Floor Statements

Mr. President, I support this FHA initiative. As the Senator from New Jersey so appropriately noted, this is another tool which is absolutely critical in this area, as is an amendment which I have pending to the farm bill which, regrettably, as a result of last night's cloture motion, will be ruled nongermane and therefore will not be allowed to be brought up. This amendment says essentially that if a person's home is foreclosed on, they don't then get hit with an IRS tax lien for the amount of the foreclosure which is not recovered. In other words, if you own a home and, regrettably, you can't meet your payments because of a subprime event, and your loan was, say, $100,000, and they foreclose, take it away from you, and then they sell your home but they don't get $100,000--let's say they get $50,000 of that loan paid--you get hit with a tax bill for the additional $50,000. Or if there is a restructuring, where the lenders actually rewrite your loan so you can make your payments, and that represents a writedown in the value of the loan, you get hit with a tax bill.

So the irony of the event is, it is pretty devastating to people. First, their home gets taken. Then the IRS agent shows up and gives them a tax bill and hits them with a tax lien. That, obviously, is not fair, and it is not appropriate. It is a quirk of our Internal Revenue law. This amendment would eliminate that. It would eliminate that event.

I do think it is important. I think it is an important element of moving forward in a way that tries to work us through this subprime meltdown which is having a deleterious effect on our economy and, obviously, is having a very tremendous personal impact on people who are affected by the interest rates on their loans jumping to a point where they can no longer pay them.

So I regret this amendment was ruled out of order for all intents and purposes by the cloture motion. I believe there was very strong bipartisan support. In fact, I have not met anybody so far who is opposed to this concept. I hope it can be included in a final package, either under unanimous consent or because nobody objects to it, or, alternatively, that the Finance Committee,

which I know is working on this issue, can come forward and offer a unanimous consent request to move this free standing.

I think it is important we do it now. I do not think we can wait. These loans are being foreclosed on now. The people who are getting hit with these tax liens are getting these liens today. So it is very important we move promptly.

So I wished to highlight this issue also as one of the issues which is raised relative to resolving this question or at least mitigating the question of how we deal with this subprime meltdown.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly on the practical implications of what we are about to do. I appreciate the positions the leaders of the bill are in. They worked hard to get this bill through.

Obviously, I don't support the bill, but I feel they have every right to finish it. They have the votes to pass it, and there is no reason there should be dilatory delays. But there are three major events that are going to be impacted by this exercise.

The first is an amendment which I had pending which would have given people relief when their homes are foreclosed on so they would not get hit with a tax bill. It appears that amendment, on which there was general consensus, will not be brought up and voted on. That is unfortunate. I hope we can come to this from another angle.

I spoke with the chairman of the Finance Committee. He and the Finance Committee members are trying to find some way to accomplish that. I think it is wrong, when people have their home foreclosed, that they have the IRS follow them to wherever they are going, the apartment they have to move to, to hit them with a tax bill for that foreclosure.

The second issue is a proposal I had--the Senator in the chair also had a proposal on this issue--which was to get some funds in LIHEAP. All of us who live in the colder regions of this country have seen our oil bills go up dramatically. There is a lot of pressure on low-income people, and the LIHEAP

funds, which help low-income people deal with that pressure, are simply not going to be adequate. They are just not going to be adequate.

The Senator from Vermont had an amendment in this area. I had an amendment in this area. Unfortunately, they both will fall.

The third issue is the firefighters, fully explained by Senator Reid, the majority leader. I appreciate his kind words relative to my efforts in this area. I am sorry we will not be able to accomplish this effort at this time. This is an important issue. I do hope we will come back to it. I know it is high on the list of the majority leader and also high on my list.

I regret the procedure that has to take place. Obviously, it is the prerogative of the leadership to do this. I can understand why they are doing it. They have been on the bill a number of weeks. The first couple of weeks we could not offer amendments. That was not our fault. As a practical matter, this session is coming to a close, and they want to wrap up the bill. And as a practical matter, the bill should be wrapped up.

I regret some of these amendments that I think are very important to Americans, especially those in cold climates having to deal with heating bills and those who have had homes foreclosed, and Americans who protect us through fighting fires, those amendments will not be considered.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

I was wondering, is it not true that in this Congress, none of the appropriations bills, which is the business of actually operating the Government--appropriations bills being the bills which fund things like education, things like health care, things like taking care of roads--none of the appropriations bills have passed the Congress in time to meet the fiscal year?

Would the Senator yield for an additional question through the chair.

The Senator has pointed out that we passed none of the obligations for operating the Government prior to the beginning of the fiscal year. As the Senator pointed out, we have only passed 1 of those bills out of the 12. We are now almost 3 months into the fiscal year. That happens to be the worst record in the history of the Congress, I believe.

That dysfunction of this Congress was not necessary, was it? Did we not vote I think almost 60 times on issues involving Iraq, on repetitive issues involving Iraq, to the point where the Democratic leaders have essentially said: We are going to ignore the operation of the day-to-day business of the Government in order to call up 60 votes, many of which were simply political votes, and use up the entire calendar of the Congress in order to make political points, when they knew they were not going to be able to do a great deal in this area other than what they should do, which is fund the troops in the field?

If the Senator would yield further for a question?

My first two questions were sort of to lay the predicate for this question, which is that the other side of the aisle has spent a lot of time saying the minority is obstructing, the Republicans are obstructing. Yet was it not by conscious choice that they decided to create a legislative calendar which was totally dominated by their desire to make political points over the issue of how the war in Iraq was proceeding rather than to take up the appropriations bills, which are the proper order of the Congress, one of the first responsibilities of the Congress? The Republican side of the aisle has not resisted going to appropriations bills; it has been the other side of the aisle which has refused to bring them up.

So this allegation of obstruction is really a bit of a straw dog, is it not? Are they not in the position of basically having created the problem and then trying to claim the problem is created by us when, in fact, the problem was created by the fact that they refused to take up the business of the Government, and now, in the 11th hour 49th minute, they have decided to turn to the business of the Government and they have chaos on their hands as a result of their own management?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes to respond to the Senator from Iowa who referred to me in his comments.

Mr. President, I find it extremely unique that the Senator from Iowa would take the position that he needs a program to be authorized but that we should not vote against it on the basis of it spending money because he doesn't ever expect to fund it. That, on the face of it, does not pass the laugh test. If you are authorizing a program, creating a program, you expect at some point to fund the program and spend money on the program. That is a totally disingenuous argument, in my humble opinion, to make that representation.

I suggest if the Senator from Iowa believes the stress program is an important program, that is fine. We will have a vote. I happen to think the stress program is a reflection of a farm bill that has gone wild in the area of spending money--American taxpayers' money. The American taxpayers are the ones who are going to be under stress.

There are a lot of industries in this country that have stress. The American farmer today is doing pretty well, as was acknowledged by the Senator from Iowa. In fact, they had a 44-percent increase in farm income just this last year. That is pretty good.

Stress may be there. I do not deny that farming is an intense and difficult process. I used to work on a farm. There can be a lot of stress in farming. But I don't think we need to set up a special program with the Federal Government to create a network and a concept for stress, and then we will authorize it, and then we will fund it. This authorization is open ended, which means any amount of money can be put in this bill in later years to fund it.

There are a lot of industries which have stress. We do not create a stress program for the capital markets industry which today is suffering from a meltdown. Are we going to have a stress program for Bear Stearns? We don't create a stress program for all the companies in this country that have basically been under stress by foreign competition. Do we have a stress program for those? Do we have a stress program for the person who runs the local restaurant? Do we have a stress program for the person who runs a local gas station? All of these are entrepreneurial undertakings, and entrepreneurship involves stress, but we don't need to create a stress network to address it.

This is a creation of an earmark, pure and simple, in a bill filled with earmarks. And it seems to me, adding a new program--remember, there are 51 new discretionary programs put into this bill--51, and this is just 1 of them.

I recognize the Senator from Iowa is totally committed to the farmers, and there is probably nobody in this Congress who has done more for the farm community than the Senator from Iowa--both Senators from Iowa, but certainly the Republican Senator from Iowa has done an immense amount.

This is a bridge too far; this is a farm tractor too far. The simple fact is, we do not need a stress program for farmers, and we do not need an authorization which is open ended and which will be funded. There is no question, you do not put an authorization in unless it gets funded.

I have serious reservations about this from, first, the concept of creating the program and, second, the concept of funding the program. I have expressed my reservation. I offered an amendment. We will vote on it. I presume we will lose because we always lose these votes. But as a practical matter, the American people should know this program, in my humble opinion, is not of value and is inappropriate in this context.

Mr. President, that is the stress program; correct?

I think we just had our 2 minutes of debate. I suggest both sides yield back time and go to a vote.

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

Mr. President, this is a new program. It is a new mandatory program. It is $15 million. It is not a lot of money but I think it would be nice if the Senate would make a statement once in a while it is going to be fiscally responsible.

This asparagus program is not needed. It is the result of a 1990s trade agreement, the claim is made, but that is 20 years ago almost that agreement was reached. What has happened is the American consumer has benefited from that agreement and now, because the American consumer has benefited from the agreement, we basically want to raise taxes on the American consumer to make them pay because they didn't pay at the shop when they bought the asparagus.

It makes no sense at all. This is a brand-new $15 million program in this bill for asparagus. The bill is replete with these types of programs. I think we ought to make a statement, at least for once, that we are going to be fiscally responsible. I hope people will vote for the amendment.

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

Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the chairman of the Agriculture Committee. I will speak on our amendment dealing with how we get more doctors to be able to care for women in rural communities. We have a real crisis in rural America today. There is a significant shortage of doctors who deliver babies. This is purely a function of one fact, and that is that the trial lawyer bar has been so aggressive in pursuing doctors who deliver babies with lawsuits, they have essentially created a cost of liability insurance for doctors who deliver babies--OB/GYNs--that is so high that a doctor practicing in a rural community who is there to help women having children, deliver those babies safely, that type of doctor cannot make ends meet. That sounds unusual, but that is a fact.

In order for a doctor to generate enough income to simply pay the liability insurance, which is generated by the large number of lawsuits filed against doctors in this country by the trial bar, it is necessary for an OB/GYN--a doctor who delivers babies--to have a very large basically urban or suburban clientele. When you get into rural America and you don't have a lot of people per square mile, where you have people who work on farms and those farms take up a fair amount of acreage, then you don't have the population base necessary for these doctors to practice and generate enough income to pay the liability insurance.

