Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I ask the Chair if there is time presently available?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to raise my concerns about the procedure and about the substance. We all know there has to be a fix relative to the doctors. We all know we cannot have this sort of reduction in payments to physicians. That is just a fact. My own personal preference is that we fix this permanently. It is going to cost a lot of money, but that is the way it should be done. We should not be fixing this every year. And, in fact, it is becoming a geometric progression which is spiraling downward, with every year becoming a much more difficult effort. We should basically do Medicare reform. But short of that, we should do a permanent doctor fix so that the physicians in this country know they are going to get a reasonable upgrade of their reimbursement every year. We should not have to go through this. However, this bill does not accomplish that. In fact, this bill aggravates the problem significantly. I genuinely wish the bipartisanship effort which Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley had been pursuing had been the effort that had come to floor, but it did not. What has come to the floor is a partisan effort; regrettably, it is not a very good one. It has a couple of practical problems, and then it has a very substantive problem. The substantive problem is that it spends $2 trillion that we do not have, not to fix the doctor problem but to add new benefits in certain elements for certain recipients under Medicare Part D. Well, Medicare Part D is already $36 trillion in debt, unfunded liabilities. Put $2 trillion more on top of that, it means we are passing a huge cost on to our children. It is not fair. It is not appropriate. The practical problem this bill has--I find it incredible that we are being asked to vote on it, quite honestly--is that it has blanks. This is the first time I have ever seen this. This bill literally has blanks in it. We are being asked to vote on a bill where the numbers, which are operative relative to how much this bill is going to cost, are left out. There are actually parentheses with nothing in them. There are lines where there is a blank. And we are being asked to vote to close the debate on this and move to final passage on this without even knowing what the numbers are going to be which are to fill in those blanks. This is so egregious, so egregious, that the CBO, which is the independent scorekeeper around here, which is the fair umpire around here, has written us and said: They cannot score this bill. They cannot give us a cost estimate since the introduced version has blanks. The Congress should not work this way. The Senate should not work this way. This is totally inappropriate. It is a terrible precedent. It is worse than a terrible precedent. It is an incompetent precedent to set to bring to the floor a bill that does not tell us how much it is going to spend because the other side of the aisle does not want to tell us how much it wants to spend or, alternatively, because they are not competent enough to put numbers into the bill. It is incredible to me that we would be asked to vote cloture on a bill that the Congressional Budget Office says they cannot estimate the cost of, which is their responsibility, because it has blanks. I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to discuss further this issue of energy which is, of course, a massive and important priority for us as a nation and for people simply trying to get through the day--driving to work or whatever they have to do that uses energy--with the price of gasoline at over $4 a gallon and, at least in my part of the country, the fear of oil prices next winter--which is the primary source of heating fuel for us in New England--being well into the middle $4 price range and potentially higher. That is something most people find almost inconceivable but, more importantly, it is extremely hard to afford and it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the family budget. The question becomes: How do we address this as a culture and how do we address it as a Congress? We have had a proposal brought forward by the other side of the aisle which seems to ignore the concept of supply and demand and turns basically to trial lawyers and to taxes to try to address how you produce more energy. That is unlikely to encourage or to address this issue in a positive way. The simple fact is to set up an American procedure where you are now allowed to sue Saudi Arabia or the Gulf Emirates or Iran over their production of oil is cutting off your nose to spite your face. These are independent nations. The idea that you are going to resolve the issue of production and availability and price by suing these nations, some of which--for example, Venezuela--have great antipathy for us to begin with; at least their leadership does--is absurd on its face. It is plain absurd. It may make a good press release, it might make a good hyperbolic statement, but it certainly does not do anything to produce more energy for us as a nation at a more affordable price. It may make a few trial lawyers happy, but that is about all it is going to do. In fact, it will have the opposite reaction. If I led a country and the U.S. Congress passed a law that said they could sue my country, I would simply say to the United States: You can go pound sand. We don't have to ship you any oil at all. We certainly don't have to take the revenues that we generate from those oil shipments and reinvest them in the United States, which is critical to us as a society for our own capital formation. So this policy is counterproductive and, as I say, is cutting off your nose to spite your face. It is followed closely by an equally incoherent policy from a standpoint of substance--maybe not from a standpoint of politics--which is the idea that you are going to tax American corporations at excessive