Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. And they will keep buying more and more and as the huge deficits pile up America's debt. This is going hat in hand to China and Japan and South Korea and many other countries. To do what? To finance huge tax breaks for the wealthy.

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator from Nevada is very perceptive. He has been here a long time. My good friend from Nevada knows how these things work, and he is absolutely right. The Senator is right. We all know that. The Pentagon already has figures put together. In the bowels of the White House they have figures put together. They already know it is going to cost money for next year. Again, I guess I respond to my friend by asking him, why wouldn't they be honest with us? Why wouldn't they be honest and put this in the budget? because everyone knows the facts--that it is going to cost some money after September 30. I ask my friend what possible reason would they have for saying it costs nothing and they are zeroing it out?

Mr. HARKIN. It is a shell game. That is all it is.

Mr. HARKIN. We are not going to balance it. But I tell you what they are doing. Effectively, they are going hat in hand to the Chinese, and they are saying, Please loan us some money. The Chinese will buy our bonds. Japan is buying our bonds. I think Japan now is the single largest owner of bonds. I think China is No. 2, if I am not mistaken.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I have had a chance now to look over the President's budget. What with being out of our offices and stuck over in the Capitol and not being able to see some of the people we were supposed to see and conduct business as usual, I have had the chance to look at the budget. Of course, I had heard it was kind of bad. I read some of the preliminary reports, but it was not until I really started digging into it and looking at some of the fine print and getting out a calculator and adding it all up that I realized how stupefyingly bad this budget is. It almost defies logic. After going through it, I can sum up his election year budget in four words: More of the same. More tax cuts for the wealthy, more massive spending increases on things such as Star Wars and, of course, that nice trip to Mars we are going to take, more giveaways to special interests, and more massive budget deficits. This is Mr. Bush's fourth budget submission, so now I think we can take stock. We can size up the full 4-year fiscal record of this administration. Quite frankly, the irresponsible actions of this administration over 4 years boggle the mind. In just 4 years, Mr. Bush has put in place trillions of dollars in tax cuts, overwhelmingly for the very wealthy. In spite of the huge deficits, the President now is demanding that those tax cuts be made permanent. At the same time, he is proposing tens of billions of dollars on new spending programs, and this includes untold billions for trips to the Moon and Mars. There is billions more for Star Wars, which Mr. Bush intends to build now and test later. President Bush has taken the projected 10-year surplus of some $5 trillion that he inherited from President Clinton and turned that into a projected 10-year deficit of nearly $5 trillion. Think about that. In 4 short years, this President and this administration have taken a $5 trillion surplus and turned it into a $5 trillion deficit, a $10 trillion swing. As I said, it just boggles the mind. By any measure, this is an astonishing record of economic mismanagement and economic malpractice. In fact, I challenge my colleagues to cite any President in the 215-year history of our Republic who has compiled such a record of sheer recklessness. The White House now says the deficit in the current fiscal year will be $521 billion. That is bad enough, but that is not the worst of it. Far more dangerous are the long-term, permanent, structural deficits that will result. Mr. Bush dares to claim he has charted a course to cut the deficit in half in 5 years. This has about as much credibility as his claim that Iraq possessed massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The fact is that, after 4 years, Mr. Bush has zero credibility on the budget. Let's look at his past projections and promises. In 2001, Mr. Bush promised: ``We can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits.'' That turned out to be untrue. In 2002, Mr. Bush reassured us: ``Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short term.'' That turned out, also, to be untrue. In 2003, Mr. Bush again assured us: ``Our current deficit is not large by historical standards and is manageable.'' That also is turning out to be untrue. This year, President Bush claims that the massive deficits he has created will be magically cut in half in 5 years' time. Is there any Senator in either party who believes that promise? I don't think so. Mr. Bush has not just created a structural budget deficit, he has created a structural credibility deficit. Few credible economists believe him anymore. The Washington Post sized up this budget in an editorial yesterday morning. The editorial was titled ``Bogus Budgeting.'' The editorial stated that: The Bush administration 2005 budget is a masterpiece of disingenuous blame-shifting, dishonest budgeting and irresponsible governing. The reality is that the deficits will persist at high levels even if the economy stays healthy. Year after year they will stay at high levels, until the baby boomers start to retire, and then the deficits will explode. If we look at the operating budget--that is not counting the surplus that comes from the Social Security taxes--the picture becomes crystal clear. Under the operating budget--again, excluding Social Security surpluses--Bush has a huge $675 billion deficit for this year. That is equal to 5.9 percent of our GDP, our gross domestic product, the second highest operating deficit since 1946. But President Bush claims this operating deficit will drop to $470 billion in just 2 years. Then, according to his own budget documents, the operating deficit begins to rise, reaching $500 billion in 2009--deficits as far as the eye can see. There are three huge problems here. No. 1, we are continuing to add debt at a very rapid rate. No. 2, the glidepath is not downward to lower deficits but upwards to bigger deficits, and it rises more rapidly as we begin paying Social Security benefits to the baby boomers and, as the Social Security surplus shrinks, the true direction of the budget disaster under Bush's plan becomes clear. No. 3, the Bush budget does not include costs that we all know we are going to have. For example, get this. The Bush budget does not include any additional funds for Iraq after September 30 of this year. In other words, for 2005, beginning October 1 of this year, fiscal year 2005, there are zero dollars for Iraq. We will have no troops there? We will have no support going to Iraq? After September 30 it is just going to all end? Does anyone believe that? Yet this budget has zero dollars in it for Iraq after September 30 of this year. That alone ought to tell you this budget is bogus. The 2001 tax bill left a timebomb called the AMT, the alternative minimum tax. In 2001, fewer than 2 million, mostly wealthy, taxpayers paid it. By 2010, if it is not changed, over 30 million taxpayers will be paying it, mostly middle-class families. Nobody around here believes that is going to be allowed to happen. Everyone understands it will be fixed, probably at a cost of over $400 billion. So, what does the Bush budget do? It just fixes it for 1 year. Again, bogus. What do these huge deficits mean, coming ahead? They mean we are increasingly dependent on the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other foreign governments and investors who buy our Treasury bonds. I said to someone the other day, after looking over this budget and looking over who is loaning us money to buy our bonds, we are actually borrowing money from the South Koreans to finance our deficit.

