Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I will yield.

Mr. DORGAN. I did yield, and he made his point. Reclaiming my time, my understanding was it was described as the House tax bill. If you have made a couple of grammatical changes to that, so be it. Let me make the case, with regard to the House tax bill and, similarly, the Senate bill, Kevin Phillips, a Republican columnist, said the following: We can fairly well call the House legislation the most outrageous tax package in the last 50 years. It is worse than the 1981 excesses. You have to go back to 1948.

Mr. DORGAN. The point I am making is this: This is not a Democrat talking. This is a Republican saying this. We all know what is in this legislation. This legislation is a piece of legislation that does what is always done by the same suspects that bring this to the floor. They are always shading, not just shading, they are galloping towards the highest end of the income ladder to provide very significant cuts. The folks on the lowest rung of the ladder, they pay payroll taxes and they are told they don't count. So the lowest 20 percent are going to get a $22 tax break; the top 1 percent, $23,300. So the question is, when you stand up and say that is unfair, what is unfair? That we are telling people what is in your bill? Is that unfair? Do you want to change the bill? Do you deny this? Do you want to change the bill? Offer an amendment, I will support the amendment to change the bill, but don't say it is unfair when we tell people what the tax cut is going to be--$22 for the lowest 20 percent of the American people, and the $23,300 for the top 1 percent--because you have decided that people who pay payroll taxes don't count as taxpayers and you don't intend to give them any help. It is the folks at the upper end of the income ladder who are going to get huge tax breaks from the income tax system.

Mr. DORGAN. Well, that is the case. I submit this: In a quiet moment, in a secluded corner, in a private conversation, most Members of the Senate who are supporting this three- quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar tax cut would admit that a better approach for this country and its future and certainly its children would be to use anticipated surpluses, first, to begin to pay down the Federal debt. If during tough times you run up the debt from $1 trillion to $5.7 trillion and then in good times you say, but we can't pay down the debt, there is something fundamentally flawed about that strategy. I think if you take all the politics and fuzz out of this and get in a quiet corner, those who are really conservative and have conservative values about these issues as embodied in the fiscal plan we passed in 1993, I think they would admit that we ought to take some of this surplus and reduce Federal indebtedness. I think they would also admit there is not an intention to kick 100,000 kids off of Head Start or to decimate the education program. Yet that is where we are headed, on auto pilot, because this surplus is garnered by those who want to package it up in a tax cut that predominantly benefits the upper-income folks. We ought to do the right thing. The right thing, it seems to me, for our children's sake, is to tell them we are going to begin using some of this to reduce Federal indebtedness, and for our children's sake, that we are going to use some of this to extend the solvency of Medicare and Social Security, two programs that have made this country a much better place in which to live for millions and millions of Americans. We ought to do that. All of us know we ought to do it. Regrettably, we are on the floor in a perverted process. Reconciliation was never intended for this process--never. Yet, we are here because it muzzles us up with a 20-hour debate and does not allow a full debate about fiscal policy and tax cuts. And I say to those on the other side, you will get your bill and have your votes and you will pass a bill. But, in my judgment, you will put this country at risk because you are spending, through tax cuts, surpluses that do not yet exist, just as yesterday you wanted to waive points of order on a conference report that had not yet been drafted. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. We are heading toward a demographic time bomb in both Social Security and Medicare. The question is, If these surpluses exist, what shall we do with them; reduce the Federal debt? That has gone from $1 trillion to $5.7 trillion in two decades. Reduce the Federal debt? The answer of the Republicans is no. How about extend the solvency of Social Security because we know we face this problem. Older people living longer; fewer people working to support them. Extend the solvency of Social Security? No. How about extending the solvency of Medicare? No. The only answer coming from that side of the aisle is take three- quarters of a trillion dollars, package it up, put a huge bow around it, and then bring it to the floor of the Senate, and then complain about a pie chart that shows they have cut out the biggest piece for the wealthiest Americans.

Mr. DORGAN. I do, indeed.

