Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. We do not have any time on this side.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG. I yield back such time as I have.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, what is the time?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I had the great good fortune when I went to college to be taught by one of the historically strongest history professors in our Nation, a man named David Truman. He went on to be president of Mount Holyoke. He wrote probably the definitive treatise on American Government. One chapter in that treatise was dedicated to committees and commissions. He said that the commission is the place where you send issues when you do not want to have to deal with them, when you want to ignore them, when you want to obfuscate the issue, and when you want to basically kick the can down the road. He was a brilliant professor and usually right, and in this case obviously totally correct. This amendment, if it is adopted, will guarantee that the issue of Medicaid is not addressed. That is a guarantee in this decade. It does not kick the can down the road, it kicks the can down the road a decade because we will not do reconciliation again for a long time, I suspect. Next year is an election year, and Congresses are not inclined to make tough choices in election years. It has been 10 years since we did the last reconciliation bill, so it is unlikely reconciliation will occur again. And we are not going to pass in this Congress a bill which reforms a significant program on the entitlement side without using reconciliation because the courage simply is not here. So let's talk about why it is absolutely critical that this year we address the Medicaid issue and why it is not going to impact any children and why all this ``wearing your heart on the sleeve'' language we heard around here is a large amount of puffery. We had some very disturbing testimony--and I believe that is the term used by the Senator from North Dakota, and it is accurate--from the Comptroller of the Currency as we talked about the liabilities already on the books that our children are going to have to pay because our generation put them on the books. They add up now to $44 trillion. That is ``trillion'' dollars. Mr. President, $44 trillion of liabilities is already on the books. This chart shows that, $44 trillion. To try to put that in perspective because a trillion dollars is something nobody can understand. If you take all the taxes paid in America since the Revolution, it adds up to $38 trillion. So we have on the books more liabilities today than taxes paid in this country in the history of this country. In fact, if you take the entire net worth of the United States today, and every American adds up all their net worth--all their houses, all their cars, all their jewelry, whatever they have, stocks, bonds, assets, real estate, it comes to $47 trillion. So we have on the books almost as much obligation as we have net worth. The practical effect of that is that we are overwhelming the next generation with obligations which they will have to pay. Our children and our grandchildren are going to have to pay the taxes to support that $44 trillion worth of obligations we put on the books. So it is important that we look at from where those obligations come. They come primarily from what is known as entitlement accounts, specifically three major accounts: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In fact, the vast majority of them do not come from Social Security, they come from Medicare and Medicaid. Health care represents $27 trillion of that $44 trillion of costs that are on the books that our children are going to have to pay because we have already committed them to do that to support the baby boom generation when it retires. It is entitlements that are the issue. My colleagues have come forward and said: But we do not have to deal with Social Security, even though the President has been willing to discuss it. We do not have to deal with it, no; stiff arm Social Security. OK, that is off the table. The President says he just amended the Medicare law, so he does not want to move on Medicare this year. OK, that is off the table. That leaves one issue, one major program that should be looked at this year at least, and that, of course, is Medicaid. The other side of the aisle and three speakers this morning have already said you can just address this problem by raising taxes. I note--it does not appear to be anybody has focused on this at all--but the amendment before us does not raise taxes, it raises the deficit. We heard all of yesterday, the day before, and the day before that how the other side of the aisle did not want to raise the deficit; they wanted to be the party that was opposed to deficit spending. Today they come forward and the vast majority of the people sponsoring and supporting the program, the bill before us, which dramatically raises the deficit by $14 billion in the 5-year period, something like $60 billion in the 10-year period. But even if you accept the fact that they want to raise taxes to pay