Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of my colleagues, we are going to vote in a moment. I have two or three quick comments I want to make. My very good friend from Oregon--and he is my good friend--as he is trying to find another vote said, wait a minute, we should not treat service workers differently than those in manufacturing. I used to run a manufacturing company. Manufacturing, frankly, in this country has been on about a 40-year decline, almost straight, on the number of jobs. The service industry, on the other hand, has been quite volatile, but jobs are increasing--frankly, increasing in lots of different and exciting ways. But to say we are going to have a Federal benefit if somebody works in a job for 26 weeks and somebody says, I lost my job and I think I lost it because of overseas competition, therefore, I am entitled to 2 years of unemployment compensation, I am entitled to a refundable, advanceable tax credit, and basically to have the Federal Government pay for my health care--three-fourths of it--for the next 2 years, and to get cash assistance of up to $5,000 a year for each year, I think is going over board. It costs a lot of money. The Congressional Budget Office scored this. We just got this. You ask, why? We just got the amendment, so we just got the score from CBO. It says the outlays to this are $5.3 billion in BA, or obligation authority. The tax credit would cost $669 million over the next 10 years. The cost is about $6 billion. According to Joint Tax, it is not paid for. I don't really think we should have the Federal Government using our resources, which are limited--and we have an enormous deficit--for paying three-fourths of the cost of a worker's health care costs for 2 years because they happened to work for 6 months. I don't think that makes good sense for a lot of reasons. I don't think it makes good sense to lower the eligibility on this wage insurance program and that we are going to pay people $5,000 a year because they might take a lower paying job. I think that sounds so socialistic. Somebody says that is better than unemployment comp. This is in addition to unemployment comp. So we are going to do unemployment comp, do your health care, give you cash in the meantime, and do your retraining. I don't think the Federal Government can do it all. This program has grown from 300-some-million dollars in 2001 to $800 million in 2004. If this amendment passes, it would be a billion dollars plus. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor, of supporting the budget although there may be a motion to waive this pay-go point of order. I yield back the remainder of my time. I make a point of order that the amendment offered by my good friend, the Senator from Oregon, Senator Wyden, increases mandatory spending and, if adopted, would cause an increase in the deficit in excess of the levels permitted in the most recently adopted budget resolution. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to section 505 of H. Con. Res. 95, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2004.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to make a couple of comments about the asbestos bill. I see my colleague from Delaware. Does he want to say something before I make a short speech?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to make a few remarks concerning the asbestos legislation we failed to reach cloture on a motion to proceed. I am disappointed that we did not go to the legislation. I came down yesterday to speak and others were engaged. Maybe it is more appropriate that I speak now. We have a very serious problem dealing with asbestos in this country. I held a hearing in the Budget Committee 2 years ago and stated that some of the biggest problems that we face, as far as our economy, is regulations and litigation abuse. And heading the list of litigation abuse in this country is asbestos litigation. We have 8,000 companies now listed as defendants in suits, and 60 or 70 companies have already gone bankrupt. Thousands of jobs have been lost. I believe over 60,000 jobs have been lost from the bankrupt companies that have gone out of business. Maybe another 100,000 jobs have not been created as a result of the negative impact that asbestos litigation has on the economy, and it is wrong. When we find out that two-thirds of the awards or settlement payments have been going out to people who are not sick, something is wrong. So this system needs to be fixed. I also want to compliment Senator Hatch, Senator Frist, and Senator Specter for their efforts. There has been a lot of work going into this legislation. However, I have very serious problems with this particular legislation, S. 2290. In my opinion, a legislative solution that would propose creating a large federal trust fund is a mistake. I think there simply is a better way to do it. I asked the Congressional Budget Office to provide the Budget Committee analysis of the legislation, that we had before us, and the essence of its potential cost effects. I now ask to include their entire statement into the record. It states that CBO estimates operations of the fund would increase federal budget deficits by $13 billion over the first 10 years of the fund. Thus, they estimate, that even though it will take in $118 billion of contributed funds over the life of trust, in the first 10 years it is going to add $13 billion to the deficit. Though the legislation says you can borrow against future anticipated revenues, it is still