Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further action on S. Res. 308, and the Senate now proceed to its consideration.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table en bloc, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. That is not necessary.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I urge our colleagues to vote against this amendment. For those who say we are raiding Social Security, I believe that is absolutely false. We are protecting Social Security just like any other budget, just like the budget Senator Conrad passed out of the Budget Committee a couple of years ago. He raided Social Security to the tune--if one uses that terminology, and I do not want to use it because I do not believe it--of about $866 billion. He did the same thing that we are doing today. We knew exactly what the law says. The law says if there are surplus Social Security revenues, they are to be invested in T-bills, and I will quote the law. This is the Social Security Act, Section 201(d): It shall be the duty of the Managing Trustee to invest such portion of the Trust Funds as is not, in his judgment, required to meet current withdrawals. Such investments may be made only in interest-bearing obligations of the United States or in obligations guaranteed as to both principal and interest by the United States. That is exactly what we do. I think some are trying to politically scare people into making a mistake. The mistake would be to say 60 votes are needed to do anything in the future, supposedly pay-go for everything. In reality, they did not cover appropriated amounts. There could be an appropriation increase of $100 billion. Oh, that does not have to be paid for. Maybe there are caps, maybe there are not caps. We have had a year that we did not have a budget resolution and did not have caps. It would be very easy not to have a resolution and not to have caps. Basically, discretionary spending would be exempt from this very new stringent requirement. Plus, there would be almost an encouragement for more spending. Some people could say let's increase spending because if spending is increased, there will not be a tax cut. Obviously, there are some people who do not want to have a tax cut--not only not have a tax cut, they do not want to see present law extended. That is really what we are talking about. Some people want to have a supermajority or mandate where there cannot be an extension of present law. So this is very important. I heard my colleague say any increases in mandatory, those are covered just like tax increases. That is not the case. There are billions of dollars of mandatory programs that are sunset, but according to the CBO those are assumed to be extended. They do not have to be paid for after they are sunset, but taxes are sunset and they have to be paid for. So this makes it tough on the taxpayer. If this amendment passes, there is a big bull's eye on taxpayers. Look out, you are getting ready to be hit. Congress is making it a lot easier to spend money. New spending on the discretionary and lots of mandatory are not covered, but any taxes, even present law extension, those are going to be hit. Taxpayers, look out. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution. I do not think 60 votes should be required to pass everything in the Senate, and I am afraid that is what this amendment would lead to. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment. I yield the remainder of our time, and I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the rollcall vote on the Conrad amendment occur at 2:45 p.m.

Mr. NICKLES. With the time equally divided.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, to respond to my colleague from Nevada, we told people to expect a vote at 2:30 p.m. I told my colleague from North Dakota we expected a very short summary and debate by the two of us. It is agreeable with this Senator to vote in the next 6 or 8 minutes, 10 minutes, 4 or 5 minutes to a side.

Mr. NICKLES. That will be fine.

Mr. NICKLES. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. NICKLES. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the Senator such time as he desires.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about the facts. Every once in a while we need to get back to facts. I made the statement in our Budget Committee no matter what level we assumed in the budget for veterans, some people would try to offer amendments to increase it. It is almost a habit. It is going to happen. I guess we have to expect it. Let me throw out a few facts. The budget we have before us increases veterans care, mandatory and discretionary, by 14.5 percent. I looked at the amendment and I said, how much does this increase outlays for veterans? It is zero. So we have a lot of rhetoric. It increases taxes over present law, certainly over the budget resolution. But then it tries to avoid a budget point of order by creating a reserve fund that says, well, if and when the appropriators spend more money, then we will give them more money. I don't know that that would pass a budget point of order. I will have to talk to the Parliamentarian about it. But it is life's little game. It doesn't increase benefits for veterans, at least directly. I think I heard the sponsor of the amendment say, the budget before us has copays on drugs for certain veterans, level 7 and 8 veterans. That was in the President's budget. It is not in our budget resolution. Frankly, when people talk about crowding, level 7 and 8 are for nonservice-connected and high income veterans. People who might be injured playing basketball or something else like that and have high incomes would have to have a higher copay under the