Russell Feingold

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin, for his leadership on this issue. The virtual kidnaping of two innocent American businessmen by Iraq is a very serious matter. Obviously, I will vote for this amendment because it strongly condemns the Government of Iraq for its unjustified action. I also think it empowers the President as he strives to assure the prompt release and safe exit of our two citizens from Iraq. At the same time, though, I want to explain for the Record that in voting for a resolution which urges the President to ``take all appropriate action'' in this matter, I do not believe that Congress is authorizing any broad use of military action. While the President may initiate an emergency operation to rescue American citizens, any military action beyond that into Iraq would have to be specifically authorized by Congress. I make this point, Mr. President, because I have seen in the past how sometimes we quickly and quite appropriately pass some foreign policy resolutions to express a sense of the Senate, only to have them reinterpreted as a broad authority for some unforeseen or even uncontemplated military action later. I hardly expect that to be the case with this amendment, but I wanted to set the record straight from the outset. Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, though the legislation is seriously flawed, I am willing to support an experimental line-item veto authority and to see it tested over the next several years. The so- called sunset clause of the legislation, which terminates the expanded veto authority unless Congress takes action, was the key to my support for the bill. If the Congress decides that we have gone too far in delegating authority to the President, the sunset clause will make it much easier to act. The burden will be on those who want to retain the authority. Without a sunset clause, Congress would have to pass a bill to overturn the line-item veto authority, and it is likely that any President would veto such a bill, thus retaining this extraordinary new power. The continuing Federal budget deficits justify granting this temporary authorty to the President, but I have a number of grave concerns with the proposal as it passed the Senate. First, and foremost among those concerns is the threshold of a two- thirds vote in each House to overcome this new expended veto authority. That kind of threshold is provided in the Constitution for entire bills, but extending that authority for individual sections of a bill may be going to far. There are many uncertainties in this new authority that we are providing the President, and no one can anticipate all the potential abuses that might flow from this new authority. In Wisconsin, we have seen the abuse of a line-item veto authority by a number of Governors, and it is safe to say that no one anticipated the extent of those abuses when the line-item veto authority was first contemplated. Governor Thompson has used the veto authority not only to rewrite entire laws, but to increase spending and increase taxes. The two-thirds threshold will compound the uncertainty about possible abuses by making it that much more difficult for Congress to respond to that possible abuse. I am also concerned about the potential unconstitutionality of the measure. A number of serious questions on this very issue were raised during the debate, and I am glad that the proposal also includes expedited judicial review to help resolve this matter. be adequate. I am troubled that the language in this proposal may be too protective of tax loopholes for the wealthy. Tax expenditures contribute greatly to pressure on the deficit, and if any area should be subjected to the scrutiny of line-item veto authority, it is this one. The basic structure of this particular line-item veto authority also raise problems. If it becomes law, the measure could mean sending the President hundreds, even thousands, of tiny bills. That could be a procedural nightmare, and I would much prefer to have seen a different approach. On the positive side, unlike the recently debated balanced budget amendment, this line-item veto authority is established by statute, not as part of the Constitution. By providing this new authority by law instead of through the Constitution, the measure does not raise the serious concerns that making a permanent change to our basic law would raise. Also unlike the balanced budget amendment, this proposal is no gimmick. Though it is not a substitute for making real spending cuts, it can help the cause of deficit reduction because it does convey real authority to the President. Indeed, the danger is that it conveys authority that is too broad, and because of that, I will watch how the President uses this new authority, and will lead the charge to oppose any extension of this particular line-item veto authority if problems arise. The proposal now goes to a conference committee to settle the differences between the two Houses, and I will revisit my support for this bill when it comes back to the Senate. I would certainly oppose the measure if the sunset clause it removed, and may well oppose the measure if other changes are made, but for now, I support this temporary new authority.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to thank the managers and all the people that were involved in this amendment. It is an excellent example of bipartisan cooperation to, in effect, try to prevent the pork from getting over to the President in the first place. The line-item veto is about getting rid of those items after the President has them on his desk. I think this will prove to be a useful tool in eliminating some of the things that have happened in Congress that have been held up really to public ridicule. I am grateful to the Senators who helped move it along. Amendment No. 402 to Amendment No. 347