Mr. DORGAN. That is correct.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, what a remarkable debate. At a time when so many Americans think so much in politics is fuzzy and they can't see much of a difference between the two parties, this is a bright-line test. There is a radical difference in terms of what we stand for and what we fight for and what we have passion to change. I want to describe a little of that difference. But first I want to go back to what some would call ``the good old days.'' Let's go back to the year just before we passed, by one vote, the bill that increased some taxes for a few people in this country, cut some taxes for others, cut some spending, and put this country back on track with an economic plan that resulted in where we are today. In 1993 I voted for that package. We did not get one vote from the other side of the aisle--not one. It passed by one vote in the House, one vote in the Senate. We did not get one vote to help us from the other side of the aisle. In fact, some on the other side of the aisle stood up and said: If you pass this, this country is going into a depression. If you pass this, it will ruin the American economy. It will throw people out of work. It will injure this country. Well, we passed it anyway. Do you remember those days? The Federal deficit then was $290 billion and growing. We had nearly 10 million Americans out of work, looking for a job. The Dow Jones Industrial Average just barely reached 3,000. Inflation was double what it was last year. There were 97,000 business failures. Then we passed a piece of legislation that put this country back on track--over the objections, I might add, of the folks who bring----

Mr. DORGAN. Of course I remember that. There were predictions of doom, saying, if you pass this, you are going to throw this country into a tailspin. This is a country that had a $290 billion deficit, an anemic economy, with 10 million people out of work. This is a country that desperately needed a change in direction. We made it without the help of one vote from the other side. Frankly, I thought a couple of the folks you referenced were going to do a half-gainer off the Capitol Dome, they were so upset about us changing the fiscal policy of this country. But we did it. Guess what happened. Guess what happened. This country's economy has seen robust economic growth. Seven years later, we do not have a budget deficit. No, we do not have a $290 billion, and growing, budget deficit. We have a budget that is nearly in balance. Economists are predicting surpluses for the next 10 years--I might point out, the same economists who predicted in the early 1990s we would have a full decade of sluggish, anemic growth in this country. I mentioned yesterday these are the same economists who can't remember their home phone number or address telling us what will happen 3, 5, and 10 years from now. We ought to be careful about these predictions. We do not have a budget surplus yet. The 10 years of estimated $3 trillion surpluses do not exist, and we have folks on the floor who are breathless to try to deal with them through tax cuts.

Mr. DORGAN. Oh, I do. In fact, the same people who made those predictions that were so wrong are now telling us they have new predictions and we should believe the new predictions.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I will just observe, if I might, that one way to avoid a lot of recorded votes is to accept a lot of amendments.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN. I inquire of the majority leader about the schedule. My understanding is that he is intending to bring the Interior appropriations bill to the floor. I wonder if the majority leader might tell us about the plans he has with respect to the reconciliation bill. Would that be the bill that follows the Interior appropriations bill?

