[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 64 (Thursday, May 10, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4776-S4794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2002--CONFERENCE
REPORT
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will now resume consideration of the conference report to
accompany H. Con. Res. 83, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Conference report to accompany 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 ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senator from West Virginia is now recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, would the Chair kindly inform me when I have
used 25 minutes of my time?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair will notify the Senator.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the Senate will soon vote on the conference
report for the fiscal year 2002 budget resolution. I will vote against
this conference report. This budget is a bad deal for America. It fails
to address critical deficiencies in our Nation's schools, our Nation's
highways, our Nation's drinking water and sewage systems, our Nation's
law enforcement, and energy independence. The list goes on and on like
Tennyson's brook--almost forever. Instead of addressing these
deficiencies, instead of planning for the future, this is a budget
resolution that places short-term, partisan political gratification
ahead of the long-term needs of the Nation.
This Nation faces daunting challenges--if you drove in just this
morning to work, or yesterday morning, you can see what I am talking
about, the daunting challenges that confront this country on the
highways--in the next two decades. We will continue increasingly to
face those daunting challenges.
The baby boom generation will begin to retire around the year 2008.
That is not far away. Because of the demands of that generation, both
the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are expected to be running
in the red by 2016--15 years from now. Not a single dime--not one thin
dime--is devoted to shoring up Social Security, and the resources
allotted to Medicare and prescription drugs are totally inadequate.
We know that 75 percent of our Nation's school buildings are
inadequate to meet the needs of the Nation's children. But how many
dollars are devoted to building and renovating school buildings? How
many dollars are devoted to making classrooms smaller? Zero. Zilch.
Zip.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, earlier this spring, graded
the Nation's infrastructure. How did we do? Abysmally. Roads, D+;
aviation,
D-; schools, D-; transit, D-; drinking water, D. Overall, in 10
different categories, the Nation's infrastructure received an average
grade of D+.
Now my old coal miner dad would have given me a good thrashing if I
had brought home a report card with a D on it. I could have depended on
that. Well, the dog must have eaten that report card on the way to the
White House because this conference report ignores low grades on the
Nation's infrastructure.
Now the President--and I have great respect for the President--is
fond of saying we ought to give the people their money back. I think we
ought to give the people their money's worth. Instead of a massive tax
cut today, we ought to look toward tomorrow and repair our outdated
infrastructure. Instead of a massive tax cut today, we ought to help
provide for safe highways and bridges, airports and transit systems
that work, clean air, safe drinking water, safe schools. We ought to
plan ahead to ensure that Social Security and Medicare will be
available in the long term. The American people expect us to make smart
choices. This conference report is not a smart choice.
What is in this conference report?
It contains a $1.35 trillion tax cut spread out over the next 11
years, based solely on an illusory surplus estimate that even the
Congressional Budget Office considers highly unlikely.
This budget also establishes discretionary spending levels that are
totally inadequate and unrealistic. For the next fiscal year, the
budget limits spending to a 4.2-percent increase. For nondefense
programs, the level provided in the conference report is $5.5 billion
below the level necessary to keep pace with inflation.
Now I am wearing my Appropriations Committee hat today. I am the
ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Let me say to my
colleagues, you will be coming to the waterhole--I think of the animals
in the forest. Occasionally, they have to go to the waterhole. They
can't avoid it. And so the people of this country have to go to the
waterhole. The waterhole is the Appropriations Committees of the two
Houses. And Senators and House Members who represent the people who
elect them and send them here also have to go to that waterhole, the
Appropriations Committee. Well, I am wearing my appropriations hat
today.
Let me say to my colleagues, if you vote for this budget conference
report, don't come to the watering hole. It is not that I would not
love to help you, but you are going to make it impossible. Those who
vote for this conference report are going to make it impossible for me
and for the Appropriations subcommittee ranking members to help you.
Hear me: I would love to help you, but you are going to make it
impossible when you vote for this conference report, because you are
going to cut discretionary spending levels to the point that we cannot
help you.
Again, for nondefense programs, the level provided in the conference
report is $5.5 billion below the level necessary to keep pace just with
inflation. This level will leave no resources for increases that we all
recognize are necessary for education, for infrastructure, for research
and development, and for the promotion of our energy independence. We
have an energy shortage in this country right now--rolling brownouts.
You are going to hear more about them. But what are we doing about it?
We are not doing anything positively in this budget conference report.
I will tell you what we are doing. We are cutting the moneys for basic
research--fossil fuel research--in the budget.
The increases being debated on the floor for elementary and secondary
education cannot be fully funded. The resolution provides for an
increase of less than $13 billion above fiscal year 2001 for all
nondefense programs. The elementary and secondary education
[[Page S4777]]
bill now pending in the Senate assumes over $10 billion in increases
for fiscal year 2002 just for elementary and secondary education
programs alone. And all we have is less than $13 billion.
Members should be under no illusions. The budget conference report is
not the budget resolution that passed the Senate 65-35 last month.
Several of our Democratic colleagues voted for that, and a great
majority on the other side did so, too. But you are not voting today
for that concurrent resolution on the budget that you voted for a
couple of weeks ago on this Senate floor. For fiscal year 2002 alone,
the conference report you will be voting for today is $27 billion below
the resolution that passed the Senate a few days ago--$10 billion lower
for defense and $17 billion lower for nondefense.
Now the President has called this a ``people's budget.'' Imagine
that. The President called this a ``people's budget.'' I would almost
laugh out loud if it weren't so serious. Imagine that--the President
calling this a ``people's budget.'' Well, that may be true if your
definition of ``the people'' is limited to those lucky individuals who
earn six-figure salaries. If you limit ``the people'' in your State to
those who are spending their mornings sipping Starbucks coffee and
perusing the Wall Street Journal to check on the status of their stocks
and bonds, then you are talking about the people.
It may be a people's budget if the people are limited to those lucky
souls who spend their winters in the Bahamas and their summers on a
Caribbean cruise. But this is not a people's budget for the coal
miners, not for the locomotive engineers, not for the brakemen on the
railroads, not for the cleaning ladies, not for the schoolteachers. It
is not a people's budget for the folks flipping hamburgers for minimum
wage. Ask them. They are the people, too, and they have been left out,
o-u-t, and left behind in this whale of a deal for the well-to-do.
President Bush, the President of all the people of the Nation, says:
It's a good budget for the working people of America.
He said it. I didn't say that. That may be true if your definition of
``working'' means calling your broker on your cell phone to tell him to
put another million on titanium futures. That may be true if your
definition of ``working people'' is the folks who hop in their Learjets
to check out their business interests on three continents.
In my State of West Virginia, we know who the working people are. The
working people are the people who earn their living by the sweat of
their brow. They are the people who get up early and stay up late
trying to make ends meet. They are the working people. They are the
people who get their hands dirty while trying to feed their families.
Those are the working people.
Working people are the teachers struggling on low pay in a hot
classroom while trying to impart some wisdom to our Nation's children.
The working people are the cops on the beat who risk their lives
daily and nightly, who try to keep some order in these mean and
dangerous streets and alleys.
Working people are the coal miners who end up crippled, who end up
sick after long, long years of digging coal from the rugged Earth to
produce the electricity for this Senate Chamber, and to produce the
electricity for this Nation. They are the people who get their hands
dirty. They are the people who wash the grime, the coal dust out of
their eyelashes, out of the wrinkles in their faces, grown old too
early. They are the working people.
Mr. President, they are the working people, the coal miners, the
welders in the shipyard, the produce salesmen in the country, the
farmers who toil in the hot Sun of the June and July and August days.
They are the working people, Mr. President. They are not the people Mr.
Bush is talking about.
The President lauds this budget. He says it contains ``reasonable
levels of spending.'' That may be true if you think that costing the
American driving public nearly $6 billion a year because one-third of
this Nation's roads are in poor condition, is ``reasonable.''
Why don't we fix America's roads? If you think highway congestion is
bad now, what will it be 5 years from now? Those of you who spent an
hour and 10 minutes yesterday morning to drive ten miles to work in
this Capitol, if you think congestion is bad now, think of what
congestion will be 5 years from now. What will it be 10 years from now?
The President calls the spending levels in this budget
``reasonable.'' In this Nation, we have so many unsafe or obsolete
bridges that it will cost $10.6 billion every year for the next 20
years to fix them.
We have 54,000 drinking water systems which will cost $11 billion to
make them comply with Federal water regulations.
We have more than 2,100 unsafe dams in this country. Do we recall
Buffalo Creek Dam in southern West Virginia? It broke several years
ago. Scores of lives were lost. And there are 2,100 unsafe dams in this
country today which could cause loss of life.
We have energy delivery systems which rely on old technology.
We have outdated and crumbling schools which will require $3,800 per
student to modernize.
This budget provides little or no money to address any of these
needs. It allows for current services adjusted for inflation for all
discretionary programs, including defense. Do you know what that means?
But for nondefense programs, the conference report is $5.5 billion
below the amount necessary to keep pace with inflation. It means this
Nation is essentially frozen in its ability to address backlogs or to
anticipate needs.
The backlogs are worsening, and the needs are going unaddressed
because the funding levels endorsed by this White House are far too
low.
Anyone who calls these levels ``reasonable'' needs a reality check.
Take off the rose-colored glasses, Mr. President; take them off, and
once the warm cheery glow of tax cut fever has subsided, we will still
have a nation that is very steadily sliding backwards.
This huge tax cut will savage our nation's real and growing needs; it
will siphon energy away from the engine that makes this economy run; it
will benefit the jet set, but leave the rest of America's riding on
rusty rails. There is nothing ``reasonable'' about such a policy.
I am also very concerned that this conference report does nothing to
address the growth of mandatory spending. The President claims that he
wants to restrain the size of Government, but his budget focuses only
on limiting the part of the budget that is subject to the annual
appropriations process. That is only one-third of the budget, and
growing smaller by the day. The rest of the budget is on auto pilot.
I assure Senators that discretionary spending will not be the cause
of any future deficits. It we return to deficits--and we very well
could--it will be because of the massive tax cuts contained in this
conference report and the growth of mandatory programs. Discretionary
spending is currently only 6.3 percent of the gross domestic product,
less than half of what it was in 1967. Under the Budget resolution, it
would fall to 5 percent by 2011. Mandatory spending is currently 9.7
percent of GDP, more than double the level in 1966 and under the Budget
conference report, mandatory spending will grow to 11 percent of GDP in
2011.
Not only does this resolution not constrain mandatory spending, it
includes seven new reserves that empower the House and Senate Budget
Committee chairmen to increase spending for mandatory programs.
I have a great deal of faith in our budget chairman, Mr. Domenici,
and I have seen all the budget chairmen we have had in the Senate since
the Budget Act became law, but I do not care if it is a Republican or
Democrat chairman, I do not support giving that kind of power to any
budget chairman, Democrat or Republican. I would not want it myself if
I were a chairman.
I am very concerned that these powers which are being given to the
Budget Committee chairmen will be used in a partisan way.
This budget resolution was produced in negotiations between White
House officials and the Republican leadership.
There was no involvement--none--of the Democratic Leadership or the
ranking members of the House and Senate Budget Committees. To add
insult to injury, this Budget Resolution would empower the Budget
Committee chairmen to allocate funding to mandatory programs with no
assurances that the minority will be consulted. This is just one more
example of the one-sided nature of this Budget Resolution. But as
Milton said in Paradise
[[Page S4778]]
Lost ``who overcomes by force has overcome but half his foe.'' There is
no balance in this budget. It is tipped too far to the tax cut side. As
a see-saw, it lifts some people up with generous tax givebacks, but it
leaves this nation's needs sitting firmly on the ground.
It is a ``for show'' budget designed to please a select group, and it
was gussied up and trotted out by one party from behind locked doors.
Since January's inauguration, we have heard plenty of lip service
being paid to bipartisanship. Lip service. We have all heard the mantra
that the tone of Washington is being changed. You better believe--it is
not being changed. We have seen the photo-ops of Democrats being
courted at the White House. All 535 Members of the House and Senate
were invited to the White House a few days ago. All 535 Members. What a
sham. That was to be a photo op. Nothing more, nothing less. What a
sham. What hypocrisy. This budget deal was crafted without input from
the Democratic Leaders, or the Ranking Members of the House and Senate
Budget Committees. When it was time for the rubber to meet the road,
bipartisanship had a flat tire. Bipartisanship never was able to wiggle
under the cracks in that door. Some Democrats may be willing to vote
for this budget--they may be willing to sit at the President's table
for this tax-cut feast. But, make no mistake, they were not in the
kitchen when the meal was being cooked. They did not get to decide what
went in the stew and what stayed out.
The President, in his remarks congratulated the Republican Budget
Committee chairmen of the House and the Senate. He congratulated the
Republican Leaders of the Senate and the House. He lauds a few
Democrats, but there is no mention in his remarks of the Democratic
Leaders or the Ranking Members of the House and Senate Budget
Committees. They were not privy to the budget pseudo-conference. There
was no room for them at the inn. That is no accident. The plain
unvarnished truth is that there has been barely a pinch of
bipartisanship in the cooking of this final budget omelet, and the
result certainly shows in the one-sided way the budget eggs were
scrambled.
There simply is not enough money to adequately fund the 13
appropriations bills, get that--there is not enough money to adequately
fund the 13 appropriation bills, and so, once again, appropriators will
have to scrimp and parse and cannibalize in order to do our work.
For those Senators who vote for this budget deal, I say go ahead and
write your press releases. Pat yourselves on the back. Tell your
constituents how you voted to cut taxes. That is an easy vote. But
don't forget to tell your constituents about the other side of that
coin. Be sure and include that in your press release. Don't forget to
tell your constituents that you voted to shortchange our schools,
roads, and water systems; don't forget to include in your press
release, that you voted for lower funding for health care and energy
research; and be sure to include in your press releases that you turned
a blind eye to the looming crises facing Social Security and Medicare.
