA and it 
fails to adequately advance the goal of improving our schools.
  If the cuts provided for under H. Con. Res. 83 are made, they will 
hurt key domestic investments which enjoy broad support among the 
American people. If the cuts are not made and the large tax cut is 
enacted, Congress risks raiding the Social Security and Medicare Trust 
Funds and possibly pushing us back into deficits. I believe the 
Republicans know that these cuts will never occur, but they provide 
cover for their huge tax cut which will ultimately eat through the on-
budget surplus and into the Social Security surplus at the expense of 
solvency and long-term economic growth.
  As I have said before, logic tells us that basing a tax cut plan on 
ten-year revenue projections, when the CBO has only been in the 
business of doing such long-term projections, is playing with fire. In 
fact, CBO itself acknowledges that current projections may 
substantially overstate projected surpluses and has concluded that 
``the estimated surpluses could be off in one direction or the other, 
on average, by about $52 billion in 2001, $120 billion in 2002, and 
$412 billion in 2006.'' Second, history has taught us that it is far 
easier to enact additional tax cuts in future years if economic 
projections hold up or improve, while it is far more difficult to enact 
tax increases or budget cuts in the future if the projections go 
unrealized. And, Mr. Speaker, we all know that the President will come 
back to Congress, after we pass this budget, and ask for billions of 
dollars of new spending for defense.

