Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, basically we have in the authorization bill the ability to conduct this study that has been ongoing for the last year and a half about the robust nuclear earth penetrator. There is a certain sum of money in the underlying bill that allows the conduct of that study to continue. What we raised in the committee was the fact that a robust earth penetrator may well be in the interest of the United States, that it contain a conventional weapon as opposed to a nuclear weapon. So the attempt of this amendment is to clarify that the research that will be conducted by the Department of Energy, with regard to the modification of a nuclear weapon that would go in the earth penetrator, that the research will be coordinated with the Department of Defense in their conduct and research of an earth penetrator that includes a conventional weapon. I urge adoption of the amendment, Mr. President.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to explain my vote against the Grassley amendment during consideration of the tax bill. Since joining the Senate in 2001, I have been an avid and consistent supporter of rural health care and Medicare providers. It was a hard decision to vote against this amendment. However, I could not in good conscience, support an amendment that as an offset would increase out-of-pocket expense for our Nation's seniors. Medicare beneficiaries are already coping with having to choose to buy their medicines or put food on the table. They are struggling to pay for their share of health care costs, and even increased health plan premiums. It is unconscionable to think that we would ask them to meet deductibles and make copayments on outpatient lab services-- something they have not had to pay for in the past. At this point, no concrete analysis is available showing the impact this would have on seniors and their out-of-pocket costs. At a time when we are growing increasingly concerned about how much seniors are having to spend to access the care they need, how can we ask them to pay more? We have not even delivered the promise of a comprehensive outpatient prescription drug benefit. I was prepared to support Senator Harkin's amendment--which he withdrew. That amendment, which included many of the provisions in the Grassley amendment, would have resulted in over $870 million to Florida's hospitals over the next 10 years. That amendment, however, eliminated the dividend tax cut beyond the initial $500--an offset I could support. Last year, I was a cosponsor of the Beneficiary Access to Care and Medicare Equity Act of 2002. This bill, by Senator Baucus, included a myriad of provisions benefiting rural health care providers, and as a result, beneficiaries residing in rural areas. Furthermore, earlier this year, during consideration of the budget debate, I supported an amendment by Senator Harkin to help rural health care providers and hospitals receive a fair reimbursement for services under Medicare. That amendment reduced tax cuts to the wealthiest income brackets--an offset I could support. I am committed to improving the state of health care in our rural communities and will continue looking for ways to do so, but not on the backs of our Nation's seniors. amendment no. 596

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I look forward to working with the Senator from Virginia. Clearly, his State will be protected. There are some 27 other States that do not have laws. They are begging the Federal Government to step in and establish a standard that will stop this obnoxious practice. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Chair. Junk E-mail

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to talk about what we are going to be considering for the next couple of days, which is the fiscal policy of this country. Before I do, I am compelled to share again with my colleagues the brief remarks I had made this morning about an experience I had yesterday in my Tampa office. Having opened up the office from the weekend, our employees in the Tampa office went into their e-mail account for the Senate. What they found was their e-mail mailbox was filled with unwanted junk, so much so that one of my employees in the Washington office talks about the unwanted e-mail junk, including pornography, that comes to the Senate office in Washington. In the course of the day's activities, it takes her some 45 minutes to clean up this unwanted e-mail. We are already seeing the statistics that it is upwards of 45 and 50 percent now of an average person's e-mail that is unwanted. Therefore, the normal course of commerce of e-mail, this new and wonderful mechanism for instant and cost-effective communication, is being denied to our everyday consumers because their e-mail mailbox is so cluttered and, in fact, is imposed on them. Then they have to go through the process of deleting it. I thought it was also instructive that the intern we have in our Tampa office happened to be gone for the last week and came back and checked on her own personal e-mail, and she had 321 unsolicited