Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, what is the regular order?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Massachusetts be recognized at this point for 10 minutes, and after the Senator from Massachusetts has completed his time, the majority leader be recognized.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, what is the regular order?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, first, I also wish to compliment the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss, who brought to us reconciliation instructions out of his committee which did not cut food stamps. But I do think it would be a mistake for us to tie Senator Chambliss's or anybody's hands as they move forward in conference. The language which I have concern about in this proposal is the last paragraph. Everything up to the last paragraph is OK, but that last paragraph catches you because he says: Reductions in funding for the food stamp program would constitute cuts in or loss of benefits to currently eligible individuals and families and would not come out of fraud, waste, or abuse. Well, it represents the fact that we cannot save any money from food stamps out of fraud, waste, and abuse. That is just wrong. There are ways to save money in food stamps by addressing fraud, waste, and abuse. There are a lot of ways. Anybody who has been exposed to the program knows that. I believe this instruction would be counterproductive to the flexibility that Senator Chambliss and others would like as they move forward in this conference, and I intend to vote no on it. Mr. President, I believe the yeas and nays have been ordered.

Mr. GREGG. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, we yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that on the next two votes they be 10-minute votes.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I would actually like to get a clarification from the Senator from Alabama because I know he is an expert on this issue, having been a U.S. attorney and having been one of the leading authorities on legal activity here in our country. Because earlier in the day the assistant leader from the Democratic side of the aisle came to the Senate floor and made an extensive statement about how abusive the present bill, which is being moved forward, is, and specifically toward libraries, and how, as he represented it, somebody's records could be subpoenaed from a library, basically carte blanche, and then the library would be gagged from disclosing that information. As I understood it, the bill, as it has worked its way through conference, has actually put in place stronger protections for libraries, and actually a terrorist gets more protection than, say, somebody who is in the Mafia; is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous order, the first vote be on the Carper motion to instruct, followed by the Baucus motion, and then the Harkin motion.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes on the Baucus motion.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, there is general feeling that the Baucus proposal is--I don't use this in a pejorative sense--benign enough so that everybody can agree to it. But I do think it is important to understand, relative to the Medicaid issue, that Governors, in a bipartisan way, have come forward and put down some proposals that are really creative, where they feel they can dramatically expand coverage and significantly save money. Some of those do involve using copays of some sort relative to higher income individuals. Having been a Governor--and I know there are other former Governors in this Chamber--I think the flexibility the Governors want is reasonable. I hope we will come back from conference with language that will give Governors the flexibility necessary to allow them to do creative things in the Medicaid accounts which will save us money, save the States money, and end up with more coverage. That should be our game plan-- more people being covered. I think it is doable because a creative Governor who has energy and guts and staff people who are effective-- and most Governors do--can do a lot if they are given flexibility and the ability to move forward without being straitjacketed by Federal regulations. So that will be our goal in conference. I don't think it is inconsistent with what the Senator from Montana has proposed.

Mr. GREGG. I believe we hope to follow closely the proposals of the Governors, which are bipartisan in nature, and give the Governors the flexibility they need in order to accomplish significant Medicaid reform, which will mean extending Medicaid to more people but doing it in a more efficient way, which will save us more money. We actually don't see that this language impairs that effort, and we think we can report a very effective bill with or without this language.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, this will be a 10-minute vote, as well as the following vote, so I hope Senators will stay around to accomplish those votes promptly. Second, we intend in conference, should we be successful in going to conference under the leadership of Senator Grassley, to bring back a bill which will effectively address the issues of Medicaid, and we see the opportunity here to follow very closely, hopefully, the proposals of the Governors, which are bipartisan in nature.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Chair.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Georgia for his excellent statement. He presented the themes and the basic philosophy which are behind this bill, the deficit reduction bill, which includes that we, as a government, need to come close to living within our means. Hopefully, we could live completely within our means. Secondly, the American people should not always have money taken out of their pockets to support the largess of the Federal Government. We should have a tax burden that is reasonable, but to the extent we can, we should allow Americans to keep their hard-earned money and allow them to make decisions as to where their money should go. If we increase taxes dramatically, we basically reduce the incentive of people to go out and be productive, which translates directly into a loss of jobs because people are not willing to take risks, are not willing to be entrepreneurs because if their tax burden is so high, the practical effect is they do not create jobs. A job, of course, is the ultimate economic benefit for any family. So I congratulate the Senator from Georgia. I think his statement was right on. I especially appreciate his comments relative to trying to put in context the comments of the Senator from New York because the Senator from New York used a few hyperboles, referring to ``The Grinch That Stole Christmas.'' ``How the Grinch Stole Christmas,'' of course, is a classic story. First, I congratulate her. I do congratulate her for using the term ``Christmas'' and recognizing this is the Christmas season, not the holiday season, something which my wife continually reminds me about. We don't have a holiday tree; we have a Christmas tree. But independent