J. Exon

Mr. EXON

Mr. EXON. We have two amendments to dispose of. I hope the people offering those amendments will recognize we hope to leave by 10. So other than the Senator from Wisconsin on our side, who we agreed will offer an amendment, I have no further requests here.

Mr. EXON. We knew about that. There is one amendment over here; is that not right?

Mr. EXON. Another thing, it seems to me we should realize and recognize it is one thing to ask Social Security beneficiaries to contribute more as a part of a general reform of the Social Security system, but it is another thing, another thing altogether, to get savings out of Social Security to help make room for maybe a tax cut.

Mr. EXON. I yield myself additional time off the resolution that is held in my name.

Mr. EXON. I would be willing to consider changes to the COLA's, if they would be used as part of a Social Security overall reform package which we all know we are going to have to face. But I suggest we should not foreclose that next option and use it in the context that it is being advanced in this area at this time. Mr. President, I believe, and I hope others will believe, we will need a whole lot of savings to address the needs of the baby boom generation in the next century, especially with regard to Social Security and Medicare. I believe we would be better served if we reserved any savings from Social Security for legislation that will address that problem so that we can ensure that the burden is going to be shared fairly and equitably. In short, I am for honest changes in the cost-of-living adjustment. I am not for cuts in COLA's that are not a part of a major overhaul of the Social Security fund, which everyone agrees is not the case in the present legislation. Mr. President, I have concerns about the Breaux-Chafee centrist budget. And I also think there are some excellent things in there. I think it is unnecessary, though, to go after Medicare beneficiaries for the amount of savings that they have outlined. Once again, I will say in the spirit I started with, it seems to me the Breaux-Chafee group and the Democrats and the President are not far apart on those numbers. I think they can be worked out. Although it does shield those in the very lowest income brackets, vast numbers of Americans making less than $50,000 would see their share of the premium costs rise, as proposed, rise from 25 to 31 percent. The President's budget, I might say, maintains a 25-percent level and still ensures the solvency of the trust fund through the year 2005. Let us not forget, too, that Medicare beneficiaries already pay 21 percent of their income for health care expenses. We should not add to their burden now. In addition, by raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67 years of age--I am willing to look at that, but I want to look at both the upside and the downside. This amendment also denies Medicare benefits to a significant number of elderly Americans who have planned on that coverage in their retirement. Remember, most of the 65 and 66-year-olds are by no means affluent. As well, Mr. President, the tax cuts in the amendment are larger than those in the President's budget. Again I say--and it has been said by several Senators here on the floor--I wish we could put off all tax cuts of any kind until we are better assured that we will balance the budget by the year 2002. That is the way I would like to have it. But I think it is clear that there is such a drive for this, and there has been so much publicity about it that, notwithstanding the concerns of this Senator, it is obvious, realistically, that some tax cut will be included because the President is for it as well. In conclusion, I believe the amendment drafters need to keep working. They do not have to start all over again but I think they have to keep working with us. I simply say without the Breaux-Chafee group, or the Chafee-Breaux group, we probably would not have much of a chance to come up with a workable package. While I have some concerns about their proposal that I have outlined in an honest fashion tonight, I want to join with them in an effort to challenge and change and bring us around, and we can bring them around, maybe we can bring the Republicans around, to begin negotiations once again with the President at the White House. As we compare budgets, all of the budgets that are on the table, I still believe--even with its warts, and I think there are some warts in the President's budget, and I introduced and asked us to use that as the mark--I think the President's budget is the best standing alone of any that I have seen. Having said that, I realize and recognize and want to emphasize once again that the President wants to work together. He has met at the White House with the Chafee-Breaux group and he has told me that he was very much interested in their presence, their attitude, and what he interpreted as a very sincere effort to get something done. That is the bottom line. I say, let us keep working. But I, like the other Members of the Senate who have spoken on this tonight, feel this has been a very interesting, very challenging debate, and I am more optimistic than I was, when we started the debate on the budget resolution, of reaching some kind of compromise after the talks tonight than I was when we began this important exercise. I yield 5 minutes of my time to the Senator from Illinois. [From the Monthly Labor Review, May 1994] Exhibit 1 Experimental Price Index for Elderly Consumers (By Nathan Amble and Ken Stewart) (An experimental consumer price index for older Americans rose somewhat faster than each of two published BLS Consumer Price Indexes; as might be expected, expenditures for medical care accounted almost entirely for this difference) The Consumer Price Index (CPI) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the average change in prices over time for a fixed market basket of goods and services for two population groups. The CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) represents the spending habits of about 80 percent of the population of the United States. The CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) is a subset of the CPI-U and represents about 32 percent of the total U.S. population. The 1987 amendments to the Older Americans Act of 1965 directed the BLS to develop an experimental index for a third population of consumers: those 62 years of age and older. In its 1988 report to Congress, the BLS observed that from December 1982 to December 1987, the experimental consumer price index for older Americans rose slightly faster than the CPI-U and CPI-W.