[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 135 (Saturday, November 20, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11767-S11769]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CONGRATULATING SENATOR STEVENS

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senate Appropriations 
chairman, our President pro tempore, Ted Stevens. Since 1971, for 34 
years, Senator Stevens has served on the Appropriations Committee, and 
for the last 8 years, or almost 8 years, he served as chairman of that 
committee, with a 1-year interruption in 2002 to be its ranking member.
  Beginning with the new Congress in January, the chairmanship of the 
committee will pass to another Senator. So today the chairman has 
brought to the floor the last appropriations bill under his 
chairmanship, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005.
  It is only appropriate that this final bill was put together--and we 
all saw it play out over the last several hours, days, and weeks--with 
the same hard work, the same focus, the same tenacity, and the same 
perseverance which has characterized his leadership of this committee 
over the last many years.
  I do, on behalf of the Senate Republican caucus--indeed, the entire 
Senate--say, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for all you have done.
  It would be a mistake, also, if as leader I did not recognize the 
extremely hard work of the chairman's staff under the superb leadership 
and guidance of the staff director, Jim Morhard. At the end of this 
Congress, Mr. Morhard will be leaving public service after over 26 
years, most of it spent right here in the Senate.
  Jim, we thank you for your dedication and your service to Government, 
to this institution, and to the Appropriations Committee.
  There have been a lot of long days and long nights over the last 
several weeks for staff, and some staff, particularly those on the 
Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, have literally gone for 
over 48 hours straight without sleep to bring us to this point today 
and tonight where we have passed this legislation. I know I speak for 
all Senators on both sides of the aisle when I say thank you for your 
work done under some very challenging and very difficult circumstances.
  This has also been a challenging year for the budget and 
appropriations process. We were able, though, in spite of all those 
challenges, to establish an enforceable $821.9 billion spending limit 
for this year. The bill today, along with the other four appropriations 
bills enacted to date, have lived by that strict spending limit we 
established.
  Total appropriations, excluding defense and natural disaster 
emergency spending, will increase 3.9 percent over last year with the 
enactment of the bill that we passed tonight.
  More important, appropriations for nondefense, nonhomeland security 
spending will increase by less than 1.7 percent, and that is the 
smallest growth in nondefense spending in this area of the Federal 
budget in nearly a decade.
  So, yes, this has been a very tough bill setting priorities and 
making difficult tradeoffs to stay within the spending limit, while at 
the same time addressing the priority items, all of which is not easy, 
to say the least, but within the strict confines of this bill, it does 
provide $19.5 billion for veterans medical care, $16.2 billion for 
NASA, $28.6 billion for the National Institutes of Health, and $57 
billion for the Department of Education, among other important, 
significant domestic programs.
  The bill also provides nearly $3 billion in necessary funding to 
address the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, and that is $700 million more than 
last year. It also provides $400 million, actually over $400 million in 
humanitarian and refugee assistance for Sudan and $1.5 billion for the 
Millennium Challenge Account.
  Despite the tightness of this budget, Chairman Stevens and Senator 
Byrd have brought a great bill before us today, and a great bill has 
been passed tonight. Yes, we know it does not please everyone; there is 
no way it possibly could. But it is the final product of this Congress 
that has been agreed to and a product of which we can be quite proud.
  I do appreciate the Senators' support for this bill, and it does 
bring to completion the fiscal year 2005 appropriations process. Thank 
you, Chairman Stevens.
  I 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. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I was reluctant to cast my vote against 
this bill which has a lot of good things in it, and it is not as bad as 
some bills that have come through, but I want to share some of my 
concerns and thoughts tonight.
  We have had charges for sometime that we have used accounting 
gimmicks to get around the budget caps or limits in the bill. This 
bill's gimmicks are not as bad as we have had in some years, but there 
are some here, and I think we ought to talk about them.
  Our budget for the year was $821.919 billion for the discretionary 
account. In order to comply with the budget resolution, this omnibus 
bill relies on roughly $1.6 billion in practices that many of us have 
described as gimmicks. And there is an additional $400 million in 
spending that was designated as an emergency which is not subject to 
the budget limitations. So it is basically $2 billion over what the 
budget limit should be, unpaid for and funded by freezing the debt in 
reality.

[[Page S11768]]

