John Chafee

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Linda Reidt Critchfield, a fellow in Senator Lieberman's office, be granted privileges of the floor for the duration of the debate.

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

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, previously this afternoon I submitted amendment numbered 3072 on behalf of myself, Senator Kempthorne, Senator Baucus, Senator Reid and Senator Domenici, and that amendment was adopted. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Bingaman be added as a cosponsor to that amendment.

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

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CHAFEE. Madam President, this amendment tightens up EPA's information-gathering authorities under the law. The amendment would require EPA to impose new monitoring reporting or record-keeping requirements only by rule of a public comment if those requirements would effect a substantial number of public water systems. This amendment has been cleared on both sides. We are prepared to adopt it.

Mr. CHAFEE. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. CHAFEE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 3074, previously agreed to, be modified with the changes I have sent to the desk.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 40 minutes equally divided on the Boxer amendment, community right to know, and following the conclusion or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote on or in relation to the Boxer amendment without any intervening action or amendment.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. I also want to thank the distinguished Senator from Wyoming for his kind comments and for his help on this legislation. He is a very valuable member of our committee, and we appreciate everything he has done to help with this. Amendment No. 3077

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, on behalf of myself, Senators Kempthorne, Baucus, Reid, D'Amato, and Moynihan, I send to the desk a printed amendment and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I listened carefully to the remarks of the Senator from Massachusetts and appreciate the thoughtfulness of his approach to this situation. It seems to me that while each side has to exercise some common sense in all of this, I really do think that there is an underlying thrust that we must not forget, and that is, that we feel very strongly on this side of the aisle that we have to reach a zero deficit situation. We believe in the year 2002. And it seems to me, as I have stated before, that is a reasonable goal. And I have heard the Democratic senior Senator from Georgia say that is a reasonable goal. And I think we all ought to agree that the year 2002 is something that is attainable and that it is fair, that we all concur in that. Now, on the other side of the aisle they feel strongly that there should not be a tax cut at all, or if there is going to be a tax cut, it should be of a far lower nature than we have proposed on this side. To me, that is fair for [[Page S 17451]] them to make that request. And I think we have to back off on this side on the size of the tax cut that we are seeking. But I would hope this, Mr. President--I know there are going to be other speakers, and I know the senior Senator from Massachusetts has some charts prepared, and we are ready for all the evils, to hear about all the evils of the deficit reduction bill that we passed last evening. All right. We are used to that. But I would hope that whoever speaks on this floor will say how he or she is going to reach a zero deficit. It is all right to criticize what we have done. And I suppose you can come up with 35 items of how what we passed last evening was not correct. All right. That is fair game. But in return, I would hope that the critics come up with how they would do it, and in what year, and how and where the savings are going to come from. Is it going to be a CPI adjustment, or is it going to be keeping the Medicare part B premium at 31.5 percent, or is it going to be a reduction in that, all of which costs money, if you change? How is that individual or those individuals proposing that we reach this zero deficit? I think that is a fair requirement for us to impose on the critics of the plan that we passed last evening. I thank the Chair. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. I agree with the Senator from Massachusetts that we want to look at these. We want to be careful we are not giving tax breaks to the very wealthy when we are trying to balance this budget. One of the suggestions that has come up here as I understand is that we really concentrate more on rewarding those who save. How can we do it? Should the interest on savings accounts be tax-exempt? Or reinstate the IRA's for those who previously have been eclipsed because they had pension plans of some kind? All of those I think are fruitful ideas. All I am saying is, I think we have the basis here for a resolution to this problem. Again, it will require all of us to back off from entrenched positions. I hope that the Democrats would agree to the 7-year time schedule. I think that is a reasonable request. If we cannot do this by the year 2002, then we have real problems in this country. We have no war. We are in peacetime. The country is relatively prosperous. Clearly, we ought to be able to pay our bills and have outgo match income in the year 2002.

