Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I think the key to what the Senator from Alabama said is that we alternate chairmanships, and it is my turn.

Mr. GREGG. I am not sure the Senator from Texas heard that discussion.

Mr. GREGG. If I could interject, what has happened is the Parliamentarian desires a few minutes to look at the amendment of the Senator from Texas. We thought we could grant him that and then during that period have Senator Reed speak for 5 minutes and then come back to the amendment of the Senator from Texas, which would remain pending.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask if the chairman would be agreeable to recognizing Senator Allard around 5:15 and that debate on his amendment and any substitute to his amendment be for 1 hour, up to an hour equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. Absolutely.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, how is the time being charged now?

Mr. GREGG. Then I ask that the time I am on the floor and the time going forward be charged against the bill.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if I might have the floor, there are a number of folks who wish to speak to this bill and have amendments relative to the bill. I strongly urge them to wander over here in the next few hours and give their talks and talk about their amendments. It is possible that we will start the vote-arama tomorrow. Once we start, there is not going to be any discussion. There will be one vote after another, with a very brief time period in between equally divided. If people want a substantive discussion on their amendments, now is the time to come over and make their presentation. Taking my own advice, I will mention an amendment I intend to offer which deals with the H-1B issue. H-1Bs are visas which go to people who can contribute immensely to our economy. We have an economy that depends on value added--smart people creating ideas which create jobs. A lot of those smart people come from overseas, and we should take advantage of them wanting to come to the United States. One of our great strengths as a nation is people want to come here, and we should take advantage of that strength and convert it to an economic engine. The way to do that, of course, is to encourage people who want to come here and who are going to contribute to the economy by being job creators--rather than taking jobs, they will be actually job creators-- to come to the United States. So I will have an amendment to expand the H-1B program. This is critical to the high-technology industry especially. I expect that this amendment will be strongly supported by those who wish to expand our economy, especially by advancing our leadership in the area of technology, and I know it will be strongly supported by everybody----

Mr. GREGG. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Illinois for a question. There will be no dead people brought over to the United States.

Mr. GREGG. Well, I know the Senator from Illinois doesn't like the H- 1B visa program, doesn't desire it to be expanded. I appreciate that and I understand we have a difference of opinion on that, and when he wants time, I will be happy to listen to his views again. But the fact is I happen to think, even though there may have been abuses in the program, I don't think they were at the core of the problem; that the primary energy of this program has been to create jobs in the United States by bringing smart people here. We should be going across the world and saying to the best and the brightest----

Mr. GREGG. I will in a second--and saying to the best and the brightest in the world, if you want to come to the United States and be a job center that adds to the value of our economy, we would like to have you come. We would like to consider you as being a participant under an H-1B visa program.

Mr. GREGG. Yes.

Mr. GREGG. I agree. I wished to make certain.

Mr. GREGG. Well, I would say to the Senator from Illinois that when you bring a person here who has the capacity to add to the strength of a Microsoft, for example, which is probably our single biggest international producer of economic activity for us as a nation, after maybe, I don't know, Wal-Mart, but it is a value-added company of the first level, and that when you bring somebody here who Microsoft feels adds to their ability to be more competitive, if that person decides to go back to India or back to China, well, that will be a choice they make. But I suspect the odds are pretty good if that person has the opportunity to stay here under an H-1B visa program, they will probably end up staying here, or at least a large enough percentage of them will stay to add to our economy. Now, what my amendment does----

Mr. GREGG. I will in a second. What my amendment does, to make it clear, is it recaptures visas that are unused and it uses those visas now. It also specifically targets bringing in high-skilled nursing, people who are trained in the nursing facility area, which is very much in demand right now.

Mr. GREGG. Certainly. Of course.

