Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas. First, Mr. President, I join the Senator from Texas in asking that the majority leader and the Democratic membership free the Veterans bill and the Military Construction bill, which is ready to be sent to the President, stop holding it hostage for the purpose of holding it up with special interest projects which have nothing to do with the military or with veterans, and instead send that bill down to the President so he can sign it so our veterans can know they are getting the support they need after their great service to our Nation.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to talk a little bit about the status of the farm bill because I was stunned, obviously, today to find that the majority leader--after for 2 weeks, almost, refusing to allow any amendments to the farm bill--has now decided to file cloture on the farm bill and claim this is the way things are done in the Senate. That is a statement which is pretty hard to accept with a straight face: the concept that the majority leader would set up a process in the Senate which, essentially, made him the gatekeeper of all amendments to a major authorization and appropriations bill--appropriations in the sense it has mandatory spending in it--so that any Member of the Senate who wanted to offer an amendment would have to go through the majority leader before the amendment would be allowed to come to the floor. Well, that is the way they do things in the House of Representatives, obviously, with what is known as the Rules Committee. But the Senate does not do that. The Senate has never done that. I have heard innumerable, wonderful speeches from the senior Senator from West Virginia, the keeper, basically, of the flame of the integrity of the Senate, Mr. Byrd, on the importance of the amendment process in the Senate. I happen to subscribe to that, as I thought every Member of the Senate subscribed to that, that the greatness of the Senate is that if we put a piece of legislation on the floor, which is a significant piece of public policy, we debate it, we hear ideas on it, then we vote on those different ideas, and then we vote on passage. We do not lock down a bill and not allow any amendments to occur on that bill except those that are accepted on the majority side and by the majority leader and then say to the minority: Well, because you would not accept our process of locking down the amendment process, we are going to file cloture to shut you out completely. That truly is an autocratic level which this Senate has never seen. Let me tell you something, it puts us on a slippery slope. It is very possible--in fact, I hope likely--that the other side of the aisle may not be in the majority forever around here and maybe not even through the next election. Certainly, if they continue to produce such a dysfunctional legislative calendar, as they have over the last year, I would think the American people would get a little frustrated and ask for a change. But they have now opened the door to running the Senate as an autocratic system, as a dictatorial system where the rights of 99 Members of the Senate are made completely subservient to 1 Member, which is the majority leader, because he has the right of recognition, he fills up the tree, and then when he does not like the amendments, he files cloture. Let's talk about some of the amendments he does not want us to hear on this bill relative to the farm bill. He does not want an amendment offered which would say to farm families, especially to mothers in farm families: You will have access to OB/GYNs. That is one of the amendments I intended to offer. It would simply say that OB/GYNs who practice in farm and rural communities would be immune from excessive liability and lawsuits from trial lawyers. We know for a fact we have lost most of our OB/GYNs in rural America. These baby doctors cannot practice in rural America because there are not enough clients for them to generate enough revenue to pay the cost of their malpractice insurance, which is generated by these lawsuits from trial lawyers. Well, the other side of the aisle is a kept group for the trial lawyers, so they do not want anything that could happen around here that might limit the income of trial lawyers, including allowing baby doctors to deliver babies in rural America to farm families. So they are not going to allow me to offer that amendment. What an outrage. They do not want an amendment which would give firefighters in this country the right to bargain in order to reach agreement on contracts. Now, I do not think fires just burn in cities. Farmers have fires. In fact, if you look at what is happening in the West with wildfires, there are a lot of issues of fires for farmers in this country, especially silo fires. I know. I come from an area where there are occasional silo fires. They need firefighters. But the other side of the aisle does not want to hear about an amendment that deals with firefighters' rights. No. They want to lock that amendment out of the process. They want to lock out of the process an amendment which would address the issue of people who are caught up in this terrible mortgage crisis we have. There are a lot of farmers, I suspect, and a lot of Americans generally who did not know how these ARMs worked when they went into these deals, and they are now finding they are being refinanced at a level where they cannot keep their homes because their interest rates are jumping up into the double-digit levels. When those homes are foreclosed on, they get a double whammy of getting hit by the IRS with what is known as a recognized gain, even though they did not have any income because their home got foreclosed on. This is a really difficult thing to do to someone, whether you are a farmer or just an average American, to first have their home foreclosed on and then to hit them with an IRS bill for having their home foreclosed on. I was going to suggest we take that issue up on the farm bill because it happens to relate to a lot of farmers who are being foreclosed on. I was going to suggest we take up an amendment which might look at some of these new commodities that were put into this bill, such as the asparagus program and the camellia program and the chickpea program, but we do not want to hear about that. No, we do not want to address those issues. We do not want to address the issue of the fact that this bill has in it $10 billion--$10 billion--of gamesmanship on moving dates so they can make this bill look more affordable and less costly. They don't want to have an amendment on that which might make the bill honest on its face. They don't want to hear that amendment. They don't want to hear this amendment, which is sort of ironic. They have put in this bill what is called walking-around money-- walking-around money--for the farm States in this country, actually for five farm States, called a $5 billion disaster