Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I am going to move to table the amendment, so I urge our colleagues to vote aye in favor of the motion to table. This amendment says we should have zero stimulus except for $150 billion up front; zero extension of the current law. In other words, we have a lot of taxpayers right now who are paying 10 percent. Their rate would go to 15 percent. We have a lot of taxpayers who are paying 25 percent. Their rate would go to 28 percent. We have some taxpayers paying 35 percent. Their rate would go to 39.6 percent. We would have increases in the death tax, the marriage penalty, and a decrease in the child tax credit from $1,000 to $500. I urge my colleagues to vote against this $1.2 trillion tax increase compared to the budget resolution before us. I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator from Alaska yield for a second?

Mr. NICKLES. Just to clarify, I believe the Senator from California yielded to both the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Massachusetts, in addition to making an opening speech. So there were at least three speakers. The Senator from Wyoming wanted 10 minutes, and the Senator from Alaska wishes to speak as well. So we would like to have the idea that we would alternate back and forth, but I believe there were three consecutive speakers on your side.

Mr. NICKLES

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 Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at 9:30 a.m., in open session to receive testimony on ballistic missile defense in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2004.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2003, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on ``Proposals To Regulate Illegal Internet Gambling.''

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at 9:30 a.m., to hold a hearing on ``Diplomacy and the War on Terrorism.'' Agenda Witnesses Panel 1: The Honorable Marc Grossman, Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Department of State, Washington, DC, and The Honorable Grant Green, Undersecretary for Management, Department of State, Washington, DC. Panel 2: The Honorable J. Cofer Black, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State, Washington, DC; Mr. Jon Pistole, Deputy Assistance Director of the Counter Intelligence Unit, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC; and Juan C. Zarate, Esq., Deputy Assistant Secretary, Executive Office for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at 4 p.m., to hold a hearing on the current hostage situation in Colombia. Briefer: The Honorable Marc Grossman, Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Department of State, Washington, DC.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate for a hearing entitled ``Small Business Continue to Lose Federal Jobs by the Bundle'' and other matters on Tuesday, March 18, 2003, beginning at 9:30 a.m., in room 428A of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water be authorized to meet on Tuesday, March 18, at 11 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the proposed 2004 Fish and Wildlife Service budget. The meeting will be held in SD 406.

Mr. NICKLES

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

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the staff of the Senate Budget Committee named on the list I send to the desk be permitted to remain on the Senate floor during consideration of S. Con. Res. 23 and the conference report thereupon, and the list be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following floor staff members, two from my staff and two from Senator Conrad's staff, named on the list I send to the desk be given ``all access'' floor passes for the Senate floor during consideration of S. Con. Res. 23: Stacey Hughes and Jody Hernandez from the Republican staff, and Jim Horney and Sue Nelson from the Democratic staff.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the presence and use of small electronic calculators be permitted on the floor during the consideration of the fiscal year 2004 concurrent resolution on the budget.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, today we will be considering the budget resolution, S. Con. Res. 23, a resolution for fiscal year 2004-- actually, 2004 through fiscal year 2013. I urge my colleagues to seriously consider this resolution. I will readily say it is not perfect. It is a result of a lot of work from individuals on both sides of the aisle who considered and put this resolution together. We had a 2-day markup in the Senate Budget Committee. We had 20-some- odd votes. And I thank my colleague Senator Conrad for his cooperation that we were able to finish and conclude the resolution we are now reporting to the Senate this week. This resolution has a lot of provisions in it. It provides for how much money we are going to spend, how much money we are going to tax, how much money we are going to take in. It also has a few other provisions in it, and I will go into those in a moment. It is most important that we pass a budget resolution. We have passed budget resolutions every year since the enactment of the Budget Act in 1974, except for last year when we did not get it done. I am not throwing complaints at anybody. I think it is vitally important, if Congress is going to get its work done; that we pass a budget resolution; that we tell the appropriators how much money they are going to spend; that we tell the Finance Committee