e-mail messages that had accumulated in the course of a week. This is getting out of control and it needs to be addressed. In part, we addressed it last year in the Senate Commerce Committee, but legislation never flowed because there was so much of whose ox was going to get gored. Various e-mail companies certainly do not want to impair their commerce, and so in the past they did not want any kind of check and balance on the ability to e-mail. But now we are seeing those companies such as AOL coming around and suddenly they are recognizing their ability to use their mechanism of e-mail is being impaired because there is so much unwanted junk. As I was in the Tampa office yesterday, I happened to look through this single-spaced page of all the e-mail messages that had just come in that morning. The third one on the list was all about salacious sex pictures. Well, that is obviously not something that is appropriate and yet this kind of information is being forced on the consumers of America, and the American people are saying enough already. What we are going to do in this session of Congress is stop it. There are only 20-some States that have addressed this issue, the most recent of which is the Commonwealth of Virginia. They have passed the most severe penalties for this kind of junk e-mail. As we address it in this Congress, what we should be doing is recognizing that if a State wants to adopt an even higher standard than the penalties we are going to set in law at the Federal level, then a State clearly ought to have the right to make it even more punitive. The bill I introduce will basically have two parts. The first part of the legislation is going to set up criminal penalties, both financial and jail time, for unwanted e-mail. Now, it is not going to catch the unsuspecting person whose post office you cannot trace--in other words, masking their identity because they did not intend it to. It is going to be intentional masking that we are going to stop or else they are going to get heavy fines and/or up to 5 years' jail time. The second act we are going to prevent is we are not going to let bulk e-mails, which I think is defined in terms of over 10,000 e-mail, falsify information. If they do, they are going to suffer the consequences. Third, we are going to try to work out some process so that normal commerce will not be impeded but that excessive junk that clutters your e-mail box will be stopped. That is the first part of the bill. If you violate those three standards, you are going to be subject to prosecution, and the penalty is already in law for fines and/or jail time. There is a second part to the legislation. We are going to make that first criminal act a component part of the RICO statute. That is the Racketeering Influence and Corruption Organizations Act. It was the statute passed some two decades ago giving prosecutors new tools to go after the criminal enterprise, the enterprise of many different criminal activities which had a pattern of criminal activity that became a criminal business. The prosecutors had a new tool to go after them because they could seize the assets of the criminal enterprise-- not just the fine and the jail time. If we want to be serious about stopping this, we need to get serious about fines and criminal penalties and giving prosecutors the additional tools to stop this terrible invasion of individual privacy by invading an individual's mailbox. That is the bill I introduce today. Clearly, I have not seen a reaction like this. I mentioned this yesterday to some assembled press when I was in the Tampa office. I am getting all kinds of reaction. The senior Senator from Virginia has arrived. I have been talking about the Senator's Commonwealth of Virginia. They just passed the strongest antispam legislation in the entire country. Virginia now has the strongest in penalties against those who clutter our consumers' e- mail boxes with unwanted mail, including pornographic stuff. To the Senator from Virginia I tell of my personal experience in Tampa yesterday and in the Washington office today, the amount of time it takes our staff to delete this unwanted e-mail. It has become such a burden for our consumers. I yield to the Senator from Virginia, my distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, unwanted e-mail has become a problem of such gargantuan proportions that today's consumers find it difficult to engage in the normal commerce of e-mail because their e- mail screen is so cluttered with so many unwanted messages. Commercially, clearly there is a desirable reason to have commercial messages, but a consumer ought to be able to opt out if that consumer does not want to continue to get those commercial messages. A consumer, particularly, should not have to endure the affront of messages that are clearly inappropriate, including pornographic messages. It is unbelievable. Yesterday, I was in my Tampa office, and in just one day, in the Tampa office, a U.S. Senate office, we had an e-mail sheet filled with unwanted messages, including pornographic messages. You can imagine if it is