Floor Statements

Madam President, this next week we will be taking up the budget for fiscal year 2010. Anyone who previously had not been concerned about that debate and what it means for the country and its future probably should be concerned, based upon the most recent CBO report that came out on Friday of last week. It was sobering. It reinforces the point that we have been making about the outline we have seen of the President's budget; that is, this budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much.

We have spoken extensively about the new spending in the budget. We have talked at great length as well about some of the new taxes in the budget and how it will drive up taxes on small businesses, the largest job creator in the economy, the economic engine that creates two-thirds of the jobs in our economy.

We also want to talk about the fact that it borrows too much. The CBO report punctuates that point. I couldn't have put it more clearly than what they came out with last week, which suggests the initial estimates about the President's budget outline, which we received earlier, were dramatically understated and, in fact, it is going to add significantly more to the deficit than what we initially anticipated. In fact, in fiscal year 2009, which is the year in which we find ourselves right now, the CBO has revised its deficit estimate to where it is going to go over $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2009, which represents 13.1 percent--13.1 percent--of our gross domestic product, which dwarfs anything we have seen at any time in history.

So as we enter this debate next week, I think it really is important for all of us in this Chamber to take a good look at this analysis and to try to digest it and, hopefully, for the American people to be able to take a good look at what these numbers mean as well. It is sometimes difficult to even put it into terms people can understand. When I think about $1 trillion, it is a staggering amount of money. We are throwing around numbers in trillions and trillions and trillions today in the abstract. When you try to put it in terms that everyday Americans can understand, it is almost daunting to try to accomplish that.

So when this new report came out, I think many of us found it even more sobering than what we already knew was going to be a very difficult economic and fiscal climate for the next several years. In fact, the President's budget outline that had been analyzed up to this point suggested the debt was going to double in 5 years and triple in 10 years. That is still the case.

If you can believe this, the publicly held debt, in 2019, is going to be $17.3 trillion under the CBO's new estimate. It is about $5.8 trillion today. It literally does, in a 5-year period, double the debt and in a 10-year period triples the debt. It takes the publicly held debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, from where it is today--a historical average of about, if you look back, 20, 30, 40 percent, but let's say today we are looking at 40 percent, and that is a very high number relative to anything we have seen in history--it takes it up to over 80 percent by the end of that period. So you are looking at public debt and public deficits that are unparalleled and are unprecedented in American history. I think that is the whole point behind the argument we have made throughout the last several weeks in the lead-up to this budget discussion we are going to have next week: This budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much.

The taxing component is something many of my colleagues have spoken to already. But if you look at, again, the overall tax increases--which many are imposed. And they talk about that it just applies to high- income taxpayers. But you are talking about small businesses, many of which file or organize as subchapter S's or LLCs. So the income they get from their small business flows to their individual income tax statement, which means when these rates go up--and they are going to go up--the effective rates, to 40 and 42 percent, when today those same businesses would be paying 33 or 35 percent, they will be significant increases in the tax burden we are imposing. That is not to mention the new climate change initiative which is also contemplated in the President's budget, which imposes an entirely new energy tax on the American people, on the American consumers, creating all kinds of new costs for energy, whether it is electricity or fuels. There have been studies that have been done, very credible studies by researchers at MIT, that have suggested it is going to cost the average family in this country over 3,000 additional dollars per year in energy costs by the year 2015.

These are some pretty daunting numbers. But they come on the heels of a stimulus bill that was passed a few weeks back that was about $800 billion. When you add interest in it, it was about $1.2 trillion. That was a huge amount of money. When we try to put that in perspective relative to anytime in our Nation's history, it eclipsed anything we had seen previously. Then we had the Omnibus appropriations bill, which increased spending over the previous year by twice the rate of inflation--about 8.3 percent. Then you add the continuing resolution that was passed last year, which funded Government programs last year through March 6 of this year because that was a stopgap appropriations measure that was put in place because the appropriations bills had not been passed last year. Then we had the stimulus bill, which was, as I said, with interest, $1 trillion. Then we had the Omnibus appropriations bill, and with that a twice-the-rate-of-inflation increase. You add all those numbers together, and we have increased the size of Government this year by 49 percent--49 percent--from fiscal year 2008. I think that points to the fact, again, as to the amount of spending we are doing. It adds up because a lot of that, as I said before, is borrowed money, and it is contributing to these deficit numbers the CBO had just released.

So it would be my hope--and I know others are on the floor who are going to speak to this issue a little bit more in detail. I know the Budget Committee has analyzed the new CBO report. We are awaiting the markup of the budget this week in the Senate. We suspect it is probably going to follow somewhat closely the President's outline, his proposal, although my guess is there will be some differences. But if you take the overall trajectory it creates, it creates a trajectory over the next 10 years that calls for an average deficit--this is the average over the 10-year period--of almost $1 trillion. It is $929 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That is the average.

This year, it is $1.8 trillion. Next year, it is $1.4 trillion. It drops down to $670 or $650 billion, I think, for 1 year. But then it starts spiking and trending back up again, to where, over the course of the 10-year window--the budget analysis and planning that is

done here is done in a 10-year window. If you look at that 10-year window, the average deficit is $929 billion a year.

As I said, these are numbers that are staggering and unlike anything we have ever seen. It is hard to put into perspective what we are talking about relative to anytime in American history.

The other thing I will mention with regard to the stimulus bill as well--because I think there was an assumption that all this borrowing and all this spending would somehow lead to job creation and hopefully getting the economy expanding and growing again--what the CBO found in their analysis, again, was that in the long term the impact would be negligible or negative from the spending that was created in the stimulus bill. So not only were we getting no additive benefit in terms of job creation from the stimulus spending--or in the long term, at least--we are going to see negative, they think, or at least negligible, zero, economic growth as a result of it. We are adding $1 trillion to the amount we have borrowed from future generations, and we are asking our children and grandchildren to have to pay it back, not to mention what I am sure are going to be other types of economic consequences associated with that: higher interest rates, higher inflation. There is already a lot of discussion about that as we continue to borrow more and more money, whether there will be people out there who will want to buy our debt.

I believe those are all legitimate concerns and questions we need to raise in this debate, coupled with the fact that there is nothing done in this budget that would in any way significantly reduce the long-term costs associated with the entitlement programs and what is really driving, in the outyears, these deficits: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. There has been a lot of discussion in the new administration about a willingness to sit down and talk about how to reform and make these programs strong and better and more efficient for the future, but there is nothing in this budget that does that.

In fact, the only serious savings we can point to in the President's budget that they try to achieve come out of defense, come out of the military, come out of our national security, which I would argue: If we do not get national security right, the rest is conversation. But they are assuming savings as a result of drawing down troops in Iraq and places such as that, which I think they are overstating what they are going to be able to achieve in savings.

I would argue some of the other assumptions in the President's outline are optimistic with regard to revenues--and I think the CBO study bears that out--to the point now that even the Washington Post, yesterday, came out with an editorial that I think illustrates exactly how serious this fiscal situation is for our country, and drawing into question the fact that there is very little done in this budget that addresses those long-term fiscal problems I just mentioned in the entitlement programs.

There is nothing to reduce the cost of Government in the outyears, only things that are going to pile on additional costs and add and multiply over a long period of time. The incredible amount of borrowing we are already doing is going to be multiplied many times over into the future.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the editorial from the Washington Post be printed in the Record.

As to the stimulus bill, in and of itself, we are told, if the spending that is included there is not terminated at the end of the 2-year period--when we assume the short-term stimulus spending would terminate--if those programs are continued, the estimate of what they would cost goes from about $1 trillion to over $3 trillion over that 10-year period.

So there will be mountains and mountains and mountains of debt as far as the eye can see, complicated by an unwillingness by the new administration to take on any of the serious decisions that have to be made with regard to entitlement programs and mandatory spending in this budget, with lots of new programs created, as I said, new energy taxes under the guise of climate change, a new health care program that is estimated to cost around $600 billion but which many independent analysts are now saying is going to cost up to $1.5 trillion.

These are all costs that are adding up and continuing to lead to more and more borrowing, higher and higher deficits, to the point that this year 13.1 percent of GDP is the percentage and over $1.8 trillion is the actual number of the deficit. And that goes on now for years and years, and an average of $1 trillion a year just in deficits, to where the public debt, at the end of that 10-year period, will be $17.3 trillion. That is an incredible problem for our country and for future generations.

So it is high time we got it under control. It is why this budget is so wrong for America and for our future.

Madam President, I yield the remainder of my time.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Reserving the right to object, as of right now, Brown for 5? Coburn?

For 7 minutes.

We will work it out on our side.

Mr. President, if the leader would yield, I think the Senator

from Oklahoma will lay down his amendments, which would take up to a half an hour, 40 minutes. Whenever he concludes, I ask that I proceed.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 12 minutes.

Mr. President, the Senate will in a couple of weeks take up the fiscal year 2010 budget. It is a defining document. In many cases, the budget establishes a blueprint for the agenda, what is going to happen in the Congress.

We normally get a budget proposal from the President, and the Congress takes it up and acts on it. We have gotten that blueprint from the new administration. The Congress will, as I said, in a couple of weeks take up our version of that budget, put it into legislative form, and take action on it.

I think what most Republicans in the Senate are going to take issue with in this budget is the fact that it does spend too much, tax too much, and borrow too much. We believe the budget as proposed is going to be very harmful to the economy at a time when we ought to be looking at creating jobs. In fact, this budget could do the exact opposite. It could cost the economy a significant number of jobs because it is going to impose all kinds of new burdens on that economy.

The first point I would like to make with respect to the issue of spending too much--as I said, it spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much, but if we look at the amount of spending in the bill on the surface, discretionary spending would increase by $725 billion over 10 years. Mandatory spending would increase $1.2 trillion during the same period.

Total spending in this year's budget for fiscal year 2010 is $3.9 trillion or 28 percent of our gross domestic product. That means we would be spending more as a percentage of our gross domestic product than at any time since World War II.

That is a stunning and staggering fact when you think about it. At a time when a lot of Americans are being asked to tighten their belts in a difficult economy, this budget grows the size of Government by 9 percent for nondefense programs in fiscal year 2010, for a total of 20 percent growth in these programs since the year 2008.

There has been a lot of talk about revising the history of the past 8 years. But this budget spends more than the Bush budget every single year, and that is even after adjusting for inflation.

For those on the other side who have been critical of the overspending on the Republican side--and I don't deny the Republicans spent more than we should have when we were in control of this place, but this budget is staggering in terms of the amount of spending it includes--$3.9 trillion for fiscal year 2010, and, as I said, 28 percent of GDP, which would represent the highest level of share of GDP at any time in this Nation since World War II.

With respect to the issue of taxes--and as I said, it spends too much which, obviously, any person who looks

at this would agree with, but it also taxes too much. If you look at the taxes in the proposal, there is on the surface a whole lot of new revenue that is raised just by allowing previous tax policy to expire. We are going to see tax rates increase on people at the higher income levels.

The argument by the Democrats in the Senate has always been--and by the President, for that matter--that 95 percent of the people in the country are going to get tax cuts, and these new taxes on the economy are not going to impact that many people.

We are going to take issue with that because if you look at the total amount of new taxation--and when I say ``new,'' I am talking about net new taxes because that is independent of the tax relief. What they call the make work pay tax credit that is included in this bill does reduce the tax burden on some Americans by a certain amount. But the overall tax burden on the American economy is going to grow by $1.4 trillion.

Again, to put things in perspective, $1.4 trillion is equivalent to the annual GDP of Spain. We are going to raise taxes by $1.4 trillion in an economy that is in the middle of a recession.

Much has been made about the fact small businesses are going to be saddled with new taxes under this budget. There have been statistics thrown around. Make no mistake about it; if you are a small business with more than 20 employees and you are organized as a subchapter S corporation or an LLC and, therefore, the income you derive from that business flows through to your individual income statement, you are going to pay a higher level of taxes if you have a certain amount of income coming in.

So any company that makes $200,000 or $250,000 a year adjusted gross income because it flows through to the individual tax form, that individual could be facing much higher taxes. In fact, what has been determined through the analysis that has been done is that 60 to 80 percent of small businesses in this country will see their tax burdens go up because of the taxes included in this budget--$1.4 trillion in new taxes, which, as I said, is the equivalent of the annual GDP of Spain in the middle of a recession.

The other point I would make to those who say this is not going to impact average middle-income Americans is, if you look at the energy tax in this bill, I don't know how you can get around the fact that is going to hit everybody across the board.

