Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, this is another entitlement, $11.2 billion added to the CHIPS program. In many States they have not even used the money yet for this program. I believe there are numerous States that have not been able to cover children with it because it is very difficult to locate them and put them under the program. I do not believe we ought to be adopting this at this time. We do not need it. We have plenty of money in the CHIP program. We are committed to continue the funding of the CHIP program. With that, I yield back any time I have and move to table the Kennedy amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate turn to the House companion resolution, H. Con. Res. 290.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, first, I say to Senators, we have been very helpful. But we only have 1 minute on the amendments--not 2, not 3, not 1 and a half. I ask the Chair to enforce the rule. Everybody is playing by the game. There should be no exceptions. From our standpoint, we do not want a rollcall vote on this but just a voice vote. I oppose it. We do not need it. It is another effort trying to raise the expenditure level, reducing the money available for the taxpayers. I think we ought to do what we have done to the other ones and vote it down.

Mr. DOMENICI. The Senator was asking the question, since the Senator from New Jersey does not object to it, could we accept it?

Mr. DOMENICI. You say they have a right. They do not want to exercise that right. They want to do it this way. Frankly, we can stop and the leaders can decide where we go next. But these sense-of-the-Senate amendments that we are adopting here should not really hold up the budget because they do not affect the budget. They are sense of the Senates that have to do with how we feel about things and what we want to make people think about the Senate with reference to the subject matter of the sense-of-the-Senate resolutions. But you have every right, and you exercise it with dignity, although for many of us it is a pretty tough pill. Even your dignity makes it a tough pill.

Mr. DOMENICI. Yes.

Mr. DOMENICI. There are a lot of people I am certain I should thank, but I think they all know how much I appreciate their efforts--the majority staff, the minority staff--and hard work and long hours on a difficult product with very difficult procedures. I hope before too long we will find a way to have these procedures streamlined so it is not so difficult and it is easier to understand and so we are not burdened by scores upon scores of sense-of-the-Senate resolutions when we are talking about numbers in a basic budget. I thank by name Senator Lautenberg, who will not be here when we do a budget resolution in the future because he will be leaving the Senate. I thank him again for the way he conducts himself and the way he asks his staff to conduct themselves in relationship to the majority and in relationship to his duties. I believe this was a pretty rare achievement, a very hard budget, with very different philosophical and ideological points of view. I think we accomplished on our side what we wanted to do. It does not take a long explanation. We did protect Social Security. We did strengthen Medicare by putting $40 billion in a reserve fund for Medicare, including prescription drugs. We reduced the national debt substantially. We provided some tax fairness for the American people. For those who are very worried about putting enough money toward the national debt, this will be the largest installment against the national debt in the history of the Republic; $177 billion will go to the debt. Most of that is by not using the Social Security trust fund. I am very grateful it has finally come to pass that the ideal which I conceived immediately after the President suggested 62 percent of Social Security should be saved, and I said why not 100 percent, looks as if it is going to come to pass. We are locking up 100 percent of the Social Security trust fund. That means there will not be big swings in expenditures in our Government, there will not be huge swings in tax reform, because we are setting aside for the senior citizens what is theirs and not spending a nickel of it. Overall, this is a good budget for this year. We are in a Presidential election, and somebody next year, a new President, will tell us what changes they want. If it is a President of the Republican Party and his name is Bush, he will recommend a brand-new budget that will be very different, in which case the tax reform we seek and the tax relief we seek will be part of his budget. He did not seek any tax relief until 1 full year from now, so that it would be time for him to be in office and work on things. Having said that, let me close saying to all the Senators who worked with Senator Lautenberg, Senator Reid of Nevada, myself, and our respective staffs to get on that long list of agreed-upon amendments, some Members have hard feelings tonight because they agreed and worked with us; having done that, Members did not get an opportunity to offer their amendments. I don't think we had any other way to do it tonight. We would not have finished this budget resolution for a very long time had the majority leader not suggested the regular order following the objection of Senator Byrd to our agreed-upon list. My last praise goes to Senator Reid, the minority whip, for spending a lot of time on the floor on every bill. He was tremendously helpful and instrumental in getting the Senate where we are. Obviously, on my side, I thank the majority leader for helping get the budget resolution completed and all the others who helped. A hearty thanks from this Senator. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, does the minority leader wish to speak?