happening to a U.S. Senator's e-mail account what is happening across the land. So today I am introducing legislation that will give the consumer the opportunity to opt out, that will create penalties, both in jail time and fines, for deceptive and untruthful messages, as well as messages that do not have a return address where somebody is masking their identity. And, Mr. President, we are going to put some teeth in this legislation because we are going to make the infraction of this particular onerous activity of unwanted e-mail an element of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the RICO Act, which will give prosecutors the tools to go after the criminal enterprise and take the assets of that criminal enterprise that has become such a plague upon the consumers of this Nation who want and desire and, in fact, use a new kind of communication, e-mail. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, unwanted e-mail has become a problem of such gargantuan proportions that today's consumers find it difficult to engage in the normal commerce of e-mail because their e- mail screen is so cluttered with so many unwanted messages. Commercially, clearly there is a desirable reason to have commercial messages, but a consumer ought to be able to opt out if that consumer does not want to continue to get those commercial messages. A consumer, particularly, should not have to endure the affront of messages that are clearly inappropriate, including pornographic messages. It is unbelievable. Yesterday, I was in my Tampa office, and in just one day, in the Tampa office, a U.S. Senate office, we had an e-mail sheet filled with unwanted messages, including pornographic messages. You can imagine if it is happening to a U.S. Senator's e-mail account what is happening across the land. So today I am introducing legislation that will give the consumer the opportunity to opt out, that will create penalties, both in jail time and fines, for deceptive and untruthful messages, as well as messages that do not have a return address where somebody is masking their identity. And, Mr. President, we are going to put some teeth in this legislation because we are going to make the infraction of this particular onerous activity of unwanted e-mail an element of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the RICO Act, which will give prosecutors the tools to go after the criminal enterprise and take the assets of that criminal enterprise that has become such a plague upon the consumers of this Nation who want and desire and, in fact, use a new kind of communication, e-mail. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to address the Senate for 2 minutes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. This Senator will be one of the Senator's cosponsors on the amendment. It is interesting that you have described it in terms of an Apollo-type program, which is exactly what this Nation needs. If we put our minds to something, as we did in the 1960s--announced by the President that we were going to the Moon by the end of the decade, and then return safely, and the Nation marshals its will and resources to do a technological feed as we did in going to the Moon, if we apply that same kind of will to addressing the energy crisis by the development of a hydrogen cell, a hydrogen engine that can propel most of our vehicles in this transportation sector--and the Senator's chart shows that transportation is the largest consumer of energy in the United States--if we did that, then clearly, as the Senator from North Dakota says--and I second it--we are going to wean ourselves from the foreign oil that we find ourselves so dependent upon today. I will just offer as support for the Senator's statements that onboard the space shuttle we produced electricity from a hydrogen fuel cell. It is the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen that then produces electricity. What does it have as a byproduct? Water. As a matter of fact, onboard a mission of the space shuttle, so much excess water is produced that it needs to be released into space; a water dump is done, usually after each flight day. It is there, it is technology we understand, and we are using it today in space aboard spacecraft. There is no reason we cannot bring down the per unit cost of a hydrogen engine if we put our minds and our technology and resources into it. What it would do for us is lessen our dependence upon foreign oil, which would lessen some of the kinds of things that we have to do in that region of the world that gets us inextricably involved in our military and foreign affairs.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator from North Dakota and I are joined at the hip on so many of these issues he has just raised regarding energy. This Senator was particularly intrigued by the compelling argument the Senator from North Dakota made about a hydrogen engine being developed. Does the Senator know, will there be an attempt to increase the amount of funding for research and development for a new hydrogen engine that will be in this particular bill?

