John Ashcroft

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I want to make a couple of remarks by way of appreciation to the other Senators as well, to Senator Hagel, to Senator Graham of Florida, Senator Mack of Florida, Senator Torricelli, and to all the Senators who worked together. It was important for us to make the fine-tuning adjustments that make this a better piece of legislation, and I commend them for their cooperation. I trust, even expect, that in implementing this process, the administration will endeavor to streamline to the maximum extent possible the process by which food and medicine can be exported pursuant to this provision. This is what our farmers and ranchers and those who produce our medicinal supplies expect from their Government and the people expect from America. For example, I urge the implementing agencies to use general licenses to the maximum extent possible, but obviously this provision provides some judgment and exercise by the administration in this regard. I thank my colleagues, and I thank the Senator from Mississippi for his patience in this respect. I am grateful to him and pleased to have had this opportunity to make this contribution to the measure. I yield the floor.

Mr. ASHCROFT

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, it is my intention to send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair. And I am grateful to the Senator for asking for order in the Chamber. I intend to send an amendment to the desk relating to something that I think is very important to the members of the agricultural community in the United States of America. This is an amendment that relates to farmers because it relates to their ability to sell the things they work hard to produce. Currently, it is possible for the President of the United States to sanction-- meaning, to curtail--the right of farmers to export and sell that which they produce on their farms. The farmers work hard, they get a bumper crop, and then, because the President would decide that he wanted to make some foreign power or another respond to his interests or his requirements, or our interests or our requirements, the President would impose an embargo, a trade embargo, which would forbid our agriculture community to export corn or wheat or soybeans--agricultural products--to these other countries. Sanctions do play an important and vital role in the U.S. foreign policy. But I think when you talk about unilateral sanctions that the Government of the United States enters into alone, and you talk about food and medicine as the subject of sanctions, you have to ask yourself a variety of different questions that I think really result in sort of a different conclusion about food and medicine type sanctions than a lot of other sanctions. Put it this way. I think it is important that we make sure we do not provide countries with the wrong kind of hardware, the wrong kind of commercial assets. But it makes very little sense, in most circumstances, to say to other countries: We are not going to let you spend money on food; we are not going to let you spend money on medicine. This amendment, which I will be offering, is an amendment that is designed to involve the Congress in the important decision about whether or not we should have sanctions that relate to food and medicine that are unilaterally imposed by the United States of America, not in conjunction with any other powers. To summarize the kind of regime that would be specified in this amendment, the bill would not tie the hands of the executive by making it necessary for the President to get the consent of Congress. The President's hands wouldn't be tied. He could still get sanctions. He would simply have to have the agreement of the Congress so that while the President would need the agreement of Congress, his hands would not be tied. He would literally have to shake hands with Congress before he embargoes agriculture or medicine. The amendment would not restrict or alter the President's current ability to impose broad sanctions with other nations. It certainly does not preclude sanctions on food and medicine. It simply says the President may include food and medicine in a sanction regime, but he must first obtain congressional consent. We did add a special provision to this amendment with regard to countries that are already sanctioned. For the seven countries under a broad sanctions regime, we want to afford the President and the Congress some time to review the sanctions on food and medicine on a country-by-country basis. Therefore, the bill would not take effect until 180 days after it is signed by the President. This gives both branches of Government enough time to review current policy and to act jointly, as would be necessary if jointly they were to decide that sanctions against food and medicine should be maintained. There are some exceptions. If Congress declares war, there is no question about it; the President should have the authority to sanction food and medicine without congressional approval. The President's authority to cut off food and medicine sales in wartime obviously should exist and would continue to exist. The bill specifically excludes all dual-use items and products that could be used to develop chemical or biological weapons. There are not many agricultural or medicinal products that have military applications, but the bill provides safeguards to ensure our national security is not harmed. We made sure that no taxpayer