Floor Statements

Mr. President, the Senator from Colorado talked about the ongoing conversation with respect to the filibuster in the Senate. If I may, I would like to reminisce for a little while because I have something of a history in the Senate. I have clearly not been here nearly as long as many of my colleagues, but I first came into this Chamber when I was a teenager. My father was a Senator. I was a summer intern in his office. I suppose there was something strange about me as a teenager because I was more interested in the Senate than I was in sports or cars, the two subjects that young boys are supposed to be paying attention to.

I remember sitting in the family gallery one evening listening to the debates. In those days, there were debates. There was not the situation we find now where Senators come to the floor to posture for the television cameras. They came to the floor to have a clash of ideas. I remember a particular debate where a Senator on the Democratic side of the aisle was holding forth. He seemed to be winning the argument and the Senators on the Republican side of the aisle sent up the call for the chairman of the Finance Committee, who entered the back of the Chamber. I remember the Democratic Senator saying, I see the Republicans have brought up their heavy artillery. Then there was an exchange between these two Senators which the chairman of the Finance Committee clearly won.

The Democratic Senator got a little flustered and a little angry at being bested in the debate and so he started to complain about the fact that Colorado, a small State, had as many Senators as Illinois, the big State, which he represented. Whereupon the chairman of the Finance Committee from Colorado then said, the Senator is no longer opposed to the bill. He is now opposed to the Constitution. I must say, I am not surprised. And he turned on his heel and walked out and the debate was over. It was an exciting thing to watch for those of us who were political junkies.

We have come a long way from that. I don't think it is a long way forward. We have come a long way from the give and take of debate into an atmosphere where this Senate has become the platform for people to express harsh views, strong political rhetoric, and occasionally, in my view, go over the line of that which is appropriate. We have become a sounding board for partisanship rather than a deliberative body for debate.

I am not quite sure when we started in that direction or what brought us from that old time to this present time. One of the moments might have been the debate over the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Robert Bork is the only nominee I know of whose name has turned into a verb. We now hear groups, as they talk about a nominee, say ``we're going to Bork him.'' Look back at what was done with respect to the nomination of Robert Bork and it was nothing short of character assassination; or, to use a phrase that was popular in the last administration, the politics of personal destruction.

We have seen that activity poison the comity of the Senate on both sides of the aisle because when it was done to Robert Bork on behalf of those who were opposed to the nomination made by President Reagan, those who were Reagan supporters began to say, we will do the same thing. When Democratic Presidents came along, their nominees began to be attacked on a personal basis rather than on the merits of the situation, much as Robert Bork had been. Now it becomes a standard tactic on both sides of the aisle.

Why do I raise that with respect to the controversy over whether the Senate has the right by majority vote to change its rules? I raise it because too much of the current debate over that question has gone in the direction of ``Borking''--Senators on both sides of the aisle, the process on both sides of the aisle and, if you will, the institution itself.

I have great reverence for this institution and I am distressed at what I see as I look over the landscape with respect to this particular debate. I see on one side e-mails and press releases saying we must stop George W. Bush from packing the courts with right-wing whackos. That is what this debate is about. The filibuster is our tool to prevent right-wing whackos from getting on the court.

The first circuit court judge ever prevented from gaining a vote by virtue of the filibuster in the history of the American Republic was a man named Miguel Estrada. Miguel Estrada is an immigrant to this country. He came here not speaking English. He graduated from the Harvard Law School as the editor of the Harvard Law Review. He served in the Justice Department under the first President Bush in the Solicitor's Office and received glowing recommendations and reports from every one of his superiors. Indeed, his performance was sufficiently outstanding that he remained in the Justice Department in the Solicitor's Office for 2 years while Janet Reno was the Attorney General. Janet Reno is not known for harboring right-wing whackos.

The American Bar Association gave him their highest recommendation for this position and they are not known for harboring right-wing whackos.

Yet the level of debate has followed to the point that those who decided they must oppose Miguel Estrada for whatever reason stand mute while he and others like him are attacked as right-wing whackos. Unfortunately, this kind of attack does not stay on one side or the other. Today there are radio ads being run in the home states of Senators who have still not made up their mind how they are going to vote, radio ads that attack these Senators' integrity and suggest if they do not vote as the majority leader would like them to vote, they are not people of faith. They are attacking their integrity and their religion. To me, that is as repugnant as attacking the President's nominees as right-wing whackos.

This kind of vilification must stop, but I don't know how to stop it. The first amendment gives us all a right to say whatever we want to say, however ridiculous it may be, however offensive it may be. But it is ridiculous and it is offensive to have the kind of debate going on over this issue. This is a legitimate issue on which Senators can have legitimately differing views. It should not become a vehicle for practicing the politics of personal destruction. But it is going on.

I simply raise my voice in the hope that on both sides, the temperature of the rhetoric can come down, and we can discuss the issue on its merits. Let me do my best to discuss the issue on its merits in the time I have.

First, what are we talking about? We are talking about changing a Senate tradition. We are also talking about changing a Senate rule. I want people to understand the two are not the same. Indeed, we have formal rules in the Senate governing the way we do business. We have created traditions

and, quite frankly, the tradition trumps the rule. If somebody invokes the rule, they can overturn the tradition, but the tradition that has taken hold trumps the rule.

I will give an example of which I am sure the Presiding Officer is aware. The rule says the Presiding Officer is required to recognize whichever Senator addresses the Chair first. The tradition is that the Presiding Officer recognizes the majority leader first, even if he is not the first one in a jump-ball situation to shout out the name of the Presiding Officer. The tradition says the Presiding Officer recognizes the minority leader second, recognizes the majority manager of the bill third, the minority manager of the bill fourth, and then those Senators who ask for recognition are recognized according to the rule.

We honor that tradition for a variety of good reasons. We have not written it into the rules, but it does not matter because the tradition trumps the rule and it helps the Senate move forward.

I make a point of this difference for this reason: those who say the filibuster being used to stop judicial nominees are acting in accordance with the rule, are exactly right. The rule has always been there and those who used the rule to stop the nomination to prevent an up-or-down vote on Miguel Estrada were entirely within their rights and acting absolutely in compliance with the rules. Let's not demonize them for using the rules.

However, those who say it is a violation of the Senate tradition to use the filibuster to block a circuit court judge are also exactly right. By tradition, we have always held in the Senate that a nominee who gets out of committee and comes to the Senate is entitled to an up- or-down vote. By invoking the rule in the last Congress, the then- Democrat leader overturned the tradition. By talking about changing the rule now, the Republican leader, the majority leader, is entirely within his rights. Neither one should be demonized for the position they took.

