Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania 2 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank all of our colleagues. I knew that we were attempting a lot to try to finish this tonight. I knew we would have a lot of votes and, I say to Senator Byrd, I knew it would not be easy. I thank Senator Byrd for his help. I thank all colleagues for their patience. With a little exception in the last hour, this has been managed quite well. I thank my friend and colleague, Senator Conrad, for his work. We have handled I don't know how many amendments. I think we voted on 15, 16 amendments today. We had a lot of cooperation. We got a lot of good work accomplished. We have a budget which we are ready to pass that will cut the deficit in half in 3 years. I thank our colleagues. I thank Senator Conrad's staff; Mary Naylor, Sue Nelson, and his entire team, as well as Hazen Marshall, Stacey Hughes, and my entire team. They worked endless hours. I urge adoption of the resolution. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES. I understand the concern of the distinguished senior Senator from New Mexico regarding mental health parity legislation and I would concur with my colleague's assessment. S. Con. Res. 95 does assume the revenue impact of enacting mental health parity legislation.

Mr. NICKLES. Yes, Senator Domenici is correct in his statement.

Mr. NICKLES. I thank Senate Domenici for his statement. This is a tough issue, and I want him to know that I understand the dilemma he is facing. I appreciate his willingness to work with me on this, and I give him my commitment to support a level of discretionary funding in the budget resolution conference report and throughout the rest of the year that will provide the resources necessary for his committee to fund Yucca Mountain without having to take resources from the other programs in the Energy and water bill if the President's law change is not enacted.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Airland of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 11, 2004, at 2 p.m., in open session to receive testimony on Army transformation in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2005 and the future years Defense Program.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 11, 2004, at 9:30 a.m., in open session to receive testimony on missile defense, in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2005.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 11, 2004, at 10 a.m., on prescription drug importation.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 11, at 10 a.m. The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on the following bills: S. 2086, a bill to amend the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 to improve the reclamation of abandoned mines; S. 2049, a bill to amend the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 to reauthorize collection of reclamation fees, revise the abandoned mine reclamation program, promote remining, authorize the Office of Surface Mining to collect the black lung excise tax, and make sundry other changes.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 11, at 2:30 p.m. to consider the nomination of Sue Ellen Woolridge to be Solicitor of the Department of the Interior.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 11, 2004, at 9:30 a.m., for a hearing titled ``Postal Reform: Sustaining the 9 Million Jobs in the $900 Billion Mailing Industry (Day Two).''

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Thursday, March 11, 2004, at 9:30 a.m., in Dirksen Senate Building Room 226. Agenda I. Nominations Henry W. Saad to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit; William James Haynes II to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit; Diane S. Sykes to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Seventh Circuit; William Gerry Myers III to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit; James L. Robart to be U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Washington; Juan R. Sanchez to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; and Lawrence F. Stengel to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. II. Executive Session

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 11, 2004, at 2:30 p.m., to hold a closed hearing on intelligence matters.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. That is my intention. I think we can do all these amendments and probably start the votes shortly before 6. These are three important issues, so Members should be advised--I know Members on the Finance Committee wish to speak on a couple of these issues--to be prepared to debate, and Members should expect three rollcall votes shortly before 6 o'clock.

Mr. NICKLES. I have no objection to that request. I modify my request so that the first vote be on Senator Byrd's amendment and then the following two votes, and the managers be allowed to have 1 minute each.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, now we will begin consideration of an amendment Senator Byrd will lay down momentarily to strike the reconciliation provision. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NICKLES. Yes.

