[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 135 (Friday, December 8, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11561-S11563]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Extenders

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to discuss what is the last pending 
major piece of business relative to this Congress and is headed toward 
the Senate from the House, something called the extenders bill.
  To put this in the proper context, there are a number of tax 
initiatives which are going to lapse this year and need to be 
extended--things such as the R&D tax credit, such as the deduction 
which teachers can take when they buy materials for their classrooms. 
Teachers--especially elementary teachers--seem to do a lot of that. 
They deserve that recognition; also, things such as tuition tax credit. 
These are all extenders which should occur. Were they to occur in the 
proper order, they might cost as much as $12 billion. However, the bill 
that is headed toward us doesn't cost $12 billion; it is going to cost 
$39.5 billion. At least that is what we think it is going to cost. We 
haven't had it finally scored. But that is what we believe is a 
reasonable number to put on that.
  That will be added to the deficit. It will be at least $17 billion 
over what is

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known as pay-go, which is a mechanism that disciplines tax cuts. It 
doesn't discipline spending, regrettably. I hope we can restructure it, 
and then I might be a supporter of it. But it is $17 billion over what 
is known as the pay-go baseline. This represents $39 billion of funding 
which will be added to the debt. That is incredible as the last act of 
Congress. It will actually be, arguably--depending on how you define 
the Part D premium exercise, which added trillions of dollars in the 
outyear debt--either the largest or the second largest budget buster 
passed by this Congress, $39 billion. It has in it a large amount of 
items which have nothing to do with extending taxes and has a lot to do 
with personal interests of various special interest groups around this 
country who have the capacity to get things put in bills.
  Probably the most significant one is conversion of a program called 
the Abandoned Mine Land Program which basically will create a new $4 
billion cost to the American taxpayer to pay for health insurance of 
mine workers and former mine workers which should have been paid for by 
the coal companies. In other words, it is a direct transfer of payment 
from the corporate coal companies' obligations to support the health 
care of these miners to the American taxpayer. And it is a directed 
program, a mandatory program, not a discretionary program. So it 
basically cannot be reviewed or adjusted in the outyears.
  It is probably one of the most egregious things we will do in this 
Congress in the area of abandoning fiscal discipline and raiding the 
taxpayers' pocketbooks for the benefit of a small group of people and 
corporations.
  It, also, includes something called the doctors' fix. It is 
appropriate that we correct the amount of money that doctors are 
reimbursed for under the Medicare Act. There is a 5-percent doctor 
reimbursement. It is not fair to doctors to be asked to bear the burden 
of the expansion of Medicare costs, and it should be corrected.
  But the understanding always was--at least I thought it was--I guess 
I am naive--that it was going to be paid for with real dollars. That 
wasn't exactly what was said here. There are some real dollars being 
used, but there are real dollars that do not have anything to do with 
the issue. They are taking something called the stabilization fund and 
applying it to doctors. That pays for some of it. That arguably is real 
dollars which should be used in this event, but as a matter of policy, 
you can't fight it from a budget standpoint. It is real dollars and bad 
policy.