\1\ (See table 1.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Charles C. Mason, ``An Analysis of the Rates of Inflation Affecting Older Americans Based on an Experimental Reweighted Consumer Price Index,'' report presented to Congress, June 1988. During the period from December 1982 through December 1987, the CPI-U rose 18.2 percent, the CPI-W increased 16.5 percent, and the experimental index for older Americans grew 19.5 percent. Over the 11-year period from December 1982 through December 1993, the CPI-U rose 49.4 percent, the CPI-W increased 46.2 percent, and the experimental CPI for older Americans grew 53.8 percent.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield myself what additional time off the bill that I may need. I want to drive home again how dire our circumstances are with the constraints of time. As I had announced earlier, we have 20 rollcall votes scheduled and more than 5 hours of voting time on Tuesday. If we start voting at 12 noon, we would be voting until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. In addition to that, we have an hour or two that will have to be taken out, obviously, for the memorial service for Admiral Boorda. In addition to that, we have the usual two caucuses, or conferences, of the two parties, which takes place at noon. I am also advised that sometime during the evening tomorrow, there is a dinner planned for Senator Simpson, one of our most distinguished Members, who is retiring from the Senate. So with that complicating factor, it makes good sense for Senators who can to now come to the floor and offer amendments. I see that, while I have been talking, my colleague from Texas has come to the floor, as I understand it, to offer an amendment. With that, I am pleased to yield the floor for the chance for the Senator from Texas to offer what I understand is an amendment.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Wyoming for initiating the discussion--this has been talked about a great deal today--and for now withdrawing the amendment. That does not mean we are not going to be revisiting things like this in the future, but in the interests of moving the budget process along it is best to delay the discussion. We have today and we have tomorrow night, which is the time the majority has indicated they would like to complete work on the budget. We are already way late on the budget. It was supposed to be acted upon earlier. So I hope we could move ahead in a brisker fashion than we have before. I would simply say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we are awaiting more amendments. If there were either a Democrat or Republican Senator seeking to offer an amendment right now, this Senator would yield. But I send out the call once again, we are going to have a crammed, packed day today without any votes. The votes will be stacked for tomorrow. But Tuesday is going to be one of those most, most difficult times. It appears to me, unless we can move in much quicker fashion than we have thus far, we are going to find ourselves tomorrow night into one of those situations where the Senate looks awfully bad. That is when we run out of the allotted time that has been yielded on the budget amendment, that is 25 hours on each side, and then we get ourselves into a situation where Members of the Senate insist upon offering additional amendments--and they have that right--but even though we just put up the amendment, there is no debate whatsoever. And then we immediately go to a rollcall vote. It always seems to me if historians would ever look at the U.S. Senate and address some of our worst, our unproductive moments, it would be that time that typically happens with the budget resolution, that is voting without debate, voting oftentimes without a majority of the Senate even having the slightest idea of what the amendment is designed to do. So this is the time to offer amendments. I hope on this Monday morning, before reckoning day Tuesday, we would get these amendments introduced. At the present time we already have 20 votes scheduled for tomorrow. Even if those were 10-minute votes, which all of them cannot be, we can see the difficult timeframe we are in. Also tomorrow, Tuesday, is going to be shortened by what I was advised recently, by the fact we will, most of us, will be going to a memorial ceremony at I believe 11 o'clock tomorrow morning at the National Cathedral as a result of the death of the late, great Admiral Boorda. So, that is going to take time out of our day tomorrow. I simply appeal to Senators on both sides of the aisle to come down now, offer your amendments, curtail as much debate time as we can so we can move ahead. Amendment No. 4008 There was an amendment introduced this morning by the Senator from Missouri that I would like to make some comments on in opposition. The pending business I make reference to is the amendment offered by Senator Ashcroft, amendment No. 4008. It sounds to me like deja vu all over again. While viewers of the Senate may have received the impression--let me repeat that--viewers of the Senate may have received the impression that we are trying to reduce the deficit here, it seems that the Senator from Missouri has another thing in mind altogether. He wants to revisit the voodoo economics of the early 1980's that got us into the fiscal mess that the United States finds itself in today. His