Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I have no objection.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, in a brief response, because I see the ranking member of the Finance Committee is here, the chairman of the committee has made the case we should not vote for the Cornyn amendment because it has policy in it. Well, actually the budget resolution has policy in it. In its reserve fund, the budget resolution has three specific policy directives relative to SCHIP which is just as specific, just as policy driven as the proposals of Senator Cornyn. So either you are pure or you are not pure. In this case, both sides are directing policy. So I do not think that argument has a whole lot of credibility. But the issue here is this: The Cornyn amendment tries to focus SCHIP on kids. That is what it should be focused on. The problem we have today is that SCHIP is being used as a stalking-horse to basically ensure all sorts of people who do not qualify in the concept of kids at 200 percent of poverty. You have three States where they actually spend more SCHIP money on adults than they do on children. You have 12 States that are spending almost $1 billion annually of SCHIP money on adults. You have nine States where they are covering up to 300 percent of poverty. You have other States where you are going up to $68,000 of personal income and still qualifying people for SCHIP. That is not the way SCHIP is supposed to be structured. SCHIP is supposed to be structured for kids. The Cornyn amendment gets us back to the original purpose of SCHIP, thus giving probably more coverage to more kids than the present program or even the expanded program which has been put forward by the other side of the aisle. Madam President, what is the time situation relative to the Members?

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I yield such time as he may desire to the ranking member of the Finance Committee.

Mr. GREGG. Why don't we give them 15 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. And, Madam President, that the majority has the right to reserve an amendment in response to the Sessions amendment and in response to the Hutchison amendment, and that the order of voting on any amendments offered this evening as part of this unanimous consent would be at the discretion of the chairman and the ranking member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. GREGG. What is the time situation?

Mr. GREGG. I yield to the Senator 6 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, if I still have time, I yield it back.

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the Senator's comments. First, I join him in thanking the staff. We are about halfway through the timeframe here and they are getting tired, but they are doing a great job and we very much appreciate all they do; not only our staffs on the committee but obviously the staff that operates the Senate itself, who end up being here late into the night, and we very much appreciate their help. As to amendments, we are going to have a lot of votes on Friday, and it is going to be a very extensive day of voting and people need to sort of get ready for that. At this point I think we ought to start the votes.

Mr. GREGG. I am not sure the yeas and nays have been ordered on all of these amendments.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes evenly divided between each amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, claiming the minute on the Republican side, the Baucus amendment makes sense, but it does so in the context of also justifying the Kyl amendment. Both amendments basically make the point that we should extend these tax rates, which have done so much to help people and create an economic boom in this country. Both amendments are essentially the same, as far as the impact on the economy, but the Baucus amendment is about 2\1/2\ times the Kyl amendment. Both of them create issues of deficit financing. As a practical matter, the Kyl amendment specifically will generate economic activity. It creates jobs and, therefore, more revenue to the Federal Treasury. If you vote for one, you should vote for the other, if you happen to believe we have a tax policy that is making sense in this country today and is generating a lot of revenue, which it is.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, could we have a little bit of order? A touch, not too much. I don't want to get carried away.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if my colleagues voted for the last amendment, they should vote for this amendment. Procedurally, they are essentially the same. They are treated the same, they have the same impact, for all intents and purposes. The last amendment, arguably, would increase the deficit by $60 billion. This one would increase it by $70 billion. Both amendments are focused on continuing the tax policy that we have in place, which is doing such a good job of generating jobs. In fact, this amendment increases the death tax to 35 percent--it reduces it, doesn't allow it to go over 35 percent. It allows the exemption to be applied to estates of $5 million; it permanently extends the tuition tax credit; it permanently extends the $250 deduction for teachers; it extends the tuition tax credit; it extends the capital gains and dividend tax rates which are so important to this economy and have had such a positive impact on revenues to the Federal Treasury.

Mr. GREGG. Do I still have time?

Mr. GREGG. Six seconds.