Mr. HARKIN. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. There was a recent article in Time magazine talking about how life in America now for many middle-income families, low-income families has become a game of chance. The game is kind of rigged against you. I remember reading a little newspaper article and the headline was: Vietnamese Immigrants Achieve American Dream, Win State Lottery. The story went on to talk about this Vietnamese couple. They bought a lottery ticket and won the lottery. The idea that this is the American dream, a one-in-a-million chance of winning the lottery, that is the American dream, that our life is a roll of the dice, the odds are a million to one against you. No, that is not the American dream. The American dream is what your parents and my parents did, to work hard, to save, to buy a home of their own, to educate their kids and build a better life.

Mr. HARKIN. It is amazing. Last year this administration came out with proposed rules to change how overtime is figured. Those changes were made without one hearing, not one. Without any consultation with Congress, they just rolled them out there. There was not one public hearing on it. Without going into all the fine details, it basically means that up to 8 million Americans will have their overtime pay protection removed. One person said to me: My time with my family is premium time. If I have to give up my premium time with my family to work overtime, I ought to get some premium pay at time and a half. That has been in law since 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act. This administration, with one stroke of the pen, one set of proposed rules is going to undermine overtime pay protections for up to 8 million Americans. I can't fathom why they would want to do this to hard- working Americans.

Mr. HARKIN. Absolutely.

Mr. HARKIN. That is true. I want to be very fair. We have changed the Fair Labor Standards Act a number of times since then because some of the job descriptions, buggy whip manufacturers and buggy harness makers, have gone out, obviously. But, at the same time, we have always expanded overtime pay protection. So the Senator is right. This is the first time since 1938 where an administration has said we want to restrict, tighten down, the amount of people who are eligible for overtime pay protection.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank my friend for his kind words and reciprocate by thanking him for his leadership on the floor and in our caucus, and for always being here to respond and make sure we have the information we need on which to base our votes. We served together in the House and we are together in the Senate, and I could not ask for a better neighbor either here or across the Mississippi River. I will close by again saying this--and I will have more to say about this later. The budget the President has proposed is just one that will harm America. It is going to harm our workers, increase our deficit and, quite frankly, it is going to put in jeopardy the Social Security and Medicare system. It is a shame all this has been squandered in just 4 years. I believe we in the Senate need to respond, we need to say no to this Bush budget, and we need to have a budget that puts us back on the path we were on just 4 short years ago. With that, we can have a budget that will be in balance, and we can have a future that is much brighter for our workers, for our children, and for our elderly. Mr. President, I will have more to say about the budget in the coming days and weeks before the budget resolution is brought to the floor. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for about 5 more minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. We had a vote here last summer to basically keep this rule from going into effect. It passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote.

Mr. HARKIN. Yes, to protect them and their right to overtime. The House of Representatives earlier passed a bill and it lost by about four votes. After we passed it, it went back to the House and they had a big vote to instruct conferees. In other words, telling their conferees to go along with the Senate provision on this. So we had that. We went to conference and before the conference came to this issue, the gavel was banged and we were never invited back. Guess what. What we voted on here and what the House agreed to disappeared, because the administration came in and said they didn't want it in the big appropriations bill we passed a couple weeks ago. So they thwarted the will of Congress, and of the conferees who never got to vote on the issue. Most important, they thwarted the will of the American people. But I have an amendment in my desk drawer and every appropriate opportunity this Senator gets, I am going to offer it here on the Senate floor because American workers deserve to have their overtime protected--nurses, firefighters, police officers, ordinary working people all over America. If they are going to be asked to give up their premium time with their families, they deserve time and a half.

Mr. HARKIN. The final result is the rules are still pending. They have not implemented them yet. As I understand it, they want to get the rules finalized by March, which is next month. So they want to finalize the rules, put them out there, and it is going to be very hard for us to turn them back again. But we will. The American people will not stand for having their overtime pay protection taken away. Time and a half, for time over 40 hours a week is something every American worker deserves. Some families rely on that extra time. They give up premium time and they work longer so they make a little extra money to get their kids through school. Now we are going to say we are going to work you longer, but we are not going to pay you overtime. The American people won't buy that. We are going to continue to fight here to protect their overtime rights.