In 1981, we took what Majority Leader Howard Baker called a riverboat
gamble with President Reagan's tax cut and we ended up with triple
digit deficits for fifteen years. Now the Republican Leadership has
forced upon us another bad deal. A deal that will reduce revenues,
according to the Joint Tax Committee, by nearly $300 billion per year
in 2011 and beyond at just the moment that the baby boom generation
begins to retire.
This conference report makes a mockery of the Budget Act because it
undermines the purpose of the act. The Budget Act was intended to
impose predictability and discipline. But the continual manipulation of
the Budget Act to achieve political goals has made it a sham and a
shame. Gimmicks and bad policy are the result--gimmicks and bad policy.
The demands of a great nation have to be satisfied in spite of fantasy
world budgets. The result will probably be that at the end of the
process, yet another Budget Resolution will have been ignored because
it had to be. It was never grounded in reality. In spite of the
President's claims that he would change things in Washington, he has
already succumbed to the same old partisan polo game, and the same old
swap shop budget bingo we have seen for years. This conference report
ought to be defeated.
Mr. President, Senators who vote for this budget conference report,
call your mother in advance of Mother's Day. If she is one of the baby
boom generations, tell her you voted for this tax cut for the bigwigs.
Tell her: ``Yes, mother, I voted for the Bush tax cut.''
But as to Social Security? There wasn't a dime in the bill for Social
Security. Forget it.
I close by this compliment from Milton from ``Paradise Lost,'' and I
offer it to our budget ranking member, Kent Conrad.
Well hast thou fought the better fight, whose single hast
maintained against revolted multitudes the cause of truth.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ensign). Who yields time?
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from
South Carolina, the very distinguished senior member of the Senate
Budget Committee.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from West
Virginia said: Tell your mother on Mother's Day that you increased
taxes. If you turn to page 4 of the conference report, you will find
that the debt goes up from $5.6 trillion to $6.7 trillion--$1.1
trillion.
As we left the last fiscal year, we ended with a $23 billion deficit,
which we had reduced, over the 8 years, from $403 billion, and now this
very minute we are running a slight surplus. But when you vote for this
particular measure, and this is our main reason for appearing here this
morning, it is to remind everybody that this is Reaganomics II. It is
happening here today.
Let me speak advisedly. As the distinguished Senator from West
Virginia reminded us, I have been on the Budget Committee since its
institution 25 years ago. I have been the chairman. I hasten to comment
that our distinguished ranking member, the Senator from North Dakota,
has done an outstanding job under the most difficult of circumstances.
Let me tell you about the difficult circumstances, because the very
reason for our budget process 25 years ago was to give all the Members
a look-see at every facet of Government spending here in Washington.
Prior to that time, we had 13 appropriations bills, we had 13
authorizing bills, and the authorizers authorized without regard to
appropriating and the appropriators appropriated without regard to the
authorization and the one--namely, defense--didn't know what education
was doing, or housing didn't know what the highways were doing.
So we got together in a comprehensive look-see, where the President
would submit his budget, we would go before the Budget Committee, and
in detail, each one of the particular appropriations measures would be
debated, marked up, reported out, and then come to the floor of the
Senate.
Here we passed this budget without having the President's budget. He
didn't give it until it had passed the House, until it had passed the
Senate--absolutely ridiculous. Why? Because he couldn't sell his tax
cut. He knew the great reason for the prosperity and comeback of our
Democratic Party is that we showed we were fiscally responsible. For 8
years we gave us the greatest prosperity. But it is a sophomoric
approach, this ``tax cuts, tax cuts, the Government is too big, the
money belongs to you'' and all that nonsense--and not paying the bills.
So the President went to 28-some States. You can't sell a tax cut? He
couldn't sell beer on a troop train, I can tell you that right now.
He went everywhere, and he didn't sell his tax cut, so he rammed it,
and the leadership on the other side of the aisle went along with it,
and the media didn't report it. That is another reason I appear here,
because this instrument is an atrocity, a clear, absolute abuse of the
process.
We had a deliberate debate back when President Clinton came to office
to find in what direction the country was going to head. Lyndon Johnson
used to say: It is not whether I am conservative or whether I am
liberal, it is whether I am headed in the right direction.
We debated. The President submitted his budget. We had 30 amendments
before that Budget Committee. We reported it out, and the last
instrument--namely, reconciliation--was not
[[Page S4779]]
passed until August. We had a real old hoedown, and we said we were
going to cut the size of Government. Yes, we were going to cut
spending. And, yes, we were going to increase taxes.
When we increased Social Security taxes, the distinguished Senator
from Texas said: They are going to hunt you Democrats down like dogs in
the street and shoot you.
Where is the Republican tax cut for Social Security? Instead, they
are going to spend the Social Security trust fund. If you don't think
so, come on up and I will give you a bet.
Congressman Kasich, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said: If
this thing works, I'll change parties.
Senator Packwood, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said: If
this thing works, I'll give you my house in downtown Washington.
But it worked. We made a great comeback paying down the debt. Now
some strayers want to go along with this ``Cut taxes, cut taxes,'' and
buying the people's vote, when in essence the debt increases. It goes
up.
We had no debate. We had no markup. We had no report. We passed it
without all that. Then we got to the conference to be told we were not
going to be conferees. Oh, they invite you to the White House when you
cannot vote, you just stand up and grin and smile and bow. But when you
got a vote in the conference committee, they said no, you are not
invited back because you're not going to vote with us.
Thank God we weren't parliamentarians. He wouldn't agree. They fired
him. They would like to fire us. That is why they said we will give you
all the rhetoric about education, because you look at the report after
it comes out: Zero increase for education. What does that mean to us in
the game? It means you are going to have to get a majority of 60 votes
in order to get your increase, whether it is for class size or whether
it is for construction or whether it is for teacher counseling or any
of these other things that we need in public education--namely,
teachers' pay. No, you are not going to get it.
All of this exercise has been the best off-Broadway show, as they see
it, because they are just smiling to themselves: We are going to
destroy this Government and we are just as much against education as we
were for that 20-year crusade to abolish the Education Department.
What happens on the so-called immediate rebate to get the economy
going? By 94 votes to 6, every Republican voted for my $85 billion
rebate plan. But instead of the instant rebate of $85 billion, they
came in here with $100 billion over 2 years, and they are going to go
to the Finance Committee--you can read the reconciliation instructions,
and they translate: We are going to use the stimulus dollars for tax
cuts.
The main thing to be said this morning in the few minutes given me is
that we have tried our best under Senator Conrad's leadership. We have
called their hand at every turn. We have been very courteous, very
tactful in trying to get the report. We know the distinguished chairman
of the Budget Committee has to practically do what the Senator from
Texas tells him. And the Senator from Texas is tied into the Office of
Management and Budget. And the Office of Management and Budget tells
the President what he wants. So you want to get on the record how it is
being worked this year: It is a total abuse, an absolute atrocity.
There is no question about it. Everybody seems to go along. And the
headline will say: We passed the budget. No. We don't even have a
defense figure.
We don't have a budget. We have a tax cut. That is what the President
wanted. That is what they had back with Reaganomics I: $750 billion.
Now this is going to go up to about $1.6 trillion. If you analyze it
carefully, it will probably be nearer to $2.6 trillion.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank the very outstanding Senator, who
is a member of the Senate Budget Committee, Mr. Hollings from South
Carolina, for his remarks this morning.
As I understand it, Senator Breaux wants time off of Senator
Domenici's allocated time. The staff director for Senator Domenici
tells me that is acceptable to their side.
We had lined up Senator Clinton to go next on our side. I don't know
if Senator Breaux would like to go at this point.
I would like to recognize Senator Clinton.
Mr. BREAUX. Absolutely.
Mr. CONRAD. How much time would the Senator like?
Mrs. CLINTON. Oh, 6 minutes.
Mr. CONRAD. I yield 6 minutes to the Senator from New York, an
outstanding member of the Senate Budget Committee, who has made a real
contribution to the work on our side of the aisle on the Senate Budget
Committee.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized for 6
minutes.
Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank my ranking member, the Senator
from North Dakota, who, as my good friend from South Carolina has put
so well, has led with honesty and directness, and believes so
passionately in the issues that we are addressing today.
I rise because I cannot remain silent in the face of both a budget
process and a budget product that I think will be so harmful to our
country. I really wish I did not have to rise today. I wish, given the
opportunities that lie before us as a nation, what we were debating was
the kind of balanced approach to the budget that I could wholeheartedly
support--a balanced approach that included an affordable, reasonable
tax cut, that fairly went to all Americans, giving every one of our
families a Mother's Day present, as Senator Byrd so wonderfully
reminded us is around the corner.
I wish this budget were filled with the kind of careful analysis
about the investments that we need to make our country rich and smarter
and stronger in the years ahead. And I wish this budget continued to
pay down the debt in the way that we had been doing.
In the last 3 years, we paid off more than $600 billion of our debt.
We took it off the backs of all these schoolchildren who are watching
us. We said: We are not going to pass on the debts of your parents.
Your grandparents, the greatest generation, did not leave us in debt
the way that this country did in the 1980s with the quadrupling of our
national debt. I cannot stand here and say that.
I look at all these faces. I meet with schoolchildren from throughout
New York nearly every day. I wish I could say: I am going to go to the
Senate Chamber and support a budget that will invest in education the
way we need it, that will continue to pay down the debt so that you are
not faced with that debt when you are my age, or even younger, and that
it will invest in Social Security and Medicare so that you do not have
to worry about your parents, your grandparents, or yourselves.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that.
I have thought hard about what it is that has happened in the Senate
in the last several months because I sat through 16 hearings in the
Budget Committee. They were informative, very helpful hearings, laying
out the priorities of our Nation, talking about the amount of money we
had that we could count on, not pie in the sky, not projections that
were unlikely ever to come true but realistically what it was we, as a
nation, could count on. And then how could we have a tax cut, pay down
the debt, and invest in education, health care, the environment, as
well as taking care of Social Security and Medicare?
I do not exactly know what happened, how we arrived at this point. We
had those hearings, and then we were shut out of the process. We did
not have a markup, which is a device in a committee to get everybody
together to try to hammer out a bill.
Then the Democrats, with decades of experience--with distinguished
Senators such as Senator Hollings and Senator Conrad--were shut out of
the process between the House and the Senate.
So here we are today on the brink of passing a tax cut that will, I
believe, do to our country what was done in the 1980s. I can only think
that this is a tax cut proposal that was born in the passion of a
primary political campaign, in the snows of New Hampshire, when the
President was running for his life to be President and had to come up
with something, so he plucked out of the air $1.6 trillion and said
that was
[[Page S4780]]
what it was going to be and felt compelled to come and present it to
us.
I was proud of the Senate when, in the process of the budget debate,
we made some good changes. We made those changes not only on the tax
cut side but on the investment side. I thought: If the House can go
along with that, maybe at the end of the process we can have a better
balance. I did not think it went far enough, but I was proud of the
fact that we had a negotiation.
What we have today has zero increases in education. We have spent a
heck of a long time talking about education. The President says it is
his first priority. I can only look at the documents I am handed. I
have only been handed them recently. I was not part of the process,
even though I serve on the Budget Committee. And it looks to me as if
we are turning our back on education.
As I thought back, I could not think of any analogy, I could not
think of any guidance that would help illuminate what it is we are
going through. So I went back and looked at 1981. I read about what
happened when another President said: Pass this big tax cut, and we are
going to have surpluses. And we went further and further and further in
debt.
It is always easier to pass a tax cut. Who doesn't want a tax cut? I
want a tax cut. But I don't want to have a tax cut at the expense of
hurting my country. I don't want a tax cut at the expense of preventing
the kind of investment in education that we need. I don't want a tax
cut where I have to go and tell my mother that Medicare may not be
viable for the rest of her natural life. I don't want that kind of tax
cut.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I give an additional minute to the Senator
from New York.
Mrs. CLINTON. So I, with great regret, stand in this Chamber and
express the disappointment I feel in that we had an opportunity to do
what our country needs--to invest in education, health care, the
environment, pay down our debt, and provide affordable tax cuts--but,
instead, we are taking a U-turn back to the 1980s. Mark my words, we
will be back here--maybe under the same President, or maybe under a
different President--having to fix the fiscal situation we are throwing
our country into today. I lived through that once. I do not look
forward to it. But I will be a responsible Member of this body in
trying to fix the problem that we are causing for our Nation because of
this tax cut and budget.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. CONRAD. The Senator from Louisiana is recognized for 10 minutes
off Senator Domenici's time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I thank the ranking Democrat on the Budget
Committee for his consideration in allowing me to have the time that I
need to make comments on this budget. I also thank Senator Domenici for
being willing to yield me some time.
Let me start, first, by commending Senator Conrad for the work that
he has done, under some very difficult circumstances, with regard to
putting together this product. It has not been easy. It has been very
difficult. It has been very emotional--with a great deal of pressure on
both sides to try to come up with something that makes sense and that
is a rational guideline for how we handle the affairs of this country
over the next 2 years.
I also commend the Democratic leader, Senator Tom Daschle, as well as
the Republican leader, Senator Lott, because I know that within their
own caucuses there are vast differences as to how we should approach
the passage of the budget for this coming year. It has not been an easy
job for either of the budget leaders--Senator Conrad and Senator
Domenici--or for our two respective leaders. I think they have both
done about as good a job as anyone could ever ask for them to do
considering the circumstances.
Mr. President, and my colleagues, I will make the point that
governing in a democracy is about the art of the possible; it is not
about the art of the perfect. Is this budget a perfect document? Of
course not. But does it advance the cause of governing in a democracy
that is almost evenly divided among the two parties?
The answer is, yes, it does. Republicans, as we need to remind
ourselves, control the House with the narrowest of margins in years.
The President was elected after losing the popular vote and narrowly
winning the electoral college vote. Our Senate, indeed, is the perfect
tie, 50/50.
Now is not the time, with these circumstances, to figure out how we
can disagree. There are plenty of opportunities to find where we
disagree with this document, but now is not the time to concentrate on
how we disagree but, rather, now is the time to figure out how we can
reach an agreement for the good of all the people whom we represent.
