Floor Statements

Mr. President, I understand I have 15 minutes under the prior order.

Mr. President, we are here to vote on the override of some portion of the farm bill which the President has vetoed. First, there is the great irony that the bill we are voting on isn't the bill that passed the Senate or the House. It is some element of that bill, other parts of the bill having not made it to the President. That sort of becomes an allegory for this entire exercise. This is a bill that really doesn't do the job it should, is incomplete in the sense that it fails the American taxpayer and consumer, and is misguided in that it spends a great deal of money, perverting the marketplace relative to the production of agricultural products. But we are here because of what was a bureaucratic snafu, I presume.

We all know the President's veto is going to be overridden, but the President was right to veto this bill. He was absolutely right. I said earlier--I know my colleagues take this in the sense of irony with which I make it, not in any personal way--this bill truly is a product of commissar politics, of the old approach that we saw years ago in countries that thought that they could have a top-down management of their farm production system.

I said in my earlier talk, where did all the economists who worked in the Soviet Union go, all those folks who sat behind desks and thought about 5-year plans and how to disconnect supply from demand and how to set arbitrary prices which caused the Soviet Union, a nation which was one of the great producers of agricultural products, to become basically a net importer of product? Where did all those economists go when the Soviet Union failed? It appears they moved to the Midwest and the South and developed our farm programs.

These programs have no relationship to the market or setting prices for commodities, which are basically totally out of tune with the market. They have no relationship to market forces. As a result, the American consumer ends up with a much higher bill and the short end of the stick.

Take sugar alone. Sugar prices in this bill are at least twice the world price for sugar. So the American consumer ends up getting hit for a much higher cost for any product that uses sugar. And just about any food commodity of any complexity uses sugar.

In addition, you have the huge effort to subsidize ethanol, which has driven up dramatically the price of corn and has the effect of basically creating an international incident in the area of food availability. We are hearing from numerous countries around the world that are finding they have shortages of other commodities because the American subsidization of ethanol has perverted the marketplace relative to the production of corn. That certainly is inappropriate. So the policy of this bill is not only an attack on the American consumer, it is basically bad policy for the world population just trying to make it through and avoid hunger.

In addition, this bill sets up all sorts of new programs, programs which make no sense on their face but which are in here because they have somebody who is protecting their initiatives, their ideas, their purposes. We have a new program for asparagus, a new program for chickpeas, an initiative for a National Sheep and Goat Industry Improvement Center, a new program that creates a stress management network for farmers. Then, according to the Washington Post--and I was not aware of this--there is the potential for a $16 billion boondoggle for agricultural products because of the new way that prices are set and payments are made, setting prices at their present high level, setting subsidy rates at their present high level under this new program called ACRE.

I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the editorial of today's Washington Post which does a much better job than I of explaining how outrageous this new subsidy is and how much it will cost the American consumer, $16 billion.

This bill has a lot of substantive problems. It probably will aggravate food consumption for nations around the world, their ability to produce product, and certainly dramatically increase the cost of product in the United States. It perverts the marketplace so a product that might be produced more efficiently would not be produced more efficiently. It spends a heck of a lot of money, $289 billion.

As we have seen, once again, it uses all sorts of budget gimmicks-- when it was originally passed, and it will have to be replaced, or parts of it will because of the bureaucratic snafu--to get around the rules of the Senate and the

House, for that matter, in the area of trying to discipline spending. There is $18 billion worth of budget gimmicks in this bill.

Then we just had a new budget avoidance exercise when the chairman of the Budget Committee declared that the new baseline under a new budget--this bill would have violated the original baseline, as was in that new budget--will now be adjusted so this bill would not violate that baseline--another exercise, unfortunately, in gaming the pay-go rules. The budget chairman has a right to do that, but it cannot be denied that is an effort to try to get around pay-go rules, as they should be applied under the budget we will be passing the week after next. So there is 18 billion dollars' worth of budget gimmicks in this bill; the worst, of course, the changing of years and the assumption that some program, which we know is going to continue, will terminate at an arbitrary date so that you can spend the money up to that date and claim there is no budget failure and, then, later on, adjust it, put the program back in place, and avoid the budget pay-go rules-- really inappropriate, to say the least, in the way this has been handled.

It is, of course, a bill that comes to the floor every 4 or 5 years. But the problem is, every 4 or 5 years the American consumer gets basically hit beside the head by this bill. Last time I spoke, I said they get hit beside the head with a lamb chop and they end up with a black eye the next day. As a result, I thought I would just stay away from that statement. But the fact is, the American consumer isn't doing very well under this bill. The American taxpayer is doing worse.

There is a claim that there is reform in this bill which is fairly specious on its face, considering all the new programs added to the bill, such as asparagus. One of the reforms they claim is that they are not going to pay farmers who have high incomes outrageous subsidies. Today you can get $2.5 million theoretically.

Well, unfortunately, the way the bill is structured, they say that, but that is not the way it works. Under this bill, a person with $500,000 of nonfarm income and $750,000 of farm income can still get the subsidy. If they are married, their spouse can have $500,000 of nonfarm income and $750,000 of farm income, so they end up basically with approximately the same amount of subsidy. Yet it is alleged this is some sort of major reform. It is not reform. It is simply an attempt to obfuscate the fact that these subsidies go to extremely wealthy people on products that should compete in the marketplace for a price and should not be subsidized in the manner in which this bill subsidizes.

Obviously, we are going to lose this vote because the way the farm bill is put together--and the American people should know this--one commodity goes to the next commodity and says: We will vote for your commodity, even though it is in my State and not in yours, as long as you will vote for my commodity which is in my State but not in yours. You go around the country and you pick up commodities. That is why asparagus has appeared here. Somebody in an asparagus district said: If you will cover asparagus and give us a new subsidy, you will get my vote for all the other subsidies in this bill.

That is the way it works. It is called log rolling. That is the historical term that comes out of the 1800s. But it is not the way to legislate. Certainly, it isn't a healthy way to legislate. It certainly takes the concept of using the market completely out of the exercise of developing a farm bill.

This farm bill runs counter to all the concepts of a free market society from which this country has benefited so dramatically and which we believe to be true and effective ways to produce product and control costs and to make product more cost-effective for the people who use it. Adam Smith was right; Karl Marx was wrong. Under this bill, one would think Karl Marx was right and Adam Smith was wrong. This is top down, let's manage the economy, let's set arbitrary prices that have no relationship to production, supply, or demand in place of going to a market where you use supply and demand to determine what will be produced.

I suppose if Patrick Henry were around today, his famous statement would have to be modified. He would have to say: Give me asparagus or give me death. That is what this bill has come down to.

We either get these farm subsidies and get the consumer rolled and the taxpayer rolled or we don't get anything around here.

As a practical matter, I, obviously, know I will lose this vote. The President knew he was going to lose this vote when he vetoed the bill. But he was absolutely right in doing so. It was the appropriate decision. It was the fiscally responsible decision. It was also a good decision from the standpoint of not only domestic policy but international policy, where we are seeing strains on production of commodities for the purposes of feeding people.

I regret we are going down this path one more time. We have been down it a few times in the past. But the simple fact is, the forces that support, for example, the sugar subsidy are too strong to be able to give the taxpayers a break.

I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

(Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries)

Mr. President, I also request to be added as a cosponsor.

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

Madam President, first, I thank the chairman of the committee, the Senator from North Dakota, for his generous comments and reciprocate by saying it is a pleasure to work with him. Obviously, we have disagreements or we wouldn't be in different parties. That is the purpose of democracy. You have disagreements and reach some conclusion that, hopefully, is constructive for all.

The budget, unfortunately, tends to be a uniquely partisan statement of a party's political positions. Therefore, it is more difficult to reach agreement, especially when the Congress has both Houses of the same party. But that doesn't mean you can't do it in a cordial and, hopefully, constructive way, have your disagreements, and make your points.

I appreciate that the Senator from North Dakota has always been cordial and professional and constructive, as has his staff, to say the least.

I don't want to start off with too much hat tipping to the Senator from North Dakota; I don't want to get carried away. Let me simply say this: It is important that the Congress have a budget. It is uniquely the Congress's responsibility to have a budget. Although the President's budget gets soundly beaten about the ears here, the President's budget is not a factor in the sense that it is part of the congressional budget process.

The congressional budget is uniquely an entity of the Congress. The Congress passes it. It does not go to the President for his signature. The elements of the budget which are most important, such as the allocations to the Appropriations Committee, such as reconciliation instructions, are uniquely the purpose of the Congress as a way of giving a blueprint and defining spending and tax revenues within the fiscal policy of the Congress.

The Congress retains, under the Constitution, the right to the purse strings, and the budget is an element of exercising that right. So although the

President sends up a budget under the Budget Act, that budget rarely, if ever, becomes law. I am not aware it has ever become law. It is simply a point for discussion. When you have a Democratic Congress and a Republican President, it tends to be discussed less other than in opposition by the Congress.

So this budget is totally the responsibility of the Democratic Congress. It is passed by the Democratic membership of the Congress, not by the Republican membership of this Congress, and the President's input is at the margins, to say the least. But it is important there be a budget. Even though I may strongly disagree with it, I do think it is the responsibility of the Congress to do a budget.

Thirdly, as a note of appreciation, I do thank the Senator from North Dakota for his insistence that reconciliation instructions not be included in the bill. Reconciliation is an extraordinarily strong hammer which is contained within the Budget Act which allows basically the Budget Committee to, hopefully, control the expansion of entitlement programs. Unfortunately, last year, it was used to expand Government, not to control the rate of expansion of Government, and that was a mistake, a serious mistake that undermined, in my opinion, the integrity of the act. I am glad we are not doing it this year, and I appreciate the Senator from North Dakota insisting on the Senate position on this issue.

To address the budget specifically, this budget, as it is brought forward by our colleagues, by the Democratic membership, is a ``back to the future'' budget. You hear Senator Obama say he wants change. Well, this is ``back to the future'' change. It is essentially a restatement of things which always happens under a Democratic Congress. It says: Yes, we can raise taxes and a lot of taxes. It says: Yes, we can increase spending and a lot of new spending. It says: Yes, we can run up the debt and a lot of new debt. It says: Yes, we will not address entitlements and the fact that entitlement spending is a major threat to our fiscal integrity.

It is a ``back to the future'' budget. The term ``tax and spend'' exists. It may be trite, but it exists because it is accurate. This budget has the largest increase in taxes in the history of the world. It has one of the largest increases in spending. It has a $500 billion increase in entitlement spending, a $200-plus billion increase in discretionary spending. The debt goes up $2 trillion under this budget. And it is on the watch of the other party. Those are policies of the other party that are being put in place, and they are not good policies. They are not healthy. They are not constructive for the American people.

The budget, as I outlined, has the largest increase in taxes in the history of this world, especially this country, and it has an impact on working Americans. You hear a great deal, especially from Senator Obama, who is the presumptive nominee now of the Democratic Party after last night, that he is going to raise taxes to pay for all his programmatic activity, but he is only going to raise it from the wealthy.

Well, this budget does not assume, to begin with, most of the proposals by Senator Obama to spend money, but it does assume a tax increase. It assumes a $1.2 trillion tax increase, and that tax increase cannot be paid for only by wealthy Americans. If you take the top tax rate in America, and you raise it back to the top tax rate under the Clinton years, which would be 39.5 percent, every year you will add $25 billion of new revenue to the Federal Government, assuming people do not try to avoid taxes and reduce their tax liability, which wealthy people tend to do because they get accountants to show them how to do that. Well, that does not come anywhere near covering the additional taxes which are proposed in this budget, the $1.2 trillion-- the $25 billion a year.

No, it is the families who are going to pay that. Forty-three million families in America will be hit under this budget, in the year 2011, with a tax increase of $2,300 or more. Those are working families, by the way. A family of four making $50,000 will have a $2,300 tax increase.

Seniors. Eighteen million seniors under this budget, in 2011, will see a $2,200 tax increase. Small businesses--the engine for economic activity, the engine for jobs in this country--27 million small businesses will see a $4,100 increase. There will be 7.8 million people brought onto the tax rolls who were taken off the tax rolls by President Bush. These are low-income individuals who no longer have to pay taxes as a result of the tax policies of the early 1980s. Those tax policies, by the way, worked. They worked. Yet there is tremendous opposition around here from the other side of the aisle to continuing those tax policies, as this budget points out.

The capital gains--I think we have a capital gains chart in the Chamber--the capital gains revenues during the last 4 years have jumped dramatically--dramatically--as a result of getting a capital gains rate which Americans feel is fair and are willing to pay. In fact, over $100 billion has been collected in the last 4 years from capital gains--$100 billion--more than was expected to be collected by the Congressional Budget Office.