and the Ways and Means Committee how much money we are going to spend on Medicare; that we set the outlines or the framework on the size of government; that we tell the Finance Committee whether they should have a growth package. In this resolution, we do call for a growth package. It is similar or identical to the number that the President requested. Actually, I think the President requested a number of about $670 billion for the growth package. The Committee on Joint Taxation scored it and said it is $725 billion. That is what we have in our resolution. It is a resolution that says we want to figure out how we can grow the economy. It is vitally important that we do grow the economy, and I will make a couple of comments about that. We have inherited a very difficult situation. We have very large deficits. Some people might say that was caused by President Bush's tax cut in 2001. I say that is not the case. The very large deficits that we have, have primarily happened because we have had a precipitous decline in revenue, and that decline in revenue was not because of the tax cut, it is because the economy has been very soft, because a lot less money is coming into the Federal Government, both on personal income tax and corporate income tax. The chart behind me shows that in the year 2000, the Federal Government total receipts were over $2 trillion--actually $2.025 trillion. In 2001, that declined about 2 percent to $1.9 trillion. It was $2 trillion, and then $1.9 trillion. Last year, it declined to $1.85 trillion. That is a reduction of $175 billion over that 2-year period of time. That is a reduction of 9 percent. Because of that reduction in revenue and because of an increase in expenditures, expenditures went from $1.8 trillion in 2000 to $1.86 trillion, to last year over $2 trillion. So spending went up by about 12 percent and revenues went down by 9 percent. That kind of intersection meant we went from a surplus of $127 billion in the year 2001 to a $158 billion deficit in the year 2002. So we went from a surplus of $127 billion to a deficit of $158 billion in that period of time because revenues have gone down and expenditures have gone up. It is about that simple. One might say, why? Well, let's look a little bit more at the economy. There has been a very precipitous drop in the stock market, well beyond what our computers were able to estimate as to what is the flow going to be, what does this mean in actual revenues that will come in to individuals, both in capital gains and also in personal income tax. This gives an example. Nasdaq, which peaked in March of 2000, was down. It was almost 5,000. I believe it did hit 5,000 in March, went down to 2,500 or 2,600 by the end of the year 2000--almost a 50 percent reduction in the last 9 months in the year 2000. It continued to decline somewhat in 2001 and 2002. As a result of that flow, everybody missed it, including the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget when they gave their estimates of what the fiscal situation was in January of 2001. They missed it big time. They greatly overestimated the amount of money that would be coming in to the Federal Government. Both CBO and OMB were projecting revenues would continue to climb, maybe a little slower than what they did for the last several years in the 1990s, but they assumed that they would continue to ascend. In reality, they dropped by 9 percent. So the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan office--and I do not fault them for their work; I am saying they missed it. Then we also had a little event on September 11, 2001, that was a real tragedy that cost 3,000 lives in the United States and caused untold damage to this economy. It would be interesting to see if the economists could ever figure the costs of that to our economy, but it has been in the billions of dollars and therefore and ultimately in revenues to the Federal Government. So we had a recession that was already starting in 2000. We had a stock market decline that was enormous, and then we also had 9/11/01, which was a double hit. If we add these things together, revenues are way down. They are actually down for the first 4 or 5 months of this year compared to last year. So we have been hit by a lot: The war on terrorism, that terrible tragedy of September 11, and the fact that we have had a very large decrease in the value of the stock market. All combined means that revenues coming into the Federal Government, like maybe revenues coming into a lot of States, are way down. So we went from surpluses of over $150 billion to last year we had a deficit of over $120 billion, which is forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to rise this year to, I believe, $246 billion. That is if we do nothing. I do not believe doing nothing is satisfactory. I guess we could just do nothing and hope that maybe things will get better, but I think we should do something. What can we do to help grow the economy? The President has a growth package. I understand people on the other side of the aisle have a growth package. Good. Let's consider a growth package. How can we grow the economy? I think we should consider any and all ideas. The President requested us to set aside as much as $700 billion for a growth package. That is what we have done, and we have it in a reconciliation instruction. Now, we do not write the tax bill, and all of our colleagues should be aware of that. We do not write the tax bill in the Budget Committee. We do give instructions