Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its proper filing with our distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee and the principal author of our election reform bill, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, today, I, along with Senator Thurmond, introduce duty suspension legislation designed to permit imports of machinery into the United States duty free. This machinery is not made in the United States. Therefore, their importation will not displace domestic sourcing. Moreover, because of the nature of the products at issue, they will assist in the creation of additional jobs in the United States. I believe that this is the most appropriate use of such legislation. The imported product will not displace any that is manufactured in the United States. Moreover, the imported product will assist in enhancing American productive capacity. I am therefore hopeful that this new capacity can be used to supply both domestic and foreign needs and will increase employment in the United States.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, today, I, along with Senator Thurmond, introduce duty suspension legislation designed to permit imports of machinery into the United States duty free. This machinery is not made in the United States. Therefore, their importation will not displace domestic sourcing. Moreover, because of the nature of the products at issue, they will assist in the creation of additional jobs in the United States. I believe that this is the most appropriate use of such legislation. The imported product will not displace any that is manufactured in the United States. Moreover, the imported product will assist in enhancing American productive capacity. I am therefore hopeful that this new capacity can be used to supply both domestic and foreign needs and will increase employment in the United States.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. It is an outstanding college and outstanding team.

Mr. HOLLINGS. It was an outstanding game. I think this was the second year in a row they won the championship.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Montana for his victory on a very important amendment. I also congratulate him on an even more important victory of the Montana team and its engagement in the 1 AA college finals last month with my Purple Paladins at Furman University, an outstanding university. In fact, the temptation is for me to challenge him to an academic final. As far as the football final, I can tell my colleagues, I watched the game and that is a monster team if I have ever seen one. It is well coached and had an outstanding performance. I lost the bet. The bet was if I lost, I would sing ``Up With Montana,'' their song. Fortunately, the rules of the Senate say no singing. In congratulating Senator Baucus, I will recite this song publicly in the Chamber of the Senate. I want everybody to listen to this: Up with Montana, boys, down with the foe, Good ol' Grizzlies out for a victory; We'll shoot our backs 'round the foeman's line; Hot time is coming now, oh, brother mine. Up with Montana, boys, down with the foe, Good old Grizzlies triumph today; And the squeal of the pig will float on the air; From the tummy of the Grizzly Bear. Isn't that something? The Senator says they are reciting this after every game?

Mr. HOLLINGS. No wonder they play so hard.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, that shows in 2001 we took $1.170 trillion from Social Security. We took from Medicare some $240 billion. From military retirement--the retirees who we say we want to look after--we looted their retirement moneys, some $157 billion; from civilian retirement, $543 billion--that is the civil service; from unemployment compensation fund, $89 billion. Now they say we might have to start paying into that. In 2001, we looted the highway trust funds by $24 billion; airports by $14 billion; railroad retirement by some $27 billion: and another $72 billion from other entities like the Federal Finance Bank. The savings and loan debacle is when we started that fever about deregulating. We deregulated the savings and loan industry and that up- ended. We deregulated the airlines and they have gone broke. We deregulated the trucking companies and they have gone out of business. Now we are on course to deregulating energy, which is before us now. Our experience is that when we have deregulated, it has been a disaster. The point is, we have hidden $2.335 trillion. We have hidden $2.335 trillion. Let me refer to the January 28th edition of Business Week. This says: Accounting in crisis, what needs to be done. I refer to page 36 and the article, ``Who Else is Hiding Debt?'' I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, you will see from this particular chart the truthfulness of what I have just stated; namely, we have not had a balanced budget since 1968-1969. More specifically, we keep talking about surpluses, but we get surpluses by using all kinds of fancy terminologies to dance around in order to hide the money and the debt. The truth is, though, the net figure as to whether the national debt goes up or goes down; whether or not we spend only the money we have, or we have to borrow in order to provide for the appropriations that we have provided; whether those things occur or not, the actual national debt has gone up, up, and away. It has gone up some billions of dollars each year for the past 31 years, to the extent that when we talked about surpluses all last year, we did not end up with a surplus when President Clinton left town. In fiscal 2000, there was a deficit of $22.7 billion. For the first year of President Bush, we now have a $143.4 billion deficit, and the Congressional Budget Office last week attested to the fact that they project that the deficit next year, in 2002, is going to be $271.2 billion. Can you imagine that? Last year at this time we were talking about $5.6 trillion in the black and now we are talking about $271.2 billion in the red. I think it was Mark Twain years ago who said: ``The truth is such a precious thing, it should be used very sparingly.'' That is exactly the way we approach this particular role of ours as budgeteers and Congressmen and Senators and everything else of that kind. We actually hide the debt. The way we hide the debt is what Alan Greenspan euphemistically calls ``intragovernmental transfers.'' That sounds pretty, but what you are doing is looting the retirement funds, the trust funds. I ask unanimous consent that this chart be printed in the Record, which reflects ``trust funds looted to balance the budget.''