What we are proposing in this amendment is a very narrow proposal. It doesn't say that doctors who are incompetent, or doctors who, unfortunately, make a mistake won't be sued. It doesn't say that at all. It simply says that in the area of rural America where we need to attract doctors so women have adequate health care, especially if they are having children, in those parts of the country--from the standpoint of population, a small part of the country--we are going to have a special consideration that allows doctors to be able to afford their liability insurance.

We are going to follow what has happened in the law that has been set up in Texas and California, two States which have confronted this issue of liability insurance for doctors and have come up with a plan that has alleviated the cost of the insurance so doctors are able to practice in those States. It essentially says that in the area of economic recovery, you can recover every expenditure, every loss you had, if you were injured as a result of malpractice on the part of a doctor delivering a baby in a rural area.

But in the area of pain and suffering, where so much of the huge awards occur, and where you have had these real decisions that have been in the numbers that are multiple millions, that won't happen any longer. We are going to limit recovery in the pain and suffering area to what has been the standard in Texas and California, which is $750,000 per incident. The practical effect of this is very simple. It will mean doctors who wish to practice in rural America, who wish to deliver

babies for farm families and for other families who live in rural America will be able to pursue those practices and still make a living, something they cannot do in many parts of this country today, so women in these communities will not have to drive for miles and miles to get adequate health care, especially when they are having children.

I know in my State of New Hampshire, if you get north of the White Mountains, one of the prettiest parts of this world, we have a very difficult time attracting obstetricians. In fact, right now, I don't think there is anybody practicing obstetrics up there because of the fact the population base is so small it cannot support those practices at a level that allows doctors in that region to be able to pay their malpractice insurance. So women in that part of New Hampshire often have to drive all the way to Hanover, NH, to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, which is a superb hospital, or down to Laconia, which has a superb hospital. But they literally have to drive through the mountains 2 to 3 hours to get to those facilities. It can be extremely difficult in the middle of winter to drive those roads. In the summer, obviously, it is not fair to ask people to drive those long distances.

This is a very significant issue for rural America and for farm families in America. That is why I have offered it on the farm bill.

The other side of the aisle, for whatever reason--I know the reason, we all know the reason, the trial bar--has decided to resist this amendment aggressively. They have demanded we have 60 votes before we can adopt this amendment. They have basically said: We don't care that women in America who live in rural America are not able to get adequate health care. What we care about is the trial lawyer bar, and that is unfortunate. But that is a reflection of the politics of our time.

The single largest contributing group to the Democratic Party today is the Trial Lawyers Association. Those trial lawyers contribute to the Democratic Party for a reason: They want them to support their agenda. There is a simpatico there. Their agenda is supported essentially by the Democratic leadership in this Congress and in prior Congresses. The trial bar agenda includes not allowing any opening on the issue of limiting liability relative to doctors--any opening. Even something as reasonable as this which is so needed from the standpoint of health care policy, which is so needed from the standpoint of good care of children and mothers in a prenatal state, so needed in the basic fairness for American citizens is resisted, not because it is not a good idea but because they see it as an opening, a slight crack in that door of their ability to bring these massive lawsuits for other people who practice obstetrics across the country or for basically against the medical community generally. They do not want any crack in that door to occur, even if the crack in the door is meant to give American women who live in rural communities, whose families work on farms, the opportunity to be assured decent health care, especially when they are in the process of having and raising a child.

It truly is unfortunate we have reached that point in this Congress where very reasonable public policy, which is to make it possible for more doctors to practice in rural America, is resisted in a knee-jerk way which has no relationship to making our country stronger, our people more healthy, and especially giving people who work in farm America a better opportunity to live a quality life, especially if they are having children.

This is not an attempt in any way to limit the ability of women who are having children and find there is some negligent event occurring as a result of a doctor's care to get a recovery. This amendment does not have that impact. Recovery is in here. It tracks what happens if you live in Texas. It tracks pretty much what happens if you live in California. So it is not an attempt to do some draconian effort to basically shut down lawsuits against doctors who may practice and make mistakes in rural America. Just the opposite. It leaves those lawsuits on the table. It makes them possible. It gives adequate and fair recovery that is allowed for people in two of our most popular States.

What it does do and what it is almost guaranteed to do is to bring more doctors into rural America.

It is interesting to look at the Texas experience because prior to Texas passing its law, which basically tracks this language, they had a very serious, basically a crisis in the area of having OB/GYNs practice in Texas. Now they have a massive backlog of OB/GYNs who want to move to Texas to practice. They actually have the opposite situation. They now have a situation where doctors see Texas as a good place to practice. So health care, for women especially of childbearing age, is improving dramatically because there are a lot more doctors available.

Their biggest problem right now is making sure the doctors who want to come into their State have the quality and ability to do the job right. So they have a big backlog now. That is a complete shift from what happened during the period prior to their passing the law. That applies to everybody, but in the OB/GYN area, they lost 14 doctors, 14 obstetricians during the period 2003, but since they passed their law, they have gained almost 200 obstetricians in the State. That is a big difference. That means a lot of people are seeing doctors who were not able to see them before.

We ought to give that same opportunity to rural America, generally, and especially to farm families. That is why I have offered this amendment.

It is not a big amendment in the sense of dramatic health care changes for the world or for the United States, generally, but it is a big amendment if you are a woman whose family works on a farm and you want to have a child because--hopefully, if this amendment is adopted-- you are going to be able to see a doctor without having to drive 4 or 5 hours maybe through a snowstorm, and that is important. It is important to that person, and it should be something we would do as a matter of decency and fairness and especially as a matter of good public policy relative to health care in this country.

I hope people will support this amendment. I understand the other side of the aisle wants to debate a little while longer. That is fine. I understand they want 60 votes. That seems highly inappropriate to me, but that was the agreement that was reached between the leadership.

As I said, I am not trying to stop this bill. It does seem to me there ought to be 60 Members of the Senate to stand up and say enough is enough; we have done enough kowtowing to trial lawyers on this issue. It is time to do something for the women who live and work in rural America and make sure they have adequate access to health care, especially to doctors who can care for them in those important and special years when they are having children.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be added as original cosponsors to amendment No. 3673: Senator Alexander, Senator Allard, Senator Cornyn, Senator Corker, Senator Dole, Senator Hutchison, and Senator Voinovich.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letters of support representing the following groups: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Dermatology Association, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, the American Urological Association, the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the National Association of Spine Specialists, and the College of American Pathologists.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and yield to the Senator from Colorado on my time.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the proper order for the 2 minutes? Is there a tradition or an order on the 2 minutes?

Thank you.

Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Illinois in going first. Let me simply make this point. This is not a complicated amendment. In rural America today, there is a distinct lack of obstetricians. Women who are going to have children are having a very serious problem finding doctors who can take care of them.

That is because of the cost of malpractice insurance. This bill tracks the Texas experience and the California experience and is a very reasonable approach. You have a simple choice in this bill on this amendment. You can vote for women who need decent health care when they are having children or you can vote for trial lawyers. That is the choice. I would appreciate it if people voted for women. Thank you.

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

Madam President, I have no objection. I want to make sure we are working off the same page on amendments to be offered. I will reserve the right to object to make sure we are on the same page.

Madam President, I would be happy to do that approach. In talking to the Senator from Michigan, who has an interest in the asparagus program, if this is not a convenient time for her, I will substitute the amendment on the emergency funding, which is No. 3822, for the asparagus one, No. 3672, unless the Senator is ready to go.

Reserving the right to object, I suggest I be recognized to offer those three amendments and set a time limit at the convenience of the managers. I am agreeable to a time limit. I can proceed to offer them and my colleagues can work out the time agreements.

Reserving the right to object, I am wondering, does this mean we are not going to have votes on the amendments I am offering?

No, but is it the understanding that at some point, we are going to get to votes on the 5 amendments that are part of the original 20 amendments that were agreed to?

Madam President, I rise to speak about amendments which I have pending to the agriculture bill. I hoped they would be voted on today. I guess there is a fundraiser this evening on the Democratic side of the aisle which allows us to not have any more

votes. Certainly, I hope most will be voted on tomorrow.

There are five amendments which I have proposed to the bill to try to make it a better bill, although it is a bill that has very serious problems. Let me talk about that quickly.

This agriculture bill comes forward every 5 years. It is a reauthorization of the farm programs. The practical effect is every year consumers get sort of taken to the woodshed behind the barn and get fleeced. This is no change from that historic activity under the farm bill. Only this time the fleecing is happening by the use of jiggling numbers and gamesmanship of numbers.

There is $34 billion of spending in this bill which is done through gimmicks--gimmicks to avoid what is euphemistically called pay-go around here, gimmicks to avoid budget points of order, gimmicks to make this bill cost less than it actually costs--$34 billion, with date changes and things such as that.

Then there is another game that is played, which is money which has historically been spent by direct mandatory spending is taken from the mandatory spending accounts and moved over to the tax accounts. Basically, in the conservation area, where we used to have, I think, $5 billion or $3 billion of mandatory accounts spending, we now have $5 billion or $3 billion of what is known as tax credits.

What is the practical effect of that? What it does by moving that spending over to the tax side is you free up that amount of money on the spending side, on the mandatory side to be spent, with the practical implication that the bill jumps in its cost by that amount of money. So you have a fairly significant increase by doing that. In the end, that adds to the deficit, of course, because you have ended up increasing spending by that amount of money.

In addition, the bill adds a large number of new programmatic activities through the subsidy realm. We already subsidize a lot of farm products around here in a questionable way. Sugar is a good example of that. We basically subsidize sugar so that the price of sugar in this country is about 75 percent higher than it is on the world market. That has an effect not only on the cost of sugar but it also has an effect on things such as the production of ethanol, because ethanol can be produced from sugarcane.

In addition, we subsidize all sorts of different commodities. As we know, the farm bill is the classic example of what you learned in school called log rolling. That is where you say, if you will vote for my subsidy, I will vote for yours, and down the road we go. You vote for wheat, I will vote for corn, corn will vote for soybeans, soybeans will vote for peanuts, peanuts will vote for cotton, and so forth and so on. So although none of these subsidies could stand on their own, when they get in this sequential support effort, they build a very solid wall of support for a lot of programs which are of questionable need, and certainly of questionable value when you look at a market economy, and we are supposedly a market economy. Of course, in the farm area we are not a market economy, we are a throwback to a commissar economy.

