Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. It costs how much?

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague from New York. I will tell him I read with interest today an article from the Washington Post that said that not only did we pass the legislation that my colleague and friend from New York alluded to to provide tax relief for the victims of the New York and Virginia disaster but also the Oklahoma City disaster, so they wouldn't have to pay taxes in the year 2001 or in the year 2000 for this recent 9-11 tragedy, but also in Oklahoma it is for 1994 and 1995. The Washington Post said we also passed the $5 billion package of benefits. That wasn't accurate.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from New York. He mentioned his desire to bring up the New York City package. I requested earlier that we take up the House-passed tax bill that has a New York package in it. We are having a debate right now as to what should be the underlying bill. So people understand, I suggested that we take up the House-passed bill. That would be the logical thing to do. If we are going to pass a stimulus package, the House has already passed it. I told the majority leader I would work with him to come up with a finite list of amendments, a mutually agreed-upon list of amendments or number of amendments, and work to pass it. He wasn't agreeable to that yet. Maybe a little later he will be. Instead, he wanted to come up with a list of amendments he thought were mutually agreeable. I don't think there is a consensus on a list of amendments. I will just go over a couple of them. The underlying bill I wanted to take up had New York in it. I will tell my colleague from New York, this amendment does not have New York in it. That doesn't mean I agree with everything that is in the House bill; I don't. So if we start with that as the package, I will probably try to make some changes and some deletions to the House bill. I look at the package the majority leader wants to bring up, and I say: Wait a minute, where is the beef? Where is the stimulation? There is no assistance for New York. I am looking at the bill that was just introduced yesterday. I am almost amazed. I heard one of my colleagues say Republicans are filibustering this bill. We are not filibustering this bill. We didn't object to bringing it up. A bill we have never seen before is now pending on the floor of the Senate. We could have asked for it to be read. We could have asked for a vote on the motion to proceed. We didn't do any of that. We wanted to take up and pass a stimulus package. But we would also like to know what is in it. And just for elementary purposes, we would like to have it stimulate the economy. We would like to have it create jobs. I looked at the package the majority leader introduced. It fails in that regard. I will go through the various elements in this package for my colleagues.

Mr. NICKLES. To be expended this year; and it is for what?

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator from Minnesota yield just for a couple of minutes?