money could be used to subsidize exports to any terrorist governments. We specifically exclude any kind of agricultural credits or guarantees for governments that are sponsors of international terrorism. However, we do allow credit guarantees to be extended to private sector and nongovernmental organizations. This targeted approach helps us show support for the very people who need to be strengthened in these countries, and by specifically excluding terrorist governments, we send a message that the United States will in no way assist or endorse the activities of nations which threaten our interests. Just last week, the American Farm Bureau and all State farm bureaus across the Nation released an ag recovery action plan. It requested $14 billion in emergency funding. I think it is a serious request. It is not a request that I take lightly. We are now considering proposals in the Congress from about $7- to $11 billion. We need to be addressing the emergency needs of farmers, but we also need to reduce our own barriers that our own farmers suffer under such as unilateral agricultural embargoes. The USDA estimated that there has been a $1.2 billion annual decline in our economy during the mid-1990s as a result of these kinds of embargoes. The National Association of Wheat Growers estimated that sanctions have shut U.S. wheat farmers out of 10 percent of the world's wheat market. The Washington Wheat Commission projects that if sanctions were lifted this year, our wheat farmers could export an additional 4.1 million metric tons of wheat, a value of almost half a billion dollars to the United States and to American farmers. American soybean farmers could capture a substantial part of the soybean market in sanctioned countries. For example, an estimated 90 percent of the demand for soybean meal in one country, 60 percent of the demand for soybeans in another. Soybean farmers' income could rise by an estimated $100- to $147 million annually, according to the American Soybean Association. For us to raise barriers for the freedom of our farmers to market the things they produce and hold them hostage to our foreign policy objectives would require that we could get great foreign policy benefit from these objectives. And there isn't any clear benefit. One of the most ironic of all the case studies about agricultural sanctions was the study of our grain embargo against the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. Indeed, there we were upset about activities in the Soviet Union, so we indicated we wouldn't sell to the Soviet Union the grain we had agreed to sell to them. It was something like 17 million tons. It turns out that by canceling our agreements, the Soviets went to the world market, according to the best studies I know of, and they saved $250 million buying grain on the world market instead of buying it from us. So our embargo not only hurt our own farmers but aided the very country to which we had directed our sanction. It seems to me we should not be strengthening our targets when we are weakening American farmers through the imposition of unilateral sanctions on food and medicine--the idea somehow that we allow foreign governments to starve their people and to spend their resources on things that destabilize regions of the world, telling their people: We can't have food in this country, the U.S. won't sell us food, when I think we should be glad for any country to buy things like soybean and wheat and rice and corn so that they are not buying things that are used to destabilize their neighbors or weaponry and the like. I believe it is important for us to say to our farmers that we are not going to make them a pawn in the hands of people for international diplomacy. The rest of America continues to go merrily forward, and they are bearing the brunt because they operate in a world marketplace where there are markets for these commodities that, in the event the foreign powers want them, they get them and replace them very easily. It is with that in mind that this amendment has been constructed, carefully constructed, and designed to respect the need for sanctions where they are appropriate. When we engage in sanctions multilaterally, this does not come into play. This is designed to affect unilateral sanctions on food and medicine, and it doesn't prohibit them. It simply says that in order for the President to impose them, he would have to gain the consent of the Congress. I am pleased that there is a long list of individuals who have been willing to cosponsor this amendment with me. Frankly, this amendment is a combination of provisions that were in a measure Senator Hagel of Nebraska and I had proposed. We have come together to work on it. Senator Baucus, Senator Roberts, Senator Kerrey of Nebraska, Senator Dodd of Connecticut, Senator Brownback of Kansas, Senator Grams of Minnesota, Senator Warner of Virginia, Senator Leahy of Vermont, Senator Craig of Idaho, Senator Fitzgerald of Illinois, Senator Dorgan, Senator Sessions, Senator Lincoln of Arkansas, Senator Landrieu, Senator Harkin, Senator Conrad, Senator Inhofe and others have been willing to cosponsor this amendment. I think it is an important amendment. I am pleased to have this opportunity to offer the amendment. I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that James Odom of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor during today's session.

Mr. ASHCROFT. May I respond to the question of the Senator from Florida?

