Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. We are going to vote at 8:01. Before we proceed, let me ask unanimous consent, so everybody will know where we are going. This has been cleared with the two leaders, and Senator Lautenberg obviously, and whoever else needs to be conferred with. I ask unanimous consent that the next four votes occur in a stacked sequence, with 2 minutes between each vote for an explanation, 1 minute on each side, that the other votes in the voting sequence be limited to 10 minutes each. I further ask that when the Senate resumes the concurrent resolution at 9 a.m. on Thursday there be 10 hours remaining for consideration. However, for the information of all Senators, these votes will be the last votes of the evening. But any Senator who wishes to remain, we plan to be here open for business all night, if it is necessary. If Senators want to come and offer amendments, we will be here. If they will come and offer them tonight, they will be stacked for an orderly hour tomorrow. I am hopeful that some Senators--a few--will avail themselves of that time. But I am certain that it will not be 4 o'clock in the morning with Senators still around offering amendments. That is why we proposed the unanimous consent as we have.

Mr. DOMENICI. Yes.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wonder if I might ask unanimous consent that we set aside this amendment temporarily while an NIH amendment is offered by Senator Specter.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask that we vote at 8:01.

Mr. DOMENICI. I haven't spoken on either amendment.

Mr. DOMENICI. It is four votes.

Mr. DOMENICI. We have a vote at 8 o'clock. It is ordered.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we are going to go on to the next amendment, which I understand is an amendment regarding veterans. But I just want to take 3 or 4 minutes and talk about the President's budget. I note my good friend, Senator Lautenberg, was talking about Senators should not use words like ``embezzlement'' and that kind of thing to describe other people's motives. I do not think he should use the word ``gimmick'' either. He called this proposal a gimmick. It is no gimmick at all. In the committee, we just adopted the President's budget by a sense of the Senate. In this one, they actually prepared a budget that looks like our kind of budget; that is, the President's budget. It took a lot of time. We used the Congressional Budget Office, and it is right. If you want the President's budget, in a broad sense, you vote aye on the Bond amendment. Frankly, it is difficult for me to see those who have been praising the President with reference to two very, very important things--Social Security and Medicare--vote against this budget, because I do believe that is a recognition that on neither count does the President's budget do what it says. Because I believe if it was a good Social Security proposal and a good Medicare proposal, those who are advocates for those two programs on the other side would be voting for it even if the rest of it was not right up to snuff because those are the big issues. The truth of the matter is, 100 Senators already said, in an early vote, on Senator Abraham's amendment--100 Senators--the President's approach to saving the Social Security trust fund is wrong. Now, they might want to turn around and vote for the budget anyway, but they already said, ``We don't want to spend $158 billion of the Social Security's money on programs.'' That was the vote. Senator Bond says, ``Do you like the President's budget enough to vote for it?'' That is one of the things you would be voting for. I guarantee you, if that budget of the President's really fixed Medicare, there would be no one on the other side who would be voting against this, because they would be ashamed and embarrassed to find somebody to ask them, ``How come you voted against this wonderful fix, reform, saving of the Medicare system by the President?'' It is because it does not do that. That is why. So I do not think we need a lot of time trying to find excuses. It is a pure, simple vote, up or down. Do you want the President's budget, with all its claims for Social Security and Medicare, or do you not? I do not think there would be very many Senators who say they do. And that ought to take care of the issue once and for all as to this President running around saying what he does and what we don't do. Now, he can talk about what we don't do, but he surely can't talk about what he does. I guess he can, but he would have to acknowledge, if he wants to be fair, that nobody in the Senate agrees with him. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 153 (Purpose: To increase funding in FY 2000 for veterans' health care by taking an across-the-board cut in all discretionary programs, except veterans and defense)

Mr. DOMENICI. I have no objection to the resolution. I hope that we can find the resources that are alluded to. I do not think there should be any false hope. It will be very difficult, unless they somehow or other decide to do something completely different from this budget. I regret that we had to establish priorities. But I have great empathy. Since we live in this very tumultuous world, we do want our foreign policy to be funded as well as possible. We will work together and, hopefully, you will succeed. Thank you very much.