The administration has said the revenue raised on the cap and trade-- we call it the energy tax component. It is going to be a tax on utilities because the utilities are going to pass this on. It is not going to be borne by the utilities. It will be passed on to consumers. The administration has indicated $646 billion or $650 billion in revenue will come in from this new cap-and-trade proposal or this new energy tax proposal. I would argue that based upon additional analysis that has been done, it will be significantly more revenue coming in from that, which means it is going to cost the economy significantly more as well.

I refer my colleagues to an MIT study that was done in 2007 where they looked at a proposal, the Boxer-Sanders proposal--S. 309, I believe it was--and made an assessment as to what that would cost the economy. Bear in mind the President, while he was a Senator, cosponsored that proposal, and his proposal for a cap-and-trade regime is modeled very much after that legislation.

What MIT found when they modeled this was that it would cost the average household in this country $3,128 in the year 2015 if this sort of cap-and-trade proposal were implemented and put into law.

As I said before, that assumes a much higher level of taxation, a much higher level of revenue coming in from this cap-and-trade proposal than does the President's budget.

I would argue that the President's budget dramatically underestimates the impact of the cap-and-trade proposal in terms of cost to the economy and the additional taxes that will be passed on, and that this represents a much more accurate review.

The Congressional Budget Office also has in their analysis concluded that by the year 2020, this could cost somewhere between $50 billion and $300 billion a year. The MIT study suggests it would cost more than $300 billion a year. I think as more and more analysis is done and more and more data is captured about this cap-and-trade proposal, we are going to find it is extremely more expensive than what has been anticipated and what has been assumed in the President's budget.

The energy tax piece of this is going to be passed on to everybody. If you are a middle-income taxpayer, a lower income taxpayer, or a small business, energy costs are going to go up. The argument has also been made the make work pay tax credit would offset that. That is true up to a point, but that is up to $400 for a single filer and $800 for a couple filing jointly and phased out so that people in the middle- income categories are still going to be faced with this significant energy tax that is paraded by the new cap-and-trade policy that is assumed in the President's budget. Not only does it directly raise taxes--the $1.4 trillion that I mentioned earlier which equals the annual GDP of Spain--the tax increase is going to be passed on to a lot of small businesses in this country. But there is this cap-and-trade tax, which is the secret job killer in this budget in terms of the enormous burden and cost it will impose on our economy, on small businesses, and on working families in this country.

As I said before, this budget spends too much, it taxes too much, and the other point I will make is that it borrows too much. If we look at the amount of borrowing that is entailed as a result of this budget and what it does to our national debt over time, again, the numbers are quite staggering.

This budget doubles--doubles, Mr. President--the public debt in 5 years and triples it in 10 years. The amount of borrowing that we are passing on to future generations is going to double in 5 years and triple in 10. Just to put this in perspective, this creates more debt. The President's budget creates more debt than was accumulated under every President in this country from George Washington through George Bush. In other words, from the inception of our country, from our very first President, George Washington, to George Bush, his Presidency included--a lot of people have criticized the previous administration for adding to the Federal debt. In fact, during the Bush administration, it was about $2.9 trillion that was added to the Federal debt. This is going to dwarf that by multitudes. It doubles the publicly held debt in 5 years and triples it in 10 years and accumulates more debt than was accumulated from the time of George Washington through the Presidency of George Bush.

That is a stunning amount of borrowing. We are getting to where even if the President's budget proposals and economic assumptions are accurate--and I would take issue with those--where the total amount of borrowing, the total amount of public debt is going to be about two- thirds of our GDP, those are numbers we have not seen at any time in this country since World War II.

There are incredible amounts of spending, incredible amounts of taxation, incredible amounts of borrowing, and lots of policy changes that we think are very bad for the country and very bad for our economy at a time when we need to be putting policies in place that will create jobs, stimulate the economy, and help expand it in a way that will make this country more prosperous and stronger for the future.

In the debate that will ensue in the next several weeks--and it will get underway in a couple of weeks--we are going to be making lots of arguments, as both sides will--those who are in favor of the President's budget proposal and those of us who are opposed to it-- about the substance of it. I hope when we focus on the substance of it, the American people will tune in because they ultimately are the ones who pay the costs.

For the taxpayers of this country who bear the burden and responsibility of financing the many new initiatives that are paraded in this, it does create a lot of new initiatives. It does away with guaranteed student loan lending, a program that has been very successful across this country and moves everything back into direct lending of the Federal Government. It, as I said, creates an entirely new energy program, a cap-and-trade program, which

is a tax. Let's call it what it is. It is going to impose an incredible cost on our economy, not to be borne by corporate America; it will be passed on to the American consumers. If the MIT study that was done a year ago is right, there will be $3,128 per household in this country to comply with the additional costs that will be imposed as a result of this new cap-and-trade proposal included in the President's budget.

It assumes some $600 billion for health care reform. We have not seen specifics and details about that, but we are concerned as well about the direction in which that may be headed. There are lots of reasons to be opposed to this budget. There are lots of things we could and should be doing to get this economy growing again, but clearly, raising taxes, spending more money here in Washington, DC, borrowing more from our children and grandchildren is not the way to go about this.

I wish I could say I was presenting the worst-case scenario. The numbers we are seeing here are probably optimistic. I think the President's economic assumptions with respect to inflation, unemployment, GDP growth, and all those sorts of things are overly optimistic. I think they have dramatically understated, as I said, the cost of the cap-and-trade proposal. They have understated savings that will be achieved by reductions in our military spending as a result of drawdowns in Iraq. I don't think that is going to be nearly what they assume it is going to be. I think the actual deficits and debt that are going to come as a result of this budget proposal that the President is putting in front of us is going to be way beyond anything we are even contemplating now.

I have to say, what we are contemplating now is way beyond anything we have seen throughout our Nation's history. It is not fair to future generations for us to be saddling them with this enormous amount of debt. As I have pointed out before on the floor, we have had a tradition in this country of one generation sacrificing for another; one generation going without things so that future generations can have a better life. We have turned that ethic completely on its head with this budget by the amount of borrowing and spending that we are doing and in the amount of taxing. We are taking from future generations and asking them to sacrifice so we can have a better life today because we have not been willing or able to live within our means.

It is high time that Congress started taking the steps necessary to get this budget under control, to not buy into the spending spree. Since we have been here--and it has been a little over 50 days in this new Congress and the new administration--the level of spending is now at $1.2 trillion--$24 billion a day or $1 billion an hour that we have spent already--and that is before we even get to this fiscal year 2010 budget, which includes historic levels of spending, historic levels of taxation, the largest tax increase in American history, and historic levels of borrowing that asks future generations to make sacrifices which are not fair to ask of them.

It is our responsibility to live within our means. We can do that. We can put policies in place that will be additive in terms of creating jobs and growing our economy and making our country stronger. Going down this path is not going to do that. I hope as we debate this in the next couple of weeks that it will become clear to the American people who is standing up for the American taxpayer and what the costs are-- the actual costs--that we are asking not only them to bear but asking their children and grandchildren to bear.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 662, and make it pending.

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, 87 Members of the Senate voted to uphold our first amendment rights by supporting a statutory prohibition on the so-called fairness doctrine. The amendment was offered by Senator DeMint and was accepted as part of the DC voting rights bill which is currently awaiting consideration by the House of Representatives. I am concerned that once the House considers this bill, whenever that might occur, and the Senate and House versions are conferenced together, this provision will no longer be a part of the final DC voting rights bill.

I will say I am hopeful that the DeMint amendment is retained in the final version of the DC Voting Rights Act, but I am fearful it will be stripped out behind closed doors when the conference committee gets underway.

So I filed an amendment to the Omnibus appropriations bill that would prohibit the FCC from using any funds to reinstate the fairness doctrine during the current fiscal year.

If this amendment is accepted to the omnibus bill, then the 87 Senators who supported this prohibition last week will have assurances that the fairness doctrine will not be reinstated for the remainder of this year regardless of whether the DeMint amendment remains part of the DC Voting Rights Act.

I would also like to remind my colleagues a similar provision was included as part of the fiscal year 2008 Omnibus appropriations bill, section 621, that was enacted into law last year. However, that language was not included as part of the fiscal year 2009 Omnibus appropriations bill.

Now, one of the arguments that has been made against this amendment from my colleagues on the other side is, well, this issue is not that important. Nobody really cares about it. It is not going to happen.

If that is the case, then why is it that the prohibition on funding to reinstate the fairness doctrine was stripped out of this bill after it had been included in the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill?

The so-called fairness doctrine has a long and infamous history in our country. The FCC promulgated the fairness doctrine in 1949 to ensure the contrasting viewpoints would be presented on radio and television. In 1985, the FCC began repealing the doctrine after concluding that it actually had the opposite effect.

They concluded then what we still know today, and that is the fairness doctrine resulted in broadcasters limiting coverage of controversial issues of public importance.

Now, recently, many on the left have advocated reinstating the doctrine. They argue that broadcasters, including talk radio, should present both sides of any issue because they use the public airwaves. However, recent calls to reinstate the fairness doctrine failed to take into account several considerations, which I will mention in just a moment. But in the event that there would be any question about whether there are those out there who would like to see this happen--because that has been one of the arguments raised in the course of the debate, that nobody in here is very serious about really doing this--if you look at what the Speaker of the House said when she was asked: Do you personally support revival of the fairness doctrine? She said, ``Yes.''

The leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives recently said:

There is a real concern about the monopoly of information

and the skewering of information that the American public

gets.

First, as to the monopoly. Obviously if one group or a

large group controls information and only allows one

perspective to be presented, that is not good for democracy.

That is not good for the American public.

That is, of course, what the fairness doctrine is directed at. It can have great merit. Those are the two top Democrats in the House of Representatives, and those are statements made within the last year.

Then perhaps even more telling is what was said by a top staffer in the House. And it says:

Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage

for Republicans, and we have had to find a way to limit it.

I would submit that really is what this is all about. We have had Members on this side, in the Senate, on the other side of the aisle, who have made similar statements. Recently, on a radio program one of my colleagues on the other side was asked: Do you think there will be a push to reinstate the fairness doctrine? ``I don't know; I certainly hope so'' was the answer.

Do you support it? ``I do.''

I mean, would you want this radio station to have to change? ``I would. I would want this station and all stations to present a balanced perspective and different point of view.''

What we are talking about is a first amendment right. In reality, the fairness doctrine resulted in less, not more, broadcasting of issues that are important to the public because airing controversial issues subjected broadcasters to regulatory burdens and potentially severe liabilities. They simply made the rational choice not to air any such content at all.

Now, the number of radio and TV stations and development of newer broadcast media, such as cable and satellite TV and satellite radio, have grown dramatically in the past 50 years. In 1949, there were 51 television stations and about 2,500 radio stations in the entire United States.

In 1985, there were 1,200 television stations and 9,800 radio stations. Today, there are nearly 1,800 television stations and nearly 14,000 radio stations. There is simply no scarcity to justify content regulation such as the fairness doctrine.

The third point I will make is this: Development of new media, social networking, and access to the Internet has changed media forever. Supporters of government-mandated balance either ignore the new multiple sources of media or they reveal their true intention, which is to regulate content on all forms of communication and ultimately stifle certain viewpoints on certain media such as talk radio.

Fourth, broadcast content is driven by consumer demand. Consumers of media show whether they are being served well by broadcasters when they choose either to tune in or turn off the programming that is being offered. The fairness doctrine runs counter to individual choice and freedom to choose what we listen to or see on the air or read on the Internet.

The fairness doctrine should not be reinstated, and 2 weeks ago the Senate acted in a strong bipartisan manner in opposition to the fairness doctrine. I am asking the Senate to agree to my amendment because it simply prohibits any funding from being used to reinstate the fairness doctrine just as we included as part of last year's Omnibus appropriations bill.

Adoption of my amendment would ensure that our first amendment rights are protected and that consumers have the freedom to choose what they see and hear over our airwaves. This amendment ensures that the Federal Communications Commission does not use any resources to reinstate the fairness doctrine through the end of the fiscal year until a more permanent solution can be reached through a statutory prohibition.

As I said, 2 weeks ago, the Senate adopted this by a vote of 87 to 11. There were 87 Senators in the Senate who agreed to language that was contained in the DeMint amendment to the DC Voting Rights Act.