of that small aside, let me point out that ``How the Grinch Stole Christmas'' is a wonderful story. It was written by a fellow who went to school in New Hampshire. It is a fantasy. He wrote some other things such as ``The Cat in the Hat.'' And quite honestly, I think the Senator from New York was talking through her hat when she delivered her statement because it, first, was inconsistent with all the facts on the ground, and, second, it represented a philosophy which essentially says, as the Senator from Georgia has pointed out, if you simply tax people more, you can solve your problems as the Federal Government. All it takes is you take more of people's money and we can solve any problem around here. Where is it factually inaccurate? Well, to begin with, the deficit reduction bill which we passed was a very unique bill. It has only been done once in the last 8 years. This is the first attempt to do it again. It was unique because the way it was structured, as it came out of the Senate--and I congratulate the various chairmen who did this, especially the chairman of the HELP Committee and the chairman of the Finance Committee and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, which bore the biggest reductions here, and the chairman of the Commerce Committee. Other chairmen also participated, but they had the big, heavy lift. The way it came out of the Senate was this: It actually ended up saving about $70 billion. But there were decisions made that as we saved some of this money we should reallocate it toward better ideas and better concepts. The practical effect of this was that we significantly, under this bill, expanded the availability of loans called Pell grants to people who want to go to college, low-income people who want to go to college. We significantly expanded it. So 5 million more people, 5 million more kids who want to pursue a college career or college path are going to be able to do so under this bill because of the expansion of the Pell grants. Why was that decision made? That decision was made because we believe, as Republican Members of this Senate, that if you give people a good education, you give them a better chance to be productive, you give our Nation a better chance to be productive, that as we give more people a better education, we become globally more competitive, and we create more jobs and more economic activity in the United States. As a result, we end up probably benefiting the Federal Treasury because we have more people earning higher incomes who pay more in taxes. But we believe very strongly in that type of commitment. So this bill, rather than as was represented earlier by the Senator from New York as being some sort of a negative event around here for low-income people, was actually the most significant expansion of the Pell grant program for low-income individuals, certainly in the last 12 years since the beginning of the Pell grant program. Secondly, the bill again, under this same philosophy, dramatically expanded the availability of funds for low-income and disabled children under Medicaid. This bill, as it passed the Senate, will add 1.1 million people, make Medicaid available for 1.1 million people, basically kids who are disabled and of extremely low income so they will have health care coverage. So some of the savings we took and we applied there. In addition, the bill expanded the effort to try to help out people who have been impacted by Katrina--unfortunately, a lot of people have been devastated by that storm--and had the effect, and will have the effect, if it is passed, of helping 1.9 million people who were dramatically impacted by Katrina get Medicaid coverage. Again, that was a decision that was made to reallocate resources. So the bill itself is probably the biggest and most aggressive effort to try to help people of low income that has gone through this Senate in recent history, probably since the welfare reform bill that was signed by the husband of the Senator from New York. How were these savings generated which were able to be reallocated? Remember that the bill overall, on a net basis, as it left the Senate, saved about $39 billion. My hope is, after we go to conference, it will save about $45 billion, maybe $46 billion, maybe be as high as $48 billion, $49 billion in net savings. But there are other savings that we have taken and reallocated. Where did those savings come from? Did they come from low- and moderate-income individuals? Were they slashing programmatic activity that benefited low-income individuals, as would be represented by the statement of the Senator from New York that the Grinch has been at work? No. As I said, a more appropriate analogy would have been the Cat in the Hat because she was talking through her hat on that issue. The savings that expand the Pell grant come directly out of the lenders who, if we do not act under this bill, will realize a $12 billion windfall because the interest rate which students will have to pay will be artificially high unless we adjust that rate to appropriately reflect the marketplace. What this bill did, under the leadership of Chairman Enzi--and interestingly enough, this language came out of that committee in a bipartisan way. The Senator from New York serves on that committee, as do I. I don't think there was any opposition to this proposal. We essentially said, rather than allowing this $12 billion windfall, which will occur if we don't act by the end of the year, which will occur so that these lenders, these corporations which lend this money to students, and they do a service for the Nation by doing that, but they are getting this artificially inflated rate of return. Because of the way the law was structured, it didn't reflect the actual interest costs or what the real interest costs are today, if we don't act, they will get a $12 billion windfall. What Chairman Enzi and the HELP Committee said was: That doesn't make any sense. Let's take back that windfall, which was artificially created by Federal law, and take a significant amount of it and expand the Pell grant program so 5 million more kids will be able to get Pell grants, low-income kids. In fact, the whole program is targeted to the lowest of low-income kids who want to go to college. And take another big chunk of it and use it to reduce the debt of the Federal Government. That is a pretty logical approach, certainly not a Grinch approach. It is a rather thoughtful approach, a good approach. I would say the characterization of the Senator from New York of this bill is inconsistent with the facts on the ground and inappropriate. The Finance Committee looked at places where we could save money in the Medicaid system. It came to the conclusion that a considerable amount of money could be saved by changing the way pharmacies are reimbursed under Medicaid. So they made a decision. They said: Rather than having an artificially high reimbursement for pharmacies and drug manufacturers, they would rather more accurately reflect the cost of those drugs and what those drugs would go for on the open market and thus take the savings from that and, once again, split