It is very clear that we could have 535 budgets and each author would
think theirs is the best one. But we can only have one.
The two principal parts of this budget consist of how we handle
revenues or taxes and how we go about spending what is left, a
challenge every American family must make for themselves when they work
out their family budgets. We are fortunate today to have what CBO tells
us is a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. That
$5.6 trillion is more than is necessary to run all of our Government
functions at the current level.
Most Members, but not all Members, would say it is appropriate to
give a portion of that surplus back to the citizens who created that
surplus when they paid their taxes. The question then before this body
is, How much do we give back?
President Bush said: Give back $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
Vice President Al Gore, as a candidate, suggested a tax cut of $500
billion. This budget consists of a $1.25 trillion tax cut over the next
10 years, plus a $100 billion stimulus package in the first 2 years.
Some would think that is too high; others argue that it is far too low
and not enough.
It is, in fact, sufficient to give money back to all Americans with a
balanced and a fair tax cut.
We can, within this budget, reduce all marginal rates. We can, within
this budget, create a new 10-percent bracket for lower income
Americans, which would also benefit all income Americans. We can,
within this budget, reduce the estate tax to a level that almost
eliminates everyone from paying it. We can, within this budget, fix the
alternative minimum tax problem. And we can, within this budget,
increase the child credit that families take. We can make it
refundable, and we can make it retroactive within this budget. And we
can help education within the tax structure of this budget by making
tuition taxes deductible for all American families. We can, within this
budget's tax structure, fix the marriage penalty.
With regard to spending contained in this budget, it is important for
us to put the figures in proper perspective. Last year our Democratic
President, President Clinton, proposed a budget for discretionary
spending calling for $614 billion. The House and Senate Republicans and
the budget, indeed, ended up saying we were going to spend $596 billion
for discretionary spending. We ended up spending $635 billion.
We did that because of emergencies that occurred during the year. We
did that because of new spending priorities that were brought to our
attention during the year that were unforeseen at the time of the
budget enactment. This Congress responded to those needs as they
occurred. This Congress will respond to those needs as they occur in
the upcoming months of this fiscal year.
This budget provides $661 billion in discretionary spending. That is
without any emergency money being designated. It is not designated
because it is clear that this Congress will add that emergency money as
the emergencies occur. If there is a hurricane, if there is an
agricultural emergency, if there is an earthquake, if there are any
other kinds of emergencies, it is clear, from the history of this body,
that this Congress will address those needs because they are true
emergencies.
That $661 billion is a $26 billion increase over last year. That is a
$47 billion increase more than President Clinton asked for last year
when he submitted his budget to the Congress.
[[Page S4781]]
I know some of my colleagues will argue that it is not enough, that
we don't have enough money, for instance, for education in this budget.
My reading on education is that there will be a lot more money than
last year for education, a lot more. President Bush has offered a $4.6
billion increase for the Department of Education over last year's $18.3
billion in spending. That is larger than the $3.6 billion President
Clinton won for this fiscal year.
As Senator Kennedy, who is the master of putting together good policy
deals, has said:
We have exceeded the budget every year in education
appropriations, and we are going to do it again.
That is a correct assessment of what we are going to do and have done
in the past, when it comes to meeting the educational needs of the
people of this country. We will provide sufficient funds to educate our
children.
It is important to bear in mind that most of the money for education
comes from the local and State levels. In fact, 94 percent, on average,
of the money on education doesn't come from Washington; it comes from
the States; it comes from the local communities that fund the
educational programs they determine are their priorities. On average,
only 6 percent of the total education budget comes from Washington, DC.
The money will be adequate to address the demands.
My recommendation is that we pass this imperfect document to allow
the Finance Committee and the Appropriations Committee to begin their
work. This document is important as an outline of our priorities, but
it is written on paper. It is not written in concrete. It can and will
be modified as we have done so every single year as we move through the
legislative process.
This is a time of great emotion. It is a time of great pressure. Our
leaders, Tom Daschle and Kent Conrad on the Budget Committee and also
Senator Domenici and Senator Lott, have had a very difficult job trying
to reach an agreement in truly a divided Government. I respect all of
them for their sincerity and their honesty and their dedication to try
to reach an agreement that everyone can support.
It is, however, time for us to move ahead. There is other work to be
done. Now is the time to begin that work by adopting this budget and
moving on to the next step.
I yield the floor.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank Senator Breaux for his
assessment of where things are. I think he included in his remarks that
there is still a contingency fund of $500 billion. For those who think
we ought to do other things and that we have to, that is still in this
budget. I think what Senator Breaux said about the appropriated account
is right on the money. We don't know where the appropriators are going
to put the money, no matter what we say in this Chamber.
But there is a $31 billion increase year over year, and $6.2 billion
more than the President asked for, if you really are talking apples and
apples and the money to be spent by the appropriators. I think Senator
Breaux summarized that just about right. I thank him for his support.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thought the distinguished Senator, my
ranking member, was going to yield to somebody on his side before he
and I used our final time.
Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Senator. The Senator from Minnesota requested
time. I yield 5 minutes to Senator Dayton.
Let me alert Senators on our side that I now have, other than the
wrap-up reserved for Senator Domenici and myself, only have 2 minutes.
I alert colleagues to the circumstance that exists.
I yield to the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Dayton, for 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from
North Dakota for granting me this time, and also for his outstanding
leadership on this issue on behalf of our Democratic caucus.
I rise to say that I intend to vote against this budget today because
I believe it allocates too much to the richest Americans and too little
to our schoolchildren, senior citizens, veterans, and most of our other
citizens. It also wrongly provides a blank check for additional
military spending without congressional review or approval.
This budget purports to be a bipartisan creation. In fact, I am told
that the Democratic Senators on the Senate-House conference committee
were completely excluded from the deliberations and decisions about
this budget agreement. As a result, a bipartisan Senate amendment to
increase funding for elementary and secondary education was eliminated.
The amendment of my colleague, Senator Wellstone, which increased
funding for veterans' programs, was eliminated. Funds for farm aid,
prescription drug coverage, Head Start, health care, child care,
transportation, and other important government services were reduced.
Except for military spending, all other federal government
discretionary services were cut by 2 percent below their inflation-
adjusted baselines.
Why? Why, despite huge projected budget surpluses, must the funds for
these essential public services be denied? For a tax cut which favors
the rich, rather than working, middle-income Americans.
There is enough surplus projected to provide immediate tax cuts and
rate reductions for all American taxpayers, so long as they are
targeted to the first tax brackets. Unfortunately, this budget places
greed ahead of need. People who already have the most get even more,
while people who have the least receive even less.
There is no compassion in this budget. There is no bipartisanship in
this budget. There is no new education funding to ``leave no child
behind'' in this budget. Its pretenses are a sham. Its promises are a
scam.
Furthermore, this budget expressly does not protect either the Social
Security or the Medicare Trust Funds from being raided for other
spending programs. Instead, it sets up an all-purpose contingency fund,
which pretends to cover every imagined funding need. First, however, it
must fund a literal blank check for whatever additional military
spending the Secretary of Defense shall recommend to the chairmen of
the Senate and House Budget Committees. In an unprecedented procedure,
with no further congressional review or approval, these two men alone
can add whatever amounts of additional spending are proposed by the
Secretary of Defense. Thus, this budget provides blank checks for the
military, big checks for the rich, and bounced checks due to
``insufficient funds'' for all other Americans.
I support, and will vote for, a large tax cut benefiting all
Minnesota taxpayers. I also support, and will fight for, additional
federal funds for special education, for student aid, for prescription
drug coverage, for farm price supports, for veterans' health care, for
flood victims, and for other important government services. I believe
in a balanced budget. I believe we have enough resources available to
us to improve the quality of life for our citizens and to reduce taxes.
I believe this budget squanders that opportunity. That is why I am
voting against it.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eighteen minutes.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from
Minnesota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from North Dakota.
I think this budget proposal on the part of my Republican colleagues
should be called ``leave no dollars behind'' when it comes to Robin-
Hood-in-reverse tax cuts with over 40 percent of the benefits going to
the top 1 percent of the population. That is what we have.
I had an amendment to provide $17 billion for veterans' health care
over the next 10 years, filling in the gaps to make sure we would do
well and say thanks to our veterans--eliminated.
I joined with Senator Harkin to provide $250 billion for education,
afterschool programs, and title I kids with special needs--you name it.
It was eliminated from the budget proposal.
This is about the most hard-hitting thing I can say, because I really
believe
[[Page S4782]]
in the chair of this committee, a Senator for whom I have tremendous
respect. He is a great Senator. But I am in profound disagreement with
his proposal.
I have been following the discussion about education. I hope my
colleagues on the Democratic side will have the courage to challenge
this education bill on the floor, which will not have the resources.
Senators, if you love children, then you don't rob them. If you love
this little boy or girl, then you don't take their childhood away. If
you love these children, you help them for 10 years from now, or 7 or 8
years from now. You must be willing to step up to the plate and make
sure you invest some money so these kids will all have the best
opportunity to learn. That means that they are kindergarten ready. That
means you help the kids who come from low-income backgrounds. That
means, just as Senators' children when they go to school, and our
grandchildren, they have the best teachers and the schools and the
technology and all of the facilities. This is no way to love children.
That is to say, do not rob them by not making the investment in
children in Minnesota and around the country and instead giving 40
percent-plus of the benefits to the top 1 percent of the population.
These are distorted priorities. There is going to be a pittance for
children and education, a pittance for health care, and not anywhere
near enough for affordable prescription drug costs for the elderly.
Whatever happened to that campaign promise?
I resist this budget. I will vote against this budget.
I am going to have a lot of amendments on this education bill that
are going to make people step up to the plate, and we will see who is
willing to talk about the resources for children and education.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time do I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-nine minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. I understand Senator Frist is going to come down and
wants to use a little time. Would you please instruct me when I am down
to 15 minutes remaining. I hope not to use that.
I first want to say to the distinguished new Senator, Mr. Dayton,
that I listened carefully to his remarks. Everyone is entitled to their
opinion. But we have not given a carte blanche to the Defense
Department of the United States.
We were confronted with a very interesting situation. One, the
President asked for a low number for defense, with the assumption in
this budget that his task force, headed by the Secretary, his top-to-
bottom review, could not come up with the answers of what we needed by
way of change by the time we were doing this work. What would one do?
Would one shut all of that out and say whatever it is when that task
force is finished, they can wait until next year?
We allocated to the appropriators the amount of money the President
asked for in defense--a low number. Then we said if and when the task
force is finished--and we are still in this year--whatever the task
force recommends in changes we will put in the defense pot allocated in
this budget. But it would have to be appropriated by the Congress of
the United States item by item, line by line, and system by system. You
might say that is an open door for defense with no controls.
You said subject to no congressional controls. I don't believe that
is the case. What I just described is true. And is that without
congressional concurrence? I think not.
I don't know any other way we could have done it. We could have said
we will produce a new budget with a new defense number and debated that
thoroughly and then came back, and we would have had the year behind us
before we could have done anything. Guess what. They would come along
and appropriate for defense and say: Too late. It has taken too long.
We are putting it in, in excess of the budget.
We are trying to have a little common sense on defense.
In my closing remarks, I will allude to some other aspects, but a lot
has been said about spending. Is there enough in this budget for the
appropriators to spend?
Let me suggest it is pretty clear that there are many who would
accept a much higher number. But I want to tell you the numbers as they
are.
It is $31.3 billion above the 2001 budget available to be
appropriated. Take out all of the things that are not spending and just
do apples and apples. It is $31.3 billion.
Of that number, $6.2 billion is new money over and above the
President's budget. That means you have what the President recommended,
plus $6.2 billion more, which gives you $31.3 billion over last year to
spend. This $661.3 billion, which is the number, is real money. It will
be sent to the appropriators to be spent. With that figure, we assume--
and that is all we can do--that $44.5 billion of it will go to the
Department of Education for the year 2002. We assume--and that is all
we can do--that there will be an 11.5-percent increase. This is new
money. Nobody can say that 11.5 percent isn't well above inflation.
What kind of money are we talking about in the 4.6? The highest ever
level of funding for education of disabled children, a $460 billion
increase in title I, including a 78-percent increase in assistance to
low-performing schools; a $1 billion increase in Pell grants; $1
billion for new reading programs; $320 billion to ensure accountability
with State assessments. We can go on. There is $472 million to
encourage schoolchildren, some kind of innovative choice that we might
pass; $6.3 billion to serve 916,000 Head Start children.
I guess it is easy to stand up and say there is nothing in this
budget for education. I just read it to you. Actually, the
appropriators will probably do more because we gave them more to spend,
and they have always favored more money for education. So, frankly,
whatever we have heard rhetorically on the floor about education, we
have done better by education than we have in modern times. This is the
highest, most dedicated budget for education that we have ever
produced.
I note the presence of the Senator from Tennessee. Would the Senator
like to speak to the matter before us?
Mr. FRIST. For 4 or 5 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. How much time do I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 23 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. The Senator wants 5 minutes. And then Senator Nickles
wants 5 minutes. I yield to them in that order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I rise because I think in 30 minutes or so
we will be voting on the conference report. I want to give my
colleagues my strongly felt support for what we have arrived at today.
I believe it does, in a very consistent way, represent what at least I
hear as I travel around the country, and through the State of
Tennessee, from every day people who are looking at their lives, the
qualities of life, looking at Washington, DC, and Government and what
it can be both for them and against them, and they tell you simple
things. Those things are: We do have a debt today, which one generation
has given another. Please address that debt.
They say we have some important things to pay for, and that is the
role of Government. That includes things such as Medicare, research in
health care, education, defense of the country. And they say: After you
pay down that debt--and in this conference report we pay down that debt
from $2.4 trillion from where it is, and they say: Thank you, that is
what we want.