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise to give my comments on an act that we passed yesterday. It is the Air Cargo Security Improvement Act. I think it is worth noting some of the particulars of this legislation which passed the Senate last night because it is another important step toward fully protecting the United States and all Americans from terrorists who intend to use our aviation system to commit future attacks. While there are a bunch of provisions in this bill, it includes the creation of a security program to protect our air cargo from terrorist attacks. This bill mandates crucial studies on blast-resistant cargo containers. It also provides for TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, passenger screening. That is known as CAPPS II. It also provides how to defend our airliners from shoulder-fired missile attacks. That is a shoulder-mounted, heat-seeking missile, similar to that used in the attack of last December on an Israeli charter jet in the skies over Kenya. This legislation is clearly in the interest of the United States and in the interest of freedom-loving people around the world. It also addresses a deep concern of mine regarding foreign citizens coming to the United States to receive pilot training on all sizes of aircraft. Does that have a resonance? Does that call to mind something that had disastrous consequences to this country? Well, indeed, because what we have seen is what can happen when people come to our country with the specific intent to do us great harm. Many of the September 11 hijackers had learned to fly airplanes right here in the United States. They used those airplanes, then, as deadly weapons against the interests of Americans and the people who were in those buildings. They learned to fly in flight schools right here in the United States. Now, section 113 of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which was enacted in the last Congress, requires background checks of all foreign flight school applicants seeking training to operate aircraft that are 12,500 pounds or more. I had attached that particular provision in the Commerce Committee, and that was part of the package that ultimately became law. Clearly, that was a step in the right direction because, had that been in effect, it would have screened out those who did harm to us by learning to fly airliners in our own flight training schools here. But that provision--with a cutoff of only learning to fly 12,500-pound aircraft or more--doesn't help us from preventing different types of potential attacks against our domestic security. To rectify that problem, we attached another amendment to the bill that passed last night which addresses the issue of background checks for all foreign flight students who come to flight schools to learn to fly in the United States. Why? Besides the obvious--the events on September 11--the FBI has issued terrorism warnings indicating that small planes might be used to carry out suicide attacks. Small aircraft can be used by terrorists to attack nuclear facilities, carry explosives, or to deliver biological or chemical agents. We remember what they found on the computer of one of the suspected hijackers: information about learning to fly a crop duster. For example, if a crop duster is filled with a combination of fertilizers and explosives and were it to be taken into an area of high concentration of people, such as a sports stadium, that could do some serious damage and some serious injury, not even to speak of the possibility of distributing biological or chemical agents from something like a crop duster. It is in the interest of this country to ensure we are not training terrorists to perform those acts. The bill that passed last night will close an important loophole and answer the critical warnings issued recently by the FBI by extending the background check requirement to all foreign applicants to U.S. flight schools regardless of the size of aircraft they seek to learn to fly. The flight schools naturally have been concerned: Is this going to be more redtape for them? The fact is, when we passed this provision over a year ago, it was assigned to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice never implemented the bill, to the great frustration of the owners and the operators of flight schools, so that they could never get the foreign flight students in because the Department of Justice had not implemented the rules to allow those background checks, which is a simple little fingerprint test that can be done in our embassies and consulates abroad before the foreign flight student ever comes to America. Naturally, the flight schools were frustrated. We are rectifying that situation for the flight schools because this is not going to be in the Department of Justice, where the holdup occurred; it is going to be in the new Department of Homeland Security, specifically designated to the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, and it is my expectation that the TSA, which provided excellent advice in the fine-tuning of this legislation, will apply an appropriate level of background screening to all foreign nationals who seek flight training in the United States, and then the frustrations of the flight schools will be taken care of. The flight schools will be able to know that the background check has already been done abroad before the flight student from a foreign land arrives. That procedure is not going to allow anyone to slip through the cracks. We cannot aid anyone who intends to do harm to Americans and to our Nation. I thank all the Senators who helped me with this legislation. It has been a couple of years in the making to finally get it to this point. The chairman and ranking members, Senators McCain and Hollings, and their staff have worked with us to ensure the inclusion of this provision in the bill. Finally, we are on the way to solving this problem.