Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the proper order for the 2 minutes? Is there a tradition or an order on the 2 minutes?

Mr. GREGG. Thank you.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I have no objection. I want to make sure we are working off the same page on amendments to be offered. I will reserve the right to object to make sure we are on the same page.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I would be happy to do that approach. In talking to the Senator from Michigan, who has an interest in the asparagus program, if this is not a convenient time for her, I will substitute the amendment on the emergency funding, which is No. 3822, for the asparagus one, No. 3672, unless the Senator is ready to go.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, I suggest I be recognized to offer those three amendments and set a time limit at the convenience of the managers. I am agreeable to a time limit. I can proceed to offer them and my colleagues can work out the time agreements.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, I am wondering, does this mean we are not going to have votes on the amendments I am offering?

Mr. GREGG. No, but is it the understanding that at some point, we are going to get to votes on the 5 amendments that are part of the original 20 amendments that were agreed to?

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I rise to speak about amendments which I have pending to the agriculture bill. I hoped they would be voted on today. I guess there is a fundraiser this evening on the Democratic side of the aisle which allows us to not have any more votes. Certainly, I hope most will be voted on tomorrow. There are five amendments which I have proposed to the bill to try to make it a better bill, although it is a bill that has very serious problems. Let me talk about that quickly. This agriculture bill comes forward every 5 years. It is a reauthorization of the farm programs. The practical effect is every year consumers get sort of taken to the woodshed behind the barn and get fleeced. This is no change from that historic activity under the farm bill. Only this time the fleecing is happening by the use of jiggling numbers and gamesmanship of numbers. There is $34 billion of spending in this bill which is done through gimmicks--gimmicks to avoid what is euphemistically called pay-go around here, gimmicks to avoid budget points of order, gimmicks to make this bill cost less than it actually costs--$34 billion, with date changes and things such as that. Then there is another game that is played, which is money which has historically been spent by direct mandatory spending is taken from the mandatory spending accounts and moved over to the tax accounts. Basically, in the conservation area, where we used to have, I think, $5 billion or $3 billion of mandatory accounts spending, we now have $5 billion or $3 billion of what is known as tax credits. What is the practical effect of that? What it does by moving that spending over to the tax side is you free up that amount of money on the spending side, on the mandatory side to be spent, with the practical implication that the bill jumps in its cost by that amount of money. So you have a fairly significant increase by doing that. In the end, that adds to the deficit, of course, because you have ended up increasing spending by that amount of money. In addition, the bill adds a large number of new programmatic activities through the subsidy realm. We already subsidize a lot of farm products around here in a questionable way. Sugar is a good example of that. We basically subsidize sugar so that the price of sugar in this country is about 75 percent higher than it is on the world market. That has an effect not only on the cost of sugar but it also has an effect on things such as the production of ethanol, because ethanol can be produced from sugarcane. In addition, we subsidize all sorts of different commodities. As we know, the farm bill is the classic example of what you learned in school called log rolling. That is where you say, if you will vote for my subsidy, I will vote for yours, and down the road we go. You vote for wheat, I will vote for corn, corn will vote for soybeans, soybeans will vote for peanuts, peanuts will vote for cotton, and so forth and so on. So although none of these subsidies could stand on their own, when they get in this sequential support effort, they build a very solid wall of support for a lot of programs which are of questionable need, and certainly of questionable value when you look at a market economy, and we are supposedly a market economy. Of course, in the farm area we are not a market economy, we are a throwback to a commissar economy. Well, in this bill they add a number of new programs. They add an asparagus payment, they add a chickpea payment, they add a camellia subsidy, and they create new programs in the area of a national sheep and goat industry. They create a new program to look at the stress farmers are under. So they add a panoply of new programmatic activity in this bill, most of which is of questionable value, but it obviously has some interest group which promoted it and, therefore, it gets put in the bill. What I have done is I have lined up five amendments here which I think are fairly reasonable and address a number of issues--policywise big issues, and from a farm standpoint some of them address fairly narrow and concise issues. The first amendment which I have offered--which has been offered on my behalf by Senator Thune, but which I will call up and ask for a vote on as soon as we can get to it, as soon as we can get people to give us votes around here--is the mortgage forgiveness amendment. What we are seeing in America today, whether it is in farm America, rural America, or in urban America, is obviously a huge meltdown in the subprime lending markets. The effect of that meltdown is that many people are finding their mortgages foreclosed on, which is obviously an extremely traumatic event, to have your house taken in a mortgage foreclosure. I can't think of too many more traumatic physical events than that. Obviously, there are more traumatic health events, but not too many more physical events or economic events. Well, when you have a mortgage foreclosed on, you have a second totally incomprehensible event. The IRS assesses you a tax on the amount of the money which you owed to the bank, or to the lender, which you couldn't repay and which was wiped out in the foreclosure. For example, if you have an obligation to a bank of $150,000 and your home is foreclosed on, and it is sold for something that recovers $100,000 of that, then that $50,000 difference becomes personal income to you and the IRS sends you a tax bill for it, even though you got foreclosed on. Well, can you think of anything worse than that? I can't, from the standpoint of economics happening on a daily basis--a person loses their home and then the IRS collection agents come by and say you owe us X number of dollars because your home was foreclosed on. Well, this amendment would put an end to that. It would say that will not be deemed income to the taxpayer, so that a taxpayer whose home is foreclosed on does not receive the double whammy of having a tax bill sent to them. It seems pretty reasonable to me. I can't imagine anybody is going to oppose this amendment. I would hope it would get a very large vote. It is not subject to a point of order, because the cost of it is within what is left on the pay-go scorecard, to the extent there is anything left on the pay-go scorecard, it having been shredded. But Senator Conrad said last week there was $670 million left on the pay-go scorecard, which my staff confirms, as ranking member of the Budget Committee, and this amendment costs less than that. So it is in order, and I hope it will be supported. I think it is only the fair and right thing to do. I mean, this is a quirk of tax policy which, unfortunately, if you are caught in it as a citizen of America it is not a quirk, it is a devastation, and it is not right. Nobody, because their home gets foreclosed on, should suddenly get a tax bill for the amount the bank didn't recover from the home they sold. The second amendment I am going to call up, and hope I can call it up very soon