Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from North Dakota telling us what I am saying. I do wish the Senator from North Dakota had brought forward a budget so we could see what he is saying and what their side thinks they should do. Right now their budget is a blank piece of paper as an overall document, and it has been for the last few years. But if we look at what they did in committee, I think you can get an idea. They proposed amendments which would have increased discretionary spending by almost $19 billion and mandatory spending by $127 billion. That is a lot of new spending. And they raised taxes by about $130 billion. That is a lot of new taxes. So there is no discipline on their side of the aisle relative to controlling the rate of growth of this Government. In fact, just the opposite. They want to expand the rate of growth significantly and they want to raise taxes on the American people to accomplish that. That has always been their position and we are going to see amendment after amendment offered to this budget which will essentially increase spending. We have already got a few in line here. I think Senator Kennedy is going to offer one for $6.5 billion as the next amendment, or one of the coming amendments here. There are others coming down the pike. They are all going to be paid for by raising taxes. The position of the other side of the aisle on this, although they manage to keep it a little foggy because they don't put forward their own budget, is pretty clear. They want to increase and grow the size of this Government significantly and they want to raise taxes to do that. What the pay-go amendment does is raise taxes. You can't deny this. There are only three items of any significance that they are going to impact in this budget. My budget has no new entitlement spending in it so pay-go won't apply to any entitlement spending. It has a lot of entitlement spending presumed in it because entitlement spending is, of course, a big part of the budget. But none of that entitlement spending is affected by pay-go because, as a practical matter, pay-go will be exempting those entitlement accounts. This reflects what were the amounts of tax increases offered from the Democratic side in committee when we marked this bill up: $133 billion, and the amount of new spending, $127 billion. It puts in stark terms how much new spending was proposed in committee by the Democratic membership, and new taxes. Now they want to use this vehicle of pay-go to essentially repeal the tax cuts. That is what they are trying to do. The only items, as I mentioned, that are going to be impacted by this pay-go language will be the extension of the tax cuts. What tax cuts will need to be extended in the next 5 years? There are the rates, there are capital gains and dividends, and there is the death tax. Those are the big ones. Also maybe State and local deductibility in that category; I am not sure. That may be extended further than this window. But in any event, those are the big ones. They are saying to a person whose rates go up: Your rates are either going to go up or taxes are going to have to be raised somewhere else to keep them at their present level. This argument that you are going to cut spending around here, and to raise taxes--I would love to see the other side of the aisle come forward with that proposal. I might be willing to do that and there might be two other people on this side of the aisle who might be willing to do that, but I have not seen a proposal from the other side of the aisle to cut spending anywhere. The Senator from North Dakota argues that this budget adds enormously to the debt. It adds a lot less to the debt than anything the Senator from North Dakota has presented because he is not willing to freeze nondefense discretionary spending. He has not put forward a budget that reduces debt. What this budget at least does is put in place discipline on the discretionary side of the ledger. It sets a cap--$873 billion. As long as you have that cap you have something around here to enforce so you can limit spending. It doesn't do as much as I would like to do on the entitlement side, but at least it puts in place a mechanism for us to have a point of order should entitlement spending get out of control-- should more than 45 percent of an entitlement account, which is supposed to be an insurance account, end upcoming out of the general treasury--and I understand they are going to try to repeal that point of order. And then they claim they are for budget discipline? The inconsistency of their position is reflected by the facts on the ground and the facts on the ground are pretty clear. The only thing this pay-go amendment will affect is taxes and it will force tax increases and it will make the extension of the tax cuts much more difficult to accomplish, which will be a tax increase. If your rates go up, if your tax rates go up, that is a tax increase. I think everybody in America probably understands that. You can call it pay-go if that is the term you want to use. If that is the new term we are going to use around here for raising taxes, we will call it pay-go and I guess that is what they want to say. When you raise taxes around here, we will call it pay-go.

