Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the underlying amendment.

Mr. GRAMM. I could ask it either way. I could ask unanimous consent it be in order to ask for the yeas and nays. Why don't I do that. I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to ask for the yeas and nays on the underlying Baucus amendment.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the yeas and nays be ordered on the underlying committee substitute.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator please yield?

Mr. GRAMM. We had gotten the yeas and nays on the point of order before I had an opportunity. We had talked to the leadership on your side about ordering the yeas and nays on the amendment. And because we had ordered the yeas and nays on the point of order, it was not in order for me to simply request it. So, therefore, I asked unanimous consent.

Mr. GRAMM. Yes.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, first I thank Senator Byrd for his speech. I want to clarify exactly where we are, exactly what the rules of the Senate are, the issues I believe are involved, and then I will make a point of order. I think I can do all that fairly briefly. We have before the Senate a bill which is the House bill, H.R. 3090. That bill has been brought to the floor of the Senate. Now there is an amendment to that bill in the nature of a substitute, which is pending. Part of that substitute is Senator Byrd's $15 billion amendment, but $67 billion has to do with tax and spending provisions as diverse as giving Federal funding for health insurance for the unemployed and an innumerable list of large and small items to be given some form of subsidy or tax treatment. In the 2001 budget, we reached a conclusion about a provision we added to the old Gramm-Rudman law in 1990, which gave emergency designations, where you wrote a budget, the budget was binding, but if the Congress and the President agreed, there was not a point of order against a provision. It was decided in the 2001 budget that this process had been greatly abused and so it was changed. It was changed so there would still be an emergency provision for defense-related matters, but there would not be an emergency provision to waive or get by the budget constraints that we had imposed on ourselves for non- defense matters. The point of order that I will make is not a point of order that Senator Byrd's provisions are not emergencies. They are not a point of order against provisions that would use poultry waste to create energy. It is simply a point of order that says we do not have a procedure whereby you can protect yourself in advance against a budget point of order except in strictly defined areas related to national defense, so that the waiver that is written into the bill is basically a waiver which is banned under the budget process as it was amended by the 2001 budget. That is the point of order that I will make. Senator Byrd has given a list of concerns that we all share. I do not believe any Member of the Senate is less concerned about security of our homeland and our people than any other Member of the Senate. The President, whether he is right or whether he is wrong, said the $40 billion that we have given him, which he is in the process of spending--$20 billion of which we will have an opportunity to set partial priorities on--is sufficient through the end of the year. At the beginning of next year, if more funds are needed, he would like the opportunity as President to review the need, to involve the Cabinet officers and members of the executive branch and potentially independent agencies in doing a comprehensive review, and to send a request to the Congress for those funds. The question proposed by the Byrd amendment, which is only a small part of the bill against which I make a point of order, is the basic approach that we should act now and that we should set these priorities as Congress. I believe it is a joint process involving the President and the Congress. The President has said that he would veto a bill that breaks the budget caps, even with the best of objectives. I make this point of order, not because it solves our problem by killing the underlying substitute, but because I see it as an important step in the right direction. The problem is we have our ideas as Republicans. Democrats have their ideas as Democrats. In this case, for the first time since September 11, we in the Senate have not successfully been able to come together on a bipartisan basis. So rather than spending the rest of this week making partisan speeches where Democrats point out and vilify some part of the Republican stimulus proposal and we pick out some small provision and burrow in on it--rather than waste the week in doing that, my objective in making the point of order is to make it clear that the provision before us cannot pass and begin the process whereby we go into negotiations, hopefully involving the House and the Senate, Democrats and Republicans and the White House, to try to come up with a stimulus package. I think the American people want us to work together. Working together means I am not going to get everything I want. Our Democrat colleagues are not going to get everything they want. But in the end, I believe we can produce something that will be worthy of being adopted. Mr. President, I make a point of order that section 909 of amendment No. 2125 to H.R. 3090 is in violation of section 205 of House Concurrent Resolution 290, the fiscal year 2001 budget resolution. Sustaining this point of order will not bring down the bill itself. The House bill will still be there. It will then be subject to amendment if we work out a bipartisan compromise. But it will pull down the committee substitute.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, is there a unanimous consent request pending?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, could it be repeated?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I would like to amend that. I don't know who else will come to speak. I would like to amend that to say I will be recognized to follow the Senator from Kentucky, if no one else is here.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, if the chairman would like to speak after the Senator from Kentucky, that would be fine. Having come over and having listened to the majority leader's speech, I would like to be sure that somewhere within that time I get an opportunity to speak.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I came over this morning to urge bipartisanship on the stimulus package--something we have not had in the Senate. I have to say that, while I have deep affection for the majority leader, I was somewhat taken aback by the tone of his speech. I don't think we are going to benefit ourselves here today by getting into a lengthy debate about the stimulus packages that are before us. I simply wish to make the following points: First of all, I do believe the American people have been proud of the fact that, since September 11, we have had a level of bipartisanship in Congress that we have not had in a very long time. I think it is a natural thing. I think the American people should expect us to come together in a period of crisis, and I think they have a right to be disappointed when we don't. Most of the legislation we have done to this point has been bipartisan. We have had a few sticking points along the way. We are in conference today on airport security. The President would like to have the flexibility to use Government employees where it makes sense, to set Federal standards and use private contractors where it makes sense. Some people have said if you are going to do it, you have to use 100- percent Government employees. They say Government employees are more reliable. Critics say that, with Government employees, you can't fire them; you can't provide incentive pay; you can't reward excellence. It is a lengthy debate. My own opinion is that when in doubt in a period of crisis, you ought to give the President the benefit of the doubt. I hope we will adopt that bill and give him the flexibility to use Government employees where he thinks they will work best, and to use private contractors under Federal standards where they would work best. It is easy to impugn partisan motives to people in that debate, but I do not think it is very helpful. I have to say the majority leader gave a lengthy discussion about the tax cuts for the rich in the House plan. It is a funny thing; I guess if you went all over the world today and listened to legislative bodies debate, we would probably be the only great legislative body in the world, and maybe the only body in the world, that is still engaged in class conflict. It was rejected in the Soviet Union. It has been rejected in the Third World. Our whole history is living proof that in America you give ordinary people extraordinary opportunities and they do extraordinary things and they get rich as a result of it, and is anybody any worse off because of it? I do not think so. I have been blessed, as I am sure many of my colleagues have been blessed, to have many different jobs. I would guess if I went back to when I first got a job throwing a newspaper or working for Krogers or working for Sam Houston Peanut Company, I may have had 30 jobs in my life. But nobody poorer than I ever hired me, and I never felt hostile to people who had been successful, who had money, who were able to invest it and create opportunities for people like me. I do not understand this effort to try to breed hate based on people's income. One of the reasons it is so utterly unfair is that it is not as if in America the only people who have income or wealth are people who are born with it. In fact, everywhere, every day, in every city and town in America, we see ordinary people who become extraordinarily successful. Why that ought to be a point of conflict I do not understand. There has been a lot of discussion about the elements of the Senate bill. Great sport has been made about provisions of turning chicken manure into energy. I thought that was a bad idea when it was first debated, and I still don't think it is a very good idea. We are trying to pass a farm bill to pay farmers $5 billion of additional money not to grow because of overproduction, and in the stimulus bill before us we are paying people $150 million not to convert agricultural land to other uses. On the one hand, we pay them not to produce, and then on the other hand, we pay them to keep land in production. None of that seems to make any sense to me. Rather than getting into all the details, I will talk about what a stimulus package is, and I am not going to try to appeal to authority, I am going to try to appeal to logic. When I was a boy studying economics, economists believed in a set of principles. They reached those conclusions based on the study of history and, by and large, economists would normally agree on certain things. Today economists are like lawyers: You just hire one, and they give you the opinion you want, and they give you the best justification they can to do it, just as a good lawyer who is appointed by the court to defend a killer makes the best defense he can make for the guy because it is his job, even though he knows the man is guilty. Today you can hire economists to say whatever you want them to say and make the most outrageous argument imaginable. You can find somebody who will do it, either because they have a political agenda or because they have their own economic agenda. Let me talk about stimulus from the point of view of logic, and just see if what I have to say makes any sense. First of all, if you want to stimulate the economy and you have a relatively small amount of money, you have options. We have sort of talked about $75 billion or $80 billion here. One option would be just to put it in small bills and fly it over cities and dump it out. People could find it and spend it. Is that a stimulus? In a sense, one could say it is. People pick up these $20 bills, they take them and spend them. The only problem is we took the $20 bills from taxpayers. Are we really any better off as a result of having dropped the money out of airplanes? I think the plain truth is, no. The same thing is true about giving tax cuts to people who did not pay any taxes. Quite frankly, I know it is going to be in the final package and the President signed on to it in a compromise--negotiating before the negotiations started in a good will gesture, which is one of the reasons I love the President, even though I do not always agree with what he is agreeing to. In trying to get this moving, he agreed we were going to give tax cuts to people who did not pay any taxes. That is like dropping money out of airplanes. I do not think it stimulates the economy because we took the money from taxpayers and are giving it to people who did not pay taxes. If we want to stimulate the economy, we have to find a way with the $75 billion to get people to spend not only it but other things. We get that done by finding ways of spending the money that encourage other people to spend their money. Unfortunately, the other people who are spending their money are people who have money and, hence, almost any stimulus package that is worth anything could be criticized that somebody who is wealthy is going to be stimulated to invest their money and they at least think they are going to benefit. The point is, America cannot be saved except at a profit. The fact that somebody will make money based on a stimulus package is the end objective. There are two ways we can go about a stimulus package. If I could write the stimulus package, I would write it as follows: First, I would have cut the capital gains tax rate. It does not cost us anything for 2 years. Our experience with it, beginning at the end of the Second World War, has been almost uniformly positive. I have argued for it incessantly. The President decided not to propose it because he saw it as polarizing. I also believe that making the tax cut permanent would stimulate the economy and bring stability to the economy. It is very destabilizing to have a tax cut that is going to dramatically change and, in fact, go away in 9 years. All over America today, people who could be investing are taking $20,000 per child and locking it up in IRAs and in gifts to their children and grandchildren to try to avoid the death tax, even though we claim we repealed it. It is coming back in 9 years. So people who expect to live 9 years are using up their resources planning for it. A decision was made that making the tax cut permanent would be too provocative in a partisan sense, and so that was not enough. Senator Grassley put together a good package given what we had already agreed to take off the table. I want to make the point--and I make it because Senator Byrd is here. Senator Byrd is going to propose some infrastructure spending. It has a disadvantage and an advantage, but it is one of the few proposals that is being made other than those that are targeted in the sense of targeting investment, tax cuts. There is no doubt about the fact that accelerated depreciation-- allowing people to spend so if they buy new capital equipment to create jobs or open a factory they can write off more of it quicker--there is no question about the fact that a little bit of money there produces a substantial economic response. I think we should be doing more of that. When people ask what cutting tax rates and accelerating the tax cut has to do with incentives to invest, do they not realize that 80 percent of the income tax paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers is paid by small businesses filing under subchapter S as individuals? The top tax rate is really a small business tax rate. When people are saying the average person in that tax bracket will earn $600,000 or $700,000 a year, that average person is really Joe Brown and Son hardware store in Texas or West Virginia somewhere, and it is really their rate about which we are talking. I see that as a very important incentive. I have to say when I look at the list of things we are doing, such as giving movie producers and recording artists and authors tax breaks, I would much prefer lowering the tax that affects investment or spending money on highways as compared to that kind of expenditure. Let me turn to the whole question of infrastructure, and then I want to sum up before I run out of time. In fact, how much time do I have?

Mr. GRAMM. The advantage of infrastructure is that by improving infrastructure, private investment can be induced. We get the impact not only of building a north/south interstate highway system in Texas, which is what we need--I do not know what they need in West Virginia, but I know we are way behind on highway construction, despite the success we have had recently in which the Senator has been a leader. But we can get a multiplier effect by the private sector investing as infrastructure is improved. If we are going to use infrastructure as part of a stimulus package, we have to find a way to speed it up because in the postwar period not much infrastructure spending ever really got going until the recession was over. I will sum up by saying what I think we need to do. First of all, I am going to make a point of order against the pending amendment, not the underlying bill. The point of order is that the pending amendment violates the budget rules. We decided in the 2001 budget that emergency designations for non-defense matters were being abused, and we eliminated them; they violate the Budget Act. But they are being used in violation of the Budget Act, and therefore there is a 60-vote point of order. Everyone knows the bill before us is not going to become law. So why not make it clear that is the case, so we can end these partisan debates that I know discourage people back home, and sit down around a table and work up a compromise. Compromise means some people get some things they want and other people get things they want. It seems to me we agree on providing incentives for investment through expensing and through accelerated depreciation. It is in both bills. There has to be a compromise level. We differ greatly as to what we really believe will stimulate the economy. The logical thing to do, it seems to me, is to take half of the funds and do it through stimulation by lowering marginal tax rates to encourage investment, which is what I believe works, and then taking the other half as the Democrats want to use it and spend it, whether they spend it on infrastructure or whether they spend it in terms of health benefits. In terms of health benefits, it is one thing to help people with health insurance, but it is another thing to set up a bureaucracy that probably would not even be in place until the recession was over. So in terms of spending money on health, I think there could be a compromise. In terms of setting up this bureaucracy, I do not think the President would agree with that and I do not think that could happen. We have to sit down and work out a compromise. I think the Nation wants us to do it. The sooner we can get on with it, the better off we will be.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I think we are all unhappy with airport security. Despite all of its failings, the private security company and the private airline did catch the guy; and then Government employees came, law enforcement officials, and let him go. We had to go back, find him, and arrest him. Eight people were fired on the spot as a result of the mistake. If they had been civil servants, they could never have been fired. The debate is whether we are basically going to add a political rider on airport security. The political rider is to force the President to use Government employees alone. It seems to me that is a political agenda, and it is not a safety agenda. We ought to give the President flexibility. Where Government employees work, use them. Set Federal standards and enforce them. Where private contractors work, and work better, use them. We have heard all the talk about the Republicans in the House who have this strange idea that if we provide lower taxes, it will induce people to work, save, and invest. All this talk about it being distinctly inferior to the Democrat Senate bill which provides subsidies to watermelon production, bison meat, distilling rum in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, new subsidies for tobacco, and tax cuts for people who don't pay taxes. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is up to the American people to decide what makes good economic sense and what doesn't make good economic sense. We will have an opportunity later today or tomorrow to debate this issue. I do not believe the American people are going to buy this grab bag of spending as a stimulus package. It is always interesting to me, having watched this whole process now going on 24 years, that every time something new happens, everybody in politics goes back and takes all the old, tired, rejected ideas they ever had and dresses them in new clothing. The new opportunity now is stimulus. All the old ideas that never passed the laugh test in the past now have come forward as part of the stimulus package. I hope we will get serious. I hope we will write a bipartisan bill. I certainly intend to support that. I didn't come over to talk about those things today. I came to talk about the resolution before the Senate. Under the old Gramm-Rudman law, one of the compromises in getting it adopted was a triggering mechanism where, if you had low economic growth or a projection of low economic growth, there was an opportunity for Congress to opt out of binding restraints on deficit spending. I am pleased we are deciding through the recommendation of the Budget Committee not to opt out of those binding constraints. I congratulate the chairman and the ranking member for their support to vote no on the resolution. I will certainly vote no on it. However, this is largely symbolic. We are in one of the great spending sprees in American history. Since September 11, we have had a dramatic swing from a commitment to balance the budget and reduce debt and save Social Security to ``anything goes'' in the way of spending. Obviously, we were all affected by September 11. I don't think there is any opposition anywhere to doing what we need to do to hunt down and kill these terrorists and to try to help people who were hurt by the terrorists and whose lives have been diminished, wrecked, or lost as a result. However, nobody can claim all of the add-on spending has anything to do with terrorism. What we are going to have to decide pretty quickly is if we have completely given up our commitment to balancing the Federal budget and paying down debt. The only way we can show that is not through some resolution which, again, I applaud. I certainly would be unhappy if we were supporting the waiving of these old budget restrictions which represent the only protection we have against deficit spending, but I would have to say we are now in a situation where appropriators in both parties--it is almost as if we have three political parties: Republicans, Democrats, and appropriators--are saying even though the President believes he can complete the year with the $40 billion we have given him to deal with September 11, we are going to force him to take all this money. The President has said after the first of the year, if it becomes clear he needs more money, he will come back and ask for it and--what I think is even better--tell us what he wants it for. There seems now to be a mad rush to force-feed the President into spending money. I hope, first of all, we will reject the resolution today, disapprove it, and when we vote on all this new spending, we will remember the gesture we made today, and when a point of order is raised against this new spending, as it will be, we will sustain that point of order. Finally, simply drifting back and not getting into debate with the very able chairman of the Budget Committee, it is clear the stimulus package that passed the Finance Committee can't pass on the floor of the Senate. I don't believe it has 51 votes, but it certainly does not have 60. I simply urge the majority leader and the minority leader to sit down together and see if we can work out a compromise. We are heading toward Thanksgiving and Christmas. We need to do a stimulus package if one can be put together that helps the economy. In all honesty, I do not believe the stimulus package that passed the Finance Committee would help the economy. My guess is it would probably be harmful. So if that were the only choice, I would simply vote no. But I don't think it is the only choice. I think we can put together a compromise. If we can do that, I suggest we get on with it. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I am sure many Americans know of the Dell Computer Corporation because they use a Dell at work or at home. However, I would like to recognize Dell for the outstanding contribution the company's employees made in helping America respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11. On the day after the attacks, Dell technicians were helping Department of Defense employees displaced from the Pentagon to set up computers in temporary offices. Dell employees also worked diligently to prioritize and facilitate orders critical to the rebuilding effort, intelligence gathering, and our Nation's military offensive. Shipments for financial services firms were also pushed to the head of the assembly line so they had needed computers to reopen for business when Wall Street and the financial markets resumed trading. On a personal level, Dell and its employees contributed more than $3.4 million to the rebuilding and recovery effort, including equipment to the American Red Cross to help serve the families directly affected by those terrible attacks. I am grateful for the hard work and generosity of the people at Dell, and I am proud of their efforts in the difficult and challenging time.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I am opposed to the Daschle amendment on both substantive and procedural grounds. First of all, in terms of substance, the Daschle amendment actually empowers a Government agency, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, to override State law. It allows this Authority in some 25 States in the Union to make a determination that would override established State law and State constitutions and impose a unionization process which the States have rejected. In my State, we have a local option, so the question of collective bargaining and unionization of the local fire department and sheriff's department is a matter for local voters. They have a referendum. That is our procedure. That is the way we do it in Texas. It has served us well. The Daschle amendment would override State law, override county ordinances, and empower a government regulatory body, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, to override State law. I think this violates everything we claim to believe about federalism. It is very bad policy. It violates the spirit of the tenth amendment of the Constitution, and I think it is profoundly wrong. Second, let me say on procedural grounds, we are in the process of trying to finish appropriations. We were encouraging our Members to put aside controversial and extraneous matters until we had an opportunity to complete the appropriations process. This bill could be brought up freestanding. The majority leader has the unilateral power to do that. But to put it on an appropriations bill, it seems to me, disrupts what we are trying to achieve and encourages others to follow suit. If this amendment is clotured, there will be a dozen amendments offered to it that have to do with labor law in America. This is another debate for another day. We will end up having to cloture this bill. There will be a lengthy process that will use up our time and energy that would better be spent on something else. I understand this is a time when we appreciate our firemen and we appreciate our policemen, but forcing people to pay union dues is not a way I show appreciation to people. We have the right in Texas and every State in the Union has the right to write its State constitution and to write its laws. Laws related to local labor relations and the relationship of the city, the county, and the State with their employees is something that should be set by the cities, counties, and States, not by the Federal Government. I urge my colleagues, on substance this amendment is profoundly wrong and wrongheaded. And on procedure, it puts us into a collision course.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I send a modification to the desk, a very simple modification. This amendment would be in order when this other amendment is over, so rather than just wait I thought I would do it and get out of everybody's way.

Mr. GRAMM. I ask Senator Gregg to yield me 1 minute.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, because we are debating this amendment, that I be able to proceed on my amendment, which is also pending, for 1 minute.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, when I offered my amendment yesterday, in guaranteeing the right, under the Daschle amendment, for people to join or not join a union, I did not include the critical right for them, if they choose not to join a union, to not have to pay union dues. I have corrected this with this modification. It fits the principle we set out. The Daschle amendment preempts State law and preempts county ordinances and city ordinances to set up a structure for unionism in police and fire and sheriff departments. I am opposed to that. But it seems to me, if the Federal Government is going to preempt State law and preempt counties and cities to set up a structure for unionism, it ought to also allow people to decide if they do not want to be members of the union and they do not want to pay union dues. So through this modification, I have corrected that problem. I thank my colleagues and yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, this is a right-to-work amendment for public safety employees. It is interesting to me that in listing the things we want to do in the pending amendment, we have before us an amendment which overrides State law, which overrides county ordinances, and which would literally set in place a structure to unionize the sheriff's department in Brazoria County in Texas. I think it would come as a shock to people that we are in the process of doing that in the name of appropriating for the Department of Health and Human Services. I am not in favor of doing this. I think this is a decision that States have to make. My State has decided Americans have a right to join or not join a union. My State is a right-to-work State, as 22 other States are. In fact, Oklahoma just joined the ranks of States that give people the right to decide to join or not join unions. The idea that we are going to override State law and county ordinances and city ordinances to establish this Federal system of unionism comes as somewhat of a surprise to me. As I read the rights that we are guaranteeing, it struck me that a right was missing. In fact, a real right was missing. Basically, in the Daschle amendment, we guarantee public safety officers the right to form and join a labor organization but, interestingly enough, nowhere do we give them a right not to join a labor organization. I do not understand rights where you have the right to do something but you do not have the right not to do it. I thought rights had to do with freedom to choose. Under section 4 of the amendment, No. 2 on page 8, has to do with public safety employers recognizing employees' labor organizations. No. 3 has to do with collectively bargaining over hours and wages and terms and conditions of employment. No. 4 has to do with a requirement of dispute resolution. No. 5 has to do with requirements enforcement through State courts. It suddenly struck me that if this is really about rights, if we are going to try to reward those who have recently, through their actions, reaffirmed the affection and love that we have for them, should not one of those rights be freedom? In many States in the Union, people who are police officers or emergency workers do have the freedom to say, boy, I really appreciate you all giving me a chance to give you part of my wages and to join your union; I am really grateful for having a chance, but I do not want to do it, and I live in America. So since I live in America and you all have offered me this chance to be part of your union, but I would rather spend the money sending my child to college or buying a new refrigerator or fixing my truck, I am just going to say thank you but no thank you. Now we have before us a proposal that would basically override State law in every State in the Union, override county ordinances in every county in America, and override the policies of every city in this country and establish a Federal standard for unionism for public safety workers. Yet in all of these rights we are giving public safety workers, never, ever do we mention freedom. So we override State law. We set up a structure for unionism and we never give workers the right to say thanks but no thanks, I do not want to join a union; I appreciate it, but I think I could spend that money better than that union could spend it on my behalf. No harm meant, no disrespect. I just would rather spend it myself. So I sent to the desk a second-degree amendment that adds a No. 6. You have five other rights that basically override State law and set up a structure for unionism with regard to public safety and emergency employees. I add a sixth right, and that would be a right to not join a union. If we are going to override State authority and State law in setting up a structure for unionism, should not we override State law with regard to allowing people to say thank you but I do not want to join a union? I thought this was America. In fact, a public safety employee might say I put on this badge this morning to protect freedom and yet I find I do not have the freedom to not give my money to a union of which I do not want to be a member. So it struck me that if, in fact, we really want to get into the business of writing county ordinances--I did not run for the county commission because I did not want to make county ordinances, and I did not run for the state legislature because I did not want to make law at the State level. My State, my county do a great job. They did not need my help. I was needed in Washington, at least I thought. So I came to Washington to write Federal law, but now today I have found the majority leader has decided he wants to get in the county commission business and the city council business and the State legislature business. So as long as we are going to get into it, it seems to me that protecting freedom is something that we have to do. If we are going to have a Federal labor standard that protects people's right to join a union is a wonderful thing, is it less wonderful to protect their rights not to join a union? Is it really the American way to say you have a right to join a union--in fact, in over half the States in the Union, over half the States in the country, not to use the same word with a very different meaning, but in over half the States in America you have to join a union to be a police officer, you have to join a union to be a firefighter, you have to join a union to be an emergency worker because those States require that you join a union if that area is organized, and in those States it is. So as long as we are writing Federal statute, I wanted to add the simple provision that said you had a right to join or not to join as it would suit your individual conscience or as it would suit your own preferences and the well-being of your family. I hope this amendment will be adopted if we are going to adopt the Daschle amendment. I offered it in all seriousness because I think it ought to be included. If we really want to finish our work, I don't think this is an issue. I think the underlying Daschle amendment, while it is certainly germane--and the Parliamentarian has ruled it is germane--it doesn't promote our objectives to finish our business. I personally believe it should be dropped. If we are going to get into the business of overriding State law, county ordinances, and city ordinances, and mandate a structure of unionism, we ought to guarantee the right of people not to join a union. I have offered such an amendment. If people want to put it into a pigeonhole, they can put it in the pigeonhole of a national right-to- work provision within a national union structure amendment that would simply say, with all the rights for unions the distinguished majority leader would provide, I add a right for an individual. The right is to say, yes, I want to join a union, or, no, I don't want to join a union. That is what my amendment does. I hope my colleagues will look at it. It is simple. It is five lines long. It is flowery; and quite frankly, so is the amendment I am amending. I didn't want my part to be less flowery than the rest of it. If you read it, you will understand exactly what I am talking about. I hope my colleagues will support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we are in the midst of debating and amending an appropriations bill. Earlier in the day, the distinguished majority leader offered an amendment relating to labor rights of public safety employees. I have been told that because there was a reference to collective bargaining in some area related to agriculture in the bill, this made it possible for this extraneous amendment, having to do with collective bargaining and unionism among public safety employees, to be offered and considered germane to the pending bill. If we are really trying to finish the Labor-HHS appropriations bill-- which I would like to do, because certainly it is in my interest, and it is in the interest of all 100 Members of the Senate, but, more importantly, I think it is in the interest of the working men and women of America that we finish our legislative activities prior to Thanksgiving and put our permanent appropriations process into place, hopefully adopt a stimulus package that is worthy of the name to help the economy and do the work we have to do and complete our business prior to Thanksgiving--Then I do not think the pending amendment related to unionism of public safety workers contributes to that desired goal of finishing our work. In fact, I think exactly the opposite is true. Amendment No. 2055 to Amendment No. 2044

Mr. GRAMM. I have come to amend a pending Daschle amendment. So I call for regular order with respect to the Daschle amendment, and I send a second-degree amendment to the pending amendment to the desk, and I would like it read.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the pending Domenici amendment. I am opposed to the Domenici amendment. I am not going to force the Senate to vote on it this afternoon. I think it is clear where the votes are, but I want to explain the issues. I want to raise the issues in this debate so that they can be looked at by the House. I believe, based on what I have been told, the administration is opposed to the amendment. There is also a point of order against the second-degree amendment that will be offered directing scoring. That point of order will lie against the conference report if the bill comes back from conference with the directed scoring provision in it. I want to reserve my right to raise that point of order at that time. I want to be brief, but let me basically explain what we have here. What we have is an amendment that imposes a new mandate on the private sector of the economy. That mandate is a mandate where we decide what kind of health insurance Americans should have, and they are going to have it whether they want it or not; and we are going to override some 70 years of negotiations between private employers and private employees as to what their health insurance looks like. We are going to mandate that if a company provides health insurance that has any mental health provisions in it, those benefits have to be treated the way benefits are for physical health or else the company may be prohibited from providing the policy. The Congressional Budget Office, in looking at this mandate, has estimated that what will happen is, premiums will go up, some companies will drop mental health coverage altogether, and others will continue to provide it under these new circumstances. Remarkably, they estimate that the adoption of this amendment, over a 5-year period of implementation, will drive up costs on the private sector of the economy by $23 billion. So we are about to impose $23 billion in costs on the private sector of the economy because we think we know better what private health contracts, negotiated between employers and employees, ought to look like. There is a budget problem here because the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by paying the $23 billion in additional health insurance premiums, that American industry and agriculture will end up paying lower wages than they would have paid, and that we will collect, over a 10-year period, over $5 billion less in taxes because of this amendment. The distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee informed the Senate that he would charge, in future budgets, that $5 billion against the Appropriations Committee if the amendment were adopted. We are now, as I understand it, in the process of writing an amendment that says that for the purposes of the budget, even though this amendment will cost over $5 billion, we are not going to count it. Without going on and on, let me raise the list of particulars. No. 1, who are we to be telling American workers and American business what kind of health insurance benefits they should have and how that package should be made up and what they should choose? What about workers who would rather have higher wages than to have this new benefit that we are deeming to be in their interest? What about the $23 billion of cost that we are going to impose on the private sector? I know the amendment is written so it does not start until 2003. The point is, that is $23 billion of cost over a 5-year period that will be borne by the private sector, $23 billion that could have gone to create more jobs, more growth, more opportunity. I simply raise two questions regarding the $5 billion of lost tax revenue because companies, as estimated by CBO, will pay lower wages when they are mandated to pay for these benefits: first, what about workers that would rather have those wages than the benefit? Shouldn't they have a choice, or are we granted such wisdom that we make the choice for them? Second, if it is going to cost $5 billion, have we not made an absolute mockery out of the budget process, made it a complete fraud by passing a law that says, yes, it costs $5 billion, but we are going to pretend that it does not cost $5 billion? That is basically the proposition that is before us. We are going to say, if you are going to provide mental health coverage, you have to provide it on par with physical health coverage or you can't provide it. The logical question is, isn't that something that people should decide about their own insurance? Isn't that the same decision that people make, in deciding do they want a new refrigerator, or do they want to send Johnny to college. They have tradeoffs on which they have to make hard decisions? What about the people who are going to lose income? We are going to lose $5 billion in taxes over a 5-year period. What about the people who lose billions of income? Maybe they would have wanted to spend on it something that would have had greater value to them. Maybe nobody cares whether they could have spent those billions better because we are going to spend it for them. Then the question becomes, if we are going to spend it, instead of being honest about it, we are simply going to pass a law that says, it costs $5 billion, everybody knows it costs $5 billion, and there is no debate about it costing $5 billion. But so that we don't have to worry about it, we are going to pass a law that says, while it costs $5 billion, for budgetary purposes, we are going to act as if it doesn't cost $5 billion so we don't have to count it against appropriations in the future. I simply have to say, I would be ashamed of this amendment. This is bad law, bad principle, and bad precedent. If I thought we had more than 15 people who would vote against it, I would demand a vote. I would be happy for the world to know I am against it. I don't want to put my colleagues on the spot, but I am hoping that the House will not accept this amendment. The Senator who offered the amendment, 5 or 6 years ago, had a similar amendment that cost only $300 million a year. Rather than extending that, we are adding a full-blown mandate on the private sector. I am hoping something can be worked out. I hope we will not have directed scoring. We ought to pay for this in appropriations if we are going to do it. Finally, I am hoping the administration and the House will not go along with this amendment. I am sorry to have taken people's time. But I wanted to come to the Chamber and basically outline what is wrong with this amendment, and what is wrong with the procedure that we are following by directed scoring when we say we know it is going to cost $5 billion but we have decided that we are going to pretend that it doesn't. We are going to charge it against mandatory spending. In any case, I hope it will be fixed. It should be fixed. This is bad policy. It sets a bad precedent. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I will be brief. I am reading from the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate of August 22, 2001. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposal will reduce Federal revenues in the initial year by $230 million and $5.4 billion over a 10-year period. That was the number I was using. I think there is no question about the fact that one of three things will happen. From my point of view, they are all bad. No. 1, some people will lose health coverage they already have because the company, in trying to escape the $23 billion of cost over 5 years, can simply drop mental health coverage. That is bad. No. 2, the company can simply decide to not provide health insurance at all, which is perfectly legal. That is also bad. Then third, if companies lower wages or if wages don't grow as much as they would have grown because these higher premiums have to be paid, for many workers that is bad because there are obviously many who would rather have that income than to have the coverage, and we are making the decision for them. I respect the opinion of my colleague from Minnesota, who is for this benefit, but all I am saying is he may think it is a great idea, but there are probably a lot of working people in America who would rather not risk that coverage, or would rather keep the mental coverage they have, or would rather have higher wages. Finally, is the question about how we are going to do the budget. It seems to me that is a point where clearly--and I don't know the argument on the other side, other than the Appropriations Committee doesn't want to be saddled with the cost of paying for this program, which they view as a rider to the appropriations process, which I understand--that the taxpayers are going to be saddled with the costs. Somebody is going to have to end up paying that $5.4 billion. I yield the floor.