CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
(Senate - May 22, 1997)
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
The Senate continued with the consideration of the concurrent
resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. ROBERTS. I thank the Chair. I thank the distinguished chairman of
the Budget Committee.
Mr. President, I rise in support of the overall balanced budget plan
and rise expressing some reservations in regard to many of the
amendments that we are considering, the pending amendments; some 45 of
them, as a matter of fact.
If nothing else, I wanted to pay a personal tribute in behalf of the
taxpayers of Kansas and thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for
his leadership, his perseverance, his patience. He has the patience of
Job. I must confess, having come from the lower body, as described by
Senator Byrd, and being the chairman of the House Agriculture
Committee, I am not sure I had the patience of Senator Domenici. We now
spell ``persevere'' D-o-m-e-n-i-c-i.
How many hours, I ask of the chairman, if he could respond, how many
days, even years, have been involved? Does he have any estimate in
regard to the hours he has spent late, early--he and Chairman Kasich of
the House? If he gives me an estimate, what is it? 10,000?
Mr. DOMENICI. On this agreement itself, just this year, I would
estimate 1,000 hours.
Mr. ROBERTS. 1,000 hours. I said hours and minutes; even years.
This has been the third year on this particular budget plan. This is
the culmination of 3 years of hard work that the Senator from New
Mexico has put in, all members of the Budget Committee, as well as the
staff. This has been a Lonesome Dove Trail ride. I hope we get through
the tall grass and balanced budget with all of our body parts intact.
If we do, the chairman will get most of the credit.
In the last session of the Congress we had two balanced budgets. We
worked very hard and very diligently. They were vetoed by the
President. We even came to a Government shutdown. Nobody wants to
repeat that. I understand that when you are doing a budget for the U.S.
Government, you have many, many strong differences of opinion. After
all, for better or worse, the Congress of the United States reflects
the diversity we have in this country and the strong difference of
opinions. Goodness knows, we have good diversity and strong differences
of opinion. The House, the other body, just the other night stayed
until 3 a.m., and, finally, by a two-vote margin, succeeded in
defeating an amendment that was a deal breaker. It involved highways.
As a matter of fact, it involved transportation, the very issue we are
discussing on the floor at this very moment other than my comments. Two
votes was the difference. Goodness knows, everybody in the House of the
Representatives, everybody in the Senate cares about transportation and
cares about highways and the infrastructure.
We came within five votes of a deal breaker on the floor of the
Senate. I think it was five votes in regard to health care for
children. Who can be opposed to additional funds for health care for
children? As a matter of fact, the chairman has worked very hard to
provide $16 billion in regard to that goal.
So we had highways, health care, and we had a situation in regard to
the construction of our schools, to fix the infrastructure of the
Nation's schools--$5 billion--with a $100 billion price tag, which set
a very unique precedent.
I don't question the intent. I don't question the purpose nor the
integrity of any Senator, nor, for that matter, anyone who would like
to propose an amendment or a better idea in regard to the budget. But I
would suggest that the high road of humility and responsibility is not
bothered by heavy traffic in this instance.
Most of the amendments--I have them all here. Here is the stack, 45
of them. Most of the pending amendments right here are either sense of
the Senate or they have been rejected outright as deal breakers.
Sense of the Senate means it is the sense of the Senate. It has no
legal standing, has no legislative standing. It is just a Senator
saying this would be a good idea in terms of my intent, my purpose,
what I think we ought to do. And there are a few that are agreed to
that obviously will be very helpful.
But here are the 45. Most of them are simply not going anywhere but
raises the point. I took a little counting here. There are 8 Democrats
and 11 Republicans--11 Republicans who have decided that they will take
the time of the Senate, take the time of the American people, take the
time of the chairman of the Budget Committee and staff and go over and
repeat their priority concerns in regard to the budget.
There is nothing wrong with that. I understand that. Each Senator is
an island in terms of their own ideas and their own purpose and their
integrity. I do not really question that but in terms of time, I mean
after 3 years of debate, after hours and hours and hours of careful
deliberation between the President and the Republican leadership and 45
pending amendments.
I have my own amendments. I have my own amendments. I should have had
some sense of the Senate amendments. I feel a bit left out. I thought
we had a budget deal. I thought we were going to vote on it. I thought
that we were going to conclude. And then during the regular
appropriations process, during the regular order, if you will, of the
rest of the session, why, perhaps we could address these things that I
care very deeply about.
Maybe we ought to have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution introduced by
Senator Roberts that all wheat in Kansas should be sold at $6. That is
a little facetious, to say the least, but I do have concerns about crop
insurance, a child care bill I have introduced, along with a capital
gains bill, capital gains and estate tax. I think capital gains should
be across the board. I think estate tax should be at least $1 million.
I want a sense-of-the-Senate resolution or amendment declaring that. Or
maybe an amendment--I tell you what we ought to have, if the chairman
would agree. I think you ought to make a unanimous consent request to
consider an amendment that all Senators who offer an amendment on the
budget process must be required to serve 6 months on the Budget
Committee. Why not? Perhaps in the interest of time, since all of the
time that is being spent by the 11 Republicans and the 8 Democrats--oh,
I forgot my sense-of-the-Senate resolution on defense. I do not think
we have enough money committed to our national defense with the
obligations we hear from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of
Defense, the administration and everything else. So add that one in
Roberts' sense of the Senate.
Maybe we ought to have a unanimous consent request, to save time, to
get
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this business done, to accept the responsibility for the budget, I
could just ask unanimous consent that all amendments pending be laid on
the table and considered en bloc and ask for the yeas and nays and we
could get the budget deal and go home. I have not made that unanimous
consent request. That would be untoward. That is the mildest word I
could use for it because it would violate agreements the distinguished
chairman has made with other Senators.
So let me say this to all the Senators who introduced all these
sense-of-the-Senate amendments, fell asleep, issued a lot of press
releases back home and got a lot of credit. And I laud their intent,
laud their purpose. What about breaking the deal? What about the law of
unintended or intended effects? What about the responsibility of
delaying the Senate and possibly delaying 3 years of work, 3 years of
work to get to a balanced budget?
As you can see by the tone of my remarks, perhaps my patience as a
new Member of the Senate is not near the patience of Chairman Job,
Chairman Job Domenici, in regard to the Budget Committee.
Now, I had intended on reading the names of all the Senators, their
amendments and lauding their intent in behalf of all the things that we
would like to see done. As I say, I have them all here. They range from
everything from highways to education to defense to making sure that we
have proper tax relief across the board. I will not do that. But I
would at least ask my colleagues in the Senate to consider the job and
the mission and what our distinguished chairman and members of the
Budget Committee have brought to the floor of the Senate. And if we
could, if we could plead for a little bit of expeditious consideration,
because you know what is going to happen. Time will run out and then we
will engage in what the Senate calls a votearama, and the votearama is
like ``Jeopardy'' or any other game you play on television. You will
not even hear what the amendment is. We will just hear an amendment by
X, Y, or Z, Senator X, Y, or Z and then we will vote on it and
obviously that will make a good statement back home and we can consider
that very serious bill, that serious legislative intent during the
regular order which should have been considered that way from the
first.
Again, I thank the chairman so much.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. ROBERTS. I will be delighted to yield.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I appreciate the Senator's remarks. When the Senator
holds the stack of amendments, is he suggesting there should be no
amendments or is he just focused on sense-of-the-Senate amendments?
Mr. ROBERTS. I think if I could further clarify that, of the 45
amendments there are about 6 deal breakers, if my conversation with the
chairman is correct. Most of them are sense of Senate. And there are
others that have been agreed to. But my basic premise is--and goodness
knows, this new Member of the Senate is not about to say that we should
change the process of the Senate. And this Member of the Senate is not
about to preclude any Member from offering any amendment.
The point that I am trying to make is that every amendment, every
sense-of-the-Senate amendment, every deal-breaking amendment also to
some degree interferes with the process and the conclusion of a
balanced budget which has taken us 3 years. And I know because I have
been sitting in the chair presiding, listening to the same speeches
that are made today in the Chamber during morning business, and people
can make them in their districts; they can make them on the steps of
the Capitol; they can make them here, and that is quite proper of the
Senate and is advisable.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. ROBERTS. Could I have an additional minute?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator seeks an additional minute. Who
yields him time?
Mr. DOMENICI. How much time does the Senator desire?
Mr. ROBERTS. One additional minute.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield it.
Mr. ROBERTS. I find it rather untoward or awkward after talking 10
minutes and expressing concern of the time here I would go on and on
about this. I think the point is well taken. I know the Senator from
Missouri has a very laudable amendment in regards to something I would
agree with and I would not deny him that opportunity. But can we not
get on with it after 3 years?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Amendment No. 311
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me make it very clear to everyone in
the Senate, first of all, I have nothing but the highest respect and
admiration for both the sponsors of this amendment, the distinguished
Senator from Virginia, who has worked diligently to try to create the
transportation programs in the committee he serves and do it in the
best interests of our whole country, and believe you me, he has had a
tough job, and so has Senator Baucus in doing a great job, whether
working on the committee or with transportation infrastructure.
Their job is very difficult because they have to balance frequently
the interests of all 50 States or those that are rural versus those
that are very dense in terms of population and thus roadway needs are
very different in his State or mine as compared with New Jersey, if you
just take into account how much gasoline tax is taken in because we are
small, with small populations, but we cannot get from one place to
another without roads, so we are in a different category. And over the
decades we have all worked very hard to figure out how to do that
balancing act. And then it turns out when it is all finished, the House
does it differently than the Senate because the Senate is represented
two Senators to each State. So Senator Baucus and his co-Senator
represent a very small population but they are two. In the House, they
always load the bills with the heavy populated States and over here we
try to do it with a little more fairness, more fair play.
They have had to be referees over that. In fact, I might tell the
Senators, they probably do not remember, but I was a referee on that
once as a conferee, and that was pretty interesting, how we found a
formula that year.
I might say, in spite of these accolades, this is a very, very
strange amendment, to say the least. Here we have been for all these
days discussing a balanced budget, and as a matter of fact even those
who would break this budget did not unbalance the budget. Or even those
who had deal breakers because they would take the principal components
of the budget and change them, as our leader said yesterday, pulling
the wheels out from under the cart so it would break down. This
amendment makes no effort to try to offset the $12 billion that they
add to this budget.
In other words, Mr. President and fellow Senators, this amendment is
bold enough to say it just does not matter about a balanced budget. We
just want to put in $12 billion more for highways. Frankly, I am sorry
we do not have the money in this budget for that. But we did in fact,
we did in fact increase the President's proposal by $10.4 billion. That
is $10.4 billion more than the President had in mind, and we balanced
the budget. We offset it somewhere or in some way reduced the amount of
tax cut we were going to have in the overall sense of putting the
package together.
But this amendment just comes along and says, well, we just want this
additional money spent on highways, and we will wait until another day
to worry about the balance. Frankly, we had a very meager surplus in
the year 2002. This particular amendment costs $4.5 billion in the year
2002, and that will bring us out of balance by over $2.5 billion.
So I urge the Senators who want to support this amendment or this
concept, they ought to come down to the floor and cut $12 billion out
of this budget so it is still in balance. Then we would understand what
would be hit--education and everything else we have been trying to
fund.
So I must say on this one the administration supports us. We were not
so
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sure yesterday morning, I say to my good friend from Kentucky, but they
support us. They sent a letter up here saying they do not support this
amendment. They support our efforts to see that it does not pass.
Frankly, I would be less than honest and less than fair with the
cosponsors--it is clear we are going to have to do something when the
ISTEA Program comes along in the not too distant future. We are going
to have to make some serious, serious adjustments. And I think those
are going to happen. Perhaps the Senators will help expedite that a bit
today by calling to the attention of the Senate the situation as you
see it.
But essentially, we have many trust funds in the United States, many
trust funds. I used to know how many. But I think it is probably fair
to say we have 100 trust funds. I think that is low by 50. I think we
have 150. But let us just say we have 100 of them.
Frankly, we do not spend every penny that comes into those trust
funds every year, nor do we take them and set them out on the side and
say whatever comes in goes out. We have put them in the unified budget.
I am not sure--people argue on both sides of that concept. Should you
break Government up into 150 pieces and then find some more pieces and
have no central government running things, no unified budget, I should
say. Forget who runs it, just a budget representing them all. And I
have come down on the side of putting them all in and leaving them in,
and if there is surpluses take credit for the surpluses. As a matter of
fact, it is pretty clear that at some point we are going to have to
change the way we are doing business, not perhaps spend more. But I
would urge Senators not to vote for this amendment today. I will move
to table it. I think it breaks the budget. It unbalances the budget.
The intentions are very, very good, but this is not quite the way to do
it.
Now I yield to Senator Lautenberg--
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. DOMENICI. Of course.
Mr. WARNER. I thank him for the courtesy. Let's clarify a little bit
just how the Senator as chairman of the Budget Committee--and certainly
we commend him for the hard work he has done. What is the meaning of a
trust fund?
Let's be honest. You are keeping $26 billion, according to my
calculation, holding it back, of the revenues paid at the gas tank, as
if it were poker chips to play where you so desire elsewhere in the
budget. We specifically did not put in offsets because the offset is
there in a trust fund established 42 years ago with a legislative
history which clearly said that it belongs to the people and should be
returned to the people. That is why we did not have an offset. The
offset is there in the form of the money in the highway trust fund.
Shall we rename that budget deficit fund?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you will be writing the new ISTEA law. If you
will care to rename it, it will be renamed under your direction, not
under mine. But I would say, from what I can find out, this $26 billion
trust fund surplus--we spend about $20 billion each year and they have
done that for a long time. This $26 billion that is referred to is made
up of two things: $20.6 billion of it is compounded interest, and $5.9
is committed to projects. Frankly, that does not mean we have an awful
lot of money to spend. As a matter of fact, we probably do not have
very much. But, from my standpoint, this trust fund balance is a very
reasonable balance to keep in the fund. If at some point we can get to
a better plan and do it over a period of time, you are going to find
this Senator on your side.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. Did Senator Lautenberg want to speak now?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I do.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 20 minutes
left; the other side has 12 minutes.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we all deeply appreciate the amount of
work the Senator from New Mexico has made to try to put this together.
It is an almost impossible task. He made an interesting statement,
though, that I would just like to follow up on a little bit. He turned
to the Senator from Virginia a few minutes ago--if I heard you
correctly; I do not want to put words in your mouth--and said something
to the effect: Yes, you are right. At some future time when we take up
ISTEA we are going to have to deal with deficiencies that are otherwise
going to be available to be spent on the highway bill, ISTEA.
If I heard him correctly, if that is what he meant, I would just like
to explore with the chairman where we might find some of those
additional dollars if it's not in the context of this budget
resolution.
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you did not quote me so incorrectly that I
would say you didn't quote me right. But, in essence I am just
expressing the notion that is pretty rampant, that outside of this
budget resolution, at a later date, that in various committees we will
be working on what do we do with this highway trust fund and what do we
do with the new formula, where there will be a new formula.
All I am suggesting is at some point that debate is going to occur,
but I don't believe it should occur here on the floor of the Senate,
taking $12 billion and just adding it to this budget and saying we are
just going to go in the red because we have not figured out any other
way. There is going to be another way to look at this situation.
Mr. BAUCUS. But again I ask you, at what time, at what point would we
begin to find the additional dollars that we all know we need for
transportation?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, look, the committees in the U.S. Senate are
marvelous institutions, and how you work out problems that are
complicated and difficult and frequently of longstanding--the Senate is
historic in its wise ways of doing this.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand.
Mr. DOMENICI. All I am suggesting is there is going to be a way.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand, but I bow to the mighty power of the Budget
Committee, when we see the limitations that otherwise are incumbent
upon us--
Mr. DOMENICI. I might suggest, I served on that committee for a long
time, Senator Warner. In fact, I would have been chairman three times
over with the longevity I would have if I would have been there.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we want the Senator where he is. Please
stay. By the way, I volunteered three times to serve on the Budget
Committee, and my name will be on there one of these days.
Mr. DOMENICI. All right. Now, how much time do we have left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 17 minutes
left.
Mr. DOMENICI. I wanted to yield to Senator Lautenberg, who is my ally
here on the floor on this issue, and then find a little time of mine
out of it to yield to the Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am not going to take that much time, Mr. President.
I think the chairman of the Budget Committee has fairly directly and
succinctly made the arguments. The fact of the matter is that none of
us are happy with the level of funding that we have for our investments
in highways and our transportation needs. We are more deficient, in
many ways, than countries down the Third World list. I think we rank
about 55th in per capita spending for infrastructure.
So, one would not disagree with the distinguished Senator from
Virginia or the distinguished Senator from Montana in terms of the
need, the need to correct the situation. But unfortunately, and it is
unfortunate for me because I have long been an advocate of more
spending on transportation in this country. I think it is common
knowledge that the Senator from New Jersey has been an advocate of mass
transit, of rail transportation, improving our highway system, of
fixing our deficient bridges, which number in the thousands. But we
have a proposal in hand that takes a priority, unfortunately, for the
moment. That is, to complete the work we started on a balanced budget.
We are committed to it.
Believe me, this is not a place I enjoy being, because I do not agree
with everything that is in the budget resolution. But I agree with it
enough to say that there is a consensus that we fulfilled an obligation
that we talked about to children, children's health, to the senior
citizens, to try to make
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Medicare solvent, to try to not further burden the impoverished in
terms of Medicare, to try to take care of those who are in this country
legally and become disabled. We fulfilled those obligations.
The economy is moving along at a very good rate and we are still
running the risk, in my view, with some of the tax cuts that have been
proposed, of taking us away from the direction that we are moving in,
which is to continue to reduce the budget deficit until the year 2002,
when there will be none.
So we have an imperfect, but pretty good, solution in front us. And,
now what we are discussing, in terms of transportation--and this is
like me talking against motherhood--but the transportation funds that
are there are inadequate because of the structure of our budgeting
structure, the budgeting arrangement that we have in our Government.
The fact is that we have unified budgets. If one wants to start, as has
been claimed here several times, establishing truth in budgeting, under
that nomenclature I think one would have to start with Social Security.
Are we prepared today to say we are going to add $70 billion to our
deficit each year? We certainly are not. Yet I think, when you talk
about a trust fund, there is no more sanctified trust fund than Social
Security, something people paid in, they are relying on for their
future, for their ability to get along. But we nevertheless still have
the unified budget. That problem, I assure you, is going to get intense
scrutiny over the next several years.
Senator Roberts said something--I don't know whether you were here,
Senator Domenici, when he said: Everybody, in order to have the budget
fully understood, every Senator should be sentenced to 6 months on the
Budget Committee. I thought immediately, there is a constitutional
prohibition against cruel and inhuman punishment, so we could not do
that, even if we wanted to. I am on the Budget Committee by a quirk of
circumstance. When I came here, a fellow I had known who was a Senator
said that he would do me a favor and that he would vacate his seat on
the Budget Committee for me. And I will get even.
The fact of the matter is, we complain and we gripe, but the money is
where the policy is, the money is where the direction is. We take this
assignment with a degree of relish, because we want to do the right
thing. None of us want to throw the taxpayers' money away. But we are
where we are.
It is with reluctance that I am opposing this amendment because both
Senators, Senator Warner and Senator Baucus, have been very actively
involved in highway funding and highway legislation as a result of our
mutual service on the Environment and Public Works Committee. But we
are spending more than we did last year. We are spending more than the
budget resolution of just 2 years ago.
I was able, with a lot of hard work and with the support of the
chairman of the committee, to get an $8.7 billion increase over the
President's budget request for transportation. I had asked that
transportation be included as one of the top priorities in the budget.
Unfortunately it is not there. But there is a plan, that we expect to
be fulfilled, to have a reserve fund that would allow significantly
more funding for some of the transportation needs.
But I want to point out one thing about the trust fund. That is,
there is a slow payout in highway projects. I think everybody is aware
of that--5, 7 years on many of these things. If we shut down the
revenue source now, interest alone would not carry the obligations that
are already out there. The obligation ceiling as contrasted with the
contract authority are quite different things. We have these
obligations that have to be fulfilled, they are there and one day must
be met. The balances in the fund, I think, will start coming down with
the adjustments that are expected to occur in ISTEA. We have the
chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee on the floor.
That will be opportunity to make some of the changes that are being
contemplated here.
I just think it is a terrible time to say we ought to burden the
budget deficit by $12 billion, roughly, right now, when everybody has
worked so hard, and this budget has been scrubbed, reviewed, rewashed,
rehashed--you name it. We are where we are, in a fairly delicate
balance, I point out to my colleagues. There are very delicate
opportunities that will, I think, upset the balance that has been
achieved. So, again, I repeat myself when I say with reluctance I am
going to vote against it.
Mr. WARNER. Will my colleague yield for a brief question?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Sure.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator, a member of our
committee, Environment and Public Works, is, according to my records, a
cosponsor of a piece of legislation called ISTEA--NEXTEA. Am I not
correct?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. In that, it is interesting, there are three bills put in
by Members of the Senate. I am coauthor--Senator Baucus, Senator Graham
of Florida; STEP 21, Senator Baucus is 2000, you are with Senator
Chafee.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Right.
Mr. WARNER. ISTEA. Look into that bill. Right in there is a provision
saying we want $26 billion each year, far more than what the Senator
from Virginia is asking. I build up to $26 billion in the fifth year.
You want it beginning this year. In other words, you are saying to the
Senate, in a cosponsored piece of legislation together with the
distinguished chairman of the committee, you want $26 billion. Now you
stand on this floor and talk in direct opposite. That is what leaves me
at a loss. So the question is, you are a cosponsor and----
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, in response to the question, before
the speech, I would say this--yes, I sponsored that legislation.
My heart is in more funding for transportation, and no one here can
say differently. The problem is that we are in a different point in
time, and if you want to take it out of highways and say forget the
children's health care bill, if you want to take it out of highways and
forget the pledge we made to the senior citizens, or take it out of
this bill and forget the pledge that we made to those who might be
disabled, let's do it, let's talk about that. Let's talk about
balancing the budget, because I know the distinguished Senator from
Virginia has been a proponent of a balanced budget almost from the day
the words were invented around here.
So now we have a different occasion. We are not talking about
transportation; we all agree that transportation is definitely
underfunded. What we are talking about is at what price do we make this
change, and the price is at, again, children's health or otherwise,
because we are committed to balancing this budget. And this is strange
talk for a fellow like me.
Mr. DOMENICI. I think it is right on, and I hope you make it about
five or six times in the remaining couple hours. I look forward to
hearing it more times than one.
Mr. President, I wonder, how much time do we have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 7 minutes; the
Senator from Virginia has 10 minutes, almost 11 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Rhode Island, the chairman of the full Committee on
Environment and Public Works, Senator Chafee.