Now, why is that? Why, when we cut the capital gains rate down to 15 percent, did we get more revenue? Well, as I have said before on the floor of the Senate, it is called human nature. If you say to somebody: We are going to give you a fair tax rate on your capital gains income, people will do things that generate capital gains. People do not necessarily have to do anything to generate capital gains. If you own a stock or you own a home or you own a small business and you feel the capital gains rate is too high, you would not want to sell that stock, home or small business because you would not want to pay all that money to the Government. But if the Government sets a fair capital gains rate--15 percent--then you say: All right, I will pay that tax in order to turn over that stock, in order to sell my business, in order to sell my home. I am willing to take that tax rate.

So people go out and they do things which generate economic activity. They generate capital gains. That generates revenue to the Federal Government. That is what has happened here. We have generated significant amounts of revenue we did not expect because people were willing to undertake activity which was taxable.

It has a second very positive effect, besides getting a lot of revenue in the Federal Government. A low capital gains rate--a reasonable capital gains rate--causes people to invest their money more productively. They go out and they take risks. Entrepreneurs take risks. Job creators take risks. Small businesses are started and jobs are created as a result of money being invested in a way that generates more jobs. It generates more activity, more entrepreneurship, more jobs.

This bill assumes the capital gains rate will be doubled. This bill assumes the rate on dividends may be more than doubled, depending on what your bracket is. This bill is a massive tax increase on working Americans and seniors. By the way, it is senior citizens who take the most advantage--and that is logical--of capital gains and dividend income. Most seniors have a fixed income. It is a dividend income. It usually comes from a pension they are getting or they invested in while they were in their working years or they have a home they sold, so they have a capital gains.

So the idea in this bill, which is to end the capital gains rate as it presently exists and raise it and to end the dividend rate as it presently exists and doubling it, that idea is going to disproportionately hit senior citizens. It is not going to raise the revenue that is projected in the bill because people are going to take tax-avoidance action.

But because of the way CBO scores things--it is static around here; there is no dynamic scoring--they claim this is going to raise all this revenue. It will not. But the fact is, those tax increases will slow this economy and damage working Americans and working families, as was shown by the prior chart. That is not fair.

Now, my colleague on the other side of the aisle will argue--and he argues all the time--that, no, we are not going to have a tax increase, even though the tax increase in the bill is the exact amount of money that CBO scores the ending of the capital gains rate and its increase and the ending of the dividend rate and its doubling--the exact amount of money that generates by CBO scoring.

So CBO at least is presuming, and the Democratic Party in setting forward this budget is taking advantage of, revenues that are expected to come from a significant increase in capital gains rates, dividend rates, and general rates. But we hear from the other side: Oh, we don't have to do that. We don't have to do that. They try to fudge this issue by claiming: We are going to collect this all from the tax gap.

As to the tax gap--the Senator from North Dakota probably went on for 15 minutes showing us buildings here and buildings there and subway systems here and subway systems there. Well, do you know something. We had testimony which totally rejects that. The Commissioner of the IRS came in and said: You couldn't possibly collect the type of dollars that are represented in this bill in tax increases from closing the tax gap. You can claim it in theory, but it will not happen in practice. This canard, so to say, has been used for years--years.

In 1987, the Senator from North Dakota said: I pound away at the need for a share. He said: That includes the tax gap between what is owed and what is paid. He said that in 1987.

In 1990, he said: It is both fiscally irresponsible and insulting to the vast majority of honest taxpayers in this country if we fail to tap this revenue from those who have not complied.

Then again, last year, he said: If we collect 15 percent of the tax gap, it would be over $300 billion, and that alone would come close to meeting the revenue needs under our budget.

That was last year's budget, by the way. How much did they collect from the tax gap? Zero. How much did they collect from the tax gap in 1987, when he first made this statement? Zero. How much did they collect in 1990, when he made the statement again? Zero. Throughout the 1990s, through the 2000s, the tax gap is not being closed.

In fact, instead of being closed, last year, they cut the funding to the IRS, those elements of the IRS who would most logically be people who would go out and collect extra money if it was owed. So this whole tax gap thing is nice rhetoric, but it has no substance, and it is not defensible on its face in light of the numbers in this bill. What is in this bill is the largest increase in taxes in the history of this country--$1.2 trillion.

Now, there is, in addition, the issue of the debt. The Senator from the other side is fond of pointing to the President, saying: He has increased the debt this much, he increased the debt this much. Yes, the debt has gone up significantly. I do not like that. Nobody likes that. But you cannot wash your hands of it when you produced the budget last year that added $200 billion to the debt--well, $400 billion it was going to add to the debt. I am sorry. I misstated. Over $400 billion will be added to the debt for the first Democratic Congress's budget-- $400 billion. This budget presumes another $370 billion to that debt.

So this wall of debt chart--yes, the President of the United States, because he put forward budgets that increased the debt, deserves some significant responsibility here, but so do our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are producing this budget. There is $2 trillion of new debt added to the wall of debt under the Democratic budget.

You could reduce that. You could reduce that by not spending so much money, which gets us to the next point. The spending in this bill goes up significantly. We passed the trillion-dollar threshold--$1 trillion of discretionary spending--in this bill.

Now, I suggested--and I agree it would maybe be a statement more of an attempt to make a point than a substantive event, but I suggested we set spending limits in this bill which would keep discretionary spending under $1 trillion. That would have meant that instead of increasing spending in this bill, as the Democratic proposal does, by $24.5 billion next year--which, by the way, is the 1-year number that goes up over 5 years and represents over $200 billion in new discretionary spending--they would have only been able to increase spending by $10 billion and then they would have stayed under the $1 trillion limit. But they couldn't even do that. I mean the desire to go out and spend is a genetic effect; it is a genetic existence in the Democratic position. That is why we have different parties. They believe the Government is better when it is bigger. They believe the Government is better when it takes your money and spends it. They believe Government knows how to spend your money better than you do and therefore, when they are in control--which they are and which they have been--they significantly raise your taxes and they significantly increase spending.

This budget isn't any different. As I said, it is back to the future. Is this change? It is change that takes us back to where we were when we had the last Democratic Congress. Significant increases in spending, and the budget doesn't even account for most spending which we know is coming down the pike which has already been signed on to by the majority of this party on the other side of the aisle.

For example, we have pending in the wings later today or tomorrow a supplemental that is going to add spending in the area of unemployment insurance of $15 billion, spending in the area of veterans of $54 billion. We have a farm bill coming at us that is a $300 billion bill. We have an AMT fix which this budget claims to pay for, but which we know won't be paid for, of $70 billion. The numbers go up and up and up and up, the debt goes up and up and up and up, the spending goes up and up and up, and the taxes go up and up and up. There can be no denying that. It is the way it is. I understand there is a difference of opinion, but I think it ought to be admitted to by the other side. There shouldn't be an attempt to obfuscate it by claiming we are going to get taxes from the Oz somewhere behind the curtain. The tax revenues are going to come out of working Americans. It shouldn't be claimed we are going to generate a reduction in spending when we are generating an increase in spending, and a fairly significant one. The other side of the aisle holds up this chart and says there is no real difference between the President's number and our number. ``Ours is a 1 percent difference.'' But 1 percent on $3 trillion is $300 billion. I don't know where they come from, but $300 billion is a huge amount of money-- a huge amount of money.

I would yield.

I reclaim my time then. The point is I don't consider $300 billion a small amount of money. Now, maybe it is a small amount of money in North Dakota, but I do know that $300 billion would run the State of New Hampshire for I think approximately 10 years. Maybe it would only run the State of North Dakota for a couple of years, because I know you have big budgets up there, but I think it is a lot of money, $300 billion. So that is--

Well, Madam President, I am happy to reclaim my time. Thirty billion dollars is a lot of money in New Hampshire. It would run the State for 10 years.

No, I wouldn't, because $300 billion is a 5-year number. But I thank the Senator for making it clear that he agrees with the fact that $30 billion is a lot of money. Maybe he doesn't agree that $30 billion is a lot of money. I think $30 billion is a lot of money.

I have the time, Madam President. I have the time.

So we are talking about big dollars, real dollars and lots of new spending. Under any scenario, we are talking a number which is going to drive large tax increases not only next year but in the outyears for working Americans in this country, and it is not right to do that to them, in my humble opinion--well, in my opinion. It is not necessarily humble. I apologize.

There is another point here that needs to be made, which is there is a claim in this budget that they have put

in some sort of enforcement mechanisms called pay-go. They keep returning to pay-go as an enforcement mechanism. To begin with, they have waived pay-go, adjusted pay-go or manipulated pay-go on at least 17 different occasions for well over $175 billion in new spending. Pay- go is only used as a vehicle to try to increase taxes. If somebody wants to cut your taxes, they will claim pay-go and you have to increase somebody else's taxes to do that. But when it comes to spending around here, as we saw with the farm bill that rolled through here, pay-go has no relevance at all. It is adjusted by changing years. It is adjusted by moving numbers around. It is adjusted by, as in the SCHIP bill, artificially ending a program when you know the program is not going to end. It is scammed. So there is no credibility to claiming pay-go is in this bill.

Furthermore, real pay-go isn't even in this bill. Real pay-go says you match the year of the spending to the year of the cost, the year it is going to be offset against. This bill doesn't do that. The first year of pay-go under this bill--- you can claim you are going to offset a new spending program in the fifth year under this bill. So you game that system right to the end.

Then there is the alleged tax proposal in this bill--the Baucus amendment, as it is referred to. Well, we went through this exercise last year. The Baucus amendment was brought forward last year and the other side of the aisle put out a lot of press releases claiming they had extended the tax cuts within the Baucus amendment which included things such as the childcare tax credit and the spousal marriage penalty and I think R&D tax credit. They did a lot of press on that and there was a great deal of fanfare after they took the vote on the budget that claimed they were going to pass a bill which would accomplish these tax cuts, extending them. Where is the bill? Where is the bill? It never passed. There were no extenders passed. The whole amendment turned out to be a fraud. So they--well, it worked so well last year with the press release, they have done it again this year. They have done it again this year. They have claimed they are going to pass those extenders, which they didn't do last year, and they may do it this year, I don't know. I haven't seen anything yet that implies to me they are going to do it. But if they did do it, just to make darn sure that it actually never had any serious effect, they put language in the bill which basically creates a Rube Goldberg system where they take back the tax deductions if a deficit occurs. Well, they know a deficit is going to occur because they have already put in place spending initiatives which exceed the alleged surpluses they have in this bill. Just the veterans benefit we are going to vote on tomorrow theoretically, and which will pass here at some point, is going to knock out the alleged surplus. So all of these alleged tax extenders which theoretically they are going to pass and at least they are going to put press releases out on are not going to occur, because they put language in this budget which says if there is a deficit, those tax extenders are recaptured, and they end. They come to an end.

So this budget is obviously, from our point of view--and it is our point of view. It is not their point of view. I don't argue with the fact that they believe they have put together a great budget. I mean in their mind, in the mind of the person who believes we should dramatically expand the size of government, dramatically increase taxes on the American people, this is a heck of a good budget. I don't argue with that. But from our perspective, when we think Americans should keep as much of their tax dollars as we can leave them with, because it is their money and they will spend it better, and they are more efficient using it than we are--we should keep a low capital gains rate; we shouldn't penalize seniors who have dividend income as their main source of income--from our perspective, this budget has the wrong priorities because it raises the taxes on capital gains and raises the taxes on dividends significantly.

In addition, it has the wrong priorities because it expands spending significantly--$500 billion in new spending and entitlements. Remember: Probably the biggest threat we face as a nation--fiscal threat--in fact, the biggest threat after, in my opinion, the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorists using a weapon of mass destruction against us--is the impending economic meltdown of this country as a result of the burden that our generation, the baby boom generation, is putting on the next generation through the entitlement accounts. There is $66 trillion of unfunded liability, $66 trillion--a huge number. Nobody knows because it is hard to define what $1 trillion is. But if you take all the taxes paid since the beginning of this Republic--I think you are talking about something like $37 trillion--and if you take all of the net worth of the American people--all their cars, all their homes, all their stock--and add it together, you come up with something like $45 trillion.

So we have a liability on our books which involves three programs-- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--that exceeds the net worth of the Nation and exceeds the amount of taxes paid in this Nation since we began as a nation. That is a huge problem for us. You have to start to address it.