Similar language prohibiting the FCC from reinstating the fairness doctrine again, as I said earlier, was contained in last year's Omnibus appropriations bill. The administration of President Obama is on record opposing efforts to reinstate the fairness doctrine. It makes sense, in my judgment, that we echo all of those statements and the vote that was made by the Senate a couple of weeks ago by including a prohibition on funding for the FCC to reinstate the fairness doctrine.

Again, we do not know what is going to happen in the DC Voting Rights Act, whether this provision is going to be stripped out, whether the DeMint amendment is going to be stripped out. So it is important, in my view, that we reinforce the vote by making a strong statement, at least for this fiscal year's funding, that funding in the FCC cannot and will not be used to reinstate the fairness doctrine.

There is no reason for the Senate not to vote for this language. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this amendment and putting us on record when it comes to the funding that would be used to reinstate the fairness doctrine that this appropriations bill will not do that.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, amendment No. 662 is simply a prohibition on funding being used to implement the fairness doctrine.

A couple of weeks ago, the Senate had a vote, and 87 Members of the Senate voted for a statutory prohibition on reinstating the fairness doctrine. In fact, the appropriations bill last year included similar language to what I am proposing in my amendment that would prohibit the FCC from using funds, appropriating funds to implement the fairness doctrine. So it is consistent with what the appropriations bill included last year. It was not included in this year's bill. All this simply does is makes it consistent with what we did in last year's appropriations bill.

Furthermore, the legislation that was actually passed by the Senate 2 weeks ago, the DC voting rights bill, my hope is the prohibition on implementing the fairness doctrine will stay in that legislation, but I have a fear that when it gets to conference with the House, it might be stripped out. This is yet another way of ensuring that funds will not be used to implement this very bad idea.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, today I recognize Vermillion, SD. The city of Vermillion will commemorate the 150th anniversary of its founding this year.

Located in Clay County, Vermillion was founded in 1859 on the banks of the Vermillion River. Originally settled by French fur traders, Vermillion's name was translated from its native title Wase Wakpala, which means red stream. The city is home to the University of South Dakota, the State's oldest institution of higher education, which was founded in 1862. Since its establishment 150 years ago, the community of Vermillion has served as a strong example of South Dakota values and traditions and I am confident it will continue to prosper.

I would like to offer my congratulations to the citizens of Vermillion on this milestone anniversary and wish

them continued prosperity in the years to come.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 635, as Modified

Mr. President, I have made no secret of the fact that the appropriations bill we have in front of us today is one that I think is way too large relative to what we should be doing in light of the fact that 2 weeks ago we passed a $1 trillion stimulus bill which will fund many of the same programs that are funded under this appropriations bill.

This appropriations bill creates an increase of 8.3 percent in funding over last year's appropriated level, which is the largest increased appropriation, year over year, that we have seen since the Carter administration. In fact, an 8.3-percent increase represents more than twice the rate of inflation.

Most Americans and families today are trying to survive and live at a time when they are dealing with diminishing revenue coming into their households and certainly are not getting an increase that is the same as the rate of inflation. We have an appropriations bill in front of us today that is more than twice the rate of inflation. So I would daresay the Federal Government is certainly not leading by example when it comes to tightening our belts. I think when American families are struggling to make ends meet and tightening their belts, it is important that we also do the same thing, and this appropriations bill is anything but that. The 8.3-percent increase, as I said, is more than twice the rate of inflation and represents the largest year-over-year increase in appropriations since the Carter administration.

Having said that, I expect at the end of the day it is probably going to pass in the Senate. What we have tried to do as we have debated it is make improvements in it and address different priorities all of us bring to this debate.

I have one in particular that I think needs to be adopted, an amendment that needs to be adopted. It is filed, it is pending at the desk, and hopefully we will have a vote on it later today. What it does is reduce discretionary spending throughout the bill by $400 million, which equals the fiscal year 2009 authorized amount from PEPFAR.

Now, PEPFAR was an emergency--well, the PEPFAR itself was the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/ AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act, which passed last year. But the Emergency Fund for Indian Safety and Health was established as part of that legislation. It was an authorization. And of the $50 billion that was authorized in the so-called PEPFAR bill, $2 billion of that was set aside to address what are very urgent needs on America's Indian reservations, the argument being that there are needs that are great abroad, other places around the world, but we have some very urgent and pressing needs right here at home. So the $2 billion authorization was a 5-year authorization, which would represent $400 million each year, and what my amendment would do is simply fund at $400 million that first-year level of authorization that was created by the PEPFAR legislation we passed last fall.

In order to do that, because there wasn't any funding for the emergency fund for Indian safety and health in the underlying bill, we have to find the money somewhere else. What my amendment does, very simply, is reduce by one-tenth of 1 percent each program funded in the bill. So bear in mind, you have an 8.3-percent increase over last year's appropriated level in the base bill. With my amendment, what you would do is reduce the 8.3-percent increase each of these programs would receive in this bill to 8.2 percent and take that one-tenth of 1 percent and distribute it into this emergency fund for Indian safety and health, which was created as part of the PEPFAR legislation that we passed last fall. It is done in a very straightforward way. It distributes money where it is needed most.

Keep in mind it doesn't do anything to the significant funding that was included for many of these same programs that received a portion of the stimulus bill funding we passed a couple of weeks ago.

Why is this important to people in Indian Country? There are a number of reasons because what that authorization did is, it allowed money, money that would come through appropriated funds later after it was authorized, to be used for three purposes: One is law enforcement, public safety; one is Indian Health Service and health care on reservations; the third one was water development. We separated those out in the bill and allocated a certain amount of funding to each of those particular categories.

The reason that is so important is because in many places, particularly on Indian reservations, these very basic needs many of us take for granted are not being met. Nationwide, 1 percent of the U.S. population doesn't have access to safe and adequate drinking water and sanitation needs. On Indian reservations, if you can believe this--I said 1 percent is the average across America. On the Nation's Indian reservations that number climbs to 11 percent, and in some parts of Indian Country, the worst parts in terms of not having access to some of these necessities that most people expect--water and sanitation services--that number climbs to 35 percent. Lack of reliable safe drinking water leads to high incidences of disease and infection. The Indian Health Service estimates for each $1 it spends on safe drinking water and sewage systems, it receives a twentyfold return in the form of health benefits.

The Indian Health Service estimates in order to provide all Native Americans with safe drinking water and sewage systems, they would need--this is the backlog--over $2.3 billion. What we are talking about represents a small amount of what the need is that exists out there, but that being said, we could go a long way, by enacting this amendment, toward meeting that need.

With respect to health care, nationally Native Americans are three times as likely to die from diabetes as compared to the rest of the population. An individual who is served by the Indian Health Service is 50 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population. An individual who is served by the Indian Health Service is 6.5 times more likely to suffer an alcohol-related death than the general population.

On the Oglala Sioux Reservation in my State of South Dakota, the average life expectancy for males is 56 years old. I want you to compare that with some other countries around the world. In Iraq, the average life expectancy for a male is 58. In Haiti, it is 59 years. In Ghana, the average life expectancy for a male is 60 years old--all higher than right here in America. On the Oglala Sioux Reservation in my home State of South Dakota, the average life expectancy for males is 56.

In South Dakota, between 2000 and 2005, Native American infants were more than twice as likely to die as nonnative infants. In South Dakota, a recent survey found that 13 percent of Native Americans suffer from diabetes. This is twice the rate of the general population, where only about 6 percent suffer from the same disease.

With respect to public safety, one out of every three Native American women will be raped in their lifetimes. According to a recent Department of Interior report, tribal jails are so grossly insufficient when it comes to cell space that only half of the offenders who should be incarcerated are being put in jail. That same report found that constructing or rehabilitating only those detention centers that are the most in need would cost $8.4 billion. Again, it is way more than what we are talking about here. But, certainly, what we could do today, in the form of this amendment, would be to put a downpayment on and begin to address what is a very serious need of adequate space for people who have committed crimes.

The South Dakota attorney general released a study at the end of last year on tribal criminal justice statistics. That study found that homicide rates on South Dakota reservations are almost 10 times higher than those found in the rest of South Dakota. Forcible rapes on South Dakota reservations

are seven times higher than those found in the rest of South Dakota. These are all things that statistically point to the very serious public safety needs that exist on America's Indian reservations today and point to the importance of us adopting the amendment I will put before the Senate and have a vote on later today.

These critical, unmet needs have consequences in the day-to-day operations for tribal courts and law enforcement. I talked about public safety, how that translates. You see all the statistics and data. That is stunning enough. But then you talk about how that actually impacts a lot of our reservations. I will give a couple examples.

At the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Court, a tribe that is a supporter of the amendment, on June 19, 2008, the tribal prosecutor scheduled to attend court proceedings that day did not appear at court. Alarmed, the tribal judge sent a court employee to the police department to ensure the prosecutor was not hurt in an accident. Once it was clear the prosecutor was not injured but instead did not show, all cases scheduled that day had to be dismissed because no replacement prosecutor was available. Cases that were dismissed that day included sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and DUIs.

At Standing Rock Reservation, another example, another reservation that borders or crosses the line in South Dakota and North Dakota--in early 2008, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation had six police officers to patrol a reservation that is geographically the size of Connecticut.

This meant during any given shift there was only one officer on duty to cover that entire area. One day the only dispatcher on the reservation was out sick. This left only one police officer to act both as a first responder and also as the dispatcher. Not only did this directly impact the officer's ability to patrol and respond to emergencies, it also prevented him from appearing in tribal court to testify at a criminal trial.

Later in the year I was able to work with my Senate colleagues in the Bureau of Indian Affairs to bring additional police officers to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation through Operation Dakota Peacekeeper. That operation, which was a success, was only possible because of the Bureau of Indian Affairs being able to dramatically increase the number of law enforcement officials on the reservation during what we referred to as the surge. This dramatic increase in officers was only possible because the Bureau had been given additional public safety and justice funds in 2008, something I would like to continue with my amendment.

The way these dollars would be used, if my amendment is accepted, also is spelled out in the amendment. It is actually spelled out in the statute, the authorization bill. But the $400 million would be distributed as follows: $200 million will go to congressionally approved water settlements; $150 million will go to public safety and justice; $74 million for detention facility construction, rehabilitation, and placement through the Department of Justice; $62 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs public safety and justice account which funds tribal police and tribal courts; $6 million for investigations and prosecution of crimes in Indian Country by the FBI and the U.S. attorneys; $6 million would go to the Department of Justice Office of Justice Program for Indian and Alaska Native Programs; $2 million for cross-deputization or other cooperative agreements between State, local, and tribal governments; $50 million to health care which would be divided as the Director of Indian Health Services determines between contract health services, construction and rehabilitation of Indian health facilities, and domestic and community sanitation facilities serving Indian tribes.

Passage of the original amendment to PEPFAR, which occurred last year, showed a commitment by the Senate on a bipartisan basis to address these domestic priorities that are faced by Native Americans in Indian Country. That was a bill that had, and the amendment I offered to that bill had, bipartisan cosponsorship. There were a number of people on both sides of the aisle who supported it. Vice President Biden was a supporter. Secretary of State Clinton was a cosponsor of the amendment. A number of colleagues have supported the effort we made to demonstrate a commitment to addressing these very serious needs, which I have alluded to that exist today in Indian Country.

What my amendment to the Omnibus appropriations bill before us does is ensures the underlying bill, the bill that we authorized, actually gets funded, and the dollars we committed are actually appropriated for the purpose of addressing these very serious needs.

I ask that when this comes to a vote, amendment No. 635, my colleagues support it in the same sort of bipartisan way we were able to support the underlying authorization that was approved last year. There is no greater need. The statistics in Indian Country, both in South Dakota and other reservations in other States, are dire. We, as the Senate, have a responsibility to address those needs, particularly at a time when we are already funding or going to pass a bill which increases spending in this appropriations bill by as much as it does.

One-tenth of 1 percent is all we are saying would be necessary to provide the $400 million that is necessary to fund this amendment and the important priorities it would serve.

I hope my colleagues will be able to support it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if I might respond to the remarks of the distinguished chairman, and I understand what I am doing here may create some technicality with regard to the budget rules, but we do this all the time, and we routinely waive the budget. The only reason it does is because it does take that one-tenth of 1 percent from across the entire nine appropriations bills as opposed to taking it out of one particular appropriations bill. What that does is attempts to distribute that reduction across the board so no one area is hurt in a significant way relative to the others.

