Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, to advise our colleagues, it now appears we will have a vote in a couple of minutes. The first will be a 15- minute rollcall vote, the second will be a 10-minute rollcall vote. It appears we will have two rollcall votes tonight. The first will be on the Baucus amendment dealing with striking the reconciliation instruction and the second will be an amendment by Senator Nelson. If my memory serves me correctly, we voted on a similar amendment yesterday. I wonder how many times we will have to vote on various issues. This amendment is very similar to the one from yesterday in a couple of respects. One, it has billions of dollars of tax increase, has billions of dollars of spending, except the spending is sheltered into a reserve fund so some people say this gives more money to veterans medical care, but it does not do that. It does not increase money to veterans medical care. It creates a fund and maybe that money would go in there if the Appropriations Committee did such and such. But you can count on what it does do; it increases taxes. My colleague has very legitimate concerns--I share some of those concerns--about veterans health care. Let me mention a couple of facts on veterans. We are increasing the total amount of money going to veterans on mandatory and discretionary by 14.5 percent. I believe I said this yesterday. That is a lot, especially when you consider you are trying to do a budget that is almost deficit neutral. We did add $1.4 billion for medical care. I understand people want more. I know people wanted more even if we did not do anything. No matter what we put in, they would want more because they think they are scoring political points. I will also say we have taken total veterans function 700--mandatory and discretionary--from $47.5 billion in the year 2001 to $70.4 billion. That is an enormous increase. I understand the demands. I understand the challenge it is. But I urge our colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time does the Senator from Florida have left?

Mr. NICKLES. Does the Senator yield his time? I am going to order some votes.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio. He is my very good friend. He makes some excellent points. I compliment him. He is what I call a deficit hawk, and I compliment him. I look forward to working with him on a lot of ideas. Some of his ideas are in this resolution. Some of his ideas for budget reform were in last year's resolution. I will remind my colleague from Ohio, we used some of your budget points of order you suggested to me over a year ago, this year, throughout the year, to save a lot of spending. I compliment my colleague from Ohio for his work, and I look forward to continuing to work with him. Amendment No. 2751 Mr. President, we are now ready to vote, first on the Baucus amendment. I expect it will be a 15-minute rollcall vote. I do not expect to let it go much beyond 15 minutes. I ask unanimous consent to have the second rollcall vote be limited to 10 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of our time. I ask for the yeas and nays on the Baucus amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, we will have one more rollcall vote tonight. That will be on the Nelson amendment. It is a 10-minute rollcall vote. I warn my colleagues, we have allowed these last rollcalls to go a little long. Tomorrow we are going to have a lot of votes. I am going to yield back a lot of time tonight or tomorrow. So we are going to be having a lot of votes. We are doing that to try to make this a more orderly process because we do not want to have a vote-arama that will go all night long tomorrow. I will cooperate with my colleague, and I thank Senator Conrad for his cooperation. I urge my colleagues to expect a long, hard day tomorrow. I urge my colleagues, when we have debate, to keep the time limited so we can consider additional amendments and conclude this resolution by sometime tomorrow night or sometime Friday. But we will stay here until we complete this resolution. Vote on Amendment No. 2745

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, we are now going to vote on the Nelson amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote no. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, that is the last vote tonight. I believe Senator Corzine has an amendment he is going to lay down. We will possibly discuss it tonight. I believe he wants to discuss it a little bit, I am not sure. I have to see what the amendment is. I am not sure what it is. I don't know if there are any other amendments that will be introduced tonight. But I want to let all our colleagues know we are going to be starting pretty early tomorrow, and we will have a lot of votes. My guesstimate is I will yield back a lot of time so we will be on amendments tomorrow. We handled a lot of amendments today. I haven't counted the number. We accepted some, we disposed of some, but we are going to have a lot more amendments tomorrow night, and tomorrow night we are probably going to be working a lot past 10 o'clock. I regret that. I would love to change the way budgets are done. I urge our colleagues, not all these amendments have to be offered. I urge our colleagues if you have amendments, if you can work them out with Senator Conrad and myself, we are happy to try to do that. That might save a lot of time. Rollcalls take a lot of time. We still conduct rollcalls the way it was done 200-some-odd years ago. It takes a little while, and that is fine. But I encourage our colleagues to think of the major amendments we really need to vote on, that they feel compelled to vote on, and we will try to have those together and give everybody a fair crack at amending this budget resolution. I hope some of our colleagues, if they have had success in passing an amendment, maybe they would consider voting for the resolution, not just trying to tear the resolution down or change it and continue to oppose it. Anyway, I urge our colleagues tomorrow to expect a long day with a lot of votes. Maybe we can conclude tomorrow night. More than likely we will conclude sometime on Friday.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. I am trying to figure out how the amendment would work. You are assuming the highest income level people would have no reduction in their tax rates going back to 2001, so their personal income tax rate would be 39.6 percent?

Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator will yield further, would that include the rate on capital gains?

Mr. NICKLES. And the rate on dividends?

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I have great respect for my colleague from New Jersey, but this is one of the worst amendments I have seen. This is a tax increase of $160 billion. The Senator from New Jersey can assume it will only be on millionaires, but you cannot do that. Therefore, it is a direction to the Finance Committee to raise $160 billion. It assumes it would be saving Social Security, but it will not. It will not in any way, shape, or form. He assumes it will be put into a trust fund to save Social Security, but it will not. It raises taxes $160 billion. I will talk about, if he was correct, how bad that would be. It would be kind of interesting to say everyone in the country gets a capital gain rate of 15 percent, but if you happen to be at an income level of such and such, your capital gain rate is twice as high; it is 39.6 percent. That is very strange. I assume, too, if you had dividend rates now and we set them now at 15 percent, and that helped the market a lot, and we tax dividends higher than any other country in the world, but we helped that in last year's bill by cutting dividends to 15 percent, and you say dividends will be taxed for everybody in the country at 15 percent except for the highest income people, that will be at 39.6 percent, you are getting into a mess as far as administering the Tax Code. What about this instruction to increase it $160 billion? How does that save Social Security? I tell my colleagues, Social Security has a $4.9 trillion unfunded liability. If this makes sense to do it to Social Security, the unfunded liability over 75 years for Medicare is 3 or 4 times as high. The last estimate I had was $15.3 trillion for Medicare. We made it worse last year when we expanded the Medicare benefits. First, if we went with the amendment's assumption, you would be increasing the maximum rate at least to 39.6 percent. The maximum rate on corporations is 35 percent. So why would we tax individuals who happen to be proprietors, who own their own business, who happen to be the individuals who are creating about 80 percent of the jobs, and probably 80 percent of the people who pay maximum rates are individuals, self-employed proprietors, maybe doctors and lawyers, hiring a lot of people, but we will tax them higher rates than we tax Exxon and we tax Goldman Sachs, the corporation. They pay 35 percent, but we will say we will have these individuals pay an additional tax up to 39.6 percent, and then to say we will put it into a fund, that just will not work. What we would do, the net essence, is raise taxes $160 billion. Presumably we will put it into a fund, but with the deficit situation we have right now it will be spent. It is absurd to think it would not be spent. It will be spent. You might have an IOU in that fund, but if the Government collects the taxes--I made this speech yesterday; I don't want to be redundant, especially this late--all money will go into one pot, and if you want to have a little paper entry that says IOU over here and you have another fund that says IOU, and someone assumes it is to pay Social Security, that is not the way it works. It would not work that way. I appreciate my colleague's amendment. I hope our colleagues would vote no on this amendment to raise taxes by $160 billion on a lot of small business entrepreneurs throughout the country. I think it would be slamming the door on economic recovery right off the bat. I urge our colleagues to vote no. We will vote on this amendment tomorrow morning.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., Thursday, March 11. I further ask that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then resume consideration of S. Con. Res. 95, the budget resolution; provided further that when the Senate resumes the budget resolution tomorrow, there be 14 hours equally divided remaining for debate under the statutory limit.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, tomorrow the Senate will resume consideration of the budget resolution. When the Senate resumes debate, we will have 14 hours remaining under the time limit. It is my expectation to yield back some time. I think we made very good progress on the resolution today. We had a lot of rollcall votes. We disposed of several amendments. The ranking member and I will return to the floor tomorrow morning and continue to work through amendments on the resolution. Again, it is my intention to yield back some time. Our colleagues should know, we are going to have a lot of votes tomorrow. I would urge colleagues not to offer amendments that have already been offered. We don't need to vote on the same thing four and five times. It is important for us to finish this resolution. We have had good debate on a variety of big issues covered in the budget. I would hope we could conclude by late tomorrow evening or possibly on Friday. I will work with all of our colleagues to try to make that happen.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Pryor for up to 10 minutes and Senator Landrieu for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. That would be my expectation.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I understand that H.R. 1997, the House Unborn Victims of Violence Act, is at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Mr. NICKLES. I now ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, they can yield for a question.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 315, submitted earlier in the day by Senators Biden, Lugar, and others.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask unanimous consent the resolution and preamble be agreed to en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements be printed in the Record without intervening action or debate.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 316, submitted earlier in the day by Senators Akaka, Allen, Sarbanes, Corzine, and others.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask unanimous consent the resolution and preamble be agreed to en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements be printed in the Record without intervening action or debate.