One of the good things the President's budget did was suggest a couple of ways to address it. In fact, he sent up a proposal which would take about 20 percent of this problem as it relates to Medicare, which is the biggest part of the $66 trillion, and would have made Medicare 20 percent less insolvent--which is a big number, by the way. That was a big step. The proposals he sent us had no impact on the vast majority of beneficiaries--no impact at all. He suggested that wealthy Americans such as Warren Buffett, for example, qualify for the Part D premium under Medicare, under the Medicare drug program, or some other extraordinarily wealthy person, should pay a fair share--not all, but should pay a fair share of the cost of the premium of their drug program. That was a reasonable suggestion. What happened to it? It was rejected by the other side of the aisle.

The President suggested that we use IT and disclosure of performance at different levels that medicine integrates with the patient so people could make more intelligent purchasing decisions, so employers and insurers could make more intelligent decisions but, more importantly, Medicare could. What happened to that idea? It was rejected by the other side of the aisle.

The President suggested we should do something about the runaway cost of malpractice, about the trial lawyers essentially running up extraordinary costs on health care providers, especially doctors, and that we should do something to limit that. It is a reasonable suggestion rejected by the other side of the aisle.

How much entitlement saving is in this bill? Zero. Zero entitlement saving is in this bill. Here we are facing probably the most significant fiscal issue of our time and we do nothing about it in this budget. In fact, under the present law, we as a Congress are required by something called the Medicare drug trigger to adjust Medicare spending to bring it down under what is known as a trigger level. It is a technical point, but Medicare Part D premium isn't supposed to exceed 45 percent from the general fund. And we have now gotten a directive from the trustees in the Medicare trust fund to act, and it would cost not a large amount of money in the context of this entire budget--$1.3 trillion.

Billion, thank you. Billion. I got into my trillions. It would cost $1.3 billion to correct this. That proposal is nowhere in this budget; nowhere in this budget. It is hard to believe we couldn't even do $1.3 billion when we have been directed to do it, when we passed the law. It was our law that said we would do this if this problem occurred. Yet the courage isn't there to do even that in the area of entitlements, which is truly irresponsible, an act of malfeasance by the Congress. So entitlement spending remains unaddressed.

Interestingly enough, I heard Senator Obama on the stump a couple of days ago--maybe it was a week ago--talking about how he was never going to allow anything to happen to the Social Security recipient or the Social Security trust fund. It is that type of language which absolutely guarantees our children are going to get a bill here that they can't afford, that our generation, the largest in the history of the

country, which will double the number of retirees, is going to basically put a weight on our children and our children's children that will make their lives less enjoyable than ours because they will not be able to afford the dollars it costs to support our generation and still be able to buy their homes, send their children to college, and buy their cars because of the tax burden generated by the entitlement costs.

So that irresponsibility is permeated in this budget when it does nothing on the issue of entitlements. Speaking of Senator Obama, I am entertained by the fact that this budget, which will have three-fourths of its life under the next President, must assume that the next President will not be Senator Obama because he has proposed $300 billion of new spending--$300 billion--in the first year of his Presidency. He proposed 187 new programs. We can only score 143 of them because the other ones were not specific enough. But if you score 143 of them, they add up to $300 billion of new spending just in the first year.

As I said earlier, Senator Obama said he is going to pay for this by taxing the wealthy. That is what he said. But if you look at this budget, they have already spent that money. This budget already assumes the wealthy are going to be taxed. The $1.2 trillion tax increase in the budget assumes the top rate in the 2010, 2011, and 2012 period jumps back to President Clinton's level of 39.5 percent. So the budget, which already is projecting deficits in the $400 billion range, already presumes inside of it, as it is presented here, a jump in the top marginal rate, which is the rate on the richest Americans. That money is already spent. It was spent when the other side of the aisle decided to increase entitlement spending by $500 billion under this budget and increase discretionary spending by close to $300 billion under this budget. So where is he going to find the money to pay for his $300 billion of new programs? I don't know. But one thing is pretty obvious: We are going back to the future with enthusiasm. Yes, we can raise taxes and, yes, we can raise spending; that will become the theme not only of this budget but future budgets should we have a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress.

This budget really doesn't do much to address the issues the American people need to have addressed. Those issues involve, No. 1, doing something on the issue of entitlements; No. 2, maintaining a tax law which creates productivity, which energizes entrepreneurship and says to small business people, go out and create jobs; No. 3, disciplines our fiscal house by containing discretionary spending under a trillion dollars.

Those are not really that dramatic or that heavy a lift to undertake. There is no reason we could not keep spending under a trillion dollars on the discretionary side, no reason we could not have taken the small steps, like asking wealthy people to pay a bigger part of--or any part of--their Part D drug premium. There is no reason this budget could not have contained within it some initiatives which would have controlled discretionary spending and would have continued to promote the tax policy we have seen for the last 3 years, which has generated a massive increase in revenues for the Federal Government, especially from capital gains.

Another course that was chosen--the course that is circular--goes back to the way we did things in the past when we had the last Democratic Congress. That course said you have to raise taxes because the American people don't know how to spend their own money, so we have to do it for them. It is a course that says the Government should always grow, and grow fast. There is nothing in the Government that should be reduced. It is a course that says we should add to the Federal debt at a radical rate. It is a course that says we should ignore real problems--the biggest problem we have, which is entitlement spending.

I want to put in one footnote because I think it sort of encapsulates the whole discussion about discretionary spending. The Senator from North Dakota got up and said we had to keep the COPS Program, which was a great program, and put cops on the street. There isn't one program that their budget proposes that we eliminate on the discretionary side that I found. Everything either gets increased or is maintained.

The COPS Program is uniquely appropriate to be eliminated. Why? Don't listen to me. Listen to President Clinton. He created the COPS Program, and he created it with this caveat: This will be a 3-year program.

That is what President Clinton said--that when we get to 100,000 police officers on the street as a result of this program, this program will be terminated. That was the program that was proposed. Not only did we get the 100,000 police officers on the street--because I chaired the committee of jurisdiction at that time--we put 110,000 new police officers on the street using Federal funds. Then, following on the suggestion of what the original program was, and following the edict of President Clinton, we started to phase out that program. It should have been completely phased out. That was 8 or 9 years ago that we hit what the number was under this Federal program. The program is still here. It is a classic example of how programs work. Once they are in place, the interest groups that support them demand that they stay in place forever. Obviously, we all believe police officers do a great job. We admire them, respect them, and they protect us. But this program fulfilled its obligation. It did what it said it would do, and it worked. It should have been terminated, just like President Clinton suggested.

Now, the other side of the aisle, 8 to 9 years after that event, is still claiming this program has to be kept and grown. That is the difference between our parties. We think when somebody puts in a program that says it will last 3 years, with certain goals, and those goals are met and the 3 years are over, the program should be ended and the American taxpayer should get to keep the money from ending that program.

The other side of the aisle thinks we should continue the program forever, grow it, and take money out of the American taxpayers' pockets to pay for something on which we have already fulfilled the responsibility. That is the difference. It is a fundamental difference between our parties. They are in the majority. They have the right to write a budget however they want it. They have done that. It is a budget that has the world's largest tax increase, has significant increases in spending, significant increases in entitlement spending, crosses the trillion-dollar line on the discretionary side, does nothing about containing entitlements, and plays games with enforcement mechanisms relative to the budget. We would not have written this budget. That is why we are opposed to it.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right, I ask for an additional 2 minutes as well.

Mr. President, I understand that as chairman of the committee, Senator Harkin should have the right to complete his statement. I am happy to proceed at this time.

I would simply make the point, in response to the discussion about this bill and the budget, there is no way anybody with a straight face can represent that this bill is fiscally responsible in the context of the budget. When this bill left the Senate, it was at $285 billion. It is now at $300 billion. This bill has $18 billion worth of gimmicks in it. The tax years are changed for corporations to pick up money. There is an attempt to adjust programs so some basically disappear after a certain number of years on the theory that then they would not score, knowing full well that those programs are going to be continued. We also have a situation where this bill violated the pay-go rules of the House and would violate the pay-go rules of the Senate, to the extent they are ever enforced around here, if we had passed the Senate budget.

The irony is that this bill comes to the floor before the budget, which was voted on and voted in favor of by the Democratic membership. That Democratic budget is violated in this bill. I have to tell my colleagues, if a Democratic budget, which spends a heck of a lot of money, is violated, then, obviously, the bill itself is spending a lot of money. In addition, it uses gimmicks such as custom user's fees. It uses gimmicks such as this adjustment of pay-go. It ends up, even using all those gimmicks, $18 billion worth of gimmicks, still with a budget point of order against it which is legitimate.

The budget is violated. This bill spends money outside the budget. That budget point of order should not be waived.

I will just say it will be a motion to instruct.

Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk.

Mr. President, this motion to instruct is necessary because the budget, as it left the Senate and it is represented, has been agreed to between the House and Senate Democratic leadership and membership, with no Republican input other than the courtesy of telling us what they have agreed to, has in it the largest tax increase in the history of the world--the history of the world, not just the history of the United States. It is a $1.2 trillion tax increase. It means that all Americans' taxes will go up significantly as a result of this tax increase. Mr. President, 7.8 million people today who do not pay taxes will find that they are paying taxes. These are low- and moderate- income Americans who are not liable to pay taxes because their income has them in a level where there is no tax event, but under this budget resolution, which assumes the termination of the tax policies that were put in place in 2001 and 2003, those 7.8 million people will be returned to the tax rolls and will have to pay taxes.

Families of four, earning $50,000--a husband, a wife and two children--in 2011, under this bill, would see their taxes go up $2,300. A single mom raising two kids--which is the toughest job in America, in my opinion--earning $30,000 a year, that mother would see her taxes go up by $1,100. That is a lot of food, a lot of clothing, and a lot of better lifestyle that will be lost to that family.

A family of four earning $110,000 would see their taxes--that would be, for example, a mother who is teaching or a father who is teaching and a mother who is a police officer, one making $50,000 and one making, say, $60,000--that family with two children could see their taxes go up $4,300 under this bill.

Small businesses--which are defined by the Democratic Party as the rich, will pay more taxes. In fact right now in the House of Representatives they are debating a bill which they claim taxes the rich, which it turns out are small businesses who file as individuals-- 75 percent of all individual returns with income above $300,000 include business income, and 83 percent of all individual returns with income above $1 million include business income. They will be subject to the high-end tax which the Democratic Party is proposing in the House. Meanwhile, small businesses, who pay 54 percent of all individual income taxes--those small businesses, 27 million in total, will see their tax bill go up by $4,100 under this budget resolution. That could easily put a lot of those small businesses out of business, that type of a tax hike. A lot of these businesses work at the margin. Even though they may have high income, they are still spending a lot of that in order to maintain their business.

Elderly couples with incomes of $40,000, if the Democratic budget goes forward, an elderly taxpayer, someone over 65 with $40,000 of income, will see their taxes go up $2,200. That is a lot of money for somebody who is probably on a fixed income and does not have too many ways to increase their income and are trying to make fixed costs, which they also cannot reduce. To be hit with a $2,200 tax bill in 2011 is a pretty stiff penalty to pay so the party in power, the Democratic Party, can spend their money on some program they deem more appropriate than allowing that individual to keep their money in their pocket. Eighteen million seniors will see taxes go up under this bill as the tax policies of 2001 and 2003 are repealed and taxes are increased.

There was an argument made on the other side of the aisle that we are not going to do that, we are going to collect this money from uncollected taxes. That argument has no viability any longer. They made that argument last year, and the amount of money which was collected from uncollected taxes went up a minuscule amount, so that argument has no credibility. There is an argument made, primarily by Senator Obama in his campaign for the Presidency, that all these new programs and all this cost will be paid for by taxing the wealthiest Americans--only the wealthiest Americans; that the other tax breaks will be left in place.

This budget does not assume that. This budget does not assume that at all. This budget assumes the full repeal of all the tax rates as they were put in place in 2001 and 2003. In addition, it assumes the full repeal of the capital gains rate, full repeal of the dividend rate-- which, by the way, taxes on capital gains and dividends are paid disproportionately by senior citizens. They are the ones who sell their homes and end up with capital gains, they are the ones who have fixed incomes usually tied to dividends from their pensions.

So that argument that this proposal is just going to tax the wealthiest of Americans does not fly, on the basis of the language of the Democratic budget. The Democratic budget says they are going to repeal and raise, by $1.2 trillion, those taxes--taxes which all Americans will have to pay.

