[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 17037-17038]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LITANY OF COMPLAINTS

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I 
will not take that much time, I am certain.
  I feel a need to respond to Senator Daschle's comments a few minutes 
ago.
  Before he leaves the Chamber, I want to say how much I appreciate, 
and the Senate appreciates, the Senator from Texas. He is going to be 
leaving this year. Maybe that is one of the reasons he is even more 
articulate than usual. He is saying what he really feels and thinks and 
is holding nothing back.
  As I have said before--and I mean it sincerely--I don't know what we 
will do without him. We are going to have to create another one, 
although I am not sure it is possible. On behalf of the taxpayers of 
this country, and even those who might disagree with him sometimes, I 
say to the Senator that I appreciate him very much. He has certainly 
become a legend in this institution. We thank him for all he has done 
and all we know he is going to do. We hope he is very successful and 
pays his fair share of the taxes, which we hope to cut as the years go 
by.
  Let me come back to what was said earlier. I think it was summed up 
in a headline this morning about the fact that Senator Daschle was 
going to make this speech. It says: ``Daschle to Attack Bush Fiscal 
Policies.'' Unfortunately, that is all it was. It was a litany of 
complaints, citing certain statistics or certain areas where there 
might be a concern.
  My first reaction is, even if you accept all of that as being a 
problem--and a lot of it is--what is your plan? What do you plan to do 
about it? What is the legislative agenda? What do you recommend we pass 
in the 3 weeks or so we have left here?
  The President has had an agenda. The President sent a budget here, 
but it was all foreordained that we would come to this point this year 
when we got no budget resolution on the floor and voted on. I asked, 
why did we not have a budget resolution? We had one for 27, 28 years in 
a row. Now, all of a sudden, we will not have one. I was told, it is 
too hard when the Senate is this closely divided. In 2001, when the 
Senate was divided 50/50, we wound up passing a budget resolution by a 
wide margin, including, I think, a dozen Democrats who voted with most, 
if not all, Republicans.
  So while every Senator has a right to point out concerns about the 
economy and the country, I think they ought to be in a position of 
saying, OK, what are you going to do about it? What is your plan or 
budget? At the time we had no budget agreement, I made note of the fact 
that we were going to have some sort of meltdown at the end of the 
fiscal year; we were not going to have endorsement mechanisms; it was 
going to be hard to get appropriations bills done because there was no 
common number agreed to on the total amount. That is what happened.
  The other thing that really bothers me is, not only is there no real 
plan from the Senate, in instance after instance the House passed good 
legislation and the Senate has not taken it up--over 50 bills. I am not 
talking about bills to create a ``watermelon recognition day''; I am 
talking about serious legislation, such as welfare reform. Surely we 
should have taken the next step to help people get off welfare, get 
training and education, and get what they need to get into a real job 
and pay taxes. That is the way you help the people and the economy. But 
welfare reform, the Senate is not going to act on that. We are still 
now working on homeland security.
  Part of what we need to do for our economy in America is to reassure 
people that we are going to be safe and we are going to have the 
protections they need at home. They need to know that life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness and the opportunity to make a decent 
living are going to be protected.
  We are into the third week. Senator Daschle filed cloture to cut off 
a filibuster. Who is filibustering? It is not this side. There have 
been not more than three substantive amendments that have been given an 
opportunity to even be considered. Yet homeland security is languishing 
here in the Senate.

[[Page 17038]]