Mr. DORGAN. Because of the time limitations on the reconciliation bill, is it the intention, I am curious, of the majority leader that that would consume all of the time tomorrow and Thursday?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, yesterday on NPR's ``Morning Edition,'' Kevin Phillips, a Republican author and commentator, had some interesting comments, and I wonder if the Senator from South Carolina had an opportunity to hear this Republican commentator discussing the House of Representatives tax cut. Tax bills often deal with Pie in the Sky. The mind boggling ten-year cuts passed late last week by the House of Representatives however deserve a new term: Pie in Stratosphere. He points out that the top 1 percent would get 33 percent of the tax cuts; the bottom 60 percent get only 7 percent of the tax cuts. I thought the last paragraph of this Republican commentator was interesting: We can fairly call the House legislation the most outrageous tax package in 50 years. It's worse than the 1981 excesses, you have to go back to 1948, when the Republican 80th Congress sent a kindred bill to President Harry Truman. Truman vetoed it, calling the Republicans bloodsuckers, with offices in Wall Street. Not only did he win reelection, but the Democrats recaptured Congress. We'll see if Bill Clinton and Albert Gore have anything resembling Truman's guts. This is from a Republican commentator. He points out the amount of these tax cuts extending 10 years into the future, by economists who predict these surpluses; economists who can't remember their phone numbers and their home addresses are telling Americans that in 3, 5, 10 years in the future we will have big surpluses. What do we do? The House of Representatives says: Give most of the surpluses back to 1 percent of the people. A Republican columnist, Kevin Phillips, says it is the most outrageous tax package in the last 50 years. Can the Senator from South Carolina comment?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, of course, I will yield, if the majority leader requests. I had wanted to make some comments about the trade deficit that was announced late last week and show a few charts. I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 10 minutes.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, might I inquire, are we presently in morning business?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will come to the floor and comment generously about this fiscal policy issue of $792 billion of tax cuts over the next 10 years. We don't have surpluses yet. We have economists who tell us we will have surpluses and when these surpluses will exist over the coming 10 years. We have an appetite for trying to figure out what we want to do with all these surpluses that have not yet materialized. Economists at the start of this decade in the early 1990s predicted almost universally that we would have a decade of slow, anemic economic growth and continued trouble. Going back 8 years, we had a $290 billion fiscal policy deficit. The Dow Jones industrial average had not yet reached 3,000, or it had barely reached 3,000. We had sluggish growth. In 1999, the budget deficit is largely gone. The Dow is somewhere close to 11,000. We have robust economic growth and economists predicting wonderful economic news as far as the eye can see. These are economists--who can't remember their telephone numbers or their home addresses--predicting what will happen, 3, 5, and 10 years in the future. The result is people seize on these surpluses and say: Let's give three-quarters of $1 trillion in tax cuts, nearly one-third of which will go to the top 1 percent of the income earners in this country. I will have a lot more to say about that in the debate which will ensue during this week. My colleague, Senator Durbin, just read Kevin Phillips' comments that were on NPR yesterday morning. I think they were right on point. I hope we can spend some time discussing those as well. I want to talk about another deficit, one that both parties have been largely ignoring. It is called the trade deficit. I have here a Washington Post article that appeared last Wednesday, July 21, ``U.S. Trade Deficit Hit Record High in May.'' This was written by Paul Blustein. Paul is the Washington Post reporter who writes their trade stories. Any time you see a trade story, it will be by Paul Blustein. He will talk to the same three or four people. They will comment in each article, and month after month the trade deficit worsens. We have a very serious problem. We tackled the budget deficit, and wrestled it to the ground. Now, we largely don't have a fiscal policy budget deficit. It is gone. That was tough, hard work. But the trade deficit is growing and at an alarming rate. It is interesting that this story in the Washington Post actually says that we have a trade deficit that is a record deficit, ``thanks to America's unflagging appetite for foreign goods.'' The Post, in this story, finds all of this both ``heartening'' and ``worrisome'' for the U.S. economy. Heartening because so many Americans are feeling so prosperous that they are buying an ever-rising amount of imports. I am more struck by the ``worrisome'' aspects of this trade deficit. One of those was highlighted by the Post article, with the Japanese deciding that their central bank should intervene with respect to the value of the yen against the dollar--to manipulate the value of the yen in order to influence continued exports to the United States. What is happening to the trade deficit? This chart shows record trade deficits month after month. It means we are buying more from abroad than we are selling abroad. It means we are running a current accounts deficit that will some day be repaid by a lower standard of living in the United States. There is a lot of disagreement among economists but none about that. A trade deficit must at some point be repaid in the future by a lower standard of living in the country that experiences the trade deficit. Here is a chart that shows the growing U.S. trade gap, exports and imports. You will see what is happening to the U.S. exports on this softening bottom line. And you will see what is happening to the level of U.S. imports and the massive red ink that represents indebtedness that burdens this country. Should we worry about this