Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I do not want my 1 minute to start until I start talking. If the Senator wants to talk, let him do it.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we have been meeting on a bipartisan basis to try to put together a bill in the waning hours of this Congress that will provide for prescription drug insurance for senior Americans. We have been working in good faith. This is a bad faith amendment. This is a politics-first amendment. Nobody knows what it costs. Nobody knows how it will work. Nobody knows what it does to the solvency of Medicare. This is politics at its worst. I think this body ought to be offended by it. I am offended by it. I do not believe that voters are going to be impressed by circumventing the process. This does not speed it up. This makes it harder for people such as Senator Roth and Senator Breaux to bring us together to pass a bill. This needs to be rejected by an overwhelming vote. I urge those who really want a prescription drug benefit--label this for what it is by voting no, and let's get on with trying to do this on a bipartisan basis.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I would like to engage in a colloquy with the gentleman from Michigan, Senator Abraham, who is the original sponsor of the legislation on electronic signatures, to discuss the scope of the legislation.

Mr. GRAMM. As to its coverage, does the Senator agree that this act is intended to operate very broadly to permit the use of electronic signatures and electronic records in all business, consumer and commercial contexts? This breadth is accomplished through the use of the term ``transaction,'' which is defined broadly to include any action or set of actions relating to the conduct of business, consumer or commercial affairs between two or more persons. For example, a unilateral action or set of actions by one of the parties to the underlying transaction, or by any other person with any interest in the underlying transaction, or a response by one party to the other's action, all are covered by the act. In this regard, it is the nature of the activity, rather than the number of persons or the identity or status of the person or entity involved in the activity, that determines the applicability of the act. Have I stated the matter correctly?

Mr. GRAMM. It is my understanding that this act, for example, covers any activity that would qualify as a financial activity, an activity incidental to a financial activity, or a complementary activity, under section 4(k) of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended, whether or not such activity is conducted by, or subject to any limitations or requirements applicable to, a financial holding company. In addition, it would cover all activities relating to employee benefit plans or any other type of tax-favored plan, annuity or account such as an IRA, a 403(b) annuity, or an education savings program, including all related tax and other required filings and reports. Is this correct?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague's willingness to participate in this colloquy to clarify the clear intent of the conference with respect to the scope of this act.

Mr. GRAMM. Is it the understanding of the Senator from Michigan that the act is not intended to restrict the scope or availability of any other federal statute, regulation and other rule of law (whether currently in effect or becoming effective in the future) that requires, authorizes or otherwise allows for the use of electronic signatures or electronic records, to the extent such federal statute, regulation, or other rule of law is consistent with the provisions of the act? Any such other statute, regulation or other rule of law will continue to be fully and independently effective. Rather, this act is intended to operate as a uniform national baseline permitting electronic signatures and electronic records to be used with respect to certain activities notwithstanding other inconsistent statutes, regulations or other rules of law. Am I correct in my statement regarding the intent of this legislation?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Boll Weevil Eradication Equity Act. Boll weevil infestation has caused more than $15 billion worth of damage to the United States cotton crop, and the nation's cotton producers lose $300 million annually. Texas is the largest cotton producing state in the nation, yet the scope of this problem extends beyond Texas. The ability of all states to eradicate this pest would stop future migration to boll weevil-free areas and prevent reintroduction of the boll weevil into those areas which have already completed a successful eradication effort. We must continue to build upon the past success of the existing program that authorizes the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to join with individual states and provide technical assistance and federal cost-share funds. This highly successful partnership has resulted in complete boll weevil eradication in California, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina. These states received an average federal cost-share of 26.9 percent, with producers and individual states paying the remaining cost. Since 1994, however, the program has expanded into Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and New Mexico, but the federal appropriation has remained relatively constant. The addition of this vast acreage has resulted in dramatically reducing the federal cost share to only 4 percent, leaving producers and individual states to fund the remaining 96 percent. This is not fair to the states now participating in the program because federal matching funds to the states enrolled in the early years of the program constituted almost 30 percent of eradication costs. The National Cotton Council estimates that for every $1 spent on eradication, cotton farmers will accrue about $12 in benefits. The bill I am introducing today will authorize a federal cost share contribution of not less than 26.9 percent to the states and producers which still must contend with boll weevil infestation. I urge my colleagues to join this effort to ensure that these producers receive no less support than that which was provided during the earlier stages of the program. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Boll Weevil Eradication Equity Act. Boll weevil infestation has caused more than $15 billion worth of damage to the United States cotton crop, and the nation's cotton producers lose $300 million annually. Texas is the largest cotton producing state in the nation, yet the scope of this problem extends beyond Texas. The ability of all states to eradicate this pest would stop future migration to boll weevil-free areas and prevent reintroduction of the boll weevil into those areas which have already completed a successful eradication effort. We must continue to build upon the past success of the existing program that authorizes the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to join with individual states and provide technical assistance and federal cost-share funds. This highly successful partnership has resulted in complete boll weevil eradication in California, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina. These states received an average federal cost-share of 26.9 percent, with producers and individual states paying the remaining cost. Since 1994, however, the program has expanded into Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and New Mexico, but the federal appropriation has remained relatively constant. The addition of this vast acreage has resulted in dramatically reducing the federal cost share to only 4 percent, leaving producers and individual states to fund the remaining 96 percent. This is not fair to the states now participating in the program because federal matching funds to the states enrolled in the early years of the program constituted almost 30 percent of eradication costs. The National Cotton Council estimates that for every $1 spent on eradication, cotton farmers will accrue about $12 in benefits. The bill I am introducing today will authorize a federal cost share contribution of not less than 26.9 percent to the states and producers which still must contend with boll weevil infestation. I urge my colleagues to join this effort to ensure that these producers receive no less support than that which was provided during the earlier stages of the program. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, if I might respond on Senator Kennedy's time, talking slowly as I do, this stethoscope picks up a strong heartbeat that believes in freedom, and that believes in the right of consumers--even health care consumers--to fire an HMO rather than call in a lawyer or a bureaucrat. That is what we call freedom. That is what we are for. We disagree, and that is what makes democracy work.