Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time has expired?

Mr. NICKLES. I ask unanimous consent the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on Thursday, April 5, at 10:00 a.m. in Senate Dirksen 226.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NICKLES. I inform my colleagues that the Bennett amendment takes the two tax accelerations that the Senator from Illinois has in his first 2 years. If I am correct, the Senator has an additional tax increase of $31 billion in 2002 and $11 billion in 2003. We put that in our amendment. The difference is that we reduce or eliminate the tax cut, and in subsequent years we drop that. But we took the first 2 years of accelerated tax cuts that the Senator has, and that is going to be in the Bennett amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I compliment my friend and leader. I say to the American public, Senator Domenici has done outstanding work on a very difficult job. This is a tough process. He was right. I mentioned on the floor that the amendment that passed last night is being reconsidered. I don't want to be so presumptive as to say the $448 billion tax increase passed. It made a step towards passing, but it has not been finally passed. I appreciate your correcting me on that because the Senator is right. The amendment Senator Durbin offered would also increase taxes from the existing resolution, $418 billion. If you add the two together, it is $866 billion, well over half of the President's proposed tax reduction. I thank my friend and colleague. The Harkin amendment has not yet been adopted, but if it is, and a lot of people are working on the assumption that it is because it got an affirmative vote yesterday, the combined impact would be $866 billion, and 55 percent of President Bush's tax proposal just went out the door. That is not the way to stimulate the economy. That is the point my colleague and friend from New Mexico and Utah were making. I thank them for that. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Durbin amendment and vote in favor of Senator Bennett's amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Regular order, Mr. President.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to reject the Durbin amendment. The Durbin amendment reduces the overall size of the tax bill. It stands at $1.6 trillion. An amendment they offered last night reduced it by $448 billion. This amendment reduces it by another $418 billion. In other words, eliminating over half of President Bush's tax cut. If you want to make news, go ahead. You got a nice headline: ``Senate Democrats Cut Bush Tax Bill By a Third.'' My compliments. Now they want to go further and reduce the tax bill even below what the leaders recommend and adopt the Durbin amendment. If we adopt the Durbin amendment we will have a stimulus--I love my friend and colleague from Connecticut who says we want a stimulus. There is a little stimulus in the front, but there are a whole lot of tax increases in the back. There is tax cut, in the Durbin amendment, in the first 2 years. My friend and colleague from Utah , wants to match those figures and give at least that much of a tax cut in the first 2 years. What you don't read in the rest of the amendment is that Democrats increase taxes all the way through for every other year. The net impact of it is to increase taxes from the underlying resolution by $418 billion. Senate Democrats, and one or two of our colleagues voted yesterday to cut the President's tax bill by $448 billion. This amendment cuts it by another $418 billion. That is a net tax reduction that is less than what many people on the Democrat side said they would support. But they want to do it under the guise of moving it up a little bit more in a few years without hardly any tax cuts later. Maybe that is the size of the tax reduction some people want. They act as if they are writing a tax bill, which you cannot do on the floor of the Senate in the budget resolution. And their argument is that this is going to stimulate the economy. Why don't you just fly over a stadium and drop money out of an airplane? That will stimulate the economy as well. They want to turn a tax bill into a spending program, without regard to who paid the taxes, or a tax cut for taxpayers. We want to gut the President's tax bill. That is what this is really all about. The tax bill they are proposing is fatally flawed and should not pass, but that will be discussed and dealt with in a bipartisan manner in the Finance Committee. I am absolutely certain the proposal they have made would never, should never, and will never pass Congress. Giving everybody $300--and now that has been raised to $450--is not going to happen. The real purpose of the amendment is to reduce President Bush's tax cut. It was already reduced yesterday to $1.15 trillion over 10 years. Now they want to take another $418 billion out. The net result would be a tax reduction over 10 years of $746 billion at a time when we have surpluses estimated to be $5.6 trillion. In other words, let us give President Bush less than half of what he asked for. That is what this amendment does. The net impact of this amendment is to have a net tax cut over the 10 years of President Bush's proposal of $746 billion. That is basically 45 percent of what President Bush originally requested. We cannot and will not let this happen. In the last couple of days, my friends on the Democratic side have offered five amendments to have higher taxes