Mr. DOMENICI. That is correct. The funding levels assumed for agriculture assistance in this resolution do not foreclose the possibility that assistance could be provided for that purpose.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order that the following amendments be made the pending business, that they be agreed to en bloc, and that the motion to table and motion to reconsider be agreed to en bloc, and that any statements be printed in the Record. Now, let me list what is in this, so Senator Byrd and others will know. First, what you have to know is these are all sense-of-the-Senate amendments. We have worked them out so they are acceptable in the manner I have just described. We will not have to vote on them. They will go to conference along with the other sense- of-the-Senate amendments that we had. I am going to start by just using the Senators' names.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we only have one vote remaining. It is on final passage. But we have about 50 sense of the Senates that we have agreed on, on both sides. We will just offer those rather quickly here and then go to final passage. But we are being asked, and appropriately so, by a Senator, that we read off the Senators and the subject matter. We did not have that all prepared in that manner, but we are working on it now. It should not take us very long. We will do our very best. Both sides are working on it, not just one. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that votes relative to the following amendments be scheduled to occur at the expiration of time on the budget resolution, they occur in the sequence listed, with no second-degree amendments in order, and there be 2 minutes prior to each vote for explanation, and all votes after the first vote in the sequence be limited to 10 minutes. The amendments are as follows: the Stevens amendment, No. 2931; the Robb amendment, No. 2965 and, if not tabled, then votes in relation to the Reed of Rhode Island amendment, No. 3013; and the Coverdell amendment, No. 3010.

Mr. DOMENICI. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. DOMENICI. Before I relinquish the floor, might I ask what this amendment is?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we have heard an interesting political discussion today. The idea we should be debating the Bush tax cut on the Senate floor is totally political. It brought a political answer. So we are now engaged in a Presidential election instead of a budget. The truth of the matter is, we do not have before us a Bush budget. What we have before us is the budget of the President of the United States. For those on the Democrat side who are talking about Bush's budget, let me say they have never offered the President's budget. Nobody has dared offer it because it is so bad that even they know they would not get the votes for it. That is not the kind of budget we are going to get next year, if George Bush is President. He is going to give us a budget that calls for less Government but priorities in Government. There is going to be sufficient money left over in his budget to have a tax cut, tax relief for the American taxpayer, and take care of the Social Security trust fund. There is no doubt in my mind he will present that kind of budget. We can argue all we want today about what fits in this year's budget. We are operating against the competition of a budget from the President. We are not working with a President who wants to have tax relief. As a matter of fact, this President's budget sets the way to increase taxes in the first year, not decrease them, and to increase them over the first 5 years, not decrease them. As a matter of fact, it is a tax increase budget. We have to compete with that and try to get our business done, having to work with him in the appropriations process. Now we have somebody coming down here telling us Bush's budget does not fit in ``your'' budget. Of course, it doesn't fit in our budget because we have not yet seen what President-elect Bush would submit to us to do with all these duplicative programs. We heard there are 342 programs in economic development. He is not going to leave those around. He is going to provide a completely different tone, a different kind of budget with high priorities in education and the issues he has described. I want to close by saying it is somewhat of a lark to come down here and talk about how big the deficit got following Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan had to take over an America whose military had gone right down the drain, an America that had an economy that was dead weak. He had to sit there and let the inflation come out of that and then, yes, build back defense and provide some tax relief for the American people. That was a great economy. He took over when it was a basket case. If we want to debate things past, I will conclude by saying: Does anybody believe this robust economy of America was made robust because Bill Clinton and the Democrats increased taxes $293 billion? Does anybody really believe that? I am certain a majority of American economists would say it was coming back strong, we plunked this on top of it, and it didn't break the economy; it just let it go ahead. It probably would be stronger if we had not adopted the $293 billion. That is my guess. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. I don't want my remarks to interrupt his statement. I ask unanimous consent a vote in relation to the pending McCain amendment, No. 2988, occur in the stacked sequence under the same terms as outlined in the previous consent agreement.

Mr. DOMENICI. In light of this agreement, there will now be three recorded votes at 2 o'clock.

Mr. DOMENICI. How much time remains on the amendment as modified?

Mr. DOMENICI. So Senators would like a vote on the Durbin amendment? Is that what all this is about? Is that it?