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished manager of the
bill.
I rise in opposition today to the amendment offered by the Senator
from Virginia and the Senator from Montana. I might say, these are two
Senators for whom I have tremendous respect. I have worked with them.
The Senator from Virginia, I think we first started our association in
1969, and the Senator from Montana, I started working with him the
first year he came to the Senate, which I think was 1978, 1979, and we
have been closely associated ever since.
However, this amendment, which would increase outlays for
transportation spending above the levels provided in the resolution
before us, I find to be inconsistent with the achievement of a balanced
budget by the year 2002.
The Senator from Virginia just said it went beyond the bill, the so-
called NEXTEA bill that goes beyond this, and that is absolutely right,
but that was before we had a target from the Budget Committee. I
believe strongly in the budgetary process we have set up. I voted for
it, and I support it.
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I think we all can agree that the Nation's roads and bridges are in
need of repair. No one argues with that. Transportation plays a
critical role in our Nation's economy. We recognize that. In the United
States, more than 12 million people, more than 11 percent of the gross
national product, is involved in transportation.
Earlier this year, I cosponsored a measure to increase, within the
context of a unified budget, the level of transportation spending from
the highway trust fund. I am pleased that the budget agreement, crafted
by the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from New Jersey,
increases the spending levels implicit in that proposal, the so-
called Bond-Chafee proposal. It is $13 billion over a freeze baseline.
That is pretty good.
Would we like more? Sure we would. But I think it is terribly
important to recognize that any proposal that boosts highway spending
or transportation spending without corresponding offsets is something I
personally cannot support. So, I agree with Senators Warner and Baucus
that transportation spending should be increased, but not in a manner
that would undermine the careful agreement reached by the Budget
Committee.
Do we like everything in this budget? No, but it is the best we can
get. I am supporting that agreement. It seems to me we simply cannot
afford to retreat from our efforts to eliminate the Federal deficit.
So that, Mr. President, is the reason I cannot support this amendment
that is before us today. I thank the Chair and thank the manager and
thank the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee that deals with
these matters. He has worked on them, and I know his heart is in this.
As always, he argues his case with vigor and considerable force.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, might I ask a question on my time of my
distinguished chairman?
There are three bills pending before the Senate relating to the
reauthorization of ISTEA. I mentioned that. Seventy-four colleagues
have signed one of those three bills. Each one of those bills has the
higher level of $26 billion. I say to my colleague, he also is a
cosponsor of the Bond-Chafee/Chafee-Bond legislation. The principle
that Senator Baucus and I are arguing today precisely is the Chafee-
Bond bill. I ask the Senator, does he feel there is any difference in
principle?
Mr. CHAFEE. Yes. First of all, I am pleased to call it the Chafee-
Bond proposal.
Mr. WARNER. Call it what you want.
Mr. CHAFEE. We call it that in Rhode Island. What the Chafee-Bond
proposal does is it says that what came in in the previous year--we do
not deal with the interest, we do not deal with----
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I do not need an explanation. In
principle, pay it in, take it out, isn't that right, in simple English?
Mr. CHAFEE. That's right.
Mr. WARNER. Fine, that's all I need to say.
Mr. CHAFEE. What comes in this year goes out next year, and that
principle is in this budget.
Mr. WARNER. That principle is in this amendment. I thank the
distinguished Senator. That is all we are asking. But it is interesting
we are asking for less than what is paid in to come out, recognizing
the challenge before the Budget Committee.
So I say, once again, 74 colleagues have signed on to legislation. We
are going to have to answer to our constituents, Mr. President, on this
vote. You say one thing in sponsoring the bills, and we will see how
consistent you are. I will put a letter on the desk signed by 56
Senators as to how they spoke to this. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator from Virginia yield for a few minutes?
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I yield all but a minute and a half, 2
minutes I have reserved.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we heard today from both the chairman and
the ranking member of the Budget Committee that we need to address this
problem; the problem that there is a deficiency in highway-mass
transit-infrastructure spending that must be dealt with at sometime.
But they are also saying they feel constrained to say they cannot deal
with it here because they feel constrained by the budget resolution, a
resolution agreed to principally between the White House and the
leadership.
They talk about an $8 billion increase. That does not include
interest. And because the country is growing, because of additional
needs we have and the crumbling bridges, if this resolution is adopted,
Senators should know that they will receive less in dollars than they
will need for their State's infrastructure.
The Senators, the chairman and ranking member, say, ``Well, we will
deal with it in the future at sometime,'' acknowledging that there is a
problem and we need more transportation dollars. I must remind Senators
that we have a difficult problem ahead of us. When we in the
Environment and Public Works Committee in the coming weeks write a bill
dealing with CMAQ, dealing with formulas, donor States, donee States,
so on and so forth, what do we look at? We look at the number that the
Budget Committee sends to us. We are constrained by that number. We
must then write a 5- or 6-year bill which locks in the spending limits
that the Budget Committee prescribes for us. We are locked in for 5 or
6 years.
Those lower levels cannot be changed next year by a new budget
resolution, cannot be changed until or unless this Congress writes a
new highway bill. I am not so sure this Congress is going to want to
write a new highway bill every year. So I am saying that this is the
time to deal with this problem. It is now. Otherwise, we are locked in
for 6 years to inadequate numbers.
We want to make an adjustment of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of
our Federal budget, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of our Federal
budget, which I am fully confident can be dealt with in conference. It
is critical that this amendment be adopted so that we are not locked in
over the next 6 years to inadequate numbers. We will be locked into
these numbers if this resolution is adopted. We can make adjustments in
all the other accounts and still maintain the core provisions of the
bipartisan agreement.
So I urge Senators to, therefore, vote for this so we can do what we
know is right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair notes 2 minutes remain for the
Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, is that all the time that is remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. The Senator from New Mexico
has 2 minutes; the Senator from Virginia has 2 minutes.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I commend my distinguished colleague. He,
in his concluding remarks, gave the clarion call: When we cast the
vote, we simply cast a vote to say to the Budget Committee, ``Go back
and look for that very small fraction so we can avoid this flat green
line which is correctly represented on this chart, and allow our
several States to build that infrastructure necessary to compete in
this world market.''
What we have left out, my distinguished colleague and myself, are
pages and pages of added requests by our colleagues. I totaled over $7
billion in addition to what is to be allocated under the formulation
for superb programs that are badly needed by the country: Appalachian
highway system; for the Indian reservation roads; for expansion of the
intelligent transportation system; for innovative financing
initiatives; for new funding to meet infrastructure--on and on it goes.
We want to, Senator Baucus and I together with other members of our
subcommittee and full committee, try and do this, but those we haven't
even discussed today. We will never get to one nickel of this unless we
are given some additional flexibility.
So we say, with all due respect, we are simply asking a voice mandate
in support of our constituents to the Budget Committee, ``Go back and
reexamine the desperate need of America for these dollars.''
I thank the Chair. I yield back all time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI. Do I have 2 minutes and that is it?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me suggest, again, to Senators who
might be listening or those who might be listening in their stead, in
this budget, we
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have tried to do many things. We have tried to cut taxes for the
American people; we have tried to cover little children who are
uninsured with $16 billion; we have tried to cover the National
Institutes of Health with a 3.5-percent increase.
We heard from people what America had to be doing, and, in each
instance, we had to get rid of something. In fact, I have not said it
yet, but the President gave up 50 percent of his initiatives in the
compromise that was made, and every time we did it, we said, ``Let's
balance the budget; let's balance the budget.'' We would come back and
say, ``Well, we want to add this, what do we take out?'' And we would
take something out. What we have here today is $12 billion as if it
just flopped out of the sky; no effort to balance the budget, no effort
to offset it with expenditures so we can all see where do you pick up
the $12 billion that is needed for highways?
Everybody understands that highways are very much needed in America,
but this budget, for the first time, will permit us to spend every cent
of new taxes that comes into that fund every single year. We are moving
in the right direction. Every cent of new gasoline tax that goes into
this fund under this budget agreement will be spent in that year that
it comes in, obligated during that year. That is a giant stride in the
direction that we have been asked to go by many people in our country.
Frankly, every Governor in America sends a letter in. They want more
money. And then some of them get up and criticize that we do not
balance the budget right. The lead Governor in America, the head of the
association, he wants every penny of highway funds, but this budget
resolution just does not get the job done right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). All time has expired.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back the balance of my time, and move to table
the amendment, and ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to
be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
lay on the table the amendment. The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 49, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 80 Leg.]
YEAS--51
Allard
Bennett
Biden
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
Daschle
Domenici
Durbin
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Gorton
Gramm
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hutchison
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Lieberman
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McCain
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Nickles
Reed
Roberts
Rockefeller
Roth
Santorum
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Stevens
Thompson
NAYS--49
Abraham
Akaka
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bingaman
Boxer
Bryan
Bumpers
Burns
Byrd
Coats
Conrad
DeWine
Dodd
Dorgan
Faircloth
Glenn
Graham
Grams
Harkin
Hatch
Helms
Hollings
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kempthorne
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Leahy
Levin
McConnell
Mikulski
Murray
Reid
Robb
Sarbanes
Sessions
Shelby
Specter
Thomas
Thurmond
Torricelli
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden
The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 311) was agreed to.
Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I move to lay it on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. WARNER. History was made with this vote, by two votes, and two
votes in the House--that resonates all across this land. It is a wake-
up call to all those entrusted with the responsibility of keeping
America's infrastructure modernized and safe so we can compete in this
one-world market. This is but the first of a series of battles that
will be waged on this floor on behalf of America's transportation
system. It is my privilege to be a part of that team.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes. I want to
compliment those who offered the amendment for the way they have
handled matters and to tell the same American people that were
listening to the distinguished Senator from Virginia that there will be
additional highway funding in years to come, there is no doubt about
it, but it will not be done at the expense of unbalancing the budget.
It will not be done at the expense of just saying we will spend some
money even if the deficit goes up. I look forward to the day we do it
in such a way that it is balanced and that, as a matter of fact, if we
increase, we cut some things to make up for the difference so we stay
in balance.
Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 2 minutes to Senator Stevens.
Mr. STEVENS. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I want to
tell the Senate that those of us who are voting against some of these
amendments are doing it because there is no money to fund these sense-
of-the-Senate resolutions. I say to any of you that want to offer
amendments that change this budget, that authorize additional funds--
show me the money. Show me where the money is when you offer amendments
that change the budget plan agreed to with the President.
I have discussed this with the distinguished Senator from West
Virginia. We will have the obligation to allot money within the budget
among 13 subcommittees. A sense-of-the-Senate resolution does not give
us any more money but it gives us the problem that you have sent a
message to America that there is money in this budget to do something
the Senate votes for in a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
When the budget resolution, just before, was voted I asked for a
chance to come to the floor again, and I ask for you to reserve some
time and we will show where a commitment has been made by the Senate to
fund items where there is no money. I urge the Senate to wake up. We
are voting against these matters not because we are against highways or
aid for children who need insurance. We are voting--the Senators from
New Mexico and New Jersey have brought us a resolution. We had a budget
that has been worked out with the President and we have a chance to
vote for a balanced budget. I do not want to be accused of being a
tightwad when we allocate the money under 602(b) of the budget act and
then we do not cover the sense-of-the-Senate Resolutions.
Again, if anyone is going to accuse us of being tightwads and not
following the sense of the Senate, I tell you, if you vote for one of
these things, you show us where the money is and we will allocate it.
We will not be misled by these attempts to gain publicity and to gain
some credit at home on a bill like this. This is a very serious bill.
The two of us are going to have a horrendous job trying to meet our
duties even within this budget, so do not give us any more of this
funny money. You show me real money and I will allocate it to your
function.
Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself in considerable
measure with the distinguished Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens]. We
have been voting for a lot of sense-of-the-Senate resolutions. I think
we had one yesterday, 99-0. We know it is not going to be paid for.
On this business about infrastructure, we hear it said that there is
no money. I am from a State that needs infrastructure. We say there is
no money. I shall state why I supported the Warner-Baucus amendment. We
do not need a tax cut in this country right now. We do not need a tax
cut. I say that with respect to the Republican tax cut and with respect
to the tax cut that is supported by the Administration. We do not need
a tax cut. When we see what we are doing in this budget resolution with
respect to cutting taxes--cutting taxes at a time when we are within
reach of balancing the budget, if we were to use that money that is
going for the tax cut, we would balance this budget much earlier than
it is expected to be balanced now and we could also use some of that
money for infrastructure. If we want to know where we
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can get the money, that is where it can be found. Let's vote against
the tax cut.
I am going to vote against this resolution if we have the tax cut
tied with it.
I thank the distinguished Senator.
Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from New
Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I yield myself 2 minutes off the resolution.
Mr. President, I don't like being put in the position that appears to
be developing here, that I am against investment in infrastructure. I
stand on my record of having fought as hard as anyone in this body to
invest more money in highways, in mass transit, in rail and aviation,
whatever was called for. I never met a transportation project I didn't
like if it was a well-founded and well-thought-out project. But the
insinuation by our distinguished friend from Virginia to caution us and
to lay down the scare that we will be counted upon or we will be looked
upon by the Record and by the voters, I want to say this: The Senator
from Virginia took the liberty yesterday of voting against the funds
for crumbling schools, against schools that are tattered and falling
apart, where children can't possibly learn. That was OK to vote
against. And the appeal wasn't made, and there was no threat that if
you vote against this, you are committing those kids to an even more
difficult assignment to try and lift themselves up.
I have defended investments in transportation as chairman of the
Subcommittee on Transportation of the Appropriations Committee. Without
fail, I have defended investing more. But the onerous comparison is
that we neglected our responsibility. It is almost as if you are
unpatriotic.
I don't really like everything in this budget resolution. But I am
committed by my constitutional responsibilities. If I take the
assignment, I have to work on it. We negotiated in good faith, and I
don't like some of the tax concessions we have in there. But I think
middle-class people in this country are entitled to some tax relief. I
think those who want to send their kids to college are entitled to some
help to get them the first step up on the economic ladder.
No, I don't like it all. But I have my duty to do, and I did it. It
wasn't pleasant. It wasn't pleasant when I went into the Army in World
War II, either, but I did it. And the insinuation that somehow or other
I have deserted my responsibility is one that really offends me.
We did what we thought was best, each one of us, whatever the vote
was.
I yield the floor.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that I was to be
able to call up an amendment at this time.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is in the order. That is true.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, before I use any of that time, just as a
matter of courtesy and parliamentary process, my distinguished
colleague is also standing for recognition.
If I could ask the Chair what the Senator's intent might be, we might
be able to work out an arrangement.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my intention, having talked to the ranking
Member, was to seek 10 minutes for debate on the resolution. Whatever
fits with the schedule of the Senator from Massachusetts will be fine
with me.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. It is a commitment that was made, I say to the
Senator from North Dakota. But the Senator from Massachusetts did have
a priority and was on record as being next in line. If an accommodation
can be made between the two--if not, the Senator from Massachusetts has
an opportunity to offer an amendment.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator
from North Dakota be permitted to proceed for 10 minutes, and
subsequently, when he completes, that I be recognized for the purposes
of calling up my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for
his courtesy. I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes on the
resolution itself that is brought to the floor of the Senate. I want to
talk just for a moment about what it is and what it is not.
This piece of legislation is a budget agreement that I intend to vote
for on final passage. I think a substantial amount of work has been
done by the chairman of the Budget Committee, the ranking member, and
many others in the House and the Senate and in the White House. They
have negotiated in very difficult circumstances the terms of a budget
agreement. But, as I said, I want to talk about what this is and what
it is not.
This is a budget agreement that provides a balanced budget of the
unified budget. Is that something that has merit? Yes, it is. Is that
something that moves in the right direction? Yes, it does. But it is
not a balanced budget amendment that balances the budget without the
use of trust funds, such as the Social Security fund. I want everybody
to be clear about that.
On page 4 of this budget resolution, which is on the desks of all
Senators, it says ``deficit.'' On line 24, it says ``deficit'' in the
year 2002, ``$108 billion.'' Why does it say that?
It says that because this piece of legislation balances what is
called the unified budget. Many of us believe there is another step to
be taken after that. That is to balance the budget without the use of
trust funds, especially without the use of Social Security trust funds.
For that reason, I voted for the initiative offered yesterday by the
Senator from South Carolina. It got very few votes, I might say. But he
said, let us balance the budget and not do tax cuts and not do added
investments at the start so that we balance the budget completely
without using the trust fund, and then, as the economy strengthens and
as we have extra money, let us provide for the tax cuts and let us
provide for the added investments. Obviously, that proposal failed.
I will vote for this budget agreement. But it is not truly a balanced
budget. It moves in the direction, and it moves the right way. But it
will leave this country, still, with a deficit. That must be the next
step following action on this document.
There are several steps here in climbing a flight of stairs to get to
the point where we make real progress. One step we took in 1993. I was
one who voted for the budget in 1993. I am glad I did. I said at the
time it was a very controversial vote. It passed by one vote in the
U.S. Senate--a budget agreement to substantially reduce the Federal
budget deficit. It passed by one vote, the vote of the Vice President
of the United States.
Some paid a very heavy price for that vote because it was
controversial. It cut spending. And, yes, it raised some taxes. But
what was the result of that vote in 1993? The result was a dramatically
reduced budget deficit.
In that year, the unified budget deficit was close to $290 billion.
Again, using the unified budget, the Congressional Budget Office now
says the unified budget deficit is going to be, at the end of year, $67
billion.
What has caused all of that? Well, a good economy and a 1993 budget
act that a lot of people here had the courage to vote for, that passed
by one vote, that says, let's put us moving in the right direction;
let's move us in the right direction to substantially reduce the budget
deficit. And only with that vote, and only with the progress that came
from that vote, are we now able to take another very large step in
moving toward a balanced budget.
What was the result of that vote? It was interesting. We had people
in 1993 on the floor of the Senate who said, if you cast a ``yes'' vote
and pass this budget, the economy will collapse; the country will go
into a recession; it means higher deficits and a higher debt; it means
the economy goes into a tailspin.
It passed with my vote--and, yes, the votes of some of my colleagues
who decided to say to this country that we are serious, that we are
going to move this country in the right direction even if the choice is
painful for us to cast this vote.
What happened? What happened was 4 years of sustained economic
growth, inflation coming down, down, down, and down, and unemployment
coming down and down for 4 years in a row. We have more people working.
This country now has 12 million more people on
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the payrolls that we did in 1993. We have an economy that is moving
ahead, a deficit that is moving down, and inflation that is at a 30-
year low.
I wonder if those who predicted doom from that vote now won't join us
and say, ``You did the right thing. It wasn't easy to do. But because
you did it, we stand here today now able to take the next step.'' The
next step is a step in which we now try to choose priorities.
What do we make investments on in our country, and where do we cut
real levels of spending?
That is what this document is about. It is a compromise between
Republicans and Democrats, between a President and Congress, that tries
to establish priorities. Frankly, while it reduces spending in some
areas, it cuts out entire classes of spending in others. It also
increases some investment in spending in yet other areas.
What are those? Education: It makes a lot of sense for us even as we
attempt to move toward solving this country's fiscal problems to say
that we don't solve the problems of the future by retreating on things
like educating our kids.
So this piece of legislation says education is a priority--more Pell
grants, more Head Start, more investing in education, from young kids
to college age and beyond. It says we are going to invest in education.
Then it says the environment and health care. It says these areas are
priorities. They are areas that make this country strong, and we will
continue to invest in those areas even as we move to reconcile our
books so that we are not spending more than we take in.
That is why this is important, and it is why it is successful. I am
pleased, frankly, after all of these years, to be on the floor of the
Senate saying this is something that is bipartisan. Finally,
Republicans and Democrats, rather than exerting all of their energy to
fight each other and beat each other, are deciding there are ways that
we can join each other and pass a piece of legislation that moves this
country in the right direction. I think the American people probably
think it is a pretty good thing that bipartisanship comes to the floor
of the Senate in the form of this budget resolution.
I started by saying I would talk about what this is and what it
isn't. I am going to vote for this. It moves this country in the right
direction. It preserves priorities that are important to preserve, and
investment in this country's future. It represents a compromise. Many
of us would have written it differently. We didn't get all we wanted.
But it moves this country in the right direction while preserving the
kinds of things most of us think are important as investments in our
country's future.
This is not a balanced budget, not truly a balanced budget. It
balances something called the unified budget. But it is a major step in
the right direction. I hope we will take the next step beyond this to
say that, on page 4 of the next budget resolution, line 24, we will say
``zero'' in a future year. That is when we will truly have completed
the job.
But the choices here are not always choices we would like. The choice
that we now ask ourselves is, does this move us in the right direction
with respect to the things I care a great deal about--one, fiscal
discipline; a more deficit reduction; investment in education, health
care, the environment--things that make this country a better place?
The answer, unequivocally, is yes. This moves America in the right
direction.
Is it an exercise between the President and Congress, between
Democrats and Republicans, that will give this country some confidence
that the past is over, that the reckless, the irresponsible fiscal
policy of saying let's spend money we don't have on things we don't
need and run up trillions and trillions of dollars of debt for our kids
and our grandkids to assume? Is it a message to the American people
that we are beyond that period and have moved on to a new day of
bipartisanship to decide together we can plot a better course and move
this country toward a brighter future? The answer to that is yes.
If the past is any experience, since 1993, the vote we took then to
put us on the road to balancing this budget is a proud vote and one
that I am glad I cast. I will be glad I cast this vote as well, because
this is the next major segment of the journey to do what the American
people want us to do on their behalf and on behalf of so many children
who will inherit this country. They will inherit a better country
because of what we will have done in this Chamber this week.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we have under
normal regular order an amount of time at this point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair.
I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has no time. The Senator hasn't
called up his amendment.
Amendment No. 309
Mr. KERRY. I call up amendment No. 309.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kerry], for himself,
Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Kohl, Ms. Moseley-Braun, Mr. Wellstone,
Ms. Mikulski, Mrs. Murray, and Mr. Bingaman, proposes an
amendment numbered 309.
(The text of the amendment is printed in the Record of May 21, 1997.)
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I now yield to the Senator from Minnesota 4
minutes.
Mr. President, before I yield let me just take 1 minute to explain.
This is an amendment to hold out a possibility--I yield myself such
time as I may use--to hold out the possibility that when we come back
in the appropriating process, we may be able to find some money to deal
with the issue of early child development. We do not spend money now.
We do not trade money. We do not have an offset. We do not spend. We
simply want to be able to reserve the capacity to come back at a later
time to deal with this issue. I will explain why I feel that is so
important, as do the other Senators joining me.