Mr. DOMENICI. Two each, that makes 4. Go ahead. Amendment No. 152 (Purpose: To express the Sense of the Senate on providing adequate foreign affairs funding.)

Mr. DOMENICI. We have agreed that we are going to vote at 8 o'clock. We have another amendment to take up. I hope you will not take too long. Do you think you can do it in 2 minutes?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, does the distinguished Senator from Oregon desire to ask the Senate something?

Mr. DOMENICI. I think what I ought to do is let that sink in around here first before we see if anyone would really complain to a shortened timeframe. I thank Senator Wyden for yielding to me.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I know everyone is wondering when we are going to vote. I ask unanimous consent we will start rollcall votes at 8 o'clock and we will have at that time stacked--you can write this up for me in more eloquent language if it needs it--Ashcroft, Conrad, Bond, and I assume it is Wellstone-Johnson or Johnson-Wellstone, and if we have time we will call Senator Specter down before that and have that one. Those will be at least the four that will be stacked and we will see what happens after that.

Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DOMENICI. We have 14 minutes under the agreement on first-degree amendments. How much time would the Senator like? The Senator can have 14 minutes. There is still time on the bill.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time do we have?

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield to Senator Bond who has been patiently waiting to give us the President's budget so we can vote on it. Amendment No. 151 (Purpose: To propose the President's budget)

Mr. DOMENICI. Before I yield back any time I have on the amendment, I want to say I hope I didn't say anything that prompted the Senator to worry about whether I was levying a personal attack on the Senator. I don't believe I was. If I did, I apologize. Let me ask unanimous consent--and this has been cleared with Senator Lautenberg--that the time on all amendments from this point on be reduced to 1 hour equally divided and the time on second-degree amendments be reduced to half an hour equally divided.

Mr. DOMENICI. And I for you.