Mr. GREGG. I happen to believe the H-1B program is one of those programs that expands jobs in the United States, and by getting people here, you actually create jobs and you will create more jobs for Americans rather than lose jobs. So, no, I don't happen to think you create a uniform rule that says nobody can come here if somebody else can take the job because then you are going to get the bureaucracy behind that which would basically bar those people from ever getting here. That becomes then a bureaucratic nightmare for building those jobs. It makes much more sense to bring these smart, intelligent people here, have them create jobs here, rather than leave them creating jobs in China and India. Bill Gates speaks to this far more eloquently than I do. He speaks to most things more eloquently than I can because he can pronounce the words. But as a practical matter, he says these people are centers for the energy that creates the ideas, that creates the jobs that drive the economy. And if you leave them in China, if you leave them in India, as those types of individuals creating jobs, they become huge competitors to the entrepreneurship of America. If you bring them here, they become adjuncts to our economy. I think the proposal makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of job creation and from the standpoint of making our economy stronger, so I will be offering it later in the day. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I take it the Senator from North Dakota is suggesting we will continue this evening, but in debate only, unless the chairman and the ranking member of the committee agree to put an amendment in order.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the next speaker in order is in the chair. When somebody replaces him, I will yield the floor. I rise to say a couple of words about what I consider to be a very dangerous precedent that appears about to be reset through the House resolution on the budget. There is something called reconciliation, which is the true hammer in the budget resolution. It allows changes in things such as Medicare, Medicaid, entitlement programs, or tax policy to be passed under an expedited procedure here in the Senate with only 51 votes. It is at the essence of the Budget Act. Its whole purpose, and the reason it was created, was in order to discipline the rate of growth of entitlement programs as its primary cause and to address tax policy. Last year, there was a token reconciliation instruction given of $750 million. I say that because reconciliations passed always have been used to save considerable sums of money, or reduce the rate of growth of programs by considerable sums. When I chaired this committee, we reconciled primarily Medicare, but other spending accounts, including agriculture, to the tune of almost $40 billion. In 1996, reconciliation was used for, I believe, $96 billion of savings and reductions in the rate of growth of programs. So this $750 million alleged savings put in the House vehicle last year was essentially a fig leaf to cover up not a use of reconciliation for the purpose it was originally designed, which is to control the rate of growth of spending, but to actually use it as a stalkinghorse to radically expand programmatic activity, with the protection of a 51- vote procedure that is basically not amendable. What happened last year was that under that $750 million of savings, almost $19.2 billion of new spending occurred--new spending, new programs, expanded programs. As a result of that, the Government grew by $19.2 billion in the long run. Yes, there were savings taken from other accounts, basically reducing the reimbursement to student lenders, but those savings pale compared to the outyear costs of what the programmatic activity that was added under reconciliation will be in last year's bill. Now we see this game being played again. This is a cynical game, because reconciliation applies only to the Senate. The House doesn't need reconciliation protection. They have a House Rules Committee. No bill in the House can come to the floor without a rule, and the Rules Committee has the ability to enforce the will of the majority--without the filibuster. In the Senate, of course, there is the filibuster. Reconciliation was designed for the sole purpose of addressing these very significant programmatic activities, and trying to control their rate of growth in a way that would not have the filibuster applied, because these programs were so significant and because making progress on controlling the rate of growth is always a challenge. So reconciliation is a vehicle that only disciplines the Senate activity. It doesn't discipline House activity. What it does in the Senate is denies the minority rights, because it basically eliminates the filibuster, as things are put under reconciliation. Why would the House of Representatives include reconciliation instructions? The Senate bill doesn't have any reconciliation instructions--none. Well, there is a game going on. As I said, it is cynical, and it is a game that undermines the basic purpose of the Budget Act. This is a direct attack on the rights of the Budget Act and the rights given under that act. When the House puts in that reconciliation instruction for a token amount of money--it is a lot of money, but under the terms of this budget, it is a fig leaf event--$750 million. What happens is when they go to conference, they will claim they have the right to pursue reconciliation instructions, which will not affect the House's ability to pass a bill, but it will affect the Senate's bill and how the Senate proceeds. We may see that reconciliation instruction--in fact, I almost guarantee we will see it in conference balloon into a massive programmatic expansion of some nature, and it could be two or three different programs, protected by reconciliation, and then passed in the Senate under a procedure of reconciliation; and while the savings may be a token amount that is put forward in the House bill, the expansion in the size of the Government will be extraordinary. The whole purpose of the Budget Act, which is to discipline the rate of growth of the Federal Government and put some discipline into the process of budgeting, will have been made a farce by this procedure. It truly damages and destroys the Budget Act, in my humble opinion, for this process to go forward. It is also an incredibly cynical act. If the Senate leadership wants to expand programs in the Senate with reconciliation protection, have the courage to bring the language to the floor of the Senate and let us vote on it during the budget process. Don't use this backdoor procedure of having the House Budget Committee do your dirty work, which is what is happening in this situation. So this, regrettably, appears to be the game that is about to be played. I happen to think it violates the privilege of the budget resolution. I think when something like this happens, which is such a clear and obvious affront to the process of the budget and is so outside the scope of what was originally considered as the purpose of reconciliation, that basically undermines the privilege of the budget resolution. Clearly, if it does not do it from a standpoint of a parliamentary situation, it does it from a standpoint of what is fair play around here and what is a proper procedure and the proper way to budget. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and whoever is in order next I guess will be recognized.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the fact that the Presiding Officer has the right to the floor as soon as someone comes over and helps him out. Pending him being relieved of his duties as the Presiding Officer, I ask unanimous consent that we yield to Senator Collins 10 minutes.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I would certainly hope I did, but I don't recall.