amendment would cut taxes first, before we have done the hard work of cutting the deficit. This Senator is for cutting the deficit above everything else. This Senator, and many similarly situated, would like very much to reduce taxes. That is the ultimate goal of a politician these days. It is not a bad goal. But the thing we have to remember is that we cannot do everything at the same time if everyone is going in different directions. And I am afraid that is what is demonstrated above everything else, unfortunately, by the amendment offered by the Senator from Missouri. He has very specific ideas about where to cut taxes and I suppose that everyone favors tax cuts. But he is far less specific about how to come up with the money to pay for it. In what I heard of the Senator's speech, he did not say one word about where the money is coming from. So the arithmetic is simple. Cut taxes by $276 billion over the next 6 years--that is wonderful. That is what everybody is for. Who can be against that--unless you are sincere about cutting the deficit of the United States of America. I thought that was the No. 1 item of concern for Members on both sides of the aisle. Cutting taxes by $276 billion over the next 6 years, as suggested by the Senator from Missouri, sounds real good and it is a whopping tax cut. But the problem is, they look around to find the discretionary savings to pay for this at some later date. That is the kind of murky fiscal thinking that has got us into the situation we are trying to address today and have been trying to address for some months. Mr. President, I need to correct a few things that the Senator from Missouri said in his diatribe against government. That is another very popular thing to do. Cutting government and carrying on diatribes against how bad government is is really good politics, but is it good sense? The Senator from Missouri said many, many things against government. The Senator would have us believe that the 1993 budget bill is the cause of the tax burden on the middle-class citizens of America. Nothing--nothing, Mr. President--could be further from the truth, in reality. In reality, 98 percent of income taxpayers do not pay 1 more penny in taxes because of the 1993 tax bill. I wish we had the time to go back to listen to the attacks from that side of the aisle on the 1993 tax bill. It would be astonishing for people to read about the reasons that the people on that side of the aisle voted against the 1993 tax bill. The 1993 tax bill is the main reason for the fact that we have had 3 successive years of reductions in deficit of the Federal Government of the United States of America--something that has not happened since Hector was a pup. The fact of the matter is that, primarily as a result of that bill, we have reduced the annual deficit from the range of $300 billion down to an estimated $140 billion to $147 billion this year. The deficit has been cut by more than half. Millions of working families had their taxes cut because of the changes in the earned-income tax credit in the 1993 bill. Mr. President, there are seldom things that we do around here that are perfect. But it seems to me that at a time when we are trying desperately to put things together on both sides of the aisle to balance the budget by the year 2002 and return sanity to the financing of the Federal Government, the amendment offered by the Senator from Missouri is the worst possible step that we could take. Senator Ashcroft's amendment is a budget buster, by any definition. Senator Ashcroft has stated that the cost of the proposal would be $276 billion over the next 6 years, over $45 billion annually. Democrats recognize that Social Security taxes present a burden to lower income taxpayers and have, as a result, strongly supported the earned income tax credit. The earned income tax credit was designed, in part, to offset these costs. Just so that we understand, the earned income tax credit is something that gives the very lowest income people of the United States of America a credit to try to get them up above the poverty line, get them out of welfare so that we will not have that welfare drain that is continuing to cause us problems. The Republican budget cuts eliminates that earned income tax credit for the poorest among us by $17 billion over the next 6 years. Last year's Republican budget would have actually increased taxes. It would have increased taxes on those lowest paid people in the United States, which amounts to about 7 million working families. This year's budget must include many of the same proposals. President Clinton, in his 1993 budget, lowered taxes on working families by increasing the earned income tax credit. That is designed to get people off welfare, get them to work, and have them contribute to society, as we would all like to have them do if they had an income above the poverty level. But I repeat, President Clinton's 1993 budget lowered taxes on these working families by increasing the earned income tax credit. In 1996, over 15 million families will receive a tax break as a result of that bill. In my State of Nebraska alone, over 78,000 families will receive a tax cut averaging about $650 for the year. I want to emphasize once again that those are the lowest paid people in the United States that we are trying to send a lifeline to lift them up by their bootstraps, if you will, Mr. President, to give them a chance to be what most of them would like to be--successful taxpaying citizens. So when we are talking about cutting Social Security taxes, I simply say that I would like to do that, too. I also say that the Democratic Party, under the leadership of President Clinton, has done just that in another form--the earned income tax credit. I am sure that amendment offered by the Senator from Missouri is good politics. But it is not good government. I yield the remainder of our time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. EXON. Is that the plan, to go on that at 9:30 in the morning?

