Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Craig), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Smith), the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Voinovich), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson), and the Senator from Montana (Mr. Burns) are necessarily absent. I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from Montana (Mr. Burns) would vote ``yea.''

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Craig), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Smith), the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Voinovich), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), and the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Hutchinson) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Texas (Mr. Gramm), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Iowa for his amendment, and also Senator Dorgan as well. I have great respect for Senator Cochran. When it comes to agricultural policy, I look to Senator Cochran for advice. I just happen to disagree with him on this amendment. I am going to vote for his substitute. But I do think a limitation is in order. I was kind of shocked to find out that, in some cases, some farms have been farming the Government quite well, and they make more money from the Government than they do from the marketplace. There has to be some limit. If not, are we going to allow people to just make millions off these programs? To a lot of us, this agricultural policy is kind of arcane, and maybe it is hard to understand. If you are not from an agricultural State and you do not wrestle with it a lot, it is kind of difficult to understand. I have tried to understand a little bit of it, and I do understand a few things: A few people are doing a lot and getting a lot of money from the Federal Government. That does not mean that their net is good. They may lose a lot of money. They may get a lot of money from the Federal Government and lose a lot of money. I do not doubt that that happens. It happens a lot. But how much should Uncle Sam be writing in checks to individual farmers and/or their families? Shouldn't there be a limit? I happen to think there should be a limit. I know I have some constituents who are listening right now who are very disappointed in what I am saying because it is going to cost them a lot of money if this amendment is adopted. They have told me that. I respect them. And some of them are family farmers. But there has to be some limit. I made my career in business. I did not get Government help and did not want Government help. But if we are getting Government help, there still should be some limit on what Uncle Sam is going to do. Looking at some of the charts--just looking at the top 10 farm subsidy recipients--my colleague says, a couple of those are co-ops, but they were averaging almost $10 million a year. And it goes on down to different farms. Maybe some of those are individual farms, but they are in the millions of dollars a year. Should Uncle Sam be writing checks to different groups, organizations, family farms, and so on, in the millions? I have a couple of Oklahomans getting in the millions. I do not think we should do that. Let's look at the present farm bill. The present farm bill has basically a cap of about $460,000. You have the flexibility contracts of $80,000, loan deficiency payments of $150,000. That is $230,000. You can have two other farm entities and get half of those again, and so that is another $115,000. Adding $115,000 twice to that totals $460,000. But also under the present farm bill some people may say, wait a minute, I thought some people were getting millions. You have no limits on what are called certificate gains, so you can get well above $460,000. That is present law. That is the reason we find some recipients doing quite well. I say ``doing quite well,'' meaning getting a lot of money. They may not be doing very well, but they get a lot of money from Uncle Sam. Looking at the proposal by Senator Harkin, the underlying bill, they can do better. Present law is $460,000. Now that level goes up from $75,000 to $100,000. So now it is $250,000. You still have the two other farms that can get 50 percent of that. So the combination of three farming entities can get $500,000. Also, under Senator Harkin's bill, there are no limits on the certificate gains, no caps, so they can get more than $500,000. So if you look at the charts from the Environmental Working Group that say some people are making this much, they can get a lot more under the Harkin bill than they could last year, and there is still no limit, no cap. So you have almost unlimited payments. If somebody happens to be farming--and you have market prices below loan prices-- they can get hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let's look at the Grassley amendment. The Grassley amendment says we ought to have a limitation. So he has flexibility contracts at $75,000, loan deficiency payments of $150,000, for a total of $225,000, and if you made another $50,000, that would be a total of $275,000. But guess what. The certificate gains are included in that $275,000, whereas under the Harkin bill, and under present law, the certificate gains are not counted. So there is a cap under present law. Under the Harkin bill, there is no cap. This is saying $275,000. Well, $275,000 is a lot of money. Granted, if somebody is losing $400,000, they may say: I am still losing money. I am sympathetic to that. I just don't think there should be an unlimited amount we are going to be writing in checks. Somebody can say: Write us a check for $5 million; I just lost $6 million. Where are we going to stop? I am not a big fan, as some people know, of loan guarantees, whether we are talking about steel or airplanes. I have some reservations about the Federal Government making loan guarantees, subsidizing business, and so on. The amendment of the Senator from Iowa makes good sense. I urge my colleagues to adopt it. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a chart that shows the percentage of payments made by income. It shows the upper 1 percent getting 19 percent of the payments, and the upper 10 percent getting 67 percent of payments in agriculture.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the floor and thank my colleagues.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Gramm), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson) are necessarily absent. I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would vote ``yea.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I object.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, reserving the right to object, we debated this before. If my colleague from South Dakota wants to, we have a couple of amendments on our side we did not get a vote on that I believe we would have a majority vote on as well. Now I oppose the amendment of my colleague from Illinois because he is expanding a program that we have never done before. The majority leader mentioned all the times we have expanded unemployment compensation in the past. We have never done that for temporary workers. That is a brand new expansion that doubles the cost. That increases the cost from about $8 billion to $16 billion. So with great respect, I object to the unanimous consent request of my colleague from Illinois.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I thank the majority leader and also appreciate his willingness to modify the unemployment compensation amendment to make it basically universal for all States for 13 weeks. I think that is fair, appropriate, and supported by all Senators. I am glad we were able to pass it. I encourage my colleagues in the House to pass it as well. Also, our colleague and friend, Senator Landrieu from Louisiana, has suggested improvements to be made on the adoption credit. Senator Bunning also has an amendment dealing with adoption and deductibility. We will work with both colleagues to see if we cannot come up with a package in the not too distant future that I hope all of our colleagues will pass and likewise I hope the House will favorably review. I make one additional comment. I am disappointed we have not been successful at making the bridge in partisan warfare to pass the stimulus package to help create jobs. I urge our colleagues not to be quite so fast in the future with cloture votes. I didn't like cloture votes when this side offered them, and I don't like them when the other side offers them. It denies the Senators the opportunity to offer amendments. We had several amendments on this side that we could not offer because of cloture. If cloture were invoked, they would not have the ability to offer a permanent R&D amendment, which I believe has a majority vote; we could not offer making the death tax repeal permanent, which I believe has a majority vote; we could not offer an amendment that Senator Domenici was pushing for, a payroll tax holiday, which many people on both sides of the aisle say has merit. I hope in the future, when we are talking about the farm bill--and I believe we will go to the farm bill soon--I urge the majority leader not to move forward with cloture. Consider amendments. No one I know wants to filibuster the farm bill, no one was filibustering the stimulus package, but we had several provisions in the stimulus package to try to make it truly stimulative and create jobs. When we get to the farm bill, I hope the first thing we look at is not a cloture vote. Some Members want an amendment to have payment limitations so some farmers are not making millions--corporate farmers are not making millions out of the farm bill. We find out they are under present law. So there is an amendment to have payment limitations. Those amendments would fall if cloture were invoked. I urge our colleagues to offer amendments, be timely, be considerate of others, have good debate, find out where the votes are, and, hopefully, not go through the idea of a cloture vote, and if we don't get cloture we pull the bill down. That is a recipe for getting nothing done. That is how the stimulus bill did not pass. We cannot get 60 votes; we will pull the bill down. I wish that were not the result. I suggested we maybe take up the stimulus bill and consider X number of amendments on each side and pass the bill. That was not the way the majority leader went on this bill. That is fine. That was his decision. I think it is regrettable. I think we could have done some things to increase employment, increase jobs. I hope when we take up the agriculture bill, it will not be under cloture, it will be with both sides offering constructive amendments to improve a bill that is in desperate need of improvement. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Domenici) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I am disappointed today that the majority leader has decided to pull down the stimulus package. We are going to have a cloture vote on the majority leader's package. He calls it a stimulus package, but there is no stimulus in it. There is a lot of spending. He says if he does not get 60 votes, basically preventing any other amendments, he is going to pull down the stimulus bill. In other words, he wants a spending package, not a stimulus bill, and if we are going to put stimulus amendments in it, no bill. I am looking at an amendment Senator Kyl has pending to make the death tax repeal permanent. That would make a real positive change to a lot of businesses, a lot of agriculture. That is a positive amendment. It is added as an amendment to one Senator Baucus had