Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. No.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I have been asked to remind Senators that there will be two more votes, after the final vote on the budget, on judges. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are now able to go to final passage. Before we go to final passage, I wish to begin by thanking Senator Conrad and his extraordinary staff, led by Mary Naylor. They have been incredibly cooperative. They are always extraordinarily professional. There is no question but we would not have been able to complete this-- in what may not seem timely to most folks because we have been here all day but is--quite honestly we could have been here into tomorrow or Saturday without the extraordinary cooperation of the Senator from North Dakota and his team. I thank him for his professionalism and their team. I also thank my Committee on the Budget staff. They have worked tirelessly and continuously on this budget for the last 6 weeks. They literally have gotten very little sleep, especially, of course, Scott Gudes, my budget leader, and Denzel McGuire, his top assistant. They did a great job of organizing, especially today, the amendments. Jeff Turcotte, Dave Myers, and Sam Donoghue of our communications team, who has tried to compete with the chart machine on the other side of the aisle, they have come close. They have done a great job. Jim Hearn and Cheri Reidy, David Pappone and Gail Millar, are the specialists who make this place work. The cornerstone of the great team, John Mashburn, and Vas Chrisopoulos, my AA who keeps everything humming along and does an incredible job on my personal staff, and I thank the leadership staff. There are an awful lot of good people working for the leadership around here. They should be acknowledged for their tremendous work. Let me thank the clerks and all the Senate staff. They have worked all day with virtually no break, along with the Reporters of Debates. I thank everyone for an extraordinary amount of commitment to making this place work correctly. This budget is now on the verge of being passed. It is the first step in the process. As I have said before, it is the responsibility of governance to pass a budget. That is our responsibility as Senators. This is a responsible budget. It is not everything I wanted, obviously, but it is a step in the right direction. It is a step on the road, and it is a positive step on the road. Rather than prolong the discussion, because we have had a lot of discussion on it, I will now yield the floor to the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Disaster Prediction and Prevention be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 16, 2006, at 10 a.m. on Volcanic Hazards.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 16, 2006 at 3 p.m. on pending Committee business.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to hold a hearing on Thursday, March 16, 2006 at 10 a.m. on the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration's strategy to restore and protect the Great Lakes.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 16, 2006, at 8:30 a.m., to receive testimony from combatant commanders on their military strategy and operational requirements, in review of the defense authorization request for Fiscal Year 2007 and the future years defense program.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Wednesday, March 16, 2006, at 9 a.m. in The Mansfield Room, S-207 The Capitol. Agenda I. Nominations: Norman Randy Smith, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit; Patrick J. Schiltz, to be U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Minnesota; Steven G. Bradbury, to be an Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel; John F. Clark to be Director of the United States Marshals Service. II. Bills: S. , Comprehensive Immigration Reform; Chairman's Mark; S. 1768. A bill to permit the televising of Supreme Court proceedings; Specter, Leahy, Cornyn, Grassley, Schumer, Feingold, Durbin; S. 829, Sunshine in the Courtroom Act of 2005; Grassley, Schumer, Cornyn, Leahy, Feingold, Durbin, Graham, DeWine, Specter; S. 489, Federal Consent Decree Fairness Act; Alexander, Kyl, Cornyn, Graham, Hatch; S. 2039, Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2005; Durbin, Specter, DeWine, Leahy, Kennedy, Feinstein, Feingold; S. 2292, A bill to provide relief for the Federal judiciary from excessive rent charges; Specter, Leahy, Cornyn, Feinstein, Biden. III. Matters: S.J. Res. 1, Marriage Protection Amendment; Allard, Sessions, Kyl, Hatch, Cornyn, Coburn, Brownback.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 16, 2006, for a committee hearing titled ``Looking At Our Homeless Veterans' Programs: How Effective Are They?'' The hearing will take place in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building at 10 a.m.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 16, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. for a hearing regarding ``Earmark Reform: Understanding the Obligation of Funds Transparency Act''.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Thursday, March 16, 2006 at 1:30 p.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226 on S.J. Res. 12, the Flag Desecration Resolution.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Mark Van de Water of the Senate Appropriations Committee be granted the privilege of the floor during the consideration of S. Con. Res. 83.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that after we complete the Santorum amendment we go to the Conrad amendment on avian flu, and then we go to the Wyden amendment on Medicare.

Mr. GREGG. Other than that, go to yours.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to claim the remainder of the time on the Santorum amendment.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Chair. This discussion which recently occurred between the Senator from Washington and the Senator from North Dakota----