those savings. They said: Part of those savings should go to expand assistance to low- income kids, adding another 1.1 million kids to the SCHIP program, the Medicaid Program for low-income kids, and taking another part of the savings and applying it to debt reduction, creating a deficit reduction event. In addition, they said: Listen, if we don't do something about doctor reimbursements, doctors will end up with their fees being cut by 4.8 percent at the end of the year. We are going to have doctors dropping out of the Medicare system. That is not a very good idea. Low-income senior citizens who want to go see a doctor aren't going to have doctors to see because doctors are going to say: I am not going to practice because my income is being cut. Everytime I see one of these patients who is a Medicare patient, I am losing money. I have to pay insurance, my nurses. I have to pay my overhead. I can't take a 4.8- percent cut. So the committee said: Let's hold the doctors harmless, basically give them no cut. Well, they gave them a 1-percent increase, but it basically amounts to no cut. And they paid for that, again, by basically reducing areas of Medicare which legitimately should be reduced. Specifically, there is $5.6 billion sitting in the Medicare Part D trust fund, which is actually in Part C, but it applies to Part D, which was euphemistically called the stabilization fund, which essentially was walking-around money for the Department of Health and Human Services to basically pay out to various insurance companies, HMOs, and drug companies in order to buy them into the drug program because there was some concern that not enough people would participate in the drug program. It turns out, in every State, there has been an overwhelming number of different drug companies and insurance companies offering pharmaceuticals that have been willing to participate. In my State, we have 41 different plans. The problem isn't that there aren't enough. The problem is there are so many people getting confused as to what is available. And that is good news. We hope that there are so many participating. We hope to be able to clarify who is offering what. The fact is, the logic behind the stabilization fund didn't come to fruition. So there was no need to have this walking-around money. It has been referred to as a slush fund. So this committee decided to take that walking-around money and basically use it to make sure that patients, when they go to see somebody under Medicare, when they need a doctor, will be able to find a doctor. Tell me what is Grinchlike about that. What is Grinchlike about the idea of creating a system where there is actually a doctor when a senior citizen wants to find a doctor because they have a problem and having a proposal which accomplishes that? Obviously nothing. Once again, on the facts of it, the Senator from New York was inaccurate as to the implications of this bill and how it affects seniors and low- income seniors. Yes, this bill does reduce the debt by, as it passed the Senate, $39 billion. And I suspect if we get it back from conference, it will probably be closer to $45, $46, maybe even higher, $48 billion. Again, what is Grinchlike about that? I ask: What is wrong with reducing the Federal debt? What is the Federal debt? It is our generation spending money to benefit, in most cases, people today, and then taking the bill for that and saying to our children and our children's children: You have to pay for it. It is akin to using a credit card only you don't pay the credit card. You give the bill for the credit card to your children or grandchildren. That is not very nice. That is Grinchlike. If the Senator from New York wants to talk about something that is Grinchlike, it is having a Government that continues to run up debt for current expenses, passing those current expenses on to the next generation and the next generation after that to pay for it. That is unfair. That is stealing the Christmas of our children and our children's children or at least undermining their capacity to go out and have the funds to have as good a life as we have had. The purpose of this bill was, for the first time in 8 years, to step up to the plate on the most significant part of the Federal budget where the most money is spent and where the most growth is occurring which is the entitlement accounts. As I mentioned before, people need to understand how the Federal Government works in the area of spending. We have the account called appropriations. It represents 30 percent of the Federal Government. It is everyday expenses such as national defense, education, laying out roads, environmental expenses. Those dollars are a decision we make every year to spend. We decide to spend dollars to buy our military equipment. We decide to spend dollars to assist a State in laying out a road. But we don't have to spend that money. We can decide not to buy that piece of military equipment or not to lay out that road. We can do it every year, and it is called the appropriating process. In the appropriation accounts, we have essentially frozen spending, under this budget, under the budget which was passed in nondefense discretionary activity. But again, it only represents 30 percent of the Federal budget. The rest of the Federal budget, outside of debt financing, is entitlement spending or mandatory spending. Those are programs where people, because of their situation, or institutions or corporations, because of their situation, have the right to come to the Federal Government and get paid. They may be veterans, students, senior citizens on health care or on Medicaid or on Social Security. They have a right to that benefit because they fit certain criteria--age or income or experience. Those entitlement accounts are the fastest growing element in the Federal Government. They have been for years. Now they are projected to explode in their rate of growth because of the fact that we have something called the baby boom generation that is about to enter the Federal system. A CBO report is coming out that reflects that it is going to overwhelm our capacity as a society to support it. The concept that you can tax your way out of this, which appears to be the proposal of the Senator from New York, cannot stand in the face of facts. It cannot stand in the face of facts. Three programs--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--make up about 80 percent of the mandatory spending. Those 3 programs today absorb I think probably around 8 or 9 percent of the Federal budget. Maybe it is higher. When the full baby boom generation has retired by the year 2030, those three programs will cost the American taxpayer 20 percent of the gross national product of the Federal Government. Why is that an important number? Because 20 percent of the gross national product is how much we have, historically, as a Federal Government been willing to spend for all Government activity, including defense spending, education, environmental protection and health care for senior citizens and Social Security. But by 2030, those three programs alone will cost as much as the entire