Wendell Ford

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. For 1932 and 1956, all of it went to the general fund. That is No. 1. No. 2, the Bush nickel was divided, 2.5 cents for transportation and 2.5 cents went to deficit reduction. It did phase out in 1995. So when you get back and start looking at all these things, there has been some tax that has been used in past administrations, and that is 10 cents, if you want to look at it, 5 in 1982 and 5 in 1990, and 2.5 cents was used in the general fund for 5 years. So when the Senator says it is the only one that has been dedicated, technically he might be right. But when you take it out of my pocket and you put it in the general fund, then I expect that I feel a little bit differently than the way the Senator explains it technically. So, yes, we have used taxes before for the general fund put on gasoline. Am I not correct, I ask the Senator?

Mr. FORD. Reserving the right to object, I have that time. So I want to consider modifying that amendment to add the minimum wage to that and under the amendment that was used by the majority leader in his proposal that we will vote on cloture at 5 o'clock.

Mr. FORD. I object.

Mr. FORD. I would rather him than some I have.

Mr. FORD. He objects. Is it not wonderful? If you want something, they object. We want something--``we object.'' It is rather interesting around here. What the Senator fails to tell us in his eloquent remarks, his Ph.D. philosophy here, and verbiage--and I am just a country boy from Yellow Creek trying to explain my position and I will do the best I can--what the Senator does not tell those who are watching on C-SPAN--and we had a big story on C-SPAN junkies today; he speaks to them--is that what the Republicans are trying to do is to have all this in one package. You have absolutely locked the minority out, and they cannot amend any one of those three items that you have talked about today. It is called the Dole gag order. The Dole gag order. Let me quote what the distinguished Senator said, I guess back in 1993--we all go back to those--when he was frustrated. But he was wrong in his frustration. He says, ``But as the distinguished chairman knows''--talking about the distinguished Senator from West Virginia-- ``we also have rights.'' You said that--excuse me--the Senator said that. I want to be careful not to use improper language. One of the rights we have is to refuse to participate in a situation which we believe, though it is totally fair and totally within the rules, creates a playing field on which we believe that we are not capable of getting a fair contest underway. That is the language of the Senator from Texas. At that time he had the ability to offer four amendments. Right now we have no time to offer any amendments. And it is not, ``Oh, we just want a vote.'' Vote on what? Vote on a package that you cannot offer an amendment to? They have us locked out. They have us locked out. You know something, this 4.3 cents--look at it. Because it increases the deficit almost $2 billion this year. And there is no offset--no offset. To offset it in the language they have, they do two things. Over 6 years, they get the $800,000 out of the Department of Energy. And we have a $2 billion debt this year--deficit. Then they want to sell the spectrum. That cannot go into effect until 1998. So we have no ability to amend it to be sure that the consumer gets the 4.3 cents. You say they could--the distinguished Senator from Texas says, ``The consumer could get it.'' If he had been at the hearing in the Energy Committee this morning, he would have found out there is nothing we can do. If we give the 4.3 cents back, we create a deficit of almost $2 billion, because you do not offset it for 6 years and the spectrum sale does not occur until 1998. Now, I have heard about the Gramm-Rudman bill, you know. You ought to read what the former Senator, Senator Rudman, talks about, how we cannot get together here. That is one of the reasons he left. So the Democrats are the minority in this case. We always want to protect the minority, that is one of the reasons for the rules of the Senate. Sure, I can quote the Senator from Texas again: ``We also have our rights.'' So we have our rights. We want a cloture; we want to have the ability to amend. We offered yesterday afternoon three stand-alones, one on the gasoline tax, with amendments, relevant. We wanted the minimum wage, with amendments, relevant amendments; and the TEAM Act, with amendments. That is all. That is our rights. To quote the Senator: That is all we are asking for, is our rights. You know something? Ninety-six percent of all the businesses today have committees that get together and talk about the very things the Senator says that they want under this legislation. They talk about safety. They talk about that now. Mr. President, 96 percent of all the businesses have those committees now. If they want to talk about health, they all could talk about that. But in this bill they eliminate present law, and the employer will appoint the committee. The employees do not have the opportunity to make that selection. You know, we get out here and it sounds so good, and we are so bad. If I had not been on the floor--I think it is kind of unprecedented that you ask for a unanimous consent when the opposite party is not on the floor. I just happened to walk out here and we get a unanimous- consent request. I suspect the Chair may have recognized that, and I think that would have been disastrous, not only for the Senate's procedures but for the Members themselves. So, yes, we are ready to vote on the 4.3-cent tax, but we want to offer an amendment to say that the consumer