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 165 the Air Cargo Security Improvement Act. This legislation is another important step toward fully protecting the United States and all Americans from terrorists who intend to use our aviation system to commit future attacks. Among other provisions, including the creation of a security program to protect our air cargo from terrorist attacks, this bill mandates crucial studies on blast resistant cargo containers, the Transportation Security Administration's passenger screening program known as CAPPS II, and most importantly, how to defend our airliners from shoulder missile attacks similar to the attack last December on an Israeli charter jet in the skies over Kenya. We must continue to be vigilant in protecting our Nation. This legislation addresses a deep concern of mine regarding foreign citizens coming to the United States to receive pilot training on all sizes of aircraft. Unfortunately, we have seen what can happen when people come to our country with the specific intent to do us great harm. Many of the September 11 hijackers learned to fly the planes they used as deadly weapons at flight schools here in the United States. Section 113 of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which was enacted in the 107th Congress, requires background checks of all foreign flight school applicants seeking training to operate aircraft weighing 12,500 pounds or more. While this provision should help prevent September 11th-style attacks by U.S.-trained pilots using hijacked jets in the future, it does nothing to prevent different types of potential attacks against our domestic security. To rectify this problem, I introduced S. 236 together with Senators Corzine, Enzi, Feinstein, and Thomas earlier this year. The FBI has issued terrorism warnings indicating that small planes might be used to carry out suicide attacks. Small aircraft can be used by terrorists to attack nuclear facilities, carry explosives, or deliver biological or chemical agents. For example, if a crop duster filled with a combination of fertilizers and explosives were crashed into a filled sporting event stadium, thousands of people could be seriously injured or killed. We cannot allow this to happen. We need to ensure that we are not training terrorists to perform these activities. We cannot allow critical warnings to go unheeded. This bill will close an important loophole and answer the critical warnings issued by the FBI by extending the background check requirement to all foreign applicants to U.S. flight schools, regardless of the size aircraft they seek to learn to fly. It also transfers the entire security background check program from the Department of Justice to the Department of Homeland Security, specifically to the Transportation Security Administration. It is my expectation that the Transportation Security Administration, which provided excellent advice in the fine tuning of this legislation, will apply a stringent level of background screening to all foreign nationals who seek flight training here in the United States. We cannot allow anyone to slip through the cracks. We cannot aid anyone who intends to do harm to Americans and to our Nation. I thank the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the Commerce Committee, Senators McCain and Hollings, and their staffs, for working with me to ensure inclusion of this provision in the bill.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

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

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the depleted condition of our national economy and what we ought to do. It is timely to point out that next week this Chamber, the U.S. Senate, will consider legislation raising the debt limit; that is, the limit set by law under which the Federal Government can borrow money that is a debt obligation of the United States. That debt limit is approximately $6.3 trillion. Next week, we will consider the House bill which has been sent to us to raise that by the largest amount ever in the history of the Union, almost $1 trillion. Specifically, $984 billion will be the vote that we will cast next week to raise the debt limit. The Federal Government has to pay its obligations. So by law we have to raise the debt limit so that the Federal Government can pay its obligations. But it is illustrative of the fact that the national debt is growing larger and larger, and we are adopting fiscal policies that add to that national debt each year by increasing the deficit financing that we engage in by the budgets we adopt and then all of the legislation with which we implement those budgets--the tax cuts, the spending bills, financing the war, all of those necessary expenditures. But a fiscal policy has been advocated by the White House, one of dropping off over the next 10 years tax revenues by some $720 billion. And what is likely to pass the Senate is the commitments that were made several weeks ago that that level will be in the range of $350 billion over 10 years instead of the level passed by or to be passed by the House of Representatives in the range of about $550 billion over 10 years. Is any elected official not for tax cuts? Of course, we are. But that is not the decision with which we are confronted. What we are confronted with is, what do we do to better stabilize a sick economy and to get our economy moving again? Almost unanimously, the economists--I say almost unanimously because it is probably a ratio of 9 to 1 among the economists, including statements issued yesterday by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan--are basically saying: Watch out. If you deficit finance, long-term interest rates are going to go up. It is going to depress the economy coming out of this near recession. It is going to be difficult for us to get the economy