But, again, I would simply point out--and I appreciate what the chairman said about these other areas in the budget, these programs being cut--bear in mind, this is an 8.3-percent increase, year over year, over last year's appropriated level in all these accounts. There is not any account in this appropriations bill that is receiving a cut. They are all receiving an increase.

The question is, Will it be an 8.3-percent increase or an 8.2-percent increase? What I am simply saying is,

you make it an 8.2-percent increase and use that one-tenth of 1 percent to fund a program this Congress, this Senate voted to authorize last year, specifically, for Indian health care, for water development, and for public safety on our reservations. Of course, there is funding in the underlying bill for some of these things, but none of which is adequate to address the need, which is precisely why so many of the reservations in my State have the high incidents of crime, the data they have in terms of the many areas I mentioned. When it comes to prosecutions, when it comes to detention facilities, when it comes to law enforcement personnel and officers, we are deficient in the responsibility we have.

So, again, it is not a question of whether all the programs that are funded in the bill are going to get an increase. They are all going to get an increase, a substantial increase. Under my amendment, it is simply an 8.2-percent increase as opposed to an 8.3-percent increase.

It seems to me, at least, the least we can do to honor the commitment we made by passing the emergency fund for Indian safety and health we passed last year is to provide funding for it.

So I appreciate the chairman's observations. I would simply ask my colleagues to look beyond whatever technicality may be raised with regard to where the one-tenth of 1 percent is coming from. It is coming from all nine appropriations bills across the board as opposed to from one particular area or account. But that, to me, seems to be the fair way in which to do this in a way that distributes that one-tenth of 1 percent reduction evenly. So I hope my colleagues will support the amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I move to waive the point of order the Senator raised under the Budget Act.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senator concludes her remarks on the other amendment, I have a couple minutes to respond.

Mr. President, if I might briefly respond to the Senator from California regarding my amendment that deals with Indian health, public safety, and water development.

I think it is important to remind everybody, first of all, that this bill we have in front of us and the appropriations bills that have been passed so far--three of them passed last year--nine of them are bundled into this bill--this bill was written behind closed doors. There wasn't any participation by Members, at least that I know of, on our side when it came to putting this together and offering amendments at the committee level. The only opportunity we have to offer amendments is when a bill comes to the floor of the Senate.

Now, it shouldn't come as any surprise to anybody here in the Chamber or anybody who is tuning in to what is going on here that that is what we do. We offer amendments. We determine priorities. We move money around within appropriations bills. To suggest for a minute that we shouldn't be offering amendments to move money from one part of this bill to another part of the bill, the fact is that nine appropriations bills have been bundled together and we are being asked to vote on $410 billion in spending at one time, and then we are being told we can't come down here and offer amendments. That is what we do. We have 100 Senators. All of them come to this Chamber with different priorities. I came down here and said I wanted to offer an amendment that took a one- tenth of 1 percent haircut across all nine appropriations bills, evenly distributed, to take $400 million and put it into a program that Congress authorized last fall but has not funded that would address the needs of Indian health care, public safety, and water development-- critical needs on Indian reservations.

I urge any of my colleagues who haven't visited a reservation to come to South Dakota and see what I am talking about. I mentioned it earlier. The average life expectancy for males on the Oglala Sioux Reservation in my home State of South Dakota is 56 years. It is 58 in Iraq, 59 in Haiti, and 60 in Ghana, all higher than right here in America. Between 2000 and 2005, Native American infants were more than twice as likely to die as non-native infants. I already mentioned the public safety statistics and the crime data that exist on our reservations because we don't have adequate law enforcement personnel, we don't have cops, we don't have prosecutors, we don't have jails, we don't have all the things that are necessary to keep our people safe on our reservations in South Dakota.

Here may be a budget technicality, a point of order that can be raised against my amendment which will require that we have to have 60 votes for my amendment, but all that means is instead of getting 51, we need 60. I can't imagine that we would not have an opportunity--nine appropriations bills being bundled together, brought to the floor of the Senate, $410 billion in spending--to come down here and offer amendments that move money around. That is what Senators do. That is what we do in the Senate.

I hope my colleagues will look past the point of order that is going to be raised and say: One-tenth of 1 percent in a bill that is being increased by 8.3 percent year over year; go for this important priority on Indian reservations across our country.

I hope my colleagues will vote for this amendment or vote to waive the point of order.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, lest there be any confusion, I filed this amendment on Monday and made it pending on Tuesday, and I spoke to it then. It is simple. Last July, the Senate, in the debate on the PEPFAR bill, voice voted an amendment to that bill that created a $2 billion, 5-year authorization for an emergency fund for Indian health and safety. All my amendment does is fund it, $400 million. It wasn't funded in the bill. I paid for it by taking a one-tenth of 1 percent across-the-board reduction in the entire bill to put the $400 million into this fund, which is necessary to fund this important program for Indian health and safety. That means the increase in the bill won't be 8.3 percent, it will be 8.2 percent. Contrary to what was stated, it increases Indian health care by $23 million. It was stated that it would reduce the health care account by a little over a million dollars. Congress authorized it last summer.

I hope my colleagues will vote to waive the budget.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, would the Senator yield?

I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor to the Senator's amendment.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I be able to call up amendment No. 635 and make it pending.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Let me explain very simply what this amendment does.

Last summer, President Bush signed into law a $50 billion foreign aid bill; HIV and AIDS was the purpose, the direction of the bill. Included as part of that PEPFAR bill was a $2 billion authorization that I and a bipartisan group of Senators worked on, including that redirected money to critical public safety, health care, and water needs in Indian Country. All of the Senators who worked on the amendment's inclusion in the final package, including now Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton, recognized there are great needs internationally, but they also realized we have equal or maybe even greater needs right here at home on our Nation's reservations.

The final PEPFAR bill created a $2 billion, 5-year authorization beginning in fiscal year 2009 for an emergency fund for Indian health and safety. Over the 5-year authorization, $750 million could be spent on public safety, $250 million on health care, and $1 billion for water settlements.

In order to ensure that the emergency fund for Indian health and safety was funded as quickly as possible, I and six of my colleagues sent a letter to President Bush last year asking that he include funding in the fiscal year 2010 budget for the emergency fund. Then we worked to get a total of 21 Senators to send a similar letter to President Obama on November 24, 2008. I believe this continued bipartisan effort underscores the support for addressing the needs that exist in Indian Country.

What the amendment does is seek to remedy this without raising the overall cost of the omnibus bill. It simply reduces discretionary spending throughout the bill by $400 million, the fiscal year 2009 authorized amount from PEPFAR, and redirects that money to the emergency fund for Indian safety and health. This amounts to less than one-tenth of 1 percent cut from each program funded in the omnibus bill.

Bear in mind the omnibus bill includes an overall funding increase of 8.3 percent over last year's appropriated level--that on top of the stimulus bill that passed earlier this year that, as we all know, poured billions of dollars into many of these Federal agencies. So what I am suggesting is we carve out one-tenth of 1 percent of the cost of this bill. As I said, take the overall increase in this year's bill from 8.3 percent over last year's appropriated amount to an 8.2-percent increase over last year's amount.

Since this appropriations bill was put together--I think it was put together in very short order behind closed doors, not to mention the fact that none of the nine appropriations bills were ever voted on in the Senate--I believe my amendment is a commonsense proposal that will ensure that we allocate tax dollars where they are needed the most.

The needs are great in Indian Country and I know many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would agree.

Nationwide 1 percent of the U.S. population does not have safe and adequate water for drinking and sanitation needs. On our Nation's reservations this number climbs to an average of 11 percent and in the worst parts of Indian Country to 35 percent.

This lack of reliable safe water leads to high incidences of disease and infection. The Indian Health Service has estimated that for each $1 it spends on safe drinking water and sewage systems it gets a twentyfold return in health benefits.

The Indian Health Service estimates that in order to provide all Native Americans with safe drinking water and sewage systems in their home they would need over $2.3 billion.

Nationally, Native Americans are three times as likely to die from diabetes compared to the rest of the population.

An individual that is served by Indian Health Service is 50 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

On the Oglala Sioux Reservation in my home State of South Dakota the average life expectancy for males is 56 years old. In Iraq it is 58, Haiti it is 59, and in Ghana it is 60, all higher than right here in America.

One out of every three Native American women will be raped in their lifetime.

According to a recent Department of the Interior report, tribal jails are so grossly insufficient when it comes to cell space, that only half of the offenders who should be incarcerated are being put in jail.

That same report found that constructing or rehabilitating only those detention centers that are most in need will cost $8.4 billion.

The South Dakota attorney general released a study at the end of last year on tribal criminal justice statistics and found: homicide rates on South Dakota reservations are almost 10 times higher than those found in the rest of South Dakota and forcible rapes on South Dakota reservations are seven times higher than those found in the rest of South Dakota.

Clearly there are great needs in Indian County and my commonsense amendment would be a good step forward in addressing some of these needs because the emergency fund for Indian safety and health can be used for: detention and IHS facility construction, rehabilitation, and replacement; investigations and prosecutions of crimes in Indian Country; cross-deputization and other cooperative agreements between State or local governments and Indian tribes; IHS contract health care; and water supply projects approved by Congress.

Passage of my original amendment to PEPFAR clearly shows a commitment by the Senate to addressing domestic priorities for Native Americans.

I urge support for my amendment to fund this authorized emergency fund for fiscal year 2009.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that two amendments that I have filed at the desk to H.R. 1105 be called up and made pending.

Thank you, Mr. President. If I might speak to one or both of these amendments, one in particular right now that I would like to reference, let me start by saying that H.R. 1105, which is under consideration now by the Senate, is yet another voluminous document, not unlike the stimulus bill we considered a couple of weeks ago. This one actually is 1,122 pages long and represents over $400 billion of spending by our Government. The fact that it is this long and represents several hundred million dollars per page here of spending would suggest that it ought to be legislation that is given a lot of consideration in the Senate, on which many amendments can be offered and different points of

view expressed. It would appear that process is going to be short- circuited on this bill and that we are not going to have the opportunity to offer amendments to it.

With regard to the general bill itself, I would simply point out what a number of my colleagues already have; that is, this appropriations bill, although having passed a trillion-dollar stimulus bill a couple of weeks ago, still represents over an 8-percent increase over the previous year's level.

So 2009, fiscal year 2009, which we are currently in, this is work that did not get completed last year by September 30, which is the end of the fiscal year. So we passed a continuing resolution that expires on March 6; therefore, the reason we have to be before the Senate trying to pass nine appropriations bills that were not completed in the form of this 1,122-page Omnibus appropriations bill. But an 8.3-percent increase over the same nine appropriations bills that were passed last fiscal year, after having already passed over $1 trillion in the stimulus bill, much of which will be directed to the agencies that will receive the plussed-up funding under this bill. But over 8 percent is more than twice the rate of inflation. So having passed a trillion- dollar stimulus bill, we are now coming on the heels of that and taking up a piece of legislation that is going to increase Federal spending by over 8 percent over last year's spending level.

That would suggest that this is something we ought to take a little time with because many of the agencies that are funded under this appropriations bill already received huge infusions of new funding in the stimulus bill. The Labor, Health, and Human Services-Education bill, along with the stimulus bill, and the funding that is included in this bill, will receive a 99-percent increase in funding over last year. There is another appropriations account that will get a 150- percent increase over last year's appropriated level. These are gargantuan increases in funding.

It would seem to me that we ought to at least be able to bring this appropriations bill in at last year's level. There is going to be an amendment, perhaps one already offered by Senator McCain, to extend the continuing resolution which would save taxpayers over $32 billion because that would represent the 8.3-percent increase that is included in this bill on top of all the additional funding that many of these agencies are going to receive as a result of the stimulus bill.

I regret the fact that the majority is not going to allow us to offer amendments to this bill. It would appear they want to move this quickly. I can see the rationale for that, when you are spending this amount of money in this short of a time period. The more the American people have an opportunity to see what is in it, the more concerned and the more resistance would build and you would see a tremendous at-the- grassroots level movement to try and stop this kind of spending spree we have seen in Washington. I would hope the process will be opened whereby Members on both sides can offer amendments to this bill that can be considered and perhaps voted on and maybe even bring some fiscal sanity to it by getting us back into a form that actually would save the American taxpayers a significant amount of money, after we have just asked the American taxpayers and our children and grandchildren to fund a stimulus bill to the tune of over $1 trillion with interest and much more than that, over $3 trillion, if much of the spending in that bill is continued and not terminated in the 2-year period for which it was intended.