Mr. DOMENICI. Let me assure Senators here on the floor, I do not intend to use 35 minutes. I am fearful if I say anything, we will have to hear the same song and dance over again from the other side. We have heard it about 10 times today, but that is all right. First of all, we all know what this is about. Last year the President of the United States said to the Congress, Democrat and Republican, we have taken Medicare out of politics. Let us move arm in arm and let us fix Medicare. Everybody said great. The President was active in this regard, and he said, let us have this commission look at it. We have taken it out of politics, because we want to fix it. The truth of the matter is, the President decided to make Medicare a political issue in his budget this year. He didn't wait around for the commission. He made it a political issue in his budget. Those who are now arguing on the floor about the budget we produced in committee are continuing the political fight rather than a factual fight. I want to say a couple of things. There is a lot to get excited about here, but I promise myself I will not do that, other than I will say to my good friend, you should never, never have put the Social Security lockbox money in the same lockbox with yours. If you would like to have a second lockbox and call it yours, you are welcome to do it. But it is a fraud to put it in the same lockbox with the Social Security trust fund. It is nothing similar to it. It has no relationship to it, and all it does is say, ``We're going to reduce the debt more than the Republicans want to, and we're hoping that by reducing that debt, there will be money available for Medicare.'' That is it plain and simple. In case anybody is interested, on this chart, this red line is the President's debt reduction for which he is taking credit and have Nobel laureates saying it is great. The committee bill before you is the blue line which reduces the debt $400 billion more than the President, which, incidentally, is more than the distinguished Senator is going to take out of the tax cut to make a case--not a case for Medicare--a case against giving back to the American people any of their hard-earned money. This amendment, which will fall because it is not germane, is an antitax amendment. Let me tell you, I am tired of Democrats getting up and saying, ``We don't want to vote for tax relief because Republicans are talking about an across-the-board tax cut.'' I am tempted to offer an amendment to strike the 10-percent tax cut from this tax cut and put in marriage penalty and any other family-related tax cuts. Take it out. Let's see if they are for it then. What will the argument be? The argument can't be 10 percent because it is not even mentioned in this resolution. What they can get up and say is, ``We have a better idea for tax cuts than the Republicans.'' And we say, ``Wonderful, if you do, that's fine.'' But it is not a wonderful idea to cut the tax cut almost in half and claim you are for tax cuts and you did something for Medicare when, as a matter of fact, all we need to do for Medicare is to get the Democrats and the President--and I will not include every Democrat because there are some who already know what they want to do--but all we need to do is get them to tell us what we ought to do for Medicare. This idea that my friend, Senator Kennedy, got up and said, ``We are in the red $860 billion over,'' I don't know how many years, Mr. President, that is saying if the program stays just like it is and there is no reform, that is what we would need to keep it going like it is. Let me assure you that not even the distinguished Senator who is proposing this so-called Medicare amendment thinks we should leave the Medicare program like it is. In fact, there is a quote--we are going to find it in a minute--where the distinguished Senator said Medicare does not have a chance to survive unless we reform it. That is what he was saying last year. Reforming it means you save money by making the program more efficient, less apt to have fraud injected into the program and, yes, being realistic. There are those who say this commission that worked on this didn't come up with a good product and they used that one idea. Thirty years from now, the age for receiving Medicare will go up piecemeal, and in 30 years, it will be up 2 years. Maybe they can fix that if they are serious. But, Mr. President, that reform package saved enough money to pay a prescription benefit. They did not need to take away this tax cut to do it. They had $61 billion left over from reform, and they said, ``Let's use it for prescription drugs.'' Any talk on the floor that the Conrad amendment is going to fix Medicare like it has never been fixed before is pure, absolute demagoguery and speculation at the highest. Nobody has any idea what that is going to do for Medicare, if it is even available for Medicare. It might not even be there. It can be spent for anything else. I submit, talking about what the American people want most and coming down here and telling us that 20 times does not mean that that is what they are getting in that amendment by my good friend, Senator Conrad, because it is not doing what he says the American people want. If you look at it, it does not accomplish what he continually claims the American people want. Frankly, I believe we ought to get serious and we ought to take the politics out of this, but if you do not want to, we will take this one as far as we can because we understand what is right, what is fair, and what is fair to future generations, not just our senior citizens. From my standpoint, the truth of the matter is, this is plain and simple: an effort to increase taxes that would otherwise be reduced by $320 billion over 10 years. What is really incredible about it is that it does not provide $1 for Medicare. Not one. It reduces the debt of the United States temporarily until it is spent by someone with no real way of saying it is to go to Medicare because there is no way to do that. It is no lockbox; it is a wish box. In fact, you should take it out of my lockbox and make your own wish box out of it, and maybe mine should be green and yours should be--I don't know what color--surely a shade of yellow, something slightly brown, something like that. In any event, all this amendment purports to do is to reduce the debt held by the public because the Senator could not even put it into the Medicare fund, as the President did, in his phony budget because if he did that, he would have to raise the gross debt of the United States and would be vulnerable here on the floor for having done that, so it doesn't even do that. I understand my friend, Senator Conrad, is anxious to get up and talk again. He has made so many arguments today, I don't know if he needs any more, but the Senate accommodates him because that is the way the budget process works. Let me conclude. The budget before us fully funds Medicare assuming no reform. Reform will save a lot of money, and there will be money around from these numbers in this budget which is fully funded. We do not cut the $20 billion that the President does, and regardless of what they say on that side, within the 10-year period, there could be up to $100 billion. And if we get on with reform, that $100 billion will be available. If we wait around forever with no proposal, then who knows. I believe we are going to get serious. The President is going to send us a package. I only hope he does not send us one that is irresponsible because of this debate. I don't think he will. He understands the issue. We can get on to doing Medicare right, not act like this amendment fixes it. Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOMENICI. How much time do we have on the amendment?

Mr. DOMENICI. Correct.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me correct the Senator. He didn't even give them an IOU. He just reduced the debt.