Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, Santo Domingo Pueblo is one of the largest Indian pueblos in New Mexico. It is located north of Albuquerque and South of Santa Fe, about midway between the two. For about 150 years, some 80,000 acres have been in dispute with neighboring Indian pueblos, Spanish land grants, and private land holders. Many of these disputes have been in court, but remain unsettled. I am pleased to inform my colleagues that three years of negotiations have produced a settlement agreement. Our legislation would ratify that agreement, thus resolving a complex land ownership situation in New Mexico. The initial Spanish land grant establishing the Santo Domingo Pueblo Grant was issued in 1689. When this Spanish grant was surveyed in the mid-19th century, approximately 24,000 acres of land to the east of the current reservation boundary were erroneously excluded. The excluded lands are now held in private deeds and public lands, but not by Santo Domingo Pueblo. The Pueblo of Santo Domingo purchased the Diego Gallegos Spanish Land Grant to expand its reservation on the west end. That purchase excluded some privately held lands and overlapped with both the San Felipe and Cochiti Pueblos. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands have also been claimed by Santo Domingo Pueblo. The global settlement we are endorsing, resolves the complex set of title disputes between Santo Domingo, the Pueblos of San Felipe and Cochiti, the federal government, and private land holders. In return for both money and land, the Santo Domingo Pueblo will waive their land claims and remove the clouded title for private land holders. This settlement envisions a monetary settlement of $23 million. Of that amount, $8 million would be payable from the Judgment Fund. The remaining $15 million would be from appropriated accounts over a three year period at $5 million per year, beginning in FY 2002. Approximately 4500 acres of BLM land would be conveyed to Santo Domingo Pueblo, and the Pueblo would have an option to purchase 7000 acres of Forest Service land for the agreed upon price of $3.7 million. Three lawsuits will be settled by this legislation. The first is Pueblo of Santo Domingo v. United States. This case is over 50 years old and was filed under the Indian Claims Commission Act (ICCA). In this action, the Pueblo asserts monetary claims against the United States for trespass, lost use, and breach of the ICCA's ``fair and honorable dealings'' provision by the United States. The Pueblo's claims, based on its Spanish land grants, involve more than 80,000 acres of land. Our legislation affirms the compromise award of $8 million for these claims and also includes the Pueblo's stipulated settlement of the ICCA case. The second lawsuit is Pueblo of Santo Domingo v. Rael. This issue stems from the Pueblo's purchase of the Diego Gallegos Grant. The Pueblo sought possession of land from a private landowner in the same grant. The Federal District court for the District of New Mexico entered judgment for the Pueblo. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit ordered the Rael action held in abeyance until the Government intervened in Rael or judgment was entered in the overlapping ICCA case. To date, neither has occurred. The settlement legislation will resolve the issues in the Rael case. The third lawsuit to be settled by this legislation is United States v. Thompson. In this case, the United States sought to enforce the Pueblo's title against third-party owners who trace their titles to overlapping land grants. In 1991, the Tenth Circuit held that the United States' claim for the Pueblo was time-barred. The Court of Appeals, however, found that the Pueblo Lands Board had ignored an express Congressional directive in its determination that the overlap lands were not the Pueblo's lands. The Court of Appeals did not resolve the ownership question, again due to the time bar. These overlap lands are currently in the possession of non-Indians and in the Army Corps of Engineers. This global settlement will resolve the ownership questions in favor of the private landowners and the Army Corps of Engineers in the overlap area. The global nature of this settlement will put all these issues to rest. Assuming the Congress agrees with our legislation, the next step would be entry of the stipulated settlement of the ICCA case and dismissal with prejudice of the Pueblo's existing quiet title action in Rael. The Pueblo of Santo Domingo would then receive both the money and the lands agreed to in this settlement agreement. In addition to waiving its ICCA claims and the Rael case, the Pueblo agrees to waive other existing land claims. In this settlement agreement, the Congress would ratify and resolve the Pueblo's land claims with finality and do so in a principled way which serves the interests of all parties. The Pueblo of Santo Domingo boundaries have been in dispute since the mid-19th century. This settlement resolves the Pueblo of Santo Domingo claims once and for all, and clearly delineates the Pueblo's boundaries. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I might suggest--and I do this in the presence of my good friend from Massachusetts; I wish the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Mr. Harry Reid, were here. I have an observation. Maybe I am 2 weeks ahead of time, but I believe the plan is that the Democrats are not going to let us do anything of significance, literally nothing, unless and until they get everything they want. The truth is, for this little period in history--I have been here 28 years, and it is a small piece of that--the Republicans have controlled the Senate and the House. But the Democrats are bound and determined this year, in an election year, that we are not going to pass the regular appropriations bills, period. They call us ``do nothing,'' but they are obstructionists of the highest order. I will just talk about one bill, then I will talk about the appropriations bill on education. I am just going to talk on one appropriations bill. We have heard from the beginning platitudes about working together to get all the appropriations bills done. The distinguished occupant of the chair has heard they want to get the Interior bill finished; they want to get the Treasury bill finished. For the American people, these are the bills you have to pass every year in order to keep certain big parts of our Government open. It comes down to October 1st, and if they aren't passed, you get the President of the United States talking about who is closing down the Government. I am going to refer to just the energy and water bill. I am going to beg the Senator, the minority leader from the other side, in the same way he pleads with us to get something done that is right. This energy and water bill was not drafted by Senator Pete Domenici; it was drafted by Senator Pete Domenici and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who spends a great deal of time on the floor of the Senate and, I might say, for one who worked with him for years before he got to spend all his time on the Senate floor, he has been a very solid performer. I praise him for his leadership on the floor. I believe he has been fair, and I believe he has been nonpartisan. But I believe what he is seeing he can't even speak about because right down deep in that Senator's mind and heart he knows it is wrong to hold up appropriations bills for the reasons being stated by his colleagues and his leader who compel him to do it. This energy and water bill is being held up. We can't even bring it up because the minority leader wants a provision that is within it taken out. He wants assurance we won't vote on it in the Senate. Who has ever heard of that? Take a provision out of a bill that is in a bill that has been voted in by a committee. And if you want that bill to see the light of day in the Senate, you take out a provision and you don't vote on it in the Senate. I am not familiar with the contents or substance of the amendment, except it has to do with a dispute between the upper Missouri River and the lower Missouri River. But it is most interesting, that the provision that the minority leader speaks of has been in the appropriations bills at least two times. The President has signed it, and it has gone out of the Senate. Maybe something dramatically changed in the meantime, but it has been in the bill. It has been signed. Some who know more than I say it has been in more than two times. I can tell the Senate, since I have been writing this bill, it has been in 2 years in a row. All of a sudden, it isn't enough to have an up-or-down vote in the Senate. The only thing that will suffice is that we take it out and agree not to vote on it. That means if you don't want to do that, you don't get an energy and water bill for this fiscal year. We are getting close because we still have to do this bill. It is different from the House bill. We need to get some new resources assigned to the committee on the House side. We might not be able to make it by the October deadline. This little innocuous title, ``energy and water,'' is a very misperceived title. Energy doesn't mean energy. Energy means all of the nuclear weapons programs in the nuclear laboratories in America. By a strange coincidence, they are in the energy part of this bill. We have been asked by the Department of Energy to put $100 million in new money in that bill to take care of production facilities in three cities, cities such as Kansas City, Missouri; Amarillo, Texas; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Aiken, South Carolina; where we have production facilities that are desperately in need of repair. We have cleanup in the State of the occupant of the chair that is ongoing because of our previous nuclear weapons reactor work. We have hundreds of millions of dollars in for that kind of cleanup. We have all the water projects and dredging projects and flood protection programs in this country in this bill. We have all of the national laboratories and their special effort and all their employees' pay in this bill. I could go well beyond that. Now I come to the conclusion: Why can't we take this bill up? Frankly, if ever there was an issue where there was something besides this bill that somebody has in mind, I have not heard of it. This has to be as bad as it is. What is it? Is there some political issue we don't understand that has nothing to do with the fundamental needs this bill addresses in water, water safety, in dams, in diversions, in the dredging of harbors and, over on the nuclear side, all the safety programs for our nuclear weapons designs, for stockpile stewardship, which is an entire program aimed at making sure our nuclear bombs are safe and sound without us doing any underground testing? We can't turn that on and off and say, wait an extra month, close down the buildings, close down the people for a month or so because we have a little problem about the Missouri River that somebody doesn't even want to let you vote on. It is not a question of whether that provision is right or wrong, it is simply a question of whether you will vote on it. I wonder, if we would have left it out and we would have brought it to the floor and this bill was rocking right along here on the floor and somebody offered an amendment to do just what the committee did because it had done it 2 years before, what would the response have been? Would it have been, you can't do the amendment and you can't move on with the bill? I assume that would be the case. I think we would have a chance of convincing Senators that is not right. I understand there are some other appropriations bills that are being held up. I am not aware of the specific reasons why, so I won't make the same kind of argument or evidence the same kind