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, under the very able leadership of Senator Nickles we have worked on this conference report more than 400 hours with more intense effort than any conference of which I have ever been part. From time to time many of our colleagues have said to Senator Nickles: The Democrats do not want a bill; they want a political issue. Why don't we write a bill and pass it with Republican votes? Our dear colleague and leader, Senator Nickles, has said: No, I want to try to do this on a bipartisan basis. I think what Senator Kennedy has proven today in a cynical political act is that no good deed ever goes unpunished. We are not here today because we are not making progress. We are here today because we are making too much progress. We are here today because we are on the verge of writing a bill, but it is a bill that Senator Kennedy is not for. Senator Kennedy has said: If you will just let lawyers get into the patient treatment room and, if you will just let people file lawsuits, he will be happy. We want to put the focus on getting health care, and one gets that from doctors and not lawyers. In an effort to accommodate and reach a bipartisan compromise, Senator Nickles proposed allowing HMOs to be sued. What does Senator Kennedy say? It is not enough. Senator Kennedy does not just want to sue HMOs, he wants to sue employers. To that we say no, we are not going to sue employers. Health insurance is provided on a voluntary basis, and we do not want employers to drop their health insurance for their workers. We are worried about millions of Americans losing their health insurance. Senator Kennedy is not worried about that; the Democrats are not worried about that because they have their plan. And here it is. Do my colleagues remember this, the Clinton health care bill? Do my colleagues remember what they wanted to do? They wanted the Government to take over and run the health care system. Today, Senator Kennedy is very worried about HMOs, but let me read something about how their health care purchasing collectives would work in his bill with President Clinton. If a patient went to a doctor and asked for treatment for your sick child, and the doctor thought your child should have it, under the Clinton plan if the Government health board ruled no, the doctor could be fined $50,000 for providing that health care to your sick child. If you said: My baby is sick, I want the health care but the Government will not pay for it, their health care bill said if the doctor provided it and you paid him, he went to prison for 15 years. That is their idea of HMOs they like, one HMO run by the Government. That is not our idea. We reject it, and we will fight it until it is dead. They will never give up on it. They do not care if they destroy the health care system of this country. They do not care if millions of people are uninsured because they know how to insure them: Insure them by having the Government take over the health care system. We say no. In our bill, we expand coverage. We gave tax deductibility to the self-employed. We want to give tax deductibility for buying health insurance if a company does not provide it. Why should General Motors get a tax deduction for buying health care but your family does not? We try to encourage people to buy long-term care insurance, so we make it tax deductible. We want to give people choices, so we have medical savings accounts. Yet in this legislation before us, there is not one mention of tax deductibility for health insurance, not one mention of expanding coverage, not one mention of expanding freedom by letting people use tax-free money to buy health insurance. Why not? What does Senator Kennedy have against the self-employed getting the same treatment as General Motors, or people who do not work for an employer that can provide health insurance getting a tax deduction? We know why he has against it. He does not want people to spend their money on health care. He wants the Government to spend the money for them. That is what this issue is about. As much as we have tried to write a bipartisan bill, unfortunately, this is an election year. We are proving it right here on the floor of the Senate. We are going to reject this amendment, and I hope we will come to our senses. I hope that we will go back into conference and write a bill and bring it to the floor, a bill that does not allow employers to be sued, a bill that holds HMOs accountable, a bill that lets people buy health insurance with tax-free dollars, and then let Senator Kennedy vote no. But I believe that America will vote yes. And this is about choices. Senator Kennedy protests that we are not making progress. We are not making progress in the wrong direction. That is what Senator Kennedy is unhappy about. We are not going to sue employers. We are going to provide tax relief to people to buy health care. We are going to hold HMOs accountable. We are not going to let the Government take over and run health care. As for the principle of compromise, I am willing to compromise and go part way, as long as we are going in the right direction. But I do not have any interest in compromising, in going part way in the wrong direction because that means we have further to go in going in the right direction. I congratulate the chairman of this conference. He has done a great job. He has provided the best leadership on any conference that I have seen since I have been in Congress. He deserves better treatment. I believe Republicans ought to be outraged about this. And I am outraged. I have worked hard on this conference. We are going to produce a good product. I am happy to have people judge me at the polls on it. I believe when you ask people do they want employers to be sued, I think they are going to say no. Senator Kennedy wants them to be sued. I say no. Let the American people decide in November. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, in 1992 and 1993, when Senator Kennedy and the Democrats were trying to raise taxes, which, unfortunately, they succeeded in doing, and when they were trying to have the Government take over the health care system, which, thank God, they failed to do, I said people would lose their jobs if they were successful. And they did. Democrats lost their jobs. Not one Republican was defeated as an incumbent in 1994. We won nine seats in the Senate. And we are in the majority. Some people did lose their jobs, because Americans did not want the Government to take over and run the health care system. I say to Senator Kennedy that, as sad as I know it makes him, they still don't, and they never will.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, this has been a long debate and, I think, a good debate. It has proven once again that this is an election year. I am not going to insult everybody's intelligence by telling them that I am shocked that Senator Kennedy is engaged in partisan politics this afternoon. This is an election year. We are politicians. This is a political act to basically try to win, again, what Senator Kennedy lost when we had the debate on the floor of the Senate. Senator Nickles won. We are in conference trying to work out an agreement, and Senator Kennedy doesn't like the way the agreement is going; he is unhappy about it. But rather than get into all this ``who shot John,'' I have tried to come up with a simple example for somebody back home who is trying to figure out what this is all about, and let me try to give it to you as succinctly as I can. Somebody goes into the treatment room and the doctor comes in there and they have their stethoscope and they tell him to take off his shirt. In comes somebody else. They say: Well, who is that in this room? And that is the gatekeeper for the HMO. Now, what the patient wants is to get that gatekeeper out of the examining room so it is them and their doctor. Senator Kennedy says he has the answer. His answer is: Well, keep the gatekeeper but here is how we will fix it. We will bring in a lawyer to sue the HMO, the insurance company, and the employer that bought the insurance. So we have the lawyer there and he gets part of the stethoscope. And then we bring in a bureaucrat to regulate it. So Senator Kennedy's answer is, rather than getting the HMO out of the examining room, bring in a lawyer and a bureaucrat; and here is the poor patient with his heart at the end of the stethoscope and now four people are listening to the heart. Now, what we are trying to do here is simple. We are trying to empower the American health care consumer to fire the HMO. We give them the ability to have innovative ways of financing health care, such as medical savings accounts, so if they don't like the way the HMO is treating them, they don't go see a lawyer, or a bureaucrat, or they don't see Senator Kennedy; they simply call up their HMO and say: You are fired. They go out through a medical savings account, and they have their credit card or their checking account through their medical savings account, and they pick up the phone and they don't say: Are you a member of our HMO? My baby is sick and needs care. Will you see him? They simply say: Will you take a check? ``Do you take MasterCard or Visa?'' If they do, they are in. In reality, that is what this debate is about. Do you believe in bureaucrats, or do you believe in freedom? Senator Kennedy, in all his heart, believes--and he is sincere, and I admire him for it--that having a lawyer there and having a bureaucrat in there improves the system. He supported a health care bill where if a doctor provided you health care that an advisory panel appointed by the Government didn't support, they could be fined $50,000. He supported the Clinton bill where if your baby is sick and the Government said this child doesn't need treatment, and you said to the doctor, treat my child and I will pay for it, if the doctor took the money he could be sent to prison for 15 years. That is what their alternative was. What we want to do is give people freedom. One of the freedoms under our bill is to say to your HMO: You are fired. If you think having a lawyer and a bureaucrat is good, then you are for Senator Kennedy. But if you believe in freedom and what is right for you and your family, what we are trying to do is the right way to go.