Mr. CHAFEE. I thank the Chair. I want to return to the balanced budget amendment discussions that we have had here previously. I listened to some of the discourse that took place here. I thought there was a lot of common sense here on the floor. The Senator from Georgia spoke, the Senator from Nevada, the two Senators from Nebraska and others. I thought what was said here gives us ground for arriving at a very reasonable compromise in the days ahead. Clearly, the President will veto the balanced budget amendment. We all accept that. The question is, where do we go from here? Mr. President, I want to continue on the discussion that took place here previously. First of all, it seems to me to ask for the balanced budget in 7 years is a reasonable request. I think the Republicans and indeed all of us have a sound basis for saying, ``Look, 7 years is not too early to balance this budget.'' So, I think it is quite proper for the Republicans to hang firm on that particular position. I heard the Senator from Georgia say that 7 years is reasonable. What about the other side? I heard discussion on the tax cut. I think it is perfectly reasonable for others to say we have to back off that tax cut. Now, should we back off to zero tax cut? Perhaps that is going too far. Perhaps we could settle on something in the neighborhood of what the President himself has discussed. As I recall, that was something in the area of $107 billion, if I am not mistaken. I am not in favor of the tax cut, period, never have been. Nonetheless, there are those, particularly in the other body, who feel very, very strongly about having a tax cut. So, perhaps a suitable compromise would be to back off to the area of the vicinity where the President himself discussed a tax cut. What about some of the other areas? I certainly hope that those who have discussed Medicare here will recognize that the 31.5 percent premium that we are now requiring for part B is a fair requirement, and it seems to me those who are talking about going down to 25 percent must recognize that that has to be picked up by the general treasury. That is where the money comes from. All of us have to use some common sense and reasonableness here, but I have great difficulty understanding those who would want to take the premium, in effect, have it dropped--have those who are receiving the benefits of Medicare, an entitlement that goes right across the board to everybody, rich or poor--to say that they are going to pay less for their part B premium. So I hope that we would agree on the 31.5 percent. Now, I have not heard a dissenting voice that we should not go to the affluence testing. We can argue about that--whether it should be $50,000 for the individual and $100,000 for the married couple and phasing out--we can argue over that. Clearly, going to affluence testing makes a lot of sense. Now, the CPI. I hope we will do the recomputation of the CPI. That is perfectly fair. If we are paying too much, we ought to recognize it. Another area that I think the Republicans should give ground on is on the Medicaid and the reductions that are provided in that--reductions from rate of growth, yes; but I have grave concerns over whether in the Medicaid we are keeping a suitable safety net for those lower income individuals in our society. Yes, we are protecting children up through the age of 12 at 100 percent of poverty or less. But is that enough? As you know, now it goes up every year so that we cover those at the age of 13, 14, and so forth up to the age of 18 by the year 2002. I, personally, would hope we would go higher than the current category, which as I said is up to the age of 13 at 100 percent of poverty or less. Mr. President, I think we have the ground here, from the discussions I have heard on the floor, for arriving at a reasonable compromise. To get any compromise, people have got to go in with a certain amount of flexibility. If the Republicans say ``Not a nickel reduction in the tax cut that we have provided,'' or if the Democrats say ``Nothing doing on the year 2002; nothing doing there,'' if each of us get dug in, we will not get anywhere. I think we have the basis here for a reasonable compromise. I hope the administration and the negotiators from the House and the Senate would pay attention to the suggestions made here on the floor today.

Mr. CHAFEE. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. CHAFEE. There is no question that that is right. I must say as we start on this, if I could use a word of caution, I hope that we would avoid the word ``morality'' here, that one side is moral and the other side is immoral. I do not want to pursue this too far, but I think all of us have to watch our rhetoric--me, us on this side, all of us in this Chamber--if we are going to arrive at a satisfactory resolution of these very difficult problems. The answer to the question, have a tax cut to help those who most need it--sure. Of course, we recognize those who most need it are not paying much of a tax to start with, so how much a reduction would be of assistance to those individuals, I do not know. I think we also have to recognize--as I said before, I am not for the tax cut. But there are those who feel very, very deeply about it, particularly in the other body. That does not mean that we cannot back off from the size of the tax cut that was proposed. If the Senator from Massachusetts has some suggestions on how we could reduce the tax cut and make it directed [[Page S 17447]] more toward the group he was suggesting, I think that sounds sensible to me.

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, we are in morning business now and we can for a specific length of time, is that the way we are proceeding?

Mr. CHAFEE

Mr. CHAFEE. Here is the situation. As the Senator knows, I very strongly supported the provision that we have in the law that says on scenic byways--and by the way, a scenic byway is designated by the State. It is not Big Brother from the Federal Government that designates them. The States designate the scenic byways, and then the Federal Government gives some moneys to help them. By the way, the provision we have is no new billboards on scenic byways, no new billboards. The question came up on segmentation. You could have a 40-mile scenic byway, then a commercial section of 2 miles maybe, and then 30 more miles of scenic byway. The question was, could you segment these things? The answer was, we included a provision that you could segment it without getting ridiculous; in other words, having a 2-mile stretch and then 4 miles of billboards and then another 2-mile stretch. So we believe that what we came up with protects the existing situation. The words that the Senator was referring to was permitting the Secretary of Transportation to have the authority to prevent actions by the State that overrode the Federal requirements that prevented billboards. In other words, this was something to ensure that these States cannot set claim it is a scenic byway and instead it is a billboard alley.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I yield 7 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Delaware.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I listened carefully to what the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma had to say. He has been a long battler for the States being able to set these speed limits. He prevailed overwhelmingly on the floor of this Chamber. I did not agree with him, but the vote was clearly in his favor. I just hope he is right. I hope he proves the rest of us to be absolutely wrong. I hope that the speed limits will be monitored carefully by the States. I think there is a lot in what he says in that the States are concerned about highway deaths. I know when I was Governor, every year I paid a great deal of attention to the deaths on our highways and sought to bring it down. Whether all the Governors spend time on matters like that, as I did, I do not know. I just hope he is right. I hope a year from now we can say to the Senator from Oklahoma, ``You were right and we were wrong.'' If so, I would be very, very pleased. Here is a case where I would be glad to be proven wrong.

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, we are ready for the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. CHAFEE. I was wondering if the Senator from New Jersey would give me a bit of his time.