Mr. GREGG. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the practical effect of this is to raise taxes. That is the only effect it has. If you take the pay-go language and put it on top of the 5-year budget we offer today, the only thing it will impact is the fact that taxes will have to be increased to pay for extending the rate cuts, for extending the repeal of the death tax, and capital gains and dividends. It is not pay-go, it is tax-go. For all practical matters, this is a vote on whether you want to raise taxes. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this will be the last vote, I suspect, tonight.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to speak to the pay-go amendment. Pay-go is a term that has sort of taken on a motherhoodlike atmosphere around here. There are some terms which occur in the legislative process or in the political arena that become perceptionwise different than what they are in substance. The perception becomes the issue versus the substance. Pay-go has taken on that sort of status because it sounds like something that makes sense. But to be honest, what pay-go is is a tax increase. It is that simple. The way this amendment is structured, it guarantees a tax increase. Rather than saying they are for tax increases, they are saying they are for pay-go. In fact, the last chart the Senator referred to which showed very large numbers in this bill which he didn't call taxes were just that--taxes. If you want to adjust those numbers, you are going to have to raise taxes by the $214 billion he cited in that chart. So pay-go is a stalking horse for a tax increase. It is really that simple. It is also technically not an appropriate approach, and this is why. CBO scores things around here, and CBO basically drives the decisions of the budget process because what the Congressional Budget Office says is what the baseline is; in other words, how much a program will cost in the outyears, how much tax revenue will occur in the outyears as a result of a tax proposal. But CBO uses different standards for different groups of spending and taxes. For discretionary spending, they have one set of standards. For entitlement spending, they have another set of standards. For tax revenues and tax cuts, they have another set of standards. So when you create this pay-go language, which the Democratic side is offering, you are creating a one-size-fits-all and applying it to different accounting systems, and it produces perverse effects. The most perverse effect is it basically means you have to raise taxes, but you will never actually impact entitlement spending. Why is that? Because under the way CBO works, they say entitlement programs never end. It is amazing. You can have an entitlement which had an authorization life of, say, 10 years, but CBO would score it as if it went on forever, never sunsets, never is perceived by CBO as having to be reduced or in any way adjusted. That is the decision they have made in scoring entitlements. On the tax side, however, they take the exact opposite approach. If you have a tax cut which is authorized for 5 years or 10 years, at the end of the 5 years or 10 years, they presume that tax cut is followed by a tax increase and, as a result, they presume there has to be more income coming in because taxes will go up. The practical effect of that is that this pay-go proposal will never actually be applied to an entitlement that already exists, but it will always be applied to a tax cut that already exists, which results in tax cuts being significantly prejudiced by this approach because it is a one-size-fits-all approach. If CBO were to change its scoring mechanisms and say that entitlements didn't go on forever, then it would be logical to have this type of an approach--potentially logical--because then you would actually have to pay for entitlements and you would have to pay for tax cuts. But under this proposal, that is not the case. Under this proposal, only tax cuts would have to be adjusted and paid for and would be affected by pay-go, and it would essentially be, therefore, a tax increase mechanism. So when our colleagues vote for this, they are voting for tax increases. It is that simple. Another problem with this technical problem is it again goes to CBO scoring. For example, under the CBO scoring, CBO uses capital gains as a revenue loser. It does not score capital gains for the dynamic effect it has on the economy. When we cut capital gains rates--it has been proven every time we have done it--we generate revenue. Why is that? It is called human nature, and human nature usually overwhelms accountants. They just sometimes cannot handle the concept of human nature, but human nature goes to work when you cut the capital gains rates because when somebody owns an asset and has owned it for a while, it is an asset which they know if they sell they are going to have to pay 30 percent taxes on. Then we cut the tax rate on that asset to 15 percent, if they sell it, and there is an incentive for them to sell that asset and to reinvest those dollars in something that is probably more productive. But if the tax rate stays at 30 percent, there is no incentive for them to go out and make that sale because they recognize they are going to pay a very high level of taxes on it. So assets get locked up. Stocks that might be sold get locked up, investments in real estate that might be converted get locked up, small businesses that might be converted get locked up, and farms that might be sold get locked up because the incentive to sell is reduced by the high level of taxes. So when we cut capital gains rates, which is what we have done, we create this huge infusion of economic activity. People start to sell assets which they wouldn't otherwise have sold, and that generates income to the Federal Government because taxes are being paid that would not have been paid before and there would be no tax revenue coming in because people would sit on these assets. We generate a tax event. More important, the money which was invested in that asset is reinvested and, by human