moving again. That is particularly true of the financial condition in which we find ourselves now. In the first 6 months of this fiscal year, the Government has had to go out and deficit spend to the tune of $250 billion. Annualized, that means we will deficit finance, if that trend holds up, a half a trillion dollars. What does deficit financing mean? That means we are going to adopt budgetary policies of spending and tax revenues by which we are going to spend a half a trillion dollars, $500 billion, more than we have coming in in tax revenue. And you wonder why the stock market is languishing so much. The stock market is a reflection of the American people's confidence in the future of the economy and economic activity. So is it any wonder the stock market just keeps kind of languishing along? Do people have the confidence we are going to come out of these economic doldrums and get the economy moving again? I think you see how they are voting with their pocketbooks on the stock market. The people do not have that confidence. Why should they if, in this year, we are going to spend a half trillion dollars more than we have coming in in tax revenue? This leads me, then, to next week. Next week, in addition to taking up the debt ceiling bill of raising the debt almost a trillion dollars more so we can pay our bills, we are also going to take up the tax bill. The tax bill, as presented to this body, is at least going to be $350 billion. There are many in this body who would like that tax bill to be even more over a 10-year period. To me, it is not wise fiscal policy if that causes our deficit financing to go up continually, just like we are seeing in this present fiscal year. If that debt keeps getting added to the national debt, then it won't be too long--another couple years--and we will be right back here asking to raise the debt limit from about $7.3 trillion-- another trillion dollars--up to about $8.5 trillion. That is not sound fiscal policy. That is not going to bring us back on the road to economic recovery. What we can do is balance interests. We can have some tax cuts that will get the economy moving again, that will provide economic growth, that will provide jobs so we get more dollars into the economy and circulating to offset the sickly economy, offset the lack of economic activity, some of which has been brought on by September 11 but some of which has also been brought on by an economic policy that is embracing deficit financing. I will never forget over two decades ago when I was in the House of Representatives. One of the most prolific writers and great speakers who had articulated balanced budgets suddenly changed his tune and started speaking the message that we will not worship at the shrine of balanced budgets anymore. Well, in the early 1980s, that kind of worship didn't work. The fiscal policies adopted in the early 1980s were so out of whack with the deficits annually soaring up to as high as $250 billion in 1 year, finally those policies had to be reversed-- not once but three times. Now we have a situation that is double the annual deficits ever experienced in the 1980s. We best get about the process of getting our economic and fiscal house in order if we want America to have the economic prosperity our citizens should enjoy. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The good ranking member of our committee was going to allocate 10 minutes to me.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I will not take the time because so many others have such beautiful ways of expressing themselves and they want to speak and I want to hear. I will conclude by saying I love this Senate, and I love these Senators. I love the Senators on this side of the aisle, and I love the Senators on that side of the aisle. The only disappointment I have had is when this place gets too partisan so it cannot work out a solution, and when this place gets too ideologically rigid so that you cannot find a consensus in the commonsense middle ground, and that is what is happening to us in this budget debate. Someday we will learn because we will have to make Government function in the way that the people all across America want it to function. I would venture that every single Member of Congress, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol, can agree on one thing: We need to get the economy moving again. Every priority that we speak about up here--whether it's health care, retirement security, national defense, battling terrorism or even cutting taxes--every one of our priorities is easier to achieve when the economy is booming. The fundamental disagreement is on how we get the economy going again. When talking about the economy, I tend to trust economists. But these tax cuts that are the centerprice of the administration's economic growth package, don't have a lot of fans among the Nation's economists. In fact, 450 economists, including 10 Nobel laureates, oppose his tax cuts because they won't create jobs or stimulate the economy. Meantime, the President was able to find just 13 who support his ``stimulus'' plan. And still, here we are, ignoring not only the better judgment of experts, but ignoring a majority of Senators who were able to agree on a smaller tax cut package. Only 2 weeks ago, this body agreed to reduce the reconciled tax cut package from $726 billion to $350 billion. Yet, in 2 short weeks, the administration and the majority party have found a way to game the system of reconciliation to ram through a higher tax cut number against the collective will of the Senate and the budget process. Over the years the budget process has endured many changes, but always with the intention of creating procedures that allowed Congress to be fiscally responsible as we plan for 10 years of spending priorities. The games that were played with the system this year have completely undermined the purpose