Well, in this bill they add a number of new programs. They add an asparagus payment, they add a chickpea payment, they add a camellia subsidy, and they create new programs in the area of a national sheep and goat industry. They create a new program to look at the stress farmers are under. So they add a panoply of new programmatic activity in this bill, most of which is of questionable value, but it obviously has some interest group which promoted it and, therefore, it gets put in the bill.

What I have done is I have lined up five amendments here which I think are fairly reasonable and address a number of issues--policywise big issues, and from a farm standpoint some of them address fairly narrow and concise issues.

The first amendment which I have offered--which has been offered on my behalf by Senator Thune, but which I will call up and ask for a vote on as soon as we can get to it, as soon as we can get people to give us votes around here--is the mortgage forgiveness amendment. What we are seeing in America today, whether it is in farm America, rural America, or in urban America, is obviously a huge meltdown in the subprime lending markets. The effect of that meltdown is that many people are finding their mortgages foreclosed on, which is obviously an extremely traumatic event, to have your house taken in a mortgage foreclosure. I can't think of too many more traumatic physical events than that. Obviously, there are more traumatic health events, but not too many more physical events or economic events.

Well, when you have a mortgage foreclosed on, you have a second totally incomprehensible event. The IRS assesses you a tax on the amount of the money which you owed to the bank, or to the lender, which you couldn't repay and which was wiped out in the foreclosure.

For example, if you have an obligation to a bank of $150,000 and your home is foreclosed on, and it is sold for something that recovers $100,000 of that, then that $50,000 difference becomes personal income to you and the IRS sends you a tax bill for it, even though you got foreclosed on. Well, can you think of anything worse than that? I can't, from the standpoint of economics happening on a daily basis--a person loses their home and then the IRS collection agents come by and say you owe us X number of dollars because your home was foreclosed on.

Well, this amendment would put an end to that. It would say that will not be deemed income to the taxpayer, so that a taxpayer whose home is foreclosed on does not receive the double whammy of having a tax bill sent to them. It seems pretty reasonable to me. I can't imagine anybody is going to oppose this amendment. I would hope it would get a very large vote. It is not subject to a point of order, because the cost of it is within what is left on the pay-go scorecard, to the extent there is anything left on the pay-go scorecard, it having been shredded. But Senator Conrad said last week there was $670 million left on the pay-go scorecard, which my staff confirms, as ranking member of the Budget Committee, and this amendment costs less than that. So it is in order, and I hope it will be supported. I think it is only the fair and right thing to do. I mean, this is a quirk of tax policy which, unfortunately, if you are caught in it as a citizen of America it is not a quirk, it is a devastation, and it is not right. Nobody, because their home gets foreclosed on, should suddenly get a tax bill for the amount the bank didn't recover from the home they sold.

The second amendment I am going to call up, and hope I can call it up very soon and get a vote on it, is already pending, and it is what I call the ``baby doctors for farm families'' amendment. Today, in rural America, there is a crisis in the area of health care. There are a lot of problems in health care across this country, but especially in rural America there is a significant crisis. The crisis is this: If you are a woman of childbearing age, or a woman, period, you are going to have a lot of trouble finding an OB-GYN. Why is that? Because baby doctors are being sued out of existence in rural America. As a result of the avariciousness of the trial lawyers in this country, and their constant attack especially on the practice of obstetrics and delivering babies, it is virtually impossible, it is extremely difficult for OB-GYNs to practice in rural communities, whether they are farm communities or rural communities.

Why is that? Because the base of practice, the number of people they can see, the number of babies they deliver never creates enough revenue to simply pay the cost of their malpractice insurance. And it is a crisis.

If you are a woman in a farm community and you have to drive 2, 3, 4 hours to see a doctor when you are having a baby, that can be a serious problem, obviously. It can be a serious problem on the face of it, but it is especially a serious problem in a place such as New Hampshire, where you are probably driving in a snowstorm or sleet or something else that is not very easy to drive in, and you shouldn't have to go that sort of distance.

We have suggested that simply in the area of baby doctors in rural America that we put in place something to support the women in those communities and make sure they have proper access to those doctors. Essentially, we are following the Texas and the California

proposal, where we limit pain and suffering liability in a manner which allows these doctors to have affordable malpractice premiums. It doesn't mean somebody who gets injured doesn't get recovery. They do. They get full and total recovery in the area of economics. They get significant recovery in the area of pain and suffering. But what we do not have are these explosively large verdicts which essentially make it impossible for someone to pay the cost of the premium to support an obstetrics practice in a rural area.

This proposal, which is very narrow and very reasonable, will serve a very large need in our country. It is to make sure that women get proper health care, and especially during their childbearing years, in rural America. Again, I can't imagine this being opposed, but actually this one is being opposed aggressively by the trial lawyer lobby. They are opposed to anything that limits their income in any way, even when it is something as reasonable as saying in an area where we have a clearly underserved population, which is rural America and doctors serving women in rural America, doctors who deliver babies. They are going to stop any sort of reform that tries to make it possible to improve that situation.

We know this reform works. Why do we know it works? Because Texas has tried it. The language here mirrors Texas. Texas tried it, and what Texas has seen during this period when they put in this law is a huge influx of doctors who deliver children, who are baby doctors. So there is a track record. This isn't some sort of theoretical exercise. We know in practice that this works. I know if it were in place, it would give a lot of women in this country the comfort of knowing they were going to have a decent doctor, or any doctor--it would be a decent doctor, obviously--to care for them as they decide to have children.

I hope we can get to this amendment. But again, I am interested in the fact that this amendment is being stonewalled by the other side of the aisle. They are telling me, well, we can't vote on this amendment. Why? Because we have a fundraiser tonight. I wonder who is at that fundraiser, by the way? There wouldn't be any trial lawyers there. We can't vote on this amendment because we don't have our people here. Well, there ought to be enough votes to take care of women in this country so you wouldn't have to have extra people here to defeat a proposal which is fairly reasonable and which tracks a major State's decision and which has been proven to work when it comes to caring for women who want to have children. It is very narrow. Again, it only applies to rural communities, only applies to doctors who deliver babies in rural communities, only gives women an opportunity to get decent health care.

I have another amendment which I hope to call up, which I would like to have voted on fairly soon. And by the way, I am agreeable to voting on all these tonight. I am agreeable to a half-hour timeframe. I am agreeable to voting them all tomorrow. So I am not holding this bill up. I am offering these amendments. They are pending and they are ready to go.

Another amendment I have says this new program of creating a farmers stress network should not be created. This is more of a statement. I mean how many new programs can we create in this bill? This is an unauthorized program. It is not funded. But I suspect it will be appropriated before we get too far down the road. But why do we need a stress program for farmers? Granted, farmers are under stress. I used to work on a farm, so I understand that farming is a stressful activity. But running a shoe store during an economic downturn is a stressful activity, running a restaurant is a stressful activity, running a garage is a stressful activity. There are a lot of activities in America that involve stress. Are we going to set up a stress network for every activity in America that has stress? And are we going to expect the Federal Government to fund it? Yeah.

My goodness, think of what we would have to do for our wonderful staff here. My goodness, we would have to have such a program it would be incredible, because we really give them a lot of stress. The simple fact is, you can't keep throwing these programs out there because they make good press releases. There are 51 new programs in this bill. Let us at least pick one of them that is so far off the ranch when it comes to being anything rational that the American taxpayer should have to pay for and say, no, we are not going to go this way. That would be a nice gesture. A gesture to the American taxpayer, I would call it. Kill the stress network.

Then I have an amendment which says the money in here for the asparagus program shouldn't be in here. I like asparagus. I have been accused of not liking asparagus, and that is why I am being bringing this forward. That is not true. I actually like asparagus. In fact, I have even grown asparagus. It is very easy to grow, after you get it cultivated. It takes 2 or 3 years to get a good asparagus bed, and you can grow a lot of asparagus, as long as you don't rototill over it. Then you kill it, which is what I did to my asparagus. But as a practical matter, there is no reason we should set up a new program for asparagus. This is going too far.

A lot is going too far in this bill, but this is another example of going too far. Now, granted, it is only $15 million, but, again, I like to think of it as a statement on behalf of the American taxpayer that we are not going to spend that money on a brandnew asparagus program.

There are some others we should also throw out. The camellia program we should throw out, the chickpea program--these are all new programs. They should go out too. But I was only allowed five amendments, and so I picked out the ones I think are most egregious and the ones I think we should make a little attempt to try to put some fiscal discipline into this bill.

Then there is one that is fairly big, which is my last amendment. There is $5 billion in this bill which is the ultimate earmark. It is $5 billion alleged to be an emergency fund for when emergencies strike farm communities. You have to understand how this works. Essentially this is a slush fund. It is a ``walking around money'' fund for about five States. It is, purely and simply, an earmark and a classic porkbarrel initiative.

We know that when we have an emergency in this country we will fund it, especially if the emergency is in farm country. We do it every year, and I believe historically it has averaged about $3.5 billion. I think that is the number. It is off the top of my head as a budgeter. I think that is the number we usually spend on emergencies in farm communities. If it is bigger than that, we spend more than that; if it is less than that, we spend less. But when you put in place a program which exists before the emergency occurs, all you are saying is: Here is a bunch of money folks, come and get it. For every big windstorm that occurs in North Dakota, somebody is going to declare an emergency and try to get reimbursed for their mailbox that got blown over because the money is sitting there. It is that simple. It really is terrible policy to put this forward. You have absolutely set a floor. You know you are going to spend every year in this account, and you know it is going to go to four or five States because that is where the claims are made.

Much better is the approach we presently use, although not perfect, I admit to that. Much better is to identify it when the emergency occurs, know what the costs were when the emergency occurred, and then pay those costs in order to reimburse the farm community which has been impacted, which is what we do. And we do it in a fairly prompt and efficient way around here whenever there is such an event.

There is one emergency out there today, and that is the price of oil. The price of oil has jumped radically. As a result, the cost of heating in this country has jumped radically. People who are of low income, in States from the northern tier especially--places such as Minnesota, New Hampshire--people of low income are in dire need of additional funds in order to meet their heating bills or else, literally, they are going to be in the cold. They are going to spend this winter, as we head into February, in serious straits. In New Hampshire, we have already seen a significant increase in the number of people applying for low-income home energy assistance. This is not going to wealthy people. This doesn't even go to middle-income people. It just marginally goes to low-income people. It really goes to people in the lowest of low

incomes, people who really need that in order to make ends meet and keep their heat on in the winter.

What I am suggesting is if we are going to declare emergencies around here and spend money, let's use the money on a real emergency, something that actually exists where people are actually feeling the pain right now, today--in the area of paying for heating for low-income families.

