Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. I ask to speak for 1 minute.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the amendment is not germane to the provisions of the reconciliation bill. I, therefore, raise a point of order against the amendment under section 305(b)(2) of the Budget Act.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment. This is another effort to cut our marginal tax rate cuts by $150 billion. I defer to the Senator from Oregon for further comment.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment. I am going to offer the rest of my time to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, not only is this amendment a bad amendment but the information just given out is erroneous. It is wrong. It is bad. Every taxpayer who pays income tax gets a marginal rate tax cut under this bill. Let's make that clear. Every taxpayer gets a tax reduction. I do not know how many amendments we have had on this bill to kill the marginal rate tax reductions we have. We have had a flood of amendments from the other party. Not one amendment from the other party has been adopted yet. And I have to wonder, what has happened to bipartisanship? Is bipartisanship dead and buried, when just 5 months ago we talked so much about it? If so, I and Senator Baucus have not been invited to the funeral. I urge the defeat of this amendment.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank Senator Corzine for recognizing some of our work regarding long-term health care financing challenges. However, in addition to this amendment, we have had others that don't seem to recognize the Senate Finance Committee's function. We have held hearings on this very subject. As I said, I am very committed to working at finding solutions to long-term financing challenges. In fact, I have introduced such a bill with Senator Graham of Florida. The impending retirement of baby boom generations presents a great incentive to act soon. What this motion doesn't recognize is that we do taxes one time and we will do long-term health care another time. We can do both. This bill is not the appropriate vehicle. This amendment will delay the tax reduction for working families. I hope we can defeat this motion. I see it as a continuing effort to kill the bill. I raise a point of germaneness. The amendment is not germane to the provisions of the reconciliation measure. I therefore raise a point of order against the amendment under section 305(b)(2) of the Budget Act.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, common sense tells me we cannot have it both ways, on the one hand telling the country we need an immediate tax cut stimulus and on the other hand vote after vote delaying this bill. To pay for these checks, the Joint Tax Committee estimates the Secretary of Treasury will have to increase taxes on small business owners by about $24 billion. This amendment is also unconstitutional from the standpoint that article I, section 7, gives Congress the taxing powers, not the Secretary of Treasury. If we can pass this bill today, I believe we could be on our way to putting more cash in families' hands by July 1 with the changes in W-2s that will result with the 10-percent rate going into effect January 1 this year.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes. I appreciate very much what the Senator said. I hope we can have such a list. We need to proceed in the bipartisan spirit under which Senator Baucus and I have been working and try to bring this bill to finality. We have been able to defeat most amendments that have come before us. We know what this bill is going to look like for final passage and that we ought to get to final passage. Amendment No. 693

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, also, as a matter of procedure, we are getting down to five or six amendments. I hope the minority whip or somebody on that side has a list of amendments that may be proposed but have not been seen on this side. I ask if we can have that shared with us so we can get a better idea of what we have left to do. Quite frankly, for Senator Baucus and me, it is a little difficult to manage all these amendments when we do not know what they are or when they are coming up. I would also like to pursue an agreement to finalize a list so we can get our work done. I wonder if somebody on the other side of the aisle can help us with that? In that regard I know there are people who think this bill came up too soon after it came out of committee, but the leader was asking me Tuesday night to bring this up Wednesday, after we voted it out of committee. I thought that was too soon. Senator Baucus said he did not want to bring it up that early. I just took it upon myself to say I would not file the papers until it came up on Thursday so we would have an opportunity for people to have access to the language of the bill to write amendments. I hope we will have the courtesy, then, of seeing the amendments that might come up and know how many there are. I see the distinguished Democratic whip, and I wonder if he can respond to my request. My request is, if there is a list of amendments, could we have that list of amendments so we know what our work is going to be.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, this is for the information of all of my colleagues. A number of Senators, obviously, will want to take a break for a quick lunch. I ask unanimous consent that we continue to vote another time or two until we approach 1 o'clock and then recess for 30 minutes until 1:30 p.m.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise to make a unanimous consent request.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, Senator Harkin asked me if we could pass over his amendment temporarily and go on to another amendment. Amendment No. 711