for it, the issue is, Could you solve this problem, this outyear liability that is caused by all these entitlement accounts, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, by raising taxes? You cannot do it. This chart shows it so clearly. The cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is the red line here. The blue line is the historical amount that the Federal Government spends, 20 percent of GDP. That is what we have historically spent, since World War II, essentially. You can see that the red line crosses the blue line in about the year 2029, 2028, in that period. These three programs--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--will actually cost the Federal Government more than 20 percent of the gross national product. What does that mean in practical terms? It means you wouldn't be able to spend any money on education, any money on roads, any money on national defense, because the entire Federal Government would be absorbed by paying for these three programs. Or, alternatively, you could take the approach the other side wants to take, which is raise taxes. If you did that, you would have to double the tax rate on Americans in order to pay for this program. Working Americans, young Americans, these pages who are here today and are going to get a job, would find their ability to have a decent lifestyle would be dramatically reduced because they would have to pay twice as much in taxes as our generation has paid in order to support these Federal programs which are already on the books. You cannot tax your way out of this. I don't care if you confiscate all the income of the two top brackets, you cannot get this system under control through taxes. You have to address the other side of the ledger, which is spending responsibly on these programs. That is what this bill tries to do. That is what the budget tries to do. In a most minor way, a minuscule way, almost, we suggest in this budget we want to save $15 billion in the rate of growth--not cuts--in the rate of growth of Medicaid over the next 5 years; $15 billion. You say $15 billion is a lot of money. It is a lot of money, but you have to put it in context. Over the next 5 years, the Medicaid system is going to spend $1.12 trillion--that is trillion with a ``t''--and $15 billion on that amount is 1 percent, essentially. What we are actually trying to save in this bill is $14 billion. This chart shows it. Medicaid spending will go up dramatically. It will go up by 39 percent. It will not go up by 41 percent. That is what it would do. It would go up by 41 percent if this bill doesn't go into place, but if this bill goes into place, it will go up by 39 percent. A 39-percent rate of growth in this program is what we are planning. We have heard people come down here, especially the Senator from Oregon, and say if this language passes, lives will be lost. I think he said that. Children will be lost. That is absurd, misleading, inaccurate, and a total gross exaggeration. I wish the Senator had been a Governor because he would know that the Medicaid system today does not benefit children as much as he thinks it does. There is a large chunk of the Medicaid system today which is being gamed out of the system by States and being used in the general operations by the States to build roads, to put police officers on the road--a large chunk of it. That could be saved. There is a large chunk of the Medicaid system today which is going to pharmaceuticals to pay dramatically more than what we pay under any other program for pharmaceutical products. That could be saved. There is a large chunk of the Medicaid system today which is going to people who are gaming the system by what is known as spending down. That is when you, in a rather fraudulent way, get rid of your assets-- give them to your kids or give them to somebody else in your family so that you can then come to the Government and say, Support me in a nursing home. So all the other Americans in this country who are playing by the rules end up supporting people who are breaking the rules and who are gaming the system through spending down. Huge amounts of dollars are pouring out of the system under those accounts. A lot of money is being lost in this system simply because it is inefficiently run, because the Governors do not have the flexibility they need in order to get more service because they know how to deliver it, but instead they are hamstrung by all sorts of rules and regulations which make no sense to them and which undermine their capacity to deliver the service efficiently. The President and innumerable Governors, responsible Governors in this country, have come forward and said you give more flexibility to the Governors and they can take a little less rate of increase in spending and deliver much more service to many more kids. So this concept that you cannot get to this 1-percent savings, that you cannot live on a 39-percent rate of growth in Medicaid without having children lose their lives and be not able to go to the emergency room for care, is scare tactics. Not only that, it is not right. Because if you cannot step up--especially as