John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, we spent a lot of effort in the last years trying to assert discipline on the budget process. This amendment is an opportunity to continue that discipline and to vote against deficit spending. As my colleagues know, I think the vast majority of the Senate is in favor of a tax cut. But this tax cut is loaded in a way that of $780 billion, $630 billion is not until the last years. In fact, it will not even take effect until about 2005. What we say is we do not take away the tax cut. We simply say if CBO says that will result in deficit spending, we delay for the 1 year until we know we are in surplus rather than having to deficit spend in order to fund a tax cut. The vast majority of the American people want to get out of debt. They do not want a tax cut if it means deficit spending to provide it. The danger is that the economic statistics, or realities, could turn downwards, but the law will require a tax cut we cannot afford. So, this is a way of saying there is an automatic delay. We do not take it away. It affects nothing on Social Security and guarantees no deficit spending.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yielded back my time. Amendment No. 242

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me just say quickly to my colleague from New Mexico, he has been a real deficit hawk, and I admire the way in which he has fought it over the years he has been here. But he knows as well as I do that we have actually changed significantly our attitude and our approach towards entitlements. We have changed significantly the entire budget structure from those years when he tried to do that with Senator Nunn. The fact is, we now operate under very strict caps. I think for the last 10 or 12 years of the 15 I have been here, we have been cutting in most places, except a couple of areas where, in order to hold Social Security whole, we made some changes in the revenue stream. The fact is, we have made significant reductions. All I am asking for here is--in 1993, we had the biggest turnaround of all. I remember my colleagues arguing that you had to have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. If you didn't do that, you couldn't change the economy of this country or our budgeting practice. Well, the fact is, we proved them wrong. In 1993, we changed the entire budgeting process and turned it around so that we now have the balanced budget and the surplus that we are talking about. The American people would like us to apply the same discipline now going forward that we applied to get to this position. The fact is that Americans do not want us to create a deficit to give them a tax cut. Ask any American: Do you want me to add to the debt of the country so I can give you back some money today? They would say: That is absurd. Why would you add to the debt of the country in order to put a few dollars into my pocket? Americans overwhelmingly want the surplus applied to debt reduction. That is what they say. All I am doing in this amendment is asking my colleagues to exercise the same responsibility about tax cuts that they have asked everybody to exercise about every other part of the budget. This is about deficit spending to support a tax cut. The vast majority of Americans would say, don't be so crazy, don't promise me some great big tax cut that actually adds to the debt of the country and maybe even deprives my mother or father of Medicare payments and maybe even deprives my kid of a loan to go to college or a number of other things. There is no way in that balance that that is the choice Americans would make. I ask my colleagues today to join in making a responsible vote on the issue of this budget. We should not fund a tax cut we can't afford down the road. Nothing in my amendment would deny us the ability to have a tax cut if the surplus is there. If you have a surplus, you will have a tax cut. That is about as decent and fiscally responsible an equation as you could ask for. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield myself 1 minute and then I will yield to the distinguished ranking member. Mr. President, let me say to my colleague who really understands budget well and understands fiscal matters well, this is not about Social Security. Indeed, the lockbox will protect Social Security. I am not here in this amendment worried about Social Security. I am talking about the onbudget surplus predicted today. That onbudget surplus could disappear. Indeed, the budget resolution claims to save $133 billion of the onbudget surplus over 10 years, but only $14 billion is saved in the first 5 years. They are going to write in some $600 billion of tax cuts in the outyears without any capacity to predict that this country will have a surplus or have the capacity to support that. What happens when that is in the law, the chairman sits down in 5 years, if he is still chairman, and he says, oh, we have these big tax cuts we have to fund, but we don't have the money for it? Where will it come from? That is when we are going to have a battle over every other program, or the tax cuts are phony. I am not taking the tax cut away. I am simply saying, if CBO tells us in that year there is no money to fund it, you delay it a year. That seems to be the most fundamental common sense of how most Americans would decide to handle their budgets. If you cannot afford it, you don't do it. That is what we are trying to ask for, fiscal responsibility, not a flimflam show. Mr. President, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, this is an