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I think we went through similar debate and a vote yesterday on an approach by the senior Senator from West Virginia. So here we are again. In March, we heard from people on the other side of the aisle that we need an economic stimulus immediately. And now we see an amendment--and it isn't just this amendment; it is amendment after amendment--seeking to delay the tax reduction. This is another attempt to delay a tax cut until other programs are passed. We are working on making sure that Social Security and Medicare are solvent. Our budget agreement of 2 weeks ago speaks to that. And that does not mean we cannot provide tax relief for American taxpayers, and do it right now. I strongly urge the defeat of the amendment. Mr. President, this amendment is not germane to the provisions of the reconciliation bill before us. I raise a point of order against the amendment under section 305(b)(2) of the Budget Act.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Every Member of this Congress knows that we ought to do more about the alternative minimum tax than we do in this bill, or that is possible to do at all. It is a major problem that needs to be addressed. We have made good steps to address it by having the child credit be credited permanently against the AMT and, secondly, by increasing the AMT exemption to $2,000 for singles and $4,000 for joint returns. These are good steps that will mean millions of Americans will not be subject to the AMT. These efforts in the bill go far to address the concerns raised in this amendment--specifically, that those making less than $100,000 should not be subject to the AMT. I think we have achieved a good balance in this bill on the AMT with other priorities, and this amendment would upset this balance and this bipartisan bill.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President,I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 1727, which is at the desk.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we voted on 3 amendments last week, 17 amendments yesterday, 27 amendments today. That is an awful lot of amendments on a bill that should have been done after 20 hours, plus a few votes. We have had a flood of amendments, and almost all of them have come from the other party. Not one amendment from the other party has passed yet. That is after 3 last week, 17 yesterday, and 27 today. When is enough enough? I ask this question in the spirit of bipartisanship that Senator Baucus and I have worked on since the first of the week and the entire work of the Senate Finance Committee, in the spirit of how the Finance Committee has always worked, and also in the spirit of the bipartisanship talked about 5 months ago in the new Congress. Why in the new Congress? Because it is the first time in 120 years the Senate has been evenly divided. I hope that bipartisanship is not dead. But if bipartisanship is dead and buried within the last 5 months of this new Congress, I have not been invited to the funeral, and I don't think Senator Baucus was invited either. Senator Baucus and I have been working on this tax bill since January. That was right around the time the leaders of this body worked out power sharing. We all knew from the beginning that shared power brings shared responsibility. Where is the responsibility to get the people's work done? Where is the responsibility to finish legislation that has been worked upon for months by a committee of this Senate, one of the most powerful committees of this Senate? Where is the responsibility to finish legislation that is the product of the bipartisanship that is known to be a product of the Finance Committee or the bipartisanship that was asked for in January? Where is the responsibility to finish legislation that has ample bipartisan support to pass? When this bill finally gets to that final rollcall vote, people are going to be shocked how many people are going to vote for this bill on final passage. Bipartisan, again. Then, in the meantime, we are putting up with 27 rollcalls today, 17 rollcalls yesterday, 3 rollcalls last Thursday. Three long days of work on this bill, and we still do not see light at the end of the tunnel because there are stalling tactics that for some reason or another go beyond the protection of a minority within the Senate. I don't argue with that protection of the minority. There is only one political institution in the United States Government where minority views are protected. Those are in the Senate of the United States. There are all sorts of rules to protect the minority. But there also can be abuse of the protection that is granted the minority, way beyond what was ever intended by the people who wrote our Constitution or established the traditions and the rules of the Senate. There is a time when statesmanship has to be above pure politics meant to kill tax relief for American taxpayers, a tax relief that is the third greatest in the last 50 years and the greatest in the last 20 years. There has to be a time when examples of bipartisanship have to be followed by those who are calling for bipartisanship. I think Senator Baucus and I have established a good tradition of bipartisanship, a tradition of bipartisanship that I hope will not only help get a bipartisan vote on this bill tomorrow or the next day, a bipartisan vote on a product coming out of conference but, more importantly, as I said in my opening remarks last Thursday on this bill, a bipartisanship that will continue for many important issues that this Senate has to work on the rest of this year and next year. There is a long list of trade legislation our committee must produce. There is the issue that was most important in the Presidential campaign of both candidates: prescription drugs for seniors and how that impacts upon the whole Medicare program. There are the problems of dealing with the uninsured, the people who do not have health insurance. That is something that was involved in candidate Gore's campaign and Candidate Bush's campaign with which we must deal. There are issues of helping with tax incentives for people to save and to have better opportunities for pensions. There are the issues dealing with tax credits for higher education and the issue of education savings accounts. You can go on and on. But most of the major issues were part of the Presidential campaign, and for the most part to some degree or another were part of the campaigns of each candidate for President in the last election. Consequently, they have a right to be on the agenda. We have a responsibility to make sure they are not only on the agenda but are carried out. So I hope what Senator Baucus and I have been working on since the first of the year will help produce further agreements. Some of them may be even more important than this tax bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Grassley and Senator Dodd.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. For the information of all Senators, the Senate will continue voting on reconciliation amendments as we have done for the past 19\1/2\ consecutive Senate hours. Votes will occur every 10 to 15 minutes until otherwise notified. It is hoped the Senate can pass this important tax bill early tomorrow so we can resume consideration of the education bill in a timely manner. Votes can be expected throughout the week.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until the hour of 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 23. I further ask unanimous consent that on Wednesday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then resume consideration of the tax reconciliation bill.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.