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I ask for about 15 minutes.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from New Mexico. Mr. President, to rephrase the statement that the chairman of the committee just indicated, he yielded me 15 minutes in opposition. Well, it puts it in a negative term that I did not want to put it in. But I am going to outline some of the concerns that I have here. But I agree that this has been a very informative discussion tonight and it will be informative tomorrow. I want to join in the general tenor of what I have heard here on the floor tonight. I would like to have one of those charts, if you could leave them here for me. I was going to say, Mr. President, that most of the Members of the coalition group--at least on the Democratic side--have been Senators that I have been intimately involved with on fiscal matters ever since I have been in the U.S. Senate. I agree with Chairman Domenici that possibly out of these discussions tonight and the general tenor of the responses on each side lead me to also agree that we can have a breakthrough. I would simply say that I happen to feel that the President of the United States has been trying very, very hard to have a breakthrough. Maybe we are sowing the seeds of that accomplishment tonight. I will be consulting with the minority leader tomorrow on this. And in the next few days, if we can just separate our differences for what they are-- firm differences of opinion--and maybe come to the realization that, indeed, we are closer perhaps than we think, just let me note for the Record that, I think, further substantiates this. And in conversations that I have had with members of the 22-member coalition, just let me note that for the record the Chafee-Breaux budget is closer to the President's budget than to the Republican budget in all key areas. I ask unanimous consent that a table demonstrating this be printed in the Record.