going to add to the deficit, and the Fund itself will become insolvent at some point because fund resources will be overwhelmed by anticipated claims liability. There are going to be major problems with this fund, too many problems. As a matter of fact, I estimate that if we go with the trust fund approach there are going to be a lot of unqualified claimants saying, ``We want to be covered under this fund.'' We can expect that, unless there is very strict medical criteria enforced, and this bill does not have very strict medical criteria. By very strict medical criteria, I mean there should be legislation in place that requires claimants to prove that they have an asbestos-related disease before they are compensated by the fund. And this bill does not do that. Also, I hope we would abandon the idea of creating a trust fund, under this legislation, that has a fixed, capped, amount that must be contributed into the fund by insurers and defendant companies involved, while the liability remains virtually unlimited. What one should easily see, is that the insurers are limited in what they must contribute and the defendant companies are limited in what they must contribute, but the extent of liability is unlimited. This should indicate to my colleagues that this Fund may not work. The claims may greatly exceed the fund, there is a shortage, and we end up with an insolvent fund. The bill says, well, we presume if the fund goes insolvent, the fund will terminate from a Government-funded fund managed by the Department of Labor, and then claimants who did not get in on the money are going to simply seek redress in the federal courts. I question that. I can see people coming back to Congress and saying: ``Hey, we want the Federal Government to pay for it.'' This puts the taxpayer at risk. So what is the solution? I am not trying to be critical. But, I think we should come up with realistic solutions. I have a couple of ideas I think we could do. One is to impose strict medical criteria in the existing tort system. The American Bar Association has said Congress should establish strict medical criteria in the tort system: in other words, a person must prove they have an asbestos related injury before they file a claim and get compensated. Let's make sure we are not paying payments to people who have lung cancer resulting from other causes, like a life-long smoking habit. My mother had lung cancer and my brother had cancer as a result of smoking. They should not be compensated out of an asbestos compensation fund. We should hold to the principle that if people are going to receive compensation from asbestos exposure they should have an asbestos-related disease; and they must prove it was the substantial contributing factor to the injury. If they prove it, they should be compensated. We should also toll the statute of limitations for asbestos injuries to protect the legal rights of claimants who should develop a disease or impairment in the future. If they discover they have an asbestos- related disease in the distant future, the statute of limitations should not begin to run until that time. They would be able to file suit. That would eliminate a lot of these bogus claims and the mass action claims where people are filing claims saying, ``We think we could develop asbestos disease in the future, and we understand the statute of limitations is going to run out, so therefore we are going to file claims now.'' Over two-thirds of the claimants today do not have asbestos-related disease, but they are filing claims. Let's enact legislation to toll the statute of limitations, so if it is proven that 10 or 20 years from now an individual develops asbestos-related disease, and it is proven, they can be justly compensated. Finally, let's eliminate the abusive venue shopping. Let's keep it in court jurisdiction where the claim belongs, and stop bargain-hunting plaintiffs from shopping their claims in only the most lucrative district or State courts in the country. There does not have to be a new Federal fund, or a new entitlement program, created to provide a reasonable solution to this problem. If we simply require claimants to prove in court that they have an asbestos-related disease or impairment, then we can compensate those who are truly sick and they can be compensated well. The defendants companies and the insurance companies could all pay a lot more to the most deserving victims of asbestos exposure, if they did not have to needlessly pay money to the two-thirds who do not have asbestos-related disease. Many of these plaintiffs lawyers who are involved in these mass action suits, those who represent legitimate victims who are being pushed aside by the non-injured, actually say that a medical criteria bill would be the right solution. We do not need take away anybody's ability to go to court. The truly sick can be truly compensated. And do not need to pay false or premature claims. We simply do not need to pay claims to people who, frankly, should not be receiving benefits. The fact is, people who do not have asbestos-related disease are clogging the courts, and they are denying people who do have the disease just compensation. I have introduced such legislation that will go a long way to solving these problems. I have kind of held back to see whether or not this trust fund approach would work, and, frankly, I do not believe it will work, whether it is $118 billion or $153 billion. I heard many of my Democratic colleagues say if it had a little more money