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Senator from Florida for his question. This bill is to harmonize the regime of potential sanctions and basically requires an agreement by the President and the Congress for any unilateral sanction that would be expressed by this country against exporting agricultural or medicinal commodities to other countries. This results in having to come back to reestablish any existing sanctions, and that has been considered in the drafting of this bill. This bill is not to go into effect for 180 days after it is signed by the President, to give time for the consideration of any sanctions that exist in the measure, and if the President and Congress agree that there are additional sanctions to be levied unilaterally against any of these countries, then those can in fact be achieved. The intention of the bill is to give the Congress and the President the ability to so agree on those issues.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, in response to the inquiry of the Senator from Florida, it is clear that the intent of this bill and the language which would be carried forward is that sanctions should be the joint agreement between the Congress and the President. This bill does set aside existing sanctions and establish a singular regime in which sanctions would exist unless another bill or enactment changed that. Now, a Congress in the future could impose, with the agreement of sanctions, sanctions in a regime that was contradictory to this bill because Congress always has the capacity to change the law. One law we pass today doesn't bind future Congresses from changing that law and future enactments. I think the Senator from Florida is correct that this measure sets aside existing sanctions and requires that future sanctions, be they initiated by the Congress or by the President of the United States, involve an agreement between the executive and the legislative branches. There is a timeframe during which that is to happen provided for in this amendment.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am willing to consider and would like to have an opportunity to discuss that. I am pleased during the course of the debate this evening to see if something can be worked out. If the Senator from Florida believes there is progress to be made in addressing that, we would be pleased to talk about those issues.

Mr. ASHCROFT. It is our intention, absent an agreement by the President of the United States and the Congress, to so embargo such sales. Such entities would be able to use their hard currency to buy from American producers, agricultural or medicinal products. Our underlying reasoning for that is that when these governments invest in soybeans or corn or rice or wheat, they are not buying explosives; they are not repressing their population. As a matter of fact, if we could get them to use all of their currency to buy American farm products instead of buying the capacity to repress their own people or destabilize other parts of the world, we want them to do that. The conspicuous absence here, obviously, is we will not provide credit for them which would release them to spend their hard currency in these counterproductive ways. So the philosophy of this measure is such that we think any time these people will spend money on food and medicine, they are not spending their resources on other things which are much more threatening, not only to the United States but to the community of nations at large.

Mr. ASHCROFT. No, I do not think so. I really think what we are saying is no matter how much money you have, if you are a terrorist state we would rather have you spend that money on food and medicine than we would have you spend that money on weaponry or destabilizing your surrounding territory. No matter how much money you have or you do not have, we are willing and pleased to have you spend that to acquire things that will keep you from oppressing individuals. I suppose you could argue rich terrorist states are going to be better off than poor terrorist states. I think that is something that exists independent of this particular proposal of this particular amendment. Rich nations, be they good, bad or indifferent, generally are better off than poor ones. But I think it is pretty clear that we do not have an intention of saying we are going to take a regime which is in power and we are going to sustain it by allowing it to displace what would otherwise be its purchases of food by providing credit so they can then use their hard currency to buy arms or other things that would be repressive. Our intention is to make sure, if the money is spent, they spend it on food and medicine to the extent we can have them do so.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think one of the things we have sought to do in this legislation is to indicate we are not at war with the people of many of these regimes. As a matter of fact, these regimes are at war with their people. Our intention is to be able to provide food and medicine to those people because we are not at war with them. As a matter of fact, too frequently their government is. That means we are willing to sell it to them. We are willing to sell it to nongovernmental organizations, to commercial organizations, even to governments, if the governments will put up the money for it. I find that to be an acceptable indication that we are not against the people of these countries; we are against these countries' repressive, terrorist ways. The terror is worse on their own people, in most of these cases. When we align ourselves with the people, align ourselves with the population in terms of their food and in terms of their health care and in terms of their medicine, that is good foreign policy. It shows the United States, while it will not endorse, fund or sustain, creditwise, a terrorist government, is not at war with people who happen to have to sustain the burden of living under a terrorist government. So, yes, this allows people in those settings to make purchases if they have the capacity to do so. But it does not allow the government to command the credit of the United States, and in our view it should not.