Let's look at why the tradition held for so many years. It held because the spirit of comity ruled in the Senate and each party recognized the time would come when the other party would control the Presidency. Indeed, if you look at history, it is almost inevitable that the other party will control the Presidency. Since the end of World War II through the election of 2004, we have had 15 Presidential elections. The party in power has won eight and the party out of party has won seven. You cannot get any closer than that. There has been only one time in that entire run where a single party won three consecutive elections, Reagan in 1980, Reagan in 1984, and Bush in 1988. Every other time the longest run either party has been able to have has been 8 years, so the historic norm says there will be a Democratic president after 2008. I hope that is not the case, but that is what history suggests will happen.

Each side has recognized that their side will have a President within a relatively short period of time--since the end of World War II, within less than 8 years. So each side has said, let us not invoke the rule that says you can filibuster judges. Instead, let us abide by the tradition that says every nominee is entitled to an up-or-down vote. That way, when we get the Presidency, our President will have the same courtesy we are now extending to their President.

I remember very clearly when President Clinton sent some nominees to this body which members of my conference decided were left-wing whackos, if I might use that phrase. They, fortunately, did not use that phrase in public as it is being used now. And I do not think they should. But they felt these nominees were too extreme to be on the bench.

When it was clear we did not have the votes to prevent them from going on the bench, there were those in the conference who said: We have to filibuster. Let's use the filibuster to prevent them. We can muster 41 votes.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, my colleague from Utah, Orrin Hatch, and the then-majority leader, the Senator from Mississippi, Trent Lott, both pled with us: Don't do it. Don't start down that road. We have never done it before. And we shouldn't do it now.

And why not? Because, they said: After 2000, we are going to have the Presidency, and we want our President to have the same courtesy we are begging with you to extend to President Clinton. They carried the day. There was no Republican filibuster on the floor of any circuit court judge.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where the tradition has been changed, and the question is, will we now change the rule to reestablish the tradition? It is a legitimate debate. I have respect for those who hold positions on both sides.

I do make this comment. If the rule change does not go through, and the rule that now holds that says judicial nominees are fair game, I guarantee the next time the Democratic Party has a President who sends up a nominee that 41 Senators on the Republican side decide they do not like, the Republicans will abide by the rule that has changed the tradition, and they will filibuster the nominee.

Now, I have many of my colleagues who say: No, no, we would never do that. We honor the tradition, and we would go back to that tradition.

I do not believe them. I do not say they are lying to us. I think they believe what they are saying now. But I believe, in the heat of the battle that would come with a Republican minority in the Senate and a Democratic President, the Republicans, in the present atmosphere, would say: Let's use the filibuster. Let's give them a taste of their own medicine. The level of political dialogue would continue to go down. The level of personal destruction would continue to go up.

The other question I raise for speculation: Suppose nothing happens in this Congress, Democrats win the Presidency in 2008, the Republicans do use the filibuster to stop judges a Democratic President sends forward, but the Democrats are in control of the Senate. Will those who are standing here saying this is a disaster for the Senate give a pledge that they will not, when they are in the majority, suggest using 51 votes to get rid of the filibuster on judicial nominees?

I suggest they would be tempted to do the same thing the Republicans are trying to do now in order to take care of their Democratic President. Indeed, the record shows they have done that.

These quotations have already been given on the floor, but I want to repeat them in this context.

Senator Byrd, in 1979, said:

Now we are at the beginning of Congress. This Congress is

not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past . . .

[I]t is my belief--which has been supported by rulings of

Vice Presidents of both parties and by votes of the Senate--

in essence upholding the power and right of a majority of the

Senate to change the rules of the Senate at the beginning of

a new Congress.

Senator Byrd now disavows that position. And I respect that. Each one of us is entitled to change our mind. I have changed my mind. He is entitled to change his. Will he make a pledge he will not change it back when the Democrats are in the majority and say: ``We want to prevent filibusters of our President's judicial nominees''?

Senator Kennedy said in 1975:

By what logic can the Senate of 1917 or 1949 or 1959 bind

the Senate of 1975? As Senator Walsh of Montana said during

the Senate debate in 1917 on the enactment of the original

rule XXII: ``A majority may adopt the rules in the first

place. It is preposterous to assert that they may deny future

majorities the right to change them.''

Senator Kennedy has obviously changed his mind. And I respect the Senator's right to change his mind. But I ask again, What assurance do we have he will not change his mind back if the Democrats get the majority and are seeking to protect a President of their own?

In 1995, there were nine Senators who voted in favor of eliminating all filibusters, not just judicial filibusters, all filibusters--nine Senators still serving, Senator Bingaman, Senator Boxer, Senator Feingold, Senator Harkin, Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Lieberman, and Senator Sarbanes. They voted in favor of eliminating all filibusters. They have now changed their minds. They have the right to change their minds. And I respect that. What indication do we have they will not change their minds back if we do not get this thing settled in this Congress?

Going back to the newspaper that sometimes acts as the house organ for the Democratic Party, the New York Times, this is what they had to say in

1995, when Senator Harkin introduced the legislation to eliminate filibusters.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that editorials of the New York Times be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my statement.

The New York Times said: ``Time to Retire the Filibuster.'' That is the headline on the editorial. It says:

The U.S. Senate likes to call itself the world's greatest

deliberative body. The greatest obstructive body is more like

it.

And they go on to attack filibusters and give a little of the history. And then this is their summary of the filibuster, four paragraphs down:

One unpleasant and unforeseen consequence has been to make

the filibuster easy to invoke and painless to pursue. Once a

rarely used tactic reserved for issues on which senators held

passionate convictions, the filibuster has become the tool of

the sore loser, dooming any measure that cannot command the

60 required votes.

Well, you would think, then, that when the Republicans are saying, ``Well, we don't want to eliminate the legislative filibuster, but we do want to re-enthrone the Senate tradition that the filibuster is not used on circuit court judges,'' the first cheerleader would be the New York Times. Having labeled the filibuster ``the tool of the sore loser,'' and saying that it is obstructionist, the New York Times ought to be cheering the idea that finally a majority is about to follow their advice offered in their editorial pages.

But, no, this is what the New York Times now says: ``The Senate on the Brink.'' This is an editorial of March 6, 2005:

The White House's insistence on choosing only far-right

judicial nominees--

There is the politics of personal destruction I was referring to earlier--``only far-right judicial nominees'' has already damaged the federal courts. Now it threatens to do grave harm to the Senate. If Republicans fulfill their threat to overturn the historic role of the filibuster in order to ram the Bush administration's nominees through, they will be inviting all-out warfare and perhaps an effective shutdown of Congress.

Interesting what 10 years' time and a change of administrations can do. The filibuster that was ``the tool of sore losers'' suddenly has become ``the historic role,'' even though they cannot point to a single case in history where the filibuster has been used to prevent an up-or- down vote on a circuit court nominee who made it to the floor.

How they can call that a ``historic role'' is something I will leave to the editorial writers of the New York Times.

I hope we will not see any more press releases attacking the President's nominees as ``right-wing whackos,'' that we will not see any more radio ads attacking Senators who are examining this matter as being people of no faith, that we will stop the politics of personal destruction on both sides of this issue, and we will look at it in its historic pattern.