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, last week we were debating the stimulus bill. In that regard, there was some discussion by some of the leadership on the other side of the aisle to the effect that they were asking for all these tax cuts. However, on Saturday morning I listened to the President. I heard him in his weekly radio address. He said: I urge it to pass a strong stimulus bill, the one that passed the House last year. So there is no question that the issue of tax cuts as a stimulus is still one of the main issues to this particular Senator, and it really hackles this Senator in that we don't have any taxes to cut. We don't have any revenues. We don't have any surplus. I have been saying this ever since we balanced the budget back under Lyndon Baines Johnson. I will never forget at that particular time George Mahon on the House side, the distinguished Congressman from Texas, was chairman of the Appropriations Committee and we were working in December, after the November elections; and in that particular December session it looked like in order to balance that budget, pay down the debt, not increase it, not have a deficit, that we needed some $5 billion more in cuts. We called over to Marvin Watson and said: ``Ask the President will he go along with another cut of some $5 billion.'' We did it at that particular time, and we balanced the budget for 1968-1969. We were in the black as we ended that particular year. It was right at $2.9 billion. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this particular point the deficits and interest costs over the past half century, since President Truman in 1947, including President Bush today.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, this says, ``Moving financial obligations into off-book vehicles is now a common ploy.'' Could it be that Kenneth Lay is acting like a Senator, acting like a Congressman, acting like a President, or acting like Alan Greenspan? Chairman Greenspan testified before our committee and it was like pulling teeth to try to get him to admit that the debt went up. He came and we went around and around and around, and finally, I said: Let me ask you this. Here is the CBO report. Does it project that the debt goes up and the Government will have to borrow over the next 10 years, or not? Mr. Greenspan answered, it does. The reason I wanted to fit that into the Record is because Mr. Greenspan is no different than the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, our good friend Dr. Crippen, when it comes to the budget. Last week at our Budget hearing on national TV, he says this is the CBO report, and all he has in this thin little document is the revenue, but none of the expenditures, so we are left with only surpluses. He kept talking about how the surplus has gone down from $5.6 trillion to $1.6 trillion. He kept saying the word surplus--surplus, surplus, surplus, surplus. That is all we heard. We did not hear about the debt and the deficit. I finally got the sheet that shows the gross Federal debt, according to CBO, goes from $5.772 trillion to $7.644 trillion; in other words, it goes up about $1.9 trillion. That is what we ought to be talking about, that is the reality; but we keep talking about intragovernmental transfers, as Dr. Greenspan says, or we talk about surpluses, as Dr. Crippin testified to. The fact is, we are doing what Kenneth Lay was doing: Misleading the public. We are trying to get reelected. So if we all go along with this $1.6 trillion surplus, surplus, surplus, that gives some substance, some credibility to a tax cut. I do not believe in letting a surplus sit around any more than anybody else, but the truth of the matter is, there is no surplus. I have the public debt to the penny chart which you can find on the internet at: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm. Mr. President, the chart shows we ended up last year with a $143.4 billion deficit. That was the end of September-October 1 of 2001. Already this year, the current amount of public debt, has gone up $122 billion. We are starting the year in the red and talking about stimulating with tax cuts. Let's get to the point. How did we get those 8 glowing years of the greatest economic boom in America's history? By what? By paying down the debt. Somehow we have gotten lost in the politics of all of this. They are all talking tax cuts, they are all talking surpluses, they are all talking about giving money back that nobody has. The truth is, economic growth is not about consumer confidence; it is about market confidence. It is the financial community up on Wall Street who know the truth. They read this budget the same way I do. Wall Street does not look for intragovernmental transfers. They look at the long range, whether or not the Government will be crowding into the market with its sharp elbows to borrow money to pay its bills. They know that