nature, it is reinvested in something that, to the person doing the investing, is going to be more productive. By creating more productive investments, we end up creating more economic activity, more jobs--many more jobs--and, as a result, once again, we generate more revenue to the Federal Government. A capital gains cut actually generates a lot of revenue. We see on this chart that CBO--the blue line--simply is not willing to score that type of economic activity, the real economic activity, the actual economic activity generated from capital gains cuts. We have had a huge infusion of revenues into the Federal Treasury as a result of the capital gains tax, huge--$60 billion, $75 billion, $81 billion. What happens is CBO uses these artificially low numbers to score that capital gains cut even though capital gains is paying for itself. If they used the accurate numbers, then pay-go wouldn't even apply to a capital gains cut because capital gains would pay for itself. It would pay for itself because it would generate so much revenue. But CBO scores it as a loser, even though it is a winner, so a capital gains cut is subject to the perverse approach under the CBO scoring rules of having to pay twice if you have pay-go in place. First, it would pay because it would generate the revenue to cover the cost of the cut, which CBO claims is a cost--it is not a cost; it is actually a revenue winner--and then it would have to pay on the presumption it was going to cost money, when, in fact, it is not going to cost money, and then you have to find revenues to cover it. There is a perverse accounting mechanism working here if we put pay- go in place relative to items such as capital gains reductions. That is a technical reason this proposal does not work. The bottom line of this proposal is simple: It is a tax increase. The basic engine of this proposal, the basic effect of this proposal would be the engine to drive tax increases. There is a fundamental disagreement between the two parties as to whether we should have tax increases driven by an accounting mechanism or whether we should have them driven by policy. It may be we should do some tax increases around here in certain areas. The Senator from North Dakota has pointed out some loopholes that should be closed, and I am for that. And he has suggested we should collect more taxes that are owed. I am for that, too. But I don't think we should use an accounting mechanism to basically repeal the capital gains rate and the dividends rate, which is the purpose of this amendment. This amendment is targeted to two tax cuts: dividends and capital gains. And then later on, when the rates adjust, when the rate adjustment comes to an end, it will be targeted on rates. It is like a laser beam aimed at those two issues. If it were to be in place today, it is unlikely we would have a capital gains rate or dividend rate at the present levels. The result, in my opinion, would be to chill the economic recovery because I think a huge part of our economic recovery has been these numbers right here, capital gains activity: people realizing their gains, selling an asset, and reinvesting it in something more productive, which creates economic activity, jobs, and revenue. There is a fundamental disagreement here. This is a stalking horse for a tax increase, in my opinion. It is doing it through a technical vehicle, but it is clearly going to have that result. If we were to put a major new entitlement on the books, it would actually impact that, I give it credit for that. But we already have on the books a pay-go which affects new entitlements--new entitlements. I would love to have a pay-go that affects existing entitlements, and if they want to redraft the amendment to do that, I would be happy to take a look at that. The practical effect of this amendment is singular in purpose: It will force a tax increase. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me briefly respond to the Senator from North Dakota. I was right then, and I am right now. Times change and dynamics of what is happening around here change substantively. The only thing that will be impacted by this pay-go amendment, if it is adopted, is tax increases. That is it, because there isn't a major new entitlement being proposed. In fact, as I mentioned before, the way the scoring occurs around here, all the entitlements will continue. These are the entitlements that are exempt: Food Stamp Program, TANF, Commodity Credit Corporation, veterans compensation, child care, State children's health, rehabilitation services, ground transportation, Federal unemployment insurance, child nutrition, and the list goes on of entitlement accounts exempt from the Senator's pay-go and pay-go generally. There is a pay-go in the bill. What isn't exempt is the fact if this were in place today, capital gains and dividends would be subject to it. And that is totally inconsistent because capital gains, as I pointed out--what happened to my chart? Somebody took it down, I guess as a courtesy to the Senator from North Dakota because this is such a devastating chart and he didn't want it to undermine his arguments. As this chart points out definitively, the money is in the bank, or at least it is in the Federal Treasury until we spend it. We are generating huge amounts of revenues from capital gains. Under this pay- go amendment, were it in place, you would have to pay for capital gains because CBO does not score it relative to what it actually does. The next event to which this is going to apply is the death tax, if pay-go is in place. That is the only thing it will impact in this budget window over the next 5 years because the only thing that is planned in this next 5 years will be the death tax and the rates, and it will be used as the club to generate tax increases. That is all it is for in the context of today. You look over this 5-year window of what this budget says, you take this pay-go language and lay it over that 5-year window, and the only thing it will impact is taxes, and it will basically be used as a lever, as a club, to raise taxes. It