Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, yesterday the Senate completed action of the second of 13 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2005, the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. Although the Senate has not yet adopted a new concurrent resolution on the budget, we did establish a discretionary spending allocation for the Appropriations Committee in the recently enacted Department of Defense appropriations bill. That allocation, and the subcommittee allocations that were derived from it, enabled us to consider the Homeland appropriations bill under the usual budget enforcement protections. During debate on the Homeland appropriations bill, a total of 10 budget points of order were raised against amendments that sought to increase spending by an incredible $19.9 billion in 2005 alone. If those amendments had been enacted and incorporated into the discretionary spending baseline, their 10-year cost is a staggering $220.2 billion. Including debt service costs, that number increases to $285.3 billion. I am happy to inform my colleagues that the Senate upheld all 10 budget points of order and rejected each one of these spending increases. Unfortunately, the Senate did adopt an amendment providing $2.98 billion in emergency spending for agriculture disaster assistance. I opposed that amendment because it did not belong on this appropriations bill, and it should be paid for and not add to the deficit. I want my colleagues to know that I will continue to seek to have this spending dropped from the bill or offset with appropriate spending cuts. I congratulate my good friend from Mississippi, Senator Cochran, who managed the Homeland appropriations bill for using the Budget Act successfully to control the spending in his bill. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the remaining appropriations bills to continue that success. I ask unanimous consent that a table displaying the budget points of order raised during consideration of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005 and their cost be inserted in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I will make a few comments concerning the Baucus amendment requesting $2.65 billion of drought assistance. I have two or three comments. One, it doesn't belong on this bill. This is the Homeland Security bill. This is not an agriculture bill, not even an urgent supplemental bill. Senator Reid, the assistant minority leader, has stated repeatedly let's do the supplemental separately from Homeland Security. I happen to think he is right. One could debate it, but he stated repeatedly and recommended strongly to the Senate to have a separate bill on the President's request. The President requested yesterday $3.1 billion for hurricane relief. He requested it yesterday. That doesn't mean it has to be done on the Homeland Security bill. Senator Reid thought it should not be on this bill. We don't even have that amendment. The President didn't request drought assistance. I looked back over the history of drought assistance and I see a lot of requests. In 2002, we had $600 million, I guess, in drought assistance. In 2003, it was $3.6 billion. But I might say it was offset by reductions in other programs in the Agriculture Committee. How can we pay for this request, because we don't have the Agriculture bill up to have offsets? This bill is not offset. This is just to add $2 billion or $3 billion of additional money. I would like to have it be paid for. I might support it if it is paid for. I might not. I want to see how it is paid for. I know in this case it is not paid for. It would add to the deficit. I am not willing to do that. So a budget point of order will lie against the amendment, and this Senator plans on making one. I don't think this is the way we should do business. I think we should follow the regular order, to the extent we can. We should be talking about an appropriations bill and maybe consider the President's request. If Congress wishes to change it or alter it, I guess we have the right to do so. But to try to double it, when we just got the President's request, and not even consider an offset, not even look at an offset, I think is a serious mistake. I don't know if this is more about helping farmers or politicians. If you want to help farmers, I think we can find a couple billion dollars in offsets. We did last year. Why can we not find an offset to pay for it this year? I make those comments. Senator Reid urged us time and again to do the urgent supplemental separate from Homeland Security. We just received the President's request, which was $3.1 billion, and it didn't include this. To pass an urgent emergency supplemental takes 60 votes, and it is this Senator's intention to hopefully join with Senator Cochran and Senator Stevens in objecting to the emergency designation and making the budget point of order on this amendment, and passing Homeland Security. Let's finish the job we have at hand. We have a real problem. Senator Cochran has done an outstanding job in managing the bill. He has already defeated amendments that totaled over $19 billion--not including the amendments this afternoon--for 2004, and $256 billion I think over a 10-year period of time, using budget points of order. A budget point of order lies against this amendment as well. So I compliment Senator Cochran for his leadership and urge our colleagues who are pushing this amendment to postpone it, hold it back another day, or find offsets to help pay for it. That is what we did last year. It had strong support last year after it was paid for. If memory serves me correctly--and I am stretching it--early last year we considered this and, initially, people tried to pass it without offsets. Objections were raised and eventually some offsets were found. That was done in the early part of last year. That was done in February of 2003. I don't think we should just be adding another $2.5 billion to our debt and deficit in this manner. So I urge our colleagues, at the appropriate time, to support a budget point of order against this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I hereby submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office under Section 308(b) and in aid of section 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. This report meets the requirements for Senate scorekeeping of section 5 of S. Con. Res. 32, the first concurrent resolution on the budget for 1986. This report shows the effects of congressional action on the 2004 budget through September 8, 2004. The estimates of budget authority, outlays, and revenues are consistent with the technical and economic assumptions of the 2004 concurrent resolution on the budget, H. Con. Res. 95, as adjusted. The estimates show that current level spending is above the budget resolution by $8.0 billion in budget authority and by $31 million in outlays in 2004. Current level for revenues is $3.1 billion above the budget resolution in 2004. Since my last report dated July 12, 2004, the Congress has cleared and the President has signed the following acts which changed budget authority, outlays, or revenues for 2004: the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2004, Part IV (P.L. 108-280); the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2005 (P.L. 108-287); and, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act, 2004 (P.L. 108- 303). I ask unanimous consent that the report and