a Republican who supposedly is committed to fiscal responsibility, because that is what our party is supposed to be committed to--and say that you can deliver better service with more flexibility, then you are probably not a very good Governor. I doubt there are any Republican Governors, at least, and I suspect there are not a lot of Democratic Governors who don't believe they can do more with a lot more flexibility. The President has listed seven or eight--actually, Governor Leavitt has--seven or eight different proposals, none of which impact services one iota and, in fact, some of which would significantly expand services to children, which could be accomplished if we reform the program and would slow the rate of growth in this program along the lines projected here. So it is unconscionable that people would claim a $14 billion reduction in the rate of growth when you are having a $1.1 trillion expenditure, a reduction which represents 1 percent over 5 years, could not be accomplished in the context of a program where there are obviously so many problems which need to be addressed and which could deliver more efficient and more effective service. It gets back to this point, of course. If we do not do this now, we are not going to do it. This is not an amendment to set up a commission, the purpose of which is to resolve the problem. This is an amendment to set up a commission to make sure the problem is never resolved. It is irresponsible because of that. I do think it is important to note how this budget has been structured. A lot of people say this Federal budget is pretty meaningless and it is sort of a process we go through here. Of course, 2 out of the last 4 years we didn't even have one. To some degree they are correct, I regret to say. We have in this budget three basic elements: discretionary spending, entitlement spending, and the other is taxes. On the discretionary side we set a discretionary cap. We have already seen 24 amendments or so offered on the floor that will affect that cap--in other words, Members not willing to accept the spending levels of this budget. They have to put money into this program or that program. We have another hundred or so amendments also pending which do exactly the same. So the willingness to discipline the discretionary side of the ledger is, to say the least, tepid. One would suspect there are going to be a lot of games played with that cap even if it gets into place before we get to the appropriations process. But it does, hopefully, limit the rate of growth and it does have some impact. But regrettably I have to admit it is at the margin. Then there is a tax side. Most of the taxes, in this budget at least, are taxes which most people are going to vote for. That point was made yesterday--whether there are reconciliation instructions, most of these tax cuts are going to be extended. They are very popular: R&D, spousal stuff, tuition tax stuff. No, the essence of this budget is whether we are going to address the fastest growing function of the Federal Government, the function of the Federal Government which is going to bankrupt our children and give them much less of a quality of life than we have had; whether our generation, the baby boom generation, which is now the generation that governs, is going to be willing to stand up and admit that we put too much on the books for our children to bear. That is the essence of this amendment. This amendment knocks out the only significant effort--well, there is one other dealing with the PBGC--the only significant effort to bring under control the rate of growth in the Federal Government in the outyears; the major piece of fiscal discipline. In the short term you can argue the discretionary caps may help. But in the long term, which is where our big problem is and where we all acknowledge it to be, the only thing that is going to address that is if we reconcile the Medicaid number. If we do not do it this year, it is not going to be done. That is why I find this amendment to be so pernicious, because it is put forward as if the people who support it are for fiscal discipline when in fact its practical implication is to gut the only thing in this budget which actually will generate fiscal discipline. And it is being done by Republicans. You have to ask yourself how they get up in the morning and look in the mirror. In any event, that is where we stand. I am not going to deny that this isn't a crucial vote. This is a crucial vote. If the Medicaid language is passed, if it is knocked out of the bill, I think I put in context the effect it has on this budget. More important, I hope I have put in context the effect it is going to have on our kids and our grandkids, because we will have said that in none of the three areas where the explosive growth is occurring--in none of these three areas where we are headed to this disaster, where our children are not going to be able to afford the costs that we have stuck them with--that in none of these three areas is this Congress willing to act. That would be more than an unfortunate event. I reserve the remainder of my time. Do I have any time?