instead of surpluses we have deficits; instead of paying down the debt, we have the national debt increasing. This is why the long- range bond rates and interest rates are staying high. Yes, Dr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve had 11 cuts to the short- term rate, and where is the long-term rate? Still at 5 percent, and it could be increasing, according to Dr. Greenspan's statement. I have had hearings. We have about a dozen committees and scores of hearings about Enron hiding the debt. But according to Business Week, who is hiding the debt? None other than the United States Government. We owe $2.3 trillion, and if we do not pay down the debt and continue to borrow, we will owe these particular trust funds $2.8 trillion at this time next year. In 1994, this supposedly conscientious Congress passed the Pension Reform Act. We said we were not going to have these fast operating artists come in, take over a company, pay down the debt with the pension fund and take the money that is left and run. We had that going on all through the eighties. So at the beginning of the nineties, we passed legislation making it a felony to pay off corporate debt with a pension fund. I refer to Denny McLain, the former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, about whom the distinguished Presiding Officer knows. He took over a company when he got out of baseball and paid down the debt with the company's pension fund. He was charged with a felony under the law and sentenced to 8 years. Now he is out, I take it, by now, and I wish him well, but I have to use that example to sear the conscience and awareness of this dormant body. Senators still want to keep their eyes and ears closed as to the truth about budgeting. They all have schemes to save Social Security. All they have to do is quit spending, quit looting the Social Security trust fund. I remember when Dr. Greenspan came to us in the early eighties, and he projected to Congress: If we do not do something about this, Social Security is going bottom up. It will go bankrupt. What happened? They appointed the Greenspan Commission, and the Greenspan Commission recommended, among other things, that we have an inordinately high payroll tax graduated upwards. Why did we graduate it upwards over the years? They said to take care of the baby boomers. The truth is, they knew this 20 years ago, so they put in that inordinately high payroll tax which, for most Americans, exceeds their income tax. The money was there and section 31 of the Greenspan report said do not touch that money. Put it off budget. Get it out of the unified budget, as they were talking about in those times. This Senator over several years tried to get that into law. Finally, George Herbert Walker Bush--Bush senior--on November 5, 1990, signed into law section 13301 of the Budget Act: Thou shalt not use Social Security in your budget. We did not put a penalty in the law. The law is violated every day by the Congress and the President. It has long since been law. We all voted for it. The vote was 98 to 2 in the Senate. But they spend that money willy-nilly, spending Social Security in violation of that law; in violation of the spirit of the Pension Reform Act. They all go out and say: I am a responsible Senator, reelect me; the Government is too big; the Government is not the answer; the Government is the problem; the Government is the enemy. Let us not act like Kenneth Lay this year. I hope that sears the conscience of not only the American people but the Senate body in which I serve. For years I have been trying to limit campaign spending. I was in the discussions during the Campaign Finance Act which we finally enacted in 1974. At the time, I looked over at the distinguished Senator from New York, Mr. Buckley, and said: You are not going to buy it. He said: Oh, yes, I am. And he sued; Buckley v. Valeo. He sued the Secretary of the Senate, and we got the Buckley v. Valeo decision. I could see exactly what happened with that Buckley v. Valeo decision. The Supreme Court turned around the intent of the Congress. And that particular decision by the Court said we are not going to be able to buy the office. But that is the only way you can get into office is to buy it. It is a disgrace. So I offered a one-line constitutional amendment, and I still propose it every Congress. It says the Congress is hereby empowered to regulate or control spending in Federal elections. But I cannot get a two-thirds vote. I used to get a lot of my Republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle to vote for it. I would get Bill Cohen, Alan Simpson, Nancy Kassenbaum, and Bill Roth, but they are all gone now. The distinguished Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm, said: Now, wait a minute. We have the money. They have the unions. Of course, I come from South Carolina and I don't get money and I don't get unions, neither