dealing with agricultural spending. I looked at almost all the Democratic amendments, and they are almost all spending: More money for agriculture, more money for Medicaid, more money to increase the Federal payments share, more money for temporary employees to the Federal program--we have never done that in the past-- new entitlement programs; no stimulus. I am looking at the amendment Senator Bond offered on expensing. That passed overwhelmingly. That would help stimulate the economy. The accelerated depreciation that Senator Gordon Smith offered would help encourage people to make investments. The R&D tax credit Senator Allard was offering would help encourage people to make investments, particularly in research and development. Senator Domenici had a payroll tax holiday. We are not going to be able to vote on that. Most importantly, we are not going to get to vote on the substitute Senator Grassley, Senator Collins, Senator Breaux, and others worked on. The bipartisan package that I believe we have a majority vote for in the Senate, we are not going to even have an up-or-down vote on. We get a cloture vote on it. If we enact cloture on the Daschle bill, we do not even get a vote. That bill is nongermane. It falls. We did not get to have votes yesterday. This side was ready to have votes. I made the commitment I would help finish the bill yesterday, certainly by today, trying to limit amendments, trying to have votes on the amendments. Let us pass the bill. Let us pass the bill and see how the votes come out, but no, we cannot do that. We do not want to vote on the Kyl amendment. We do not want to have a vote on making a permanent death tax repeal. We do not want an up-or-down vote on the Grassley-Breaux-Collins amendment. We do not get to have that. So I say to my colleagues, if they really believe in the Senate tradition of allowing Senators to offer germane amendments, in this case stimulative amendments, to vote no on the cloture vote we will have in the next 15 or 20 minutes. I think it is an important vote. I hate to see us give up and not pass a stimulus bill. We have a chance now to make a bill that is not stimulative into a bill that really could create jobs. The economy is soft. It does need a little shot in the arm. The underlying bill, the Daschle bill, does not do it. There are several proposals, several good amendments on which Senator Gramm, Senator Grassley, and others have worked. I mentioned about a half dozen. If we could pass some or all of those, I think we would make the bill worthwhile, make it worth passing. Not only would it do no harm, it would do some good. It would help create jobs. More importantly, for the process of the Senate, I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Daschle cloture petition in a few moments because individual Senators should be entitled to offer those amendments. They should have their day. They should have a chance. Then they will send a bill that truly is stimulative to conference and hopefully we can get a bill on the President's desk that would create jobs. Let me make it crystal clear; some people said the Republicans are filibustering, but there is no way. No one can say Republicans filibustered this bill. We have legitimate amendments that would stimulate the economy. I urge my colleagues to give us a chance to offer those amendments, to pass a good stimulus bill today, and to vote no on the Daschle cloture petition in a few moments. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first I wish to compliment Senator Clinton from New York for her speech in criticizing the International Olympic Committee for refusing to allow us to use the damaged flag that flew in the recovery efforts at the World Trade Center. I find that decision very offensive. I am going to join her on that letter, and I would encourage my colleagues to do so as well.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, at this time, I tell my friend and colleague, I will not object because I have a great deal of respect for him. We are ready to proceed with a lot of amendments on the stimulus bill. My colleague from Arizona has an amendment to make the estate tax elimination permanent. As people know, it is effective for 1 year and goes off the books; it sunsets. It should be made permanent. We have other amendments dealing with net offset carryback for 5 years. We would like to have a vote on that amendment. We have amendments that we believe will help stimulate the economy. We would like to have votes on them. I guess we can go into a period for morning business, have the caucuses, and people can strategize. Democrats and Republicans do have several amendments pending. Frankly, a lot of us would like to vote on those amendments to improve the package the majority leader introduced, which we believe comes up a little short. I am not going to object to his request for a period for morning business. My understanding is we can debate the stimulus package through that period. But I hope we will have a chance for Democrats and Republicans to offer their amendments later today and tomorrow. So I mention to my colleague, who is my very good friend, that we want to have some votes to improve this package today, but I shall not object to his request.