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a question, and I will give him a minute to answer it?

Mr. GREGG. Does this amendment raise taxes to pay for the $15 billion that would be called for to put in this budget, or does it increase the deficit with more spending?

Mr. GREGG. To reclaim the time, the Senator did not answer the question. Maybe he is not familiar with the answer, but the answer is that this amendment increases the deficit by $15 billion.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I reserve that time and yield the floor. I yield the remainder of the time on my side to the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the appropriate comments of the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 223, agreed to earlier, be modified with the language at the desk. It has been cleared on both sides.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, recognizing that the first amendment to be considered is the Frist amendment, are the yeas and nays ordered?

Mr. GREGG. How many want to stay at 10 minutes? (Showing of hands.)

Mr. GREGG. We have now done a 5-minute vote two times. Senator Conrad and I were wondering what the reaction of the Chamber is. We thought we would ask for a show of hands. How many want to keep going 5 minutes or go back to 10 minutes? All those in favor of 5 minutes raise your hand. (Showing of hands.)

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 224 be agreed to, regarding the Corps of Engineers.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. That was the agreement. When President Clinton offered this proposal, which I supported, which I funded--I happened to chair the subcommittee that funded this proposal--the understanding was it would be a 3-year program. The cities and towns would come in, they would get their police officers approved, and then after 3 years those police officers would be off the Federal payroll, on the local payroll, and when we got to 100,000 police officers, the program would end. In the year 2000, we got to 100,000 police officers; in the year 2001, we got to 110,000 police officers--and the program goes on and on. There was an agreement 2 years ago that we would only fund those officers who were sort of the end of the line--in rural communities, essentially--and then we would terminate the program the way it was supposed to be originally terminated. That has not happened, either. Finally, the President, living up to the commitment of President Clinton, has said: Enough is enough. The program did what it was supposed to do, it put over 100,000 police officers on the street. As a result of doing that, it has succeeded. Let's declare victory relative to this program because it accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish--it added 110,000 or 120,000 officers, I guess, in the end-- and let's take these funds which were being used here and move them to another account, specifically accounts which are going to be more focused on a targeted response--primarily to the threat of terrorism-- versus a general response. The police officers, obviously, have a terrorism role, but they have a lot broader portfolio when they walk on that street, from moving- vehicle crimes to, obviously, violent crimes to drug crimes. But the dollars that were being spent on the COPS Program have been moved over, essentially to homeland defense and other accounts, the purpose of which is to get the Federal role together in an area where we have a priority, which is fighting terrorism. The officers who were put on the street by this program are theoretically still on the street because the communities that use this program to basically gear these officers up--I think we paid 75 percent the first year, 55 percent the second year, 25 percent the third year, and then it goes on the community's payroll, that officer's salary-- those officers are still out there, one presumes. It is just extremely ironic that there would be such an outcry to keep a program that the prior administration fully expected and put forward as a program that was going to be focused on getting 100,000 police officers on the street, and when it accomplished that it would terminate. It accomplished that and more, and it should be terminated. So I hope maybe we could prove President Reagan wrong once. He has been right on just about everything he ever did as a President, but maybe we could just prove him wrong once--I'm sure it would make the other side happy--by showing all programs are not eternal in this city and we can terminate one--the COPS Program. I yield the remainder of my time on this amendment, then, and we will move on to the next amendment, which I guess is Senator Feinstein's. Amendment No. 188

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, a lot of folks around here talk about budget reform, and this is budget reform in that it returns us to the days when the President was treated essentially this way, back under President Clinton, under President Bush the first. I think it is important to know what the issue is. The issue is not defense spending, because the proposed budget point of order and the Presidential involvement does not apply to defense spending. So with regard to the supplemental that is coming at us, the majority of which is defense spending, it does not affect that. It is nondefense areas where basically emergency designations are used to avoid the cap. The cap is the enforcement mechanism on the discretionary side. There are going to be instances where we are going to have to go through the cap because there are legitimate emergencies--hurricanes, the tsunami. But the simple fact is, there are also instances where we have used the emergency designation, such as for oyster farming, where maybe they were not quite emergencies, and yet they allowed the cap to be avoided for that spending item. This tries to put some balance back into the process of when we are going to have domestic emergencies and when we are not, and making sure the President is part of that process, which has traditionally been the way we did it around here. So I think it is reasonable change. I understand the chairman and the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee are concerned because it may well impact them, although I suspect with this President they will be able to work out an understanding that they will agree on. But I do think it is an enforcement mechanism that is appropriate at this time. Madam President, do I have any time left?

Mr. GREGG. I yield that back.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I yield the Senator 2 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that following this debate which has just been completed, the following times be allocated specifically for Members to offer their amendments; provided further, that if the Senator is not here during the allocated time, the clock run against the time reserved for the amendment. I send a list of those allocations to the desk.

Mr. GREGG. Yes, the Senator is correct. I believe the House budget resolution proposes reducing mandatory spending for agriculture by $5.3 billion over the next 5 years. I add that the President's budget proposed to reduce mandatory program spending for agriculture by nearly $9 billion.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the question of the Senator from Montana. Yes, the Senator's understanding is correct. We took great care to assure that this budget resolution was constructed to provide the Agriculture Committee with the flexibility needed to achieve a reduction in the deficit while ensuring continued support for programs that provide a critical safety net for farmers and ranchers, promote conservation, and reduce hunger.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor of the resolution.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Seapower be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 17, 2005, at 3 p.m., in open session to receive testimony on the posture of the U.S. Transportation Command in review of the Defense Authorization Request for fiscal year 2006.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Coast Guard be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 17, 2005, at 10 a.m. on Coast Guard Operational Readiness/Mission Balance/FY 2006 Budget Request in SR-253.