I wanted to speak to an amendment that I have filed at the desk and asked to have made pending, which was objected to by the majority-- again, an indication of how amendments are going to go on this piece of legislation. I offer this amendment because last week 87 Members of the Senate voted to uphold our first amendment rights by supporting a statutory prohibition of the so-called fairness doctrine. This amendment was accepted as part of the DC voting rights bill, which is currently awaiting action by the House of Representatives.

My concern is that once the House considers this bill, whenever it may be that the Senate and House versions get conferenced together, that provision will no longer be part of the final DC voting rights bill. I am hopeful the DeMint amendment is retained in the final version of the DC Voting Rights Act, but I am fearful it will be stripped out behind closed doors.

I filed an amendment at the desk to the Omnibus appropriations bill that would prohibit the FCC from using any funds to reinstate the fairness doctrine during the remainder of fiscal year 2009. If this amendment is accepted to the omnibus bill, the 87 Senators who last week supported this prohibition will have assurances that the fairness doctrine will not be reinstated for the remainder of this year, regardless of whether the DeMint amendment remains part of the DC voting rights legislation.

By way of background, many of my colleagues heard this discussion last week, but the so-called fairness doctrine has a long and infamous history. The FCC promulgated the fairness doctrine in 1949 to ensure that contrasting viewpoints would be presented on radio and television. In 1985, the FCC began repealing the doctrine after concluding that it actually had the opposite effect. They concluded then what we all know today: that the fairness doctrine resulted in broadcasters limiting coverage of controversial issues of public importance. Recently, many on the left have advocated reinstating the doctrine, arguing that broadcasters, including talk radio, should present both sides of any issue because they use the public airwaves. However, recent calls to reinstate the fairness doctrine fail to take into account several considerations.

The first is, in reality the fairness doctrine resulted in less, not more, broadcasting of issues of importance to the public. Because airing controversial issues subjected broadcasters to regulatory burdens and potentially severe liabilities, they simply made the rational choice not to air any such content at all.

Second, the number of radio and TV stations and the development of newer broadcast media such as cable and satellite TV and satellite radio have grown dramatically in the past 50 years. In 1949, there were 51 television and about 2,500 radio stations. In 1985, there were 1,200 television and 9,800 radio stations. Today there are nearly 1,800 television and nearly 14,000 radio stations. There is simply no scarcity to justify content regulation like the fairness doctrine.

The third observation is that the development of new media, social networking, and access to the Internet has changed media forever. Supporters of government-mandated balance either ignore the multiple new sources of media or reveal their true intention, which is to regulate content of all forms of communication and ultimately stifle certain viewpoints on certain media such as talk radio.

The fourth observation I would make is this: Broadcast content is driven by consumer demand. Consumers of media show whether they are being served well by broadcasters when they choose either to tune in or turn off the programming that is being offered. The fairness doctrine runs counter to individual choice and freedom to choose what we listen to or see on the air or read on the Internet. The fairness doctrine should not be reinstated.

Last week, the Senate acted in a strong bipartisan manner in opposition to the fairness doctrine. What I am asking the Senate to do is to consider one additional measure to ensure that our first amendment rights are protected and that consumers have the freedom to choose what they see and hear over our airwaves. This amendment ensures that the FCC does not use any resources to reinstate the fairness doctrine through the end of the fiscal year until a more permanent solution can be reached through a statutory prohibition.

It is a very straightforward amendment and one that follows along the lines of the debate held last week. I wish I was confident that the prohibition on reinstatement of the fairness doctrine that was included last week in the DC voting rights bill would be retained in the conference with the House. I have reason to believe that will be stripped out, and this is one additional way in which this body can weigh in and ensure that the fairness doctrine is not reinstated, not put back into effect, and that American consumers have the freedom to choose

what they want to see and what they want to hear over our airwaves.

I hope at some point I will be able to get it pending, to perhaps have a vote on it. It would be unfortunate on a bill of this consequence and magnitude, when, again, we are talking about 1,122 pages of this legislation, all of which is spending another $400-some billion--$410 billion or thereabouts in additional spending on top of the $1 trillion stimulus passed a couple weeks ago--that we would have an opportunity at least to offer amendments, to debate amendments, to get amendments voted on, and this is one that I would like to have a vote on. It would certainly be my sincere hope that the majority at some point would open the door to those of us on both sides who would like to have amendments voted on which, frankly, could improve the bill. There will be others that will be offered and, hopefully, considered which will get at the overall size and cost of the bill which, as an 8.3-percent increase over last year's appropriated level, last year's spending level, a $32 billion increase over last year's level, is an enormous amount of money in light of all the spending that is going on around here.

I might mention as well, that is the largest 1-year hike in annual appropriated spending since the Carter administration. What we are talking about is 8 percent, over 8 percent, more than twice the rate of inflation, but also the largest 1-year hike in annual appropriated spending since the Carter administration. That is, again, on the heels of $1 trillion spent a couple of weeks earlier, much of which was directed at these very same agencies of Government that will receive funding under this 1,122-page bill.

We need to open this process. We need to be able to offer amendments. We need to get amendments voted on. It would certainly be my hope that would be the case.

I have one other amendment which I will speak to perhaps tomorrow which would move some money from one account to another to fund something that was a very important priority the Congress established last year during the PEPFAR debate. I offered, along with Senators Dorgan and Kyl, Senator Clinton and a number of others, an amendment that carved a couple billion out of that $50 billion authorization for needs on Native American reservations; specifically directed to law enforcement, which is a security issue; to health care, which is something that is desperately lacking on many reservations; and at water development--all critical needs and all important priorities and things we ought to be concerned with.

I would move money from another account in this bill to actually provide funding for the authorization that Congress created as part of the PEPFAR bill a year ago. This ought to be a priority for the Congress. We are talking about spending this amount of money and funding all these various accounts and agencies. We certainly ought to find room to fund some of the priorities that were created as a result of the PEPFAR legislation.

I will be offering that amendment as well and will also be requesting that it be made pending and that we have an opportunity to vote on it. It would seem to me that many of the other amendments that Members on our side would like to offer, as well as Members on the other side would like to offer, ought to be able to be put before the Senate and voted upon in an attempt to try to make this bill stronger and better. We all have different ideas about how to make this a better bill. I hope the majority will allow us to do that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the leader yield for a question?

Mr. President, I will simply ask, through the Chair, if I might: The leader talked about being able to offer amendments. I have filed a couple amendments. Is there some point at which--you mentioned the one amendment you have an agreement on now that will be voted on tomorrow--where other amendments will be able to be made pending and voted on, that Members will be able to get their amendments actually--

I thank the Chair.

Through the Chair, I thank the leader for his answer. And I will be available. Mine are filed, and I would love to get them actually up.

Mr. President, I had filed an amendment and have pending at the desk amendment No. 579, which is a concealed carry amendment. I talked about it yesterday on the floor of the Senate. I would like to have had a vote on it and certainly believe it is something the Senate ought to consider. It is worth voting on.

My State of South Dakota is one of many States around the country that has concealed carry laws. What my amendment simply would have done is allowed those who have concealed carry permits in a particular State to have reciprocity with other States that have concealed carry laws, respectful of the laws of those other States, but it would have allowed people of this country under the second amendment to exercise the individual right to carry firearms insofar as they are adhering and following the laws of the State not only in which they reside but the State in which they would be carrying that firearm. That is something for which I think there is a lot of support.

I introduced a bill in the Senate. It has 19 cosponsors. As I said, I offered the amendment to this particular piece of legislation. My understanding is the other side does not want to vote on it. What I have tried to ascertain is whether the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy, would be willing to hold a hearing. He informs me he will do that. I will have a hearing on the bill itself.

With that understanding, Mr. President, my intention is to withdraw amendment No. 579 and hope that we will have an opportunity to consider it at some point at a future date.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment that is at the desk, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, my amendment is a very simple amendment. It allows individuals the right to carry a lawfully concealed firearm across State lines while at the same time respecting the laws of the host State. It is very similar to legislation I introduced earlier, a stand-alone bill, S. 371, which currently has 19 Senate cosponsors.

As I believe and the Supreme Court found last June, the second amendment of the Constitution provides law-abiding citizens have the right to possess firearms in order to defend themselves and their families. As such, I believe a State's border should not be a limit on this right. Today, there are 48 States that have laws permitting some form of concealed carry. While some States with concealed carry laws grant reciprocity to permit holders from other select States, what my amendment would do is eliminate the need for these laws by allowing an individual to carry a concealed firearm across State lines if they either have a valid permit or if under their State of residence they are legally entitled to do so.

After entering another State, the individual must respect the laws of the host State as they apply to conceal-and-carry permits, including the specific types of locations in which firearms may not be carried. Reliable empirical research shows that States with concealed carry laws enjoy significantly lower violent crime rates than those States that do not. For example, for every year a State has a concealed carry law, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

My amendment is relevant to this debate because it underscores the selective support that the District of Columbia has when it comes to individual rights such as the second amendment, and together with Senator Ensign's amendment will increase these rights. Specifically, anytime the word ``State'' is mentioned throughout my amendment, DC is also explicitly mentioned as well.

My amendment is a common-sense measure that will strengthen public safety throughout the Nation. And I would hope if the Senate is willing to pass the unconstitutional legislation that is before us--the underlying bill creating an additional Member of Congress within the District of Columbia--then the Senate should also be able and willing to pass amendments which are constitutional and protect each citizen's second amendment rights.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the moment of truth is almost here, the time when we will all have to cast our votes. I submit this is a sad day for our country, for the American taxpayer, and it is a sad day for future generations, who will be left paying for this trillion dollar spending bill.

The American people are hurting and they are demanding action. Unfortunately, Congress has failed the American people and lost an incredible opportunity to empower small business owners, fix our housing crisis, and turn our economy around. So many things could have been done with this legislation that could have meaningfully led to job creation and economic stimulus.

In the few short hours that the final bill has been available, it is clear that the Democratic leadership has turned a deaf ear to the American taxpayer.

The final spending bill still includes spending on wasteful Government projects that have outraged taxpayers across the country. The final bill includes: tax benefits for golf carts, electric motorcycles, and ATVs; $300 million for Federal employee company cars; $1 billion for ACORN-eligible block grants; $50 million for arts endowment; $165 million for fish hatcheries; $1 billion for the census.

Instead of mouse habitats, electric golf carts, and fish barriers, Congress should have focused on serious proposals to address the housing crisis and create jobs through small business tax relief.

There were a number of opportunities. I view this as the question of what could have been. A number of amendments that were offered last week would have addressed this crisis with respect to housing and job creation and getting the economy back on a path to a recovery. Senators McCain and Martinez and other Republican Senators offered an alternative proposal that would have cut wasteful Government spending and focused on targeted investments and tax relief.

This proposal was a well thought out and fiscally responsible proposal. It included a commonsense provision that would have cut off new spending after two consecutive quarters of economic growth greater than 2 percent of inflation-adjusted GDP.

The alternative plan would have invested about $45 billion in transportation infrastructure, $17 billion in defense facilities and resetting our combat forces. This targeted spending would have rehabilitated our military facilities and equipment while creating jobs over the next 9 months--important tax relief that would have put money back into the hands of average middle-income families in this country and incentives for small businesses to create jobs, hire employees, and purchase equipment.

What is unbelievable and, in my view, a major flaw in the Democratic stimulus bill is this simple fact: The bill we will be voting on spends $6 billion on Federal buildings and only $3 billion on small business tax relief. Small businesses create most of the jobs in our economy-- three-quarters to 80 percent of the jobs in this country. We ought to be figuring how can we get that economic engine going again so small businesses are making those investments. As I said before, this bill contains $6 billion for Federal buildings and only $3 billion for small business tax relief--a small, minuscule amount. One-third of 1 percent of the final stimulus bill is going to small business tax relief.

In terms of the way the bill breaks down, 27 percent of the entire almost trillion dollar bill is in tax relief in some form, or tax provisions. Many would argue that it was meaningful tax relief. There are a lot of better ways to deliver tax relief. The rest is in the area of spending. Forty-seven percent of that spending doesn't occur in 2009 or 2010. Only 11.3 percent will be spent in 2009, which means one thing--there is a lot of spending in the bill that cannot be characterized as stimulus. In other words, it is spending that will go on and on for years to come. What is remarkable about it--the late President Ronald Reagan once said that the closest thing to immortality on this planet is a Government program.