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, today I join with Senator Lugar, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to introduce the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. The formal purpose of this legislation is to reauthorize the Commodity Exchange Act, the legal authority for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As important as that is, this legislation does far more. This is a landmark bill, that addresses four chief goals that Senator Lugar and I set out to achieve when we first began discussing this legislation. First of all, this bill would repeal the so-called Shad- Johnson Accord, the 18-year-old temporary prohibition on the trading of futures based on individual stocks. Second, the bill eliminates the legal uncertainly that today hangs as an ominous cloud over the $7 trillion financial swaps markets. Third, the bill addresses the need to harmonize the treatment of margins among the futures, stock, and options markets. Fourth, the bill provides important and necessary regulatory relief to the futures and securities markets. One of the most notable aspects of this bill is that it brings together the chairmen of the two committees with jurisdiction over these issues, the Agriculture Committee and the Banking Committee. To start out with such cooperation speaks well, I believe, for the prospects for this legislation. While the Commodity Exchange Act is clearly within the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, stocks, options, and swaps are within the jurisdiction of the Banking Committee. The next step for this bill will be joint hearings of our two committees to consider it. Few bills are in a perfected form when first introduced, and I fully expect that additional changes will be made to this one before it becomes law. For example, I hope to see additional measures of regulatory relief for the securities markets included. But this bill is a fine beginning, introduced in the best way. We bring together two committees that could choose to argue over turf but instead are choosing to cooperate to make changes in law that are needed to ensure that our financial market places continue to lead the world. At the same time, we will be providing the widest choice of investment opportunities for American businesses and families.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, today I join with Senator Lugar, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to introduce the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. The formal purpose of this legislation is to reauthorize the Commodity Exchange Act, the legal authority for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As important as that is, this legislation does far more. This is a landmark bill, that addresses four chief goals that Senator Lugar and I set out to achieve when we first began discussing this legislation. First of all, this bill would repeal the so-called Shad- Johnson Accord, the 18-year-old temporary prohibition on the trading of futures based on individual stocks. Second, the bill eliminates the legal uncertainly that today hangs as an ominous cloud over the $7 trillion financial swaps markets. Third, the bill addresses the need to harmonize the treatment of margins among the futures, stock, and options markets. Fourth, the bill provides important and necessary regulatory relief to the futures and securities markets. One of the most notable aspects of this bill is that it brings together the chairmen of the two committees with jurisdiction over these issues, the Agriculture Committee and the Banking Committee. To start out with such cooperation speaks well, I believe, for the prospects for this legislation. While the Commodity Exchange Act is clearly within the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, stocks, options, and swaps are within the jurisdiction of the Banking Committee. The next step for this bill will be joint hearings of our two committees to consider it. Few bills are in a perfected form when first introduced, and I fully expect that additional changes will be made to this one before it becomes law. For example, I hope to see additional measures of regulatory relief for the securities markets included. But this bill is a fine beginning, introduced in the best way. We bring together two committees that could choose to argue over turf but instead are choosing to cooperate to make changes in law that are needed to ensure that our financial market places continue to lead the world. At the same time, we will be providing the widest choice of investment opportunities for American businesses and families.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me remind everyone that 4 years ago we moved to begin to correct an injustice in military medicine, and the injustice was that if you served in the military for 20 or more years, you received a commitment, at least in your mind and I believe in reality, that you and your dependents would have access to military medicine for the rest of your life. When Medicare came in and the federal government started making the military pay Medicare payroll taxes, it stopped allowing retirees over 64 to use military medicine. That was a breach of faith. Then we started an experiment 4 years ago to allow them to use their Medicare coverage to obtain treatment at base hospitals again. The Warner amendment we just adopted will allow people who served a career in the military to get treatment at base hospitals from military doctors, and have Medicare pay the cost. It is a good idea and I strongly support it. Now, Senator Johnson has offered an amendment that on its face has merit, and that is to put military retirees into FEHBP. Maybe in the long run that is the answer to the problem. But the problem with Senator Johnson's amendment today is that it busts the budget by $92 billion. So I urge my colleagues, whether they support the FEHBP solution or not, to not bust the budget today. Let's stand with the taxpayers today, and let's also complete the Medicare subvention experiment, and let's take up Senator Johnson's proposal when we know how to pay for it. I thank the chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, the issue before us is whether we are going to waive the budget point of order. I insist on the point of order and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAMM. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I wish to share with my colleagues a moving autobiographical article written by Ward Connerly. Mr. Connerly's intelligence and personal experience with racism blend together into a truly insightful analysis and I encourage my colleagues to read about Mr. Connerly's uniquely American story. Mr. President, I ask that the article which appeared in the June 2000 edition of The American Enterprise be printed in the Record. Laying Down the Burden of Race (By Ward Connerly) Not long ago, after I'd given a speech in Hartford, Connecticut, I saw a black man with a determined look on his face working his way toward me through the crowd. I steeled myself for another abrasive encounter of the kind I've come to expect over the past few years. But once this man reached me he stuck out his hand and said thoughtfully, ``You know, I was thinking about some of the things you said tonight. It occurred to me that black people have just got to learn to lay down the burden. It's like we grew up carrying a bag filled with heavy weights on our shoulders. We just have to stop totin' that bag.'' I agreed with him. I knew as he did exactly what was in this bag: weakness and guilt, anger, and self-hatred. I have made a commitment not to tote racial grievances, because the status of victim is so seductive and so available to anyone with certain facial features or a certain cast to his skin. But laying down these burdens can be tricky, as I was reminded not long after this Connecticut meeting. I had just checked into the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco to attend an annual dinner as master of ceremonies. After getting to my room, I realized that I'd left my briefcase in the car and started to go back to the hotel parking garage for it. As I was getting off the basement elevator, I ran into a couple of elderly white men who seemed a little disoriented. When they saw me, one of them said, ``Excuse me, are you the man who unlocks the meeting room?'' I did an intellectual double-take and then, with my racial hackles rising, answered with as much irritation as I could pack into my voice: ``No, I'm not the man who unlocks the rooms.'' The two men shrank back and I walked on, fuming to myself about how racial profiling is practiced every day in subtle forms by people who would otherwise piously condemn it in state troopers working the New Jersey Turnpike. As I stalked toward the garage, I didn't feel uplifted by my righteous anger. On the contrary, I felt crushed by it. It was a heavy burden, so heavy, in fact, that I stopped and stood there for a minute, sagging under its weight. Then I tried to see myself through the eyes of the two old men I'd just run into: someone