In addition, I have suggested that we reduce the deficit because that is a pretty big emergency, in my humble opinion, getting this deficit down. So this amendment essentially says let's take $1 billion and add it to the low-income heating assistance program and let's take the other $4 billion and reduce the deficit with it. That is a pretty practical approach. That is addressing a need that exists today and a need that is going to exist tomorrow, which is to reduce the deficit, rather than adding to the deficit and creating an emergency spending account which basically ends up being a slush fund and walking-around money for folks in four or five States that traditionally declare emergencies.

Those are the five amendments. I regret quite honestly that we cannot get an agreement to vote on all of them right now. I would be willing to say: OK, let's debate all of them for half an hour and then go to a vote, in seriatim vote them--bang, bang, bang, bang. Obviously, I have serious reservations about this bill. I think it is very bad policy in a lot of areas. But I recognize that the votes are there to pass the bill, so I am not trying to delay it in some tactical or procedural way. I am suggesting just the opposite, that we proceed to vote on issues which are important, which include making sure people whose homes are foreclosed on do not end up with the tax man showing up the next day and saying they owe money on money they didn't ever see as a result of their home being foreclosed on; making sure that women who are having children can see a doctor in a rural community, that farm families have adequate access to baby doctors; making sure that people who are very low income have enough to be able to meet the heating costs of this winter, which we know are going to be 30 percent to 40 percent higher than they were last winter; making sure that we reduce the deficit; suggesting we eliminate a couple of programs which are not that big but which are sort of examples of an underlying problem, which is that there is a lot of new programmatic activity here that probably should not be here and there are a lot of new subsidies in here that should not be in here--the asparagus program and the farmers stress network program.

Amendment No. 3673

Madam President, at this time I would like to call up amendment No. 3673. I am not calling it up for a vote because I understand it is not agreed to, but I do want to call it up and send a motion to the desk.

I am calling up the medical malpractice amendment, not for a vote but because I want to second-degree it.

Madam President, I ask for the regular order relative to amendment No. 3673.

I send an amendment to the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, at this point I yield the floor.

What is the order of recognition? Is it the Democratic side or Republican side?

Does the Senator wish to proceed?

I will be happy to allow you.

Mr. President, I appreciate the chairman of the Finance Committee outlining the problems with the AMT. I agree 100 percent with his statement relative to the problems with the AMT. He is absolutely accurate. It was a concept passed with the consequences being--with the known consequences being--to make sure people who had high incomes would pay a fair share of taxes.

It turns out it was drafted poorly, it was not indexed for inflation. As a result, we have literally millions of people who are paying this tax who should not have to pay this tax, and therefore it should be repealed. Actually, it should be repealed permanently. There is no reason for us to even go 1 year. We should do the whole thing, get it done.

But this bill which is being brought forward on which cloture is being filed in order to proceed to it is a very bad approach. Because basically what this bill is saying is a tax which was never intended to be in place, people who were never supposed to pay this tax and, therefore, to correct it is not giving them a tax cut, it is simply saying: You are going to be taxed the way we expected you to be taxed. Or to put it another way: If the alternative minimum tax goes forward, people are going to pay a tax they should not have to pay because it was never perceived they would have to pay it.

A bill which should accomplish that, which should give those people relief, is being coupled with tax increases on people who should not have to pay new taxes to correct the alternative minimum tax problem.

It is also being coupled with a bill which has some bad policy in it. For example, this bill will stop, stop the IRS from proceeding with investigations and action, potential action, against people who are using the Virgin Islands as a tax shelter. There are 279 investigations going forward right now relative to Americans who have basically created a shell lifestyle in the Virgin Islands so they can avoid taxes in the United States, which they probably owe.

It is estimated there may be as much as $370 million of taxes owed to the United States by those high-income individuals. What does this bill do that came to us from the House? It says: We are going to stop that. We can no longer investigate those people. The IRS can no longer continue to proceed with an action against those people who are basically trying to escape American tax law.

It also, this bill, includes in it a tax deduction for State legislators during periods when they are not in session. How about a little gift to our friends in the State legislature maybe in New York. So that if the New York legislator does not even go to Albany, they are still able to deduct their per-diem expense.

That is called porkbarrel tax policy, I suspect. Those are terrible policies. But the larger policy which is bad, which is in the bill before us, is we are essentially going to hit partnerships and individuals with something called a carried interest tax, the practical effect of which will be that people who are involved in the financial business of this world--in the United States, not the world, people who are involved in the financial business in this country--and I know there is not a lot of sympathy for those folks because they make a lot of money. We would all like to make a lot of money like that. But these folks are essentially the engine of a large part of our economy. They are the ones who are creating the capital which is then invested in the businesses. They are the entrepreneurs who then create jobs. Jobs do not appear from thin air. They do not. They appear because someone out there is a creative individual who says: I have an idea. I am going to start this little company. I am going to start this little restaurant. I am going to start this little business.

They build it, and then they get to a certain point where they need more money in order to expand it to create more jobs. Where do they get the more money? It does not appear from thin air. It appears from the fact that we have financial markets, the most viable capital markets in the world where people can raise money. They go into the market, and they say to the people who are the professionals: We need X amount of dollars in order to expand our business so we can create more jobs in New Jersey or in New Hampshire or in Montana or in Texas. We are coming to you to help us raise capital.

Those folks go out and they raise the capital. They invest it in those businesses and those businesses create jobs, those entrepreneurs create jobs. What this bill says is: Those people who are in those financial markets will receive a brandnew tax on what they consider to be the way they raise money and create wealth for Americans by creating jobs, in what they consider to be a fair way to do it, which under the tax law today they are not taxed for it. It is a brandnew tax. What is the practical implication of putting this new tax in place in order to pay for the elimination of a 1-year kicking down the road of the alternative minimum tax expansion? Which should be done.

The practical implication of doing it by raising taxes in this way is that, first, people who should have not paid taxes under the AMT will not have to pay their taxes. That is good. We should not have counted that revenue anyway.

But, second, you are going to put in place a new tax system which would drive those people who create that financial incentive, which creates jobs, which gives business people and small entrepreneurs in this country the revenue and capital they need to create jobs, you will drive them overseas. We will be exporting jobs again because we are in global competition in the area of capital.

One of our biggest problems in this country today is a lot of the capital that is being formed in this world today, which used to be done in New York, where if you wanted to raise capital in this world, you used to come to New York. Unfortunately, it is a world competition, and now places such as London are competing with us, and they are being very effective in their competition.

One of the reasons they are able to compete with us effectively is we have put a lot of restrictions on our people which have been maybe a little bit over the top and, more importantly, we have a tax policy which has not been constructive, which has not encouraged people to stay here. It encourages them to go overseas.

The effect of this proposal will be to even aggravate that further. We will be exporting more jobs. More importantly, not only will we be exporting the job of the person in the financial market, we will be exporting the creation of the capital. That is serious. Because that capital is the feed corn for the expansion of our economy.

You should not be raising taxes at this time. That is another point that should be made--this alternative minimum tax proposal which comes to us from the House raises taxes. That is pure and simple. We are headed into potentially an economic slowdown. That is the way it looks. Because of the subprime crisis, because of the capital market crisis, we are heading into some sort of a slowdown. Hopefully, it will not be severe, but it could be difficult. There is no question about that.

To raise taxes in the face of that type of a slowdown is the absolute opposite of what any reasonable person who has experienced any economic slowdown would do. In fact, recently I was interested to read what Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration and who is readily acknowledged as being a liberal economist, and a very talented one by the way, he went to Dartmouth, so I know he is talented.

Robert Reich said: A tax increase at this time would be foolish. What we should be talking about is a tax cut.

Actually, what we should be talking about, and what we on our side would like to do, quite honestly, is put in place an alternative minimum tax fix which is permanent. That has been proposed by a number of us on our side.

Let's correct this problem so we do not have to deal with it this year, next year, or the year after. That is the first thing we should do. Short of that, we should put one in that is a little bit longer, at least, so there is some predictability in the tax law.

But under no circumstances should we put in place an AMT fix which is coupled with a tax increase or which is coupled with terrible policies such as this Virgin Island loophole and this State legislator loophole that was put in this bill. That is why we resist this approach.

The Republican leader came to the floor a couple days ago and suggested three or four different avenues where we could correct this problem. They were all fairly reasonable. I don't know why they were rejected by the other side of the aisle. My sense is that we should be able to work this out because I honestly believe, when I listen to the chairman of the committee, that there is not that much difference between where he wants to go and where our side would like to end up, which is let's straighten out the AMT. Let's put all this additional tax policy and these tax increases which have come from the House aside. Let's say: The House got off on the wrong track. Let's just take this approach of doing AMT and do AMT and fix that, and then, if the House wants to come back with a tax increase bill, we will fight that out on a separate agenda.

We can't on our side support a bill and vote for cloture on a bill which would mean we would be shut off from a lot of our amendments, vote in a way which would basically put us in a position which would potentially lead to a tax increase in order to correct what is an underlying important problem. Obviously, this is a motion to proceed, so we might not be shut off from amendments, but I suspect the motion to proceed will be followed very closely by the filing of cloture on the underlying bill.

I am not too concerned about the fact that we would not be allowed our approach. If the position of the other side of the aisle is, we are willing to give you your votes, let's set that up right now. Let's take the Republican leader's position, set up three or four votes in tandem, make them all 60-vote hurdles, if that is what it requires--and that is what it will require because pay-go is going to get waived on every one of them--and vote on them--bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Let's not go through this exercise on cloture. We want to correct the AMT problem. We think it should be corrected. We don't think the way to correct it is to raise taxes on the productive side of the American agenda and potentially throw us into a further slowdown of the economy or force people to go overseas in order to raise capital or, alternatively, put in place policies which basically make the Virgin Islands a safe haven for people who want to avoid American taxes or give State legislators the opportunity to claim a per diem deduction when they are not even going to work.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, because I don't think this is inconsistent with what the Senator from Montana, chairman of the Finance Committee, has asked for, I renew the Republican leader's request from yesterday.