administration's proposal. It may be a good proposal. Anyway, we didn't assume it in this budget. We also didn't assume that $250 deductible on the same category of people, high income people, nonservice connected. It was proposed by the administration. We did not assume it in the budget. It was mentioned that we did. Maybe he was referring to the President's budget, not the budget before us. Let's talk about some of the facts. The facts are, when I look at how the function totals have grown over the years, I look in 1993, total veterans benefits and services was $36 billion. In the year 2001, it was 47. That was an increase of about $9 billion. In 2001, it was 47. Today it is 70, actually 70.34. Last year it was 61. This is mandatory as well as discretionary. Both count, both are real dollars. Both are Uncle Sam writing the check. To go from $61 billion in 2004 to $70.4 billion in 2005, that is a 14.5 percent increase. Even though we have allocated 14.5 percent, some people say that is not enough, and we would have to have 22 or 25 percent if this amendment was adopted and if this reserve fund was created and if it was released. I don't know when you say enough is enough. I understand there is demand on veterans care. Senator Allard pointed out the amount of money we have spent has risen dramatically. I might mention, it has grown more in the last few years. In just veterans health care services alone, it has risen from $21 billion in 2001 to $29 billion under this resolution. That is a very significant percentage increase. I could go on and on. We have done a lot. I might mention we have done a lot in other areas. I mentioned mandatory as well as discretionary. Last year we passed concurrent receipts, so starting for the first time this year, veterans who are service-connected disabled with 50 percent or more rating receive both military retirement and VA disability. That affects about 250,000 disabled military retirees. We passed the Montgomery GI bill increasing the benefits of that 52 percent in educational benefits. They can receive benefits equaling up to $35,000 worth of GI benefits. Veterans buying their first homes, we have increased the VA home loan guarantee by 20 percent up to a maximum mortgage of $240,000. We have done a lot. Under this budget we increase medical care, which I have heard is being cut, by $1.4 billion over last year. So we have done a lot. We increased medical and prosthetic research by about 25 percent. I could go on and on. A lot has been done. Yet I see this amendment says we haven't done near enough. We want to it grow 20 percent. How sustainable is that when we are trying to do a budget that holds the growth of spending down close to a freeze in nondefense areas? We didn't hold it to a freeze in VA. VA discretionary and mandatory is 14.5 percent. That is a big increase. Yet it is still not enough. I want to attack how this is being paid for. I have heard some people say this assumes there is only going to be a tax on millionaires. That is not in the budget resolution or the amendment. The amendment says, let's raise taxes by about $5.4 billion for 2005. One can say, our assumption is that is only going to be on millionaires. It reminds me of Russell Long: Yes, tax someone. Don't tax me, tax somebody behind the tree. Tax somebody else. Well, what we are assuming in the budget resolution, what we guess we might be successful in getting passed, what I hope and expect we will be successful in getting passed is a continuation of present law. In present law, most of those benefits go to low-income people, to families. For example, the child tax credit is $2.6 billion. The marriage penalty relief is $5.4 billion. So we almost pay for this if we eliminate the marriage penalty relief that we have given people for 2004 and that some want to give in 2005. This idea we are just going to tax millionaires, do my colleagues think the President is going to sign a bill that is going to increase marginal rates? I can guarantee you he will not. I know the President very well. I can tell you we will not let that pass. I am not going to let it pass. I happen to be on the Finance Committee. I can talk for a long time. That is not going to happen. People can say: We are just going to tax these upper income rates. Those happen to be small businesspeople. The real tax debate is: Are we going to extend present law? Are we going to make present law permanent, or are we going to extend permanent law? Those are family- friendly tax cuts--marriage penalty relief, child tax credit, and the 10-percent rate. Some people are saying we do not want to do those cuts; we do not want to extend those cuts. My point is, if you look particularly in the last few years, since President Bush has been in office, total spending for veterans care has risen dramatically. It has risen more than Bill Clinton's first 8 years--substantially more. The total amount of outlays since 2001 has increased by $23 billion. In President Clinton's 8 years, total outlays, mandatory and discretionary, grew by $11 billion. Yet that is still not enough, according to this amendment. Then this amendment says let's just increase taxes. They assume it is going to be on those darn millionaires. For one, they cannot make that assumption. If you read the amendment, it doesn't say that. It tells the Finance Committee: Raise more taxes than assumed by this resolution by several billion dollars. Also, this is interesting: Oh, this just applies to 2005. Sure, if we are going to increase spending by $2.7 billion in 2005, you might as well multiply that by 10 plus an inflater because this is not going to happen for 1 year. We are not going to fund it for 1 year and drop it off, just as I