who was black, yes, but more importantly, someone without luggage, striding purposefully out of the elevator as if on a mission, dressed in a semi-uniform of blazer and gray slacks. I turned around and retraced my steps. ``What made you think I was the guy who unlocks the meeting rooms?'' I asked when I caught up with them. ``You were dressed a little like a hotel employee, sir,'' the one who had spoken earlier said in a genuinely deferential way. ``Believe me, I meant no insult.'' ``Well, I hope you'll forgive me for being abrupt,'' I said, and after a quick handshake I headed back to the garage, feeling immensely relieved. If we are to lay this burden down for good, we must be committed to letting go of racial classifications--not getting beyond race by taking race more into account, as Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun disastrously advised, but just getting beyond race period as a foundation for public policy. Yet, I know that race is a scar in America. I first saw this scar at the beginning of my life in the segregated South. Black people should not deny that this mark exists: it is part of our connection to America. But we should also resist all of those, black and white, who want to rip open that scar and make race a raw and angry wound that continues to define and divide us. Left to their own devices, I believe, Americans will eventually merge and melt into each other. Throughout our history, there has been a constant intermingling of people-- even during the long apartheid of segregation and Jim Crow. It is malicious as well as unreasonable not to acknowledge that in our own time the conditions for anger have diminished and the conditions for connection have improved. We all know the compelling statistics about the improvements in black life: increased social and vocational mobility, increased personal prestige and political power. But of all the positive data that have accumulated since the Civil Rights Act of 1964--when America finally decided to leave its racial past behind--the finding that gives me most hope is the recent survey showing that nearly 90 percent of all teenagers in America report having at least one close personal friend of another race. My wife Ilene is white. I have two racially mixed children and three grandchildren, two of whose bloodlines are even more mixed as a result of my son's marriage to a woman of half-Asian descent. So my own personal experience tells me that the passageway to that place where all racial division ends goes directly through the human heart. Not long ago, Mike Wallace came to California to interview Ilene and me for a segment on ``60 Minutes.'' He seemed shocked when I told him that race wasn't a big topic in our family. He implied that we were somehow disadvantaging the kids. But Ilene and I decided a long time ago to let our kids find their way in this world without toting the bag of race. They are lucky, of course, to have grown up after the great achievements of the civil rights movement, which changed America's heart as much as its laws. But we have made sure that the central question for our children, since the moment they came into this world, has always been who are you, not what are you. When we ignore appeals to group identity and focus instead on individuals and their individual humanity, we are inviting the principles of justice present since the American founding to come inside our contemporary American homes. I won't pretend this is always easy. While a senior at college, I fell in love with an effervescent white woman named Ilene. When Ilene's parents first learned how serious we were about each other, they reacted with dismay and spent long hours on the phone trying to keep the relationship from developing further. Hoping for support from my own relatives, I went home one weekend and told Mom (the grandmother who had raised me) about Ilene. She was cold and negative. ``Why can't you find yourself a nice colored girl?'' she blurted out. I walked out of the house and didn't contact her for a long time afterward. Ilene and I now felt secretive and embattled. Marrying ``outside your race'' was no easy decision in 1962. I knew that Ilene had no qualms about challenging social norms, but I was less sure that she could deal with exclusion by her family, which seemed to me a real possibility. Nonetheless, she said yes when I proposed, and we were married, with no family members present. I called Mom the day after and told her. She apologized for what she'd said earlier. Ilene's parents were not so quick to alter their position. For months, the lines of communication were down. Sometimes I came home from work and found Ilene sitting on the couch crying. Finally her parents agreed to see her, but not me. I drove her up to their house and waited in the car while she went in. As the hours passed, I seethed. At one point I started the engine and took off, but I didn't know the area and so, after circling the block, came back and parked again. When Ilene finally came out of the house, she just cried for nearly the entire return trip. Today, people would rush to hold Ilene's parents guilty of racism. But even when I was smoldering with resentment, I knew it wasn't that simple. These were good people--hard working, serious, upstanding. They were people, moreover, who had produced my wife, a person without a racist bone in her body. In a sense, I could sympathize with my new in-laws; there were no blacks in their daily life, and they lived in a small town where everyone knew everything about everyone else. Our marriage was a leap nothing in her parents' lives had prepared them to take. But their reaction to me still rankled. After having to wait in the car that afternoon I vowed never to go near their house again. For a long time we didn't see Ilene's parents. But we did see her Aunt Markeeta and Uncle Glen. They were wonderful people. Glen, dead now, was a salt-of-the-earth type who worked in a sawmill, and Markeeta had a personality as piquant as her name. They integrated us into their circle of friends, who became our friends too. In those healing days, we all functioned as an extended family. If I had to pick the moment when our family problems began to resolve themselves if would be the day our son Marc was born. Not long after, we were invited to come for a visit. This time I was included in the invitation. I remember sitting stiffly through the event, which had the tone of the recently released film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? I was supremely uncomfortable, but I also sensed that the fever had broken. And indeed, a peace process was in place. The visits became more frequent. The frigid tolerance gradually thawed into welcome. There was no single dramatic moment that completed the reconciliation; no cathartic conversation in which we all explored our guilt and misconceptions. Instead, we just got on with our lives, nurturing the relationship that had been born along with my son. It grew faster than he did. Within a year we were on our way to becoming what we are now--a close- knit, supportive family. Today, my relationship with my in- laws could not be better. I love them very much, and they let me know that the feeling is mutual. The moral is clear. Distance exaggerates difference and breeds mistrust; closeness breaks down suspicion and produces connection. My life so far tells me that our future as a nation is with connection. Most people call me a black man. In fact, I'm black in the same way that Tiger Woods and so many other Americans are black--by the ``one drop of blood'' rule used by yesterday's segregationists and today's racial ideologues. In my case, the formula has more or less equal elements of French Canadian, Choctaw, African, and Irish American. But just reciting the fractions provides no insight about the richness of life produced by the sum of the parts. A journalist for the New York Times once described my bloodline as being right out of a Faulkner novel. He was right. And my family was always trying to understand how the strands of DNA dangling down through history had created their individual selves. They had their share of guilty secrets and agonized over the consequences of bad blood, whatever its racial origin. But in their actions, they, like Faulkner's characters, treated race and other presumed borders between people as being permeable. I grew up with my mother's people. My maternal grand-father was Eli Soniea, a mixed-blood Cajun born in the tiny Louisiana town of Sulphur. He eventually settled in Leesville, not far from the Texas border, a sleepy town with hazy foothills stretching behind it like a movie backdrop. Eli died ten years before I was born, and I never knew him. But photographs of him have always intrigued me. He was light skinned, had straight black hair, and a serious look. I've been told he spoke a pidgin French and English and was an ambitious man. He worked as a carpenter, sometimes ran a construction gang, and amassed enough money to buy some land and build a restaurant and bar in Leesville, He was evidently a no-nonsense type who didn't like anyone, especially his own kin, putting on airs. Eli's wife, my grandmother Mary Smith--or ``Mom,'' as I always called her--was half Irish and half Choctaw. This latter element was clearly evident in her high cheekbones and broad features, and in the bloom of her young womanhood she was sometimes referred to as an ``Indian Princess.'' Mom