accompanying letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, the pending Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2005, S. 2537 as reported by the Senate Committee on Appropriations provides $32.867 billion in budget authority and $30.736 billion in outlays in Fiscal Year 2005 for the Department of Homeland Security. Of these totals, $867 million is for mandatory programs in Fiscal Year 2005. The bill provides total discretionary budget authority in Fiscal Year 2005, of $32 billion. This amount is $1.05 billion more than the President's request, it matches the 302(b) allocations adopted by the Senate Appropriations Committee, and is $2.812 billion more than Fiscal Year 2004 enacted levels excluding Fiscal Year 2004 supplemental appropriations. I commend the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee for bringing this legislation before the Senate. I ask unanimous consent that a table displaying the Budget Committee scoring of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, yesterday the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, issued their September update. It just came out. I heard my colleague and counterpart on the Budget Committee allude to it on the floor of the Senate yesterday, and he did that with great talent but maybe with a little different analysis than what I might give. So I thought I might give a little different presentation. I think there is a lot of good news in this report. It also shows we have some big challenges before us. CBO estimates for this year we are going to have a deficit of $422 billion. That is a record in nominal terms. But it is an improvement. CBO was just predicting 6 months ago it was going to be $470-something, so it is down $56 billion. The deficits are moving down. That is good news. OMB projected earlier this year the deficit was going to be $521 billion. Now they are down around the $441 billion, so they project significant improvement. As a matter of fact, the number CBO just came up with is about $100 billion less than what OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, had predicted at the beginning of this year. So deficits are coming down. They are coming down dramatically. I think the good news is the budget we passed last year and the tax package we passed, the economic growth package we passed last year, is working. We should be proud of it. I have been in the Senate now for 24 years. We pass a lot of different bills sometimes to stimulate growth or try to help the economy or try to do something that will have significant economic results. The bill we passed last year, the 2003 tax bill that President Bush signed in January, the tax bill that cut the tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 15 percent, the tax bill that accelerated the 2001 tax cuts and actually made them effective-- that bill worked. Most of those cuts had not actually gone into effect. Some did for lower rates, but upper incomes had not received a rate reduction. Middle-income people had not received but a 1-point reduction. We accelerated the 28 percent to a 25-percent rate, the maximum rate to 35 percent, cut cap gains to 15 percent, and cut the rate on dividends to 15 percent. And guess what. It has worked. It has worked. Since the President signed that bill, we have 1.75 million new jobs. That is 1,750,000 new jobs created. We have had 12 months in a row where we have had new jobs created every month. We really did reverse a downward trend, a decline. We had a real chilling event on 9/11: our economy was hit. The financial structure of the United States was hit. We had a stock market that burst, frankly, in March of the year 2000. The NASDAQ declined by about 50 percent in the year 2000. Revenues to the Federal Government had been declining dramatically. You add 9/11, to that you add the war on terrorism. Deficits are high. This Senator has spent the majority of my career trying to rein in Federal spending and hold down deficits. These deficits are very high. The good news is the deficit is coming down. Before one can criticize, they have to understand what caused the deficits. The deficits were caused by the market crash. When Alan Greenspan mentioned this a few years ago, he called it irrational exuberance in the stock market. That crashed. As a result, a lot of money, actually trillions of dollars of market value, was lost in the stock markets. That reduction applied to money coming into the Federal Government. The money we received in the Federal Government, total receipts, was over $2 trillion in the year 2000. Last year it was about $1.78 trillion. That was not because of the tax cuts we passed. It was because of the very soft economy, and it was because of 9/11. A lot concurred at that time. President Bush realized that, this Congress realized that, and I compliment my colleagues, especially Zell Miller for that because he helped me cosponsor that bill we passed last year that helped make this economic recovery happen. The other good news in this report is CBO projected real economic growth this year of 4.8 percent. That is great. They project 4.2 percent for next year. That is super. That is real economic growth over and above inflation. So the budget has worked. The tax bill we passed last year worked. New jobs are being created, almost 2 million jobs in the last 12 months alone. So we have a lot of good news. The good news is the budget we passed last year has worked. We defeated over $800 billion worth of additional spending, most of which was offered by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We defeated that. The budget worked. The good news is when we passed the Department of Defense appropriations bill before we adjourned for the August recess, we put in a budget provision that caps domestic discretionary spending. That was part of the DOD appropriations bill. So we passed that part of our budget this year. That is now the law of the land. Now we can pass our appropriations bills. We are going to take up the Homeland Security bill later this afternoon, and hopefully we will be able to pass it. We have budget rules that will work to enforce limitations on that bill and all other appropriations bills. So maybe now we can go ahead and complete our appropriations process. I mention these things to point out that there is some good news in this report. The report is also distorted because it says you have to use present base lines. Present base lines assume that all spending will continue to grow basically with inflation. This year alone, in the year 2004, we are spending about $115 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war on terror. We did that through supplementals. We will not continue doing that year after year, not at those levels. In that period of time we have been fighting a war. We have hundreds of thousands of troops who are engaged in that effort. I was in Iraq a couple of months ago. We are training 210,000 Iraqis to take our place. I was in Afghanistan. We are training thousands and thousands of Afghanis, and we have 20-some thousand troops in Afghanistan. They will be taking our place so we will not have to continue. We will not have supplementals near in this range. We had a $87 billion supplemental last year, and $28 billion included in the DOD appropriations bill. We will not have that large an amount of additional money to be used primarily to fight wars against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am