of concern as I have about the energy and water bill. The Senator from Massachusetts talked about getting our education programs funded. We are talking about two things. We are talking about an elementary and secondary education authorization bill which has gotten tied up in all kinds of problems from both sides of the aisle on amendments. When can we pass it? Can we get agreement? But over there in those new offices beneath the Senate, that are called ``SC''--those offices out there that are really nice to work in--there is a whole batch of House Members. I was in there. I made up a very large group of Senators working on the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill. I just have a hunch, from the little bit I have participated, that the White House does not intend to sign that bill no matter what we do. We have already put in that bill resources amounting to $106 billion, the largest appropriations for those functions in the history of the Republic. In fact, there is now in that bill, to be spent on education and other things, $12 billion more than the Budget Committee contemplated. While our numbers aren't binding, the Senator who occupies the Chair knows we reported out a budget resolution, and we assumed all these pieces would fit together. We assumed about $96 billion--$94 billion or $96 billion--for Labor, Health and Human Services. We have now gotten to the point where we have taken from others and we put $106 billion in. From what I gather in that committee, there is little we can do to convince the Democrats to be for that bill. My guess is if it rocks along as it is, it is going to be a partisan bill, and then no matter what we try to do, the President is going to say, ``I want more,'' and the President is going to say, ``It is not a good enough bill''; and he will find some reasons to say it doesn't fund this enough or that enough. We are moving toward a real shipwreck. The issue is going to be, at some point, why are we where we are when we come to that shipwreck point? I am going to start today, and I will watch everything I can, and I will come to the floor. But I am starting today taking just one bill and saying it would appear to me that on the energy and water bill, for some political reason, we can't take it up, and as time passes and moves on, whether or not we can get a bill and do all the things I have alluded to or not will be in the hands of the Democrats and the President, and then we will see who is to blame. I want to suggest that to the extent we are called ``a Senate that doesn't do anything,'' I believe we have to put another mantra on somebody else and we have to talk about the marvelous obstructionism that is going on by the other side of the aisle. It is being done with such dignity, such ease, with such platitudes about ``we are all working together,'' and ``we are trying to get there,'' and ``we are not trying to delay things.'' It really is that, unless they get their way on everything, there will be nothing moving in the Senate. Now I never saw it run quite like that, and I have never seen anyone ever win an argument on a claim that the other group wasn't doing anything. We will see how it comes out. In the meantime, we ought to try to work together one more time, and I beg the minority leader on this bill--it is $23 billion, not one of the biggest. I literally beg that he reconsider and let us vote and let us have our 2 days of debate. There are about five very serious problems in this bill that will be debated. But they will be debated and done with, just as the Missouri River issue will be debated and finished if they will let us do it. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I want to respond. The Senator from Nevada does so well that I was almost going to come over and sit beside him and say he is right. The fact is, he is not right. At this late stage--when he knows there is hardly a risk of our being able to get appropriations bills finished in a timely manner to keep the Government open--to tie appropriations bills up because a judge has not been appointed is not right. It might be that there is an argument about the judicial appointment, but is it right in the waning days of Congress, when we have about 25 working days left, for somebody to come along and say: Now it is my turn. I will not let any appropriations bills be approved by the Senate unless certain people are appointed to the judicial and judge positions in this country? I think it is not. Second, this is not a partisan issue. I don't know if it is a minority versus majority party issue, because I think in the final analysis there are some people on that side of the aisle who would like to vote on their issue and who may not agree with the distinguished minority leader as to their interests for their respective States. My last point is that we protect minority rights. But I wonder in this case, when it is obvious that Missouri River upper and lower groups are going to argue about this, if it is a question of protecting minority rights. It stands in the way of getting a vote on the issue. If it is important enough to the upper Missouri that they think it is very important but it is also similarly important to those on the lower Missouri, it would seem that the way to settle it is to let our colleagues understand the issue--that is what this Senate is all about--and let us vote. I don't quite understand why we can't vote. I wonder what is worrying people. The Senate expresses its views on many things. It resolves disputes such as this regularly. But, in this case until some future date, who knows when we will not be permitted to express the collective Senate will by voting on this issue--which in 30 minutes could be known by all sides and all parties, and a good decision could be made by the Senate. I thank the distinguished Senator for yielding.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. How much time?