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, this amendment is a very positive amendment. The Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, introduced an amendment that would add another $2.3 billion in emergency spending for agriculture. We debated that last week. We defeated it. We defeated it on a budget point of order. I made that motion because we have had a lot of emergency spending for agriculture. As a matter of fact, the last couple of years it has just ballooned. We averaged less than a billion or two for decades, and then all of a sudden the last couple of years we start doing $12 billion, $13 billion, $14 billion of emergency spending. The Senator from Montana said we have more problems; let's add another $2 billion or $3 billion--not in the context of the farm bill or the budget but just another couple billion dollars. Now that we are in deficits, I question that. My colleague from Arizona offered an amendment that my farmers have been talking to me about for the last 20-some years, and that is to repeal the death tax. Why in the world should agriculture, or anybody who has a business, have to sell the business because somebody happens to pass away? Somebody passes away and all of a sudden the Government says it wants 55 percent of their farm, 55 percent of their business. I happen to think that is wrong. In the tax bill we passed last year, we reduced the estate tax and we increased the exemptions. We increased the exemption from $675,000 to a million dollars beginning January 1 of 2002. So that is a positive thing, a good thing. Over the course of the tax bill, over the next 10 years, we eliminated the death tax, increased the exemption from $1 million to $2 million to $4 million, where in the year 2010 the death tax is repealed. That entire bill was sunsetted. People who do not follow the Senate and do not know our rules ask why did we sunset it? We sunsetted it because of the reconciliation bill. The reconciliation bill, by law, has to be within a 10-year timeframe. We could not make permanent tax law changes. We could change the law in 10 years. So that is exactly what we did. The Senator from Arizona says in this particular case the sunset does not work. When people are doing estate planning, they want to know what their tax liability is when they die and, if they have an estate, they can plan accordingly. Maybe they can give their property to a son or a grandson, a grandchild, a granddaughter, or maybe they want to give it to a trust or they want to give it to a charity or they want to break it up. Whatever they want to do, they should have those options. They should not be faced with the current situation of well, OK, we are going to reduce the death tax for years, increase the exemption up to $4 million, in effect reducing the death tax, but in the year 2011 it reverts back and all of a sudden you are looking at an enormous tax rate, a tax rate that would be as high as 50 percent. That is wrong. So the Senator from Arizona says: Let us fix it. Let us make it permanent. That was the intent of the bill that we passed last year. I believe that is where the votes are in the Senate. If they believe in free enterprise, if they believe in agriculture, if they believe in family farms, if they do not want an enterprise, whether it be a farm or a business, if they do not want somebody to have to sell it because someone passes away, to give Government half of it, then support the amendment of Senator Kyl. If my colleagues really want to do something, let us make this tax change, which, because we were under reconciliation last year had to be temporary, had to be sunsetted. We are not under reconciliation now so we do not have those constrictions imposed upon us as Members of the Senate. We are not under those rules, so I encourage my colleagues to not say, oh, yes, they supported elimination of the death tax, and in the year 2011 it is reinstated at the previously higher rates. That would be grossly unfair and grossly inequitable. For people who are trying to do estate planning and trying to estimate what their tax liability would be for their kids or for their grandkids, it is tremendously unfair. It might be great for the estate lawyers, for estate planners and others because the more Congress changes this, the more they get to do in writing wills and rewriting estates and how planning should be done. So the way to solve this problem is to pass the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. That is the best thing we could do for agriculture, not another $2 billion, $3 billion in emergency assistance. Every Congressman and every Senator knows if we could go back and tell our agricultural community, the Farm Bureau, the farmers union, the wheat growers, the cattlemen, and so on, that we repealed the death tax, we know we would get a standing ovation because of the very fact that many of those farms are second and third generation. They are wealthy on paper but they are cash poor. So if they pass away now, they know their survivors will have to sell the operation to pay the death tax, to pay the tax that will be owed the Federal Government. When the Government comes in and says they want half, they will have to sell it; they will have to break it up. In the process, it will cost a lot of jobs. The amendment of Senator Kyl creates jobs. It will help maintain small businesses so they do not have to break up. It will help maintain farms and ranches so they will not have to break them up into smaller units or sell them for the taxman. So I again compliment my colleague from Arizona. I think he has an excellent amendment. He has added it to the amendment of Senator Baucus. I encourage people on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of the amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be made a cosponsor of Senator Kyl's amendment.