Hopefully, we will get it done this week, or next week, or sometime, so 
we can get it before we go out.
  We have not made the tax cut permanent. We should do that. The 
ridiculousness of the uncertainty of not knowing whether the tax cuts 
are going to be applicable in the years to come--when I go around the 
country, people say: Explain this to me. How can you do such a thing, 
have a tax cut and not know for sure whether it is going to be in place 
down the road? We have not done that.
  Prescription drugs: We could have had an agreement if we had gotten a 
prescription drug measure together and debated it and voted on it in 
the Finance Committee. We could have reported out a bipartisan bill 
that would have come to the floor and would have passed. We could have 
a bill probably out of conference now that would help low-income 
elderly people who do need this help in the future.
  So in instance after instance, as Senator Gramm pointed out, the 
Senate has not produced any results. There has been no plan. We have 
done three appropriations bills. We are on the fourth one. Not one bill 
will go to the President by the end of the fiscal year. I know it is 
tough because, as majority leader, year after year I had to wrestle 
with the appropriations bills. We got them done; usually, one by one we 
got them through the process. In 1996, we actually got them all done, 
and I think we got them done very close to the end of the fiscal year. 
It was harder and harder after that.
  But how can you complain about what is happening in the economy when 
you have such uncertainty in the Government--what is going to be 
available for transportation, education, health and housing? That is 
all out there with no result.
  The only proposal I have heard from some Democrats as to what we 
should do to be helpful within the economy is to spend more--always add 
more money, no matter what the issue is. Whenever a proposal is made by 
the President or by Republicans, Democrats say: We will double you or 
triple you. They think that is the way you create jobs--more Government 
spending. The Government is what kills jobs in many instances because 
of the pressure of the tax burden, regulatory burdens, and all the 
other problems that come out of having these deficits.
  So their only proposal is: Let's spend more. And they tip-toe around 
it, but they cannot quite bring themselves to say what they want to do 
is stop the tax cuts; they want tax increases.
  We need to be giving more incentives for the economy to grow. Let me 
talk a bit about what has been done. I will show my colleagues the 
difference.
  It has been very difficult, but we have gotten some of the 
President's very important agenda through both the Senate and the House 
or into conference.
  One of the things we could do to help the economy and create more 
jobs is to have increasing trade. We need to open trade. We need to 
make sure our companies, our farmers, and ranchers have access to 
markets all over the world in a truly open and free trade arrangement. 
We did get that through, although I think it took us 7 weeks to get the 
trade bill done. It was a long stretch of time, once again, because of 
the way it was brought up.
  We also did get an energy bill through the Senate. It is still 
pending in conference. I think that took us about 4 weeks.
  We did pass effective tax relief to help Americans keep more of their 
money to buy what is needed for their children at the beginning of the 
school year. In fact, while I had my doubts about it at the time, the 
rebate that was included in the tax cuts in 2001 started hitting in 
August, September, and October when we were feeling the effects of not 
only a recession that started in 2000, but also the aftereffects of 
what happened on September 11. As that money got into consumers' hands, 
they continued to buy what was needed for their families, and they have 
been the strongest part of the economy during a critical time.
  We also had passed--and this is a case where it was bipartisan--tough 
corporate accountability legislation.
  There are some other issues we still could do in the waning hours of 
this session, but I think to just make speeches and be critical of 
fiscal policies without offering any alternatives is the height of what 
we should not be doing in the Senate.
  The emperor has no clothes, Mr. President. The leadership has not 
passed a budget. It has not passed appropriations bills. The Senate has 
not passed the prescription drug bill. We have not been able to get any 
traction on homeland security, and we have not even done pension 
reform. I would like people to know more about what they can count on 
with regard to putting money in IRAs or maybe taking money out of IRAs 
for education and what we are going to do in the future in terms of 
protecting 401(k)s and how stock options are going to be done. But that 
has not been brought up, and I am not sure it ever will be.
  We have the opportunity in the next 3 weeks to do what must be done 
for our country: We can pass the Defense and military construction 
appropriations bills to make sure our men and women have what they need 
to do the job to protect America at home and abroad. We can pass this 
homeland security bill, create this Department that will bring some 
focus to our homeland security, and we can help with economic security 
by controlling spending and by passing such bills out of conference as 
the energy bill. If we do not deal with the energy needs of this 
country for the future, if we do not have an energy policy and someday 
we have a real shortfall, that could have a quick negative effect on 
our economy.
  Those are the issues on which we can work in the next 3 weeks. Of 
course, we are going to need to stand up to our responsibilities and 
address the Iraq situation also. I think we will do that. We should 
focus on those issues we can do, where we can find agreement, and quit 
being critical without offering any alternatives.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. 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. BYRD. 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. BYRD. Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Morning business.

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