and get a vote on it, is already pending, and it is what I call the ``baby doctors for farm families'' amendment. Today, in rural America, there is a crisis in the area of health care. There are a lot of problems in health care across this country, but especially in rural America there is a significant crisis. The crisis is this: If you are a woman of childbearing age, or a woman, period, you are going to have a lot of trouble finding an OB-GYN. Why is that? Because baby doctors are being sued out of existence in rural America. As a result of the avariciousness of the trial lawyers in this country, and their constant attack especially on the practice of obstetrics and delivering babies, it is virtually impossible, it is extremely difficult for OB-GYNs to practice in rural communities, whether they are farm communities or rural communities. Why is that? Because the base of practice, the number of people they can see, the number of babies they deliver never creates enough revenue to simply pay the cost of their malpractice insurance. And it is a crisis. If you are a woman in a farm community and you have to drive 2, 3, 4 hours to see a doctor when you are having a baby, that can be a serious problem, obviously. It can be a serious problem on the face of it, but it is especially a serious problem in a place such as New Hampshire, where you are probably driving in a snowstorm or sleet or something else that is not very easy to drive in, and you shouldn't have to go that sort of distance. We have suggested that simply in the area of baby doctors in rural America that we put in place something to support the women in those communities and make sure they have proper access to those doctors. Essentially, we are following the Texas and the California proposal, where we limit pain and suffering liability in a manner which allows these doctors to have affordable malpractice premiums. It doesn't mean somebody who gets injured doesn't get recovery. They do. They get full and total recovery in the area of economics. They get significant recovery in the area of pain and suffering. But what we do not have are these explosively large verdicts which essentially make it impossible for someone to pay the cost of the premium to support an obstetrics practice in a rural area. This proposal, which is very narrow and very reasonable, will serve a very large need in our country. It is to make sure that women get proper health care, and especially during their childbearing years, in rural America. Again, I can't imagine this being opposed, but actually this one is being opposed aggressively by the trial lawyer lobby. They are opposed to anything that limits their income in any way, even when it is something as reasonable as saying in an area where we have a clearly underserved population, which is rural America and doctors serving women in rural America, doctors who deliver babies. They are going to stop any sort of reform that tries to make it possible to improve that situation. We know this reform works. Why do we know it works? Because Texas has tried it. The language here mirrors Texas. Texas tried it, and what Texas has seen during this period when they put in this law is a huge influx of doctors who deliver children, who are baby doctors. So there is a track record. This isn't some sort of theoretical exercise. We know in practice that this works. I know if it were in place, it would give a lot of women in this country the comfort of knowing they were going to have a decent doctor, or any doctor--it would be a decent doctor, obviously--to care for them as they decide to have children. I hope we can get to this amendment. But again, I am interested in the fact that this amendment is being stonewalled by the other side of the aisle. They are telling me, well, we can't vote on this amendment. Why? Because we have a fundraiser tonight. I wonder who is at that fundraiser, by the way? There wouldn't be any trial lawyers there. We can't vote on this amendment because we don't have our people here. Well, there ought to be enough votes to take care of women in this country so you wouldn't have to have extra people here to defeat a proposal which is fairly reasonable and which tracks a major State's decision and which has been proven to work when it comes to caring for women who want to have children. It is very narrow. Again, it only applies to rural communities, only applies to doctors who deliver babies in rural communities, only gives women an opportunity to get decent health care. I have another amendment which I hope to call up, which I would like to have voted on fairly soon. And by the way, I am agreeable to voting on all these tonight. I am agreeable to a half-hour timeframe. I am agreeable to voting them all tomorrow. So I am not holding this bill up. I am offering these amendments. They are pending and they are ready to go. Another amendment I have says this new program of creating a farmers stress network should not be created. This is more of a statement. I mean how many new programs can we create in this bill? This is an unauthorized program. It is not funded. But I suspect it will be appropriated before we get too far down the road. But why do we need a stress program for farmers? Granted, farmers are under stress. I used to work on a farm, so I understand that farming is a stressful activity. But running a shoe store during an economic downturn is a stressful activity, running a restaurant is a stressful activity, running a garage is a stressful activity. There are a lot of activities in America that involve stress. Are we going to set up a stress network for every activity in America that has stress? And are we going to expect the Federal Government to fund it? Yeah. My goodness, think of what we would have to do for our wonderful staff here. My goodness, we would have to have such a program it would be incredible, because we really give them a lot of stress. The simple fact is, you can't keep throwing these programs out there because they make good press releases. There are 51 new programs in this bill. Let us at least pick one of them that is so far off the ranch when it comes to being anything rational that the American taxpayer should have to pay for and say, no, we are not going to go this way. That would be a nice gesture. A gesture to the American taxpayer, I would call it. Kill the stress network. Then I have an amendment which says the money in here for the asparagus program shouldn't be in here. I like asparagus. I have been accused of not liking asparagus, and that is why I am being bringing this forward. That is not true. I actually like asparagus. In fact, I have even grown asparagus. It is very easy to grow, after you get it cultivated. It takes 2 or 3 years to get a good asparagus bed, and you can grow a lot of asparagus, as long as you don't rototill over it. Then you kill it, which is what I did to my asparagus. But as a practical matter, there is no reason we should set up a new program for asparagus. This is going too far. A lot is going too far in this bill, but this is another example of going too far. Now, granted, it is only $15 million, but, again, I like to think of it as a statement on behalf of the American taxpayer that we are not going to spend that money on a brandnew asparagus program. There are some others we should also throw out. The camellia program we should throw out, the chickpea program--these are all new programs. They should go out too. But I was only allowed five amendments, and so I picked out the ones I think are most egregious and the ones I think we should make a little attempt to try to put some fiscal discipline into this bill. Then there is one that is fairly big, which is my last amendment. There is $5 billion in this bill which is the ultimate earmark. It is $5 billion alleged to be an emergency fund for when emergencies strike farm communities. You have to understand how this works. Essentially this is a slush fund. It is a ``walking around money'' fund for about five States. It is, purely and simply, an earmark and a classic porkbarrel initiative. We know that when we have an emergency in this country we will fund it, especially if the emergency is in farm country. We do it every year, and I believe historically it has averaged about $3.5 billion. I think that is the number. It