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, section 314 of the Congressional Budget Act, as amended, requires the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to adjust the appropriate budgetary aggregates and the allocation for the Appropriations Committee to reflect amounts provided for an earned income credit (EIC) compliance initiative. I hereby submit revisions to the 2001 Senate Appropriations Committee allocations, pursuant to section 302 of the Congressional Budget Act, in the following amounts: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Budget Authority Outlays ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Current Allocation: General purpose $541,593,000,000 $554,214,000,000 discretionary.............. Highways.................... ................... 26,920,000,000 Mass transit................ ................... 4,639,000,000 Mandatory................... 327,787,000,000 310,215,000,000

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Could I make a statement?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President and fellow Senators, first, I thank the distinguished majority leader for the effort he has just made. This is a very good bill and very important to America. It contains all of the nuclear weapons funding, some very important money for the enhanced security apparatus for the National Laboratories that we have all been concerned about. It contains about $100 million to build some of our old, decrepit nuclear manufacturing facilities which are still being used for parts in other things and are held in abeyance in case they are needed. We have a report saying they are in desperate shape. We have a report that some of the facilities we are trying to maintain in the State of Nevada--that are still there from the underground testing--need to be fixed up because they will not be in a position of readiness. We have hundreds of water projects in this bill for Senators. And we wait to go to conference to even fill in some more. Oh, let me talk about the Missouri conflict. I am not aware of the substance of it, but when the distinguished Senator from Nevada says there are quite a few Senators who are concerned on your side, let me suggest that there are more than quite a few Senators who are worried on the other side--and they are here, and they are there--as to who is being impacted. I hope at some point they would let us fight that issue out. We would be willing to have a full debate on it, if the minority leader will let us. He is a wonderful and hard-working minority leader who tries to put things together. We all agree with that. But in this instance, these provisions have been in three previous bills that I have brought to the floor with my good friend, Senator Reid. They have been in there and signed by the President of the United States. To take a bill we worked on diligently, that contains all of these important issues I have just discussed, and say we can't get it done--I see the minority leader. I just said I have great respect for everything he does in the Senate. I just want to make sure that everybody understands, this is a very important bill. We ought to get it done and go to conference. We need some additional resources to get the job done on the water side and other aspects, but we will get a good bill completed. I hope we are not in a position where we will never get this bill. If the Senator insists that it go his way, I think we won't get a bill. I hope at some point he will let us vote, I say to the minority leader. I have told him before and I confirm, I put the language in three times that is in this bill. The President signed it. I would very much like to move ahead. I am not trying to put any untoward pressure on anyone, just to state the problem that I see in not moving ahead.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, I don't agree on whether we have a surplus or not, and I listened attentively to that discussion, too, but I actually think you are raising a very good point in telecommunications. I voted for the telecommunications reform, but one of the big strengths, we were deregulating the industry.

Mr. DOMENICI. I wonder if I might ask Senator Hollings a question. I was listening to the remarks about telecommunications, and I was very impressed. Am I to understand that we have a regulated, governmentally-owned company that wants to buy into a deregulated market which we have created?

Mr. DOMENICI. I have been here 28 years. It is almost that.

Mr. DOMENICI. On this one subject, I have great respect for you and consider you a friend. I hope you are my friend.

Mr. DOMENICI. It seems to me the question we have to ask is, Do we want a deregulated market that is working very, very well?