hope we do not give a tax cut to families and then stop it at the end of this year. I hope we don't. So the real cost of this amendment over a 10-year period of time would probably be more like $35 billion, and people should be aware of that fact. My guess is we will have a lot of amendments where people will want to raise taxes and raise spending. I happen to disagree with that. I disagree and will take issue with this idea of increasing marginal rates from 35 percent. When Bill Clinton was elected, the maximum rate was 31 percent. It went all the way up to 39.6, and we finally have it down to 35 percent. Thirty-five percent happens to be the same rate that corporations pay. Why should individuals who maybe own a business, maybe a restaurant or something, why should they pay more than the corporate rate? That would be bad policy. If you want to slam the door on the economic recovery, that is a good way to do it because about 80 percent of the jobs are created by small business, and they are 80 percent of the beneficiaries of that top percent. That top percent rate does not fly. There is nothing in this amendment when one reads it that says it only applies to millionaires. That is in rhetoric but not in reality. The reality is it raises taxes by $5.4 billion, and we are going to assume, yes, maybe eventually it is going to come to Veterans Affairs even though there is not an outlay for the VA in this amendment. At the appropriate time, I will urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment. I advise my colleagues my expectation is we will be voting on this amendment probably in the next 30 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. I believe I heard my good colleague and friend from Wisconsin, a member of the Budget Committee--and I have worked with him on some issues and amendments--say this is only a tax increase on millionaires, but I read the resolution. It says, raise taxes, but it does not say raise it on millionaires. Would the Senator not agree with me on a budget resolution the Finance Committee can raise revenues, but they cannot be directed how to do it?

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I appreciate that answer, but the facts are, and my colleague from North Dakota I know will affirm this if pressed, we do not write tax law in the budget resolution. We may assume something. I am assuming we are going to continue law that is presently in effect. We have at least scored enough for reconciliation to make sure low and middle-income families do not get a big tax increase to the tune of, for a family of 4, about $1,600, and for a family of 6 about $2,200 next year. That is basically all we are assuming for next year. And a little AMT relief. In reconciliation, that is all we are assuming. If last year is any example, we assumed a lot but we only got what we reconciled. Reconciliation assumes continuation of present law. In other words, no tax increase on families, no tax increase on marriage penalty, no tax increase on families that have children. That is what we are assuming. This amendment says, no, we want $5.5 billion more in taxes. That is just the first year. That might as well be multiplied by 10. My point is, this assumes a tax increase. The proponents may say they assume it is only for millionaires, but that is not what the amendment says. The amendment says to the Finance Committee, go raise some taxes; increase spending in an account that is already growing by 14.3 percent in the budget we have before us, mandatory and discretionary. So I just make those points. I am a little disappointed to hear my colleague from Florida say he wants to do an amendment tomorrow that is going to raise the same function by another $1.5 billion without regard to how this amendment comes out. How many times do we have to vote on Veterans Affairs? I guess I will wrestle with that one tomorrow. I just tell my colleagues, in looking at what this President has done and what this Congress has done since the year 2001, it is a dramatic increase compared with what the previous Congresses did for the last 8 or 10 years; a dramatic increase. Yet some people are still saying that is not enough. This amendment needs to be defeated for a lot of different reasons. I mentioned we have done a lot for veterans, including expanding the Montgomery Bill of Rights by 52 percent, by expanding concurrent receipt--last year a multibillion dollar expansion for about 250,000 retirees. We added $1.4 billion for VA medical care under this resolution. We did not assume the increase in copays that some people have alleged. I urge our colleagues, in the not too distant future--my guess is we will be voting on this amendment within the next 20 minutes--to vote no.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield to my colleague from Alabama.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for this amendment. For the information of our colleagues, it is my expectation we will probably vote on this amendment shortly after lunch, unless others wish to speak on it. We are happy to accommodate that. I rise in opposition to the amendment, but I want to give a little explanation about what, in my opinion, this amendment does and does not do. First, if we did what my friend and colleague from North Dakota is saying, we would be in violation of the Budget Act. In the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, section 301, there is a Social Security point of order that says it is against the law to bring any budget concurrent resolution to the floor of the Senate if you do anything detrimental to the so-called trust fund. I will read the point of order: It shall not be in order in the Senate to consider any concurrent