Mr. GREGG. The Senator from North Dakota is wrong. Vote for the Kyl amendment.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Jared Clauss, Eric Slack, Ann Thomas, and Bess Allison Ullman of the Finance Committee staff be granted the privileges of the floor for the duration of the debate of the fiscal year 2008 budget resolution.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, is the majority leader being recognized for purpose of an amendment?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I make a point of order a quorum is not present.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I appreciate the Senator's brief explanation of his budget. I look forward to the longer version. We always appreciate his charts, which are well done. I congratulate staff. Let me start by thanking him and his staff for their courtesy. It has been professional, cordial, and very enjoyable to work with him and his staff on trying to pull this together in a way that is fair, honest, and everybody gets their 2 cents in. Obviously, there are philosophical differences here, but I greatly admire the chairman's commitment to governing fairly and making sure that everybody has a good chance of getting their points across. I admire his ability and his effectiveness as chairman of the committee. I enjoy working with him. There is a lot to talk about. It is hard to know where to start. I may not be as brief as my colleague, in fact, because there is so much to talk about, although I usually try to be terse and concise. Let's begin with where we are which is we are now functioning under economic policies put in place by President Bush and the Republican Congress that have produced extraordinary results for the American people. We came out of the 20th century, unfortunately, with the biggest bubble in the history of the world bursting, the Internet bubble of the late 1990s, followed by the attack of 9/11 which threw our economy into a tailspin. Those two events combined should have thrown us into a severe recession or depression. We did have a recession, but it was nowhere nearly as severe as it might have been. Obviously, we didn't have a depression. The reason primarily was because in the early 2000 period, President Bush, with the support of this Republican Congress, put in place policies which created an atmosphere for economic recovery even in the face of those two devastating events, the bursting of the largest bubble in our history, the Internet bubble--bigger than the tulip bubble, the South Seas bubble--followed, of course, by 9/11, which was an extraordinarily devastating event for all of us. As a result of the policies put in place, the economy has now expanded for 21 straight months. Employment is up 7.6 million jobs. That is people with real jobs, which, of course, is the essence of economic recovery and quality of life. A good job is the essence of a good quality of life. The unemployment rate is lower than it has historically been in most recoveries, which is positive news. The economic growth has propelled dramatic increases in revenues. I will return to this in more depth in a few minutes. We have seen in the last 3 years the most significant increase in Federal revenues in the history of the country over a 3-year period. We now have revenues above their historic norm. Historically, they have been about 18.2 percent of gross national product. Now they are about 18.5 percent. During this recovery, real wages have jumped as compared with President Clinton's period, which was a good time economically, and we have had real wage growth that has been more significant than during that period. To get back to the revenue issue, as a result of the tax cuts put in place by this administration and the Congress, we have seen a dramatic increase in revenues. That is because we have come to a point in our society economically where we put in place a tax law that is fair. We are saying to the American people: Go out and be an entrepreneur. Take a risk, be a marketplace-oriented person, create jobs. If you are willing to do that, we are going to tax you at a fair return on your investment. We have, as a result, dramatically increased revenues so that they are above the historic norm. We have seen the single most significant jump in revenues in our history over the last 3 years, and this chart shows that. So we have as a government actually seen a huge inflow of revenues. What is the effect of that? The effect is the deficit has dropped dramatically. It was estimated to be about $500 billion about a year and a half, 2 years ago. It is now going to be below $250 billion, and it is headed down. In fact, over the next 5 years, using a CBO baseline, the deficit will continue to go down until we are into surplus and, as a practical matter, under the CBO baseline we reach surplus in late 2011, early 2012. I have said on a number of occasions, it is even humpty-dumpty in the next 5 years to reach surplus. Given what is happening with the revenues of the Federal Government, we are simply in a good time for revenues. Why? Because we are in a good time economically from the standpoint of an expanding economy, creation of jobs and, as a result, the creation of revenue. It is important to remember that if you have a tax law that says to the American people, go out and invest and take a risk, they will do it. That is the exciting part about our economy. Americans are entrepreneurial by nature. They love to take risks, if they know they can get a return on that risk, because that is the nature of the American people. They will create jobs as a result. When we put in place a dividends rate and a capital gains rate which essentially said: If you want to expand, you want to take a risk, we are going to give you a chance to do it, and you get a reasonable return on your dollars, they have done it. Human nature has produced these huge revenue explosions. It is also human nature to say to someone: We are going to tax you at such a rate that you are not going to have much incentive to go out and invest because the Government is going to take too much money out of your pocket, so why should you go out and put