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I want to lay before the Senate two propositions. One, using a normal conventional budget approach, I want to share with the Senate the incredible amount of money we are taking from our taxpayers each year, and for the foreseeable future, that the current Government doesn't need. The question is, How much of that extra money we are getting from our taxpayers should we give back to them, and how much should we spend, and how much should we put on the debt? That is a very important threesome, with everybody knowing one of the most significant things to do is to get the debt down. Pervasive in everybody's plan, whether it is a 10-year plan or whatever, is don't give it all back; put some on the debt. Those who know they want to spend a portion of it have to answer the question, Do you not want to give some back to the taxpayer? And a further question: Don't you want to try to fix the Tax Code where it is unfair and where it unfairly taxes Americans? I think the answer would be, if you have a very large surplus, that essentially belongs to the taxpayer--not the Government; it just happens we are putting in more taxes than we need. The question should be, Do you want to fix the marriage tax penalty? I believe almost anyone looking at the American Tax Code and taking into account our culture, what we live by, what we say is powerful about America, has to say that we honor and respect married life along with families. We are not saying it has to be every family structure, but I think nobody should disagree, we surely want to stay there and move in that direction and cherish that concept. If we do, then you have to answer a question: If that is the case, why would we leave a tax on the books that makes it more difficult for married couples to survive economically? We tax the working couple and the married couple more than we would tax two individuals who are not married, earning the same income. That is the essence of the problem. Most married husbands and wives are not quite aware, if they run into two people with whom they have been friends a long time and they have similar jobs to theirs, and the two who have a family are struggling, their friends are paying significantly less in taxes because they are not married. That is what we are asked: Do we have enough resources accumulated in surpluses to do that? Second, there is a very onerous tax called the death tax. Anybody looking at the Tax Code would have to say that deserves looking at, because at a point in time it is no longer considered to be very wealthy; or on an estate that has a lot of assets, citizens can wake up and find out that the Federal Government is going to take 55 percent of the accumulated worth that might have come over 40 years of work. Say you have parents, a mother and father living together, struggling, both working, and they now own two filling stations--I use that as an example--and a very nice house. Today, filling stations are not the little filling stations with two pumps that were on Highway 66 when I grew up. If you were in the business, it was a pretty good enterprise, but you owned two of them because you worked at it. Both of them are in an airplane crash and die. They have five kids, three kids--whatever. What a shock when those two filling stations and the house are worth, just hypothetically, probably in today's market, $1.5 million to $2 million. They are going to get whacked by the Federal Government on everything over $650,000. That is not fair. The Democrats can deny this and talk about all the rich people who are not going to pay, but most Americans say it is not fair to take it away. Believe it; I may get there myself. Things are happening so vibrantly in the American economy, maybe this person is looking at this and says: I might be rich enough for them to take away 55 percent of what I had left and accumulated in my life. So what the Republicans have done is they have said: Let's, over time, get rid of that. Let's take the marriage tax penalty and really take the ax and chop a bunch of it away. There can be two reasons the President will veto these bills, and two reasons that most of the Democrats who have voted against them would use as their excuses. No. 1, they say it is too big a tax cut and therefore it uses up too much of the surplus. They even use the word ``risky.'' What is risky, in essence, to fix the marriage tax penalty? There is nothing risky about that. What is risky about getting rid of the death tax? That cannot be risky per se. So this is what happens. The answer is it is risky because it is giving too much back to the American taxpayer and we do not want to give that much because that is risky economics. I want to make one simple point today and that is for anybody who is listening, wondering: Is there money left for Medicare if we want to do something, small or large, about it? Is there money left if we decide to move in a direction of more defense money each year? Is there money if we were to decide on a little more assistance for education? I will tell everyone you should understand we do not participate, out of the National Treasury, in helping with education to any significant degree. So we have our debates about education but we are talking about 8 percent of the funding for our public schools that comes out of Federal tax coffers. Maybe at one point it was 9, but it is now tottering between 7.5 and 8.5 percent. Maybe we want to change that and make it 2 percent higher. I want to assure everyone, using conventional, acceptable budget analysis, if the President were to sign the Republican tax cuts which amount to $195 billion over 10 years--do you see this chart? You can hardly see the piece in red that the U.S. Government is giving back to the people. See the little sliver? All of this is money set aside for the Social Security trust fund or, believe it or not, a huge amount of money over the decade that the taxpayer has sent us that does not belong to Social Security. Therefore we say: Is that too much? We are calling this the love and death tax cuts. I don't know who nicknamed it that on the floor, but I borrowed it here. Only 5 percent of the non-Social Security surplus will be used over the decade. Five percent will be used for those two taxes. Frankly, I challenge anybody to say to the American people this is risky, giving back that much in tax