resolution on the budget or amendment or motion or conference report on the resolution that would decrease the excess Social Security revenues over Social Security outlays in any of the fiscal years covered by the concurrent resolution. That is strong. That is the law. We comply with the law. If we did not, our entire budget would fall. I make that point. Senator Conrad eludes to the fact that we are raiding Social Security. I disagree with that entirely. With great respect, I will say Senator Conrad's budget, which he wrote in 2002 that passed the committee but did not pass the Senate, did the exact same thing, for at least $866 billion. I understand politics, and I understand the way this is being framed, but it is absolutely wrong. What do we do with a Social Security surplus? Senator Conrad is correct, there is $166 billion more Social Security taxes coming into the Social Security trust fund than money going out. What do we do with the excess money? We do exactly what the law says we should do. We take that money and buy Treasury bonds that are supposedly invested in West Virginia. I say ``supposedly'' because all the money got into one big pot. Social Security, as well as income taxes, all goes into one big pot. If you are an employee and look at your W-2, you have withholding for Social Security and income taxes that goes out every payroll period. All that money goes into the U.S. Treasury. Half does not go over here and half over there. All of it goes into the Treasury, and Treasury writes the checks. With Social Security, if they determine there are less outlays than income, they take the balance and buy T bills. That is a commitment by the U.S. Treasury to pay it back with interest. That is the law of the land, and that is exactly what we do. That is exactly what we do under this resolution. This chart shows exactly what the trust funds will be approximately, with the budget and without the budget. The trust fund is exactly the same because we take every dime of the surplus and we buy T bills with it. I might add, if our colleagues on the other side of the aisle offered a budget, it would be exactly the same or else their budget would fall. I just make that point. I hope people do not get confused about all the raiding talk. We buy T bills with the Social Security surpluses. That is what has been done for years because that is the law of the land. There is some discussion that if we had a surplus, maybe we should buy equities or not buy equities. You could buy major corporations, you could buy a very significant portion of the stock exchange, and so on. But we did not do that. We follow the law of the land. Instead of picking out which company or sector might benefit from a Government investment, we said, no, we are going to buy T bills. With those T bills, we can do one of two things: spend the money or pay off debt. But that is beside the point. The trust fund is basically the same, the obligation to pay. We are not changing the law of the land. The law of the land is we have obligations to pay Social Security benefits based on formulas. We can change those formulas. We can change eligibility. We can change retirement age. We can change the cost-of- living benefits. We can take a lot of different actions. Congress can do that. We cannot do it under a budget resolution, not if it is detrimental to the health of the trust fund. I want to make sure everybody understands we are not raiding the Social Security trust fund. The Social Security trust fund is going to be exactly the same under this resolution as before because that is the law of the land, and we abide by the law. I also repeat, Senator Conrad's budget and, frankly, any budget that I have seen in my years in the Senate--and I have seen 24 of them--we did not pass Senator Conrad's budget, but the 23 we passed all treated Social Security the same--all did. What about this point of order he is creating? That sounds pretty good, and I think I hear him correctly when he says no new spending and no new tax cuts unless we have this supermajority. Guess what? We exempt a whole lot of spending. According to CBO, we exempt about $1 trillion of spending under the baseline. They just assume the spending is going to continue, even though, in many cases, the authorizations expire. But the way this is drafted and the way I can tell, we more or less exempt that. For example, the farm bill. The farm bill expires at the end of 5 or 6 years. Under this amendment, we would not say the new farm bill has to be paid for, at least that is not my interpretation of the amendment. So spending has an advantage compared to tax cuts. Any tax cuts, because tax cuts are for a definite short term, a limited term, when they expire, they would have to be 100 percent paid for. But a lot of spending programs, over $1 trillion worth of spending programs, would continue even though they are scheduled to expire. They are assumed to continue. Tax cuts are not assumed to continue. There is a big difference. We also exempt appropriations. We can have big increases in appropriated accounts. Discretionary accounts--the money we spend--in some cases have been growing rather dramatically. We will exempt that. In this fiscal year, fiscal year 2004, we are going to have discretionary spending of about $788 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and we are projecting under the budget resolution $814 billion. It may be higher. CBO scores the President's budget at $823 billion. There is a difference between $823 billion and $788 billion of about $35 billion. Under this amendment, no, you do not have to pay for that. If we can have lots of increases in discretionary spending, that wouldn't have to be paid for. We