loan fund. The way we have always handled disaster loans for the farm community--and they have them, and they are legitimate--is we have simply passed an emergency bill around here to cover the disaster when the disaster occurs. But what this bill does is set up a new fund which will be a floor, essentially, which says there is $5 billion in this kitty sitting over here for which if there is a disaster, you take this money too. What is the practical implication of that? Every wind storm that occurs in North Dakota that blows over a mailbox is going to be declared a disaster so they can get some of this money. It is putting money on the table that is just going to be used up. We know we are going to fund disasters when they occur. Why would we prefund disasters in a way that is going to make it absolutely guaranteed that a disaster will occur, even if there is not a disaster? Well, we don't want to have an amendment which says: Let's take that disaster money and move it over to IDEA, special education. There is an account that needs some more money. There is an account which would give relief to a lot of families in this country, a lot of small towns in this country, farm communities and other communities that have a huge burden of IDEA in special education. Let's take that $5 billion out of that emergency account and, rather than having walking-around money for the five States that usually get this emergency money, use it for IDEA, which will benefit all the States in this country. They don't want to hear those amendments. It is incredible that on a bill of this size--one of the biggest bills we deal with as a Congress, one of the most important pieces of public policy we deal with--the other side of the aisle and the majority leader have specifically set up a procedure where amendments will not be tolerated--simply won't be tolerated. Totally inappropriate. I think basically what the other side of the aisle wants to do is kill this bill. Now, from my perspective, this is not a good bill, and I am going to be voting against it. But I know it is going to pass if it is given a legitimate shot at passage because there are a lot of people around here who have these different commodities, and they all vote for each other, and, as a result, they build up enough votes to pass this bill. That is the way the farm bill always works. But that is no reason why we should not have a chance to debate it, to address some of these issues, such as baby doctors in rural communities and farm communities, such as the need for firefighters to have adequate bargaining rights, such as the need for people who are getting foreclosed on not getting hit with an IRS bill, such as the need to have proper accounting on this bill for what they are actually spending, such as the need for not setting up a $5 billion walking-around money fund, such as the need for the new commodities programs for asparagus, chickpeas, and camellia. We should have amendments to address all these issues. That is what the process of the Senate is all about. But it is being denied here. The result of that denial is that those of us who happen to believe the Senate should function as a place where things are amended and discussed and aired and heard are going to have to resist this bill. So the majority seems to want to kill this bill, which is unfortunate, because in the end, this bill should at least get a fair hearing.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming and the Senator from Massachusetts. I rise to express my appreciation for their excellent work on this legislation. It has been a long time in gestation. I think it reflects their commitment to legislating in a bipartisan and effective way that the bill is now at this stage. I congratulate them. I think anybody who has been exposed to Head Start is impressed by the program. There have been studies and reports of that which can be done to improve the program, and hopefully this bill will work in that direction. But the underlying idea of giving low-income kids the ability to come into an atmosphere where they get nurturing, good nutrition, and now, because of this bill, where they get starting blocks for learning how to deal with an academic program is totally appropriate and something that has succeeded. If you look at what we are facing as a nation, as discussed here at considerable length--I heard the Senator from Tennessee make an excellent statement on the needs of education, and what our country really needs is the ability to bring into the educational mainstream children who today, unfortunately, are not able or do not come to school with the necessary skills to compete with some of their fellow students. Head Start gives those children that opportunity. It gives low-income kids the ability to start kindergarten and get into the first grade with an understanding of how, first, to be social and deal with an atmosphere where there are other children; secondly, to have the necessary nutrition to get through the day and be able to learn; and third, begin the building blocks of learning. This program works, and it has worked. It is something that should be continued to be supported by the Federal Government and also by the local communities that stand behind Head Start. That is one of the great things about Head Start. In my experience, when you go to a local Head Start center in New Hampshire--or anywhere--as chairman of the committee, I visited Head Start centers all across the country. They are usually community-oriented events. Behind those teachers and committed people, who are willing to spend the day with the children and try to make their lives better during the day, there are usually a lot of volunteers and people from the community stepping up to also make those programs work well. So Head Start is one of the success stories and one of the things we need as one of the building blocks in order to continue to make America a great place to live and give people the ability to participate in the American dream. Again, I thank the Senators for orchestrating this effort. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I would be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. GREGG. Well, that is a good question, an excellent question. And the answer is, the first obligation of a Federal Government is to defend the country. And when you have soldiers in the field, you do that. You pay for them being in the field. I would suggest the way we could pay for that, in fact, would be that we not waive the pay-go rules for this $143 billion of spending which has nothing do with national defense or, alternatively, we could eliminate the $23 billion of nondefense spending which has been added by the Democratic Party in this year's budget cycle. That would save us a significant amount of money. So I would be happy to pay for it by cutting either of those accounts. But, in any event, I am going to pay for soldiers who are in the field.

