Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me say to the Senators who are not here but are listening to what is going to be going on on the floor, that in about 6 or 7 minutes, I hope not much longer than that, we are going to start voting. There is already a consent agreement to vote on everything. All votes are stacked this afternoon. That means we will have about five or six votes. After the first one, they will be 10 minutes, with both sides having 2 minutes to explain each proposal, and on each instruction 1 minute on the side. So we ought to be starting by 4:15, and perhaps in an hour we will be finished.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, that means we have one proposal left, as I understand it. I yield the floor. Motion To Instruct Conferees

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, does the Senator yield back his time?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the Senate voted by a vote of 57 to 40 to approve this amendment when we had the budget resolution. We are going to go to conference and try to work it out. I am not asking anyone to vote against it. In terms of the chairman's position, vote however you wish. I don't think there is a total Republican position because 15 Republicans voted for it last time. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I move to table the motion, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Vote On Dodd Motion To Instruct

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I move to table the Kennedy motion, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the Senate rejected an amendment on this by a vote of 56-43 just a few days ago. It is the identical issue. Senator Kennedy would have us believe that the President's approach to putting 15 percent of the surplus into IOUs in the Medicare trust fund will help Medicare become solvent. He also suggests, Mr. President, that leading economists support the President's IOU; that is, we will pay for it later. They support that. They support it because we are not spending the money. But we already save $400 billion more than the President and we would apply it to the national debt, which is what the economists thought was good. Our budget is better than this in that regard and it does not put IOUs into a fund, which in this case is a postdated check that somebody will pay for later on--our kids and grandkids. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, there are now 2 minutes evenly divided on the Kennedy motion to instruct.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me just finish quickly. The Domenici instruction takes into consideration the Breaux-Thomas bipartisan plan which includes prescription drugs as part of the reform. And this instruction includes that we adopt the Snowe-Wyden provision which allows budget surpluses not currently allocated to the Social Security trust fund, because it is not needed there for taxes, that those surpluses may be used for major Medicare reform. I hope we will adopt this motion. It will be followed by a Kennedy motion that I will speak to later. I yield back any time I might have.

Mr. DOMENICI. We have three remaining votes. There is 1 minute in between each one. Then we are finished. I say while many of the Senators are here, I am sorry that we have to vote over again on the same issues we voted on 2 weeks ago, but essentially most of the motions are revoting on what we already voted on. Had we appointed conferees the very night we did this budget resolution, there would not have been any time to have motions to instruct the conferees. So I am trying to hurry through, but I cannot do any better. Vote On Domenici Motion To Instruct What is up now is the Domenici motion to instruct. It reaffirms the Senate position on the Roth-Breaux amendment calling for Medicare reform. That really extends solvency.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, if you would get everyone's attention, I will tell everybody where we are going.

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DOMENICI. Senators should be on notice we will start this vote in 2 minutes. This motion to instruct says to the conferees, adopt the language regarding the Social Security trust fund that is in the budget resolution which passed the Senate with every Republican and one Democrat supporting it. Since it is consistent with the budget resolution, and I still have to go to conference with the House under all circumstances, I recommend on our side, at least, that everybody vote for it. I yield back any time remaining.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have 1 minute and the Senator from New Jersey has 1 minute. Have the yeas and nays been requested?

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

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, for all Senators who might be listening, the first motion to instruct is Senator Lautenberg's on Social Security. This is essentially consistent with the budget resolution that we voted for on our side of the aisle. I ask every Senator to vote for it. 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. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI. There is 1 minute on each side to discuss the motion. The second vote will be on the Domenici motion. We will explain that when the time comes. Then we will vote on the Kennedy Medicare tax breaks motion. Then we will vote on the motion of Senator Dodd.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, perhaps we could engage in a parliamentary discussion regarding order. If I am correct, the first vote would be on the Lautenberg Social Security motion.

Mr. DOMENICI. Thank you very much. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent that I be vested back with any time that I had remaining. I thought we would finish. That is why I yielded.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, first, I greatly appreciate the kind remarks of my good friend, and I say to him that on some of the issues he cares about, such as agriculture and the problems of the family farm, he has as much tenacity as anybody around here. I compliment him for that. We are going to accept his motion because it says we ought to try to do better in conference than we did here, and everybody understands that we will do that. If the Senate accepts this, we will try to do that. However, in defense of the budget resolution, I will make two big points that are very important. The budget resolution increased the mandatory spending, the spending for agriculture, $6 billion over what it would have been but for the change we have made--$2 billion in each year, more or less, in this budget resolution. At first we decided we would do $4 billion at the behest of some Senators from the middle of the heartland of the agriculture country. They asked for more. We put $2 billion more in. That has been done. Why do I say that? Because the President of the United States, who has his agriculture Secretary traveling all over the United States in agriculture country talking about the needs of the family farm and the needs of the farmers, did not put one penny of increase for agriculture in their budget. I don't know whether they expected that we would come along because we have Senators who really pushed this and we would put the money in. But I believe for a President of the United States in the midst of an agriculture disaster, more or less, to leave it up to Senators to have to put more money in for agriculture--but you can count on it. They won't be remiss in going out there and talking to the farmer about what they did. They should put up their hand, like this, and say they did zero. At least we put $6 billion new money in for which the distinguished Senator has thanked the Budget Committee when we put it in. And so did his colleague from his State. He thanked the committee. You put in $6 billion. Nobody did at the White House. There was nothing. So it isn't as if we are not concerned and as if we did nothing. As a matter of fact, we have been spending a very healthy amount of money for agriculture. And we are going through some cyclical problems in agriculture, with parts of the worldwide economy not in very good shape. And they used to buy a lot of our agricultural products. We know that. We are getting better at producing more with less acreage, and there seems to be no limit to that. We get better all the time. In other words, the farmer is producing prolifically in the United States, be it the family farmer or the corporate farm. We are producing large amounts. Having said that, I don't know ultimately how we resolve this issue, but for now we are going to conference with this proposal saying we ought to do more, if we can. And, frankly, I appreciate the Senator bringing it to all our attention. It will be accepted now, if he doesn't mind. I yield any time I have.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Parliamentary inquiry. What is before the Senate?