Senator Obama says if he just taxes the wealthy, he can pay for all his new spending programs. Those new spending programs total up to well over $300 billion a year. He has proposed over 185 new programs. If you score just 143 of those programs he is proposing--his new or additional programs--it totals $300 billion in new spending. That is on top of the new spending already in this budget resolution. This budget radically expands spending. It is well over $200 billion in new discretionary spending over the 5-year period of this budget and of course you put the Obama ``spend-orama'' on top of that and you are up another $300 billion. All of this is going to be paid for, allegedly, by just taxing the wealthy.

You have to look at the language of the bill. That is not the way it is going to be paid for. As I outlined, it is going to be paid for by taxing working Americans, elderly Americans, single moms with families and individuals who run small businesses.

In fact, if you took Senator Obama at face value, and what he is proposing, he is going to raise all of these taxes on the wealthy to pay for his $300 billion of new spending and the $200 billion in this bill. The $300 billion figure is an annual number, by the way.

The maximum amount, if you were to return to the top rate in America, back to the rate during the Clinton years, which is what has been proposed by Senator Obama, the maximum amount that generates annually is $25 billion. The fact is, we will not get that much. These are wealthy people. They understand how to hire tax accountants and avoid taxes when taxes become disproportionate, and they view them as something that should be avoided rather than paid.

The great advantage we have from the tax cuts which were put in place by President Bush and which caused this economy to expand and caused Federal revenues to grow in the most aggressive way in our recent history, was that tax laws have reached fair levels.

Take, for example, the capital gains tax which, under this bill, under this

budget, will be doubled. The capital gains tax today, because it is at a reasonable rate, 15 percent, is generating huge increases in Federal revenues.

In fact, CBO estimated when the capital gains rate went to 15 percent, it would generate about $100 billion less than what it has actually generated over the last 3 years. And why did we obtain an additional $100 billion in tax revenue as a result of having a lower capital gains rate? For two reasons: One, because the capital gains rate was fair so people were investing in activity that was taxable, and they were not trying to avoid taxes by investing in nontaxable activity; and, two, because when you set a fair capital gains rate, what you do is incentivize people to go out, recognize their capital gains--in other words, sell the asset which they obtained gain in, and then take that new money they have gotten and reinvest it in some other activity which also generates capital gains.

Instead of having the capital gains event locked down, instead of having assets held simply because people do not want to pay taxes, and those assets may be nonproductive assets, thus not having productive use of those dollars, a reasonable capital gains rate, which is what we now have in this country, causes people to go out and invest and act in the most efficient way with the money they have.

As a result, not only do they generate more taxes to the Federal Government, $100 billion more than was estimated, but they also, at the same time, create more jobs. Because those dollars are used more efficiently, there is more entrepreneurship, there is more risk taking, and more people are willing to go out and take the risks to create a job because they know they are going to have a chance to get an adequate return, and their efforts will not be taxed away.

But this budget rejects all of that. This budget rejects that whole concept. It says: Let's go back to the period where we taxed people at extremely high rates. And why? Why do they tax people at extremely high rates? Is it to reduce the deficit? No, the deficit goes up dramatically under this bill.

Does it reduce the national debt? No, the national debt goes up dramatically under this bill. The reason they want your tax dollars is because they want to spend your tax dollars. There is a genuine philosophy on the other side of the aisle that says they know how to spend your money better than you do. You, the working American, you, the small business man or woman, you, the single mother, they know better how to spend your money than you know how to spend your money. Thus, they want to raise your taxes in order to reprogram it in some sort of program that they deem to be of a better social purpose than allowing the person who earned that income to keep their money in their pocket so they can make decisions which benefit them and their family with those dollars.

That is the philosophical difference that divides us and could not be shown in a more stark way than in this budget as it left the Senate and which will be conferenced, because this budget repealed almost all the constructive tax policy that was pro-growth oriented in the President's proposals of 2001 and 2003, and as a result it drives this massive increase in the tax burden on the American people.

This is not a tax on the wealthy. This is a tax on the middle class because it is middle-class America who will have to pay for the $1.2 trillion tax increase. To review the numbers, 7.8 million people who do not pay taxes today will have to pay them under this bill; 27 million people who run small businesses will see their taxes go up by $4,100; 43 million working Americans who have children will see their taxes go up by $2,300; and senior citizens, 18 million senior citizens, will see their taxes go up by $2,200.

Obviously, we have a deep philosophical difference with the majority on this point. And that is why we are suggesting an instruction which says we should not proceed down the path of having the world's largest tax increase. Let's at least tell our conferees: Do not do that to the American people. Keep the tax laws at a level that is fair and is responsible.

By ``responsible'' I mean the tax laws, as they presently are structured today, are returning more revenue to the Federal Government from our income tax than we have ever had in our history. And even as a percentage of the gross national product, they are returning more revenues to the Federal Government than has been the historical average. Mr. President, 18.7 percent of gross national product today is being collected in tax revenue. Historically, it was only 18.2 percent. So these tax laws have not reduced Federal revenue, they have actually increased Federal revenue, as I pointed out when I discussed the capital gains rates.

We should not be putting in place a tax burden on working Americans which is going to be counter to the idea of creating jobs, creating economic incentives, and giving and allowing people to keep in their pockets money which they have earned and which they know better how to spend than we as a government know how to spend.

I reserve the remainder of my time. I look forward to continuing this discussion as we proceed through the afternoon.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill.) The Senator from North Dakota.

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

Madam President, I now suggest we yield back the time remaining on this motion and that we turn to the motion to instruct by Senator Kyl. So I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time.

Madam President, to my knowledge we have not seen the side by side.

Why don't we proceed with Senator Kyl, and after we see your side by side, we can talk about time agreements because we already have an hour.

That is fine with me.

Yes.

On both motions?

Madam President, I am not speaking on Senator Kyl's motion. He has reserved his time. I am going to ask to set aside his motion and send another motion to the desk.

As I understand the order, we have pending the motion to instruct that I offered, the motion to instruct which Senator Kyl offered, the motion to instruct which Senator

Conrad offered relative to the motion of Senator Kyl, the motion to instruct which Senator DeMint offered, the motion to instruct which Senator Boxer offered in relationship to Senator DeMint's motion, and this motion; is that correct? Is there anything else pending right now?

The Conrad motion relative to the Kyl motion has not been sent to the desk.

Relative to the unanimous consent agreement, other than the motion I have just sent to the desk, which is a trillion-dollar spending cap, we would still have available to be sent to the desk the motion relative to nuclear energy reserve and the motion relative to offshore drilling, with the side by sides.

I thank the Chair. I believe all the motions that are pending, to the extent they still have time remaining on those motions pursuant to the unanimous consent request, that time is reserved; is that correct?

So right now I will address the trillion-dollar spending one and have that come off that time which is, I believe, 30 minutes equally divided.

What this instruction says is, we should not be spending $1 trillion on discretionary accounts around here. This budget for the first time, the Democratic budget, because of its increases last year on top of the increases in this budget, has hit the trillion-dollar mark. That should be a fairly big red flag, that we are now going to spend $1 trillion in discretionary spending. I have trouble comprehending what a trillion dollars is. I suspect almost everybody does. But if you take all the taxes paid since we began as a republic, I believe it totals something like $42 trillion. That would be over 200 years. So this one budget is going to spend a fairly significant amount of what has been raised in taxes since our country began. It is a big number, $1 trillion. It seems to me we ought to sort of maybe draw a line here, take a breath, and say: Let's stop. Let's think about what we are doing. Let's see if rather than spending this huge amount of money, we can't save a little money.

Last year the Democratic budget, and then the Democratic appropriations bills, increased spending by $22 billion. That was what they proposed. It is not just a 1-year event when you raise spending around here by $22 billion. That compounds over 5 years. It is $22 billion plus $22 billion plus interest, plus $22 billion. It adds up. In fact, a 5-year number is probably closer to $220 billion, $250 billion, when you spend $22 billion in 1 year or increase spending by that much. So it is a lot of money. Last year they increased spending by $22 billion on nondefense discretionary spending. This year it is not absolutely clear, because it hasn't actually been disclosed to us, but we know it is going to be well over $20 billion on nondefense discretionary spending again.

That is why the Democratic budget takes us over $1 trillion; $1.9 trillion, I believe, will be spent under this budget on discretionary spending. As I said, it is time for a timeout. That is what this motion to instruct says. It says: Let's go back and rethink this effort. Can't we somewhere in that trillion dollars find enough savings to get us back under $1 trillion? Shouldn't we certainly be saying we are not going to push the American taxpayer over the trillion-dollar number; rather, we will make a little extra effort to try to reduce spending in this account if we want to increase spending in that account, rather than constantly add on to the spending?

This Democratic budget has absolutely no programmatic savings in it. The President suggested some programmatic savings. I believe his programmatic savings added up to about $15 billion. None of those was accepted and none of those was put in this budget. None of those are assumed. In fact, all it does is add to spending and add to programs. It is hard to believe that in a trillion-dollar budget, we couldn't find a mere 1 percent or 2 percent of savings by reducing programs which have either outserved their usefulness or which, in the order of priorities, we simply can't afford, and we should make difficult decisions of maybe not increasing them as much as proposed or maybe even reducing them. In most instances, we are talking about slowing the rate of increase. We are not actually talking about reducing.

This is a red-flag motion. It says: Let's pause. Let's think about this. Do we want to blow through the trillion-dollar mark on the discretionary side of the ledger without having made some effort to try to save some money around here, to reallocate money, to set priorities, and to do what is affordable? I don't think we do. That is why we are calling on the conferees to take some action to bring this number back under $1 trillion. That means they have to save $9 billion, $10 billion. That is 1 percent. They ought to be able to do that. I know it is a lot of money, $10 billion, but on a trillion-dollar budget, it certainly ought to be a doable event. It does seem to me the American people deserve that type of effort. We could all earn our pay around here, a number of times over, if we were to save the American people $10 billion or $20 billion and allow them to keep that money so they can spend it and make their lives better rather than have the Government spend it for them.

That is what this motion does. It instructs the conferees to bring this budget back under the trillion-dollar level in the discretionary side.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending motion and send to the desk a motion on behalf of Senator Graham dealing with nuclear power.

Madam President, I note that the Senator from Louisiana is on the Senate floor. I had planned to offer this motion on behalf of Senator Graham in order to move the process along. He is in accordance with that as he is in a meeting he could not get out of, a briefing on security. I will reserve the remainder of the time on the motion so Senator Vitter can be recognized.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be no further motions to be brought forward.

Mr. President, I think we will yield back all time on the Kyl-Conrad motion.

I would like to retain 2 minutes to respond to my spending a trillion dollars.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 4 minutes be equally divided between Senator Conrad and myself when we get to the Kyl-Conrad AMT amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we turn to two other items that need to be taken up prior to the time limit.

Mr. President, I send two motions to the desk dealing with budget enforcement. I ask they be reported in seriatim.

Mr. President, these are two motions, one of which says that under the rules of the budget, there will be a disclosure of the debt owed by the United States in a manner that is comprehensible.

Right now the budget is a very hard, very complex document to read for those of us who are involved in it, but it is extremely difficult to glean what actually is the debt and how the debt relates to the overall budget. The first motion says that will be made clearer for the purpose of transparency.

The second motion has four elements. The first one is a point of order that says the budget resolution, which will be live, does not put us on a path to a balanced budget over a 5-year period. The second one is a point of order against a reconciliation bill which spends more than 20 percent of what it saves. The third is a point of order against a budget resolution that does not provide a debt disclosure statement, such as the first motion included. And fourth is a long-term deficit point of order that should prohibit any deficit increases outside the budget window.

I talked about these with the chairman. The chairman seems amenable to accepting these motions. I hope they can be accepted.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the second motion be adopted.

That came from the farm bill.

It must have been asparagus.

We are. I suggest we have 2 minutes equally divided before each vote to explain what we are voting on for our colleagues.

And after the first vote, the votes be 10 minutes.

Mr. President, it being my motion, I am sure the chairman would like to go first.

Mr. President, there is a tax increase in this resolution. If there

isn't, then the budget doesn't make any sense because it assumes $1.2 trillion of new revenues in order to reach its targets, and that means 78 million taxpayers who don't pay taxes today are going to end up paying taxes under this budget.

It means a working family of four with $50,000 income will end up with a $2,300 tax bill increase in 2011. It means a single mom with two kids earning $30,000 will have a $1,000 tax increase in 2011. It means that 18 million senior citizens will have their taxes increased by over $2,000, and that 27 million small businesses will have their taxes increased by over $4,000 in the year 2011.