is off the top of my head as a budgeter. I think that is the number we usually spend on emergencies in farm communities. If it is bigger than that, we spend more than that; if it is less than that, we spend less. But when you put in place a program which exists before the emergency occurs, all you are saying is: Here is a bunch of money folks, come and get it. For every big windstorm that occurs in North Dakota, somebody is going to declare an emergency and try to get reimbursed for their mailbox that got blown over because the money is sitting there. It is that simple. It really is terrible policy to put this forward. You have absolutely set a floor. You know you are going to spend every year in this account, and you know it is going to go to four or five States because that is where the claims are made. Much better is the approach we presently use, although not perfect, I admit to that. Much better is to identify it when the emergency occurs, know what the costs were when the emergency occurred, and then pay those costs in order to reimburse the farm community which has been impacted, which is what we do. And we do it in a fairly prompt and efficient way around here whenever there is such an event. There is one emergency out there today, and that is the price of oil. The price of oil has jumped radically. As a result, the cost of heating in this country has jumped radically. People who are of low income, in States from the northern tier especially--places such as Minnesota, New Hampshire--people of low income are in dire need of additional funds in order to meet their heating bills or else, literally, they are going to be in the cold. They are going to spend this winter, as we head into February, in serious straits. In New Hampshire, we have already seen a significant increase in the number of people applying for low-income home energy assistance. This is not going to wealthy people. This doesn't even go to middle-income people. It just marginally goes to low-income people. It really goes to people in the lowest of low incomes, people who really need that in order to make ends meet and keep their heat on in the winter. What I am suggesting is if we are going to declare emergencies around here and spend money, let's use the money on a real emergency, something that actually exists where people are actually feeling the pain right now, today--in the area of paying for heating for low-income families. In addition, I have suggested that we reduce the deficit because that is a pretty big emergency, in my humble opinion, getting this deficit down. So this amendment essentially says let's take $1 billion and add it to the low-income heating assistance program and let's take the other $4 billion and reduce the deficit with it. That is a pretty practical approach. That is addressing a need that exists today and a need that is going to exist tomorrow, which is to reduce the deficit, rather than adding to the deficit and creating an emergency spending account which basically ends up being a slush fund and walking-around money for folks in four or five States that traditionally declare emergencies. Those are the five amendments. I regret quite honestly that we cannot get an agreement to vote on all of them right now. I would be willing to say: OK, let's debate all of them for half an hour and then go to a vote, in seriatim vote them--bang, bang, bang, bang. Obviously, I have serious reservations about this bill. I think it is very bad policy in a lot of areas. But I recognize that the votes are there to pass the bill, so I am not trying to delay it in some tactical or procedural way. I am suggesting just the opposite, that we proceed to vote on issues which are important, which include making sure people whose homes are foreclosed on do not end up with the tax man showing up the next day and saying they owe money on money they didn't ever see as a result of their home being foreclosed on; making sure that women who are having children can see a doctor in a rural community, that farm families have adequate access to baby doctors; making sure that people who are very low income have enough to be able to meet the heating costs of this winter, which we know are going to be 30 percent to 40 percent higher than they were last winter; making sure that we reduce the deficit; suggesting we eliminate a couple of programs which are not that big but which are sort of examples of an underlying problem, which is that there is a lot of new programmatic activity here that probably should not be here and there are a lot of new subsidies in here that should not be in here--the asparagus program and the farmers stress network program. Amendment No. 3673 Madam President, at this time I would like to call up amendment No. 3673. I am not calling it up for a vote because I understand it is not agreed to, but I do want to call it up and send a motion to the desk.

Mr. GREGG. I am calling up the medical malpractice amendment, not for a vote but because I want to second-degree it.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask for the regular order relative to amendment No. 3673.

Mr. GREGG. I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, at this point I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. What is the order of recognition? Is it the Democratic side or Republican side?

Mr. GREGG. Does the Senator wish to proceed?

Mr. GREGG. I will be happy to allow you.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the chairman of the Finance Committee outlining the problems with the AMT. I agree 100 percent with his statement relative to the problems with the AMT. He is absolutely accurate. It was a concept passed with the consequences being--with the known consequences being--to make sure people who had high incomes would pay a fair share of taxes. It turns out it was drafted poorly, it was not indexed for inflation. As a result, we have literally millions of people who are paying this tax who should not have to pay this tax, and therefore it should be repealed. Actually, it should be repealed permanently. There is no reason for us to even go 1 year. We should do the whole thing, get it done. But this bill which is being brought forward on which cloture is being filed in order to proceed to it is a very bad approach. Because basically what this bill is saying is a tax which was never intended to be in place, people who were never supposed to pay this tax and, therefore, to correct it is not giving them a tax cut, it is simply saying: You are going to be taxed the way we expected you to be taxed. Or to put it another way: If the alternative minimum tax goes forward, people are going to pay a tax they should not have to pay because it was never perceived they would have to pay it. A bill which should accomplish that, which should give those people relief, is being coupled with tax increases on people who should not have to pay new taxes to correct the alternative minimum tax problem. It is also being coupled with a bill which has some bad policy in it. For example, this bill will stop, stop the IRS from proceeding with investigations and action, potential action, against people who are using the Virgin Islands as a tax shelter. There are 279 investigations going forward right now relative to Americans who have basically created a shell lifestyle in the Virgin Islands so they can avoid taxes in the United States, which they probably owe. It is estimated there may be as much as $370 million of taxes owed to the United States by those high-income individuals. What does this bill do that came to us from the House? It says: We are going to stop that. We can no longer investigate those people. The IRS can no longer continue to proceed with an action against those people who are basically trying to escape American tax law. It also, this bill, includes in it a tax deduction for State legislators during periods when they are not in session. How about a little gift to our friends in the State legislature maybe in New York. So that if the New York legislator does not even go to Albany, they are still able to deduct their per-diem expense. That is called porkbarrel tax policy, I suspect. Those are terrible policies. But the larger policy which is bad, which is in the bill before us, is we are essentially going to hit partnerships