rates over which you tax other corporations because they make profits that are deemed by Members of the other side of the aisle to be excessive. Basically the philosophy of this position is: Well, we in Congress know how to spend your profits better than you, the company that produces those profits knows how to spend them, and that somehow we in Congress are going to produce more oil and, as a result, reduce the price of oil if we simply take control over your profits so you can no longer invest those profits in the exploration for new oil or for new energy sources or for alternative energy sources. The idea that Congress could in any way efficiently handle these dollars has been proven to be a fallacy, of course. Congress would simply take those dollars and spend them on whatever political issue we happen to feel the most appropriate and whatever constituency we want to benefit the most--dollars which could be much more efficiently used. Remember, most of these dollars, these profits, don't end up going to some pie-in-the- sky exercise; they either go back to the exploration to produce more energy or they go to stockholders through dividends. Most Americans are stockholders. Working Americans are invested in pension funds through their place of employment and they are stockholders. In fact, well over 65 percent of senior citizens receive dividend income. Of course, those dividends are a function of profit for the companies that pay the dividends. The money flows back to the employees of those companies and to the people who own pension funds which have invested in those companies, whether it is an auto worker or somebody working in a factory in New Hampshire or a high-tech individual who has a 401(k). So those profits usually get reenergized into the economy to produce more economic activity. They certainly are more efficiently used in that manner and through exploration than they would be for us to basically confiscate those profits through an excessive tax because some Members of the other side think it is good politics and as a result wish to target these companies which they see as good political fodder. A much more logical approach to production and reducing the cost of energy in this country would be to actually do something about producing more available energy for the American people. Unfortunately, on every attempt to do that, we have been stonewalled by the majority party--stonewalled on the issue, for example, of producing more nuclear power. We have a unique experience of this in New Hampshire. New Hampshire was the last State to bring online a nuclear powerplant. It came online years after it should have come online at a cost which was dramatically more than it should have cost because of the opposition of the left--aggressive and very effective opposition in stalling--in bringing that nuclear powerplant online, Seabrook. What has happened since it has been brought online? It has produced a lot of good, clean energy, not only for the people of New Hampshire but for the people of New England who have benefited from that nuclear powerplant. Unfortunately, the people of New Hampshire have been stuck with a bill of almost $100 million which is the result of cost overruns driven almost entirely by the left by delaying tactics which were put upon the plant and the production of this energy. That attitude hasn't changed much on the other side of the aisle. There is still genuine opposition to nuclear power. Nuclear power is a clean form of energy and it is something we should be turning to. France--a country which is not often held up as an example around here for policy, but it should be on this issue--has 80 percent of its energy coming from nuclear power. We as a country should be equally aggressive in that area. Another area we need to be aggressive in, for those States that feel it is appropriate, they should be allowed to do over-the-horizon exploration for oil and for gas off their shores. It works in Louisiana. Ironically, one of the few things that results from Katrina that you could look at as positive--and Katrina was a horrific disaster--was the fact that there wasn't one barrel of oil spilled as a result of that hurricane--a level 5 hurricane--coming up the gulf and going through New Orleans. It wiped out the city of New Orleans, but all the oil rigs that were functioning--and there were a lot of them in the Gulf of Mexico--survived without a leak, without a spillage of any kind. That shows that drilling in deep water can be done in an environmentally safe way. Yet the other side of the aisle resists and stops any attempts to allow other States that might wish to pursue this course of over-the- horizon exploration for oil and gas from pursuing that course. Virginia has expressed interest in doing it, and Virginia may have a very large potential energy source right off its coast. It may be fairly far out, and it will be deep water, but it may well be there. There is no reason we should not look at that type of approach and produce energy there. We need to produce more American energy because we cannot rely--and this is fairly obvious--on energy from nations in the Middle East especially. Another example is oil shale. The technology for the recovery of oil shale has gotten to the point where it is extremely sophisticated and, again, environmentally safe. All the activity occurs below ground. There is virtually nothing occurring above the ground, other than the actual pumping out of the final product, which is a kerosene-type product that can be used for jet fuel. We have a reserve of oil from oil shale that exceeds the reserve of Saudi Arabia. Think about that. We have, in our Western States, enough oil from shale, which can be recovered by underground methods and have no insignificant environmental impact, to actually produce more oil than Saudi Arabia. Are we able to pursue that? No. Why? Because the other side refuses to allow exploration for participation in oil shale in the