They say: What about teacher quality? We have $2.6 billion in the
budget for teachers and we know, when we look at that teacher-pupil
interaction in the classroom, that this is important. In higher
education for Pell grants, they say: After graduating from high school,
let's give people that opportunity to have, in essence, a pool of
resources to take wherever they choose to go, and that is Pell grants--
and indeed it is in this bill--for disadvantaged students; we assume
$9.8 billion for Pell grants. They say: In health care, make sure you
address this issue of prescription drugs. Very specifically in this
budget $300 million is provided for expansion of Medicare prescription
drug benefits. The exact
[[Page S4783]]
mix, the exact bill, the exact nature--yes, couple it with
modernization but do it in a way that we can see it soon. They say
think about the future.
In this bill we think about the future in the field of health
research. The resolution includes the President's $2.8 billion increase
in the National Institutes of Health. It goes through the defense
spending, agriculture, attention to the veterans. Then they say: After
addressing the debt, after protecting the Social Security trust fund,
after protecting that Medicare trust fund, both of which give security
to our seniors today, let us keep, instead of sending to Washington,
DC, a little bit more of our hard-earned money.
Indeed, we do that. All of this is our money, say the people
throughout Tennessee, not yours because you represent the Federal
Government. So if after we invest in those priorities of health care,
education, quality of life, agriculture, defense, and the veterans--
after we make that commitment to substantially pay down that debt,
allow us to keep the dollars with us. Trust us, the American people, to
spend, to save, to invest.
``Trust us,'' the people across Tennessee tell me. We do that by
allowing the taxpayer to keep $1.35 trillion over the next 11 years in
their pockets, instead of on April 15 sending it to Washington, DC,
when it is not needed.
In addition to that $1.35 trillion that we allow taxpayers to keep is
the $100 billion stimulus, which answers the question of: What are you
doing today to restore that hope in our economy, that hope in job
creation? And the answer is that we are taking $100 billion and
targeting it for a short-term stimulus to help turn this economy
around--something that everybody feels each and every day--a change,
something different than 2 years ago, than 3 years ago.
Finally, in this bill we authorize the additional tax relief, or debt
relief, if surpluses exceed those expectations.
Mr. President, this conference report reflects what the American
people want. There is compromise and negotiation in there. I, for one,
would like to see taxpayers keep a little bit more money in their
pockets as we look to the future. But recognizing the realities of this
body pulling together people on both sides of the aisle, I believe the
conference report is strong, and it reflects the will and spirit of
people throughout Tennessee. Therefore, I look forward to heartily
supporting this conference report as we go forward.
I yield the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I compliment my friend and colleague, the
chairman of the committee, Senator Domenici, for his work. We have been
on the Budget Committee for many years. I have been on it for 20 years
and have had the pleasure of working with him. Most of the time,
unfortunately, the budgets are pretty partisan. I wish they weren't. I
know Senator Domenici wishes they weren't. Many times they are
difficult to put together. This has been one of the toughest. It is not
an easy task in any way, shape, or form. Certainly, with a 50/50,
evenly divided Senate, it is a very difficult task.
I compliment my friend and colleague who has had battles with
Democrats, Republicans, with liberals on both sides of the aisle and
conservatives on both sides. He has wrestled with a very difficult
task. He has come up with a product that I think is a giant step in the
right direction. It is not perfect. The Senator from Tennessee, whom I
compliment, is a member of this committee. He said he would like to
have a larger tax cut. This is a small tax cut in relation to the
surplus. We have an estimated surplus of over $5 trillion. The total
tax cut, at maximum, is $1.35 trillion, with one-fourth going to
taxpayers. The majority is used to pay down the national debt. We have
colleagues on both sides who said let's do it.
The Senator from New Mexico said we are paying down the national debt
from publicly held debt, as of this year, $3.2 trillion, and in 10
years it will be less than $1 trillion. We are paying it down to the
maximum extent that we possibly can. Nowhere in the history of our
country have we ever paid down the national debt the way we are
projecting to do it this year, next year, and throughout the next 10
years.
So I compliment my friend from New Mexico. We still have a
significant surplus. He says let's give a portion of that to taxpayers.
I have heard people objecting and saying we are not taking care of our
Nation's domestic needs. Either we need more money for education, or
veterans, or defense, and so on; we need more money to spend.
The spenders have been winning for the last 3 years. The people who
have wanted for the last 3 years to give some of the surplus to the
taxpayers or let the taxpayers keep some of the surplus have lost.
We passed tax cuts in 1999 and 2000. President Clinton vetoed them.
We did not have the votes to override, so the taxpayers did not get a
break. They just kept sending in more money. As a matter of fact,
taxpayers today, on a per capita basis, send in $1,000 more than the
Federal Government is spending. The Federal Government today is
spending $7,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.
That is a surplus of about $1,000.
Let's give a portion of that back to the taxpayers. Let's let them
keep some of their own money. They are sending in too much. Granted,
there is no limit to the ideas we have in Congress on spending people's
money, and people obviously think Congress can spend it better than the
American people.
Let the taxpayers keep a portion of it and take the bulk of the
surplus and pay down the national debt. That is exactly what we are
doing in this proposal. Spending continues to grow. Maybe it has not
grown as much as it has in the past. Thank goodness. Spending got out
of hand in the last couple of years. I will put in a chart showing
domestic spending last year grew 14.1 percent. Defense spending grew at
3.5 percent.
Some people say spending grew at 8 percent last year. Nondefense
spending grew at 14 percent last year. That is not sustainable. The
education function last year grew in budget authority 29.9 percent.
That is not sustainable.
Yet on top of those enormous increases we had last year and large
increases in the previous year, this budget says let's grow spending
more, actually 5 percent more.
I heard people say: We are not doing enough in education despite the
enormous increases we had in education. Education funding is projected
under this budget to grow at 11 percent, and all of us suspect, with
the large support we have in education led by our President and others,
that education within these functions will probably grow by even more
than that amount.
My point is, we are spending a lot of money, over $7,000 for every
man, woman, and child, and it should be enough. Surely, we can give
some tax relief to taxpayers.
I heard some of my colleagues say the tax bill benefits the rich. I
am in the process of working with others on the Finance Committee to
put together a bill. It does not just benefit the rich; it benefits
taxpayers. It is weighted towards taxpayers who are in the lower income
categories. We are talking about large percentage cuts for individuals
who pay the lowest rates, not the highest rates. The largest
beneficiaries, certainly in the first few years, are the people at the
lower end of the brackets who are now paying 15 percent. They will pay
10 percent, or 12 percent under the House bill, or people who are
paying 28 percent will pay 15 percent. We are going to expand the 15-
percent bracket.
My point is, please do not prejudge the tax bill as benefitting the
rich. A lot of that is class warfare demagoguery that is not going to
be sustained by the facts. Let's allow taxpayers to keep a portion of
the surplus and take the bulk of the surplus to pay down the debt and
limit the growth of spending to 4 or 5 percent as proposed under this
budget. It is affordable and sustainable.
I thank my colleagues for supporting this budget resolution. We had
65 votes in favor of the budget a week or two ago. There is no reason
those individuals who supported this budget a week or so ago would not
support it today. The differences in the tax cut are minimal from what
we passed a couple weeks ago. I urge my colleagues to support the
budget resolution.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the chart to which I
referred earlier be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[[Page S4784]]
APPROPRIATIONS BY SUBCOMMITTEE
[In billions of dollars]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Growth from Growth from
Fiscal year Fiscal year fiscal year Fiscal year fiscal year
2000 2001 2000 (percent) 2002 request 2001 (percent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agriculture:
BA.......................... 15.0 16.1 7.3 15.4 -4.3
OT.......................... 14.7 16.3 10.9 16.4 0.6
Commerce/Justice/State:
BA.......................... 38.8 37.6 -3.1 37.9 0.8
OT.......................... 36.9 37.5 1.6 39.6 5.6
District of Columbia:
BA.......................... 0.5 0.5 0.0 0.3 -40.0
OT.......................... 0.4 0.5 25.0 0.3 -40.0
Defense:
BA.......................... 278.8 287.5 3.1 301.0 4.7
OT.......................... 273.5 276.2 1.0 296.1 7.2
Energy/Water:
BA.......................... 21.6 23.6 9.3 22.5 -4.7
OT.......................... 21.7 23.3 7.4 23.2 -0.4
Foreign Operations:
BA.......................... 16.2 14.9 -8.0 15.2 2.0
OT.......................... 14.8 15.7 6.1 15.7 0.0
Interior:
BA.......................... 15.4 19.0 23.4 18.1 -4.7
OT.......................... 15.6 17.9 14.7 18.3 2.2
Legislative Branch:
BA.......................... 2.5 2.7 8.0 3.0 11.1
0T.......................... 2.5 2.6 4.0 3.0 15.4
Labor/HHS:
BA.......................... 87.1 109.4 25.6 116.4 6.4
OT.......................... 87.4 100.3 14.8 110.3 10.0
Military Construction:
BA.......................... 8.7 9.0 3.4 9.6 6.7
OT.......................... 8.5 8.9 4.7 8.6 -3.4
Transportation:
BA.......................... 14.4 18.3 27.1 16.2 -11.5
OT.......................... 44.0 48.2 9.5 52.7 9.3
Treasury/Postal:
BA.......................... 13.7 15.8 15.3 16.6 5.1
OT.......................... 13.7 16.1 17.5 16.3 1.2
VA/HUD/IND:
BA.......................... 71.8 80.7 12.4 83.1 3.0
OT.......................... 81.1 85.9 5.9 89.0 3.6
Emergency Reserve:
BA.......................... (\1\) (\1\) (\1\) 5.3 (\1\)
OT.......................... (\1\) (\1\) (\1\) 2.4 (\1\)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total:
BA.................... 584.4 634.9 8.6 660.6 4.0
OT.................... 614.8 649.4 5.6 691.7 6.5
===============================================================================
Defense:
BA.......................... 300.8 311.3 3.5 325.1 4.4
OT.......................... 295.0 299.6 1.6 319.2 6.5
Domestic:
BA.......................... 283.6 323.6 14.1 335.5 3.7
OT.......................... 319.8 349.8 9.4 372.5 6.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: OMB.
\1\ Not applicable.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, a month ago I voted in support of the
budget resolution which passed the Senate and which contained $688
billion in discretionary spending for fiscal year 2002 and $1.18
trillion in tax cuts.
I continue to support the elements of the tax package that made for
half of the budget agreement. I support providing broad-based tax
relief, eliminating the marriage penalty, and providing significant
estate tax reform. And I believe that a stimulus package will be
important in assuring that the economy does not slip into a recession.
But it was the allocation of resources in the Senate budget
resolution--particularly funding for education programs--that made it
possible for me and many of my colleagues to support the tax cuts.
Without the allocation of adequate spending to allow us to meet
pressing domestic needs, especially in education, it seems to me that
the other half of the understanding that made my support of the budget
resolution is now missing.
As I understand it, the conference report currently before the
Senate, provides discretionary budget authority of $661.3 billion ion
2002, $27 billion below the amount agreed on by the Senate, and even
below the amount that the CBO estimates is needed to keep pace with
inflation.
In fact, overall funding for all non-defense discretionary spending
is $5.5 billion less than last year's level, adjusted for inflation.
And on education, the bottom line appears to be that although the
President's budget included an increase in education spending, the
conference report which is currently before the Senate does not.
There is no new funding for education in the conference report, and,
in fact, the discretionary education totals in the budget resolution
are nearly $1 billion less than the increases provided in the
President's budget.
There is no new funding provided for Head Start, and only minimal
increases for Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act, IDEA. This is not an approach which is calibrated to ``leave no
child behind.''
And while it is true that this conference report provides up to $6.2
billion in additional unallocated discretionary budget authority for
funding domestic priorities beyond the President's budget request,
which some have argued can all be used on education, discretionary
education funding is only one of the priorities that this money will be
needed for. This $6.2 billion is all that is available for all domestic
priorities, not just education.
I supported the Senate budget resolution because I thought that it
represented a good balance at a time of unprecedented surpluses,
providing both significant tax relief and making significant
investments in our children and in our nation's future.
This conference report, unfortunately, no longer contains that
balance, and I find that I cannot, in good conscience, support it.
Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, first I must congratulate the chairman
of the Budget Committee, Senator Domenici, for his hard work on the
budget. It is a thankless task that earns the Senator few if any points
with his New Mexico constituents. Unfortunately, I am greatly troubled
by certain elements in this budget, and
[[Page S4785]]
will vote against the fiscal year 2002 budget resolution conference
report now before the Senate.
In approving this budget, Congress is missing a significant
opportunity to address some of our nation's most critical needs. Key
among these needs is education. A nation that does not invest in its
people, that does not provide its citizens with an excellent education,
that does not ensure that its children can read, and that does not
train them for eventual entry into the workforce, is acting
irresponsibly.
We must grant the American people a tax cut. We must pay down the
debt. We must protect social security. But we must not ignore a most
critical responsibility, to provide a free and adequate education to
every child in America.
I was proud to play a key role in making the tax cut contained in
this budget more responsible. I have the greatest respect for my
centrist colleagues who joined me in striking this agreement. But I
cannot support a budget that puts large tax cuts and unlimited defense
spending ahead of educating our nation's children. By voting against
this budget agreement today, I am committing to the nation that I will
continue my efforts to bring more resources to our schools and children
to improve education.
I can not hide my disappointment that the Congress once again will
not fulfill its pledge to fully fund special education. This year, I
tried and failed to have language included in the budget that would
have made the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA,
mandatory spending.
When I first arrived in Congress, one of the very first bills that I
had the privilege of working on was the Education of All Handicapped
Children Act of 1975. As a freshman Member of Congress, I was proud to
sponsor that legislation and to be named as a member of the House and
Senate conference committee along with then Vermont Senator Bob
Stafford.
At that time, despite a clear constitutional obligation to education
all children, regardless of disability, thousands of students with
disabilities were denied access to a public education. Passage of the
Education of All Handicapped Children Act offered financial incentives
to states to fulfill this existing obligation. Recognizing that the
costs associated with educating these children was more than many
school districts could bear alone, the Federal government pledged to
pay 40 percent of the additional costs of educating these students.
