J. Exon

Mr. EXON

Mr. EXON. Senator Pryor?

Mr. EXON. Senator John Kerry, 15?

Mr. EXON. Does Senator Conrad ask for 15?

Mr. EXON. Fifteen. Senator Dorgan, 15?

Mr. EXON. Fifteen. All right.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I would like to get some order now if we could. We have plenty of time, but we are having difficulty meeting the schedules of the individual Senators. At 3:15 we had this list in their order of appearance on the floor: Senator Wellstone, Senator Bob Kerrey, Senator Kennedy, Senator Dorgan, Senator Conrad, Senator John Kerry and Senator Pryor. Senator Wellstone will be first. He has indicated to me that he would like 10 minutes. May I inquire of the other Senators about how much time they would take when I yield, so the other Senators would have some idea of time.

Mr. EXON

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes off the time that I have under my control, and will the Chair advise me how much time the Senator from Nebraska controls?

Mr. EXON. He has requested a parliamentary inquiry, which I do not think requires a yielding of time.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I raise a point of order that the sections designated on the list that I now send to the desk violate the Byrd rule, sections 313(b)(1)(A) and (D) of the Congressional Budget Act. The list follows:

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate will unfortunately adopt this conference report to the reconciliation bill. Although I will not vote for the legislation, I certainly want to congratulate Chairman Domenici for his leadership and for the many months of yeoman labor that he put in on this piece of legislation. He made the hard choices, some good and, in my opinion, many bad, but he was a true leader of great merit, and I congratulate him. Mr. President, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will savor their victory, but I must also say to all Senators that it is time to move on. With victory short lived and the fate of this bill certain, it will soon take its place in veto history. Mr. President, where do we go from here? In my 17 years in the Senate, I have never seen such a poisonous atmosphere as the one that hangs thick over the Nation's Capitol. The nervous truce that existed in January has collapsed. We are, in the words of President Lincoln, ``a house divided against itself.'' I still nurture the hope that we will find a way out of this morass and that our leaders--especially those in the other body--will set aside pettiness, vanity, and rigid ideology for the good of the Nation. There is no honor in the dishonor that has been brought about by the actions of the last few days and the last few hours. I firmly believe, with every fiber in my body, that we should balance the budget. So do the American people. It is the stark route that the Republican majority took, however, that cleaves our ranks. I tell my Republican friends that if we ever can come to an agreement on a balanced budget, we cannot adhere to the current formulas that exist in the conference report. It hobbles any hope that we can redeem our differences in a constructive alliance to balance the budget. But we must keep trying. I yield my remaining time. [[Page S 17328]]

Mr. EXON. I yield 8 minutes to the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, was there an objection?

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I have been fascinated and horrified by the press reports about the horse trading that went on to win the support for the Republican budget. I am not speaking about wooing recalcitrant Republicans who strayed from the party line. No, I am looking at some of the sweeteners that were loaded into this bill to keep the medical establishment at bay and to pay the American Medical Association for their support of the Republican budget. This conference report is groaning with extraneous giveaways to the medical establishment. They do not only violate the Byrd rule, but they violate every sense of decency and fair play. The conference report exempts physicians' offices and laboratories from the Clinical Laboratory and Improvement Act of 1988. It is clear that this is a violation of the Budget Act. It is extraneous, in addition to being bad policy. Antitrust regulations are turned on their heads in this conference report just to boost physicians' salaries. The conference report exempts certain groups of health care providers from the most basic antitrust violations against price fixing. This is also a violation of the Budget Act and is likely to impair competition and raise costs for non-Medicare health care purchasers. It is appalling that when our seniors, our poor, our disabled, and our children are being asked to sacrifice basic health care, the Republicans are trying to enlarge special interest giveaways to the Nation's physicians. The provisions do not belong in this fast-track reconciliation bill and are a violation of the Byrd rule. I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to waive this well-founded point of order. Madam President, at this time, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. EXON. Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. EXON. Madam President, since there are no other Members seeking recognition at this time, I yield 5 minutes of my time to the Senator from Arkansas.

Mr. EXON

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Washington.

