[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 114 (Tuesday, September 21, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9412-S9414]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         CHARITABLE GIVING ACT

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Minnesota for 
yielding back his time.
  Shortly, I will be making a unanimous consent request to move certain 
legislation to conference, the Charitable Giving Act that passed the 
House, or the CARE Act that passed in the Senate. These two bills, very 
similar in nature, were passed earlier in this session, actually last 
year--both were passed last year--to try to help those organizations 
that are out on the front lines meeting the needs of our society. These 
are nonprofit organizations across America. The President refers to 
them as ``arms of compassion,'' those who meet human service needs, 
those who meet educational needs, our not-for-profit sector, which are 
a vitally important part of what makes America tick and what makes our 
country the great envy of the world in the sense that we have such 
strong communities, we have such strong voluntarism, we have such 
strong commitment to our neighbor.
  These community organizations have seen, particularly in light of the 
decline in the stock market in the early part of this decade, with some 
of the problems we have had with our economy early in the decade, the 
amount of charitable giving decline. So as a result, to respond to 
these pressing needs, and actually to make the Tax Code, I would say, 
more equitable, we put forward a bipartisan bill offered by Senator Joe 
Lieberman and me that passed 95 to 5. Support for this bill is pretty 
overwhelming. In the House, it passed 408 to 13, and in the Senate it 
passed 95 to 5. So there is strong support to try to help these 
charitable organizations meet the needs of those in our society.
  Unfortunately, we have run into a roadblock. The roadblock is there 
are differences between the House and Senate bills. We would like to 
sit down and work out those differences in conference and move to a 
final solution to help these nonprofit organizations. We have been 
blocked repeatedly on the Senate floor from appointing conferees on a 
bill that is virtually noncontroversial, that has almost passed 
unanimously in both Houses, different versions, but we have not been 
able to do so.
  On eight occasions I have come to the Senate floor and asked for 
consent to do what we do as a normal course of record, which is to sit 
down with the House in a conference and come up with a bill to be voted 
up or down by both the House and Senate. We have had objections to it. 
In fact, we have had eight objections by the Democratic leadership; 7 
times Senator Reid objected, and the most recent one Senator Daschle 
objected. I am going to offer another one today.
  We are approaching the end of the session. We are approaching a point 
where all the work that has been done on this legislation is going to 
come to an end. There are 1,600 groups supporting this legislation. 
There are 1,600 national nonprofit organizations that have come forward 
and said: We want this to be passed.
  Not only that, Senator Daschle himself said in an op-ed--which I ask 
unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Rapid City Journal, Feb. 15, 2002]

                    Compromise Good for SD., America

                        (By Senator Tom Daschle)

       Washington--Sept. 11 filled all of us with an overwhelming 
     sense of grief. But like other human tragedies, Sept. 11 also 
     taught us something important about ourselves. It reawakened 
     in Americans a sense of generosity and civic duty. There was 
     a heartfelt outpouring of altruism across the country as 
     Americans united to provide assistance to the victims of 
     Sept. 11.
       It is important to continue building on this generous 
     spirit by creating living memorials to the victims of 
     September 11--not just in New York and Washington, but in 
     Sioux Falls and Rapid City, in Newell, Faith, Elk Point and 
     every community across South Dakota and America. We can do 
     this by embracing President Bush's call to build on the 
     important partnership between the federal government and 
     community-based and faith-based organizations.
       President Bush has been working with Democrats and 
     Republicans in Congress to promote charitable giving and 
     encourage community and faith-based groups. On Feb. 8, the 
     president and a bipartisan group of Senators unveiled the 
     Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act--or CARE Act--that 
     will harness the goodwill of Americans and turn this goodwill 
     into good works.
       I strongly support this faith-based initiative, and commend 
     President Bush and Sen. Joseph Lieberman for their joint 
     leadership on an issue that is so close to their hearts and 
     so important to our nation.
       Community and faith-based organizations do not seek to 
     replace government. There will always be a need for programs 
     like Social Security, Medicare or Head Start. What this 
     proposal seeks to do is strengthen the partnership whereby 
     charities and government can work side-by-side to meet some 
     of the great unmet needs of our nation.
       South Dakotans know the good works charities perform. They 
     have seen success stories. Sioux Falls Promise works with 
     community and religious leaders and educators to meet the 
     needs of children and young people. In Rapid City, Catholic 
     Social Services provides adoption services and family 
     counseling, while in Sioux Falls Lutheran Social Services 
     runs one of the best immigrant assistance programs in the 
     country. In other communities in our state and across the 
     country, religious-based charities tutor and mentor children, 
     give shelter to battered women and children, help young 
     people find jobs, and feed the hungry by running soup 
     kitchens and food pantries.
       The bipartisan faith-based initiative announced by 
     President Bush will help meet unmet needs in our communities 
     by providing tax incentives to businesses and individuals to 
     give money to charities, by simplifying the process by which 
     charities can qualify for tax exempt status, and by providing 
     technical assistance for community and faith-based groups.
       In the wake of Sept. 11, it will provide a framework and 
     incentives for Americans to take up arms against enemies here 
     at home, including poverty, illiteracy, hunger and 
     homelessness.
       The CARE Act isn't a Republican or a Democratic plan. It is 
     a bipartisan proposal that strikes the right balance between 
     harnessing the best forces of faith in our public life 
     without infringing on the First Amendment. It reflects a 
     broad concept of public service and builds on programs 
     sponsored by presidents from John F. Kennedy to President 
     Bush's own father. Most importantly, it is representative of 
     what we can accomplish in Washington when we put partisanship 
     and politics aside and focus on what matters. I

