Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. We could go back and forth all day. I would like to start the rollcall vote very quickly. If Senator Levin is in the Chamber, this would be the time for him to speak.

Mr. NICKLES. If Senator Feingold wants an additional minute, that will be fine. I will take an additional minute.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to grant Senator Feingold an additional minute. I will take an additional minute and then we will hear from Senator Byrd and we will vote.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I believe our regular order would be we would revert to the Byrd amendment with 1 minute debate on each side.

Mr. NICKLES. I was going to make that request. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time. What we agreed to do previously was to stack the three votes. Senator Byrd would be first. We agreed to have the proponents and opponents each have a minute before each vote. I ask unanimous consent that we vote on Senator Byrd's amendment and that the following two votes be limited to 10 minutes each.

Mr. NICKLES. I modify my request so that there be 2 minutes on each side prior to the vote on the amendment of Senator Warner and Senator Stevens.

Mr. NICKLES. I alert my colleagues we are going to start 3 rollcall votes momentarily. The only way to make sure there is not a tax increase on American families is to pass reconciliation. Maybe we don't need it. I hope we don't need it. Maybe we will have some good bipartisan cooperation and we can extend present law to make sure these families don't have a tax increase, but this is a pretty partisan time. We can't even get conferees appointed to the Workforce Reinvestment Act, which would help people to get jobs. Some people are just playing games. I don't want to play games with the American family. We only reconcile $81 billion out of $12 trillion. I want families to have a tax cut. I want them to keep the same tax law they have today. That is a savings of $1,600 for a family of four that has taxable income of $58,000. The only way we can really assure that is going to happen, or increase the likelihood that will happen, will be to have reconciliation. I wish that wasn't necessary, but unfortunately it is. You can have a lot of people play games with the tax bill if it comes through and it has unlimited amendments. Maybe we won't need reconciliation. Chairman Grassley asked me to make sure we have it as an option, and I think it is important to do so. If we don't, you may well see the $1,000 tax credit per child go to $700, you may well see the marriage penalty relief disappear and increase taxes on couples $900. I urge our colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I don't think this economy needs a big tax increase. I have not figured out percentagewise what it would be if you applied it to upper income, but it is an increase of about 15 percent, I guess maybe 14 percent on some of the most productive people we have in the country. That is a good way to encourage a lot of people to go overseas. That is a good way to encourage more business in other areas. That is a good reason for people to outsource more to other countries that do not have tax rates this high. I find this to be very shortsighted. This is a big tax increase. It would not be funneled into Social Security. If you want to do that, increase the payroll tax. Some people think we will save Social Security by increasing some people's income tax. That is not my opinion. Very shortsighted. We pay Social Security right now. It is basically an unfunded, defined benefit plan. It is a rollover type plan, money coming in, money going out. Right now a little more is going in than going out, but there is significant liability. It has never been a funded, vested plan. It is basically a pay-go system, paid for under the payroll system. Some think it should be changed. I happen to think maybe it should be changed in line with what the President suggested, where we move it from a defined benefit to a defined benefit plus a defined contribution plan; where we allow individuals to take a percentage of their payroll and put it in their own bank account where they own it and they control it and they are not dependent on Government promises to provide future benefits. That is a debate for another day. That would help save the system. I used to be a trustee of a private pension system. Our system, like millions across America, moved away from a defined benefit system to a defined contribution system. Federal employees have done the same thing. Frankly, that will continue happening and will continue happening. We need to let individuals have the opportunity to grow, own, invest, and control part of their retirement funds, including Social Security retirement funds. This, however, is not that solution. This is a solution that says let's not only have the payroll tax--and I might mention, the payroll tax is already very large. The payroll tax of Social Security is 12.4 percent of payroll. Matching employee and employer, 6.2, 6.2, 12.4 percent of all payroll going up to 87,000 is paid into Social Security. That is a lot. That is thousands and thousands of dollars. Incidentally, the individuals get a crummy deal because they have to pay taxes on it before they make their contribution. So they have to use aftertax dollars to make their Social Security contribution. This is not a great deal for individuals. They can do a lot better if they were able to invest some of their own money in their own accounts, and let it grow--hopefully, grow tax free--so they would not be so dependent on Government. This solution says, let's have not only the payroll taxes and the demographic challenge that we have with payroll taxes--because right now you are going to have a lot more people drawing the benefits and fewer people paying as the baby boomers retire--but let's create a tax surcharge or an income tax just on a very small percentage and really sock it to them. And we will say we are putting that into a fund. All that fund would be used for would be to maybe reduce debt or maybe finance more spending. The direction in this amendment is: Well, let's create a fund. Basically, the Finance Committee might create a fund, but there are going to be more taxes raised. It would be a $160 billion tax increase over the next 5 years. I do not doubt my colleague from New Jersey; it may be $1 trillion over the next umpteen years. I think it would be very shortsighted economic policy. Marginal rates make a difference. I used to run a manufacturing company. I used to have a janitor service. Marginal rates made a difference when I had a janitor service because I found out I was working just as much for the Government as I was for myself. And why would you build or expand? The Senator's amendment would move us very close to 40 percent, not counting State income tax, not counting city income tax, if you happen to live in some cities. If you add all that together, people will say: Why should I grow, build, or expand? If they do not expand, they are not creating jobs. This is a very bad amendment if you want to grow the economy. The real future of Social Security is going to be dependent on a growing economy. This amendment would be sending the signal we are not interested in growing; we would rather have you leave. So I urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I want to remind our colleagues, this is a 10-minute rollcall vote. We will have one other vote immediately following that. For the information of our colleagues, it is our expectation to have more rollcall votes, probably to begin at around 8:45.

