Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

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

Mr. NICKLES. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment. This is a good reason that maybe we should not have 10-year budgets. He assumes we should increase spending in some areas instead of defense, but there is not one line item that says 050. Nothing would increase money in defense under this resolution. It would increase taxes. It would increase spending, unspecified spending. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Lautenberg amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment. This amendment says there will be no growth package. It implies a tax increase in 2011, 2012, and 2013. That means a 10-percent rate would go to 15 percent; the child credit that would be $1,000 will fall back to $500; the marriage penalty would be increased. I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the next two amendments that are in order are the Sarbanes amendment and the Crapo amendment. I believe they have been able to work something out. I thank them for that. We will save considerable time. I yield to the Senator from Maryland for a comment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the Sarbanes amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Idaho for his amendment. Amendment No. 317

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I am not sure we called up the Crapo amendment. We withdraw the Sarbanes amendment. I do not believe we called up the Crapo amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Crapo- Sarbanes amendment be modified to include Senator Sarbanes as a cosponsor. I thank my friend and colleague from Maryland for his leadership and willingness to work together. I am glad we can accept it, and I think we can have a voice vote.

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 thank both our colleagues. We just saved at least 30 minutes. I thank them both very much for their cooperation.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, we will soon be voting on the Mikulski amendment. This will complete the first batch of amendments and Senator Conrad and I will be working to put together a list of additional amendments. So I expect there will be some break, just for the information of our colleagues. We hope to begin--this vote will start in just a couple of minutes. I expect we will have another round of votes beginning probably close to 1:15.

Mr. NICKLES. Go ahead.

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

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, we have tentatively agreed on an outline for amendments. I will read through these amendments. It is subject to change. I thank my colleague from North Dakota. We are working together and trying to accommodate Senators. Most of the amendment requests are coming from the minority side of the aisle, and that is the way it usually is on these resolutions. I understand that. We are going to try to move as expeditiously as possible. We are absolutely committed to finishing this bill. It is important we work together to try to complete it. Some people are outside trying to rewrite amendments or write new amendments. I really discourage that. It is this Senator's intention to finish the bill. We have only been on it all week, and to have people in the drafting stage to see what they can come up with is not a good way to finish. We will be here until we finish. I will not ask unanimous consent. I will list the order we expect just so Senators are notified and can be ready: Senator Clinton dealing with homeland security; Senator Dorgan dealing with veterans affairs; Senator Breaux and others dealing with the $350 billion growth package; Senator Kennedy dealing with Pell grants; Senator Gregg dealing with Pell grants; Senator Byrd dealing with Amtrak; possibly Senator McCain on Amtrak; Senator Biden dealing with COPS; Senator Hollings on port security; Senator Nickles on port security; Senator Bond on highways; and Senator Nickles on highways. That is our intention. It is not a unanimous consent request. It is just our intention, a list, an outline for our colleagues. This will be another 10 amendments. I suspect three or four of these amendments will drop.

Mr. NICKLES. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. I concur. We are ready to do business. I believe Senator Clinton has a modification of her amendment to send to the desk. Amendment No. 381

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for this list of amendments I have outlined, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes equally divided on each of these amendments.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I do not know when we can say enough is enough. We have doubled the funding for homeland security in 2003 compared to 2002. That is a result of 9/11, and appropriately so. The budget we have before us increases it another 18.4 percent. We have already increased homeland security an additional $3.5 billion as a result of passage of the Cochran amendment. Senator Clinton's amendment would just bump it up another $3.5 billion. That would be an enormous percentage increase. Right now, we have funds for homeland security State by State that are not being spent, for whatever reason. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment. I think this is another case where I said no matter what we do in committee, no matter how much we add, someone is going to come up and say it is not enough. We increased the veterans budget altogether over 12 percent, $3.4 billion. We did 10 percent over the President's request, about $3 billion. We did a 14.7 percent increase in veterans health care. This amendment not only has more increases but, in addition, it also reduces the tax cut. We are taking care of our veterans in this proposal with enormous percentage increases. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote on the Dorgan amendment No. 385.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up and pass amendment No. 328, sponsored by Senators Wyden and Kyl, regarding the national fire plan; and amendment No. 282, by Senator Brownback, regarding a commission to review the efficiency of Federal agencies.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the next amendment we will have will be by the Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Breaux. There will be a 10-minute time limitation. It is a very large amendment. I ask that the Senator from Louisiana be recognized.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, it is my belief that if this amendment passed, we would take the growth out of the growth package. I call upon my colleague, the chairman of the Finance Committee.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 5 minutes on each side for this amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the chairman of the Finance Committee.