  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in rejecting this 
``spend today, borrow tomorrow'' measure that was bound together by the 
Republican Majority in such a haphazard fashion, so as to leave no room 
for adequately funding the nation's priorities or protecting against 
unforeseen economic downturns. As I have said before, I support a 
substantial tax cut but not at the expense of hard-fought fiscal ground 
and long-standing domestic priorities, such as strengthening Social 
Security and Medicare, providing a universal prescription drug benefit, 
and adequately funding education and defense. Mr. Speaker, that is why 
I cannot support H. Con. Res. 83 and would urge my colleagues to join 
me in rejecting this sham budget.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the budget 
conference committee report. Amazingly, this proposal keeps getting 
worse, not better. The item before us, in order to accommodate the tax 
cut, does not include provisions earlier passed by the Senate for 
education. The $294 billion supported by the bipartisan majority in the 
Senate, and that would be supported by a majority of the members in 
this body, is nowhere to be seen. It even does not have $21.5 billion 
for education proposed by President Bush and approved by the House in 
March. It also provides less money than the President requested for the 
Ryan White AIDS Treatment Grants, Maternal and Child Care Health Block 
Grants, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug 
Administration. This budget proposal has $700 million less for 
veteran's programs in FY 2002 than the House-passed resolution and $2.7 
billion less than the Senate-passed resolution. Furthermore, at a time 
of energy crisis, this document does nothing to restore the significant 
reductions in energy conservation proposed by the Administration. It is 
in short, a resolution that stands our bipartisan budget priorities on 
their head.
  The part that is most objectionable to those of us in Oregon is the 
silence on where future budget cuts are going to fall. There will be a 
requirement for additional budget cuts of at least $6 billion next year 
and more than ten times that amount over the next ten years, without a 
hint of where those reductions will come from. Last week the budget 
process fell apart after keeping the Members of this House waiting 
until the early hours of the morning for a vote. In part, this 
breakdown was less due to the two pages that were lost, and more due to 
the fact that this bill has not proceeded as a serious piece of 
bipartisan legislation. Despite the hopeful rhetoric about changing the 
tone in Washington from the Bush Administration, nobody had seen the 
resolution last week, and now what has been revealed to us leaves 
gaping holes in essential priorities.
  What we do know is the Administration is about to unveil massive 
increases for defense. When coupled with the known requirement for 
annual emergency spending that is not accounted for in this document, 
the cost rises by hundreds of billions of extra dollars. Additionally, 
we must acknowledge the need to correct the problem of the Alternative 
Minimum Tax that was originally implemented to ensure the super wealthy 
at least paid some income tax. Instead the AMT is affecting lower 
income Americans with large families in ways never intended and the 
impact will be much worse under President Bush's proposed income tax 
rate reductions. Everyone in Congress knows it has to be fixed and this 
budget resolution ignores our duty to correct this inequity in the tax 
code.
  Congress and the American people deserve an honest budget resolution 
that tells us where we want to go and how we are realistically going to 
get there. This proposal does neither.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this 
Republican budget. Unfortunately, this budget is nothing but missed 
opportunities and misplaced priorities.
  Mr. Speaker, our nation needs a national economic strategy for 
economic opportunities for all Americans. We can charge boldly into the 
21st Century with prosperity for all if we have the vision to see our 
opportunities and the courage to seize those opportunities. But this 
budget will squander our prosperity and set America back on a failed 
course.
  We must invest in science and technology and innovation, but this 
budget cuts Research and Development. We must invest in better schools 
and training so we can have the greatest workforce in the world, but 
this budget neglects education. Some people say education is too 
expensive; I say it's a whole lot cheaper than ignorance. We must 
strengthen Social Security and reform Medicare to include a benefit for 
prescriptions, but this budget will raid those trust funds. We must 
rewrite the Farm Bill so North Carolina's farm families have an 
opportunity to make a living, but this budget puts agriculture under 
the knife. We must modernize our defenses and make America's military 
second to none, but this budget blows the resources we need to 
accomplish that mission.
  Don't get me wrong: I support responsible tax relief for our working 
families. But this budget will run our economy into the ditch and 
return us to the days of huge deficits, economic stagnation, high 
unemployment and out-of-control inflation. Our North Carolina values 
call for balanced budgets and responsible policy, but this budget sends 
us a on riverboat gamble with America's future. I urge its defeat.
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member rises in strong support of the 
Budget Conference Report.
  This Member is especially pleased with the funds proposed for 
agriculture. Not only does the budget agreement include $26.3 billion 
for agriculture related programs in FY2001, but it also includes funds 
for emergency spending of $5.5 billion in FY2001 and $7.35 billion in 
FY2002. Furthermore, an additional $66.15 billion will be held in 
reserve for reauthorization of farm support programs between FY2003 and 
FY2011. This sends a strong signal that there will be money available 
for farmers this year to meet emergencies and in the coming years as we 
develop the new farm bill. Farmers and their bankers certainly need 
assurance that there will be money there and these numbers demonstrate 
that commitment.
  This Member strongly regrets that the funds originally in the 
conference report for the creation of a new natural disaster 
contingency fund within the budget were eliminated during last minute 
conference negotiations. Not only were there disagreements about the 
emergency fund between authorizers and appropriators, but there was a 
crucial and possibly erroneous ruling by the parliamentarian in the 
other body that the emergency fund would trigger a requirement for a 
60-vote majority. That ruling caused the other body to oppose the 
creation of the funds in the conference report. While the amount of 
money in the emergency fund ($5 billion) might end up being an 
underestimate, depending on the number and severity of natural 
disasters, it would have been a good start in responsibly addressing 
the certainty of a need for disaster assistance funding in this big and 
diverse nation. This Member has been a long-time supporter of the 
establishment of such a fund and is hopeful that it will be created as 
soon as possible.
  The compromise includes $1.35 trillion in tax cuts over the next 11 
years including $100 billion in an immediate tax cut ``stimulus'' for 
the current fiscal year, and it holds overall spending to a four 
percent increase. While the overall tax cut is less than President Bush 
proposed, it is still the largest tax reduction in the last 20 years. 
Furthermore, the budget conference report provides an historic $2.3 
trillion in public debt reduction by 2011 (the maximum that can be 
repaid without penalties).
  Mr. Speaker, this is a good budget agreement that provides a strong 
framework for the future of our country. Accordingly this Member is 
pleased to support this common sense plan that funds our nation's top 
priorities, provides for the continuation of the retirement of our 
national debt, and which also gives tax relief to every taxpayer. At a 
time of actual and projected budget surpluses the American taxpayers 
deserve ``a refund'' to keep that money from being collected for 
dramatic increases in spending. Therefore, the tax relief offered by 
this agreement will help strengthen our economy, create jobs, and 
leaves more money in the pockets of those who earned it.
  In closing Mr. Speaker, this Member urges his colleagues to support 
this important measure.