was born and raised in Texas. She married Eli Soniea as a result of an ``arrangement'' brokered by her parents, after which he brought her to Louisiana. In their early life together, the two of them lived in that part of Leesville known as ``Dago Quarters'' because of the large number of Italian immigrants. After Eli's early death-- when I was growing up you didn't ask why or how someone died; the mere fact of it ended all discussion--Mary's only income was from the restaurant and bar he had built, which she leased to people who did business with the servicemen from the nearby Army base. Because money was tight, she moved the family to a less expensive neighborhood, the predominantly black ``Bartley Quarters.'' The complexions of Mom's own six children ranged from light to dark. (William, for instance, was always known as ``Red,'' because of this Indian look and coloring.) But whatever their exact coloration or facial characteristics, they all had ``colored'' on their birth certificates. In Louisiana in those days, being ``colored'' was not just a matter of blood; it was also a question of what neighborhood you lived in and what people you associated with. ``Colored'' is on my birth certificate. The Sonieas' race problem came not only from whites but from blacks too. Leesville's social boundaries were reasonably porous, but if you were falling down through the cracks rather than moving up, as the Sonieas were doing after Eli died, you attracted notice. My grandmother often recalled how her new neighbors in Bartley Quarters called her and her children ``high yellers,'' a term coined by white Southern racists but used with equal venom by blacks too. In fact, Mom's kids had so much trouble that officials tried to convince them to transfer out of the school to escape the racial animosity. This experience left some of my relatives with hard feelings that never really went away. During the campaign for California's Proposition 209, for instance, when I was being accused of selling out ``my people,'' my Aunt Bert got annoyed one day and said, ``When we lived back in Leesville, they didn't want to be our ``brothers and sisters'; they didn't own us as `their people' then; so why do they think we owe them something now because of skin color? My biological mother Grace, Bert's little sister, was the youngest of Mom's children. I wish I had more memories of her. I have only one sharp image in my mind: a face resting in satin in a casket. Old photographs show my mother as a beautiful woman with a full, exotic face. But she wasn't beautiful lying there with a waxy, preserved look, certainly not to a terrified four-year-old dragged up to the front of the church to pay his last respects. I still remember standing there looking at her with my cousin Ora holding my hand to keep me from bolting as the pandemonium of a Southern black funeral--women yelling, crying, fainting, and lying palsied on the floor--rose to a crescendo all around me. According to family legend, she died of a stroke. But I suspect that this claim was really just my family's way of explaining away something infinitely more complex. Two other facts about my mother's life may have had something to do with her early passing. First, she had been in a serious car accident that left her with a steel plate in her head. And secondly, she had been physically abused by my father. I didn't find this out until I was in my fifties. The information accidentally escaped during a conversation with my Aunt Bert, who said, when the subject of my father came up, ``You know, your Uncle Arthur once said, excuse the expression, `That son of a bitch once took out a gun and shot at me!' '' I asked her why. ``Because Arthur told your father that if he ever beat your mother again he'd kill him, and your father got out a gun.'' I guess Roy Connerly was what they called a ``fancy man'' back then. Judging from his photos, he was quite handsome, with light skin and a wicked smile, and a reputation as a gambler, a drinker, and a womanizer. He worked odd jobs, but it seems that his real profession was chasing women. I've been told so many times about the day he got tired of me and my mother and turned us in at my grandmother's house that it has come to feel like my own legitimate memory. He arrived there one afternoon with the two of us and with his girlfriend of the moment, a woman named Lucy. My Aunt Bert was watering the lawn when he walked into the yard. ``Is Miss Mary here?'' my father asked. Bert said yes. ``Go get her,'' he ordered. Bert went in to get Mom, who appeared on the porch wiping her hands on her apron. ``I'm giving them back to you, Miss Mary,'' Roy said, gesturing at my sobbing mother and at me, the miserable child in her arms. ``I want to be with Lucy.'' Always composed in a crisis, Mom looked at him without visible emotion and said, ``Thank you for bringing them.'' A few days later he brought my red wagon over. Then Roy Connerly vanished from my life. Later on I learned that Roy Connerly eventually got rid of Lucy and, at the age of 39, entered a relationship with a 15- year-old girl named Clementine and had a couple of kids by her. But nothing more than that for over 50 years. Then, just a couple of years ago, a writer doing a profile on me for the New York Times called one day. ``Are you sitting down?'' he asked melodramatically. I asked him what was up. He said that in his research about my background he had discovered that my father was still alive, 84 years old, and living in Leesville. The writer gave me his phone number. I didn't do anything about it for a long time. Then, in the fall of 1998, I was invited to debate former Congressman William Gray at Tulane University in New Orleans. One of the things that made me accept was how close it was to Leesville. But I didn't actually decide to go there until after the speech. I came back to the hotel, rented a car, and got directions from the concierge. It was a four-hour drive in a dreary rain. I warned myself not to surrender to counterfeit sentiment that would make a fool of both me and my father. I stopped on the outskirts of town and called from a convenience store. My father's wife Clementine answered. I told her who I was and asked if I could come by and see him. There were muffled voices on the other end of the line, then she came back on and said that I should stay put and she'd send someone out to lead me to the house. A few minutes later, a couple of young men in a beat-up blue car came by and motioned at me. I followed them down the main street and over railroad tracks to a run-down neighborhood of narrow houses and potholed roads without sidewalks. We got out of the car and went into a tiny, shuttered house whose living room was illumined only by a small television set. I introduced myself to Clementine, and we talked about my father for a minute or two. She emphasized that the man I was about to meet was very old, quite ill, and easily confused. When she led me into the bedroom, I saw him, sunk down in the mattress, a bag of bones. His hands and feet were gnarled and knobby with arthritis, but in his face I saw my own reflection. I touched his arm: ``How are you feeling today?'' He looked up at me uncomprehendingly: ``All right.'' ``You know who I am?'' Seeing that he was lost in a fog, Clementine said, ``It's Billy,'' using my childhood nickname. He looked at her, then at me. ``Oh, Billy,'' the voice was thin and wavering. ``How long you're staying?'' I told him I couldn't stay long. There was an awkward silence as I waited for him to say something. But he just stared at me. We looked at each other for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, a lifetime's worth of questions came tumbling out. ``Did you ever care how I was doing?'' I asked him. ``No,'' he replied uncertainly. ``Did you ever try and get in touch with me?'' ``No,'' he looked at me blankly. ``Did you ever even care what happened to me?'' ``No.'' At this point Clementine intervened: ``I don't even think he knows what you're asking.'' I stood there a moment, resigning myself to the situation. I would never get an explanation for his absence from my life. Then Joseph, one of the young men who'd guided me to the house and who I now realized was my half-brother, beckoned me out of the room. In the hallway, he asked if I'd like to visit some of my other relatives living nearby. I said yes and he took me outside. We crossed the street to a narrow house where an elderly woman was waiting for us. Joseph introduced her to me as my Aunt Ethel. She cordially invited us in. Ethel had married my father's brother and served as the family's unofficial archivist and historian. As we talked, she asked if I knew anything about my father's family. I said no. Ethel showed me some photos. She told me that his mother, born in 1890, was named Fannie Self Conerly, and that they spelled it with one n then. She said that Fannie's mother was Sarah Ford Lovely, who had died at the age of 98, when I was a boy. This woman, my great-grandmother, had been born a slave. After I walked back to my father's house and sat for a while beside him. I stood and said, ``I've got to be going. You take care of yourself.'' ``You too,'' he said to me. ``You ever coming back this way again, Billy?'' I smiled and waved and left without answering, and without asking him the one question that was still on my mind: Did you beat my mother like they say? Did you hasten her death and thus deprive me of both of you? On the drive back to New Orleans I thought about my discoveries--this sickly old man who was my life's most intimate stranger; the fact that his blood and mine had once been owned by another human being. I felt subtly altered, but still the same. My father's gift to me, if you could call it that, was a deeper realization that it is not the life we're given that counts, but the life we make of the life we're given.