The simple fact is this budget assumes massive tax increases, the largest tax increase in the history of the world. I hope people will oppose that.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I have no charts. I simply have a number: $1 trillion. We should draw the line somewhere around here. We should say to the American people: It is time that we exercise fiscal discipline. Let's do it at $1 trillion. That means that in this budget, you only have to reduce it 1 percent to get back underneath that number.

We don't have to look to the President to do that. We can't, amongst ourselves, come up with $10 billion of savings on a $1 trillion budget? If we can't, we should all go home.

Vote to draw the line at $1 trillion. Vote for the American taxpayer.

Mr. President, I yield back my time.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Will the majority leader yield for a question?

Mr. President, I would ask the majority leader if I might be recognized to speak after he completes his speech and his statement because I would like to speak.

Will the majority leader yield for a further question?

I think the majority leader has made his case as to the status of the situation. But I do believe we should not shut off debate in the sense of not allowing for those of us who would like to express the way we see the situation to also be able to speak. That is why I would like to have an opportunity to speak.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be set aside.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be set aside.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be set aside.

Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Then I object.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I am happy to agree to this because I have been trying to speak now for 4 or 5 hours, and the last three times I rose to speak, the majority leader would not allow me to speak. I understood his concern and his pique about what he perceived as to what was happening on the floor, but independent of that, I still think I should have the right to speak. Therefore, since I sought the floor initially and was seeking the floor the last time this exercise took place, I would request that the unanimous consent request be adjusted so that I be recognized first and that I be given 5 minutes to speak.

Madam President, I wanted to rise earlier to put into context what the exercise we were involved in was about and the fact that the issue of the Graham amendment, in my humble opinion, did not, in any way, adversely affect the capacity to pass and proceed on the underlying bill, which is the firefighter initiative here that I and Senator Kennedy have brought forward.

I think there were representations from the majority leader that the Graham amendment was some sort of attempt to basically sidetrack the firefighter bill. It was not that at all. It was simply the Senate doing its natural business, which is to amend bills on the floor of the Senate and get votes on those amendments. The Republican leader, in his absolute right, set the matter so it would be voted on. If he had not done what he did, there probably would have been no vote on the Graham amendment because the majority would have been able to sidetrack that amendment.

I think Senator Graham had every right to come forward with whatever amendment he wanted. Every Member has that right when a bill is open to amendment. That has been a huge debate for quite a while. The majority party, for some reason, has decided to try to run the Senate as if it were the House of Representatives, which means they are trying to proceed in an autocratic way, where they decide for the minority party what amendments will be brought forward. That is not appropriate. That is not the tradition or the purpose of the Senate. The minority party has an absolute, sacred right to bring forward amendments, and there is no right in the majority party to ban the capacity of the minority party to do that, unless the majority party has the capacity to basically bring down the entire operation of the Senate, which is what it consistently has been doing--filling the tree time and time again in an attempt to shut off our party, the minority, from making its points and bringing forward amendments, which can be debated and voted on, and then you can get to the underlying bill--which is the way the Senate worked, by the way, for over 200 years.

Now, another action is occurring here which required Senator Graham to offer this amendment. He didn't, by choice, pick this bill out of his interest in the bill to offer the amendment on. He had to offer it because the majority party is using the rules of the Senate to shut off all amendments to the bill being proposed by the Senator from Virginia.

The bill of the Senator from Virginia will be marked up in a manner that will bring it to the floor so that it would not be amendable. That has been public knowledge around here for weeks--that we were not going to be given the opportunity to amend the Senator's bill. That is inappropriate also. So the only way Senator Graham could protect his rights was to bring this amendment forward at this time. It did nothing to undermine the movement of this bill forward. If this bill doesn't move forward--the firefighter bill--it will be because the Democratic leadership has not been able to schedule the floor in an efficient enough way to get the bill across the floor. That is the reason. It is not the failure of the minority to move this bill across the floor. It is failure of the majority to bring forward the bill in a proper procedure and allow for a proper amendment process to occur.

I think that point needs to be made. It is like the story of the guy who kills his parents and throws himself on the jury's mercy because he claims he is an orphan. The majority party has killed its parents. They are trying to deny the right of the minority to offer amendments to the Webb measure. It is inconsistent with the way the Senate should act.

I think we had a legitimate case with the Graham amendment. I think the Republican leader did the right thing in filing cloture to force a vote on that amendment. We have now had a vote, which was a vote to table. As a practical matter, it hasn't slowed down the firefighter bill. The bill has not been prejudiced by this action. Rather, the activity of the Senate, which is to give the minority the right to amend, has occurred in a proper way. It took work to get it done and huffing and puffing from the other side of the aisle, saying it should not be done. The proper order was done, and I congratulate the Republican leader for following this course.

Mr. President, first, I appreciate my colleague for allowing me to proceed at this time. I recognize that we are debating a bill the conclusion of which is already foregone. The cards are dealt and turned over, and this bill will pass. That doesn't mean it should not be discussed and some of the weaknesses should not be pointed out.

I have severe reservations about the way we approached the commodity side of the bill, which is, as it has been adequately represented, not the majority of the spending bill, but it is a very significant amount of spending, $190 billion, or somewhere in that vicinity.

Some may ask--and I guess I may have wondered from time to time--what happened to all of those economists who worked for the Soviet Union when it failed, who were sitting around their desks and they didn't have a job anymore--the folks who believed in a command economy, in top-down management, and believed in 5-year plans and believed that supply and demand had no relationship to the market. Where did all those people go? We now know. They went into the development of American farm policy. It is sort of like, after World War II, you took all of the scientists out of Germany and put them in Huntsville. At the end of the Cold War, we took the economists out of the Soviet Union and put them in the Midwest or maybe in the South because this bill is structured in a world that has no relationship to the market. It actually fundamentally undermines the concept of market and relating productivity to demand and supply to the market.

It is also a bill that does serious damage to budgeting because it uses $18 billion in gimmicks in order to avoid and get around pay-go rules and other budget enforcement mechanisms. It even brings back-- amazingly enough--the Customs fees. How many times can we bring back Customs fees? But it brings them back and claims a savings and uses that money and spends it--$10 billion, I believe.

So at a time when the farm community in this country is doing pretty darn well--in fact, the average farm income today is about 51 percent higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 years--$92 billion--real farm income is up $200 billion just in the last couple of years. Farmers are experiencing record income. We are setting up a subsidy structure, the purpose of which is to basically make payments to farmers who are making a lot of money on products that are doing very well.

Wheat is selling at $6 or $8 a bushel, and the average price has been around $3.50. It is almost twice the average price. The same can be said for corn--corn is higher even--barley, soybeans, and rice, which is at three times the average price. We have commodities that are able to compete in the market, so why do we need this massive new subsidy structure which essentially creates this command and control attempt to manage the markets? We don't, obviously. We don't in the context of this time.

In addition, the bill sets up some new mechanisms that are rather poor. It creates this new floor for emergencies. It says there will be a $3.8 billion kitty for emergencies. We have never handled emergencies that way. The reason is because we don't know what the emergencies are going to be. We have always taken care of emergencies, whether it was Katrina--which cost will be over $150 billion--or whether it was smaller events, such as a flood somewhere or hurricanes or tornadoes. We take care of them when we know what the cost is. We don't set up basically a slush fund for emergencies so that the next time a post office box blows over in some community, it is declared an emergency and they can go get this money. This is going to incentivize an aggressive attempt to declare everything an emergency to get at the money that exists.

The irony is--to show how totally inconsistent this language is--they don't even use the emergency money they have set aside in this bill for an emergency they identify in the bill, which is the Kansas tornadoes, which they funded in the amount of $60 million, I believe it is. It shows this money is just going to be used for something else. If they are going to fund a $60 million emergency in the bill, they ought to at least have the credibility to take it out of the new slush fund. I mean, how absurd is that? This is walking around money. That is what it amounts to--$3.8 billion, which is real money, by the way. It would run the State of New Hampshire for 2 years.

There is a representation that there is a major reform effort in the area of payment to wealthy farmers. They reduce the payment level so you don't get any payments if you have more than $750,000 of farm income. What isn't discussed today is the $2.5 million. The fact is, you can also have $500,000 of outside income, plus the $750,000, so that gets you up to $1.2 million. Then, if you are married, you can couple that up with your spouse so that she or he can have the same amount. If it is a married farmer, and they are making $2.5 million of income, they still qualify under this bill. So it is sort of a sleight of hand exercise to claim there is significant reform.

In fact, this reform is insignificant compared to what is suggested. The President's reform would have saved $1.6 billion. He suggested that people with an adjusted gross income of over $200,000 not get these payments.

How much does this bill save in that area, because it allows the spouse to qualify also and it allows the extra income outside farming to qualify? Mr. President, $286 million. That is not a lot of money when you spread it--that is a lot of money, but when you put it over the period of this bill, it is not a significant amount of money, and it reflects the fact that it is not a significant reform. It simply is not.

The bill also does nothing to limit the practice of farmers locking in subsidy payment rates at the lowest market prices, yet retaining their crops to sell later when the prices are much higher. As a result, farmers are paid subsidies for losses they never had. This is what is known as commissar politics. This is where the guys from Russia and the Soviet Union gather and say: This worked in the Soviet Union, let's do it here.

The concept that you pay people for losses that don't exist for a product that is being sold that the guy gets to keep and gets to sell-- let's be reasonable about this. This is not logical, and it certainly is not market politics. It has very little relationship to Adam Smith.

It also, ironically, at a time when we should be encouraging people to use ethanol, continues a major discouragement for those of us who live in the Northeast from using ethanol by extending the tariff for 2 more years, to 2010. This tariff makes no sense at all because you cannot ship to the Northeast the ethanol that is being produced in the Midwest, and we don't have the production capabilities in the Northeast. We don't have the product, although the switchgrass initiative, which I respect and say is a good initiative, hopefully can give us that option.

The simple fact is, to maintain this tariff is to penalize uniquely the Northeast--Pennsylvania, New England, New York, New Jersey, everything basically in the East, not even the Northeast--in order to protect the subsidies of product corn in the Midwest. Corn is doing pretty darn well. It does not need the protection. In fact, if anything, we need to figure out a way to produce other products to make ethanol. The folks in Brazil have figured it out, so why not let us b uy that ethanol? Why penalize us in a way that is really punitive-- punitive--for the purposes of basically protecting production which is already at a record price? It makes no sense at all.

And then the one that really is the worst or, in my humble opinion, the most egregious. The most egregious is the Sugar Program. The Sugar Program was pretty bad before this bill. In

an act of avarice that can only be called a sugar high, they managed to make it significantly worse. I mean, how can they do that? It is very hard to do, but they essentially locked in a price for sugar in the United States that is double the world price. On top of that, they are making the Federal Government buy sugar at that inflated price and then resell it for the production of ethanol at a significant loss.

The Sugar Program makes no sense to begin with. It never made any sense other than the fact this was a commodity that had influence in the process of developing this bill; obviously, a disproportionate amount of influence. To take this program, which was bad to begin with, and make it so egregious by forcing the Federal Government and Federal taxpayers first to have to pay twice what the world market price is for sugar and then to have to resell it to ethanol producers at a huge loss--how many times can you hit the taxpayers for the purpose of the sugar production industry? It is not right.

Then, of course, there are the new programs, the asparagus payments. I like asparagus. When we did the farm bill, I talked about the fact that I used to grow asparagus. I love it. I did rototill my asparagus bed, I admit to that. I destroyed our asparagus crop. I didn't get a subsidy payment. I didn't get a disaster payment. Under this bill, I might because there is a new asparagus program.

There is a new large chickpea program and a camelina program. I don't even know what that is. That is, obviously, some product made somewhere for which somebody wanted to get a subsidy.

There is the National Sheep and Goat Industry Improvement Center for $1 million.

There is the Desert Terminal Lakes Program, which is $175 million to lease or purchase water rights.

There is a variety of earmarks, and one I find to be most representative of the failure of this bill as being outrageous is one that sets up a program for farm and ranch stress assistance networks. Do we have a stress assistance network for the family who is running a gas station or maybe the family who opened a restaurant and they are not doing so well or the folks who start a small shoe store somewhere? Do we have a stress program, a farm and ranch stress program? What qualifies farmers and ranchers for a special program dealing with stress? The only thing that qualifies is somebody somewhere came up with this program, got somebody's ear, and decided to stick it in this bill because this bill was leaving the station. It does not make sense, and it is certainly something on which tax dollars should not be spent.

