Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. You are right on that one, and it didn't pass either. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, it is my hope that over the next week or early the next week, I will be able to propose a list of amendments. I suggest that would be kind of in the realm of what we can agree to. We have been looking at these various amendments. Some of them are clearly not going to be acceptable, and they probably could be easily tabled. Even though they are not relevant, some of them are meritorious. Our concern is, they have not been considered by the appropriate committee, whether it is Finance, or Agriculture. We are hesitant to have a vote on these and try to get Members to vote against them when, in fact, they may eventually want to be for them in a different forum. I have an idea of how we might be able to work something out on this. I will have a suggestion on that before we come back a week from Tuesday.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, negotiations are still ongoing with respect to the pending marriage tax penalty legislation. However, a resolution to the issue has not been worked out yet. It looks as if we are not going to be able to get it before the recess. I call for the regular order with respect to H.R. 6 and send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I move to proceed to S.J. Res. 3 and send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I had hoped we would be able to announce a unanimous consent agreement at this time as to how we will proceed on eliminating the marriage tax penalty and what amendments would be in order and how much time. I have now received a list of amendments from Senator Daschle, but we have had only a couple of minutes to review that. We need a little time. I understand several of the amendments actually have been filed. There may be one or two on which we don't actually have access to an amendment. For instance, Senator Torricelli may have an amendment prepared and we would like to get a copy of the amendment. We would like to have a little time to review the list and the substance of these amendments. We have agreed we should go forward with general debate while we do that. I ask consent the Senate resume the pending legislation for debate, equally divided, until the majority leader is recognized at 4:30 this afternoon.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, could I inquire, is this the same list I was given earlier today plus the Harkin amendment that was added after that original list?

Mr. LOTT. Is there any difference? I thought you indicated on a couple of these--and I referred to the earlier Kennedy amendment, which really is a major Medicaid change--you made it sound as if it might be relative to the marriage penalty tax.

Mr. LOTT. Is the Senator saying in each one of these cases what is offered would be in place of the Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Act in whole or in part?

Mr. LOTT. How about second-degree them?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I object to that with at least two observations.