What we do or do not do on this issue will set the tone of where the Senate and future Presidents go for decades to come. The Republic survived for over 200 years without the minority of either party exercising its right to filibuster judges. I think we should be very careful about enshrining in tradition the rule that says it is time to change.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

[From the New York Times, Jan. 1, 1995]

Time to Retire the Filibuster

The U.S. Senate likes to call itself the world's greatest

deliberative body. The greatest obstructive body is more like

it. In the last session of Congress, the Republican minority

invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the

will of the majority. This relentless abuse of a time-honored

Senate tradition so disgusted Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat

from Iowa, that he is now willing to forgo easy retribution

and drastically limit the filibuster. Hooray for him.

For years Senate filibusters--when they weren't conjuring

up romantic images of Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Smith, passing out

from exhaustion on the Senate floor--consisted mainly of

negative feats of endurance. Senator Sam Ervin once spoke for

22 hours straight. Outrage over these tactics and their

ability to bring Senate business to a halt led to the current

so-called two-track system, whereby a senator can hold up one

piece of legislation while other business goes on as usual.

The two-track system has been nearly as obstructive as the

old rules. Under those rules, if the Senate could not muster

the 60 votes necessary to end debate and bring a bill to a

vote, someone had to be willing to continue the debate, in

person, on the floor. That is no longer required. Even if the

60 votes are not achieved, debate stops and the Senate

proceeds with other business. The measure is simply put on

hold until the next cloture vote. In this way a bill can be

stymied at any number of points along its legislative

journey.

One unpleasant and unforeseen consequence has been to make

the filibuster easy to invoke and painless to pursue. Once a

rarely used tactic reserved for issues on which senators held

passionate convictions, the filibuster has become the tool of

the sore loser, dooming any measure that cannot command the

60 required votes.

Mr. Harkin, along with Senator Joseph Lieberman, a

Connecticut Democrat, now proposes to make such obstruction

harder. Mr. Harkin says reasonably that there must come a

point in the process where the majority rules. This may not

sit well with some of his Democratic colleagues. They are now

perfectly positioned to exact revenge by frustrating the

Republican agenda as efficiently as Republicans frustrated

Democrats in 1994.

Admirably, Mr. Harkin says he does not want to do that. He

proposes to change the rules so that if a vote for cloture

fails to attract the necessary 60 votes, the number of votes

needed to close off debate would be reduced by three in each

subsequent vote. By the time the measure came to a fourth

vote--with votes occurring no more frequently than every

second day--cloture could be invoked with only a simple

majority. Under the Harkin plan, minority members who feel

passionately about a given measure could still hold it up,

but not indefinitely.

Another set of reforms, more incremental but also useful,

is proposed by George Mitchell, who is retiring as the

Democratic majority leader. He wants to eat away at some of

the more annoying kinds of brakes that can be applied to a

measure along its legislative journey.

One example is the procedure for sending a measure to a

conference committee with the House. Under current rules,

unless the Senate consents unanimously to send a measure to

conference, three separate motions can be required to move it

along. This gives one senator the power to hold up a measure

almost indefinitely. Mr. Mitchell would like to reduce the

number of motions to one.

He would also like to limit the debate on a motion to two

hours and count the time consumed by quorum calls against the

debate time of a senator, thus encouraging senators to save

their time for debating the substance of a measure rather

than in obstruction. All of his suggestions seem reasonable,

but his reforms would leave the filibuster essentially

intact.

The Harkin plan, along with some of Mr. Mitchell's

proposals, would go a long way toward making the Senate a

more productive place to conduct the nation's business.

Republicans surely dread the kind of obstructionism they

themselves practiced during the last Congress. Now is the

perfect moment for them to unite with likeminded Democrats to

get rid of an archaic rule that frustrates democracy and

serves no useful purpose.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Vermont be allowed to speak for more than 10 minutes. I certainly did. I want to be sure he has the same courtesy.

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

It is only one.

I wonder if the Senator heard my denunciation of that kind of thing when I gave my speech?

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 22, 2005, at 9:30 a.m., in open and closed session to receive testimony on U.S. Special Operations Command in review of the defense authorization request for fiscal year 2006.

Mr. President, I now move to proceed to calendar No. 69, H.R. 3, the highway bill, and I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the live quorum be waived and the vote occur at 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, April 26.

Mr. President, I understand there are five bills at the desk that are due for a second reading.

Mr. President, in order to place the bills on the calendar under provisions of rule XIV, I object to further proceeding.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until 2 p.m. on Monday, April 25. I further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved, and the Senate then resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 3, the highway bill.

I further ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the adjournment of the Senate, Senators be permitted to submit statements for the Record until 12 p.m. noon today.

Mr. President, on Monday, the Senate will resume the motion to proceed to the highway bill. There will be no rollcall votes on Monday but Senators are encouraged to come to the floor to make their statements with respect to the bill.

As a reminder, a few minutes ago, cloture was filed on the motion to proceed to the bill and that cloture vote will occur at 11:45 on Tuesday of next week. That will be the first rollcall vote of next week. Next week is the last week prior to the Senate recess and Senators should expect a busy week with votes as we make progress on the highway legislation.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Lupus-- Research, Education, Awareness, Communication, Health Care--or REACH Amendments of 2005. This bill will strengthen the Nation's research efforts to identify the causes and cure of lupus, improve lupus data collection and epidemiology, and enhance public and health professional awareness and understanding of lupus--one of the Nation's most devastating, yet least understood autoimmune diseases. It has been almost 40 years since the FDA has approved a drug specifically to treat lupus.

Lupus is a life-threatening, life diminishing autoimmune disease that can cause inflammation and tissue damage to virtually any organ system in the body, including the skin, joints, other connective tissue, blood and blood vessels, heart, lungs, kidney, and brain. It affects women nine times more often than men and 80 percent of newly diagnosed cases of lupus develop among women of child-bearing age.

This disease is not well known or well understood despite the fact that according to the Lupus Foundation of America at least 1.5 to 2 million Americans live with some form of lupus. Many are either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. As the prototypical autoimmune disease, discoveries on lupus may apply to more than 20 other autoimmune diseases.

Of serious concern is that this disease disproportionately affects women of color--it is two to three times more common among African- Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans--a health disparity that remains unexplained. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the rate of lupus mortality has increased since the late 1970s and is higher among older African-American women. Comprehensive and definitive epidemiologic studies will help improve our understanding of these health disparities and move us toward closing the gaps.

The symptoms of lupus make diagnosis difficult because they are sporadic and imitate the symptoms of many other illnesses. If diagnosed promptly and properly treated, the majority of lupus cases can be controlled. Unfortunately, because of the dearth of medical research on lupus and the length of time it takes to make a diagnosis, many lupus patients suffer debilitating pain and fatigue. The resulting effects make it difficult, if not impossible, for these individuals to carry on normal everyday activities, including work. Thousands of these debilitating cases needlessly end in death each year. Our Nation must do more to ensure that health professionals are aware of its signs and symptoms so that people with lupus can receive the prompt, appropriate care they need and deserve.