[[Page S9413]]

     look forward to working with President Bush to get this 
     proposal signed into law.

  Mr. SANTORUM. He said himself to the Rapid City Journal in an op-ed 
in South Dakota, talking about how good legislation this was:

       The CARE Act isn't a Republican or Democratic plan. It is a 
     bipartisan proposal that strikes the right balance between 
     harnessing the best forces of faith in our public life 
     without infringing on the First Amendment . . . I look 
     forward to working with President Bush to get this proposal 
     signed into law.

  It is nice that the Democratic leader said that he is looking forward 
to it being signed into law, but he has done everything to stop it from 
actually becoming law by standing up and objecting to this legislation 
going to the conference committee so we can work out differences.
  Many of those differences are going to be tough to work out. I will 
admit, some of the funding issues for social service block grant funds, 
some of the issues with respect to how much tax relief we are going to 
give to those who contribute to nonprofits, are going to be difficult 
issues to deal with, and there are going to be compromises that are 
going to be needed. There are going to be some things that Republicans 
are not going to be happy with in this compromise. There are going to 
be some things that Democrats are not going to be happy with in the 
compromise. But we need a vehicle to be able to sit down and work out 
these differences because people are not going to be able to get the 
benefits of this legislation, and they are profound benefits, unless we 
act.
  Just to go through very quickly what the benefits are, there is a 
provision to encourage food donations. This is a very important part of 
meeting the needs of the hungry in America. Yes, we have Federal 
dollars that go for that purpose, but as my colleagues know, the vast 
majority of the food that is distributed through food pantries, soup 
kitchens, or missions comes from private donations. That is where the 
vast majority of the food comes from.
  Yes, we do provide some Federal assistance to America's Second 
Harvest, to other organizations, but the vast majority comes from 
donations. There is an area of the law that candidly does not 
encourage, because of the Tax Code, some purveyors of food to give 
their surplus food for the hungry in America. So we changed that 
provision of the law. We believe--not we--America's Second Harvest 
believes that 878 million meals will be provided, as a result of this 
provision, for hungry Americans over the next 10 years. This is not a 
small amount. This is not a minor, trivial matter.
  For those who care about hunger in America, and as someone who was a 
sponsor of the bill in the Senate that passed, the Good Samaritan Food 
Donation Act, I care a lot about America's Second Harvest and others 
who have the food necessary to be able to meet the needs of the hungry 
in America.
  Individual development accounts--Senator Lieberman, Senator 
Feinstein, myself, and others have been working on this for years to 
try to help low-income Americans have the opportunity to accumulate 
wealth, to have savings and investment, to help them to get a college 
education, to get a GED, or to have the opportunity to own a home or to 
start a business, 300,000 matched savings accounts, matched with 
Government and private dollars to help low-income individuals save, to 
build wealth.
  We have heard the President talk about an ownership society. This is 
a very important part of that ownership society in this bill. There is 
$2 billion of educational resources through what is called an IRA 
charitable rollover. People have IRAs, and some people who have IRAs 
candidly have a lot of money, and they do not need that money for 
retirement. If they want to give it to a charity, they are heavily 
penalized if they do. This will allow them to roll over their IRA. The 
biggest beneficiaries of this approximately $3 billion that we believe 
will be contributed will be educational institutions. Colleges, 
universities, private schools, maybe charter schools, and other 
educational institutions will benefit from this provision, and that is 
why all of the public universities and private universities in the 
country are for this provision and believe it can be a great help to 
educating our children and keeping the cost of education down.
  Eighty-six million lower and middle-income Americans will benefit 
from the nonitemized deduction. What does that mean? Two-thirds of 