sure we will be spending some money. I am sure there will be some, but it will not be anywhere near that over a 10-year timeframe. CBO assumes we will spend $114 billion inflated for the next 10 years. That is over $1.3 trillion. Then, if you add inflation to that, in addition to that, and interest expense that they also assume, that assumes about half of their negative projections. I might mention, too, my colleague said we have to fix the AMT, and if you add that in and extend every tax cut out there, the deficits will be terrible. I have a couple of comments. No. 1, the President made a speech at the Republican Convention and said we need to reform the Tax Code. I will not be here, but I hope the next Congress will take the President up on that. The Tax Code needs to be reformed. AMT is living proof that the Tax Code needs to be reformed. I look at the Tax Code as about a foot tall. I always compare it to the Bible. The Bible is about an inch. Unlike the Bible, the Tax Code contains no good news. I look at the Tax Code and it is complicated. It needs to be reformed. The President challenged Congress to do it. The next Congress should take the President up on that. You can fix AMT. There are an awful lot of anomalies and so many inconsistencies in the Tax Code. You can't fix it a paragraph at a time. You need to rewrite the entire thing. I think that can be done. You don't have to get in this debate--well, if we continue this or that. We have to extend the family tax provisions that expire at the end of this year. There are three of them. There is a $1,000 tax credit per child. That would revert to $700 per child if it is not extended. We need to extend the marriage penalty relief to allow married couples who have taxable incomes up to $58,000 so they will pay a 15-percent rate on taxable income up to $58,000. If you do not do it, it will revert back to some $40,000. That is about a $900 tax increase on married couples. Also, the expansion of the 10-percent bracket. Those need to be done this year. They need to be done this month. Hopefully this Congress will get that done. I expect we will. I am a conferee of that particular bill which is in conference. I am optimistic we will get that extended. We need to reform the Tax Code. Some people say we need a higher personal rate; we want to sock it to the wealthier people who are paying a 35-percent rate. That is the same rate General Motors pays. I don't think wealthy people should have to pay more than the largest corporations in the world. I am in favor of reforming the Tax Code. I think the President is right on in that effort. Instead of trying to paint the most negative picture possible with a doomsday scenario of the deficit getting bad, assuming we are going to a war in Iraq every year, which is not going to happen, and assuming a lot of negatives that, frankly, I do not agree with, I think future Congresses can reform the Tax Code and do it without ``having higher tax rates'' on individuals than you have on General Motors and other corporations. The good news is CBO says deficits are falling. That is good. The tax cuts we passed last year, frankly, are raising more revenues than people anticipated. That is good. CBO overestimated revenue. They kept telling us we think it is going to be better. Revenue crashed when the stock market crashed. It took a lot of economic viability out of the economy. When we introduced the tax bill last year, the Dow Jones was at 7,700. Because of the tax cut we passed last year, today the Dow Jones is 10,300. The Nasdaq is up over 40 or 50 percent more than it was when we introduced the bill a little over a year ago--almost 2 years ago in January. We passed the bill in June of last year. We have seen very positive results in the stock market. We have seen very positive results in the economy with 4.8 percent growth. Now we have seen very positive results in employment with almost 2 million new jobs created, including in the manufacturing sector which has been on a 1- year decline. We now see an uplift in the manufacturing sector as well. The good news is the economy is growing. The bill we passed last year has had a positive impact. With the cooperation of Senator Stevens, we were able to put in a cap on discretionary spending in the DOD appropriations bill. Now Congress can move forward. That is half of our budget. If somebody wants to know, the budget basically deals with how much money you are going to spend and how much money you are going to tax. This takes care of the spending side of it and puts the cap on spending, replacing the cap we passed in the previous budget. It supersedes that. Now we have a new cap on domestic discretionary spending of $821 billion. That is what we passed on the floor of the Senate. That is what we agreed to and that is what is now the law of the land. I think that is good news as well. That will constrain spending. We will probably find out later this afternoon. I think we have some good news on the economy. We have good news because the future deficits are falling. The economy is growing, and we have a little work to do to finish the appropriations bills and to finish action on a couple of tax bills this year. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I rise in support of H.R. 3463, the SUTA Dumping Prevention Act of 2003. This bill cleared the House on July 14 by voice vote, and was held at the desk in the Senate to facilitate its quick passage. On July 15, I introduced a companion bill with Senator Kennedy, S. 2662, and it is cosponsored by Senators Grassley, Baucus, Ensign, Levin, Gregg and Murray. SUTA stands for State Unemployment Tax Avoidance. This bill addresses employers who have lowered their State unemployment tax rate by changing their ``experience rating.'' Experience rating is used to determine an employer's unemployment tax rate. It means that companies who have laid off more workers are required to pay more in State unemployment taxes, and companies that have had fewer layoffs pay less. Experience rating provides several incentives for employers, including encouraging employers to maintain a stable workforce, and an incentive to contest claims when employees quit or are fired for cause. This legislation cracks down on employers who intentionally avoid paying their fair share of State unemployment taxes. It prohibits shifting employees into shell companies with the sole purpose being to avoid paying the proper amount in unemployment taxes by changing their experience rating. H.R. 3463 ends this abusive practice by requiring States to deter tax rate manipulation and prevent SUTA dumping by requiring that tax rate-related unemployment experience be transferred with a business once it is transferred to another employer. It also imposes penalties when the law is violated. SUTA dumping was first exposed in December 2002 by the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration. Since then several States have enacted SUTA dumping legislation, including Arkansas, Maine, North Carolina and Washington. Though according to the General Accounting Office, three-fifths of State unemployment administrators indicated their State law is unable to combat the problem. H.R. 3463 also includes language to make sure unemployment insurance payments are not fraudulently paid to people who have returned to work. The legislation includes a new hire database provision that authorizes States to access nationwide work history information to ensure that workers on a payroll are not also collecting an unemployment check. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that H.R. 3463 will decrease the Federal deficit by $499 million over 5 years and $510 million over 10 years. The savings result from increased collections from employers who are currently engaging in SUTA dumping, and additional savings from eliminating fraudulent unemployment insurance payments to employed workers. The SUTA dumping provision will reduce the Federal deficit by $429 million over 10 years, and the new hire database provision by $81 million over 10 years. These revenues will be added to unemployment trust funds, which include triggers that lower unemployment tax rates as trust fund balances rise. Enactment of H.R. 3463 promotes fairness and will lead to reduced tax rates for employers who are today overtaxed.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the conference report to accompany H.R. 4613, the Department of Defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005, provides $391.170 billion in budget authority and $416.011 billion in outlays in fiscal year 2005 for the Department of Defense. Of these totals, $239 million is for mandatory programs in fiscal year 2005. The bill further provides $28.2 billion in budget authority in fiscal year 2004 designated as emergency requirements. Of this total $26.8 billion is for defense purposes and $1.3 billion is for non-defense purposes. The fiscal year 2004 emergency funds for defense include $25 billion in supplemental appropriations for on-going operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the President requested these funds for fiscal year 2005, the conference report makes these funds available on enactment. The conference report also includes a repeal of a $1.8 billion defense rescission enacted in the 2004 Omnibus Appropriations bill, P.L. 108- 199--in effect appropriating a new $1.8 billion for defense. In total, the $26.8 billion in fiscal year 2004 emergency defense budget authority generates $19.3 billion in outlays in fiscal year 2005. The bill provides $500 million for wildland fire suppression for 2004. These funds are consistent with amounts assumed in the 2005 budget resolution. The conference report also includes the following non-defense funds: $685 million for the Iraq embassy and diplomatic security expenses; $50 million for convention security in New York City and Boston; and $95 million for Sudan humanitarian assistance. The bill provides total discretionary budget authority in fiscal year 2005, including emergencies, of $390.931 billion. This amount is $1.684 billion less than the President's request and equal to the 302(b) allocations adopted by the House of Representatives. This amount is $68.4 billion less than fiscal year 2004 enacted levels when supplemental appropriations are included. When supplemental appropriations are not included the conference report provides $20.8 billion more than last year's enacted level. The conference report also provides a 2005 302(a) allocation to the Senate Appropriations Committee. This will ensure that adequate enforcement tools are available as the Senate considers the remaining appropriation bills. The allocation in the conference report is consistent with the levels envisioned in S. Con. Res. 95, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for fiscal year 2005. I commend the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee for bringing this legislation before the Senate, and I ask unanimous consent that a table displaying the Budget Committee scoring of the bill be inserted in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, on page 45 of the bill, it says: The Secretary may by regulation require restrictions on the sale and distribution of a tobacco product, including restrictions on the access to, and the advertising and promotion of, the tobacco product, if the Secretary determines that such regulation would be appropriate for the protection of the public health. If the Secretary determines something is appropriate for the protection of the public health, they can do whatever they want, I believe, including banning tobacco. That is very broad discretion for the Secretary of Health, to do whatever they want. Also, the program does not end the tobacco program. At least it didn't in Senator McConnell's bill. We have not had a chance to really review it, but it didn't in his bill. It did in the House bill. I compliment the House. If you are going to spend $10 billion, you ought to eliminate the program. We are going to spend $12 billion and not eliminate the tobacco program.

Mr. NICKLES. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I am going to urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment for two or three reasons. One, the bill we are voting on has never been marked up out of the Agriculture Committee. It has never been marked up in the HELP Committee. We are going to spend billions of dollars. We are rewriting the farm bill. We have a $12 billion buyout for tobacco farmers. I heard my colleague from Kentucky say it ends the tobacco program. It does not end the tobacco program. This amendment was offered late last night, but under the bill of the Senator from Kentucky it did not eliminate the program. The House bill spends $9.6 billion and it does eliminate the program. It eliminates this quota. This bill eliminates quotas, but it does not eliminate the Secretary from having the authority to be able to restrict acreage on who grows tobacco. So we are going to spend $12 billion and not even eliminate the program, and not have any limitation on how much it is going to cost? It is estimated the House bill would have almost 500 people make $1 million. This bill is much more generous than the House bill. There are going to be a few people who are going to become multimillionaires as a result of this bill, but yet we were not given the chance to offer any amendments. We could not say there should be a limit of $250,000 per person who is not a farmer. Incidentally, 85 percent of the people who receive money from the buyout are not farmers, are not living on a farm. So this is a buyout for a few people. The FDA section is the biggest grant of power to the FDA, which not only gives them the power to regulate tobacco, but frankly I believe they can ban tobacco. It is a blank check to do almost anything they want--the most sweeping power they have ever been given. I think the House was wrong to add the $9.6 billion tobacco buyout in their tax bill, and two wrongs do not make a right. Now we are adding totally unrelated things, not considered by committee. It is going to cost billions of dollars, and we are going to add it to the Senate bill. It is going to come back from conference in all likelihood with some provision. I think it jeopardizes the entire FSC bill. I do not think it should become law. Certainly, this is not the way it should become law. If it should become law, let us take it up freestanding and give Senators the right to amend and discuss it before spending billions of dollars. The cost of this buyout is multiples of the so-called quota buyout we did for peanuts. It is going to cost billions of dollars. I urge our colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I congratulate Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus for the way they have managed this bill. They have conducted their work in a very appropriate