Mr. GREGG. I would certainly like to have. But unfortunately, at the time, again, we were not within the budget window. But you are within the budget window, and you are taking credit for those tax extenders lapsing. Are you not taking credit for $400 billion under the baseline? That number is reached by CBO by presuming that the tax extenders on cap gains, dividends, and rates will expire? Are you not taking credit for that in your budget resolution?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we will go to the Senator from Texas.

Mr. GREGG. Could we amend the unanimous consent to say that after Senator Stabenow speaks for 15 minutes we go to Senator Graham for 10 minutes and then to Senator Bunning for 10 minutes and the time that was supposed to start at 5:15 be moved to 5:20?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the budget. First, I express my respect for the people who have worked on this budget, my staff especially but also the Democratic staff, and the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad. We are, however, in an extraordinarily difficult time as a nation. We confront major issues. We confront international issues involving the threat of Islamic terrorism. We confront domestic issues of even more or equal significance--not equal significance; nothing is more significant than the threat of a terrorist attack with some sort of weapons of mass destruction, but we confront huge domestic issues such as the projected bankruptcy of the Nation. That is a pretty big issue, that is an undeniable fact that is going to occur unless we take some action because of the fact that the baby boom generation is beginning to retire, and the cost they will put on the Federal Government and, therefore, on our children who support them through taxes is going to be extraordinary. We also confront the extremely difficult issue of energy policy and the cost of gasoline. A barrel of gasoline went over $107. It is not projected to come down. The effect on the economy is devastating. We confront the fact that we have a Federal Government which is spending and continues to spend significantly more than it is taking in and, as a result, is spending the Social Security surplus and is significantly adding to the debt of the Nation. One would hope that in light of these very large issues--the threat of terrorism, the issue of the retirement of the baby boom generation and the fiscal devastation that is going to bring to our children's ability to have an affordable lifestyle, the issue of the cost of energy, the issue of the size of the Federal Government and its growth at a pace which it cannot sustain, the tax on the American people, which gasoline now represents, which is undermining the economy, and the general tax policy of the proposed budget which will undermine it even further--that the Democratic leadership of Congress would have come forward with a budget that showed some imagination, some creativity, some initiative in the area of addressing some of these crucial problems. Regrettably, what we got was the same old-same old--a budget filled with taxes; a budget filled with spending on this special interest program and that special interest program, a budget which underfunds the national defense, a budget which dramatically increases taxes on working Americans, a budget which dramatically increases the debt of the Federal Government and therefore the debt passed on to our children, a budget which raids the Social Security trust fund, a budget which has no creativity in the area of trying to address entitlement reform, a budget which uses gimmick after gimmick after gimmick and even gimmicks its own gimmicks in the area of pay-go, in the area of discipline, in the area of revenues. To say the least, it should be an embarrassment because it is such a mediocre presentation. It passes the problems on to the next generation. It doesn't confront them. It doesn't even try to confront them and simply aggravates those problems for the next generation. That is unfortunate because we are running out of time here. We are the generation of leadership, the baby boom generation. We have some obligation to fix the problems we are going to pass on to our children. I believe we have a significant obligation to do that. But this budget doesn't accomplish anything in that area. This budget has one thought in mind. It is not jobs, jobs, jobs, as the majority leader said; it is reelect, reelect, reelect--win the next election rather than trying to solve the problems which we are passing on to the next generation. The horizon of this budget is somewhere this July, this August, as we move into the full-scale election cycle, when they can go to this interest group and say, we have given you this money, and this interest group and say, we have given you this money, and then deny that they are taxing people because the taxes for those costs won't hit people until after the election and deny that they are fudging the numbers through using gimmicks because those events won't occur until after the election. It is truly a budget that fails on all counts to take on what is the real issues facing our Nation--how we fight