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, first, I thank our wonderful colleague from California for doing such a sweet thing. She is going to speak for some time. I know it would help educate me to stay and hear it, but like so many other people, I am too busy and I want to say a few things. First of all, I congratulate the President for proposing the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. The President recognized wisely that even if we took all the aid provided by every country in the world and gave it to sub-Saharan Africa, obviously we could have a short-term impact on them, but the long-term impact would be small when compared to the impact we can have through trade. This bill is an opportunity for us to open up our markets for goods from some of the poorest countries in the world. I know there are some who say that even though this will mean clothing will be cheaper for American consumers, for working and low-income Americans, somehow there is a sacrifice involved. I fail to see it. I see everybody benefiting from trade. Desperately poor people in Africa will have an opportunity to produce products that can be sold in America, and we can raise their living standards and our own through the miracle of world trade. This is not a perfect bill. I wish it were less protectionist. One provision in the bill requires that in order for textiles from sub- Saharan Africa to come into the country, they have to be made out of American yarn and American thread. That provision is going to reduce their competitiveness, but I appreciate the fact that the conference put in an exception for the 41 countries that have per capita incomes of below $1,500 a year. So the bill is not perfect, but it is a movement in the right direction, and I strongly support it. It is important for us to promote world trade. I know our colleague who spoke before me believes that trade only helps rich people and big companies, but I believe trade helps working people. It creates jobs. It creates opportunity. It expands freedom. That is why I am so strongly in support of this bill. I thank the Finance Committee for working out a compromise that will mean more trade, that will mean more products. I have to say I do not understand how, with a straight face, the textile industry was so adamantly opposed to this bill. If we unleashed all of the energies of sub-Saharan Africa and all of their productive capacity and had them produce textiles to sell in America, they would still have no substantial impact on our market. I do not understand why we continue to let special interests in America direct our Government to limit our ability to buy goods that would raise the living standards of working Americans. It is outrageous and unfair, and it is important that we stand up against these protectionist forces. Who gives the American textile industry the right to say that, as a free person, I cannot buy a better shirt or a cheaper shirt produced somewhere else in the world? How is America diminished by it? I say it is not. My freedom is diminished by such forces. We have a mixture of protectionism and trade in this bill. But, overall, it is a movement in the right direction, and I am in favor of it. When the Multifiber Agreement is implemented, we will open up trade in textiles. As late as 5 years ago, the average American family paid $700 more a year for clothing because of textile protection in America than they would with free trade. This is a small step in the right direction. I rejoice in it, and I support it. I thank the Senator from California for yielding.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Vote on Amendment No. 3122

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that though we have the previous unanimous consent agreement, I be able to speak for up to 30 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, yesterday, as I listened to our Democrat colleagues talking about the marriage penalty elimination, and their opposition to our bill, I got interested in this debate and eager to speak on it. I know we have not been able to work out an agreement yet to bring the bill to the floor. I know our Democrat colleagues have refused to agree to limiting it to amendments relevant to the marriage penalty. We all know the easiest way to kill something around here is to pile a bunch of extraneous amendments on it. I am hopeful we can work out these differences and that we can have a vote on eliminating the marriage penalty. The American people have a right to know where Members of the Senate stand on this critically important issue. The repeal of the marriage penalty was adopted in the House by an overwhelming vote. I believe it should be repealed. I am hopeful the President will sign the bill, even though to this point in time he says he will not. But rather than waiting around for some agreement to be made--that may never be made--I felt I had something to say that ought to be heard on this issue. What I would like to talk about today is, first, to set this debate within the context of the President's budget and basically highlight the choice we are making between spending here in Washington, where we sit around these conference tables and make decisions to spend billions of dollars, and spending back home in the family, where the families sit around the kitchen table and try to decide how to spend hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars for themselves. I would like to talk about our repeal of the marriage penalty and why it is the right thing to do, why it is not just a tax issue, why it is a moral issue. This is a moral issue we are talking about. I want to talk about the so-called marriage bonus that some of our colleagues have thrown up. I want to try to point out how it is one of the more phony issues that has ever been discussed. I want to talk about President Clinton's alternative to our repeal of the marriage penalty. Finally, I want to talk about the last form of bigotry that is still acceptable in America; that is, bigotry against the successful. I would like to try to do all that in such a way as to deviate from my background as a schoolteacher and be brief. First of all, let's outline the choices we have. The President has proposed in his budget that we spend $388 billion over the next 5 years on new Government programs and expansions of programs. This is brand new spending. This is $388 billion the President's budget says we ought to spend above the level we are currently spending, and we ought to do it on a series of new programs and program expansions--about 80 new programs and program expansions. We have proposed that we give the people of America $150 billion of the taxes they have paid above the level we need to fund the Federal Government, and at the same time to save every penny of money that came from Social Security taxes for Social Security. Many people who have followed this debate heard our Democrat colleagues spend all of yesterday saying, it is dangerous, it is irresponsible, it is reckless to let the American people keep $150 billion of this non-Social Security surplus we have in the budget because the American economy is generating more revenues than we need to pay for the current Government. The question I would ask, and that I would ask Americans as they are sitting in front of their television screens or as they are sitting around the kitchen table doing their budget, is: How come it is irresponsible for us to let working families spend $150 billion more of their own money, but it is not irresponsible to let President Clinton and Vice President Gore and the Democrats spend $388 billion of their money? How come it is irresponsible when families get a chance to keep more of what they earn, and yet it is not irresponsible to take more than twice that amount of money and spend it in Washington, DC? Why repeal the marriage penalty? Gosh, most people are shocked when they discover that we have such a thing. Let me quickly point out, I do not think anybody ever set out with a goal of imposing a penalty on marriage. When many of the provisions of the Tax Code were adopted, only 30 percent of adult women worked outside the home; now it is roughly 60 percent. The world has changed dramatically since much of the Tax Code was written. As Abraham Lincoln recognized long ago: To expect people to live under old and outmoded laws is like expecting a man to be able to wear the same clothes he wore as a boy. It just does not work. No matter who set out to do it, we have in today's Tax Code a provision of law that basically produces a situation where, if two people, both of whom work outside the home, meet and fall in love and get married, they end up paying on average about $1,400 a year in additional income taxes. Paradoxically, that is true if they meet, fall in love, and decide to get married on the last day of December. They pay $1,400 more of income taxes for the right to live in holy matrimony for one day. The number gets much bigger for working couples