and individuals with something called a carried interest tax, the practical effect of which will be that people who are involved in the financial business of this world--in the United States, not the world, people who are involved in the financial business in this country--and I know there is not a lot of sympathy for those folks because they make a lot of money. We would all like to make a lot of money like that. But these folks are essentially the engine of a large part of our economy. They are the ones who are creating the capital which is then invested in the businesses. They are the entrepreneurs who then create jobs. Jobs do not appear from thin air. They do not. They appear because someone out there is a creative individual who says: I have an idea. I am going to start this little company. I am going to start this little restaurant. I am going to start this little business. They build it, and then they get to a certain point where they need more money in order to expand it to create more jobs. Where do they get the more money? It does not appear from thin air. It appears from the fact that we have financial markets, the most viable capital markets in the world where people can raise money. They go into the market, and they say to the people who are the professionals: We need X amount of dollars in order to expand our business so we can create more jobs in New Jersey or in New Hampshire or in Montana or in Texas. We are coming to you to help us raise capital. Those folks go out and they raise the capital. They invest it in those businesses and those businesses create jobs, those entrepreneurs create jobs. What this bill says is: Those people who are in those financial markets will receive a brandnew tax on what they consider to be the way they raise money and create wealth for Americans by creating jobs, in what they consider to be a fair way to do it, which under the tax law today they are not taxed for it. It is a brandnew tax. What is the practical implication of putting this new tax in place in order to pay for the elimination of a 1-year kicking down the road of the alternative minimum tax expansion? Which should be done. The practical implication of doing it by raising taxes in this way is that, first, people who should have not paid taxes under the AMT will not have to pay their taxes. That is good. We should not have counted that revenue anyway. But, second, you are going to put in place a new tax system which would drive those people who create that financial incentive, which creates jobs, which gives business people and small entrepreneurs in this country the revenue and capital they need to create jobs, you will drive them overseas. We will be exporting jobs again because we are in global competition in the area of capital. One of our biggest problems in this country today is a lot of the capital that is being formed in this world today, which used to be done in New York, where if you wanted to raise capital in this world, you used to come to New York. Unfortunately, it is a world competition, and now places such as London are competing with us, and they are being very effective in their competition. One of the reasons they are able to compete with us effectively is we have put a lot of restrictions on our people which have been maybe a little bit over the top and, more importantly, we have a tax policy which has not been constructive, which has not encouraged people to stay here. It encourages them to go overseas. The effect of this proposal will be to even aggravate that further. We will be exporting more jobs. More importantly, not only will we be exporting the job of the person in the financial market, we will be exporting the creation of the capital. That is serious. Because that capital is the feed corn for the expansion of our economy. You should not be raising taxes at this time. That is another point that should be made--this alternative minimum tax proposal which comes to us from the House raises taxes. That is pure and simple. We are headed into potentially an economic slowdown. That is the way it looks. Because of the subprime crisis, because of the capital market crisis, we are heading into some sort of a slowdown. Hopefully, it will not be severe, but it could be difficult. There is no question about that. To raise taxes in the face of that type of a slowdown is the absolute opposite of what any reasonable person who has experienced any economic slowdown would do. In fact, recently I was interested to read what Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration and who is readily acknowledged as being a liberal economist, and a very talented one by the way, he went to Dartmouth, so I know he is talented. Robert Reich said: A tax increase at this time would be foolish. What we should be talking about is a tax cut. Actually, what we should be talking about, and what we on our side would like to do, quite honestly, is put in place an alternative minimum tax fix which is permanent. That has been proposed by a number of us on our side. Let's correct this problem so we do not have to deal with it this year, next year, or the year after. That is the first thing we should do. Short of that, we should put one in that is a little bit longer, at least, so there is some predictability in the tax law. But under no circumstances should we put in place an AMT fix which is coupled with a tax increase or which is coupled with terrible policies such as this Virgin Island loophole and this State legislator loophole that was put in this bill. That is why we resist this approach. The Republican leader came to the floor a couple days ago and suggested three or four different avenues where we could correct this problem. They were all fairly reasonable. I don't know why they were rejected by the other side of the aisle. My sense is that we should be able to work this out because I honestly believe, when I listen to the chairman of the committee, that there is not that much difference between where he wants to go and where our side would like to end up, which is let's straighten out the AMT. Let's put all this additional tax policy and these tax increases which have come from the House aside. Let's say: The House got off on the wrong track. Let's just take this approach of doing AMT and do AMT and fix that, and then, if the House wants to come back with a tax increase bill, we will fight that out on a separate agenda. We can't on our side support a bill and vote for cloture on a bill which would mean we would be shut off from a lot of our amendments, vote in a way which would basically put us in a position which would potentially lead to a tax increase in order to correct what is an underlying important problem. Obviously, this is a motion to proceed, so we might not be shut off from amendments, but I suspect the motion to proceed will be followed very closely by the filing of cloture on the underlying bill. I am not too concerned about the fact that we would not be allowed our approach. If the position of the other side of the aisle is, we are willing to give you your votes, let's set that up right now. Let's take the Republican leader's position, set up three or four votes in tandem, make them all 60-vote hurdles, if that is what it requires--and that is what it will require because pay-go is going to get waived on every one of them--and vote on them--bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Let's not go through this exercise on cloture. We want to correct the AMT problem. We think it should be corrected. We don't think the way to correct it is to raise taxes on the productive side of the American agenda and potentially throw us into a further slowdown of the economy or force people to go overseas in order to raise capital or, alternatively, put in place policies which basically make the Virgin Islands a safe haven for people who want to avoid American taxes or give State legislators the opportunity to claim a per diem deduction when they are not even going to work. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, because I don't think this is inconsistent with what the Senator from Montana, chairman of the Finance Committee, has asked for, I renew the Republican leader's request from yesterday. I ask unanimous consent that at a time determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to consideration of H.R. 3996, the House-passed AMT bill, and it be considered under the following limitations: there be 1 hour of debate on the bill equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, followed by a vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the bill; provided further that if cloture is not invoked, then the only amendments in order to the bill be the following offered in the following order: a substitute amendment to be offered by Senator McConnell or his designee which is to be an offset AMT extension and an unoffset extenders package, a Baucus or designee first-degree amendment to the McConnell substitute which is to be a set of offsets for the extender package, a Sessions amendment related to AMT and exemptions, an Ensign amendment which is an AMT repeal and extends other expiring provisions, and a DeMint amendment which relates to the AMT and flat tax; provided further that there be an additional 2 hours of debate on the bill equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; that there be a time limitation of 2 hours for debate on each amendment equally divided in the usual form; provided that each amendment require 60 votes in the affirmative for adoption and that each amendment that does not receive 60 votes then be withdrawn. I further ask that notwithstanding the adoption of any substitute amendment, the other amendments be in order; and finally, that following consideration of the above amendments, 60 votes be required for passage of the bill, as amended, if amended. This outlines a procedure to accomplish what I believe the Senator from Montana requested because it does have his first degree. There are three other amendments in there, but they are all subject to 60 votes-- the Sessions, Ensign, and DeMint. If they fail, they fail. One presumes that, depending on the position of the Senator from Montana, since he controls more than 40 votes on his side, that would happen and that we would then proceed in this way.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the objection of the Senator from Montana. I understand he believes the suggestion he is proposing is the right way to proceed. I would note that this subjects everything to a time limit. Yes, the flat tax is going to be debated for 2 hours, and, no, it is not going to get 60 votes, so it will not be in the final package. Yes, the Ensign proposal, which is essentially a repeal of the AMT and also extends the cap gains dividend rates--I believe that is the proposal--would be brought forward. It would be debated for 2 hours, and then we would move on. I actually hope that one might pass. In any event, this sets out a pretty tight timeframe. If you take all the factors here, we could finish this by sometime around 7 o'clock tonight, assuming everybody wants to talk for 2 hours, which they probably wouldn't, and be done. We would get it done, get the AMT straightened out, and have done some good work around here. I suspect-- though I won't guarantee this--the final resolution of this proposal, which Senator McConnell made yesterday, would be closer to what the Senator from Montana wants than the bill he is suggesting we vote cloture on relative to proceeding.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to congratulate the Senator from Iowa and the Senator from Montana for bringing the bill to the floor. Earlier in the day, we had a discussion about the underlying bill, which is the bill that came over from the House, and the reservations I had about this, specifically the fact that it raises taxes. It raises them in an inappropriate way, in a way, in my opinion, which would chill economic expansion in this country, would undermine our ability to create capital in this country and, as a result, would undermine the ability of entrepreneurs to go out and create jobs. It would have the effect of exporting jobs offshore, as a practical matter in the financial markets and, unfortunately, would probably have an equally detrimental effect of encouraging places such as London to become even more aggressive as they compete for our capital formation activity, which has always historically occurred in New York City, which plays a large role in the energy of our Nation's economy. So the underlying bill has serious problems as it came over from the House. It also had a specific earmark to basically benefit essentially 290 people who are using the Virgin Islands as a tax shelter. It had another specific earmark to benefit State legislators who would get a per diem for not even showing up at their State legislature. It was a very poor bill. The proposal as brought forward from the Senator from Montana is an excellent approach: Let's take care of the AMT for next year. Let's move on. Let's do this quickly so the people who are being subject to this or may be brought into this improperly, who were never supposed to be brought into this, can be relieved of that burden. Of course, there is the issue of whether there should be an offset. Well, of course, there should not be an offset. Looking at it from a budgeteer's standpoint, in my opinion, these are all phantom funds. We basically know the alternative minimum tax is not going to generate these revenues that we score as coming in because we know the AMT was never intended to tax 26 million Americans or 20 million Americans. We know that. But because of the rules, the arcane rules we have around here for budgeting, we basically have to include those revenues in this baseline, even though we know we are never going to tax people at those levels because it would be totally unfair and inappropriate. So I congratulate the Senator from Montana and the Senator from Iowa for coming forward with this approach to resolve this matter. I look forward to voting for the proposal. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, I suspect at a later time this will, hopefully, be worked out--hopefully sooner rather than later--but at this time I am going to have to object.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I understand the Senator from Idaho intends to speak. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to speak after he is concluded.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I rise to address the issue which has been noted by the Senator from Idaho, which is the process under which the farm bill is being considered in the Senate. A number of the Members on the other side of the aisle, primarily the leadership, have spoken on this process and have made the representation that in some way we, on our side, are slowing down this bill. Nothing could be less accurate, in my opinion. I know, although I do not happen to support the farm bill because I think it is bloated in many ways and essentially ignores the concept of a marketplace, the farm bill is going to pass. It always does pass. It always passes with a very large majority, which is assured by the fact that enough commodities are put into the subsidy system so that you can add up enough people to support it, so it will always pass with a large majority. And there will be 20 or 25 people who will vote against it. So I have never held any belief or even thought for a second this farm bill was not going to pass the Senate. It is going to pass the Senate. It has not been my intention to either slow it down or try to defeat it because I know I cannot do either--or I did not think I could do either. My intention was to improve it and to address issues which I think are relevant to it or which are appropriate to the issues which the Senate should be addressing today generally. But, unfortunately, on the procedure that has been structured by the majority leader, all Members of the Senate, but especially members of the minority--the Republican Members of the Senate--have been shut out of the ability to amend this bill. The majority leader has essentially created a system which you could call the ``permission slip'' approach to legislating. If he does not give you a blue permission slip, you cannot bring forward an amendment on this bill. Obviously, that does not work for those of us who wish to amend the bill. But, more importantly, it does not work for the institution. The essence of the Senate is the ability to amend legislation when it is on the floor. Washington described the Senate