I ask unanimous consent that at a time determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to consideration of H.R. 3996, the House-passed AMT bill, and it be considered under the following limitations: there be 1 hour of debate on the bill equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, followed by a vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the bill; provided further that if cloture is not invoked, then the only amendments in order to the bill be the following offered in the following order: a substitute amendment to be offered by Senator McConnell or his designee which is to be an offset AMT extension and an unoffset extenders package, a Baucus or designee first-degree amendment to the McConnell substitute which is to be a set of offsets for the extender package, a Sessions amendment related to AMT and exemptions, an Ensign amendment which is an AMT repeal and extends other expiring provisions, and a DeMint amendment which relates to the AMT and flat tax; provided further that there be an additional 2 hours of debate on the bill equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; that there be a time limitation of 2 hours for debate on each amendment equally divided in the usual form; provided that each amendment require 60 votes in the affirmative for adoption and that each amendment that does not receive 60 votes then be withdrawn.

I further ask that notwithstanding the adoption of any substitute amendment, the other amendments be in order; and finally, that following consideration of the above amendments, 60 votes be required for passage of the bill, as amended, if amended.

This outlines a procedure to accomplish what I believe the Senator from Montana requested because it does have his first degree. There are three other amendments in there, but they are all subject to 60 votes-- the Sessions, Ensign, and DeMint. If they fail, they fail. One presumes that, depending on the position of the Senator from Montana, since he controls more than 40 votes on his side, that would happen and that we would then proceed in this way.

Mr. President, I appreciate the objection of the Senator from

Montana. I understand he believes the suggestion he is proposing is the right way to proceed. I would note that this subjects everything to a time limit. Yes, the flat tax is going to be debated for 2 hours, and, no, it is not going to get 60 votes, so it will not be in the final package. Yes, the Ensign proposal, which is essentially a repeal of the AMT and also extends the cap gains dividend rates--I believe that is the proposal--would be brought forward. It would be debated for 2 hours, and then we would move on. I actually hope that one might pass.

In any event, this sets out a pretty tight timeframe. If you take all the factors here, we could finish this by sometime around 7 o'clock tonight, assuming everybody wants to talk for 2 hours, which they probably wouldn't, and be done. We would get it done, get the AMT straightened out, and have done some good work around here. I suspect-- though I won't guarantee this--the final resolution of this proposal, which Senator McConnell made yesterday, would be closer to what the Senator from Montana wants than the bill he is suggesting we vote cloture on relative to proceeding.

Reserving the right to object, I suspect at a later time this will, hopefully, be worked out--hopefully sooner rather than later--but at this time I am going to have to object.

Mr. President, I wish to congratulate the Senator from Iowa and the Senator from Montana for bringing the bill to the floor. Earlier in the day, we had a discussion about the underlying bill, which is the bill that came over from the House, and the reservations I had about this, specifically the fact that it raises taxes.

It raises them in an inappropriate way, in a way, in my opinion, which would chill economic expansion in this country, would undermine our ability to create capital in this country and, as a result, would undermine the ability of entrepreneurs to go out and create jobs.

It would have the effect of exporting jobs offshore, as a practical matter in the financial markets and, unfortunately, would probably have an equally detrimental effect of encouraging places such as London to become even more aggressive as they compete for our capital formation activity, which has always historically occurred in New York City, which plays a large role in the energy of our Nation's economy.

So the underlying bill has serious problems as it came over from the House. It also had a specific earmark to basically benefit essentially 290 people who are using the Virgin Islands as a tax shelter. It had another specific earmark to benefit State legislators who would get a per diem for not even showing up at their State legislature. It was a very poor bill.

The proposal as brought forward from the Senator from Montana is an excellent approach: Let's take care of the AMT for next year. Let's move on. Let's do this quickly so the people who are being subject to this or may be brought into this improperly, who were never supposed to be brought into this, can be relieved of that burden.

Of course, there is the issue of whether there should be an offset. Well, of course, there should not be an offset. Looking at it from a budgeteer's standpoint, in my opinion, these are all phantom funds. We basically know the alternative minimum tax is not going to generate these revenues that we score as coming in because we know the AMT was never intended to tax 26 million Americans or 20 million Americans. We know that.

But because of the rules, the arcane rules we have around here for budgeting, we basically have to include those revenues in this baseline, even though we know we are never going to tax people at those levels because it would be totally unfair and inappropriate. So I congratulate the Senator from Montana and the Senator from Iowa for coming forward with this approach to resolve this matter. I look forward to voting for the proposal.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I understand the Senator from Idaho intends to speak. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to speak after he is concluded.

Madam President, I rise to address the issue which has been noted by the Senator from Idaho,

which is the process under which the farm bill is being considered in the Senate.

A number of the Members on the other side of the aisle, primarily the leadership, have spoken on this process and have made the representation that in some way we, on our side, are slowing down this bill. Nothing could be less accurate, in my opinion.

I know, although I do not happen to support the farm bill because I think it is bloated in many ways and essentially ignores the concept of a marketplace, the farm bill is going to pass. It always does pass. It always passes with a very large majority, which is assured by the fact that enough commodities are put into the subsidy system so that you can add up enough people to support it, so it will always pass with a large majority. And there will be 20 or 25 people who will vote against it.

So I have never held any belief or even thought for a second this farm bill was not going to pass the Senate. It is going to pass the Senate. It has not been my intention to either slow it down or try to defeat it because I know I cannot do either--or I did not think I could do either.

My intention was to improve it and to address issues which I think are relevant to it or which are appropriate to the issues which the Senate should be addressing today generally.

But, unfortunately, on the procedure that has been structured by the majority leader, all Members of the Senate, but especially members of the minority--the Republican Members of the Senate--have been shut out of the ability to amend this bill.

The majority leader has essentially created a system which you could call the ``permission slip'' approach to legislating. If he does not give you a blue permission slip, you cannot bring forward an amendment on this bill.

Obviously, that does not work for those of us who wish to amend the bill. But, more importantly, it does not work for the institution. The essence of the Senate is the ability to amend legislation when it is on the floor.

Washington described the Senate as the place where the hot coffee from the cup--referring to the House--it is the saucer into which that hot coffee is poured, so it can be looked at, thought about, and reviewed to make sure there is not hasty action, to make sure there is not precipitous action, to make sure there is not action which will come back to haunt us because we did not try our best to anticipate the consequences.

So the Senate was structured to be a deliberative institution. That was its purpose. Our Founding Fathers designed it with that intent in mind, as expressed by George Washington. It has always worked that way. We have always, when we have had major pieces of authorizing legislation on the floor, had the opportunity to amend that legislation. Even if they are not major pieces of legislation, in many instances we have had the ability to amend it in just about any way we wanted. There was a statement that you have to do relevant amendments. Well, under the rules of the Senate, there is no such thing as relevant amendments. Everything is relevant. Irrelevant amendments are relevant because that is the way the Senate is structured. That is the way we work. If there is an issue of the time which a Member wants to bring forward to discuss and have voted on, the idea is the Senate will do that. Now, there is a procedure to cut off and go to relevant or germane amendments, but that procedure is a very formal procedure known as cloture and it takes 60 votes. That should not be done on a bill of this size until there has been adequate debate and a reasonable number of amendments considered.

I noticed that the Senator from Michigan, whom I greatly admire and enjoy working with, had a large chart today which talked about the fact that there have been 55 filibusters by the Republican Party since the Senate has convened. That is sort of like, as I have said on occasion, the fellow who shoots his parents throwing himself on the mercy of the court because he is suddenly saying he is an orphan. The simple fact is the only reason there have been 55 cloture motions filed around here is because the majority party has decided to try to shorten debate and shorten the amendment process at a rate that has never occurred before. Bills are brought to the floor and cloture is filed instantaneously. That never used to happen around here. It is not our party which has been trying to extend these debates; it is the other party which has been trying to essentially foreshorten the debates in an extremely artificial and premature way and limit the capacity of the minority to make its points and to raise the issues it considers to be important.

On almost every one of these bills--the 55 that are noted--agreement could have been reached, timeframes could have been agreed to, an amendment list could have been set, and we could have proceeded under regular order. But regular order was not allowed because the other side of the aisle wants to manage the Senate the way the House is managed: Where the majority party essentially does not allow the minority to offer amendments to the bills unless the majority party agrees to the amendments. Well, I can understand that in the House. There are 435 people there and it would be pretty much chaotic. But in the Senate, we are not designed that way. The whole purpose of this institution is to allow extensive discussion of legislation and amendments on legislation, whether the amendments are relevant or irrelevant.

So the process that is being put in place is harmful, in my opinion, to the fundamental institution of the Senate, when you have a majority leader who comes forward, immediately fills the tree, and then says the majority leader is not going to allow any amendments to the bill unless the amendments are accepted by the majority leader which, of course, on its face is a little absurd. Obviously, if we were all going to offer amendments that agreed with the majority leader, we would all be in the majority leader's party. That is why we have a two-party system. The idea is a two-party system. The one party sometimes disagrees with the other party and tries to make the points we feel are important to govern us. But the majority leader closes the floor down, says we have a permission slip process where you have to get his blue slip of approval before we can move forward, and then he files cloture on the bill after having not allowed any amendments to move forward. I think that does fundamental harm to the institution. It creates a precedent around here that may well be a slippery slope for us as an institution. I remember a couple of years ago there was a big debate about whether we should do cloture, or needed cloture, on the issue of Supreme Court judges. On our side of the aisle, because there was a lot of foot dragging about some of the Supreme Court judges who were being nominated, there were many who felt we should go forward and have a ruling of the Chair which says it only takes 51 votes; the Constitution does not allow filibusters against Supreme Court judges. Well, some on our side of the aisle felt that was a slippery slope, that that type of a procedural heavy-handedness by the majority would harm the institution and would lead to serious ramifications down the road when the parties changed governance.

This institution will not always have a Democratic majority. The facts are pretty obvious. We change around here. The American people like to have Government change. They like change. They get frustrated with the way things are going, so they make a change. There will be a Republican majority; I absolutely guarantee that. But the Democratic leadership, the majority leader, is in the process of setting a precedent, if he is successful, which will be extraordinarily harmful should a Republican majority take control and use that same precedent. So I think it is a huge mistake that this process has proceeded in this way and it is inconsistent with the facts on the ground.

The majority leader has said we can only have relevant amendments-- relevant, ironically, as defined by the majority side. Well, history has shown us that is not the case. Even on farm bills--even on farm bills--especially on farm bills, amendments are brought forward which are irrelevant to the farm bill all the time. In fact, ironically, the majority leader has brought forward a number of those amendments. In 1996, for example, he offered an amendment to the farm bill regarding the importation of tea and the Board of Tea experts. In 1990, he offered an amendment to the bill regarding

testing consumer products containing hazardous and toxic substances. In the year 2000, he offered an amendment to the farm bill regarding the Social Security trust fund and tax policy. In the year 2000, the majority leader offered an amendment to the farm bill regarding pest management in schools. The manager of the bill, Senator Harkin, in the year 2000, offered an amendment regarding fees on pesticide manufacturing. In the year 1985, he offered an amendment regarding the creation of additional bankruptcy judges in the State of Iowa.