will get it. You go back and listen to the very crafty language of the Senator from Texas. He says you ``may'' get it. We can save you, but if the oil companies, when you take off 4.3 cents, add a nickel on, the only people who make any money really, putting more money into their pockets, is the oil companies. If I represented Texas and big oil, I imagine I would want to do the same thing, but I am here trying to protect the low-income people in my State and in this country. When gasoline prices go up and you have no control over it, only 4 cents, and the minimum wage does not go up, they are still making the same amount of money, why do we not have our right? So the choice here is whether we are able to have a question on the 4.3-cent gasoline tax removal and the ability to amend, that is all we ask. Then we have--and give a time agreement--and then we have the minimum wage. If you want to amend it, well and good. But the majority leader gave the Senator from Massachusetts exactly what he asked for. I doubt seriously if the Senator from Texas likes that. I do not imagine he does, but that is a stand alone. If they want to amend it--the other side--they can. We are giving them that right. Then on the TEAM Act: stand alone, time limit, but give us an opportunity to amend it. My dad used to tell me, ``Son, when you miss a train, stand there with your suitcase and hat and another one will be by.'' What goes around comes around. We can fill the tree one of these days, and some of the Senators on the other side may just be here --may just be here. I understand the rules of the Senate. I understand them very well. So, Mr. President, we want to be sure that an offset is there, and it is not there in this bill for 4.3 cents. Just increase the deficit, increase the deficit, increase the deficit. I have been preached to ever since I have been here by the Senator from Texas about balancing the budget. Well, he wants to dig into Social Security, $147 million a year. I am not going to allow that. I have a contract with my senior citizens around the country. I hope he is making a lot of notes on this. I want to hear the rebuttal. Probably will be good; probably will be good. I can hardly wait. I will wait with bated breath, I guess. Insurance? The insurance bill that was agreed to here I think was something very good for the retiring Senator from Kansas, Senator Kassebaum. I think it was good that we had bipartisan agreement with Senator Kennedy and Senator Kassebaum joining together and asked we have no amendments. An amendment was offered and it lost. Then you want to put conferees on who would say, even though we lost the amendment in the Senate on a vote, we are going to put it on in conference. Sure, you have something to object to. We have our rights. We have our rights, and that is what the distinguished Senator from Texas said: ``I have played by the rules in sending up the pending amendment.'' So we have our rights. Well, we are going to have a little debate on the budget, I guess now. We did not have a chance to have any input into it. Read the paper today. It is the Dole budget. You know, it looks like they are reducing the amount of tax cuts, but it is a ``fooler.'' The last budget was for 7 years; this budget is for 6 years. So you have one-seventh more taxes into that one little frame--6 years. So we have to be very careful. One thing Dad told me, too, ``The devil's in the fine print.'' If you do not read the fine print, you might not understand what you are voting on. That is one reason, I think, that we ought to be sure we understand that if the 4.3-cent gasoline tax comes off, we will have almost a $2 billion deficit this year, and this year ends September 30, and it takes 6 years to repay it. We cannot even pay for part of it until 1998. We think we ought to have an ability to amend it to be sure that the consumer receives the money rather than ``might save,'' ``might receive.'' The dealer does not have to pass it on. I think that is a true statement. The oil companies do not have to pass it on. I think that is a true statement. So give us an opportunity to amend, to the best of our ability, to be sure that the consumer receives the 4.3 cents. That is all we have asked. That is all the fairness we want, and I think that fairness is what the argument is about--not gridlock, not refusing to let you vote, but principle. I intend to stay here and work as hard as I can for principle and for the rules of the Senate and to operate in the best manner possible. So when you get down to it, that is all that you can ask for. So I go back and one more time read: But as the distinguished chairman knows, we also have rights. I am quoting the Senator from Texas. And one of the rights we have is to refuse to participate in a situation which we believe, though it is totally fair and totally within the rules, creates a playing field on which we believe that we are not capable of getting a fair contest underway. So now I say to the Senator from Texas, all we are asking for is a fair contest. I think we have offered you a fair contest--or to the distinguished majority leader. Stand alone, give us an opportunity to amend. We cannot amend. You have it your way, we cannot get it our way. Fairness in this Chamber is one thing that we have always prided ourselves on, but when we have a gag order--a gag order--and we are unable to amend, then I think we have every right under the Constitution and under the ability of use of the rules that we do the best we can. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor. Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I am glad to yield--you yielded to me--as long as I do not go beyond.