Mr. GREGG. I would be honored.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this morning, while I was working out in the gym, on the air came one of my friends, a gentleman with whom I enjoy serving, who has a great sense of humor--Senator Schumer from New York. He was being interviewed by the CNBC team, which is a great and enjoyable team to watch: Mark Haines and Becky Quick and others--David Faber. He said the Democratic Party had been disciplined because they had used pay-go as a way to control spending here in the Congress. I almost fell off the treadmill, because that statement is so outrageous that it could only be made by somebody from New York who sees things in big pictures, sees the forest but misses the trees. The statement represents, or implies, that pay-go is a fiscally disciplining event around here when just the opposite is what has occurred. Pay-go has become a term of art which has a nice name, and which is thrown out by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as their representation of fiscal discipline, but in fact it has become a mechanism for spending money at an outrageous rate in entitlement and mandatory accounts. I don't call it pay-go anymore, I call it ``Swiss-cheese-go.'' The record is now pretty clear. Since this Congress came into being under the control of the other party, with the representation that pay-go was going to be used to discipline spending around here, there have been 13 major incidences--these don't count the minor ones--major incidences of pay-go being waived, manipulated, or manhandled so that it didn't apply to spending. Items which should have not been allowed to occur, spending initiatives which should have been subject to the pay-go rules have been ignored, manipulated, or gimmicked so that pay-go did not apply on these 13 incidents, which now total $143 billion--billion--in new spending. So when Senator Schumer spoke on CNBC this morning--I think he was being asked by Mark Haines--Mark Haines said to him: Will pay-go survive? Senator Schumer said: Sure, it will survive. We are committed to this type of fiscal discipline. What Mark Haines should have asked is: What happened to pay-go? Why have so many holes been put in the process? Why has the Democratic leadership allowed it to be waived, manipulated, and gimmicked so that $143 billion of spending, which should have applied to pay-go, which should have had pay-go applied to it, has simply been allowed to pass? Well, it is very simple. Pay-go was never meant to discipline spending. It is a fraud to represent that pay-go is used to discipline spending. Honestly, if we as a Congress had to sign financial statements the way we make people sign financial statements in the corporate world as a result of the Enron case--you know, the heads of our various corporations have to actually sign their statements, and they are subject to criminal penalty if they are inaccurate. If we were forced to sign a fiscal statement that said we were using pay-go to discipline spending, we would all go to jail because if we signed that statement we would be defrauding the American people at a level that would make Enron look like a little exercise. Now, $143 billion of fraud has occurred under the alleged pay-go rules because pay-go, which should have applied, has not been applied. But this is just the first step in the exercise of profligate spending around here. This is one of the more ingenious ones because under the name of pay-go, we are representing that we are controlling spending, when, in fact, using pay-go, we are actually spending $143 billion. There is the second step, which is the discretionary side. This is all entitlement spending, of course. Now, $23 billion is being spent over what the President requested this year. We hear from the other side of the aisle: Well, it is only $23 billion. It is being spent on good causes. Everything gets spent on a good cause around here. Then in the Labor-HHS bill, which represents $11 billion of that $23 billion, obviously many good causes are listed. But what people fail to mention is, first, $23 billion is a lot of money. In fact, there are something like 30 States in this country which could operate their entire budgets on $11 billion; $23 billion would probably be the budget of almost every State in this country. But this builds the baseline. This $23 billion is not the end of the number we are spending, it is the beginning of the number of the add- ons. When you take it out to 5 years, the baseline jumps by $133 billion. If we take it out to 10 years, that is $313 billion--billion-- of additional spending. So this is not just $23 billion of new spending that is being spent above what the President believes is necessary in order to operate the Government, it represents $313 billion of spending over 10 years. That is a big number. That is a massive number. You could do a lot with that amount of money. You could cut a lot of taxes, for example. You could eliminate the double tax on people who are married, which is going to go back up in 2010, if you did not spend this money. You could give higher tuition tax credits to people trying to get their college degrees if you did not spend this money. You could extend the capital gains and dividends tax rates, which disproportionately benefits senior citizens, especially the dividends tax rate if you did not spend this money. This is real money. Real money--$23 billion this year totals $313 billion over a 10-year period. So you take this $313 billion and you attach it to the swiss-cheese-go attack here of $143 billion. You are up to half a trillion dollars, half a trillion dollars that this Congress has spent in 10 months. They have only been in charge for 10 months--half a trillion dollars. Multiply that out. My goodness, you are up to $2 trillion over the term of this Congress, theoretically. Now, $2 trillion, that is even real money by Democratic terms. I think colleagues on the other side of the aisle would even agree that $2 trillion is a lot of money. Now, that might be a bit of hyperbole, but the half a trillion dollars is not. That is how much this Congress has cost the American people in the first 10 months in office, while they have been living under the fiscal discipline of pay-go, while they go on TV shows and say: We are disciplined because we believe in pay-go. As a result of that, we get half a trillion dollars of new spending. Well, that is a lot. We have a bill on the floor right now that regrettably follows on with this exercise in excess and profligateness. The farm bill alone has $34 billion of gimmicks in it to try to avoid budget discipline, $34 billion of gimmicks. That is huge. I think it adds four new major subsidy programs for new crops, including asparagus and camellia--I do not even know what that is--and a variety of other crops; creates or authorizes programs which study or work to alleviate stress on farmers; adds Chinese gardens in places; does a little gimmick which is even creative by the creativeness of this place, creates a new standard of creativeness where they now are taking entitlement spending and freeing up entitlement spending by giving tax credits. In other words, they create a new tax credit, and the purpose of that tax credit is to pay for items which historically have been paid for by entitlement spending under the farm bill, mandatory spending. Since they no longer have to pay for that with mandatory spending, they have created an extra $3 billion they could spend on new farm programs. So the farm bill itself is a continuation of this exercise in making the concept of pay-go superfluous. And, certainly, the claims that pay- go applies around here are fraudulent. It is about time, hopefully, people start paying attention. When you are up to half a trillion dollars of new spending in 10 months, much of which has been done outside of the budget window, so that the budget rules have not been allowed to apply to it, that gets to serious money. It gets to a serious lack of fiscal discipline. I hope we would change this course, but we do not appear to be changing this course. We actually appear to be aggravating this problem by bringing forward bills such as the farm bill, which continues this failure of fiscal discipline. Who has to pay for all of this? Well, I see those young pages. They are enthusiastic, they smile, they help us out. Regrettably, every day they are here--most of them have been here for a little while--we add about a billion dollars to their debt. Interesting how this adds up. But that $500 billion has been put on the books in the last 10 months. We are not going to pay for it. Our generation is not going to pay for it. These pages and their generation are going to have to pay for it. It is all debt. It is not fair to them, and it is certainly not fair to the American people to represent that we are exercising some sort of fiscal discipline around here under the term ``pay-go,'' when, in fact, just the opposite is happening. That is used as a stalking horse, not for fiscal restraint but for spending.