West. Those are a few examples of the type of expansion and approach we should take toward producing more American energy, which is totally resisted, regrettably, by Members of the other side of the aisle who are speaking for aggressive groups on the left. We are not going to produce more energy or reduce energy costs by setting up a regime to sue Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. We will probably have the exact opposite effect. Certainly, it will affect the willingness of those countries to invest in the United States. We are not going to produce more energy or reduce energy costs by putting a confiscatory tax on companies that produce energy and taking money that can go to individuals through dividends, working Americans, or can go to greater exploration out of the pipeline and giving it to people in Congress to spend on special interest groups. The only way we are going to get more energy and reduce our reliance on foreign energy is if we produce more in the United States, which we can do; we have the reserves. We are not allowed to use them. We can pursue nuclear, for example, and we can pursue renewables. They can have a positive effect, but they cannot obviously overwhelm the entire need, or carry the entire need. We also, of course, should look at other areas, such as conservation and using a different type of vehicle or engine--something that is either a hybrid or an all-electric engine. But to drive an all-electric car, you have to have electricity produced, which means you have to have more electrical plants, and you have to make sure they are clean and not putting carbon, nitrogen, and sulfates into the air. We should be using nuclear power and promoting clean coal technology. So you need specific initiatives that will actually produce something in the way of energy, not political statements that produce something in the way of hyperbole. Senator Domenici has proposed a bill that would carry a number of those issues--expansion in the effort of nuclear, the opportunity to pursue over-the-horizon exploration, and using shale oil through underground recovery. Yet that bill has been held up and stopped by the other side of the aisle. So the question today becomes, how do we better improve our position and make sure we have less dependence upon foreign oil and begin to bring down these prices of gasoline and home heating oil? The answer is simple: Beyond conservation and the renewable issue, which there is agreement on, the answer is to produce more American energy and make it clean energy, such as nuclear. I believe if we want to progress in this area, we need to take a hard look at over-the-horizon drilling for offshore oil and gas off the States that are willing to pursue that. Maine, which has the Gulf of Maine, is not going to be willing to do it because of the fisheries and neither will New Hampshire. If Virginia wants to do it, they ought to be able to do it. It can be done safely. Second, oil shale is a reserve that can be produced, again, underground and without environmental harm. These are substantive, specific approaches, which we need at this time. I yield the floor, reserve the remainder of our time, and I suggest the absence much a quorum.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I had the fortunate opportunity to travel to Africa and South America over the Easter recess, and I want to take a moment to share some of my observations with my colleagues. Mali receives significant U.S. foreign assistance totaling $45 million in fiscal year 2007, $55 million in fiscal year 2008--and $461 million in Millennium Challenge Corporation, MCC, funding. While Mali appears headed in the right direction, I worry that the MCC is going down the wrong path, specifically by funding a $90 million renovation project for Bamako airport's runway and terminal. I understand that this project may have been formulated through a consultative process, but it seems to me that it should be funded through the African Development Bank or by private investment. I expect the MCC to justify to the State, Foreign Operations Subcommittee the necessity for U.S. taxpayers to fund the airport project, and to consult on the reprogramming of funds required by the derailed $90 million industrial park project. The funding disparity and contrast between our traditional development agency--the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID--and the MCC was glaring in Mali. Where USAID--could benefit from a slight increase in overall funding, the MCC was struggling to determine how best to reprogram $90 million. I am very concerned that MCC may not live up to its billing as a more effective aid delivery program, and its deep pockets may create unintended opportunities for corruption. I had the opportunity to visit the U.S. Embassy and learned of the loss of air conditioning for a lengthy period of time which was a burden to American and local staff. This is not the first time I've heard of problems at our newly built embassies, and I encourage the State Department to make sure that no patterns exist at these facilities because of subpar contractors or equipment. Like Mali, Nigeria receives significant U.S. assistance primarily through a new initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR. Assistance in fiscal year 2007 totaled $350 million and $491 million in fiscal year 2008, of which $282 million and $410 million are for HIV/AIDS activities, respectively. On paper, Nigeria is wealthy country with significant oil reserves, and, we were told, an estimated $57 billion in an excess crude account. Corruption is unfortunately a cancer that stymies development and political progress in that country; Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, 2007, ranks Nigeria 147th out of 179th. Nigeria is a PEPFAR focus country, with a 3.9 percent prevalence rate among adults. Given Nigeria's significant natural resources, it is imperative that the AIDS Coordinator begin a process of