indebtedness? The answer is, yes, of course. Should we do something about it? Absolutely, and sooner rather than later. There is now in law a commission called the Trade Deficit Review Commission. This is a piece of legislation that I authored and was cosponsored by Senators Byrd, Stevens, and others. This Commission has been impaneled and is now beginning its work. But we have a responsibility as a country to respond to this trade deficit and to do so aggressively. Another chart shows the deficit with respect to specific countries. Japan: We have had a trade deficit with Japan forever, it seems. This trade deficit is robust and growing, and continues to grow to record levels. It used to be that economists would say that we have trade deficits because we have been running budget deficits. When you run budget deficits, you are going to run trade deficits. The budget deficits are gone. Why is the trade deficit worsening? Yes, with Japan, with Canada, and it is worsening with Mexico. We used to have a trade surplus with Mexico. We were able to turn that into a deficit very quickly because we negotiated a trade agreement with Mexico that was incompetent. We have incompetent negotiations by bad negotiators that resulted in bad trade agreements and higher deficits with respect to Mexico. We turned a surplus into a deficit. China: What is happening with China is a very substantial runup of the trade deficit in just a matter of about 8 to 10 years. What do we do about all this? I am concerned, obviously, about not only the general trade deficit, which weakens our manufacturing sector, but also with respect to the economic stars in our country, the family farmers. Agricultural trade balances have worsened. Our agricultural trade balance with Europe declined sharply between 1990 and 1998. In Asia and Europe, our agricultural trade balance has changed in a manner that is detrimental to family farming. Going back to the issue I mentioned on the previous chart of our individual bilateral trade relations with China, Mexico, Canada, and Japan, you will see that we are continuing to run trade deficits that are alarmingly high. Yet no one wants to talk about it, and certainly no one wants to do anything about it. The minute someone says let's take some action, someone else will say: You are proposing a trade war. What on earth can you be thinking about? This country had better think about itself for a few minutes. It ought to turn inward and ask: What does this red ink mean to the U.S. and its future? Even Mr. Greenspan, who is prone to understatement, indicated that this cannot be sustained for any lengthy period of time. This country must worry about its bilateral trade relationships with the countries I just described. It also must worry about its general trade strategy, which results in huge trade deficits and in the kind of trade relationships, which I think will make this country's citizens increasingly angry and anxious. Incidentally, these trade deficits are much higher than the Washington Post reports. The trade deficit in the Post represents the combination of goods and services. If you look at trade deficits in goods, it is much higher than this. That relates to the question of what is happening to the American manufacturers. Let me talk about farmers specifically for a moment. Our family farmers around the country are suffering through a very serious crisis. The bulk of that is because prices have collapsed on the grain market, even though the stock market is reaching record highs. The grain market has collapsed, and farmers are told their food has no value. Another serious part is that, even though we produce more than we need and we need to find a foreign home for our grain, we discover that grain floods across our borders and livestock floods across our border, especially from Canada and other parts of the world, undercutting our farmers' interests. Why? Because we had incompetent negotiators negotiating incompetent trade agreements. They have resulted in increasing trade deficits in this country. The story behind the headlines is the injury that is caused to family farmers, to the manufacturing sector, to that part of America's economy that has produced the strength of this country today. That strength will not long exist if we don't do something about the trade deficit. Those who talk about tax cuts for 10 years, anticipating future economic growth and future economic surpluses, will not see those develop and will not experience that growth unless we do something about this exploding trade deficit. You cannot sustain long-term economic growth when you run a $21.3 billion deficit in one month. It wasn't more than a couple decades ago that we ran a trade deficit of a couple billion dollars in a quarter of the year. Wilbur Mills, who used to be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, called special meetings to talk about emergency tariffs to be put on goods to reduce the debilitating trade deficits. Now they are $21 billion a month and growing in a very significant way. We need the Administration and the Congress to understand that the underlying trade negotiations and trade agreements we have had with a number of countries, including NAFTA and GATT, have undercut this country's interests. They do not work. They sell out the interests of family farmers in this country. They injure our manufacturing sector. I am not suggesting putting up walls and retreating. I want our producers to be required to respond to competition. But our producers cannot and should not be expected to respond to competition when our producers have one hand tied behind their backs by unfair trade agreements. Finally, I want to talk for a moment about what happened last December with the U.S. Trade Ambassador announcing a deal with respect to the Canadian trade issue. They have all kinds of agreements that, as I said, weren't worth much. We just allowed them to put a bunch of points down on a piece of paper. I reviewed that deal, and nothing much has happened. In fact, our trade situation with Canada grows worse. Our agricultural economy grows worse. Prices have continued to collapse. Family farmers continue to be injured and, at the same time, we have durum and spring wheat, cattle and hogs flooding across the border, most unfairly traded and most in violation of the basic tenets of reciprocal trade. Yet, nothing happens. Nobody lifts a finger to say let us stand up on behalf of your interests and take the actions you would expect the Federal Government to take to insist on fair trade.