amendment, really, of common sense and I think fiscal responsibility. It is a very simple amendment that I believe is a safeguard, an important safeguard, against our returning to an era of deficit spending. This amendment includes no new spending, no new programs, it does not touch the budget authority, it does not touch outlays as proposed in the budget resolution. Neither does it affect in any way whatsoever the Social Security trust funds. Perhaps most important to many Members on the other side of the aisle, this amendment does not eliminate any of the tax relief that is provided in the budget resolution. Indeed, Congress can and Congress should consider sensible tax cuts which are targeted towards helping working families to meet their growing needs, whether it is health care or child care or buying a first home or any number of other things-- saving to send a child to college--there are a number of tax cuts I think all of us can agree on. Those tax incentives will help Americans to plan and to save for retirement and to build the economy of the country. My amendment simply directs that the tax cuts we authorize, that we pass today in the budget resolution, will not rely on deficit spending to fund them. That is it. It is a very simple proposition: We should not pass a tax cut that will rely on deficit spending in order to fund it. In the Budget Committee's report accompanying this resolution, Chairman Domenici and his colleagues say the following, and I quote Chairman Domenici: The whole premise of this resolution is to ensure that the onbudget deficit is eliminated and to prohibit consideration of legislation resulting in an on-budget deficit in the future. So the chairman and his colleagues who have voted for this budget have brought it to the floor of the Senate with the statement that it is their purpose to prevent a future onbudget deficit by having any legislation that would create that deficit. I applaud the chairman and his colleagues for that effort to maintain the course of fiscal discipline which we began in 1993 with the Deficit Reduction Act, which has put us on this path. To keep on that path is both progrowth and fiscally responsible. I am offering my amendment to ensure this year's tax provisions cannot and will not result in deficit spending. Under my amendment, if the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determines that the tax cut passed in this year's reconciliation bill would result in an onbudget deficit in the future, under the scoring periods we are currently applying for budget purposes, then all I would do is simply delay that tax cut for 1 year. We do not repeal it. We do not end it. We do not take it away. We simply delay it for the purposes of not being confronted with deficit spending in order to fund it. The amendment itself would not affect the tax cuts once they become effective. The budget we have before us sets aside the Social Security surplus for debt reduction, but, as every single one of my colleagues knows, the Social Security surplus is only one portion of the projected surplus over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects an onbudget, obviously non-Social Security, surplus that will be more than $800 billion over the next 10 years. That is the projection. If the Finance Committee reports out a tax bill later this year, those tax provisions will become law, and they become law not just for this year but they become law for the next year and the next year and the outyears. They will take effect regardless of what happens to the current projections on the economy. But most of them will not be effective until the year 2005. All of us in this institution understand that our predictive capacities are not so honed that we are going to guarantee we have the revenues in the year 2005 in order to pay for the new tax breaks while still doing the other things the budget requires. So the last thing I think any of us would want to do is set up an equation where we put into law today $800 billion worth of projected surplus, therefore tax cuts, but, lo and behold, the surplus is not there but the tax cuts are still in law. The question then will be, How do we fund them? It seems to me there ought to be precautions taken against this kind of fiscal irresponsibility. If the projected onbudget surplus suddenly disappears during the intervening years, we want to avoid the crisis that will occur when those tax provisions are in law. If we were to create an automatic push onto the next year, we would wind up in a situation where we have not promised a tax cut that cannot be delivered, we have not promised a tax cut that is going to force us into deficit spending or into other choices that are similarly unpalatable. That is the simplicity of this budget amendment. Under this amendment, we can guarantee if the surplus actually materializes, tax cuts passed this year will not be affected, they will go into effect. But if the current economic projections change for the worse and the surplus turns out to be considerably smaller or nonexistent, we will delay the effect of the tax cuts and avoid the crisis of that moment. I think it is common sense. It is a sound way to budget. It is an appropriate way to make a determination instead of promising a tax cut that can either never materialize or that takes you into a position of fiscal irresponsibility. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I add as original cosponsors Senator Lautenberg, Senator Reed of Rhode Island, Senator Johnson, Senator Hollings, Senator Kerrey of Nebraska, and Senator Conrad.