Mr. NICKLES. You would have to talk to your manager.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I urge our colleagues to vote no on this amendment. These are the tax cuts we are trying to protect. Everything, basically other than that with a minor couple other things, is pay-go. We have pay-go on everything that is not assumed in the budget. This chart shows most of it. That is tax relief for American families. We should protect taxpayers. We do not have pay-go for expansion of entitlements that sunset, but we do for tax cuts that are sunset. That is not fair to the taxpayers. Let us protect taxpayers. We have pay-go in the underlying resolution. Last year, I and others made 62 points of order to cut spending. We used pay-go. We will use it again this year. We have it in this budget resolution. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Feingold amendment. For the information of colleagues, we expect to have about a 2-hour window, and we expect to have more rollcall votes probably beginning about 8:45 or 9 p.m.

Mr. NICKLES. What amendment would that be?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, Senator Conrad and I are trying to work out an agreement on which amendments will be going next. I believe we have an understanding that Senator Baucus will offer an amendment. At that point, Senator Voinovich will offer an amendment, and I think I will stop there. I know Senator Conrad is trying to line up one or two more. It is our hope that people would not want too much time on their amendments so we could expedite as many amendments as possible. Again I will repeat, we expect votes to occur probably shortly before 9.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, we have three or four amendments in the queue. I believe they are the amendment of Senator Baucus, the amendment of Senator Voinovich, the amendment of Senator Nelson, and the amendment of Senator Corzine. I ask unanimous consent there be 30 minutes equally divided on each of those four amendments.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent there be 5 minutes on each side remaining on the Baucus amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I think Senator Grassley said it very well. He is chairman of the committee. He said the committee can find $3.4 billion out of $4.6 trillion. I think it could be in Medicaid or in the earned-income tax credit. I think it could be in almost any program, such as the welfare program. I have no doubt whatsoever there is plenty of abuse. The administration talked about the intergovernmental transfers. There is lots of abuse. I am going to embarrass our colleagues by getting into this in detail. I will show people how some States have been ripping off this system--probably to a much greater extent than even what has been bantered about. It is happening today. Many States are doing it. I will tell my colleagues that we found we had payment abuse in Medicaid in years past. You might remember the program. We had to tighten it up. There has been some tightening of the intergovernmental transfer but not very much. A lot more could be done. The Federal Government should not be taking Medicaid dollars and giving it to States to pave roads. In some cases, Medicaid money is being used by States for a lot of things other than Medicaid. I am telling you, I come to this Senate with, I hope, a little bit of credibility. I am not making this up. Maybe a more thorough evaluation in the committees would expose some of this. The earned-income tax program, people don't want to touch it. Yet the GAO says there is an error rate, a fraud rate in 27 to 30 percent, or a 32-percent fraud in a program that spends $36 billion a year, and we cannot direct the committee to say, Can you not come up with some savings? I am embarrassed. If we are not going to stay let's at least do some shaving of the growth of some of the fraud in the entitlement programs, two-thirds of the Federal Government or of the budget, if we cannot shave a little spending in this area, shame on us. For the people who act as if I am a deficit hawk, I want to get the deficit down. The last time we had significant instruction to reduce the growth of some of these entitlements to take out some abuse was in 1997. Some of my colleagues say we got the deficit down. The biggest spending reduction thing we did--maybe one was shutting down the Government in 1995 for a while, but the biggest thing was in the 1997 bill that had reconciliation instructions, had significant savings. A lot of the people taking credit for the great savings we did in the nineties didn't vote for that. Anyway, to ask this committee to find $3.4 billion out of $4.6 trillion over the next 5 years is not heavy lifting, as Senator Grassley alluded to. I agree with him entirely. I think the committee can find this much and more. I urge our colleagues to, at the appropriate time, vote no on the Baucus amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, we yield back the remainder of our time. I believe the Senator from Ohio has an amendment. He has requested 25 minutes on his side. I know a couple of other colleagues have amendments. We told people to expect votes at 9 o'clock. I would like to get in three or four amendments, if possible. I call upon our colleague from Ohio.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Ohio be recognized for his amendment not to exceed 25 minutes, and the Senator from North Dakota be recognized for 20 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to compliment my colleague from Ohio. I appreciate the amendment. If his amendment had our deficit projection level for the first few years and then went down to zero, I would probably support him. I can't support an amendment that would have higher deficits than what we project in our budget. I have the greatest respect for my colleague. He is very sincere. He is a deficit hawk. He is very interested in getting down to zero, as I am.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, momentarily we will be taking up the Nelson amendment. We will have a very short 10 minutes on each side on that amendment, and I expect we would have three rollcall votes.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to.

Mr. NICKLES. I would be happy to do that temporarily for some period of time. I know Senator Corzine has an amendment. I think he was next in line to lay one down. I was expecting that would be the first amendment we would vote on tomorrow. But I will be happy to consider it. I know the Senator has an amendment that deals with homeland security. I think Senator Cochran will be debating that issue. I am not sure he wants to debate it tonight. I would like to get the rollcalls started pretty quickly so we can get people home by 10 o'clock, or not too late thereafter. Tomorrow, for the information of our colleagues, is going to be a very tough day. We will have a lot of votes tomorrow. I expect we will have a lot of votes on Friday. I am trying to cooperate to dispose of as many amendments as possible. I will be happy to work with my colleague from Maryland to get in his amendment. I have asked Senator Conrad to line up amendments on his side. I am trying to line up amendments on my side.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, we are ready to begin voting. We are going to have two votes tonight. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Amendment No. 2705 Withdrawn