way. They had hearings on this bill. I want to compliment Ambassador Zoellick. Our trade negotiator did an outstanding job in putting this together. This trade agreement is a win/win. It is a win for Australia and it is a win for the United States. I am pleased to see the Senate work as it is supposed to work. We had hearings on it. We had a markup in committee. We are now having it considered on the floor. This is going to open additional markets and reduce tariffs for the United States. It is going to be a win for Australia as well. Both countries, strong allies, will benefit as a result. Prime Minister Howard of Australia has been a good friend and ally of the United States. He has been steadfast in helping us in many ways, trade being one of them. Again, free trade, equal trade, open access, we are winning or gaining more because the tariffs were higher on their side in many respects and so this is positive for United States consumers and for Australian consumers. Again, I want to compliment the administration for proposing this agreement, for the work that was done by our trade negotiators, and also by Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus for bringing this up so quickly on the floor, getting it through the Finance Committee and ultimately through the Senate today. I also want to compliment our leader, Senator Frist, for making this happen. I led a delegation to Australia earlier this year. We felt very strongly in our support not only for this agreement but frankly in strengthening our relationships with such a great ally and friend as Australia. So I am very pleased to support this agreement. I urge our colleagues to support it with an overwhelming vote later this afternoon. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I have a couple comments. Again, I compliment my colleagues, Senator Kennedy and Senator DeWine. They have been steadfast in their advocacy. Senator DeWine is right, he and Senator Kennedy introduced this a long time ago. If I am correct, it did not pass out of a committee, it is not on the calendar, and all of a sudden it appears on the floor. These are two bills combined, and my biggest objection is with the buyout. The buyout is $12 billion. How often do we spend $12 billion around here without having any hearing on it? The buyout did not pass out of a committee. It did not pass out of the Agriculture Committee. It certainly was not considered by the Budget Committee. There is no payment limitation, I say to Senator Grassley. In the House bill, with the $9.6 billion, it is estimated by one group to be 480 millionaires. Some estimates are 85 percent of the quota owners are not farmers. I do not know how many of those will be made millionaires. The Senate bill we are going to vote on does not even eliminate the tobacco program. A lot of people are thinking we will spend this money, we will buy the quotas back, and then be done with it. No, there will be a Federal board set up by the Secretary. The Secretary will establish a permanent advisory board for the purpose of setting what kind of tobacco shall be in the Acreage Limitation Program, I tell my colleague from Nevada, where they limit acres, make recommendations on acres. The Secretary, with the Tobacco Quality Board, shall establish and maintain the Acreage Limitation Program for each crop, each kind of tobacco. If we have an acreage limitation program, that is a price support program. That is a continuation of the tobacco program. So we are going to throw away $12 billion and maybe benefit one tobacco company versus all the other tobacco companies, spend a whole lot more money, have another 100 some-odd pages of regulations, some of which were so intrusive--I have not had a chance to review these regulations in detail, but in past years, some of these regulations dealt with convenience stores. If a convenience store did not check IDs of people up to age 21 or age 25, they could be penalized and fined and successively with higher penalties. If they did not check IDs three or four times of somebody who is 24 years old--they are military and obviously old enough to smoke--if they did not check their ID, the fines could be in the thousands of dollars. That was in previous regulations. I am not sure if it is in these regulations because I have not had enough time to decide. I know there is a blank check for the Secretary to outlaw tobacco if he so desires, to ban advertising if he so desires. I don't like tobacco consumption. I don't want people to smoke. If Congress wants to ban tobacco, let's do it. Let Congress do it. Let the elected officials do it, not the Secretary of HHS. These regulations are too broad. I know Senator Gregg had a proposal that was not quite as aggressive. I would like to vote on it. I would like to consider the two. We don't even have the option. The option is take these regulations, 155 pages--and my guess is most were promulgated by the Clinton administration which we rejected earlier--and then let's add a $12 billion buyout program that almost guarantees we will have a buyout program that comes out of conference on the FSC/ETI bill. My final comment is, two wrongs do not make a right. The House was wrong to put in a tobacco buyout in the FSC/ETI bill. Now we are going to double that wrong and almost ensure it is going to come back from conference with a multibillion-dollar buyout, where some people are going to make millions of dollars. We are going to pay people a whole lot of money and maybe even continue the program. That is absurd. That is a waste of money. That is paying people for the privilege--frankly, if they had a quota, the Government gave them a quota; they had a special benefit over all other landowners in the United States. Oklahoma did not have a quota. We could not grow tobacco if we wanted to. We could not get the higher prices. Now we give a special reward to people who have a quota. We buy them out, and we are going to have a price support program in addition if we pass the Senate language. That is bad legislation. I hope our colleagues will recognize if they vote for this today and if it comes back from conference in any way resembling this, they are going to be embarrassed because a year or so from now, somebody is going to do a report saying XYZ tobacco quota owner--and there are several in the District of Columbia. I don't know how much tobacco is grown in the District of Columbia, but quotaholders in the District of Columbia get millions of dollars. They are going to be reading about this and be upset, and they are going to say: Congress, how could you do this? Then they are going to go back and say: Congress didn't debate this much. I compliment my colleague from Ohio. Most of the debate has been on the FDA regulations, not the buyout. I hope my colleagues reject the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, most of the speakers have been proponents. I compliment Senator DeWine and Senator McConnell for getting included this deal. I want to make two or three comments. One is on the process. The FDA bill we are now going to vote on--I venture to say nobody knows much about it because, and correct me if I am wrong, it has not been reported out of any committee. The very extensive bill, very important bill, has 155 pages of regulations and not 1 paragraph that says the FDA has regulatory authority over tobacco. It is a lot of regulatory statute proposed to be the law of the land. There is a tobacco