Mr. FEINGOLD. I will reiterate that there is no objection on either side to this. It has to do with changing the rules for emergency spending bills. It is making sure that extraneous matters are not attached to them, as has happened in the past. I understand both sides have agreed to voice vote on that.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I brought up amendment No. 356 last night and it was laid aside. I ask unanimous consent that we return to that now. It is my understanding that the managers have no objection to the amendment.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. That is what I understand.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I will be very brief. I had an opportunity to speak, but this may be the only debate on this amendment the way this is structured. Let me make two quick points. First of all, I am pleased to note this is a nonpartisan issue. Everyone watching should be aware things are not breaking down on a partisan basis. There is a disagreement on the Republican side and there is a disagreement on the Democrat side whether we can go with tax cuts. I think it is heartening for people to realize the Senate can function in this way and we can resolve the issue on other than a Democrat or Republican basis, and I hope that is the way this tax cut debate will continue. The other point I would just make in response to the Senator from Arizona is that I am also willing to examine the impact that this issue of tax cuts and deficit reduction has on the bottom line for American families. I had a meeting yesterday in Wisconsin with a business advisory group, and the business men and women there were absolutely convinced that doing the tax cut, rather than using the money for deficit reduction, would mean that the actual budgetary picture of those individual families would be worse with the tax cut, for two reasons. One, they believed if we do not reduce the deficit as dramatically as we can right now, in other words not using the tax cuts, that the interest we have to pay on the Federal debt will inevitably cause them to have less money of their own because so much of our national economy will be going toward paying the causes. The other point was very specific. Their belief was that the increase in interest rate that will occur because of the failure to deal with the deficit, and possibly because of the tax cuts, could generate an inflationary effect and would mean a greater increase in their costs monthly in the form of interest on car payments and home payments. So I think the Senator's analysis is a fair approach, not just the macroeconomic one of what happens to the whole society and our deficit, but the macroeconomic issue of what happens to those individual families. I hope, as we go on this debate, that we will look at it from both points of view. Both are central to this issue. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Chair. I also ask unanimous consent that Senator Simon of Illinois be added as a cosponsor to this sense-of-the- Senate amendment having to do with tax cuts.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Although nonemergency matters attached to emergency bills are still subject to spending caps established in the current budget resolution as long as total spending remains under those caps, as the Senator well knows, these unrelated spending matters are not required to be offset with spending cuts. In the case of the Los Angeles earthquake bill because the caps have been reached, the new spending was offset by rescission, but in my view those rescissions might otherwise have been used for deficit reduction. We lost an opportunity for deficit reduction of those offsets because they had to be belong in the California earthquake bill. Moreover, by using emergency appropriations bills as a vehicle these extraneous proposals avoid the examination through which legislative proposals must usually go to justify Federal spending. If there is truly a need to shift funds to these programs, an alternative vehicle--a regular supplemental appropriations bill, not an emergency spending bill--is what should be used. Mr. President, the amendment I am offering today will end that kind of misuse of the emergency appropriations process. It is a reasonable first step toward cleaning up our emergency appropriations process. Adding nonemergency extraneous matters to emergency appropriations not only is an attempt to avoid legitimate scrutiny of our normal budget process, it can also jeopardize our ability to actually provide relief to those who are really suffering from a disaster to which we are trying to respond. Just as importantly, adding superfluous material to emergency appropriations bills degrades those very budget rules on which we rely to impose fiscal discipline. Mr. President, I think that only encourages further erosion of our efforts to reduce the deficit. This amendment that I am offering today to the line-item veto proposal passed the other body in the last Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, first as a substitute amendment on a vote of 322 to 99, and then as amended by a vote of 406 to 6. So I urge my colleagues to support this effort to end this abusive practice. As I indicated in my opening remarks, this amendment is both consistent with and complementary to the underlying bill. It is an attempt to impose a prior restraint on Congress so that this kind of spending is not added in the first place to an emergency spending bill. This amendment is an attempt to make a fundamental change in the way Congress has done business in the past. Slipping pork projects into appropriations bills may at one time have been the hallmark of a successful legislator, but I hope in this new era of fiscal constraint it is time that this practice ended. I hope that this amendment will receive the broad bipartisan support that it surely deserves. I wish to conclude this part of my remarks by again thanking the Senator from Arizona for his work with me on this and for his rather effective questioning during my presentation. Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I guess more the eastern side of the United States than the west.