Mr. EXON. You just lost your time.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Illinois. I was going to ask him a question. I am going to be addressing this matter a little bit more in response to the Breaux-Chafee amendment. I think there are a lot of good things in the Breaux-Chafee amendment, and there are some good things in this amendment, which, as far as I can tell, is similar to Breaux-Chafee, but evidently this particular proposition is not entirely subscribed to nor is it endorsed by all 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans who make up the people who have been doing the good work under the direction of Senator Chafee and Senator Breaux. Let me say briefly about the CPI that we have to do something about Government and about Government overspending, but for the life of me I have never been able to figure out how we can justify, with the upcoming problems that we obviously have in Social Security and its solvency around the year 2030, changing the CPI without looking at the larger question of making solvent the Social Security trust funds or the Medicare fund. I am not for making arbitrary adjustments other than those recommended by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have told us there should be an adjustment of, I believe, about 0.3 percent to make it fair and equitable, the way it was intended. I am for that. But these automatic, arbitrary cuts in CPI, it seems to me, is robbing Peter to pay Paul, Paul in this case being the budget deficit. I think that is not well thought through. I simply say that rushing into things from time to time just because they sound good might not be the smartest thing to do. If there are any sponsors of the amendment on the floor, I would like to pose a question to any of them, or to anyone who can explain this. On page 2 of the amendment before us, line 24, under 6 it states: ``Workers should be allowed to divert 2 percent of their total payroll taxes into their own personal investment plan.'' Then listen to this: ``As long as there is no effect on the solvency of the Social Security Program.'' I wish someone could explain that to me. I do not know what they are saying. Are they saying that they want to make a fundamental change without hearings in the U.S. Senate on the historic Social Security plan by diverting 2 percent of the total payroll taxes into a personal fund so long as there is no effect on the solvency of the Social Security Program? What does that mean? Does that mean that the 2 percent would not be paid or could not be taken out unless it had an ill effect on the program? Does that mean we would have to have a massive tax increase to make up for the difference of money that is coming out of the Social Security trust fund that is already projected to go bust by the year 2030? Does that mean that we would have to have significant reductions in Social Security payments at that time? Can anyone explain to me what that phrase means, we can take 2 percent and put it in your own personal fund ``as long as it has no effect on the solvency of the Social Security Program?'' Can anyone explain that? Hearing no one, I can only assume that there is no explanation, or at least the people that know the answer to the question that I posed are not here to answer it. I hope they will take the opportunity to do that at another time. I am going to be very brief on this. I first want to commend the motivations of the sponsors of this amendment, most all of whom are close friends and associates of this Senator during the years I have been in the Senate. We all can agree that we need to look at entitlement reform. Chairman Domenici said much the same in remarks he just concluded. But I will have to oppose the amendment because it calls for piecemeal changes to the Social Security system that may compromise reform of that program and endanger rather than ensure its solvency. In addition, this is, once again, one of those famous sense-of-the- Senate resolutions. Sometimes these sense-of-the-Senate resolutions take on a life of their own. We all agree that sometime in the not too distant future we are going to have to address this problem. We need to look at the entire pie before we decide to endorse these piecemeal changes. We have, for example, Mr. President, a Social Security advisory council due to report, as I understand it, very soon their findings. They are not an official body of the Senate. I am very much interested in what they have to recommend. We should also have hearings. We have seen neither their report, nor their recommendations. So although the proponents are well-intentioned, before we get into an area like these we need to make reasonably sure you know what you are doing before you do it. We all recognize we will have to make substantial changes in Social Security to ensure the solvency of the program for the baby boom generation, but we should think those proposals through. We should have hearings. We should know for sure, as best we can, what we are doing. The relevant committees should study, have hearings, debate the issue and make a recommendation to the floor of the Senate for action. We have not done that in a comprehensive way as far as I know in this case. This amendment also contains two proposals--cutting the cost of living adjustments and moving back the age at which seniors become eligible for Medicare. These proposals are similar to a very large extent under the Chafee-Breaux budget substitute, which, I understand, we are going into as soon as we finish the remarks of the Senator from Maine. I will have something more to say on that. I think that basically covers some of my concerns with regard to the sense-of-the-Senate resolution presently before us. I yield the floor. Ms. SNOWE addressed the Chair.