cuts. All the rest of the money that we might need for anything--Social Security, Medicare--is all the rest of this surplus that is in white. Because that total is $3.15 trillion--trillion--of which we are giving back, under our cuts, $195 billion. You understand, the argument cannot be maintained that it is too big. The only argument that can be made is that we would like to use it for something else. I would like somebody to come down and we can talk about President Clinton's marriage tax penalty relief. It is so small, in his tax package; it is 10 percent of what he would do in his various tax relief targeted measures--10 percent. I believe the marriage tax penalty has to be solved, and it cannot be 10 percent of the tax package that you put before the Congress. It has to take care of the marriage tax penalty significantly, substantially, almost all. Then let's look at this. The Clinton-Gore budget that we got showed 10 years with new spending. Out of the $3.35 trillion, that plan would spend $1.35 trillion, leaving $1.99 trillion. I do not believe we are ever going to spend this much out of this surplus. But even if you gave them all that money, there is $1.99 trillion left, of which we are giving back $195 billion. I truly believe when we really get down to this, in order to make sense to the American people, the President and those who oppose this are going to have to say we really don't believe that a significant portion of this money that is accumulating, that the taxpayer has paid to us, that is in excess of our Government needs--you have to be saying we are not going to give much of it back. I believe that is a terrible mistake. Unless you could say--and nobody could say this--we are not going to touch any of it; we are going to put it all against the national debt. The next time I come to the floor I will tell you how much we are reducing the national debt already. It is the most significant reduction of the national debt, that will occur by the end of this year, for a 3-year period. And there is no comparable debt reduction period in American history; it is so big. So the only answer could be: Wait around for our plan and we will not give the taxpayers back that much money; or they will come to the floor and say they want to give it all back to the poor taxpayer, the taxpayer who is middle income and poor. Before we are finished, that debate is going to be talked about, too. What we have to do when we have a tax cut, we have to give it back to people who are paying taxes. One would not think that tax relief would mean giving it back, in some way, so the people paying taxes do not get any relief, and those who are not paying, or paying very little, they get some relief--even a check from the Federal Government. To say we think you are paying too much taxes, even if you are not paying any, so we give you back more money--that may be one of the propositions. We ought to debate that for the American people. You can then say the tax relief is going to the working poor. Frankly, you are not giving it to anybody who earns money enough to pay a tax. I thought this all was about tax reduction. I thought the overage was giving back Americans who paid it a little more, a little bit more than what is being talked about by the other side. I close by saying some people think it is a mystery about all this new revenue we have, this surplus, part of which goes to Social Security and part of it is left over. There is no mystery about it. Cumulatively, all the taxpayers who are paying taxes, the American people, the combined amount has increased. Some will come up and say, ``but the median income has not increased, this has not increased, and the tax on these people has not increased''--how does the tax take go up $3.35 trillion? Everybody out there combined is paying more taxes-- and is it really more? Yes, it is. On average, America existed and existed beautifully with 18 percent of the gross domestic product coming into the Government as taxes. We are now at 20.4 percent, 2.4 percent higher in terms of a tax take versus the gross domestic product of our Nation, a way to measure what we want to measure, and that is out of the total economy how much are we taking away and putting in our coffers. It is very high at 20.4 percent, and the economy is booming. The reason we have the surplus is because we are taking more from the taxpayers. I believe if it can be understood and if we can get around ads that are confusing the issue and attack ads that have nothing to do with the real problems and issues, if we can boil it down to: Mr. and Mrs. America, if the surplus is this much, would it seem fair to you that we should give back 25 percent of it to the American people by way of tax relief? I think most people would probably end up saying: I guess that seems fair; maybe that is even a little low. That would leave 75 percent of this surplus for the things everybody says we will take care of when we get a new Congress. I submit that we cannot forget the taxpayers as we think about new ways to spend this surplus. We ought to probably start with them, not stop with them at the end of the line. That is what we will be talking about, it seems to me, in the next few months, at least I hope so. Then we can look at whose tax cuts are fair. We will see the other side stack up dollars and say the Republicans give it back to the rich people. The marriage tax penalty relief in this bill, in terms of to whom it goes--if the President of the United States would listen to us instead of listening to the technical advice of the Treasury Department--it is eminently fair; it is loaded at the bottom end of the earnings and yet gives people in the middle- and high-income categories something. If you do not want that, what do you want? Stack up the dollar bills--rich versus the poor--all you want when it comes to the marriage tax penalty, which is a very big and fair tax cut and tax reform at the same time. Obviously, I am on a subject on which I could talk for a long time, and I continue to have a lot of interest buildup in me. Sooner or later, people listening cannot pay attention, and I believe we are getting close to that. I yield the floor and thank the Senate for giving me the privilege of speaking. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. The chairman is correct that this cooperatively operated institute would reduce duplication of effort as research institutions across the country find the need to develop bioinformatics systems to validate and disseminate results from plant genomic studies. Three model plant species have been identified by the National Science Foundation, and this institute would incorporate software platforms that will enable the integration of these model plant bioinformatic resources with crop plant bioinformatic resources.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank Senator Gramm for working on this with me and the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee and all those who helped put an agreement together, including Ted Stevens, Senator Stevens, and those who helped him. I really believe the discussion tonight was a very good one. Whether or not it means anything in the weeks and months to come, who knows? But, frankly, I am fully aware in that list there are some items that are really natural disasters, or disasters of one sort or another that we would compensate for. I just believe that at some point or another in the field of agriculture, and on the agricultural bill, at some point in time adding emergencies has to kind of end. I submit there would be more than this if it would be 2 weeks from now when the agricultural bill came up. That is my point. I really have a lot of faith and confidence in Thad Cochran and his minority ranking member. But I frankly believe sooner or later we ought to just face up and add to the budget and not continue to add emergencies when they are not emergencies. And certainly many of them were. I did not have a chance to look at it thoroughly.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Department of Agriculture and Related Agencies Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2001. The Senate-reported bill provides $75.1 billion in new budget authority (BA) and $39.4 billion in new outlays to fund most of the programs of the Department of Agriculture and other related agencies. All of the discretionary funding in this bill is nondefense spending. When outlays from prior-year appropriations and other adjustments are taken into account, the Senate-reported bill totals $64.2 billion in BA and $46.7 billion in outlays for FY 2001. Including mandatory savings, the subcommittee is at its 302(b) allocation in both BA and outlays. The Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee 302(b) allocation totals $64.4 billion in BA and $46.7 billion in outlays. Within this amount, $14.9 billion in BA and $15.0 billion in outlays is for nondefense discretionary spending. For discretionary spending in the bill, and counting (scoring) all the mandatory savings in the bill, the Senate-reported bill is $315 million in BA and $6 million in outlays below the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation. It is $75 million in BA below and $131 million in outlays above the 2000 level for discretionary spending, and $630 million in BA and $77 million in outlays below the President's request for these programs. I recognize the difficulty of bringing this bill to the floor at its 302(b) allocation. I appreciate the committee's support for a number of ongoing projects and programs important to my home State of New Mexico as it has worked to keep this bill within its budget allocation. I urge adoption of the bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a table displaying the Senate Budget Committee scoring of the bill be inserted in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Chairman of the Subcommittee.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. What was the total?

Mr. DOMENICI. Do you know each amount? It is your bill.

Mr. DOMENICI. Could the Senator state the dollar number when he reads it? You gave us a description. Can you tell us how much?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am reluctant to say this, but I have to sooner or later. How many items are we going to keep adding and calling them ``emergencies''? We have already passed a lot of emergencies for agriculture. I believe there are emergencies in this bill. I just wonder how many more we can come to the floor with. Everybody should know that when you come here and designate it as an emergency under the Budget Act resolution, it means it doesn't count against anything. If we want to, we can be down here the rest of this evening adding additional items and saying they are emergencies. I don't know enough about this amendment. It is difficult to understand, even though it has been read. But we do know one thing: It costs $900 million. Obviously, there are some who do not want anybody interfering with people's ability to come down here and add money. But I frankly think what we ought to do is test this one out. I don't believe it is the right amendment to adopt as an emergency. I think maybe we will discuss it. Some will decide what it looks like and understand it. I don't know. But I am going to make a point of order that this amendment contains an emergency designation in violation of section 205 of H. Con. Res. 290, the fiscal year 2001 budget resolution. I am perfectly willing to have a debate. We have the statute in front of us. If the Senator wants to make a case for the Senate that in fact he has a brand new emergency, it wasn't available to the committee. It wasn't available the last two times we had an agriculture supplemental--a number of which were emergencies for which we paid billions of dollars. I can recall a couple that were $7 billion. One was $6 billion. Then there are lesser ones now that are all supplementals for emergencies for agriculture. I have been told there is no limit so don't bother. There is no limit to those things that will pass as emergencies in the agricultural area. It is kind of difficult when it is an agricultural issue to get up here and say this because there are some in my State; there are some in other States. I am sure when we are through understanding this amendment, they will try to convince us that everybody should vote for it because it affects them. Frankly, even if it does affect them, it doesn't mean we have to determine that it doesn't count. It should count. I have a statute in front of me. I will yield the floor for a moment. Perhaps the Senator from Texas would like to read the statute.