Mr. GREGG. Well, I would be happy to respond to that if I knew the answer, but I do not. But let me talk about the tax cuts. The tax cuts which were put in place were put in place prior to 9/11. As a practical matter, had they not been in place, the effect of the burst of the Internet bubble in the late 1990s, which was the occurrence of a dramatic expansion of the economy with a paper expansion of equities being issued for companies which had value in the late 1990s, was a speculative event. That collapse, coupled with the 9/11 attack which put this country into trauma, both physically and politically, but also economically, would have led us into a very severe recession if we had not had those tax cuts. The fact that we put those tax cuts in place early in this administration has led to economic growth, which has led to 43 months of growth, 8.7 million new jobs, and interestingly enough, those tax cuts have actually led to our revenues today being at a historic high. Over the last 3 years we have collected more money in revenue growth than we have received at any time in our history. We are now getting 18.7 percent of gross national product in revenues, when historically we usually get about 18.2 percent. And the vast majority of that revenue growth has come directly from the cut in capital gains rates, as we have received over $100 billion of new revenue in just the capital gains activity. So I would say, first, the tax cut was not put in place during the war. It was put in place at the beginning of the war; and, secondly, it has had the right effect, which is to energize economic expansion and energize revenue to the Federal Government. I do appreciate that question. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Will the majority leader yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG. Yes.

Mr. GREGG. So I am clear as to what the process is now that has been structured, you have used the term it has to be a ``relevant'' amendment. But, essentially, under the present process, is it not true that for any amendment to move forward in this body it would have to move forward on the basis of unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if the majority leader would yield for a further question, essentially, we have set up a process which is extremely constricted. And, in fact, in comparison with the Rules Committee, it is even more constricted than the House process because any Member--and there are 100 Members in this body--who does not like the fact somebody is going to offer an amendment which might affect their interests--and, believe me, there isn't an amendment that will be offered that would not have opposition on the other side-- is going to be knocked down by an objection from that individual Member. So you have essentially shut the floor of the Senate down because the only amendments that can be brought up would be amendments that would have unanimous consent, which means 100 people have to agree to them. Basically, they are amendments of no impact or significance, relevant or irrelevant.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if the majority leader would yield further, of course, the end of that sentence should have been: Yes, but I control the ability to allow those amendments to come forward. And, in fact, it has been made fairly clear that control will be exercised by the leadership in a way that limits amendments that are brought forward to those which are agreed to by the majority leader until we get to the point where the majority leader is going to file a motion for cloture, which, on a farm bill, of course, would most likely be successful because we all know everybody around here is ``in the field,'' so to say. I would not say ``in the tent,'' but they are in the field for the farmer. So as a practical matter, this is an extraordinarily closed process. Just to use one example, the majority leader said--he threw out, and maybe it was just a throw-away line--estate taxes shouldn't be brought onto this bill because they are not relevant, under the majority leader's terms. If I want to offer an amendment which says we should reform the death tax--which I might like to offer in light of the fact there is a tax title there--I happen to think that has a huge impact on the farming community because, for the most part, it is family farms and small businesses that are most impacted by the death tax. But we have already been told that would not be a relevant amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President I don't want to beat a dead subsidy, so I will constrain myself to this last question. The point is pretty obvious. Sure, any Senator on any bill can object to setting aside an amendment. That is not the way the institution has ever worked, in my experience. The way the institution works is the amendment process is a free-flowing, Wild West exercise around here, especially on bills such as this, which are huge authorizing bills with a lot of mandatory funding in them. Amendments are simply taken up in seriatim as they are offered. What will happen now, and the majority leader has been specific about this and very open about this, he is going to limit the ability to bring forward amendments, and the unanimous consent is not going to be granted unless he deems those amendments are relevant to the underlying bill, which means in his context of what is relevant. Well, a lot of us will have different views on what that means, as I pointed out on the death tax alone as an issue. So this is a process of shutting down the amendment process on the farm bill. The last time we debated the farm bill, we had 245 amendments and 19 rollcall votes, and we were on it for 4 weeks. I think on the first day or the second day of the farm bill debate around here, for those of us who may not be enamored with the bill, even though we know a lot of effort was put into it--because it spends a lot of money, creates a lot of new subsidies and programs, and uses a lot of budgetary gimmicks--we would like to have a much more open process, and I am disappointed we are not going to. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader's explanation of his position. But I think in his own explanation he raises the issues on which we are concerned. He has now taken off the table the estate tax. I cannot think of anything that is more relevant to the farmers, to the family farm, than the ability to pass that farm on to your children without having it wiped out by punitive and other inappropriate taxes, the death tax. He has now taken off the table global warming issues. Well, I have to say from my little knowledge of that issue--I studied it a bit, I have spent a lot of time on it in a couple of narrow areas such as acid rain. Farming is a critical issue in the issue of global warming. What is done on a farm has a huge impact both positively and negatively on global warming. Then he took off the table the issue of labor, labor questions. Well, in my experience, labor questions have a huge impact on farm policy, especially the immigration labor issues, how you get people who are immigrants to help you pick apples in New Hampshire, and the potatoes in Idaho. That is a labor issue. So his concept of relevance is an extremely narrow one. But his concept of relevance is going to be the concept that disciplines this floor relevant to amendments being made. The Senate was never conceived as being the House. This is supposed to be the place where we get into debates, where we exchange ideas, where people throw out a thought on a bill such as this that is fairly significant, and it gets debated, a position. But that is not going to happen on this bill because the majority leader has decided to execute a process which is even more constricted than what would be the House procedure under this similar bill. It is certainly inconsistent with the traditions of the Senate, on the issue of the farm bills specifically, but on our traditions generally. He used my statistics to support his position. I do not see how he can do that, quite honestly. Farm bills have always involved significant debate on the floor. Why? Because they are huge policy issues which affect a lot of people in this country--everybody who eats, to begin with, and that is about everyone--and obviously the farm community, which is the producers of food and do an extraordinary job for our Nation. They have always taken a long time on the floor to debate--weeks, usually. And they have always been open for amendments, which is totally reasonable because of the complexity of the bill. They have often brought in issues such as the death tax, immigration, labor, and how you get migrant labor, global warming, and in the case of New England, for example, they brought in the question of these subsidies, which we find a little difficult to tolerate, which are now being expanded to asparagus. There is a crop that needs a subsidy or the walking-around money that has been put in this bill for the purpose of disasters or the fact that there is probably $20 billion of gimmicks put in this bill that are budgetary games or the fact that they have moved mandatory spending over to tax expenditures. What an outrage on the budget process. They opened a $3 billion add- on in mandatory spending so they could go out and spend that on various interest groups by creating a tax credit. The list goes on and on and on and on. Why should we not on this bill get into a debate over the issue of tax policy? Because tax policy underlines the way this bill is paid for. The Senator from Arizona has an extraordinarily good proposal on the death tax. Why should that not be on the table here? The whole issue of AMT should be on the table, in my humble opinion, because there are a number of farmers, by the way, who pay the AMT tax, a number of them. There are going to be a lot more when we bump up to 20 million people paying that tax next year. These are all relevant to this bill, in my humble opinion, of what relevant is. By the way, in the Senate, relevance is everything when it comes to the open amendment process. We are not functioning under postcloture rules here. Relevant is irrelevant when it comes to a bill on the floor of the Senate. Anything can be amended in any way, and it is an open bill. That is the concept of the Senate. If somebody wants to put on this bill policies relative to Nicaraguan housekeepers, they can put that amendment on traditionally. That has no relevance at all to the average American looking at it, but it is the Senate's prerogative. So we are undermining the fundamental prerogative of the Senate and every Member of the Senate, I think in a very damaging way. I am disappointed in the decision by the majority. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Graham amendment. It is an amendment which I have been involved in helping to develop. It is an amendment that was offered on the Homeland Security bill, and essentially it is the same concept. The purpose of this amendment is something on which I think there is general agreement in the Senate, which is that we supply adequate resources to make sure that our border is secure. Now, this is an effort we have been pursuing for quite a while. I had the good fortune to be chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Appropriations Committee, and during that time we dramatically increased our commitment to border security, especially in the area of the number of agents, in the area of the number of detention beds, in the area of fencing, in the area of electronic and virtual fencing, and in the area of making technology available and support facilities available to border security agents, and the ICE agents. It is a ramping-up process, however, and there is still a ways to go, although we have made very significant strides. Unfortunately, in our opinion, on this side of the aisle--and this amendment was agreed to by the other side of the aisle for all intents and purposes when it was offered on Homeland Security--there is a need for additional funding to make sure that we put in place the resources which will basically assure the American people that the southern border can and will be secured. Now, what does that require? Well, this amendment doesn't put specific numbers relative to the number of agents or detention beds or fencing, but what it does put in place is an additional $3 billion in emergency funding, which will essentially go toward three major areas, the first of which is agents. We know that we need about 20,000 agents on the border. We know we are headed toward that number, but we know it is going to take a