terrorism, how we support our troops in the field, how we deal with this looming, massive, unfunded liability of the retirement of the baby boom generation which will put unsustainable costs on our children and make their lives essentially less viable in the way of affluence than ours has been, a budget that dramatically increases taxes on working Americans in the name of raising taxes on high-income Americans, a budget that dramatically grows the debt and raids Social Security funds. This list, as shown here, is what it does. I think I pretty much outlined it. It raises taxes by $1.2 trillion. It dramatically increases spending. I will get into that a little bit. It dramatically grows the debt. It gimmicks its own enforcement mechanisms--pay-go and all the other enforcement mechanisms it allegedly has in place. Then it does nothing to address the $66 trillion unfunded liability, which is such a huge number nobody can understand it. So to try to put it in context, it means, I think, that every American today has a $120,000 debt. This budget adds $24,000 to that debt. This budget does nothing to try to improve that situation. The chairman of the committee said: We need to be tough on spending. The number of spending cuts in the Democratic budget: zero. The number of spending increases: $22 billion over this baseline this year stated on the discretionary side. On the entitlement side: $466 billion--increases in spending. They allege it is $18 billion, but they play another one of their games, another one of their budget games. They take $4 billion in what is known as advanced appropriations--that means they take it out of next year and spend it this year--$4 billion additional doing that. It has been done in the past. I have opposed it in the past. But this time they plus up the number a little bit so their numbers can work so they can say to their different constituencies: We are going to spend money on you. You can have this money. We got it for you. We are going to borrow it from next year's budget--$4 billion. Mr. President, $22 billion in new spending. That is a pretty big number: $22 billion. That would literally run the State of New Hampshire for 3 or 4 years. But that is not the whole number because you have to put it in a 5-year context. It is actually over $200 billion of new discretionary spending because once you spend that $22 billion this year, it does not come out of the budget next year, it goes into what is known as the baseline. It becomes the floor, and we build on that. Last year, they wanted to spend $22 billion more too, so over 2 years they have bumped things up--or tried to bump things up--$44 billion. Plus last year they put in a supplemental for another $21 billion. I know these numbers are starting to be thrown around like crazy here, but the simple fact here is, it is big money--big money--being spent on constituencies that vote for them. The chairman of the Budget Committee said: I am prepared to get savings out of long-term entitlement programs. How many savings are there out of long-term entitlement programs in this budget? Zero net savings; zero. While the deficit in the long-term accounts goes up dramatically--$66 trillion is owed to those accounts we cannot pay for--this budget adds $466 billion into those accounts. It is a staggering amount of money. There is no attempt to adjust that at all. Now, it is interesting, we will hear from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--let me go to this one first, and then I will get into that. The national debt goes up over $2 trillion under this budget. Mr. President, $2 trillion is added to the national debt. My colleagues on the other side: ``I really believe increasing the debt is the threat.'' That is one of Senator Conrad's great phrases: The debt is the threat. I agree with him. The problem is, he is aggravating the threat with this budget. Now, he does not have too much choice because he is spending so much money we don't have that he is aggravating the debt. And now, the famous wall of debt chart. It goes up, and goes up dramatically, under this budget. We will hear from the other side of the aisle: But the President's budget does the same thing, or it is even worse. That is a canard. That is a straw dog. The President does not sign the budget. The President is not part of the budget process other than he has an obligation to send a budget up here for the purposes of our review, which is, depending on the President, uniformly rejected by the party in power. He sends up the budget. He announces what his priorities are. But, uniquely, the budget instrument--and this is an important point--is a child of the Congress. It is a child of the Congress. Congress produces the budget. The Senate produces a budget. The House produces a budget. It goes to conference committee. It comes back to the Senate and comes back to the House. But do you know what it does not do, as with most laws? It does not go to the President to be signed. He cannot veto a budget. He cannot sign a budget. He simply gets a budget in the form the Congress wants. It is a resolution. It is not a bill. Why is that? Because the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, and the people who put together the Budget Act--some of whom are still here, Senator Byrd and Senator Domenici being two of the key players in that in 1976, I think--knew the power of the purse, which is what the budget is all about, lies with the Congress. The Congress has the first and primary responsibility on the budget. So when you throw out: Well, but the President did this and the President did that, you are trying to hide in the weeds. Congress has the responsibility for the budget. It is the Congress which passes the resolution that creates the budget, and the President does not sign it at all. So it is the Congress you should turn to and say: You are the responsible party here. Are you being responsible? That is the issue: Are you being responsible as a Congress? This Congress is not being responsible because the big issues we face as a nation are either being finessed, gamed, ignored, or aggravated under this budget. As I said before, this budget adds $27,000--$27,000--to the debt that each child born today has to pay. So if you are having a child or you just had a child--I just had a niece this year. She is a wonderful little girl. She came into the world. She got a $27,000 bill from the Democratic leadership of this Congress--a pretty stiff bill to stick her with, a pretty stiff bill to stick any American with who is just getting started. It is not fair at all. Let's get into some specifics about this budget. First is the allegation that there is some sort of disciplining mechanisms around here. I take this on first because it is such a fraud that it has to be taken on first. I have heard more Senators on the other side of the aisle saying: We are going to use pay-go to discipline the budget, darn it. When we use pay-go, we limit spending around here. ``Pay-go'' is a motherhood term, regrettably. It is a title that has been put on supposedly a procedure which requires you to pay for new spending and to pay when you cut taxes. Well, time and time again, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, when they were confronted with a choice of actually having to use pay-go--which would have caused them to have to cut spending somewhere in order to increase spending somewhere else--gamed the system. They moved a year here or a year there so they would not be subject to pay-go. They cut programs from reasonable funding levels such as SCHIP by 85 percent in 1 year, so they would not be confronted--knowing it was never going to happen--so they would not be confronted with pay-go enforcement mechanisms. They took the MILC Program and put it in a supplemental bill so they could build it into the base and not be subject to pay-go. Time after time after time--15 different times--they gamed pay-go to the tune of $143 billion. I call it ``Swiss cheese-go.'' I think that is a much more truth-in-labeling act. There is no reason we should ever call this thing pay-go again. Let's just call it ``Swiss cheese-go'' because that is what it is. Whenever it is inconvenient for the Democratic leadership to have to subject themselves to their own discipline rules, they waive them, game them, or ignore them. The first obligation of a national government is national defense. The most important thing about national defense is to make sure your soldiers who are in the field have the resources they need to do the job we have asked them to do. Whether you agree with what they are doing, you should never send a soldier into the field and not support that soldier with everything he or she needs. I understand there is a huge debate, especially on the other side of the aisle, as to whether we should cut the legs out from underneath our troops in Iraq. We all understand that. We voted on it here 43 times in this Congress. But there should be no question that those soldiers need the support as long as they are in the field. It is totally inappropriate and a total abrogation of responsibility of the Congress not to support those soldiers in the field. Now, in this exercise, the White House does not come with clean hands. I was fairly aggressive in complaining about their decision to send up a request for only $70 billion--which is a lot of money, but that is nowhere near what it is going to cost to keep our soldiers in the field over the next year. To their credit, at least, the people at the Pentagon--Secretary Gates, when confronted with that number, said: No, that is wrong. Even though OMB may have sent it up here in the President's presentation, it is wrong. We are going to need something like $150 billion to $170 billion, somewhere between $80 billion and $100 billion more than they have in the budget. The chairman of the Budget Committee agreed. He said: And we know, I think with great certainty, $70 billion is not the right answer for 2009, zero is not the right answer for 2010. Those are the two numbers the White House had. And Secretary Gates said: No, it is not the right answer, when he was asked. He said: It has to be a higher number. So the documentation is pretty clear, even if the White House did not send up the right number, by the time we acted--and remember, once again, it is the Congress that does the