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I will try to be very brief. I want to make an observation. I honestly believe that we would be better off if instead of continually adding emergencies for agriculture or anything else, if we were to add more money straight up to the appropriations process. I believe we ought to just ask the chairman and ranking member at the end of this year to add more money. But we ought not to, by the week, add emergencies. I know there are a number of bills--who knows where we will come out on them--that are taking care of problems by adding emergency provisions. I believe the chairman understands, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee understands our problem. I believe Senator Byrd understands our problem. The solution is not to add an emergency by the week, have a bill and then everybody comes running and we say: There is no room for it. Well, call it an emergency and then there will be room because it doesn't count against anything. I want to make another observation about the agricultural community. I probably have the best support or at least as good support as any Senator here from the agricultural community of my State. But I am not impressed with the year-in-year-out emergency requests of the agricultural community of this country. It is approaching the ridiculous. They ask the Budget Committee, put more money in for agriculture. We were pretty skimpy on other things, but we were not very skimpy on agriculture. We provided, and the committee held on to this in the appropriations, a $5.5 billion reserve fund for market losses. As soon as they funded it, the reserve fund was released, and they had $5.5 billion. Market losses are emergencies in the broad sense for agriculture, I guess. I understand that to be the case. People are getting checks because the market didn't work. They didn't get money. We put in a new crop insurance allowance for which everybody thanked us. It was passed, but it was passed even bigger than we thought. And that was all right. That amounted to $3 billion. It is heralded as a fantastic success by people such as Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas. We finally did it. Now crop insurance is emergency money. It is a rational way to take care of annual losses by crop insurance, a sharing of the burden by a lot of people. When a crop fails, you have something to help them with. Well, that wasn't quite enough and we knew it. And we heard: Don't hold your breath; there will be more agricultural emergencies. I hope and pray the bill finishes tonight. I wish it would have finished a week ago. Sooner or later, we have to stop adding emergencies to a bill in the agricultural area. I am not sure that every one of these are agricultural subsidy enhancers. The bill has a lot of jurisdiction. It could be other things. The distinguished senior Senator from Mississippi manages the bill beautifully. He knows what he is doing. I noted also, when he sent these amendments to the desk, he said: I send them on behalf of the Senators that have asked for them. He did not say the chairman of the Agriculture Committee submits these and asks for all of them. I believe he really thought somebody would challenge some of them but he would offer them because he had worked on them to narrow down a request that was even bigger than this. I suggest that we try this on tonight, that we decide that if we need more money and we are going to put it in bills, that we ask the chairman to spend more money. I will not agree with my friend from Texas. It is not the appropriations bills that are going to break this budget. It is not the appropriations bills that are going to cause us to run out of the surplus that is being generated. You can count on that. The increases in appropriations will be wiped out by one entitlement bill. Whatever you expect to be added to appropriations the next decade will be wiped out by the first major entitlement bill that comes along. It will take from the same pot of surplus as appropriations. It is not appropriations that is breaking the bank. I compliment Senator Gramm for trying to keep us from going wild, but the truth is, it is not appropriations. We don't have any control over it, if in fact instead of asking for the money to be added to the budget and vote on that as grown-up Senators, we added money, and do you want it or not. You will have a shot at that when we add it because we are going to add money. The chairman is going to have to ask us for more money to get the appropriations bill, substantially more. But it will be a heads up add-on. It won't be coming along the way we are here. So when it is appropriate, after asking a parliamentary inquiry, I will make a point of order. What is pending before the Senate right now?

Mr. DOMENICI. Is it appropriate to make a point of order under the Budget Act regarding the emergency quality of that?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I make a point of order that the amendment contains an emergency designation in violation of section 205 of H. Con. Res 290, and the fiscal year 2001 budget resolution.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, section 213 of H. Con. Res. 290 (the FY2001 Budget Resolution) permits the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to make adjustments to the revenue aggregate, the reconciliation instructions, and the Senate pay-as-you-go scorecard, provided certain condition are met. Pursuant to section 213, I hereby submit the following revisions to H. Con. Res. 290: Current Revenue Aggregate: (sec. $1,503,200,000,000 101(1)(A))--FY 2001 Recommended Level of Federal Revenues.................... Adjustment: Additional reduction in -5,000,000,000 revenues............................... Revised Revenue Aggregate: FY 2001 1,498,000,000,000 Recommended Level of Federal Revenues.. Current Reconciliation Instruction: 11,600,000,000 in 2001, (sec. 104(2))--Reduce revenues by no 150,000,000,000 in 2001-05 more than.............................. Adjustment: Additional reduction in 5,000,000,000 in 2001 revenues............................... Revised Reconciliation Instruction: 16,600,000,000 in 2001 Reduce revenues by no more than........ 150,000,000,000 in 2001-05 Current Senate Pay-as-you-go Scorecard: 26,509,000,000 FY 2001 beginning balance.............. Adjustment: Additional balance added to 5,000,000,000 scorecard.............................. Revised Senate Pay-as-you-go Scorecard: 31,500,000,000 FY 2001 beginning balance..............