shouldn't be called pay-go, it should be called tax-go. The Senator from North Dakota made this case for us when he held up his chart that showed all these bars--and he didn't identify what they were--of numbers that this budget allegedly doesn't cover that are losses of revenue, according to the Senator from North Dakota, because we have cut taxes. He didn't actually say they were loss of revenue from tax cuts, he used some other term for it. I don't know what the term was, but he had one bar that was $216 billion. Well, that is death taxes, rate cuts, dividends and interest, for the most part. There might also be some R&D tax credits in there and some State and local deductibility. So it is ironic, to say the least, that they would claim that this is a balanced approach. Another ironic thing is we have heard the Senator from North Dakota and other Members come to the floor and say the AMT is an outrage, the alternative minimum tax. Well, I haven't heard them suggest how they are going to pay for fixing the AMT, but under their amendment, they would have to, and that is an $800 billion hole. I happen to think we should fix the AMT, and we should fix it in the context of revenue neutrality. But I don't see any amendments floating around here, and I haven't seen any amendments floating around here to accomplish that. So I don't see how you can argue anything other than the fact that this proposal, as it is presented, has one fundamental impact: and that will be that over the next 5 years any attempt to extend any tax cut will be put to a 60-vote point of order and will be, therefore, pressure to raise taxes. It will be pressure to raise taxes to do that extension. It will have no impact on anything else because there are no new entitlement programs planned in this bill. And because CBO scores all entitlements that already exist as going on forever, they won't be hit by this proposal. So as I said earlier, it is a one-size-fits-all proposal that disadvantages tax cuts. The irony is the tax cuts that pay for themselves, such as capital gains and dividends cuts, which generate economic activity, which generate income, will end up having to be paid for twice. That really doesn't make any sense, and it will be driven by an accounting mechanism. I don't think policy should be driven by an accounting mechanism when it is so unfairly applied where it basically impacts tax policy one way and entitlement policy another way. I would rather see something that was fair. But, in any event, I don't support this because it is a tax increase mechanism.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, how much time is left on this amendment?

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the Senator's passion. I just wish he had been there when we voted on the deficit reduction bill and we put $9 billion in student assistance and increased the Pell grant concept $8,000 per student, students with low income to pursue academic careers which are needed in this country so we could be more competitive. As I have mentioned before, the numbers are pretty staggering, what we put into education accounts, and this budget puts in another $1.5 billion over what the President suggested, although again it is not binding. Nothing we do in this budget is binding in a specific account. The only binding number we have and we should keep is that top line on the issue of how much we are going to spend as a Government. I would say not only is it important to pass along good education to our children, but it is also important to pass along a healthy economy to them and a nation which they can afford to live in. But raising their taxes as this amendment does is not going to make us more competitive or make them have a better lifestyle. It means they end up paying more taxes. Not living within your budgets is not a good idea for government, it is not a good idea certainly for students, and I think this amendment sets a bad precedent. It establishes a precedent of saying, well, we will just blow the cap off with either higher taxes or more debt. It is a very inappropriate approach and certainly unfair to those kids who want to go to college and have a country they can afford to live in and be able to make a decent living in and not have to pay too much in taxes. This amendment, in my opinion, is excessive, inappropriate, and clearly, as a result of busting the budget, is not constructive to fiscal responsibility and to maintaining fiscal discipline here at the Federal level. Now I would yield back the remainder of my time. I understand the next amendment will be offered by the Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. GREGG. Complete your statement on this topic.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me simply respond to some of the things the Senator said. We haven't seen a budget plan from the Democratic side of the aisle for the last 2 years. In fact, even when they were in control of the Senate, we didn't get a budget across the floor from the other side of the aisle. I think one of the reasons is because they would have to openly admit to the fact that what they are basically saying, in language which is not specific but which is clear, is that they are going to raise taxes, that they want to raise taxes, and pay-go is just a stalking horse to accomplish that. It is that simple. The facts are very clear. If you take this pay-go language and you template it over this budget, there are no entitlements that are going to be impacted. None. But there are taxes that are going to be impacted: specifically, capital gains, dividends--if they aren't addressed in this reconciliation package that is still being worked on--and the death tax. I think most people in this country know that when their rates go up, they are getting a tax increase. And the effect of the pay-go language will be that if you get to the time when the rates have to be extended, the pay-go language will either force them to go up or force taxes to be raised somewhere else. It will be basically a major club used for the purpose of defeating the maintenance of