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Let me just say, if it is permissible for me to respond, I thank the Senator from Florida for his careful questioning and the opportunity to make a response. I think this is a very constructive way to handle this. I do not think there is anything that is not humanitarian about allowing nongovernmental organizations, commercial organizations, to buy food so people can eat. I think that is humanitarian. I do not find that to be inconsistent with the title. I do not think in order to have the character of being assistance and humanitarian, they have to be gifts or they have to be credit guarantees. The mere fact that Americans would make possible the sale of vital medicinal supplies and vital food supplies in a world marketplace to people who are hungry and people who need medicinal care is humanitarian. We do make it possible for certain kinds of nongovernmental organizations and commercial organizations to get credit, but we simply draw a line in extending credit to governments which have demonstrated themselves to be unwilling to observe the rules of human decency and have been perpetrators of international terrorism and propagators of the instability that such terrorism promotes in the world community. So it is with that in mind that we want people to be able to eat, understanding that the United States is not at war with the people of the world but has very serious disagreements with terrorist governments. We want people to be able to get the right kind of medicinal help, understanding that we are not at war with people who are unhealthy and who need help medicinally, and understanding that when people get that kind of help, and understand that the United States is a part of it, it can be good foreign policy for the United States. But we do not believe that addressing the needs of the Government itself, especially allowing them to take their hard currency to buy arms, by our providing them with credit guarantees for their purchase of foodstuffs, would be appropriate.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ASHCROFT. Is it the Senator's belief that somehow all our agricultural products are subsidized; therefore, it would be cheaper than the world market price?

Mr. ASHCROFT. That is not the question I raise. But if I may ask, the Senator's answer, then, is that he thinks what we are talking about in disaster assistance to farmers in this aid is a subsidy that would allow us to sell below world market prices, and that is why we will not do that?

Mr. ASHCROFT

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

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1456 which is at the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, first of all, I thank the Senator from Texas for her outstanding work correcting a pernicious discrimination against the most valuable institution in our society, the family. I thank the chairman for his sensitivity to this important issue, for placing in this bill procedures to remedy the marriage penalty. The marriage penalty simply is an anomaly. It is a strangeness in the tax structure that has evolved, that penalizes people for being married. It puts them into higher tax brackets when they get married than when they were single. When people get married, they start paying a tax penalty. That is something we should stop. The Senator from Texas and the chairman of this committee have agreed that we should stop it. And we should, as a matter of fact, according to the amendment of the Senator from Texas, of which I am an original cosponsor along with Senator Brownback, accelerate the time at which we begin to stop this very serious fault with the tax system. America should not penalize the family. It should not make it harder for people to have families. It should not make it financially more difficult for two people to be married and live together than unmarried and live together. That is a simple fact. It is because the family is the best department of social services, the best department of education; it is the best place in which individuals are enriched to learn individual responsibility and the values and character our culture needs to survive. I am very pleased to be a part of this tax measure which will say about America's families that we cherish them rather than punish them and it is time for all of us to join together and eliminate the marriage tax penalty.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, this amendment simply eliminates from this bill a special tax cut aimed at foreign technologies for converting poultry waste into electricity. I agree with converting poultry waste into something useful, but I disagree with giving a tax break to foreign corporations when there are U.S. companies capable of achieving that end. Two such companies exist in my home State. Agri-Cycle of Springfield, MO, processes chicken manure into pollution-free fertilizer pellets. The British company that wants to build the facility here and burn the waste claims they need the tax break because without it, they would not be able to expand here because they are used to large subsidies they receive from the British Government. I ask my colleagues to support this amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I join the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from Michigan and rise in support of the American community renewal and charity empowerment amendment. I would also encourage the Chairman to include these essential provisions in the conference report. The legislation will also provide increased flexibility for states that choose to offer targeted charity tax credits. This principle is consistent with the growing support for expansion of charitable choice and recognizes that empowering faith-based and other charities is an essential next step in welfare reform.