We have items that arrived out of nowhere in this bill: fisheries disaster assistance of $170 million for California, Washington, and Oregon; forest conservation bonds. As I mentioned, I find it reasonable that there should be relief for the tornado in Kansas, but why wouldn't it come out of the money we just set aside in this bill for disasters, $3.8 billion? Why wouldn't the fishery assistance, if that is an emergency, come out of that money?

The budget gimmicks. This bill is just replete with gamesmanship to try to get around pay-go. I refer to pay-go as ``swiss cheese-go,'' which is very appropriate in a farm bill. I assume it is subsidized.

The fact is, there is $18 billion of gimmicks in this bill. There are sunsets of programs after 5 years that they know are not going to sunset, so they won't be scored. There is the nonscoring still of the milk income loss compensation issue. There is the classic shift of the corporate tax one day so that you collect it a day earlier or a day later, and that gives you a different score, which allows you to avoid the pay-go rules.

If you look at this budget, it had to have pay-go waived in the House, with $7.4 billion out of whack for pay-go in the House.

Equally ironic, tomorrow we are going to take up the conference report on our budget, on the unified budget. If the budget that passed the Senate earlier this year were in place now, a pay-go point of order would lie against this bill because it violates the very budget that was produced by the majority party and passed with some fanfare earlier this year. The only reason we cannot make the pay-go point of order is because the budget has not fully passed and therefore is not in effect. But I think it is very hard to, with a straight face, say this bill does not violate pay-go when you know that right around the corner is a budget which was passed by the majority which, if it were in place and which I presume it will be in place fairly soon, a pay-go point of order would lie against this bill.

I think we can stop talking about pay-go around here as an enforcement mechanism because it clearly does not exist, and this bill is just another example of where it has been gamed and manipulated. We count 15 to 20 different examples, adding up to something around $143 billion of instances where pay-go has been gamed around here. And this bill just takes that total up a little further--not a little further, a lot further, $18 billion further. So as a result, enforcing pay-go becomes very--well, it is just a very fraudulent exercise. It is only used on very rare occasions when it is politically acceptable for the majority to use it. On other occasions, where it might lie, it is gamed.

This bill is one of the extraordinary examples of that gamesmanship.

And, of course, I mentioned customs fees. I believe the last count is we have used customs fees to fund 55 different programs around here in 55 different instances. The same fees. No, they are not different fees. They are the exact same fees that have been used, I believe, 55 times to fund different programs so the programs can claim they met the budget rules, and this bill--maybe it is 56 or 54, but it is $10 billion of gamesmanship.

The bill has, in my opinion, decoupled economic common sense from the farm production and especially from farm payments. If we want a farm system that works, why don't we go to the market? A lot of these commodities today are doing pretty doggone well, extremely well. It is good times in farm country for most people. Why don't we let the market continue to work? Why do we have to set up these massive subsidy programs? Why do we have to have a sugar program that charges American consumers twice the world rate for sugar? It makes no sense. Why do we have to have a slush fund for emergencies when nobody else has that sort of slush fund? Why do we have to have a new program for asparagus? I think asparagus growers are probably pretty competitive. I don't know who their competition is. Maybe the Chinese grow asparagus. I suspect most asparagus growers can compete with the Chinese. I prefer American asparagus, by the way.

Let's let the markets do this rather than create this bill which is such a mutation of every idea that Adam Smith put forward which has made, quite honestly, our country strong, the basis of which basically won the Cold War, which was that free markets work, capitalism works, competition works, the rules of supply and demand work, that you let people produce the product that has a comparative advantage, and they produce it better and more efficiently, especially Americans, and you get it at a better price for the consumer, and the taxpayers don't end up with the bill.

I know I am not going to win this battle. The way this bill is structured, it is the classic log-rolling exercise. You pick this group that has this interest and you give them a subsidy and they give you a vote. Then you go over here, pick this group, they have an interest, they get a subsidy, and you get their vote. You pick this group that has an interest, give them a dramatic increase in their program--it all adds up to 80 votes around here. The only problem is, the people who pay are our kids and our consumers. This is taking a lamb chop to the head of the American consumer and just pounding him with it. I just thought of that.

In any event, I have a point of order which lies against this bill which I wish to make at this time because this bill violates innumerable points of order in spirit, and were the budget the Senator from North Dakota brought to the floor in law at this time, passed as a resolution at this time, it would violate them in reality also. But there is at least one budget point of order which is a holdover from a prior chairman which makes considerable sense, which is that you should not run up the

debt on the next generation by adding spending in outyears without paying for it that this bill still violates.

Mr. President, section 203 of the 2008 budget resolution makes it out of order to consider legislation that increases the deficit by more than $5 billion in the Senate for any of the four 10-year periods, starting in fiscal year 2018. The pending bill would increase the long- term net deficit in excess of $5 billion. Therefore, I raise a point of order under section 203 of S. Con. Res. 21 against the pending bill.

I thank the leaders on this bill for their courtesy on the floor, the chairman and the ranking member. They have given me more than a reasonable amount of time to express my thoughts. I understand I have totally swayed them to my view and they will be joining me in my position. I also very much appreciate the courtesy.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to be joined by Senator Kennedy and the other 31 cosponsors of the Public Safety Employer- Employee Cooperation Act of 2007, as we begin discussion of this legislation. The Cooperation Act would extend to firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials the right to discuss workplace issues with their employers.

Each year, more than 80,000 police officers and 75,000 firefighters are injured protecting their communities. Not counting the tragic events of September 11, it is estimated that 162 police officers and 100 firefighters will lose their lives each year in the line of duty. These extraordinary individuals selflessly risk injury, and sometimes their lives, to protect others, yet they remain the only sizable segment of workers who do not have the combined right to enter into collective bargaining agreements with their employers.

The Public Safety Employee-Employer Cooperation Act is balanced in its recognition of the unique situation and obligation of public safety officers. The bill requires that, within 2 years of enactment, States offer public safety officers the ability to vote in a free and fair election on whether to form and voluntarily join a union and collectively bargain over hours, wages, and conditions of employment. The bill only affects States which do not currently provide this opportunity, and those States would have 2 years to establish their own collective bargaining systems that can meet their unique needs. This approach leaves the decisions regarding implementation, enforcement, and all other major details with the individual States and local governments, ultimately allowing them to have the final say over any contract terms. Finally, under this legislation, States with right-to- work laws, which prohibit employers and labor organizations from negotiating labor agreements that require union membership or payment of union fees, can continue to implement those laws.

The legislation recognizes the need to put public safety first, so the use of strikes, lockouts, sickouts, work slowdowns, or any other action that is designed to influence the terms of a proposed contract and that will disrupt the delivery of emergency services is strictly prohibited. It further protects small towns by ensuring that areas with populations of less than 5,000 or fewer than 25 full time employees are exempt from collective bargaining and that firefighters or EMTs who are employed by a department participating in collective bargaining agreements can still serve their local communities as volunteers.

Healthy labor-management partnerships result in improved public safety for our towns and cities. The bipartisan Cooperation Act helps build these partnerships by putting firefighters, law enforcement officials, and other public safety officers on much deserved equal footing with other private and public sector employees and providing them with the ability to negotiate with employers over basic workplace rights.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak briefly--not about the bill that is pending but about a bill that is somewhere in one of the hallways around here, which is the supplemental that is necessary in order to fund our troops in the field. That bill was supposed to be marked up today in the Appropriations Committee, but, regrettably, for reasons which are not totally clear to me but which are reasonably apparent--which is that the House has not yet gotten its procedures in order--the bill was not marked up, the markup was canceled. It was supposed to start at 2 o'clock.

I certainly hope we will mark up this bill. It is very important this bill be subject to regular order. It is a very significant bill, obviously, because it involves funding for our troops in the field. It is significant also because a lot of other matters which are extraneous to the issue of fighting the war and giving our troops the resources they need have been added to it on the House side, and even more, as it appears, maybe even being added on the Senate side. Thus, the Senate ought to have the right to work its will on the bill in the regular order, which includes a committee hearing where the various issues are aired and amendments can be made. Then when it gets to the floor, it should also be subject to amendments so the minority, especially, can have some input on the bill. Otherwise, the minority gets written out of the process, which is not constructive to the institution, and it certainly means we would have to defend our rights and probably oppose the bill on those procedural grounds that we have an obligation--that we as a minority basically have the sacred right of making a decision as to when amendments are to be offered or at least what amendments should be voted on.

Relative to a major piece of legislation such as this, we as the minority should have the right to amend it. If we decide not to amend it, that is our choice, obviously. But parts of this bill clearly need to be subject to amendment, and the minority has a right to be heard on that in the Senate, especially because that is the essence of the institution. The minority has the ability to participate in the process through the amendment process and through the filibuster process.

So I wish to speak to some of the amendments I would have offered had we met today which I happen to think are very appropriate to this bill and which are in the area of jurisdiction for which I have primary responsibility. I am the ranking member on the Foreign Operations Subcommittee which is the committee that deals with foreign relations, with the State Department, and with funding foreign activities. There are some very important issues which need to be addressed in this bill that are not addressed. This bill has a significant amount of money in it that will flow through the State Department which deals specifically with Iraq, with Afghanistan, and to some extent with other issues such as Mexico.

The first amendment I would have offered would have been language to correct what is an inconceivable bureaucratic snafu, in my opinion. That is the fact that Nelson Mandela--certainly one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, who epitomized the movement for freedom and for equality in Africa but really for the world generally--is not allowed in the United States unless he gets a special waiver from the Secretary of State which allows him to come into the United States because of the fact that he was a member of the African National Congress and is a member of the African National Congress, having been the head of South Africa as that party rules there; and that party, due to the history of that party, has been caught in the bureaucratic framework of our laws and is designated as a potential terrorist organization, which is really ridiculous on its face.

The fact that Nelson Mandela cannot come into the United States because the organization he led, which delivered freedom and equality in South Africa, has gotten this designation due to its prior activity, it would be like saying the head of the Likud Party, which a number of Prime Ministers of Israel come from, because it at one time was an activist organization confronting British rule in Palestine at the time, the head of the Likud Party would not be allowed in the United States but would have to receive special exemption. It makes no sense.

So this language, which the Secretary of State totally supports and the Secretary of State is equally outraged by, would have to be changed. So working with the State Department, we have this language together, and we will go over it.

I understand at 2 o'clock we go into debate on the DeMint amendment, and I will be happy to yield the floor as soon as somebody arrives and wishes to debate. But I ask unanimous consent to be able to continue until such individual arrives.

The second amendment I would have offered would address the issue of the war on terror and our involvement with Iraq relative to the State of Jordan, which unfortunately has found itself incurring dramatic costs as a result of the overflow of the events in Iraq. Massive amounts of refugees are coming into Jordan. It has put an extraordinary burden on that country, a tremendous ally and friend of the United States.

So I believe we have an obligation as a nation--since we created this problem for Jordan in many ways by the activity in Iraq--to support Jordan as it tries to address the issues of the refugees. We cannot help them with the physical activity of the refugees there, but we can give them resources. I was going to increase funding to Jordan to accomplish that. I know Senator Inouye is also very interested in this issue.

In addition, money being spent by the State Department in Iraq on behalf of reconstruction should be significantly limited; but more important than that, any new money we spend for reconstruction through State Department accounts should be matched one-to-one by the Government of Iraq. I find it inconceivable for a government that runs a $30 billion or $40 billion surplus, on the issue of oil revenues, not be asked to pony up or at least match what the American taxpayers are spending there relative to resources to promote reconstruction in Iraq. So I was going to offer that amendment.

I see the Senator from South Carolina is here. I understand this time is correctly his. At this point, I will yield the floor. First, I also intended to offer an amendment in markup today which would have put a consular office in Tibet. I think it is critical to have a consular office there as the Tibetan people deal with the situation occurring there relative to the Chinese Government crackdown.

At this point, I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 4710

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 7 minutes.

Madam President, I rise on a separate subject that is coming at us that is of even greater significance in many ways because it is going to impact the entire structure of the economy and the lives of everyone in the United States, and that is how we get a handle on the issue of global warming and the issue specifically of the emission of toxic materials from plants which generate energy. The term ``cap and trade'' is applied to a bill that is going to be brought forward supposedly in early June. Cap and trade is a concept of basically creating areas where energy companies are required to start reducing their emissions but the manner in which they do so is tied to the trading of rights of basically emissions and what sort of chemicals can be emitted through a trading process between different regions and within different communities of emitters.