The budget resolution that is before the Senate continues to make a
mockery of this pledge. However, I will work with members of the Senate
Appropriations and Finance Committees both to increase annual spending
for IDEA and convert the program into mandatory spending. Additionally,
the budget sets overall discretionary education spending at a level
below what was passed in the Senate and below what is needed for our
children and the future of our country.
The budget resolution allows up to $1.35 trillion in tax cuts over
eleven years. While I agree some level of tax cuts are warranted, I
continue to be troubled with making surplus assumptions ten years into
the future. The level of tax cuts called for in this resolution gives
the Congress little leeway should projected surpluses not materialize.
While the budget resolution sets the overall level of tax cuts that
will be considered by the Congress this year under reconciliation
rules, I intend to be an aggressive advocate for children when the tax
bill is debated in the Finance Committee. I also will strongly advocate
that the Congress not attempt this year to exceed $1.35 trillion in tax
cuts by writing additional tax bills. We can and should enact all of
this year's tax cuts within a ceiling of $1.35 trillion.
We dare not risk a return to the era of deficits, especially with the
coming retirement of millions of baby boomers and the burden that this
will place on the Social Security and Medicare systems.
On the positive side, I am pleased that this resolution protects
Social Security. Not one penny of the Social Security surplus is
touched. Second, it balances the budget every year without using the
Social Security surplus. Thirdly, this resolution retires the national
debt held by the public--about $2 trillion over the next ten years.
I should add that it has been a pleasure these past weeks to work
with a bipartisan group of centrist Senators who believe that tax
relief is warranted, but not at the expense of education, veterans
health, job training, child care, environmental and other important
discretionary programs.
This budget, like all budgets passed by Congress, is an expression of
political intent, priorities, and a starting point for bargaining. Much
work remains to be done to pass the 13 appropriations bills that
actually fund the Federal Government. In areas where I disagree with
the budget resolution, I plan to work hard with appropriators to adjust
spending levels and turn this budget into reality.
Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I rise today with great disappointment to
oppose this budget. I am disappointed that I am forced to vote against
a tax cut number, $1.25 trillion over the next ten years, that I
support and think is reasonable. I am disappointed that Congress, by
the slimmest of margins, is passing a spending plan that includes zero
funding for education reforms, school modernization, teacher training,
or any education initiative that will empower our local communities to
improve their schools.
But mostly I am disappointed that a budget that left this chamber a
reasonable compromise, with significant investment in education,
veterans, and Medicare and an over $1 trillion tax cut, has returned a
political document in bipartisan clothing.
I want to make it clear that I do not oppose the tax cut set up by
this budget. I believe that we can afford, and should give, a tax cut
of over $ 1 trillion. In fact, I have every intention of voting for the
tax cut bill that will be on the floor in the next couple of weeks. Our
strong economy, and our fiscal discipline over the last few years makes
it possible to let taxpayers keep more of their money while still
making essential investments in our children, our communities, our
veterans and our seniors.
The Senate vote last month proved that. We had 65 votes, mine
included, for a budget that envisioned a $1.2 trillion tax cut, an
unprecedented increase in education investment, a substantial
commitment to veterans health, significant debt reduction, and the
deserved title of bipartisan.
The budget before us today chooses to keep the tax cut, and I support
that, but to sacrifice investment on education, health care, NIH, and
other domestic priorities. Why? In order to allow a blank check for
defense spending.
Let me repeat that. This budget allows an unspecified and unlimited
amount of resources to go to defense while holding flat spending on
education and other domestic programs, completely flat. The budget
before us right now has less education spending than any other budget
considered this year--the Senate Budget Resolution passed last month
had more, the House Budget Resolution passed last month had more, the
President's budget submission had more. I pride myself on being a
tightwad when it comes to spending taxpayer money, but I have always
said the one area I will not shortchange is our children's education. I
cannot support the lowest offer for education on the table, yet that is
exactly what we have before us today.
I very much wanted to support this budget today. I look forward to
supporting portions of it in the future. And I sincerely hope that, as
we work through the tax and spending bills this year, we return to the
compromise and broad support that marked the Senate Budget Resolution--
and reject the extremism and political polarization that scars the
final budget before us now.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, when I came to the Senate almost 30 years
ago, we were just entering what became a generation of Federal deficit
spending. We lost the key to balanced budgets, the discipline to match
our spending with our income.
The economic impact of those decades of deficits was profound. The
accumulating debt grew faster than our economy, and we slipped from our
position as the world's leading creditor nation to the world's biggest
borrower.
While the Federal Government borrowed money as if nobody else needed
[[Page S4786]]
it, private borrowers from first-time home buyers to major corporations
all paid more for their loans. Our inability to balance our budgets was
a dead weight burden on the economy here, and our high interest rates
affected international finance as well.
But perhaps the most important cost of those deficits was the loss of
faith suffered by Americans in their Government. A lot of factors
contributed to that cynicism and skepticism, but I am convinced that
the cumulative effect of decades of unbalanced budgets was a major
reason Americans for so long held their Government in such low esteem.
Those deficits had another major effect. As we struggled every year
to match our spending with our income, the priorities I came to the
Senate to fight for, support for those among us who need it most,
protection of the environment, quality education for everyone, safe
streets and homes, those priorities were the first hit by spending
cuts.
And as we cut back on those programs, we cut back on the basic
responsibilities of a democratic government. The era of budget deficits
was marked by a deficit of democracy itself.
Today, we can congratulate ourselves on not only balancing our
budgets, but on producing substantial budget surpluses. On the
foundation of an historical economic boom, the longest period of high-
productivity growth in our history, we have restored the health of our
Federal budgets.
History will judge how we manage this success, what we do with the
opportunity before us. Will we build a foundation for future growth,
will we pay down the burden of debt that we built up in the generation
of deficits, will we continue to meet the demands of our citizens for
world class education, health care, and technology, for safe streets,
clean air and water? Or will we put all of this at risk, along with the
hard-won victory over deficits?
I will vote against the Budget Resolution before us today, because it
gives the wrong answer to those questions.
As the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee
reminded us so eloquently last week, Americans rightly expect us to
make sure that the basic functions of government are taken care of.
When we fail to provide the safe streets, the clean water, the good
schools, that the citizens of the world's richest nation have every
reason to expect, we have failed to live up to our responsibilities. I
am sorry to say that this budget marks such a failure.
Because of the size of the tax cuts, $1.35 billion, and their shape,
they increase in cost in future years, this budget puts at risk all we
have gained through years of hard work on the budget. And it puts at
risk our ability to meet the basic demands our citizens make of us to
manage our common affairs effectively and efficiently.
We have real needs in this country, as the distinguished Senator from
West Virginia reminded us last week. Almost a third of our bridges are
in need of repair, many of our school rooms are crumbling, our water
and sewer systems are in disrepair. In the midst of all of the private
wealth our economy has created in the last decade, our public
investments have failed to keep pace.
This budget fails to provide any new funds for education, for health
care, for clean air and water, for police protection, for safer roads
and bridges--none. This budget spends less per citizen, after
inflation, for all of those priorities.
The President claims, and I believe him, that he wants to spend more
on education. I support him in that effort. However, because there is
not enough money in this budget to keep present levels of support for
any domestic priorities, any increase in education spending will have
to come out of police protection, out of drug interdiction, out of
health care research.
There is no increase in spending for education, unless you count a
vague promise that we would like to spend more. But a budget is not
about vague promises. It should tell us the facts about how much we
have to spend on our priorities. And the sad fact is that this budget
has no new money for education, period.
This budget fails to meet the basic test of facing up to reality,
there are more demands on our budget than there are funds to meet them,
and this budget gives us no idea of where the cuts will fall to pay for
any of the new priorities we face.
When the Senate voted on its version of the budget last month, we
called for $225 billion in additional investments in education. That
money is gone from the Budget Resolution before us today, gone.
In fact in this resolution, there is actually $5.5 billion less than
last year's spending for education, allowing for inflation.
The Federal budget is already smallest it has been since 1960 as a
share of our economy. It is simply not realistic to assume that it will
continue to shrink, in real terms, not just next year but for the next
ten years. But that is just what this budget assumes.
These cuts in domestic priorities will happen even if the economic
projections on which this budget is based, ten-year projections that
have proved wrong every time in the past, even if those projections
turn out to be true. If the economy grows more slowly, if we face
natural disasters, national security threats or other inevitable but
unpredictable emergencies, there will be even more cuts.
But there are other assumptions built into this budget, assumptions
that I believe will be wrong no matter what happens to those economic
projections. This budget assumes we will do nothing to protect millions
of Americans from increases in the alternative minimum tax, that we
will fail to renew popular and important programs such as the research
and development tax credit, it assumes that we can undertake a major
overhaul of our defense policy with a relatively small increase in
spending. But recent statements by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld suggest
hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending, that is not in this
budget.
If any of those assumptions, or a lot of other similar costly issues
that are assumed away in this budget, prove to be wrong, there will be
even less money for education, for health care research, for clear air
and water, for cops on the beat.
But this budget does not face up to those problems, it assumes them
away.
With the underlying health of our economy, with the hard work we put
into restoring balance to our budgets, I am convinced we can afford tax
cuts, tax cuts that would in any other context sound huge.
Prudent budgeting, that makes full allowance for domestic and defense
priorities and that is cautious about ten-year economic forecasts that
have huge margins of error, would still leave room for hundreds of
billions of dollars in tax cuts.
There is no economic reason behind the tax cut numbers in this
resolution. Those numbers date back to the Republican primaries, in
1999, when the economy was booming, the stock market was soaring and
unemployment was falling. The Bush campaign picked a tax cut number
they thought would help them beat Steve Forbes in the New Hampshire
primary.
They certainly were not concerned with formulating a ten-year budget
plan during a slack economy. But those are the numbers we are told are
still basically right for today.
If we go into this thinking that we can afford a tax cut of this
size, and a defense build-up many times greater than this budget allows
for, with promises to increase spending on education, expectations that
health care spending will go up, some kind of plan to shore up Social
Security and Medicare with funds from outside those systems, I think we
can all see where we are headed.
One of the first things to go will the surpluses that we ought to use
to pay down the debt, the burden that raises interest payments today
and that our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. For all
the talk about the surpluses belonging to the American people, we have
to remember that the national debt belongs to them, too.
Playing fast and loose with the assumptions in the budget could leave
us with a bigger debt, and higher continuing interest payments on the
debt burden, than we would have if we stayed on the course that
restored balance to our budgets.
We have come too far to go that way again.
[[Page S4787]]
This budget does not build on the successes of the last decade; it
threatens to return us to the time when we failed to make the hard
choices that Americans expect us to make. I will vote against this
budget resolution, and I hope my colleagues will join me.
Mrs. CARNAHAN. Mr. President. Last month, I joined a bipartisan group
of centrist Senators to support a $1.25 trillion tax cut along with an
economic stimulus for this year. The tax cut agreed upon after
negotiations with the White House and House of Representatives totals
$1.35 trillion. I support a tax cut of this size and think that the
people of Missouri also believe it to be a commonsense compromise.
This tax cut should provide immediate tax relief to help stimulate
the economy, cut personal income taxes for all taxpayers, eliminate the
marriage penalty, and eliminate the estate tax for all family farms and
family-owned small businesses. I also want to ensure that the tax cut
is distributed fairly and responsibly by focusing on the people who
need tax relief the most--the working men and women of America.
The other key component of the budget voted on by the Senate last
month was an approximately $300 billion investment in education over
the next decade. That budget plan included sufficient funds to meet the
Federal Government's commitment to fund 40 percent of the cost of
special education. Meeting this commitment would enable states and
localities to spend billions of dollars of their own funds on improving
educational quality at the local level. The Senate budget also included
funds for student loans, programs for disadvantaged students, and the
testing and accountability reforms currently being debated on the
Senate floor.
Unfortunately, the conference report before us completely eliminated
the educational investments contained in the Senate passed budget.
Indeed, this conference report does not even fund the education
increases contained in President Bush's budget proposal.
Not only is this approach to education inconsistent with the
bipartisan actions taken on the budget by the Senate a few weeks ago,
but it is dramatically at odds with the votes being cast by the Senate
on the education reform bill. Last week, the Senate unanimously voted
to fully fund the Individual with Disabilities Education Act at a cost
of $120 billion over ten years. Earlier this week, the Senate agreed to
fully fund the largest federal education program for disadvantaged
students at a cost of $130 billion. The vote on that amendment was 79-
21.
I am a newcomer to the Federal budget process, but it defies common
sense to be voting to support major increased investments in education
on the one hand, while on the other hand voting for a budget that does
not meet these commitments.
Some of my colleagues have stated that the lack of education funding
in the budget should not be of concern because, eventually, Congress
will provide additional support for education during the appropriations
process. But I ask, what purpose does a budget serve if we vote based
on an intention not to abide by it?
So, while I strongly support the $1.35 trillion in tax cuts for the
American people contained in the conference report, I cannot support
this budget agreement. I look forward to working on the tax cut
legislation scheduled for later this month and on the appropriations
bills that follow. Hopefully, in the end, we will provide both a tax
cut of $1.35 trillion that provides needed tax relief to the public and
an investment plan that meets our vital national priorities.
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, today the Senate will complete action on the
conference report to the 2002 budget resolution. While we all know that
a budget resolution is a non-binding document that does not require the
President's signature, it is, nonetheless, still an important document
because it should serve as the blueprint that reflects the priorities
for America. Sadly, the document before us does not fulfill that
purpose.
At the outset, let me first express my disappointment with the
process that was undertaken to produce this misguided conference
report. In the Senate, Budget Committee members were denied the
opportunity to mark up a budget resolution and the decision was made to
bring one directly to the floor for consideration without any committee
input. The conference report itself was negotiated by the White House
and Republican congressional leaders without allowing Democratic
members a meaningful seat at the table. As a result, the Senate will be
voting on a partisan conference report that is flawed, unbalanced, and
out of touch with the needs of the American people. We need to take a
lesson from this year's experience to improve upon how we deal with one
of the most important pieces of legislation that we consider as a body
each year. This conference report isn't worthy of the Senate and it's
certainly not worthy of the Americans it is intended to serve.