your sweat equity into trying to build a little business, a restaurant or maybe a small software company or something such as that? Why should you do that if the Government is going to take so much of your income that it doesn't make any sense? So you don't make that type of an adjustment in your lifestyle. We have created an economy and a tax atmosphere where people know they are going to be taxed fairly--not undertaxed, taxed fairly. As a result, we have seen huge increases in revenue. In fact, because we have created such a fair tax climate, today the top 20 percent of American income tax payers pay a higher percentage of American taxes to the Federal Government than they did during the Clinton years. Let me explain this another way. During the Clinton years, if you were in the top 20 percent of the income brackets, you paid less in taxes as a percent of the total Federal burden than you do today, if you are in that top 20 percent. So basically high-income people are today paying 85 percent in Federal income tax. At the same time the bottom 40 percent of Americans who have income tax obligations actually don't pay a lot of income tax. They actually get money back through something called the earned income tax credit. They are getting back twice as much, almost twice as much under the system today as they got back under the Clinton period. So we have the highest income people--those top 20 percent of the American people paying income taxes--paying 85 percent. We have the lowest income people--the bottom 40 percent--getting about twice as much back as they did under the Clinton years. What does that mean? We actually have--under this new tax law that was put in place which is generating all this revenue, 21 months of economic expansion, 7.5 million jobs, and all sorts of revenue for the Federal Government--we actually have a more progressive tax system than during the Clinton years. In other words, high-income people are paying more, low-income people are paying less and getting more back. That is progressivity, and that is the way it ought to be. So in light of this situation, where we have seen a dramatic expansion in the economy, a dramatic expansion in Federal revenues, a big increase in jobs for Americans, and a situation where we have a more progressive tax system, what does the Democratic budget suggest? Well, it suggests putting in place a set of policies which goes in exactly the opposite direction of the policies that got us to this point. The Democratic budget, as proposed, will increase taxes, or revenues, by approximately $916 billion, it will increase nondefense discretionary spending by approximately $140 billion, it will increase the debt by $2.2 trillion, and it does nothing in the area of mandatory savings. I will talk about all four of these areas individually. I also will mention some of the things it leaves out. It has left out long-term entitlement reform. It has left out long-term AMT relief. Funding for the ongoing costs of the war beyond 2009 is left out. It has left out fixing the physicians payment and unexpected emergency funding, and its spending and taxes in 24 different reserve funds. We will get into more specifics on this issue. On the spending side of the ledger, this budget increases nondefense discretionary spending by $146 billion, approximately--$18 billion next year. Remember, that is not in a vacuum. That is on top of the budget the President sent up here that would increase spending by almost $50 billion next year. So you are seeing a dramatic expansion in spending. At the same time, there is virtually no reduction in the amount of spending which is occurring in nondefense entitlement spending, in entitlement spending, or in nondefense discretionary spending. The chairman of the committee said: We need to be tough on spending. But in his budget, there are no spending cuts--none. He said we would need more revenues, so in his budget he put in $900 billion more of revenue. What you have is a budget that dramatically expands revenue but does not do anything to constrain spending. As a result, what you are going to get is a very significant increase in the debt of the Federal Government. It is going to be up by $2.2 trillion after this Democratic budget has gone forward. The wall of debt, which we have seen many times on this floor from the chairman of the Budget Committee, is going to grow and get higher and be more difficult for our children to bear and get over. In addition, the budget, as proposed by the Democratic membership, will significantly use Social Security funds for the operation of the Government. Over $1 trillion of Social Security funds will be used to operate the Federal Government. Now, that is not unusual. I admit to that. Historically, Social Security funds have been used to operate the Federal Government. But in the past we have heard from the other side of the aisle it is not right to do that. Well, if it was not right for us to do that when we were in the majority, why is it right for the Democratic side of the aisle to do that when they are in the majority, which is what they do. In addition to building the wall of debt, they are also building the wall of spending. There are all sorts of expansions of programs in this budget. In fact, as I listened to the chairman's opening remarks, what I heard most--maybe because my ears are attuned to it; but I also think the majority of the time was spent on two things--one was new spending programs. He listed them--one after another after another after another. We have to spend more money here, more money on agriculture, more money on SCHIP, more money on LIHEAP, more money on CDBG, more money on transportation, and more money on the COPS Program. My goodness gracious, the COPS Program was put forward by President Clinton back in, I think, 1995. He said it was going to be a 3-year program. At the end of 3 years it was going to go away, if we funded 100,000 cops on the street. That was the program. Well, we funded 100,000 cops. Then we funded 10,000 more. So we ended up funding 110,000 cops. Three years went by and the program did not go away. It is still there. It is like every