Mr. FORD. But he wants to keep it in the same package.

Mr. FORD. Absolutely, absolutely, that is the whole theme here, and you have to approve of the amendment.

Mr. FORD. We have been prepared all along, but what you do is put a poison pill in, and we are not going to accept the poison pill. Wait a minute. We are not going to accept the poison pill. You say this is it, and we say we cannot be for it if you put that in. Well, you put that in and so, therefore, we have told you in advance we cannot be for it. So we are put in a position of having to be against it, and I do not particularly like that. But I wanted to tell you, if I am precluded from offering any amendment, I think I have the right, and this side has the right, and some on that side will have the right to offer amendments and be quite disturbed about not being able to offer amendments. So what we did is we offered three stand-alone bills with relevant amendments and a time, and you say, ``No, we want to put it all in a package, and we have to vote on it as a package. We get three votes and then a vote on the package.'' I do not understand why you will not take the offer. There must be some reason, because the minimum wage was the only threat you had. That was the only threat. Now you are agreeing to the minimum wage to take it as an amendment or vote on it. And there is a majority in this body that will vote for it, and the majority leader stated that this afternoon. So the majority wants to increase the minimum wage in the Senate. The majority leader agreed to that. So, that is one vote. That is stand alone. That is the only threat you have had. That is the only thing that the majority leader has been building the tree for, so we cannot have an amendment, so we cannot put on the minimum wage. Now something happened out there beyond the beltway, and all of a sudden we are agreeing to the minimum wage, because you have Senators on your side who want to vote for the minimum wage increase. So we just say there are three bills. Let them stand alone, let us have relevant amendments, let us do a time agreement, if that is what is necessary, instead of putting it in a package and then having three votes and then the fourth vote to approve the package. There is some reason beyond the minimum wage.

Mr. FORD. You want to talk about the President. There was a history of a $300 billion deficit when President Clinton took over. It is now $140 billion, down 4 consecutive years--4 consecutive years--after you built it up over almost $5 trillion. You say, we have not done very well? Let us look at the record. You are saying, we had to swallow the poison pill to vote for that.

Mr. FORD. You got me worked up, and I am sweating a little bit. But the thing that really bothers this Senator is to say that it is all President Clinton's fault. Why, I even saw one story that he was responsible--an op-ed piece--that he was responsible for the Unabomber. Keep on keeping on, because he is going up in the ratings. He is even 16 points ahead in Kentucky. Will you believe that? I yield the floor. And I will go to dinner.

Mr. FORD. You have the floor.

Mr. FORD. I request 5 additional minutes.

Mr. FORD. I say to my colleague, you take one line out of a statement and then you do not read the paragraph before or the paragraph under of the President's State of the Union Message. My interpretation of that was that employees ought to be recognized as assets, to be nurtured and improved and trained--that was No. 1--so that management and the employees could work together. Second, I think his intent was the employees should not be used to be fired so the CEO could get $5 million as a bonus for that year while they are out walking on the street. So what he was saying, as long as the----

Mr. FORD. I am trying not to, but some people just say some things.

Mr. FORD. But what this law----

Mr. FORD. Oh, I understand that.

Mr. FORD. But 96 percent of all businesses now, I understand, have the team concept, but what they do is try to improve the assembly line, to try to improve, so that the nuts and bolts ought to be here on the right instead of on the left. The Ranger truck in Louisville that was not doing so well, management and the employees got together and they were able to learn to put the truck upside-down and be able to lean on the machine that tightens the bolts and turn the truck back up and were able to do these things. That is fine. But now are you saying that these teams will be able to negotiate wages? Negotiate hours? Is that the team concept that you want?

Mr. FORD. If I do not object, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. FORD. So I will not object. Why do we need to change the law when these people you are talking about now are on a team?

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I just wanted you to know how much it costs per page.