The budget outlined in this conference report fails on a number of
important counts and I take this opportunity to briefly discuss why I
believe this budget is wrong for this country and why I will be voting
against it.
First, this conference report is unrealistic as it fails to take into
account numerous costs that will most likely be incurred in the months
and years ahead. Specifically, it ignores the cost of Alternative
Minimum Tax reform, something that we all know will be absolutely
necessary as more and more taxpayers find themselves subject to this
tax. It does not address the additional interest costs associated with
the tax cut required in the conference report or the funds that will be
needed for the extension of popular expiring tax provisions. It also
does not consider the costs that are likely to arise as a result of the
President's National Defense Review. Preliminary estimates indicate
that this new defense spending could carry a price tag of at least $250
billion over the next 10 years. Yet, none of these costs are reflected
in the document up for consideration today.
Second, the conference report provides no safeguards for Social
Security and Medicare. Once one adds up all the real costs which,
again, are noticeably absent from this budget, raiding both the Social
Security and Medicare trust funds will become an unfortunate reality.
What is more troubling is the fact that this budget does not provide
any real protections for these trust funds that would guarantee that
their surpluses would be used only for the purposes of Social Security
and Medicare. We seem to be moving in the wrong direction on Social
Security and Medicare at a time when the demands being placed on them
will be at their greatest. These trust funds should not become a piggy
bank, but I fear that this conference report does nothing to ensure
that they won't.
Third, one of this conference report's most obvious failures, is the
fact that it limits our ability to invest in the priorities that are so
important to the American public like preserving the environment, law
enforcement, new highways, and quality health care. One of the areas in
which I, personally, take the greatest exception is the conference
report's utter disregard for education.
Many of us in the Senate agree that education is one of the most
critical priorities facing our nation. Proof of this was evident during
the Senate's consideration of the budget resolution when, on a
bipartisan basis, the Senate voted for a smaller tax cut and increased
investments for children and education.
In a bipartisan vote, the Senate approved an amendment offered by
Senator Harkin which added $250 billion to support student achievement
and to help failing schools. Again, on a bipartisan basis, the Senate
supported an amendment from Senators Breaux and Jeffords which
increased funding for the education of children with disabilities by
$70 billion. In addition, last week, by an overwhelming vote of 79-21,
the Senate supported an amendment to the ESEA reauthorization bill that
I offered with Senator Collins to add $135 billion over the next 10
years to the title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
which helps to meet the educational needs of the poorest, most
vulnerable children in our country.
And does this conference report reflect any of these bipartisan
votes? No. It rejects them and provides no new dollars for us to commit
to education in this country. It prevents us from making any of those
investments on behalf of the neediest school children in America that
the Senate has gone on record as supporting.
[[Page S4788]]
I have heard my Republican colleagues claim that this conference
report increases funding for education. While we may be reading the
same document, we do not share the same interpretation of its meaning.
As a result, there are no increases to be found. None.
In fact, when I read this conference report, all I see are cuts.
There are no increases for education because total non-defense
discretionary funding in this conference report is actually $5.5
billion below what is needed to maintain even current programs and
services. This decrease becomes $62 billion less over the next 10
years. Consequently, to pay for any proposed increases in education
will require severe cuts in other programs which are already operating
on less than adequate funding. So, in effect, this conference report
will squeeze resources from critical priorities such as education,
health care, and the environment in order to help finance a massive tax
cut that heavily favors the most affluent.
I am aware that the conference report provides a $6.2 billion earmark
for education. Unfortunately, this money is a mirage. It is in the form
of non-binding, unenforceable ``sense of the Congress'' language
expressing that Congress should spend this money on education. This is
in no way a guarantee and it is a far cry from the resources that the
Senate believed were necessary to truly improve education in this
country.
The one thing that is abundantly clear in this conference report is
the amount of money that will be spent on a tax cut. I find it
interesting that the language in the report with respect to the tax cut
is straightforward and directs Congress to cut taxes by $1.25 trillion
over the next 10 years. Yet, we can't seem to make the same kind of
unequivocal commitment to education.
I support tax relief and I believe that Americans need tax relief.
But tax relief must be affordable fair. The tax cut in this conference
report is neither. I believe it is unwise to commit $1.25 trillion to
tax cuts that will benefit the wealthiest Americans, that we may not be
able to pay for in years to come, and that may risk a return to runaway
deficits.
The conference report also can't seem to commit to the idea of an
immediate economic stimulus which many economists feel would boost our
slowing economy. With the way the language is structured in the
conference report, the $100 billion that should be used as a stimulus
in 2002 could potentially be spread over the next decade, thereby
losing its stimulatory impact.
One way to make this tax cut more fair would be to double the child
tax credit and make $500 of it refundable. Senator Snowe and I have
introduced legislation to do precisely that. This bill would, with just
a few words, lift one million children out of poverty.
It seems fair to me that at the same time that we consider cutting
taxes by $1.25 trillion over the next 11 years, we could work to find
the resources to provide these working families with some kind of
modest relief. Senator Snowe and I introduced what I believe is a bill
that acts as a first step in truly helping these families. This
legislation won't eliminate child poverty entirely, but it's a start. I
hope that the Finance Committee will keep the millions of children who
live in poverty in this country in mind as it begins work on a tax
bill.
I represent a State with the highest per capita income in the nation.
Yet, surprisingly, I do not many people asking for a $1.25 trillion tax
cut. What I do hear is that people want Social Security and Medicare to
be strengthened, they want cleaner drinking water, they want better
roads, and they want quality teachers and safer schools for their kids.
Unfortunately, this conference report virtually ignores all of their
concerns and offers only vague, empty promises. This conference report
has got it all wrong. It's wrong on the environment, it's wrong on
defense, it's wrong on Social Security and Medicare, it's wrong on
education, and it's most especially wrong on tax cuts.
As such, I hope my colleagues will join me in opposing this
conference report so that we can begin work again, in a bipartisan
fashion, to prove to the American people that we are truly listening.
And should it pass--as it probably will on a largely partisan basis--I
hope that we will, before the year is out, honor and support the
important priorities of the American people.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I must oppose this budget resolution
conference report because it is an irresponsible gamble with our
economic future. Despite the best efforts of the Senate to reduce the
President's risky tax cut plan, this conference report does not
adequately protect the interests of low- and medium-income American
men, women, and children.
This resolution sets aside trillions of projected budget surpluses
for tax cuts proposed by President Bush that are steeply tilted to the
wealthy. It pays for the Bush tax plan at the expense of needed
investments in Social Security, Medicare, education, and the
environment. In addition, the cost of the Bush tax plan imperils our
ability to pay off the national debt so that this nation can finally be
debt free by the end of the decade.
We should remember that the nation still carries the burden of a
national debt of $3.4 trillion. Like someone who had finally paid off
his or her credit card balance but still has a home mortgage, the
federal government has finally balanced its annual budget, but we still
have a national debt to pay off. In the meantime, the Federal
government has to pay almost $900 million in interest every working day
on this national debt.
Paying off our national debt will help to sustain our sound economy
by keeping interest rates low. Vermonters gain ground with lower
mortgage costs, car payments and credit card charges with low interest
rates. In addition, small business owners in Vermont can invest, expand
and create jobs with low interest rates.
I want to leave a legacy for our children and grandchildren of a
debt-free nation by 2010. We can achieve that legacy if the Congress
maintains its fiscal discipline. But this budget resolution tosses out
fiscal responsibility for skewed tax breaks. It is based on a house of
cards made up of rosy budget scenarios for the next ten years. Any
downturn in the economy, are of which we are now beginning to
experience, threatens to topple this house of cards.
Mr. President, the $5.6 trillion surplus that President Bush and
others are counting on to pay for huge tax cuts is based on mere
projections over the next decade. It is not real. Many in Congress have
been talking about the $5.6 trillion surplus as if it is already money
in the United States Treasury. It is not.
While none of us hope that the budget surpluses are lower than we
expect, to be responsible we need to understand that this is a real
possibility. In its budget and economic outlook released in January
1st, CBO devotes an entire chapter to the uncertainty of budget
projections. CBO warns Congress that there is only a 10 percent chance
that the surpluses will materialize as projected by saying:
``Considerable uncertainty surrounds those projections.'' This is
because CBO cannot predict what legislation Congress might pass that
would alter federal spending and revenues. In addition, CBO says--and
anyone whose watched the volatility of our markets over the past few
months knows--that the U.S. economy and federal budget are highly
complex and are affected by many factors that are difficult to predict.
With all of this uncertainty in projecting future surpluses, it is
amazing to me that the budget resolution insists on a fixed $1.35
trillion tax cut. I was one of five Senators still in the Senate who
voted against the Reagan tax plan in 1981. We saw what happened there:
We had a huge tax cut, defense spending boomed, and the national debt
quadrupled.
The conference report includes the full $1.5 billion increase in
budget authority ($32.4 billion total) for essential Department of
Justice programs to help state and local law enforcement programs
contained in the Leahy/Harkin amendment that unanimously passed the
Senate. However it reduces the outlays increase to $1.1 billion ($31.8
billion total) in FY 2002. The conference report also waters down the
Sense of the Senate language to drop all references to specific grant
programs that are targeted for cuts by the President.
I cosponsored and supported a successful, bipartisan amendment in the
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Senate to increase funding for agriculture conservation programs on
private lands by $1.3 billion. This funding was to support nationally-
successful programs like the Environmental Quality Incentive Program,
the Farmland Protection Program, and the Wildlife Habitat Incentive
Program--programs that truly help farmers and ranchers keep their
working lands and that help private landowners enhance their
communities' water quality, open space, and wildlife habitat.
Unfortunately, though communities all over the nation have asked
Congress for help to protect and restore water quality and open space,
Republican negotiators chose to strike funds for our amendment in the
final conference report.
The conference report also ignores communities' cries for cleaner
energy and energy conservation--especially communities in the Northeast
who breathe the downwind fumes of 1960's-era, dirty energy production
further west. By following the Bush plan to significantly cut funding
for the Department of Energy's conservation, energy efficiency, and
clean energy programs, the Republican negotiators continue to ignore
the 21st century energy needs of our people.
During consideration of the budget resolution in the Senate, I joined
many of my colleagues in supporting amendments to increase funding for
education programs. Despite the passage of these important amendments,
this budget resolution conference report ignores the Senate's actions
and does not provide sufficient funds for our students, teachers and
schools.
This conference report contains no increase for K-12 or higher
education discretionary spending. Mandatory spending for education and
training is essentially the same as the House-passed resolution and
therefore reflects none of the Senate's bipartisan actions. The
conference report rejects the Harkin education amendment that provided
increased funds for so many important education programs. It rejects
the Jeffords/Breaux amendment, which increased funding for the
Individuals with Disabilities Education (IDEA) Act--fulfilling the
Federal government's responsibility. This conference report also fails
to accommodate the Hagel-Harkin amendment--adopted unanimously by the
Senate to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--without
additional cuts to student loan programs.
At a time when the Senate is debating reauthorization of ESEA and
considering a significant change to our education system, it makes no
sense to me that we reduce education funds as is the case in this
conference report. If we really want to leave no child behind, then we
must acknowledge that we have a financial responsibility to support our
children's education. This conference report fails to do that.
The conference report includes a $1 billion increase in discretionary
veterans health spending. That increase barely covers inflation in the
Department of Veterans Affairs' current programs, let alone provides
the department flexibility to increase the availability and quality of
care. I am also concerned that this budget squeezes this money out of
critical veterans health research programs, leaving investigations into
spinal injuries and war wounds at inadequate levels.
This conference report also drops a provision passed by the Senate
that would have allowed military retirees to receive their full VA
disability and retiree pay earned during their lifelong service. Once
again, the other side has made it a priority to top-off the bulging
piggy-banks of the wealthy with change pilfered from the fixed income
checks of those who have sacrificed for our country.
Mr. President, after years of hard choices, we have balanced the
budget and started building surpluses. Now we must make responsible
choices for the future. Our top four priorities should be paying off
the national debt, passing a fair and responsible tax cut, saving
Social Security, and creating a real Medicare prescription drug
benefit. This budget falls far short of these priorities. For the sake
of our economy and the working families of America, I will vote against
this budget resolution.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, yesterday I cited chapter and verse how
this Republican budget flunks the test of education reform. It puts tax
cuts for the wealthy first, and the needs of America's children last.
But that is not the only fundamental flaw in this budget. America's
seniors, too, will be left out and left behind.
Too many elderly Americans today must choose between food on the
table and the medicine they need to stay healthy or to treat their
illnesses. Too many senior citizens take half the pills their doctor
prescribes, or don't even fill needed prescriptions--because they can't
afford the high cost of prescription drugs.
Too many seniors are paying twice as much as they should for the
drugs they need, because they are forced to pay full price, while
almost everyone with a private insurance policy benefits from
negotiated discounts.
Too many seniors are ending up hospitalized--at immense cost to
Medicare--because they aren't receiving the drugs they need at all, or
can't afford to take them correctly.
Pharmaceutical products are increasingly the source of miracle cures
for a host of dread diseases, but senior citizens are left out and left
behind in this republican budget.
The crisis senior citizens face today will only worsen if we refuse
to act, because insurance coverage continues to go down, and drug costs
continue to go up.
Twelve million senior citizens--one third of the total--have no
prescription drug coverage at all. Only half of all senior citizens
have prescription drug coverage throughout the year. Coverage through
employer retirement plans is plummeting. Medicare HMOs are drastically
cutting back. Medigap plans are priced out of reach of most seniors.
The sad fact is that the only senior citizens who have stable,
reliable, affordable drug coverage today are the very poor on Medicaid.
