[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2187-2189]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                STATE OF THE UNION AND WASTEFUL SPENDING

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to talk about two things this 
morning: No. 1, the President's State of the Union Address last night, 
and No. 2, Senator Gregg's proposal to reduce wasteful spending.
  I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Colorado, who has been 
a

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leader on renewable energy and energy independence. I want to point 
this out. The President last night did his job. It was a truly 
Presidential speech, in my opinion. I used to work in the White House, 
and a wise man there told me: Lamar, our job here on the White House 
staff is to consider everything that comes to the White House as 
important. We need to push those things out and reserve for the 
President those things which are truly Presidential.
  The President talked about truly Presidential issues last night, and 
he did what Presidents are supposed to do. He did not give us a laundry 
list. He talked about Iraq, terrorism, energy independence, and health 
care costs. He said: Pick up immigration and deal with it. He said 
reduce the budget in 5 years. He gave us a strategy in each case, he 
tried to persuade us that he is right, and then he handed the ball to 
us.
  We are independent of the President. We have a Democratic Congress, 
closely divided, and a Republican President, so I don't think we can 
criticize the President. I think we should applaud the President and 
say: Mr. President, you did your job. You identified the issues, you 
gave us a strategy, and you handed the ball to us.
  The biggest news last night, it seemed to me, was on energy 
independence and health care costs. Starting with energy independence, 
the President said let's set a goal to reduce our use of gasoline 20 
percent in 10 years. That is a big, serious proposal. This country uses 
25 percent of all the energy in the world. If we reduce our use of 
gasoline by 20 percent in 10 years, it will help clean the air, it will 
help reduce dependence on foreign oil, it will create a big market for 
agricultural products in this country to help create biodiesel 
alternative fuels, and it will force innovation in such things as 
electric batteries.
  The President's proposals will require a change in the so-called fuel 
efficiency CAFE standards. It will require these new technologies. It 
is a big step, and it is the kind of thing that Democrats as well as 
Republicans can take, improve, and pass. We don't need to be saying to 
the President: Mr. President, you walk the walk. He talked. Now it is 
up to us to act.
  The same with health care. His proposal on health care is a big, 
serious proposal. There is probably no subject Tennesseans talk to me 
about more in their daily lives than: How do I pay for my health care 
costs? The President had an answer last night. He said: For 80 percent 
of working Americans, I will give you an average of $3,600 in savings 
from your taxes which you can spend to buy yourself health care 
insurance. That means if you are a family of four, making $60,000 a 
year, you might have $4,000 or $5,000 in tax savings to use to pay for 
health care costs.
  Now, 20 percent of us would pay a little more for health care. Mine 
would go up. But 80 percent of all of us who work would get significant 
savings to pay for health care insurance. This would help us afford it. 
This would help more people who do not have it pay for it. This would 
help hospitals whose emergency rooms fill up with people who cannot pay 
for health care. It is a big, serious proposal.
  The President has done his job. It is up to us now to have a hearing, 
improve it, and enact it.
  I salute the President for doing his job last night with what I felt 
was a truly Presidential speech. Much of it was about Iraq. Iraq is 
being talked about today in many different bodies, but much of it is 
about what is happening at home. If we take up immigration and don't 
stop until we are finished, if we balance the budget in 5 years, if we 
reduce the amount of oil we are using by 20 percent in 10 years, if we 
give 80 percent of working Americans several thousand dollars to help 
pay for health care insurance, that will be a great big step forward. 
So it is up to us, now, to pick up the ball and run with it. He has 
handed it to us. Let's go. Let's talk about it. Let's do it. If we have 
a better idea, fine; if not, let's just pass his proposal.
  Second, I wish to speak for just a moment about the proposal of 
Senator Gregg that would give the President a new tool for cutting 
wasteful spending. I believe it should have been enacted with our 
reforms last week on lobby reform because it would help rein in 
wasteful spending and earmark abuse. But I commend Senator McConnell 
and Senator Gregg, and I thank Senator Reid for working it out so we 
can have a vote on this important amendment.
  We need to get our fiscal house in order. Yesterday, 25 of us 
attended a breakfast. The Chair and I were there. It wasn't a breakfast 
where we talked about how Democrats could beat Republicans and vice 
versa; we talked about how we can put our fiscal house in order. The 
Presiding Officer had some very good ideas to express, but the whole 40 
minutes was about the unsustainable growth of Federal spending here, 
especially in the entitlement area. There are several things we need to 
do about it, but this amendment by Senator Gregg is one. It is not the 
same thing as a line-item veto, but it goes in that direction.
  I would support amending the Constitution to give the President a 
line-item veto. I don't think that is in derogation of our authority to 
appropriate. The Supreme Court thinks it does that, so we have to 
respect that. But this is a little different way to let the President 
have a way of letting us take a second look at appropriations we passed 
which may not have been wise.
  Under current law, the President has the power, for example, to 
propose cuts in spending after appropriations bills have been passed by 
Congress. Then we can pass those cuts in the same form and send them 
back or we can ignore them. So the idea would be, under the Gregg 
amendment, that the President could submit four packages of rescission 
proposals each year. We couldn't ignore the proposals. We would have to 
vote on them in a short period of time, if any Member wanted us to. If 
the majority of the Senate and the House agreed with the President's 
recommendations for cutting spending, then the spending or targeted tax 
breaks would get cut and the money would be used to reduce the deficit. 
But if a simple majority of either House disagreed, then the cuts would 
not go into effect.
  It is pretty much the same amendment Senator Daschle and Senator Byrd 
offered in 1995, which was supported by 21 of my Democratic colleagues 
who are still serving in the Senate. It is not the same thing as the 
traditional line-item veto, but it is an opportunity to put the 
spotlight on wasteful spending.
  Senator Gregg went one step further to make his amendment more 
closely reflect the Daschle-Byrd proposal. Senator Gregg's amendment 
allows us in the Congress, if the President makes a rescission 
proposal, to strike out an individual part of his proposal. There are 
plenty of forces here in this city for increasing spending. There are 
not enough forces that push to reduce spending. The Gregg proposal 
would be one tool the President and the Congress can use to reduce 
spending.
  I know when I was Governor I had this authority and 43 Governors 
currently have the line-item veto. In Tennessee, it is not much of a 
line-item veto because the Governor's veto can be overridden by a 
majority of the legislature. But just because I had the veto and the 
fact that I might have used it, and occasionally did use it, helped me 
put the spotlight on wasteful spending and gave the legislature a 
chance to reconsider or think twice about what they might do.
  As a new member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I can assure 
my colleagues, I don't take lightly proposals to alter the Congress's 
power of the purse. For Congress to appropriate is as natural as for 
Johnny Cash to sing or for the President to nominate Supreme Court 
Justices. But I don't think this interferes with that because both the 
Senate and House must vote to adopt the President's proposed cuts; 
second, we can strike portions of his proposed cuts; and third, the 
power to do all this would sunset after 4 years, giving us in the 
Congress a chance to evaluate how well it is working.
  There are some other things I think we can do. A biennial budget 
would help. Passing a 2-year budget, so we can focus all of the first 
year on the

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budget and all the next year on oversight over programs to help them 
work better, avoid duplication, and get rid of some programs--all of 
that would help control spending. We also ought to have a commission on 
accountability and review of Federal agencies, which would help 
reorganize duplicative and unnecessary programs.
  I am honored to sponsor the Gregg second look at waste amendment 
because it gives the President and the Congress one tool to reduce 
wasteful spending at a time when we urgently need to do that and the 
country knows that.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand we are in morning business at 
this time?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.

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