This cap-and-trade proposal, which is known as the Warner-Lieberman bill, is a huge readjustment of our economy. It represents a massive cost to our economy as well as, hopefully, a massive improvement, if it would work right, in the amount of toxic emissions which we incur and which occur as a result of our production of electricity specifically. The cost of the cap-and-trade program, through the purchasing and selling of allocations of what can be emitted, is estimated to be about $1.2 trillion over the first 10 years of the proposal. This cost, obviously, is going to have a major impact on our economy. It is going to have a major impact on the people who consume the electricity, because the cost is going to be passed on to the people who use electricity in their homes, primarily, and businesses. There are a lot of issues raised by this bill on the substance of whether cap and trade can work--for example, issues of foreign competition, whether the technology necessary to meet the conditions for reduction will be available in time, issues as to whether certain segments of our industrial society are going to be unnecessarily handicapped and create a rush to move jobs offshore. These are big policy issues. I didn't want to address those. I don't want to address the substance of how the actual cap and trade will work. What I want to address instead is the ancillary, sidecar issue of the generation of this huge cost of $1.2 trillion, and it will go on 40 years. So we are talking about literally trillions of dollars passed on to consumers through higher energy costs. It is estimated those energy costs will increase anywhere from $30 to $500 a month.

In any event, the costs are dramatic, and that has two effects. One, the Federal Government is going to make a massive amount of income as a result of these costs. Two, the consumers, the homeowners are going to see their electrical rates go up which is essentially a tax as a result of these costs. So the way I conceive of this is that the Federal Government is going to get a lot of new revenue, and what do we do with that revenue is the first question. Secondly, what about the consumers who are going to have to pay this new consumption cost through the increase in the price of electricity which is essentially a consumption tax.

The bill itself that is being discussed in committee and is supposedly going to be reported on the floor will take the $1.2 trillion over that 10-year period and essentially spend it all, spend it all in a variety of ways. But a large amount of that spending would involve the expansion of Government. It would be a huge infusion of funds into the Federal Treasury at the expense of the consumer who pays those funds.

Barack Obama, who is running for President, who appears to be close to successful in winning his quest for the nomination, has suggested he would pay for an additional $300 billion in new spending annually. He has proposed over $300 billion in new spending annually. He would pay for a large amount of that through generating $30 to $50 billion annually in taxes as a result of cap and trade. It is estimated by some that that revenue to the Federal Treasury might exceed that number and be actually up to $100 billion a year annually of income to the Federal Treasury. But Barack Obama has already suggested that we spend it on the expansion of the Federal Government.

The bill itself proposes that it be spent on the expansion of Government as well as on various other initiatives which the bill suggests we should pursue.

I suggest a different approach. I suggest that if we go down the path of cap and trade and if we end up raising well over $1 trillion over a 10-year period from consumers, we should return those dollars to consumers in some way. I believe since we are basically creating a consumption tax and we are essentially shifting the burden of the Government significantly onto the user of electricity, especially the homeowner, they should receive a commensurate reduction in taxes that they pay in other places. It makes sense to me that if you are going to shift what amounts to a $1.2 trillion increase in consumption taxes, you ought to take those revenues and use them to reduce income taxes to working Americans by pretty much an equal amount. I believe if we did that, if we took the revenue from the consumption tax and moved it over and reduced the income taxes so working Americans could benefit from that reduction in their income taxes, you could end up dramatically reducing income tax rates on working Americans.

That should be our goal with these dollars. We should not use these dollars to significantly expand the size of the Federal Government. If we are going to create this brandnew consumption tax in order to try to energize the effort of the marketplace to control emissions which may be causing global warming,

then we ought to use the revenues which are the result of a new tax burden, a consumption tax burden on people using electricity, to reduce the tax burden on working Americans in other places. We should not use it as a windfall to the Federal Government which would expand the size of the Federal Government and expand the size of Government. It is not right to do that.

The overall tax burden on the American people is already significant. It is going to grow, regrettably, over the next few years. If we listen to some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, it is going to grow a lot. In fact, the budget that passed this Congress suggests it will grow by almost a trillion dollars over the next 5 years. We don't need to throw on top of that increased burden of taxation, which Americans are already paying, a brandnew consumption tax, the revenues from which are then taken to expand the size of the Federal Government. Rather, let's take those revenues and put them toward a reduction in income taxes. In fact, there are many people who look at tax policy and would argue that this is an intelligent way to structure this, to basically begin the shift from an income tax system to a consumption tax system is a much more efficient way for us to collect revenues and, secondly, a better way to collect revenues from the standpoint of energizing a strong and vibrant economy. But independent of that argument, which has been raging for years, whether a consumption tax makes more sense than an income tax, what doesn't make sense is to raise consumption taxes through cap and trade by $1.2 trillion over 10 years and then spend it to increase the size of Government. Let's use that money to reduce the tax rate on working Americans, to reduce the income tax. That should be our goal as we move forward and debate the issue of cap and trade and how we are going to use the revenues which that bill will generate.

I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Louisiana and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to respond to some attacks relative to my integrity which were run today in a New York newspaper--I think it was the Daily News--which I presume were energized and orchestrated by the staff of the leadership--the Senate office of the senior Senator from New York. The editorial could not have had the fact pattern that it had, had it not been fed that information from the senior Senator's staff. So I think it is appropriate to respond to it.

It implies, obviously, that I am inconsistent in my views on how I approach spending in this Congress. I think that will come as a surprise to most people in this Congress because I doubt anyone in this Congress--I am sure there are a few--does not think my record in trying to control spending and having some resistance to spending which I feel is inappropriate is fairly strong.

As chairman of the Budget Committee, I tried to discipline spending. I tried to make our Government more affordable for our children. I tried not to pass on to our children debts which they should not have to bear so our children can have the opportunity to live as fulfilling a life and have as high quality a life as we have had.

There is in this bill a proposal to spend $1.6 billion on an air train to Kennedy Airport. That is not an aircraft issue. It is clearly an add-on. This proposal is, ironically, paid for using the Tax Code in a very ingenious way. It gives a credit to the State of New York, or the city, for taxes which they don't pay over a period of time, which is fairly extensive. I think it will run into the period 2020. That credit totals about $1.6 billion, $1.7 billion. It is, under any scenario--I did not use this term when I spoke about it first, but I will use it now--it is under any scenario an earmark, and not a very good earmark, to say the least.

The representation is that my opposition to this is an attack on the efforts of this country to address the very serious and legitimate and appropriate concerns of the city of New York that resulted from 9/11.

After 9/11, the people of New Hampshire and the people of this Nation were committed and remain committed to making sure the city of New York is made whole, to the extent it can be. Obviously, it could never be after such a horrific event. We in our State were happy to take our tax dollars and put them toward the city to try to address those problems, and I voted for that. And we in our State were happy to support efforts to rebuild and continue to be happy to support efforts to rebuild Ground Zero because that is a place which has taken on sacred meaning to our Nation. But we are not interested, in New Hampshire--and I suspect most American citizens are not interested--in using dollars which were supposed to be used for 9/11 to help out some other, maybe a legitimate need--but I don't know whether it is--in the city of New York, and that is building a train. I call it the train to nowhere. It is a bit of an exaggeration, but since I was trying to put it in the context of an earmark that was of a questionable purpose, that seemed like a reasonable term to use. That has become sort of like the term ``Xerox'' when you talk about an earmark about which you have serious questions. But building this air train to Kennedy Airport--by the way, I understand there is some significant disagreement within the city about whether it should even be built, but certainly it should not be on this bill as an attempt to basically get around an authorizing process or a process which would air whether this earmark is appropriate.

It should also not use a brand new exercise in tax policy, which is totally inappropriate, of basically using the tax laws in a way that creates an earmark by saying that you get a credit for a tax you don't even have to pay. That is very bad precedent--horrific precedent, quite honestly.

This earmark should see the light of day, and I don't think it can be defended on the grounds of 9/11. In fact, I think that really does serious damage to the historic and very human perspective of 9/11. To try to defend building an air train to Kennedy Airport and stand behind 9/11 as your reasoning, and then claim, in a way that is most inappropriate, in my opinion, if somebody opposes that proposal, they are attacking the memory and the purpose and the sacredness of the 9/11 event and the Ground Zero reconstruction, is just, even by New York standards of exaggerated politics, carrying it a step too far--more than a step too far, in my opinion. But that is what was done here.

An earmark was created for something which has only marginal relationship to even downtown Manhattan--I guess you have to get there from Manhattan, so I guess it has a relationship--certainly no nexus with Ground Zero from the standpoint of an air tram construction to Kennedy Airport. Using the tax laws in an abusive way to generate this earmark and then claiming, when anybody raises the question of the legitimacy of it, that they are somehow acting in a way that is inconsistent with the commitment to the rebuilding of New York after 9/ 11 and they are degrading the name of the 9/11 event is beyond the pale.

But that seems to be the goal, the style, and the approach of at least the people who fed the information to the paper--which I presume was the staff of the senior Senator from New York. Maybe it was not his staff. I would like him to come down here and deny it if it wasn't. I would like him to come to the floor and deny it if he didn't basically give this information and set the tone of this position because, very clearly, in my opinion, he has.

Let's return to the fact pattern as it exists. I will stop using the term ``train to nowhere'' because I can understand how that might irritate. I will accept that term was probably inappropriately applied. I will call it an earmark, a very questionable earmark for a lot of money which does not flow from the original commitment, in my opinion, to the rebuilding of New York--which the citizenry of America made and which we were happy to stand behind.

In fact, ironically, the plans for this train, this elevated train, were begun in 1998, and the actual commitments that this train would go forward, as I understand it, were discussed as early as 1988. The claim this is tied into Ground Zero is to extend credibility quite a bit, in my opinion. To hide behind that and use it in such a personal way which basically questions another Member's integrity is obviously inappropriate.

I think the Senator may have the votes to support his proposal to raid the Tax Code for $1.6 billion. Maybe he has the votes to do that. But it should not be on this bill. It is not an airplane issue. I can tell you right now, if I have anything to say about it, this bill is not going to move forward as long as it is on this bill.

It had not been my intention to engage at this level, but, as, you know, people from New Hampshire know how to play politics. We know how to deal in this Chamber as well as people from New York. We may be from the country, but we know how to engage. It appears engagement has been called upon, so let us go forward and see who is right, see who has the equities on their side, and determine whether the American people believe building a train which was designed in 1988, was committed to, I believe, in 1998, about which there is considerable discussion whether it should even be going forward, which is an elevated train to an airport in, I believe, Queens, is an appropriate use of $1.7 or $1.6 billion of their hard-earned income. Let's see what happens on that issue.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to express my thanks to Franklin D. Barca, a loyal member of my staff who has chosen to retire after being a public servant to our country for more than four decades. A graduate of Braintree High School in Braintree, MA, and Northeastern University, Frank served a full career as a civilian within the Department of Defense at locations such as the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Pentagon. To my good fortune, Frank was assigned to my office as a detailee in 1997 and later agreed to join my staff as my military legislative assistant, a position he has dutifully held ever since.

Serving as my adviser on national security issues, Frank's greatest legacy will be his work as the clerk of the caucus created to save the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard during the 2005 round of base realignment and closure. His tireless work ethic, attention to detail, and leadership were instrumental in our efforts to show the Department of Defense that Portsmouth truly is the gold standard of the Navy. During his work on BRAC, Frank was affectionately given the nickname of ``The General.''

Walking through the Capitol with Frank you understand his love and respect for history. Whether it's showing someone Lincoln's catafalque for the first time or telling stories of the District during the Civil War, Frank

seems to have a bit of trivia for every corner of this building. In the words of another man whom the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts lay claim, Daniel Webster, ``The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.'' I will certainly miss Frank's advice, straightforwardness, and willingness to go the extra mile to help me serve the people of New Hampshire.

I hope that Frank Barca will enjoy his retirement. It is an achievement that he certainly has earned. I know that Frank will get pleasure from being able to spend more time with his wife Elaine, his daughters, and his four grandchildren Katie, Meredith, Michael, and Sarah.

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

Madam President, I rise to speak briefly about where we are headed as a government and specifically what we are passing on to our children, which is regrettably a lot more debt than they deserve. This year the Federal deficit is projected to be close to $400 billion. That is up from last year, where it was under $200 billion. That is not a good trend, to be driving up the deficit.

It is also not a good trend to be putting on the books program after program which will end up costing our children a lot of money, and which we borrow from our children to pay for.

This bill, which is brought forward today, has in it, unfortunately, a couple of items--at least one specifically--actually a couple that are questionable, in which we are spending money which could much better be used to reduce the debt on our children. As I said, this year alone we are going to add $400 billion of debt to our children's backs. Probably the most significant in this account is something that has nothing to do with air transportation. You can call it the train to nowhere or the fast track to waste. It is the train they are proposing to build somewhere in New York to go somewhere in New York which is going to cost $1.7 billion.