significant increase in funding for us to get to that. Now, we wish we could sort of wave a magic wand of dollars and produce these agents overnight, but we can't. These people are highly skilled. They require special qualities as individuals. They have to be obviously law enforcement individuals, but they also have to speak Spanish. They have to have the character and the personality to be able to work in a very intense environment and deal with very threatening situations, while at the same time dealing with people who are coming across the border and trying to make a better way of life for themselves and shouldn't be treated in a criminal way but should be treated as decent human beings trying to seek a better way of life in the United States, who try to come in inappropriately but having to go back. Handling that type of situation requires a little bit more care and sensitivity than dealing with somebody who is coming across to sell drugs. So the individuals we need to attract into the border security effort are high-quality, high-caliber individuals. You can't gather them up overnight. It takes awhile to get the applicants and then put them through the schooling process, and it does take money to do that. This amendment will allow us, to the extent that we can find these types of individuals to populate this workforce, to do exactly that so we will have a full complement of agents on the southern border. In addition, it will add detention beds which are critical. There is a belief that we need around 33,000 detention beds, I think is the number. We are headed toward building out a significant number of detention beds, and this amendment--or the dollars in this amendment-- will give the Department the resources it needs to accomplish the additional detention beds. Why are detention beds important? Because we have gone from a policy which was essentially catch-and-release of 2 years ago, or 3 years ago, to a policy where we actually catch and hold people. We no longer say come back in a few months after we catch you crossing the border illegally; we would say come back in a few months and appear before the court, and what happened was people never came back. We would send them off and they would never return, not surprisingly. Now we hold these folks, and we make sure they have their day in court, that they receive the proper protections of our law enforcement system, but that if they are found to have entered this country illegally, they get sent back. But it takes money, and that is why this amendment is important. Thirdly, we are building a fence in those areas, a physical fence in those areas where we need fencing. Fencing isn't appropriate for the entire border, but in our more urban areas along the border, it is appropriate, and it is expensive. So this money in this bill will allow us to complete the fencing commitments which we think are necessary. Equally important, it will put in place the operations of what amounts to what we call a virtual fence, but it is a real fence. There will be towers essentially. We have a tremendous electronic surveillance capability, oversight capability through unmanned aerial vehicles. All of this has been put into the works, and we are in the process of building out this system of surveillance in nonphysical fenced areas but areas which will have basically an electronic fence and a visual capability. But that, again, costs a lot of money. So this amendment fully funds the movement in that direction. That is what we need to do. We need to spend this money. Now, it is a lot of money, $3 billion, there is no question about it. But I see it very much as part of the war on terror, as a necessary element to protecting our culture and our society. A country which can't control its borders, which doesn't know who is coming across its borders, is a country which is at considerable risk. It is at considerable risk for a lot of reasons, but obviously the primary reason is the threat of terrorism. We have an obligation to our citizenry to make sure as people come across the southern border, we know who they are and we know that they are coming across legally. I think the American people have grown--and rightly so, I am afraid-- a little cynical about our efforts on the southern border. They see us say: Well, we are going to secure the southern border, but then they don't see us putting the resources on the border to accomplish that. These dollars will complete the debate on the issue of resources. The dollars will be there. Whether the management capability is there, whether the build-out capability is there, that is still an issue--I admit to that--but at least the dollars will be in the pipeline to accomplish this goal. So as a practical matter, I think this is a very important step forward. I congratulate the Senator from South Carolina, who has been a leader on this effort for awhile. He was obviously a leader on immigration reform, and he has backed up his words on immigration reform, in that the first step in effective immigration reform is effective border security. That is true. That is essential. He has backed that up with this amendment which puts the dollars in place to accomplish this. That is a corollary to this whole debate, which is that we do need to significantly overhaul our immigration laws, make them more appropriate to the times and to the situations. But you cannot get the public confidence to do immigration reform unless the American people believe at the outset that our border--especially the southern border--is secure from people being able to cross willy-nilly into this country illegally. These dollars will put in place the resources necessary to accomplish that, to make sure our southern border is secure on the issue of crossings. It may take a couple years for them to bear fruit because there is not an instant response with the hiring of agents. But the fact is that the resources will be in the pipeline to accomplish that, and the American people can have confidence that it is going to occur. I congratulate the Senator from South Carolina for his amendment. I am happy to join him as a cosponsor of the amendment. I hope it will be adopted unanimously or with a large majority. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, is the pending business the Graham amendment?