The Lupus REACH Amendments of 2005 seek to expand biomedical research and strengthen lupus epidemiology. This bill authorizes a study and report by the Institute of Medicine, IOM, evaluating various Federal and State activities and research. This legislation will raise public awareness of lupus and improve health professional education. It aims to promote increased awareness of early intervention and treatment, direct communication and education efforts, and target at-risk women and health professionals to help them quickly achieve a correct diagnosis of lupus.

I would urge all my colleagues, to join me in sponsoring this legislation to increase research, education, and awareness of lupus.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Lupus-- Research, Education, Awareness, Communication, Health Care--or REACH Amendments of 2005. This bill will strengthen the Nation's research efforts to identify the causes and cure of lupus, improve lupus data collection and epidemiology, and enhance public and health professional awareness and understanding of lupus--one of the Nation's most devastating, yet least understood autoimmune diseases. It has been almost 40 years since the FDA has approved a drug specifically to treat lupus.

Lupus is a life-threatening, life diminishing autoimmune disease that can cause inflammation and tissue damage to virtually any organ system in the body, including the skin, joints, other connective tissue, blood and blood vessels, heart, lungs, kidney, and brain. It affects women nine times more often than men and 80 percent of newly diagnosed cases of lupus develop among women of child-bearing age.

This disease is not well known or well understood despite the fact that according to the Lupus Foundation of America at least 1.5 to 2 million Americans live with some form of lupus. Many are either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. As the prototypical autoimmune disease, discoveries on lupus may apply to more than 20 other autoimmune diseases.

Of serious concern is that this disease disproportionately affects women of color--it is two to three times more common among African- Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans--a health disparity that remains unexplained. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the rate of lupus mortality has increased since the late 1970s and is higher among older African-American women. Comprehensive and definitive epidemiologic studies will help improve our understanding of these health disparities and move us toward closing the gaps.

The symptoms of lupus make diagnosis difficult because they are sporadic and imitate the symptoms of many other illnesses. If diagnosed promptly and properly treated, the majority of lupus cases can be controlled. Unfortunately, because of the dearth of medical research on lupus and the length of time it takes to make a diagnosis, many lupus patients suffer debilitating pain and fatigue. The resulting effects make it difficult, if not impossible, for these individuals to carry on normal everyday activities, including work. Thousands of these debilitating cases needlessly end in death each year. Our Nation must do more to ensure that health professionals are aware of its signs and symptoms so that people with lupus can receive the prompt, appropriate care they need and deserve.

The Lupus REACH Amendments of 2005 seek to expand biomedical research and strengthen lupus epidemiology. This bill authorizes a study and report by the Institute of Medicine, IOM, evaluating various Federal and State activities and research. This legislation will raise public awareness of lupus and improve health professional education. It aims to promote increased awareness of early intervention and treatment, direct communication and education efforts, and target at-risk women and health professionals to help them quickly achieve a correct diagnosis of lupus.

I would urge all my colleagues, to join me in sponsoring this legislation to increase research, education, and awareness of lupus.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from New York with great interest, and the Senator from West Virginia. If I thought for one moment that the administration's budget would, in fact, kill Amtrak or eliminate passenger rail service in the Northeast corridor or other corridors around the country, where it is prospering, I would be the first to stand up and oppose the administration's position.

I agree absolutely that rail passenger service in highly congested areas such as the Northeast corridor from Washington to Boston is not only important, it is essential. And I agree absolutely with the statement that says we could not absorb on our highways and our airplanes the number of passengers that would be forced there if Amtrak were to disappear.

The Senator from New York spoke about what happened after 9/11, and she said Amtrak was the only way out of Manhattan. As the bridges were closed, you could not drive out. The airports were closed. You could not fly out. You could not walk out. The only way New York City was connected--Manhattan Island, at least--with the rest of the country was by train. And it would be an absolute tragedy, it would be absolutely insane to shut that down. But as I understand the administration's position, they have no plans to shut that down. Indeed, they are willing to subsidize, as they have subsidized in the past because of all of the reasons that have been cited on the Senate floor, that kind of rail passenger traffic.

But let me take you to another part of the Amtrak system that does not enjoy the same kind of patronage as the Acela train that goes high speed from Washington to New York City, and which I have taken with great satisfaction. Let me take you to my home State of Utah. We have Amtrak service in Utah.

On one occasion, a family friend notified my wife and me that she was coming to Salt Lake City on Amtrak and would we meet her train. And we said: ``Why, of course. We will be happy to meet her train.'' We were a little less happy when we discovered that the train was arriving at 2:30 in the morning, and that this was its only stop, this was the only time. There was not an alternative time because the timing of the trains coming through, 2:30 in the morning was the only time this train came through Utah.

We went down to the depot or the terminal, and I was a little bit struck by how shabby it had become through misuse over the years. But we were there. She came. We met her. I counted the number of people who got off the train with her, and it was fewer than you could count on the fingers of your two hands.

There are fewer than 100 people a week that come into that station in Salt Lake. After 9/11, there would have been no disruption whatsoever of people traveling in and out of Salt Lake if Amtrak were not there. That terminal we went to that night was somewhat old and dilapidated and a bit shabby, but is now refurbished, lovely, big, and disconnected from Amtrak.

The current Amtrak terminal is a Quonset hut because the real estate on which the old terminal sat was too valuable and it is part of a shopping center and real estate development activity. And when that train comes in to disgorge its two or three passengers per night--and it is not every night; the schedule only comes through three times a week--the passengers who get off get off in a Quonset hut. There is no taxi service there. It is in a part of town that is not easy to walk to and from. It has fallen into disuse not because the administration has not been subsidizing it enough, not because Amtrak has not had a big enough capital budget, but because rail passenger service across very large numbers of miles between cities that do not naturally connect to each other simply does not make sense.

Amtrak in the Northeast corridor makes all the sense in the world, and we must do everything we can to make sure we preserve it. In the Cascades there is Amtrak service that makes sense. In California there is Amtrak service that makes sense. There are a number of places where Amtrak makes sense, and we must preserve it in those places. The administration, in this budget, as I understand it, has provided for $360 million that would go to the Surface Transportation Board that would be available to reimburse Amtrak in those areas where it needs it to keep the kind of service that has been described here on the Senate floor.

Now, I have given this speech before in committee--this is the first time I have done it on the floor--and every time I do, I get a flurry of letters. They are all from the same people. And they all object. Their objections all come down to nostalgia for the rail service that we all knew when we were young--or at least that I knew when I was young. I am sure there are many Members of the Senate here who have no memory of it at all.

I have great memories of rail travel: full trains, dining rooms with crisp, white linen on them, and silver tea sets and china and long trips across the country. If you were taking a train trip across the country from Salt Lake to New York, you better allocate several days for that. You better take along a pretty good library of books to read. But you'll love the scenery. Then, you were willing to take the time. You were willing to relax. It was a wonderful way to travel.