maybe they could support it. It will not work. My guess is if there was a fund of $153 billion or even $173 billion, as much money as that is, with the medical criteria being lax as it is in this bill especially for smokers, it will not work because you will still have thousands of unqualified people saying, ``My lung cancer should be covered too.'' As a matter of fact, if one looks at one of the compensation plans under this bill, yes, under levels VII, VIII and IX section C, smokers get compensation without having clear proof it was caused by their asbestos exposure. Now, maybe they worked in a plant that might have had asbestos present, but if they cannot prove that it was the cause of their cancer and not, for example, the five packs of cigarettes they smoked each day for thirty years, then they should not be compensated, but this Trust Fund bill would do this. My point is, let's go back to the drawing board. I do not believe a trust fund approach is the right approach. I happen to think that S. 2290 is almost an invitation for people to say here is a bunch of money, probably not enough money, so let's make sure we run our claims early, fast, and get in while the money is still there. So the claims would greatly exceed the money available no matter what size the pot of money is on the table. And when it runs out the net result will be that people will come to the Federal Government to keep it going. This trust fund will simply not be adequate to compensate all the claims, especially not with lax medical criteria. So I urge our colleagues to rethink this. Let's establish medical criteria in the courts using medical evaluation standards proposed by the American Medical Association, and consistent with a resolution endorsed by the American Bar Association, that calls on Congress to establish criteria standards along those lines and toll the statute of limitations for those who may become sick in the future. Let's compensate those families, those individuals, who are truly sick. Let's help the victims, and not reward people who do not even have asbestos disease or injury by giving them two-thirds of the benefits under this present flawed system. I urge my colleagues to seriously review such an alternative approach when we reconsider this bill in the not too distant future. I ask unanimous consent that the CBO letter of April 20, 2004, be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Inhofe and myself, I wish to honor and pay respect to a great Oklahoman, COL (Ret) Aaron ``Burley'' Burleson. Currently, he is the director of Military Development of the Altus Chamber of Commerce, Altus, OK. He has served the State of Oklahoma and the United States for many years. Mr. Burleson was born in Lawton, OK, and graduated from Lawton High School. While attending Cameron College in Lawton, he was mobilized for active duty with the 45th Infantry Division in 1940. After completing pilot training in 1944 at Pampa Army Airfield, TX, Burley Burleson received his commission as a second lieutenant. Over the next 30 years he would serve his country around the globe. He served as special air missions officer in the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force, the Pentagon. During this assignment, Burley worked directly with the White House, the Office of the Secretary of State, the Senate and the House of Representatives. His main assignment was to provide airlift for both United States and foreign dignitaries. In 1970, he transferred to Altus Air Force Base, OK, where he served as Vice Commander of the 443rd Military Airlift Wing and later as base commander in 1973. Retiring as a colonel from the Air Force in 1974, he immediately became the executive director of the ``Committee of 100,'' a special part of the Altus Chamber of Commerce. The main purpose of the committee was to strengthen and promote economic development of Altus and Jackson County, OK. After serving as the head of the organization from 1975 to 1984, Burley became the community's liaison between the men and women of Altus and the personnel assigned to Altus Air Force Base. Burley's leadership brought about tremendous support for Altus AFB. Working with Air Force personnel and congressional Members, he was able to help secure needed funding and resources for the base. Some examples include new housing, runway easements, a parallel assault runway, a corrosion control facility and a drop zone. In 1982, a tornado struck Altus AFB and caused severe damage. Under Burley's leadership, critical funding was obtained to repair the damages. These projects helped Altus Air Force Base become rated as the best base in the Air Force a few years ago. Burley has received numerous awards and citations through the years for his many achievements. Recently, Air Education Training Command singled Burley out for one of four, first time, ``Pioneer Awards'' to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Air Force. He was also heavily involved with the Air Force Association, at the national and the State levels, as well as numerous civic and charitable organizations in Altus. Burley Burleson, unfortunately, suffered a stroke in November of 2002 and is currently recovering. Jim Inhofe and I are proud to call him a friend and appreciate his dedicated service to our great country. His positive contributions to countless friends, all Oklahomans, and the U.S. Air Force are greatly appreciated.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Regular order.