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
(Senate - May 22, 1997)
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
The Senate continued with the consideration of the concurrent
resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. ROBERTS. I thank the Chair. I thank the distinguished chairman of
the Budget Committee.
Mr. President, I rise in support of the overall balanced budget plan
and rise expressing some reservations in regard to many of the
amendments that we are considering, the pending amendments; some 45 of
them, as a matter of fact.
If nothing else, I wanted to pay a personal tribute in behalf of the
taxpayers of Kansas and thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for
his leadership, his perseverance, his patience. He has the patience of
Job. I must confess, having come from the lower body, as described by
Senator Byrd, and being the chairman of the House Agriculture
Committee, I am not sure I had the patience of Senator Domenici. We now
spell ``persevere'' D-o-m-e-n-i-c-i.
How many hours, I ask of the chairman, if he could respond, how many
days, even years, have been involved? Does he have any estimate in
regard to the hours he has spent late, early--he and Chairman Kasich of
the House? If he gives me an estimate, what is it? 10,000?
Mr. DOMENICI. On this agreement itself, just this year, I would
estimate 1,000 hours.
Mr. ROBERTS. 1,000 hours. I said hours and minutes; even years.
This has been the third year on this particular budget plan. This is
the culmination of 3 years of hard work that the Senator from New
Mexico has put in, all members of the Budget Committee, as well as the
staff. This has been a Lonesome Dove Trail ride. I hope we get through
the tall grass and balanced budget with all of our body parts intact.
If we do, the chairman will get most of the credit.
In the last session of the Congress we had two balanced budgets. We
worked very hard and very diligently. They were vetoed by the
President. We even came to a Government shutdown. Nobody wants to
repeat that. I understand that when you are doing a budget for the U.S.
Government, you have many, many strong differences of opinion. After
all, for better or worse, the Congress of the United States reflects
the diversity we have in this country and the strong difference of
opinions. Goodness knows, we have good diversity and strong differences
of opinion. The House, the other body, just the other night stayed
until 3 a.m., and, finally, by a two-vote margin, succeeded in
defeating an amendment that was a deal breaker. It involved highways.
As a matter of fact, it involved transportation, the very issue we are
discussing on the floor at this very moment other than my comments. Two
votes was the difference. Goodness knows, everybody in the House of the
Representatives, everybody in the Senate cares about transportation and
cares about highways and the infrastructure.
We came within five votes of a deal breaker on the floor of the
Senate. I think it was five votes in regard to health care for
children. Who can be opposed to additional funds for health care for
children? As a matter of fact, the chairman has worked very hard to
provide $16 billion in regard to that goal.
So we had highways, health care, and we had a situation in regard to
the construction of our schools, to fix the infrastructure of the
Nation's schools--$5 billion--with a $100 billion price tag, which set
a very unique precedent.
I don't question the intent. I don't question the purpose nor the
integrity of any Senator, nor, for that matter, anyone who would like
to propose an amendment or a better idea in regard to the budget. But I
would suggest that the high road of humility and responsibility is not
bothered by heavy traffic in this instance.
Most of the amendments--I have them all here. Here is the stack, 45
of them. Most of the pending amendments right here are either sense of
the Senate or they have been rejected outright as deal breakers.
Sense of the Senate means it is the sense of the Senate. It has no
legal standing, has no legislative standing. It is just a Senator
saying this would be a good idea in terms of my intent, my purpose,
what I think we ought to do. And there are a few that are agreed to
that obviously will be very helpful.
But here are the 45. Most of them are simply not going anywhere but
raises the point. I took a little counting here. There are 8 Democrats
and 11 Republicans--11 Republicans who have decided that they will take
the time of the Senate, take the time of the American people, take the
time of the chairman of the Budget Committee and staff and go over and
repeat their priority concerns in regard to the budget.
There is nothing wrong with that. I understand that. Each Senator is
an island in terms of their own ideas and their own purpose and their
integrity. I do not really question that but in terms of time, I mean
after 3 years of debate, after hours and hours and hours of careful
deliberation between the President and the Republican leadership and 45
pending amendments.
I have my own amendments. I have my own amendments. I should have had
some sense of the Senate amendments. I feel a bit left out. I thought
we had a budget deal. I thought we were going to vote on it. I thought
that we were going to conclude. And then during the regular
appropriations process, during the regular order, if you will, of the
rest of the session, why, perhaps we could address these things that I
care very deeply about.
Maybe we ought to have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution introduced by
Senator Roberts that all wheat in Kansas should be sold at $6. That is
a little facetious, to say the least, but I do have concerns about crop
insurance, a child care bill I have introduced, along with a capital
gains bill, capital gains and estate tax. I think capital gains should
be across the board. I think estate tax should be at least $1 million.
I want a sense-of-the-Senate resolution or amendment declaring that. Or
maybe an amendment--I tell you what we ought to have, if the chairman
would agree. I think you ought to make a unanimous consent request to
consider an amendment that all Senators who offer an amendment on the
budget process must be required to serve 6 months on the Budget
Committee. Why not? Perhaps in the interest of time, since all of the
time that is being spent by the 11 Republicans and the 8 Democrats--oh,
I forgot my sense-of-the-Senate resolution on defense. I do not think
we have enough money committed to our national defense with the
obligations we hear from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of
Defense, the administration and everything else. So add that one in
Roberts' sense of the Senate.
Maybe we ought to have a unanimous consent request, to save time, to
get
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this business done, to accept the responsibility for the budget, I
could just ask unanimous consent that all amendments pending be laid on
the table and considered en bloc and ask for the yeas and nays and we
could get the budget deal and go home. I have not made that unanimous
consent request. That would be untoward. That is the mildest word I
could use for it because it would violate agreements the distinguished
chairman has made with other Senators.
So let me say this to all the Senators who introduced all these
sense-of-the-Senate amendments, fell asleep, issued a lot of press
releases back home and got a lot of credit. And I laud their intent,
laud their purpose. What about breaking the deal? What about the law of
unintended or intended effects? What about the responsibility of
delaying the Senate and possibly delaying 3 years of work, 3 years of
work to get to a balanced budget?
As you can see by the tone of my remarks, perhaps my patience as a
new Member of the Senate is not near the patience of Chairman Job,
Chairman Job Domenici, in regard to the Budget Committee.
Now, I had intended on reading the names of all the Senators, their
amendments and lauding their intent in behalf of all the things that we
would like to see done. As I say, I have them all here. They range from
everything from highways to education to defense to making sure that we
have proper tax relief across the board. I will not do that. But I
would at least ask my colleagues in the Senate to consider the job and
the mission and what our distinguished chairman and members of the
Budget Committee have brought to the floor of the Senate. And if we
could, if we could plead for a little bit of expeditious consideration,
because you know what is going to happen. Time will run out and then we
will engage in what the Senate calls a votearama, and the votearama is
like ``Jeopardy'' or any other game you play on television. You will
not even hear what the amendment is. We will just hear an amendment by
X, Y, or Z, Senator X, Y, or Z and then we will vote on it and
obviously that will make a good statement back home and we can consider
that very serious bill, that serious legislative intent during the
regular order which should have been considered that way from the
first.
Again, I thank the chairman so much.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. ROBERTS. I will be delighted to yield.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I appreciate the Senator's remarks. When the Senator
holds the stack of amendments, is he suggesting there should be no
amendments or is he just focused on sense-of-the-Senate amendments?
Mr. ROBERTS. I think if I could further clarify that, of the 45
amendments there are about 6 deal breakers, if my conversation with the
chairman is correct. Most of them are sense of Senate. And there are
others that have been agreed to. But my basic premise is--and goodness
knows, this new Member of the Senate is not about to say that we should
change the process of the Senate. And this Member of the Senate is not
about to preclude any Member from offering any amendment.
The point that I am trying to make is that every amendment, every
sense-of-the-Senate amendment, every deal-breaking amendment also to
some degree interferes with the process and the conclusion of a
balanced budget which has taken us 3 years. And I know because I have
been sitting in the chair presiding, listening to the same speeches
that are made today in the Chamber during morning business, and people
can make them in their districts; they can make them on the steps of
the Capitol; they can make them here, and that is quite proper of the
Senate and is advisable.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. ROBERTS. Could I have an additional minute?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator seeks an additional minute. Who
yields him time?
Mr. DOMENICI. How much time does the Senator desire?
Mr. ROBERTS. One additional minute.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield it.
Mr. ROBERTS. I find it rather untoward or awkward after talking 10
minutes and expressing concern of the time here I would go on and on
about this. I think the point is well taken. I know the Senator from
Missouri has a very laudable amendment in regards to something I would
agree with and I would not deny him that opportunity. But can we not
get on with it after 3 years?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Amendment No. 311
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me make it very clear to everyone in
the Senate, first of all, I have nothing but the highest respect and
admiration for both the sponsors of this amendment, the distinguished
Senator from Virginia, who has worked diligently to try to create the
transportation programs in the committee he serves and do it in the
best interests of our whole country, and believe you me, he has had a
tough job, and so has Senator Baucus in doing a great job, whether
working on the committee or with transportation infrastructure.
Their job is very difficult because they have to balance frequently
the interests of all 50 States or those that are rural versus those
that are very dense in terms of population and thus roadway needs are
very different in his State or mine as compared with New Jersey, if you
just take into account how much gasoline tax is taken in because we are
small, with small populations, but we cannot get from one place to
another without roads, so we are in a different category. And over the
decades we have all worked very hard to figure out how to do that
balancing act. And then it turns out when it is all finished, the House
does it differently than the Senate because the Senate is represented
two Senators to each State. So Senator Baucus and his co-Senator
represent a very small population but they are two. In the House, they
always load the bills with the heavy populated States and over here we
try to do it with a little more fairness, more fair play.
They have had to be referees over that. In fact, I might tell the
Senators, they probably do not remember, but I was a referee on that
once as a conferee, and that was pretty interesting, how we found a
formula that year.
I might say, in spite of these accolades, this is a very, very
strange amendment, to say the least. Here we have been for all these
days discussing a balanced budget, and as a matter of fact even those
who would break this budget did not unbalance the budget. Or even those
who had deal breakers because they would take the principal components
of the budget and change them, as our leader said yesterday, pulling
the wheels out from under the cart so it would break down. This
amendment makes no effort to try to offset the $12 billion that they
add to this budget.
In other words, Mr. President and fellow Senators, this amendment is
bold enough to say it just does not matter about a balanced budget. We
just want to put in $12 billion more for highways. Frankly, I am sorry
we do not have the money in this budget for that. But we did in fact,
we did in fact increase the President's proposal by $10.4 billion. That
is $10.4 billion more than the President had in mind, and we balanced
the budget. We offset it somewhere or in some way reduced the amount of
tax cut we were going to have in the overall sense of putting the
package together.
But this amendment just comes along and says, well, we just want this
additional money spent on highways, and we will wait until another day
to worry about the balance. Frankly, we had a very meager surplus in
the year 2002. This particular amendment costs $4.5 billion in the year
2002, and that will bring us out of balance by over $2.5 billion.
So I urge the Senators who want to support this amendment or this
concept, they ought to come down to the floor and cut $12 billion out
of this budget so it is still in balance. Then we would understand what
would be hit--education and everything else we have been trying to
fund.
So I must say on this one the administration supports us. We were not
so
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sure yesterday morning, I say to my good friend from Kentucky, but they
support us. They sent a letter up here saying they do not support this
amendment. They support our efforts to see that it does not pass.
Frankly, I would be less than honest and less than fair with the
cosponsors--it is clear we are going to have to do something when the
ISTEA Program comes along in the not too distant future. We are going
to have to make some serious, serious adjustments. And I think those
are going to happen. Perhaps the Senators will help expedite that a bit
today by calling to the attention of the Senate the situation as you
see it.
But essentially, we have many trust funds in the United States, many
trust funds. I used to know how many. But I think it is probably fair
to say we have 100 trust funds. I think that is low by 50. I think we
have 150. But let us just say we have 100 of them.
Frankly, we do not spend every penny that comes into those trust
funds every year, nor do we take them and set them out on the side and
say whatever comes in goes out. We have put them in the unified budget.
I am not sure--people argue on both sides of that concept. Should you
break Government up into 150 pieces and then find some more pieces and
have no central government running things, no unified budget, I should
say. Forget who runs it, just a budget representing them all. And I
have come down on the side of putting them all in and leaving them in,
and if there is surpluses take credit for the surpluses. As a matter of
fact, it is pretty clear that at some point we are going to have to
change the way we are doing business, not perhaps spend more. But I
would urge Senators not to vote for this amendment today. I will move
to table it. I think it breaks the budget. It unbalances the budget.
The intentions are very, very good, but this is not quite the way to do
it.
Now I yield to Senator Lautenberg--
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. DOMENICI. Of course.
Mr. WARNER. I thank him for the courtesy. Let's clarify a little bit
just how the Senator as chairman of the Budget Committee--and certainly
we commend him for the hard work he has done. What is the meaning of a
trust fund?
Let's be honest. You are keeping $26 billion, according to my
calculation, holding it back, of the revenues paid at the gas tank, as
if it were poker chips to play where you so desire elsewhere in the
budget. We specifically did not put in offsets because the offset is
there in a trust fund established 42 years ago with a legislative
history which clearly said that it belongs to the people and should be
returned to the people. That is why we did not have an offset. The
offset is there in the form of the money in the highway trust fund.
Shall we rename that budget deficit fund?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you will be writing the new ISTEA law. If you
will care to rename it, it will be renamed under your direction, not
under mine. But I would say, from what I can find out, this $26 billion
trust fund surplus--we spend about $20 billion each year and they have
done that for a long time. This $26 billion that is referred to is made
up of two things: $20.6 billion of it is compounded interest, and $5.9
is committed to projects. Frankly, that does not mean we have an awful
lot of money to spend. As a matter of fact, we probably do not have
very much. But, from my standpoint, this trust fund balance is a very
reasonable balance to keep in the fund. If at some point we can get to
a better plan and do it over a period of time, you are going to find
this Senator on your side.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. Did Senator Lautenberg want to speak now?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I do.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 20 minutes
left; the other side has 12 minutes.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we all deeply appreciate the amount of
work the Senator from New Mexico has made to try to put this together.
It is an almost impossible task. He made an interesting statement,
though, that I would just like to follow up on a little bit. He turned
to the Senator from Virginia a few minutes ago--if I heard you
correctly; I do not want to put words in your mouth--and said something
to the effect: Yes, you are right. At some future time when we take up
ISTEA we are going to have to deal with deficiencies that are otherwise
going to be available to be spent on the highway bill, ISTEA.
If I heard him correctly, if that is what he meant, I would just like
to explore with the chairman where we might find some of those
additional dollars if it's not in the context of this budget
resolution.
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you did not quote me so incorrectly that I
would say you didn't quote me right. But, in essence I am just
expressing the notion that is pretty rampant, that outside of this
budget resolution, at a later date, that in various committees we will
be working on what do we do with this highway trust fund and what do we
do with the new formula, where there will be a new formula.
All I am suggesting is at some point that debate is going to occur,
but I don't believe it should occur here on the floor of the Senate,
taking $12 billion and just adding it to this budget and saying we are
just going to go in the red because we have not figured out any other
way. There is going to be another way to look at this situation.
Mr. BAUCUS. But again I ask you, at what time, at what point would we
begin to find the additional dollars that we all know we need for
transportation?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, look, the committees in the U.S. Senate are
marvelous institutions, and how you work out problems that are
complicated and difficult and frequently of longstanding--the Senate is
historic in its wise ways of doing this.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand.
Mr. DOMENICI. All I am suggesting is there is going to be a way.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand, but I bow to the mighty power of the Budget
Committee, when we see the limitations that otherwise are incumbent
upon us--
Mr. DOMENICI. I might suggest, I served on that committee for a long
time, Senator Warner. In fact, I would have been chairman three times
over with the longevity I would have if I would have been there.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we want the Senator where he is. Please
stay. By the way, I volunteered three times to serve on the Budget
Committee, and my name will be on there one of these days.
Mr. DOMENICI. All right. Now, how much time do we have left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 17 minutes
left.
Mr. DOMENICI. I wanted to yield to Senator Lautenberg, who is my ally
here on the floor on this issue, and then find a little time of mine
out of it to yield to the Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am not going to take that much time, Mr. President.
I think the chairman of the Budget Committee has fairly directly and
succinctly made the arguments. The fact of the matter is that none of
us are happy with the level of funding that we have for our investments
in highways and our transportation needs. We are more deficient, in
many ways, than countries down the Third World list. I think we rank
about 55th in per capita spending for infrastructure.
So, one would not disagree with the distinguished Senator from
Virginia or the distinguished Senator from Montana in terms of the
need, the need to correct the situation. But unfortunately, and it is
unfortunate for me because I have long been an advocate of more
spending on transportation in this country. I think it is common
knowledge that the Senator from New Jersey has been an advocate of mass
transit, of rail transportation, improving our highway system, of
fixing our deficient bridges, which number in the thousands. But we
have a proposal in hand that takes a priority, unfortunately, for the
moment. That is, to complete the work we started on a balanced budget.
We are committed to it.
Believe me, this is not a place I enjoy being, because I do not agree
with everything that is in the budget resolution. But I agree with it
enough to say that there is a consensus that we fulfilled an obligation
that we talked about to children, children's health, to the senior
citizens, to try to make
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Medicare solvent, to try to not further burden the impoverished in
terms of Medicare, to try to take care of those who are in this country
legally and become disabled. We fulfilled those obligations.
The economy is moving along at a very good rate and we are still
running the risk, in my view, with some of the tax cuts that have been
proposed, of taking us away from the direction that we are moving in,
which is to continue to reduce the budget deficit until the year 2002,
when there will be none.
So we have an imperfect, but pretty good, solution in front us. And,
now what we are discussing, in terms of transportation--and this is
like me talking against motherhood--but the transportation funds that
are there are inadequate because of the structure of our budgeting
structure, the budgeting arrangement that we have in our Government.
The fact is that we have unified budgets. If one wants to start, as has
been claimed here several times, establishing truth in budgeting, under
that nomenclature I think one would have to start with Social Security.
Are we prepared today to say we are going to add $70 billion to our
deficit each year? We certainly are not. Yet I think, when you talk
about a trust fund, there is no more sanctified trust fund than Social
Security, something people paid in, they are relying on for their
future, for their ability to get along. But we nevertheless still have
the unified budget. That problem, I assure you, is going to get intense
scrutiny over the next several years.
Senator Roberts said something--I don't know whether you were here,
Senator Domenici, when he said: Everybody, in order to have the budget
fully understood, every Senator should be sentenced to 6 months on the
Budget Committee. I thought immediately, there is a constitutional
prohibition against cruel and inhuman punishment, so we could not do
that, even if we wanted to. I am on the Budget Committee by a quirk of
circumstance. When I came here, a fellow I had known who was a Senator
said that he would do me a favor and that he would vacate his seat on
the Budget Committee for me. And I will get even.
The fact of the matter is, we complain and we gripe, but the money is
where the policy is, the money is where the direction is. We take this
assignment with a degree of relish, because we want to do the right
thing. None of us want to throw the taxpayers' money away. But we are
where we are.
It is with reluctance that I am opposing this amendment because both
Senators, Senator Warner and Senator Baucus, have been very actively
involved in highway funding and highway legislation as a result of our
mutual service on the Environment and Public Works Committee. But we
are spending more than we did last year. We are spending more than the
budget resolution of just 2 years ago.
I was able, with a lot of hard work and with the support of the
chairman of the committee, to get an $8.7 billion increase over the
President's budget request for transportation. I had asked that
transportation be included as one of the top priorities in the budget.
Unfortunately it is not there. But there is a plan, that we expect to
be fulfilled, to have a reserve fund that would allow significantly
more funding for some of the transportation needs.
But I want to point out one thing about the trust fund. That is,
there is a slow payout in highway projects. I think everybody is aware
of that--5, 7 years on many of these things. If we shut down the
revenue source now, interest alone would not carry the obligations that
are already out there. The obligation ceiling as contrasted with the
contract authority are quite different things. We have these
obligations that have to be fulfilled, they are there and one day must
be met. The balances in the fund, I think, will start coming down with
the adjustments that are expected to occur in ISTEA. We have the
chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee on the floor.
That will be opportunity to make some of the changes that are being
contemplated here.
I just think it is a terrible time to say we ought to burden the
budget deficit by $12 billion, roughly, right now, when everybody has
worked so hard, and this budget has been scrubbed, reviewed, rewashed,
rehashed--you name it. We are where we are, in a fairly delicate
balance, I point out to my colleagues. There are very delicate
opportunities that will, I think, upset the balance that has been
achieved. So, again, I repeat myself when I say with reluctance I am
going to vote against it.
Mr. WARNER. Will my colleague yield for a brief question?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Sure.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator, a member of our
committee, Environment and Public Works, is, according to my records, a
cosponsor of a piece of legislation called ISTEA--NEXTEA. Am I not
correct?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. In that, it is interesting, there are three bills put in
by Members of the Senate. I am coauthor--Senator Baucus, Senator Graham
of Florida; STEP 21, Senator Baucus is 2000, you are with Senator
Chafee.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Right.
Mr. WARNER. ISTEA. Look into that bill. Right in there is a provision
saying we want $26 billion each year, far more than what the Senator
from Virginia is asking. I build up to $26 billion in the fifth year.
You want it beginning this year. In other words, you are saying to the
Senate, in a cosponsored piece of legislation together with the
distinguished chairman of the committee, you want $26 billion. Now you
stand on this floor and talk in direct opposite. That is what leaves me
at a loss. So the question is, you are a cosponsor and----
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, in response to the question, before
the speech, I would say this--yes, I sponsored that legislation.
My heart is in more funding for transportation, and no one here can
say differently. The problem is that we are in a different point in
time, and if you want to take it out of highways and say forget the
children's health care bill, if you want to take it out of highways and
forget the pledge we made to the senior citizens, or take it out of
this bill and forget the pledge that we made to those who might be
disabled, let's do it, let's talk about that. Let's talk about
balancing the budget, because I know the distinguished Senator from
Virginia has been a proponent of a balanced budget almost from the day
the words were invented around here.
So now we have a different occasion. We are not talking about
transportation; we all agree that transportation is definitely
underfunded. What we are talking about is at what price do we make this
change, and the price is at, again, children's health or otherwise,
because we are committed to balancing this budget. And this is strange
talk for a fellow like me.
Mr. DOMENICI. I think it is right on, and I hope you make it about
five or six times in the remaining couple hours. I look forward to
hearing it more times than one.
Mr. President, I wonder, how much time do we have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 7 minutes; the
Senator from Virginia has 10 minutes, almost 11 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Rhode Island, the chairman of the full Committee on
Environment and Public Works, Senator Chafee.