and higher spending. They won on one of them yesterday. I consider that a setback, and I hope to repair that damage before we are done by tomorrow night. This amendment doubly complicates it. Yesterday we adopted the Harkin amendment and we increased taxes from the underlying budget resolution of $448 billion. This increases taxes an additional $418 billion on top of the Harkin amendment. I urge my colleagues not to go down this road. This would be a serious mistake. The tax proposal that was outlined would be a very serious mistake. Let us work together and see if we cannot have a tax cut and do some positive things to stimulate the economy. My friend from Utah, Senator Bennett, has articulately stated that we will come up with more money in the upfront years. We want to do it. We have been trying to do it. Our budget resolution has $60 billion in 2001. We only have a few months left in 2001. We can increase year 2002 by $31 billion. That is what the amendment of my colleague from Utah says. We will match that and also increase the level in 2003 by $11 billion. We will have that amount of additional tax relief in the upfront years. What I disagree with in the Conrad amendment is, other than the first two lines which cut taxes, there are dozens of lines that increase taxes. Two lines cut taxes up front, but all the rest of the lines increase taxes to a net total of $418 billion. They adopted an amendment yesterday to reduce the tax cut by $448 billion. If we adopt the Durbin amendment, we will also reduce the tax cut by another $418 billion. That is a total reduction of President Bush's underlying budget of $866 billion, and total tax increases they have adopted in the last 2 days. That would be a serious mistake, and I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to say that is not enough. Taxpayers are paying enormous surpluses, and President Bush gives one-fourth of that back to taxpayers. The taxpayers are paying in the entire surplus, and we are saying taxpayers: We are going to let you keep a fourth of it. The Democrats are saying: No, no, maybe one- eighth; not quite an eighth; maybe the taxpayers get to keep one- eighth. Then they want to give it to people who filed a return, whether they paid taxes or not. I disagree with that totally and completely and urge my colleagues to vote no on the Durbin amendment and vote yes on Senator Bennett's amendment. They will be voted on at some point later today. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. NICKLES. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 215

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I want to correct the record. The pending amendment provides additional tax relief in the year 2002, $31 billion, and in 2003, $11 billion, but it also has over $400 billion in tax increases compared to the resolution before us. If we adopt this amendment, the net tax cut will boil down to not $1.6 trillion, not $1.1 trillion, which is where we ended up last night, but a total of $746 billion. That means the President gets less than half the tax cut he proposed. There is a lot of spending. My colleagues on the Democratic side have offered $697 billion in new spending and higher taxes, now $1.3 trillion. The pending amendment raises taxes $418 billion over and above the tax increase we passed last night, which was $448 billion. If my colleagues want a tax cut that is less than half of what the President proposed, adopt this amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the underlying amendment.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 5, 2001 to hear testimony on Taxpayer Beware, Schemes, Scams and Cons.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, April 5, 2001 at 10:00 a.m. for a hearing regarding the State of the Presidential Appointments Process.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety be authorized to meet on Thursday, April 5 at 9:00 a.m. to receive testimony on the interaction between our environmental regulations and our nation's energy policy.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, April 5, 2001 at 9:30 a.m. in room 485 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a Hearing to receive the goals and priorities of the United South and Eastern Tribes (USET) for the 107th Congress.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I think my colleague raises an interesting point. What my colleagues have tried to do on the Democrat side is to institute a new Medicare benefit without financing it by Medicare. In other words, use general revenues to finance anything. I think if it is Medicare, it ought to be financed under the Medicare system. Maybe that is old fashioned. But if we are going to give it the Medicare designation, that is what it should be. A lot of people want to move a lot of different funds and have general revenues subsidize Medicare, but Medicare taxation is growing, and growing substantially. Let me give a couple of examples. Maximum taxation right now for a person who makes $76,000, paying Social Security and paying Medicare: Social Security tax equals $9,000; Medicare tax equals over $2,000. I remind my colleagues they have to pay for those taxes with aftertax dollars. They already have to pay income tax on those dollars to pay Social Security and Medicare tax. I am not sure everybody is aware of that. I think it is grossly unfair. Maybe one of these days we will be able to fix that. Right now, we haven't fixed it. So people can understand this