Mr. FEINGOLD. To continue the litany, including the Amtrak station in New York, we not only had a geographical amazement with regard to our continent, we had $40 million for the space shuttle in the California earthquake bill, $20 million for a fingerprints lab, $500,000 for the U.S. Trade Representative travel office, and $5.2 million for the Bureau of Public Debt.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Apparently, under a new geographical approach used by the Senate on this bill. We are hoping to change that.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I am happy to respond.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. President. This amendment is based upon legislation, S. 289, the Emergency Spending Control Act of 1995, which I introduced on January 26 with the Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain], the manager of the bill before the Congress, as well as the Senator from Kansas [Mrs. Kassebaum], the Senator from California [Mrs. Feinstein], and the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Campbell]. This is a measure which had passed the other body in the 103d Congress by an overwhelming vote, and was designed to limit consideration of nonemergency matters in emergency legislation. The Washington Post, in an editorial dated August 22, 1994, called this legislation ``a good idea.'' And it is a good idea. The line-item veto legislation before Congress is intended to allow the President to remove pork-barrel spending from appropriations bills. This amendment is designed to prevent some of that pork from getting into appropriations bills in the first place. Anyone who has watched the congressional appropriations process at any length knows exactly what we are talking about. An emergency appropriations bill begins moving through the legislative process and it is almost as if a red alert is sounded that a fast-moving appropriations vehicle is on the launch pad. What happens, Mr. President, is staff begin drafting legislative language to insert some project that did not get funded in the regular appropriations bill or got left out in the conference In some cases, the proponents simply do not want to wait for a regular appropriations bill to present their arguments on behalf of an item. They just see this opportunity of an emergency bill to shortcut the whole process. Mr. President, that is the way things have operated in Congress for many years. That is the way the Federal dollars have poured into special projects that might not otherwise be able to compete for limited Federal funds. That is the way that public confidence in our ability to achieve fiscal discipline has been eroded over the years. Mr. President, it is time that we stop this abuse of the legislative process. Emergency spending bills should be limited to what they are supposed to be for--emergency spending. They should not become vehicles for an odd assortment of spending projects. As the Washington Post said in its editorial last year, there should be no ``hitchhikers in an ambulance.'' Specifically, Mr. President, my amendment limits emergency spending bills solely to emergencies by establishing a new point of order against nonemergency matters other than rescissions of budget authority or reductions in direct spending, spending in any bill that contains an emergency bill or an amendment to an emergency measure or a conference report that contains an emergency measure. Mr. President, as an additional enforcement mechanism this amendment adds further protection by prohibiting the Office of Management and Budget from adjusting the caps on discretionary spending or from adjusting the sequester process for direct spending and receipt measures for any emergency appropriations bill if the bill includes extraneous items other than rescissions of budget authority or reductions in direct spending. Mr. President, though this proposal, like the underlying line-item veto measure, can help in the fight to reduce the deficit, I want to stress that process rules themselves do not solve the deficit problem. No rule can--whether it is a procedural rule of the Senate, a statute, or even a constitutional amendment. The only way we can lower the deficit is through specific policy action. Still, Mr. President, the budget rules can help Members maintain the kind of discipline that is necessary to achieve our goals of deficit reduction. Mr. President, I am delighted that the main coauthor of this amendment, or the bill that led to this amendment, is the manager on the majority side, Senator McCain, who called me after the election and said, ``Aren't there some reforms items we can work on together?'' And this is one of the first we chose to work together on. In general, Mr. President, the rules require that new spending-- whether through direct spending, tax expenditures, or discretionary programs--be offset with spending cuts or revenue increases. However, the rules provide for exceptions in the event of an emergency, and I think, rightly so. The deliberate review through the Federal budget process, weighing one priority against another, in some cases may not permit a timely response to an international crisis, a national disaster, or some other