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished manager of the
bill.
I rise in opposition today to the amendment offered by the Senator
from Virginia and the Senator from Montana. I might say, these are two
Senators for whom I have tremendous respect. I have worked with them.
The Senator from Virginia, I think we first started our association in
1969, and the Senator from Montana, I started working with him the
first year he came to the Senate, which I think was 1978, 1979, and we
have been closely associated ever since.
However, this amendment, which would increase outlays for
transportation spending above the levels provided in the resolution
before us, I find to be inconsistent with the achievement of a balanced
budget by the year 2002.
The Senator from Virginia just said it went beyond the bill, the so-
called NEXTEA bill that goes beyond this, and that is absolutely right,
but that was before we had a target from the Budget Committee. I
believe strongly in the budgetary process we have set up. I voted for
it, and I support it.
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I think we all can agree that the Nation's roads and bridges are in
need of repair. No one argues with that. Transportation plays a
critical role in our Nation's economy. We recognize that. In the United
States, more than 12 million people, more than 11 percent of the gross
national product, is involved in transportation.
Earlier this year, I cosponsored a measure to increase, within the
context of a unified budget, the level of transportation spending from
the highway trust fund. I am pleased that the budget agreement, crafted
by the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from New Jersey,
increases the spending levels implicit in that proposal, the so-
called Bond-Chafee proposal. It is $13 billion over a freeze baseline.
That is pretty good.
Would we like more? Sure we would. But I think it is terribly
important to recognize that any proposal that boosts highway spending
or transportation spending without corresponding offsets is something I
personally cannot support. So, I agree with Senators Warner and Baucus
that transportation spending should be increased, but not in a manner
that would undermine the careful agreement reached by the Budget
Committee.
Do we like everything in this budget? No, but it is the best we can
get. I am supporting that agreement. It seems to me we simply cannot
afford to retreat from our efforts to eliminate the Federal deficit.
So that, Mr. President, is the reason I cannot support this amendment
that is before us today. I thank the Chair and thank the manager and
thank the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee that deals with
these matters. He has worked on them, and I know his heart is in this.
As always, he argues his case with vigor and considerable force.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, might I ask a question on my time of my
distinguished chairman?
There are three bills pending before the Senate relating to the
reauthorization of ISTEA. I mentioned that. Seventy-four colleagues
have signed one of those three bills. Each one of those bills has the
higher level of $26 billion. I say to my colleague, he also is a
cosponsor of the Bond-Chafee/Chafee-Bond legislation. The principle
that Senator Baucus and I are arguing today precisely is the Chafee-
Bond bill. I ask the Senator, does he feel there is any difference in
principle?
Mr. CHAFEE. Yes. First of all, I am pleased to call it the Chafee-
Bond proposal.
Mr. WARNER. Call it what you want.
Mr. CHAFEE. We call it that in Rhode Island. What the Chafee-Bond
proposal does is it says that what came in in the previous year--we do
not deal with the interest, we do not deal with----
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I do not need an explanation. In
principle, pay it in, take it out, isn't that right, in simple English?
Mr. CHAFEE. That's right.
Mr. WARNER. Fine, that's all I need to say.
Mr. CHAFEE. What comes in this year goes out next year, and that
principle is in this budget.
Mr. WARNER. That principle is in this amendment. I thank the
distinguished Senator. That is all we are asking. But it is interesting
we are asking for less than what is paid in to come out, recognizing
the challenge before the Budget Committee.
So I say, once again, 74 colleagues have signed on to legislation. We
are going to have to answer to our constituents, Mr. President, on this
vote. You say one thing in sponsoring the bills, and we will see how
consistent you are. I will put a letter on the desk signed by 56
Senators as to how they spoke to this. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator from Virginia yield for a few minutes?
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I yield all but a minute and a half, 2
minutes I have reserved.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we heard today from both the chairman and
the ranking member of the Budget Committee that we need to address this
problem; the problem that there is a deficiency in highway-mass
transit-infrastructure spending that must be dealt with at sometime.
But they are also saying they feel constrained to say they cannot deal
with it here because they feel constrained by the budget resolution, a
resolution agreed to principally between the White House and the
leadership.
They talk about an $8 billion increase. That does not include
interest. And because the country is growing, because of additional
needs we have and the crumbling bridges, if this resolution is adopted,
Senators should know that they will receive less in dollars than they
will need for their State's infrastructure.
The Senators, the chairman and ranking member, say, ``Well, we will
deal with it in the future at sometime,'' acknowledging that there is a
problem and we need more transportation dollars. I must remind Senators
that we have a difficult problem ahead of us. When we in the
Environment and Public Works Committee in the coming weeks write a bill
dealing with CMAQ, dealing with formulas, donor States, donee States,
so on and so forth, what do we look at? We look at the number that the
Budget Committee sends to us. We are constrained by that number. We
must then write a 5- or 6-year bill which locks in the spending limits
that the Budget Committee prescribes for us. We are locked in for 5 or
6 years.
Those lower levels cannot be changed next year by a new budget
resolution, cannot be changed until or unless this Congress writes a
new highway bill. I am not so sure this Congress is going to want to
write a new highway bill every year. So I am saying that this is the
time to deal with this problem. It is now. Otherwise, we are locked in
for 6 years to inadequate numbers.
We want to make an adjustment of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of
our Federal budget, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of our Federal
budget, which I am fully confident can be dealt with in conference. It
is critical that this amendment be adopted so that we are not locked in
over the next 6 years to inadequate numbers. We will be locked into
these numbers if this resolution is adopted. We can make adjustments in
all the other accounts and still maintain the core provisions of the
bipartisan agreement.
So I urge Senators to, therefore, vote for this so we can do what we
know is right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair notes 2 minutes remain for the
Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, is that all the time that is remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. The Senator from New Mexico
has 2 minutes; the Senator from Virginia has 2 minutes.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I commend my distinguished colleague. He,
in his concluding remarks, gave the clarion call: When we cast the
vote, we simply cast a vote to say to the Budget Committee, ``Go back
and look for that very small fraction so we can avoid this flat green
line which is correctly represented on this chart, and allow our
several States to build that infrastructure necessary to compete in
this world market.''
What we have left out, my distinguished colleague and myself, are
pages and pages of added requests by our colleagues. I totaled over $7
billion in addition to what is to be allocated under the formulation
for superb programs that are badly needed by the country: Appalachian
highway system; for the Indian reservation roads; for expansion of the
intelligent transportation system; for innovative financing
initiatives; for new funding to meet infrastructure--on and on it goes.
We want to, Senator Baucus and I together with other members of our
subcommittee and full committee, try and do this, but those we haven't
even discussed today. We will never get to one nickel of this unless we
are given some additional flexibility.
So we say, with all due respect, we are simply asking a voice mandate
in support of our constituents to the Budget Committee, ``Go back and
reexamine the desperate need of America for these dollars.''
I thank the Chair. I yield back all time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI. Do I have 2 minutes and that is it?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me suggest, again, to Senators who
might be listening or those who might be listening in their stead, in
this budget, we
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have tried to do many things. We have tried to cut taxes for the
American people; we have tried to cover little children who are
uninsured with $16 billion; we have tried to cover the National
Institutes of Health with a 3.5-percent increase.
We heard from people what America had to be doing, and, in each
instance, we had to get rid of something. In fact, I have not said it
yet, but the President gave up 50 percent of his initiatives in the
compromise that was made, and every time we did it, we said, ``Let's
balance the budget; let's balance the budget.'' We would come back and
say, ``Well, we want to add this, what do we take out?'' And we would
take something out. What we have here today is $12 billion as if it
just flopped out of the sky; no effort to balance the budget, no effort
to offset it with expenditures so we can all see where do you pick up
the $12 billion that is needed for highways?
Everybody understands that highways are very much needed in America,
but this budget, for the first time, will permit us to spend every cent
of new taxes that comes into that fund every single year. We are moving
in the right direction. Every cent of new gasoline tax that goes into
this fund under this budget agreement will be spent in that year that
it comes in, obligated during that year. That is a giant stride in the
direction that we have been asked to go by many people in our country.
Frankly, every Governor in America sends a letter in. They want more
money. And then some of them get up and criticize that we do not
balance the budget right. The lead Governor in America, the head of the
association, he wants every penny of highway funds, but this budget
resolution just does not get the job done right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). All time has expired.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back the balance of my time, and move to table
the amendment, and ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to
be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
lay on the table the amendment. The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 49, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 80 Leg.]
YEAS--51
Allard
Bennett
Biden
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
Daschle
Domenici
Durbin
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Gorton
Gramm
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hutchison
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Lieberman
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McCain
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Nickles
Reed
Roberts
Rockefeller
Roth
Santorum
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Stevens
Thompson
NAYS--49
Abraham
Akaka
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bingaman
Boxer
Bryan
Bumpers
Burns
Byrd
Coats
Conrad
DeWine
Dodd
Dorgan
Faircloth
Glenn
Graham
Grams
Harkin
Hatch
Helms
Hollings
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kempthorne
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Leahy
Levin
McConnell
Mikulski
Murray
Reid
Robb
Sarbanes
Sessions
Shelby
Specter
Thomas
Thurmond
Torricelli
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden
The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 311) was agreed to.
Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I move to lay it on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. WARNER. History was made with this vote, by two votes, and two
votes in the House--that resonates all across this land. It is a wake-
up call to all those entrusted with the responsibility of keeping
America's infrastructure modernized and safe so we can compete in this
one-world market. This is but the first of a series of battles that
will be waged on this floor on behalf of America's transportation
system. It is my privilege to be a part of that team.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes. I want to
compliment those who offered the amendment for the way they have
handled matters and to tell the same American people that were
listening to the distinguished Senator from Virginia that there will be
additional highway funding in years to come, there is no doubt about
it, but it will not be done at the expense of unbalancing the budget.
It will not be done at the expense of just saying we will spend some
money even if the deficit goes up. I look forward to the day we do it
in such a way that it is balanced and that, as a matter of fact, if we
increase, we cut some things to make up for the difference so we stay
in balance.
Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 2 minutes to Senator Stevens.
Mr. STEVENS. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I want to
tell the Senate that those of us who are voting against some of these
amendments are doing it because there is no money to fund these sense-
of-the-Senate resolutions. I say to any of you that want to offer
amendments that change this budget, that authorize additional funds--
show me the money. Show me where the money is when you offer amendments
that change the budget plan agreed to with the President.
I have discussed this with the distinguished Senator from West
Virginia. We will have the obligation to allot money within the budget
among 13 subcommittees. A sense-of-the-Senate resolution does not give
us any more money but it gives us the problem that you have sent a
message to America that there is money in this budget to do something
the Senate votes for in a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
When the budget resolution, just before, was voted I asked for a
chance to come to the floor again, and I ask for you to reserve some
time and we will show where a commitment has been made by the Senate to
fund items where there is no money. I urge the Senate to wake up. We
are voting against these matters not because we are against highways or
aid for children who need insurance. We are voting--the Senators from
New Mexico and New Jersey have brought us a resolution. We had a budget
that has been worked out with the President and we have a chance to
vote for a balanced budget. I do not want to be accused of being a
tightwad when we allocate the money under 602(b) of the budget act and
then we do not cover the sense-of-the-Senate Resolutions.
Again, if anyone is going to accuse us of being tightwads and not
following the sense of the Senate, I tell you, if you vote for one of
these things, you show us where the money is and we will allocate it.
We will not be misled by these attempts to gain publicity and to gain
some credit at home on a bill like this. This is a very serious bill.
The two of us are going to have a horrendous job trying to meet our
duties even within this budget, so do not give us any more of this
funny money. You show me real money and I will allocate it to your
function.
Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself in considerable
measure with the distinguished Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens]. We
have been voting for a lot of sense-of-the-Senate resolutions. I think
we had one yesterday, 99-0. We know it is not going to be paid for.
On this business about infrastructure, we hear it said that there is
no money. I am from a State that needs infrastructure. We say there is
no money. I shall state why I supported the Warner-Baucus amendment. We
do not need a tax cut in this country right now. We do not need a tax
cut. I say that with respect to the Republican tax cut and with respect
to the tax cut that is supported by the Administration. We do not need
a tax cut. When we see what we are doing in this budget resolution with
respect to cutting taxes--cutting taxes at a time when we are within
reach of balancing the budget, if we were to use that money that is
going for the tax cut, we would balance this budget much earlier than
it is expected to be balanced now and we could also use some of that
money for infrastructure. If we want to know where we
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can get the money, that is where it can be found. Let's vote against
the tax cut.
I am going to vote against this resolution if we have the tax cut
tied with it.
I thank the distinguished Senator.
Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from New
Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I yield myself 2 minutes off the resolution.
Mr. President, I don't like being put in the position that appears to
be developing here, that I am against investment in infrastructure. I
stand on my record of having fought as hard as anyone in this body to
invest more money in highways, in mass transit, in rail and aviation,
whatever was called for. I never met a transportation project I didn't
like if it was a well-founded and well-thought-out project. But the
insinuation by our distinguished friend from Virginia to caution us and
to lay down the scare that we will be counted upon or we will be looked
upon by the Record and by the voters, I want to say this: The Senator
from Virginia took the liberty yesterday of voting against the funds
for crumbling schools, against schools that are tattered and falling
apart, where children can't possibly learn. That was OK to vote
against. And the appeal wasn't made, and there was no threat that if
you vote against this, you are committing those kids to an even more
difficult assignment to try and lift themselves up.
I have defended investments in transportation as chairman of the
Subcommittee on Transportation of the Appropriations Committee. Without
fail, I have defended investing more. But the onerous comparison is
that we neglected our responsibility. It is almost as if you are
unpatriotic.
I don't really like everything in this budget resolution. But I am
committed by my constitutional responsibilities. If I take the
assignment, I have to work on it. We negotiated in good faith, and I
don't like some of the tax concessions we have in there. But I think
middle-class people in this country are entitled to some tax relief. I
think those who want to send their kids to college are entitled to some
help to get them the first step up on the economic ladder.
No, I don't like it all. But I have my duty to do, and I did it. It
wasn't pleasant. It wasn't pleasant when I went into the Army in World
War II, either, but I did it. And the insinuation that somehow or other
I have deserted my responsibility is one that really offends me.
We did what we thought was best, each one of us, whatever the vote
was.
I yield the floor.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that I was to be
able to call up an amendment at this time.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is in the order. That is true.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, before I use any of that time, just as a
matter of courtesy and parliamentary process, my distinguished
colleague is also standing for recognition.
If I could ask the Chair what the Senator's intent might be, we might
be able to work out an arrangement.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my intention, having talked to the ranking
Member, was to seek 10 minutes for debate on the resolution. Whatever
fits with the schedule of the Senator from Massachusetts will be fine
with me.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. It is a commitment that was made, I say to the
Senator from North Dakota. But the Senator from Massachusetts did have
a priority and was on record as being next in line. If an accommodation
can be made between the two--if not, the Senator from Massachusetts has
an opportunity to offer an amendment.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator
from North Dakota be permitted to proceed for 10 minutes, and
subsequently, when he completes, that I be recognized for the purposes
of calling up my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for
his courtesy. I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes on the
resolution itself that is brought to the floor of the Senate. I want to
talk just for a moment about what it is and what it is not.
This piece of legislation is a budget agreement that I intend to vote
for on final passage. I think a substantial amount of work has been
done by the chairman of the Budget Committee, the ranking member, and
many others in the House and the Senate and in the White House. They
have negotiated in very difficult circumstances the terms of a budget
agreement. But, as I said, I want to talk about what this is and what
it is not.
This is a budget agreement that provides a balanced budget of the
unified budget. Is that something that has merit? Yes, it is. Is that
something that moves in the right direction? Yes, it does. But it is
not a balanced budget amendment that balances the budget without the
use of trust funds, such as the Social Security fund. I want everybody
to be clear about that.
On page 4 of this budget resolution, which is on the desks of all
Senators, it says ``deficit.'' On line 24, it says ``deficit'' in the
year 2002, ``$108 billion.'' Why does it say that?
It says that because this piece of legislation balances what is
called the unified budget. Many of us believe there is another step to
be taken after that. That is to balance the budget without the use of
trust funds, especially without the use of Social Security trust funds.
For that reason, I voted for the initiative offered yesterday by the
Senator from South Carolina. It got very few votes, I might say. But he
said, let us balance the budget and not do tax cuts and not do added
investments at the start so that we balance the budget completely
without using the trust fund, and then, as the economy strengthens and
as we have extra money, let us provide for the tax cuts and let us
provide for the added investments. Obviously, that proposal failed.
I will vote for this budget agreement. But it is not truly a balanced
budget. It moves in the direction, and it moves the right way. But it
will leave this country, still, with a deficit. That must be the next
step following action on this document.
There are several steps here in climbing a flight of stairs to get to
the point where we make real progress. One step we took in 1993. I was
one who voted for the budget in 1993. I am glad I did. I said at the
time it was a very controversial vote. It passed by one vote in the
U.S. Senate--a budget agreement to substantially reduce the Federal
budget deficit. It passed by one vote, the vote of the Vice President
of the United States.
Some paid a very heavy price for that vote because it was
controversial. It cut spending. And, yes, it raised some taxes. But
what was the result of that vote in 1993? The result was a dramatically
reduced budget deficit.
In that year, the unified budget deficit was close to $290 billion.
Again, using the unified budget, the Congressional Budget Office now
says the unified budget deficit is going to be, at the end of year, $67
billion.
What has caused all of that? Well, a good economy and a 1993 budget
act that a lot of people here had the courage to vote for, that passed
by one vote, that says, let's put us moving in the right direction;
let's move us in the right direction to substantially reduce the budget
deficit. And only with that vote, and only with the progress that came
from that vote, are we now able to take another very large step in
moving toward a balanced budget.
What was the result of that vote? It was interesting. We had people
in 1993 on the floor of the Senate who said, if you cast a ``yes'' vote
and pass this budget, the economy will collapse; the country will go
into a recession; it means higher deficits and a higher debt; it means
the economy goes into a tailspin.
It passed with my vote--and, yes, the votes of some of my colleagues
who decided to say to this country that we are serious, that we are
going to move this country in the right direction even if the choice is
painful for us to cast this vote.
What happened? What happened was 4 years of sustained economic
growth, inflation coming down, down, down, and down, and unemployment
coming down and down for 4 years in a row. We have more people working.
This country now has 12 million more people on
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the payrolls that we did in 1993. We have an economy that is moving
ahead, a deficit that is moving down, and inflation that is at a 30-
year low.
I wonder if those who predicted doom from that vote now won't join us
and say, ``You did the right thing. It wasn't easy to do. But because
you did it, we stand here today now able to take the next step.'' The
next step is a step in which we now try to choose priorities.
What do we make investments on in our country, and where do we cut
real levels of spending?
That is what this document is about. It is a compromise between
Republicans and Democrats, between a President and Congress, that tries
to establish priorities. Frankly, while it reduces spending in some
areas, it cuts out entire classes of spending in others. It also
increases some investment in spending in yet other areas.
What are those? Education: It makes a lot of sense for us even as we
attempt to move toward solving this country's fiscal problems to say
that we don't solve the problems of the future by retreating on things
like educating our kids.
So this piece of legislation says education is a priority--more Pell
grants, more Head Start, more investing in education, from young kids
to college age and beyond. It says we are going to invest in education.
Then it says the environment and health care. It says these areas are
priorities. They are areas that make this country strong, and we will
continue to invest in those areas even as we move to reconcile our
books so that we are not spending more than we take in.
That is why this is important, and it is why it is successful. I am
pleased, frankly, after all of these years, to be on the floor of the
Senate saying this is something that is bipartisan. Finally,
Republicans and Democrats, rather than exerting all of their energy to
fight each other and beat each other, are deciding there are ways that
we can join each other and pass a piece of legislation that moves this
country in the right direction. I think the American people probably
think it is a pretty good thing that bipartisanship comes to the floor
of the Senate in the form of this budget resolution.
I started by saying I would talk about what this is and what it
isn't. I am going to vote for this. It moves this country in the right
direction. It preserves priorities that are important to preserve, and
investment in this country's future. It represents a compromise. Many
of us would have written it differently. We didn't get all we wanted.
But it moves this country in the right direction while preserving the
kinds of things most of us think are important as investments in our
country's future.
This is not a balanced budget, not truly a balanced budget. It
balances something called the unified budget. But it is a major step in
the right direction. I hope we will take the next step beyond this to
say that, on page 4 of the next budget resolution, line 24, we will say
``zero'' in a future year. That is when we will truly have completed
the job.
But the choices here are not always choices we would like. The choice
that we now ask ourselves is, does this move us in the right direction
with respect to the things I care a great deal about--one, fiscal
discipline; a more deficit reduction; investment in education, health
care, the environment--things that make this country a better place?
The answer, unequivocally, is yes. This moves America in the right
direction.
Is it an exercise between the President and Congress, between
Democrats and Republicans, that will give this country some confidence
that the past is over, that the reckless, the irresponsible fiscal
policy of saying let's spend money we don't have on things we don't
need and run up trillions and trillions of dollars of debt for our kids
and our grandkids to assume? Is it a message to the American people
that we are beyond that period and have moved on to a new day of
bipartisanship to decide together we can plot a better course and move
this country toward a brighter future? The answer to that is yes.
If the past is any experience, since 1993, the vote we took then to
put us on the road to balancing this budget is a proud vote and one
that I am glad I cast. I will be glad I cast this vote as well, because
this is the next major segment of the journey to do what the American
people want us to do on their behalf and on behalf of so many children
who will inherit this country. They will inherit a better country
because of what we will have done in this Chamber this week.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we have under
normal regular order an amount of time at this point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair.
I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has no time. The Senator hasn't
called up his amendment.
Amendment No. 309
Mr. KERRY. I call up amendment No. 309.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kerry], for himself,
Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Kohl, Ms. Moseley-Braun, Mr. Wellstone,
Ms. Mikulski, Mrs. Murray, and Mr. Bingaman, proposes an
amendment numbered 309.
(The text of the amendment is printed in the Record of May 21, 1997.)
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I now yield to the Senator from Minnesota 4
minutes.
Mr. President, before I yield let me just take 1 minute to explain.
This is an amendment to hold out a possibility--I yield myself such
time as I may use--to hold out the possibility that when we come back
in the appropriating process, we may be able to find some money to deal
with the issue of early child development. We do not spend money now.
We do not trade money. We do not have an offset. We do not spend. We
simply want to be able to reserve the capacity to come back at a later
time to deal with this issue. I will explain why I feel that is so
important, as do the other Senators j
Amendments:
Cosponsors:
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
Sponsor:
Summary:
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
(Senate - May 22, 1997)
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
The Senate continued with the consideration of the concurrent
resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. ROBERTS. I thank the Chair. I thank the distinguished chairman of
the Budget Committee.