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I 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 April 8, 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 $7.6 billion in budget authority and under the budget resolution by $13 million in outlays in 2004. The current level for revenues is $3.1 billion above the budget resolution in 2004. Since my last report dated March 23, 2004, the Congress has cleared and the President has signed the following acts: the Welfare Reform Extension Act of 2004, Pub. L. 108-210; an act to reauthorize certain school lunch and child nutrition programs through June 30, 2004, Pub. L. 108-211; and, the Pension Funding Equity Act of 2004, Pub. L. 108- 218. In addition the Congress has cleared for the President's signature S. 2057, an act to require the Secretary of Defense to reimburse certain transportation expenses of members of the U.S. Air Force. These actions changed the level of budget authority, outlays or revenues for 2004. I ask unanimous consent that the report, with its accompanying letter, be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, I believe we are going to have debate that will last about an hour and a half. My colleague from North Dakota will be in control of an hour and myself or Senator Gregg will be in control of 30 minutes. At the conclusion of that debate time, we expect to appoint conferees. The House has already appointed conferees. They appointed conferees on Monday. We expect to appoint conferees at the conclusion of our debate time. And for the information of our colleagues, and especially the conferees--hopefully they have been notified--we will have a conference this afternoon beginning at 2:30. We will go as long as necessary to hear everybody's viewpoints on both the House and Senate budget proposals and any constructive suggestions they might have to improve them. I look forward to that discussion. I would love to see us come out of conference with a bipartisan budget. That usually has not happened in the recent past, but I would love for it to happen in this case. Again, we look forward to going to conference and resolving the differences between the House and the Senate. There are not a lot of differences. The numbers are pretty close on the outlay side, and the numbers are pretty close on the revenue side. There are some differences, and we will have to work those out. There are some differences in enforcement provisions. We will work those out. That is what conferences are for. They are compromises between the House and the Senate. I compliment our colleagues in the House for passing a budget. We actually passed a budget the week before last. I thank all of our colleagues. We actually ended up passing the budget after 4 days. The last day was a fairly long day. It lasted into Friday morning, about 1:30 in the morning. We did it with 25 votes. That was half the number of votes we had the previous year. The previous year we had 51 votes. Those votes dealt with a lot of different issues. Hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes were proposed, and hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending were proposed, most of which were defeated. We accepted some amendments, and we will work through those amendments. We have other issues, I will tell my colleague, and he is well aware of it. My colleague from North Dakota is very familiar with the budget. There is a reserve fund, and there are a lot of different issues. The House has some, and we have some. We have to work those out. That is what budgets are for. The House intends to pass this bill this week. That means we have to do a lot of work. Some work has already happened behind the scenes. Chairman Nussle and I have been trying to resolve issues and lay the groundwork, but a lot of major decisions have yet to be made. Again, that is what conferences are for. So I look forward to working with all of our colleagues in the Senate, especially the conferees, to come up with a budget resolution that will significantly reduce the deficit. I say significantly reduce the deficit, the budget we passed in the Senate would reduce the deficit, which is far too high, by half in 3 years. I hope we can meet that goal coming out of the conference committee. That is not easy. It is not easy in any way, shape, or form. So I want to make sure everyone is aware of that. Again, I thank our colleagues for their cooperation. I thank my colleague from North Dakota for his cooperation today because we will get conferees appointed, we will go to conference, and, frankly, we will meet as long as necessary to get this job done. That certainly is our intention. I had hoped that possibly the Senate could pass the budget resolution on Friday. I believe it is the majority leader's intention, if the conference agreement is reached and the House passes it this week, that we would take it up on the Senate floor next Thursday. That is certainly acceptable with this Senator, and I will be happy to work with all of our colleagues to make that happen. For the information of our colleagues, once a conference agreement is reached, the rules of the Senate provide for 10 hours of debate and a vote on the budget resolution. Unless things change, I expect that would be sometime next Thursday. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. That is correct, a week from Thursday.