There is a letter out from the CBO in response to a question posed by a House Member regarding some spending in the bill: What would happen to the 20 most popular Government programs that are funded in this bill if, in fact, at the end of the 2 years the funding doesn't terminate? In other words, a lot of this spending will go on and on over time. What CBO found was the total cost of the bill, if those programs are expended--bear in mind that these are popular items on which it will be difficult to turn off the spigot. If the spending continues past that 2-year window, the cost of this explodes to $3.27 trillion. The interest alone is $744 billion. So it will be $3.27 trillion for much of the spending in this bill if it continues beyond the 2-year window.

As I said, according to CBO, only 47 percent of the spending part of the bill gets spent in 2009 and 2010. There are so many better ways this could have been done. We offered amendments last week. I mentioned the McCain amendment. I offered an alternative focused on tax relief for middle-income families and small businesses, which, according to the methodology developed by the President's own economist, Christina Romer, would have created twice as many jobs at half the cost--6.2 million jobs--and the cost of this amendment voted down last week was about $440 billion or, in rough terms, half of what we are looking at in the bill we are voting on today.

The last amendment I offered last week, toward the end of the debate, would have taken the total amount. I don't agree that we ought to spend this

amount of money. I think it is stealing from future generations. If we are going to do it, the question is, should Washington spend it or should the American people? I took the total amount and divided it by every tax filer in the country--182 million people who file a tax return in this country--and we could have given a rebate of $5,403 to a single filer and to a couple filing jointly, $10,486--if we take the total amount of the bill and divide it among the taxpayers in this country. I would be willing to bet that the American people would much rather have that check than have money going to Washington, DC, to spend on these new programs, many of which will create obligations and liabilities for generations to come.

I think we have missed a golden opportunity here. I think we have created a whole new realm of spending that will go on for some time into the future. It is not fair to our children and grandchildren. The Federal Government needs to learn to live within its means. I can tell you as somebody who comes from the prairies, when the prairie pioneers settled South Dakota and places such as that, they understood a basic principle or ethic, which was that they were going to have to sacrifice so their children and grandchildren and future generations could have a better life.

What we have done with this bill is turn that very ethic entirely on its head. What we are asking future generations to do is sacrifice by handing them a trillion dollar debt so that we here and now can have a better life, and we cannot live up to the obligations we have to pay our bills on time.

It is a sad day; it is unfortunate. This could have been much different. There could have been more input from our side. It is a bill heavy on spending, not only temporary but spending that will continue to go on for some time into the future and create obligations down the road. If this is correct and the CBO response in this letter is accurate, if these programs continue to be funded and don't terminate at the end of the 2-year period, there will be $3.27 trillion in liabilities that we are creating today by voting for this legislation. It is not fair to our children and grandchildren and to the future generations who will bear the cost of the fact that we cannot live within our means and cannot come up with a way to fund an economic recovery plan that creates jobs and helps stimulate the economy and gets this recovery underway in a fashion that is fiscally responsible.

I regret that I will be voting no on this bill. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to do the same.

I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Tennessee yielding and the comments of my colleague from Wyoming in focusing this debate where it should be, on things that are actually stimulus, that actually do create jobs in the economy, that actually do stimulate the economy and create growth and economic opportunity for more Americans.

I would say to my colleague from Tennessee that there are lots of things about this bill that do not meet that criteria, that do not meet that definition. You used the phrase ``timely, targeted, and temporary.'' I would argue that much of the substance of this bill is much different than that. In fact, it is slow, it is unfocused, and it is unending.

Again, we do not know exactly what is in it, unfortunately, because we have yet to see the bill. All we know is it is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 billion in face amount. When you add in the interest to that--some $350 billion--you are talking about almost $1.2 trillion in obligations we are handing off to future generations.

I think whenever you talk about that, you need to make sure you are understanding what you are getting for that amount of investment and what that means to future generations. For example, a lot of people do not realize or think about the debt we have today. The gross Federal debt is $10.7 trillion. Now, that means that every man, woman, and child in the United States owes approximately $35,000. That is their personal part of the Federal debt. CBO projects the fiscal year 2009 deficit to be $1.2 trillion before--before--any additional stimulus measures are considered. So when you start adding that in, the deficit as a percentage of our gross domestic product will be 10 percent, which is the highest level--the last time we saw that kind of a deficit-to- GDP ratio was back in 1945 when it was 8 percent. That is the amount of debt we are talking about.

I heard my colleague from Tennessee say before that this generation of

Americans will be the first generation of Americans who will not have the same standard of living as their parents. If you think about what we are doing, we are making matters much worse. We have a lot of young people out there who do not have a voice in this debate. I would characterize them as the ``silent generation'' who are not going to be heard. Somebody needs to be their voice in this debate too. Somebody needs to bring some rhyme or reason to what is happening here and hope we can get something reasonable passed through the Senate that is focused on job creation, that is temporary, that is targeted, that is timely--all the things we have talked about should be but this bill is not.

Yes, that is correct. We had an opportunity to vote on a number of alternatives. The McCain alternative, which you and I both supported, was one that, in my judgment, made a lot of sense because it got you about twice the effectiveness, twice the job creation, at half the cost.

It was focused, as you mentioned earlier, and as our colleague from Wyoming mentioned, on the central issue of housing, which is so critical to bringing our economy back on a pathway to recovery. It also focused on tax relief for middle-income Americans and for small businesses which are responsible for creating most of the jobs in this country. It had an appropriate focus on infrastructure, which many of us agree is an area that can create jobs. It also had a trigger in there, a hard trigger that said when you have two consecutive quarters of economic growth, the spending would cease or would terminate. In other words, when we start to get our way out of the recession, we would actually bring some fiscal responsibility to this debate.

What troubles me about where we are going with this particular bill right now is it does not have that. In fact, much of the spending in here is long term and extends well beyond the so-called period we are looking at in terms of getting some stimulus into the economy. Many of the commitments that are made, many of the obligations will be obligations we are going to experience for months and years to come. Much of the spending in the bill is on what we call mandatory spending; in other words, spending that will be factored into the baseline and that we are going to be responsible for going into the future.

Senator McCain's amendment would have addressed that issue. It would have brought some fiscal responsibility to this proposal. Unfortunately, it was defeated. But that being said, there are lots of things in here that still I think the average American, when they look at this, they will wonder: What is Washington doing, and why are they spending money on these sorts of things?

I am looking here at another proposal: $750 million for the replacement of the Social Security Administration's National Computer Center. Now, that is almost a billion dollars we are talking about, and you have to ask the question: What does this do to create jobs? How is it that this in any way stimulates anything other than perhaps some jobs in a government agency in Washington, DC? We have $2.5 billion to turn Federal buildings into green buildings; $1 billion for the U.S. Census; $850 million in new subsidies for Amtrak; $650 million in additional funds for digital TV conversion boxes; $645 million for new and repaired facilities at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; $448 million for the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security in Washington; $300 million for new cars for government workers; $228 million to the State Department for information technology upgrades; $125 million for the Washington, DC, sewer system; $20 million for the removal of fish barriers. These are all things that are included. I forgot this one: $3 million tax benefit for golf carts, electric motorcycles, and ATVs, provided they don't exceed 25 miles per hour. These are all things that are in this legislation, and I think it would be very hard to convince the majority of the American people these have anything to do with stimulus.

Furthermore, as the Senator from Tennessee has very appropriately pointed out on many occasions, with some of the spending in here, what the States are asking for in terms of assistance--because many of them have shortfalls in their budget. My State is an example of Medicaid now constituting a bigger portion of our State's budget. It was 15.83 percent of the State's budget in 2000, and in 2008 it was 23.33 percent of the budget--a dramatic increase. What we are talking about is sending a lot more money out there. I have heard the Senator from Tennessee talk about it as the States asking for a life raft, and we are sending them the yacht from Washington, DC--

--to do it, almost eight times the amount of money they would need just to cover additional enrollment due to the downturn. Eight times the amount the States would need to get that done is what we are going to be shipping out there and, as the Senator from Tennessee mentioned, borrowing from future generations and piling on to that $35,000 that every man, woman, and child in America already owes as their part or their share of the Federal debt.

This is a very bad direction, in my view, to be heading for the country. I think we have had some opportunities to improve the bill, to make it better. We have had some alternatives offered. The McCain alternative which the Senator mentioned was one that I think, again, was very well balanced, focused on housing and tax relief and infrastructure and had the kind of fiscal responsibility and discipline in it that makes sure a lot of the spending doesn't go on ad infinitum--forever.

So I would concur with the points and the arguments that have been made by my colleague from Tennessee and say that we ought to be thinking not just about today but about the next generation because we have always had a history in this country--for 200 years Americans have sacrificed to make the next generation's lives better, to create a better life for our children and grandchildren. We are asking our children and grandchildren to sacrifice for us. That is a reversal of 200 years of American history. For generation after generation after generation, we have attempted to build a better, brighter, more prosperous future for our children and grandchildren. What we are essentially asking them to do is to loan us $1 trillion to do these things--some of which I mentioned and that I think are just completely outside the realm of anything that fits within the mission of job creation or stimulating the economy--at enormous cost to them because it is going to pile additional debt on top of the $35,000 they already owe, their share of the Federal debt we have today.

So I hope in the end people will come to the realization that this is a mistake and that we will see the necessary votes to defeat it and perhaps go back to the drawing board and put something together that really does, in fact, address the fundamental problem we are facing in the country right now, to get the focus back on housing, to get the focus back on the American people and families and small businesses, and to make sure we are doing it in a fiscally responsible way.

Who controls the time, Mr. President?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use up to that amount of time.

Again, to my colleague from Tennessee, I thank him for his leadership on this issue and particularly for bringing to the forefront of the debate the housing issue which, as so many have mentioned already, really is an integral, essential part of the solution. If we don't deal with that, then I think we are not going to be able to lead our country out of the recession. I don't think anybody will dispute the fact that housing played a very important role in where we are today, and I think trying to recover is going to require a good amount of focus and attention on that issue which, in this bill, is very light. In fact, if you look at what is included in the bill--let me see--1 percent of the Senate bill goes toward fixing housing. Even the $15,000 new home buyer credit that was reportedly cut in half in the final version of the bill, I am told--and I don't know the answer to this because I have not seen the final bill, nor, I don't think, have any of us seen the details in it--that entire housing tax credit may, in fact, be gone which would eliminate any commitment to helping to repair that aspect of our economy--the housing sector of the economy-- which I think is going to be so important in helping us to recover.

So 1 percent of the Senate bill goes toward housing currently, 2.3 percent of the Senate bill goes toward small business tax relief, and, as I mentioned before, small businesses create two-thirds or three- fourths of all of the new jobs in our economy. It seems to me at least that ought to be a very proper and important focus of this legislation.

Of course, some of the alternatives we voted on last week, one of which was the McCain alternative which we referenced earlier, did include a significant amount of incentive for small businesses to invest and to create jobs. I offered a couple of tax amendments to a couple of alternatives to the bill which really did focus on tax relief for middle-income families and for small businesses. That, of course, was defeated as well.

I guess my point is, the bill as we have it in front of us is going to be very much oriented toward spending, and spending on government programs and spending which, in many cases, doesn't go away; that isn't temporary, that, in fact, makes obligations and commitments and liabilities well into the future. We talked about up to about $200 billion of funding in the bill being what we call mandatory spending; in other words, spending that is built into the baseline, that isn't temporary, and it is hard to see how that

fits into the definition of temporary, targeted, and timely, which was the criteria that was set out by the President and by the Democratic leadership in developing this bill in the first place.

The Senator from Tennessee, when he touched upon the amount of money his State of Tennessee will receive and what the State's need is--and I would repeat what I said earlier, that under this bill, we are not giving States what they have estimated their amount is to cover the increased Medicaid enrollment due to the economic downturn.

We are giving them--if you can believe this--almost eight times the amount of money they would need to cover additional enrollment due to the economic downturn. Why? States, of course, aren't going to refuse it. Which Governor out there will turn down additional resources? It is estimated that States would need about $11 billion in additional funding to cover enrollment-driven growth in State Medicaid Programs.

Under this bill, we provide $87 billion with absolutely no strings attached and no requirements that States get their own spending and fraud and abuse under control. I hope we have pointed out--and we will continue to point out--the ways in which the funding under this bill is being spent. Again, I mention some of the particular earmarks here, much of which go to Government agencies: $20 million for the removal of fish barriers; $300 million for new cars for Government workers; $645 million for new and repaired facilities at the NOAA; and $750 million for the new computer center for the Social Security Administration.