Mr. President, I rise in support of the overall balanced budget plan
and rise expressing some reservations in regard to many of the
amendments that we are considering, the pending amendments; some 45 of
them, as a matter of fact.
If nothing else, I wanted to pay a personal tribute in behalf of the
taxpayers of Kansas and thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for
his leadership, his perseverance, his patience. He has the patience of
Job. I must confess, having come from the lower body, as described by
Senator Byrd, and being the chairman of the House Agriculture
Committee, I am not sure I had the patience of Senator Domenici. We now
spell ``persevere'' D-o-m-e-n-i-c-i.
How many hours, I ask of the chairman, if he could respond, how many
days, even years, have been involved? Does he have any estimate in
regard to the hours he has spent late, early--he and Chairman Kasich of
the House? If he gives me an estimate, what is it? 10,000?
Mr. DOMENICI. On this agreement itself, just this year, I would
estimate 1,000 hours.
Mr. ROBERTS. 1,000 hours. I said hours and minutes; even years.
This has been the third year on this particular budget plan. This is
the culmination of 3 years of hard work that the Senator from New
Mexico has put in, all members of the Budget Committee, as well as the
staff. This has been a Lonesome Dove Trail ride. I hope we get through
the tall grass and balanced budget with all of our body parts intact.
If we do, the chairman will get most of the credit.
In the last session of the Congress we had two balanced budgets. We
worked very hard and very diligently. They were vetoed by the
President. We even came to a Government shutdown. Nobody wants to
repeat that. I understand that when you are doing a budget for the U.S.
Government, you have many, many strong differences of opinion. After
all, for better or worse, the Congress of the United States reflects
the diversity we have in this country and the strong difference of
opinions. Goodness knows, we have good diversity and strong differences
of opinion. The House, the other body, just the other night stayed
until 3 a.m., and, finally, by a two-vote margin, succeeded in
defeating an amendment that was a deal breaker. It involved highways.
As a matter of fact, it involved transportation, the very issue we are
discussing on the floor at this very moment other than my comments. Two
votes was the difference. Goodness knows, everybody in the House of the
Representatives, everybody in the Senate cares about transportation and
cares about highways and the infrastructure.
We came within five votes of a deal breaker on the floor of the
Senate. I think it was five votes in regard to health care for
children. Who can be opposed to additional funds for health care for
children? As a matter of fact, the chairman has worked very hard to
provide $16 billion in regard to that goal.
So we had highways, health care, and we had a situation in regard to
the construction of our schools, to fix the infrastructure of the
Nation's schools--$5 billion--with a $100 billion price tag, which set
a very unique precedent.
I don't question the intent. I don't question the purpose nor the
integrity of any Senator, nor, for that matter, anyone who would like
to propose an amendment or a better idea in regard to the budget. But I
would suggest that the high road of humility and responsibility is not
bothered by heavy traffic in this instance.
Most of the amendments--I have them all here. Here is the stack, 45
of them. Most of the pending amendments right here are either sense of
the Senate or they have been rejected outright as deal breakers.
Sense of the Senate means it is the sense of the Senate. It has no
legal standing, has no legislative standing. It is just a Senator
saying this would be a good idea in terms of my intent, my purpose,
what I think we ought to do. And there are a few that are agreed to
that obviously will be very helpful.
But here are the 45. Most of them are simply not going anywhere but
raises the point. I took a little counting here. There are 8 Democrats
and 11 Republicans--11 Republicans who have decided that they will take
the time of the Senate, take the time of the American people, take the
time of the chairman of the Budget Committee and staff and go over and
repeat their priority concerns in regard to the budget.
There is nothing wrong with that. I understand that. Each Senator is
an island in terms of their own ideas and their own purpose and their
integrity. I do not really question that but in terms of time, I mean
after 3 years of debate, after hours and hours and hours of careful
deliberation between the President and the Republican leadership and 45
pending amendments.
I have my own amendments. I have my own amendments. I should have had
some sense of the Senate amendments. I feel a bit left out. I thought
we had a budget deal. I thought we were going to vote on it. I thought
that we were going to conclude. And then during the regular
appropriations process, during the regular order, if you will, of the
rest of the session, why, perhaps we could address these things that I
care very deeply about.
Maybe we ought to have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution introduced by
Senator Roberts that all wheat in Kansas should be sold at $6. That is
a little facetious, to say the least, but I do have concerns about crop
insurance, a child care bill I have introduced, along with a capital
gains bill, capital gains and estate tax. I think capital gains should
be across the board. I think estate tax should be at least $1 million.
I want a sense-of-the-Senate resolution or amendment declaring that. Or
maybe an amendment--I tell you what we ought to have, if the chairman
would agree. I think you ought to make a unanimous consent request to
consider an amendment that all Senators who offer an amendment on the
budget process must be required to serve 6 months on the Budget
Committee. Why not? Perhaps in the interest of time, since all of the
time that is being spent by the 11 Republicans and the 8 Democrats--oh,
I forgot my sense-of-the-Senate resolution on defense. I do not think
we have enough money committed to our national defense with the
obligations we hear from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of
Defense, the administration and everything else. So add that one in
Roberts' sense of the Senate.
Maybe we ought to have a unanimous consent request, to save time, to
get
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this business done, to accept the responsibility for the budget, I
could just ask unanimous consent that all amendments pending be laid on
the table and considered en bloc and ask for the yeas and nays and we
could get the budget deal and go home. I have not made that unanimous
consent request. That would be untoward. That is the mildest word I
could use for it because it would violate agreements the distinguished
chairman has made with other Senators.
So let me say this to all the Senators who introduced all these
sense-of-the-Senate amendments, fell asleep, issued a lot of press
releases back home and got a lot of credit. And I laud their intent,
laud their purpose. What about breaking the deal? What about the law of
unintended or intended effects? What about the responsibility of
delaying the Senate and possibly delaying 3 years of work, 3 years of
work to get to a balanced budget?
As you can see by the tone of my remarks, perhaps my patience as a
new Member of the Senate is not near the patience of Chairman Job,
Chairman Job Domenici, in regard to the Budget Committee.
Now, I had intended on reading the names of all the Senators, their
amendments and lauding their intent in behalf of all the things that we
would like to see done. As I say, I have them all here. They range from
everything from highways to education to defense to making sure that we
have proper tax relief across the board. I will not do that. But I
would at least ask my colleagues in the Senate to consider the job and
the mission and what our distinguished chairman and members of the
Budget Committee have brought to the floor of the Senate. And if we
could, if we could plead for a little bit of expeditious consideration,
because you know what is going to happen. Time will run out and then we
will engage in what the Senate calls a votearama, and the votearama is
like ``Jeopardy'' or any other game you play on television. You will
not even hear what the amendment is. We will just hear an amendment by
X, Y, or Z, Senator X, Y, or Z and then we will vote on it and
obviously that will make a good statement back home and we can consider
that very serious bill, that serious legislative intent during the
regular order which should have been considered that way from the
first.
Again, I thank the chairman so much.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. ROBERTS. I will be delighted to yield.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I appreciate the Senator's remarks. When the Senator
holds the stack of amendments, is he suggesting there should be no
amendments or is he just focused on sense-of-the-Senate amendments?
Mr. ROBERTS. I think if I could further clarify that, of the 45
amendments there are about 6 deal breakers, if my conversation with the
chairman is correct. Most of them are sense of Senate. And there are
others that have been agreed to. But my basic premise is--and goodness
knows, this new Member of the Senate is not about to say that we should
change the process of the Senate. And this Member of the Senate is not
about to preclude any Member from offering any amendment.
The point that I am trying to make is that every amendment, every
sense-of-the-Senate amendment, every deal-breaking amendment also to
some degree interferes with the process and the conclusion of a
balanced budget which has taken us 3 years. And I know because I have
been sitting in the chair presiding, listening to the same speeches
that are made today in the Chamber during morning business, and people
can make them in their districts; they can make them on the steps of
the Capitol; they can make them here, and that is quite proper of the
Senate and is advisable.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. ROBERTS. Could I have an additional minute?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator seeks an additional minute. Who
yields him time?
Mr. DOMENICI. How much time does the Senator desire?
Mr. ROBERTS. One additional minute.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield it.
Mr. ROBERTS. I find it rather untoward or awkward after talking 10
minutes and expressing concern of the time here I would go on and on
about this. I think the point is well taken. I know the Senator from
Missouri has a very laudable amendment in regards to something I would
agree with and I would not deny him that opportunity. But can we not
get on with it after 3 years?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Amendment No. 311
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me make it very clear to everyone in
the Senate, first of all, I have nothing but the highest respect and
admiration for both the sponsors of this amendment, the distinguished
Senator from Virginia, who has worked diligently to try to create the
transportation programs in the committee he serves and do it in the
best interests of our whole country, and believe you me, he has had a
tough job, and so has Senator Baucus in doing a great job, whether
working on the committee or with transportation infrastructure.
Their job is very difficult because they have to balance frequently
the interests of all 50 States or those that are rural versus those
that are very dense in terms of population and thus roadway needs are
very different in his State or mine as compared with New Jersey, if you
just take into account how much gasoline tax is taken in because we are
small, with small populations, but we cannot get from one place to
another without roads, so we are in a different category. And over the
decades we have all worked very hard to figure out how to do that
balancing act. And then it turns out when it is all finished, the House
does it differently than the Senate because the Senate is represented
two Senators to each State. So Senator Baucus and his co-Senator
represent a very small population but they are two. In the House, they
always load the bills with the heavy populated States and over here we
try to do it with a little more fairness, more fair play.
They have had to be referees over that. In fact, I might tell the
Senators, they probably do not remember, but I was a referee on that
once as a conferee, and that was pretty interesting, how we found a
formula that year.
I might say, in spite of these accolades, this is a very, very
strange amendment, to say the least. Here we have been for all these
days discussing a balanced budget, and as a matter of fact even those
who would break this budget did not unbalance the budget. Or even those
who had deal breakers because they would take the principal components
of the budget and change them, as our leader said yesterday, pulling
the wheels out from under the cart so it would break down. This
amendment makes no effort to try to offset the $12 billion that they
add to this budget.
In other words, Mr. President and fellow Senators, this amendment is
bold enough to say it just does not matter about a balanced budget. We
just want to put in $12 billion more for highways. Frankly, I am sorry
we do not have the money in this budget for that. But we did in fact,
we did in fact increase the President's proposal by $10.4 billion. That
is $10.4 billion more than the President had in mind, and we balanced
the budget. We offset it somewhere or in some way reduced the amount of
tax cut we were going to have in the overall sense of putting the
package together.
But this amendment just comes along and says, well, we just want this
additional money spent on highways, and we will wait until another day
to worry about the balance. Frankly, we had a very meager surplus in
the year 2002. This particular amendment costs $4.5 billion in the year
2002, and that will bring us out of balance by over $2.5 billion.
So I urge the Senators who want to support this amendment or this
concept, they ought to come down to the floor and cut $12 billion out
of this budget so it is still in balance. Then we would understand what
would be hit--education and everything else we have been trying to
fund.
So I must say on this one the administration supports us. We were not
so
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sure yesterday morning, I say to my good friend from Kentucky, but they
support us. They sent a letter up here saying they do not support this
amendment. They support our efforts to see that it does not pass.
Frankly, I would be less than honest and less than fair with the
cosponsors--it is clear we are going to have to do something when the
ISTEA Program comes along in the not too distant future. We are going
to have to make some serious, serious adjustments. And I think those
are going to happen. Perhaps the Senators will help expedite that a bit
today by calling to the attention of the Senate the situation as you
see it.
But essentially, we have many trust funds in the United States, many
trust funds. I used to know how many. But I think it is probably fair
to say we have 100 trust funds. I think that is low by 50. I think we
have 150. But let us just say we have 100 of them.
Frankly, we do not spend every penny that comes into those trust
funds every year, nor do we take them and set them out on the side and
say whatever comes in goes out. We have put them in the unified budget.
I am not sure--people argue on both sides of that concept. Should you
break Government up into 150 pieces and then find some more pieces and
have no central government running things, no unified budget, I should
say. Forget who runs it, just a budget representing them all. And I
have come down on the side of putting them all in and leaving them in,
and if there is surpluses take credit for the surpluses. As a matter of
fact, it is pretty clear that at some point we are going to have to
change the way we are doing business, not perhaps spend more. But I
would urge Senators not to vote for this amendment today. I will move
to table it. I think it breaks the budget. It unbalances the budget.
The intentions are very, very good, but this is not quite the way to do
it.
Now I yield to Senator Lautenberg--
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. DOMENICI. Of course.
Mr. WARNER. I thank him for the courtesy. Let's clarify a little bit
just how the Senator as chairman of the Budget Committee--and certainly
we commend him for the hard work he has done. What is the meaning of a
trust fund?
Let's be honest. You are keeping $26 billion, according to my
calculation, holding it back, of the revenues paid at the gas tank, as
if it were poker chips to play where you so desire elsewhere in the
budget. We specifically did not put in offsets because the offset is
there in a trust fund established 42 years ago with a legislative
history which clearly said that it belongs to the people and should be
returned to the people. That is why we did not have an offset. The
offset is there in the form of the money in the highway trust fund.
Shall we rename that budget deficit fund?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you will be writing the new ISTEA law. If you
will care to rename it, it will be renamed under your direction, not
under mine. But I would say, from what I can find out, this $26 billion
trust fund surplus--we spend about $20 billion each year and they have
done that for a long time. This $26 billion that is referred to is made
up of two things: $20.6 billion of it is compounded interest, and $5.9
is committed to projects. Frankly, that does not mean we have an awful
lot of money to spend. As a matter of fact, we probably do not have
very much. But, from my standpoint, this trust fund balance is a very
reasonable balance to keep in the fund. If at some point we can get to
a better plan and do it over a period of time, you are going to find
this Senator on your side.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. Did Senator Lautenberg want to speak now?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I do.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 20 minutes
left; the other side has 12 minutes.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we all deeply appreciate the amount of
work the Senator from New Mexico has made to try to put this together.
It is an almost impossible task. He made an interesting statement,
though, that I would just like to follow up on a little bit. He turned
to the Senator from Virginia a few minutes ago--if I heard you
correctly; I do not want to put words in your mouth--and said something
to the effect: Yes, you are right. At some future time when we take up
ISTEA we are going to have to deal with deficiencies that are otherwise
going to be available to be spent on the highway bill, ISTEA.
If I heard him correctly, if that is what he meant, I would just like
to explore with the chairman where we might find some of those
additional dollars if it's not in the context of this budget
resolution.
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you did not quote me so incorrectly that I
would say you didn't quote me right. But, in essence I am just
expressing the notion that is pretty rampant, that outside of this
budget resolution, at a later date, that in various committees we will
be working on what do we do with this highway trust fund and what do we
do with the new formula, where there will be a new formula.
All I am suggesting is at some point that debate is going to occur,
but I don't believe it should occur here on the floor of the Senate,
taking $12 billion and just adding it to this budget and saying we are
just going to go in the red because we have not figured out any other
way. There is going to be another way to look at this situation.
Mr. BAUCUS. But again I ask you, at what time, at what point would we
begin to find the additional dollars that we all know we need for
transportation?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, look, the committees in the U.S. Senate are
marvelous institutions, and how you work out problems that are
complicated and difficult and frequently of longstanding--the Senate is
historic in its wise ways of doing this.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand.
Mr. DOMENICI. All I am suggesting is there is going to be a way.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand, but I bow to the mighty power of the Budget
Committee, when we see the limitations that otherwise are incumbent
upon us--
Mr. DOMENICI. I might suggest, I served on that committee for a long
time, Senator Warner. In fact, I would have been chairman three times
over with the longevity I would have if I would have been there.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we want the Senator where he is. Please
stay. By the way, I volunteered three times to serve on the Budget
Committee, and my name will be on there one of these days.
Mr. DOMENICI. All right. Now, how much time do we have left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 17 minutes
left.
Mr. DOMENICI. I wanted to yield to Senator Lautenberg, who is my ally
here on the floor on this issue, and then find a little time of mine
out of it to yield to the Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am not going to take that much time, Mr. President.
I think the chairman of the Budget Committee has fairly directly and
succinctly made the arguments. The fact of the matter is that none of
us are happy with the level of funding that we have for our investments
in highways and our transportation needs. We are more deficient, in
many ways, than countries down the Third World list. I think we rank
about 55th in per capita spending for infrastructure.
So, one would not disagree with the distinguished Senator from
Virginia or the distinguished Senator from Montana in terms of the
need, the need to correct the situation. But unfortunately, and it is
unfortunate for me because I have long been an advocate of more
spending on transportation in this country. I think it is common
knowledge that the Senator from New Jersey has been an advocate of mass
transit, of rail transportation, improving our highway system, of
fixing our deficient bridges, which number in the thousands. But we
have a proposal in hand that takes a priority, unfortunately, for the
moment. That is, to complete the work we started on a balanced budget.
We are committed to it.
Believe me, this is not a place I enjoy being, because I do not agree
with everything that is in the budget resolution. But I agree with it
enough to say that there is a consensus that we fulfilled an obligation
that we talked about to children, children's health, to the senior
citizens, to try to make
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Medicare solvent, to try to not further burden the impoverished in
terms of Medicare, to try to take care of those who are in this country
legally and become disabled. We fulfilled those obligations.
The economy is moving along at a very good rate and we are still
running the risk, in my view, with some of the tax cuts that have been
proposed, of taking us away from the direction that we are moving in,
which is to continue to reduce the budget deficit until the year 2002,
when there will be none.
So we have an imperfect, but pretty good, solution in front us. And,
now what we are discussing, in terms of transportation--and this is
like me talking against motherhood--but the transportation funds that
are there are inadequate because of the structure of our budgeting
structure, the budgeting arrangement that we have in our Government.
The fact is that we have unified budgets. If one wants to start, as has
been claimed here several times, establishing truth in budgeting, under
that nomenclature I think one would have to start with Social Security.
Are we prepared today to say we are going to add $70 billion to our
deficit each year? We certainly are not. Yet I think, when you talk
about a trust fund, there is no more sanctified trust fund than Social
Security, something people paid in, they are relying on for their
future, for their ability to get along. But we nevertheless still have
the unified budget. That problem, I assure you, is going to get intense
scrutiny over the next several years.
Senator Roberts said something--I don't know whether you were here,
Senator Domenici, when he said: Everybody, in order to have the budget
fully understood, every Senator should be sentenced to 6 months on the
Budget Committee. I thought immediately, there is a constitutional
prohibition against cruel and inhuman punishment, so we could not do
that, even if we wanted to. I am on the Budget Committee by a quirk of
circumstance. When I came here, a fellow I had known who was a Senator
said that he would do me a favor and that he would vacate his seat on
the Budget Committee for me. And I will get even.
The fact of the matter is, we complain and we gripe, but the money is
where the policy is, the money is where the direction is. We take this
assignment with a degree of relish, because we want to do the right
thing. None of us want to throw the taxpayers' money away. But we are
where we are.
It is with reluctance that I am opposing this amendment because both
Senators, Senator Warner and Senator Baucus, have been very actively
involved in highway funding and highway legislation as a result of our
mutual service on the Environment and Public Works Committee. But we
are spending more than we did last year. We are spending more than the
budget resolution of just 2 years ago.
I was able, with a lot of hard work and with the support of the
chairman of the committee, to get an $8.7 billion increase over the
President's budget request for transportation. I had asked that
transportation be included as one of the top priorities in the budget.
Unfortunately it is not there. But there is a plan, that we expect to
be fulfilled, to have a reserve fund that would allow significantly
more funding for some of the transportation needs.
But I want to point out one thing about the trust fund. That is,
there is a slow payout in highway projects. I think everybody is aware
of that--5, 7 years on many of these things. If we shut down the
revenue source now, interest alone would not carry the obligations that
are already out there. The obligation ceiling as contrasted with the
contract authority are quite different things. We have these
obligations that have to be fulfilled, they are there and one day must
be met. The balances in the fund, I think, will start coming down with
the adjustments that are expected to occur in ISTEA. We have the
chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee on the floor.
That will be opportunity to make some of the changes that are being
contemplated here.
I just think it is a terrible time to say we ought to burden the
budget deficit by $12 billion, roughly, right now, when everybody has
worked so hard, and this budget has been scrubbed, reviewed, rewashed,
rehashed--you name it. We are where we are, in a fairly delicate
balance, I point out to my colleagues. There are very delicate
opportunities that will, I think, upset the balance that has been
achieved. So, again, I repeat myself when I say with reluctance I am
going to vote against it.
Mr. WARNER. Will my colleague yield for a brief question?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Sure.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator, a member of our
committee, Environment and Public Works, is, according to my records, a
cosponsor of a piece of legislation called ISTEA--NEXTEA. Am I not
correct?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. In that, it is interesting, there are three bills put in
by Members of the Senate. I am coauthor--Senator Baucus, Senator Graham
of Florida; STEP 21, Senator Baucus is 2000, you are with Senator
Chafee.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Right.
Mr. WARNER. ISTEA. Look into that bill. Right in there is a provision
saying we want $26 billion each year, far more than what the Senator
from Virginia is asking. I build up to $26 billion in the fifth year.
You want it beginning this year. In other words, you are saying to the
Senate, in a cosponsored piece of legislation together with the
distinguished chairman of the committee, you want $26 billion. Now you
stand on this floor and talk in direct opposite. That is what leaves me
at a loss. So the question is, you are a cosponsor and----
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, in response to the question, before
the speech, I would say this--yes, I sponsored that legislation.
My heart is in more funding for transportation, and no one here can
say differently. The problem is that we are in a different point in
time, and if you want to take it out of highways and say forget the
children's health care bill, if you want to take it out of highways and
forget the pledge we made to the senior citizens, or take it out of
this bill and forget the pledge that we made to those who might be
disabled, let's do it, let's talk about that. Let's talk about
balancing the budget, because I know the distinguished Senator from
Virginia has been a proponent of a balanced budget almost from the day
the words were invented around here.
So now we have a different occasion. We are not talking about
transportation; we all agree that transportation is definitely
underfunded. What we are talking about is at what price do we make this
change, and the price is at, again, children's health or otherwise,
because we are committed to balancing this budget. And this is strange
talk for a fellow like me.
Mr. DOMENICI. I think it is right on, and I hope you make it about
five or six times in the remaining couple hours. I look forward to
hearing it more times than one.
Mr. President, I wonder, how much time do we have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 7 minutes; the
Senator from Virginia has 10 minutes, almost 11 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Rhode Island, the chairman of the full Committee on
Environment and Public Works, Senator Chafee.