Americans don't like to travel that way anymore. It makes no sense to kid ourselves that a national railway system similar to the Europeans' makes sense in the United States. Look at the difference in distances. The Northeast corridor from Washington to Boston would cover three or four national frontiers in Europe. You would visit three or four countries traveling that far in Europe. And it makes tremendous sense with the high density of population over there for them to have a national railway system. But when you are dealing with a nation the size of Belgium, you are dealing with something rather different from a nation the size of the United States.

Now, I have a particular personal history with this. I was working in the Department of Transportation in the Nixon administration as the head of congressional relations. The distinguished Presiding Officer was the voice on the other end of the phone when I called the White House, as he was working for Bryce Harlow in charge of congressional relations. I was not always able to get hold of Bryce Harlow, but I could always get hold of Lamar Alexander. The decision to shut down passenger travel as we had known it for close to 100 years in the United States was made in the Nixon administration, and it was my responsibility to sell the Congress on the concept of Amtrak. Because railroads were required by law to maintain passenger traffic on their whole system, and the railroads were hemorrhaging red ink over this issue, our Department came up with the idea of creating a single National Railroad Passenger Corporation. That is the formal name of Amtrak. Amtrak was the name that was created by the image makers after the Congress acted.

It was my responsibility, along with my team, to come to the Congress and convince them that it made sense to shrink rail passenger service to this skeletal fashion. The outcry was enormous: You can't do that. Look at the towns that will no longer be served if you shrink it down to this skeletal system.

I remember one Governor traveled all the way to Washington to protest to us. And then we pointed out to that particular Governor that the number of people who got on the trains in his State could be picked up with chauffeur-driven limousines and driven to the nearest town where they wanted to go in the name of rail service, and it would cost a fraction of the amount that was being spent on rail service. When the Governor looked at the reality of what was really happening and got away from the nostalgia of passenger rail service, he himself, having not taken a train in many years, looked at us and said: You know, this really doesn't make any sense.

One by one, the Governors withdrew their objection to the creation of what is now Amtrak. We need to have the same kind of understanding here that brought us to the creation of Amtrak in the first place. There are parts of the country where Amtrak is essential and must be maintained. I will be the first Senator to stand here and defend it, and I will be a Senator from Utah who votes for appropriations for Amtrak for New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington State, California, and other places where it makes some sense. I agree that the Federal Government should subsidize that if it cannot make it on its own because it makes a contribution that is essential. But I cannot, under any condition, defend the expenditures of maintaining a national network in the name of saying we are connected all over the country with a set of rails and saying isn't that wonderful that you can get on the train and go all the way across the country when it is very clear that nobody wants to in any kind of quantity that makes any kind of sense.

I will be happy to contribute that portion of Amtrak's budget that goes to maintain rail service in Utah to the State of New Jersey, where they need it, and, if necessary, in Utah, we can come up with one bus per week, which has enough capacity to handle all of the Amtrak passengers who come through our State.

So for that reason, I am opposed to this amendment, because, in my view, it is attempting to maintain something that has passed from our history, actually to the detriment of that which is needed in our future. Let's get over the nostalgia of the old national railway system, and let's focus on the need to have an intelligent passenger railway system in the corridors where it contributes enormously to cutting down on congestion, pollution, and delay.

For that reason, I oppose this amendment, and I urge our fellow Senators to do the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me repeat what I said earlier. As I have listened to my friends talk about this amendment, I know of no one on this side who wants to shut down Amtrak. I know of no one in the administration who wants to destroy Amtrak. I know of no one who thinks that it would make sense to stop running trains in those corridors where people depend upon them for their daily activities. I hear all of the doomsday talk. I dismiss it because I don't know of anybody who is planning to do the terrible things they are accused of.

I do want to respond to the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, on one comment he made about the necessity for keeping a national rail system. He said, if we don't keep running trains in all of these States that don't have big population centers, that depend upon Amtrak the way New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania do, we will lose their political support.

Apparently, he didn't hear what I had to say, so I will repeat it. I am a Senator from Utah who supports Amtrak, who believes it is essential for the Nation to have Amtrak in the Northeast corridor and other heavily populated areas. I would be glad to donate to Amtrak the cost of running a train through Utah or running several trains through Utah. I am not going to disappoint many of my constituents because they don't ride the trains. I am

not so parochial as to say that the only reason I would support Amtrak is because there is a train in my State. When I look at the number of people who are on the train, I look at the number of people who use the train, I realize that a train in my State is a waste of money. A train in my State makes no sense. I have watched the service shrink, as I said before, with the number of people who ride it. I have watched the terminal go from a large terminal that had great nostalgia and history down to a smaller one, to a corner of that one, until today it is quite literally a Quonset hut. Because there are so few people going through it, there is so little use of it that you want to conserve as much money as you can in the capital structure that supports it.

So let us not say that the reason we have to maintain the fiction of a national railway system is for political support that can support the areas where the railway system is really needed. Let's give those of us who come from other States enough credit of being smart enough to realize that shutting down Amtrak in the Northeast corridor would be a stupid thing to do, but keeping Amtrak running across areas of the country bigger than the areas across Europe all by themselves, where nobody uses the service, is also a stupid thing to do.

This is not an all-or-nothing discussion. This is not a debate between killing Amtrak and putting 15 million people on the Northeast corridor on the highways or keeping rail service available all across the Nation. This is a question of saying after 30 years of watching the subsidies fail to produce a system that makes sense, it is time to redraw the nature of the system. And this is the administration's way of getting our attention.

If, in fact, we find out during the appropriations process that the administration wants to kill Amtrak, that the administration really wants to destroy service in the Northeast corridor, I will be the first to come to the floor and stand with my friends from New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland and say this is a stupid thing to do. And I will vote for appropriations, I will vote for subsidies for Amtrak in those areas, as I always have. But do not assume the reason I always have is because there is a train running through my State. Indeed, I have always voted in that fashion saying that you ought to get rid of the train that is running through my State so that you have more money available to solve the problems in the Northeast corridor.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I yield the remainder of the time we have to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Madam President, I have listened with interest to my friend from Illinois. I am sure he enjoyed his camping experience in the wildlife refuge. I wish he had been with us about a week ago when we were in the wildlife refuge and up on the North Slope when the oil activity was going on. He should remember that oil activity in the area does not go on in the summertime. It goes on in the wintertime when there is enough ice that you can drive on ice roads, and we did. You can drive to a drilling pad that is made of ice, and we did; and know that when spring comes and the thaw sets in, both the roads and the drilling pads will disappear. All that will be left from the exploratory well is a single marker showing where the well was.

The one thing I learned that I had not known before I went up there and started talking to the people who were paying attention to that area was where the areas are and the labels that have been drawn.