dilemma, a person who makes $80,000 has to pay $9,000 Social Security tax, $2,000 in Medicare tax, and they have to do it with aftertax dollars. So to pay that $11,000, in reality they have to make about $14,000 or $15,000. That is the present system. Now our colleagues are saying: That is not enough; we want to have a whole lot of general taxation--in other words money coming out of your income tax to also pump into the system because we are increasing benefits faster than you can pay for them. That is the argument that is being made on the other side. I disagree with that. I think to just say let's increase new benefits and to have it outside of any Medicare reform is grossly irresponsible. I tell my friend and colleague, I do not think that makes sense. I have a couple of other comments on the exploding cost of Medicare. You can almost take whatever estimate is out there and multiply it by two or three and it is still not going to be enough. Many people are proposing prescription drug benefit. If you have a prescription drug benefit that some people are advocating and you do not have proper cost controls and so on, this cost can explode. Last year in the budget resolution we had a couple of Medicare provisions. We said, let's have $20 billion we can put in immediately and another $20 billion contingent on Medicare reform, for a total of $40 billion over 5 years. Then, if I remember, the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Robb, came up with an amendment on the floor that said that is not enough. Let's come up with another proposal, let's do it to the tune, if I remember, of $248 billion. That was his proposal. We voted on that proposal. We defeated that proposal. That proposal had enormous cost impacts and an enormous cost share of up to $80 copays, a huge expense. Yet it still was not enough for the Democrats. Now we have a proposal that is not 100 and not 40 over 5, not 138-- that is the President's proposal--over 10. Somehow that is still not enough, even though it is a lot more than we passed last year. The Democrats want to double the President's figure. They have not calculated a program and they do not have an estimate of what the copays are going to be. They don't have anything. They say whatever you have, we are going to double it and you cannot use Medicare funds to pay for it. That simply does not make sense. If somebody makes $1 million, 2.9 percent of that is $29,000. There are a fair number of people who make that amount. There is a lot going into Medicare, and we are not going to let them use some of that money for prescription drugs? That is the argument being made on the other side. It just does not make sense. I urge my colleagues to go about dealing with prescription drug benefits in a fiscally responsible way, not just to try to score points. It is not responsible to double the figure just because there is political capital in doing so. Let's work together to come up with something that is financially responsible, that is solvent, that will not be putting our kids at a disadvantage. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the time I speak be charged to the Senate resolution.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to make a couple of comments in regard to Medicare, Medicaid, and prescription drugs, and to speak in opposition to the amendment pending before the Senate now, offered by my friend and colleague from Montana, Senator Baucus. This amendment purports to say we will do something positive on prescription drugs. It actually takes drugs away from low-income people next year, in the year 2002 and the year 2003. The underlying budget that Senator Domenici proposed in the President's budget put in significant dollars, $11.2 billion in 2002, $12.9 billion in 2003, and $14.8 billion in 2004, for low-income people, to get immediate assistance to help them buy expensive drugs. It employs medicaid to help those who can't help themselves; let's get that money to them, through the States, and make it effective now. Unfortunately, the amendment before the Senate strikes that language. It eliminates the $40-some-odd billion of the President's Helping Hand Program and increases Medicare, raising taxes and spending, without Medicare reform. I happen to be on the Finance Committee. I am in favor of Medicare reform. I want to improve Medicare and to provide prescription drug benefits. I think we can do that. To say we don't want to do anything for low-income people in the first 3 or 4 years, and to create a new entitlement for Medicare without reforming and saving Medicare simultaneously, in my opinion, is a serious mistake. This amendment, while very well intended, would do damage to the system. It would not get prescription drugs to the people who desperately need help, and need help now. Everyone in this body knows that Medicare is a ticking time bomb. We need to save it. We need to expand benefits--including prescription drugs--but it cannot all be done simultaneously. We can do it the right way, this Congress and in a bipartisan fashion. Elimination of the Helping Hand Program, where we give assistance to those who need it the most, would be devastating. I urge my colleagues to work together, see if we can't do both, see if we can't get assistance to the States to help those who really need it, immediately, so we can have some assistance in the year 2002. For an example, under the President's proposal there is $11.2 billion in the year 2002 for drug assistance for