who make substantial income, and it gets bigger for working couples who make very moderate income. Today, if a janitor and a waitress--the janitor has three children; the waitress has four children; they are both working; they are struggling, trying to do the toughest job in the world, which is to make a single-parent home functional--meet and fall in love and have the opportunity to solve one of their great problems, by their getting married, they not only both lose their earned-income tax credit but they end up in the 28-percent tax bracket. We literally have a disincentive in the Tax Code for people to form the most powerful institution for human happiness and progress in history; that is, the family. This obviously makes no sense. Nobody argues that it makes sense. Even the people who oppose repealing it agree that the Tax Code does not make any sense. They simply want to spend the money that would be given back, and so they don't want to give it back. They don't say it makes sense. They don't say it is fair. I think it is not only unfair, it is immoral. How dare we have a Tax Code that penalizes people for getting married? So we want to repeal it. Where does the penalty come from? I know people's eyes glaze over when we talk about numbers. I will not talk about many of them today, but let me try to explain why it happens. If you are single and filing your tax return, you pay at the 15- percent rate on income up until you earn $25,750. Let's say you and your sweetheart both get out of school and begin teaching, and you both make $25,000 a year, and you are both paying 15-percent marginal tax rates. If you get married, then, at a combined income of $43,000, roughly, you go into the 28-percent tax bracket. So the first reason for the marriage penalty is that in the case of these two young people who fell in love, got married, were making $25,000 each, they were paying 15-percent marginal tax rates each, and they got married, $7,000 of their joint income is taxed at 28 percent. Secondly, the standard deduction is such that you end up losing and getting a smaller standard deduction by getting married than if you stayed single. The net result is, the standard deduction for a married couple is less than the sum of the two deductions for two individuals who are single. You get into the 15-percent tax bracket at a lower income. You get into the 28-percent tax bracket at a lower income. The bottom line is, when you take into account that rather than getting $8,600 in a combined standard deduction, you only get $7,200, and when you take into account that you get into the 28-percent tax bracket $7,000 sooner, the net result is, on average, for those Americans who fall in love and get married, they pay on average $1,400 a year for the privilege of being married. We get rid of the marriage penalty for everyone. How do we do it? First of all, we say, whether you are single or whether you are married, you get the same standard deduction. If it is you and your wife filing a joint return, you get twice what you would have gotten filing individually, or you get the combination of what she would have gotten and what you would have gotten. We then stretch the 15-percent tax bracket to assure that by getting married, married couples do not get pushed into a higher tax bracket. Then we stretch the 28-percent tax bracket to be sure that by getting married, people don't get pushed into the 31-percent tax bracket. The net result of our bill is, we totally repeal the marriage penalty. As a result, the average taxpaying family in America would get about $1,400 more that they could spend themselves on their own families. I know every time we talk about appropriations here, spending money in Washington, people talk about compassion: We are spending money on education, housing, nutrition, those things we are all for. By repealing the marriage penalty and letting families keep $1,400 of their own money to spend on their own children, they are going to spend it on education, housing, and nutrition--the education they choose, the housing they choose, and the nutrition they choose. That is what we want to do. The alternative is proposed by President Clinton. I want people to know that when the President stands up and says, I am for repealing the marriage penalty just as the Republicans are, only I want to do it differently, he is not quite leveling with you. You need to know that. How can I possibly say such a thing? First of all, when you look at the fine print of the President's tax cut, the first year, he raises taxes by $10 billion; the second year, he raises taxes by $1 billion. At the end of 5 years, which will be in the second term of the next President--or it could be two Presidents from now--finally, the Clinton plan will grant a grand total of a $5 billion tax cut. When the President is saying he gets rid of the marriage penalty, he is not leveling with you. Let us talk about who is excluded. I am sure people know the code. If they don't know the code, I want them to know it. Whenever President Clinton and Vice President Gore and the Democrats want to deny people the ability to keep money they earn, or whenever they want to raise their taxes, there is one label they always stick on them--they are ``rich.'' Every time taxes are raised, if you listen to President Clinton and Vice President Gore, we raised taxes on ``the rich.'' Go back and look at the President's tax increase he proposed in 1993. It turned out that if you were earning $25,000 a year and were drawing Social Security, you were rich. That is how they define rich. Then they had tax increases on families making $44,000 a year. Ask yourself, how did they get rich? Well, when you looked at the way President Clinton and Vice President Gore proposed their tax increase, to calculate who had to pay it, they added what you would have to pay in rent to rent your home if you owned your home, they calculated what your retirement had grown by, they calculated the value of your health insurance, they calculated the value of your parking place. Some family in Texas making $44,000 a year, thinking they were a long way from being rich, suddenly, with all of President Clinton's amazing ability to twist the facts, they were making $75,000 a year, if they owned their own home, owned their own car, had a parking place at work, if they owned life insurance. But the point was that supposedly they were rich. Now, I am sure if you followed this debate, you have heard our Democrat colleagues say that the Republican bill gives relief from the marriage penalty to people who are rich. Well, who are they talking about? Well, under the President's bill, he raises the standard deduction, though not enough to eliminate the marriage penalty coming from it, and he does nothing to eliminate the fact that young people, or people who are married, get into the 28-percent tax bracket $7,000 earlier. So when we stretch the 15-percent tax bracket, who are we helping that the President says is rich? It seems to me that is a reasonable question. Who are these rich people we are helping that the President's bill would not give the tax relief to by stretching the 15-percent tax bracket? Well, the people we are helping, as it turns out, are people who make $21,525 each. So that if you have a fireman and you have a dental technician and they meet and fall in love, under the President's notion of rich, you are rich. And to quote one of our Democrat colleagues: ``You don't deserve to have this penalty eliminated because you don't need it; you are rich.'' Under their bill, two people who get married and who each make $21,525 would be denied the relief we grant by stretching the 15-percent tax bracket. Now, ultimately, I ask people, if you are making $21,525, are you rich? You may not think you are, but realize that when President Clinton and Vice President Gore and the Democrats are talking about rich people, they are not talking about Rockefeller, they are not talking about Mellon, and they are not talking about all of these new rich people who came from the information age; they are talking about you if you make over $21,525. Under the President's proposal, he gives no marriage penalty relief if one parent stays at home. So under the President's plan, if you sacrifice and give up things in order that one parent can stay at home, you are rich. Under the President's proposal, you don't deserve any relief under eliminating the marriage penalty. Let me quickly add, I don't want to get into a judgment--and I am not going to--on whether one parent should stay at home. My mama worked my whole life because she had to. My wife has worked the whole lives of our children because she had a career and she wanted to. I think people have to make the decision for themselves. This is the point. You are not rich because you make a decision that one of you should stay home and take care of your children. The President says that if you itemize your deductions--and about half of all families who make $30,000 or more itemize deductions, and everybody does that owns a home--you are rich and therefore you don't get marriage penalty relief. The President's plan would grant marriage penalty relief at a maximum of $43.50 the first year. This is my point. Does anybody really believe that somebody making $21,525 is rich? Does anybody believe that every family in America where one of the parents stays at home with their children is rich? Does anybody believe