transitioning from U.S. to Nigeria-funded programs. America can help the Government of Nigeria spend its health dollars, but I question the efficacy of U.S. funding for HIV/AIDS programs in that country. I will have more to say on this issue when the Senate considers the reauthorization of PEPFAR, perhaps later this year. Namibia is also a PEPFAR focus country, and received $86.9 million in fiscal year 2007 and $103 million in fiscal year 2008 for HIV/AIDS programs. Unfortunately, other programs for Namibia, specifically support for democracy activities, has been in steady decline over the past few fiscal years and is being zeroed out. Given that the ruling SWAPO party is no longer a monolith, and splinter parties are forming, the Administration's reduction in assistance to Namibia may be ill timed and ill advised. My staff and I are exploring ways to ensure that sufficient funding exists for non-HIV/AIDS programs for Namibia, including immediate support for domestic election monitoring activities in that country, and like Nigeria, I encourage PEPFAR personnel to explore sustainment strategies for U.S.-funded HIV/AIDS programs. I am also concerned that the United States is not supporting enough exchange programs with countries in Africa. I intend to increase these programs in upcoming appropriations bills. South Africa is also a PEPFAR focus country and received $398 million in fiscal year 2007 and $547 million in fiscal year 2008 HIV/AIDS funding. South Africa is running a budget surplus--in this case totaling $2.4 billion. I am very pleased that our U.S. Ambassador understands the need for South Africa to assume greater financial responsibility for HIV/AIDS programs, and it is unfortunate that certain South Africa government officials have not been aggressive in addressing this issue. Any future support for HIV/AIDS programs in South Africa should be conditioned on the development and implementation of sustainment strategies to ensure that the Government of South Africa assume the care for its infected populations. Crime remains a significant challenge to everyone in South Africa, and given the increased personnel requirements associated with PEPFAR, it may make sense to allow the use of PEPFAR funds for administrative and operational expenses at the U.S. Embassy, including for security purposes. New initiatives create increased desk and office space needs, and I've asked my staff to take a closer look at this issue in anticipation of marking up the fiscal year 2009 State, Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. I also intend to continue to work with Secretary of State Rice on resolving travel issues impacting members of the Africa National Congress, which is an unnecessary irritant in U.S.-South African relations. Finally, although Argentina is not a major recipient of U.S. foreign assistance--some $2 million was provided in fiscal year 2008--relations between our countries have been historically good. I encourage my colleagues to continue to follow counterdrug and counterterrorism developments in that country--and region.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GREGG. I was going to say: in the world.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me thank the majority leader and the chairman for their kind words. They would have done the same thing were they in my position, if somebody on our side were ill. I know they would have, because I know the type of people they are, and I thank them for their generous comments relative to my willingness to help on that issue. I especially want to acknowledge, as they have, Senator Warner and Senator Domenici. This is Senator Domenici's last vote on the budget, and Senator Domenici and the budget are inextricably identified together. He basically wrote the Budget Act along with Senator Byrd, who regrettably can't be here and whom he is pairing with, and for 30- plus hours now, he has been overseeing the budget as the godfather of it. For him to pair on this matter on this last vote on the budget is a very gracious act, as Senator Conrad has pointed out. I also thank Senator Conrad and his staff for their courtesy and their professionalism. It is always afforded to us as Republicans by the majority staff and we very much appreciate it. We obviously disagree fundamentally on where this budget is going, but that doesn't mean we can't proceed in an orderly manner. As I have said before, although I strongly disagree with this budget, I feel equally strongly that this Nation needs a budget, even though in this instance it is something I will point to as a mistake. But we could have done a lot better. As a practical matter, I respect the efforts put in by the majority and the majority staff, and especially the chairman of the committee who worked tirelessly on this and defends it very effectively. He has said I will say this is the largest tax increase in the history of the world. Let me confirm that, and let there be no mistake about it--there is the largest tax increase in the history of the world in this budget. We are talking trillions here, which is hard to understand for anyone. It is a concept that is alien to all of us. But this budget talks in the trillions. This will be the first budget that pushes debt over $10 trillion. That is a lot of money. Two trillion dollars will be added to the debt as a result of this budget. This will be the first budget that takes non-emergency discretionary spending over $1 trillion. I suggested we draw the line and say, at least for 1 year, we will hold back and not go over $1 trillion. That idea was rejected. This budget has buried in it a $1.2 trillion tax increase. Yes, it would not occur this year, but it is assumed in the budget. That is how they get to balance in the budget. It is assumed in the outyears. That tax increase will translate, when it kicks in, in 2011, into real increases in taxes for Americans. Although most of us cannot understand $1 trillion, we can understand the fact