basically exempt all the appropriated accounts, about $1 trillion of mandatory spending that is assumed to continue. That does not have to be paid for. What has to be paid for? What is the real target of this amendment? The real target of this amendment is if you want to continue present law in the Tax Code, you have to have 60 votes. That is what this amendment is really getting at, and it is trying to cloud the issue with Social Security. We treat Social Security exactly the way Senator Conrad did in his budget. We treat Social Security the same as every other budget that has been before the Senate. We treat Social Security according to the law. If we have surpluses, we buy T bills--that is an IOU--period. The real essence of this amendment is, they would like to make sure that if we are going to continue present law, we have to have 60 votes. That is the essence of it. It means if there is going to be a lot of other legislation--maybe it is the prescription drug bill, maybe it would be the Energy bill, maybe it would be anything else--oh, that has to have 60 votes, too. We basically would be changing the way we do business in the Senate and say we have to have 60 votes for anything. Some people think that should be the case anyway. I disagree. Some people go in with the idea that we are going to have a filibuster on every bill, have to have 60 votes. That is not the tradition of the Senate. That is not how the Senate historically has worked, and it should not work that way. Filibusters should be very rare and few, and it seems as if everybody wants to pull that trigger every time we turn around. I disagree with that practice, and I hope people will think about that further because it will greatly undermine the workings of the Senate. Also, this amendment, in my opinion, would encourage spending because a lot of people around here do not like tax cuts. They would realize you could never have a tax cut if we were not in balance, minus Social Security, and, therefore, there is real tendency to increase spending with a majority vote and you have to have a supermajority to get tax cuts. So it is going to be a lot harder to get tax cuts and less harder to get more spending, and the more spending you get, the less likely a tax cut will happen. Some of our colleagues and many people would love this bias towards spending because you can pass spending increases, discretionary spending increases, with a majority vote. They do not count and, therefore, if you spend more, it would be less likely to have tax cuts. Tax cuts would be out of order. The more I think about this, the less I like it. I have great respect for my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, but I think this amendment demagogs on the issue of Social Security. Maybe it tries to inflame people about raiding Social Security. I absolutely think that is false. I told my colleague from North Dakota I look forward to having a hearing in the Budget Committee in the not too distant future on this whole concept of trust funds, what is there, what is not there, what obligations we have, what they really mean, because I think there are a lot of misconceptions about trust funds in general. I look forward to that. I also will make a couple of comments on a few facts relating to Social Security. I know Senator Conrad asked, is it not interesting because the Social Security surplus is just about equal, the same amount of money as the tax cuts? Well, I will show Social Security taxes and payroll taxes are just about equal--not quite equal--to the total amount of money that we pay out in Social Security and Medicare. So one could easily say the Social Security surpluses are used to pay Medicare. That is the point I am making. As a matter of fact, they do not quite pay for Medicare. It so happens the Medicare beneficiaries are by and large the same beneficiaries of Social Security, and those are just some facts. To give an example in the year 2004, actually the total benefits for Social Security and Medicare together are $784 billion. The total amount of money coming in from payroll tax is $753 billion. In other words, we pay out $31 billion more than we take in on payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security. Somebody says: I am not aware of that. I thought we had big surpluses. We have surpluses in the Social Security trust fund theoretically because 12.4 percent of payroll tax goes in for Social Security; 2.9 percent of payroll tax goes into Medicare. I started to say it is the same payroll tax. If one looks at their W-2, it says FICA tax. A lot of people do not even know what FICA means. That is the Social Security and Medicare tax. It is 15.3 percent, which is 12.2 and 3.9. Do I have that right? I know that did not add up right--I have not given this speech in a while. It is 12.4 and 2.9, which equals 15.3, and that is what individuals pay. Self-employed individuals pay all of it. Individuals who have an employer, they pay half and the employer pays half. It adds up to 15.3 percent of payroll, up to a taxable base of $87,900. Wow. So my point is, if we add all the payroll taxes up, that is a lot, but it does not quite pay for all of the benefits that are going out in Social Security and Medicare. It is about $30 billion short. Some people can say, well, those Social Security excesses are used to pay for tax cuts. I disagree with that. I think they are being used to pay for Medicare. We subsidize Medicare. Under the budget, we pay for three-fourths of part B. That is the doctor expense. The beneficiary pays one-fourth and the Government pays three-fourths. The Government pays for it out of general revenues. My point is, this money is all going into one pot. All