low-income people; under the Baucus amendment, there is only a $100 million expenditure for prescription drugs. Certainly the Domenici proposal, the President's proposal, does a lot more in the year 2002. I compliment my colleague from New Mexico. I urge our colleagues not to support the underlying Baucus amendment and see if we cannot come up with something to provide a prescription drug benefit in Medicare, as well as reforming Medicare. I disagree with those who say we shouldn't use Medicare trust funds to do that, to help pay for prescription drugs. Medicare is financed by a payroll tax, on all wages, at 1.45 percent. That is matched by the employer, with another 1.45 percent. If my math is correct, that is 2.9 percent on all payroll. There was an enormous tax increase for Medicare that was enacted as a result of President Clinton's tax increase in 1993. This was when they increased the base for Medicare taxation away from the Social Security base, which right now I believe is $80,000. The Democrats put a tax on all wages, even if wages equal $1 million or $2 million or $10 million. A tax of 2.9 percent on all wages to help pay for Medicare. The reason there is a surplus in Medicare funds is because of an enormous tax increase. Basically, it is a payroll tax. It is not a Medicare tax as we know it. It is a payroll tax increase passed by the Clinton administration in 1993. This is a new tax for anybody who makes over the Social Security base amount, which used to be 70-some-thousand dollars and is now climbing up. Why not let those people help pay for Medicare prescription drugs? I heard the argument, we can't use Medicare tax to pay for Medicare benefit. I disagree with that. I don't think that makes sense. I urge my colleagues to use common sense, to use Medicare funds to pay for Medicare benefits. That includes prescription drugs. Do it in context with overall Medicare reform. Increasing benefits, without fixing the system, when we know demographically we have some challenges ahead--is only doing a small part of the job. Unless we take every step necessary to reform and provide benefits we are making a mistake.

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

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from North Dakota. Sometimes when we are here, we get a little impatient since we all have places we want to go. I appreciate his comments, and I very much look forward to debating the budget and tax bills on the floor of the Senate next week and, frankly, over the next couple of months, as we do our appropriations bills. I enjoy those issues, and I would have preferred doing those instead of campaign finance for the last 2 weeks. I would have preferred doing the education bill. I, for one, was urging our caucus, and Senator McCain and others, to defer on campaign finance so we could take up some of the higher priorities which, in my opinion, are education, tax reduction, and the budget. I didn't win that debate. We have been on the campaign finance bill for the last couple weeks because of the tenacity, persistence, and stubbornness of our good friends, the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, and the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold. I compliment them. They have been persistent and tenacious in pushing this bill. I also compliment them for their efforts in working with many of us who tried to make the bill better. We had some successes and we had some failures. In some ways this bill is a lot better than it was when it was introduced and in some areas it got a lot worse. I will touch on a few of those. I had hoped we would be able to improve the bill. I could not support the bill when it was originally introduced before the Senate. I had hoped we could make some improvements so that this Senator could support final passage. I was committed to try to do that. We had some success in a couple of areas, but we had some important failures as well. I also compliment others who worked hard on this bill including Senator Thompson and Senator Hagel. Senator Hagel came up with a good substitute. Senator Thompson had a good amendment dealing with hard money, and I worked with him on that amendment. I also compliment Senator McConnell and Senator Gramm, who were fierce, articulate opponents and spoke very well. Senator Gramm's speech last night was one of the best speeches I have heard in my entire Senate career. He spoke very forcefully about freedom of speech and the fact that even though the editorial boards and public opinion polls say, let's vote for this, that we should abide by the Constitution. The Presiding Officer, Senator Byrd, reads the Constitution as frequently, maybe more frequently than anybody in this body. When we are sworn into office, we put up our hand and we swear to abide by the Constitution. The first amendment to the Constitution, one of the most respected and important provisions in the Constitution, states very clearly that ``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.'' ``Congress shall make no law . . .'' Mr. President, that includes the McCain-Feingold bill. In my opinion, this bill restricts our freedom of speech, not only in the original version, but especially in the version that we have now. Some of the different sections of this bill go by different names based on their sponsors. I have great respect for my colleagues, and I know Senators Snowe and Jeffords worked on a section restricting speech before elections by