things like the capital gains rate, dividend and interest rate, the dividend rate, and the death tax. That is the purpose, and it couldn't be any clearer from the facts. I wish the Senator would present a budget because I think if he did, you would see that. Clearly, he hasn't addressed how they are going to do AMT. That amendment has been offered from their side. It was in committee, and it is, I presume, going to be offered again before we finish. Are they going to offset that with tax increases, that almost $1 trillion tax event? If they are going to stick to their language, they should. I don't think they will. So there is a different standard. The point is obvious. This language, as it is presently structured, because of the facts that we have before us, which is a 5-year budget which has no new entitlements in it, and because CBO scores entitlements as going on forever and therefore they are never impacted by this pay-go language, this pay-go language will not affect the spending side of the ledger at all. But it will affect the tax side of the ledger. And when the death tax needs to be extended, this pay-go language will require a tax increase. When rates need to be extended, this pay-go language will require a tax increase. When dividends and interest, dividends and capital gains, should they not be extended in this reconciliation agreement need to be extended, this pay-go will require a tax increase, and that is the purpose of this. This concept that CBO writes us back and says: Well, we can't really figure out that the capital gains cut generated capital gains income, that is one of the problems here. The CBO is taking a very strict green-eyeshade approach to budgeting. The way they build their baseline, they use four or five different major assumption groups. The assumption group they use for entitlement, the assumption group they use for taxes is entirely opposite and unfair and disproportionately impacts the capacity to do anything on the tax side of the ledger around here. And this amendment, if it were agreed to, would lock in that unfairness. Clearly, capital gains generate revenue. Now, maybe the Senator from North Dakota wants to repeal the capital gains rate. He is saying in the outyears they don't generate revenue, they lose revenue. I happen to think they create a great deal of capital activity and investment and people are willing to take risks because they have a tax rate that is reasonable. In the industrialized world, in major industrialized countries, we still have one of the highest rates of taxation on capital there is. Most industrial nations don't even tax capital formation because they recognize it creates jobs. We do, and the rate we have is reasonable, in my opinion. But if the Senator from North Dakota wants to raise it because he thinks in the outyears it is a revenue loser--fine. Say so. Offer a budget that does that. I would be happy to debate that rather than move under the terminology that is misleading, this motherhood terminology of pay-go, which is nothing more than ``tax-go'' in the way it will be applied to this bill and to the next 5 years. Obviously I oppose this amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, what is the time remaining?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we now proceed to the consideration of the following amendments in the order listed and the times for debate equally divided for today and into the evening: Senator Specter relative to Labor-HHS, 30 minutes; Senator Stabenow relative to interoperable, 30 minutes; Senator Frist, or his designee, relative to Menendez subject matter, \1/2\ hour; Senator Menendez relative to port security, \1/2\ hour; Senator Byrd on mining, \1/2\ hour; Senator Chambliss and Senator Dayton, Byrne grants, 30 minutes; and Senator Murray on CDBG, 30 minutes. Beginning on Wednesday at 9 a.m., the following will be considered: Senator Kyl on immigration, 15 minutes; Senator Grassley on Medicare, 30 minutes; Senator Nelson on Medicare, 30 minutes; and Senator Santorum on CDBG, 30 minutes. I further ask unanimous consent that following the debate or yielding back of time on these amendments the Senate proceed to a vote in relationship to the amendments with no second degrees in order to amendments prior to the vote; further, that the time used during the votes count equally against the resolution. I further ask unanimous consent that the votes occur in the order listed above with the exception of the Santorum vote which will occur immediately following the Murray amendment; provided that prior to each vote there will be 2 minutes equally divided for debate, and that in each stacked series all votes after the first be limited to 10 minutes each. For clarification, tomorrow morning after the debate on the Santorum amendment, we will begin a series of votes. We have some scheduling issues and, therefore, we will pause that sequence at some point and resume around 1 p.m. We have a joint meeting beginning at 2 p.m., and therefore we will then begin the next series of votes at 3 or 3:15. I further ask unanimous consent that no other amendments or motions be in order other than those listed during the pendency of this request.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I have one more unanimous consent request which is that during the time we are in joint session with the House and hear the message from the President of Liberia, for which I guess we would be in recess, that time be counted against the bill equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, there is 30 minutes on her amendment, equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are ready to go to the next amendment. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Kyl as a cosponsor to Senator Burns' amendment No. 2999.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we yield back the remainder of our time on the Akaka amendment. I believe the next amendment in order will be the Talent-Cantwell amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we deem the yeas and nays to have been ordered on all seven amendments.