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague's comment. I appreciate the earnestness with which he says it and makes his case very forcefully, but I am going to urge the opposite side. Let me say, I don't totally disagree with my friend and colleague from West Virginia. I regret it appears we probably need reconciliation at times to get things done in the Senate. My colleague from West Virginia opined about the great days years past when Howard Baker was majority leader. I remember that very well. I remember passing great tax bills. We actually passed a tax bill in 1981, and in 1986--by 1988 the maximum tax bracket went from 70 percent to 28 percent. The Senator from West Virginia is right, it wasn't done under reconciliation. But I also say the climate was much better in the Senate. There was a lot more cooperation in the Senate. The Senate was more civil and I wish the Senate would return to those days. I hope we don't need reconciliation to pass the bills we are advocating or encouraging the Finance Committee to do. I think it should be able to be done without reconciliation, if the Senate would work the way it should work. The Senator from West Virginia knows, though, things have changed. Unfortunately things have changed a lot in the Senate. We used to not have filibusters on judges, never had them in the history of the Senate. Now we have six individuals we can't confirm because they happen to be nominated to an appellate court. We have a situation today where we can't even get bills, in some cases that have been approved by the entire Senate unanimously--we can't even get conferees appointed. Senator Enzi from Wyoming sponsored a bill that has strong bipartisan support. The Workforce Reinvestment Act passed the Senate unanimously, and we can't get conferees appointed. I am troubled by how difficult it is or how partisan it is to do a lot of work in the Senate. Last year, yes, we used reconciliation to pass a tax bill and the tax bill was a jobs growth bill. To help the economy we did it, and frankly it worked. If we hadn't used reconciliation last year, it wouldn't have passed. The only reason I was advocating, reluctantly, that we use the reconciliation process to pass it was because I thought it was the only way we could pass it. In days of old, you could pass legislation in the Senate with a majority vote, but a lot of times people think we need to have 60 votes to pass everything. I think that is a serious mistake. The tax bill we did pass last year did cut taxes on dividends. We used to tax corporate dividends higher than any other country in the world. We slashed that tax by half--in some cases more than half-- and it worked. We cut the capital gains rate from 20 percent to 15 percent, and it worked. We set the maximum rate for individuals as the same rate for corporations--35 percent--and it has worked. The economy really did start to move. The reconciliation process and expedited procedure helped us to do things that, frankly, in the past we couldn't have done under normal procedures. The only way to make sure there is not a tax increase on my daughter and, frankly, on my grandson is to make sure we have reconciliation. I appreciate Senator Byrd saying the amount of debt per child born today is very significant. I want to reduce that. We have a budget that is the most significant deficit reduction package before this Senate in years--maybe decades, maybe ever. We take a $477 billion deficit and reduce it in half in a couple or three years. That is not easily done. I don't think we should raise taxes on American families by not having this reconciliation process. I am afraid that is what will happen. Some people say you want to give additional tax cuts. The truth is, we want to keep the tax cuts that are now in law. We don't want to have tax increases on American families. If we don't have this reconciliation process, that may well happen. It may be that some Members, for partisan reasons or whatever, would say: I just do not want that to happen. I know President Bush really wants it, and, therefore, they might work hard to see that it doesn't happen. What happens if that is the case? If the tax bill, which is current law, is not extended, there will be a tax increase on American families. To give you an example, a couple that has taxable income of $58,100-- that is not a particularly wealthy family; I think most of us would say that is a middle-income family--this year, under present law, will pay $6,000. If we don't keep present law, their taxes will increase to $7,600; that is for a family of four. I will outline it. With the provisions that we are assuming in reconciliation, the Finance Committee can reconcile anything. If we give them $80 billion and say, reconcile the tax reduction, we are assuming--presuming maybe--they would extend present law. We are not trying to cut taxes further than they are in the year 2000. We are just trying to keep the present tax law from increasing. If we don't do it, they will find with the tax credit we have now that the $1,000 a child goes to $700. That is a $300 tax increase on that family. If they have two kids, that is $600. If they have four kids, that is $1,200. Last year we also did something that a lot of people do not understand but it is very significant in the Tax Code. We have the most significant reduction in the marriage penalty--the imposition of taxes on people and penalizing them because of the fact they are married. It is a higher income tax on couples as compared to individuals. We have the most significant reduction of that tax in history. We basically said for at least the couple they should pay the 15-percent bracket. Basically they should have to double the amount of income that an individual has on the 15-percent bracket. It should be doubled for couples. Individuals who have taxable income pay at the 15-percent bracket--taxable income up to $29,000. We say that should be $58,100 for a couple. If we don't extend present law, they will have a tax increase of $900. They will be paying 25 percent, not on income above $58,100. They will be paying 25 percent above any income above $42,000. That is a $900 tax increase, if we don't extend present law for a married couple. My father-in-law and mother-in-law are both retired. Their income is in this category. I don't want them to have a $900 tax increase. I don't want my son and my son-in-law and my daughter to have a $900 increase. I want them to be