Mr. NICKLES. Correct.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. NICKLES. How much on the other side?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I compliment my colleague from North Dakota. I appreciate the cooperation. We will soon be appointing conferees. That is my objective. I want to thank Senator Gregg and Senator Grassley for their remarks. A couple of things. It is important we pass a budget. We will appoint conferees and then we will go to work out the differences between the House and the Senate. We have differences between the House and the Senate, but in my 24 years in the Senate we are probably closer with the House in the 2 budget resolutions--the Senate resolution is probably closer to the House resolution than most times in the past. In the past, we have had cases where the House resolution was 5 years, our resolution was 10, and we never reconciled that difference, or we had a hard time reconciling it. We had 1 year we didn't pass a budget in the Senate. They did in the House. This year the numbers are pretty close. I have a couple of comments. I heard a statement in the budget debate on the floor. I would say, my staff has compiled the amount of spending that was in the amendments that were debated on the floor. Our Democrat colleagues offered amendments that would have 1-year tax increases of $86 billion and 1-year spending increases of $81 billion for 2005. For 5 years, that figure would be tax increases of $443 billion, and 5-year spending increases, $382 billion. That is assuming no inflation. If you take the first year and extrapolate, some said we only spend for 1 year, but there are programs which would obviously be spent further. I have a chart that extrapolates and continues those. That is how I came up with those figures. I ask unanimous consent to have those printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES. I want my colleagues to know we keep tally and keep measures of how much some of these amendments cost. This is an accurate portrayal. We had amendments that would increase taxes and spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. Those are now entered in the Record. I also heard some comments on pay-go. I might mention for our colleagues, last week Senator Murray had an amendment. I raised a point of order on it that most all of our colleagues on the Democrat side said, let's waive pay-go. Let's spend an extra $18 billion. We have a tax credit, but basically it was to spend more money, $18 billion. We didn't waive it, but most of our colleagues on the Democrat side who profess belief in pay-go voted to waive pay-go--for a bill, incidentally, that had never had a hearing before the Finance Committee, never been vetted. It is just proposed on the floor. I happen to be a supporter of pay-go. Incidentally, people act like we have not had pay-go for the last year. That is false. The budget we passed last year had pay-go for anything that wasn't assumed in the budget resolution, period. We used pay-go and other points of order, some of which are redundant. You can make a budget point of order because a committee exceeds its allocation, or you can make a pay-go point of order. I used both. We made 61 or 62 budget points of order, on most of which we prevailed, which saved over $800 billion in new spending. It seems a lot of people who are now pro pay-go are trying to make sure the tax cuts that are presently law are not extended. I hope that will not be successful. I just make those comments. I think I would much prefer to have the debate, whether it is on pay-go, the amount of money we spend for defense or the amount of money we spend on nondefense, or new budget rules--incidentally, these rules apply only to the Senate--but I think it would be appropriate for us to have those in conference. For the information of all our colleagues, the Budget House and Senate conferees will be meeting at 2:30 this afternoon in the Senate budget room on the sixth floor of the Dirksen Building. We tried to find a room in the Capitol and were not successful. For the information of our colleagues, I think we had a good debate today. I look forward to a constructive, positive conference, one in which we will hear all sides and all viewpoints and consider constructive suggestions for making improvements. It is my hope we can conclude the Budget conference in a very short period of time. The House would like to vote on it Thursday or Friday. I think that is possible. I think it would be important for us to actually pass a budget that will show we can get the deficit down, in half, in 3 or 4 years. I expect that will be our result. That is my objective. I hope to do that and I hope we can accomplish that. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I again thank my colleague from North Dakota for his cooperation and I look forward to the conference. I see my good friend from Massachusetts is here. I know he offered an amendment on minimum wage. I know he would be disappointed if I didn't respond to his proposal. While he is here, I want to make a couple of comments about the amendment which I believe is pending before the Senate. It may have been set aside, but I believe it is pending, Senator Kennedy's amendment, which increased the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7 an hour. Is that the pending amendment?