[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 12 (Wednesday, February 4, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S584-S587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE BUDGET AND THE DEFICIT

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to engage my colleague from 
Iowa in a dialog on this issue relative to the budget and the deficit.
  The question I asked earlier related to the experience of the Senator 
from Iowa when he traveled his State and the response of the people of 
Iowa when it came to the suggestion of President Bush that his tax cut 
program--primarily for the wealthiest people in the country--be made 
permanent law. And I asked the Senator: I know that everyone likes a 
tax cut, but what are you finding?
  If I might have the permission of the Chair to ask this question of 
the Senator from Iowa, without yielding the floor----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. What are you finding to be the response, as you travel 
throughout your State, in terms of the President's tax cut policy?
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I reply to my friend from Illinois, as I 
traveled around my State since we adjourned back in December, I have 
not heard anything about making this tax cut permanent. I cannot think 
of one person who came up to me saying that. But I will tell you what I 
did hear a lot about.
  As the Senator pointed out, I heard from my schools on No Child Left 
Behind, that they are being underfunded. Special education is taking 
its toll on property taxpayers all over our State, and they are 
demanding the Federal Government live up to its promise on special 
education. I am hearing about the loss of manufacturing jobs in our 
State. And there are no jobs to be had. I am hearing about the need for 
better health care for people who do not have health insurance in our 
State.
  I am hearing about the high cost of education. So many middle-class 
families now, and low-income families, are simply being priced out of 
higher education. It is taking more and more money to get into college. 
Right now, a Pell grant provides for about--under this budget--30 
percent, give or take 1 percent--maybe 31 percent--of the cost of 
college. Just 4 years ago, it was 40 percent. So we have lost 25 
percent of the purchasing power just of a Pell grant. And these are for 
poor kids to go to college. Twenty-five percent, just in

[[Page S585]]

4 years, has been eroded. Yet this budget keeps Pell grants right where 
they have been--with not one penny of an increase.