Americans do not itemize, period. They fill out the short form, the 
1040EZ. We have a certified public accountant in the Chair, and he can 
explain this better than I can, but I will do my best.
  Right now, if someone is one of these two-thirds of Americans who 
contribute to their church, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, they 
cannot deduct the contribution that they made; whereas, if one 
itemizes, they can. So what we are trying to do is to provide some 
encouragement for people who do not have complex tax forms to give 
money to these organizations. That is what this nonitemized deduction 
for charitable giving is about. Eighty-six million lower- and middle-
income Americans will do that, and it will be billions of dollars in 
increased donations as a result of it.
  As Joe Lieberman said--we had a press conference recently--what is 
left in this bill is all good. There is nothing bad. There is nothing 
controversial or that would be disagreed upon. There is disagreement on 
how to pay for this. There is disagreement on how much of this we want 
to do. There is disagreement as to how much we are going to have in 
direct Government assistance to nonprofit organizations, social service 
block grant funds. All of that is a controversy, but all of it is an 
argument on how much good we want to do, or how the focus should be.
  The idea that we cannot get a discussion on how we can help those in 
need in our society, how we can help those organizations that want to 
help those in need, and get that into a form in which we can resolve 
these differences and come to a solution, to me, is very discouraging.
  I have met with Senator Daschle from South Dakota. I have asked him 
to allow us to go to conference, and the Senator from South Dakota 
basically said: You have to agree before we go to conference to 
everything I want in this bill. If you don't agree with everything I 
want in this bill, then you can't go to conference.
  What is the point of conference? If we have to do exactly what the 
Senator from South Dakota wants, to write this bill exactly how he 
wants it or we can't get a bill, that is hardly the kind of bipartisan 
cooperation that we have seen in getting this bill to the point it is 
right now. This is not the way legislating works. It is not my way or 
the highway from the minority. It is not my way or the highway to the 
American people, who would like to see some help for those in need in 
our society. You either do it the way I want to as the Democratic 
leader of the minority in the Senate, not the way the President would 
like to do it, nor the way the House would like to do it, nor how the 
Senate majority would like to do it, but how the Senator from South 
Dakota would like to do it himself. That, to me, is not bipartisanship. 
That is not reaching across the aisle to make things happen in a 
positive direction for an area in the country that is in need.
  I am willing to compromise. I have said to the Senator--in fact, I 
said to the Senator from South Dakota that I am willing to make 
reductions in areas of this bill that I care most about, and I am 
willing to give in areas that I care probably less about. I am willing 
to make that compromise, but it is not all or nothing. It can't be all 
or nothing. That is what we are being told. To me, that is an insult to 
the very people we are attempting to help and certainly not in keeping 
with the comments of the Senator from South Dakota that he made in 
Rapid City. I understand how he would say those things in South Dakota. 
But here in Washington, DC, it is a very different story. It is not a 
story that says to those who are not-for-profit organizations that want 
to help, that need these resources and are in need, to not come and 
apply because we are going to deal with you exactly how this bill is 
going to be written.
  This bill has been written in more of a bipartisan fashion than any 
bill I have ever been involved with in the Senate or in the House where 
I served. This is all good, the Senator from Connecticut said.

[[Page S9414]]

  I am hopeful we will have an opportunity to place this good 
legislation in a situation where we can forge a compromise that will 
give us not everything I want, not everything the Senator from 
Connecticut wants, not everything the Representative in the House who 
is leading the effort on the House side wants, not what others want, 
but that we can arrive at a compromise in a bipartisan way to allow 
this bill to provide remedies for the needs of our society by getting 
this bill passed and signed into law.