Prescription drug costs are out of control. Since 1996, costs have
grown at double-digit rates every year. In the stunning report released
earlier this week, cost increases continue to accelerate, with
prescription drug costs growing an enormous 18.8 percent last year. No
wonder access to affordable prescription drugs has become a crisis for
so many elderly Americans.
Every Member of Congress understands that this is a crisis--but this
budget offers no solution. It refuses to give senior citizens the help
they deserve. Yet it gives lavish tax breaks to millionaires.
Compare the language in this budget for prescription drugs to
language on tax cuts and you have a sense of the relative priorities in
this budget.
If the Republicans gave a real priority to coverage of prescription
drugs under Medicare, there would be a reconciliation instruction--not
a reserve fund. The budget resolution could require the Finance
Committee to report a prescription drug bill and set a date certain for
action, just as the GOP resolution does for tax cuts.
If Republicans gave a real priority to this proposal, they would not
condition life-saving prescription drugs for seniors on ``reforming''
Medicare. The supporters of the resolution are saying that prescription
drugs for seniors will be held hostage to controversial reforms in
other parts of Medicare. But the resolution contains no requirement
that the tax code must be reformed before millionaires get their tax
breaks.
If the Republicans were serious about a prescription drug proposal,
the resolution would specify that the reserve fund is for coverage of
prescription drugs under Medicare. That is what senior citizens want
and deserve. But this resolution doesn't require that. These funds are
available for any program that ``improves access to prescription drugs
for Medicare beneficiaries.'' That could be a welfare program. It could
be an expansion of Medicaid. It could even be President Bush's proposed
block grant that would reach only one-third of senior citizens.
At bottom, the amount the resolution allocates for Medicare
prescription drugs is grossly inadequate. The maximum it provides is
$300 billion over ten years. But, according to the Congressional Budget
Office, senior citizens will have to spend $1.1 trillion on
prescription drugs over the next ten years. The maximum amount that can
be provided under this budget resolution is only about a quarter of
that amount. That is not the kind of help senior citizens need, and it
is not what
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Congress should provide. To add insult to injury, the Republican budget
resolution allows the Medicare drug benefit to be funded by taking
money from the Medicare Hospital Insurance fund, which seniors have
paid into over their working lives to protect them against the high
cost of health care.
There is a reason for the inadequate promises of this budget
resolution. The budget does not contain enough funds to provide a real
prescription drug benefit under Medicare, because it squanders too much
of the budget surplus on new tax breaks for millionaires.
Medicare is a solemn promise to senior citizens. It says, ``Work
hard, pay into the trust fund during your working years, and you will
have health security in your retirement years.'' But this promise is
being broken every day, because Medicare does not cover prescription
drugs, and this budget does not mend that broken promise.
It has been said that the measure of a society is how it treats its
young and its old. By this measure, the Republican budget is a sad
commentary on our values. It shortchanges young and old alike. It is a
budget that is anti-child, anti-education, and anti-senior citizen. Its
priorities are not the priorities of the American people, and it should
be rejected.
This budget spends $1.6 trillion over the next ten years on tax cuts,
but only $153 billion on Medicare prescription drugs. Almost half the
tax cut goes to the richest one percent of Americans--people with
incomes averaging more than a million dollars a year. The GOP budget
gives this small number of wealthy families more than five times as
much as it provides for essential prescription drugs for forty million
elderly and disabled Americans.
The President and the sponsors of this budget say that they want to
provide prescription drug coverage for every elderly American under
Medicare. But adoption of this budget will make this goal much more
difficult to achieve. This budget squanders the surplus and saves only
token amounts for Medicare prescription drugs.
In fact the budget does not even fund the low income program fully.
If the block grant program is adjusted for inflation, it will cost $210
billion over 10 years, not the $153 billion that this budget provides.
Clearly, there is not enough money in this budget to fund a Medicare
benefit for all senior citizens.
The choice could not be clearer. Do we stand with America's senior
citizens--or with the privileged few? Do we believe the budget surplus
should be used to benefit all Americans--or just the wealthiest
Americans? Do we believe it is more important for people who already
have incomes of more than a million dollars a year to get an additional
$50,000 a year, than it is for senior citizens scraping by on limited
incomes to get the life-saving drugs their doctors prescribe?
For all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote against this
anti-senior citizen budget.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to express my serious
disappointment with the budget resolution and to explain why I cannot
vote for it. This resolution is irresponsible. It is irresponsible to
the citizens and businesses of this nation, to the fundamental economic
principles for which we stand, and to the values that define us as
Americans. As I have stated often, the government does not create jobs
or economic success. However, through fiscal discipline the government
can create an environment in which the private sector thrives. Fiscal
responsibility produced an environment that enabled the historic
economic growth of the past several years and the unprecedented surplus
we have today. I am sorry to say this resolution abandons that
discipline.
Government should tend to the people's money with the same care and
consideration that individuals, families, and businesses demonstrate
when handling their own dollars and cents. As I look at the budget
resolution that we are voting on, I conclude that it lacks not only
fiscal responsibility, but also a sense of reality. It is based
entirely on large projected surpluses that we are not confident will
materialize. And, if these surpluses are not realized, this budget
resolution puts us at risk of returning to deficit spending financed by
borrowing from the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.
The tax cut provided for in this budget resolution is simply too
large. At the very least, it will cost $1.35 trillion over 11 years. In
addition, if you add in other required or likely to pass tax
provisions, including AMT reform, increased interest payments,
extension of expiring tax provisions, pension reforms and business tax
cuts, this package easily rises to above $2 trillion. While I support
significant tax cuts, that amount is more than we can afford. This
budget resolution spends too much of the projected surplus on a tax cut
that is too large and it uses too little of the surplus for other
priorities.
Additionally, this resolution does not seriously address debt
reduction. Aside from funds already committed to the Medicare and
Social Security Trust Funds, this budget does not devote a single
dollar over the entire decade towards paying down our national debt.
Because this resolution is so irresponsible, it is not at all clear
that even the Medicare and Social Security Trust funds will be
available for debt reduction if they are used instead to pay for the
tax cut. Sadly, this budget resolution sacrifices the unique
opportunity that we have at this point in time to successfully pay down
our publicly held debt--the key to low interest rates and economic
growth.
This budget resolution sets us on course for an appropriations train
wreck later this year and in the future. The spending levels do not
even keep up with inflation. The resolution provides total
discretionary spending levels for FY02 that are $2 billion below CBO's
baseline with inflation. For the 10-year period, they are $24 billion
below inflation. Despite the rhetoric, it removes nearly $300 billion
in additional education funding that the Senate had added to its budget
resolution. It provides an increase of only $3.3 billion above
inflation for defense in FY02 and only $40 billion over ten years--$22
billion less than the President's request prior to the Rumsfeld review.
According to the resolution, any increased spending as a result of the
Rumsfeld review which is likely to be at least $250 billion over 10
years--would come out of the contingency reserve fund. This fund may
not even exist if surplus projections do not materialize or if Congress
taps it for other purposes, including additional tax cuts.
This budget resolution does not represent reality, but fantasy. It
abandons fiscal discipline and blithely overspends a surplus whose size
six months down the road or six years down the road is at best
theoretical. This agreement sets our country on a dangerous path toward
resurrecting the deficits we worked so hard to eliminate over the past
several years. Finally, this resolution does not add up because the
Administration and the Majority here in Congress prefer to sound the
call for compassionate conservatism rather than engage in honest
accounting. It is ``dejavoodoo economics.'' It commits us to the same
fiscal mistakes of the early 1980s that had a horrendous and long-
lasting impact on our economy.
So I call on centrists of both parties here in the Senate to not
waste a decade's worth of hard work invested in re-building our
economy. I urge my colleagues to look closely at this resolution. It is
not what the American people deserve, nor is it what they expect it to
be. In support of progress and prosperity, I must vote no and I
encourage my centrist colleagues to do the same.
Mr. NELSON of Nebraska. Mr. President, I want to express my support
for the conference report on the budget resolution. My affirmative vote
on this report will be cast for several reasons, but the most important
one among them is that this resolution provides the American people
with a substantial tax cut--without neglecting our national budgetary
obligations. The concerted effort from Senators and Members of Congress
on both sides of the aisle in the negotiating process has culminated in
a victory for American taxpayers.
The vote on the budget resolution will succeed in doing a great deal
for our country and for our future. Today we are authorizing the third
largest tax cut in the history of our Union. The men and women of
Nebraska, as well as the men and women across the Nation, will directly
benefit from the $1.25 trillion tax cut over 11 years that will enable
us to still pay down the national debt and meet our domestic budgetary
priorities. The American people deserve a tax cut, and it is the
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role of Congress and the administration to deliver it. This conference
report is our delivery vehicle.
Of even greater consequence than the tax cut spread over 11 years is
the inclusion of a $100 billion up-front stimulus package, which will
help strengthen our economy sooner rather than later. I firmly believe
that our economy, which has been showing all the symptoms of a slow-
down, needs a jump-start from a stimulus package to blunt the effect of
what could become a serious economic recession. As any doctor will tell
you, you should not wait until the patient is on life support before
you begin treatment. It is critical that we heed the warning signs of a
slowing economy, and use the tools within our legislative power to
prevent the situation from metastasizing. The 2-year, $100-billion
economic stimulus package prescribed by this conference report will put
the American economy back on the road to recovery.
Another important aspect of the resolution, in addition to the
substantial tax cut and the upfront stimulus package, is the increased
support of agriculture. When our budget negotiations started,
agriculture was a mere footnote in the margin. While it remains a
footnote, it is now a little bolder and a little bigger. I am anxious
to see agriculture removed altogether from ``footnote'' status, or more
accurately, out of emergency spending mode; but I am pleased in the
interim that at least we are increasing agriculture funding to a more
substantial--and realistic--level. While a new farm bill would be more
welcome than prolonging the endless cycle of emergency spending, the
$79 billion over 11 years that has been included in this Report does
recognize and consider the unfavorable odds and inequities that our
farmers and ranchers are forced to contend with due to a problematic
farm bill and unpredictable hardships dispensed by Mother Nature.
As with any compromise, the conference report on the budget
resolution is not representative of my ideal budgetary blueprint. I
accept, however, that ``giving and taking'' is an integral part of the
bicameral, bipartisan negotiating process. While this report could be
stronger in some areas--namely, education--I am comfortable casting an
affirmative vote, because it meets an important criterion I have
consistently promoted throughout the process. This report authorizes a
substantial tax cut--including an up-front economic stimulus package--
that allows us to still provide for our critical domestic priorities,
such as preserving Social Security and Medicare, paying down the
national debt, and funding agriculture. As a result, I will vote in
favor of this conference report.
While the final outcome of the budget resolution cannot be described
accurately as a triumph for bipartisanship, it can be characterized as
a triumph for American taxpayers. It is my hope that we will forge
ahead on other issues in a stronger and more cohesive spirit, more
united in our efforts and less divided in our cause. It is time to make
``politics as usual'' synonymous with progress, not partisanship.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). Who yields time?
The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I yield myself the remaining time and I
ask the Chair if he would inform me when I have 5 minutes remaining.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will be so notified.
Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, first, I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee
for his courtesy as we have considered the budget conference report. I
respect him. I admire him. I have affection for him. I disagree with
him with respect to this budget, and I disagree with him strongly with
respect to this budget.
I do not believe this is the right budget plan for our country, and
it is not an opinion limited to me. We have heard on our side of the
aisle how deficient we believe this budget is.
I noticed in this morning's New York Times the lead editorial was
entitled ``An Irresponsible Budget Plan.'' I will read the first
sentence:
After several days of back room negotiations, the House
approved a federal budget plan yesterday that is a model of
fiscal evasion and irresponsibility.
I echo those words.
Earlier the Washington Post called this budget we are considering
today an unreal budget. They concluded their editorial by saying:
The theme of this budget is tax cuts first, sweep up
afterward. It's the wrong way around. Budget resolutions are
supposed to foster fiscal responsibility. This one will have
the opposite effect.
Unfortunately, that is the case. The reason for it is quite clear.
First, this entire budget is based on a 10-year forecast--10 years.
This is not money in the bank; these are projections over 10 years. The
people who made the projections have warned us of the uncertainty. In
fact, they told us that in the fifth year alone, based on the previous
variances in their forecasts, we could have anywhere from a $50 billion
deficit to more than a $1 trillion surplus.
In fact, they have told us there is only a 10-percent chance the
forecast number that is being used, that is being relied on, will come
true. There is a 45-percent chance there will be more money; a 45-
percent chance there will be less money. And that forecast was made 8
weeks ago before we saw additional weakness in the economy.
Just yesterday, we saw the productivity growth forecast come out on
the first quarter of this year. They were expecting a 1-percent
increase. Instead, they got a reduction. If there is just a 1-percent
reduction in productivity over the forecast period, instead of having a
$5.6 trillion surplus, we will have a $3.2 trillion surplus. It seems
to me that advises caution in what we do on this budget resolution.
Those are not the only defects of this budget. There are huge chunks
of spending that are not even in this budget, that have not been
included. For example, here is a story from USA Today, Friday, April
27. ``Billions Sought for Arms.'' The story says that the Secretary of
Defense and this administration are expected to seek a large boost in
defense spending, $200 billion to $300 billion over the next 6 years.
That money is not in the budget. None of that money is in the budget.
Why not?
Perhaps we heard the reason in an interview this last weekend on
``Meet the Press.'' The Secretary of Defense was there. He was asked:
Will you get the $10 billion more in defense money this
year that you need?
His response:
I don't know. I have not gone to the President as yet. He
wanted to wait until after some of the studies had been
completed and until the tax bill was behind us. . . .
That is the real reason this budget is unreal. It is the real reason
this budget is irresponsible, because they are not telling us the full
story. They do not really have the budget before us. What they have is
a part of the budget because they know what we know. If they put the
full budget in place on one piece of paper, on one document, it would
not add up. That is the problem with this budget.
It goes to education. The President says education is his highest
priority, and yet there is no new money in this budget for education.