The Alaska National Petroleum Reserve--that is an area we do not hear discussed in this debate. But it is there, and we visited that. The National Petroleum Reserve and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge we visited as well.

These are very evocative words: the Petroleum Reserve calls up images of great wells of petroleum being held in reserve just waiting to be tapped. The wildlife refuge calls up images of something being protected, that wildlife goes there as a haven to get away from predators, or the devastation of human activity, and so on. What I learned in the trip is that the National Petroleum Reserve was drawn on a map by President Warren Harding in 1923 at the recommendation of the Navy who said: There is probably some petroleum up here. There was no scientific examination of the kind we use today.

By today's standard, the idea that there was petroleum there was very primitive. But the President of the United States, in 1923, drew a line on a map and created by decree the National Petroleum Reserve.

President Eisenhower, in 1960, drew another line on a map creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It was expanded by subsequent Presidents, first President Johnson and then President Carter.

The interesting thing to me was to discover that there is more wildlife in the petroleum reserve than there is in the wildlife refuge, and there is more petroleum in the wildlife refuge than there is in the petroleum reserve. When the Presidents drew those lines, they didn't have the advantage of today's information.

The other thing that my friend from Illinois did not mention is that when President Eisenhower drew those lines he also drew a line around an area within the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Range-- refuge now--saying this portion of it is set aside for exploration and production of oil and gas.

For those who are saying let us not despoil this magnificent area, let me remind them that this magnificent area was created by a Presidential declaration and that same declaration said in this portion of the area we are going to have oil and gas exploration and production. It was set aside right from the beginning.

I am sure the senior Senator from Alaska will explain the promises that were made to the people of Alaska for oil and gas production in that area at the time that designation was set aside, promises that have not been fulfilled for over a quarter of a century.

The interesting thing for me to discover with respect to these evocative words and how they don't really describe what happens on the ground was the discussion of the caribou herd. We have had an awful lot of rhetoric about the caribou and how the caribou in ANWR must be protected. The caribou are unaware of the boundaries drawn by the President. The caribou go where they want to go in the area and the area includes the petroleum reserve, State land, ANWR, and Canada. The caribou go across all of those jurisdictions without paying attention to the names that are given to the land they are wandering over.

It was interesting to talk to some of the people in Barrow, which is the northern-most city in the United States. They pointed out that when Prudhoe Bay was opened for exploration and the pipeline was built there was great concern about the caribou being unable to cross the pipeline. Overpasses were built over the pipeline to allow the caribou free access to the other side because they said it will upset the caribou's migrating habits, it will upset their mating season, it will upset the calving season if they cannot move freely across. Ultimately, the compromise was that we will build the overpasses for the caribou.

As this native of Barrow who has lived there all of his life said to us, the caribou didn't understand that. The caribou don't use the overpasses. The caribou, when they get to the pipeline, scrunch down and go under the pipeline and go on with their migration without paying attention whatever to the oil pipeline.

I was in the Nixon administration when the debate about building the oil pipeline went on. It was just as bitter as the debate today. We were told the caribou population would be decimated by this. Go up there 30 years later and the caribou herds are bigger now than

they were when the pipeline was built, and by a fairly substantial margin.

I talked to some of the natives who watch the caribou. They said the thing that bothers the caribou the most are the mosquitos. They are terrible in the summer. We find caribou coming on to the gravel oil pads because if they stand under the oil platform on the gravel, there are fewer mosquitos.

The caribou like to come around. The caribou are disturbed by human activity there. The mayor of Barrow said to us, look outside the town and you find plenty of caribou. The only time caribou get upset by humans and their activity is when the humans get on snowmobiles and chase into the caribou herd with rifles and start shooting them. The caribou don't like that.

But that is the pattern of some of the people who said to us, do not disrupt our subsistence living culture. There was one Gwich'in Indian almost in tears as he pled with us, do not disrupt our subsistence living culture that has gone back 1,000 years. We live on the caribou and the whale. We don't need the oil. We live on the caribou and the whale. I thought, if you really want the subsistence living culture, it goes back 1,000 years, we can give it to you by cutting down the shipment of diesel fuel that goes to your village, that provides you with heat and power during the wintertime.

I was more moved by the prayer of the preacher who came to talk at our meeting who said he thanked God for the caribou and he thanked God for the oil. He said, God gave us the caribou and God gave us the oil. And they were meeting in a heated room where they could gather for the town meeting that we held there under the direction of Senator Domenici, and then for the church service that was held there.

I asked a question, how is this heated? Where do they get the power for this? They said, once a year a barge comes through and deposits a year's supply of diesel fuel. They had a power shortage in that village. Everything shut down. Helicopters, rescue teams, everything was set up to try to get to them to restore the power so they weren't sitting in their homes freezing anymore. And it was diesel fuel.

My friend from Illinois talks about the diesel spills. I think there are probably more diesel spills connected with the shipping of the fuel up there to take care of the native villages than there are on the oil pads and the activities of the oil industry because I saw the lengths to which the oil industry goes to try to prevent any kind of spills. I saw trucks driving around with diapers on. That is not literally true, but it is figuratively true. They had plastic pads under them in case there was any leakage out of the truck, then it did not get on to the ice and slip into the tundra. When you are unloading diesel fuel, a whole year's supply, in the village you will have spills.

I didn't respond to this particular Indian, tell me about your subsistence living culture, because I didn't want to embarrass him, but I knew that his subsistence living culture meant getting on a snowmobile and going after the caribou with the rifles. I thought, the caribou would much rather have oil engineers giving them some shelter from the mosquitos rather than this kind of human intervention into their lives.

A lot has been said about the puny amount of oil this would be. A lot has been said, economically, we don't need it. All the rest of it. I came back recognizing how important this is to the people of the State of Alaska, how important this is to their economy and to their future. It won't affect the caribou. It won't affect the wildlife. There are millions of acres they go over without respect to any of this activity. But if we did not proceed with this, it will significantly affect the people of Alaska. As a Senator from Utah I don't want to deprive them of that which is their natural heritage as described by that preacher when he said God gave us this oil.

It will be extracted in an environmentally friendly fashion. I think it is time we went ahead and did it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Budget Act indicates that during every budget debate there should be a period of time discussing the general economy. As the past chair and current vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee, I feel I am in a position to do that. I want to share with my colleagues a statement of where the economy is now, and then make a few comments about where it may be going and talk about the future.

Naturally, you can't have a conversation about the economy without charts. That seems to be one of the essentials for any economic discussion. So I brought a fair number of charts to outline the economy to the Members of the Senate.

This first chart is an historic chart that goes back to the years of the early 1970s. All of the bars above the lines are quarters of economic growth. They are measured in GDP growth, the percentage of growth in the gross domestic product. The bars below the lines are quarters of gross domestic production shrinkage where the economy contracted.