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished manager of the
bill.
I rise in opposition today to the amendment offered by the Senator
from Virginia and the Senator from Montana. I might say, these are two
Senators for whom I have tremendous respect. I have worked with them.
The Senator from Virginia, I think we first started our association in
1969, and the Senator from Montana, I started working with him the
first year he came to the Senate, which I think was 1978, 1979, and we
have been closely associated ever since.
However, this amendment, which would increase outlays for
transportation spending above the levels provided in the resolution
before us, I find to be inconsistent with the achievement of a balanced
budget by the year 2002.
The Senator from Virginia just said it went beyond the bill, the so-
called NEXTEA bill that goes beyond this, and that is absolutely right,
but that was before we had a target from the Budget Committee. I
believe strongly in the budgetary process we have set up. I voted for
it, and I support it.
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I think we all can agree that the Nation's roads and bridges are in
need of repair. No one argues with that. Transportation plays a
critical role in our Nation's economy. We recognize that. In the United
States, more than 12 million people, more than 11 percent of the gross
national product, is involved in transportation.
Earlier this year, I cosponsored a measure to increase, within the
context of a unified budget, the level of transportation spending from
the highway trust fund. I am pleased that the budget agreement, crafted
by the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from New Jersey,
increases the spending levels implicit in that proposal, the so-
called Bond-Chafee proposal. It is $13 billion over a freeze baseline.
That is pretty good.
Would we like more? Sure we would. But I think it is terribly
important to recognize that any proposal that boosts highway spending
or transportation spending without corresponding offsets is something I
personally cannot support. So, I agree with Senators Warner and Baucus
that transportation spending should be increased, but not in a manner
that would undermine the careful agreement reached by the Budget
Committee.
Do we like everything in this budget? No, but it is the best we can
get. I am supporting that agreement. It seems to me we simply cannot
afford to retreat from our efforts to eliminate the Federal deficit.
So that, Mr. President, is the reason I cannot support this amendment
that is before us today. I thank the Chair and thank the manager and
thank the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee that deals with
these matters. He has worked on them, and I know his heart is in this.
As always, he argues his case with vigor and considerable force.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, might I ask a question on my time of my
distinguished chairman?
There are three bills pending before the Senate relating to the
reauthorization of ISTEA. I mentioned that. Seventy-four colleagues
have signed one of those three bills. Each one of those bills has the
higher level of $26 billion. I say to my colleague, he also is a
cosponsor of the Bond-Chafee/Chafee-Bond legislation. The principle
that Senator Baucus and I are arguing today precisely is the Chafee-
Bond bill. I ask the Senator, does he feel there is any difference in
principle?
Mr. CHAFEE. Yes. First of all, I am pleased to call it the Chafee-
Bond proposal.
Mr. WARNER. Call it what you want.
Mr. CHAFEE. We call it that in Rhode Island. What the Chafee-Bond
proposal does is it says that what came in in the previous year--we do
not deal with the interest, we do not deal with----
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I do not need an explanation. In
principle, pay it in, take it out, isn't that right, in simple English?
Mr. CHAFEE. That's right.
Mr. WARNER. Fine, that's all I need to say.
Mr. CHAFEE. What comes in this year goes out next year, and that
principle is in this budget.
Mr. WARNER. That principle is in this amendment. I thank the
distinguished Senator. That is all we are asking. But it is interesting
we are asking for less than what is paid in to come out, recognizing
the challenge before the Budget Committee.
So I say, once again, 74 colleagues have signed on to legislation. We
are going to have to answer to our constituents, Mr. President, on this
vote. You say one thing in sponsoring the bills, and we will see how
consistent you are. I will put a letter on the desk signed by 56
Senators as to how they spoke to this. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator from Virginia yield for a few minutes?
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I yield all but a minute and a half, 2
minutes I have reserved.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we heard today from both the chairman and
the ranking member of the Budget Committee that we need to address this
problem; the problem that there is a deficiency in highway-mass
transit-infrastructure spending that must be dealt with at sometime.
But they are also saying they feel constrained to say they cannot deal
with it here because they feel constrained by the budget resolution, a
resolution agreed to principally between the White House and the
leadership.
They talk about an $8 billion increase. That does not include
interest. And because the country is growing, because of additional
needs we have and the crumbling bridges, if this resolution is adopted,
Senators should know that they will receive less in dollars than they
will need for their State's infrastructure.
The Senators, the chairman and ranking member, say, ``Well, we will
deal with it in the future at sometime,'' acknowledging that there is a
problem and we need more transportation dollars. I must remind Senators
that we have a difficult problem ahead of us. When we in the
Environment and Public Works Committee in the coming weeks write a bill
dealing with CMAQ, dealing with formulas, donor States, donee States,
so on and so forth, what do we look at? We look at the number that the
Budget Committee sends to us. We are constrained by that number. We
must then write a 5- or 6-year bill which locks in the spending limits
that the Budget Committee prescribes for us. We are locked in for 5 or
6 years.
Those lower levels cannot be changed next year by a new budget
resolution, cannot be changed until or unless this Congress writes a
new highway bill. I am not so sure this Congress is going to want to
write a new highway bill every year. So I am saying that this is the
time to deal with this problem. It is now. Otherwise, we are locked in
for 6 years to inadequate numbers.
We want to make an adjustment of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of
our Federal budget, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of our Federal
budget, which I am fully confident can be dealt with in conference. It
is critical that this amendment be adopted so that we are not locked in
over the next 6 years to inadequate numbers. We will be locked into
these numbers if this resolution is adopted. We can make adjustments in
all the other accounts and still maintain the core provisions of the
bipartisan agreement.
So I urge Senators to, therefore, vote for this so we can do what we
know is right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair notes 2 minutes remain for the
Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, is that all the time that is remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. The Senator from New Mexico
has 2 minutes; the Senator from Virginia has 2 minutes.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I commend my distinguished colleague. He,
in his concluding remarks, gave the clarion call: When we cast the
vote, we simply cast a vote to say to the Budget Committee, ``Go back
and look for that very small fraction so we can avoid this flat green
line which is correctly represented on this chart, and allow our
several States to build that infrastructure necessary to compete in
this world market.''
What we have left out, my distinguished colleague and myself, are
pages and pages of added requests by our colleagues. I totaled over $7
billion in addition to what is to be allocated under the formulation
for superb programs that are badly needed by the country: Appalachian
highway system; for the Indian reservation roads; for expansion of the
intelligent transportation system; for innovative financing
initiatives; for new funding to meet infrastructure--on and on it goes.
We want to, Senator Baucus and I together with other members of our
subcommittee and full committee, try and do this, but those we haven't
even discussed today. We will never get to one nickel of this unless we
are given some additional flexibility.
So we say, with all due respect, we are simply asking a voice mandate
in support of our constituents to the Budget Committee, ``Go back and
reexamine the desperate need of America for these dollars.''
I thank the Chair. I yield back all time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI. Do I have 2 minutes and that is it?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me suggest, again, to Senators who
might be listening or those who might be listening in their stead, in
this budget, we
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have tried to do many things. We have tried to cut taxes for the
American people; we have tried to cover little children who are
uninsured with $16 billion; we have tried to cover the National
Institutes of Health with a 3.5-percent increase.
We heard from people what America had to be doing, and, in each
instance, we had to get rid of something. In fact, I have not said it
yet, but the President gave up 50 percent of his initiatives in the
compromise that was made, and every time we did it, we said, ``Let's
balance the budget; let's balance the budget.'' We would come back and
say, ``Well, we want to add this, what do we take out?'' And we would
take something out. What we have here today is $12 billion as if it
just flopped out of the sky; no effort to balance the budget, no effort
to offset it with expenditures so we can all see where do you pick up
the $12 billion that is needed for highways?
Everybody understands that highways are very much needed in America,
but this budget, for the first time, will permit us to spend every cent
of new taxes that comes into that fund every single year. We are moving
in the right direction. Every cent of new gasoline tax that goes into
this fund under this budget agreement will be spent in that year that
it comes in, obligated during that year. That is a giant stride in the
direction that we have been asked to go by many people in our country.
Frankly, every Governor in America sends a letter in. They want more
money. And then some of them get up and criticize that we do not
balance the budget right. The lead Governor in America, the head of the
association, he wants every penny of highway funds, but this budget
resolution just does not get the job done right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). All time has expired.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back the balance of my time, and move to table
the amendment, and ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to
be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
lay on the table the amendment. The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 49, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 80 Leg.]
YEAS--51
Allard
Bennett
Biden
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
Daschle
Domenici
Durbin
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Gorton
Gramm
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hutchison
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Lieberman
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McCain
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Nickles
Reed
Roberts
Rockefeller
Roth
Santorum
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Stevens
Thompson
NAYS--49
Abraham
Akaka
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bingaman
Boxer
Bryan
Bumpers
Burns
Byrd
Coats
Conrad
DeWine
Dodd
Dorgan
Faircloth
Glenn
Graham
Grams
Harkin
Hatch
Helms
Hollings
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kempthorne
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Leahy
Levin
McConnell
Mikulski
Murray
Reid
Robb
Sarbanes
Sessions
Shelby
Specter
Thomas
Thurmond
Torricelli
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden
The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 311) was agreed to.
Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I move to lay it on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. WARNER. History was made with this vote, by two votes, and two
votes in the House--that resonates all across this land. It is a wake-
up call to all those entrusted with the responsibility of keeping
America's infrastructure modernized and safe so we can compete in this
one-world market. This is but the first of a series of battles that
will be waged on this floor on behalf of America's transportation
system. It is my privilege to be a part of that team.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes. I want to
compliment those who offered the amendment for the way they have
handled matters and to tell the same American people that were
listening to the distinguished Senator from Virginia that there will be
additional highway funding in years to come, there is no doubt about
it, but it will not be done at the expense of unbalancing the budget.
It will not be done at the expense of just saying we will spend some
money even if the deficit goes up. I look forward to the day we do it
in such a way that it is balanced and that, as a matter of fact, if we
increase, we cut some things to make up for the difference so we stay
in balance.
Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 2 minutes to Senator Stevens.
Mr. STEVENS. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I want to
tell the Senate that those of us who are voting against some of these
amendments are doing it because there is no money to fund these sense-
of-the-Senate resolutions. I say to any of you that want to offer
amendments that change this budget, that authorize additional funds--
show me the money. Show me where the money is when you offer amendments
that change the budget plan agreed to with the President.
I have discussed this with the distinguished Senator from West
Virginia. We will have the obligation to allot money within the budget
among 13 subcommittees. A sense-of-the-Senate resolution does not give
us any more money but it gives us the problem that you have sent a
message to America that there is money in this budget to do something
the Senate votes for in a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
When the budget resolution, just before, was voted I asked for a
chance to come to the floor again, and I ask for you to reserve some
time and we will show where a commitment has been made by the Senate to
fund items where there is no money. I urge the Senate to wake up. We
are voting against these matters not because we are against highways or
aid for children who need insurance. We are voting--the Senators from
New Mexico and New Jersey have brought us a resolution. We had a budget
that has been worked out with the President and we have a chance to
vote for a balanced budget. I do not want to be accused of being a
tightwad when we allocate the money under 602(b) of the budget act and
then we do not cover the sense-of-the-Senate Resolutions.
Again, if anyone is going to accuse us of being tightwads and not
following the sense of the Senate, I tell you, if you vote for one of
these things, you show us where the money is and we will allocate it.
We will not be misled by these attempts to gain publicity and to gain
some credit at home on a bill like this. This is a very serious bill.
The two of us are going to have a horrendous job trying to meet our
duties even within this budget, so do not give us any more of this
funny money. You show me real money and I will allocate it to your
function.
Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself in considerable
measure with the distinguished Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens]. We
have been voting for a lot of sense-of-the-Senate resolutions. I think
we had one yesterday, 99-0. We know it is not going to be paid for.
On this business about infrastructure, we hear it said that there is
no money. I am from a State that needs infrastructure. We say there is
no money. I shall state why I supported the Warner-Baucus amendment. We
do not need a tax cut in this country right now. We do not need a tax
cut. I say that with respect to the Republican tax cut and with respect
to the tax cut that is supported by the Administration. We do not need
a tax cut. When we see what we are doing in this budget resolution with
respect to cutting taxes--cutting taxes at a time when we are within
reach of balancing the budget, if we were to use that money that is
going for the tax cut, we would balance this budget much earlier than
it is expected to be balanced now and we could also use some of that
money for infrastructure. If we want to know where we
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can get the money, that is where it can be found. Let's vote against
the tax cut.
I am going to vote against this resolution if we have the tax cut
tied with it.
I thank the distinguished Senator.
Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from New
Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I yield myself 2 minutes off the resolution.
Mr. President, I don't like being put in the position that appears to
be developing here, that I am against investment in infrastructure. I
stand on my record of having fought as hard as anyone in this body to
invest more money in highways, in mass transit, in rail and aviation,
whatever was called for. I never met a transportation project I didn't
like if it was a well-founded and well-thought-out project. But the
insinuation by our distinguished friend from Virginia to caution us and
to lay down the scare that we will be counted upon or we will be looked
upon by the Record and by the voters, I want to say this: The Senator
from Virginia took the liberty yesterday of voting against the funds
for crumbling schools, against schools that are tattered and falling
apart, where children can't possibly learn. That was OK to vote
against. And the appeal wasn't made, and there was no threat that if
you vote against this, you are committing those kids to an even more
difficult assignment to try and lift themselves up.
I have defended investments in transportation as chairman of the
Subcommittee on Transportation of the Appropriations Committee. Without
fail, I have defended investing more. But the onerous comparison is
that we neglected our responsibility. It is almost as if you are
unpatriotic.
I don't really like everything in this budget resolution. But I am
committed by my constitutional responsibilities. If I take the
assignment, I have to work on it. We negotiated in good faith, and I
don't like some of the tax concessions we have in there. But I think
middle-class people in this country are entitled to some tax relief. I
think those who want to send their kids to college are entitled to some
help to get them the first step up on the economic ladder.
No, I don't like it all. But I have my duty to do, and I did it. It
wasn't pleasant. It wasn't pleasant when I went into the Army in World
War II, either, but I did it. And the insinuation that somehow or other
I have deserted my responsibility is one that really offends me.
We did what we thought was best, each one of us, whatever the vote
was.
I yield the floor.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that I was to be
able to call up an amendment at this time.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is in the order. That is true.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, before I use any of that time, just as a
matter of courtesy and parliamentary process, my distinguished
colleague is also standing for recognition.
If I could ask the Chair what the Senator's intent might be, we might
be able to work out an arrangement.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my intention, having talked to the ranking
Member, was to seek 10 minutes for debate on the resolution. Whatever
fits with the schedule of the Senator from Massachusetts will be fine
with me.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. It is a commitment that was made, I say to the
Senator from North Dakota. But the Senator from Massachusetts did have
a priority and was on record as being next in line. If an accommodation
can be made between the two--if not, the Senator from Massachusetts has
an opportunity to offer an amendment.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator
from North Dakota be permitted to proceed for 10 minutes, and
subsequently, when he completes, that I be recognized for the purposes
of calling up my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for
his courtesy. I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes on the
resolution itself that is brought to the floor of the Senate. I want to
talk just for a moment about what it is and what it is not.
This piece of legislation is a budget agreement that I intend to vote
for on final passage. I think a substantial amount of work has been
done by the chairman of the Budget Committee, the ranking member, and
many others in the House and the Senate and in the White House. They
have negotiated in very difficult circumstances the terms of a budget
agreement. But, as I said, I want to talk about what this is and what
it is not.
This is a budget agreement that provides a balanced budget of the
unified budget. Is that something that has merit? Yes, it is. Is that
something that moves in the right direction? Yes, it does. But it is
not a balanced budget amendment that balances the budget without the
use of trust funds, such as the Social Security fund. I want everybody
to be clear about that.
On page 4 of this budget resolution, which is on the desks of all
Senators, it says ``deficit.'' On line 24, it says ``deficit'' in the
year 2002, ``$108 billion.'' Why does it say that?
It says that because this piece of legislation balances what is
called the unified budget. Many of us believe there is another step to
be taken after that. That is to balance the budget without the use of
trust funds, especially without the use of Social Security trust funds.
For that reason, I voted for the initiative offered yesterday by the
Senator from South Carolina. It got very few votes, I might say. But he
said, let us balance the budget and not do tax cuts and not do added
investments at the start so that we balance the budget completely
without using the trust fund, and then, as the economy strengthens and
as we have extra money, let us provide for the tax cuts and let us
provide for the added investments. Obviously, that proposal failed.
I will vote for this budget agreement. But it is not truly a balanced
budget. It moves in the direction, and it moves the right way. But it
will leave this country, still, with a deficit. That must be the next
step following action on this document.
There are several steps here in climbing a flight of stairs to get to
the point where we make real progress. One step we took in 1993. I was
one who voted for the budget in 1993. I am glad I did. I said at the
time it was a very controversial vote. It passed by one vote in the
U.S. Senate--a budget agreement to substantially reduce the Federal
budget deficit. It passed by one vote, the vote of the Vice President
of the United States.
Some paid a very heavy price for that vote because it was
controversial. It cut spending. And, yes, it raised some taxes. But
what was the result of that vote in 1993? The result was a dramatically
reduced budget deficit.
In that year, the unified budget deficit was close to $290 billion.
Again, using the unified budget, the Congressional Budget Office now
says the unified budget deficit is going to be, at the end of year, $67
billion.
What has caused all of that? Well, a good economy and a 1993 budget
act that a lot of people here had the courage to vote for, that passed
by one vote, that says, let's put us moving in the right direction;
let's move us in the right direction to substantially reduce the budget
deficit. And only with that vote, and only with the progress that came
from that vote, are we now able to take another very large step in
moving toward a balanced budget.
What was the result of that vote? It was interesting. We had people
in 1993 on the floor of the Senate who said, if you cast a ``yes'' vote
and pass this budget, the economy will collapse; the country will go
into a recession; it means higher deficits and a higher debt; it means
the economy goes into a tailspin.
It passed with my vote--and, yes, the votes of some of my colleagues
who decided to say to this country that we are serious, that we are
going to move this country in the right direction even if the choice is
painful for us to cast this vote.
What happened? What happened was 4 years of sustained economic
growth, inflation coming down, down, down, and down, and unemployment
coming down and down for 4 years in a row. We have more people working.
This country now has 12 million more people on
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the payrolls that we did in 1993. We have an economy that is moving
ahead, a deficit that is moving down, and inflation that is at a 30-
year low.
I wonder if those who predicted doom from that vote now won't join us
and say, ``You did the right thing. It wasn't easy to do. But because
you did it, we stand here today now able to take the next step.'' The
next step is a step in which we now try to choose priorities.
What do we make investments on in our country, and where do we cut
real levels of spending?
That is what this document is about. It is a compromise between
Republicans and Democrats, between a President and Congress, that tries
to establish priorities. Frankly, while it reduces spending in some
areas, it cuts out entire classes of spending in others. It also
increases some investment in spending in yet other areas.
What are those? Education: It makes a lot of sense for us even as we
attempt to move toward solving this country's fiscal problems to say
that we don't solve the problems of the future by retreating on things
like educating our kids.
So this piece of legislation says education is a priority--more Pell
grants, more Head Start, more investing in education, from young kids
to college age and beyond. It says we are going to invest in education.
Then it says the environment and health care. It says these areas are
priorities. They are areas that make this country strong, and we will
continue to invest in those areas even as we move to reconcile our
books so that we are not spending more than we take in.
That is why this is important, and it is why it is successful. I am
pleased, frankly, after all of these years, to be on the floor of the
Senate saying this is something that is bipartisan. Finally,
Republicans and Democrats, rather than exerting all of their energy to
fight each other and beat each other, are deciding there are ways that
we can join each other and pass a piece of legislation that moves this
country in the right direction. I think the American people probably
think it is a pretty good thing that bipartisanship comes to the floor
of the Senate in the form of this budget resolution.
I started by saying I would talk about what this is and what it
isn't. I am going to vote for this. It moves this country in the right
direction. It preserves priorities that are important to preserve, and
investment in this country's future. It represents a compromise. Many
of us would have written it differently. We didn't get all we wanted.
But it moves this country in the right direction while preserving the
kinds of things most of us think are important as investments in our
country's future.
This is not a balanced budget, not truly a balanced budget. It
balances something called the unified budget. But it is a major step in
the right direction. I hope we will take the next step beyond this to
say that, on page 4 of the next budget resolution, line 24, we will say
``zero'' in a future year. That is when we will truly have completed
the job.
But the choices here are not always choices we would like. The choice
that we now ask ourselves is, does this move us in the right direction
with respect to the things I care a great deal about--one, fiscal
discipline; a more deficit reduction; investment in education, health
care, the environment--things that make this country a better place?
The answer, unequivocally, is yes. This moves America in the right
direction.
Is it an exercise between the President and Congress, between
Democrats and Republicans, that will give this country some confidence
that the past is over, that the reckless, the irresponsible fiscal
policy of saying let's spend money we don't have on things we don't
need and run up trillions and trillions of dollars of debt for our kids
and our grandkids to assume? Is it a message to the American people
that we are beyond that period and have moved on to a new day of
bipartisanship to decide together we can plot a better course and move
this country toward a brighter future? The answer to that is yes.
If the past is any experience, since 1993, the vote we took then to
put us on the road to balancing this budget is a proud vote and one
that I am glad I cast. I will be glad I cast this vote as well, because
this is the next major segment of the journey to do what the American
people want us to do on their behalf and on behalf of so many children
who will inherit this country. They will inherit a better country
because of what we will have done in this Chamber this week.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we have under
normal regular order an amount of time at this point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair.
I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has no time. The Senator hasn't
called up his amendment.
Amendment No. 309
Mr. KERRY. I call up amendment No. 309.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kerry], for himself,
Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Kohl, Ms. Moseley-Braun, Mr. Wellstone,
Ms. Mikulski, Mrs. Murray, and Mr. Bingaman, proposes an
amendment numbered 309.
(The text of the amendment is printed in the Record of May 21, 1997.)
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I now yield to the Senator from Minnesota 4
minutes.
Mr. President, before I yield let me just take 1 minute to explain.
This is an amendment to hold out a possibility--I yield myself such
time as I may use--to hold out the possibility that when we come back
in the appropriating process, we may be able to find some money to deal
with the issue of early child development. We do not spend money now.
We do not trade money. We do not have an offset. We do not spend. We
simply want to be able to reserve the capacity to come back at a later
time to deal with this issue. I will explain why I feel that is so
important, as do the other Senators joining me.