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments we have outlined so far--the Conrad amendment, the Burr amendment, the Wyden-Snowe, and if there is an agreement from our side in response to Wyden-Snowe, they will all be 15 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. I understand I have 9 minutes. Good. The discussion which just occurred between the Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Washington is a discussion which reflects the difference between our views and how you should budget. Essentially what the Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Washington said is we should break the cap, we should spend additional money, and we should raise taxes. Their approach to budgeting is to tax and spend. Our approach, on the other hand, has been to say if there is a priority which the Senate feels is a high priority, whether it is veterans' benefits or CDBG--and there will be other amendments like these--that the Senate should declare there is a priority and set up a process where other programs will have to be reduced in order to pay for that program within the cap. The Senator from North Dakota correctly referred to it as an across-the-board cut. Section 920 is a technical event. It does not have money in it, and it never has. But when you identify a 920 expenditure, it creates a mechanism where another program activity would be cut across the board. That is the philosophical difference between our parties. This budget increases the size of Government from last year to next year by over $100 billion. That is the growth in this budget--over $100 billion. The growth in the discretionary account will be about $30 billion under this budget. Those are huge numbers of growth. That is expanding the Government in a very dramatic way and a very significant way, much more so than I would personally wish to do. I wish to see us control, for example, entitlement spending a little more aggressively around here, which is the majority of growth. But the fact is that is the growth. What the Democratic proposals are saying--there have been innumerable ones--is we should grow Government even more, we should expand Government even more, and then we should raise taxes to pay for that. The traditional Democratic approach to Government is basically no end to the size of Government. There is no end to the amount of taxes they are willing to raise. And this argument that they are going to use loopholes, I have to say, is a little shallow. There was this loophole around here called Customs fees which would be used to pay for new spending around here 45 different times. People said we are going to take it out of Customs fees, and then they offset it because they didn't get a budget point of order against it. This building in the Caymans is the new Customs fee. The simple fact is if you eliminated all the loopholes which they are talking about-- they may or may not be loopholes; I certainly think some of them sound legitimate--that would be $11 billion you would raise over 5 years, all of them. They have proposed $133 billion in new taxes. So they are $121 billion short. Where is that going to come from? That is going to come from increasing maybe the death tax, increasing rates, and increasing taxes on working families, on small businesses, so they can expand Government. That is the difference of opinion which we have. We don't believe that is the way you control the size of Government, to grow it and then raise more taxes to pay for it. We believe the way to control the size of Government is to set a hard spending level, which we have done, $873 billion, and hold that, and then within that spending level set priorities. A lot of amendments come through here saying what the priorities should be. I think they are fairly reasonable; some aren't. The fact is they will all have to be shoehorned under that hard spending cap as long as we maintain that spending cap, as we have done so far in this budget process. But every amendment offered so far from the other side of the aisle has been a spending amendment which has broken that spending cap-- increase the size of Government; grow the Government; then raise taxes to pay for it, representing that it is a corporate loophole closing, which it can't be because they have already gone well beyond the estimates that are reflected in those loopholes which they allege exist. There is a difference of opinion here. We happen to think we are doing it the right way by setting the priorities under the cap. They think they are doing it the right way by growing the size of Government beyond the spending cap and then paying for it with tax increases on working Americans. It is a difference of opinion. I yield the remainder of our time on the Santorum amendment and we can move on to the Conrad amendment.

Mr. GREGG. I would suggest, then, that we spend another 6 minutes on this. You take 3; I take 3. Then we move on to your amendment.

Mr. GREGG. I will yield the floor, recognizing that I will probably reclaim it for the amount of time that the Senator from North Dakota uses.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, for the sake of figuring out where we are going, I can never remember who is the junior or senior Senator any longer because the Senator from North Dakota came, went, and came back. How much time do you think Senator Dorgan would like?