Mr. LOTT. For instance, the taxability of the CRP income--I don't know how anyone can stretch that to make it applicable to the Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Act. Second, the request by the Democratic leader did not allow for second-degree amendments, or any alternatives, or any option--even side-by-side amendments by the majority. We certainly need to work through that. I still think we can go forward and continue to work to try to find a list of, hopefully, relevant amendments that could be offered to get to a conclusion on the marriage penalty tax. Since we are not able to reach an agreement at this time, I announce that the cloture vote will occur tomorrow unless we come to an agreement that allows a vitiation of that cloture vote.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, may I inquire about the situation now? I believe we had general debate until 5 o'clock.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I understand Senator Daschle will be here momentarily. For his benefit, I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, the Democratic leader and I have been working to try to reach an agreement to consider the very important Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Act. We started working on it yesterday afternoon sometime around 3:30 or 4. Senator Daschle indicated they had a number of amendments that they would like to have considered, and, of course, we asked for a chance to see what those amendments were. We, of course, urged that they be relevant amendments. At about 3 o'clock today, we received a list of amendments that members of the minority wanted to offer to the Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Act. The list included nine amendments, five or six of which were clearly not related to the marriage tax penalty relief bill. And then about an hour or so later an additional amendment was added by Senator Harkin. The list is now up to 10 amendments. I indicated all along--like we worked it out earlier this year on the education savings account--that we could go with alternatives and relevant amendments. That is eventually what we did with the education savings account. Of course, I had hoped with the very overwhelmingly popular Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Act that we could do something similar to what we did on the Social Security earnings test elimination. That was something that had been pending in this body and on Capitol Hill for 20 years. Finally, we worked it out. We had a couple of relevant amendments to which we agreed. We had a good discussion. We voted, I think, on one of those amendments. It passed unanimously. The President signed it last week with great fanfare that we had achieved this worthwhile goal. I think we can do the same thing with the marriage penalty tax. But in order to do it, we need to keep our focus on what is the best way to provide this marriage penalty tax relief. Is it a phaseout? Should it apply to everybody? What can you do for those in the lower income brackets in how you deal with the EITC, earned-income tax credit, how you deal with the lowest and middle brackets? Is there a better way to do it or another way to do it? Senator Moynihan, Senator Baucus, and others on the Finance Committee, had a different approach. I described it then, and publicly I think it is a credible approach. I don't think it is as good as the one we had in the basic bill, but it is one that is worthy of being talked about and thought about. I hope we can work it out so we can do that. We could have debate on the bill and then go to a vote on the alternatives and relevant amendments and get this finished by the close of business on Thursday or Friday at the latest. But the list we have is not only not relevant, but, first of all, we haven't had a chance to really look at how they would work or the details of the proposals. One of them by Senator Robb has to do with prescription drugs. Senator Wellstone has one which is something similar to the Canadian system of prescription drugs. But it looks to be a pretty detailed proposal that I don't think the Finance Committee has had a chance to consider. We have one by Senator Graham dealing with Medicare and Social Security priorities. I think he offered something similar to this in the Finance Committee. This is not one of which we were unaware. We could have a discussion on that, and I think have a vote, but it certainly doesn't relate to the marriage tax penalty. We have one on the college tuition tax credit. There is one on the CRT income. This is an agriculture issue. We have one on changing how you deduct a natural disaster impact on your tax form. I don't even know. That may be something we would want to look at doing. Don't we want to consider that in the Finance Committee, see what the budgetary impact is, and see what people are doing now versus what they might do under this proposal? It is something I would like to talk to Senator Torricelli about to see exactly what he is trying achieve. Then, at 3:45, we got the amendment from Senator Harkin. Honestly, I can't even quite tell you what it did. I believe that one relates to the marriage tax penalty. It would probably be relevant. Three or four of these could probably be relevant, and we could get them done. I hope the Democratic leader would try to reduce his list or, at a minimum, make them work with us in getting relevant amendments to the marriage tax relief bill. I think that is a reasonable request. I emphasize again that is what we did on the education savings account and on the Social Security earnings limitation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now resume the pending legislation and that there be 10 relevant amendments in order for the Democratic leader, or his designee, and 2 relevant amendments in order for the majority leader to the pending substitute, with no amendments in order to the language proposed to be stricken, or motions to commit or recommit. I further ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the listed amendments--certainly 10 would be an awful lot of amendments--and any relevant second degrees, the bill be advanced to third reading, and passage occur, all without any intervening action or debate. I further ask unanimous consent that following passage of the bill, the Senate insist on its amendments, request a conference with the House, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on behalf of the Senate. I finally ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote scheduled for Thursday of this week be vitiated, in view of this request, if it is agreed to.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate recess for 2 minutes for the purpose of the Senate welcoming and receiving to the U.S. Senate, the President of Colombia, President Andres Pastrana.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I asked the Senator to yield because I very much agree with what he is saying and want to emphasize a couple points. There is a Democrat alternative. I indicated even yesterday we would be glad to take up debate and vote on it. I note even the Washington Post yesterday said the problem, for instance, with the Democratic bill is it is backloaded and would actually cost more over a 10-year period and more of it would affect the upper end, the more wealthy people. That is the alternative that was offered in the Finance Committee. I believe our bill is much more in line with what the average working American--a young couple and older couple, for that matter--would like to have. I appreciate the Senator's remarks. I want to say something else for the record. A complaint was made a few weeks ago by the Democratic leader about the cost of this bill and whom it will affect. I will, once again, read briefly what this bill will do. It will provide a $2,500 increase to the beginning and ending income level for the EIC phaseout for married filing jointly; in other words, a $2,500 increase for the earned-income tax credit joint or married couples. That is the low-end, entry-level couples who need help. There is a specific provision that will cost, over a 10-year period, about $14 billion. It also provides the standard deduction set at two times single for married filing jointly, and it doubles the brackets for the 15-percent and 28-percent. Then it provides for permanent extension of the alternative minimum tax treatment of refundable and nonrefundable personal credits. What is it in these provisions to which the Democrats object? It is aimed at low-end married couples. It is aimed at correcting a problem that was never intended, where people in the middle income are paying higher taxes because of the alternative minimum tax, and it is aimed at the lowest and the middle brackets. It makes good sense. Once again, what the Democrats are suggesting is a diversion. They want to get into agricultural policy. They want to get into Medicaid reform. They want to get into anything to distract from the issue at hand. We are perfectly willing to go ahead with relevant amendments on the marriage tax penalty. In the end, the question is: Are you for eliminating the marriage tax penalty or not? If you are, this is the opportunity. We will have a chance to see tomorrow who is really for it and against it. I thank the Senator for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership on this issue. It is an issue he has been talking about ever since he arrived in the Senate. Now we have a chance to get it done. We should not get off on side trails on issues that will complicate or maybe even defeat our entire effort. I thank the Senator. Keep up the good work.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak----

Mr. LOTT. For up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I now send a cloture motion to the desk to the pending bill itself.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, this cloture vote, if necessary, if it is not vitiated, would occur then on Thursday of this week at a time that would be announced after consultation with the leaders on both sides. It is, again, my hope that we can work out an agreement that would provide for full debate and discussion of amendments and swift passage of the bill itself. But while these negotiations are going on, I will stay in touch with the minority leader, and we will make sure all Members are notified as to how the proceedings are going. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived and the bill be pending for debate only.

Mr. LOTT. I just did.