budget, not the White House--by the time we acted, we should have put a number in here that adequately reflects what our soldiers are going to need to remain safe. Now, even if you oppose this war vehemently, as some do on the other side of the aisle--to the point where they are willing to take soldiers out next week, which you cannot physically do; we all know it will take 6 months to a year to get the soldiers out of there--with this number, you cannot get the soldiers back with $70 billion, literally. This number does not allow you to get the soldiers back. What happens with this number is you are going to have our soldiers in the field without ammunition, without resupply, without the facilities they need, and without the equipment they need. This number assumes we are going to leave our soldiers in the field unprotected-- unprotected. It is an inexcusable, irresponsible number to put in the budget simply to make your budget look better. This number should have been at least $70 billion to $100 billion higher to have an accurate budget. Then the budget moves on. We have heard more about how there are uncollected taxes, and if we collect the uncollected taxes, we will solve all our problems. I call it the ``Wizard of Oz'' approach to budgeting. There is somebody behind a curtain somewhere who owes us a lot of money. We are going to find that person. We are going to get the money. That is going to take care of everything. We will all be happy. Last year, they suggested we do this to the tune of $300 billion. Last year, they were given the benefit of the doubt. They had never done a budget before, so you have to give them some benefit of the doubt. OK. Let's see how much they got. The chairman of the committee again: If we just collect 15 percent of the [tax gap]-- That is what is referred to-- that would be over $300 billion. That alone would come close to meeting the revenues needed under our budget resolution. That was last year. Do you remember how much they collected last year from the tax gap? Zero. In fact, they cut in their budget the collection capabilities of the IRS. Not only was the IRS not able to go out and collect more money that was owed, they were having trouble collecting what they did get which was owed because their collection process has been cut. So you would think after such a pathetic performance they would presume not to do this again. It would take incredible--I don't know-- verve to claim one more time that you are going to generate these types of revenues. But they do. They do: $300 billion. They are going to get it from out there in the virtual land of tax policy. What they got was zero--zero. This budget at its essence is a massive tax increase. That is essentially what it is. It is a massive tax increase, the purpose of which is to expand the size of the Federal Government--grow the Federal Government--and, in my humble opinion, as a result, make it much more difficult for us as a government to produce a positive and strong economy and to give people an opportunity to live lives that are as affluent and, hopefully, as successful as prior generations. The amount of tax increase in the bill is $1.2 trillion--the largest tax increase in history: $1.2 trillion. Under the assumptions of this budget, every tax goes up to rates which were fairly high and which the Congress agreed were too high back in the early 2000s. The marriage penalty goes up. The child tax credit goes up. Rates go up. Capital gains go up. Dividends go up. The estate tax goes up. They are all assumed to go up. AMT is assumed to be continued for every year but this year. We have a new chart called the ``Wall of Taxes'' because that is what this budget does. It generates a wall of tax increases, climbing every year as a percentage of GDP. It is important to know it has historically been the case that we have presumed the Federal Government would take something akin to 18.2 percent of Gross National Product in tax revenues. That has been the case since the end of World War II. This budget blows through that number. But equally important, it should be noted that in blowing through that number and adding $1.2 trillion in new taxes, it doesn't address the outyear issues which are going to cause taxes to go up even higher. The failure to do anything on entitlement reform and then use up all the revenues to fund this group and that group that you happen to be happy about giving money to for the next election puts you in an even worse position when, hopefully, the Congress gets around someday to addressing the biggest fiscal policy issue, which is entitlement reform. In addition, it needs to be noted this tax increase of $1.2 trillion is the beginning. It is the beginning of the Democratic proposals. Because if we listen to their two national candidates for President, in the case of one, they have already offered and put in place over $300 billion--$300 billion of new programs in 1 year. That adds up to something like $1.2 trillion of additional programs over 5 years. That is on top of this number. Now, when Senator Obama makes that representation: I am going to add $300 billion of new programs every year, the practical effect