Mr. KERRY. I call up amendment No. 190.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I believe the regular order is to proceed now to my amendment; is that correct?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am absolutely confident that we can work this out appropriately with the help of the distinguished manager. I make it clear that no call for regular order was made. We were in the middle of the process of debating the Ashcroft amendment which is under controlled time. In the course of that debate of controlled time, the Senator from Maine--and I have no objection to this--stood up to speak on a separate amendment without calling for regular order. So that is not the pending business before the Senate. Now, I am delighted to have the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Oregon be able to debate their amendment, but there is, in fact, an order setting up a line of amendments here. I am happy to enter into a new unanimous consent agreement that adequately protects those people in line and the time of the Senator from Maine's, and then we can proceed. I would be willing to lift my objection to having the serial votes follow at that point in time. I do think we ought to follow the procedures of the Senate.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, again----

Mr. KERRY. The Snowe amendment is a separate amendment, and not in order.

Mr. KERRY. Senator Reid. And we propounded a unanimous consent request at that time which the Chair, in fact, did rule on, saying there would be six amendments, three on each side; and the three on our side were specifically listed at that point in time. And I think the distinguished minority whip will confirm what I am saying.

Mr. KERRY. Further inquiry, Mr. President. Last night I stood here in this very chair when the distinguished manager----

Mr. KERRY. The Ashcroft amendment is being debated under controlled time; is that correct? There is a unanimous consent request as to the order of amendments. Excuse me. There is a unanimous consent order that has set up the order of amendments now. So the order is the Ashcroft amendment. Subsequent to the Ashcroft amendment, there is an additional Daschle amendment, and then it is going back and forth. So we are on the Ashcroft amendment. If debate on that is finished, under the consent order, we would move to a separate order. This amendment, if it is separate, would not be in order at this time.

Mr. KERRY. No. It is my understanding, Mr. President, that the Ashcroft amendment is the pending business.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, parliamentary point of inquiry. Which amendment is, in fact, the amendment that is currently under controlled time?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I do object.

Mr. KERRY. Reserving the right to object, I want to make sure I understood that correctly, Mr. President. Was that request, again, as of 4 to begin the process of serial votes?