emergency. In other words, Mr. President, we do not ask that earthquake victims find a funding source before we send them aid. Mr. President, the emergency exception to our budget rules designed to expedite a response to an urgent need has become something very different. It has become a loophole, abused by those trying to circumvent the scrutiny of the budget process. These abuses have taken essentially two different forms: First, declaring some expenditure to be an emergency that is truly not an urgent or unexpected matter. A second approach is adding nonemergency matters to emergency legislation that is receiving the special accelerated consideration that appropriate emergency measures are supposed to get. Mr. President, this amendment does not prevent every abuse of the emergency spending exceptions to our budget rule. In fact, it is only aimed at the second problem I just identified. That is, adding those nonemergency matters to emergency legislation. This proposal will not stop Congress and the President from declaring a matter to be an emergency thus funding it by adding it to the deficit when it is not truly urgent or unexpected. I am not saying we should not do that. I am saying that is something we must address in the future. In fact, we saw this recently as last year when the Department of Defense's continuing peacekeeping operation in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and Haiti were declared emergencies, suddenly with the costs added to our Federal budget deficit. In most cases, those operations had been ongoing for significant periods of time. They were not sudden, urgent, or unforeseen costs which would have justified circumventing budget rules. I offered an amendment last year during floor consideration of H.R. 3759 to strike these questionable provisions. Although there were only a handful of votes for this amendment, a number of Members expressed concern about whether such spending was appropriately tied to the California earthquake emergency. The basic problem is that when these spending items are packaged together on a fast track, it is difficult to separate questionable items for fear of jeopardizing the entire measure which is supposed to respond to some very immediate human needs in places such as California after the earthquake. Although this amendment does not address this particular problem, it is aimed at limiting the abuses surrounding emergency measures by helping to keep those measures clean of extraneous matters on which there is not even an amendment to make an actual emergency designation. When the appropriations bill to provide relief for the Los Angeles earthquake was introduced last session it officially did four things: Provided $7.8 billion for the Los Angeles quake, $1.2 billion for the Department of Defense peacekeeping operations that I mentioned, $436 million for Midwest flood relief, and $315 million more for the 1989 California earthquake. Mr. President, it went a lot further than that. By the time the Los Angeles earthquake bill became law it also provided $1.4 million to fight potato fungus, $2.3 million for FDA pay raises, $14.4 million for the National Park Service, $12.4 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $10 million for a new Amtrak station in New York. I guess we got on the wrong side of the country on that one.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Madam President, I think roughly half an hour.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I have a second amendment No. 362 pending at the desk that I call up and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona. That sounds like a very reasonable approach to this amendment. I hope it can be accepted. I wish to again thank him for his willingness and effort to work on a bipartisan basis, and also for his personal efforts and the efforts of his staff over the years to identify those pork projects. I think it is one of the reasons that these kinds of amendments have a chance of prevailing in this environment. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside my first amendment so that I can call up my second amendment.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I will defer the request for the yeas and nays on the first amendment in response to the suggestion of the manager, the Senator from Arizona. I thank both the managers for their kindness and cooperation in my opportunity to offer these amendments. I yield the floor.