as the place where the hot coffee from the cup--referring to the House--it is the saucer into which that hot coffee is poured, so it can be looked at, thought about, and reviewed to make sure there is not hasty action, to make sure there is not precipitous action, to make sure there is not action which will come back to haunt us because we did not try our best to anticipate the consequences. So the Senate was structured to be a deliberative institution. That was its purpose. Our Founding Fathers designed it with that intent in mind, as expressed by George Washington. It has always worked that way. We have always, when we have had major pieces of authorizing legislation on the floor, had the opportunity to amend that legislation. Even if they are not major pieces of legislation, in many instances we have had the ability to amend it in just about any way we wanted. There was a statement that you have to do relevant amendments. Well, under the rules of the Senate, there is no such thing as relevant amendments. Everything is relevant. Irrelevant amendments are relevant because that is the way the Senate is structured. That is the way we work. If there is an issue of the time which a Member wants to bring forward to discuss and have voted on, the idea is the Senate will do that. Now, there is a procedure to cut off and go to relevant or germane amendments, but that procedure is a very formal procedure known as cloture and it takes 60 votes. That should not be done on a bill of this size until there has been adequate debate and a reasonable number of amendments considered. I noticed that the Senator from Michigan, whom I greatly admire and enjoy working with, had a large chart today which talked about the fact that there have been 55 filibusters by the Republican Party since the Senate has convened. That is sort of like, as I have said on occasion, the fellow who shoots his parents throwing himself on the mercy of the court because he is suddenly saying he is an orphan. The simple fact is the only reason there have been 55 cloture motions filed around here is because the majority party has decided to try to shorten debate and shorten the amendment process at a rate that has never occurred before. Bills are brought to the floor and cloture is filed instantaneously. That never used to happen around here. It is not our party which has been trying to extend these debates; it is the other party which has been trying to essentially foreshorten the debates in an extremely artificial and premature way and limit the capacity of the minority to make its points and to raise the issues it considers to be important. On almost every one of these bills--the 55 that are noted--agreement could have been reached, timeframes could have been agreed to, an amendment list could have been set, and we could have proceeded under regular order. But regular order was not allowed because the other side of the aisle wants to manage the Senate the way the House is managed: Where the majority party essentially does not allow the minority to offer amendments to the bills unless the majority party agrees to the amendments. Well, I can understand that in the House. There are 435 people there and it would be pretty much chaotic. But in the Senate, we are not designed that way. The whole purpose of this institution is to allow extensive discussion of legislation and amendments on legislation, whether the amendments are relevant or irrelevant. So the process that is being put in place is harmful, in my opinion, to the fundamental institution of the Senate, when you have a majority leader who comes forward, immediately fills the tree, and then says the majority leader is not going to allow any amendments to the bill unless the amendments are accepted by the majority leader which, of course, on its face is a little absurd. Obviously, if we were all going to offer amendments that agreed with the majority leader, we would all be in the majority leader's party. That is why we have a two-party system. The idea is a two-party system. The one party sometimes disagrees with the other party and tries to make the points we feel are important to govern us. But the majority leader closes the floor down, says we have a permission slip process where you have to get his blue slip of approval before we can move forward, and then he files cloture on the bill after having not allowed any amendments to move forward. I think that does fundamental harm to the institution. It creates a precedent around here that may well be a slippery slope for us as an institution. I remember a couple of years ago there was a big debate about whether we should do cloture, or needed cloture, on the issue of Supreme Court judges. On our side of the aisle, because there was a lot of foot dragging about some of the Supreme Court judges who were being nominated, there were many who felt we should go forward and have a ruling of the Chair which says it only takes 51 votes; the Constitution does not allow filibusters against Supreme Court judges. Well, some on our side of the aisle felt that was a slippery slope, that that type of a procedural heavy-handedness by the majority would harm the institution and would lead to serious ramifications down the road when the parties changed governance. This institution will not always have a Democratic majority. The facts are pretty obvious. We change around here. The American people like to have Government change. They like change. They get frustrated with the way things are going, so they make a change. There will be a Republican majority; I absolutely guarantee that. But the Democratic leadership, the majority leader, is in the process of setting a precedent, if he is successful, which will be extraordinarily harmful should a Republican majority take control and use that same precedent. So I think it is a huge mistake that this process has proceeded in this way and it is inconsistent with the facts on the ground. The majority leader has said we can only have relevant amendments-- relevant, ironically, as defined by the majority side. Well, history has shown us that is not the case. Even on farm bills--even on farm bills--especially on farm bills, amendments are brought forward which are irrelevant to the farm bill all the time. In fact, ironically, the majority leader has brought forward a number of those amendments. In 1996, for example, he offered an amendment to the farm bill regarding the importation of tea and the Board of Tea experts. In 1990, he offered an amendment to the bill regarding testing consumer products containing hazardous and toxic substances. In the year 2000, he offered an amendment to the farm bill regarding the Social Security trust fund and tax policy. In the year 2000, the majority leader offered an amendment to the farm bill regarding pest management in schools. The manager of the bill, Senator Harkin, in the year 2000, offered an amendment regarding fees on pesticide manufacturing. In the year 1985, he offered an amendment regarding the creation of additional bankruptcy judges in the State of Iowa. I would argue that none of those amendments, under the most liberal interpretation of what is relevant, would be defined as relevant in a postcloture exercise and, therefore, by the actions of the majority, and specifically the majority leader and the chairman of the committee; they have set a precedent that even if it weren't the right of the membership of the Senate, they have set a precedent that amendments which are not--which are irrelevant to the underlying bill can be brought forward, and they should be brought forward. For example, today the majority leader came down and made a very compelling statement relative to the dire straits that people are in who are having their mortgages foreclosed on because of this subprime meltdown we are having. It is serious. It is very serious. It is serious to those people especially, but it is also serious to the Nation as a whole because it is affecting the credit markets and it may be contracting the economy. I filed an amendment which would address that issue. Some farmers I suspect are caught up in this subprime foreclosure exercise, unfortunately. I bet there are some farm families who have been hit by this. I know there have been. So I think it is probably pretty relevant to these people who are farmers and, therefore, an argument could be made it is relevant to the bill. But I am not making that argument. I am saying that issue should be raised right now--we shouldn't wait--that the amendment I have offered which would essentially say that if your home is foreclosed on, you don't get hit with a tax bill for phantom income, which is what happens today. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to have your home foreclosed on, you get a tax bill from the IRS, even though you lost your home and even though you didn't get any income out of the foreclosure sale. That puts a little more pressure on the person who has had their home foreclosed on. That is a traumatic enough event, but to then have the IRS come after you, that is horrible. So this amendment would basically stop that practice. It would say to the IRS: No. You can't deem that as income. There are going to be some farmers who are going to need that protection, and there are going to be a lot of Americans who are going to need that protection, unfortunately. So we should take that amendment up. I would be happy to offer that amendment right now, but if I offered it right now, it would be objected to under the proposal because the majority leader has deemed it is not relevant to the farm bill and, therefore, he is not going to allow it to be debated. I happen to think it is a pretty darned important amendment. There are a couple of other amendments I have suggested. I have suggested 11 amendments to the bill. That is not outrageous. Some of them I think could probably be negotiated. I even suggested I would take 15 minutes of debate on them, 7\1/2\ minutes divided equally on each one of them. Unfortunately, the other side of the aisle rejected that idea--or they didn't formally object to it, but they told us we would want to talk a little bit more about some of these amendments. But the assistant majority leader on the Democratic side of the aisle came down to the floor and specifically called out a few of my amendments and said that they were the problem. They were the problem because they shouldn't be heard on this farm bill. He mentioned the mortgage amendment which we discussed. He also mentioned an amendment which I happen to think is pretty darn relevant to this bill, especially to rural America and farm communities, which is that in most of rural America today, there is a crisis relative to the ability of baby doctors to practice their profession. It is virtually impossible, for example, in northern New Hampshire to see an OB/GYN unless you drive through the mountains and down to the southern or mid part of the State. That is true across this country, because OB/GYN doctors--baby doctors--people who deliver babies in rural communities can't generate enough income because the populations aren't large enough to pay the cost of their insurance against frivolous lawsuits or lawsuits generally. So I have suggested that for those doctors specifically, so we can get more of them into the rural communities delivering babies for all the people who live in the rural communities but obviously for farm families, that we give protection to them--protection which tracks--it is not outrageous protection--the California protection for doctors which occurs generally under California law so the cost of their premium for malpractice insurance will not drive them out of practicing and delivering babies in rural America and especially to farm families. The Senator from Illinois said that was a frivolous--he didn't use the term ``frivolous''--he implied the amendment wasn't a good amendment; we shouldn't have to debate that amendment on this bill. Why not? Why not take up that amendment? Fifteen minutes I am willing to debate that amendment, 7\1/2\ minutes on both sides, and vote on it. Well, it is not because it is not relevant and it is not because it shouldn't be taken up; it is because there are a number of Members on their side of the aisle who said we don't want to vote that issue. It is a hard vote. Why? Because it makes sense. That is why I think it is a hard vote. But there are other people on the other side of the aisle who simply don't want to have to cast that vote. It is not about the relevance of that amendment; it is about the desire to avoid casting a difficult vote. Well, you were sent here; you should make difficult votes on public policy that is important, and that happens to be a fairly significant point of public policy that is important, whether women in rural America can have adequate and prompt access to an OB/ GYN. I think that is pretty darn important. Then the assistant leader said an amendment I had on the list, my 11 amendments--a small number of amendments--was not appropriate because it dealt with the Gulf of Mexico. Well, this amendment says, as a follow-on to the Oceans Commission, which did a very large, extensive study of the status of the ocean and America's involvement and what we should be doing relative to the ocean, which was completed about 2 years ago and which was created, authorized, and funded as a result of an initiative by Senator Hollings from South Carolina, with my support as a member of the appropriations subcommittee that had jurisdiction over NOAA, and the conclusion of this Commission, which was filled with the best and most talented scientists and leaders we have on the issue of how the ocean was being impacted, was that the Gulf of Mexico is being uniquely impacted by fertilizer runoff from the Midwest coming down the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the other tributaries of the Mississippi and going into the Gulf of Mexico, and we are getting a dead zone there, a very significant dead zone because of the phosphates and I think the nitrates. The Commission called for action. It said: We have to do something as a country about this. But what does this farm bill do? It expands dramatically the incentive to put more acreage into production, and I say: Fine. That is great. But it doesn't address the runoff issue, which is that additional production is going to occur, or the runoff issue that is occurring as a result of already existing production. So all this amendment does is say let's give NOAA the ability to go out and study this problem and see if they can come up--working with the Department of Agriculture--with some ideas on how we might be able to abate the harm we are doing as an unintended consequence of expanding our agricultural community, the harm we are doing to the Gulf of Mexico. But no, no, we can't take up that amendment. No, no. It doesn't get a blue slip, permission slip from the majority leader. Then the fourth amendment which was mentioned or cited by the assistant leader as being something that was problematic--and that is sort of a conservative description of the way he addressed the issues--was an amendment I have that says the firefighters should have the ability to pursue collective bargaining. Now, maybe farms don't have fires. Maybe barns don't burn down and silos don't blow up. Maybe there weren't any wildfires in San Diego. Maybe I missed all that. But it seems to me that fire protection is a pretty big part of everybody's lifestyle in this country, and having fire departments that know what they are doing and are properly paid, have proper equipment and training is really important whether you happen to be in New York City or on a farm somewhere in the Midwest or the West. So I cannot imagine under what scenario it is deemed that this amendment should not be discussed and voted on. Again, I am willing to do this for a briefer period of time. I am not trying to slow the bill down. I want to get a few issues up that I think are important to the definition of the problem as I see it in the farm region. Then I had a series of amendments--well, I only had 11, but 5 of the amendments I had dealt with the budget process. This farm bill does fundamental harm to the concept of responsible budgeting. It plays games with our budget process. We hear so much from the other side of the aisle about how they use pay-go to discipline spending around here. That is the term, the motherhood term we hear, ``pay-go.'' It turns out that it is ``Swiss cheese go'' as far as the other side of the aisle is concerned regarding spending restraint. On 15 different occasions, they