of our budget process. As a result, we are in grave danger of plunging the country off a cliff into massive deficits and debt--threatening the education of our children, the financial security of our seniors, and the strength of the Nation. Given all the uncertainty we face, this tax cut we're forcing through is irresponsible. If the economy doesn't improve, or it peacekeeping in Iraq takes longer than expected, or if we face another conflict or terrorist act, we're going to have to find a way to pay for it. Fiscal responsibility cannot be predicated on a hope that all goes right, it requires planning to ensure financial stability should anything go wrong. This is no way to budget. We are not planning for the rainy days ahead. We're hoping that the economy gets going again. We're hoping that America doesn't have to defend itself again. We're hoping that homeland security costs don't mount or that more terrorists don't strike. Meantime, unemployment is growing, there are more uninsured Americans, we're about to have more veterans, our schools are not receiving the funds they need, the baby boomers are retiring, and we're cutting taxes? Sooner or later, we are going to have to pay for all of this or, more likely, our children will. If any of these worst-case scenarios occur, we will have to raise taxes or we will have to cut programs such as Medicare and Social Security or we will have to keep up deficit spending. No matter what, future generations are going to be forced to pay for the sacrifices we have refused to make. Our budget process and sound fiscal policy have become the latest casualties of political expedience. This is not the time for a tax cut, and certainly not one this large.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. For that to come from the senior colleague of my State, who not only can I call friend but also my senior Senator, my mentor, I am very grateful. I find that as in most of the cases, his and my ideas are very similar, as he has just expressed so about this budget. I want to start my remarks by telling a story. In 1978, I came to the House of Representatives and became a freshman member of the Budget Committee. Twenty-two years later, I come to the Senate, and I am a freshman Senator put on the Budget Committee. In the second term I had in the House, we had a newly elected President, President Reagan. I felt that the President, having won a significant victory, was owed a certain deference with regard to his tax policy. On a very close vote, I was one of the handful of votes that allowed President Reagan to pass his budget in 1981, and his tax cut. In a couple of months, I realized that I had made a mistake. I took to the floor of the House of Representatives and stated that I had made a mistake because what we had done was to cut the tax revenues so much so that the revenues were plummeting at the same time we were increasing expenditures of Government. Prior to the Reagan administration we were still running deficits, but it was about a $20 billion deficit, annual deficit--that is, $20 billion more that the Government was spending than it had coming in tax revenue--but if you look on a chart, what happened after that was the expenditures were going up and the revenues were coming down. And the annual amount of borrowing that the Government had to do was all the greater, swelling the national debt, causing a huge expenditure for the Federal Government of annual interest on the additional amounts that we were borrowing each year. It was taking us into the economic ditch. We were in fiscal chaos. I will never forget one of my dear friends in the House, who shall remain nameless but who was one of the preeminent economic spokespeople of the time for the trickle-down, supply-side economics theory, stated--and I found it revealing--We do not worship at the altar of the balanced budget anymore. Well, that was certainly true because in the decade of the 1980s, the annual deficit swelled to around $250 billion a year. The national debt doubled and tripled, and that big tax cut I said was a mistake in 1981 had to be undone--not once, not twice, but three times over the course of the decade of the 1980s--ultimately, into the 1990s. Then sounder fiscal minds prevailed. The budget was ultimately balanced to the point at which almost nirvana was achieved in the late 1990s and the year 2000. And lo and behold, here we were in a surplus. Had we been fiscally conservative--let me repeat that statement--had we been fiscally conservative, we could have been good stewards of those surpluses, and we could have provided for the additional spending that clearly we were going to have to do, particularly in the defense of the country, even though we didn't know at the time that September 11 would happen. And we had the very real probability that we could pay off the national debt over the course of 10 or 12 years. I tell that story because that is a personal story I have lived. It is a story of personal experience that I come to this Senate Chamber today to tell as to why I voted against this budget resolution when it came through the House and why I am going to vote against it today. Because it is not sound fiscal policy; it is not conservative fiscal philosophy. It is exactly the opposite. It is reckless fiscal policy when you drive revenues down, increasing expenditures, particularly in time of war and the kinds of occupational expenses that we are going to have to be expending, that we are already expending in Afghanistan, that we have been expending in Bosnia for 7 years, and how many years are we going to have to expend it in Iraq, which I support. It brings us back to this mindless fiscal policy driving us into the economic ditch. I say to the ranking member of the committee, I am just getting wound up. I know you have lots of others to talk. I am just getting into my message, but you get the drift