to the tax-writing committees: Here is the amount of money they can use to put together a growth package. What we have proposed is about $725 billion. I believe about $30 billion of that is for actual spending, what we would call refundable tax credits, and the balance of the President's proposal is mostly geared toward various tax cuts that would help grow the economy. I believe many of those tax cuts would do that, they would help grow the economy. They would help get these figures on the revenues, that blue line, instead of going down, to go up. Frankly, it will not go up unless we really have a growing economy. The President has several proposals. I will touch on a couple of them. Probably the most controversial is eliminating the double taxation of dividends. We are long overdue for eliminating the double tax on dividends. Many have called for it, Democrats and Republicans. I don't see how anyone can defend the present policy which taxes distributions from corporations higher than almost any other country in the world. We tax the distribution profits, called dividends, to the stockholders at rates of 65 or 70 percent. There is only one country in the world that taxes dividends higher than the United States, and that is Japan. We are about even with them. We tax dividends higher than France. We tax dividends higher than the Swiss and almost higher than anyone with the exception of Japan. That is absurd. We are supposed to be this defender of free markets, entrepreneurship, and we are saying if you make money in the corporation, and you distribute to the owners, we want two-thirds, maybe three-fourths of it. That is terrible tax policy. The President said we should eliminate double taxation of dividends. If we did that, we would encourage a lot of changes in behavior. Right now, the present Tax Code encourages debt and discourages investment in equities. I compliment the President for his proposal. If we can get the taxation of dividends down at a more realistic level, we would have encouragement for investment which would create jobs. That would be positive. We need to think what can we do--not to score political points but what can we do to help grow the economy. That is a fundamental part of the President's growth package, the elimination of the double taxation of dividends. He has several other provisions that would help. I used to run a small business, and he has a provision that would allow people to expense up to $75,000. That is a good provision. That would encourage jobs. That is positive. We should pass that. The President has several provisions that would be very helpful to families. Basically, eliminating the marriage penalty for couples with incomes less than $56,000 would be very positive. Right now, a married couple with combined incomes up to $56,000 have a marginal rate of 27 percent. Say they make $50,000. Any additional dollar they make is taxed at 27 percent. The President said you should be taxed at no more than 15 percent, all the way up to $56,000. Not to get too wonkish, that equates to $1,100 more per couple with combined incomes up to $56,000. Some say this just benefits the wealthy. That is not true. You are not wealthy if you make $56,000. The President says you should pay combined tax together, husband and wife, not in excess of 15 percent. That is a positive proposal. The President has a proposal that says we should increase the per- child tax credit from $600 to $1,000. If you have four kids, that is $4,000 you do not have to pay taxes on. That would be an increase of $1,600 that you get to keep from present law. Present law on the child credit and on the marriage penalty and on the 1-point rate deductions we have had is $600. That is scheduled to expire at the end of the year 2010. In the budget, we extend that for the years 2011, 2012, and 2013. We do not propose to do it in the so-called reconciliation package. The reconciliation package is the growth package. In the growth package, what we proposed to the Finance Committee is an amount that would allow the per-child tax credit, that would allow elimination of the marriage penalty, that would allow expensing for small business, and that would allow for eliminating the double taxation of dividends, something I believe would very much help grow the economy. I had business people who saw me today and thought that would help grow the economy by hundreds of thousands of jobs. I heard others say that just eliminating double taxation of dividends alone would be several hundred thousand jobs. We need to consider how we can grow the economy. We have a measure in the budget that is under reconciliation that says we should consider opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and allow exploration to occur in the refuge. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of that proposal. I understand there may be an amendment to strike. That is one proposal that would create jobs. That is one proposal that will reduce our dependency on imported oil which right now is right at 60 percent and increasing. A lot of that is from the Middle East. Some of it happens to be from Venezuela and other places. Oil costs are high. So we need to figure out how we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. This is a main provision where we can do it. And for those who say they don't think we should do that because it might not be sensitive to the environment, I guess they have not been there. I have been in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and the Coastal Plain area. It can be done. If you have been to Prudhoe Bay, you can see that is where we have been getting up to 2.1 million barrels per day. That is now under 1 million barrels a day. We need to supplement that. We can do that with exploration in a very scientific, environmentally safe and sound manner that will not have any negatives whatever on wildlife and will help reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil. And we will keep billions and billions of dollars in the United States instead of sending those dollars to the Middle East and other countries. We are exporting so many dollars in purchasing imported oil; this is a way we can create jobs. There will be thousands and thousands of jobs created, good jobs created if we are able to enact the provision dealing with the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. It is also important to note we constrain the growth of government under this budget. I have no doubt that many people will be complaining about the budget and will complain about the deficit, but they will probably be some of the same people who will be voting to increase spending far and above what is proposed in this resolution. The President has proposed and we have adopted in our resolution budget caps on the amount of money that we will have on discretionary spending both for 2004, 2005, and 2003, as well. We have caps for all 3 years. We would increase the spending cap amount to a total of $784 billion in 2004, compared to what we have enacted in 2003 of $765 billion. In nondefense, it is a $10 billion increase. And we also have mandatory, total outlay increase for 2003 and 2004, 4.4. A majority of that is mandatory. We are holding down nondefense. The growth of nondefense between 2003 and 2004 is 2.9 percent. The growth in defense between 2003 and 2004 is 2 percent. Now, why only 2 percent? The year before in defense, 2003, we are already at 8.6 percent. We added $10 billion, actually $6 billion for defense, $4 billion for intelligence-related in the 2003 appropriations bill just passed last month. I mention that to my colleagues. It is very important. We hear about the growth package and people want to cut the growth package. I am sure we will have amendments. That is perfectly right. I hope we have the amendments to eliminate the growth package or to cut the growth package in half. We had those amendments in the committee. I expect we will have them on the floor. I hope they will be defeated. They want to take the growth out of the growth package. I want the economy to grow. How much is enough? Is $350 billion enough? Is $700 billion enough? We anticipated having revenues of over $27 trillion over this 10-year life of this budget. So $350 billion is a very small percentage. It is about 1 percent; $700 billion is about 2 percent. Can we make some changes that would have a dramatic impact on revenues? I think we can. We have a little history on our side showing if we do what is right, we can make the economy grow. In 1997, we had a significant tax cut. We actually passed one in 1995 and President Clinton vetoed it. We passed one in 1997 and he signed it. If you look at the results, you also see the revenues went way up. What was one of the main components of the tax bill that we passed in 1997? It was reducing the tax rate on capital gains from 28 percent to 20 percent. There was a flood of money coming into the Federal Government as a result of that change, a flood of money--more money than the Government ever anticipated because we didn't use dynamic scoring. We used static scoring. We actually assumed maybe this was not going to raise very much money. It raised a lot of money. Because we reduced the tax on financial transactions, we had a lot more financial transactions, and it caused and encouraged an explosion in the stock market. It encouraged a lot of investment. It encouraged growth. The changes we make can make a world of difference. That is why I encourage my colleagues to consider the President's growth package. What changes can we make now that will help grow the economy? If you look at taxation, we were taxing exchanges, financial transactions, and we were taxing those at 28 percent. If we reduced that to 20 percent and we had a lot more transactions, that would generate a lot more money. What about dividends? If they are taxed at 60 percent--combined rate, corporate and individual, at 65 percent or 70 percent, if we can reduce that and only tax it once so corporations are taxed at 35 percent, it is going to greatly encourage corporate investment and distribution to their owners. I think that would encourage investment and I believe have a very positive impact on the stock market and, frankly, on everybody. Somebody would say that only benefits the wealthy guy who owns a lot of stock. That is not true. Ask the person who works for the telephone company, who has a 401(k), and they have watched their stock investments go back down as Nasdaq did. They want it to go back up. They want the entire market to go back up. Ask a Federal employee who invested in the C fund, the common stock fund. Are they invested? Sure they are. They want to see the stock market go up. When it does, I think it has a very positive impact on the economy. I just mention those things. The President has that proposal. He does have a cap and we put the cap in our budget, a cap on discretionary spending, a cap that grows just a couple of percent, 2.4 percent, for 2004. So this very important figure, 