                   Unanimous-Consent Request--H.R. 7

  I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from 
further consideration of H.R. 7, the charitable giving bill, and the 
Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
  I further ask unanimous consent that all after the enacting clause be 
stricken, that the substitute amendment, which is the text of S. 476, 
the Senate-passed version of the charitable giving bill, be agreed to; 
that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motion 
to reconsider be laid upon the table; further, that the Senate insist 
on its amendment and request a conference with the House; that the 
Chair be authorized to appoint conferees with a ratio of 3 to 2; and 
that any statements to the bill be printed in the Record.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. REID. Objection.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, if I can conclude and then I would be 
happy to let the Senator speak, I will submit for the Record a letter 
from Senator Lieberman and I to the conferees on the FSC/ETI bill. We 
believe this is an important enough measure that we should pass it this 
year. If we are not able to go to conference and work out differences, 
Senator Lieberman and I may ask the conferees on this tax bill to 
please consider the Charitable Giving Act as part of the FSC/ETI 
conference. I hope if this is not the vehicle, we can get it to 
conference another way.
  I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                    Washington, DC, July 22, 2004.
       Dear Conferees: We are writing on behalf of the charitable 
     community, large and small, across this country seeking to 
     aid families and better their neighborhoods and communities 
     by helping those in need. As you know, both the Senate and 
     the House of Representatives have passed legislation in this 
     Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support that provides 
     significant additional incentives for charitable giving 
     around the country and additional resources for efforts to 
     help those in need including innovative Individual 
     Development Accounts (IDAs), increased Social Services Block 
     Grant (SSBG) funding, and the Compassion Capital Fund. The 
     Charity Aid, Recovery, and Empowerment Act (CARE) passed the 
     Senate on April 9, 2003, by a vote of 95-5. The House of 
     Representatives passed companion legislation, the Charitable 
     Giving Act, on September 17, 2003, by a vote of 408-13.
       Since both the Senate and the House have strongly supported 
     charitable incentives, and since both the Senate and House 
     FSC-ETI (JOBS) bills include charitable reforms which limit 
     existing practices, inclusion of a package of charitable 
     incentives in the FSC-ETI conference is appropriate and 
     within the scope of the conference for this Congress. 
     Furthermore, we believe that any revenue raised through 
     constructive reforms impacting charities should be dedicated 
     to expanding charitable giving incentives in order to help 
     those in need.
       We strongly urge the conferees to work with the many 
     sponsors and supporters of the CARE Act in the Senate and the 
     Charitable Giving Act in the House to include the significant 
     provisions shared by both bills and full and fair 
     consideration of those that differ--for the benefit of all 
     Americans. The time has come to expand the tools of 
     generosity and increase resources for those in need in a 
     bipartisan fashion.
       Thank you for your consideration of this request. We look 
     forward to working with you in this important effort.
           Sincerely,
     Rick Santorum,
     Joseph Lieberman,
       U.S. Senators.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I just came to the floor after having 
presented an award to Senator Gordon Smith. The Suicide Prevention 
National Organization gave him an award, which is the No. 1 award that 
this organization can present. Gordon Smith's son took his own life at 
age 22. We passed in the Senate in recent days--in fact, on Garrett 
Smith's birthday--the Garrett Smith Suicide Prevention Act.
  The reason I mention that is that matter was passed and is going to 
become law. The President will sign it any day.
  As a result of what I suggest to my friend from Pennsylvania happened 
in this instance, we are not objecting to the passage of this bill. We 
have never objected to the passage of this bill. We are simply saying 
that it be handled in the way the Garrett Smith legislation passed, and 
let the House take whatever action on it and we bring it back. If we 
like what they have done, we will take it; if not, we will amend it and 
send it back to them.
  We have had numerous bills enacted into law without using a 
conference to negotiate differences between the House and the Senate. I 
say numerous; I don't say several. I say numerous. I have not counted 
these, but I assume there are about 100 pieces of legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). The time is under the control 
of the Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to 
speak in response to the Senator from Pennsylvania for up to 10 
minutes. I will be happy if the Senator wants me to speak afterwards, 
whatever he wants me to do. I know we have a recess to take place at 
12:30. I want to give fairness, and I should have the opportunity to 
respond.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, the Senator from Nevada may wish to speak 
after I speak. I will be covering some of the same ground. I will be 
making a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. REID. Would the Senator allow me to respond to him and Senator 
Santorum's unanimous consent request following his statement?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, if there is 
to be an agreement soon, I would like to be a part of that agreement. I 
would like to offer a unanimous consent request to set a date for a 
vote on the reimportation of prescription drugs. If we reach an 
agreement, I would like to be a part of that so I can offer a unanimous 
consent request that the Senate be able to consider that issue.
  Mr. ENZI. I am going to object to giving some leeway to the Senator 
from Nevada to give some kind of response because we are going to be 
asking unanimous consent. But I have listened for the last 2\1/2\ hours 
to comments from the other side that I have not been able to respond 
to. To give unlimited additional time to the other side to again make 
comments that we obviously would like to comment on, too, isn't 
reasonable at this point in time. We are already into the time of the 
policy meetings, so we are extending beyond that time. We are having to 
take that time in order to use our allotted time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Wyoming.

                          ____________________