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
(Senate - May 22, 1997)
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CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET
The Senate continued with the consideration of the concurrent
resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. ROBERTS. I thank the Chair. I thank the distinguished chairman of
the Budget Committee.
Mr. President, I rise in support of the overall balanced budget plan
and rise expressing some reservations in regard to many of the
amendments that we are considering, the pending amendments; some 45 of
them, as a matter of fact.
If nothing else, I wanted to pay a personal tribute in behalf of the
taxpayers of Kansas and thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for
his leadership, his perseverance, his patience. He has the patience of
Job. I must confess, having come from the lower body, as described by
Senator Byrd, and being the chairman of the House Agriculture
Committee, I am not sure I had the patience of Senator Domenici. We now
spell ``persevere'' D-o-m-e-n-i-c-i.
How many hours, I ask of the chairman, if he could respond, how many
days, even years, have been involved? Does he have any estimate in
regard to the hours he has spent late, early--he and Chairman Kasich of
the House? If he gives me an estimate, what is it? 10,000?
Mr. DOMENICI. On this agreement itself, just this year, I would
estimate 1,000 hours.
Mr. ROBERTS. 1,000 hours. I said hours and minutes; even years.
This has been the third year on this particular budget plan. This is
the culmination of 3 years of hard work that the Senator from New
Mexico has put in, all members of the Budget Committee, as well as the
staff. This has been a Lonesome Dove Trail ride. I hope we get through
the tall grass and balanced budget with all of our body parts intact.
If we do, the chairman will get most of the credit.
In the last session of the Congress we had two balanced budgets. We
worked very hard and very diligently. They were vetoed by the
President. We even came to a Government shutdown. Nobody wants to
repeat that. I understand that when you are doing a budget for the U.S.
Government, you have many, many strong differences of opinion. After
all, for better or worse, the Congress of the United States reflects
the diversity we have in this country and the strong difference of
opinions. Goodness knows, we have good diversity and strong differences
of opinion. The House, the other body, just the other night stayed
until 3 a.m., and, finally, by a two-vote margin, succeeded in
defeating an amendment that was a deal breaker. It involved highways.
As a matter of fact, it involved transportation, the very issue we are
discussing on the floor at this very moment other than my comments. Two
votes was the difference. Goodness knows, everybody in the House of the
Representatives, everybody in the Senate cares about transportation and
cares about highways and the infrastructure.
We came within five votes of a deal breaker on the floor of the
Senate. I think it was five votes in regard to health care for
children. Who can be opposed to additional funds for health care for
children? As a matter of fact, the chairman has worked very hard to
provide $16 billion in regard to that goal.
So we had highways, health care, and we had a situation in regard to
the construction of our schools, to fix the infrastructure of the
Nation's schools--$5 billion--with a $100 billion price tag, which set
a very unique precedent.
I don't question the intent. I don't question the purpose nor the
integrity of any Senator, nor, for that matter, anyone who would like
to propose an amendment or a better idea in regard to the budget. But I
would suggest that the high road of humility and responsibility is not
bothered by heavy traffic in this instance.
Most of the amendments--I have them all here. Here is the stack, 45
of them. Most of the pending amendments right here are either sense of
the Senate or they have been rejected outright as deal breakers.
Sense of the Senate means it is the sense of the Senate. It has no
legal standing, has no legislative standing. It is just a Senator
saying this would be a good idea in terms of my intent, my purpose,
what I think we ought to do. And there are a few that are agreed to
that obviously will be very helpful.
But here are the 45. Most of them are simply not going anywhere but
raises the point. I took a little counting here. There are 8 Democrats
and 11 Republicans--11 Republicans who have decided that they will take
the time of the Senate, take the time of the American people, take the
time of the chairman of the Budget Committee and staff and go over and
repeat their priority concerns in regard to the budget.
There is nothing wrong with that. I understand that. Each Senator is
an island in terms of their own ideas and their own purpose and their
integrity. I do not really question that but in terms of time, I mean
after 3 years of debate, after hours and hours and hours of careful
deliberation between the President and the Republican leadership and 45
pending amendments.
I have my own amendments. I have my own amendments. I should have had
some sense of the Senate amendments. I feel a bit left out. I thought
we had a budget deal. I thought we were going to vote on it. I thought
that we were going to conclude. And then during the regular
appropriations process, during the regular order, if you will, of the
rest of the session, why, perhaps we could address these things that I
care very deeply about.
Maybe we ought to have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution introduced by
Senator Roberts that all wheat in Kansas should be sold at $6. That is
a little facetious, to say the least, but I do have concerns about crop
insurance, a child care bill I have introduced, along with a capital
gains bill, capital gains and estate tax. I think capital gains should
be across the board. I think estate tax should be at least $1 million.
I want a sense-of-the-Senate resolution or amendment declaring that. Or
maybe an amendment--I tell you what we ought to have, if the chairman
would agree. I think you ought to make a unanimous consent request to
consider an amendment that all Senators who offer an amendment on the
budget process must be required to serve 6 months on the Budget
Committee. Why not? Perhaps in the interest of time, since all of the
time that is being spent by the 11 Republicans and the 8 Democrats--oh,
I forgot my sense-of-the-Senate resolution on defense. I do not think
we have enough money committed to our national defense with the
obligations we hear from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of
Defense, the administration and everything else. So add that one in
Roberts' sense of the Senate.
Maybe we ought to have a unanimous consent request, to save time, to
get
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this business done, to accept the responsibility for the budget, I
could just ask unanimous consent that all amendments pending be laid on
the table and considered en bloc and ask for the yeas and nays and we
could get the budget deal and go home. I have not made that unanimous
consent request. That would be untoward. That is the mildest word I
could use for it because it would violate agreements the distinguished
chairman has made with other Senators.
So let me say this to all the Senators who introduced all these
sense-of-the-Senate amendments, fell asleep, issued a lot of press
releases back home and got a lot of credit. And I laud their intent,
laud their purpose. What about breaking the deal? What about the law of
unintended or intended effects? What about the responsibility of
delaying the Senate and possibly delaying 3 years of work, 3 years of
work to get to a balanced budget?
As you can see by the tone of my remarks, perhaps my patience as a
new Member of the Senate is not near the patience of Chairman Job,
Chairman Job Domenici, in regard to the Budget Committee.
Now, I had intended on reading the names of all the Senators, their
amendments and lauding their intent in behalf of all the things that we
would like to see done. As I say, I have them all here. They range from
everything from highways to education to defense to making sure that we
have proper tax relief across the board. I will not do that. But I
would at least ask my colleagues in the Senate to consider the job and
the mission and what our distinguished chairman and members of the
Budget Committee have brought to the floor of the Senate. And if we
could, if we could plead for a little bit of expeditious consideration,
because you know what is going to happen. Time will run out and then we
will engage in what the Senate calls a votearama, and the votearama is
like ``Jeopardy'' or any other game you play on television. You will
not even hear what the amendment is. We will just hear an amendment by
X, Y, or Z, Senator X, Y, or Z and then we will vote on it and
obviously that will make a good statement back home and we can consider
that very serious bill, that serious legislative intent during the
regular order which should have been considered that way from the
first.
Again, I thank the chairman so much.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. ROBERTS. I will be delighted to yield.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I appreciate the Senator's remarks. When the Senator
holds the stack of amendments, is he suggesting there should be no
amendments or is he just focused on sense-of-the-Senate amendments?
Mr. ROBERTS. I think if I could further clarify that, of the 45
amendments there are about 6 deal breakers, if my conversation with the
chairman is correct. Most of them are sense of Senate. And there are
others that have been agreed to. But my basic premise is--and goodness
knows, this new Member of the Senate is not about to say that we should
change the process of the Senate. And this Member of the Senate is not
about to preclude any Member from offering any amendment.
The point that I am trying to make is that every amendment, every
sense-of-the-Senate amendment, every deal-breaking amendment also to
some degree interferes with the process and the conclusion of a
balanced budget which has taken us 3 years. And I know because I have
been sitting in the chair presiding, listening to the same speeches
that are made today in the Chamber during morning business, and people
can make them in their districts; they can make them on the steps of
the Capitol; they can make them here, and that is quite proper of the
Senate and is advisable.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. ROBERTS. Could I have an additional minute?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator seeks an additional minute. Who
yields him time?
Mr. DOMENICI. How much time does the Senator desire?
Mr. ROBERTS. One additional minute.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield it.
Mr. ROBERTS. I find it rather untoward or awkward after talking 10
minutes and expressing concern of the time here I would go on and on
about this. I think the point is well taken. I know the Senator from
Missouri has a very laudable amendment in regards to something I would
agree with and I would not deny him that opportunity. But can we not
get on with it after 3 years?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Amendment No. 311
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me make it very clear to everyone in
the Senate, first of all, I have nothing but the highest respect and
admiration for both the sponsors of this amendment, the distinguished
Senator from Virginia, who has worked diligently to try to create the
transportation programs in the committee he serves and do it in the
best interests of our whole country, and believe you me, he has had a
tough job, and so has Senator Baucus in doing a great job, whether
working on the committee or with transportation infrastructure.
Their job is very difficult because they have to balance frequently
the interests of all 50 States or those that are rural versus those
that are very dense in terms of population and thus roadway needs are
very different in his State or mine as compared with New Jersey, if you
just take into account how much gasoline tax is taken in because we are
small, with small populations, but we cannot get from one place to
another without roads, so we are in a different category. And over the
decades we have all worked very hard to figure out how to do that
balancing act. And then it turns out when it is all finished, the House
does it differently than the Senate because the Senate is represented
two Senators to each State. So Senator Baucus and his co-Senator
represent a very small population but they are two. In the House, they
always load the bills with the heavy populated States and over here we
try to do it with a little more fairness, more fair play.
They have had to be referees over that. In fact, I might tell the
Senators, they probably do not remember, but I was a referee on that
once as a conferee, and that was pretty interesting, how we found a
formula that year.
I might say, in spite of these accolades, this is a very, very
strange amendment, to say the least. Here we have been for all these
days discussing a balanced budget, and as a matter of fact even those
who would break this budget did not unbalance the budget. Or even those
who had deal breakers because they would take the principal components
of the budget and change them, as our leader said yesterday, pulling
the wheels out from under the cart so it would break down. This
amendment makes no effort to try to offset the $12 billion that they
add to this budget.
In other words, Mr. President and fellow Senators, this amendment is
bold enough to say it just does not matter about a balanced budget. We
just want to put in $12 billion more for highways. Frankly, I am sorry
we do not have the money in this budget for that. But we did in fact,
we did in fact increase the President's proposal by $10.4 billion. That
is $10.4 billion more than the President had in mind, and we balanced
the budget. We offset it somewhere or in some way reduced the amount of
tax cut we were going to have in the overall sense of putting the
package together.
But this amendment just comes along and says, well, we just want this
additional money spent on highways, and we will wait until another day
to worry about the balance. Frankly, we had a very meager surplus in
the year 2002. This particular amendment costs $4.5 billion in the year
2002, and that will bring us out of balance by over $2.5 billion.
So I urge the Senators who want to support this amendment or this
concept, they ought to come down to the floor and cut $12 billion out
of this budget so it is still in balance. Then we would understand what
would be hit--education and everything else we have been trying to
fund.
So I must say on this one the administration supports us. We were not
so
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sure yesterday morning, I say to my good friend from Kentucky, but they
support us. They sent a letter up here saying they do not support this
amendment. They support our efforts to see that it does not pass.
Frankly, I would be less than honest and less than fair with the
cosponsors--it is clear we are going to have to do something when the
ISTEA Program comes along in the not too distant future. We are going
to have to make some serious, serious adjustments. And I think those
are going to happen. Perhaps the Senators will help expedite that a bit
today by calling to the attention of the Senate the situation as you
see it.
But essentially, we have many trust funds in the United States, many
trust funds. I used to know how many. But I think it is probably fair
to say we have 100 trust funds. I think that is low by 50. I think we
have 150. But let us just say we have 100 of them.
Frankly, we do not spend every penny that comes into those trust
funds every year, nor do we take them and set them out on the side and
say whatever comes in goes out. We have put them in the unified budget.
I am not sure--people argue on both sides of that concept. Should you
break Government up into 150 pieces and then find some more pieces and
have no central government running things, no unified budget, I should
say. Forget who runs it, just a budget representing them all. And I
have come down on the side of putting them all in and leaving them in,
and if there is surpluses take credit for the surpluses. As a matter of
fact, it is pretty clear that at some point we are going to have to
change the way we are doing business, not perhaps spend more. But I
would urge Senators not to vote for this amendment today. I will move
to table it. I think it breaks the budget. It unbalances the budget.
The intentions are very, very good, but this is not quite the way to do
it.
Now I yield to Senator Lautenberg--
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. DOMENICI. Of course.
Mr. WARNER. I thank him for the courtesy. Let's clarify a little bit
just how the Senator as chairman of the Budget Committee--and certainly
we commend him for the hard work he has done. What is the meaning of a
trust fund?
Let's be honest. You are keeping $26 billion, according to my
calculation, holding it back, of the revenues paid at the gas tank, as
if it were poker chips to play where you so desire elsewhere in the
budget. We specifically did not put in offsets because the offset is
there in a trust fund established 42 years ago with a legislative
history which clearly said that it belongs to the people and should be
returned to the people. That is why we did not have an offset. The
offset is there in the form of the money in the highway trust fund.
Shall we rename that budget deficit fund?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you will be writing the new ISTEA law. If you
will care to rename it, it will be renamed under your direction, not
under mine. But I would say, from what I can find out, this $26 billion
trust fund surplus--we spend about $20 billion each year and they have
done that for a long time. This $26 billion that is referred to is made
up of two things: $20.6 billion of it is compounded interest, and $5.9
is committed to projects. Frankly, that does not mean we have an awful
lot of money to spend. As a matter of fact, we probably do not have
very much. But, from my standpoint, this trust fund balance is a very
reasonable balance to keep in the fund. If at some point we can get to
a better plan and do it over a period of time, you are going to find
this Senator on your side.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. Did Senator Lautenberg want to speak now?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I do.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 20 minutes
left; the other side has 12 minutes.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we all deeply appreciate the amount of
work the Senator from New Mexico has made to try to put this together.
It is an almost impossible task. He made an interesting statement,
though, that I would just like to follow up on a little bit. He turned
to the Senator from Virginia a few minutes ago--if I heard you
correctly; I do not want to put words in your mouth--and said something
to the effect: Yes, you are right. At some future time when we take up
ISTEA we are going to have to deal with deficiencies that are otherwise
going to be available to be spent on the highway bill, ISTEA.
If I heard him correctly, if that is what he meant, I would just like
to explore with the chairman where we might find some of those
additional dollars if it's not in the context of this budget
resolution.
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, you did not quote me so incorrectly that I
would say you didn't quote me right. But, in essence I am just
expressing the notion that is pretty rampant, that outside of this
budget resolution, at a later date, that in various committees we will
be working on what do we do with this highway trust fund and what do we
do with the new formula, where there will be a new formula.
All I am suggesting is at some point that debate is going to occur,
but I don't believe it should occur here on the floor of the Senate,
taking $12 billion and just adding it to this budget and saying we are
just going to go in the red because we have not figured out any other
way. There is going to be another way to look at this situation.
Mr. BAUCUS. But again I ask you, at what time, at what point would we
begin to find the additional dollars that we all know we need for
transportation?
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, look, the committees in the U.S. Senate are
marvelous institutions, and how you work out problems that are
complicated and difficult and frequently of longstanding--the Senate is
historic in its wise ways of doing this.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand.
Mr. DOMENICI. All I am suggesting is there is going to be a way.
Mr. BAUCUS. I understand, but I bow to the mighty power of the Budget
Committee, when we see the limitations that otherwise are incumbent
upon us--
Mr. DOMENICI. I might suggest, I served on that committee for a long
time, Senator Warner. In fact, I would have been chairman three times
over with the longevity I would have if I would have been there.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we want the Senator where he is. Please
stay. By the way, I volunteered three times to serve on the Budget
Committee, and my name will be on there one of these days.
Mr. DOMENICI. All right. Now, how much time do we have left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 17 minutes
left.
Mr. DOMENICI. I wanted to yield to Senator Lautenberg, who is my ally
here on the floor on this issue, and then find a little time of mine
out of it to yield to the Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am not going to take that much time, Mr. President.
I think the chairman of the Budget Committee has fairly directly and
succinctly made the arguments. The fact of the matter is that none of
us are happy with the level of funding that we have for our investments
in highways and our transportation needs. We are more deficient, in
many ways, than countries down the Third World list. I think we rank
about 55th in per capita spending for infrastructure.
So, one would not disagree with the distinguished Senator from
Virginia or the distinguished Senator from Montana in terms of the
need, the need to correct the situation. But unfortunately, and it is
unfortunate for me because I have long been an advocate of more
spending on transportation in this country. I think it is common
knowledge that the Senator from New Jersey has been an advocate of mass
transit, of rail transportation, improving our highway system, of
fixing our deficient bridges, which number in the thousands. But we
have a proposal in hand that takes a priority, unfortunately, for the
moment. That is, to complete the work we started on a balanced budget.
We are committed to it.
Believe me, this is not a place I enjoy being, because I do not agree
with everything that is in the budget resolution. But I agree with it
enough to say that there is a consensus that we fulfilled an obligation
that we talked about to children, children's health, to the senior
citizens, to try to make
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Medicare solvent, to try to not further burden the impoverished in
terms of Medicare, to try to take care of those who are in this country
legally and become disabled. We fulfilled those obligations.
The economy is moving along at a very good rate and we are still
running the risk, in my view, with some of the tax cuts that have been
proposed, of taking us away from the direction that we are moving in,
which is to continue to reduce the budget deficit until the year 2002,
when there will be none.
So we have an imperfect, but pretty good, solution in front us. And,
now what we are discussing, in terms of transportation--and this is
like me talking against motherhood--but the transportation funds that
are there are inadequate because of the structure of our budgeting
structure, the budgeting arrangement that we have in our Government.
The fact is that we have unified budgets. If one wants to start, as has
been claimed here several times, establishing truth in budgeting, under
that nomenclature I think one would have to start with Social Security.
Are we prepared today to say we are going to add $70 billion to our
deficit each year? We certainly are not. Yet I think, when you talk
about a trust fund, there is no more sanctified trust fund than Social
Security, something people paid in, they are relying on for their
future, for their ability to get along. But we nevertheless still have
the unified budget. That problem, I assure you, is going to get intense
scrutiny over the next several years.
Senator Roberts said something--I don't know whether you were here,
Senator Domenici, when he said: Everybody, in order to have the budget
fully understood, every Senator should be sentenced to 6 months on the
Budget Committee. I thought immediately, there is a constitutional
prohibition against cruel and inhuman punishment, so we could not do
that, even if we wanted to. I am on the Budget Committee by a quirk of
circumstance. When I came here, a fellow I had known who was a Senator
said that he would do me a favor and that he would vacate his seat on
the Budget Committee for me. And I will get even.
The fact of the matter is, we complain and we gripe, but the money is
where the policy is, the money is where the direction is. We take this
assignment with a degree of relish, because we want to do the right
thing. None of us want to throw the taxpayers' money away. But we are
where we are.
It is with reluctance that I am opposing this amendment because both
Senators, Senator Warner and Senator Baucus, have been very actively
involved in highway funding and highway legislation as a result of our
mutual service on the Environment and Public Works Committee. But we
are spending more than we did last year. We are spending more than the
budget resolution of just 2 years ago.
I was able, with a lot of hard work and with the support of the
chairman of the committee, to get an $8.7 billion increase over the
President's budget request for transportation. I had asked that
transportation be included as one of the top priorities in the budget.
Unfortunately it is not there. But there is a plan, that we expect to
be fulfilled, to have a reserve fund that would allow significantly
more funding for some of the transportation needs.
But I want to point out one thing about the trust fund. That is,
there is a slow payout in highway projects. I think everybody is aware
of that--5, 7 years on many of these things. If we shut down the
revenue source now, interest alone would not carry the obligations that
are already out there. The obligation ceiling as contrasted with the
contract authority are quite different things. We have these
obligations that have to be fulfilled, they are there and one day must
be met. The balances in the fund, I think, will start coming down with
the adjustments that are expected to occur in ISTEA. We have the
chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee on the floor.
That will be opportunity to make some of the changes that are being
contemplated here.
I just think it is a terrible time to say we ought to burden the
budget deficit by $12 billion, roughly, right now, when everybody has
worked so hard, and this budget has been scrubbed, reviewed, rewashed,
rehashed--you name it. We are where we are, in a fairly delicate
balance, I point out to my colleagues. There are very delicate
opportunities that will, I think, upset the balance that has been
achieved. So, again, I repeat myself when I say with reluctance I am
going to vote against it.
Mr. WARNER. Will my colleague yield for a brief question?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Sure.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator, a member of our
committee, Environment and Public Works, is, according to my records, a
cosponsor of a piece of legislation called ISTEA--NEXTEA. Am I not
correct?
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. In that, it is interesting, there are three bills put in
by Members of the Senate. I am coauthor--Senator Baucus, Senator Graham
of Florida; STEP 21, Senator Baucus is 2000, you are with Senator
Chafee.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Right.
Mr. WARNER. ISTEA. Look into that bill. Right in there is a provision
saying we want $26 billion each year, far more than what the Senator
from Virginia is asking. I build up to $26 billion in the fifth year.
You want it beginning this year. In other words, you are saying to the
Senate, in a cosponsored piece of legislation together with the
distinguished chairman of the committee, you want $26 billion. Now you
stand on this floor and talk in direct opposite. That is what leaves me
at a loss. So the question is, you are a cosponsor and----
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, in response to the question, before
the speech, I would say this--yes, I sponsored that legislation.
My heart is in more funding for transportation, and no one here can
say differently. The problem is that we are in a different point in
time, and if you want to take it out of highways and say forget the
children's health care bill, if you want to take it out of highways and
forget the pledge we made to the senior citizens, or take it out of
this bill and forget the pledge that we made to those who might be
disabled, let's do it, let's talk about that. Let's talk about
balancing the budget, because I know the distinguished Senator from
Virginia has been a proponent of a balanced budget almost from the day
the words were invented around here.
So now we have a different occasion. We are not talking about
transportation; we all agree that transportation is definitely
underfunded. What we are talking about is at what price do we make this
change, and the price is at, again, children's health or otherwise,
because we are committed to balancing this budget. And this is strange
talk for a fellow like me.
Mr. DOMENICI. I think it is right on, and I hope you make it about
five or six times in the remaining couple hours. I look forward to
hearing it more times than one.
Mr. President, I wonder, how much time do we have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 7 minutes; the
Senator from Virginia has 10 minutes, almost 11 minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Rhode Island, the chairman of the full Committee on
Environment and Public Works, Senator Chafee.