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

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

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to Scott Gudes, who leaves his post at the helm of my Budget Committee staff this week. After 29 years of loyal service to the Federal Government, Scott has chosen to become vice president for government relations for the National Marine Manufacturers Association--a job well suited for a man who loves the sea as much as he does. When I became chair of the Senate Budget Committee in 2005, I asked Scott if he would serve as my staff director. In under a year, under Scott's stewardship, we passed both a budget for the first time in 2 years, specifically the fiscal year 2006 budget resolution, and a reconciliation bill, the Deficit Reduction Act, DRA--marking the first time in 10 years Congress had passed a reconciliation bill to reduce spending. The DRA was a notable achievement in that it saved $39 billion, a feat which is practically unheard of around here, as the last time it was done was in 1997. These accomplishments could not have been done without Scott, who worked tirelessly to shepherd each authorizing committee through the often confusing reconciliation process. His unique combination of intellect, humor, and humbleness was a key component in navigating the complex waters of the compromise that was necessary to pass the first substantive deficit reduction legislation in 10 years. Scott followed up his initial year of success by spearheading efforts to develop a more comprehensive approach to restraining spending. His efforts contributed to the introduction of the Stop Over-Spending Act, a budget process reform bill that helped focus the national debate on solutions to our long-term fiscal challenges. Just this year, Scott helped structure the Conrad/Gregg Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action Act of 2007, legislation that will encourage bipartisan action to put our fiscal house back in order. At heart, Scott is a true nonpartisan who recognizes that the best policy is made when both sides of the aisle work together, and his first instinct is to seek out common ground rather than partisan differences. However, much like Thomas Jefferson chose to be remembered as author of the Declaration of Independence rather than various elected offices he held, including President, I expect that Scott would rather be remembered for spearheading efforts to write, edit, and publish the ``Budget Committee History'' rather than his impressive legislative credentials. Scott took it upon himself to initiate a historic accounting of the Senate Budget Committee. This labor of love reflects countless interviews and hours chronicling the birth, history, and importance the committee has held in shaping the Federal budget and fiscal policy. His devotion to this project is an example of Scott's love of history and respect for the institution of the Senate. The handful of aforementioned achievements merely reflects Scott's latest accomplishments in an achievement-filled career. It would be nearly impossible to chronicle the numerous programs and projects he created, funded, and oversaw--programs that improved and enriched both individual lives and the environment. In addition to his tour of duty at the Senate Budget Committee, Scott has held key positions on both sides of the Capitol, both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and a point I like to forget, Scott has even worked on both sides of the aisle. Included in this impressive list are stints as the clerk of the Commerce, Justice, and State Appropriations Subcommittee, professional staff on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and Acting NOAA Administrator, where he championed science, service, and environmental stewardship programs and greatly improved agency morale. In NOAA circles, Scott is a virtual god--king of satellites, staunch advocate of the NOAA Corps and its ships and planes, and an addict of the NOAA label, which I understand is plastered on literally everything under and around his home, car, and office. But the true bearing of Scott's 29 years of Federal service is not the remarkable list of the jobs he has held, although the list is long and distinguished, but the manner in which Scott has approached these positions and the people he has touched along the way. Those who know Scott best describe him as a loyal, encouraging, and creative boss, who supports and celebrates those who work with him. Everything Scott does is done in an ``all hands on deck'' manner that gives everyone an opportunity to pitch in and support the common goal. One cannot talk about Scott without recognizing his acumen for all things trivia--Scott is a virtual trivia savant. He knows the answer to nearly every trivia question, regardless of topic, and can somehow relate every event back to an old movie or seventies rock song. He will search to the end of the Internet to find a historic or comic analogy to make a point about fiscal responsibility, or often the lack of it. He is equally conversant on the latest entertainment news and military strategies of ancient times. The influence of his crosscutting interest and knowledge has occasionally found its way to the Senate floor, where both the Geico Caveman and a Rube Goldberg cartoon have been used to drive home a point. As a lifelong boater, fisherman, and lover of all things relating to the ocean, Scott reminds me of the remarks that President Kennedy made at the 1962 America's Cup sailing race. He said, ``All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea-- whether it is to sail or to watch it--we are going back from whence we came.'' Kathy joins me in wishing Scott well as he joins the National Marine Manufacturers Association, to ``go back from whence he came'' and advocate on behalf of issues he is most passionate about. As he sets off for new adventures with his wife Ann, and, of course, Buddy the Budget beagle dog by his side, Scott leaves in his wake a nation that is better off for his service, and colleagues that will miss him dearly.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I wish to speak in morning business.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, we are today going to vote on what is euphemistically known as the SCHIP bill. It is clearly incorrectly identified because under that reading one would think it was for children, but it is actually a bill that also covers adults. I think there is a general consensus and no disagreement about the fact that children who are at or near poverty--even considerably above poverty-- families who have that type of fiscal constraint should be covered. There is agreement on that. The issue is whether we should take a program which covers children in poverty, or near poverty, up to 200 percent of the poverty level-- which, if we define poverty, it is twice as much as what poverty is-- whether we should cover children who are in families who have incomes well above 200 percent of the poverty level and adults who have no children at all, and whether we should do that extra coverage through a nationalized system. That is what is at issue. The issue is not whether children who come from families who are not that well off--not necessarily poor families but are not well off--those children are covered under the President's proposal, under proposals which I would support, children from families with incomes up to 200 percent of poverty. The issue is whether we should have States, for example, such as New Jersey, where families who make $71,000 a year--$71,000 a year--should be able to be covered under a federally, totally subsidized, taxpayer- paid-for health care plan, and whether families that are not even families--because they are two adults with no kids--should also be able to be covered under that federally subsidized health care plan, where the taxpayers pick up all the costs, and whether those plans should be structured in a way that they are single-payer, Government-directed, nationalized health care plans. What is the practical implication of taking a program, which is supposed to be directed at children who come from low-income families, and expanding it radically in the way that the bill we are going to get does? Well, the first practical implication is it spends a heck of a lot of money: $71 billion over 10 years in additional spending--$71 billion-- to cover children in