  How did we get there? An $821 billion budget was the discretionary 
spending. The Senate insisted on $4 billion more in additional spending 
above the budget resolution. While insisting that spending remain 
within the overall limit, the administration sought funding for certain 
Presidential priorities at higher levels than provided either by the 
House or the Senate. As a result, the omnibus bill pays for this 
additional spending, I am pleased to say, with an across-the-board cut, 
across all the accounts, of .8 percent, less than 1 percent, but it did 
pay for most of that. It reduces the accounts in all bills and helps 
reduce the amount of debt that would be incurred by this spending bill. 
While we would prefer to live within our budget, this across-the-board 
cut is better than increased debt.
  However, rather than paying for all of the increases with this 
across-the-board cut, which we could have done by perhaps having a 1-
percent reduction across the board, the bill includes a series of at 
least four accounting maneuvers.
  First, the omnibus bill includes an accounting shift regarding public 
housing authorities, PHAs.
  Currently, the Federal Government subsidizes the operating costs of 
PHAs. However, the PHAs are on different fiscal years and normally get 
their full annual allocation at the beginning of their fiscal year, 
October 1. The omnibus bill will include language requiring all PHAs to 
convert to a calendar year budget, resulting in $1 billion in savings 
for 2005. No cuts, nothing but a maneuvering of the calendar year 
budget and that would save $1 billion. But it is not a saving, is it? 
The effect of the provision is to defer costs into the future to allow 
for additional spending now and spending that will likely be assumed 
into the baseline of our spending, and the baseline of spending is very 
important.
  I will take a moment to discuss why baseline is so important. When we 
increase annual spending by $2 billion, that is a significant hit to 
the taxpayer. It does not sound like a lot out of a $821 billion 
budget. We have had worse years, I will admit, but still a significant 
hit.
  Next year, when we begin the budget and appropriations season, that 
$2 billion will be assumed into the baseline, meaning to fund all the 
programs at the previous year's level, we will need to spend another $2 
billion.
  Second, the bill rescinds roughly $300 million in defense 
appropriations. It took $300 million from defense, raising the concern 
for some that defense spending may be reduced in priority and we ought 
not to take anything from defense we cannot fully justify, and I do not 
think we need to in this time of war take anything from defense.
  In addition, it is unclear such a rescission will result in true 
savings. For instance, the fiscal year 2004 omnibus included a similar 
$1.8 billion rescission of defense and unused emergency spending from 
post-9/11 to help meet last year's budget resolution. That $1.8 billion 
was later restored in the Department of Defense conference report and 
it was labeled an emergency. So what happened? It is pretty clear, is 
it not? What happened was that last year we used this reduction of 
defense by $1.8 billion and later we declared it an emergency, which 
means it is not subject to the budget limitations of the budget, and we 
funded it by increasing the debt. In other words, we went around the 
budget limits, the budget caps, we agreed to.
  Third, the bill relies on new data suggesting that receipts have 
increased in the Crime Victims Fund by $283 million. However, CBO, the 
Congressional Budget Office, does not publish an updated economic 
outlook until January and thus to have access to such funds it would be 
necessary to direct CBO to assume such revenues in its scorekeeping.
  The committee has left the directed scorekeeping provision out of the 
text due in part to past objections by some conservatives to such 
provisions, and thus when a CBO score is finally produced, it will 
probably result in the omnibus exceeding the budget resolution.
  Finally, the omnibus will also include an extra $300 million for the 
Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, another $300 million 
beyond the regular appropriations, because of high energy prices. This 
will be designated as an emergency and it will not be counted against 
the budget resolution, even though past LIHEAP contingencies have been 
paid for within the budget parameters. So LIHEAP has been declared an 
emergency.
  I do not think we need to be in a position of saying that simply an 
increase in the energy prices justifies a $300 million increase in 
spending straight to the debt and violating our budget. In addition, 
the bill provides an additional $100 million in emergency designations, 
$7 million for the Postal Service, and $93 million for Sudan.

  If we measure our spending by maintaining the same rate of increase, 
we will not only have to spend the $2 billion next year, but we can 
assume more than $2 billion on top just to maintain the rate of 
increased baseline. So a $2 billion increase this year becomes a $4 
billion increase next year, or at least an increase in the debt. And 
this is the way it works: We go over the budget this year by $2 
billion. Then next year, we have to have a budget that funds that same 
$2 billion, and if our habits continue the same and our appropriators 
cannot stay within the $821 billion or whatever our budget number is 
next year, and it will be somewhat higher, then we will have another $2 
billion or maybe more through additional gimmicks next year, because I 
do not think we have ever done an appropriations bill since I have been 
in the Senate that has been truly honest, without some gimmicks.
  Now, I figured this out. If we did it just $2 billion--and, remember, 
often we have done worse than this bill and had more than $2 billion in 
gimmicks--then the next year there is another $2 billion plus the $2 
billion we raised up this year, and so it is $4 billion up, and the 
next year it is $6 billion up, and next year it is $8 billion. Add 
those to the amounts that have been tapped and hit the country with 
deficit spending, in over 10 years I calculate it would be $132 
billion. So this $2 billion a year is not a one-time deal. It tends to 
become part of the baseline of Federal spending, and as a result of 
that it grows exponentially over time. That is how we get out of 
control.
  Now, the way we reached a surplus in our budget account and 
eliminated the deficit throughout the 1990s fundamentally was good 
control of spending--not perfect but pretty good. Remember, this 
Congress shut down the whole Government for a while, trying to contain 
and cut spending. At any rate, over a period of time we did a pretty 
good job of controlling spending. This year's budget is good on 
discretionary spending. It is less than a 1-percent increase. I am 
proud of the Senate for doing that. I am proud of President Bush for 
supporting it. It was the right decision. We have done a pretty good 
job of staying with that. But I want to point out that just this $2 
billion excess can make a large difference in the total over a period 
of years.
  If we would remain true to the limits we all agreed to in our budget, 
the $821 billion, and we stayed flat at that, it would make a big 
difference over time, a lot more than people think. If we had not had 
this offset, which I salute our appropriators and the leadership in 
this Senate for taking a .8-percent reduction across the board to fund 
most of this, we would have been in lot worse shape. We got so close. 
My concern is, why not go all the way? Why not be true to the budget we 
agreed to, the budget limits we had? If we had done that, I think we 
could be more proud of our work today.
  I conclude by expressing my concern about the budget and the need to 
stay absolutely true to it. If we will, it will make a huge difference 
over a period of years in our goal to substantially reduce the deficits 
that are facing our country. Again, I want to say how much I appreciate 
the leadership of Senator Frist, Assistant Majority Leader McConnell, 
and Senator Stevens for the work they have done on this bill. It is a 
very difficult job.
  We do not need to be doing this every year. My best judgment is that 
we absolutely need to do a budget that is good for 2 years. We do not 
need to be doing this every year. We could work more carefully on it, 
more responsibly, and end up with a spending level we can agree to and 
not have two opportunities to break it--there would only be one 
opportunity to break it--and I believe we can make real progress in 
maintaining fiscal integrity in our Government by doing so.

[[Page S11769]]

  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Parliamentary inquiry: Is now a time to speak or are we 
in some kind of special business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may be recognized.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I seek recognition, to use 5 minutes as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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