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, after one year of working to enact a program that emphasizes prevention over reaction in dealing with natural disasters, the bill Senator Cleland and I first introduced in the 105th Congress has made its way back to the Senate for our consideration and support. I ask my colleagues to vote for S. 388, the Disaster Mitigation Coordination Act of 1999. Your vote will help our nation's small businesses save money and prepare for natural disasters. This bill establishes a 5-year pilot program that would make low- interest, long-term loans available to small business owners financing preventive measures to protect their businesses against, and lessen the extent of, future disaster damage. This pilot is designed to help those small businesses that can't get credit elsewhere and that are located in disaster-prone areas. The small business pre-disaster mitigation loan pilot program would be run as part of the Small Business Administration's regular disaster loan program, testing the pros and cons of preparedness versus reaction. Currently, SBA's disaster loans are available for mitigation after a recent natural disaster. Those loans are also limiting because only 20 percent of an SBA disaster loan may be used to install new mitigation techniques that will prevent future damage. In contrast, this legislation would allow 100 percent of an SBA disaster loan to be used for mitigation purposes within any area that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has designated as disaster-prone. In Massachusetts, that includes Marshfield and Quincy, two coastal communities that are prone to flooding, rainstorms and Nor'easters. I see a great need for this type of assistance in the small business community. Aside from avoiding inconveniences and disruptions, we know that there are cost-benefits to making meaningful improvements and changes to facilities before a disaster. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has a disaster mitigation program for communities, rather than businesses, we save two dollars of disaster relief money for each dollar spent on disaster mitigation. Nationwide, whether you're a business in Florida or Massachusetts, this pilot would allow you to take out a loan to make the improvements to your building or office to protect against disasters. To lessen damage from hurricanes, it can mean constructing retaining and sea walls. To lessen damage from fires, it can mean adding sprinklers and flame-retardant building materials. And to lessen damage from floods, it can mean grading and contouring land or relocating the business. The administration supports this pilot program and included it in President Clinton's budget request two years in a row--fiscal years 1999 and 2000. As the bill authorizes, the President requests that up to $15 million of the total $358 million proposed for disaster loans be used for disaster mitigation loans. Senator Cleland and I introduced this same legislation in the last Congress. And although it passed committee and the full Senate without opposition, the House did not vote on its merits before the 105th Congress ended. I thank our friends in the House and my colleagues in the Senate for sharing our concern to meet the needs of our small business owners while also working to find solutions that are smarter, more pro-active and more cost-effective. Mr. President, I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this legislation and am hopeful it will pass the Senate today and that the President will soon sign it in to law.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on H.R. 774, the Women's Business Center Amendments Act of 1999. This bill will make small but important changes to the Women's Business Center program. First, similar to the bill that Senator Cleland and I introduced last Congress, it will raise the authorization for the centers from $8 million to $11 million. Secondly, the bill changes the matching requirements for centers; instead of raising two non-Federal dollars for every Federal dollar in the third, fourth and fifth years, centers will only be required to raise one non-Federal dollar for every one Federal dollar. I support this bill, thought I would prefer that the authorization and funding were increased to $12 million to make it consistent with the legislation our Committee passed last year. This program has been very successful in helping women start and grow businesses and it deserves generous funding. Women-owned businesses are increasing in number, range, diversity and earning power. They constitute more than one-third of the 20 million small businesses in the United States, and account for some $3 trillion in annual revenues to the economy. Addressing the special needs of women-owned businesses serves not only entrepreneurs, but also the economic strength of this nation as a whole. This bill further ensures that new and potential women business owners, who otherwise might be excluded from the economic mainstream of society, are afforded every opportunity to succeed through the Small Business Administration's Women's Business Centers program. Centers are faced with the challenging task of teaching business basics and providing practical support and realistic encouragement. Massachusetts has an excellent example of a Women's Business Center-- the Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) in Boston. Andrea Silbert is a tireless executive director who effectively raises money, forges partnerships and designs thorough training and mentoring programs to help women entrepreneurs. When CWE trains an entrepreneur, she leans how to approach a lender for a loan, learns how to manage her business, and gains an understanding of the hows and whys of marketing. Nationwide, women should have access to this type of quality, comprehensive training. It is clear that the centers are having a positive social and economic impact on the lives of many women and the communities which they serve. New clients continue to be racially and ethnically diverse: Some 40 percent are members of minority groups. About half are married, and half are single, widowed, divorced, or separated. While this bill addresses some important issues, I am concerned about the unresolved problem of sustainability. How can established, effective centers that are at the end of the five-year Federal funding cycle continue to provide the same quality of services without the Federal contribution? It's their bread and butter, and it's indispensable leverage that helps centers raise the obligatory matching funding. Agnes Noonan, executive director of the Women's Economic Self- Sufficiency Team (WESST corp.) in New Mexico recently reinforced this point when she testified before the Senate Committee on Small Business. With an 89 percent growth in the number of women-owned businesses over the last decade and a 161 percent increase in revenues, it is sound economic policy for the Federal government to support programs which facilitate the training and development of women business owners. It follows that we would be wise to safeguard the investment that has been made to date in the infrastructure of women's business centers around the country. I believe we should find a fair way to let these centers recompete for the base funding. And we should do it this calendar year, before it's too late and the centers have lost their Federal funding and are out of business. I will be introducing a bill to allow Women's Business Centers to recompete for Federal funding in mid-April, when we return from the Easter recess. I hope that my colleagues with strong Women's Business Centers in their states will join me in sponsoring recompetition legislation. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for their continuing efforts to expand policies that allow women entrepreneurs to grow and thrive.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes today to share with my colleagues my support of this amendment--offered by my friend from South Dakota, Senator Johnson--an amendment which would increase funding for veterans health care services by $2 billion for Fiscal Year 2000. I believe that this funding level is necessary for the VA to provide the high quality of care it promises our nation's veterans. It is absolutely critical that we reverse the downward trend in VA health care funding and address the abhorrent deficiencies that exist currently in our VA health care system. We, as a nation, must keep our commitments to ensure that our nation's veterans receive consistent, high-quality, and reliable health care services. I am convinced we cannot fulfill these commitments under the current level of funding provided both in the Administration's budget request and in the Chairman's mark which came out of the Budget Committee. I have expressed my concern in a number of letters to the Administration, both before and after their budget numbers came over to Congress--as I know many of my colleagues in both the House and Senate have done-- about the Administration's decision to maintain a flat-lined budget for VA health care for the fourth consecutive year. I also recently met with VA Under Secretary of Health Kenneth Kizer to make him aware of the severe effects that this level of funding has had already in Massachusetts. I told him that many of our VA hospitals and clinics are under serious budget strain and cannot provide sufficient care to the many veterans who need--and rightly deserve--to receive it. I expressed my concern that VA Hospital Directors have contacted me to say that, if they have to incorporate the same cuts in the coming fiscal year as they did this year, they will be forced to close wards, eliminate programs, and reduce staff. In fact, this already is happening. In the Brockton, Massachusetts VA hospital, service providers have made it clear to me and my staff that they aren't able at times to provide adequate care for their patients. They are being forced to move psychiatric patients out into the community long before they are ready. The hospitals are unable to sufficiently help homeless veterans struggling with substance abuse problems. All of these troubles in taking care of our veterans are the result of one problem--today there is not enough money to care for those veterans who so badly need our help. Our Northampton VA hospital--which has a nationally renowned reputation for its care of combat-wounded veterans--is facing the same challenges as the hospital in Brockton. They have a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Unit there in Northampton--the only one of its kind in the entire Northeast. Veterans come hundreds of miles to find help in either putting their lives back together or keeping them from falling apart. The unit is always filled to capacity and requires a full-time, experienced staff that can address the needs of veterans who go there. But because we aren't doing right by our veterans, that unit is in jeopardy. Three years ago, this unit had a dedicated staff of twenty. Today, it has fourteen. There is only one overnight nurse to deal with 25 combat veterans. I don't believe this Senate can say that the quality of care in that unit has not been diminished. These examples are part of a far broader crisis in veterans health care. Consider the VA nurses who haven't seen a substantial vacation for as long as they can remember and haven't received pay raises in five years, years when our economy has been growing in leaps and bounds. Put that crisis into a larger context: we have to ensure that adequate incentives exist for VA health care providers so that the VA can recruit and retain highly skilled staff. As U.S. military personnel are going over to defend U.S. national interests in Kosovo, we must do all we can to let them know that their country is united behind them. We must do this for all the brave men and women who served and who have served our nation. Veterans are the brave men and women who already have served our nation, who have been on the front lines fighting for the freedoms Americans care about so deeply. How can we ask today's soldiers to represent our values around the globe if we're not willing to provide adequate health care services for those who have already made the sacrifice? How can we give so little to those who have already given so much to their country? These are questions that I don't believe any of us want to ask. They are not ones that our country should be asking--Americans everywhere deserve a different and better debate than this one. Mr. President, when the VA Under Secretary of Health asserts in a memo that the VA's flat-lined health care budget ``poses very serious financial challenges which can only be met if decisive and timely actions are taken,'' I believe that there is one critical action we must take. We must provide a significant increase over the Administration's request for VA health care. We ought to begin listening to our veterans and listening to those who care for them. We ought to provide the level of investment the national veterans service organizations have endorsed in their Independent Budget for FY 2000--$3 billion over the Administration's request--the level of investment I believe is so badly needed just to fund the programs we already have while ensuring that future programs can address the needs of an aging veterans population. Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I believe that the way we have arrived here is less than ideal. However, the choices we have are also not ideal. The choice of doing nothing is absolutely unacceptable. While I will have more to say about the process by which we got here, there are powerful strategic, humanitarian, and historical reasons that the United States, in a broad-based, NATO-based effort, ought to be doing what it is engaged in. I think it is important for all of our colleagues to reflect on the fact, this is not the United States acting unilaterally; this is all of the allies, all together, all of them coming together, with a preponderance ultimately of European involvement if there ever is a peace process to enforce. I want to emphasize one thing with respect to the goals and objectives. I view these as very limited in their current structure. I view it as essentially an effort to try to minimize Milosevic's capacity militarily to ethnically cleanse. It is hoped that you might also secure the peace. It is hoped that you might also be able to move to a more broad-based enforcement process. But I don't view that as the essential objective. The essential objective is to minimize his capacity to work his will without any contravening forces that would equalize the battlefield, if you will, and minimize the capacity for ethnic cleansing. That is the overpowering strategic and, I think also, humanitarian interest here, and I think it is important for the Senate to stay focused on the limitations.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that Brendan O'Donnell of my staff be permitted the privilege of the floor.