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I have great respect for my colleague from Massachusetts. If the State of Massachusetts wants to increase the minimum wage to $7, or $8, let them do it. What may work in Boston probably does not work in my hometown of Ponca City, OK, or maybe in Sallisaw, OK. I used to work for minimum wage. I made minimum wage when it was $1.60 an hour in 1968. My wife and I made that. That was our first job when we married. And by having a job, we could start climbing the ladder. I am afraid Senator Kennedy's amendment which says let us increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7 an hour is going to hurt some of the people he professes to help. I heard his comment yesterday that this is going to lift a lot of people out of poverty, or help them. If that is the case, let us not stop at $7. Let's make it $10 or $20. If you can lift people out of poverty by mandating a higher wage, why in the world would we stop at $7 an hour? I frankly want people to make more than $7 an hour. Why in the world would we set this level? If you are actually going to be eliminating poverty or lifting people out of poverty, let us increase it dramatically more. Let us make it $20 an hour. I do not know if a second-degree amendment is in order. Maybe we should have an amendment to make it $10 an hour. I would like for everybody in America to make at least $10 an hour. My daughter who works close to minimum wage and is a college student would love to have $10 an hour. But I am not sure she would have a job. Maybe in Boston they could pay a student $10 an hour working part time in a clothing store on weekends. Maybe they could pay that much, and maybe they can't. But I know one thing: In some rural areas they cannot. That student who may be working not in Boston, maybe not going to an Ivy League school, but maybe going to a vo-tech school in rural South Dakota where they can't pay $7 an hour, would be out of luck. Maybe it is a minority student in New York City, or maybe in southern California who can't get a job at $7 an hour. Maybe that job is flipping hamburgers. People always make fun of working at one of those fast-food places, how terrible that is. It is a job. Maybe McDonalds can afford to pay for it, but a lot of places can't. Maybe it is pumping gas or sacking groceries. They may have a job now, let us say, making $5.15, or maybe $5.50, or $6. But if we pass this amendment, we are saying if you don't make $7, we would rather you be unemployed. It is against the Federal law. Even though it is to your mutual benefit and the benefit of whoever is hiring you to make $6.50 an hour, we are going to say no because of Senator Kennedy's amendment. If you do not make $7 an hour, you are unemployed. I find that to be a bad economic argument. I am afraid it would hurt a lot of people. I am afraid a lot of lower income people might not start climbing the ladder. My wife and I worked for minimum wage. We worked for a janitor service in Stillwater, OK for minimum wage. We did that for a couple of months. I asked for a raise. We got a very small raise. As a matter of fact, we quit and started our own janitor service. We learned enough to start our own janitor service. My point being not to lift this economic ladder so high that some people can't get on. By saying if you make less than $7 an hour, if the job can't pay $7 an hour, we don't want you to have that job, maybe as a result of that we don't have people pumping gas. Almost everything is self- serve. We don't have too many people sacking groceries today. There are a lot of jobs maybe that have been priced out of the marketplace. I don't know if that is good. I would rather have somebody get a job even if it doesn't pay very much because they start climbing the economic ladder. I would hate to pull that ladder up so high that maybe it would deny them the opportunity to start climbing, to start improving, to learn work habits. One of the good things about a job--and many people like myself and others started when they were very young--is if they did not learn anything else they learned to be on time. You have to report to work. You have work habits. You have certain things to do that are expected. One of the things you learn many times is it is not enough money. They learned they can't get by. My daughter has already learned that working part time in a clothing store won't cut it. It is not enough. She demands more. So she knows she has to improve her skills and have a higher education so she can demand more in the workplace. But having that job is good. If we start telling everybody all across America no, if the job doesn't pay at least 36 percent more than the present minimum wage, at least $7 an hour, sorry, I am afraid there will be a lot of jobs lost, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of jobs this amendment would cost, but it will cost many. I don't think we should try to legislate economics. As a matter of fact, I know a lot of businesses--I suspect there are a bunch in Montana and other places--particularly rural areas, that are struggling to survive. They might be small mom-and-pop stores, and Wal-Mart came in down the street. Maybe they are not making any money today. They might be struggling. Maybe it is a little hardware store in a town with a population of 12,000 and they have been there for 30 years. They have part-time help. They may pay somebody $5.15 or $6 an hour to work there. All of a sudden, a big Wal-Mart comes in. They are losing money and business. They are just trying to hang on. Then Congress passes a bill which says the minimum wage is going to go up by 36 percent. Now you will have to increase that from $5.15 to $7 an hour. We are not making any money now. We are losing money and can't compete. We are just hanging on. They realize they can't lose money