one. So that being the case, I believe I am going to have to go for public campaign financing. I have resisted the idea of public financing politics, but it is currently being financed in the most corrupt fashion. Do not give me McCain-Feingold. That does away with the soft money. Instead, contributions are directed into hard money and those particular special interest entities. I call McCain-Feingold the Give- the-money-to-Grover bill; that is, Grover Norquist and all of that crowd. So we take all the contributions from soft money and the parties have the duty and the responsibility of running elections. Now we are giving it to corporate America, and corporate America and the hard money will be there. This will end, I say, the Democratic Party down in my backyard. It will not even have a chance on that score. So I believe we ought to have public financing, where we can get away from this corruption that the Enron case has brought to the fore. Back to the point, remember, we do not have a surplus. It is a deficit and debt. Is there any way better to emphasize how we got this way than a Wall Street Journal of August 16 2001, almost a month before 9-11? I ask unanimous consent to have the Wall Street Journal article printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I quote a couple of lines: The Wall Street Journal analysis looked at earnings excluding extraordinary items going back to September 1995 for about 4,200 companies listed on NASDAQ, which is heavily weighted toward technology stocks but also includes hundreds of financial and other growth companies. For the most recently reported four quarters--that is since January 1 of 2000--those companies tallied $148.3 billion in losses. This figure roughly equaled the $145.3 billion in profits before extraordinary items these companies reported since September 1995. It was as if the last 5 years never happened, and now they want to tell me it was because of 9-11. Come on. It is the same thing with the government. Do you mean to tell me that the $143.4 billion deficit for 2001 was incurred from September 11 until September 30? The Government did not spend $143.4 billion in 20- some days. No. No. It was going down on account of tax cuts. We did not have a surplus. It was a deficit. We were operating in the red, and more than anything else we were operating just like Enron. Who is hiding debt? We are. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, under the unanimous consent agreement, can we turn to S. 1214 and ask the clerk to report?

Mr. HOLLINGS. The Senator from California has raised good points. I appreciate her interest in the matter and her willingness to reach an accommodation with the Commerce Committee. We certainly want to interdict any nuclear devices as assuredly as we want to interdict other WMDs.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the Senator for his comments on the state of our nation's transportation security, and I agree with his assertion that a complete treatment of our security needs would include legislation to improve the security of our rail network. I am aware that the need for the safe and expeditious rail transportation of chemicals and other hazardous materials is essential for our nation's economy, and that the movement of some chemicals, including chlorine, is necessary for the preservation of public health. I am aware also of the security improvements that have been undertaken by railroads and hazardous materials shippers. I agree that the security-related expenses are extraordinary, and that in the interest of protecting the general public from the effects of a terrorist attack on hazardous materials shipped by rail, the federal government should help these companies on a short-term basis to defray their post-September 11th security-related expenses. I will promise the Senator from West Virginia that the Commerce Committee will take up the issue of rail security as early as possible during the next session of the Congress.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, we worked hard with the Administration to incorporate many of their suggested changes in this bill to sharpen the policy and create a better legislative product. I had intended to work with Chairman Leahy of the Judiciary Committee to modernize and update some of our maritime criminal laws to reflect the realities following the attacks of September 11th, and to strengthen our laws to protect against maritime terrorism. Unfortunately, the Administration did not consult or share with the Judiciary Committee the changes in criminal laws and other matters within the Judiciary Committee's jurisdiction that were provided to me. I would like to ask the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, if he would be willing to work to work with me and Senator McCain next year to consider whether new criminal provisions are necessary to enhance seaport security?