buyout provision that costs $12 billion. I have yet to see the language. Neither of these bills was reported out of committee, and neither should have had a time agreement. I wasn't consulted on a time agreement on these particular amendments. All of a sudden, we find out at 9:30 there is a time agreement and we are talking about spending $12 billion--and, oh, yes, you cannot amend it. I am kind of offended by that. Senator Grassley used to say we should have some kind of limitation on payments. We find out, according to some analysis, some farmers will make millions of dollars on the tobacco buyout. I would say, wait a minute, if we are going to buy out a quota--a quota is a Government benefit basically which we have given and which has benefited a few. We find out that 85 percent of the quotas go to nonfarmers. I would like to have the benefits go to the farmers. We don't have a chance to offer that amendment. I would like to say the benefit should be going to tobacco farmers. We don't have a chance to offer that. We have an FDA bill before us. Senator Gregg has a proposed amendment; I would like to offer that or consider it. We don't have a chance to do that. We don't have a chance to offer one amendment. Yet we are saying let's add this to the FSC/ETI bill. I agree with Senator Lott, who says we should pass the FSC/ETI bill, and we are held up for weeks after we already passed it on the floor of the Senate. The House, in my opinion, made a mistake. The House made a mistake when they passed FSC/ETI. They put in a $9.6 billion tobacco buyout as part of their package. Now we are getting ready to say that two wrongs make a right. Since they do it, we will do it, too, except where they spent $9.6 billion, we will spend $12 billion. At least, to their credit, they got out of the tobacco program when they spend $9.6 billion. They are going to pay the tobacco farmers and get out of the Federal price support program for tobacco. But we don't do that on this proposal. We are going to spend $12 billion on supposedly buying out quota. Guess what. At the end of the day, you still have a tobacco program, a price support program. That is ludicrous. What a waste of money. We are going to spend $12 billion and not end the program? I cannot imagine doing that. I cannot imagine that we would pay people for a quota, most of whom are not farmers, and then we are going to continue a price support program at the end of the day. That is in this bill. It is all tied together. You don't have a chance to break it apart, don't have a chance to amend it. This is very offensive to the legislative process. It is very offensive to the taxpayers. The regulatory authority I have heard many people bragging on is very broad. For example, I don't know if people are aware of it, but maybe we want to give the Secretary of HHS a blank check to regulate and/or outlaw tobacco. In reading on page 45, it says: The Secretary may, by regulation, require restrictions on the sale and distribution of a tobacco product, including restrictions on the access to and the advertising of and promotion of the tobacco product, if the Secretary determines such regulation will be appropriate for the protection of public health. The Secretary can do anything he darn well pleases, including banning tobacco, I guess. I am no fan of tobacco. Frankly, I have had family members who got cancer as a result of it. It almost took my mother's life--lung cancer, emphysema, all probably directly related to tobacco. I had a brother with serious cancer. I am no fan of tobacco. I don't use it. I don't want my kids to use it. I urge people not to use it. I question having a new Federal program where we are going to have $12 billion to buy people out of their quotas, including most of the people who don't even grow tobacco, and then we are going to say, yes, at the end of the day, we are going to continue the tobacco program, and then we are going to put it on a FSC/ETI bill where it doesn't belong. We need to pass the tax bill and resolve conflicts with the WTO so we can eliminate surcharges and tariffs on products coming into the U.S. We need to do our work. This tobacco provision, which has not had a hearing in the Agriculture Committee or in the HELP Committee, and hasn't had a hearing on either FDA or a markup of the appropriate legislation before the appropriate committees--all of a sudden we are getting ready to pass legislation that is going to make, according to one estimate, over 500 people millionaires--millionaires--and we don't even have a chance to amend it. I wonder how many of my colleagues are aware of that. I wonder how many have a clue what is in this proposal. I venture to say that very few do. Maybe the sponsors do. Maybe there was some deal cooked up last night. I don't know. I am looking at the size of that amendment and saying, Mr. President, that is pretty thick. I wonder how many billions of dollars are going to be spent as a result of this amendment without people really knowing what they are voting on. I will vote no on the amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment. If we pass this, there is going to be a tobacco provision in the House bill and the Senate bill, and that will make it difficult to delete in conference. As a conferee, I plan on opposing tobacco. I was going to oppose energetically having the House pass that as part of the FSC/ETI bill. It doesn't belong there. If we put a similar provision in the Senate bill, it more than likely will be there. I will tell you it may be too much of a load for that bill to pass conference. I can see all kinds of ways that this could bog down the conference totally, and we will end up having no bill. Who wins out of that? Certainly not the tobacco growers. Certainly not tobacco. Some people allege that the regulations benefit one tobacco company at the expense of the others. I don't know. I just know this is a crummy way to legislate. This is not the way we should be doing business in the U.S. Senate. We should not be gumming up an already overloaded bill by including this provision. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment when we vote later today. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on the FSC/ETI bill for 10 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I thank my colleague from Colorado for yielding. I compliment Senator Allard for his work on this amendment and on this issue. It is a very important issue. I also compliment Senator Hatch for the very fine statement he made earlier, as well as Senators Santorum, Sessions, and Cornyn. Several of our colleagues have made very eloquent remarks about this amendment and about the fact that marriage is under attack. I want to come at it from a little different perspective. I was the principal sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed and was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. I heard my very good friend from Minnesota, Senator Dayton, mention that this is about politics, and I wanted to inform him as the sponsor of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, it was not about politics in 1996, it was because in 1996 the Hawaiian Supreme Court was getting ready to legalize same-sex marriage, and under the general understanding of full faith and credit, if they recognized it, there would be a lot of same- sex couples running to Hawaii to be married and they would return to other States and those States would be required