If we go back to this period in the early 1980s, we see what the economists call the double dip, the dreaded period where the economy goes into recession, comes out of it, and then slips back into recession. Those who are old enough to remember the early 1980s remember how difficult a time that really was. I have a very clear memory of one of my associates in that period of time who said to me: Bob, be very, very grateful you have a job. Unemployment was high, business activity was off, the economy was recovering, or attempting to recover from the great inflation.

We talk about the 1930s as the days of the Great Depression. The late 1970s were the days of the great inflation. All kinds of things were happening. I remember running a business in this period and going to the bank to borrow money and feeling very fortunate I was able to borrow money at a 21-percent interest rate to support my business. The folks on the late-night comic shows were talking about the height of the interest rates. I remember one who said Jimmy Carter is the only President in history whose approval rating is below the prime rate.

We came out of that period with the help of a combination of activity by the Federal Reserve with Paul Volcker, actions by the Congress, and tax cuts under President Ronald Reagan. We survived through this, and we had a period of tremendous economic growth, the strong recovery out of the recession, and then, after that recovery had taken hold and gained traction, a period of good economic growth. Then we went into the recession that occurred during the Presidency of the first President Bush--much milder than the dreaded double dip of the 1980s but, nonetheless, a period of contraction. The recovery was not as strong as this one following the double dip because it did not have that much to rebound from. But we had that recovery and then a period of strong economic growth until we come to the recession from which we have just emerged.

Interestingly, this, by technical definition, was not a recession because the technical definition of a recession is at least two successive quarters of shrinkage in the gross domestic production. We never had two successive quarters. What we had were three quarters, not in succession; by historic standards, we had a very mild contraction in the size of the economy.

This was, perhaps, the shortest and shallowest recession that we have had in our history. We did not have that strong a recovery.

When I asked Alan Greenspan why the recovery was not taking hold, he said because the recession was so short

and shallow. If you want a really strong recovery like the one we had after the double dip, you have to be coming out of a recession as bad as the one at that time. So we can be grateful.

The recent recovery finally got traction in the second half of 2003, and we see now we are in a period of very strong economic growth, which by historic standards is as good as the economic growth we had in the other two areas. The light blue at the end is what the economists are forecasting for the balance of 2005. But interestingly enough, already the newspapers are saying those forecasts may be too conservative. As they go back and look at the business activity in the first quarter of 2005, they are saying 2005 may very well be a better year than is being forecast. Those are the figures and the statistics for the economy as a whole.

Now we will look at the question of jobs. We heard a lot of rhetoric prior to the election about how bad the job situation was. The background shaded areas in the figure are the areas of recession. You see the unemployment numbers superimposed upon the historic periods of recession. From the period of the double dip, we saw unemployment get into double digits--10.8 percent was the peak. Then it came back down and in this area which is about 7 percent you would feel, OK, the employment picture has gotten good again. We are down from 10.8 down into the 7-percent range. Then, as the economy became even stronger, the unemployment rate fell down. When the recession hit in the early 1990s, unemployment came back up to 7.8 percent, a very large increase from where it had been, but in historic terms not that bad. When the recovery took hold, this time unemployment came all the way down to about 4 percent. Then the recession hit and unemployment spiked at 6.3 percent.

I remember when I took economics in college they told me 6-percent unemployment was full employment--that the economy could not employ more people than that without heating up with inflation. We found out that was not true here. True to the pattern, the peak was reached at 6.3. It is now falling back. Unemployment is at 5.4 percent, well below the averages of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The economy in these categories is behaving as it has throughout our past history.

Another look at jobs. Here are the jobs per month created since the recovery took hold. We can see it was in the second half of 2003 that the recovery took hold. We started creating new jobs in May of 2003, and while it was anemic for a while, then it really took off in the first part of 2004 and on through. We have had 21 months of increased employment every single month, and we have created over 3 million jobs in that period of time. The economy continues to show signs of creating jobs because jobless claims, which are the forecast of new jobs, have been falling.

Once again, this is the period of the recent recession and jobless claims were going up and peaked in that period. They flattened out. When the recovery took hold in the middle of 2003, they started down in 2003 and they continue to trend downward, indicating that the increase in jobs is something we can look forward to for a fairly good period of time ahead.

Business activity, dividing between service and manufacturing activity: We can see that for the manufacturing sector the recession was very difficult. The blue line shows expansion or contraction. Manufacturing started down in early 2000, went below the line and stayed there until 2002, briefly came back up, and then dipped below again in the first part of 2003. Once again, that is when the recovery took hold and manufacturing has been in positive territory ever since. Services have done better than manufacturing all the way and both of them remain in the position of expansion.

During that period, however, inflation has remained well under control. Here are the inflation numbers. The Consumer Price Index, in the dark blue, has come down and remained fairly low, but the personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the inflation measure that the Federal Reserve uses to determine what is going on with inflation, is even lower and is staying more stable.

So the recovery has taken hold in all sectors, manufacturing as well as services. Jobs are coming back, and the forecasters say we will have economic growth at or above the level we enjoyed during the 1990s, at least through 2005.

What about the deficits? We keep hearing a lot of conversation about deficits around here and people saying: Well, maybe the economy is doing that well, but it is all because of runaway deficits.

Here again is the historic pattern of deficits. You can see the deficits spiked as a percentage of GDP during the 1980 double dip. It got to 6 percent GDP. In the recession of the early 1990s, it did not get that high. It was a little bit under 5 percent. This last one has been under 4 percent. The deficit peaked at a lower level than the peaks of the two preceding recessions. The dotted line that is shown here is CBO's projection of where the deficit is going as a percentage of GDP.

Now, you can say: How can it be falling as a percentage of GDP when it is going up in total dollars? Well, if it is rising less rapidly than GDP is growing, it is falling as a percentage of GDP.

Let's look at the numbers behind the deficit to see what is happening with respect to revenues. Here are the tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, again in historic context. They peaked in 1969-1970. And then when the recession hit, they fell. Here is the double dip, 1980-1982. Just before that recession, they peaked. The recession hit, and revenues fell dramatically.

The last one, 1990-1991, they did not come back up that much. But they fell as soon as the recession came along.

Then we had the revenues to a historic high as a percentage of GDP, up over 21 percent, coming at the time of the dot-com bubble.

One of the things that was responsible for this tremendous rise was the capital gains revenues. We in the Congress cut the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 20 percent and produced 5 times--5 times-- the capital gains realizations that CBO had projected. There were so many people with so much inflated value in their stock who took advantage of that capital gains tax cut, who cashed it all in and paid that capital gains tax, and that pushed the revenue to unprecedented highs as a percentage of GDP.

The combination of the collapse of the dot-com bubble, and the collapse of the stock market that came along as a result, and the recession drove receipts down. And, yes, the tax cuts played a role there. There are those who were saying the tax cuts were solely responsible for this. The data do not support that. But they came back down.