Mr. HARKIN. I know.

Mr. HARKIN. Right here.

Mr. HARKIN. The Fair Labor Standards Act.

Mr. HARKIN. Well, the Senator is right. Again, this is mind-boggling. I will say this--and again to be as fair as possible--there was one part of the proposal that was good, which was to raise the low-income base from about $8,000 to about $21,000. That means that right now, no matter who you are in this country, if your pay is less than $8,000 a year, you are guaranteed overtime regardless of what you do. Well, that needed to be raised for some time. Nobody argues that. They wanted to raise it to $21,000. We agree with that. But in doing so, they issued advice to employers on how to get around it. They said we are going to raise the base to $21,000, but here is advice on how to get around it. No. 1, what you do is simply work your people longer and you build that into their base pay. So you work them longer, but you don't have to pay them any more. Secondly, they said if they are near $21,000--let's say $20,500--you may want to raise their pay to $21,000 and then they are exempt and you save by not paying overtime. There is gimmick after gimmick on how they can basically get around it. I said this on the floor. This is like the IRS issuing advice to tax cheats on how to cheat on their income taxes.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I would like today's Record to indicate that I am necessarily absent due to a delayed incoming flight to Washington. Had I been present for the vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to consideration of the highway funding bill, I would have voted yea. (At the request of Mr. Daschle, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank my friend from Vermont for this clarification and for his and the Appropriations Committee's efforts to reach the goal of a polio-free world.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise today to thank the ranking member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, my distinguished colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, for his support of the ongoing efforts to eradicate polio by 2005, and especially thank him for working to include language recommending $30 million in the Senate report accompanying the FY 2004 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. The international effort to eradicate polio has made tremendous progress. Since the global initiative began in 1988, more than 3 million children in the developing world, who would otherwise have become paralyzed with polio, are walking because they have been immunized. The number of polio cases has fallen from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to approximately 1,500 cases in 2002. The target date for the last case of polio is 2005. When the world is certified polio free, immunizations can cease and the U.S. will save $350 million annually while the world will save at least $1.5 billion. The major partners in the global polio eradication effort have joined with national governments around the world in an unprecedented demonstration of commitment to this historic public health goal. As the initiative runs its course, total victory can only be guaranteed through continued and unwavering commitment to the goal of a polio-free world. It is my further understanding that the House report recommended not less than $25 million for USAID's global polio eradication activities in FY 2004. This is similar to last year, and the final disposition was $27.5 million for polio eradication in FY 2003. My question to my friend from Vermont is how much does he expect USAID to allocate for these activities in FY 2004?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am very concerned that the Department of Agriculture has not been allocating funds built up in the account for the Rural Economic Development Grant and Loan Program called the ``cushion of credit.'' Rather than providing these funds to local rural electric cooperatives and telephone cooperatives where they can be used to create jobs and improve the economy of rural America, a considerable sum has been built up. There has never been as large a sum unspent as we have seen over the past year. USDA needs to put this money to work as the law intends.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Nevada for asking for this consent. Certainly I will yield to the Senator from Arizona when he arrives. I know he had time reserved. I listened with great interest to the President's State of the Union speech, hoping to hear what kind of plans he had to help America's working families in the struggling economy. Unfortunately, I didn't hear anything to help the millions of people who are out of work and have given up looking for work because there are so few jobs. I think this administration needs to wake up and come up with a real jobs plan to help America's families. We need to extend emergency unemployment insurance for the hundreds of thousands of people who paid into unemployment when they were working but months after losing their job still can't find work. We need to raise the minimum wage, which has not been increased in over 6 years. And the administration needs to immediately withdraw its proposal that would deny millions of workers their overtime pay. The President's proposal will deny overtime pay to 8 million workers. Five months ago the Senate voted 54 to 45 on my amendment to block the administration's effort to take away overtime pay to 8 million Americans. The House soon followed, 223 to 201. The Senate spoke again yesterday in its vote against cloture. This should not even be an issue on the Omnibus appropriations bill that is before us today. The Congress of the United States spoke up, clear as a bell, and said: No, the administration must not strip overtime rights from 8 million American workers. But, as we all know, the administration refused to accept the will of Congress. The administration ordered its foot soldiers in the House to strip this provision from the omnibus. Senator Specter and I fought to keep it in, but the administration refused any cooperation or compromise. In the end, just like that, without any vote in the conference, the administration nullified the clear will of both Houses of Congress and the American people by sticking to his position to deny overtime pay rights to 8 million Americans. This is a clear abuse of power by the administration and part of a pattern we have seen from this President, time and time again. The administration seems to believe in government by one branch, the executive branch. When there are no checks and balances, the result is bad public policy, and that is exactly what we see here today. Mr. President, I see the Senator from Arizona has arrived. I will yield the floor and resume my talk on the overtime provisions later on sometime today.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, what is the order right now?