is he has to pay for it somehow. His claim is he is going to pay for it by taxing the rich. He is going to tax the rich and pay for his--he actually, ironically, has the same number here: $1.2 trillion of additional spending over that 5-year period. Well, if you tax the rich, which would mean you raise the top bracket from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, which was the bracket under President Clinton, you generate how much income to the Federal Government? Twenty-five billion dollars. Multiply that by 5 years, which is what this number is--the $1.2 trillion Senator Obama has suggested we spend in new programs--and you have $225 billion. So he is about $1 trillion short in order to pay for what he is suggesting in new programs. But there is another irony. This tax number already assumes that $225 billion. This tax number assumes the rates have been increased to 39.6 percent for the top income brackets, with the practical effect of that being it has already been spent. This budget already spends the money and the tax revenues candidate Senator Obama has suggested he is going to spend on his new programs. So he doesn't have any money available to him. So now we have a Democratic budget which increases taxes by $1.2 trillion, increases spending dramatically, as I have gone through already, and then you have layered on top of that a national candidate--two national candidates, because Senator Clinton is not far behind Senator Obama in suggesting new programs--who is going to add another $1.2 trillion on top. The numbers become staggering. But what does it all translate into? Huge tax increases on working Americans--huge, absolutely staggering. To try to put this in context, without the Obama tax increases or the Clinton tax increases, 27 million small businesses in this country, under the Democratic budget, will see their taxes go up $4,100 each per year. Now, you can double that if Senator Obama were to put in all his programs. Eighteen million seniors will see their taxes jump $2,200 each because of this budget--$2,200 each. That is a lot of money. Let's try to put that in context. That basically buys groceries for most Americans for, I think it is half a year. It certainly buys a fair amount of gas, although not as much as we would like because the price of gas is so outrageous. It certainly helps with a mortgage payment or maybe a child going to school or helping a grandchild go to school in the case of a senior. But serious money: $2,200. That is what this budget in new taxes is going to cost average seniors in this country. Something else should be pointed out. This budget assumes the capital gains and dividend rates are going to go up, and the primary benefit of capital gains and dividend rates flows through senior citizens. As a percentage, seniors take more advantage of dividend rates and more advantage of capital gains than any other demographic group. So it is directly targeted on the tax increase. All of this works out to--for the average American family, there is a $2,300 tax increase in this bill, and that doesn't include how much it would be increased if you were to put the Obama or Clinton programmatic initiatives on top of that. It would almost double this number. The appetite to raise taxes on the other side of the aisle is unquenchable. It is huge. Let's put it that way. It is unstoppable, it appears. When this budget passes, John Q. Public is going to have to write Uncle Sam a check for $2,300. That is a pretty expensive experience for the American people. What do they get for it? What do they get for it? Let's come back to what they get for it. Not a lot. Do they get the troops properly supported when they are fighting for us overseas? No. No, they are $100 billion short on that. Do they get entitlement reform that helps us down the road with the pressure that is going to be put on our children by the cost of the expansion of the entitlement programs due to the retirement of the baby boom generation? No. No, they don't get that. Do they get health care reform? No. There is no health care reform in here. Do they get tax reform? No. There is no tax reform in here. Do they get programmatic initiatives which make sense and which are presented in a coherent and orderly manner? Are there programs eliminated that have maybe been around too long in exchange for adding programs? We have study after study that tells us about programs we can eliminate. No, not one program is eliminated in this budget--just an expansion. Just add to the base; bump it up another $200 billion over the next 5 years and pass that bill on to our children. Passing the problem on, that is what this budget is. Courageous? Creative? Imaginative? Addressing the core issues which we confront as a nation and which do threaten us, whether it is terrorism, the cost of energy, the cost of the Government, the retirement of the baby boom generation? These issues are not going away, but you wouldn't know they even existed if you looked at this budget. It is a regrettable missed opportunity in a very difficult time. It is unfortunate that all it has become is your classic liberal tax-and-spend initiative. I yield the floor.