Government spends today as a percentage of our gross national product. What are the implications of that? The implications are that in order to pay for that, and to have a functioning government, you would have to raise taxes on our children and grandchildren over this 20 percent level. That number keeps going up because the unfunded liability of Medicare and Medicaid alone is $27 billion. The unfunded liability of Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid together and all of the other entitlement programs is about $44 billion. So the number keeps going up well beyond 20 percent, so by 2040 you are looking at 25 to 30 percent gross national product for those three programs. Maybe the Senator from New York is willing to raise taxes as a percentage of the gross national product well above what we have done as a Nation, generally. We have never had a tax rate which has exceeded 21 percent. That has been hit occasionally, but usually the tax rate has been about 18 percent of GDP. Once you get above 18 percent of GDP as your tax rate, you suppress the Nation's ability to be productive. People will come to the conclusion that there is no point in going out and working harder because the Federal Government is simply going to take their money. That is what happened in the late 1970s when tax rates were up to 70, 75 percent. People said: Why should I go out and work hard to produce that extra dollar? They are just going to tax it away from me. So Ronald Reagan came along, following the ideas of John Kennedy, and said: Let's cut the tax rate, and it will produce more incentive for productivity, more entrepreneurship, and therefore more jobs and more revenues, and that is exactly what happened. That is also what happened with George W. Bush. He cut the tax rate in the middle of a very severe recession, followed by the attack of 9/ 11. As a result of the tax-rate cut, we have seen a huge increase in revenues in the last 2 years. That revenue increase is a direct result of the fact that we have created an incentive for people to be productive and create jobs. So you cannot, as a practical matter, even if you wanted to do this, follow the course that has been outlined by the Senator from New York, which is essentially trying to tax your way out of the problem we confront, which is called the Federal deficit, and the spending of the Federal Government resulting from entitlement spending. The only way you can address this issue is if you take a hard look at the entitlement programs and begin to restructure them so that they become affordable for the next generation. I wish this deficit reduction bill was much more expansive than it is. I wish it took a hard look at Medicare. I wish we were addressing Social Security. Both of those issues were taken off the table through the political realities of the time. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, in I think an act of real fiscal irresponsibility, basically demagogued the President when he suggested that we address the Social Security issue. So we could not move forward on that. Regrettably, the President took Medicare off the table because he said we should let Medicare Part D go forward before we start to move to try to restructure Medicare. I think that was a mistake, but that was the decision. We were left with a narrow number of entitlement programs to look at. Even within those narrow programs, we were asked to limit significantly the scope of our review. For example, in the area of Medicaid, which we will spend $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion on over the next 5 years, our suggestion was simply to reduce that rate of growth of spending by $10 billion. So the rate of spending in Medicaid, instead of being 40.5 percent, would fall back to 40 percent. Even with that, less than a one-tenth-of-1-percent reduction in the rate of growth of Medicaid, it has been described as Grinchlike, even though none of it, as proposed in the Senate, came out of beneficiaries. In fact, as I mentioned, the number of beneficiaries that will receive Medicaid under the Senate bill will expand by 1.1 million people. Rather, the savings came out of pharmacy and drug manufacturers as a result of pricing. But that, under the theory of the Senator from New York, is Grinchlike. It is hard to accept that on its face, if you look at the facts behind this bill. But what we do know will be Grinchlike is if we pass on to our children a continued expansion of the Federal debt and deficit, so that undertakings which we pursue today as a Government that benefit people today--they are not capital expenses, but they are basically the ordinary operating expenses of the Government from day to day. Those undertakings will continue to be paid for by our children and our children's children. That would be Grinchlike. That takes away from them the opportunity to have as high a quality of life as we have had because their tax burden to pay for our bills will be added to their general tax burden to pay for their bills and, as a result, they will have less money available to do things for their kids, whether it is buying toys, putting them through college or buying a decent family home. So this deficit reduction bill, which was structured in a very careful way to make sure it expanded benefits to low-income individuals, adding 5.5 million new people to Pell grants, 1.1 million kids to Medicaid, and 1.9 million people who were impacted by Katrina relative to health care costs. At the same time, it moves forward for the first time in 8 years in an attempt to address the issue of reducing the debt. It is the right policy and it is, rather than being a Grinchlike event, truly an appropriate gift, should we get around to passing it, to our children and our children's children and to those people who benefit from this bill. Mr. President, at this point, I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, for several years the Pell Grant Program has been accumulating a shortfall. This shortfall has recently been estimated at $4.3 billion. For a program that costs around $13 billion to run each year, this is a significant problem that puts the entire program in jeopardy. The concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2006 addressed this issue by including a new scorekeeping rule to ensure that the program is fully funded each year and by providing a reserve fund to retire the $4.3 billion shortfall that has already accrued. Section 303 of H. Con. Res. 95, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2006, permits the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to make adjustments to the 302(a) allocations when certain conditions are met relating to retiring the Pell grant shortfall. These conditions having been met in the Labor-HHS appropriations conference report, I am making the reserve fund adjustment. The following table reflects revised 302(a) allocations. The revised allocations for budget authority and outlays are the appropriate levels to be used for enforcement of the congressional budget. Additionally, the Senate-passed Labor-HHS appropriations conference report included additional funds for three program integrity initiatives as specified in the 2006 congressional budget resolution, and accordingly on July 28, 2005, I submitted changes to the Appropriations Committee's discretionary 302(a) allocation, increasing both budget authority and outlays by $309 million. However, the Labor- HHS-Education conference report does not include these additional funds for the program integrity initiatives. Therefore, the discretionary 302(a) allocation will be reduced by $309 million in budget authority and outlays. Pursuant to sections 303 and 404, I hereby ask unanimous consent to have the following revisions to H. Con. Res. 95 printed in the Record.