I would argue that none of those amendments, under the most liberal interpretation of what is relevant, would be defined as relevant in a postcloture exercise and, therefore, by the actions of the majority, and specifically the majority leader and the chairman of the committee; they have set a precedent that even if it weren't the right of the membership of the Senate, they have set a precedent that amendments which are not--which are irrelevant to the underlying bill can be brought forward, and they should be brought forward.

For example, today the majority leader came down and made a very compelling statement relative to the dire straits that people are in who are having their mortgages foreclosed on because of this subprime meltdown we are having. It is serious. It is very serious. It is serious to those people especially, but it is also serious to the Nation as a whole because it is affecting the credit markets and it may be contracting the economy. I filed an amendment which would address that issue. Some farmers I suspect are caught up in this subprime foreclosure exercise, unfortunately. I bet there are some farm families who have been hit by this. I know there have been. So I think it is probably pretty relevant to these people who are farmers and, therefore, an argument could be made it is relevant to the bill. But I am not making that argument. I am saying that issue should be raised right now--we shouldn't wait--that the amendment I have offered which would essentially say that if your home is foreclosed on, you don't get hit with a tax bill for phantom income, which is what happens today. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to have your home foreclosed on, you get a tax bill from the IRS, even though you lost your home and even though you didn't get any income out of the foreclosure sale. That puts a little more pressure on the person who has had their home foreclosed on. That is a traumatic enough event, but to then have the IRS come after you, that is horrible. So this amendment would basically stop that practice. It would say to the IRS: No. You can't deem that as income.

There are going to be some farmers who are going to need that protection, and there are going to be a lot of Americans who are going to need that protection, unfortunately. So we should take that amendment up. I would be happy to offer that amendment right now, but if I offered it right now, it would be objected to under the proposal because the majority leader has deemed it is not relevant to the farm bill and, therefore, he is not going to allow it to be debated. I happen to think it is a pretty darned important amendment.

There are a couple of other amendments I have suggested. I have suggested 11 amendments to the bill. That is not outrageous. Some of them I think could probably be negotiated. I even suggested I would take 15 minutes of debate on them, 7\1/2\ minutes divided equally on each one of them. Unfortunately, the other side of the aisle rejected that idea--or they didn't formally object to it, but they told us we would want to talk a little bit more about some of these amendments. But the assistant majority leader on the Democratic side of the aisle came down to the floor and specifically called out a few of my amendments and said that they were the problem. They were the problem because they shouldn't be heard on this farm bill. He mentioned the mortgage amendment which we discussed.

He also mentioned an amendment which I happen to think is pretty darn relevant to this bill, especially to rural America and farm communities, which is that in most of rural America today, there is a crisis relative to the ability of baby doctors to practice their profession. It is virtually impossible, for example, in northern New Hampshire to see an OB/GYN unless you drive through the mountains and down to the southern or mid part of the State. That is true across this country, because OB/GYN doctors--baby doctors--people who deliver babies in rural communities can't generate enough income because the populations aren't large enough to pay the cost of their insurance against frivolous lawsuits or lawsuits generally. So I have suggested that for those doctors specifically, so we can get more of them into the rural communities delivering babies for all the people who live in the rural communities but obviously for farm families, that we give protection to them--protection which tracks--it is not outrageous protection--the California protection for doctors which occurs generally under California law so the cost of their premium for malpractice insurance will not drive them out of practicing and delivering babies in rural America and especially to farm families.

The Senator from Illinois said that was a frivolous--he didn't use the term ``frivolous''--he implied the amendment wasn't a good amendment; we shouldn't have to debate that amendment on this bill. Why not? Why not take up that amendment? Fifteen minutes I am willing to debate that amendment, 7\1/2\ minutes on both sides, and vote on it.

Well, it is not because it is not relevant and it is not because it shouldn't be taken up; it is because there are a number of Members on their side of the aisle who said we don't want to vote that issue. It is a hard vote. Why? Because it makes sense. That is why I think it is a hard vote. But there are other people on the other side of the aisle who simply don't want to have to cast that vote. It is not about the relevance of that amendment; it is about the desire to avoid casting a difficult vote. Well, you were sent here; you should make difficult votes on public policy that is important, and that happens to be a fairly significant point of public policy that is important, whether women in rural America can have adequate and prompt access to an OB/ GYN. I think that is pretty darn important.

Then the assistant leader said an amendment I had on the list, my 11 amendments--a small number of amendments--was not appropriate because it dealt with the Gulf of Mexico. Well, this amendment says, as a follow-on to the Oceans Commission, which did a very large, extensive study of the status of the ocean and America's involvement and what we should be doing relative to the ocean, which was completed about 2 years ago and which was created, authorized, and funded as a result of an initiative by Senator Hollings from South Carolina, with my support as a member of the appropriations subcommittee that had jurisdiction over NOAA, and the conclusion of this Commission, which was filled with the best and most talented scientists and leaders we have on the issue of how the ocean was being impacted, was that the Gulf of Mexico is being uniquely impacted by fertilizer runoff from the Midwest coming down the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the other tributaries of the Mississippi and going into the Gulf of Mexico, and we are getting a dead zone there, a very significant dead zone because of the phosphates and I think the nitrates. The Commission called for action. It said: We have to do something as a country about this.

But what does this farm bill do? It expands dramatically the incentive to put more acreage into production, and I say: Fine. That is great. But it doesn't address the runoff issue, which is that additional production is going to occur, or the runoff issue that is occurring as a result of already existing production. So all this amendment does is say let's give NOAA the ability to go out and study this problem and see if they can come up--working with the Department of Agriculture--with some ideas on how we might be able to abate the harm we are doing as an unintended consequence of expanding our agricultural community, the harm we are doing to the Gulf of Mexico. But no, no, we can't take up that amendment. No, no. It doesn't get a blue slip, permission slip from the majority leader.

Then the fourth amendment which was mentioned or cited by the assistant leader as being something that was

problematic--and that is sort of a conservative description of the way he addressed the issues--was an amendment I have that says the firefighters should have the ability to pursue collective bargaining.

Now, maybe farms don't have fires. Maybe barns don't burn down and silos don't blow up. Maybe there weren't any wildfires in San Diego. Maybe I missed all that. But it seems to me that fire protection is a pretty big part of everybody's lifestyle in this country, and having fire departments that know what they are doing and are properly paid, have proper equipment and training is really important whether you happen to be in New York City or on a farm somewhere in the Midwest or the West. So I cannot imagine under what scenario it is deemed that this amendment should not be discussed and voted on.

Again, I am willing to do this for a briefer period of time. I am not trying to slow the bill down. I want to get a few issues up that I think are important to the definition of the problem as I see it in the farm region.

Then I had a series of amendments--well, I only had 11, but 5 of the amendments I had dealt with the budget process.

This farm bill does fundamental harm to the concept of responsible budgeting. It plays games with our budget process. We hear so much from the other side of the aisle about how they use pay-go to discipline spending around here. That is the term, the motherhood term we hear, ``pay-go.'' It turns out that it is ``Swiss cheese go'' as far as the other side of the aisle is concerned regarding spending restraint. On 15 different occasions, they have gimmicked pay-go, played games with it to the point where they have spent almost $143 billion in this Congress which should have been subject to pay-go but was not subject to a pay-go vote because they managed to gimmick their way around it.

This farm bill is a classic example of that procedure occurring again. By changing dates--1 day--so that they shift years and take items out of the pay-go--what is called the pay-go scorecard--they are able to avoid pay-go charges in this bill to the tune of $10 billion. That is not small change, by the way. We should have a pay-go vote on that $10 billion if we are going to maintain the integrity of the budget process. That is reasonable. I have asked for that vote.

In addition, they have created a new emergency fund--a $5 billion emergency fund. The way we have handled emergencies--and there are, I admit, many emergencies in farm country--is that we have always paid for those emergency costs through an emergency supplemental, whether it is because of a flood or if there is a drought or if there is a hurricane. We fund the costs after they have occurred, and we pay the costs of the emergency. What this would do is set up what amounts to a slush fund--what I am afraid will become basically walking-around money--of $5 billion and a floor so that we are going to be guaranteed that every year for the next 5 years at least a billion dollars will be spent on emergencies, whether there is an emergency or not. You know, if a large wind blows a mailbox over in North Dakota, it is going to be declared an emergency because somebody is going to want to get their hands on that billion dollars. That makes no sense from a budget standpoint. We know that human nature--especially legislative nature-- will spend that money once it is allocated, and we should not do it up front, create a floor; we should do it the traditional way, which is to pay for emergencies when they occur. Now, some people here obviously disagree with me. I suspect I will not win that vote. But it doesn't mean we should not have a vote on that point of budget discipline and the importance of budget discipline.

In addition, on the budget issue, there is a $3 billion gimmick in here that is so creative it sets a new standard for creativity. There always has been movement of money from the discretionary side of the account to the mandatory side, and vice versa, to free up more spending. That is a game that has been played a long time, where an expenditure that is discretionary will suddenly find out it is being put under a mandatory account, so the money being spent in the discretionary account can be freed up to spend it on something else. If you get it into the mandatory accounts here, you basically put it on autopilot and don't have to worry about it ever again.

This bill takes this concept to a new dimension. It takes a mandatory spending responsibility and moves it over to a tax credit, so that we now have a $3 billion tax credit where we used to have a $3 billion mandatory expenditure, and then it takes the $3 billion that was being spent on the mandatory side of the account and spends it on a new program. So, essentially, by using the tax law in a very creative way, you have generated new spending of $3 billion. I think that is terrible budget policy. I think we should address it, debate it, talk about it on the floor, and definitely vote on it before we allow this bill to go to cloture.

Obviously, there are a lot of issues raised by this bill; otherwise, there would not be 240 amendments filed. The majority of them have been filed by the other side of the aisle. But the fact that the procedure has been structured in a way that these amendments, which are totally reasonable, which are parts of significant issues of public policy, such as whether women in rural America will be able to see an OB/GYN or whether farmers get the equipment they need or whether a person whose home is foreclosed on will get hit with an IRS tax penalty or whether the Gulf of Mexico should be looked at relative to maintaining its vitality as a environmentally sensitive area--we are not going to be allowed to look at all of these issues because the majority leader set up a blue-slip permission process, which is totally antithetical to the system the Senate historically works under and undermines the capacity of issues to be debated and voted on. I just think, as I said, it is doing fundamental harm to our institution. Even if I didn't want to bring these amendments forward, I would not want to have a process that denied the right of other people to bring amendments like them forward.