able to get a $1,000 tax credit. It costs a lot of money nowadays to raise children and to educate children. We also have an expansion of the 10-percent bracket as well. More people pay more who have a greater amount of income. They pay a 10- percent tax instead of 15 percent. That tax rate used to be 15 percent and was reduced to 10 percent, and we expanded the amount of income covered under that. To make sure people understand, we are trying to extend present law to make sure that a couple with a taxable income of $58,100 will not have a $1,600 tax increase if they have two kids. If they have four kids, it would be a $2,200 tax increase. I didn't want that to happen to American families. One way of making sure it doesn't happen is to have reconciliation protection so we can pass a bill. If we get bogged down politically and Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus can't get it worked out, if there are endless amendments and people will say we are going to keep amending this thing forever, you will never get an agreement to finish it. It is nice to have at least in the arsenal to get things done a reconciliation process where it can guarantee that we don't increase taxes on American families. That is why this reconciliation provision is in there. It is not a lot of money. We are assuming, according to the Congressional Budget Office, almost $12 trillion of revenues to be generated to the Federal Government under present law over the next 5 years--$12 trillion. I will tell my colleague from West Virginia that we are only reconciling $81 billion out of $12 trillion. Again, I don't consider that new taxes. That is extending present law for American families--for low-income and middle-income American families primarily. They will be the big beneficiaries of this. I have the greatest respect for my colleague and friend from West Virginia. But I urge our colleagues to vote no on the amendment to strike reconciliation because this is our resource if people are obstructing passing bills. It seems to be more prevalent all the time in the Senate today. Let us maintain some protection for the American taxpayer by using reconciliation, if we have to. We can make sure these tax increases of $1,600 or $2,200 for a family of four do not happen. Let us not saddle American couples with a $900 tax increase. Let us make sure we protect taxpayers and American families. I am afraid, unfortunately, we need reconciliation as an option to make sure they aren't faced with a big tax increase. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time remains on both sides?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, to notify our colleagues, it will be my intention to yield some time back and to vote, unless my colleague from Iowa wishes to speak, at quarter to 6. We have three rollcall votes. The first one will be on Senator Byrd's amendment to strike the reconciliation provisions. I notify my colleagues that rollcall votes will probably begin in the next 10 minutes. I have great respect for the authors of the amendment. I support pay- go, but I think it should be pay-go with the present law tax cuts being extended. If we do not, we are going to have tax increases. We ought to let people keep the same tax rates they have today. I do not want to lose the marriage penalty relief. That is what we are assuming in our budget. This boils down to, we have pay-go on everything except these child-friendly, marriage-friendly tax cuts. We want those to continue, maybe not under pay-go. Some people say let's raise somebody else's taxes to pay for them. That is a recipe for getting nothing done. We want to continue present law on the taxes. It is very interesting that present law on spending does not have to be paid for. We have a lot of spending programs that also have sunset provisions, but they do not have pay-go when they are reauthorized, when they are extended. If you extend the farm bill--I have a whole list of programs-- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, food stamps, Commodity Credit Corporation, veterans compensation, child care entitlements, and State Children's Health Insurance Program. All these, and many more, are temporary. They sunset. When they are extended, they are assumed to be extended. They do not have to be paid for. But any tax cuts--when I say tax cuts, marriage penalty relief, child credit taxes, the rates that we now have, 35 percent maximum, 10 percent--that 10 percent is now going to revert to 15 percent unless we pay for it? Oh, that rate that is 25 percent today is going to go to 28 percent unless we pay for it, but we do not make the appropriators pay for incremental expense. They can increase appropriations by any amount. They do not have to pay for it. My point is we have basically identical pay-go under our resolution as this amendment provides, except we assume present law, I stated a while ago, with exception of AMT. AMT is basically an extension of present law. The resolution we have before us was well thought out. It says let's keep present law intact, basically. Let's not have tax increases on families. Let's not make it more difficult for people to keep present law. Let's not tax them more next year under some rule, the present law. I know most of my colleagues do not want to increase taxes on those families, so we put it in the budget. Anything above that has to be paid for. So we have pay-go. If somebody says it does not work, they did not look at the Senate last year. I happened to be chairman of the Budget Committee. I requested somebody to make 60-some budget points of order, almost all of which we prevailed on. If anybody thinks I am not willing to use pay-go or any other budget rule to try and constrain spending, I think the facts will show quite differently. We will enforce the budget. The question is whether we are going to allow people to keep the same rates they have today or assume they are going to have a tax increase unless we find some other tax increase to pay for it. I urge our colleagues to vote against this amendment. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the remainder of my time on the Feingold amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES. I am not familiar with the amendment. I would like to see it. I expect I would agree to it.

Mr. NICKLES. I will modify the request that there be an hour equally divided on the Baucus amendment and the other three amendments I referred to be equally divided.