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to hold a hearing on Wednesday, December 14 regarding EPA's Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure program, specifically the issues addressed by proposed rule and guidance document issued Friday, December 2.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet in open Executive Session during the session on Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 11 a.m., to consider the nominations of Antonio Fratto, to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Public Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC; David M. Spooner, to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Import Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, DC; Vincent J. Ventimiglia, Jr., to be Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Legislation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC; Richard T. Crowder, to be Chief Agricultural Negotiator, Office of the United States Trade Representative, Washington, DC; Jeffrey Robert Brown, to be Member of Social Security Advisory Board, Social Security Administration, Baltimore, MD; and David Steele Bohigian, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Market Access and Compliance, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, DC.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are now proceeding to try to appoint conferees for the purposes of passing, hopefully, at some point, the deficit reduction bill which would reduce the deficit of the United States by $45 to $48, maybe $49 billion and, thus, reduce the debt of the United States and be the first piece of legislation passed in the last 8 years which attempts to address one of the most serious issues we have as a matter of Federal spending policy, which is the issue of how we bring under control our entitlement accounts. It is important, as we move down this road, that we once again set the table as to what the issues are. It is a complex issue, and it is one which a lot of people who are not focusing on it probably do not really appreciate the subtleties because it is something that takes a certain amount of expertise or at least a fair amount of time relative to understanding it. The way the Federal spending process works is that there are essentially two different sets of accounts. One is discretionary. Those are accounts that we spend every year. They are for things such as national defense, education, environmental cleanup, health care, items which every year need to be appropriated. That is called the appropriations bills. They represent about a third of the Federal spending. Another set of accounts is entitlement accounts. Entitlement accounts are programs from which you, as American citizens or an organization, have a right to receive a payment. It is not a question of being appropriated. In other words, there doesn't have to be a law passed every year for you to get that expenditure like you have to do with national defense. Rather, this money, you have a right to because the law says you meet certain criteria. You may be a veteran. You may be a student going to college and you have a right to a student loan. You may be a senior citizen who is retired and you have a right to Social Security payments and you have a right to health care payments. You may be a low-income individual and you have a right to Medicaid payments. The problem we confront in the Federal Government is that although the discretionary accounts have been held at a very low rate of increase--in fact, nondefense discretionary funding has essentially been frozen under the budget resolution we passed. That freeze has been enforced through what is known as spending caps, where in order to go past this essential freeze, you have to have a supermajority to do it. On the entitlement side, there is no way in the regular order of the Senate to control the rate of growth in entitlement spending because, for a certain number of people or programmatic activity, the payment must be made. We confront a fiscal tsunami, driven by the fact that we are facing the largest retired generation in the history of this country, the baby boomers. As Chairman Greenspan pointed out in what was essentially his wrap-up statement as to what he thought were the concerns we as a Nation should be looking at in the area of fiscal policy--or maybe not his last statement but maybe a major policy statement made in London. He said the one thing that most concerned him was the fact that the baby boom generation--this large generation born after World War II, through the 1950s--when it hits the retirement system, tremendous demands are going to be put on the Federal Treasury and, therefore, on the taxpayers of the country--the younger generation who are trying to earn and have a good lifestyle--are going to be overwhelmed. We are essentially going to confront the situation where we will have so many people retired compared to the number of people working that those people who are working are going to have to pay a disproportionate amount of their income in order to support the retired generation, and it will be to a level that will essentially eliminate or dramatically reduce our children's and grandchildren's ability to have a quality lifestyle. These pages today are going to have a tax burden that is so high that basically their ability to buy a house, to send their children to college, to have a quality of life that is equal to or better than ours--which is, of course, what we hope to pass on to our children-- will be dramatically reduced. To put this in context of dollars--and the dollars are so big it is hard to understand it--there is presently $47 trillion of unfunded liability out there to support the generation that is about to hit the retirement system. That is an unfunded liability. That means there is no way anybody knows how to pay for those programs. The vast majority of that is in the health care area, where there is about $24 trillion of unfunded liability between the Medicare and the Medicaid systems. Those numbers were not numbers I thought up or even that CBO thought up or OMB thought up, the in-house accounting groups we turn to for advice. Those numbers came from the independent, totally objective source of the Comptroller's office. So we confront this huge cost, and the issue for us as policymakers and as shepherds of hopefully a better America for our children is how do we address that so we don't pass