The fact that the leadership on the other side of the aisle wants to insulate its membership from making tough votes on things like baby doctors being available to farmers and farms getting the equipment they need and people whose homes are foreclosed on not being subject to IRS penalties--the fact that they want to protect their membership, that is understandable. That is their leadership. Their leadership is clearly trying to protect them in their jobs. To abuse the process of the Senate to accomplish that, to create a procedure where you basically foreclose amendments in a manner that actually is even more strict and more contracted than what the House does, does more harm than good to the institution. As I said earlier, it puts us on an unnecessary and inappropriate slippery slope, and it is a fundamental change in the way the Senate works.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas.

First, Mr. President, I join the Senator from Texas in asking that the majority leader and the Democratic membership free the Veterans bill and the Military Construction bill, which is ready to be sent to the President, stop holding it hostage for the purpose of holding it up with special interest projects which have nothing to do with the military or with veterans, and instead send that bill down to the President so he can sign it so our veterans can know they are getting the support they need after their great service to our Nation.

Mr. President, I rise to talk a little bit about the status of the farm bill because I was stunned, obviously, today to find that the majority leader--after for 2 weeks, almost, refusing to allow any amendments to the farm bill--has now decided to file cloture on the farm bill and claim this is the way things are done in the Senate. That is a statement which is pretty hard to accept with a straight face: the concept that the majority leader would set up a process in the Senate which, essentially, made him the gatekeeper of all amendments to a major authorization and appropriations bill--appropriations in the sense it has mandatory spending in it--so that any Member of the Senate who wanted to offer an amendment would have to go through the majority leader before the amendment would be allowed to come to the floor. Well, that is the way they do things in the House of Representatives, obviously, with what is known as the Rules Committee. But the Senate does not do that. The Senate has never done that.

I have heard innumerable, wonderful speeches from the senior Senator from West Virginia, the keeper, basically, of the flame of the integrity of the Senate, Mr. Byrd, on the importance of the amendment process in the Senate. I happen to subscribe to that, as I thought every Member of the Senate subscribed to that, that the greatness of the Senate is that if we put a piece of legislation on the floor, which is a significant piece of public policy, we debate it, we hear ideas on it, then we vote on those different ideas, and then we vote on passage. We do not lock down a bill and not allow any amendments to occur on that bill except those that are accepted on the majority side and by the majority leader and then say to the minority: Well, because you would not accept our process of locking down the amendment process, we are going to file cloture to shut you out completely.

That truly is an autocratic level which this Senate has never seen. Let me tell you something, it puts us on a slippery slope. It is very possible--in fact, I hope likely--that the other side of the aisle may not be in the majority forever around here and maybe not even through the next election. Certainly, if they continue to produce such a dysfunctional legislative calendar, as they have over the last year, I would think the American people would get a little frustrated and ask for a change. But they have now opened the door to running the Senate as an autocratic system, as a dictatorial system where the rights of 99 Members of the Senate are made completely subservient to 1 Member, which is the majority leader, because he has the right of recognition, he fills up the tree, and then when he does not like the amendments, he files cloture.

Let's talk about some of the amendments he does not want us to hear on this bill relative to the farm bill. He does not want an amendment offered which would say to farm families, especially to mothers in farm families: You will have access to OB/GYNs. That is one of the amendments I intended to offer. It would simply say that OB/GYNs who practice in farm and rural communities would be immune from excessive liability and lawsuits from trial lawyers.

We know for a fact we have lost most of our OB/GYNs in rural America. These baby doctors cannot practice in rural America because there are not enough clients for them to generate enough revenue to pay the cost of their malpractice insurance, which is generated by these lawsuits from trial lawyers. Well, the other side of the aisle is a kept group for the trial lawyers, so they do not want anything that could happen around here that might limit the income of trial lawyers, including allowing baby doctors to deliver babies in rural America to farm families. So they are not going to allow me to offer that amendment. What an outrage.

They do not want an amendment which would give firefighters in this country the right to bargain in order to reach agreement on contracts. Now, I do not think fires just burn in cities. Farmers have fires. In fact, if you look at what is happening in the West with wildfires, there are a lot of issues of fires for farmers in this country, especially silo fires. I know. I come from an area where there are occasional silo fires. They need firefighters. But the other side of the aisle does not want to hear about an amendment that deals with firefighters' rights. No. They want to lock that amendment out of the process.

They want to lock out of the process an amendment which would address the issue of people who are caught up in this terrible mortgage crisis we have. There are a lot of farmers, I suspect, and a lot of Americans generally who did not know how these ARMs worked when they went into these deals, and they are now finding they are being refinanced at a level where they cannot keep their homes because their interest rates are jumping up into the double-digit levels. When those homes are foreclosed on, they get a double whammy of getting hit by the IRS with what is known as a recognized gain, even though they did not have any income because their home got foreclosed on. This is a really difficult thing to do to someone, whether you are a farmer or just an average American, to first have their home foreclosed on and then to hit them with an IRS bill for having their home foreclosed on. I was going to suggest we take that issue up on the farm bill because it happens to relate to a lot of farmers who are being foreclosed on.

I was going to suggest we take up an amendment which might look at some of these new commodities that were put into this bill, such as the asparagus program and the camellia program and the chickpea program, but we do not want to hear about that. No, we do not want to address those issues.

We do not want to address the issue of the fact that this bill has in it $10 billion--$10 billion--of gamesmanship on moving dates so they can make this bill look more affordable and less costly. They don't want to have an amendment on that which might make the bill honest on its face. They don't want to hear that amendment. They don't want to hear this amendment, which is sort of ironic.

They have put in this bill what is called walking-around money-- walking-around money--for the farm States in this country, actually for five farm States, called a $5 billion disaster loan fund. The way we have always handled disaster loans for the farm community--and they have them, and they are legitimate--is we have simply passed an emergency bill around here to cover the disaster when the disaster occurs. But what this bill does is set up a new fund which will be a floor, essentially, which says there is $5 billion in this kitty sitting over here for which if there is a disaster, you take this money too. What is the practical implication of that? Every wind storm that occurs in North Dakota that blows over a mailbox is going to be declared a disaster so they can get some of this money. It is putting money on the table that is just going to be used up.

We know we are going to fund disasters when they occur. Why would we prefund disasters in a way that is going to make it absolutely guaranteed that a disaster will occur, even if there is not a disaster? Well, we don't want to have an amendment which says: Let's take that disaster money and move it over to IDEA, special education. There is an account that needs some more money. There is an account which would give relief to a lot of families in this country, a lot of small towns in this country, farm communities and other communities that have a huge burden of IDEA in special education. Let's take that $5 billion out of that emergency account and, rather than having walking-around money for the five States that usually get this emergency money, use it for IDEA, which will benefit all the States in this country.

They don't want to hear those amendments.

It is incredible that on a bill of this size--one of the biggest bills we deal with as a Congress, one of the most important pieces of public policy we deal with--the other side of the aisle and the majority leader have specifically set up a procedure where amendments will not be tolerated--simply won't be tolerated. Totally inappropriate. I think basically what the other side of the aisle wants to do is kill this bill.

Now, from my perspective, this is not a good bill, and I am going to be voting against it. But I know it is going to pass if it is given a legitimate shot at

passage because there are a lot of people around here who have these different commodities, and they all vote for each other, and, as a result, they build up enough votes to pass this bill. That is the way the farm bill always works. But that is no reason why we should not have a chance to debate it, to address some of these issues, such as baby doctors in rural communities and farm communities, such as the need for firefighters to have adequate bargaining rights, such as the need for people who are getting foreclosed on not getting hit with an IRS bill, such as the need to have proper accounting on this bill for what they are actually spending, such as the need for not setting up a $5 billion walking-around money fund, such as the need for the new commodities programs for asparagus, chickpeas, and camellia. We should have amendments to address all these issues. That is what the process of the Senate is all about. But it is being denied here. The result of that denial is that those of us who happen to believe the Senate should function as a place where things are amended and discussed and aired and heard are going to have to resist this bill. So the majority seems to want to kill this bill, which is unfortunate, because in the end, this bill should at least get a fair hearing.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming and the Senator from Massachusetts. I rise to express my appreciation for their excellent work on this legislation. It has been a long time in gestation. I think it reflects their commitment to legislating in a bipartisan and effective way that the bill is now at this stage. I congratulate them.

I think anybody who has been exposed to Head Start is impressed by the program. There have been studies and reports of that which can be done to improve the program, and hopefully this bill will work in that direction. But the underlying idea of giving low-income kids the ability to come into an atmosphere where they get nurturing, good nutrition, and now, because of this bill, where they get starting blocks for learning how to deal with an academic program is totally appropriate and something that has succeeded.

If you look at what we are facing as a nation, as discussed here at considerable length--I heard the Senator from Tennessee make an excellent statement on the needs of education, and what our country really needs is the ability to bring into the educational mainstream children who today, unfortunately, are not able or do not come to school with the necessary skills to compete with some of their fellow students. Head Start gives those children that opportunity. It gives low-income kids the ability to start kindergarten and get into the first grade with an understanding of how, first, to be social and deal with an atmosphere where there are other children; secondly, to have the necessary nutrition to get through the day and be able to learn; and third, begin the building blocks of learning. This program works, and it has worked. It is something that should be continued to be supported by the Federal Government and also by the local communities that stand behind Head Start.

That is one of the great things about Head Start. In my experience, when you go to a local Head Start center in New Hampshire--or anywhere--as chairman of the committee, I visited Head Start centers all across the country. They are usually community-oriented events. Behind those teachers and committed people, who are willing to spend the day with the children and try to make their lives better during the day, there are usually a lot of volunteers and people from the community stepping up to also make those programs work well.

So Head Start is one of the success stories and one of the things we need as one of the building blocks in order to continue to make America a great place to live and give people the ability to participate in the American dream.