Mr. GREGG. I yield back our time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after we conclude the vote on the Bingaman amendment, the next amendment in order will be the Specter-Harkin amendment for half an hour, followed by the Stabenow amendment for half an hour. We are working on a unanimous consent request to line up a whole series of amendments, which unanimous consent request we hopefully will be able to offer at the end of this amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I greatly respect the Senator from Michigan. I especially respect and appreciate her dedication to trying to make sure we straighten out this issue of interoperability because she clearly has identified it as a critical issue in the area of first responders. And we know it is. We know it has to be addressed. I don't, however, agree with the approach she is taking, which is essentially to put significantly more dollars into the pipeline. Why? Basically for this reason: In the last budget process, the Commerce-State-Justice committee put $2 billion of additional money into the interoperability pipeline. Then in the deficit reduction bill, which no Democrats voted for, but this was not the big item that caused that to happen-- actually, I am sorry, I think two Democrats voted for it--we put an additional billion dollars into interoperability. And really a large part of that was in response to some of the points that have been made by the Senator from Michigan. So she has done a pretty good job of energizing money flowing into these accounts--in fact, so much so that when you tie that in with the first responder funds which are already in the pipeline, $5 billion of which have not been drawn down yet, which funds will go disproportionately, I suspect, toward interoperability issues, easily being a plurality the way the funds will be spent, if not a majority of the way the funds will be spent, you literally have a huge amount of money in the pipeline headed out to the States, to communities for the purposes of addressing the issue of interoperability. The problem isn't dollars right now. The problem is the technical ability of different agencies to agree on an interoperable standard. Every State sees it. You certainly see it across State lines where State police organizations have trouble communicating with local police organizations and fire departments have a different system than the other police in the community. And then the Federal agencies on top of that--Customs, Immigration, FBI, ATF--have problems communicating with the State people. The county people have problems communicating with the State people. They have all, over the years, bought different systems. There is already in place a massive amount of communications equipment out there, and you can't just replace it all. We could never afford to do that. You have to create an atmosphere where, as they either upgrade or they change or they basically agree to try to work together, there is a system to accomplish that. The problem we have today is that those systems are not in place. Most of the State plans we have received that involve interoperability as an element--every State plan has interoperability as one of its priorities--have not been executed because of the fact that they can't figure out how to do interoperability. Literally, they have been negotiating now for 5 or 6 years on a regime, an understanding, a protocol for general interoperability, and they can't reach agreement. What is happening is--and the Senator from Michigan makes this point, too. I don't know if she did in her statement; I regrettably had to leave the Chamber--there is a lot of inventiveness out there. We have turned loose the creative juices of America on this because there is a lot of money in the pipeline, and a lot of people want to participate in it. There are a lot of good ideas coming up quickly as to how to do interoperability without having to do massive hardware changes, and how you can get different systems built by different contractors to communicate with each other. They are not in place yet, but the dollars are there to buy them. A lot of money is there to buy them. We do not need this money at this time. At some point in the future, we are going to need the money--when the house starts to get in order and there is a sugaring off of what the proper technology is and maybe there is an agreement on a national standard or something, then we will need some more money. We will put more money in at that time. To put more money in at this time is unnecessary, to be very honest. I am afraid we will simply overwhelm the system with dollars and end up with a lot of blue lights and cruisers being purchased and not a lot of good, standardized, interoperable communications systems. That is one reason I oppose it. The other reason I oppose the amendment is it would raise the caps. I don't think we should be raising the caps in this budget. I made that case about 15 times in the last 2 days, so I won't state that case. It is a pretty valid case. We are opposed to this amendment. I appreciate the energy of the Senator from Michigan on this issue. I think she has had an impact already, and I believe it is reflected in the fact that there is so much money presently in the pipeline. But it has not been spent. Until there is a better plan to spend it, I don't think we need additional funds. I yield back our time on this amendment. I think the Senator's time has expired; is that correct?

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.