unions, corporations, and by other interest groups. This bill restricts their ability to speak, to run ads. This bill prohibits them, in many cases, from being able to run ads less than 60 days prior to an election that mention a candidate's name. There are a lot of groups, some on the left, such as the Sierra Club, and some on the right, such as National Right To Life, for example, that may want to run ads about a bill before Congress. We may be debating partial birth abortion or ANWR, and we might be having this debate in September on an appropriations bill, less than 60 days before the election. This bill will say they cannot run an ad with an individual's name saying vote this way or that way, or don't support this person, because he is wrong on ANWR, or he is correct on the right to life issue. Their free speech would be prohibited. I find that to be unconstitutional. I have heard a lot of debate on the floor saying they did not think that Snowe-Jeffords is unconstitutional, and other people saying that it was. Then Senator Wellstone came up with an amendment that said, let's expand that to all interest groups--the same restrictions we had on unions and businesses on running ads within 60 days. Let's make that apply to them as well. Senators McCain and Feingold said the Wellstone amendment was unconstitutional. If that was unconstitutional, then the underlying bill was unconstitutional because, basically, Senator Wellstone copied it. Why would we pass a bill we know is going to be unconstitutional? And that relates to the nonseverability amendment, described as a killer amendment. Why? Because they know some of the bill is going to be declared unconstitutional. Why would we pass legislation we know is going to be unconstitutional? Yet, some of the proponents are basically admitting it is going to be unconstitutional. The big fight was on severability. The sponsors had to have that because we more than suspect that parts of this bill will be declared unconstitutional. I think they are right, because the people sitting at the Supreme Court are going to say: does this bill restrict an organization's ability to communicate and mention a Member's name, or mention an issue that is before Congress? It will restrict that right. So it will restrict their ability to have freedom of speech. I think parts of this bill--not all of it, but certainly parts of it--will be determined unconstitutional. I think we should not be passing unconstitutional bills. I think we should not say, let's just pass it and let the courts do the homework on it. I guess you can do that, but I think we have the responsibility to uphold the Constitution, respect the Constitution, and not to be passing things we know are unconstitutional, that won't uphold a constitutionality test. In addition, I mentioned that we had some victories and some defeats. One of the victories, in my opinion, was when we increased the hard money limits, which have been frozen at the 1974 levels. I compliment Senators Hagel and Thompson because they pushed that amendment. I helped them negotiate the compromise. We increased what individuals can do. They were frozen, since 1974, at $1,000, and we doubled that amount and indexed that for inflation. So we improved that section. Individuals can now participate more fully and extensively. That was a good amendment. Not everything in this proposal is bad. There are good things and bad things. I came to this debate thinking I might be willing to ban so-called soft money, if it could be done constitutionally, if we could increase hard money, the money that is completely reported and that everybody says is legitimate. I wanted to stop the practice that both parties have used, used quite well on the Democrat side, with the so-called joint committees, where individuals exceed the individual amount, and contribute thousands and thousands of dollars more through a special committee, through either the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee or the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. The Democrats did it to the tune of $21 million last year, and the Republicans did it to the tune of $5 million last year. In one race in New York, there was $13 million of soft money directed toward one candidate. How can you have limits and then have other people contributing millions of dollars outside those limits? Everybody has heard about that Denise Rich contribution. She contributed over $100,000 to one Senate candidate, and I thought the law was only $1,000 for a primary and $1,000 for a general election. But Denise Rich contributed over $100,000 through the use of a joint committee. That was an abuse. It needed to be stopped. Now, let me turn to the issue of coordination. I mentioned this last night on the floor. The coordination section in the underlying McCain- Feingold bill was grossly inadequate in its respect for free speech. The sponsors of the bill, Senators McCain and Feingold, admitted as much and said we needed to fix it. The bill had a several- page definition of coordination, saying if a union or interest group coordinated with a campaign, they would have to report everything they did and consider it as a contribution. And if you didn't do so, there could be fines and penalties against that organization and against the candidate. You could make them criminal violations because they would be violating the law. We didn't want to make people criminals and put them in jail because, basically, they were exercising their