Clearly this is not the right bill for that proposal. But even if it were the right bill, this would be not an appropriate proposal. This is a situation where folks from New York, who are good and decent people, have decided to raid the Federal Treasury to get some money to pay for something--in a very questionable way, by the way; by basically waiving FICA taxes, which they are not paying to begin with, for town employees--State employees. They have decided to raid the Federal Treasury for the purposes of building this train to nowhere.

We have seen this before, these specific projects, which benefit a specific place, which are not defensible. This certainly falls into that category. But in the broader context it becomes even less defensible because we are facing such a large deficit. We are not only facing this very significant deficit of almost $400 billion, we are constantly adding to that deficit. There are now, within the framework of the walls of this Capitol building--there are not four walls, there are lots of different walls in this Capitol building, but within this Capitol there is a series of ideas which is being promoted, which is also on a fast track, regrettably, a fast track of spending, which is also going to end up ballooning that deficit further than $400 billion.

There is, for example, a proposal being floated which has merit in concept but, when it comes to paying for it, nobody is willing do that, which will cost close to $60 billion. That is a proposal to dramatically expand the GI bill, as it is known. There is a proposal to expand unemployment insurance, even in States where unemployment has not hit numbers where it represents an immediate problem. Traditionally, unemployment under 6 percent or 5.5 percent is deemed to be full employment. In much of this country today, many States have their unemployment rates under 5.5 percent. But there is a proposal to expand the number of weeks a person can claim unemployment, even in States where there is essentially a number that represents full employment and that is going to cost $15 billion.

There are proposals in the farm bill, which has all sorts of gimmicks and all sorts of machinations to cover its costs and claim that it is paid for, which will cost billions and billions of dollars. The farm bill itself is a $285 billion bill. Huge expenditures are coming down the pike here, which are going to have to be paid for by our children.

There are proposals for further relief for Katrina of $5 billion. There are food stamp proposals of billions of dollars. There are Byrne grants, competitiveness grants, county payments, Bureau of Prisons--all of these ideas are floating around this Capitol as ideas on which we should spend more money. Most of them have good and reasonable arguments behind them. But the problem is they also, almost in every case, end up passing more debt on to our children.

In many instances, especially the train to nowhere in New York, you cannot justify it. It is wasteful spending at the expense of our children and it is inappropriate because this debt is building up and up. As a result, paying off this debt is going to mean the taxes on our children are going to have to go up and up as they move into their earning years.

The practical effect of that is that the next generation, our kids and our children's children, are not going to be able to afford as high quality a lifestyle as our generation has because they will have to be paying so much to support the Federal Government and the debts of the Federal Government. They will not be able to afford to send their kids to college, assuming college is even affordable at that time. They will not be able to buy that first home. They will not be able to live the high quality of lifestyle that has become the nature and character of American life, because the cost of the government, which we have incurred today, will have to be paid for by them tomorrow.

It is not fair. It is not right. It used to be around here people talked about the deficit a lot. They used to point to it as a failure of our Government and there used to be genuine efforts to try to reduce the deficit--on the spending side of the ledger from our side of the aisle and on the other side of the aisle by raising taxes. But that discussion has waned. There is no focus right now on the deficit, I suspect in large part because we now have a Democratic Congress and deficit spending is justifiable if it meets an interest group's claims that they have a right to this money or they believe should have a program, such as the train to nowhere in New York, which is promoted by our colleagues from the other side of the aisle who represent New York.

In the end, if we do not return to the basic concept that every family in America has to confront, which is you need to pay your bills as they come in and you cannot put too much money on the credit card because that means down the road you are not going to be able to pay that credit card and you are going to have to suffer significant contraction as a family--if we do not face up to that real fact of day- to-day existence that most Americans must realize, as far as how their spending meets their income, or if we do not as a government face up to that, we are going to fundamentally undermine our Nation. We are certainly going to do significant damage to our children and their future.

We talk a lot now about the weakness of the dollar and how that has caused the price of gasoline to jump dramatically, which it has. The weak dollar has caused energy costs and costs of commodities which are not produced in the United States to be driven up in large part because the dollar has weakened so much. One of the drivers of the weak dollar is a belief in the international community that we are not going to put our fiscal house in order, that we are going to continue to run deficits that are excessive, and that is what we are doing as a Congress.

We have some responsibility here. You can't make great progress unless you begin somewhere. A good place to begin might be to take this $1.7 billion that is proposed in this bill to spend for the train to nowhere, or the fast track to waste, and eliminate that program and take the revenues that are alleged to be used to offset that program and use them to reduce the debt on our children's heads. Reduce that debt by $1.7 billion. That is progress. Granted, in the overall scheme of things it is not a huge amount of money compared to the total debt that is being incurred, even this year, the $400 billion, but you have to start somewhere. This would be a good place to start.

Let's stop the wasteful spending which is adding to the Federal debt, which inevitably will undermine the quality of life of this Nation and especially pass on to our children obligations which there is no reason we should ask them to bear.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor U.S. Army Sergeant David Stelmat of Littleton, NH. On March 22, 2008, Sergeant Stelmat was tragically taken from us, along with two fellow soldiers from the North Carolina Army National Guard's 1132 Military Police Company, when his humvee encountered an improvised explosive device in Bagdad, Iraq. At only 27 years old, SGT David Stelmat, or DJ as he was known to his friends and family, will always be remembered as an adventurous, fun- loving young man who enjoyed the outdoors.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, were the worst our Nation has ever experienced. Terrorists hijacked commercial airplanes, turned them into weapons, and brutally steered them into the World Trade Center Towers in New York, the Pentagon only miles from here, and the last plane lost on a field in Pennsylvania as a result of the heroic stance of the passengers aboard. It has become part of New Hampshire lore that in the wake of this tragedy, when our Nation was looking to heal itself, DJ, a 1998 graduate of Profile High School, along with a friend, climbed to the top of the Old Man of the Mountain and placed an American flag in the iconic profile. Pictures of DJ's action quickly spread and served as a patriotic symbol of our State and our country.

Upon returning home from military service to our Nation as part of the infantry in Afghanistan, DJ attended the New Hampshire Technical Institute in his ardent desire to become an emergency medical technician. I am sure that this patriotic need to help our Nation heal after September 11 came from the same source of motivation which led to his burning desire to achieve his goal of military service as a combat medic.

In January 2006, DJ joined the New Hampshire National Guard's 237th Military Police Company. In August of that year he completed training as a health care specialist. After receiving training, he deployed with the 1132nd Military Police Company. As a testament to his service, Sergeant Stelmat's awards include a Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Medal with ``M'' device, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, Combat Action Badge, Expert Rifle Weapons Qualification Badge, and an Overseas Service Bar.

My deepest sympathy, condolences and prayers go out to DJ's loved ones, especially his parents. The service and sacrifice of Sergeant Stelmat remind me of the words of another son of New Hampshire, Daniel Webster, who said, ``What a man does for others, not what they do for him, gives him immortality.'' As combat medic, there is no doubt but that DJ put his country and his fellow soldiers before himself. For this selflessness, we are eternally grateful. May God bless U.S. Army Sergeant DJ Stelmat.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and to call up amendment No. 4501.

Well, I am shocked, shocked to hear an objection from the Senator on this very reasonable request to call up an amendment so this bill, which is a fairly significant bill, could be voted on by the Senate in parts, because there are some parts of this bill which aren't that good, and this amendment addresses one of those parts. Specifically, this amendment says the net operating loss carry-forward provisions, which cost $17 billion over the first 3 years of this bill, would be eliminated. There are already in law net operating loss provisions. What this bill does, however, regrettably, is expand those provisions dramatically and benefits one small segment of our commercial society, to the disadvantage of other segments of our commercial society and to the distinct disadvantage of our children and our children's children who have to pay for all the money that is going to be spent in the area of a tax credit or deduction.

This $17 billion will go to benefit the same industry, or part of the industry, which created the problem which this stimulus package is trying to address. It is a lot like that story of the fellow who shot both his parents and then threw himself on the court and asked for mercy because he was an orphan. What we have is the housing industry requesting a $17 billion tax break specifically for them because they created an economic meltdown by speculatively building thousands of houses--thousands more than we needed--and then selling those houses to people through the subprime mortgage process, which turned out to be a very poor idea for many people who bought houses with a subprime mortgage.

At the time these housing construction industry companies did this, they made a lot of money--a lot of money. Now they are losing money. And they are saying, with a straight face, in this bill: We need a $17 billion tax break, which allows us to go back and eliminate the taxes we paid on the profit we made during the good days of the housing bubble and get a tax rebate to reflect the fact that we are losing money today, which recovers the taxes we paid 3 and 4 years ago. How outrageous is that?

In addition, of course, housing contractors who were responsible--and who during this period of the bubble did not overbill or did not overly utilize subprime mortgages but, rather, built in a reasonable manner and are still doing well and are still making money--are going to find that their competitor down the street--who was potentially excessive, building a lot of inventory that was not necessary, selling it through subprime mortgages and then finding they are stuck with it today and thus losing money today--is going to get a tax benefit representing

$17 billion. So the contractor who actually has been responsible and has run their business in probably a conservative and constructive way is going to have to compete with the profligate contractor, potentially, who is losing money but is suddenly going to get a huge windfall as a result of this bill in the way of a tax rebate. Where is the fairness in that?

In addition, of course, it undermines the whole concept of the free marketplace. I mean, the marketplace says: If you take a risk and you make an investment and you make a lot of money--which is what happened here--and then that risk turns out to turn on you and you start to lose money, the Government shouldn't come in and say: Oh, that is okay, we are going to insure your losses with a tax break--which is essentially what is happening. We are going to insure them to the extent of $17 billion over the next 2 years.

That is not a capitalist system. That is a French system. That is sort of modified socialism. It essentially says: You can't lose. You can go out and make money, and if you start to lose money, we will give you a tax credit. So the American taxpayers get to pay so you don't lose money.

Then who pays for all this? Who pays for this $17 billion? Well, these folks sitting right down here--the pages--will pay for this. We are not going to pay for it this year. We are not offsetting this cost. This goes on the national debt. Interest will accrue on it. When these young pages graduate from high school and then move on to college--and I know they are all going to go to college--and then they move out of college and start to get a job, you know what they will have to do? They will have to pay taxes, and part of the taxes they are going to be paying 8, 9, 10 years from now is going to go to pay for this tax deduction which we are passing today to benefit an industry which created the bubble, which created a recession. We are giving them this type of insurance through this type of tax break. That is not fair.

It is not fair to the next generation to pass this bill on to them. It is not fair to competitors who were conservative and managed their businesses well, that we are going to give this tax break to people who were not so successful or were successful but today aren't doing well. It doesn't make any sense. It is almost a bill of attainder. It should be unconstitutional--the idea we are going to pass a tax that benefits this one segment of the industry.

By the way, it is not going to stimulate the economy because most of this benefit is going to probably come to fruition after the recession is pretty much over. Probably not before the third or fourth quarter of this year and into next year will these dollars start to reflow into these industries. So as a practical matter, most economists are saying that to the extent we have a recession--and I happen to believe we have one--it is going to be shallow and short, which means it will probably be over. With all the Fed is doing, I think it will definitely be over by the end of this year, at the latest. So this makes no sense.

At the minimum, the Senate should at least have the right to vote on this policy. I mean, why not at least have a vote on this policy? It is a huge piece of policy, by the way. It seems to me we should have the right to have a vote on this policy. So all I have asked for is not that we accept the ideas I have put on the table, which is that this tax benefit makes no sense economically, that it makes no sense from the standpoint of a capitalist system, it makes no sense from the standpoint of the debt to pass on to our children, and it makes no sense from the standpoint that the people who are benefitting from this tax benefit were the biggest beneficiaries from the runup of the speculative market. I am not saying people have to accept those arguments, although I find them logical, reasonable, and I hope most people would accept them. I am saying let's vote on them. Let us have a vote on whether those arguments make more sense or the idea of putting this tax benefit in this bill makes more sense.

So that is why I have asked, on a number of occasions, for a vote on this item. I regret that there has been an objection, on occasion, to my request for this amendment to be brought up. I am tempted to renew that request at this time, but I sense somebody else might object--this time probably from the audience, as the last objection came from staff. But in any event, I can appreciate the fact that there would be an objection, so I will not raise it again. I will simply reflect the fact that I have made this point, and hopefully at some point there will be a relenting on the other side of the aisle to having a vote on this item.

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