to recognize it. We thought that was a serious mistake. We did not want that mixed court decision in Hawaii to become the law of the land. So we passed the Defense of Marriage Act. It passed by a vote of 85 to 14. I notice several of the people who are arguing against a constitutional amendment are arguing for States rights. Several of the people who have argued against this amendment also debated and voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which was basically a States rights approach to the solution. Now, let us frame this as an issue. Marriage is under attack. It is under attack in several respects. It is under attack by a liberal court in Massachusetts which wants to redefine marriage, including same-sex couples. They were not elected. It is under attack by mayors in some cities: the mayor of San Francisco, and the mayor of New Paltz, NY. They wanted to legalize or grant licenses to same-sex couples. It happened to be against the law in the State of California. It is very interesting that a newly elected mayor would decide to defy State law, actually break State law, but he was doing it and gained great notoriety. He was on TV most every day. Then a mayor in New Paltz, NY, wanted to do the same thing. I am not sure what the State law in New York is. But marriage is under attack as defined by this Congress. The Defense of Marriage Act says marriage is between a man and a woman, and yet we had either an unelected court or mayors saying, no, they know better. So if it is under attack, how is it protected? Is it protected better by a statute or by a constitutional amendment? That is a legitimate debate, and I respect people who say we have the Defense of Marriage Act, but many of the people who are making that claim voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, so I question whether they really believe in States rights or they are using it at this particular point. But it is under attack. What has happened differently between now and when the Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996, one decision was the Lawrence decision. Every once in a while I will sit in on a Supreme Court debate. I sat in just a month ago on the question on the Pledge of Allegiance, whether we could actually have in the Pledge of Allegiance ``one Nation under God.'' In that case, the Ninth Circuit Court, which makes a lot of very absurd rulings, said we should not have ``one nation under God.'' Thankfully, the Supreme Court rejected that argument. I enjoyed listening to that debate. I wish I had attended the Lawrence v. Texas debate because I am absolutely astounded at their conclusion. Senator Santorum deserves great credit because he took a lot of flak, but he denounced that decision. He denounced it strongly, and he was right. I did not pay enough attention to the Lawrence decision, nor to the Texas statute, which probably should have been overturned or should have been repealed by the Texas legislature. Possibly that is a debate for another day. They went a lot further than just dealing with the Texas statute. In the Lawrence case, the Supreme Court found: . . . a State's governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice . . . Sorry about that, States, sorry if you had morality as part of the reason you are legislating, but the Supreme Court thinks that may not be enough. That is a very troubling case. I have heard a lot of constitutional scholars and others say because of the Lawrence case the Defense of Marriage Act would probably be determined unconstitutional. I hope they are wrong. The Defense of Marriage Act passed with 85 votes. I hope the Supreme Court will pay attention to the fact that it passed with 85 votes. That was not 51 to 49. So if they are going to overturn the Congress-- incidentally, it passed in the House by an overwhelming margin, even greater than that, I believe. So I hope it will not be determined unconstitutional. But the Lawrence case does mean marriage is under attack. When there is a mayor of San Francisco who decides in spite of State law that he is going to start granting marriage licenses or a mayor in New York or by a 4-to-3 decision in the State of Massachusetts--all of those things have happened since the Defense of Marriage Act passed. So it really boils down to which body, which element of our democracy is going to be making this decision? If we are going to redefine marriage and say that it is legal between same-sex couples, should that not be decided by State legislatures and/or elected Federal officials? It certainly should not be decided by an unelected 4-to-3 decision in one liberal court in the country. So to stop that 4-to-3 decision, particularly given the fact that there is a Supreme Court decision which seems to give credibility to that decision, maybe a constitutional amendment is in order. My guess is it probably will not pass until they do overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, and then I believe there really will be a revolt around the country. Then it might get the necessary two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress and be ratified by three-fourths of the States. Our forefathers showed great wisdom in making it very difficult to amend the Constitution. It has only been amended 27 times--only 17 if we take out the Bill of Rights--in the last 228 years. That is pretty remarkable. They made it very difficult to amend the Constitution. We are dealing with something very fundamental when we are talking about how marriage is defined. Marriage is a very esteemed union between a man and a woman, a contract with Government recognition, with benefits, a sacred union, a sacrament in some religions, a very special relationship, not to be changed or altered, frankly, by a 4-to-3 decision, by an unelected court, trying to redefine something so important. It should be decided by elected officials. So we have a process. We have the statute process, which we have done, and we have a constitutional process which may be necessary in light of the Lawrence decision and in light of the State of Massachusetts, in light of the mayor of San Francisco, in light of mayors in other places around the country who wish to make such a fundamental change and do it without authority, without election, without backing. In the State of Hawaii, when the State supreme court there tried to redefine marriage, there was an uproar and basically they passed a constitutional amendment that allowed the legislature to define marriage. The legislature defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The legislature stopped it. Hopefully maybe legislative action would be enough, but my concern is that in spite of the fact that 38 States have passed identical legislation to DOMA, in spite of the fact that 4 additional States have passed something very close to it, 42 out of 50 States passing legislation basically defining marriage as between a man and a woman, is that there still might be a 4-to-3 decision that becomes the law of the land because of what I believe is an absurd decision based on the Lawrence decision. I hope that is incorrect, but I do want to fight to defend marriage as between a man and a woman. That can be done constitutionally. It can be done statutorily. I do think that people, through their elected officials, should be making this decision instead of an unelected 4-to-3 decision in a court. This is vitally important. So, again, I compliment my colleague, Senator Allard, for his leadership on this issue. I hope people will take this very seriously. The benefits of marriage are great. Undermining marriage has great negative consequences for our country, and I hope our colleagues will weigh those decisions very closely and at least support the motion to proceed. It is a legitimate debate as to whether the amendment should be one sentence or should it be two sentences, should it be rewritten or tweaked one way or another. We will not know unless we pass the motion to proceed. So I urge our colleagues to support the motion to proceed in tomorrow's vote.