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for her leadership in this respect. She has understood the challenge, the special challenge that comes to families as a result of this pernicious discrimination in our Tax Code. She has fought long and hard for its removal. I am honored to be a participant as a cosponsor of this amendment with her and Senator Brownback. I also thank the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Roth, who understood the fundamental value that is expressed in neutralizing the tax policy toward families. I say ``neutralizing.'' I really mean that, in the sense that we have been at war with families in our Tax Code. Mr. President, 21 million American couples, 42 million Americans, are spending an average of $1,400 per year more, each couple, because of the marriage penalty. It makes it tough for that couple to make choices that they ought to be able to make to benefit their families. So I thank the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Roth, for placing this in the bill, for seeing to it that this category of remediation, this effort to repair an injury to the very fabric of America's culture, is included in this tax measure. We would not be here this evening with the capacity to say we want to accelerate that remedy, that we want to provide this antidote to a malady which has been afflicting the American culture, we could not move it up in the bill had it not been there in the first place. I commend him. I would like to just take us, for a minute, back to some very substantial fundamentals about America. I think the first of those fundamentals is that this is a culture where the most important things are not in Government. The most important things are not in the institutions of Government, not in the corporate responsibility of Government. The most important things are with individuals. This is a society that honors great freedom and expects great responsibility. America has prospered. America is distinguished from, different from, differentiated from, we are different from other countries, other cultures. We have gone farther, we have soared father, for that reason. We expect individuals to do things for themselves; not to be reliant, always, on Government, but, where possible, to build the sense of independence, responsibility, judgment, self-reliance that makes Americans unique in the community we call the world. When you believe the future of America is dependent upon that spirit, you have to ask yourself what are we going to fund in America? Are we going to fund the bureaucracy and the institution or are we going to fund the family and individuals? Are we going to give families the opportunity to take care of themselves or are we going to give all the resources to the sort of second best alternative? I do not think there is a Member of this Chamber who would say it is ever better to have a vast Government program than it is to have a good family. I just do not think we have anyone who believes that because we know the family is the best Department of Education, it is the best Department of Health, it is the best teacher of responsibility and character, which is as important as anything else. It is where it really must happen. Yet our Tax Code has been sweeping the resources away from this essential institution of the culture, the family, into the coffers of the Government, and plan B, the second priority, the sort of safety net, has gotten all the resources. We have left in an anemic place the family, which ought to be doing the front-line defense. It would be similar to giving all the guns and weapons to the rear guard and not having the guys on the front line with any bullets. It is time to load the resources into the families, at least to give them a fair shake. It is just a fundamental part of America. We believe families are important. If we really get our job done in the families of America, Government will not really have much responsibility and much problem. If we destroy the families of America, there is no amount of Government that will solve our problems. So here we have a choice. Are we going to endow families with the resources they create, they earn? Are we going to let them keep some of those resources or, when they form these durable, lasting, persistent bonds and a relationship that teaches people how to rely on each other, to live with each other, how to be individually responsible and self- reliant, are we going to take that institution and continue to punish it? Or are we going to wake up and say: Hello, it is time for us to say about families we are going to let the families have some of the resources which they earn and they should keep. I do not think it is a hard question. It is pretty simple. The proverbial rocket scientist is not needed here. It is an anomaly of our tax law. It is unfair to say the Congress at some point went forward to try to hurt families. But in this topsy-turvy tax environment that has grown by just a snippet here and a little piece there and a few hundred thousand words there--this Tax Code was, what, 750,000 words in 1955 and it is 5 million words now. You would have a hard time reading it if you started at birth and read as fast as Evelyn Woods to get through the thing before the end of your life. So we have a situation where this code has grown