other Federal program. They do not go away. They stay on, as has this one, even though that program was specifically designed to go away. But we see it as a high priority for new spending in this budget. So it is spending upon spending upon spending--$146 billion in new spending in nondefense discretionary spending. That is a big number. It compounds. It is not as though it is not a big number to begin with. But when you get out past 5 years, that number becomes the base that everything grows off of, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It is not as though it is a one-time event. The COPS Program is a good example. It was supposed to go away. It stayed around. It is compounding--got to add to it, got to add to it, got to add to it. In the end, who pays? Well, it goes back to that wall of debt. The $2.2 trillion of new debt that is being put into this system by this bill goes to our children. That is a bill directly to our children. We need to address the fact that this budget, as proposed by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, is going to do nothing to give our children the opportunity to have a decent lifestyle, to have the lifestyle our generation has had. In fact, it is going to aggravate their ability to afford the Government they are going to be handed because it is going to give them all this new spending, and then it is going to hit them with mandatory spending. We know if we do not address the mandatory spending accounts in this Government, we are going to bankrupt this country. We are going to send this country into a fiscal spiral, and our children are essentially going to be handed a country which they cannot afford. We know that. Why do we know that? Well, because the chairman has been good enough and, appropriately, has held probably 10 or 15 hearings on this specific point. Every major witness we have had--all the leaders, from the Chairman of the Fed, to the Comptroller General--all of the major witnesses have said the same thing: We are headed toward a fiscal meltdown as a nation because of a demographic tidal wave that is headed toward us. The baby boom generation is going to retire. It is going to double the number of recipients who will get Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As a result, our children are going to be overwhelmed. This chart shows it so appropriately, the three programs: Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. The spending on those programs is going to exceed what has been spent by the Federal Government historically, which is about 20 percent of gross national product. That is shown by the black line on the chart. It is going to exceed that number by about the year 2025, 2028. Then, it keeps going up. So as a very practical matter, in about a decade and a half from now, it is going to be impossible for the Federal Government to function because three programs will be absorbing all the money the Federal Government traditionally spends. The practical effect of that will be our children will basically have to be taxed into obscurity in order to support this. That, unfortunately, is what is going to happen unless we address this issue. The total unfunded liability of our Federal Government is about $67 trillion over the next 75 years. Mr. President, $67 trillion--try to put that number into concept. I do not know what $1 trillion is. Try to think of what that means: $67 trillion. Well, to try to put it into some context--it is still unconscionable; it is such a huge number--if you take all the taxes paid in the United States since the beginning of our Government, we have paid in about $42 trillion. So the unfunded liability--most of which is due to Medicare, some of which is due to Social Security--exceeds the total taxes paid to the Federal Government since the beginning of our country. To put it another way: If you take all of the net worth of America-- everybody's car, everybody's house, all your stocks, all your businesses--and roll it into a ball, that adds up to about $56 trillion. We actually have on the books today a liability that we do not know how we are going to pay for, which exceeds--exceeds--the total worth of America. Yet this budget, which we are presented today, does nothing about that. Even though we had hearing after hearing to talk about the need to address entitlements and the spending on entitlements, it does nothing about it. It is not as though nothing can be done. We will hear from the other side of the aisle, well, we need to do a global settlement--and I have joined with the Senator from North Dakota to try to accomplish that-- that we cannot do anything until we do a global settlement. That is a good idea, and that is the way it should be done, but we have to get started, folks. We have to get started. This budget was the opportunity to start. In fact, the President sent us up an idea--two ideas, basically, which would have accomplished very significant savings in the entitlement area. His proposals would have saved $8 trillion of the $24 trillion now unfunded in the Medicare fund or essentially 25 percent of the Medicare fund. Twenty-five to thirty percent of the Medicare fund insolvency would have been addressed. How did he do it? He did not affect beneficiaries with his proposals. They were very reasonable proposals. Essentially, the way he did it was to set up two proposals. One would have calculated correctly the reimbursement cost to provider groups, not counting doctors. The other would have required that very high- income seniors, people making over $160,000 on their joint returns, would have to pay a higher percentage of the cost of their Part D premium and their Part B premium. So 95 percent of the seniors would not have been affected at all by the proposals he sent up here. Remember, these proposals would have reduced the insolvency of the Medicare trust fund by $8 trillion or by about 30 percent. This type of proposal should have been taken up. It should have been agreed to. There should not be any debate about it. Why, for example, should a person--a mother, maybe a single mother working at a restaurant, who has to pay taxes--why should she