Mr. EXON. The majority could have prevented this drain on the Treasury in the out-years by sunsetting the tax provisions. I read in the press that, at one time, they were actively considering such a notion. But they did not. The tax cuts continue to add to the debt year after year. It is this Senator's view that it is self-evident from the Joint Tax table that the tax title does indeed worsen the deficit in years beyond the 7 years covered by this reconciliation bill. It is thus this Senator's view that the violation of section 313(b)(1)(E) is plain. Some may argue that I am setting an impossible standard for ever enacting tax cuts. Quite to the contrary, my colleagues on the other side could have avoided this point of order in a number of ways. I am not here to give free parliamentary advice, but they could have sunsetted the tax breaks, as I noted earlier. They could have included the tax breaks in the same title as the Medicare spending cuts. Or, during consideration of the budget resolution reconciliation instructions, they could have specified that section 313(b)(1)(E) would not apply to the tax breaks. Any one of these three steps would have prevented a violation of the point of order. But they didn't do any of them. Therefore, Mr. President, I believe a point of order should lie against subtitles A through D of title XI of this conference report because they violate section 313(b)(1)(E) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Mr. President, I understand that the parliamentarian has advised that he will not agree that these 2 points of order lie against the bill. Everyone should have known that the fix is in for these tax breaks. If there had been any doubt, that doubt has now been set aside. The majority has demonstrated that it will do whatever it needs to do-- including bend and stretch the rule--to protect its cherished tax breaks for the wealthy.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. EXON. I yield my colleague 1 additional minute.

Mr. EXON. Section 205 of the budget resolution gives the majority the authority to lower the revenue floor in the budget resolution. Without section 205, the majority would violate the revenue floor in the budget resolution by including tax cuts in this bill. But the facts are that the conference report before us today fails to meet the two conditions in section 205 for including tax cuts. The budget resolution directed committees to come up with $632 billion in deficit reduction over the next 7 years in order to be allowed to include tax cuts in this bill. The bill before us includes only $577 billion in spending cuts, plus $3.7 billion in revenue increases in the jurisdiction of a committee with instructions to increase revenues, for a net of $581 billion in deficit reduction. That is $51 billion short of the amount committees were instructed to achieve by the budget resolution. The bill is thus $51 billion short of the amount necessary to allow the chairman of the Budget Committee to lower the budget resolution's revenue floor to allow for the tax breaks. As a consequence, the tax cuts cause this bill to violate the budget resolution's revenue floor. Therefore, Mr. President, a point of order should lie against this conference report because it violates section 311(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full test of the CBO cost estimate on this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. EXON. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I believe that the majority's desire to include tax breaks in this bill has caused two points of order to lie against this bill. It has long been my belief that the tax breaks have been the tail that has wagged this dog of a budget. They have driven the majority to make extreme cuts in Medicare and education. And their desire for tax breaks for the wealthy has also driven the majority to jump through some pretty high procedural hoops. I hope to demonstrate over the next few minutes that the majority has abused the budget reconciliation process and violated the conditions of the budget resolution to pave the way for these misguided tax breaks. The budget resolution that created this budget reconciliation bill provided that the majority could cut taxes if and only if two conditions were met: One, they had to balance the budget in 2002. And, two, the reconciliation legislation had to ``compl[y] with the sum of the reconciliation directives for the period of fiscal years 1996 through 2002'' in the budget resolution. These two conditions are plainly spelled out in section 205 of the budget resolution. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of section 205 of the budget resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. EXON. And I say to my colleagues that the tax title in the reconciliation conference report creates enormous loses in the out- years. Just look at the capital gains provisions, for example, which lose nearly $12 billion in 2002, over $13 billion in 2003, and nearly $16 billion in 2004. And these numbers are from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which understates the losses from capital gains relative to the estimates of the Treasury Department. In total, the tax breaks in this bill worsen the deficit by over $47 billion in 2003, over $51 billion in 2004, and nearly $57 billion in 2005. These tax cuts continue in the out-years to dig us into a deeper and deeper hole. Over 10 years, the Republican tax cuts worsen the deficit by nearly $382 billion. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a table prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation displaying the 10-year effects of these tax breaks be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. EXON. I yield at least 8 minutes--no more than 10 minutes--to my colleague from Arkansas.