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator include me as a cosponsor of the amendment? Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be made a cosponsor.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. I understand. Looking at the package that the majority leader has introduced, there is only one thing that anybody could remotely say is really stimulative. There are four elements to the majority leader's package, one of which deals with accelerated depreciation. Then there are three others that would fall into spending categories. Some people say it is rebates of tax cuts, $14 billion; people who didn't get anything from the tax cuts. They didn't get anything because they didn't pay taxes. Anybody who paid Federal income taxes got a tax cut of $300 for individuals, $600 for a couple. We have already done that. What we didn't do is give tax cuts for people who didn't pay taxes. That is the proposal pending. Some people say everybody has agreed with that. I don't agree with it. I don't think it is good policy for us to go out and borrow $14 billion to have to pay over $1 billion a year in interest basically to hand out money and call it a tax cut when they didn't pay taxes. I find that objectionable. Maybe I am unique in that way. Maybe the majority will pass it. That may well be. It did pass the House of Representatives. I don't think it is good policy. I think it does spend $14 billion. It does add that much to the deficit, to the amount of national debt. We don't have a surplus anymore. Some people say it made sense last year when we were distributing the surplus. But to me, it doesn't make sense today. I don't think that should be in the package. So not everybody agrees with everything in the majority leader's package. It has the extension of unemployment compensation. That will increase spending and will not stimulate the economy. It also gives the States $4 or $5 billion. I am sure they would be very appreciative of that. States are going through some difficult times; so is the Federal Government. I don't know if this is the right time for us to be implementing a new revenue sharing approach. The House has done it. Now it is being proposed by some on this side. Maybe the votes are there. We may find out. I am not particularly excited about it. I am not sure it is the right thing to do. Some people would easily say we are taking money out of the Social Security trust fund and giving it to the States. I am not sure that makes good sense to do that either. If we look at those three proposals, extending unemployment compensation, that costs money, it is a spending program; $14 billion in checks to people who didn't get checks last time, but they didn't pay taxes last time, so basically a spending program for $14 billion to low-income people for last year; and then a new program to give the States some money, maybe calling it Medicaid, maybe calling it revenue sharing, basically contributing, I believe, under Senator Daschle's proposal, about $5.5 billion. The House passed $4 billion. Those are the three spending proposals, and then the accelerated depreciation. Accelerated depreciation is the only thing that anybody could say legitimately is going to give incentive to create jobs. Looking at this proposal, I have heard people say the House-passed bill had 30 percent depreciation for 3 years, 30-percent accelerated depreciation. That means if you have 100-percent depreciation for the life of the asset, and you have to depreciate it over X number of years, let's say 10 years, you can put a greater percentage of that in the first year and expense it. That will encourage investment. The House did that with 30 percent for 3 years. So any investment made in the next 3 years could qualify. Senator Daschle's proposal says it is 30 percent for 1 year. I just looked at the language and it says: Special allowance for certain property acquired after September 10, 2001, and before September 11, 2002. January has already gone. You are talking about, if we enacted this tomorrow, maybe 7 months. But by the time people understand it and by the time it passes the conference, by the time it gets out, you are looking at a provision that is probably less than 6 months. In other words, hurry up and purchase your equipment or whatever you are going to do in the next few months. That might be good for disposable items, but for anybody who is going to purchase something that needs to be manufactured, it is not enough time to do any good. The proposal Senator Daschle has introduced has a worthless stimulative impact. It will not create jobs. It fails the test, and I don't think we should pass it. Why don't we take the bill the House passed and have some amendments to it? I count votes around here. At one time, that bill had well over 50 votes. It may not have had 60, but it had over 50. It had a lot of provisions that some of us didn't like in there, but it had a majority of votes, I believe. Senator Daschle doesn't want to take up that bill. As a matter of fact, he wants to take up a different House bill, strike the language--take out House bill 622; insert his bill in it, amend it for a little while, and then, when we are finished, take up the House- passed bill, strike that language, and put this bill in. I suggest, why don't we take up the House-passed stimulus bill and amend it? We can go through the regular order and have amendments. I will help him get a limitation on amendments. Or we don't have to have that; we can just take it up, debate it, amend it, and pass it. That would be the regular order. I don't want anybody to say the Republicans are filibustering. I am ready to amend Senator Daschle's proposal. But I think we ought to take up the House-passed bill. Then I will work with him to come up with language. But to say we have a consensus bill and call it stimulus--when three or four elements of the bill are spending provisions, and the one thing that might be considered stimulative--accelerated depreciation--doesn't last long enough. Senator Breaux suggested a compromise of 2 years. That would be a lot better than the 6 months I have seen for the accelerated depreciation. 4 or 5 months have already gone by since September 11. There is not much time left. There is not much stimulus to this bill. The other side wants to act as if they tried to bring up a stimulus bill and get it done, but because they could not get a unanimous consent agreement to pass it in 2 days, they will pull it down and say: We tried; it was their fault. There is no stimulative impact to that bill whatsoever. The Democrats held up the package for the last couple of months. President Bush asked for it in early October, but we didn't get it done, even though we tried to get it up in November and December. And there was some criticism--I think rightfully--delivered toward the Democrats for not letting that happen. I heard Senator Grassley say let's take up the bipartisan bill-- Democrats and Republicans supporting the bill--on which the administration worked. That bill is H.R. 3529. Let's take that up, amend it, and pass it, and see if we can't do some good. Tax legislation happens to be important. Then I look at Senator Daschle's accelerated depreciation, and I want to see the good in this bill, I want to see something that will create jobs and provide economic relief. I don't think this will create very many jobs. I am disappointed in it. We can do better. We must do better. Some people say let's just pass something and send it over in the House and maybe we will fix it in conference. I would like to do better than that in the Senate. We should do better. We should be embarrassed if we can't do any better than that. We should not call this a stimulus package. You can call it a spending package, aid for States or for unemployment extension; you can call it expanded welfare payments for people who didn't pay taxes--we are going to give $14 billion out--or if you cram through a purchase in the next 6 months, we might give you a little better deal. You can't call this a stimulus package. It is political cover for the Democrats to claim they tried to do something and didn't get it done. It is unfortunate to try to blame the other side. I would like to see us take up a package that would, hopefully, be agreed to by Democrats and Republicans, work on it, amend it, improve it, pass it, send it to conference, and see if we can't get a bill out of conference in the next couple of weeks to create jobs. If we are not going to create jobs, let's not do it. We don't need more excuses to spend money. We are spending a lot of money. The President is coming up with a budget proposal that has more money for national security, defense, and homeland defense. We spent a lot of money last year. We don't need excuses to spend more money and use the guise of a stimulus bill with the title of a stimulus bill. This bill that Senator Daschle introduced, in my opinion, fails the test. It has the title: ``To provide incentives for economic recovery, and for other purposes.'' The other purposes are ``let's spend more money,'' because it does very little, if anything, toward helping stimulate an economic recovery. I really hope we will work together and try to come up with a package. I don't want to stall anything. I am happy to begin considering amendments if that is Senator Daschle's request. We can have amendments on the floor. I see Senator Grassley is on the floor, the ranking member of the Finance Committee. We can start considering a lot of amendments today. I know Senator Wellstone mentioned he has some, and I have some. They probably won't be the same but let's consider them. Let's get to work on a true economic stimulus plan. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator's amendment deals with the accelerated depreciation. The essence of the Senator's amendment is there would be accelerated depreciation of 30 percent for 3 years in contrast to Senator Daschle's amendment, which is 30 percent for a timeframe between September of 2001 and 2002. Senator Daschle's amendment has 30 percent basically from February--basically 8 months.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Murkowski), the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Sessions), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Bond), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I will just state to my friend and colleague from West Virginia, he is very much my friend, and I know he has a Defense appropriations speech, and I look forward to hearing his comments on that, and then I look forward to working with him to kind of show him some of the provisions on which Senators Frist, Kennedy, and Gregg, and others have worked. I believe there are 75 or more cosponsors on this bill. I think it is a good bill, a bipartisan bill, strongly supported by both sides. I will work with my colleague from West Virginia to acquaint him with that. I hope and expect we can pass it a little later this afternoon.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of colleagues regarding H.R. 2869, I ask unanimous consent the following letter be printed in the Record:

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Further reserving the right to object, if the Senator is not going to agree to pass the House-passed language that passed in April with the extenders language, then I ask the Senator to modify his request and let us take up the stimulus package that did have the extenders, that did have many other provisions that would have helped the unemployed, that did have some things that would help stimulate the economy, that did some things that would help New York in addition to what we have already done today. So I ask my colleague to modify his request, let us take up the stimulus package, the H.R. 3529, which was received from the House. I ask unanimous consent that the request be modified so that at first the Senate would proceed to consideration of H.R. 3529, which is the stimulus package received by the House; the bill be read a third time and passed, with no intervening action or debate. I would add, before the Chair rules, the bill has extender language that my colleague from Montana is requesting and therefore it would accommodate his request.

Mr. NICKLES. The Presiding Officer might like for us to do that.

Mr. NICKLES. My intention was, if we want to repeal the death tax and pass the extenders, this Senator would have no objection. I am sure we could whip it and see if there would be no objection.

Mr. NICKLES. I cannot agree to that. I do not know if we are playing one-upmanship. I would like to pass the bill that passed the House. So I will not agree to that.

Mr. NICKLES. Further reserving the right to object, again I will object if it is striking the House bill. The House passed a bill with a good vote. I do not remember exactly what it was. If it is in addition to the House bill, I would not object. I ask my colleague--and I think I hear the Senator saying he is not going to--is it not the intent of the Senator not to pass the House- passed bill? I was hoping we could make a deal. I might mention we might have to notify a few other Senators before we do this by unanimous consent.

Mr. NICKLES. I know.

Mr. NICKLES. Reserving the right to object, I concur with many of the statements my friend from Montana made; it is very important for us to work together more than we have done in the last few months. The unanimous consent request, if I am reading it correctly, says the Senate wants to substitute the extenders for H.R. 8, which is the revenue package that passed April 6. Is that correct?

Mr. NICKLES. I am reading this as a substitute for the House bill. I believe it is a substitute for the House bill. If the Senator modifies this and makes it in addition to the House bill, at least this Senator would not object. But if it is striking the House bill, I feel constrained to object. If the Senator is willing to move it, in addition to the House bill, I will not object at this time.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Allen, for his comments. I also thank my colleague, Senator Torricelli, for his work and the work we did in the Finance Committee. We also included the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing disaster 6 years ago in which 189 people lost their lives. Likewise, they should not have to pay taxes for that year or the preceding year. The amount of income is almost de minimis, but it is only fair. I thank my colleagues from New York and New Jersey for their cooperation. My colleagues from New York had many additional, very interesting items--accelerated depreciation and other ideas to stimulate the economy. We are happy to work with them to try to make that happen in the near future. I thank my colleagues for their support, and I shall not object.

Mr. NICKLES. Reserving the right to object, and I shall not object.