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the vote that has been called on this issue, I assume, is a vote that will come to the Senate because some are inconvenienced or upset by amendments that have been offered by those on the Democratic side of the aisle. These amendments have dealt with a range of issues we think are very important: Education, health care, agriculture--a whole series of issues we think need to be addressed. Because we have not been able to address them on authorization bills, we have offered amendments on appropriations bills. As the Presiding Officer and my colleagues know, the precedent stemming back from a vote some while ago in the Senate allows us to do that. That might be inconvenient for the majority because it allows us, then, on an appropriations bill, to offer an amendment and have a debate on the Patients' Bill of Rights, for example. Or it may allow for us to have a debate on the agriculture disaster relief bill. They may not want to do that, but they cannot deny the members of the Democratic minority in the Senate the right to amend an appropriations bill. So the proposal is to change the rules back to where they used to be in order to prevent amendments of the type I have just described from being offered to the appropriations bills. I thought it would be useful today to just go through a list of bills that describe the way the Senate has been operating in recent years and describe why many of us have felt it necessary to try to add legislation to appropriations bills. Let me just go through a list going back to 1997 and 1998. The Family Friendly Workplace Act, S. 4. This bill, as it was described on the floor of the Senate, sought to give employees more flexibility with their work hours. Senator Patty Murray sought to propose an amendment to give employees 24 hours a year of current family medical leave so they could take time off to go to school conferences and other things. But cloture was filed so that amendments could be offered. The purpose of the majority was to say: We want to debate S. 4. It is our bill. We want to debate it and we do not want the inconvenience of having amendments that we believe are not appropriate or germane to the bill. So what we want to do is put the bill on the floor and file cloture and prevent the Democrats from offering amendments. On the Education Savings Act for public and private schools, they had the same approach: Bring the bill out here, file cloture and say: We want to debate this bill. It is our agenda. But we do not want you to be able to offer the amendments you want to offer. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act, the same thing; Child Custody Protection Act, same thing. If we go through a list of these, we see what has happened is the majority leader has set himself up, it seems to me, as a kind of House Rules Committee in the Senate, saying I am going to bring a bill to the floor, and I am going to fill the legislative tree, as they call it, and create a mechanism by which no one else can move. It is a legislative straitjacket. No one else will be able to offer amendments. Then the majority leader has said to us, on occasion: All right, I have a bill. I have filled the tree, come to me with your amendments, and if I approve and think we ought to debate them, I will allow you to debate them; if I don't, I will not. That is not the way the Senate works. The Senate is a very inconvenient place and not a very effective or efficient place in the way it disposes of legislation. But that happens to be the way George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and Mason and Madison anticipated this place should work. Remember the description about the Senate being the saucer that cools the coffee? They did not intend the Senate to work the way the House works, to have a Rules Committee to mandate that only certain amendments will be allowed, and then there will only be a certain amount of debate allowed, and it will all go very efficiently. That is not the way they intended the Senate to work. Yet that is exactly the way the majority leader has anticipated the Senate should work now for some long while. If we had this rule in place last year, for example, the Senator from Nevada knows we would not have been able to offer the agriculture relief package we offered and got attached to the agriculture appropriations bill. The first portion of the farm crisis relief package was done in the Senate as an amendment that I and Senator Conrad offered to the agriculture appropriations bill. It would not be allowed under the rule change that is now being proposed by the majority leader. So we have a circumstance where the majority has decided that it really wants to debate its agenda. I understand that. If I were on their side, I would want to debate their agenda. They have a right to do that; that is their right. I will vote every day to support their right to do that. But then they say: Not only do we want to debate our agenda, we want to prevent the other side from offering amendments that relate to their agenda. That is not appropriate. It is not the way the Senate should work. The reason we have had to offer amendments to appropriations bills is because authorization bills have not been passed. When they do come to the floor, the majority leader decides he does not want amendments offered to authorization bills. Let me give one example, if I might. Does anybody know anything about the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill? That is an important bill. It describes how we run the airways in this country--the control towers, the safety of air transportation. Do you know we just passed the other night, by unanimous consent, a 2-month extension of the FAA bill? I will bet there are not 10 Senators who know we passed, by unanimous consent, a 2-month extension. Why did we pass a 2-month extension? Because we should have passed an FAA reauthorization bill in the last Congress and it did not get done because we have a huge fight going on.

Mr. DORGAN. I was in the House of Representatives 12 years.

Mr. DORGAN. That is correct.