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I understand the majority leader intends to stack votes on amendments offered tonight for some time to be determined and I ask unanimous consent, on the amendment I just proposed, it be in order to ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. FEINGOLD. I will continue just a brief time longer. Mr. President, let me take a couple of other points on this matter of the sense-of-the-Senate resolution. Some proponents of these tax cuts argue that they have to be a high priority because the American people are insisting on them. The Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Breaux] a distinguished member of our tax-writing committee, had a very good response to this contention. In today's Washington Post he was quoted as saying, ``We do not have a lot of people marching on Washington asking for tax cuts.'' The Senator from Louisiana hit the nail on the head. There is no great demand for tax cuts, but there is widespread support for us to cut spending and to use those savings to reduce the deficit. I have been speaking out on this issue for several months now, basically since November 8 when I first saw the Republican contract and then after I saw the President's proposal on December 15. I took issue with the President's proposed tax cuts last December on the day he announced them, and I did so because I felt tax cuts were just not fiscally responsible right now. I concede that I would be tempted to make this argument even without strong support from my constituents. Sometimes that is part of this job. The voters elect you to make some tough calls, not to constantly stick out your finger to test the political winds before every vote. On this issue, the people of Wisconsin have been overwhelmingly supportive. They realize what they would get back in lower taxes--a meaningful amount to many people--was simply not worth the devastation it would cause our Federal budget. In just the last few weeks, the phone calls and letters to my office have been running 7 to 1 in favor of reducing the deficit over cutting taxes. Here are just a few of the things they have been saying. A gentleman from Janesville wrote: As popular as a ``middle class tax cut'' may be, this is not the time for such action. . . . I urge you to keep your eye on the prize. Concentrate your efforts on balancing the budget and then, begin to pay down our national debt. Please, do not make this process more difficult by returning a pittance to this over taxed citizen. A woman from Prairie du Sac wrote: . . . any tax cut at this time would be pure folly. . . . Reducing the deficit must be the number one priority of this Congress now and for many years to come. Our country's economy is dependent on this. . . . And a gentleman from Minong, just a few miles from the Minnesota border, wrote this to me: It's not that I don't believe the middle class deserve a tax cut. I just don't think we can afford to cut taxes when we can't cover our budget right now. . . . When we are out of debt, then the time has come to grant tax cuts. Not before. My office has received hundreds of calls and letters that are similar to these. And, though I do not presume to speak for the constituents of other Members, I think this view is widely shared outside Wisconsin as well. that 70 percent of those polled said if Congress is able to cut spending, then reducing the deficit is a higher priority than tax cuts. A Washington Post-ABC News poll from January 6 showed that people favored deficit reduction over tax cuts by a 3-to-2 margin. And in a column in today's Washington Post, James Glassman notes that an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found only 13 percent of respondents said taxes were the ``most important economic issue facing the country'' while nearly three times as many said it was the deficit. Mr. President, while polling often can be one-dimensional measures of opinion, there was nothing one-dimensional about the response to the field hearings of the House Budget Committee on this matter. The crowds that attended those hearings showed clear, vocal majorities supporting deficit reduction over tax cuts. Mr. President, it is frustrating to hear constituents, who could certainly use the money, urge Congress to make deficit reduction a higher priority than tax cuts, and then watch the rush to see who can propose the bigger tax cut. In his column, Mr. Glassman calls upon Republicans to immediately shelve their plans to cut taxes this year and instead devote all their energy to cutting spending. I will add that I think both Democrats and Republicans should shelve plans to cut taxes. Let us focus on the task of identifying spending that can be cut, and then use the savings we achieve from those cuts to reduce the deficit. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that copies of the column by James Glassman, and the story headlined ``Senate GOP Prepares to Invalidate Tax Provisions of House `Contract,''' both from today's Washington Post, be included in the Record at this point.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Nebraska. He is the perfect person to be describing the specifics of what this does about reducing our Federal deficit. Nobody knows the issue better. I can only say my only regret is that the Senator has chosen not to seek reelection. I think his being here in the next 6 years would be one of the keys to eliminating this Federal deficit, but we will certainly be delighted to have the benefit of his great skills in the area of deficit reduction over the next several months. Does the Senator have a question?

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent further reading be dispensed with.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. President. I send amendment numbered 356 to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I thank the managers. I ask unanimous consent that the Simon amendment be temporarily set aside so I can offer two amendments.