  So I say to my friend from Illinois, this is what I hear Iowans 
talking about.
  Mr. DURBIN. If I might further engage my colleague from Iowa in this 
dialog and go back to the point I made earlier, I say to the Senator, 
he has been chair and ranking Democrat on the Appropriations 
subcommittee that is responsible for education and health, and he has 
done a substantial and marvelous job, including record funding for the 
National Institutes of Health and amazing efforts to help the funding 
of education.
  I ask my friend and colleague from Iowa to just reflect on what I 
have found, and I ask if he has found the same. I have gone to good 
schools in Illinois, and they have told me the results of the testing. 
The results of the testing, in the most recent rounds of testing in No 
Child Left Behind, required that the students reach a 60-percent plus 
of performance in terms of their learning ability and learning 
attainment, education attainment--60 percent.
  In some of the schools I have visited in the suburban areas of 
Chicago--not in the cities, in the suburban areas of Chicago--here is 
what we found. When they took the test, we found that the white 
students in the schools were testing slightly over 60 percent. So they 
were meeting their target. The African-American students were testing 
in the 40-percent range; the Hispanic students in the 25- and 30-
percent range; and the special education students, the students with 
disabilities, below 20 percent. All of these subgroups, if there are 
certain numbers of them in each school, are all expected to hit 60 
percent.
  I ask the Senator from Iowa if he has had similar experiences, and if 
he would share them with me and try to answer the question these 
educators asked. They said: If these groups are not meeting the test 
scores they are supposed to meet, and we are going to be labeled a 
failing school because of that, what are we supposed to do? What will 
you do to help us in terms of mentoring students, tutoring students, 
afterschool programs, and summer school programs?
  My response to them, sadly, is, if you look at President Bush's own 
budget for No Child Left Behind, he underfunds the promised money for 
these school districts. The law authorizing No Child Left Behind said 
this year we would send $34.3 billion to school districts across 
America to help these kids--$34.3 billion--and the budget only provides 
$24.9 billion. So we are underfunding it by $9.4 billion.
  Mr. HARKIN. Nine billion dollars, yes.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask the Senator, who deals with this appropriation, and 
the money behind it, where does this leave our schools in Iowa and 
Illinois, taking the test, finding the challenge, but without the 
resources to address it? I ask unanimous consent, through the Chair, 
for the Senator from Iowa to respond, without my yielding the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Illinois, Lew Finch, who is the 
retiring superintendent of schools in Cedar Rapids, talked to me about 
this. There was an article in the paper also quoting him saying that 
their good schools are failing and they are doing it for the exact 
reason the Senator from Illinois pointed out. But here is what he said 
to me.
  He said: I fear that all the progress we have made in the past, under 
things like the Americans with Disabilities Act, IDEA, Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act, and integrating students in schools, 
bringing kids with disabilities into the mainstream of schools--he 
said: I fear what we are going to start doing is now segregating them 
out one more time, segregating them out of our schools again because 
they are being a drag on all the other students.
  Mr. DURBIN. Let me add to what the Senator from Iowa said. This year 
we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, 
50 years in America where we have said the integration of schools is 
essential to equality of opportunity. Separate but equal--Plessy v. 
Ferguson--was rejected by the Supreme Court 50 years ago, moving us 
toward a colorblind America and the integration of races in America, 
something essential to put the era of slavery and racism behind us.
  Mr. HARKIN. Jim Crow.
  Mr. DURBIN. And I say to the Senator from Iowa--and I know how deeply 
he feels about special education--I feel the same way, the same 
intensity level about the reaction, as parents walk into the school 
board meeting and say: This high school that I planned on sending my 
son to, my daughter to so she could get into a good college, I read in 
the morning paper is a failing school. Will you tell me why I made the 
sacrifice to buy an expensive home in the suburbs to send my child to a 
school for his future or her future and now it is a failing school? 
Explain it to me.
  The educators will put the test scores up, and they will see it is 
the minority students and the students of Hispanic ancestry, as well as 
the special education students, who are leading to this conclusion.
  Now, two things can happen, I say to the Senator from Iowa. The good 
thing that can happen is we will say: What can we do to bring all test 
scores up, particularly for those kids who are not doing well. Well, 
you will not find the answer in this budget. This budget misses the 
target by $9 billion in providing extra teachers, extra technology, 
extra attention. It is not there.
  But there is another course we can take that is sinister and ugly. It 
is the course that says: Incidentally, when those minority students 
don't come to school, don't go looking for them--would you?--because 
they are dragging down the test scores. That would be a terrible 
outcome.
  Mr. HARKIN. Or vouchers.
  Mr. DURBIN. Or vouchers. And for those--and there are many, even in 
this Chamber--who have given up on public education long ago, this is 
the answer to their prayers.
  Mr. HARKIN. I know.
  Mr. DURBIN. They will get bad test scores and say: Didn't we tell you 
public education has failed in America? I say to the Senator from Iowa, 
I think the funding of education is pushing us into a critical moment 
in the future of public education. Starting just 2 weeks ago, with the 
signature on the Omnibus appropriations bill, we will have the first 
Federal funding of a voucher program for private schools in the history 
of the United States of America.
  Mr. HARKIN. Right here.
  Mr. DURBIN. Right here in the District of Columbia.
  Mr. HARKIN. Absolutely.
  Mr. DURBIN. It is an answer to the prayers of those who have a 
loathing for public education and for the teachers in public schools 
who many think have the wrong political allegiance, whatever the reason 
might be. When you put all this together, you realize it is more than 
dollars. We are moving ourselves to a decision that is calling into 
question 50 years of American history and more.

  I ask the Senator from Iowa, what is his impression as he reviews No 
Child Left Behind and this funding and the challenges it presents?
  Mr. HARKIN. Our budget has basically two purposes. Any budget, 
whether it is your own personal family budget, a business budget, or 
the Government budget, has two purposes: One is to balance income and 
outlays--in other words, what is the income and what are the outlays, 
try to get some balance between the two--and the second purpose is to 
set priorities, choices.
  I am sure the Senator is like I am. When you have an income, you sit 
down and say, this is our income. What is our mortgage? What is our car 
payment? What is our tuition, all those sorts of things. You add it up 
and you make choices on how you budget.
  That is what this budget is. It is about choices, the choices that 
this President has chosen: tax breaks for the wealthy, continue those 
and make them permanent; continue to ship our jobs overseas; continue 
to underfund education, as the Senator has pointed out; and continue 
this march towards bigger and bigger debt, bigger and bigger deficits 
that is going to choke off any hope of having a viable Social Security 
and Medicare system for our kids and grandkids. Those are the choices 
in this budget.