on to them this massive debt. In the last 8 years, we have done nothing about the entitlements. This section of the Federal spending apparatus has basically been ignored, except that new programs have been added. In the last 4 years, we have seen the largest increase in the history of the country added to entitlements in the prescription drug program, an $8 trillion unfunded liability in that program. So this year in the budget process, the Republican majority, with the exception of a few Members, decided that we would try, for the first time in 8 years, to actually do something about the entitlement accounts, and we passed something called reconciliation instructions, which essentially is a program by which we say as a Congress to the committees of jurisdiction, look at your entitlement spending programs, look at the health care programs, the farm programs, the various education programs and see if there is not some way, without significantly impacting the quality of those programs or the economic integrity of those programs or the benefit of those programs to the people--isn't there some way we can rein in their rate of growth so they will be more affordable for our children's generation to pay for it. It is the first time we have tried this in 8 years. We didn't pick a big number to hit. It is a big number, but in the context of the Federal spending it is not that big a number. For example, in the Medicaid area, we suggested that the rate of growth be slowed by $10 billion. That is a big number, but in the context of total Medicaid spending, it is not. Total Medicaid spending over the 5-year period, which we asked for a $10 billion savings in, will be $1.2 trillion. So $10 billion is actually less than one-tenth of 1 percent of that total spending, and it will slow the rate of growth of Medicaid spending from somewhere around 40.5 percent down to 40 percent. That is the rate of growth. Forty-percent growth will still occur in the Medicaid account, even if we hit the target that the Senate has proposed. So we are trying as a Congress now to reach agreement on this package of proposals to rein in the rate of growth of Medicaid spending and other entitlement account spending, and we hope to have a package within the $40 billion to $50 billion range. That is a big number, but today we need to get to conference to do that. We have to meet with the House. That is the way it works. We have to go to conference and talk about it. Some would like to give instructions to the conference as to what the conference should do. Now, it is the legitimate right of everybody in the Senate to offer a motion of instruction before you go to conference. That is so the other side of the aisle, coupled with some Members on our side, have asked to set up a set of motions for instructions. I believe seven will be proposed, and we will hopefully get a vote on conferees. There is an irony to this--in fact, it is more than irony. Other terms may be more appropriate, but I will not use them. But in every instance the people who are offering--the primary offerers--the motions to instruct conferees did not vote for the budget. None of them. They did not vote for the budget. There was one cosponsor of one of these who did vote for it, and I appreciate her vote; it was the Senator from Maine, Ms. Collins. But she is not the prime sponsor of it. The prime sponsors of those proposals did not vote for the budget. They not only didn't vote for the budget which had in place the spending restraint which froze discretionary spending and put into place the caps necessary to control discretionary spending and put in place the entitlement reconciliation instructions which would allow us to move forward with a reconciliation bill and try to control spending--so the sponsors of these instructions didn't vote for any spending restraint proposals and now they want to instruct the conference as to how to proceed. And then having not voted for the budget when the reconciliation bill came to the floor, which bill involved, when it passed the Senate, $3 billion of savings, deficit reduction, savings in spending, deficit reduction--they didn't vote for that--none of the sponsors of these motions to instruct the conferees voted to control spending by voting for the deficit reduction package or to control spending by voting for a budget. And now they come to the floor in an act of what I think is exceptional irony, and they wish to advise and tell and instruct the people who are going to try to put together a bill to reduce the deficit and reduce the debt as to what should be done. And in most instances, most of these instructions don't reduce the debt, don't reduce the deficit, but actually increase the debt and increase spending. As was noted yesterday by the Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the committee that has jurisdiction over this issue, the trade instruction in this bill, which is directed at a special interest program, will actually cost the American taxpayers about $3 billion. So having voted against the budget to reduce spending, having voted against the deficit reduction bill to reduce spending, they now come to the floor and in an act of extraordinary irony suggest instructing the people who are trying to put together some fiscal responsibility around here that they should spend more money or should have less available to spend. I think these motions to instruct should be taken with a large grain of salt because of that fact. It would be credible if somebody who had voted for this deficit reduction bill offered a motion to instruct, especially if it is was an instruction, hopefully, to get more deficit reduction, and it would be credible if somebody who had voted for the budget resolution offered an instruction. But most of these instruction requests are not being offered in the context of trying to save funds, reduce the deficit, and reduce the debt, but are actually being offered for the purposes of increasing spending, increasing the debt, and increasing the deficit. So we go forward with this exercise today of motions to instruct, but I think they need to be put in context, and that is what I have tried to do. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are trying, as the Senate and as a Congress, to wrap up the business for the Government this year. A major part of that effort is to complete the budget process. Included in the budget were two directions to the Congress, which were voted in by a majority of the Congress--regrettably, very few people from the other side of the aisle supported it--and one of the directions was, for the first time in 8 years, to attempt to bring under control the rate of growth of entitlement spending. Anybody who looks reasonably at the Federal Government--and let's take an independent view here and the view specifically of Chairman Greenspan, who recently gave a speech in London where he pointed out that the biggest concern he has from the standpoint of fiscal policy was the burgeoning costs of the Federal Government which were being driven by entitlement spending, and which would explode as the baby boom generation began to retire in 2008 and become an untenable burden for the children of the baby boom generation and their children as they have to pay the taxes or costs of supporting that retired generation which is so large. This bill, in what I consider to be the first act of fiscal responsibility of significance in the last 8 years, moved legislation that said the Congress, for the first time in 8 years, will address the issue of entitlements. Now, the savings being projected in the bill were not that dramatic and they continue to be not that dramatic. They are large numbers, obviously, but in the context of the total spending on entitlements, they are not that large. For example, the savings that are being projected in the area of Medicaid are about $10 billion over 5 years. But what you have to understand--and that is a big number--is over that period, Medicaid will be spending approximately $1.4 trillion--trillion dollars. So we are actually asking for less than a one-tenth of 1 percent reduction in the rate of growth in Medicaid, and Medicaid during that period will grow at 40 percent--a 40-percent growth rate over those 5 years, down from 41 percent, assuming we make the $10 billion reduction over the 10 years in the rate of growth. The total deficit reduction bill was to be somewhere in the range of $35 billion to $50 billion, depending on which bill was taken from which House. It left the Senate at $39 billion and left the House of Representatives at about $50 billion, $51 billion, something like that; I am not sure. In any event, it is going to fall somewhere between those two numbers. We as a Congress hopefully can pass legislation that accomplishes that goal which starts to reduce the rate of growth of entitlements and reduces the debt of the Government to at least $40 billion--hopefully more than that, $45 billion, $46 billion over the next 5 years. This is the responsible thing to do, and it will be the first act of significant fiscal responsibility in which we have participated in a while around here as we continue to pass in the entitlement area--there has been significant fiscal responsibility in the nondefense discretionary area executed by the Appropriations Committee under, again, the budget which essentially froze nondefense discretionary spending and put in place what is known as caps so we can enforce them. Ironically, none of these proposals for fiscal responsibility put in place have received any significant support from the other side of the aisle. When the budget passed this Congress, I don't think any Members from the other side of the aisle voted for it. When the reconciliation bill passed this Congress, two Members from the other side of the aisle--I appreciate it very much--the Senator from Louisiana and the Senator from Nebraska voted for it, but other than that, no one else on the other side of the aisle voted for fiscal responsibility or an attempt to reduce the rate of growth of the Government. So this has become a lifting exercise in which, for all practical purposes, Republican Members of the Congress appear to be ready to participate. Yet today we are hearing from the other side of the aisle that they want to instruct the conferees of a bill, against which they voted-- they voted against the budget, which was the underlying bill--instruct the conferees how the conference should occur. I find that to be a touch inconsistent--to be kind, a touch inconsistent, a big touch inconsistent, to be honest. Here they are, folks who have not voted for any fiscal restraint and, in fact, as we moved through the appropriations process have suggested that we add $500 billion of new spending to the Federal Government under the appropriations process, which is not, by the way, impacted under this deficit reduction bill because this is entitlement activity, the two accounts being separate, appropriations being one-time annual expenditures of the Government, entitlements being programs which people have a right to and, therefore, they can go out and receive funding. They may be veterans, they may be low-income individuals, they may be students--they have a right to receive funding. It goes on independent of annual legislation. As I said, the other side of the aisle not only has not supported the efforts of fiscal responsibility by voting for either the budget or the vast majority, with the two exceptions I mentioned, not voting for a deficit reduction bill, but now come forward with a series of what are going to be instructions to the conferees as to how the conferees should act after they voted against passing the bill and moving forward with the legislation. Chutzpah is an understatement for that type of approach. Let's just take one or two examples and discuss them for a second. For example, the Senator from Rhode Island was talking about LIHEAP. There is significant irony in the position of the Senator from Rhode Island--significant irony. To begin with, he voted against the one proposal that we could have passed--which was funded--which would have funded LIHEAP to keep people protected from the increase in oil costs. It was paid for. That amendment was offered by myself. It was paid for with an across-the-board cut in the Labor-HHS bill. It would have fully funded the LIHEAP account at a level which would have held harmless everybody who receives LIHEAP money, low-income energy assistance, because we all realize the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program is a critical program and there is going to be significant stress, especially in the Northern States, as a result of the increased costs of the price of oil. And yet this was opposed. When this opportunity came along, it was opposed for political reasons, if nothing else, I suspect, because they wanted to make a claim that they were going to fund LIHEAP at a level that was significantly higher than what CBO and what the Energy Department and what everyone else said was needed, including the Health and Human Services Department, to hold the program harmless, to keep the people funded who needed to be funded. That increase, which was required, was a $1.2 billion increase. You don't have to listen to me to believe that. Take a look at the letter the Senator from Rhode Island sent out asking that the funding in LIHEAP be increased--it was signed by I think 44 Members of the Senate--be at a level that held harmless the system so people who receive money under LIHEAP would get the money they needed. What was the number in that letter? The number was $1.2 billion. But suddenly, in order to promote an agenda which had nothing to do with making sure the people were held harmless but had a lot to do with maybe headlines, we find the number being asked for is another $1.5 billion on top of that. It is not paid for, not offset. Just run up the debt and put money into an account far in excess of what that account needs to do the job right. In fact, as a result of the warm season in November in many of the Northern States and the result of the softening, to some degree, of oil prices, especially home heating oil prices, the number has now dropped. It is down below $1.2 