up and it discriminates against families. It hurts families, and we have a great opportunity now, thanks to the chairman of the committee who placed this concept of remediating this pathology right here in this bill. I predict Members on both sides of the aisle are going to say: We want to vote in favor of marriages; it is time to correct this inadvertent, but very damaging, prejudice against marriage in the Tax Code. That is where we ought to be. No one in this Chamber believes that Government is more important than families. No one believes that our front line, in terms of developing this culture, is so unimportant that we ought to load all the resources to the guys at the back of the operation. We ought to put some of our ammunition in the hands of the front line. Let's let families, let's let parents, who make these kinds of lasting commitments to each other and to their children, build an America tomorrow which has all the promise of the America you and I inherited. I will add that it is not a great tradition in America to discriminate against marriage. This has happened in the Tax Code as our tax bite on the American family has accelerated with the growth of social programs. It was not until the sixties that we had anything of a marriage penalty, and it began to get worse and worse until now, as I have indicated, $29 billion a year is what Government takes from families as it robs 21 million families of about $1,400 per couple, and it sweeps that money away from the families into the Government, into the bureaucracy, into the plan B, the second best, yes, important safety net. Yes, we need it, but let's not deprive the first line of this culture's conditions for greatness--the families--let's not deprive them of the resources they ought to have. I thank Senator Roth, chairman of the Finance Committee, for placing this concept in the bill. I thank Senator Hutchison from Texas for having been alert to this since before I came to the Senate. She was working hard in this respect. I am always delighted to be a part of any measure with Senator Brownback whose sensitivity to the values and the need for character in this culture is unsurpassed. I do not think Government should be dictating our culture and pounding in values, but, on the other hand, our Government should not be at war with our values, and it is time for us to call a peace conference around the kitchen table of America and say to husbands and wives: You have a very important job to do, and we want you to have the resources to do that job. We must eliminate the marriage penalty, and this bill, with the Hutchison-Brownback-Ashcroft amendment, can get that down. I reserve the remainder of the time and yield the floor.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for this opportunity to address what I consider to be a very important issue. Of all the freedoms we enjoy, I think the freedom to use and to spend and to devote the product of our own hands, the work we do to benefit our own families, is perhaps one of the most cherished freedoms of a free society. In our debates about the theories of government and resources and whether we should have tax cuts or increased taxes, sometimes we forget that it is a fundamental freedom--a cherished opportunity for individuals--to accept the incentive, the opportunity, and the responsibility of providing for themselves. One of the things we want to provide for ourselves, obviously, is government, so that we have a framework in which to work, which protects our property, protects us, and protects our families. That is an important thing we do. We have to be careful that we do not think we are working for government rather than for ourselves, or that government should do for us those things we can do for ourselves. As we think about how we deal with the resources that are generated by the enterprise and the productivity of the American people, we ought to think about the American people and the fact that the fundamental freedom we cherish is being able to work, to produce something, and then to manage that which we produce for our own benefit. We as a people have been so successful at it that we even are able to be generous with that which we produce. But it is our own generosity. America is the most giving nation in the world. Philanthropy here dwarfs philanthropy in other settings, but it is, in part, because we are allowed to keep that which we produce. Giving is greater here than any place on the planet because we allow people to keep that which they produce, to manage it for their own benefits and for their families, and then to give it according to their desires. We stand on the threshold of a debate about what happens when a person works hard and creates something, creates resources, earns wages, creates wealth--that is what wages are. People earn that, they create it with work and decide how it will be devoted, what will happen to it. We have a situation now where our Government has taxed the American people to such an extent that if those taxes are just collected over the next 10 years, we will have collected in that 10-year period about $3.3 trillion that we will not need to spend in that 10-year period. That is why we call it the general surplus, the sort of global surplus, the entirety of the surplus. A number of us realized it would not be responsible to spend all of that, so we said: Wait a second, there is a part of that surplus which we will not spend, and that is the part that is the surplus related to Social Security. We said there will be no expenditures of the Social Security surplus. It sounds simple and it sounds like something that should always have been the case, but the truth of the matter is, for the first time in recent history, in memorable history, for the first time we had a budget