[[Page S586]]

  Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator from Iowa, he and I have a mutual 
friend in former President Bill Clinton who spoke to a group of 
Democratic Senators a week or so ago. He said: When you look at this 
budget and you project what this administration and this budget are 
headed to, it is the concentration of wealth and power in America, the 
breakdown of our effort to enlarge the middle class in America and, 
frankly, to accept--sadly--the reality of the haves and have-nots, the 
disparity in income.
  We don't find in this budget an effort to lower the ladder to allow 
people to come climbing up, as your parents and my parents and we did 
in our own lives. That is the worst part of this budget, as the Senator 
said, tax breaks for wealthy people, for this to be the hallmark of 
this administration for the next year. It has failed to lift the 
economy. It has failed to create jobs. What it has done is drag us 
deeply and deeply into debt.
  The Senator brought up the issue of Social Security. We went through 
the Medicare bill, the prescription drug bill. I have certainly been 
back to talk to my seniors in Illinois about it. What have you found in 
Iowa as you traveled around about that bill?
  Mr. HARKIN. Well, again, people in Illinois are not that much 
different than the people in Iowa. I hear the same things you hear. 
People are frightened. They are not frightened of Saddam Hussein. They 
are not even frightened by Osama bin Laden. They believe we will have 
the power and the wherewithal to protect our citizens, maybe not with 
absolute certainty but with enough that they will feel comfortable in 
their homes and businesses and in their travel.
  What they are frightened about is their kids' education. They are 
frightened about not being able to pay the next health care bill 
because they don't have adequate health insurance. They are concerned 
about whether or not there is going to be a viable Medicare system for 
their parents, and whether their parents will truly get any 
prescription drug help at all. There is some confusion right now. 
People were promised a prescription drug benefit. It passed the 
Congress last year. The President signed it. Now we are finding out 
that it is not going to help them that much and that most of the money 
is going to the pharmaceutical companies.
  That is what I find. People in Iowa are afraid that we are headed in 
the wrong direction. I sense this kind of mood among people, that they 
know it is not right.
  Mr. DURBIN. One of the Presidential candidates, one of our 
colleagues, refers to two Americas, an America for the wealthy and an 
America for everyone else. What the Senator has just described is what 
I hear. People who really believed in the American dream thought that 
with enough hard work and the right values you could succeed. That is 
what brought my mother as an immigrant to this country and millions 
like her. Now the concern is that despite your good values, despite 
your effort, despite your hard work, you can't reach that point of 
security because the Senator from Iowa is hearing, as I am, retirees 
finding that their retirement benefits are being cut off. Their health 
care benefits are cut off.