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield the additional 3 minutes that the Senator from Louisiana needs to assist the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, it seems to me, if I heard the leader of the committee correctly, that he has essentially all but endorsed the bipartisan commission with the one exception of Social Security. And if we are that close maybe--just maybe--we can solve the problem. But I would remind all that when we get that close there is going to have to be some give and take on both sides in a compromise. So, Mr. President, I want to salute my friends, Senator Chafee from Rhode Island, Senator Breaux from Louisiana, and all of their associates for their stamina in their efforts to find a middle ground in this very, very important debate. Yet, I must say that, while I think this has been extremely helpful, I suggest that they keep on searching. But since I am convinced that they are searching in the crunch of numbers much closer to the President's budget than the Republican budget, there is no question in my mind that they can be helpful in reaching a workable compromise that I have not heard anybody object to tonight. I think everybody is saying we are closer than some people think. But I suggest that they keep working, and I will outline some of the--only three--key points that I have some concern about, and I suggest that the President might have some concerns about. That does not mean that we do not want to talk. That does not mean that we are saying the Republican budget is impossible to work with. That does not mean to say that we do not think that the coalition budget is a sincere effort because obviously it is. So there is much merit to the Breaux-Chafee budget et al. There are many savings that I would simply emphasize once again are very close to those contained in proposals that I have made and, indeed, close to the numbers in the President's budget. But there are three areas--three glaring problems--that I see that I want to comment on that force me to say we have to do better. That does not mean that we are not willing to compromise. That does not mean we are not willing to talk. The chairman of the committee said that he hoped maybe that as a result of these discussions the President would call us down to the White House in the morning. Well, the President has had an invitation out for us to come down to the White House every day on the hour, it seems to me, in the past several weeks, and he has been frustrated, I am sure, with the fact that the Republicans will not come down. In fact, the chairman of the Budget Committee on the Republican majority on the House as much as said that there is no reason to go down there because we are so far apart. But I see that there are problems in three areas which I want to discuss for just a little bit to show that, while we are close, everything is not hunky-dory. We can stand out on the floor of the Senate and pat each other on the back, but I, for one, am saying there are still some problems. They are not insurmountable, but there are problems. The first problem that I have is the change in the Consumer Price Index; second, the cuts and the change in the direction of the Medicare Program; and third, the tax cuts. Nonetheless, this proposal is far superior, in my view, than the one offered out of the Budget Committee. The proposed adjustment in CPI, I simply say, is no small matter, and it should be fully understood. It amounts to $126 billion. The numbers speak for themselves. Mr. President, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to scrap the CPI adjustments and not bring down the entire Breaux-Chafee budget. I believe that was discussed in some detail in the negotiations that were held between the chairman of the committee and the Breaux- Chafee group. Therefore, the CPI and the amount of the CPI is absolutely essential to make the Breaux-Chafee budget work unless-- unless--the Breaux-Chafee group is willing to forgo most of their big tax cut. I oppose the change in CPI for the reason that it asks the most from those who have the least. A change in the CPI will not affect the lifestyles of Senators or the wealthiest Americans, but it could deliver a devastating blow to seniors and the disabled who depend solely on Social Security and supplemental security income, commonly known as SSI, or those low-income families who get little relief from the earned income tax credit. More than 40 percent of the dollars the proposal raises comes from a reduction in projected Social Security benefits. That is plain and that is simple. Mr. President, when one says ``adjust the Consumer Price Index,'' it almost sounds reasonable. Everyone is in favor of an accurate CPI. But let us call this proposal for what it really is--a proposal to cut cost-of-living adjustments by half a percent no matter what the accurate CPI would be. What that means is that benefits will be cut below projected levels for Social Security, for earned income tax credit and supplemental Social Security income, for veterans' compensation and pensions for the elderly. Is that where we as a government should be looking first for deficit reduction? I suggest not. Over the next 10 years, a half-percent COLA change means $110 billion in less Social Security benefits, $16 billion less in EITC, earned-income tax credits, $11 billion less in SSI benefits, and $5 billion less in veterans' compensation and veterans' pensions. Let me take a moment to talk about the chart that has been moved over here behind me now. It is a very interesting chart, and it tends to show the minimal differences. While they appear minimal, I suggest, to people with the income of those of us in the Senate, it purports to show how little one-half a percent Consumer Price Index change would actually cost the beneficiaries, if you do the arithmetic, Mr. President, and you add up all the cuts that are suggested on that chart, they come up to $1,200 per beneficiary, which is real money, which is real money for people on Social Security. I am not saying that we are not willing to talk about this, but to minimize how small this is should be put in the context of the lowest income Americans as far as the fairness test is concerned. And, oh, by the way, there is something that has not been mentioned that we should look into. It seems to me, if we were to proceed along this basis, it also means about a $106 billion tax increase over the same period because it would bring back bracket creep that we thought we had eliminated. Mr. President, I have a table which shows the current estimates of the Congressional Budget Office as to where these savings would come. I ask unanimous consent that this table be printed in the Record.