constitutional rights. Senators McCain and Feingold said they would fix that. I looked at the fix, and they fixed it for the unions, but not for everybody else. For the unions, they excluded the in-kind contributions. Unions don't have to report those, disclose them, and they are not considered coordination. That affects a lot of money, maybe to the tune of in excess of $100 million or $200 million. That in-kind contribution is excluded from the coordination fix we just adopted earlier today. But we didn't fix the expenditures side of that. So if you have other groups, such as National Right To Life or the Sierra Club, and so on, that make expenditures and are working on campaigns and handing out leaflets and so on, that may well be considered a coordinated activity that has to be reported and disclosed both by the candidate and by the organization. Right now, they don't have to do that. We are going to say that could be illegal activity. What I am saying is that they took care of the unions, but not of these groups. I don't like this coordinated section because I think it goes way too far. We are risking telling people who are exercising their constitutional rights engaging in campaigns, they better not do that or the heavy hand of the Federal Government might come in and say they violated the law. The people accused will say, what law? These are people that might be trying to convince people not to drill in ANWR, or maybe that we should. Maybe we want to change the mining laws, or maybe we should not change the mining laws. They should have a right to petition Congress. That is what the First Amendment says. We should not abridge anybody's right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. But we do under this bill if it is during a campaign or within 60 days of an election. You are certainly going to be handicapping their ability to redress a grievance to the Government-- their right to petition the Government. Again, we have the Constitution, and we have this bill. I find this bill to be in violation of the Constitution. Under my reading of the Constitution--and I am not a constitutional scholar--I believe we are eliminating or reducing an individual's ability to be able to petition the Government, and an individual's ability to have freedom of speech to say, ``I agree with them,'' or ``I disagree with them,'' or ``I disagree with Senator so-and-so,'' or ``I agree with Senator so-and- so,'' right before the election. This bill says, no, you can't do it. If you do it, you might well be in trouble. But, oh, we have a little fix for the unions. We will just run it through on the last amendment of the day, which is what happened. Do you know what else concerning the unions is missing in this bill? You would think in the year 2001 we would say that all campaigns contributions would be voluntary. Guess what? They are not in America today. There are millions of Americans who are compelled to contribute to campaigns they don't support. They would rather not. Some people say these people don't have to contribute because they don't have to join the union. In some States, they have to join, or if they don't, they have to join under an agency fee arrangement, and they have to pay dues. They may not want to, but they have to. They have to pay the dues or the agency fee. A lot of that money--maybe in excess of $10, or $15, or $20 a month--is used for political activity. That individual may not want it to be used for that. He might disagree with the leadership of the union that money is going to candidates to whom he or she is totally opposed. We wanted to have a provision that says no one should be compelled to contribute to a campaign; they would have to give their permission before money can be taken out of their paycheck every month. Oh, no, that amendment could not be accepted. To be fair, the amendment that was offered was not a good amendment, in my opinion, because it also included shareholders, and there is no way in the world you can include a shareholders provision, in my opinion. But the voices were clear: You are not going to win on that Paycheck Protection amendment. Senator Hatch offered another amendment that said at least let's have disclosure on businesses and unions on how much money they are putting into campaigns. I thought surely that amendment was going to be adopted. That amendment was not adopted. I will say right now that I believe organized labor put hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaigns last cycle, and we do not know and we will not know because this bill does not require that they tell us. Everybody else has to disclose contributions; organized labor does not. They do not have to disclose their independent activities. They do not have to disclose their indirect, in-kind contributions to campaigns. They have thousands of people making phone calls day after day that are paid full salaries, benefits, at a station set up for political activity, and most of that is not disclosed. We do not know and this bill does not help us know. Is this a balanced package? It looks to me more and more that it is not. Originally, this bill had language supposedly to codify Beck, Beck being a decision that if a union person did not want their money used for political purposes, they could file notice and get a refund. I never thought that case was satisfactory because their money would be used in ways with which they still would not agree, but it was better than nothing. They could get a refund. If