have gimmicked pay-go, played games with it to the point where they have spent almost $143 billion in this Congress which should have been subject to pay-go but was not subject to a pay-go vote because they managed to gimmick their way around it. This farm bill is a classic example of that procedure occurring again. By changing dates--1 day--so that they shift years and take items out of the pay-go--what is called the pay-go scorecard--they are able to avoid pay-go charges in this bill to the tune of $10 billion. That is not small change, by the way. We should have a pay-go vote on that $10 billion if we are going to maintain the integrity of the budget process. That is reasonable. I have asked for that vote. In addition, they have created a new emergency fund--a $5 billion emergency fund. The way we have handled emergencies--and there are, I admit, many emergencies in farm country--is that we have always paid for those emergency costs through an emergency supplemental, whether it is because of a flood or if there is a drought or if there is a hurricane. We fund the costs after they have occurred, and we pay the costs of the emergency. What this would do is set up what amounts to a slush fund--what I am afraid will become basically walking-around money--of $5 billion and a floor so that we are going to be guaranteed that every year for the next 5 years at least a billion dollars will be spent on emergencies, whether there is an emergency or not. You know, if a large wind blows a mailbox over in North Dakota, it is going to be declared an emergency because somebody is going to want to get their hands on that billion dollars. That makes no sense from a budget standpoint. We know that human nature--especially legislative nature-- will spend that money once it is allocated, and we should not do it up front, create a floor; we should do it the traditional way, which is to pay for emergencies when they occur. Now, some people here obviously disagree with me. I suspect I will not win that vote. But it doesn't mean we should not have a vote on that point of budget discipline and the importance of budget discipline. In addition, on the budget issue, there is a $3 billion gimmick in here that is so creative it sets a new standard for creativity. There always has been movement of money from the discretionary side of the account to the mandatory side, and vice versa, to free up more spending. That is a game that has been played a long time, where an expenditure that is discretionary will suddenly find out it is being put under a mandatory account, so the money being spent in the discretionary account can be freed up to spend it on something else. If you get it into the mandatory accounts here, you basically put it on autopilot and don't have to worry about it ever again. This bill takes this concept to a new dimension. It takes a mandatory spending responsibility and moves it over to a tax credit, so that we now have a $3 billion tax credit where we used to have a $3 billion mandatory expenditure, and then it takes the $3 billion that was being spent on the mandatory side of the account and spends it on a new program. So, essentially, by using the tax law in a very creative way, you have generated new spending of $3 billion. I think that is terrible budget policy. I think we should address it, debate it, talk about it on the floor, and definitely vote on it before we allow this bill to go to cloture. Obviously, there are a lot of issues raised by this bill; otherwise, there would not be 240 amendments filed. The majority of them have been filed by the other side of the aisle. But the fact that the procedure has been structured in a way that these amendments, which are totally reasonable, which are parts of significant issues of public policy, such as whether women in rural America will be able to see an OB/GYN or whether farmers get the equipment they need or whether a person whose home is foreclosed on will get hit with an IRS tax penalty or whether the Gulf of Mexico should be looked at relative to maintaining its vitality as a environmentally sensitive area--we are not going to be allowed to look at all of these issues because the majority leader set up a blue-slip permission process, which is totally antithetical to the system the Senate historically works under and undermines the capacity of issues to be debated and voted on. I just think, as I said, it is doing fundamental harm to our institution. Even if I didn't want to bring these amendments forward, I would not want to have a process that denied the right of other people to bring amendments like them forward. The fact that the leadership on the other side of the aisle wants to insulate its membership from making tough votes on things like baby doctors being available to farmers and farms getting the equipment they need and people whose homes are foreclosed on not being subject to IRS penalties--the fact that they want to protect their membership, that is understandable. That is their leadership. Their leadership is clearly trying to protect them in their jobs. To abuse the process of the Senate to accomplish that, to create a procedure where you basically foreclose amendments in a manner that actually is even more strict and more contracted than what the House does, does more harm than good to the institution. As I said earlier, it puts us on an unnecessary and inappropriate slippery slope, and it is a fundamental change in the way the Senate works. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, today I honor the 50th anniversary of the Student Conservation Association. Over these last five decades, the SCA has led the way in promoting the importance of conservation service and stewardship. Its staff and supporters have made an extraordinary commitment to instilling this ethic in our country's young people. While it is headquartered in my home State of New Hampshire, the SCA's reach and influence go far beyond the borders of New Hampshire. Since its founding in 1957 by Elizabeth C. Titus Putnam, nearly 50,000 SCA volunteers have worked to protect the critical natural habitats and threatened wildlife in our country's parks, forests, and urban green spaces. Its members can be found in all 50 States, as well as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and Latvia. In 2006 alone, 4,000 volunteers logged 1.6 million service hours at 511 separate sites. In past years, they worked to restore the Everglades following the devastation Hurricane Hugo left behind and to repair the damage to Yellowstone National Park following the fires which damaged that park in 1988. This year, they were chosen to lead the Northwest Recovery at Mount Ranier and other parks in that region of the United States following the floods of 2006. It is, in fact, the largest conservation service program in the country. Those numbers and facts are impressive, but they do not fully convey the central role this organization plays in strengthening the quality of life in the United States. The thousands of volunteers and interns clearly have relished meeting the obligation we all have to protecting the vital natural areas in our country. Their unique dedication and enthusiasm have made them great role models and leaders. These qualities explain why such Federal agencies as the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Armed Forces all have partnered with the SCA and are the reason the White House, National Wildlife Federation, and the National Park Service have recognized the SCA's achievements. The prime architect behind the SCA is Elizabeth Titus Putnam, and I am especially pleased to honor her. It is a great reflection on her character that the vision she developed 50 years ago became a reality. Her energy and passion for environmental protection have touched countless people and demonstrate why the SCA continues to be an effective and vibrant organization. For these reasons, I am proud to be a member of the 50th Anniversary Honorary Committee. I hope all the alumni and current volunteers will long remember the deep impact they have made on communities from Maine to Hawaii and from Alaska to Florida. Happy Birthday to the Student Conservation Association and my best wishes for continued success.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Thank you, Mr. President.