Mr. FORD. If I reached the 5 minutes, I did not want to charge the taxpayers any more than $389. I hope I did not use up a page of the Record. I yield the floor. Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, earlier, we were required and asked to object to a bill being brought up without being notified, and that was Megan's law. We did not know anything about it until it was offered, at least I did not. We did not have an opportunity. What we do around here is hotline to see if any Senators have any objection or if they have any amendments. And so we knew that there were amendments and we would like to improve the bill. And so therefore we were required to object. I do not think there was any motive there to stop the law. It will pass. We just had some Senators I think who wanted an opportunity to amend. And so I think that is where we are on the debate here. We talk about the tax, 4.3 cents. You would think it was going to save the world. But the minute we take it off and we do not assure that the consumer will receive it, the oil companies increase it a nickel. I bought gasoline last night, 2 cents higher today. We did not take the tax off and have not changed anything. We put the tax on 3 years ago, gasoline went down. They were telling us put on more tax; maybe it will be cheaper. Mr. President, 3.8 million barrels of gasoline is what is being used today, about 8.4 is the maximum amount of gasoline that can be produced in this country today. That is running it at full speed. And we have not had a new refinery in over 20 years. So what you are going to find, taking the speed limit off, taking the speed limit off has helped. Four of every 10 vehicles purchased get only 14 miles to the gallon. And so regardless of what we do here, we lose. Now, if we do not want to reduce the deficit, you have to offset it from something else. How are you going to offset it? They threw out slurringly on Sunday they were going to take it out of education--you know, I hate Government anyhow. That was the statement. Well, they had to retract that the next day. And how are you going to offset it? So what we would like to do, or what I would like to do is to find out how you could assure that the consumer gets 4.3 cents because you are going to cut it someplace else. Once you reduce the 4.3 cents and not assure the consumer receive the 4.3, you are going to reduce the budget some place else because you have to have an offset. So the consumer probably, with the approach here, is going to lose twice. One, they will not see the 4.3 cents, and you are going to cut the budget someplace else. So they get hit twice. So I think we ought to be sure that when we reduce the gasoline tax-- and I think we are going to be able to vote for that--but let us be sure that the consumer receives it and that the big oil companies do not have a windfall, because the 4.3 cents now is reducing the deficit. It has had 4 consecutive years in reduction of the deficit. We have about 8.5 million new jobs in a little over 3 years. Oh, I can hear the crocodile tears that, ``We could do better if you would listen to us.'' I remember the 1990 tax. If we are not reducing the deficit, how in the world are you going to get to a balanced budget? If the deficit went down, it was back when President Clinton took office--$300 billion. If it was still there, and suppose President Clinton had not won and it was still there, under past procedures, under past administrations, it would go up $300 billion a year. That was not under ours. You say, ``Well, that is a Democratic Congress, and for 6 years you had it right here--control.'' I tell you, the President had the same kind of wet pen that this President has, the same kind of wet pen on the same desk in the same room. All they have to do is speak to him to get 34. That is all he needs. But how many vetoes did we get?--caved in. He said it was not going to increase taxes, and did. All he had to do is put the pen to it. You fussed at the President for vetoing. Look at the mess we were in when you would not veto. So you can brag and plead and fuss. I would like, if we could, to try to find some way to get this Senate back in order, to get it back on track, to try to do something that will help people and get a balanced budget up. We argue over these things that are sound bites. It is $389 a page to have your speech put in the Record, and we will have 10 some mornings, and they will all say the same thing and cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars; $389 a page. That is when it is electronically. Otherwise, it is over $400. Every time you make a speech here--and I do not make very many-- every time you talk, the page in that Record is $389. So I just want you to know that every time we hear 10 speeches, it costs tens of thousands of dollars. It has been hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in speeches anti the President, and his popularity is better today than it has been any time. So keep knocking. I think you ought to keep knocking--sour grapes, you know. I think one thing that we ought to do to get it on the right track is that they ought to run the race for the Presidency out in the field and not every little item that comes up here saying to the Democrats, you cannot vote, you cannot offer an amendment, you cannot vote on one of your amendments. So we are going to have to start getting this place in a position where it is respected. Are we limited to 5? I did not know that. I apologize to the Chair. I did not know we were limited to 5 minutes.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I will not take but just a moment.