that for families earning $50,000, with two children, their taxes, under this proposal, over the next 5 years will go up $2,300. For retired people--and there are 18 million of them--their taxes will go up over $2,000. For 47 million small businesses in America today--the engines of the economy, of economic growth, the people who create the jobs in this economy--their taxes will go up $4,000. That is a lot of money. That is money they should be able to keep, and it should not come to the Federal Government. That tax increase should not go into place. This bill has taxes in it that presume that the capital gains tax will essentially double for many Americans. The dividends tax will definitely double. Rates will jump dramatically. The 10-percent rate will be repealed. The estate tax will jump dramatically. This bill essentially assumes a major tax increase on working Americans and on small business. In my opinion, that is a huge mistake. The other huge mistake that this budget has in it is it makes no effort at all to control the accounts that are going to essentially bankrupt our Nation for our children, which are the entitlement accounts. We know we are sending this Nation over a fiscal cliff. We know that if we don't act, our children and grandchildren will not be able to afford this Government because of the cost and burdens of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We know the baby boom generation is alive and is going to be moving into retirement. Yet this bill takes no action--no action at all--to try to remedy this very serious fiscal problem, which is going to occur on the watch of this bill. This is a 5-year budget. So this is a very serious failure of taking responsibility on a key issue of fiscal policy. In addition, of course, we have strong differences over the amount of spending in the bill. It crosses the trillion-dollar line. The Senator from North Dakota named some of the important things to spend money on. Yes, they are important, but we need to set priorities. Rather than simply increasing spending, we ought to look at programs now on the books, which are not as high a priority as we need, and move the money from those programs into the programs we want to spend more money on. This budget assumes that of all the Federal programs on the books--$1 trillion of discretionary spending--none will be eliminated, not one. Let me tell you, there are programs we can eliminate, and we should have made that tough decision. So we have strong opinions that this budget doesn't go where it should go. It fails in the issues of tax policy, entitlement policy, and spending policy. Obviously, the other side of the aisle is the majority--and, remember, they were in the majority last year too--so they have the right to pass their budget. I point out that last year they claimed they were going to give us a tax cut, and they didn't do it. They took credit for the amendment that said they were going to give a tax cut, but it was never passed. This year, they are taking credit for the same amendment, and I suspect it would not pass again. What will pass is the tax increase of $1.2 trillion in this bill on working Americans. That will come to fruition because the majority assumes this budget event. This budget doesn't work without those new revenues. It is a failure, in our opinion, and that is why we oppose it. I yield back the remainder of my time and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator would add me for 15 minutes on that list, I would appreciate it.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, what we should not do with this major new consumption tax is use it to expand the size of the Federal Government, to put in place a series of initiatives that are essentially being used for the purpose of building constituencies that will support this bill. That is the way legislation passes here, but it is wrong--wrong when we did it in agriculture and especially wrong when we do it in the energy production area. American consumers should not be hit with this tax and have no tax cut or rebate coming to them on the other side of the ledger to try to mitigate the impact of this consumption tax. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his courtesy in finding a spot for me to speak. This is obviously a bill of immense proportions and implications for us as a nation, for our economy, for consumers, for our place in the world, and for how we deal with the passing on of the quality of life that we have to our children so they can live in an environment that will sustain them and be sure that we do not overly pollute our world or atmosphere. I think the Senator from California needs to be congratulated for moving the initiative forward. It is my opinion that this is a debate that needs to be pursued aggressively. I respect all the different parties' views on this. There has been an excellent discussion of how to proceed in this area. In the past, I have strongly supported initiatives that are similar to this effort, in the sense that they tried to reduce the amount of pollutants we put into our atmosphere through a variety of different means. The Lieberman-McCain bill and the Carper-Alexander bill, both of which I have supported, had attempted to do this also. This bill, however, is much more comprehensive, much more extensive, and the implications are far greater to our economy and to our quality of life in the United States. It is safe to say that were this bill to become law in its present form, it would impact our future as much as anything that we could do-- after addressing the issue of defeating global terrorism as they attempt to try to destroy our culture--and making sure we are fiscally solvent as a result of the cost of programs we already have on the books, such as entitlements. So it is a tremendous issue and deserves serious and thoughtful consideration, which it is getting so far in this debate. I respect both sides of the argument. I find myself, on