somebody does not want money used for political purposes, they should say no and not have to contribute. The underlying bill purported to codify Beck, but it did not do that. I raised that issue with Senator McCain and Senator Feingold, and they concurred with me. We struck the language that weakened Beck, in my opinion, significantly. That made the bill a little better. I want to give credit when credit is deserved. Certainly this bill is improved by the hard money increase. I think it was improved by striking the language, what I would call the false Beck. That language was taken out of the bill. That made it a little bit better. Then there was another provision this Senator fought very strongly against, but only at the last minute because I just found out about it at the last minute, and that was the amendment by our friend and colleague from New Jersey, Senator Torricelli, that dealt with lower advertising rates for politicians. I fought it, but we only had 30 votes against it. Under that amendment, broadcasters have to offer the lowest unit rate to candidates for each type of time over a 365-day period. That is an outlandish, enormously expensive subsidy for politicians. And while people say, this is great, we are limiting money in politics, and so on, what we have given politicians is an enormous multimillion-dollar gift through this amendment, a multimillion-dollar gift. We defeated a couple amendments that dealt with public financing of campaigns, but this amendment is indirect public financing of campaigns because it is going to allow politicians to get the rates cheaper than anybody else in America. It also has a little provision that says the politicians's ads cannot be preempted. To give an example, prior to the election in October, it gets expensive because a lot of people are trying to buy time. There is a lot of competition. A lot people watch ``Monday Night Football.'' I like to watch it. I am sure commercial ads get expensive on Monday night or any night of high visibility. We said: Politician, you get the cheapest rate of the year, and you can use that time on Monday night, you can use it on any great night. You get to have the cheapest time of the year. You get your time, and it may be one-tenth as expensive as normal rates for ``Monday Night Football'' or some other program. You get the lowest rate of anybody throughout the entire year, and they cannot preempt you. You buy the time, you've got it. Maybe the broadcaster is in rural West Virginia or Oklahoma and has a radio station or a TV station and is scraping to get by. They are going to get paid the lowest rate they charge on a hot summer night. The broadcaster may think: This is good, we have the new ``ER'' or some other new show that is really popular, so we can make some money. But they are going to have politicians swamping them saying: Give that time to me. We passed an enormous subsidy for politicians. It is an enormous advantage for incumbents because incumbents usually outraise their challengers most of the time. We just increased the advantage incumbents have by millions of dollars. Thank you very much. We should pat ourselves on the back: Hey, this is good, and we were able to slide this through. People don't know--they think we are reforming campaigns, and we are giving politicians enormous subsidies and acting as if it is reform, and being proud of it. We are going to slap everybody on the back about our great reform. We did a little nice thing to which nobody paid attention. Politicians, you get the lowest rate of anybody all year long, and you get to use it the night before an election. That is our little gift to ourselves to which nobody paid attention. It is another good reason, in my opinion, that this bill should be defeated. I look at groups who are active in campaigns, and they will say: You are infringing on our ability to get our message out, to communicate, to run ads, to mention names, vote for, vote against. We are making it very difficult, in some cases illegal, under this bill. It is wrong and unconstitutional. We also greatly increase subsidies for politicians. I think that is absolutely shameful. We should not have done it, but we did it. While this bill may be an improvement over present law on the whole, it is unconstitutional and it includes an egregious subsidy for politicians. It should be defeated, and I will vote no on this measure when we vote on Monday. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, thank you very much. I say to my friend and colleague, we both have been here a long time. It is my intention to speak on campaign finance for probably 10 or 15 minutes. Does my colleague want to make a few remarks? His patience is wearing about as thin as mine. Madam President, I will be happy to yield to my colleague a few minutes if that would accommodate his schedule. If the Senator from North Dakota is seeking a few minutes, I am happy to accommodate his schedule.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator has an hour under his control. I wish to make a speech on campaign finance.

Mr. NICKLES. Regular order, Senators are having discussion. They are supposed to go through the Chair. I believe the Senator from Arizona has the floor. I believe he can only yield for a question.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Gramm), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Murkowski), and the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Thomas), are necessarily absent.