It is hard to argue that these things are stimulus. Perhaps they are needed and, in fact, perhaps ought to be debated, but it ought to be done in the regular order, handled through the normal annual appropriations process, not included in a bill that is being sold to the American people as stimulating the economy and creating jobs. There is little in here I can see that meets that definition.

I want to make a final point with regard to the whole issue of job creation, because the CBO, in a letter dated February 11, 2009, clearly describes the false economic theories behind this Government spending bill. The CBO letter encompasses the majority of the economists' views on this legislation. Specifically, the letter states that beyond the year 2014, this legislation is estimated to reduce gross domestic product by up to two-tenths of 1 percent. The reduction in GDP is therefore estimated to be reflected in lower wages, rather than lower employment. Workers will be less productive because the capital stock is smaller. The legislation's long-run impact on output also would depend on whether it permanently changed incentives to work or save. The legislation would not have any significant permanent effects on those incentives.

Those are quotes from the CBO letter that came out last week. Even the most optimistic CBO projection states that long-run GDP growth will increase by zero percent. Even the most optimistic projection is built on an assumption that all of the relevant investments, on average, would add as much to output as would a comparable amount of private investment.

The Government spending included in the House and Senate bills doesn't change GDP at all due to Government spending crowding out private investment.

Most of us would agree--I think most of us on this side would agree-- that we are much better served in terms of creating economic growth and jobs, in seeing that the jobs are created in the private sector, and that we are providing the necessary incentives for investments in new jobs. This bill is very light on the types of incentives that would lead small businesses to go out and invest and do the sorts of things that actually will create jobs and help us recover and build a better and more prosperous future for our children and grandchildren which, as I said earlier, in my view, is in serious jeopardy because of this legislation--primarily because of the enormous amount of borrowing it includes and how much it adds to the debt for every man, woman, and child in America, and $35,000 is that share of the debt. Under this bill, that would grow $2,700 per every man, woman, and child in America.

What we are doing to future generations is wrong, it is not fair to them. This Government needs to learn to live within its means. We need to think about building and sacrificing so that our children and grandchildren and future generations will have a brighter future. That is the way it has always been in this country. It is part of our culture and ethic that we work hard and sacrifice so that future generations can have a brighter and better future. This completely turns that whole history, that legacy, we have as a nation on its head by asking future generations to sacrifice for us. That is the wrong thing to do.

I hope we will reject this legislation and go back to the drawing board and do something that is effective and creates jobs and does work and will give the American taxpayer a good return on their investment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to take issue with something that was said on the Senate floor earlier about this being rushed and that Republicans are blocking this or slowing this down or delaying this bill. I have to take issue with that.

If you think about the enormity of what we are dealing with, we are talking about spending $1 trillion of our hard-working American tax dollars. We have been on this bill literally since

last Tuesday. So 4 days last week and today--it seems to me, at least by Washington standards, that is pretty much light speed for moving anything around here. So to suggest that somehow Republicans are blocking or delaying this bill is a complete misstatement of the facts with regard to anything historical in the Senate.

When you are dealing with big issues, when you are dealing with issues of consequence, the Senate typically takes a certain amount of time and considers amendments. We have had 26 rollcall votes on this bill, only 5 amendments have been accepted. Unfortunately, most of the amendments that have been voted on and been accepted are amendments that have added to the cost rather than reduced the cost. But the point simply is the 4 or 5 days of time in the Senate to spend $1 trillion. I said this before, but I will repeat it: $800 billion, which is the base amount of the bill, when you add in the interest costs of about $350 billion, it gets you up to almost $1.2 trillion. But I said this last week: Between the Revolutionary War and the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, we only, as a nation, borrowed, cumulatively, $800 billion. We are talking about borrowing $800 billion from future generations in this one piece of legislation.

This is historic. It is unprecedented. It is stunning in terms of the size and scope and scale, and it certainly ought to be given the consideration I think something of this consequence and magnitude to the American people deserves.

I think it could be said about this legislation: The more things change, the more they stay the same. I said before, when we saw this bill come over from the House, it was about $820 billion. It got added to in the Senate, got up to a little over $900 billion. Then this last week there was this big debate about we are going to be able to reduce its size; we are going to change some of the ways in which it is funded, make it more stimulative and more oriented toward job creation. But the reality is, in spite of all those statements to the contrary, we are faced with a bill today that is essentially larger than the bill that came to us from the House.

The so-called compromise, which was designed to cut extraneous wasteful spending from this bill, reduced the overall amounts in some specific categories, but it didn't eliminate the categories. We are now spending on the same types of wasteful nonstimulative items--we are just spending slightly less than we were going to under the original bill we had last week in front of us. In fact, compared, as I said, to the bloated House bill to which so many people across the country reacted negatively, we are actually spending more.

So the Senate bill, the so-called compromise, is actually not smaller but, rather, larger than the House bill.

Second, the same shotgun approach to funding programs that are not temporary and not targeted is being employed. So we continue to fund budget items that still reflect bad policy and bad precedent. We just do so a little less. Expansions of Medicaid, COBRA, the first ever foray by the Federal Government into school construction--they are all policy and precedent-setting changes from which it will be very hard to retreat.

Make no mistake about it, with this bill we start down a path to a bigger and more pervasive Federal role, thereby changing the traditional dynamic between the Federal Government and State and local government. I do not believe this is the bargain the American people thought they were getting.

Just where are we in this process, as we end up on the Senate floor this Monday afternoon? We still have a $800 billion bill, more than $800 billion. As I said earlier, it is larger than the House bill. The House bill came over at $820 billion. The Senate added to it, got it up close to $940 billion. It got cut back under the so-called compromise that emerged last week. But the compromise leaves us at a point where we are actually spending more, $827 billion, than the bill that originally came to us from the House, which was scored at $800 billion. Add in the interest: $1.2 trillion.

It really has not been reduced from the levels that most Americans found to be very disturbing about the House bill. In fact, the Senate bill is actually larger, not smaller, as I said before, than the House bill.

Second, it continues to be poorly targeted, spraying money at all kinds of programs, new and old, that have little hope of creating private sector jobs. We got the report from CBO last week which suggested, again, that there could be as few as 1.3 million jobs created from the previous Senate bill. My assumption, of course, is although this has been reduced--not by much--the overall job creation will be less under the so-called compromise than it was under the original bill introduced last week.

Third, it is not timely. Much of the job creation in here will take years, due to the number of new programs that are created which will require new bureaucracies to be stood up, regulations to be issued, and all the redtape that is attendant to the creation of new Government programs.

Fourth, it is not temporary. The mandatory funding in this bill will be added to the baseline, creating long-term spending programs and liabilities that are permanent. Let's not fool ourselves. Much of the spending in this bill is not going away.

Fifth, every penny is borrowed from future generations. There is no way we can get around what we are doing to our children and grandchildren. Not only are we handing them all this debt, according to CBO, passing this bill will cost us in GDP growth down the road, making it even harder for our children to experience the growth in the economy that will be necessary to retire this kind of debt, not to mention the inevitable increase in inflation and interest rates that come with greater Government borrowing.

Finally, lest there be any confusion about the magnitude of what we are doing, let's remember again what $1 trillion represents. As I said before, more than the total amount of borrowing between the Revolutionary War and the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. The debt service alone on that amount of money, that amount of borrowing, is almost $350 billion over a 10-year period. The deficit for this fiscal year alone will exceed 10 percent of our gross domestic product, a level we have not seen since World War II.

I was a business student years ago. When we did financial calculations, we used a Texas Instrument Business Analyst II calculator to do our financial calculations.

That calculator would be inadequate to today's debate. There was not enough room on the screen to accommodate the number of zeros we are talking about.

This is serious business. We better get it right. This bill misses the mark. It spends too much, and it does too little. We offered lots of amendments last week to make it better, all of which were rejected. But I submit there is a better way. This bill has the votes to pass. We know that based on the agreement that was reached. But it is not too late to put the brakes on and actually sit down and work on a true bipartisan basis on a solution that sticks with the mantle of fiscal responsibility and actually would create jobs.

I hope my colleagues will defeat this bill and avoid making a mistake for which our children and grandchildren will pay for generations to come.

We know there are other installations of borrowing that are coming. We know the debate that was going to occur in the House last week on the first ever $1 trillion Omnibus appropriations bill was delayed because they didn't want to get it conflicted with the other $1 trillion we are going to be spending for stimulus. So we have a $1 trillion bill coming, an appropriations bill coming, a $1 trillion stimulus. We know the announcement is going to be coming tomorrow from Secretary Geithner about what their intentions are with respect to market stabilization and additional liabilities the country will acquire as a result of that effort. As my colleague from North Dakota earlier today noted, there is the Bloomberg story today about the trillions and trillions of dollars which Americans are being put on the hook for in the future.

We have lots of additional liabilities, obligations, debt that is coming down the pike. It is going to affect our children and grandchildren for generations to come.

There was something said earlier about Republicans do not have any

ideas; they do not have any alternatives. We offered lots of amendments. I offered two substitutes last week----

That would have improved this bill dramatically. But this bill is the wrong way to go, and I urge my colleagues to reject it.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to use whatever time allotted to our side until the next Republican speaker arrives.

Madam President, I want to come back to the one point I neglected to make earlier or did not have the time to make in my remarks; that is, even though I made the point that the House bill when it came over was at a certain funding level, $820 billion, the Senate compromise is $827 billion, and that actually the compromise is more costly than was the bill that so many people complained about as being pork laden when it came over from the House. There are those who are saying this bill is going to get bigger in the conference committee when the House and Senate get together to work out their differences.

I want to note what one of the Senators from Michigan said recently, and that is: I expect there will be some significant improvements over the package that comes out of the Senate. He said: There would be a push for more spending on infrastructure, education, and aid to the States.

The President indicated recently: ``I will be honest with you, the Senate version cut a lot of education dollars. I would like to see some of this restored.''

We talk about cuts in this program as if we are actually cutting something that already exists. We are talking about $1 trillion in new spending, an unprecedented amount of spending that has not been authorized. It did not go through regular order. Now we are actually talking as if somehow because the Senate bill, although as large as it is, larger than the House bill, is smaller than it was relative to where it was a week ago, which was over $900 billion, that somehow that bill has been cut, and that when we go in conference we are going to restore some of this money.

So I guess the only point I would make is, as this bill makes its way through the legislative process, we are not talking about a bill that is going to be smaller, we are talking about a bill that is going to be increasingly larger. I suggest when it goes to the conference committee with the House of Representatives, that this will not--if it is at 820 in the House and at 827 in the Senate--you can bank on it, that is going to be the minimum--it is probably going to get significantly larger.

As I said before, we believe there is a much better way of doing this. First, there was a great comprehensive approach last week put forward by the Senator from Arizona, which many of us supported, which invested in infrastructure, which addressed the housing issue, which many of us believe is central to our ability to emerge from this crisis, and which also appropriately targeted a lot of the stimulus toward job creation in the form of tax relief for small businesses, which, frankly, create most of the jobs in our economy, at least a good share. Two-thirds to three-quarters of the jobs in our economy are created by small businesses.

It also directed a lot of that particular approach and package to tax relief for middle-income families, putting more money into their pockets and allowing them to get out and to spend and to take advantage of something that might benefit them more than some government program that is going to be funded in Washington, DC, from which they probably will derive very little benefit.

So this is not getting smaller, it is getting larger at every step in the process. There are better ideas and better alternatives out there. This has been proven, at least by the CBO, to have very, I think, questionable ability to create jobs and also to do more long-term damage to the economy down the road. In their study which came out last week, it suggested that if in fact this stimulus bill was enacted, it would lead to lower GDP growth in the outyears.

I see some of my colleagues have arrived.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as many of my colleagues have already noted, the jobs numbers today were very bleak and should cause great concern for all of us as we look at steps we can take to get this economy growing again. But that is why the CBO report that came out yesterday also is so troubling because it indicated the Democratic proposal, the stimulus plan before us, would create as few as 1.3 million jobs--as many as 3.9 million, to be fair, but as few as 1.3 million jobs. Well, a trillion dollars is a terrible price to pay for a bill that may create as few as 1.3 million jobs over, I might add, a 2- year period.

It also went on to say, the CBO report did, that it would reduce the GDP growth in the outyears. So not only does it create potentially a very small amount of jobs--1.3 million over a 2-year period--but it also diminishes the amount of GDP growth we would experience in later years.