forever. I am afraid they will have to close the doors. How many rural communities have you seen where in downtowns they are really struggling? I wonder what this amendment will do to those towns. Some of those towns are trying to hang on. Some of those towns are trying to revive. Again, maybe some Members in this body think it is a living wage, or it is getting people out of poverty. That is good. But it may be putting some people in poverty. It may be denying the opportunity for a young student who might be working part time to help pay for vo-tech, or maybe work part time so they can get through college, or to become a secretary, or you name it. We are just arbitrarily going to say no. If you can't make $7 an hour, we have decided it is against the law for you to have a job. That is what this amendment would do. If you ask the question in a poll if you support an increase in the minimum, a lot of people used to say yes. If you ask the question whether it should be against the law for anybody to work for less than $7 an hour, even though they might all agree it is not to their advantage to work for less than that, they would say no, it should not be against the law. That is what this says. But this amendment says it is against the Federal law. Again, if the State of Massachusetts wants to do it, and its economy is good, and maybe wage patterns and living costs are so high, that might be appropriate. But many States have minimum wage laws. There is a lot of difference between them. There is a lot of variance, as well there should be. But to come in and say we want to increase the federal minimum wage to $7--that may take away the chance for some people to start climbing that economic ladder. It is far more important to give people opportunity to work than almost anything we do. The work habits and skills they obtain from their first job are very important. The first job for some people is a minimum wage job. I would hate to price people out of the marketplace in so many cases. Clearly, I think this would do it. Clearly, it would do it in some parts of the country. One other comment: It was alluded to. We haven't raised this in several years. So now is the time. Why won't these Republicans let us do this? The Democrats ran the Senate from June 2001 throughout 2002. They could have offered minimum wage. I heard it hasn't been increased since 1997. It has been 7 years and we want to increase it now. They ran the Senate most of 2001 and all of 2002, 4 and 5 years after the last increase. How many votes did we have in 2001 and 2002 when Tom Daschle was the majority leader? Senator Kennedy was chairman of the Labor Committee. How many votes did we have? We did not have any votes. They controlled the floor. They could have offered an amendment. They could have had a bill reported out of committee and sent it to the Senate floor, and we could have debated it. I would have debated it. But we did not have it. We did not have one during that timeframe. So, I will mention, this is kind of interesting: they had plenty of chances to debate this when they were in the majority. They had the majority leader. They had control of the Senate. They could have offered the bill at any time during that period of time. So I mention those issues. I do not want us to make a mistake. I do not want us to pass a bill that will probably cost hundreds of thousands of people jobs, and particularly hundreds of thousands of people who are at the low end of the economic scale. Let's give them a chance to climb that economic ladder. We do not do that by passing laws that say it is against the law for them to work for less than $7 an hour. I would urge our colleagues, if and when we vote on the Kennedy amendment, to vote no on the Kennedy amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the pending amendment offered by our colleague from Washington, Mrs. Murray, decreases revenues and if adopted would cause an increase in the deficit in excess of the levels permitted in the most recent budget resolution. Therefore, I raise a point of order against the amendment pursuant to section 505 of House current resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2004.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, this bill has a big tax provision that is estimated to cost $18.4 billion. Therefore, a budget point of order does lie against this amendment. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of our time.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, to inform my colleague from Washington, at the appropriate time, when she concludes her statement, I plan on making a budget point of order. First, I compliment my colleague, Senator Graham from South Carolina, for his leadership on this issue for years. I believe today we are going to pass a bill that is long overdue. I also compliment my colleague, Senator DeWine from Ohio, for his leadership. I complimented him in private. I have observed his very high quality of debate. We have had some excellent debate today, and I compliment Members on all sides. I think it has been very important and we are going to pass a good bill today, largely due to the leadership of the Senator from Ohio, Mr. DeWine, and also Senator Graham of South Carolina. I compliment both of our colleagues for their effort. This is an important bill, one that deserves to be passed and sent to the President. I rise today to speak against the amendment of our colleague from Washington. I have great respect for our colleague from