this issue, in a variety of different camps because I am attracted to parts of the bill, and I find parts of the bill to be very difficult. I am not going to get into all the different elements. I am concerned about the effect on our competitiveness internationally. I am concerned that if we put limitations on our economy in place, economies such as India and China, which will not be subject to these limitations, will simply pursue courses that will end up polluting at a rate that overwhelms whatever we save and that, as a practical matter, we may significantly undermine our competitiveness. I am concerned about how this cap-and-trade issue is going to work. I am concerned that NOX and carbon are not addressed. I am concerned that we are looking at an issue of how the science is not up to speed with the requirements being put on the industries that must reduce their pollution, or NOX itself. There is a legitimate question of whether we are putting the cart before the horse relative to the science of the capacity to deliver these savings. For example, in the area of savings and the reduction of pollutants, I believe strongly that we need to pursue a much more aggressive policy in the area of nuclear. But the question of whether we can bring on line the nuclear generating capacity necessary to meet the requirements of this bill is very much an issue and very much in doubt, simply because of our permitting procedure in this country, coupled with the fact that the industrial complex in this country doesn't have the capacity to produce the nuclear plants in the timeframe necessary in order to comply with what would be the reduction necessary in this bill. Those are some of my concerns. Again, I come back to the fact that I think the concept of cap and trade, as proposed in the bill, is a path we need to seriously consider going down. However, on a parallel path, I have a very severe concern, serious concern, and that is that this bill, under its present structure, is going to generate value of approximately $6.7 trillion over its life. Over the next 10 years, it is estimated that the sale of these allowances will approximately be a billion dollars. Most of this will come into the Federal Treasury--not all of it--and then under this bill it gets spent, for the most part. There is $800 million set aside, theoretically, but it is done by a sense of the Senate, as was noted. The vast majority of the money gets spent by creating new programmatic activity and expanding the size of the Federal Government. Now, this $6.7 trillion is costs that will be passed on to the American consumer in the form of increased electrical bills. I think the American consumer is willing to pay a higher price for electricity if they feel they are significantly and positively impacting the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases that are affecting our climate. I am willing to vote for putting that type of cost into place. But what I am not willing to vote for is taking that money and using it to radically expand the size of the Federal Government. If you look at the proposals in the bill, it essentially becomes the most massive exercise at earmarking we have ever seen. It dwarfs the farm bill, which is hard to do, when it comes to earmarks. As a very practical matter, that is not fair to working Americans. Working Americans, under this bill, are going to be hit with a new consumption tax. That is what this bill does. It creates a massive new consumption tax, called allowances, which get sold, but the price of paying for those allowances will go back into the rate base and will raise the cost of electricity and will be a consumption tax. Americans, working at their jobs and trying to make ends meet, trying to take care of their families, are going to see their energy bills go up because they will get hit with this new consumption tax. I believe very fervently that if we are going to go down this road of creating this massive new consumption tax, the purpose of which is to promote the reduction of greenhouse gases, which will reduce our negative impact on the global climate, we need, at the same time, to reduce for working Americans the burden of their taxation in other places. This should be a one-for-one trade, very simply. If we are going to say to working Americans that we are going to increase your consumption tax by $6.7 trillion, or if you take out the money that is under here and represented as a sense-of-the-Senate tax reduction, it will be around $4-plus trillion--if you are going to have that type of major tax impact and essentially shift the economy to a national consumption tax--and many States have those consumption taxes, but there is no national one. If you are to shift to a national consumption tax, then you need to take those dollars and reduce the burden on working Americans, one for one, so you mitigate the impact on their quality of life, on their ability to be productive citizens, and on their ability to pursue a lifestyle they can afford. There are a variety of ways to do this. You can reduce income taxes. You can take the consumption tax, which is going to flow into the Treasury, and move it to the reduction of income tax rates or you can take the consumption tax, which is going to fall under the Federal Treasury through these allowances, and you can use it to reduce the FICA tax, the Social Security tax, which is an across-the-board tax that all Americans pay or you can take the consumption tax, which is going to be generated by this bill, and you can use it under some sort of rebate proposal such as that which has been proposed by the Senator from Tennessee, where people making less than $150,000 would get a rebate reflecting the amount of money coming into the Treasury under the allowances. Have I used 10 minutes?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for another 5 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Then, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes.