784 figure--last year you might remember we heard a lot of discussion, talk about 751. That was the discretionary cap figure the President had. Then, 759 or 751, we discussed that figure like it was the total Federal budget. It is not. But it is the amount of money we say we are going to appropriate. We ended up appropriating 765, now 784; it is a 2.4-percent increase. I hope we do not increase that figure during the course of all the amendments we are going to consider. I know there are dozens of amendments that say we need to spend more money. We are already spending something like $7,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Spending has been growing dramatically over the last several years. When these revenue figures were going up, our outlay figures said let's just catch up. Just on the discretionary side, outlays, nondefense, went up 17.1 percent; in 2002, they went up 12.5 percent. Both of those figures are greater than what we did in defense for 2001 and 2002. That is not sustainable. That is not affordable. Our proposal said let's at least limit the growth. We did better in 2003 in nondefense discretionary. Now we are saying let's hold it at 2.4 percent, about the rate of inflation. Many of our colleagues say that is not enough. We need to have more money for everything you can imagine, and I am sure those amendments will come. I urge my colleagues to show some fiscal discipline. Do we want to have the President's growth package, a bigger one or a smaller one? Let's vote and then decide how much money we are going to spend. We do not dictate to the Finance Committee the composition of the growth package. We are assuming the composition is similar to the President's. We also do not dictate to the Appropriations Committee. We make assumptions: This is how it will break down. But I might mention they could reallocate the money in any way they want. There are a couple of other things I will mention that are part of the resolution. We have assumed $400 billion for improvements in strengthening Medicare; not just offering a prescription drug package, which would be a component of it, but to improve and strengthen and solidify, make Medicare a better system for seniors and for future seniors. That is in the proposal, of the $400 billion increase. Homeland security--we have the President's request, an 18.4 percent increase over last year. In education, we have increased funding for title I by $1 billion; for IDEA, $1.2 billion. We have a reserve fund for uninsured of $50 billion, an instruction to the Finance Committee. We have a highway figure of $32.1 billion; that is 10 percent over the President's request. I know there is going to be a request to increase that figure dramatically--some people say by as much as $5 billion or $8 billion or $10 billion more per year. There is not enough money in the trust fund to do it. There is not enough money generated by gasoline taxes to do it. I am a believer that highways should be paid for by user fees, by gasoline taxes. Some people would want to increase the deficit by whatever amount it is to expand on that figure. I hope we do not do that. I am sure that will be one of the contentious issues with which we wrestle. I encourage my colleagues, I hope they review this budget proposal. It tracks largely what the President requested for defense and nondefense for the first couple of years. It tracks the President's request for expanding and improving Medicare, homeland security, education--we bumped over the President's figures in education. I hope my colleagues will consider it. I hope they will say, What can we do that will help grow the economy? If they have a better idea, let's consider it. We will consider an amendment also at the appropriate time. I look forward to working with all my colleagues and particularly my ranking member, my friend and colleague, Senator Conrad, on this resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I have heard many people say the tax cut is really weighted towards the upper income people, and sometimes I do not know if we are talking about the 2001 tax cut or the tax cut that President Bush is now proposing for growth or the extenuation of the 2001 tax cut. In his total 10-year budget, the President had about $1.5 trillion of reduced revenues. Of that, $695 billion, I believe, was in the growth package and tax cuts; about $30 billion in expenditures. Some of the tax cuts were refundable, so Government will write a check. So that goes on the expensing side. About $600 billion of that figure is the extension of the 2001 tax cuts that will sunset at the end of the year 2010. Those are tax cuts that are the per-child tax credit, the marriage penalty, and also the reduction in rates. I might mention the reduction in rates, what we already passed in 2001, particularly as far as income strata is concerned, who benefited the most percentage-wise, low income benefited a much greater percentage than upper income. Those are the facts. We reduced the 15- percent bracket to 10 percent, and we did it retroactive in June of 2001. We made it retroactive to January of 2001. Now, that is a reduction of rates of about 30-some-odd percent. That is from 15 percent to 10 percent, and it was made retroactive for individuals who were in that income tax bracket. For individuals who were at the maximum tax bracket, we went from 39.6 percent to 38.6, 1 percentage point. Incidentally, we went 1 percentage point in the other rates as well. The 28-percent rate went to 27 