Wendell Ford

Mr. FORD

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. And then we have an amendment in the first degree. We have used up all of the time allotted, unless we get unanimous consent on both of those; is that correct?

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Bradley] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. I thank my friend from Delaware, and I also thank my friend from Utah. Mr. President, I am reluctant to do this but I understand where we are coming from. We will revisit this question, and if we do not vote, if I do not get it the first time, it may be the second time and it may be the third time. I am going to be persistent. So, therefore, Mr. President, I withdraw my amendment. So, the amendment (No. 2946) was withdrawn.

Mr. FORD. Will the Senator from Pennsylvania yield for a question?

Mr. FORD. The two Senators over there are just talking to each other. I do have a germane amendment, which yours is not, to this bill. I have discussed it with the floor manager of the legislation. I would like to get on. If you want a vote, let us have a vote. You can even move to table your amendment. I just would like to get on to other things, because we have been through this rosy scenario, and we are very acquainted with ``Rosy'' because you have introduced her to us.

Mr. FORD. If the----

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, will the Senator yield again?

Mr. FORD. Did the Senator hear the former chairman of the Budget Committee this morning when he said your budget, by CBO figures, was $108 billion or $105 billion short in 2002? So you are standing up here telling us that you are balancing the budget and you have the direct opposite view from that of the former chairman of the Budget Committee, and he got his information from CBO.

Mr. FORD. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I understand what the distinguished Senator from Utah is saying. But, if I did not bring notice----

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

Mr. FORD. For a long time, three States have had split judges. The State of Kentucky has one, I think Missouri has a good many, and so does Oklahoma. The reason I ask the Senator this question is that we have the split judge driving from one end of the State to the other, and most of the judicial time that is needed in court is spent on the road. Until and unless we can have an additional judge, we will still have the split judge. I think an amendment to eliminate the split judge and add one, even though the commission, as the Senator mentioned earlier--we have not considered its recommendations. I understand they recommended an additional judge to eliminate our split judge. That was withdrawn, and we fired off letters asking them to come back. I believe this amendment would be germane. And, I intend, after we are offered the President's budget to approve and other things on this bill, to offer that amendment. I wanted to alert the Senator so he understands what I am concerned about.

Mr. FORD. I am hoping to offer it on this bill because this amendment is more germane to the bill than some of the other amendments we are going to get this afternoon.

Mr. FORD. It will probably be next year before we can get to it.

Mr. FORD. But I say to my good friend, into the next year we will have this one particular judge, and she will be driving from Ashland, KY, to Paducah, KY, from Louisville to Owensboro, and on the road. We have cases that are beginning to pile up, and it is no fault of the split judge. So it is just very important that I at least get this out for people to think about, and I may introduce it. I have it prepared to introduce as an amendment to this bill. As I say, it will be more germane to this bill than other nonbinding amendments, sense-of-the-Senate resolutions that are going to be offered here this afternoon to try to make us walk the plank. We voted 99 to 0 on the one that is going to be offered next, I think. So I just wanted to be sure that the Senator understood why I am doing it, and not because of the Senator's position and my respect for the Senator.

Mr. FORD. This has been going on for a long time. We have been waiting for the commission's report. Then they withdrew that. So I waited for that without doing anything. Now I feel I am almost compelled for my constituents to be served by the Federal judiciary.

Mr. FORD. I thank the Senator. I thank the Chair. Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I object to dispensing with the reading.

Mr. FORD. He did not get it out of his own office, he got it out of CBO.

Mr. FORD. Is this is on the second degree?

Mr. FORD. I understand that. I ask unanimous consent the modification be read.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Bradley] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD

Mr. FORD. I would not have quit sooner, though.

Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I hear all this talk about the budget every day and everybody says the same thing. We could probably just have a tape recording of what we said yesterday, and we get the same thing again today. Senators act like this is the first budget that has ever been brought before the House or the Senate submitted by a President that has been voted on that did not get any votes. The distinguished Senator from Mississippi talked about 96 to nothing or 99 to nothing. Remember Ronald Reagan's 425 to nothing in the House. I believe that is correct. I see him shaking his head. So there have been a lot of budgets that have been dead on arrival. Even the Republicans have voted against a Republican President's budget. So this is not new. Senators act like this is the first time for it to ever happen, this is the worst fellow that has ever been up there. If turning budgets down makes a bad President, then we have had some Republicans up there who had their budgets turned down, so they were not very good Presidents that we are now bragging about. One statement has been made here that we ought to quit this smoke and mirrors, and we ought to sit down and we ought to do it rather than beating up on the President. You have responsibility; I have responsibility; we all have responsibility to try to get it worked out. We take CBO figures. We take CBO figures and we get letters from the Director of CBO which state the Republican budget is not in balance by $105 billion. We did not select that chairman. The majority selected that chairman. That chairman sent us the letter, and we now have it, which says the budget that is being proposed is $105 billion short. So what I wish to do, Mr. President, is not stop the Pell grants for my State. I do not want to reduce or eliminate the help for 55,000 higher education students in my State. We are in a global market. We are in global competition. Education is the great equalizer. But oh, no, we are increasing, you hear from the other side, Pell grants by $100. That may be true, but you are eliminating--if you are not eligible for $600, you are eliminated from the rolls. So in Kentucky we lose 6,000 Pell grants next year alone--next year alone. So it just is a little bit disconcerting to me to hear all of these things, and the public ought to be quite confused, quite confused because you get a CBO letter with a gold seal on it that says the budget is balanced, and the next day you get one that says it is not-- from the same office, signed by the same person as it relates to whether Social Security is in the trust fund and loaned or it is in the general fund. It cannot be both places. You can say what you want to and argue all day. I do not believe you can find a jury that would say in this particular case that it is both. You can borrow from it and spend it, but the assets are over in Social Security. It cannot be used twice. And so we do not have it. So the point I am trying to make here, Mr. President, is that we can take care of Medicare without cutting it $270 billion; $89 billion is enough. We do not need to put the middle-income people in a problem, and the middle-income people, $35,000 to $70,000, is where I would say they are as it relates to Medicaid and nursing homes because you are going to run out of money. That is going to fall on the shoulders of the sons and daughters of the $35,000 to $70,000 income families at some point when their parents are in a nursing home on Medicaid and the phone rings about the latter part of July, 1st of August saying, ``Come and get dad; come and get mom; we are out of money.'' And you change the rules in this bill on regulations on nursing homes. You change the rules as they relate to regulations on nursing homes. Let States do it. The reason the Federal Government is in the business of regulating nursing homes is because the States had it. And the statement has been made, OK, just sedate the elderly; you can handle them easier; then you have fewer employees, you will need fewer employees. Well, that is just one giant indication that we are headed back to the same place we were when we had to take over the regulation of the nursing homes. One of the things that we see coming down the pike is hiding the sale of power marketing administrations in the House bill on page about 470- something where it is now the Secretary of Energy, Interior and Army cannot sell PMA's, but in the House bill you repeal those three and then you instruct those three Secretaries to have a report on how to sell PMA's by the end of next year. And now you have put it in the appropriations bill, and those that are opposed to the sale of PMA's, you better go look at the appropriations bill, Interior bill, and see what they have done there and refuse to sign the conference report until the PMA sale is in that appropriations bill. I see the Senator looking at his watch. I will quit any time he wants me to. I yield the floor. Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.