Mr. GREGG. According to the earmark list I have, $191 billion goes to worker training, $171 billion goes to mass transit projects, $237 billion goes to natural resource and wildlife adaptation, $288 billion goes to Federal programs of natural resources, $342 billion goes to international climate change, $300 billion goes to agriculture and forestry, and $368 billion goes to reforestation. Under these numbers, only $136 billion out of the trillions of dollars goes to energy efficiency block grants, and that is for local governments.

Mr. GREGG. That is what I worry about.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a brief intercession.

Mr. GREGG. I agree. In fact, the Senator from California clearly states my position, which is I support initiatives in this area. I support mandatory initiatives in this area. What I am concerned about is that these allowances--which really are a consumption tax, in my opinion--will essentially be used to greatly expand the Government. If we were to take that section out of the bill and just basically take those dollars and give them back to the taxpayers without having this huge section which essentially creates huge new initiatives in all sorts of different areas, I think you would have a very workable bill.

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will yield further, Mr. President.

Mr. GREGG. If we are going to limit dollars spent to technology advancement, I guess I could be receptive to that, some percentage. But the vast majority of the dollars--that is not going to take that many dollars compared to the money we are dealing with here, $6.7 trillion. If you want to take some percentage of that and use it for expansion of technology purely on the technology side, that may make sense. This bill goes way beyond that. It has all sorts of initiatives in here which are only at the margin of the issue of technology, in my opinion. Where the dollars really should go is to reduce the tax burden for the people who are going to have the higher energy prices.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand I have 15 minutes under the prior order.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are here to vote on the override of some portion of the farm bill which the President has vetoed. First, there is the great irony that the bill we are voting on isn't the bill that passed the Senate or the House. It is some element of that bill, other parts of the bill having not made it to the President. That sort of becomes an allegory for this entire exercise. This is a bill that really doesn't do the job it should, is incomplete in the sense that it fails the American taxpayer and consumer, and is misguided in that it spends a great deal of money, perverting the marketplace relative to the production of agricultural products. But we are here because of what was a bureaucratic snafu, I presume. We all know the President's veto is going to be overridden, but the President was right to veto this bill. He was absolutely right. I said earlier--I know my colleagues take this in the sense of irony with which I make it, not in any personal way--this bill truly is a product of commissar politics, of the old approach that we saw years ago in countries that thought that they could have a top-down management of their farm production system. I said in my earlier talk, where did all the economists who worked in the Soviet Union go, all those folks who sat behind desks and thought about 5-year plans and how to disconnect supply from demand and how to set arbitrary prices which caused the Soviet Union, a nation which was one of the great producers of agricultural products, to become basically a net importer of product? Where did all those economists go when the Soviet Union failed? It appears they moved to the Midwest and the South and developed our farm programs. These programs have no relationship to the market or setting prices for commodities, which are basically totally out of tune with the market. They have no relationship to market forces. As a result, the American consumer ends up with a much higher bill and the short end of the stick. Take sugar alone. Sugar prices in this bill are at least twice the world price for sugar. So the American consumer ends up getting hit for a much higher cost for any product that uses sugar. And just about any food commodity of any complexity uses sugar. In addition, you have the huge effort to subsidize ethanol, which has driven up dramatically the price of corn and has the effect of basically creating an international incident in the area of food availability. We are hearing from numerous countries around the world that are finding they have shortages of other commodities because the American subsidization of ethanol has perverted the marketplace relative to the production of corn. That certainly is inappropriate. So the policy of this bill is not only an attack on the American consumer, it is basically bad policy for the world population just trying to make it through and avoid hunger. In addition, this bill sets up all sorts of new programs, programs which make no sense on their face but which are in here because they have somebody who is protecting their initiatives, their ideas, their purposes. We have a new program for asparagus, a new program for chickpeas, an initiative for a National Sheep and Goat Industry Improvement Center, a new program that creates a stress management network for farmers. Then, according to the Washington Post--and I was not aware of this--there is the potential for a $16 billion boondoggle for agricultural products because of the new way that prices are set and payments are made, setting prices at their present high level, setting subsidy rates at their present high level under this new program called ACRE. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the editorial of today's Washington Post which does a much better job than I of explaining how outrageous this new subsidy is and how much it will cost the American consumer, $16 billion.