  These people also wonder if Social Security and Medicare will be 
there when they need it. If we reach the point where we have diminished 
those institutions through the prescription drug bill on Medicare, 
through this budget and its raid on the Social Security trust fund for 
years to come, then, frankly, we have walked away from the heritage we 
received.
  Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator will yield.
  Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield for a question.
  Mr. HARKIN. There was a recent article in Time magazine talking about 
how life in America now for many middle-income families, low-income 
families has become a game of chance. The game is kind of rigged 
against you.
  I remember reading a little newspaper article and the headline was: 
Vietnamese Immigrants Achieve American Dream, Win State Lottery. The 
story went on to talk about this Vietnamese couple. They bought a 
lottery ticket and won the lottery. The idea that this is the American 
dream, a one-in-a-million chance of winning the lottery, that is the 
American dream, that our life is a roll of the dice, the odds are a 
million to one against you. No, that is not the American dream. The 
American dream is what your parents and my parents did, to work hard, 
to save, to buy a home of their own, to educate their kids and build a 
better life.
  Mr. DURBIN. Let's pursue one aspect of that which has been an issue 
on which the Senator has been the leader. Not only has this 
administration cost us 3 million jobs during the 3 years plus that the 
President has been in office, more jobs lost than any President since 
the Great Depression, but now, to add insult to injury, the hardest 
working Americans, the ones who say we are going to keep going, not 
just 40 hours a week but whatever it takes for our family, those 
working hard with time away from their family, working overtime to pay 
the bills, to get the money together for college, would the Senator 
from Iowa share with those who are following this debate what this 
administration has done to overtime pay for Americans for the first 
time in history?
  Mr. HARKIN. It is amazing. Last year this administration came out 
with proposed rules to change how overtime is figured. Those changes 
were made without one hearing, not one. Without any consultation with 
Congress, they just rolled them out there. There was not one public 
hearing on it.
  Without going into all the fine details, it basically means that up 
to 8 million Americans will have their overtime pay protection removed.
  One person said to me: My time with my family is premium time. If I 
have to give up my premium time with my family to work overtime, I 
ought to get some premium pay at time and a half.
  That has been in law since 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act. This 
administration, with one stroke of the pen, one set of proposed rules 
is going to undermine overtime pay protections for up to 8 million 
Americans. I can't fathom why they would want to do this to hard-
working Americans.
  Mr. DURBIN. What was the name of the law?
  Mr. HARKIN. The Fair Labor Standards Act.
  Mr. DURBIN. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Is this not the 
only time since the passage of this law that any President, Democrat or 
Republican, has reduced overtime coverage and protection for American 
workers? This is the first time it has ever been done?
  Mr. HARKIN. That is true. I want to be very fair. We have changed the 
Fair Labor Standards Act a number of times since then because some of 
the job descriptions, buggy whip manufacturers and buggy harness 
makers, have gone out, obviously.
  But, at the same time, we have always expanded overtime pay 
protection. So the Senator is right. This is the first time since 1938 
where an administration has said we want to restrict, tighten down, the 
amount of people who are eligible for overtime pay protection.
  Mr. DURBIN. To follow up on that point, is my impression correct that 
the Bush administration didn't just sign the law, they sent out 
information to employers across America saying here is the way to cut 
the overtime pay of your employees; that the Bush administration 
proactively sent out this information encouraging employers to cut 
their employees off of overtime?
  Mr. HARKIN. Well, the Senator is right. Again, this is mind-boggling. 
I will say this--and again to be as fair as possible--there was one 
part of the proposal that was good, which was to raise the low-income 
base from about $8,000 to about $21,000. That means that right now, no 
matter who you are in this country, if your pay is less than $8,000 a 
year, you are guaranteed overtime regardless of what you do. Well, that 
needed to be raised for some time. Nobody argues that. They wanted to 
raise it to $21,000. We agree with that. But in doing so, they issued 
advice to employers on how to get around it. They said we are going to 
raise the base to $21,000, but here is advice on how to get around it. 
No. 1, what you do is simply work your people longer and you build that 
into their base pay. So you work them longer, but you don't have to pay 
them any more.
  Secondly, they said if they are near $21,000--let's say $20,500--you 
may want to raise their pay to $21,000 and then

[[Page S587]]

they are exempt and you save by not paying overtime. There is gimmick 
after gimmick on how they can basically get around it. I said this on 
the floor. This is like the IRS issuing advice to tax cheats on how to 
cheat on their income taxes.
  Mr. DURBIN. Under the Bush administration, we have lost 3 million 
jobs, we have seen thousands and thousands more manufacturing jobs lost 
in your State and mine--probably gone forever to China and other 
places, and then this Department of Labor, for the first time in 
history, decides that hard-working Americans will not be paid overtime 
and says 8 million of these Americans stand to lose their overtime pay. 
If the Senator from Iowa will help me, if we could tell those following 
this debate, what kind of workers are we talking about? I heard Senator 
Kennedy say we are talking about nurses and we are talking about people 
who are involved in firefighting and police protection.
  Mr. HARKIN. That is right.
  Mr. DURBIN. These are the people, unless protected through a 
collective bargaining agreement, who could lose their overtime pay. I 
say to the Senator, I don't know what it is like in his State, but we 
are desperate for nurses in my State. We are looking all over the world 
to bring in nurses. Along comes the Bush administration saying here is 
a way, incidentally, for this hospital to stop paying overtime to 
nurses. It is a tough profession being a nurse, demanding. We count on 
them when somebody in our family is ill. What is going on here when we 
are cutting overtime for nurses? Why would this administration make 
that part of their economic policy?
  Mr. HARKIN. Well, it is one way some unscrupulous employers--I would 
not say all--will be helped. Again, I must say to my friend that prior 
to this rule being issued last year by the administration, and even 
during the debate on this last year, I never had one employer in my 
State come up to me and say we need that. Not one. Obviously, there are 
some someplace who want to get it changed. They must have very close 
friends in the White House. This is one way of working people longer 
hours. American workers now work a longer work week than any other 
workers in any other industrialized country right now. Now they want to 
work them longer and not pay them overtime.

  Mr. DURBIN. To close this chapter completely, I want the Senator to 
tell us about the legislative history. Didn't you ask us to vote on 
this on the floor of the Senate? Didn't you ask us to say to the 
administration, no, you cannot cut 8 million people off of overtime. 
Didn't the Senate decide that? What happened?
  Mr. HARKIN. We had a vote here last summer to basically keep this 
rule from going into effect. It passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote.
  Mr. DURBIN. To protect workers.
  Mr. HARKIN. Yes, to protect them and their right to overtime. The 
House of Representatives earlier passed a bill and it lost by about 
four votes. After we passed it, it went back to the House and they had 
a big vote to instruct conferees. In other words, telling their 
conferees to go along with the Senate provision on this. So we had 
that. We went to conference and before the conference came to this 
issue, the gavel was banged and we were never invited back. Guess what. 
What we voted on here and what the House agreed to disappeared, because 
the administration came in and said they didn't want it in the big 
appropriations bill we passed a couple weeks ago. So they thwarted the 
will of Congress, and of the conferees who never got to vote on the 
issue. Most important, they thwarted the will of the American people. 
But I have an amendment in my desk drawer and every appropriate 
opportunity this Senator gets, I am going to offer it here on the 
Senate floor because American workers deserve to have their overtime 
protected--nurses, firefighters, police officers, ordinary working 
people all over America. If they are going to be asked to give up their 
premium time with their families, they deserve time and a half.
  Mr. DURBIN. I will say this and I will yield the floor. We have a 
mutual friend, Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin, who has a favorite 
saying on the floor of the House about Members of Congress posing for 
``holy pictures.'' In this situation, with the vote the Harkin 
amendment asked for in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans said we 
are against this Bush policy of cutting 8 million Americans off of 
overtime pay, and then the House of Representatives in instructing 
conferees said we are against this Bush policy, so that all of us were 
posing for this big group picture--holy picture--on how we are standing 
with American workers.
  In a matter of 5 minutes, as the gavel is struck in the conference 
committee, the Bush White House prevailed and this rule striking 
overtime for 8 million American workers is signed into law by the 
President. Is that the final result, until your amendment comes along, 
I hope?
  Mr. HARKIN. The final result is the rules are still pending. They 
have not implemented them yet. As I understand it, they want to get the 
rules finalized by March, which is next month. So they want to finalize 
the rules, put them out there, and it is going to be very hard for us 
to turn them back again. But we will. The American people will not 
stand for having their overtime pay protection taken away. Time and a 
half, for time over 40 hours a week is something every American worker 
deserves. Some families rely on that extra time. They give up premium 
time and they work longer so they make a little extra money to get 
their kids through school. Now we are going to say we are going to work 
you longer, but we are not going to pay you overtime. The American 
people won't buy that. We are going to continue to fight here to 
protect their overtime rights.

  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator for this dialog about the budget and 
about issues involving working families in America. I thank him for his 
leadership time and, again, whether on special education, funding for 
college expenses, or protecting American workers on overtime, he has 
been a leader in the Senate and he will continue to be. There is much 
more that needs to be said about this budget. At this point, I will 
defer to others who want to join in this conversation.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for about 
5 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank my friend for his kind words and 
reciprocate by thanking him for his leadership on the floor and in our 
caucus, and for always being here to respond and make sure we have the 
information we need on which to base our votes. We served together in 
the House and we are together in the Senate, and I could not ask for a 
better neighbor either here or across the Mississippi River.
  I will close by again saying this--and I will have more to say about 
this later. The budget the President has proposed is just one that will 
harm America. It is going to harm our workers, increase our deficit 
and, quite frankly, it is going to put in jeopardy the Social Security 
and Medicare system.
  It is a shame all this has been squandered in just 4 years. I believe 
we in the Senate need to respond, we need to say no to this Bush 
budget, and we need to have a budget that puts us back on the path we 
were on just 4 short years ago.
  With that, we can have a budget that will be in balance, and we can 
have a future that is much brighter for our workers, for our children, 
and for our elderly.
  Mr. President, I will have more to say about the budget in the coming 
days and weeks before the budget resolution is brought to the floor.
  I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor and suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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