Mr. GREGG. Why don't we give 5 minutes to Senator Dorgan, and then I will respond.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the Senator from North Dakota makes my case. The seriousness of purpose would require that they present a budget, and if they did, they would be presenting a budget that had dramatic tax increases in it and dramatic expansion of the Federal Government, as has been shown by the amendments they have brought to the floor--over $127 billion of expansion of the Federal Government, over $133 billion in tax increases. That is just the start. The senior Senator from North Dakota basically questioned this recovery. I suppose you can always walk around with a dark cloud over your head and claim there is no sunlight when the sun is shining on you. The fact is, this recovery has been pretty good, especially in the context of the fact that we are fighting a war and we have had basically the entire Gulf States wiped out as a result of catastrophic natural events, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. If we look at some of the issues that affect people the most in this recovery, let's look at the price of homes. They have gone up; there have been historic increases. When that happens, everyone's net worth in America jumps. All homeowners' net worth jumps when the price of homes goes up. So everybody who is a homeowner has a little more of a cushion to their life. Dividend income has jumped dramatically as a result of the cut in dividends. Why? Because corporations, instead of borrowing and instead of using mechanisms where they reinvest maybe overseas--which seems to upset our colleagues on the other side--have decided to pay out dividends. So people who own stock in this country--the vast majority of Americans, by the way, either directly or through pension funds--are benefiting from the fact that dividend income has jumped radically under this administration. Unemployment, during a period of fairly significant recession at the beginning of this administration, and a period of war that has been going on throughout this administration, and a period where the gulf coast has been overwhelmingly hit by an economic downturn as a result of the impact of the catastrophic events of Katrina and Rita, unemployment continues to drop. In fact, I remember a couple years ago, under this administration, when the other side of the aisle was claiming we weren't creating enough jobs. We don't hear that routine anymore. Jobs are being created at a significantly faster rate than historic norms, and we are seeing a lot of people being employed--5 million jobs added, which is more than the combined increase of Japan and Europe--which, by the way, has a population of about half again as large as ours--over the same period of time. Productivity growth. This is an important one because it is a function of the tax laws that we put in place. Productivity growth is higher than almost all prior business cycles. We have maintained extremely high productivity growth as a result of the fact that we have created a tax climate where people are having incentive to invest and create jobs, which we have talked about earlier. That is a hugely important factor, something that if you listen to former Chairman Greenspan, who I think is a fair arbiter of economics in this country, he will tell you productivity growth is probably the most important thing. If you can keep that ahead of inflation, you are going to have a robust economy, and we have certainly done that as a result of the policies of this administration. We have had 17 consecutive quarters of economic growth, economic expansion. That is a very robust recovery under any definition of recovery--17 consecutive months. It may not be as strong as other recoveries, but it is certainly a very strong recovery and something we as a nation should be taking a fair amount of pride in. That brings us back to the issue of tax policy because if you listen to the other side of the aisle, you would think that revenues were still down as a result of Katrina, as a result of the attack of 9/11, and as a result of the burst of the Internet bubble, and they claim it is as a result of tax cuts. Revenues are not down; they are proceeding to go up. They continue to grow. At least their chart shows they are back to a historic level. That level that they are at is essentially the level they should be at, which is the historic level that we pay taxes as a percentage of gross domestic product. The Federal Government should not be taking more than 18.4 percent of GDP out of the economy for tax purposes. We are growing at a dramatic rate. These bars go up significantly, and they are going to continue to go up significantly because of the fact that we have in place tax policy that encourages economic activity, risk taking, and job creating, which is so critical to the generation of revenue to the Federal Government. So we get back to what is the essence of the debate because I think it needs to be restated. The essence is this chart--they have their chart, and it is basically the same chart, but we look at them differently. We agree that the chart is the same. The point is this: Revenues are coming back to their historic levels, 18.4 percent of gross national product. Spending, however, is not coming down as much as it should, and it is not coming down not because we have not made a commitment to try to control spending--we have done that. Last year, we passed the first deficit reduction attempt on entitlements in 8 years. We got two votes from the other side of the aisle. There was no attempt to control entitlements from the other side of the aisle last year. There was opposition to spending control there. Then we put into place a cap on spending, and again we didn't get any votes from the other side of the aisle. What their proposal is, is shown in their amendment, which essentially says we are going to grow the size of Government, grow it above that line where it is now, which is 20 percent; and we are going to raise taxes and grow the revenues well above the 18.4 percent, which is the historic norm. So they are basically saying they are willing to take much more out of this economy to grow the Government, make the Government bigger than what has historically been the case, and they are also willing to take much more in taxes. We don't think we should go that way. We think we should put into place spending restraint. We would love it if the other side of the aisle would support this. But there is no attempt to support the caps from any amendment offered on the other side of the aisle. Every amendment that has come forward from them has raised the caps, raised the size of Government. There was no support for entitlement control on the other side of the aisle--none. Well, there were two votes, I am sorry. I respect those votes and I thank them. But the vast majority of the other side of the aisle didn't want to do any entitlement restraint. To the extent we have seen spending go up, it has only gone up in two categories-- entitlements and national defense. National defense is something you have to do when you are at war. So when the Senator from the other side of the aisle points to the spending chart going up, he knows and I know that the extent that is discretionary spending, it is 95 percent national defense because that is what we have to do when we are at war. So if you are going to control the rate of growth of Government, you have to control the discretionary side and the entitlement side. There is no attempt to do that on the other side. There is an attempt to expand it. Yes, the debt goes up. Their argument is that we are expanding debt. Well, that is true because we are fighting a war that we have to pay for and because we cannot get any support in a bipartisan way to address what is driving the debt most, which is entitlement spending. The President comes forward with a proposal on Social Security and says everything is on the table. The other side says we won't accept anything. He comes forward with a Medicare proposal. Immediately, the leader on the other side of the aisle said the proposal was inexcusable, even though it was put forward by MEDPAC, an independent organization of health professionals, which suggested you can restrain the rate of growth nominally with a couple of changes. The same is true of Medicaid. What a battle we had last year to save $5 billion in Medicaid spending, with over a $1.2 trillion base, so we took the rate of growth from 40 percent to 40 percent. We didn't even change it. There was opposition every step of the way from the other side. So it is very hard to give a lot of credibility to the idea that there is a desire to control spending on the other side of the aisle. What this is on the other side of the aisle is shown by this chart, which is to increase spending, increase the size of Government, increase taxes and, as a result, we refer to that as tax and spend, a term which I believe is reasonably accurate in this context. At this point, I will yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand Senator Grassley wishes to respond to Senator Wyden. That may be the appropriate time. Let Senator Wyden make his presentation.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. We are going to be here a long time if we keep doing 10- minute votes for 16 minutes. I have spoken with Senator Conrad. It is my sense that we should start cutting these votes off. We have a whole series of votes. The next one will take 10 minutes. We are going to start to enforce that timeframe.