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I hereby submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office under Section 308(b) and in aid of Section 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. This report meets the requirements for Senate scorekeeping of Section 5 of S. Con. Res. 32, the First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for 1986. This report shows the effects of congressional action on the 2004 budget through June 25, 2004--the last day that the Senate was in session before the recent recess. The estimates of budget authority, outlays, and revenues are consistent with the technical and economic assumptions of the 2004 Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, H. Con. Res. 95, as adjusted. The estimates show that current level spending is above the budget resolution by $8.6 billion in budget authority and by $28 million in outlays in 2004. Current level for revenues is $3.1 billion above the budget resolution in 2004. Since my last report dated April 20, 2004, the Congress has cleared and the President has signed the following acts which changed budget authority, outlays, or revenues for 2004: the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2004, Part II--P.L. 108-224; the TANF and Related Programs Continuation Act of 2004--P.L. 108-262; the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2004, Part III--P.L. 108-263; the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004--P.L. 108-265; and, an act approving the renewal of import restrictions contained in the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003--P.L. 108-272. In addition, the Congress has cleared for the President's signature H.R. 4103, the African Growth and Opportunity Acceleration Act of 2004. I ask unanimous consent that the budget scorekeeping report be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I also compliment my colleague and friend, Senator Reid, for his statement. I have a similar experience. My father also committed suicide. I am not going to go into the details, but it is a lot of pain. It is very evidenced by the pain in the expression by Senator Smith and Senator Reid that this is a very serious problem throughout our country. It is a serious problem, as Senator Smith has experienced, unfortunately, particularly with teenagers. For teenagers, this is a problem that most people cannot comprehend. I did know Garrett. Garrett was a troubled young man with mental illness. He was also a very fortunate young man because he had outstanding and loving parents. He had an angel for a father and a mother, and he received more love than most children would ever dream of receiving. Now maybe he is in some ways giving a gift to the country because Senator Smith, in trying to rationalize maybe, combat this very serious problem, is trying to tackle it nationally. I have no doubt as a result of us passing this legislation we will end up saving a lot of lives, maybe thousands of lives. So I just want to associate myself with my very good friend Gordon Smith but thank and compliment him because we will never know--we will never know--did this save someone's life somewhere in Oregon or Oklahoma or Nevada or New York because there are a lot of troubled kids out there, frankly, who have not received the attention they need. Maybe it will also lead to greater research in combating suicide as a whole because it is a big problem throughout this country for many ages, particularly for teenagers. I compliment Senator Smith for the love and attention and focus both he and Sharon focused on Garrett. Garrett was a very fortunate young man to have such loving parents. The Senate is very fortunate, our country is very fortunate, to have his leadership on this very difficult, sensitive issue for them and, frankly, for our country. I compliment him for his work and yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I compliment my colleague from Oregon, Senator Smith, for his statement and also for the work he has done in putting together this legislation. I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the Department of Defense appropriations bill for FY 2005, S. 2259, as reported by the Senate Committee on Appropriations, provides $384.012 billion in budget authority and $401.785 billion in outlays in FY 2005 for the Department of Defense. Of these totals, $239 million is for mandatory programs in FY 2005. Additionally, the bill provides $7.158 billion in budget authority and $7.054 billion in outlays in FY 2005, which are designated as emergency requirements. The bill further provides $25 billion in budget authority in FY 2004, which is also designated as an emergency requirement. This budget authority generated $18.798 billion in outlays in FY 2005. The bill provides total discretionary budget authority in FY 2005, including emergencies, of $390.931 billion. This amount is $1.684 billion less than the President's request and equal to the 302(b) allocation adopted by the House of Representatives. I commend the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee for bringing this legislation before the Senate, and I ask unanimous consent that a table displaying the Budget committee scoring of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment. This amendment creates a new entitlement program, set up by a formula designed to add benefits based on eligible people. My father- in-law is eligible, but he doesn't receive VA benefits. Now we are going to set that up as an entitlement that would cost $300 billion-- three-fourths of the cost of the Medicare bill expansion last year? We have a lot of people saying we believe in paying for these. This was not paid for. This would increase the deficit by $300 billion. We are doing a lot for veterans right now. If you look at it, we didn't do a lot during the Clinton administration, but we have done a lot under the Bush administration--up 50 percent in the last few years. We are going from 2004, $61 billion, to $70 billion in 2005, a 15- percent increase. Yet some people say that is still not enough. I think this amendment is not so much about helping veterans. I think it is trying to help politicians. I urge my colleagues to sustain the budget point of order. The pending amendment offered by the Senator from South Dakota, Mr. Daschle, increases mandatory spending and, if adopted, would cause the underlying bill to exceed the committee's allocation section 302(a) allocation. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Five minutes will be fine.

Mr. NICKLES. Reserving the right to object, I wish to speak for a few minutes. I did not complete my remarks in the last debate.

Mr. NICKLES. To inform my colleague, the budget also would reduce the deficit by half in 3 years. That is not easily done when you have a $400 billion deficit. So please keep that in mind as well.