be supporting the premium which is being used to support the drug benefit for a retired senior who has an income of over $160,000 filing a joint return? Let's take, for example, a retired Senator. Why should somebody who is working on a production line or in a restaurant or in a gas station--why should their general taxes have to be used to support a retired Senator's Part D premium for drugs? Because the retired Senator is probably going to be making more than $160,000 jointly or $80,000 individually. It makes no sense. Just by effecting this one change, you could have dramatically reduced the liability of the trust fund and made our Government more affordable to our children so our children would be able to send their kids to school and not have this huge tax burden. This is another example of that. But, essentially, this budget, as presented, totally ignores the entitlement storm that is coming--the Medicare storm, the Social Security storm, and the Medicaid storm. It is a failure in policy and a failure in leadership. It is especially unfortunate because when you put it in the context of the fact that this budget significantly increases taxes, taking--we will get into that in a few minutes--the tax burden of the American people from 18.5 percent of gross national product up to 20 percent of gross national product, instead of using those revenues for the purposes of maybe trying to resolve this long- term crisis which is so significant that it truly will cause an economic meltdown--instead of doing that, these tax increases are frittered away. They are frittered away. They are spent. They are used to adjust this program or that program, whereas, they should have been used, if they were going to be done at all--which they should not be at this time--to at least address the liability of the Medicare trust fund. But they didn't. It didn't occur. So when the Democratic chairman says: ``I have said I am prepared to get savings out of long-term entitlement programs,'' I wish he had done that. Instead of that happening in this budget, there is absolutely no savings that would improve the trust fund situation. There is a $15 billion savings, but that is used to pay for a $50 billion expansion of the SCHIP program, so it is actually a net loser to the tune of $35 billion. The practical implications of this budget--the practical situation, to clarify, because it is fairly complex, is that by increasing spending by $146 billion and then increasing revenues by $900 billion and then increasing the debt by $2.2 trillion and doing nothing on the entitlement side of the ledger, this budget essentially creates almost what you could call a perfect storm of tax and spend. It is overwhelming, the practical implications of where this is going to go, because of the four priorities as they are set out and the way they have been dealt with. Missed opportunities on the entitlement side, dramatic expansion of revenues on the revenue side, nondefense discretionary spending increases to $146 billion. On the revenue side-- on the big red chart--this bill essentially says the revenues increase is going to be about $900 billion. To put this fairly, if you were to look at the President's budget and compare it to this, the President's budget would be about $400 billion or $450 billion. That basically involves the AMT. So what essentially is being proposed is a $450 billion to $500 billion increase in taxes over what the President might have suggested, or did suggest, which is a half trillion dollars. The chairman likes to call this 3 percent. We are just 3 percent above the President. He has these two graphs that go together. You remember when you were in junior high school and you did graphs. If you compress the numbers enough, you make everything go together. It is all mushed together. That is what he has done. Three percent is real money, folks. Even though the graphs go like this, they are all crushed together on his chart. Three percent is a half trillion dollars. A half trillion dollars, that is a lot of money in new taxes. In fact, that represents the single largest tax increase in the history of the country. This budget reflects that. We don't know where it is coming from because we have this representation from the majority leader that it is not going to come from increasing the rates. Well, that is hard to understand because he has claimed he is going to get it from the tax gap, and then he has claimed he is going to get it from closing loopholes. We had testimony before the committee from the head of the IRS. The Commissioner of the IRS said he might get another $30 billion to $40 billion at most over 5 years--and I am giving him the benefit of the doubt--out of the tax gap. He was close to $20 billion, actually. Regarding closing the loopholes, we have had a lot of people around here chasing loopholes for a long time. Everybody has loopholes they chase all around this place. It is sort of like one of those games when you take your kids to Chuck E. Cheese's and they have those things with the big heads that pop up and you hit them with the club. Everybody is chasing loopholes all over this place, but they don't appear to get them very often. When they do get them, they don't generate a half trillion dollars. It might generate $5 billion or $4 billion. That is a lot of money, but it is not a half trillion dollars. A half trillion dollars is real money. Where do you get it? You raise rates. This budget is a stocking horse for rate increases. There is no question about it. In fact, all you have to do is read the fine print. In the fine print, there are four--not one, not two, not three, but four new--because I count their pay-go proposal as new--four new--and tax-go proposal--four new points of order against tax rates increasing over their present--tax rates being allowed to stay at their present rate. Let me restate that because I obviously mixed up the sentence. There are four new points of order against the ability to keep tax rates where they are today. My colleagues, remember when we started this discussion, we talked about all the good news we were getting as a result of having a tax system that