[[Page H2049]]

  Mr. COSTELLO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the $1.35 trillion 
budget resolution. While I am in favor of tax relief for the American 
people, I do not believe relief should be accomplished through tax cuts 
benefiting big business and the wealthiest of Americans.
  I believe that the Congress can and should pass legislation giving 
tax relief to the American people. That is why I have consistently 
voted to eliminate the death-inheritance tax and the marriage tax 
penalty.
  Mr. Speaker, the Congress can and should give tax relief to the 
American people. However, any tax cut should not threaten our Social 
Security and Medicare programs. While we still have a surplus we should 
provide a prescription drug coverage paid by Medicare, an initiative 
the majority of Americans support. Even so, we should not support a 
budget and ensuring tax cut that spends expected revenue 11 years down 
the road. We need to have a mechanism in place to adjust the plan if 
revenue projections prove to be wrong.
  Today I intend to vote against the Republican budget. A more 
realistic five-year spending bill should be put in place to fund 
critical programs important to the American people like Social 
Security, Medicare/Medicaid, national defense and other important 
programs. Then we should bring a tax relief package before the Congress 
that is realistic and that has a mechanism that directly ties tax cuts 
to controlled spending and the amount of revenue that will come to the 
federal treasury each year.
  I am also troubled that this budget does nothing to ensure the 
solvency of Social Security, instead relying on a commission loaded 
down with individuals who have publicly supported the privatization of 
Social Security. I am adamantly opposed to investing any money intended 
for a secure retirement through our current Social Security system in a 
stock market that is increasingly more volatile.
  Mr. Speaker, today we should reject this misguided budget.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 136, the 
previous question is ordered.
  The question is on the conference report.
  Pursuant to clause 10 of rule XX, the yeas and nays are ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 221, 
nays 207, not voting 4, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 104]

                               YEAS--221

     Aderholt
     Akin
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baker
     Ballenger
     Barr
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bereuter
     Biggert
     Bilirakis
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (SC)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Cannon
     Cantor
     Capito
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Coble
     Collins
     Combest
     Condit
     Cooksey
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crane
     Crenshaw
     Culberson
     Cunningham
     Davis, Jo Ann
     Davis, Tom
     Deal
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Diaz-Balart
     Doolittle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     English
     Everett
     Ferguson
     Flake
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Fossella
     Frelinghuysen
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Graves
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Grucci
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hart
     Hastert
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Herger
     Hilleary
     Hobson
     Hoekstra
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Isakson
     Issa
     Istook
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Keller
     Kelly
     Kennedy (MN)
     Kerns
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kirk
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaHood
     Largent
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     LoBiondo
     Lucas (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Manzullo
     McCrery
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McKeon
     Mica
     Miller, Gary
     Moran (KS)
     Morella
     Myrick
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Osborne
     Ose
     Otter
     Oxley
     Pence
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Platts
     Pombo
     Portman
     Pryce (OH)
     Putnam
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Rehberg
     Reynolds
     Riley
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Roukema
     Royce
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaffer
     Schrock
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Simmons
     Simpson
     Skeen
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Souder
     Spence
     Stearns
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Tancredo
     Tauzin
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Tiahrt
     Tiberi
     Toomey
     Traficant
     Upton
     Vitter
     Walden
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                               NAYS--207

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Allen
     Andrews
     Baca
     Baird
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Barcia
     Barrett
     Bass
     Becerra
     Bentsen
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Blumenauer
     Bonior
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardin
     Carson (IN)
     Carson (OK)
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Conyers
     Costello
     Coyne
     Crowley
     Cummings
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     Deutsch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doyle
     Edwards
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Ford
     Frank
     Frost
     Gephardt
     Gonzalez
     Gordon
     Green (TX)
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Harman
     Hastings (FL)
     Hefley
     Hill
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hoeffel
     Holden
     Holt
     Honda
     Hooley
     Hoyer
     Inslee
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jefferson
     Johnson, E. B.
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     Kind (WI)
     Kleczka
     Kucinich
     LaFalce
     Lampson
     Langevin
     Lantos
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Luther
     Maloney (CT)
     Maloney (NY)
     Markey
     Mascara
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McIntyre
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller, George
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moore
     Moran (VA)
     Murtha
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Paul
     Payne
     Pelosi
     Peterson (MN)
     Phelps
     Pomeroy
     Price (NC)
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Ross
     Rothman
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Sanchez
     Sanders
     Sandlin
     Sawyer
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Scott
     Serrano
     Sherman
     Shows
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Solis
     Spratt
     Stark
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stupak
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Taylor (MS)
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Thurman
     Tierney
     Towns
     Turner
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Wexler
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Wynn

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Cubin
     Miller (FL)
     Rivers
     Stump

                              {time}  1402

  Mr. SHERMAN changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  Mr. TOOMEY changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
  So the conference report was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.

                          ____________________