the money goes into one pot and comes out of one pot. There is a balance. If there is a balance in Social Security, we credit that to the Social Security trust fund. We do it by the law. We do it the same way Senator Conrad did when he passed his budget out of the Budget Committee. So I hope we have a little less talk about we are stealing or raiding because that language is somewhat political or inflammatory. Again, let's stay with the facts and stick by the budget resolution. That is exactly what we do. Let's not create a bias for let's spend more, but if we are going to do more in spending, we are really not going to count that. We are not going to count incremental increases in discretionary. We are not going to count a trillion dollars of entitlements that are assumed to be expanded forever, but if we want to extend present law on the Tax Code, oh, it has to be paid for. Right now the child tax credit is $1,000 per child. That is present law. Some of us want to extend that. The President of the United States wants to extend that. Some people are saying, oh, no, we think we should have to pay for that. What do they mean? They are trying to say, well, we think there should be higher taxes some place else. In other words, we want to extend entitlements. I will make an editorial comment. I did not hear this argument raised when we were dealing with greatly expanding the Medicare bill. People said, oh, let's pay for it, let's make sure that is paid for with increased revenues or reduction in spending. No, it was not. We have a bill that CBO estimates it will be a $395 billion expansion over last year's bill. I think it will be more than that. The OMB said they thought it might be higher than that. They thought it might be $500 billion and something. I would not be a bit surprised if it was higher than both estimates because we put in some very generous benefit increases. I did not hear a hue and cry about that. Guess what. We did not terminate that law after 5 years or 10 years and say at the end of that 5 years it has been paid for. So it is going to terminate and go to zero unless other offsets or other cuts are found. There is a real bias the way this would work that would benefit spending and be very much to the detriment of a continuation of tax increases at least, not to mention further tax reduction. I happen to be proud of the tax reduction that we passed last year. I was very involved in it. I think that was very good tax relief. I think we have seen positive results of the tax bill that we passed last year. Yes, we cut the tax rate on capital gains, and I think revenues are starting to come in. We cut the tax on dividends. We tax dividends higher than any other country in the world. Chairman Greenspan said we should probably have a zero individual tax on dividends. He said we should only tax dividends once. Now we tax them about one and a half times. We have a 15-percent rate on dividends. I understand some people want that rate to go up to 35 percent, or maybe they want it to go to 39.6 percent. Maybe they want it to go higher than that. I wonder what the reaction would be for the stock market and what people's 401(k)s would do and what their investment balance would be. Because we made those tax changes last year, there is the best economic growth news we have had in decades in the last two or three quarters. It has been great, positive economic news. That is really good. We have seen the stock market grow by 40 percent from last year at this same point. Now, some people want to increase those taxes. I do not. I want to continue them. Yet under the Senator's amendment to continue present law, there would have to be 60 votes. A lot of people realize right now 60 votes are very hard to obtain on a lot of issues. Under Senator Conrad's amendment, I would think there would have to be 60 votes to do anything. There would have to be 60 votes to pass an Energy bill. There would have to be 60 votes to pass an increase in child nutrition on which Senator Dole and some others are working. There would have to be 60 votes to pass family tax relief; i.e, the marriage penalty relief that we gave for married couples who have taxable income of $58,000, we are going to tax them at 15 percent. That is present law. Some of us want to continue that. If we do not continue that, that means instead of paying 15 percent up to $58,000, people start paying 25 percent around $52,000. There is a $900 difference. I do not want to sock it to middle-income families who earn $58,000. Maybe it is a teacher and a spouse with taxable income of $58,000. They are not particularly wealthy. I keep hearing about all of this benefit going to the wealthy. The tax cuts we are trying to extend are very pro-family tax cuts and, frankly, directed towards middle-income Americans. I want to be able to continue that. Senator Conrad's amendment says there would have to be 60 votes. There would have to be 60 votes for almost anything at least for the next 10 years. I do not think that is the road we want to go down. I urge our colleagues at the appropriate time to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Correct me if I am wrong. What we are doing with the excess money is exactly what the law states. According to the statute, and I will show you the statute, it says you buy T-bills with it, and correct me if I'm wrong, that is exactly what we are doing with the surplus.