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished manager of the
bill.
I rise in opposition today to the amendment offered by the Senator
from Virginia and the Senator from Montana. I might say, these are two
Senators for whom I have tremendous respect. I have worked with them.
The Senator from Virginia, I think we first started our association in
1969, and the Senator from Montana, I started working with him the
first year he came to the Senate, which I think was 1978, 1979, and we
have been closely associated ever since.
However, this amendment, which would increase outlays for
transportation spending above the levels provided in the resolution
before us, I find to be inconsistent with the achievement of a balanced
budget by the year 2002.
The Senator from Virginia just said it went beyond the bill, the so-
called NEXTEA bill that goes beyond this, and that is absolutely right,
but that was before we had a target from the Budget Committee. I
believe strongly in the budgetary process we have set up. I voted for
it, and I support it.
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I think we all can agree that the Nation's roads and bridges are in
need of repair. No one argues with that. Transportation plays a
critical role in our Nation's economy. We recognize that. In the United
States, more than 12 million people, more than 11 percent of the gross
national product, is involved in transportation.
Earlier this year, I cosponsored a measure to increase, within the
context of a unified budget, the level of transportation spending from
the highway trust fund. I am pleased that the budget agreement, crafted
by the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from New Jersey,
increases the spending levels implicit in that proposal, the so-
called Bond-Chafee proposal. It is $13 billion over a freeze baseline.
That is pretty good.
Would we like more? Sure we would. But I think it is terribly
important to recognize that any proposal that boosts highway spending
or transportation spending without corresponding offsets is something I
personally cannot support. So, I agree with Senators Warner and Baucus
that transportation spending should be increased, but not in a manner
that would undermine the careful agreement reached by the Budget
Committee.
Do we like everything in this budget? No, but it is the best we can
get. I am supporting that agreement. It seems to me we simply cannot
afford to retreat from our efforts to eliminate the Federal deficit.
So that, Mr. President, is the reason I cannot support this amendment
that is before us today. I thank the Chair and thank the manager and
thank the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee that deals with
these matters. He has worked on them, and I know his heart is in this.
As always, he argues his case with vigor and considerable force.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, might I ask a question on my time of my
distinguished chairman?
There are three bills pending before the Senate relating to the
reauthorization of ISTEA. I mentioned that. Seventy-four colleagues
have signed one of those three bills. Each one of those bills has the
higher level of $26 billion. I say to my colleague, he also is a
cosponsor of the Bond-Chafee/Chafee-Bond legislation. The principle
that Senator Baucus and I are arguing today precisely is the Chafee-
Bond bill. I ask the Senator, does he feel there is any difference in
principle?
Mr. CHAFEE. Yes. First of all, I am pleased to call it the Chafee-
Bond proposal.
Mr. WARNER. Call it what you want.
Mr. CHAFEE. We call it that in Rhode Island. What the Chafee-Bond
proposal does is it says that what came in in the previous year--we do
not deal with the interest, we do not deal with----
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I do not need an explanation. In
principle, pay it in, take it out, isn't that right, in simple English?
Mr. CHAFEE. That's right.
Mr. WARNER. Fine, that's all I need to say.
Mr. CHAFEE. What comes in this year goes out next year, and that
principle is in this budget.
Mr. WARNER. That principle is in this amendment. I thank the
distinguished Senator. That is all we are asking. But it is interesting
we are asking for less than what is paid in to come out, recognizing
the challenge before the Budget Committee.
So I say, once again, 74 colleagues have signed on to legislation. We
are going to have to answer to our constituents, Mr. President, on this
vote. You say one thing in sponsoring the bills, and we will see how
consistent you are. I will put a letter on the desk signed by 56
Senators as to how they spoke to this. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator from Virginia yield for a few minutes?
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I yield all but a minute and a half, 2
minutes I have reserved.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, we heard today from both the chairman and
the ranking member of the Budget Committee that we need to address this
problem; the problem that there is a deficiency in highway-mass
transit-infrastructure spending that must be dealt with at sometime.
But they are also saying they feel constrained to say they cannot deal
with it here because they feel constrained by the budget resolution, a
resolution agreed to principally between the White House and the
leadership.
They talk about an $8 billion increase. That does not include
interest. And because the country is growing, because of additional
needs we have and the crumbling bridges, if this resolution is adopted,
Senators should know that they will receive less in dollars than they
will need for their State's infrastructure.
The Senators, the chairman and ranking member, say, ``Well, we will
deal with it in the future at sometime,'' acknowledging that there is a
problem and we need more transportation dollars. I must remind Senators
that we have a difficult problem ahead of us. When we in the
Environment and Public Works Committee in the coming weeks write a bill
dealing with CMAQ, dealing with formulas, donor States, donee States,
so on and so forth, what do we look at? We look at the number that the
Budget Committee sends to us. We are constrained by that number. We
must then write a 5- or 6-year bill which locks in the spending limits
that the Budget Committee prescribes for us. We are locked in for 5 or
6 years.
Those lower levels cannot be changed next year by a new budget
resolution, cannot be changed until or unless this Congress writes a
new highway bill. I am not so sure this Congress is going to want to
write a new highway bill every year. So I am saying that this is the
time to deal with this problem. It is now. Otherwise, we are locked in
for 6 years to inadequate numbers.
We want to make an adjustment of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of
our Federal budget, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of our Federal
budget, which I am fully confident can be dealt with in conference. It
is critical that this amendment be adopted so that we are not locked in
over the next 6 years to inadequate numbers. We will be locked into
these numbers if this resolution is adopted. We can make adjustments in
all the other accounts and still maintain the core provisions of the
bipartisan agreement.
So I urge Senators to, therefore, vote for this so we can do what we
know is right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair notes 2 minutes remain for the
Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, is that all the time that is remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. The Senator from New Mexico
has 2 minutes; the Senator from Virginia has 2 minutes.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I commend my distinguished colleague. He,
in his concluding remarks, gave the clarion call: When we cast the
vote, we simply cast a vote to say to the Budget Committee, ``Go back
and look for that very small fraction so we can avoid this flat green
line which is correctly represented on this chart, and allow our
several States to build that infrastructure necessary to compete in
this world market.''
What we have left out, my distinguished colleague and myself, are
pages and pages of added requests by our colleagues. I totaled over $7
billion in addition to what is to be allocated under the formulation
for superb programs that are badly needed by the country: Appalachian
highway system; for the Indian reservation roads; for expansion of the
intelligent transportation system; for innovative financing
initiatives; for new funding to meet infrastructure--on and on it goes.
We want to, Senator Baucus and I together with other members of our
subcommittee and full committee, try and do this, but those we haven't
even discussed today. We will never get to one nickel of this unless we
are given some additional flexibility.
So we say, with all due respect, we are simply asking a voice mandate
in support of our constituents to the Budget Committee, ``Go back and
reexamine the desperate need of America for these dollars.''
I thank the Chair. I yield back all time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI. Do I have 2 minutes and that is it?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me suggest, again, to Senators who
might be listening or those who might be listening in their stead, in
this budget, we
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have tried to do many things. We have tried to cut taxes for the
American people; we have tried to cover little children who are
uninsured with $16 billion; we have tried to cover the National
Institutes of Health with a 3.5-percent increase.
We heard from people what America had to be doing, and, in each
instance, we had to get rid of something. In fact, I have not said it
yet, but the President gave up 50 percent of his initiatives in the
compromise that was made, and every time we did it, we said, ``Let's
balance the budget; let's balance the budget.'' We would come back and
say, ``Well, we want to add this, what do we take out?'' And we would
take something out. What we have here today is $12 billion as if it
just flopped out of the sky; no effort to balance the budget, no effort
to offset it with expenditures so we can all see where do you pick up
the $12 billion that is needed for highways?
Everybody understands that highways are very much needed in America,
but this budget, for the first time, will permit us to spend every cent
of new taxes that comes into that fund every single year. We are moving
in the right direction. Every cent of new gasoline tax that goes into
this fund under this budget agreement will be spent in that year that
it comes in, obligated during that year. That is a giant stride in the
direction that we have been asked to go by many people in our country.
Frankly, every Governor in America sends a letter in. They want more
money. And then some of them get up and criticize that we do not
balance the budget right. The lead Governor in America, the head of the
association, he wants every penny of highway funds, but this budget
resolution just does not get the job done right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). All time has expired.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back the balance of my time, and move to table
the amendment, and ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to
be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
lay on the table the amendment. The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 49, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 80 Leg.]
YEAS--51
Allard
Bennett
Biden
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
Daschle
Domenici
Durbin
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Gorton
Gramm
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hutchison
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Lieberman
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McCain
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Nickles
Reed
Roberts
Rockefeller
Roth
Santorum
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Stevens
Thompson
NAYS--49
Abraham
Akaka
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bingaman
Boxer
Bryan
Bumpers
Burns
Byrd
Coats
Conrad
DeWine
Dodd
Dorgan
Faircloth
Glenn
Graham
Grams
Harkin
Hatch
Helms
Hollings
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kempthorne
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Leahy
Levin
McConnell
Mikulski
Murray
Reid
Robb
Sarbanes
Sessions
Shelby
Specter
Thomas
Thurmond
Torricelli
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden
The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 311) was agreed to.
Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I move to lay it on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. WARNER. History was made with this vote, by two votes, and two
votes in the House--that resonates all across this land. It is a wake-
up call to all those entrusted with the responsibility of keeping
America's infrastructure modernized and safe so we can compete in this
one-world market. This is but the first of a series of battles that
will be waged on this floor on behalf of America's transportation
system. It is my privilege to be a part of that team.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes. I want to
compliment those who offered the amendment for the way they have
handled matters and to tell the same American people that were
listening to the distinguished Senator from Virginia that there will be
additional highway funding in years to come, there is no doubt about
it, but it will not be done at the expense of unbalancing the budget.
It will not be done at the expense of just saying we will spend some
money even if the deficit goes up. I look forward to the day we do it
in such a way that it is balanced and that, as a matter of fact, if we
increase, we cut some things to make up for the difference so we stay
in balance.
Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 2 minutes to Senator Stevens.
Mr. STEVENS. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I want to
tell the Senate that those of us who are voting against some of these
amendments are doing it because there is no money to fund these sense-
of-the-Senate resolutions. I say to any of you that want to offer
amendments that change this budget, that authorize additional funds--
show me the money. Show me where the money is when you offer amendments
that change the budget plan agreed to with the President.
I have discussed this with the distinguished Senator from West
Virginia. We will have the obligation to allot money within the budget
among 13 subcommittees. A sense-of-the-Senate resolution does not give
us any more money but it gives us the problem that you have sent a
message to America that there is money in this budget to do something
the Senate votes for in a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
When the budget resolution, just before, was voted I asked for a
chance to come to the floor again, and I ask for you to reserve some
time and we will show where a commitment has been made by the Senate to
fund items where there is no money. I urge the Senate to wake up. We
are voting against these matters not because we are against highways or
aid for children who need insurance. We are voting--the Senators from
New Mexico and New Jersey have brought us a resolution. We had a budget
that has been worked out with the President and we have a chance to
vote for a balanced budget. I do not want to be accused of being a
tightwad when we allocate the money under 602(b) of the budget act and
then we do not cover the sense-of-the-Senate Resolutions.
Again, if anyone is going to accuse us of being tightwads and not
following the sense of the Senate, I tell you, if you vote for one of
these things, you show us where the money is and we will allocate it.
We will not be misled by these attempts to gain publicity and to gain
some credit at home on a bill like this. This is a very serious bill.
The two of us are going to have a horrendous job trying to meet our
duties even within this budget, so do not give us any more of this
funny money. You show me real money and I will allocate it to your
function.
Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself in considerable
measure with the distinguished Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens]. We
have been voting for a lot of sense-of-the-Senate resolutions. I think
we had one yesterday, 99-0. We know it is not going to be paid for.
On this business about infrastructure, we hear it said that there is
no money. I am from a State that needs infrastructure. We say there is
no money. I shall state why I supported the Warner-Baucus amendment. We
do not need a tax cut in this country right now. We do not need a tax
cut. I say that with respect to the Republican tax cut and with respect
to the tax cut that is supported by the Administration. We do not need
a tax cut. When we see what we are doing in this budget resolution with
respect to cutting taxes--cutting taxes at a time when we are within
reach of balancing the budget, if we were to use that money that is
going for the tax cut, we would balance this budget much earlier than
it is expected to be balanced now and we could also use some of that
money for infrastructure. If we want to know where we
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can get the money, that is where it can be found. Let's vote against
the tax cut.
I am going to vote against this resolution if we have the tax cut
tied with it.
I thank the distinguished Senator.
Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from New
Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I yield myself 2 minutes off the resolution.
Mr. President, I don't like being put in the position that appears to
be developing here, that I am against investment in infrastructure. I
stand on my record of having fought as hard as anyone in this body to
invest more money in highways, in mass transit, in rail and aviation,
whatever was called for. I never met a transportation project I didn't
like if it was a well-founded and well-thought-out project. But the
insinuation by our distinguished friend from Virginia to caution us and
to lay down the scare that we will be counted upon or we will be looked
upon by the Record and by the voters, I want to say this: The Senator
from Virginia took the liberty yesterday of voting against the funds
for crumbling schools, against schools that are tattered and falling
apart, where children can't possibly learn. That was OK to vote
against. And the appeal wasn't made, and there was no threat that if
you vote against this, you are committing those kids to an even more
difficult assignment to try and lift themselves up.
I have defended investments in transportation as chairman of the
Subcommittee on Transportation of the Appropriations Committee. Without
fail, I have defended investing more. But the onerous comparison is
that we neglected our responsibility. It is almost as if you are
unpatriotic.
I don't really like everything in this budget resolution. But I am
committed by my constitutional responsibilities. If I take the
assignment, I have to work on it. We negotiated in good faith, and I
don't like some of the tax concessions we have in there. But I think
middle-class people in this country are entitled to some tax relief. I
think those who want to send their kids to college are entitled to some
help to get them the first step up on the economic ladder.
No, I don't like it all. But I have my duty to do, and I did it. It
wasn't pleasant. It wasn't pleasant when I went into the Army in World
War II, either, but I did it. And the insinuation that somehow or other
I have deserted my responsibility is one that really offends me.
We did what we thought was best, each one of us, whatever the vote
was.
I yield the floor.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that I was to be
able to call up an amendment at this time.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is in the order. That is true.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, before I use any of that time, just as a
matter of courtesy and parliamentary process, my distinguished
colleague is also standing for recognition.
If I could ask the Chair what the Senator's intent might be, we might
be able to work out an arrangement.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my intention, having talked to the ranking
Member, was to seek 10 minutes for debate on the resolution. Whatever
fits with the schedule of the Senator from Massachusetts will be fine
with me.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. It is a commitment that was made, I say to the
Senator from North Dakota. But the Senator from Massachusetts did have
a priority and was on record as being next in line. If an accommodation
can be made between the two--if not, the Senator from Massachusetts has
an opportunity to offer an amendment.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator
from North Dakota be permitted to proceed for 10 minutes, and
subsequently, when he completes, that I be recognized for the purposes
of calling up my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for
his courtesy. I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes on the
resolution itself that is brought to the floor of the Senate. I want to
talk just for a moment about what it is and what it is not.
This piece of legislation is a budget agreement that I intend to vote
for on final passage. I think a substantial amount of work has been
done by the chairman of the Budget Committee, the ranking member, and
many others in the House and the Senate and in the White House. They
have negotiated in very difficult circumstances the terms of a budget
agreement. But, as I said, I want to talk about what this is and what
it is not.
This is a budget agreement that provides a balanced budget of the
unified budget. Is that something that has merit? Yes, it is. Is that
something that moves in the right direction? Yes, it does. But it is
not a balanced budget amendment that balances the budget without the
use of trust funds, such as the Social Security fund. I want everybody
to be clear about that.
On page 4 of this budget resolution, which is on the desks of all
Senators, it says ``deficit.'' On line 24, it says ``deficit'' in the
year 2002, ``$108 billion.'' Why does it say that?
It says that because this piece of legislation balances what is
called the unified budget. Many of us believe there is another step to
be taken after that. That is to balance the budget without the use of
trust funds, especially without the use of Social Security trust funds.
For that reason, I voted for the initiative offered yesterday by the
Senator from South Carolina. It got very few votes, I might say. But he
said, let us balance the budget and not do tax cuts and not do added
investments at the start so that we balance the budget completely
without using the trust fund, and then, as the economy strengthens and
as we have extra money, let us provide for the tax cuts and let us
provide for the added investments. Obviously, that proposal failed.
I will vote for this budget agreement. But it is not truly a balanced
budget. It moves in the direction, and it moves the right way. But it
will leave this country, still, with a deficit. That must be the next
step following action on this document.
There are several steps here in climbing a flight of stairs to get to
the point where we make real progress. One step we took in 1993. I was
one who voted for the budget in 1993. I am glad I did. I said at the
time it was a very controversial vote. It passed by one vote in the
U.S. Senate--a budget agreement to substantially reduce the Federal
budget deficit. It passed by one vote, the vote of the Vice President
of the United States.
Some paid a very heavy price for that vote because it was
controversial. It cut spending. And, yes, it raised some taxes. But
what was the result of that vote in 1993? The result was a dramatically
reduced budget deficit.
In that year, the unified budget deficit was close to $290 billion.
Again, using the unified budget, the Congressional Budget Office now
says the unified budget deficit is going to be, at the end of year, $67
billion.
What has caused all of that? Well, a good economy and a 1993 budget
act that a lot of people here had the courage to vote for, that passed
by one vote, that says, let's put us moving in the right direction;
let's move us in the right direction to substantially reduce the budget
deficit. And only with that vote, and only with the progress that came
from that vote, are we now able to take another very large step in
moving toward a balanced budget.
What was the result of that vote? It was interesting. We had people
in 1993 on the floor of the Senate who said, if you cast a ``yes'' vote
and pass this budget, the economy will collapse; the country will go
into a recession; it means higher deficits and a higher debt; it means
the economy goes into a tailspin.
It passed with my vote--and, yes, the votes of some of my colleagues
who decided to say to this country that we are serious, that we are
going to move this country in the right direction even if the choice is
painful for us to cast this vote.
What happened? What happened was 4 years of sustained economic
growth, inflation coming down, down, down, and down, and unemployment
coming down and down for 4 years in a row. We have more people working.
This country now has 12 million more people on
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the payrolls that we did in 1993. We have an economy that is moving
ahead, a deficit that is moving down, and inflation that is at a 30-
year low.
I wonder if those who predicted doom from that vote now won't join us
and say, ``You did the right thing. It wasn't easy to do. But because
you did it, we stand here today now able to take the next step.'' The
next step is a step in which we now try to choose priorities.
What do we make investments on in our country, and where do we cut
real levels of spending?
That is what this document is about. It is a compromise between
Republicans and Democrats, between a President and Congress, that tries
to establish priorities. Frankly, while it reduces spending in some
areas, it cuts out entire classes of spending in others. It also
increases some investment in spending in yet other areas.
What are those? Education: It makes a lot of sense for us even as we
attempt to move toward solving this country's fiscal problems to say
that we don't solve the problems of the future by retreating on things
like educating our kids.
So this piece of legislation says education is a priority--more Pell
grants, more Head Start, more investing in education, from young kids
to college age and beyond. It says we are going to invest in education.
Then it says the environment and health care. It says these areas are
priorities. They are areas that make this country strong, and we will
continue to invest in those areas even as we move to reconcile our
books so that we are not spending more than we take in.
That is why this is important, and it is why it is successful. I am
pleased, frankly, after all of these years, to be on the floor of the
Senate saying this is something that is bipartisan. Finally,
Republicans and Democrats, rather than exerting all of their energy to
fight each other and beat each other, are deciding there are ways that
we can join each other and pass a piece of legislation that moves this
country in the right direction. I think the American people probably
think it is a pretty good thing that bipartisanship comes to the floor
of the Senate in the form of this budget resolution.
I started by saying I would talk about what this is and what it
isn't. I am going to vote for this. It moves this country in the right
direction. It preserves priorities that are important to preserve, and
investment in this country's future. It represents a compromise. Many
of us would have written it differently. We didn't get all we wanted.
But it moves this country in the right direction while preserving the
kinds of things most of us think are important as investments in our
country's future.
This is not a balanced budget, not truly a balanced budget. It
balances something called the unified budget. But it is a major step in
the right direction. I hope we will take the next step beyond this to
say that, on page 4 of the next budget resolution, line 24, we will say
``zero'' in a future year. That is when we will truly have completed
the job.
But the choices here are not always choices we would like. The choice
that we now ask ourselves is, does this move us in the right direction
with respect to the things I care a great deal about--one, fiscal
discipline; a more deficit reduction; investment in education, health
care, the environment--things that make this country a better place?
The answer, unequivocally, is yes. This moves America in the right
direction.
Is it an exercise between the President and Congress, between
Democrats and Republicans, that will give this country some confidence
that the past is over, that the reckless, the irresponsible fiscal
policy of saying let's spend money we don't have on things we don't
need and run up trillions and trillions of dollars of debt for our kids
and our grandkids to assume? Is it a message to the American people
that we are beyond that period and have moved on to a new day of
bipartisanship to decide together we can plot a better course and move
this country toward a brighter future? The answer to that is yes.
If the past is any experience, since 1993, the vote we took then to
put us on the road to balancing this budget is a proud vote and one
that I am glad I cast. I will be glad I cast this vote as well, because
this is the next major segment of the journey to do what the American
people want us to do on their behalf and on behalf of so many children
who will inherit this country. They will inherit a better country
because of what we will have done in this Chamber this week.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we have under
normal regular order an amount of time at this point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair.
I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has no time. The Senator hasn't
called up his amendment.
Amendment No. 309
Mr. KERRY. I call up amendment No. 309.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kerry], for himself,
Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Kohl, Ms. Moseley-Braun, Mr. Wellstone,
Ms. Mikulski, Mrs. Murray, and Mr. Bingaman, proposes an
amendment numbered 309.
(The text of the amendment is printed in the Record of May 21, 1997.)
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I now yield to the Senator from Minnesota 4
minutes.
Mr. President, before I yield let me just take 1 minute to explain.
This is an amendment to hold out a possibility--I yield myself such
time as I may use--to hold out the possibility that when we come back
in the appropriating process, we may be able to find some money to deal
with the issue of early child development. We do not spend money now.
We do not trade money. We do not have an offset. We do not spend. We
simply want to be able to reserve the capacity to come back at a later
time to deal with this issue. I will explain why I feel that is so
important, as do the other Senators j
Amendments:
Cosponsors: