Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I would be very happy to listen to Senator Dorgan. I will learn something.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, there are two issues I wish to talk about and they are related to the two bills that are before the Senate. Let me begin with the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill. As my colleagues are aware, we currently have a situation--Senator Domenici has been here longer than I have--that I don't ever remember. A President is threatening to veto a bill based on an issue other than what is in the bill. Obviously, there have been many vetoes as part of our constitutional process. But normally when we are dealing with an appropriations bill, it has to do with funding or not funding various priorities. What we have before the Senate is an extraordinary circumstance where the President of the United States is literally threatening to veto this bill, saying if we don't add a totally extraneous matter that has nothing whatever to do with funding the law enforcement effort in America, then he is going to veto the bill appropriating funds for the criminal justice system and law enforcement in America. What is even a greater paradox, in my opinion--I have to say, in my period of public life I have never seen anything like it--the President is saying, if we don't grant amnesty to people who violated the law, he will veto a bill that funds DEA, the FBI, the Justice Department, the prison system. He is literally threatening if we don't pass a law forgiving people who violated the law by coming into this country illegally, if we don't grant them amnesty and therefore forgiveness for having violated the law, his threat to us is that he is going to risk shutting down the FBI, the DEA, the criminal justice system, the courts, and the prisons. That is an extraordinary threat. It is a threat that, I am happy to say, is opposed on a bipartisan basis by at least one Democrat who happens to be the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. It is opposed very strongly by many Republicans. I want to say on this bill to our President, I want him to sign the bill funding our drug enforcement effort, the FBI, the prison system, our criminal justice system, our courts. I want to urge the President to do that, but I want to make it clear to him there is at least one Member of the Senate who is never going to grant amnesty for illegal aliens to pay a political bribe to the President. That is what this issue is about. This is about electioneering, where the President is putting politics in front of people. He is willing to play politics with law enforcement and the criminal justice system, to try to pressure us to grant amnesty for law breakers. I despair of trying to reason with the President in the waning hours of his administration, but I say again to the extent that any one Member can influence this decision, we will not grant amnesty to illegal aliens in this Congress or, hopefully, ever again. We did that once. Everybody said it was a one-time deal. We were never going to do it again. The problem with doing it was we reward people who violated the law. We reward people who came into the country illegally. Granting amnesty to people who broke the law penalizes the millions of people who are waiting to come to America legally. What we have proposed, and what is in the bill before us, is a provision which I believe is strongly supported by the vast majority of Americans. That provision basically says if you came to America legally, if you played by the rules, if you have been self-supporting while you are here, we will expedite the process to allow you to bring your spouse and your dependent children. We are for family unification. The President, by vetoing this bill, will be denying family unification. We also say, where there is a legal dispute, a legitimate dispute as to whether people have gotten justice through the courts based on recent court rulings, we give them their day in court because we believe in due process. I do not need to say any more about this issue other than to simply say I hope the President will sign this bill. I know he probably believes he is going to force us to grant amnesty to illegal aliens in return for funding the DEA and the FBI, but I want to tell him I am not going to support it, I am going to oppose it vigorously. There are many Members of the Senate, I believe, who share my views. The President may win it, but he is not going to win it without one big terrific fight. In the end, I think nobody benefits from that kind of politics as usual. I want to now say something about the tax bill that is before us. I would have to say it is pretty extraordinary that the President picked out and attacked as a rich person's provision the one provision in this bill that I would have thought was absolutely unassailable. In fact, our President can say things with a straight face that Shakespeare's Richard III would blush in saying. That is a strong statement, but let me give an example. As I am sure everybody in this chamber knows, the general pattern in America is, if you have a good job, if you are making good wages, part of your employment package is health insurance. I have the standard Blue Cross/ Blue Shield policy. People who work for the Government are blessed with good health insurance. People who make high wages in America get their health insurance through their job. One of the good things in this tax bill is that we think it is wrong that, if the Federal Government helps buy me health insurance, it is tax deductible; if General Motors buys health insurance for its employees, it is tax deductible; but if somebody makes a low wage and their company does not provide health insurance, they have to buy their health insurance with after-tax dollars, they get no deduction. In what I think is excellent public policy in this bill, we make health insurance tax deductible for everybody: For the self-employed, for the small business person, and for the person who is working at $7 an hour and who is not provided health insurance where they work. You would think that would be pretty unassailable, but it is not unassailable by Bill Clinton, because this morning on the radio, Bill Clinton, through his spokesman, was saying that we are giving health benefits to rich people by providing deductibility for health insurance. I ask my colleagues, do you know any rich people who do not get health insurance through their jobs? Do you know any rich people who do not get health insurance by being members of corporate boards? The point is, this is a bill, at least in this provision, that is targeted precisely at moderate-income people who get cheated in the system because their employer cannot afford to buy them health insurance and they have to buy it with after-tax dollars. That would seem to me to be an unassailable position. But to Bill Clinton, it is helping rich people and he is not for it. The plain truth is, any tax cut in Bill Clinton's mind helps rich people, so he is not for it.

Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, Senator Kennedy would have us believe that Texas is a terrible place. But we can look at what is actually happening in Texas. We created 1.6 million new, permanent, productive, tax-paying jobs for the future since Governor Bush has taken office. This is 50% faster than job growth nationwide. And while the Nation has lost manufacturing jobs, we have created almost 100,000 new manufacturing jobs in Texas under the leadership of Governor Bush. But there is a simple, empirical test as to whether people want to live in a State and what the quality of life is and how good the political leadership is of that State. People vote with their feet. People vote with their feet by leaving places that have bad government and they come to places that have good government. Senator Kennedy wants us to believe that Texas is this terrible place. The incredible paradox is, consistently now for over 30 years, people have been leaving Massachusetts and moving to Texas. For over 30 years, Texas has exploded in population as Americans have chosen to move there, make their life there, and cast their lot with those who were elected to represent them in Texas. And for over 30 years, people have cast their lot by picking up, packing up their children in the station wagon, and driving out of Massachusetts. It seems to me that is the empirical test. I personally believe that this silly business about attacking States as part of a political campaign doesn't make any sense. I don't know why Senator Kennedy feels compelled to talk about it. I don't know why he feels compelled to try to attack Texas. The last fellow that tried to attack Texas was General Santa Ana. It did not turn out too well for him. Maybe Senator Kennedy thinks it is going to turn out better for him than it did for General Santa Ana. I think the message here is not that Massachusetts is a bad place because people are picking up and moving out of it; in fact, it is a very nice place. They have very good people. But they have politicians who have implemented in Massachusetts the program that Al Gore wants to implement in America. They have spent and taxed, spent and taxed, spent and taxed. In the process, every time we take a census, every time we reapportioned representation in the U.S. Congress for the last 30 years, relatively speaking, as compared to the population growth of the country, people have moved out of Massachusetts and moved to Texas. We have gained congressional representation, and Massachusetts has lost congressional representation. I don't think that says that Massachusetts is a bad place. Everything I know about their people, they are wonderful people. But it says something about the key issue in the campaign for President of the United States. It says that when Americans have the right to vote with their feet, they turn their backs on the policies of Al Gore--spend and tax, spend and tax, spend and tax--and they vote with their feet by walking away from those policies. Senator Kennedy has come over today and yesterday and instead of defending Gore's policies, which no one can defend, he tries to attack Texas. But the plain truth is, the people who have moved out of Massachusetts in the last 30 years have moved because they were rejecting Al Gore's policies of spend and tax that have been implemented in Massachusetts. Here is the problem. If we implemented those policies in America, the policies that have been implemented in Massachusetts and that Al Gore has proposed, with almost $3.3 trillion worth of new Government spending, over 70 massive new Government programs and program expansions, if we adopted those policies in America, where would you move? How would you move with your feet? Who is ready to walk off and leave their country? The problem is, we can vote with our feet to leave Massachusetts and flee bad government and come to Texas. But we can't vote with our feet, we don't want to vote with our feet, to leave America. So again we don't want to leave America, I say to my dear colleague from Utah; we need to turn our back on the policies of tax and spend that have been imposed by politicians in Massachusetts and we need to reject them for America. I have thought it is bad policy and bad form to debate the campaign for President on the floor of the Senate. But given that Senator Kennedy is now going to do it every day, apparently, I thought I would take the bait and talk for a moment. When people were listening to the Presidential debates--the Senator from Utah watched them, I know, because we talked about it the next morning--they kept hearing Al Gore say: 1 percent of Americans get all the benefit. They get all these tax cuts. It is the rich people. It is the people against the privileged. And Al Gore is for the people. That is what they heard. Those, by the way, are the same slogans that destroyed ancient Rome and destroyed ancient Athens. And I have to say that Al Gore sounds like a socialist candidate running in a Third World country, to stoop low enough to use that kind of language. I want to explain to people why it is phony. Let me start by talking about Al Gore's record on taxes. Everybody knows he is not for George W. Bush's proposal to cut taxes. We all know that. Let me talk about his record in Congress, and as Vice President, on taxes. How many people know that when Jimmy Carter was President he proposed a tax cut in 1978, that among other things raised the personal exemption from $750 to $1,000 for working families with children, and made the earned- income tax credit permanent. When Jimmy Carter in 1978 said the American people deserve a tax cut and because of inflation--remember, Senator Bennett, the inflation was in double digits when Jimmy Carter was President--he said we need to raise the personal exemption. What did Al Gore say? It is for the rich. It is for the rich. When you raise the personal exemption from $750 to $1,000, it will help the rich people. So he voted against the tax cut. Apparently, everybody that got a tax cut was rich. Then in 1981 when Ronald Reagan proposed reducing taxes across the board for everybody, taking millions of families off the tax rolls completely, Al Gore thought that was a tax cut for rich people, and so he voted no. Then when we had our effort to reduce the tax burden in 1995, Al Gore again had a chance to support tax cuts, but he supported the veto that killed the bill. Then when we had the Tax Relief Act of 1999, a tax relief that was aimed at repealing the marriage penalty, Al Gore again supported the veto that killed the bill. He believed that if you make $21,800 and you meet another person who makes $21,800 a year and you fall in love and you get married, you become too rich to deserve a tax cut, and you are going to pay on average $1,400 a year to the Federal Government in taxes for the right to be married. Why should you do that? Because Al Gore believes that he can spend that $1,400 better than your family can spend it. So when he had a chance in that tax cut to say yes, he said no. When we passed the marriage penalty repeal, free standing, in the year 2000, he was opposed to it because we actually stretched the tax bracket for couples with each person making $21,925 a year so that they didn't go into the higher, 28 percent tax bracket. But Al Gore thought they were the 1 percent who were privileged and so he supported the President in vetoing the repeal of the marriage tax penalty. Then we passed the death tax repeal. This is a tax that small business people and family farmers pay. They work a lifetime to build up a business or family farm. They scrimp, they sacrifice, they save, and they build up the farm or business. They may not have much cash, but their land, if they are farmers, is worth a lot of money if they sold it. But they don't want to sell it. Their father worked it. They worked it. They want their children to work it. But Al Gore said: No, you are rich. And, besides, if you have to sell your family business, if you have to sell your family farm, it is worth it because the Government can spend this money better than you can spend this money. Now look, here are all of the tax cuts since Al Gore has been a Member of Congress, or Vice President, that have been considered--major tax cuts by the U.S. Congress in all the years since Al Gore came to the House of Representatives. Guess what. He thought every one of these tax cuts was for rich people, because he never voted for a major tax cut. Not once since he came to Congress has he believed, on a major tax bill, that we ought to be cutting taxes. I guess he thought, when we were raising the exemption for children from $750 to $1,000, that all those children were rich. When Reagan cut taxes across the board, took millions of people off the tax rolls, I guess Al Gore thought they were all rich, because he was against it. The point is, he has been against every major tax cut since he has been in public life; every one of them has been a dangerous scheme, to Al Gore. Now that is only part of the story. You see, we have raised taxes since Al Gore has been in Congress. In fact, I have here every major tax increase that has been voted on since Al Gore came to Congress and while he was Vice President. Guess what. One thing you have to give him credit for, he is totally consistent; he has never voted against a major tax increase since he has been in public life. He voted for the major tax increase in 1983, 1984, 1987, in 1990, and 1993, and let me talk briefly about 1993. You heard, if you watched all those debates, that Al Gore wants to tax rich people. He loves capitalism, but he seems to hate capitalists. He loves economic growth, but he seems to hate people who create it. He wants to pit people against each other, so if somebody is creating jobs, you ought to resent them if you are a worker. I do not know about our colleague from Utah, but neither of my parents graduated from high school. No poor person ever hired me in my life. Every job I ever got was from somebody who had a lot more money than I had. I was glad to have the job. Those jobs made it possible for people such as me to be successful in America. But Al Gore supported every major tax increase that has been voted on since he has been in public life--he voted for it. Do you remember the point in the debate where he said: I am proud to have cast the deciding vote on the 1993 Clinton economic program. He did not tell people that that deciding vote was for a gasoline tax increase. The rhetoric of Al Gore and Bill Clinton was their 1993 tax bill only taxed rich people--it did not tax anybody but rich people. But listen to their definition of rich. If you drove a car or a truck in America, you paid a higher gasoline tax, so, by Al Gore's definition, you were rich. If you remember, in the bill that was voted on in the House, that Al Gore supported, it had a Btu tax that would have taxed everybody's utility bills. Guess what. If you have heating or air-conditioning, if you use electricity or heating oil or natural gas, Al Gore believes you are rich, because he said he was only taxing rich people. Yet he supported taxing everybody's utility bill. The final one, which was the ultimate, it seems to me, was the tax on Social Security. You know, it is funny. When you are not in these debates, you watch them on television, and you are brilliant. If you were just there, you would know exactly what to say. It is funny, when you are there, you never quite know what to say. But when Al Gore was talking about Social Security and he was accused of never having done anything about it, he didn't defend himself. But in fact he has done something. Al Gore, in fact, cast the deciding vote on something that profoundly affected Social Security, and that deciding vote was to tax the Social Security benefits of people who make over $25,000 a year--in fact, to tax 85 percent of the benefits of every retiree in America who made over $25,000 a year. Wait a minute. Al Gore said, when he was for this bill, that it only taxed rich people. If you make $25,000 a year and you are drawing Social Security, to Al Gore you are rich. A final thing, and then I will stop. I thought it would be interesting. We heard all this business about who gets Al Gore's tax cut. I decided to do a little experiment. It is a little bit clever--it is not too clever--but here is the basic point. I decided to take a page out of the Washington Post. This is a want ads page of the Washington Post. It is page D11, on Tuesday, October 24. I have reproduced it up here. I went through this list of jobs and asked: Who taking a job in this list would not be too rich to get Al Gore's tax cut? I am not talking about a tax cut you get if you do what Al Gore wants you to do. I am talking about a cut in your income taxes, where you get to keep more of your money. So follow with me, if you will. This is page D11 of the want ads. Here are all the jobs: From Fairfax Yellow Cab, ``cash daily''; dispatcher; we have here a sports entertainment local branch office for a national sports marketing firm; we have here a newspaper carrier; we have a driver for a warehouse chain--pretty much typical jobs in America. If you go through this and you say, OK, take off every job that was on the want ads page in the Washington Post on Tuesday so that you just leave those jobs that, if you take those jobs, you get Al Gore's tax cut, there it is. Now look. This is page D11 of the Washington Post. These are jobs that are out there right now for people: Landscape foreman and laborer, janitorial; interior design, sales; driver, class A tractor-trailer; drafter, 2 years of experience needed. These are real jobs in the real world. If you took one of these jobs, would you be too rich to get Al Gore's tax cut? When you take all the job ads off that would make you too rich for Al Gore's tax cut, that is what is left. Those are the jobs you could take and you would get Al Gore's tax cut. Here they are: Dry cleaning, pants pressers. You can take a job in Vienna. Let me make it very clear, I am not denigrating these jobs. These are tickets to success in America. Thank God people are creating these jobs. I do not want to go too far in reading it. Here is the point: You could get a job pressing pants, you could get a job as a lifeguard and cleaning a swimming pool, you could get a job as a newspaper carrier, and you could get Al Gore's tax cut. But if you have any of these other jobs--one can see the difference between them--if you got any of those other jobs, you do not get Al Gore's tax cut. I guess this says you are in the 1 percent. That comes as a big surprise to people as to who is rich and who is not rich. I will sum up, make my point, and then yield to Senator Bennett. Al Gore has served in public life for a long time. In fact, he took pride in it. Look, it is God's work to be involved in public life. The point is, on every tax increase since Al Gore has been in public life, every one of any size or significance, he has voted for every one of them. Every tax cut voted on since Al Gore has been in public life, he has opposed every single major tax cut. He has written a so-called tax cut that 89 percent of the jobs in the Washington Post on page D11 on Tuesday, if you took one of those jobs, your income would be too high to qualify for his tax cut. If you did something he wanted you to do, that there was some kind of favorable tax treatment for, you might get some benefit, but in terms of getting to keep more of your own money to spend, which is what most people call a tax cut, this is what you are down to. Why? Why has Al Gore in his whole public life never voted against a tax increase, never voted for a tax cut, and why does he want to exclude almost anybody who would get any job at random out of the newspaper? Because he believes in his heart that Government can spend the money better in Washington than you can spend it at home. Al Gore is not against married couples. He is not against love. I know he loves his family, and he has a wonderful family. He should love them. But he believes that having working couples in America pay $1,400 a year in a marriage penalty is OK, it is a good thing, it ought not to be repealed, because he believes Government can spend the $1,400 better than they can spend it. He believes it is OK to make people sell the family farm or sell the family business and destroy their parents' life's work and everything their family has worked for in America to give Government 55 cents out of every dollar they earn, not because he does not like small business or does not like family farms, he likes them, but he believes with all of his heart that Government can spend the money better than they can. If you have to sell your family farm and you have to give the life work of your parents and grandparents to the Government, he believes the Government will do the right thing in spending it and you will be better off. If you believe that, your choice in this election is very clear. If you believe that Government, by spending $3.3 trillion on new Government programs, which is what Al Gore has proposed, can make your life better, then you ought to vote for him. If you believe it is not risky to spend $3.3 trillion in Washington but it is risky to give back $1.3 trillion in tax cuts to working Americans, Al Gore is your man. On the other hand, if you believe the Government is probably about as big as it ought to be, if you believe that you can do a better job spending your money than the Government can do, then you probably ought not to vote for Al Gore. You probably ought to vote for George Bush. To tie it all together, what does this have to do with bashing Texas and Massachusetts? It has to do with people who have already made these decisions. Millions of people have moved to Texas because they wanted lower taxes, because they wanted more opportunity, because they wanted to decide. It was not that they hated Government. The Government does a lot of good things. It is they believe they can do things for their family better than the Government can do things for them. Senator Kennedy does not believe that. He thinks Al Gore is right. He believes we need to spend all this money. He believes we need a bigger Government. His State historically--it has changed; it is getting better, I believe--but historically, his State believed the same thing, which is why so many people moved to Texas, because they were voting for freedom instead of Government. Quite frankly, I would rather we not debate the Presidential campaign on the floor of the Senate, but as long as Senator Kennedy is going to debate it, I am going to debate it. I want to debate the real issues, and the real issue is, do you want more Government or do you want more opportunity for your family? It is just about as clear as the issue can be clear. Al Gore voted for every tax increase of any significance, against every tax cut of any significance since he has been in public life for one reason: He believes that Government can spend your money better. I do not. George Bush does not. The question is: What does America think? I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I thank my dear colleague from Texas for her comments on the floor. It seems that our colleague, Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts, has decided that now he wants to come over daily and tell people how terrible Texas is. I think my dear colleague from Texas has done a very good job answering Senator Kennedy. But I don't think, quite frankly, the charges need to be answered per se in any other way other than saying that in America, thank God, we have a freedom where people can move. So if Texas were this terrible State that Senator Kennedy says it is, then we would expect people to be exercising their freedom to move out of Texas and to move to paradise States such as Massachusetts.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may proceed in morning business for 20 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me say I have been busy all morning trying to work out our Medicare and Medicaid Improvement Act and work on finalizing actions so we can, hopefully, finish the business of the Senate tomorrow or Friday. I have not had an opportunity to come over, though I understand Senator Kennedy has gone on at great length talking about Texas. Let me respond in the following way. There are a lot of States in the Union I wouldn't want to live in. But I know there are people who love those States. I am proud when people ask: What State do you represent in the Senate? I am proud I can say I am a Senator from the greatest State in the Union. I am a Senator from Texas. Now, Texas does not need defense against Ted Kennedy. The fact that Ted Kennedy is not for George Bush for President is a very good reason to vote for George Bush for President. The fact that Ted Kennedy does not like our Patients' Bill of Rights in Texas is a pretty good indication we have a good Patients' Bill of Rights in Texas. After all, it was Ted Kennedy who joined the Clintons in proposing that the Government take over and run the health care system in America. I don't have to defend Texas because people vote with their feet. We have had 321,666 people move from other States to Texas since George Bush has been Governor. They must think things are pretty good in Texas. We have created 1.6 million permanent, productive tax-paying jobs for the future in Texas while George Bush has been Governor. While America has lost manufacturing jobs, we have gained 100,000 manufacturing jobs in Texas. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be great if America were a little bit more like Texas? I quote from the rules of the Senate, rule XIX, clause 3: No Senator in debate shall refer offensively to any State of the Union. Now I don't intend to come over and say bad things about Massachusetts. Some great Americans have come from Massachusetts. Massachusetts is a great and wonderful State. I don't choose to live there, but I know the people who live there love it. It is interesting that we are gaining two congressional seats because so many people are moving to Texas; Massachusetts keeps losing congressional seats. But I am not going to come out here and criticize Massachusetts. I say to Senator Kennedy and to others: if you want to run for President, you want to campaign, go out and do it. But I don't think we ought to turn the floor of the Senate into the fulcrum of that campaign. I thank my colleague for coming over. She does a great job in defending Texas and defending its interests. I am always proud to be associated with her. Texas doesn't need any defending. But obviously the rules of the Senate do. I call on my colleagues to abide by the rules. I don't think we help each other if we try to tear down other people's States. I think it behooves us to try to build up our own States--to try to build up our own country. I think when we do that, the country benefits. I thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I had the responsibility in working with the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee to try to work out our differences with the House on the Medicare give-back. We passed a bill in 1997 that was aimed at trying to balance the budget and trying to save Medicare. We succeeded in balancing the budget. We have been in the process since that day of trying to undo everything we did. We have put together a package that costs over $27 billion in Medicare give-backs. About half the package is totally deserved and desperately needed. About half the package in my opinion-- I am speaking just for myself--represents things that are bad public policy, and it is being done for one simple reason: We have the money. Why not spend it? I am not going to go down a long list. But let me give you one example--bad debt forgiveness. Believe it or not, this bill has a provision that says to hospitals, if you don't collect your bad debt--remember, Medicaid pays for health care for poor people. We have two provisions of Medicare that provide taxpayer assistance above Medicaid for very marginal income people who are not poor but they have difficulty paying their bills. When we are talking about bad debt, we are talking about bad-debt incurred by people who didn't qualify for Medicaid. We have a provision in this bill where the taxpayer will simply come in and pick up 70 percent-plus of bad debt costs for hospitals. Collecting debt is difficult. Ask any retail merchant, or ask anybody who is in business in America. They will tell you it is hard to collect debt. What do you think is going to happen when the taxpayer pays 70 percent of the debt that hospitals don't want to collect and that people do not want to pay? They are going to stop collecting. People are going to stop paying, and the taxpayer is going to pay. To get to the bottom line on this issue, the President says: Look, you didn't spend enough money on the things I wanted it spent on, and I am going to veto this $27 billion give-back. I hope the President does veto it. I think about half of it is justified. I think we could have done it for $15 billion, and could have done a reasonably good job. But my own view is that if the President vetoes it--we are just moments now from an election. We are going to have a new President. My suggestion is, if the President vetoes this bill, that we simply wait until January for a new President--hopefully, someone who will be more responsible than this President--and we will take a very serious look at Medicare. In this bill, with spending of $27 billion, we could not find one penny of savings to put in the bill. There is not one thing currently being done in America in health care, including a new scam by States where they simply overcharge the Federal Government and pocket part of the difference--we could not find one thing on which we could save money. I find that difficult to sell. Finally, there was an article in today's Washington Post by David Broder. I don't always agree with David Broder, but I always think about what he has to say. I guess if you want to define a serious commentator and set it out in a column, you would have to put David Broder's name at the top of that list. You may not like what he says about you. You may not like what he says about your view. But he doesn't say anything that he doesn't think about. I admire that. He points out today in an article that says ``So Long, Surplus'' that we are currently--this year--on the verge of spending $100 billion more than we said we would spend this year when we adopted the much touted Balanced Budget Act in 1997, which Bill Clinton signed. This wasn't just Congress, this was Congress and the President. We are on the verge of spending $100 billion this year more than we said we were going to spend. I just want to say that someday people are going to ask: What happened to this surplus? They are going to ask: Why didn't we rebuild Medicare? Why didn't we rebuild Social Security by putting real assets into Social Security--not taking anything out of Social Security but putting real assets into Social Security--by taking this money and investing it in stocks, bonds, and real assets so we have something to pay benefits with in the future? Someday someone is going to ask: What happened to that surplus? Why couldn't we, when tax rates were at the highest level in American history, have some tax relief for working families? Why did we have to keep forcing people to sell the farm or business in order to pay the Government a death tax? Why did we have to tax marriage and love in the marriage tax penalty? Someday somebody is going to ask those questions. I just want to be on record saying I think it is outrageous that we are doing this. I think we need to stop doing this. I read in the paper where the President said he is like the Buddha. He is like Buddha. He just sits and waits and waits, and Congress wants to go home, and the only way they are going to go home is to spend all of this money. I repeat that I am not going anywhere. President Clinton's number of days as President is now short. My point is that we have a right to say no. We have a right to say in education when we have spent every penny the President said he wanted but we want to let States decide how to spend the money--we want to give them the same money, but we want them to decide how to spend it, and President Clinton says: No. I am going to veto your bill because I want to tell States how to spend it. I think we have an obligation to say no. If people need schools, they can take the money and build schools. If they need more teachers, they can take the money and hire more teachers. But if they need other things, they can take the money and do that, because they know their needs better than Bill Clinton. But that is not what the President wants. We spent every penny he asked for--too much money, in my opinion. But he said he is going to veto that bill because we give the States the ability to decide what they need to spend the money on. My answer to that is, let him veto it, and then we can pass a continuing resolution. Let's have an election. If people want to spend this surplus, if they want to spend it on program after program after program, if they want more government and less freedom, they know how to vote in this election. If you want the Government to spend more, and if you want this surplus to be spent on government programs, you know how to vote. But we ought not to let Bill Clinton spend the money before the American people vote for more spending. First, I don't think they are going to do it; but, second, that is what elections are about. I think we have to quit kowtowing to the President. If he wants to force us to stay here and pass these bills day after day after day, if I were running for reelection and were in a close race, I would go home and campaign. But for the 60-some-plus of us who are not up for reelection, let's just stay here in town. And if the President suddenly becomes reasonable, we will reach an agreement. But if he is going to play Budhha, to quote him, and sit there and see if it will work one more time--that is, if by threatening to hold us in session he can get us to spend more money than our budget and more money than his budget-- he wants to see if it will work one more time, I want to say no. I think the American people would rejoice in it. I am hopeful my fellow colleagues will come to the conclusion that the President is asking too high a price to see this session of Congress end. Too much money. Too much change in permanent law that does not represent the will of the American people. I think we need to say no. The sooner we say no, the sooner the President will come to his senses. And he will for a simple reason: He is not holding a strong hand here. He is the one moving off. We are not moving anywhere. I think we can come to a compromise with the President, but I think we ought to be tired of being run over. I say we should not spend more money simply to get out of town. To do that would basically betray everything we claim to believe in and betrays the people who are going to pay our salary, whether we are in town or not. I thank my colleagues for their indulgence, and I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, today I want to talk about a series of issues that are related to the final things with which we have to deal in ending this Congress. It is not a long list, but it is a list of things that are important. I hope my colleagues will indulge me while I talk about these issues. I read this morning in the New York Times, under the headline ``Leaders in Congress Agree to Debt Relief for Poor Nations,'' that an agreement has been worked out on debt relief. I want to make it clear that I am not part of any such agreement. I hope an agreement will be worked out, and I would like to be part of an agreement. But I am not part of any agreement today. It is important, since so much has been said and written on this issue, that someone on the other side stand up and explain what this issue is about, why it is important, and why people all over America ought to be concerned about it and be concerned that it be done right. I remind my colleagues and those who might be listening to this discussion that routinely in America people borrow money and are required to repay it. Where I am from, College Station, TX, it is a pretty hard sell to talk about forgiving billions of dollars of debt to countries that borrowed money from us and, in too many cases, simply squandered or stole it, and now they do not want to repay it. They riot, they protest, they demand, but those things do not work in College Station, TX. In College Station, TX, when you borrow money from the bank or finance company or from your brother-in-law, you are expected to pay it back. Let me make it clear that I am not here to make the most negative case that can be made about debt forgiveness. The flip side of the coin is that many of these countries are desperately poor, and much of this debt can never be repaid. So the debate I want to engage in today is not against debt relief, as hard a sell as that is back home--and I am willing to make that sale or try to--but I am not willing to support debt relief unless we are going to have some reforms to assure that the money is not wasted. I remind my colleagues, while we talk about debt relief, we are actually appropriating over $450 million because we are paying off this debt. Our money was lent and was largely squandered, and now it is going to be used to pay off this debt. So, I am concerned because of the lack of accountability in how the money is being spent. Any Member of Congress knows this is an issue in which a great deal of interest has been taken. I had a group of holy people come to my office the other day to lobby for this debt forgiveness. I do not think since Constantine the Great called his ecumenical council in Nicaea has there been a larger gathering of holy people in one place than the people who came to see me about supporting debt forgiveness. And let me quickly add that everybody who came was well intentioned. Their hearts were in the right place. But the problem is not with our hearts; the problem is with our heads. Obviously, in this 2000th year of Christianity--this 2000th year of the birth of Christ--there is a movement all over the world to try to help the poor. But the question is, In forgiving this debt, are we really assuring that the money that we are giving is getting through to the people we are trying to help? And I think that is basically where the problem lies. Let me now talk about a couple of examples that illustrates this problem. I want to read from four newspaper articles that outline a story, in my opinion, of how this debt forgiveness is abused and how our taxpayer ends up holding the bag. The first story is from Africa News, July 23, 2000, and is from Kampala, Uganda--one of the initial countries targeted for debt relief. In March Parliament there approved the direct procurement of a new 12-seat presidential Gulf Stream GIV Special Performance SP jet at a cost of $31.5 million. Aviation experts said that the final cost of the plane could well be $47 million. The current presidential jet is a 9-seater Gulf Stream III acquired just a few years ago. Now, from the August 2, 2000, issue of the Financial Times in London, I quote: The Group of Seven leading industrialized countries is pressing the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to stop export credits being used to help poor countries buy arms and other ``nonproductive'' items. Although the OECD cannot impose binding rules, the U.S. and Britain, leaders of the G7 initiative, believe ``naming and shaming'' dubious policies could create pressure to get them changed and prevent poor countries from squandering debt relief. This article is from August 2, and on July 23 we learned that the Ugandan President has bought a new $47 million plane for his use. And we are naming and shaming, along with the British in the Financial Times. And now on September 13, 2000, in Africa News, Kampala: The Paris Club of creditor countries yesterday cancelled $145 million of Uganda's debt under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Tuesday's Paris Club announcement brings Uganda's total debt relief from the lending countries so far to $656 million. Uganda has also received $1.3 billion debt relief pledges from the IMF and World Bank in debt relief over the next 25 years. So on July 23, which turns out to be the day that debt forgiveness was announced for Uganda, the President of Uganda buys himself a new $47 million luxury jet. And on August 2 we are naming and shaming people who are abusing debt forgiveness dollars that come from American taxpayers. And then on September 13 it is announced that we have forgiven this debt, raising the total to $656 million for Uganda, the same country whose President on the day the debt forgiveness package was announced ordered a $47 million jet. Now, the final quote on this point is from the Wall Street Journal, dated October 12, 2000: On the day that Uganda qualified for debt forgiveness under the Clinton initiative, the president of that struggling African nation signed a $32 million lease-purchase agreement for a brand-new Gulf Stream jet. It goes on to say that we have been assured by the administration that he got a pretty good buy on the jet. Now, I ask my colleagues, when we are talking about this debt forgiveness, should we be forgiving debt with the idea that it is going to help poor people in Uganda when the President of Uganda, on the day the debt relief is announced, buys a $47 million jet? Maybe you can go to College Station and sell that, but I cannot. And I am not going to. Let me go to the next point. All of the people who have written or called me, launched letters and sent calls and prayers and e-mails on this issue, say: We are trying to help people in these poor countries; don't stand in the way; forgive this debt, which I remind my colleagues means appropriating money to pay off the debt on their behalf. The next country I want to talk about is Chad. This is a country that is next on the list to receive debt forgiveness. The argument is that by forgiving Chad's debt, we are going to help poor people who live there. But let me read from this year's U.S. State Department ``Report on Human Rights Violations'' in Chad, a country that the administration is pressuring us to appropriate tax money for so he can forgive their debt. This is from the State Department issued under the name of the Secretary of State, who was appointed by President Clinton, not by me. This is what she says about Chad, a country on the list of countries that would receive debt forgiveness if we provide this $450 million. I quote: The security forces--- This is in Chad--- continue to commit serious human rights abuses. State security forces continue to commit extrajudicial killings. They torture, beat, abuse and rape. Now, I ask my colleagues--and I ask public opinion--does it make sense for us to appropriate $450 million to forgive debt to a country when our own State Department, headed by the Secretary appointed by the same President who champions this debt forgiveness, tells us, ``State security forces continue to commit extrajudicial killings; they torture, beat, abuse, and rape''? Maybe you can go to College Station or Little Rock or Jackson Hole, WY, and sell that. I cannot. What we are facing is this: Based on good intentions, we want to forgive this debt, but what happens when there is clear and convincing evidence that the proceeds of the debt forgiveness are going to buy luxury jets for Government officials? And in Chad, remember that the ordinary citizens there did not borrow this money, this was a loan to the Government. So are we going to forgive debts to a government that, according to our very own State Department, continues to murder, brutalize, and rape its own people? I don't think so. Having said all of that, what is the solution to this problem? It seems to me that if this administration is serious about doing something other than what it believes will be good politics in this election, or something that will make us all feel good--forgiving all of this debt--what we have to do is try to replicate what happens in every American family when people have financial problems. So, what happens in Arkansas, Texas or anywhere in America, when the bill collector comes knocking at the door? What happens is that families get together around the kitchen table, they get out a pencil and try to figure out on the back of an envelope how much they are making and how much they are spending. They get out their credit cards, they get out the butcher knife, and they cut up their credit cards, and they try to reorganize. They change their habits and their behavior. It seems to me, when we are talking about forgiving billions of dollars of debt to governments--these loans were made to governments, not to people--when we are forgiving that debt, we have a right--in fact, I would say an obligation--to see that that debt forgiveness benefits the people who live in that country. These countries are not poor because of this debt. They are poor because they have oppressive governments, because they have economic policies that do not work, because they are denied freedom. The sad story is that if we forgive this debt, and we do not demand real reforms, nothing will change. This great opportunity to do something good for poor people in the world will be lost. In trying to work with the administration--and I would have to say that, in theory, there is a lot of agreement with the administration-- but when it comes time to put the requirements into place, that is where we cannot seem to work this issue out. The administration does not contradict its own State Department report on rampant human rights abuses. But when we're trying to set requirements for getting this debt forgiveness, that is where the administration says no. I have tried to reduce the requirements that I think the conscience of the Senate should require to some very simple things. And I just ask people who might be listening to what I am saying to ask yourself: Are these unreasonable requirements in return for billions of dollars of taxpayer money? Let me remind my colleagues, I know there is a drunkenness that has come from this big surplus. Never in my political career have I seen money squandered as it is in our Government this very minute, even as I am speaking right now. It is frightening to me. But even in this moment of a huge surplus, surely everybody realizes and remembers that, for every dollar we get, every dollar we spend, somebody worked hard to earn that money. I believe that money ought to be respected. So in return for billions of dollars of the American taxpayers' money, here are the conditions to which I have asked the administration to agree. No. 1, we cannot forgive debt for a country that we find in our most recent human rights evaluation engages in a gross violation of human rights against its own people. In other words, what we would say to the government of Chad is: If you want this debt forgiven, then you have to quit killing, abusing, and raping your people. And if you do not do that, we are not going to forgive the debt. That is condition No. 1. I do not view that as unreasonable. Quite frankly, I would be ashamed to have my name affixed on a voting list to the forgiveness of this debt if we gave it to murderers, thugs, and rapists. The second condition has to do with the fact that these countries are poor because they are basically practicing socialism. They deny property rights and economic freedom, and, as a result, they are poor. We sometimes get the idea that because socialism does not work economically, that it is dying. But socialism works politically, which is why it is alive all over the world and why it is debated in Washington, DC. Now, here are three economic conditions that, at a minimum, I believe we need. First of all, if countries are going to take our money, they should be required to open their markets to meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization so that we have an opportunity to sell American goods in their economy, and so that their workers have a right to buy goods competitively, instead of being forced to buy expensive, inferior goods from a government-run monopoly. We have one of the most open economies in the world. We are the richest, freest, happiest people in this world. Asking those who are getting debt relief to do something that will help them is, I think, something that is required. It is something that must be done. Secondly, they would be required to set up a series of benchmarks, not just on opening up their economy, but also in those countries where government dominates the market, where huge numbers of people work for the government, and, in essence, the government runs everything, we would require, in return for the loan forgiveness, that they set up benchmarks for phasing out subsidies to these government-run enterprises. The third requirement is simply that in printing their financial and government records on how much money they are spending, how much they are taking in in taxes, how much they are borrowing, that we have transparency so that we and investors can know what is going on in the country and so that we can see whether they are taking actions that will actually improve the life of their people. And that would include transparency in their financial institutions and their banks. What this would say is, we do not forgive money until these conditions are in place. And if at any point along the way countries do not live up to these commitments, then we stop the debt forgiveness. Some people think these are outrageous conditions. But I just simply go back to College Station. When you have a line of credit with a bank, and you have told them you are using this line of credit to invest in your restaurant, and it turns out you bought a car for private use, they cut off your line of credit. When you do not tell the truth, you end up losing your line of credit. So I just want to urge, publicly, the administration to help Congress put together a program that will take this debt forgiveness and put it to work to help ordinary working people. If we do not do something like this, we are going to end up seeing this money spent on jet planes for government leaders; we are going to see the benefits of debt forgiveness go to the leadership elite; and 10 or 15 years from now, when these same countries have the same debt crisis, we will have someone like President Clinton who will be arguing that we could just fix all this if we just forgive this debt. I am willing to go along with the debt forgiveness. I am willing to go home and try to explain to people why these governments are treated better than citizens here are treated if I know the money is not going to be squandered or stolen or used to abuse the very people we are trying to help. But I intend to fight--and fight hard--to see that we do not take billions of dollars from American taxpayers to give to buy fancy airplanes for government officials, and that we do not use it to basically subsidize corruption and the abuse of the very people we are trying to help. Amnesty

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, a second topic I rise to talk briefly about is the issue of amnesty. The White House sent a letter dated October 12, 2000 to Congress which in many ways is one of the most extraordinary letters I have ever seen a President send to Congress. This letter, basically says the President will veto the Commerce- Justice-State appropriations bill unless we grant amnesty to people who have violated our laws by coming to this country illegally. In other words, the President is threatening that he will veto a bill that funds DEA--the Drug Enforcement Administration--the FBI, the Federal prison system, our system of criminal and civil justice, he will veto that bill unless we in Congress grant amnesty to people who have broken the law by coming to the United States of America illegally. It is one thing for the President, functioning under the Constitution, to say: You have your idea about how much money should be spent. I have my idea. I don't think you are spending enough. That is what the President is saying every day. The President is threatening to veto appropriation after appropriation because he doesn't think we are spending enough. We are spending faster than we have ever spent since Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States, yet we are not spending enough money to suit President Clinton. You can argue that he is wrong, that it is dangerous, that one of the reasons the stock market is in shock today is this runaway Federal spending that endangers our economy and our prosperity, but it is a legitimate issue to be debating on an appropriations bill, how much money we spend. The President just happens to be wrong--dangerously wrong, in my opinion--and I am not going to support him. But that is one thing. But to say that unless we pass a law that has nothing to do with spending money, that forgives lawbreakers who came into this country illegally, he is going to veto a bill that funds the FBI, the DEA, and the criminal justice system is an outrageous assertion of Presidential power. Our President has been so successful in manipulating the Congress, he has forgotten that we have a separation of powers in America. He is going to get reminded in this debate. I don't want to get too deeply into the amnesty issue, but I will say a couple things about it. First of all, as the Presiding Officer knows, as anyone in the Senate knows, if there has been one Member who has been a champion of legal immigration, it is I. I have stood on the floor many times arguing for letting people with a desire to work hard, with talent, genius, creativity, and big dreams into America and to let them come legally. I am proud of the fact that my wife's grandfather came to America as an indentured laborer to work in the sugarcane fields in Hawaii. I have spoken previously on this issue at great length. One of the most successful employees I ever had was a young man named Rohit Kumar. The Senate was debating an increase in the quota for legal immigration, if I remember correctly. I talked about the Kumars. His daddy is a research doctor. His mama is a physician. His uncle is an engineer, an architect. The point I made was, America needs more Kumars. I am sure when you are talking about amnesty, there are going to be those who will say this has something to do with being against foreigners. Well, I don't believe America is full. I was the cosponsor of the H-1B program that will let 200,000 highly skilled technical people--most of them in graduate school in America right now, being funded by our taxpayers--stay temporarily to help us keep the economy strong. But I draw the line on illegal immigration. I draw the line when it comes to breaking the laws of this country. I believe if we keep granting amnesty to people who came to the country illegally, we are in essence putting up a neon sign on all of our borders saying: Violate our law; come into the country illegally. Then we will later pass laws making it all right and you will be able to stay. I am not for that. I am adamantly opposed to it. Millions of people today are on waiting lists to come to America legally. They are often the wives or husbands of people who have come here and become permanent resident aliens. I am in favor of family unification where someone has come here, they are self-sustaining, they haven't received public assistance within a year, and they show the financial ability to take care of their spouse and children. I say let them come to America. But I draw the line on illegal immigration. We have somewhere between 5 and 7 million people who have come to America illegally. When we passed the immigration bill in 1986, we granted amnesty to people who were here illegally. That was supposed to be it. Yet now the Clinton administration says they are going to shut down the DEA and FBI and the criminal justice system unless we grant amnesty to more people. We are getting this sort of bait and switch, for which the administration is famous. I am sure you have heard the argument. There is a claim that there were some aliens here in 1986 who claim they were unfairly denied amnesty and we should now go back and let them qualify. These are the facts: Most didn't qualify for amnesty because the original law, which was going to be the first and last amnesty ever granted to lawbreakers in American history--that was the commitment made here on the floor of the Senate--was for people who could document that they resided here prior to 1982. Now the Clinton administration is saying there were people here when we passed amnesty, who did not get amnesty, and that is unfair, and let's do it for everyone here prior to 1986. I suppose then we can do it up to 1996. We can do this rolling amnesty which, again, simply puts a neon sign along our border which says: Violate America's law; come here illegally. I don't know what the President is going to do. Maybe he is going to veto Commerce-Justice-State. Maybe he is going to try to shut down the DEA and the FBI, and maybe he is going to try to find somebody to blame. Let me give him a name: Phil Gramm. It may well be that the President can pass this amnesty provision. It may very well be that he has the political power to force us to grant amnesty to lawbreakers in return for funding Commerce-State-Justice. I want to go on record here and say, I will not make it easy. Any conference report that comes up that has amnesty in it, I am going to offer motions to postpone, to delay, and attempt to force cloture. That is going to take 3 days. Then we are going to have 30 hours of debate, which is going to take another day and a half. Then you are going to do cloture on the conference report itself, and that is going to take another 3 days. Then we are going to have 30 hours of debate on that conference report which is going to take another day. Bill Clinton is the one moving to New York or Arkansas--I guess the location to be determined by the outcome of the election. I am not going anywhere. I am going to be here next year. Amnesty may pass. We may basically say: Forget about American laws. You come here, violate them; we will just forget it. But it is not going to pass without determined resistance. I want my colleagues to know that when we are sitting here on election day and there is an effort to pass amnesty, it is not as if people hadn't been told that this was going to be resisted. This is profoundly wrong. This is dangerous for the future of our country. It needs to be stopped. Medicare Give-Back

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I yield back my time as well.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I am stunned that we are talking about fiscal discipline and asking whether a bill is over the budget when we have a bill before us where we set out funds in the budget knowing that this was a problem that needed to be dealt with. We set out $400 million in the budget to try to begin to deal with this problem. The bill before us creates a brand new program never debated anywhere and which no Member of this Senate can really explain how it will work. It has never been tested anywhere. It will cost $59.9 billion. Let me quote from Senator Warner's letter and his initial cost estimate, which is now out of date because additional benefits were added to this bill. But let me quote from his letter of September 27. ``The cost of this proposal is scored by the Congressional Budget Office at $42.4 billion in mandatory spending over 10 years.'' That has now risen to $59.9 billion. ``In addition, the Treasury would accept a $200 billion liability that would be amortized over 70 years.'' Not only is this bill a budget buster--it will win the blue ribbon in Congress this year. There will be no bill in this Congress that will approach this bill in terms of fiscal irresponsibility and lack of financial discipline. And all of this was done not in a committee, not in a public debate, but by a group of conferees who got together in closed sessions. The House entered that conference with a program that cost $945 million. The Senate went into the conference with a program that cost $466 million. They came out of conference with a program that cost $60 billion, and committed us to a 70-year debt of $200 billion. I believe there is no parallel in the history of appropriations and authorizations in America to the bill before us in terms of a bill which has never been debated and a program that has never been discussed. Let me make a couple of points. First of all, it is obvious that all of us here tonight should praise our dear colleague, Senator Kerrey, who is retiring. You can get a lot of praise around here by dying or retiring. Given the choice between the two, he has chosen the right one. Let me say that many people have congratulated Senator Kerrey for his physical courage. I don't know much about that type of courage. So far as I know, nobody has ever shot at me. Nor do I have any reason to believe I would have been shot at. I don't know much about that kind of courage. But there is a different kind of courage that I know a little bit about. It is a courage that has to do with standing up to peer group pressure. There is something very human about the fact that somewhere around the first or second grade we start caring terribly about what people around us think. It is something we never escape from until they lower us in the grave. One would think grown men and women, Members of the Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the history of the world, would be immune to it. But as my colleagues know, we are not immune to it. We want to be loved. We want to be accepted by our colleagues. You don't get love by opposing this giant expenditure of money. You don't get appreciated by your colleagues by standing up to it. Senator Kerrey is getting a lot of praise tonight. My guess is when the votes are counted, we may have three votes to sustain this point of order. But I don't know. I wasn't there when Senator Kerrey won the Congressional Medal of Honor, but I was there when he stood up in this Congress and pointed out to America and to this Congress that the largest federal entitlement programs tax young working people who are just starting out, and give that money to seniors, many of whom have built up retirement savings over a lifetime. And it's being done because older people vote and younger people don't vote. We are digging a hole in Medicare and Social Security that can destroy America and that will destroy our prosperity if we don't do something about it. The Senator from Nebraska has been a leader in that and I want to say I appreciate it. I believe America does, but America is not embodied in the way it can speak and, since it hasn't been elected, it couldn't speak on the floor of the Senate anyway. On behalf of working people in my State and my country, I thank you, Bob Kerrey. I'm sorry you are retiring. I want to thank you for what you have said and what you have stood up for. Now, let me try to put all this in perspective. First of all, I agree with Senator Warner's poster. I hope my colleagues will forgive me because I want to give a little bit of history to establish my bona fides on this issue, if I can. First, my dad was a career soldier. He joined the Army on his 15th birthday in his brother's clothes. He was in the Army for 28 years, 7 months, and 27 days. He believed when he joined the Army that part of what the Government had committed to him was that if he served for 20 or more years, they were going to take care of him and his family and their health care needs. I am proud to say--and I say it with certainty because I know; I was born in the same hospital my dad died in, and it was a military hospital at Ft. Benning, GA--the Government never, ever took that benefit away from my dad. We are here today for two reasons. We are here in part because the policies of our Government changed. They changed in a remarkable way, and it is an interesting thing how benefits are lost. They changed because Medicare was going broke. So our government made everybody join Medicare, including men and women in the Armed Services. This problem came about because people who retired from the service qualified for two medical programs: One, by paying Medicare taxes; and two, by serving 20 or more years. The military health care benefit was a right not to Medigap insurance or any of the things we are talking about today, it was a right to go to a military hospital on a space-available basis and get military medicine. What happened--which was terribly wrong, in my opinion--is that, in the midst of a period of very tight budgets, the military gave retirees their military health benefit until they turned 65 when they became qualified for Medicare. As they got close to their 65th birthday--I know this because I have a brother who is a career soldier. I don't know whether he likes military medicine because they know his name-- ``Colonel.'' He goes to a regular hospital and they call him ``Mister'' although, obviously, they don't know who he is. They don't know anything about him. So I don't know whether it is that or whether he just is comfortable with having been a career soldier and having served in the Army for some 27 years--the point is, as he gets closer to 65, under the current system he will get a sheet when he goes in, and members of the staff know this, he will get a referral sheet. And they will say, ``Colonel, you are going to turn 65 in August. So these are the medical areas that we are aware of that are relevant to you, and these are private practitioners in Dallas, Texas, that you can go to under Medicare.'' Here is a person who got military medicine on active duty for 27 years, and then he retired and continued to get it up to the day he was 65, but because he earned two benefits, they shoved him out the door when he turned 65. My disagreement with Senator Warner is not about that recruiting poster. I believe that poster is true. And I believe the benefit is owed. Where we split company is on what we are doing here tonight. Let me explain. Just to complete the history, because I felt that I had some personal knowledge about this problem, I was the leader in Congress in putting together a test program called Medicare Subvention. The idea was simple. A lot of simple ideas don't work. It is not clear how well this one is working. In some ways, I think it is working well although costs are up because utilization is up. But the basic idea was simple. Let's pick ten facilities in America that have big retirement populations near them and let people stay in military medicine and let Medicare pay what they would pay had they gone to the private sector. We are in the midst of a test of that program right now. Earlier this year, while Medicare Subvention was still being tested, this bill came up, and while we were debating military retiree health care, a proposal was made to spend $92 billion. Senator Domenici will remember that. That proposal failed. And it should have. I voted against it. During that debate, Senator Warner offered a 2-year program to build on the test that we had underway. Senator Warner's program cost $466 million. I supported it. In fact, I think all the rest of us supported it. I am not sure Senator Kerrey did, but I think Senator Domenici supported it. The Senate had put in the budget enough money that to try Senator Warner's program out for 2 years. Why was it important to do it in 2 years? I will talk about the money, but let me talk about the policy. What is wrong with committing to $60 billion worth of new programs that have never been debated, never been tested, and committing to a $200 billion liability over the next 70 years? What is wrong is, as anybody who has ever served in public office knows, once this program is in place, a vested political interest will build up around it in the medical sector, in the retirement sector, and in the communities where it is provided. What happens is even if this program doesn't work, even if it is terribly inefficient, even if people are unhappy with it, the chances of ever getting rid of it or fundamentally changing it are very low. We have in Medicare, as Senator Kerrey, better than anyone else knows having served on the Medicare Commission, we have a 1965 medical care system. In Medicare, we have an old Edsel. Yet we can't change it. We tried to change it on the Medicare Commission as the Senator remembers. But the vested interest in it, even though it is inefficient, even though it doesn't serve the public well, even though it costs tremendous amounts of money, once it is in place, it is hard to change. Here is the point. The first problem with this huge program is that was never debated, never discussed, and was written by a handful of people that, quite frankly, are very intelligent people, very knowledgeable people about defense. As far as I am aware, it was never discussed in the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare. It was never debated in any public forum. It has never been tested anywhere. The point is, tonight on the verge of adjournment, we are getting ready to commit $60 billion in spending on a program that may or may not work, may or may not satisfy people, and which is going to be virtually irreversible. The second point I want to make is the House went into conference with a program that extended the Medicare Subvention demonstration, made it permanent within 6 years, and costs $945 million. So the Senate went to conference with a temporary program of $466 million to build on a concept, that basically, we had started in the test; and the other House of Congress went with a program that made a judgment to move toward full implementation of the test, and it cost $945 million. But what happened? What happened--and Senator Kerrey was making the point, I thought very effectively--they got to conference and suddenly somebody said, ``The sky's the limit. We have a huge surplus. This is an election year.'' So what happened is one House, with a program for $466 million, and the other House, with a program for $945 million, got together and suddenly we have a $60 billion entitlement program. Actually the new program is $39 billion, but the committee just gratuitously took existing health care programs and said let's just put $21 billion on automatic pilot in a permanent entitlement program so we do not have to account for spending it. That is what happened. Why did it happen? Because the surplus is burning a hole in our pocket. This surplus is the greatest danger we face in terms of our economic stability--not just now, but 10 or 12 years from now when the baby boomers start to retire. It is not just happening here. I am not just being mean to our dear friends on the Armed Services Committee, a committee I had the privilege to serve on for 6 years. It is happening everywhere. We have a railroad retirement proposal that lowers the retirement age. We are raising the retirement age in Social Security. Yet, we would lower it in railroad retirement. We have a proposal to give Amtrak $10 billion. We have proposals--we are giving back Medicare savings that we have previously adopted at a rate where, in 10 years, we will have given back more than we ever had in savings, yet Medicare is going broke every day. What is happening to us? What is happening to us is this surplus is affecting our judgment and we are spending it as fast as we can spend it. Let me sum up. I want to make a point about the economy, one I had not thought of until I was talking to Alan Greenspan today, and I want to bring it up because I think it is relevant. What is my position? My position is we do have an obligation to military retirees and we have to find a way to fix the health care system for military retirees. But I think we need to do it so we know what we are doing, so we know what it costs, so we know it is going to be efficient, and we have to do it after there has been a clear, effective, public debate and where we have actually tested the program so we know what we are doing. The problem here is this bill is immensely popular, as my colleagues know if any of you have paid any attention to your telephone calls today, but it is popular because we are spending massive amounts of money. My point is I do not disagree with Senator Warner. We owe these benefits, and we are going to have to provide a way for our military retirees to have quality medical care, which we promised. But the idea of doing it by busting the budget by $59.9 billion on a program nobody ever debated, nobody ever tested, nobody has ever seen work, I think is clearly the wrong way to do it. We have a point of order that is going to be raised by Senator Kerrey. What is the point of order about?

Mr. GRAMM. Well, he has raised it. What it is about is, in our budget we agreed we were going to spend $400 million to begin to try to fix this problem. The committee with jurisdiction to fix it was not willing to abide by that budget, and they came up with a program that did not cost $400 million, they came up with a program that cost $59.9 billion and committed us to a $200 billion debt to be amortized over 70 years. So Senator Kerrey has raised a point of order saying: This may be wonderful, this might actually be the right thing to do someday, but this violates what we voted to do and the constraints we imposed on ourselves. I do not suffer any delusion. My guess is we are going to get 3 or 4 or 5--maybe 10 votes here. We are going to waive this point of order, and we are going to spend this $60 billion. We are going to spend it on a program which was never debated, never tested, never analyzed in any systematic way. My fear is that we are going to have a very difficult time fixing it. I am afraid 10 years from now we may be here debating how we can fix it, but with the vested interests that have built up, it will be very difficult to do. So I believe this point of order should be sustained. I am going to vote to sustain it. Why should we care about this spending? I was talking to Chairman Greenspan today about the economy and about the stock market. We were talking about spending. I basically had raised the issue with him, was he worried about this runaway spending? He made a point to me that, in April and May, something clearly started happening because long-term interest rates started going up in America. Some people say that is caused by Fed policy. No, the policy of the Fed, as our colleagues know, affects short-term interest rates. But the economy affects long- term interest rates. Let me tell you what was happening in May. What was happening in May is it started to become clear we were not going to abide by our budget. It started to become clear we were losing control of spending. These long-term rates went up and the economy started to cool, and that is being reflected in the stock market today, in my opinion. I am not saying we are going into a recession. But I am saying the interest rates went up on the long-term because we are losing control of spending. We are losing fiscal discipline. They went up until the economy slowed down enough that they started to back off. I think we ought to be concerned about spending this surplus. I think we need to make rational decisions about it. It may very well be, after a debate, we write a budget and we spend $60 billion on this problem. I do not think I would do it this way. I think we need efficiency, I think we need copayments, I think we need incentives for cost consciousness. I don't think I would support doing it this way, but I might support a program that costs this much, more or less. But doing it this way, where two or three people put together this proposal, is fundamentally wrong and is dangerous. This is a noble cause, and a cause that I support--military retirees were promised a benefit. They weren't promised these kinds of benefits, but they were promised access to military medicine. I want them to have it. As bases have closed and as people now do not live near military bases, we have to come up with another program. But I think it ought to be a rational program. I think it ought to be one we look at over time. So I am going to vote to sustain this point of order. I think this bill is simply an outward and visible sign of what is happening in our Congress. I wish America could be awakened to it. We are on a spending binge that has no precedent in my period of service in Congress. You have to go all the way back to Lyndon Johnson to find spending at the level we are now talking about in the Congress. At first it was just discretionary spending. Now we are into entitlements. As we all know, these things start out small. This one didn't start small, but a lot of them do. But they get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. I appreciate my colleagues' listening. I think this is an issue such that you have to explain to people what you are trying to do. I think it is a very easy issue to say, boy, I am trying to deliver on the commitment in that recruiting poster. I believe in the commitment in the recruiting poster, but you don't deliver on it with a huge program that has never been tested, that was put together by people who do not specialize in this area of government, and where there has never been a debate. I think this is a mistake, and I think we are going to end up regretting it. I think we will someday come back and fix it, but we will not fix it, in my opinion, until we have spent a lot of money and until we have produced a system that--unless we are extraordinarily lucky--is not going to provide the kind of efficient care we need. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. I was hoping our distinguished chairman would consume less than allocated on the budget but he consumed 10 times as much.

Mr. GRAMM. Yes.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I had the opportunity, earlier today, to talk about the effort by Senator Daschle and the minority to suspend the rules of the Senate and to bring before this body an amnesty provision. In essence, this provision would reward people who violated the laws of this country by coming to the United States illegally when we have millions of people waiting to come the right way, legally. After I left, the minority leader, in response to what I said, asked if I had seen the Statue of Liberty lately. Let me assure him that not only have I seen it, but that when my grandfather, who came to this country by way of Ellis Island, saw the Statue of Liberty he rejoiced in it. I would also like to ask the people who are for this bill, if they have they seen the Supreme Court Building lately? ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' Without law, we can't have liberty. Without law, we can't have an organized society. We corrupt the legal system when we have a set of rules that people are supposed to operate under, and then for political reasons in an election year, say to all of those who have abided by the law in waiting to come to America, that they are going to be treated differently than people who violated the law in coming to this country. I have seen the Statue of Liberty and I rejoice in it. I want people to give us the best they have so we can build a greater country. But I want people to come, as my grandfather came, as my wife's grandparents came--I want them to come legally. Second, the H-1B program is a temporary work program for highly skilled people. It is an entirely different issue than the issue before us, which is an effort to waive the rules of the Senate and bring before us a bill that would grant amnesty to and reward people who have violated the law. I do not believe my colleagues are going to do this. I know our Democrat colleagues believe this is good politics and that this is going to get them more votes, but I don't believe it. As I said before, I would be willing to let this election, and every other election for the remaining history of this country, be determined on this issue and this issue alone. I do not believe it is good politics to basically say that we are going to reward people who violate the law at the expense of those who abide by the law. Also, the idea that somehow immigrants support this bill I think is outrageous. I think those who have abided by the law resent the fact that we routinely reward people who violate the law. Finally, in 1986 we adopted an amnesty provision, and that was supposed to be the final granting of amnesty. Now we are back trying to renegotiate the deal. The point is, every time we grant one of these amnesty provisions, we say to people all over the world: Violate the law, come to America illegally, and you will ultimately be rewarded for it. I say to people all over the world: Come to America legally, and secondly I say, we need to promote free enterprise to individual freedom where we can take America to them. Not everybody who goes to bed at night praying to come to America is going to get to come. We cannot have the whole world in America, but we can take America to them by promoting the policies worldwide that have made us the greatest and richest country in the history of the world. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Basically, what their bill is, is that you will be rewarded by being put in front of the 7 million people who have applied to come to America legally because they weren't willing to violate America's laws to become Americans and you were. If I may say this, and I then will yield the floor------

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, in light of this agreement, Members can expect two back-to-back votes at 4:30 p.m. today.

Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, to hasten the moment of this all-important vote, I ask unanimous consent that a vote occur on the pending Daschle motion to suspend the rules at 4:30 p.m. today, and the time between now and 4:30 p.m. be equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent, notwithstanding rule XXII, that following that vote, the pending amendments Nos. 4201 and 4183 be considered adopted, and the vote then occur immediately on the second-degree amendment No. 4178, without any intervening action or debate.