Mr. HOLLINGS. I appreciate the fact that the Senator from Georgia brought this matter to the committee's attention. Bus security is in fact an important issue which unfortunately cannot be appropriately addressed before the end of this year. I applaud the initiative of the Senator from Georgia and leadership on this issue and, in particular, his introduction of S. 1739, which establishes a competitive grant program to allocate funding to bus companies to increase security and safety and creates a research and development program for new technologies to increase bus security and safety. It is my intention to consider this legislation on the markup calendar of the Commerce Committee's first executive session of 2002.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I read from the article: The Wall Street Journal analysis looked at earnings excluding extraordinary items going back to September 1995 for about 4,200 companies listed on Nasdaq, which is heavily weighted toward technology stocks, but also includes hundreds of financial and other growth companies. For the most recently reported four quarters those companies tallied $148.3 billion in losses. That roughly equaled the $145.3 billion in profit before extraordinary items these companies have reported since September 1995. It is as if the last 5 years never occurred. What did I have to listen to as a long-time member of the Budget Committee? Surpluses as far as the eye can see, they said in June when the President signed the $2.3 trillion tax cut. I want to say it right as a Senator saying we ought to be increasing revenues, paying our way. I see the distinguished former Governor of Florida in the Chamber. We could not get by as Governors in our States unless we had a triple-A credit rating. None of these industries are going to expand and come to us at all. What really hearkened this particular Senator because we never seem to learn. The same act, same scene 20 years ago: David Stockman, the head of President Reagan's economic team, the Director of his Office of Management and Budget, in his book, ``The Triumph of Politics,'' talks about the Trojan horse, growth-growth, Kemp-Roth, and what we had entitled ``voodoo No. 1.'' Now we have voodoo No. 2. Referring to voodoo No. 1 on page 342, at the end of the year in November after they passed the tax cuts, we immediately went into recession, which is exactly what has happened in the year 2001. I quote: [President Reagan] had no choice but to repeal, or substantially dilute, the tax cut. Can you imagine that? He had no choice but to repeal, or substantially dilute, the tax cut. That would have gone far toward restoring the stability of the strongest capitalist economy in the world. It would have been a great act of statesmanship to have admitted the error back then, but in the end it proved too mean a test. In November 1981, Ronald Reagan chose not to be a leader but a politician, and in so doing he showed why passion and imperfection, not reason and doctrine, rule the world. His obstinacy was destined to keep America's economy hostage to the errors of his advisers for a long time. That is exactly our dilemma now. For those who regret the non-passage of the stimulus bill, go to Sunday school and thank the Good Lord because--as Stiglitz said and as the USA Today said and as the Wall Street Journal said and now as Dave Stockman said 20 years ago--we ought to be removing those tax cuts, repealing that $2.3 trillion. It is not the confidence of consumers, it is the confidence of the market. The money boys who really govern the economic affairs of this country--the $2 trillion is still going to be lost. How much are we up? I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record, the deficit to the penny as included by none other than the Secretary of Treasury. It is entitled the Public Debt to the Penny. That is the Secretary of the Treasury. I ask unanimous consent that this document be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I will read the last sentence: But in the long run [Mr. Bush] owes Americans coping with hard times a better domestic political strategy and a stronger economic team. That is the first time I heard the Wall Street Journal ask for a stronger economic team. The reason is because we are in deep trouble. We ended up last fiscal year, which ended just 3 months ago, on September 30 with a deficit of $141 billion. That was not as a result of September 11. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a Wall Street Journal editorial dated August 16.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, earlier this week USA Today had an editorial entitled ``Shopping for 2002 Votes, Dems, GOP Raid Surplus.'' I will read the last sentence: In Washington, putting on a great show of activity to demonstrate concern for anyone's economic hurt may seem to be smart politics. But sometimes the best thing the government can do is nothing. This is one such time. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the Wall Street Journal printed an article earlier this week on Monday entitled, ``The Stimulus Fiasco.'' I ask unanimous consent this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, with respect to the stimulus bill, let's go right to the point. It really was not a stimulus at all. Over a month ago, Joseph Stiglitz wrote an article entitled ``A Boost That Goes Nowhere.'' I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. And if I were lost on a lonely, dusty road amongst the hills, I would want Senator Byrd with me.

Mr. HOLLINGS. First, let me commend the Senator from West Virginia. Over the years, I have seen him accomplish many feats. None would be more outstanding than what he has done on homeland security for the City of New York. Like Horatio at the bridge, he stood there against all forces, particularly with respect to the executive branch, and otherwise, and made sure we at least got some semblance of homeland security started. It is on account of Senator Byrd of West Virginia.