families with up to $71,000 in income. In fact, they go up to 400 percent of the poverty level, with families who make up to $80,000 a year, and they cover adults who do not have children. Yet they claim it is a children-in-need health care program. So you are going to increase the Federal Government and the size of the Federal Government and the spending of the Federal Government-- which, remember, comes from taxpayers--by $71 billion under this proposal. The President has proposed increasing spending in this area over the baseline--which is about $25 billion--by an additional $5 billion over 5 years. Some of us have proposed we even go a little higher so we make sure every child in that category of 200 percent of poverty can be covered. But to expand this program to a $71 billion increase is a huge explosion in the Federal program, in the size of the program, and in the cost to the taxpayers. Remember this: Another effect of this policy of covering families who make up to $80,000 a year with this federally taxpayer-paid health care insurance is that families that presently have their children insured by the private sector are going to move their insurance from the private sector, which is paying for the cost--the business they work for--over to the public sector. In fact, it is estimated, under the proposal before us, 4.4 million children will be covered who are not covered today by this new SCHIP program which covers families up to $80,000 and spends an extra $71 billion. However, what people do not tell you--at least folks from the other side do not tell you--is 2.4 million of those children who are going to be picked up by this plan are already covered--they are already covered--by private insurers. So we are basically shifting the burden from the private insurance over to the public side, which means the taxpayers--average working Americans--are going to have to pay more to cover kids who are already covered by the private sector through their taxes. Does that make sense? Of course it does not make sense. Why would you do something like that? Why would you set up a program like that? Why would you expand a program to families that make $80,000; to adults who do not have children; to children who already are insured and draw them out of the private insurance into the public insurance? Why would you do something like that? Well, the answer is pretty obvious. This is part of the effort of the other side of the aisle to move us toward a single-payer, nationalized system of health care. There is no hiding that fact. That has been stated as the purpose, even by the chairman of the Finance Committee. So the goal is not necessarily to bring more kids under insurance who need to be insured because they come from families of less means. That is going to be done under either program. The goal is to radically expand the size of a public insurance program to families that are really doing quite well, families making up to $80,000 that may not have children or the children may already be insured by the private sector because you want to move more people onto the public insurance system because you want to have a nationalized system. Now, I do not happen to support a nationalized system of health care. But I think if we are going to have a nationalized system of health care, we should not do it through the back door. We should not do it through this bait-and-switch approach that this bill represents. We should do it in a very open, honest statement, much as what Senator Clinton proposed back in the early 1990s: We are going to nationalize the health care system of this country. There is going to be one payer. It is going to be the Federal Government. And all your health care will be provided for by the Federal Government, with the cost being picked up by the American taxpayer. I oppose that type of an approach for a variety of reasons: first and most honestly because in every other nation that has tried that, it has led to dramatic rationing of care. Depending on your age, you simply are not able to get certain types of care, treatment. You go to Canada, and you wait for months, sometimes years for certain types of procedures or you go to England and you wait for months, years, and you cannot even get certain types of procedures. So you get rationing. Secondly, you undermine research. You do not get people investing in creating new products and new ways to make people healthy because the cost is not reimbursed. Thirdly, if you take the private sector out of providing health care, you immediately create huge inefficiencies because you reduce competition, you reduce the forces for cost control that private insurance brings into play. So I do not support a single-payer plan. But I especially find it inappropriate that the way the other side of the aisle is trying to get to a single-payer program is through this surreptitious back door of taking one chunk of the population--kids who are already insured by the private sector--and moving them over to the public sector in the name of protecting children who are from lower or moderate-income families. All the proposals that are pending around here--the proposal by the President, the proposal I would support--protect children in families at 200 percent of poverty or less. One of the ironies, of course, is that as they expand to higher income families, in States such as New Jersey, for example, where people making up to $71,000 are covered under the single-payer plan, they actually leave out low-income kids. For example, in New Jersey, there are about 19,000 kids who are in families that are under 200 percent of poverty and are not covered under the New Jersey plan. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense, if we were honestly trying to address low-income kids, to put in place a plan which actually covered kids who were in family situations where the income was less than 200 percent of poverty and make sure everybody was covered? That was the proposal from our side of the aisle, by the way, but it was rejected in this rush toward trying to get a big bite on the apple of nationalization, single-payer proposals. So that is the policy problem with this bill. But there are a lot of other problems. Call them technical, if you want, but they are pretty big technical problems. For example, there is the problem that there is a scam going on, a scam in this bill as to how it is paid for. You can see this chart I have in the Chamber. This reflects the increased costs of the bill as it goes forward. But in order to make their own budget rules, which they claim so aggressively to be following, such as pay-go, they have to take the program, in the year 2013, from a $16 billion annual spending level down to essentially zero. In other words, they are zeroing out this program in the year 2013. They are not spending any money on it at all so they can hit their budget numbers. That is called a scam. That is called a scam. It is a budget scam. And it is being played against a background of claiming they are going to do all these wonderful things with all of this extra money, such as nationalize the system for people making $80,000 or less, but they are simply not going to claim how they are going to pay for it. This big, white area in here, they have no idea how they are going to pay for that. None. None. I will tell you how they are going to pay for it: by raising taxes on the rest of working Americans. That is how they are going to pay for it. Working Americans are going to pay for it so they can nationalize the system. Then, on top of that, they have set up a verification system which uses Social Security numbers which the Social Security Administration says will lead to illegal immigrants being the people who get the benefit of this program, primarily--or not primarily but in part-- because the Social Security Administration is incapable of accurately monitoring whether these numbers are correct. So you are going to have a lot of illegal immigrants getting coverage, claiming they are legal, because the system has been set up to accomplish that. Maybe this was the back-door approach toward some level of amnesty or something, but if it was going to be done, it should have been done more openly than the system that is being used in this bill. This is a fundamental flaw of this bill. It is a bill which, in its present form, is not paid for and has a huge cap.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.