in this body that said we are not going to spend the Social Security surplus. Frankly, on this side of the aisle, I am very proud of the fact that we have been able to do that. It was not a budget that was voted for by the people on the other side of the aisle. They did not vote for that. That is not something they have ever done with one of their budgets or one of the things they have done with their leadership, but it is something they fought against. We have done it, and it is now an achievement of the Senate that we have a budget which is designed to protect every cent of Social Security, none of it to be spent to cover operating budget demands of this Government. That is a major achievement. That is something for which we can be grateful. Secondly, we have a plan in place, even with the proposed tax relief for the American people, that will cut the national debt, the publicly held debt of America, in half over the next 10 years. That is pretty responsible. They are talking about lots of things, saying we are not addressing the debt properly. Never have I seen any budget in a previous setting ever purport to move forward to cut the deficit in half in the next 10 years. Very few families will try to pay off a mortgage in that period of time--very few. We have an opportunity now, very responsibly, to set aside Social Security, which the American people want us to do, to take the budget deficit of publicly held debt in this country, and cut it in half, paying down the publicly held debt by half in the next 10 years. And then we will have some money, some resources that are left over in this vast infusion of Government resource that has come from the people. What are we going to do with the rest of it? The Republican plan simply says a good part of that, some significant part of it, ought to go back to the American people. They should be able to spend it on their families, to do for themselves what they do not need Government to do for them, because the best department of social services is the family, the best department of education is the family, the best department of health is the family. Let's let our families operate. Let's fund families, not just bureaucracies. Let's fund people in their homes, not just the bureaucracy in its Government. That is what the Republican plan is. There is a lot of debate now: If we can afford a tax cut for the next 10 years, we have to make sure we do not promise the American people we can have tax cuts on a permanent basis. We are making this tax relief on very modest presumptions regarding the prosperity of this country. We are presuming a very modest growth, very limited. This is conservative. It is not appropriate for us to say we will provide tax relief now and not provide it later. If we repeal the marriage penalty tax now, we should not repenalize you ten years later. That does not make sense. We simply ought to put the tax rates where we believe they reflect the integrity of the American people and the productivity of the American people and the fact that the American people are now being asked to pay more than it costs to provide the service. And we ought to reduce them, and we ought to reduce them permanently, not on a piecemeal basis, not with an automatic reinstater of a tax which is the highest in history. Why is it we are asked to have a tax cut and those on the other side of the aisle want to make sure we cannot make it permanent relief for the people, that we have to promise somehow that the highest rates in history will be revisited after a 10-year lapse? I do not believe that is good government. I do not believe that is good judgment. I believe when we lower taxes, when we lower the burden on the American people, we are beginning to direct the assets of the culture to America's families instead of governmental bureaucracy. It seems to me we ought to do that on a permanent basis. I do not remember tax increases that have said they only last 10 years. It seems to me that when taxes have been raised in this culture, they are just raised. I think we would be well served to say we are going to provide a tax structure that respects families. We are not going to say we will take the marriage penalty out of the code for 10 years and then reimposed it. If we are going to provide tax equity for people so that the lowest- rate taxpayers in America have an even lower rate, and more people are paying at that lower rate, we should not say this is a sale which goes off and later on your taxes will automatically be raised by some Congress in the future or at some certain date in the future. It is time for us to say that the American people have simply paid in more than it takes to provide the services. When you pay in more than it takes to provide what you are buying, you get change. I go to the grocery store. When I pay in more than it takes to buy the gallon of milk that I want to buy for my family, the grocer does not say to me: I tell you what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to give you a stalk of celery and a bag of broccoli and two boxes of cereal so you use up all the money you paid me. He says: You paid more than is necessary for the services, and you get change. You get a refund. You get relief. You get some of your resource back. I think that is where we are as a Senate. It is time for us to look at this country, where our cost of government is higher than it has ever been in the history of this Republic, and to say that it is time to give people relief. That relief is appropriate. And it should be permanent, not relief upon which we could not rely, but that it should be relief upon which we can rely, plan, and build for our future. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of our time. Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.