[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2266-2267]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, we are talking about the budget this 
morning,

[[Page 2267]]

about the tax reductions that the President will speak of this evening, 
I think talking about the importance of how the budget is arranged, how 
it matches the needs of our people, of our country. It seems to me, as 
I think I mentioned before, it is one of the most important decisions 
we will make, and that is the allocation and indeed the priorities of 
what our program will be in the coming year.
  I want to just talk in more general terms perhaps about some parts of 
it. First of all, I think in most everything we do here, we ought to 
try to have a vision of what it is we are seeking to accomplish a 
little way down the road and, hopefully, sometimes quite a way down the 
road, 10 or 20 years. What do we want the country to look like in 10, 
20 years? What is it we want to do during the next year? That has a 
great deal of impact on what we do with financing and with the budget.
  Of course, one of the priorities has been security and defense. I 
think, clearly, it is time to take a long look at that and make 
additional investments in our military and in our defense.
  One of the things that needs immediate attention is the welfare of 
our military men and women. I think all of us have taken the occasion 
to visit military bases--in some cases overseas--such as Warren Air 
Force Base in Cheyenne, WY. Last year, I had the opportunity to return 
to the base where I served in the military, Quantico, VA. The first 
place they took me, in terms of their needs, was housing for the 
military.
  The President has indicated his desire to immediately increase 
spending for salaries for the military, housing, and health care. There 
is no question that ought to be one of our priorities.
  Following that, there ought to be a substantial review of our 
military strategic needs, because changes have taken place in the world 
and changes have taken place in military structures. That is a wise 
thing to do in terms of further funding. It seems to me that priority 
is one that encompasses a notion that we want to take better care of 
those men and women who have volunteered to be in the service to 
protect their country, and then take a long look at our capacity to 
deal with today's threats and the threats we will see tomorrow.
  Education: Every time one takes a poll or asks questions of folks in 
my State or nationwide, education is generally the No. 1 issue. It is 
easy to be for education, but it is a little bit more difficult to 
figure out what to do about it. Nevertheless, I think all will agree 
education is a high priority, that education is something we have to 
look to down the road. What is more important than providing a good 
education for the young people who are going to be running this world?
  We find ourselves with some differences about how we do that. A 
strong feeling has existed that Washington ought to decide what the 
money is for; it ought to be sent from Washington with attached 
instructions as to how to use it. I believe strongly that the needs in 
Meeteetse, WY, are different from the needs in Pittsburgh. Local people 
in the States ought to have the opportunity to use those dollars as 
they see fit, with some accountability, so we can ensure ours kids are 
getting the best education and can have a successful life. Again, I 
hope we can see what we want for education.
  I am particularly interested in the third priority the President has 
laid out, and that is energy. We have some problems in energy. 
Hopefully, some of them are short term. We have some long-term 
opportunities to do the things in the field of energy that we want to 
happen. One of them is to improve and increase domestic production so 
we are not totally dependent on OPEC and overseas imports of foreign 
energy. That is not wrong necessarily, but we become a victim of 
imports.
  We need an energy policy. We have not had an energy policy over the 
last number of years. The policies are fairly broad, and they are 
implemented in more detail, but it is my view that we need a policy for 
energy. It ought to be one that encourages domestic production, and 
there are many ways to do that. Some, I suppose, will be by way of 
taxes. I am not as excited about that as I am the opportunity to 
encourage domestic production.
  I spent last week in Wyoming. Wyoming is one of the large energy 
producers in this country. We have an opportunity to increase our gas 
production--we are doing that now--and we have an opportunity to 
increase oil production. We are the largest producer of coal in the 
Nation. Coal is a basic resource but can even be better as we do 
research. Domestic production is one part of a basic policy.
  Research: We need to continue research. One area is to make coal 
cleaner and to enrich coal so we get more Btu's out of coal and bring 
the transportation costs down.
  We want to do more with air quality, and we can. In almost any 
instance, it is fair to say when you have large electric generators, up 
in the 1,500-megawatt area, coal is the most efficient producer of 
energy, and we need to research that.
  We need diversity of energy sources. I am a great supporter of 
natural gas, but we find ourselves overly dependent on natural gas. 
Natural gas is a flexible fuel that can be used not only for stationary 
generation but also can be used for many other things.
  I hope we will have some diversity, that we will have hydro, coal, 
and oil. We ought to also be working on diversity of renewable energy. 
We can do more in renewables than we have in the past, and that ought 
to be part of our basic policy.
  Transportation: Energy has to be moved. We see the problem in 
California. Part of the problem is the unwillingness or the inability, 
at least the absence of transmission lines and pipelines, to move 
energy. Some people don't like to see transmission lines. They won't 
see them because it will be dark. That is the choice we have to make. 
We need to do that. It is increasingly difficult to get the easements 
to do that.
  Conservation: Part of our policy ought to be the more efficient use 
of energy so that we can get more out of our energy and renewables, as 
I have mentioned. Of course, one of our goals, one of our missions, 
ought to be a reasonable price for the consumers. We have seen that 
change in the last several months. That is not something we want to 
continue.
  We ought to be looking at defense, education, and energy. Medicare is 
very important to health care. It needs to be revised. There have been 
a number of efforts to do that. We have not completed those efforts. We 
need to include some aspect of pharmaceuticals.
  What do we want to see in the future? I happen to be cochairman of 
the conference on rural health care in our caucus. Rural health care is 
a little different from health care in the large cities. Not every 
little town in every State is going to have all kinds of medical care. 
They are not going to have specialists. We need an outreach so that all 
people in this country have access to health care. It needs to be done 
differently. We need telemedicine. We need to do a number of things. 
That is another goal we need to pursue and envision where we want to 
be.
  Social Security: If we do not do something with Social Security, 
these young people here, who now have 12.5 percent of their salaries 
withdrawn when they work, will not have benefits. We can change that. 
We are going to be talking about individual accounts that can be 
invested in the private sector, that can be invested in equities or 
bonds and can offer a much higher return so they will have benefits.
  I hope, rather than seeking to find a political item to work on for 
the election of 2002, we can take a longer look at these issues and say 
here is where we want to be and here is what it takes to do that. We 
have a great opportunity in terms of tax relief, our budget, our 
spending, and we have that opportunity now. I hope we take full 
advantage of it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

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