that every family who owns a home is rich? Does anybody believe that anybody who makes $30,000 a year and itemizes on their taxes is rich? I submit that nobody believes that. But why does the President say it? Why does the Vice President say it? Why do our Democrat colleagues say it? Let me tell you the only thing I can figure out. The alternative to saying that you are against repealing the marriage penalty, because it goes to the rich, is to say you are against it because you want to spend it in Washington. I think what the President, the Vice President, and their supporters have concluded is that it is not viable to stand up on the floor of the Senate, or in front of a television camera anywhere, and say it probably is unfair that you are paying $1,400 for the right to be married; but, look, we can spend the money in Washington better than you can, and it is better to let us keep it because we will spend it and we will make you better off. I don't think anybody would believe that and so, as a result, we see an effort to confuse people by saying, well, look, we just don't want to give this to the rich. But who gets tax relief to eliminate the marriage penalty under our bill and ends up not getting the full relief under the President's bill? People making $21,525 each, people who choose to have one parent stay at home, people who own their home or itemize deductions. So the plain truth is, those are the people who are being called rich. I don't think that is an accurate portrayal of rich. But, look, what is wrong with being rich? I will address that in a moment. You have heard, and you will hear again as this debate progresses, about a marriage bonus. Let me not mince words. If there has ever been a fraudulent idea in any debate in American history, it is the marriage bonus. Clearly, some minion at IRS was ordered by a politician to give a justification for continuing the marriage penalty, and after great exertion and twisting of logic, they came up with the concept of a marriage bonus--that there are actually people getting a bonus from being married--an average of about $1,300, I think it is, for these people who supposedly get the bonus. What is this bonus? The bonus is the following thing. I have two sons; one is 24 and one is 26. They have been on my payroll for those corresponding numbers of years. I, as many parents, look forward to them being off my payroll. If a wonderful, successful girl came along and married one of them, she would get a marriage bonus. She would get to take a standard deduction by having them on her payroll instead of my payroll. She would be able to file jointly with them and stay in the 15-percent tax bracket, up to $43,000 a year. She would end up getting, on average, about an $1,300 benefit by marrying one of my sons. I would lose the benefit, but would I complain? Would this be a great economic deal for her? I mean, let's get serious. Can you feed, clothe, house, educate, and entertain somebody for $1,300 a year, or $1,400 a year, or $4,000 a year? We insult the intelligence of the American people by talking about a marriage bonus as if the piddling amount of deduction that people get when they marry someone who doesn't work outside the home as if somehow that is a bonus to them, when it is a tiny fraction of what it costs, basically, to care for someone in America. Let me say I would be willing to supplement the marriage bonus that someone would get by taking one of my sons off my payroll. Maybe for love someday it will happen. I hope so. But for economic reasons, nobody is going to marry somebody to get their standard deduction because they cannot feed them, house them, clothe them, and all the other things they need for them. Let's not insult the intelligence of the American people by sighing: Oh, yes, it is true that the average family with two members who work outside the home pay $1,400 of additional taxes for the right to be married, but there are these people who get a bonus. The bonus is a fraud. The tax penalty is very real. I want to turn to the final question. It is one about which I have thought a lot and about which I feel very strongly. That is all this business about, every time we debate anything related to the Tax Code, we are always talking about rich people. For some reason, the President and the Vice President and many members of their party believe you have to constantly divide Americans based on their income. I strongly object to it because I think it is very destructive of everything this country stands for. There are a lot of things I have always admired about my mama. But the one thing I think I admire the most is, when I was a boy and we were riding around in a car, we would ride down the nicest street in town, and my mama would almost always say, ``If you work hard and you make good grades, someday you can live in a house like that.'' By the logic of the President and the Vice President and many members of their party, my mother should have been saying: Those are rich people. They probably stole this money from us. It is outrageous that they have this money. They don't deserve this money. We ought to take some of this money away from them. If we had some landed aristocracy, or something, maybe you could make that argument. But the people who were living in those nice houses when I was growing up as a boy didn't get there by accident. Most of the people didn't inherit that money, most of them earned it. Why should they be singled out? Under their logic, my wife's father would have been a rich person to be singled out. Both his parents were immigrants. Neither of them had any formal education. He won $25 for an essay contest when he was a senior on ``What I can do to make America a greater country.'' His essay was, the only part of America he could control was himself; the only way he could make it a greater country was making something out of himself. He won $25 in 1932 for writing that essay. And he decided he was coming to the mainland from Hawaii and was going to become an engineer. He took a freighter from Hawaii, got on a train, met a boy going to an engineering school, went there, went out looking for a job, went to a restaurant, and the guy at the restaurant said: You are in luck. There is a guy coming here with a machine that says it will wash dishes. If you can outwash the machine, you have the job. Joe Lee outwashed the machine. He went on, and 3 years later he had a degree in electrical engineering. He became the first Asian American ever to be an officer of a sugar company in the history of Hawaii. Is he the kind of person we ought to hold up and say, He is rich? He was president of the Rotary Club. He was president of the Little League. He was the head lay leader of his church. Is that something in America where we single people out and say they are rich? I don't think so. There is only one form of bigotry that is still acceptable in America, and that is bigotry against the successful. It is bigotry against the people who, through their own exertions, succeed. I would just like to say, obviously, it is a free country. If the President and the Vice President and people in their party who constantly engage in this class warfare want to do it, they have a right to do it. But I don't think it is right. And I think they are stretching the truth to the breaking point when they claim that in repealing the marriage penalty, as we do that, we are helping rich people when in fact the President's proposal to ``eliminate the marriage penalty'' denies marriage penalty relief to people who earn $21,525 a year. Where I am from, that is not rich. But there is nothing wrong with being rich. Look, if we are against the marriage penalty, aren't we against it if a young lawyer and a young accountant meet and fall in love? Why should it exist for some people and not for others? Should marriage penalties be paid by people who have high incomes and not by those with low income? Our position is very simple. The marriage penalty is wrong. It is immoral. It should be repealed, and we are going to repeal it. I hope the President will sign this bill. If he doesn't, we are going to have an election. If people want it repealed, they will know how to vote. I thank my colleagues for their indulgence, having listened to speeches all yesterday about the rich and how we were trying to help them by repealing the marriage penalty. Let me simply say I thought some response was needed. Let me also say I don't have any objection to people being rich. I wish we had more rich people. When our programs are in effect, we will have more rich people because they will have more opportunity. They won't be paying the death tax, and they won't be paying the marriage penalty. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I commend our colleague from Louisiana. Today we have 130 million people who work outside the home and earn income. We have some 260 million Americans. About 30 million of them get some form of public assistance. You might ask yourself: Who takes care of the other 100 million Americans? They are taken care of by families. And the driving force is love. So not only is the distinguished Senator from Louisiana talking about saving money, but what adoptive parents will add to the equation is love and care. The whole world benefits from it. So I commend her.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter dated April 11, 2000, from myself to Senator Lott in regard to S. 2382.