  But there is another group of dollars being used that does not even 
exist and is being claimed as part of the payment. They are going to 
correct a hole in next year's doctors' fix which will double next 
year's fix; take that money that doesn't exist and claim they are 
taking that money to pay off the doctors' fix this year. It is an 
accounting gimmick of extraordinary brazenness, which if you did it in 
the corporate world, you would go to jail. There wouldn't be any 
question about it. There would be a clear-cut jail sentence tied to 
this one if this were a corporate gimmick used by a corporation and put 
on the shareholders or the investors in your company as something that 
was appropriate. It is an outrage of the first order on the American 
taxpayer and our children, because who pays for this? Our children pay 
for it. That is what happens.
  The bill is laden with earmarks, where this group or that group or 
that one--the District of Columbia gets $150 million, the State of 
Tennessee gets $35 million, and the State of Nevada gets $4 million. I 
don't know how this one got in here: The Music Writers of America are 
going to get $3 million. The music writers will get $3 million from the 
taxpayers and put on the debt. By our standards around here, it 
wouldn't even make an asterisk. But it is what this represents that is 
so outrageous.
  The rum excise revenue sharing with Puerto Rico, $184 million; 
special depreciation for ethanol plants.
  I don't think there has ever been a financial bill which has come 
through this body that didn't have something for ethanol. Ethanol is a 
great idea. I am for it now. I used to be suspect about it. But it is 
such a vertical, integrated subsidy. Why do we have to keep throwing 
subsidy after subsidy into it? In fact, not happy enough with that 
little exercise, they also had to extend the tariff on ethanol that 
comes into the country from international producers so that the 
Northeast, which can't get the ethanol from the Midwest because it 
can't be shipped through the pipelines because ethanol can't be shipped 
through the pipelines because it bonds with water and the pipelines 
will not work--the Northeast, which can only get it shipped efficiently 
and cost effectively, say, from Brazil and have it shipped in by boat, 
has to pay a huge tariff on that--54 cents a gallon, which makes it 
economically unfeasible, even though it is an alternative fuel source 
that should be used throughout our country. And granted, we would like 
to have it produced in America, but I would rather be buying ethanol 
from Brazil than oil from some of our friends in the Middle East, such 
as Iran. Yet this makes it virtually impossible to do that. It is good 
policy, I say with great irony and sarcasm. Of course, it has nothing 
do with tax extenders.
  Then there are serious policy implications. For example, it extends 
the sales tax deduction, which is a policy of essentially saying to 
high-tax States: You should increase your taxes on your people at the 
expense of the Federal Treasury. The sales tax deduction is nothing 
more than a revenue sharing for the Federal Government, where the 
Federal government says to a State: We will give you a deduction for 
increasing your taxes and the Federal taxes will then go up for 
everybody else to pay for that deduction. There are a lot of States 
that don't have a sales tax. There is no reason they should be 
penalized in this way. There is no reason people in New Hampshire 
should have to pay sales tax to subsidize a high sales tax in the 
States of New York or Texas or California. It doesn't make any sense, 
from a policy standpoint.
  This is not distributed in a very equitable way. The only people who 
can take advantage of this are the itemizers. Itemizers, by definition, 
usually earn more than $60,000, at about the breaking point where you 
start to itemize your tax deductions. Basically, low-income people who 
pay a sales tax will see their sales taxes go up because States will 
want to raise them in order to claim their deduction, and low-income 
people will now have to pay more in sales tax and not be able to deduct 
it; whereas, high-income people in those States deduct it. It doesn't 
make any sense policywise or from a tax standpoint. It is just one 
important effort by one group of States that want to get this deduction 
put in place to take advantage of a bill coming through here.
  The bill, as I said, is arguably the biggest budget buster ever 
brought forward by the Republican Congress. That is ironic in and of 
itself, isn't it? That is pretty ironic.
  The way it is being brought forward is interesting. It is being 
brought forward in a manner which will make it extraordinarily 
difficult. This is being done by the Republican leadership for the 
Republican membership in a way that makes it extraordinarily difficult 
for anyone to attack the bill at any point and raise any of the issues 
which I just raised. In other words, if I wanted to address this 
deduction of $35 million for Tennessee or if I wanted to address the 
music writers item, I will not be able to do that. That option is not 
going to be allowed to me on a traditional vote nor on a motion to 
strike. I probably would lose those motions, but that is not going to 
be available to knock those earmarks out.
  If I wanted to raise the policy arguments on the doctors' fix, the 
fact that you have this unbelievable accounting mechanism used to pay 
for it, I am not going to be able to do that as Budget chairman. That 
will be denied. The Republican leadership is denying Republican 
membership the capacity to address these serious fiscal issues in this 
bill, including the fact it is $39 billion added to the Federal debt. 
It is going to be brought over in a manner which I have never seen 
happen before, probably because it is the biggest budget buster in the 
history of our country passed by the Republican Congress. They do not 
want to have anybody highlighting it but are sending it over as a 
message from the House--not as a bill but as a message from the House, 
which dramatically limits the ability

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to attack it or raise issues by it. ``Tax'' maybe is the wrong term. 
Then they are going to fill the tree so no amendments can be made. Then 
they are going to have the final vote with motions to concur with the 
House message. It is obvious they have the votes to do this. This bill 
has so much in it for so many different little folks and issues around 
here that they have racked up the vote count to the point where they 
can accomplish it. Well over 60 votes would be for this bill. The votes 
are there. They can do it. That is the way the majority works.

  But we have to ask this question. The American people took the reins 
of government away from the Republican Party, the Republican Congress, 
in this last election. They did so in large part because they were 
tired of our hypocrisy as a party on the issue of fiscal 
responsibility. It would appear their concerns are justified. It is 
true that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will probably 
be worse at fiscal management than we are. We have shown it to be in 
our nature to spend money. If you add up all the things they talk about 
in their campaigns, they will spend a lot, but at least they will not 
be hypocritical, going to the American people and saying: We are the 
party of fiscal responsibility.
  We have to ask how we as a party got to this point where we have a 
leadership which is going to ram down the throats of our party the 
biggest budget buster in the history of the Congress under Republican 
leadership.
  Anyway, the American people figured it out. I am sorry we haven't 
figured it out yet.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized for 15 
minutes.

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