percent, for example. So percentage-wise, they did not do near as well, about a 3-percent reduction compared to a 33-percent reduction for lower income. As a matter of fact, the Tax Code is more progressive now as a result of the 2001 tax cuts than it was without the 2001 tax cuts. Upper income people pay a greater percentage of the income tax. Senator Grassley will probably allude to this when he makes some of his comments. If we pass the President's entire package as presented, the tax cut would still be more progressive. One might say, why? Well, because we are increasing the number of people who will pay no income tax. If one has four kids, passing a child credit of $1,000 per child is $4,000 they do not pay taxes on. If one has income less than a certain amount, they may not pay any in connection with tax. So percentage-wise, that may be a 100-percent reduction of their income tax. That is rather significant. I mentioned the marriage penalty. Couples with taxable income less than $56,000 would be taxed at a 15-percent bracket instead of marginally at a 27-percent bracket. So that benefits them dramatically. It goes from a 27-percent bracket to 15-percent bracket. That is almost a 50-percent reduction. That is very significant. Sometimes people want to play class warfare. I don't. I want to come up with good tax policy. It is absolutely not good tax policy to be taxing distributions from corporations to the tune of 67 or 70 percent. And now a personal example. I used to run a manufacturing company before coming to the Senate. It was a corporation, Nickles Machine Corporation. We made money for a while. Unfortunately, we turned into a nonprofit organization--but not by choice. When we were making money, we wanted to distribute some of the money to our shareholders, to the owners of the company. At that time, corporate tax was 48 percent and the tax on individuals was 50 percent, for our purposes. If you have $1,000 and distribute that to the owners, the net result is the Federal Government gets 75 percent and the owners get 25 percent. What is it today? If a corporation wants to distribute $1,000, they pay 35 percent corporate tax and the individuals might be paying 27 percent, possibly 33 percent or 38.6 percent. If a corporation wants to distribute $1,000 in earnings to the owners, the Federal Government gets 70 percent and the owners get 30 percent. This is not a very good deal. A lot of corporations said: Let's do something else; let's pay bonuses. So there were bonus schemes. The goal of a business is to generate a profit and distribute that to the owners. It makes no economic sense to pay a lot of dividends if the Government gets over half, maybe as much as two-thirds, maybe more than two-thirds, even up to 70 percent. That is how present law is written. The President proposes changing that, and I compliment him for doing so. Alan Greenspan has spoken in favor of that needed change. Many who follow the markets, including Charles Schwab and others, say this would be very positive and would help raise the markets. We would stop this terrible suffocating policy of overtaxing corporate distributions, which is what we are doing. We are currently grossly overtaxing corporate distributions. We need to change that. Again, this will help anyone, including Senate employees. I don't see too many millionaires walking around here, but it would benefit every Senate employee who works for me who has money in the retirement account. It would help employees of corporations who have money in retirement funds. A teacher retirement fund is one of the largest in the country. I believe it is the California teachers retirement plan. They invest in the stock market. They would benefit from this proposal. It would benefit everyone, including our country. I don't think we should be talking about class warfare. Percentage- wise, the lower income group has a greater percentage reduction of its income tax than any other group. That is a fact. Some are talking about this leading to cuts in Social Security and Medicare. I find that not to be the case. The Social Security trust fund will be just as large in 10 years whether we pass this budget or not. We do not do one thing that would have any impact on the Social Security trust fund. Right now, the Social Security trust fund is financed by payroll tax. There is more money going out than coming in if you look at Social Security and Medicare combined. If you take the two trust funds combined, there is more money going out because we subsidize Medicare substantially in Part B. I will have charts on the total money in those pots of funds. We want to have a very good, enlightened debate on this entire budget. I encourage my colleagues, if they find this budget deficient, to please offer their own. We will have ample time to consider alternatives. I am sure others have ideas, and we would be happy to debate those. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield to the Senator from Wyoming such time as he desires.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield whatever time he consumes to the Senator from Idaho.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time does the Senator from Alabama desire?

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the Senator from Alabama as much as he desires.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield the Senator from Colorado such time as he desires.

Mr. NICKLES. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period for morning business.