was finally fair and where people were willing to go out and take a risk and invest and create jobs: 7.4 million new jobs, 21 months of expansion, best revenues we have ever had in the history of this country. That is going to go by the board because you are going to have to jump the first hurdle, the second hurdle, the third hurdle, and then the fourth hurdle with very aggressive points of order which will require 60 votes before we are going to be able to maintain those tax rates. This budget, which increases taxes by $900 billion, which, as a result, has to be focused on driving those tax rates up because there is no place else you can get the money, is a clear attack on things like the capital gains rate, the dividends rate, the death tax rate, and rates in general, plus all the other extensions, whether they are helping kids or not. The practical effect of this is what you have to worry about. We are on a path under this budget to become France. That is where we are headed, a tax level which is essentially a French tax level. The American people aren't going to want to work very hard. Well, the French people don't want to work very hard. I shouldn't say that. Maybe they do, they just don't act like they do. As a result, we are going to find that our Nation's productivity drops precipitously because we are raising our taxes. Under this proposal taxes will go up to 20 percent of gross national product. Remember that chart I showed you. You probably don't remember it, but I will remind you of it. Historically, the tax rate has been about 18.2 percent of gross national product. Today we are at 18.5 percent of gross national product, so we are actually bringing in a lot more than the historical level. This budget assumes--assumes that we are going to go to 20 percent of gross national product in taxes. That is a dramatic expansion in the size of the government. What do we get? Well, we get more asparagus growing. We get more COPS Programs, more CDBG, more ag payoff. We are not getting something substantive that is going to, in the long term, straighten out our biggest issue, which is entitlement reform for this dramatic expansion in revenues. What we are getting is more government, more government. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In fact, not only do we have a wall of debt, which the chairman has often mentioned to us, we now have a wall of taxes. You can see how, under the chairman's budget, the tax wall goes up and up and up. The problem with this wall is that when people try to climb over it, they run out of energy after a while and they stop climbing. Productivity drops, people who are willing to take risks stop, jobs dry up, and people come to the conclusion that maybe it is not worth working all this hard because they are going to send all the money to the Government in Washington, and they are not all that confident the Government in Washington spends their money all that well. Now, the chairman--and I just have to respond to this one because the chairman keeps holding up this chart that says--first, he had the 3 percent chart which mushed the lines, but then he has the chart which says, well, our taxes are about the same as the President's taxes. What he fails to mention is--well, he did mention it actually, but what he fails to point out is that he uses one scoring mechanism and the President uses another scoring mechanism. He uses apples and the President uses oranges. So that chart is a little misleading. So I decided to do it apples to apples and oranges to oranges. When you compare the scoring mechanisms equally, you end up with the fact that, my goodness, $934 billion in new taxes under the Democratic proposal, apples to apples, that is CBO. That is the number that I think even the chairman of the committee will acknowledge is how much new revenue he is raising, and under the OMB scoring it would be $600 billion of new taxes. Dramatic increases. Dramatic increases in tax revenues, with the implications, of course, with all of these new budget points of order and all--and the failure to be able to--even out of this building in--where is it--the Cayman Islands or Panama or someplace, this one little building, no matter how he squeezes that building down and crushes it into dust, he cannot get $439 billion out of it. He might get $30 billion out of it, but that still leaves him $400 billion to go, or depending on the other scoring, $570 billion. The only place you can go with this type of money is the American taxpayer. We are not talking about the rich. We are talking about Americans trying to make a living, small businesspeople running a small business. Most people who live off dividends actually are senior citizens. Senior citizens will be hit heavily by this tax increase. Capital gains--that is where people take risks, and they are not going to change their asset mix anymore and, as a result, it will dry up. This is a huge tax increase budget. So to summarize, although I hate to do that because I haven't taken nearly enough time, the Democratic budget raises taxes by $900 billion, raises spending on the nondefense discretionary side by $146 billion, and most acutely, in my opinion, although the tax number is obviously daunting, the most acute failure of this budget is that it passes all this debt on to our children and then further burdens them by not doing anything of any significance to address the coming tsunami, which is the entitlement costs which the baby boom generation is going to force on to our kids, making our Government unaffordable for our children. So I have reservations about this budget. As we go forward, I imagine there will be amendments to reflect those reservations. At this time, I would like to yield to our leader for 10 minutes, if that is all right with the chairman. Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.

Mr. GREGG. No, you cannot assume that.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that an additional 30 minutes of debate time be added to the original 3 hours, equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. I yield 40 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a question?