Mr. EXON. You would use 3 hours tonight and 1 hour tomorrow?

Mr. EXON. How much time is allowed?

Mr. EXON. From what I can gather, probably in the neighborhood of 6 o'clock.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield me time?

Mr. EXON. Or vice versa.

Mr. EXON. I will be glad to yield the Senator time, but I guess he has some over there.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I would first like to yield 4 minutes of the opposition time to the Senator from Illinois, who has been patiently waiting.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, more than a third of the savings from a CPI adjustment suggested here would come from families with annual incomes under $30,000 per year. Ratchet it up just a little bit and 56 percent of the burden falls on families with incomes under $50,000 per year. This proposed change in the CPI will hit most middle and lower income American families. I suggest, for this reason, this is not shared sacrifice, at least in this Senator's book. As I previously mentioned, the proposed change in the CPI exacts too much from another group of our citizens, the retirees. Under the Breaux-Chafee budget, two-thirds of the savings come from retirees regardless of income. Let us not forget that Social Security contributes 90 percent or more of the income for about a third of our beneficiaries. It is also the major source of income for two-thirds of all of our beneficiaries. When we come up with these easy charts that show how simple and really ``no hurt'' this proposition is, I think we need to look at where it is coming from and who is taking the hit. In addition, the very oldest American would be hit the hardest. COLA reductions accumulate, so that the biggest reductions are experienced by the retirees at the very end of their lives. It is simply not right to take the bread off the table of an elderly citizen--in many cases, a widow who is really now counting every penny. Yes, that is hard for many of us to believe, but that is going on today with many of our citizens who are certainly not well off.

Mr. EXON. Senator Simon wants to be recognized.

Mr. EXON. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield myself what time I may need in opposition to the sense-of-the-Senate amendment offered by the Senator from Alaska. The Senator from Nebraska has made several points today with regard to the sense-of-the-Senate amendments that are before the body that might lead some to expect that the Senator from Nebraska would jump at the opportunity that is being offered by the Senator from Alaska to do away with sense-of-the-Senate amendments. Yes, the Senator from Alaska has offered an amendment to prohibit the sense-of-the-Senate amendments. OK, there is some validity for that argument. Sense-of-the-Senate amendments do not have, obviously, the force of law, as I have made the point on several occasions earlier today. But let us stop and think. If we prohibit them, what would be the result? Frankly, I do not think very much, because Senators would, as a substitute, offer small changes in dollars in a regular amendment with some very long statements of the purpose. There is no way, I suggest, to get out of such votes, whether they are sense of the Senate or not. In a way, I will simply say as much as we all may find sense-of-the- Senate amendments a bother to deal with, the alternative may actually be worse. Sense-of-the-Senate amendments allow the Senate to let off steam on a particular subject without actually spending any more money or, even better, making more laws that have not been thought through. Sometimes that can be a useful thing just to let off steam. If the Senate adopts the Murkowski amendment, this will be just another limitation on the rights of the minority. I will simply say that all of those years that we were in the majority, at least while I was here, the majority never tried to interfere with the rights of the minority. Therefore, while I am not accusing the author of the amendment of being devious, the facts are that sense-of-the-Senate resolutions all during those years when the Republicans were in the minority were used quite successfully to make points that they could not make in any other fashion. So I simply say the minority should be prevented possibly from even changing any language, if we proceed as in the fashion as suggested by the Senator from Alaska. I point out that this is a tradition in the Senate that has been around a long, long time. Maybe it is something that we should take a look at. Maybe we could expedite the procedures of the Senate, which I think we would all like to do. But let us pause for just a little bit. Let us discuss this for a little bit. As far as I know, there have been no hearings on this matter, which I think there should be when we are making such a fundamental change in the procedures of the Senate. Let us talk. Let us investigate the pros and cons of taking the action that, as far as this Senator knows, just came out of the blue. Let us take a little time before we take this step that has been around this Senate and sometimes used successfully, especially by the minority, to make a point. The reason that I made inquiry when the yeas and nays were asked for--I did not have a chance to state my objection then--I just wanted to say that the Senator's amendment is not germane, and at the appropriate time I will raise a point of order that the amendment violates the Budget Act, which would require 60 votes to proceed. I simply say that this came upon us rather suddenly. We were not fully advised on it. I will raise a point of order at the appropriate time before the rollcall vote.