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Thompson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Specter), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Lott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I regret to state to my colleagues it is pretty obvious the Democratic majority leader does not want to pass a stimulus package. We needed to amend the package. We have a lot of amendments that were pending and we have not had a vote all day. We had amendments this morning on which we were willing to vote, amendments this afternoon on which we were willing to vote. That was how we would work our way through and have a bill that would pass and go to conference. Obviously, for some reason, the majority leader decided, no, he would file cloture, have cloture on his underlying proposal, which many Members believe falls far short of providing any stimulus. It provides a lot of spending. The majority leader's underlying proposal has spending for rebate, $14 billion for people who did not pay taxes. They certainly did not pay any income tax or they would have gotten a tax cut last year. They may have paid payroll taxes, but likely they are available for an earned-income tax credit, and in many cases three or four times the payroll tax they paid. So basically, $14 billion in welfare reform payments that many were trying to call a tax cut or rebate, but it was not a rebate. There is another $5 billion for an entitlement program for States, supposedly to help pay for health care costs, but it was in the form of an entitlement. So it would not be $5 billion for 1 year, although it was sunsetted in 1 year, but in all likelihood will be continued indefinitely and probably cost more like $50 or $60 billion over 10 years. He had unemployment compensation extension at about $8 billion. And I notice our colleagues on the Democratic side said: That is not good enough. We need to expand that and have that apply to temporary workers. The Federal Government has never paid unemployment compensation for temporary workers. Some people, perhaps, want to take advantage of the fact there is a recession, so just expand Federal entitlements. That was going to cost about $16 billion. Then the majority leader introduced the only stimulus piece, accelerated depreciation. That was 30 percent. Most people said for a year. We found out the commitment had to be made by September 10 of this year. That is not 12 months; that is more like 8 months from now. So the stimulative side of his proposal is very small. The spending side was very big. I thought, well, I don't like starting with that. I would have preferred starting with the bipartisan bill on which Senator Breaux and Senator Collins and Senator Snowe and Senator Grassley and others worked. That was a bill that most, if you count both sides, thought there was a majority vote for. That should be underlying, but we did not get that. So we thought: We will amend the majority leader's proposal and improve it and come up with a bill worthy of passing to conference. We had several amendments. Some amendments that were adopted made the bill better. Some on our side would actually have stimulus impact. We had an expensing amendment that Senator Bond and Senator Hutchinson and Senator Collins passed. That would allow small business to expense immediately items up to $40,000. Right now the level is $24,000. That would have created jobs. That was a positive amendment. Senator Gordon Smith had an amendment dealing with accelerated depreciation, 30 percent for 3 years. The point of order was made and it was not successful. He came back with one that was 2 years at 30 percent. That passed and would have created jobs. We had an amendment by Senator Kyl to make the death tax repeal that we passed last year permanent. That would have been positive. You say: How could that make a difference? It makes a difference because there are farms and ranches in Missouri, Oklahoma, and all across the country that would not have to be broken up to pay the death tax. Maybe some small businesses would decide not to be so small because they could agree and know they could grow without the Federal Government getting half of it. A lot of businesses almost suffocate. Owners know if they grow the business any more, the Government will get so much, so why grow it? Why work and expand and build and create more jobs if Uncle Sam will come in and get half? So if we passed the death tax repeal proposed by the Senator from Arizona, it would have had a positive stimulative impact on the economy. Unfortunately, our colleagues on the Democratic side do not want to vote on that amendment. They wanted to have other amendments. They wanted amendments to increase agricultural emergency spending. Senator Baucus had that amendment. We defeated that amendment sometime last week. It was offered again. Senator Kyl offered a second-degree amendment in addition to that to provide death tax repeal, permanent repeal. To me, that would have been positive for agriculture. Unfortunately, our colleagues on the Democratic side did not want to vote on that amendment. They have not allowed a vote on the amendment. In other words, they are saying: We will vote on what we think is stimulative, but we don't want you to vote on your amendments. We will vote on spending increases. They had an amendment to increase the Medicaid Federal share. I don't know what is stimulative about that, but it certainly increases Federal Government costs. Medicaid is a Federal-State program, presumably the idea of 50/50. But in many cases the Federal ratio is 70 percent, not 50 percent, and this amendment would increase the Federal ratio by another 3 percent and cost $10 billion for a couple years and in all likelihood be extended indefinitely. It would have cost $50 billion or $60 billion. That was an amendment by our colleagues on the Democratic side: Increase the Federal share on Medicaid, and instead of 70 percent, make it 73 percent; or 60 percent, make it 63 percent. The State would pay the balance. Then they had an amendment to increase unemployment compensation, including temporary workers, and make that an entitlement. Maybe my daughter, who works part-time while she is a college student, if she changes jobs, could draw unemployment compensation. She