Mr. GREGG. This bill has a lot of substantive problems. It probably will aggravate food consumption for nations around the world, their ability to produce product, and certainly dramatically increase the cost of product in the United States. It perverts the marketplace so a product that might be produced more efficiently would not be produced more efficiently. It spends a heck of a lot of money, $289 billion. As we have seen, once again, it uses all sorts of budget gimmicks-- when it was originally passed, and it will have to be replaced, or parts of it will because of the bureaucratic snafu--to get around the rules of the Senate and the House, for that matter, in the area of trying to discipline spending. There is $18 billion worth of budget gimmicks in this bill. Then we just had a new budget avoidance exercise when the chairman of the Budget Committee declared that the new baseline under a new budget--this bill would have violated the original baseline, as was in that new budget--will now be adjusted so this bill would not violate that baseline--another exercise, unfortunately, in gaming the pay-go rules. The budget chairman has a right to do that, but it cannot be denied that is an effort to try to get around pay-go rules, as they should be applied under the budget we will be passing the week after next. So there is 18 billion dollars' worth of budget gimmicks in this bill; the worst, of course, the changing of years and the assumption that some program, which we know is going to continue, will terminate at an arbitrary date so that you can spend the money up to that date and claim there is no budget failure and, then, later on, adjust it, put the program back in place, and avoid the budget pay-go rules-- really inappropriate, to say the least, in the way this has been handled. It is, of course, a bill that comes to the floor every 4 or 5 years. But the problem is, every 4 or 5 years the American consumer gets basically hit beside the head by this bill. Last time I spoke, I said they get hit beside the head with a lamb chop and they end up with a black eye the next day. As a result, I thought I would just stay away from that statement. But the fact is, the American consumer isn't doing very well under this bill. The American taxpayer is doing worse. There is a claim that there is reform in this bill which is fairly specious on its face, considering all the new programs added to the bill, such as asparagus. One of the reforms they claim is that they are not going to pay farmers who have high incomes outrageous subsidies. Today you can get $2.5 million theoretically. Well, unfortunately, the way the bill is structured, they say that, but that is not the way it works. Under this bill, a person with $500,000 of nonfarm income and $750,000 of farm income can still get the subsidy. If they are married, their spouse can have $500,000 of nonfarm income and $750,000 of farm income, so they end up basically with approximately the same amount of subsidy. Yet it is alleged this is some sort of major reform. It is not reform. It is simply an attempt to obfuscate the fact that these subsidies go to extremely wealthy people on products that should compete in the marketplace for a price and should not be subsidized in the manner in which this bill subsidizes. Obviously, we are going to lose this vote because the way the farm bill is put together--and the American people should know this--one commodity goes to the next commodity and says: We will vote for your commodity, even though it is in my State and not in yours, as long as you will vote for my commodity which is in my State but not in yours. You go around the country and you pick up commodities. That is why asparagus has appeared here. Somebody in an asparagus district said: If you will cover asparagus and give us a new subsidy, you will get my vote for all the other subsidies in this bill. That is the way it works. It is called log rolling. That is the historical term that comes out of the 1800s. But it is not the way to legislate. Certainly, it isn't a healthy way to legislate. It certainly takes the concept of using the market completely out of the exercise of developing a farm bill. This farm bill runs counter to all the concepts of a free market society from which this country has benefited so dramatically and which we believe to be true and effective ways to produce product and control costs and to make product more cost-effective for the people who use it. Adam Smith was right; Karl Marx was wrong. Under this bill, one would think Karl Marx was right and Adam Smith was wrong. This is top down, let's manage the economy, let's set arbitrary prices that have no relationship to production, supply, or demand in place of going to a market where you use supply and demand to determine what will be produced. I suppose if Patrick Henry were around today, his famous statement would have to be modified. He would have to say: Give me asparagus or give me death. That is what this bill has come down to. We either get these farm subsidies and get the consumer rolled and the taxpayer rolled or we don't get anything around here. As a practical matter, I, obviously, know I will lose this vote. The President knew he was going to lose this vote when he vetoed the bill. But he was absolutely right in doing so. It was the appropriate decision. It was the fiscally responsible decision. It was also a good decision from the standpoint of not only domestic policy but international policy, where we are seeing strains on production of commodities for the purposes of feeding people. I regret we are going down this path one more time. We have been down it a few times in the past. But the simple fact is, the forces that support, for example, the sugar subsidy are too strong to be able to give the taxpayers a break. I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor. (Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries)

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Mississippi yield me 4 minutes off the bill.