What is happening is they are coming back up, as they always have. After every recession, revenues have come back as a percentage of GDP. And here are the specifics of how they have come up in fiscal 2005, in the years we have been operating in this fiscal year. The corporate income tax is up 50 percent from where it was a year ago. Payroll taxes are up 6 percent of where they were a year ago. Personal income taxes are up 10 percent of where they were a year ago. That is a clear indication, once again, that the recovery has taken hold and it is producing the standard historic response to a recovery after a recession. Revenues increase as the recovery takes hold.

The overall number is 9 percent. All total revenues are 9 percent higher than they were in the previous year's corresponding months. Total spending in that period is up 7 percent. That includes the war. That includes the supplementals. That includes all of the things we have done here. Total spending is up 7 percent higher than it was the previous year. But total revenue is up 9 percent higher than it was the previous year. So the recovery is taking hold and the deficit as a percentage of GDP is, in fact, staying within historic norms.

Now, I do not want to leave the impression from all of this that the future, therefore, is completely rosy and we do not need to worry about the deficit or that we do not need to worry about the future of the economy because lying there in our future is a major challenge. This has been talked about many times on the floor by Senators from both sides of the aisle. But I want to dramatize it with this set of charts.

I go back to fiscal 1966. Why did I pick fiscal 1966? That was the first year we began to see spending for Medicare.

Medicare was passed prior to that time, but they had to gear up for it. They had to do the kinds of preparations they are doing now with respect to the drug benefit, so that the first time you began to see spending for Medicare was 1966.

All right. These colors on the chart demonstrate how the budget was divided. The big portion of the budget, the dark blue, is defense spending. Defense spending in 1966 was 44 percent of the Federal budget.

The light blue is non-defense discretionary spending. That was everything else. That was highways. That was education. That was courthouses. That was the Customs Office. That was everything we did in Government, which was 23 percent. Interest costs on the national debt were 7 percent. And the red, the mandatory spending, was 26 percent, the mandatory spending primarily being Social Security.

All right. That is what it was when the Medicare spending started.

Now, look what has happened today. This is 2004. The mandatory spending has grown to 54 percent. It is like a Pac-Man beginning to close in on everything else. The defense discretionary, even while we are at war, has shrunk to 20 percent of the budget. The nondefense discretionary is at 19 percent. It shrunk a little from where it was before, but close to the same. The interest costs are steady at 7 percent of the budget. But we have seen mandatory spending go from about 25 percent in 1966 to 54 percent in 2004.

Now let's go out in a projection. This is not a projection into the far distant future. This is only 10 years. We can be a little more confident of a 10-year projection than we can a 20-or 30-year projection. See how the Pac-Man portion of this circle is growing. Mandatory spending is now up to 62 percent. Defense discretionary has shrunk to 14 percent. Nondefense discretionary has shrunk to 15 percent, and interest costs have grown to 8 percent.

If you project this out, as this begins to take over all of the chart, the one thing that will challenge it is not defense spending and not discretionary spending, it is interest costs. As this begins to grow to the point where we cannot cover it, then we borrow more and more, and you will see the yellow begin to push the red back. You would see the yellow begin to take over where the red took over first.

I make this point because, as we are dealing with this budget, we should remember the impact of mandatory spending. I use this figure to illustrate this point to my constituents who say to us: The deficit must be brought under control. You in Congress must stop spending. You have to show some spending discipline, or the deficit will overwhelm us.

Let me give you two numbers. The President's budget proposal is for $2.7 trillion. The amount of discretionary spending that we are debating in this budget is $843 billion, and that $843 billion includes defense. That is why it says defense discretionary. If you take defense off the table on the grounds that we are at war and say, all right, you are going to have to balance the budget and bring the deficit under control by controlling spending, the only portion of spending over which we have any authority becomes 19 percent of the total budget. The other 81 percent will go on regardless of what we do.

That is why we have to have the courage, looking ahead at this that is coming, to say somehow we have to roll back the mandatory spending. You cannot balance a budget of $2.7 trillion by shaving down a percentage of discretionary spending. If we were to have an across-the- board cut of 10 percent of all discretionary spending, we would have a cry of outrage on this floor that would be heard all over the country. A 10-percent across-the-board cut? A 10-percent across-the-board cut for IDEA? A 10-percent across-the-board cut for food stamps? A 10- percent across-the-board cut for everything we do in Government? Absolutely not. But if we were to enact that 10-percent across-the- board cut, ignoring the mandatory spending, that would yield only about $80 billion out of a budget of $2.7 trillion. To use a phrase that all of the politicians in the room can understand, that is within the margin of error. And $80 billion out of a budget of $2.7 trillion makes little or no impact.

That is why in this budget debate we should keep in mind two things: First, as I hope I have illustrated, right now the economy is strong. It is robust. The recovery has taken hold. Jobs are being created. The deficit is coming down as a percentage of GDP. Things are moving in the right direction virtually across the board.

However, if we do not now exhibit the courage to start taking steps to hold down mandatory spending, all of the present work that we have done to make the economy solid, sound, and strong will be for naught. It will be overwhelmed by a sea of red ink, coming not from the fact that Congress is being profligate in the appropriations that we make and spending decisions we make, but coming from the fact that we did not have the courage to deal with the mandatory programs.

Now I have talked about Medicare, and that is the one that seems to have the greatest pressure. But we are also talking about Social Security, a mandatory program. We are talking about Medicaid, a mandatory program. We are talking about farm subsidies, a mandatory program. We are talking about the kinds of things that politicians have a very tough time addressing. This budget begins to address the mandatory programs very slightly, very gently, and in very small amounts. But they have already set off alarms of complaint around the Capitol that ``you are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.'' That is a great slogan, and nobody wants to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, but we have to recognize that if the economy goes into the tank because of runaway spending, driven by mandatory, it will be the poor who will pay the heaviest price.

I remember during the 1990s, when we were enjoying as much expansion as we were in the gross domestic product, one of my colleagues asked Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve: who benefited most from this boom? He was expecting Greenspan to say it was the rich because look how rich they have become. He was a little surprised when Chairman Greenspan said--and I agree with what he said: Without question, this good economy has primarily benefited the poor.

My colleague said: How can you say that because the poor have not gotten as big an amount of money as have the rich?

The chairman said: The poor have seen their life circumstances change far more dramatically than the rich have. They can get jobs where they could not before. They are beginning to buy homes in ways they could not before. They are beginning to save money in ways they could not before. There is no question but what, in terms of the impact on people's lives, this strong economy has benefited the poor more than anybody else.

That is why we should look at these numbers that I have shared with the Senate today and realize that our primary stewardship must be to keep the economy as strong as we possibly can, that there is nothing we can do that would benefit the poor more than to see to it that this recovery remains robust and that the future moves away from this chart back to the kinds of proportions that we have today on this chart, where mandatory spending is roughly half instead of two-thirds of the total obligations of the Federal Government.

I salute the chairman of the Budget Committee for his resolution and determination to see that we do that, and I hope the Members of the Senate will support the budget as it has been reported from the Budget Committee.

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