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I am reminded of the movie ``Show Me The Money.'' I say to our friends on the Democrat side, show me this budget because this budget would do exactly the same thing. Senator Conrad's budget that was written in 2002, which passed the committee and did not pass the floor, used $866.3 billion of the Social Security surplus under his budget. If I wanted to--I am not going to do that because I don't believe in that--I could say you were raiding Social Security and using that spending on other programs. I am not going to do that because I don't think that is correct. I think what he did was the same thing every other budget did whenever there has been a Social Security surplus, and that is buy securities. I will quote the law. That is the law of the land. If we are breaking the law, let people know. People say you are taking that money and spending it on other things. We are investing that money in T bills. I make the argument that it is an entry and say this is how much the trust fund is, but it is exactly the same under this budget as it would be under Senator Conrad's budget. If I had an alternative or any other budget that anybody else would offer, it would be exactly the same. You are bound by law to purchase T bills, which are basically Government IOUs saying we will pay this amount of money with those T bills. The Government receives money. What do they do with it? They use it to either spend money or pay down the debt. By and large, over the last many years, it has been used for other things. The Government has that money. The Government has to buy the T bills. We have a T bill. We take that cash and buy a T bill with a promise for a future obligation. That obligation is paramount. It has always been made by the Federal Government. That doesn't mean Social Security doesn't have problems in the long term. Demographically there are fewer people writing the checks than people who will be receiving them. People who will be receiving the checks are living longer. We have some demographic problems that need to be addressed. Incidentally, it is a lot worse in Medicare than it is in Social Security. We need to be talking about it. I am happy to discuss long- term challenges that we have, whether it be Medicare or Social Security. The Medicare challenge is about five times greater than Social Security. I think some people think they can score political points with Social Security and are maybe trying to scare senior citizens. This is happening. They forget to say they did the same thing. We have always done the same thing but we think maybe we can score some political points. I urge our colleagues not to go down that road. There is a bias. There is definitely a bias in this amendment towards spending. We don't count discretionary spending. You can increase discretionary spending under this resolution by $100 million per year. You don't have to pay for that. There is a trillion dollars' worth of spending that the Congressional Budget Office has on mandatory programs that expire. Those won't be included. They can expire but we will just assume they continue. You don't have to pay for those. But if a tax cut expires, you have to pay for that. But you don't have to on mandatory programs. I find that argument very inconsistent. For all the above reasons, I urge our colleagues to vote no on the Conrad amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I heard part of my colleague's speech, but I will just say that budget resolutions are not easy. When I see people holding up charts that have a picture of President Bush and another one of Herbert Hoover and saying job loss and so on, that is politics. Enough with politics. Let's do our Nation's business. Let's pass a budget. Some people seem to think this is a political free-for-all. We are going to have an election in November. We have plenty of time to do politics. We have conventions in July, August, and September. That is time enough. This is March. To be having a picture of the President of the United States, and comparing him to Herbert Hoover, I find offensive. I find it so political, it is debasing to the Senate. I guess people have a right to do that, but enough is enough. Let's stay with the business at hand instead of trying to score political points. I urge our colleagues to do that. I have never been a fan of charts, but my good friend, Senator Conrad, manufactures them on a daily basis. I compliment him for it. But to have pictures and to use those kinds of things denigrates our President. In my opinion, I am not sure it elevates the caliber of debate that we should have before the Senate.

Mr. NICKLES. To respond to my colleague's question, maybe it is an interesting analogy between President Bush and President Hoover. President Hoover was present when the market collapsed on that fateful day in October in 1929. President Clinton was President when the market collapsed in March of 2000. NASDAQ took a dive. The stock market took a dive and continued to dive throughout 2000. I do not want to play that game, but I am offended when I see pictures and hear those kinds of aspersions. I do not think it helps the debate. I agree with my colleague, that market crash was foretelling that we had very significant problems coming, and it resulted in a lot of lost revenue to the Government that no one projected, whether it be the White House or anybody else. I appreciate my colleague. I want to elevate the caliber of the debate and not be quite so political and quite so partisan so early.

Mr. NICKLES. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. I respond to my colleague, I am offended by the political partisan nonsense that is coming up with that picture and the tone of the debate. Let's have a good debate. But to cast aspersions--I am offended. I am telling my colleague that I do not think we have to go to that level of partisanship. It is March. Why don't we do our Nation's business and play politics in September, October, and November?