Again, I thank the Senators for orchestrating this effort.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I honor the 50th anniversary of the Student Conservation Association. Over these last five decades, the SCA has led the way in promoting the importance of conservation service and stewardship. Its staff and supporters have made an extraordinary commitment to instilling this ethic in our country's young people. While it is headquartered in my home State of New Hampshire, the SCA's reach and influence go far beyond the borders of New Hampshire. Since its founding in 1957 by Elizabeth C. Titus Putnam, nearly 50,000 SCA volunteers have worked to protect the critical natural habitats and threatened wildlife in our country's parks, forests, and urban green spaces. Its members can be found in all 50 States, as well as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and Latvia. In 2006 alone, 4,000 volunteers logged 1.6 million service hours at 511 separate sites. In past years, they worked to restore the Everglades following the devastation Hurricane Hugo left behind and to repair the damage to Yellowstone National Park following the fires which damaged that park in 1988. This year, they were chosen to lead the Northwest Recovery at Mount Ranier and other parks in that region of the United States following the floods of 2006. It is, in fact, the largest conservation service program in the country.

Those numbers and facts are impressive, but they do not fully convey the central role this organization plays in strengthening the quality of life in the United States. The thousands of volunteers and interns clearly have relished meeting the obligation we all have to protecting the vital natural areas in our country. Their unique dedication and enthusiasm have made them great role models and leaders. These qualities explain why such Federal agencies as the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Armed Forces all have partnered with the SCA and are the reason the White House, National Wildlife Federation, and the National Park Service have recognized the SCA's achievements.

The prime architect behind the SCA is Elizabeth Titus Putnam, and I am especially pleased to honor her. It is a great reflection on her character that the vision she developed 50 years ago became a reality. Her energy and passion for environmental protection have touched countless people and demonstrate why the SCA continues to be an effective and vibrant organization.

For these reasons, I am proud to be a member of the 50th Anniversary Honorary Committee. I hope all the alumni and current volunteers will long remember the deep impact they have made on communities from Maine to Hawaii and from Alaska to Florida. Happy Birthday to the Student Conservation Association and my best wishes for continued success.

Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. President, this morning, while I was working out in the gym, on the air came one of my friends, a gentleman with whom I enjoy serving, who has a great sense of humor--Senator Schumer from New York. He was being interviewed by the CNBC team, which is a great and enjoyable team to watch: Mark Haines and Becky Quick and others--David Faber. He said the Democratic Party had been disciplined because they had used pay-go as a way to control spending here in the Congress.

I almost fell off the treadmill, because that statement is so outrageous that it could only be made by somebody from New York who sees things in big pictures, sees the forest but misses the trees. The statement represents, or implies, that pay-go is a fiscally disciplining event around here when just the opposite is what has occurred. Pay-go has become a term of art which has a nice name, and which is thrown out by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as their representation of fiscal discipline, but in fact it has become a mechanism for spending money at an outrageous rate in entitlement and mandatory accounts.

I don't call it pay-go anymore, I call it ``Swiss-cheese-go.'' The record is now pretty clear. Since this Congress came into being under the control of the other party, with the representation that pay-go was going to be used to discipline spending around here, there have been 13 major incidences--these don't count the minor ones--major incidences of pay-go being waived, manipulated, or manhandled so that it didn't apply to spending.

Items which should have not been allowed to occur, spending initiatives which should have been subject to the pay-go rules have been ignored, manipulated, or gimmicked so that pay-go did not apply on these 13 incidents, which now total $143 billion--billion--in new spending.

So when Senator Schumer spoke on CNBC this morning--I think he was being asked by Mark Haines--Mark Haines said to him: Will pay-go survive? Senator Schumer said: Sure, it will survive. We are committed to this type of fiscal discipline.

What Mark Haines should have asked is: What happened to pay-go? Why have so many holes been put in the process? Why has the Democratic leadership allowed it to be waived, manipulated, and gimmicked so that $143 billion of spending, which should have applied to pay-go, which should have had pay-go applied to it, has simply been allowed to pass?

Well, it is very simple. Pay-go was never meant to discipline spending. It is a fraud to represent that pay-go is used to discipline spending. Honestly, if we as a Congress had to sign financial statements the way we make people sign financial statements in the corporate world as a result of the Enron case--you know, the heads of our various corporations have to actually sign their statements, and they are subject to criminal penalty if they are inaccurate.

If we were forced to sign a fiscal statement that said we were using pay-go to discipline spending, we would all go to jail because if we signed that statement we would be defrauding the American people at a level that would make Enron look like a little exercise.

Now, $143 billion of fraud has occurred under the alleged pay-go rules because pay-go, which should have applied, has not been applied. But this is just the first step in the exercise of profligate spending around here. This is one of the more ingenious ones because under the name of pay-go, we are representing that we are controlling spending, when, in fact, using pay-go, we are actually spending $143 billion.

There is the second step, which is the discretionary side. This is all entitlement spending, of course. Now, $23 billion is being spent over what the President requested this year. We hear from the other side of the aisle: Well, it is only $23 billion. It is being spent on good causes. Everything gets spent on a good cause around here.

Then in the Labor-HHS bill, which represents $11 billion of that $23 billion, obviously many good causes are listed. But what people fail to mention is, first, $23 billion is a lot of money. In fact, there are something like 30 States in this country which could operate their entire budgets on $11 billion; $23 billion would probably be the budget of almost every State in this country.

But this builds the baseline. This $23 billion is not the end of the number we are spending, it is the beginning of the number of the add- ons. When you take it out to 5 years, the baseline jumps by $133 billion. If we take it out to 10 years, that is $313 billion--billion-- of additional spending.

So this is not just $23 billion of new spending that is being spent above what the President believes is necessary in order to operate the Government, it represents $313 billion of spending over 10 years. That is a big number. That is a massive number. You could do a lot with that amount of money. You could cut a lot of taxes, for example. You could eliminate the double tax on people who are married, which is going to go back up in 2010, if you did not spend this money.

You could give higher tuition tax credits to people trying to get their college degrees if you did not spend this money. You could extend the capital gains and dividends tax rates, which disproportionately benefits senior citizens, especially the dividends tax rate if you did not spend this money.

This is real money. Real money--$23 billion this year totals $313 billion over a 10-year period. So you take this $313 billion and you attach it to the swiss-cheese-go attack here of $143 billion. You are up to half a trillion dollars, half a trillion dollars that this Congress has spent in 10 months. They have only been in charge for 10 months--half a trillion dollars.

Multiply that out. My goodness, you are up to $2 trillion over the term of this Congress, theoretically. Now, $2 trillion, that is even real money by Democratic terms. I think colleagues on the other side of the aisle would even agree that $2 trillion is a lot of money.

Now, that might be a bit of hyperbole, but the half a trillion dollars is not. That is how much this Congress has cost the American people in the first 10 months in office, while they have been living under the fiscal discipline of pay-go, while they go on TV shows and say: We are disciplined because we believe in pay-go.

As a result of that, we get half a trillion dollars of new spending.

Well, that is a lot. We have a bill on the floor right now that regrettably follows on with this exercise in excess and profligateness. The farm bill alone has $34 billion of gimmicks in it to try to avoid budget discipline, $34 billion of gimmicks. That is huge. I think it adds four new major subsidy programs for new crops, including asparagus and camellia--I do not even know what that is--and a variety of other crops; creates or authorizes programs which study or work to alleviate stress on farmers; adds Chinese gardens in places; does a little gimmick which is even creative by the creativeness of this place, creates a new standard of creativeness where they now are taking entitlement spending and freeing up entitlement spending by giving tax credits.

In other words, they create a new tax credit, and the purpose of that tax credit is to pay for items which historically have been paid for by entitlement spending under the farm bill, mandatory spending. Since they no longer have to pay for that with mandatory spending, they have created an extra $3 billion they could spend on new farm programs.

So the farm bill itself is a continuation of this exercise in making the concept of pay-go superfluous. And, certainly, the claims that pay- go applies around here are fraudulent. It is about time, hopefully, people start paying attention.

When you are up to half a trillion dollars of new spending in 10 months, much of which has been done outside of the budget window, so that the budget rules have not been allowed to apply to it, that gets to serious money. It gets to a serious lack of fiscal discipline.

I hope we would change this course, but we do not appear to be changing

this course. We actually appear to be aggravating this problem by bringing forward bills such as the farm bill, which continues this failure of fiscal discipline.

Who has to pay for all of this? Well, I see those young pages. They are enthusiastic, they smile, they help us out. Regrettably, every day they are here--most of them have been here for a little while--we add about a billion dollars to their debt.

Interesting how this adds up. But that $500 billion has been put on the books in the last 10 months. We are not going to pay for it. Our generation is not going to pay for it. These pages and their generation are going to have to pay for it. It is all debt. It is not fair to them, and it is certainly not fair to the American people to represent that we are exercising some sort of fiscal discipline around here under the term ``pay-go,'' when, in fact, just the opposite is happening. That is used as a stalking horse, not for fiscal restraint but for spending.

I would be happy to yield for a question.

Well, that is a good question, an excellent question. And the answer is, the first obligation of a Federal Government is to defend the country. And when you have soldiers in the field, you do that. You pay for them being in the field.

I would suggest the way we could pay for that, in fact, would be that we not waive the pay-go rules for this $143 billion of spending which has nothing do with national defense or, alternatively, we could eliminate the $23 billion of nondefense spending which has been added by the Democratic Party in this year's budget cycle. That would save us a significant amount of money.

So I would be happy to pay for it by cutting either of those accounts. But, in any event, I am going to pay for soldiers who are in the field.

I would be honored.

Well, I would be happy to respond to that if I knew the answer, but I do not. But let me talk about the tax cuts. The tax cuts which were put in place were put in place prior to 9/11. As a practical matter, had they not been in place, the effect of the burst of the Internet bubble in the late 1990s, which was the occurrence of a dramatic expansion of the economy with a paper expansion of equities being issued for companies which had value in the late 1990s, was a speculative event.

That collapse, coupled with the 9/11 attack which put this country into trauma, both physically and politically, but also economically, would have led us into a very severe recession if we had not had those tax cuts.

The fact that we put those tax cuts in place early in this administration has led to economic growth, which has led to 43 months of growth, 8.7 million new jobs, and interestingly enough, those tax cuts have actually led to our revenues today being at a historic high. Over the last 3 years we have collected more money in revenue growth than we have received at any time in our history.

We are now getting 18.7 percent of gross national product in revenues, when historically we usually get about 18.2 percent. And the vast majority of that revenue growth has come directly from the cut in capital gains rates, as we have received over $100 billion of new revenue in just the capital gains activity.

So I would say, first, the tax cut was not put in place during the war. It was put in place at the beginning of the war; and, secondly, it has had the right effect, which is to energize economic expansion and energize revenue to the Federal Government.

I do appreciate that question.

I yield the floor.