might be appreciative, but that is an enormously expensive amendment. Every State has determined unemployment eligibility. Now we will say: States, you do or we will do it for you. And decide to do temporary workers. Some States do temporary workers; most States do not. Most States do not for a reason. But, no, we will do that. I look at the amendments of our colleagues on the Democratic side, and I don't see anything stimulative. I see a lot of spending-- agriculture, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, extend and expand entitlement programs, and do nothing to stimulate the economy, do nothing that would help create jobs. On the other hand, on the Republican side we have more amendments that we want to offer to stimulate the economy. I mentioned Senator Kyl's amendment. Senator Domenici has an amendment calling for a payroll tax holiday. Some Democrats say they like it. They are cosponsors of it. Guess what. We are not going to get a vote on it. The amendment offered by Senator Domenici might be a substitute for the entire package, it may well have a majority vote, but we are not going to get a vote on it. Why? Because cloture was filed. If we invoke cloture, this amendment falls. There is an amendment Senator Allard has making R&D tax credits permanent to encourage investment in research and development. We are not going to get a vote on it. There is a bipartisan package on which many Senators have worked. I mentioned earlier that Senator Breaux and Senator Collins and Senator Snowe and Senator Grassley--several Senators worked on it, Democrats and Republicans. We are not going to get a vote on it, even though we had a majority vote in December, probably still have a majority vote for it, the President said he would sign it, it would become law, could become law this week if we pass the bill the House passed. The House has actually passed a couple of stimulus packages. Let's pass the last one and let it become law. No, some people do not want to pass that one either. So we are not even going to get a vote on it. I think it is very disappointing, to use a word my colleague from South Dakota uses on occasion, to see that cloture was being called up so early. I can just see the plan. We will have a cloture vote on the Daschle underlying bill. It will not pass. It should not pass. I certainly hope it does not pass because I do not think the underlying bill is worth passing. And I do not think all these amendments I mentioned which would have a stimulative impact on our economy should be closed out. I do not think this side of the aisle should be foreclosed from offering amendments. We did not object to having an amendment on the emergency agriculture bill of Senator Baucus--emergency spending. It was not really relevant to the underlying bill, but we did it. We made a point of order. They can make a point of order on Senator Kyl's amendment. I would much prefer to have an up-or-down vote but no, ``We don't want to vote on his amendment, we don't want to vote on Senator Domenici's amendment; we don't want a vote on the bipartisan stimulus package. No, we are going to file cloture and pull the whole bill down. If we don't get cloture, we are still going to pull the bill down. We'll give a cloture vote on the bipartisan substitute''--because we filed cloture on it just so we can get a vote. The idea being, we will vote on cloture twice, and if we don't get cloture, we will just pull the bill down. I hope that is not the case. I think our economy needs a little shot in the arm. It is not in great shape. We have a lot of people who are still hurting, and if we could craft a positive stimulus bill that would create jobs, we would do something positive for America. I think what we have instead, we have the majority leader and unfortunately most Democrats--we will find out tomorrow--who are going to say we want to have our own little package. We want to have it our way. We can't consider other amendments. We will have it our way or we will pull the bill down. Tomorrow, when we vote on this--and I expect we will be voting on it at maybe 10:30 or 11:30 tomorrow--I urge our colleagues to vote no on the cloture vote and let us consider these amendments. We are more than willing on this side to have a limitation on amendments. For anybody on the other side of the aisle to say Republicans are filibustering this bill is totally false. People are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts. We are willing to consider these amendments. We are willing to enter into time limits on these amendments. We are willing to pass this bill tomorrow night--tomorrow night. We are willing to finish this package. Let's just allow our colleagues to have votes on their amendments that they believe would stimulate the economy, and we will vote on amendments, as our Democrat friends have offered, to spend more money. Let's vote on both. Let's vote on these amendments. Let's see how the votes come out and let's pass a bill. Let's pass a bill that would help the economy. Let's pass a bill that would create jobs. I hope we will. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the cloture vote. Let's allow these amendments to have their fair day in the Senate. People worked hard on these amendments. They may well do some good. I looked at several of these that were offered on the Republican side, some of which--several of which have Democrat cosponsors--that I think could help the economy. So I would love for our colleagues to get a chance to vote on these amendments. We will be very cooperative working with the majority leader and others on the Democrat side to limit amendments, to try to see if we cannot get a stimulus bill that would actually help the economy. I yield the floor.

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 object.