Now, if it, in fact, does create only 1.3 million jobs, if this trillion dollar plan--again, all based on borrowing from future generations--does create as few as 1.3 million jobs, if you do the arithmetic on that, if you spend $1 trillion, and you only create a little over a million jobs, that is $800,000 per job. Try and think about how you can convince your constituents back in your home States about the need to spend $800,000 to create a single job.

I mentioned this yesterday, but I will repeat it again: For the people in my State of South Dakota, the average annual salary is about $30,000 per year. So to think about spending $800,000 to create a job is something that is going to be very hard to accept for a lot of people around this country, which is why I believe, and so many people around the country are rallying and saying, this is the wrong direction in which to head.

I happen to agree with that assessment, and I think there are some things that could be done that would make this process more fair in terms of including ideas that Republicans have to put forward but, more importantly, to get a product that is more effective--more effective-- at creating jobs at a lower cost.

Now, many of us have tried to improve this bill. I supported a McCain amendment yesterday, a comprehensive approach that is much better in terms of addressing the issue and much better focused in terms of job creation at about half the cost of the underlying bill, the majority bill we are debating today. So we tried to make this bill more focused and more fiscally responsible. I think putting the focus and the emphasis on job creation is the right place to be. But many of the efforts we have made to that end have failed. We have also offered amendments to cut much of the wasteful spending out of this bill, most of which have been defeated.

So what I have sort of concluded is, as much as we tried to make this a better bill by cutting wasteful spending,

by making the focus on job creation, by trying to reduce taxes on small businesses and middle-income taxpayers, which would get more money back into the economy, and emphasize less spending on Government programs in Washington, DC, where the bulk of this is committed, that is a much better approach, and many of our amendments have been focused in that direction. But, as I said, none have been accepted.

I have one more amendment I have filed and I hope to have an opportunity to call up. It is sort of a last-ditch effort to bring some reason to this whole debate. But what it essentially would do is take the total cost of the Democratic bill--about $900 billion without interest; $900 billion, when you add in the interest costs, as I said before, you get up to about $1.2 trillion or north of that, all of which is borrowed money, borrowed from future generations--but take that total amount of $900 billion and divide it by every tax filer in this country--anybody who files an income tax in this country--and basically write them a check.

Now, it is probably surprising to most of us here what you could do with that. But for an average individual filing a tax return in this country, you could write them a check for $5,143; for a couple filing jointly, $10,286.

Now, to be fair, I also wrote the amendment so anybody making more than $250,000 a year would not be eligible. I tried to make this so you cannot argue this is a tax cut for the rich. So anybody who makes more than $250,000 would not be eligible. All filers who have under $250,000 in taxable income would be eligible under this amendment. You could actually write a check to an individual filing for $5,143 dollars; and to a couple filing jointly, a check for $10,286.

I think that is a lot of money in most people's family incomes and it makes a lot more sense, in my judgment, than spending $900 billion on programs that many of us know will not work, creating new bureaucracies in Washington, DC, at a very high cost per job. As I said, if the CBO numbers are right on the low end--1.3 million new jobs--and you divide that, do the arithmetic on that, you are talking, in round numbers, about $800,000 per job. What kind of sense does that make?

It is pretty clear, in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of most of the American people, this is very misdirected in terms of the mission of this whole thing. The intention is great, but the substance of this particular piece of legislation is very flawed.

I would add one last thing; that is, we talk about economic models and analysis and methodology, but the President's own chief economic adviser put together a methodology about a year ago--a little over a year ago--that said for every dollar of tax cuts you get a multiplier of 2.2 percent increase in GDP. So if you cut taxes by a dollar, GDP increases by 2.2 times.

It seems to me, at least, that you can take that methodology--and it seems intuitive to most Americans--when you reduce their taxes, middle- income families' taxes and taxes on small businesses, which create the jobs in this country, you get a much better outcome in terms of GDP growth, in job creation, than sending a bunch of money into Government programs here in Washington, DC, many of which, I might add, are new programs that will not get up and be started for a very long time. There will be a tail on them. As a consequence, you will not see the result in the short period of time we are trying to target here--the temporary approach to this--that actually creates jobs and helps pull us out of the economic crisis we are in.

That is an amendment I have filed. It takes that total amount--$900 billion--breaks it down on a per-filer basis, and if you are an individual filing, you can get a check for $5,143, and if you are a couple filing jointly, you can get a check for $10,286.

But I wish to see us approach this in a different way. A lot of amendments, as I said, have been offered--some good alternatives. The McCain alternative we voted on yesterday makes a lot of sense to me. It does it at about half the cost, and is a lot more effective at creating jobs. That was defeated, as have been all the other amendments we have offered to make this more fiscally responsible, more focused, and more targeted on job creation.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana, the manager of this bill, for yielding and for the opportunity to offer this amendment.

As I have indicated, I will start by saying I am very uncomfortable with the notion of spending almost $1 trillion--over $1 trillion if you include interest--on this undertaking when, in my view, it is not timely, temporary, and targeted--as has been suggested should be the criteria for this legislation--but, rather, it is slow, unfocused, and unending. As a consequence of that, as I said, I am very concerned about the size of this and I am very concerned about the substance of it.

I don't believe we ought to spend this amount. I have supported amendments, including Senator McCain's amendment, that were significantly smaller in terms of the size, much more, in my judgment, fiscally responsible, much more targeted and focused on job creation, and doing the types of things I believe will help get the economy growing again. Unfortunately, those amendments--those amendments I have supported, and I have even offered a substitute of my own--have all failed.

I say that to preface my comments as I offer this amendment, to make the point that I am not in favor of or supportive of this size of spending and this size of borrowing from future generations in order to accomplish what, in my judgment, are very questionable job creation goals--frankly, I think based on the CBO study we saw yesterday, very questionable goals in terms of what this might achieve.

I have concluded, however, that with all the amendments that have been offered, many of which are amendments that in my view would reduce some of the wasteful spending in this bill, some of which would refocus it more toward tax relief, more toward infrastructure, and more toward housing--things I think are important in this debate--I have concluded that the way to perhaps shape this is to offer an amendment that, frankly, will clarify what the difference is in this debate. Because I think it all comes down to who spends this money: does Washington spend it or do the American people spend these dollars that are going to come in?

If we are going to commit to spending $936 billion, what my amendment essentially would do is to say that the $936 billion ought to be divided evenly among people who file income tax returns in this country. There are 182 million filers, all of whom would have a significant tax cut if you took a $936 billion pricetag and divided it up among those 182 million filers.

My amendment I think also illustrates the simplicity of this debate, because this is nine pages long. This amendment is nine pages long. The underlying bill is 735 pages long. It takes 735 pages, I would argue, to go through all the various types of spending programs that are created in this bill, many of which are new programs that are going to create liabilities and obligations for the taxpayers well beyond the so-called targeted period in which this assistance is designed to take effect. But my nine-page amendment basically spells out a clearer option that I think we ought to rally around.

Again, as I said before, it is very straightforward. If you are a taxpaying person in this country, if you are someone who files an income tax return--and there are 182 million filers in America--and you make less than $250,000--if you have $250,000 or less in terms of adjusted gross income--then you would be eligible for, if you are a single filer, $5,143 in terms of a tax cut or tax rebate in 2009. This would all spend out in 2009. If you are a married couple filing a joint return, you would get a tax cut totaling $10,286 in 2009.

One of the Democrat arguments for the $1 trillion stimulus is they believe the GDP will shrink by that amount in the near future, primarily because of a decrease in consumer spending, which accounts for approximately 70 percent

of gross domestic product. This amendment would inject $936 billion into the economy by the end of 2009 in the form of a recovery rebate for middle-class tax filers. These tax cuts total approximately 6 to 7 percent of our gross domestic product.

Consumers and taxpayers, not government bureaucrats, would determine how to spend this money. Consumers could decide to make a downpayment on a new home, purchase a new car, get ahead of day-to-day bills, or save and invest for the future. I suggest this is a far more efficient way of stimulating the economy relative to improving fish barriers or designing polar ice breakers or purchasing supercomputers for climate research.

One of the primary arguments my colleagues on the other side, I am sure, will make against this amendment is that most consumers decided to save their tax rebates in 2008 rather than spend the checks they received in the amount of $600 for a single filer and $1,200 for married filing jointly. Well, first, this economic recovery rebate is much larger, which increases the likelihood of a positive impact on consumer spending.

Second, with the advent of the financial crisis, we are at a very different situation relative to January 2008. Even if individuals choose to save half of this tax cut, that would mean a $450 billion infusion of capital into our banking system, which would also help stabilize our financial institutions, and that is a critical part of our economic recovery.

I believe the American people are tired of business as usual in Washington. I think the stimulus package we have before us is a perfect example of how Washington works. It is loaded with a lot of spending, in many cases, as I said before, spending on new programs and a lot of special interest spending. I hope my colleagues will listen to the American people, who I think are following this debate and are, frankly, outraged with the size of the stimulus plan and the notion that it is going to be spent on many of the things they find objectionable. I argue that the American people should be given the choice between a 9-page, very simple and straightforward approach to this, which puts money back in their pockets--in fact, a lot of money; $5,143 if you are a single filer and $10,286 if you are a married couple filing jointly--or a 735-page bill which includes spending for all kinds of things that in my view are not going to be successful when it comes to creating jobs or helping get this economy back on track.

That is the amendment. It is very straightforward. It is very simple. It takes $936 billion and divides it by 182 million tax filers. If they make under $250,000 year it gives them a tax rebate in the amount of $5,143 for a single filer, $10,286 for a married filer filing jointly, married couple filing jointly.

I yield the floor. I ask my colleagues to support the amendment.

Let me say, if I have not already, I ask it be pending. It was filed at the desk.

Will the Senator yield for a clarification?

I appreciate the question because I think that is one of the arguments that have been made against a lot of the tax amendments we have filed. This was drafted in a way so it is refundable, so all the Americans that you are talking about would also receive that benefit.

Just a couple of points, if I might. I appreciate the observations of the Senator from Montana regarding the amendment, but I do want

to make a couple of corrections. One, of course, is we did apply this in a way that it is refundable so everyone benefits from it. It is delivered in a very straightforward way. It doesn't matter where you are on the income scale, as long as you make under $250,000 a year. I might add, as well, people who make above that amount, I agree, probably are less likely to spend than are those who make under that amount. But this was capped. Eligibility for this refund is based upon how much you make. Your adjusted gross income has to be less than $250,000 a year. So it is not skewed toward the rich. It does skew toward those who are more likely to spend these dollars and put them back into the economy.

I still believe when you start talking about over $5,000 for a single person, over $10,000 for a couple, that is real money to most families, and I suggest a lot of that money is going to be spent. Granted, there will be some who will put it away and save it. As I said before, I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. We ought to encourage saving, and furthermore it will help get liquidity in the banking system. If they put half into the banks, that is $450 billion that will go into the banking system of our country.

Just with respect to the multiplier effect--there are lots of different analyses that have been done, spending versus tax relief. I draw, of course, on history. If you look back, in the 1960s under Kennedy, 1980s under Reagan, more recently under President Bush, the impact when you reduce the marginal income tax rate, when you reduce the taxes on investment and job creation, in most cases you get more revenue and not less, and you also get a better return in terms of jobs created. In fact, the President's own economist, Dr. Christina Romer, back in March of 2007 did a study that suggested for each dollar of tax cut, you get a 2.2 multiplier effect. In other words, for each percent of GDP that you reduce taxes, you get 2.2 times that in terms of economic growth.

So I simply say, again, when you are allowing American families to keep more of what they earn, and particularly when you start talking about the amounts that we are discussing here, and when you cap it at $250,000 for eligibility so it is not a tax cut for the high end, for the rich--it is for people who are actually more likely to need it, to be able to do all the things they have to do to keep their families going on a daily basis--and you also write it in such a way so that it is refundable so income-tax payers on the lower end of the income scale are also eligible for it, as the Senator from Montana noted, and it is true--it is a very simple approach if you are going to do this-- sometimes I think the simple approach is the best approach.

Arguably, 9 pages versus 735 is in the underlying bill. It is a small amount of ink and print by this city's standards. But it is a very straightforward approach which I think the American people will understand and appreciate because they are going to receive this, rather than having this money, all this money we are going to be borrowing from future generations, going into spending programs from which they may not derive any benefit.

I yield the floor.