Washington, especially for the title of the amendment. The Wellstone Domestic Violence Act is very well named, but when looking at the substance of the bill I find it leaves a lot to be desired. I happen to believe in the legislative process. This bill has not had a hearing. I happen to be on the Finance Committee. There are two or three things that deal with Finance Committee issues that we have not touched. It did not go through the Labor Committee. It addresses family leave, not the Family Medical Leave Act. It is basically a whole new act. It is not consistent with the Family Medical Leave Act. To qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act, we exempt employers with 50 employees or less. This says employers of 15 or less. That does not make sense to me. I look at the unemployment section of it, and a lot of people are not even aware of this--I have not heard very much debate about this--but if a State does not comply with the unemployment dictates given by this bill we tell the States they must have unemployment compensation for people who are victims of abuse as defined by this. The tax to the State goes from $56 a year to $434 a year. That is a 675-percent increase. That is a heavy penalty on the States. One could say, well, they give States time to amend their law. They are given 25 days if they are in session and 180 days if they are not in session. Oklahoma is shortly going to be out of session and we do not go back into session for the rest of the year, so 180 days would not be adequate. I guess there would have to be a special session. I used to serve in the Oklahoma Legislature. Most legislatures are kind of like Congress, they do not move that fast. If they do not move that fast, they have a very heavy penalty increase in their unemployment compensation taxes. The main thing I guess I am objecting to, as I look at it, there is a new tax credit in this bill. It is a 40-percent tax credit for a provision that is very expensive. It applies to a lot of things. It applies to a long definition that would qualify expenses that an employer might incur to implement workplace safety. I used to be an employer in the private sector, and I know all employers are interested in safety. Almost all of those expenses related to safety are expensed. None of them, to my knowledge, get a tax credit. This amendment would say, for some safety provisions employers are going to get a 40-percent tax credit. Then I started looking at the definition. It applies to basically any new security personnel, purchase, or installation of new security equipment and so on. That is wide open. In this day and age of terrorist threats, there are a lot of people who are going to be hiring more security personnel and they are going to say: Thank you very much, Government, because you just gave us a 40-percent tax credit. If a company is profitable, that is worth a lot. If they are not profitable, it is not worth much. I asked the Joint Tax Committee to give an estimate on how much this would cost. I just received it. I ask unanimous consent that a letter I received from Dr. George Yin, that gives the revenue estimate, be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, is all time yielded back from our colleague from Washington?

Mr. NICKLES. He says the cost of this provision in 5 years is estimated at $8.7 billion, and over 10 years, $18.4 billion. That is a lot of money. We are going to say companies get a 40- percent tax credit if they do something in the realm of safety, which one could almost drive a truck through anything and call it safety. I am not a big fan of tax credits anyway, but that is beside the point. This is a very expensive provision, one, in my opinion, that has not been well thought out, one that is enormously expensive, one that is not paid for. A week before last, we had votes saying we should be paying for these new spending proposals and tax cuts. Well, this is a big tax cut that is not paid for. Frankly, it is a big loophole that is not paid for. It also causes other little constitutional problems. We have a Constitution that says all revenue measures have to originate in the House. We do not have a tax bill before us. This did not originate in the House of Representatives. I know my colleagues very well in the House. I respect them and I know they will blue-slip this if this amendment is passed because this would turn this into a tax bill. So this amendment would kill this bill. Our colleagues in the House want to pass the bill as it is. I hope that a majority in the Senate want to pass the bill as it is. As it is, this amendment does a couple of things. It increases spending and it increases taxes, both of which violate the budget, both of which I can make a budget point of order against, and at the appropriate time I will make a budget point of order against this amendment, certainly for the tax provision, and I will leave it at that. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. I move to reconsider the 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 March 22, 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 $14.1 billion in budget authority and under the budget resolution by $222 million in outlays in 2004. Current level for revenues is $244 million below the budget resolution in 2004. This is my first report for the second session of the 108th Congress. I ask unanimous consent that the report be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES

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