of my message. I know you want to allocate time to other folks. I will sum up. I have always tried to conduct myself in public office looking to what is the workable solution, what is the commonsense solution. Most folks want Government to work, and they want their elected representatives to perform so that Government will perform and function well. When you adopt fiscal policy such as this, driving the annual deficit higher and higher, when there is no prospect in the future anytime soon of bringing it into fiscal balance and getting close to a balanced budget. That just doesn't comport to common sense. You can do all of the legislative sleight of hand and fiscal ``now-you-see-it-now-you- don't,'' as has been done by this budget resolution, but that doesn't get away from the hard economic fiscal reality that we are going in the opposite direction. Do I support tax cuts? Of course I do. In the first year, I voted for a version that went as high as $1.2 trillion over a 10-year period. What we passed was supposedly $1.35 trillion. But the reason I didn't vote for that was that we knew that wasn't accurate; that it was going to be closer to $2 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. Would I like to have those tax cuts? Of course, but every decision we make here has to be balanced as to how is it going to perform in the functioning of the economy. What you want is an economy that hums. You want an economy that functions, that is a robust economy. We are going in the opposite direction, where we fall off revenues so much at the time of expenses going so high that it causes the markets to get shaky because people do not have confidence in the markets.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, it is my understanding that the sponsors of the resolution on the POWs are on their way to the Chamber. I just left Senator Warner in a briefing with the Secretary of Defense. I wish to speak before the sponsors arrive on the subject of the POW resolution. There are two POWs from Florida. Those whom we suspect are POWs are the ones who were interviewed on Al-Jazeera television, who were captured at about the time that PFC Jessica Lynch was captured. Of course, that was such a wonderfully successful mission of finding and retrieving her. The entire world has rejoiced at her return. From my State, one of the unaccounted whom we think is a POW is Private Williams from Orlando, FL. Naturally, I will lend my support to this resolution which is most important not only to express our concern, but to express and demand that these prisoners of war be treated according to the Geneva Convention, which means that under the rules of war we treat prisoners of war humanely. The conviction that arises in my voice comes from another POW in Iraq of 12 years from Jacksonville, FL, CAPT Scott Speicher. Our Defense Department made a mistake and initially declared him dead. On the first night of the gulf war 12 years ago, his F-18 was shot down, and we left a downed pilot. There were a series of mistakes. He was declared dead when there was not the evidence that he was dead. When we repatriated the POWs in a POW exchange with Iraq, we did not even ask for him because at the time, through mistakes, they did not think he was a POW. They sent back surveillance assets to look at the crash site. They gave them the wrong coordinates, so they did not see the wreckage. It was not until some 5 years later that a Qatar hunting party found the wreckage of his jet. Once that happened, we started making more inquiries. The American press got into it. Lo and behold, years later, the Defense Department finally admitted some of its mistakes and changed his status from killed in action to missing in action. Then just last fall, thanks to the Secretary of the Navy, they changed his status from missing in action to missing captured, which is the status for a POW. The Defense Department says they do not know that he is alive. Madam President, I can tell you that Senator Roberts, who has been joined at the hip with me on this matter because the Speicher family was originally from Kansas and now lives in Florida, and I believe, through the information we have received, that he is alive. It has been published that we have a special team that is now going into Iraq to look for him. What a great day it will be for America if we bring home this American pilot who we walked away from and who has been gone for 12 years. Of course, we can imagine what has happened to his family, his minor children first being told their father was dead, and now having hope that he might be alive. It is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions. It is a tragedy that is borne out of the fog of war. It is a tragedy of bureaucratic ineptness and bureaucratic footdragging, but we can make that right by finding him. Of course, the possibility is that in the ensuing melee, he might be used. It is our hope that we will resolve the fate of CAPT Scott Speicher, and it is my prayer, and the prayer of Americans all over this country, that he can be brought home and that he will be alive. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wish to say how much I appreciate the comments of the Senator. Here is a great example of two Senators representing two different parts of the country, at the end of the day, we have the same conclusion--what we want is freedom for that island. That island is the jewel of the Caribbean. Once freedom comes to that island, it will economically blossom and prosper. That island has so much rich history and such a beautiful culture. The Senator has pointed out that although we might have a difference of opinion about topics such as an economic embargo, at the end of the day what we earnestly want is change. We want the winds of change to blow, and blow very hard and rapidly so that freedom can come to Cuba. I thank the Senator for yielding.