In the Senate, when we considered the budget, we passed the Harkin
amendment that added $225 billion for education. It took $450 billion
away from the tax cut and put $225 billion into education and put $225
billion into paying down more of the debt. What came back from the
conference committee? Not one penny of that amendment survived.
We passed a bipartisan amendment on the floor of the Senate when the
budget resolution was considered, with $70 billion of additional
funding for education to address the disabilities act. Not one penny of
that increase came back from the conference committee. That is true
throughout the education budget.
We have heard a lot of talk that somehow there is money in this
budget, new money for education. Here is the document. Here it is by
fiscal year. What it shows is the increase in budget authority and
outlays over what is in the so-called baseline is zero. It is zero for
2002; it is zero for 2003; it is zero for every single year.
There were a lot of brave speeches about education being the
priority, but it is clearly not a priority in the budget because there
is no new money in the budget for education.
It doesn't stop there. Not only is it the case that the defense
buildup that we all know is going to be announced, perhaps as early as
next week, is not in the budget, the President says education is a
priority, but that is not in
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the budget. And then we see the President has a meeting at the White
House and says he is going to strengthen Social Security but there is
no money in the budget for that.
We have an editorial from the Columbus Dispatch that says:
The tax-cut proposal works against [the President's] plan
to begin privatizing Social Security. . .experts differ on
how much this ``transition cost'' will be, but it won't be
cheap. . .thus, the Bush's 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax cut
would deprive the Government of the cash it would need to pay
for the $1 trillion transition cost for the first 10 years of
Bush's Social Security privatization plan. The goals are
contradictory.
Do you see a pattern? The administration is calling for a major
defense buildup but the money is not in the budget. The President says
education is a top priority but the money is not in the budget. The
President says he is going to fix Social Security but the money is not
in the budget.
Why? I think we all know the reason why. Because if the money were in
the budget for the defense buildup, if the money were in the budget for
the education initiatives, if the money were in the budget to
strengthen Social Security, then the budget does not add up. In fact,
it would show they are raiding the Medicare trust fund by over $200
billion. They are raiding the Social Security trust fund by over $200
billion. That is the dirty little secret of this budget. It is the
reason whole chunks of what is really intended have been left out.
Over in the House they had two missing pages. It stalled the budget
work for a week. Two missing pages? There is more than two missing
pages. There are whole chunks of the real budget that have been left
out because they know it doesn't add up.
As we look ahead, it is critical to understand we are in a period of
surplus now. These projections of surpluses may hold. They may not. But
at least we have a projection of surpluses. We know when the baby
boomers start to retire that these surpluses turn to massive deficits.
Then the question will be: What did we do when we had the opportunity
to prepare for what was to come?
This is what we are doing.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 5 minutes remaining.
Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair for advising me of the time.
If we go back to the budget that is before us and put back the
defense buildup the administration is going to call for and which is
authorized in this budget, although the numbers are not included, if we
would go back and correct the alternative minimum tax that is going to
affect over 35 million taxpayers in this country, one in every four
taxpayers who think they are going to get a tax cut but are going to be
surprised when they find out they are caught up in the alternative
minimum tax and it costs $290 billion to fix it; if we put in the
education amendment that passed on the Senate floor last week on a
unanimous consent basis; if we put in the emergencies that we all know
are going to occur that run on average $5 billion a year; and if we put
in the associated interest costs with those items, what we find is that
we would be deep into the Medicare trust fund; that we would be deep
into the Social Security trust fund.
That is the reason all of those items have been left out--because
this budget does not add up.
There has been a lot of talk about reducing the public debt, but the
part of the debt they have been talking about is the publicly held
debt. It is true, the publicly held debt is going down under this
budget. It is going down from $3.2 trillion at the end of this year to
$800 billion at the end of this 10-year period.
Do you know what? While the publicly held debt is going down, the
debt to the trust funds of the United States is going up. As a result,
the gross debt of the United States, which is currently $5.6 trillion,
will be $6.7 trillion at the end of this time. It is very interesting--
just about the amount of the tax cut is the amount of additional debt
our country will have at the end of this 10-year period.
I believe these are the top six reasons to oppose the budget
resolution conference report.
No. 1, no new money for education;
No. 2, unaffordable tax cuts crowd out priorities, especially paying
down this national debt;
No. 3, it hides defense spending increases by providing a blank check
to the Bush administration;
No. 4, it sets up a raid on the Social Security and Medicare trust
funds;
No. 5, it cuts spending for high-priority domestic needs by $56
billion over the next 10 years. They are $56 billion short of just
keeping pace with inflation, not to mention population growth.
Finally, No. 6, it fails to set aside funds for the long-term Social
Security and Medicare reform needs we all understand are before us.
Perhaps it is time to review history. Those who are advocating this
budget are the very ones who, back in the 1980s, advocated a similar
policy, a policy of a massive tax cut combined with a substantial
buildup in defense. What was the result? The result was an explosion of
the deficits in the Reagan administration and a further growth of the
deficits in the Bush administration. It was only when we had a new
administration and a new fiscal plan that deficits started coming down
and we began to pay down debt.
Here is the record. It is as clear as it can be. President Reagan
came in; he had about a $80 billion deficit. That exploded to over $200
billion, with exactly the same kind of economic analysis that has been
done and with the same advocates that put in place that plan.
Then the deficit further exploded under President Bush to over $290
billion. It was only when a new administration came in and we put in
place a 5-year plan to bring our fiscal house back into order that we
began to reduce deficits, reduce debt, and put this Nation in a
position to have the longest economic expansion in our history.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. CONRAD. I ask our colleagues to oppose this budget resolution so
we do not repeat this history.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico controls time.
Mr. DOMENICI. Am I correct now, there is no time remaining on the
other side and I have how many minutes?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 12 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. So our fellow Senators ought to know, we are going to
finish in a timely manner and the vote will be sometime after 11:30.
First, I thank all the wonderful staff on both sides of this budget
battle. Much more work goes into this than anybody thinks.
In particular, I say to Bill Hoagland, the staff director on our
side, and to his staff, thank you so much for all you have done. It has
been a great effort.
Mr. President, fellow Senators, those who are listening, this is a
budget for prosperity now and prosperity in the future, plain and
simple. It is the largest commitment of money for education in our
Nation's history. I will go into some details on that momentarily. It
keeps our word. Social Security and Medicare are not touched. Their
funds are not used.
I know that Senator Byrd said today on the floor that when your
mother calls you--implying on Mother's Day--tell her that the Social
Security trust fund is being raided, and whatever else he said we
should be responding to our mothers on Mother's Day.
I have another response. My mother is not alive. But if she were to
call me, I would say: Your Social Security is intact and fully
protected. Medicare is fully protected. But also, mother, there is $300
billion in this budget for prescription drugs and reform of the
Medicare program--$300 billion. The House wanted only $146 billion.
There is $300 billion to get started on the program. There is $300
billion that can be used.
I say, in addition to my mother, that this budget is good for me, one
of your children, and for the other three children, and for the
grandchildren, six of whom are working. I am just describing a family.
Do you know that it is good for them, mother? Because we are going to
give them back some of their hard-earned tax money. You know they are
hurting because of gas prices. They are hurting because of electric
bills. Everybody is working on some way to fix that.
But wouldn't it be nice if, in fact, your sons and daughters and
grandchildren this year and next year got a very significant tax
reduction?
Frankly, I could go on and on as to what this budget does.
But let me suggest that to bring into this debate the subject of
Social Security and Medicare is just another part
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of the same old argument. Whenever tax cuts for the American people are
close at hand and we are going to do something for them, every argument
in the world that can be invented from a budget standpoint is offered
in opposition. It is a wonder that the American people ever get a tax
cut; we have our minds on so many things that we can do with that
money.
But we decided today to take about 25 percent of the surplus--it
sounds like we are using all of it--about 25 or 26 percent, and give it
back to the Americans in an orderly way for such things as child
credits, marriage tax penalty, which everybody knows should be done,
and marginal rate reductions with bigger cuts at the bottom end than at
the top end.
I don't know what else we can do. I believe we have done everything
in this budget that you can do in a rational way to make sure that the
surplus is handled in a proper manner and that it is there to have the
right things feed on it, use it, and get money out of that surplus for
things we must have.
I have already disagreed with my friend on the other side. But I
don't disagree from the standpoint of his hard work, his own views, and
his own opinions. I would not be asking people to vote for a budget
resolution that touched the Social Security trust fund. I wouldn't be
asking them to vote for one that touched Medicare because it does not.
But neither would I ask them to vote for a budget resolution that some
would want that would spend all the money instead of having any of it
for the taxpayers of America.
We have heard all kinds of ideas of what should be in this budget. If
anybody is adding it up and listening to us, I guess you would conclude
that the Government of the United States is going to take care of every
problem in the United States, and if we just didn't gave the taxpayers
back any money, we would be out there solving all of them.
We know that isn't true. This budget is an increase over last year.
In fact, I know that the House and the Senate would do it in their own
way.
I see the chairman of the House Budget Committee. I want to tell the
Senate that I believe on the nondiscretionary side of this budget there
is a little bit more than 5 percent over last year they can spend. The
House started at 4; the President started at 4. That is $6.2 billion
more we have for education and other things of significance.
I want to close my remarks where I started. This budget is for
prosperity. Now, because it has $100 billion that will go back to the
American taxpayers in these next 2 years, this one and the next, and it
is a budget for the future because for America to prosper we have to
have low taxes and low tax rates. It has been our history that we
compete not through government but through innovation, and through
people investing their money, time, talents, and working hard. If you
have high taxes, you get less of those things in an economy. That is
just it.
Senator Nickles also told us about how much we are paying in taxes as
a group of people, as Americans. It is very high. We are going to
reduce it a little bit--not very much; $1.25 billion over ten years is
not very much. In fact, when you look at that as part of the total tax
take, what we are going to give back to the American people is rather
insignificant.
I close by saying to everyone here: This is your chance today but not
the last chance because there is a $500 billion surplus remaining. But
this is your chance to say to the American people before we spend all
of your tax money that isn't needed, we are going to give you a little
bit of it to be used as you see fit because we trust you. Not only do
we trust you, but we think the less you are taxed, the harder you work,
and the more you will invest in your life, in productivity, in growth
and doing things, and the more you will sit around the family table
saying what you can do with your money instead of saying the Government
is taking so much of your money.
In conclusion, this has been as tough as it comes. I have been at
budgeting for many years. It is tough because there are people on both
sides of the aisle, in the White House, and in the House of
Representatives, who have their own opinions and nothing was going to
change anybody's opinion. A lot of opinions have been changed. There
have been many compromises, which is what we have to do to get our work
done. This compromise package is the best we can do this year. I
believe it is good for our future. I believe the American people, in
about 6 months, will say it is a very good budget. And, yes, I believe
those wondering where the education money is coming from will be very
happy. There will be over an 11-percent or perhaps as much as a 12-
percent increase in education with some highlighted at higher increases
than that.
I think that is what we ought to be doing. The highest priority on
the domestic side is education.
I want to say to President Bush, you didn't get everything you
wanted, Mr. President, but I want to compliment you because you have
made us change direction. You have moved us in the direction of giving
back taxes to the American people rather than giving them the last cut
after the debt. They are going to get some of those taxes back now,
next year, and the year after. That is a new direction. Mr. President,
you ought to be proud of it.
We will implement it in due course, and, frankly, I think that we
will all say this was a job well done, as hard as it was.
I close by saying if we don't want to do this now, when will we do
it? How much more surplus will we have to have? I believe we have
enough surplus that we should leave part of it in the hands of the
taxpayers.
I yield such time as I might have.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second. The question is on agreeing to the
conference report. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 47, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 98 Leg.]
YEAS--53
Allard
Allen
Baucus
Bennett
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Bunning
Burns
Campbell
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Craig
Crapo
DeWine
Domenici
Ensign
Enzi
Fitzgerald
Frist
Gramm
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Helms
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Kyl
Lott
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Miller
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Nickles
Roberts
Santorum
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thomas
Thompson
Thurmond
Voinovich
Warner
NAYS--47
Akaka
Bayh
Biden
Bingaman
Boxer
Byrd
Cantwell
Carnahan
Carper
Chafee
Clinton
Conrad
Corzine
Daschle
Dayton
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Edwards
Feingold
Feinstein
Graham
Harkin
Hollings
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Kohl
Landrieu
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sarbanes
Schumer
Stabenow
Torricelli
Wellstone
Wyden
The conference report was agreed to.
Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. LOTT. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank everyone who participated in
this debate. I believe we have a good product and now we will implement
it over the next year.
Once again, I thank everybody who participated on both sides of the
aisle. We have a good product. Now everybody can begin to implement it.
It means different things to different people, but in the end, it is
pretty clear we are going to have a significant tax reduction plan in
place. Let's hope, as we work through it, we will get some of the other
things that most of us believe are in this budget resolution and see if
we can carry them out in the ensuing months.
I thank the ranking member on the Budget Committee for the way he
conducted himself, the information he put together, and the knowledge
he has obtained. It has been a pleasure working with him. I thank him
very much.
[[Page S4794]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I congratulate the chairman of the Budget
Committee for his victory today and for the way he has conducted
himself. I appreciate the relationship we have. We disagree on this
budget, but I have great respect for him as a Senator and as a person.
I also thank the staff on both sides. They worked incredibly hard in
these last 2 days, in some cases almost around the clock. I thank my
staff director, Mary Naylor, for her extraordinary efforts, Sue Nelson,
Jim Horney, and the entire group of budget staffers on our side.
I also want to recognize the professionalism of the staff director on
the Republican side. Bill Hoagland is a consummate professional, as are
the other members of the staff on the Republican side. We have a very
professional working relationship. They have worked very hard to
produce this document.
One of the great things about the Senate and the Congress is we will
be back. These battles are not over. We have a different sense of what
the priorities should be for the country, and we will be speaking out
on those issues in the days ahead.
Again, I congratulate those on the other side who prevailed on this
vote. I look forward to a continuing debate on what should be the
fiscal course for the country.
I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
____________________