Mr. DOMENICI. Let's just do it.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have two observations. I wish Senator Byrd were on the floor. He spoke about the 60-vote point of order in terms of history, and what great Americans have said about supermajority being applicable in the year we are in, and the 60- vote point of order on emergencies. We have passed very large emergency appropriations for agriculture. In fact, I think it might have been as much as $8 billion. Nobody raised a point of order. There was no point of order voted upon. We had hurricane assistance; we had Y2K emergency assistance, all of which fell within the purview of meeting 60 votes. Nobody raised it. Had they raised it, it would have gotten 60 votes. I don't believe what is being predicted will happen. I believe when there are real emergencies, they will get adopted on the floor of the Senate and nobody will even raise that 60 votes. If they do, they will get 60 votes. My last observation is we have lots of 60 vote points of order in the Budget Act, some of which the distinguished Senator from West Virginia has supported in the past. We entered into a 5-year agreement with the President, bipartisan, both Houses, with a firewall on defense for the first 3 of the 5 years. We lived with it in exactly the way that has served the distinguished Senator tonight. But it succeeded. The cap on defense was high enough for defense, and none of the defense was used for domestic for the first 3 years of the agreement to balance the budget. I think it will work again, especially with the modifications we have added tonight. I yield whatever time I had remaining.

Mr. DOMENICI. Let me suggest that this modification is supported by Senator Stevens, Senator Domenici, Senator Gramm, and Senator Warner, and I understand on the Democrat side Senator Inouye has told Senator Stevens he supports it. We are obviously trying tonight to complete our work and get a budget resolution that we can take to conference with the House of which we are proud. Frankly, we came out of committee with $595.6 billion available in program authority for defense and domestic accounts. In addition, we said in that budget resolution that we were reinstating what we had used for 3 years: The first 3 years of the balanced budget agreement between the President and the Congress--to wit, a firewall--so the defense money couldn't be used for domestic spending or vice versa. In this amendment, we retain that, but we have added $4 billion in program authority to defense. There will be no mingling of that money with domestic and no mingling of domestic money with defense. That firewall stays in this modification offered by Senator Stevens on behalf of himself and other cosponsors. In addition, the budget resolution had a 60-vote point of order for emergencies. With this amendment, we have returned to the law as it was before this budget resolution; that is, last year we had in the budget resolution that 60-vote point of order which would apply to domestic spending. That is retained, not modified, and it is not expanded to include defense. In addition, the House of Representatives adopted in the budget resolution a limitation on advanced appropriations, a technicality often used but not always used by Presidents and Congress as they complete their appropriations work. It is a legitimate tool of appropriating. The House, in their resolution, has $23 billion as the maximum amount allowed in program authority to be advanced. Then there is a point of order, if you do more. We are agreeing here to do what the House did. Senator Stevens has negotiated with us, and we are going to the House level on that number. That means for those who are concerned, we are keeping some very rigid discipline, but we are going to the House number, and the number that was very much discussed in the Budget Committee, we are back to that number. Senator Gramm of Texas has agreed with their compromise, and he was one who wanted to lower the number. We are beginning to develop a package that looks to have consensus on our side. I wasn't sure any Democrats were going to vote for our budget resolution. I hope they do with these modifications. We have Senator Inouye agreeing with these modifications. It doesn't mean he is committed to the budget resolution. There are no nondefense delayed obligations except for those listed in the budget and those that are ordinary and historic. Senator Stevens made two commitments to us. Frankly, I have committed to him. We worked together. He is going to make every effort to stay within the limitations in this budget. That means there is $289 billion in budget authority, and $327.6 billion in outlays for the nondefense part of this budget. Depending on how you figure it, it is anywhere from a 3.35-percent increase--looking at it another way, it may be as much as 6, or 6\1/2\, depending upon a couple of things such as a $4.3 billion budget authority that is going to be made available when we pass a certain bill that was required by the Budget Act of 1997. The distinguished chairman is committing to do everything in his power to live within the budget resolution. That is all anybody ever asked. He has agreed not to violate the $23 billion in advanced funding. There would be no reason to put it in the budget resolution if we weren't going to do it. I express my extreme gratitude to the distinguished Appropriations Committee chairman for working with me, working with Senator Gramm, and working with Senator Lott and others on our side, and the distinguished Senator Warner who carved out this budget enforcement compromise. I think it is an excellent one. I think we ought to adopt it. From what I can understand, all segments of the Republican Party that had diverse views on this budget resolution ought to be in concurrence on this. I believe it does precisely what most of us would like. I remind those who are thinking about domestic spending that we have increased the advanced appropriations amounts from $13 billion to $23 billion. That is a pretty good one that will allow flexibility of management, which is what the appropriators are looking for. But it is not too high because the House has accepted it also as something they can live with based on this year's levels and the levels of last year. I think overall it is a good compromise. It is now the pending business, as Senator Stevens indicated in his submission to the desk as a modification of his original amendment. We still have some additional time. The distinguished Senator from Texas, who is a valued Member of the Senate and of the Budget Committee, with whom I worked very hard to carve the budget resolution, is here. I yield 7 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Texas.