billion, according to the estimates I have been seeing, to hold the system harmless. I am still willing to go to the $1.2 billion level and have it paid for. That is the way it should be done. You have to set priorities. You live in a household, and this is all about households trying to make ends meet. They set priorities. One of the priorities should be that the Federal Government should not pass the bills in an energy program today which pays for oil that is purchased today and given out today on to our children and our grandchildren to pay through debt. We should pay for it ourselves. We should be willing as a Congress to step up and say: Yes, this is an important program; yes, it should be funded at a level that holds everybody harmless and makes sure they get the support they need, but also it should be paid for by the generation that is going to benefit from it or at least the Government that is taking advantage of it. It should not be passed on to the next generation as a bill to our kids because our kids are also probably going to have cold winters, and they sure are going to have tough energy issues because we haven't solved any of those issues around here. We passed an energy bill that was filled with a lot of vertical subsidies but didn't have a whole lot of good energy policy in it; a little bit, a little bit of good energy policy and a lot of bad policy which was basically driven by interest groups around here, but it sure didn't do anything to make us more long-term solvent in the area of energy. One item that might address that is the issue of producing more energy for our country, and that, of course, is a big issue in this bill, and we will get into that in a later discussion. The point here is we are being asked to vote for the reconciliation bill when it comes out of conference. We are being asked to instruct the conferees to add another $2.9 billion of debt onto our children's backs rather than doing an appropriate action which is what I suspect the conference will do, which is increase the money in the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program by $1.2 billion, or something in that range, and have it paid for within the context of the entire deficit reduction bill, which is the fiscally responsible way to approach this issue. This will make a good press release, and it will obviously make a good political ad, but I hope there will be a followup statement and maybe even a followup political ad, maybe paid for by our kids or grandkids which says: Hey, why are you doing this to us? Why do you not take responsibility for your generations? Why are you giving us a bill for oil and heat for this year when we may have the same bills to deal with when we retire or when our children have to take care of us in retirement 10, 15 years from now? Let us do this the right way. Let us make this system solvent, not only solvent but make the system--put in the system the funds that are necessary to make sure that people who need the low-income energy assistance can get it under the higher oil prices, and then let us pay for it. Set a priority and say there are some things we can afford, some things we cannot afford, and in the Federal Government let us make the decisions to reduce the things we cannot afford and pay for the things we need, which specifically would be this proposal for low- income energy assistance at $1.2 billion. But that is not the politics of this institution. So I do hope we will pass a reconciliation bill, otherwise known as a deficit reduction bill, and I do hope it will step forward and reduce the debt by somewhere around $45 billion or $46 billion, maybe more, and that in that process we will address the low-income energy assistance program and make sure that it is funded at a level that is necessary in order to make sure people are held harmless, and low-income individuals who need energy can afford it to heat their homes and do not have to make difficult choices. But we should all do it within the context of prioritizing the responsibilities of the Federal Government today and not pass our responsibilities today on to our children and our children's children tomorrow by deficit-financing this event. So we are going to get these instructions. I guess there has been some unanimous consent agreement worked out. There are going to be about seven proposals, instructions to conferees. I just hope that as we go through these instructions people will have the intellectual integrity to ask the question, if they did not vote for the bill, if they did not vote for the budget which was trying to control spending, and they did not vote for the deficit reduction bill which is trying to control spending, why are they coming to the floor and suddenly telling the conferees how they should go about hitting their targets which are part of the bill, which they did not vote for, and they do not support? Maybe we will hear somebody preface their request for instructions with an explanation of that point. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I ask for the regular order, Mr. President.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I hereby submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office under Section 308(b) and in aid of section 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. This report meets the requirements for Senate scorekeeping of section 5 of S. Con. Res. 32, the first concurrent resolution on the budget for 1986. This report shows the effects of congressional action on the 2006 budget through November 16, 2005. The estimates of budget authority, outlays, and revenues are consistent with the technical and economic assumptions of the 2006 concurrent resolution on the budget, H. Con. Res. 95. Pursuant to section 402 of that resolution, provisions designated as emergency requirements are exempt from enforcement of the budget resolution. As a result, the attached report excludes these amounts. The estimates show that current level spending is under the budget resolution by $26.874 billion in budget authority and by $10.974 billion in outlays in 2006. Current level for revenues is $17.308 billion above the budget resolution in 2006. Since my last report, dated September 26, 2005, the Congress has cleared and the President has signed the following acts that changed budget authority, outlays, or revenues: An act making continuing appropriations for Fiscal Year 2006, P.L. 109-77; Natural Disaster Student Aid Fairness Act, P.L. 109-86; Community Disaster Loan Act of 2005, P.L. 109-88; Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2006, P.L. 109-90; Medicare Cost Sharing and Welfare Extension Act of 2005, P.L. 109-91; Agriculture Appropriations Act, 2006, P.L. 109-97; An act to extend the special postage stamp for breast cancer research for 2 years, P.L. 109-100; and, Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, 2006, P.L. 109-102. In addition, the Congress has cleared the Energy and Water Appropriations Act, 2006, H.R. 2419, and the State, Justice, and Commerce Appropriations Act, 2006, H.R. 2862. I ask unanimous comment that the report be printed in the Record.