Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. First of all, Mr. President, we have on the part of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle a proposal for exporting more oil now from the North Alaska slopes, at the very time we are saying we are worried about our own supply. That is already contained in this bill. Second, this is typical of what happens when we try to scale back corporate welfare and close tax loopholes. Every time you take on a powerful interest like this as opposed to regular people, opponents claim that the sky is going to fall in. It is not true that this change would spell the demise of the oil and gas industry. Just like other industries and other businesses, they should be made to capitalize their costs, to write off their costs over a longer period of time--the life of the asset. This is a special exemption, just for one industry. That is what is going on here. And this is why people do not trust this process. Every time it is a powerful interest whose benefits are under fire, we hear all sorts of reasons why they cannot be asked to tighten their belts. But, boy, when it comes to Medicare, when it comes to education, when it comes to children, belt-tightening is all the rage. This amendment basically says, let us have a standard when it comes to some deficit reduction. Let us have standard of fairness. I will reserve the rest of my time. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will just take a minute and then wait to respond later, if I could.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this amendment scales back corporate welfare in the Tax Code by eliminating several loopholes, including the deduction for intangible drilling and development costs for oil, gas, and geothermal wells, the corporate minimum tax provisions, the foreign earned income exclusion, and section 936, the possession tax credit. It locks all of the savings away to be used for deficit reduction--and only for this purpose. The savings from these amendments, all to go for deficit reduction, range between $60 and $70 billion, depending on whose estimates you use. I do not have time to go through each of these corporate welfare provisions, but let me simply say that over and over and over again this week we have been talking about basic fairness, and that closing these loopholes is an attempt to make the Tax Code fairer. I will tell you right now, as people in the country look at this deficit reduction bill, they know that it is based upon the path of least political resistance. They know that it is disproportionately working families and middle-income people and low- and moderate-income people who have been targeted. Mr. President, I do not know one citizen in Minnesota, or in any of our States, if the truth be told, who would not agree with the proposition that we ought to close some of these loopholes. And by closing some of these loopholes, with these benefits going primarily to large companies that do not need the benefits, that have not been asked to tighten their belts, instead of allowing these to continue we would have more money to slash the deficit further, to invest in law enforcement, in education, in children, in health care, in transportation, in child care, in child nutrition programs. It is a matter of priorities. Donald Barlett and James Steele won a Pulitzer for their book here, ``America: What Went Wrong?'' They are two really fine investigative reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer. And in the section of the book ``America: Who really Pays the Taxes?'' they have an interesting paragraph: For over 30 years, Members of Congress and Presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike, have enacted one tax after another to create two separate and distinct systems, one for the rich and powerful called the privileged person's tax law, and another for everyone else called the common person's tax law. Mr. President, this amendment will move us back toward a Tax Code that treats people fairly. It is time for some basic fairness, and that is the meaning of this amendment. I reserve the rest of my time.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for just a moment? I did not hear the Senator from Nebraska. What was the order of the next 50 minutes, did he say?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the majority leader for his statement made on these war crimes, these atrocities. I do not believe that those who committed these crimes should be able to get away with it. I think it would be a terrible mistake for the world. I appreciate the power of what the majority leader says. I very much appreciate his focus on the war crimes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have 30 seconds to thank the majority leader for his statement.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, 2 minutes is hardly any time at all. Let me just put it to you this way. This is thoughtless. This is not a farm bill. It is not agricultural policy. It is slash and burn. It is $48 billion over the next 7 years. It plays off children and nutrition programs against family farmers, against the environment. It is a 50- percent cut in the Conservation Reserve Program, which in my State of Minnesota and I bet every State, has brought together those that love outdoor recreation and the environmentalists and the farmers. This is really, Mr. President, the opposite of a careful policy--the very opposite of a careful policy. What we have here is the worst of all worlds--keep the farm prices low, then have some subsidy. Have the subsidy in inverse relationship to need, with taxpayers having to pick up the cost. Mr. President, why do we not understand that rural people are not going to stay out of sight and out of mind? Why are we picking on the people that we think do not have the voice, picking on the people we think do not have the power, picking on people who are not the heavy hitters, not the players, are not the big contributors. That is what this is about. We should not have these tax cuts that go to wealthy people. We should not have a Pentagon budget that is $7 billion over what the Pentagon wanted, and we should not lavish subsidies on most of the major large corporations and financial institutions in the country. Rural people in Minnesota, the people of greater Minnesota, ask for one thing and one thing only: A fair shake. There is no fair shake and there is no fairness to this plan. That is why I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I yield a minute of my time to the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I simply say it loud and clear, and I will shout it from the mountaintop. I only have probably 30 seconds left. If you want to do deficit reduction, cut the subsidies for the pharmaceutical companies, cut the subsidies for the oil companies, cut the subsidies for the insurance companies, cut the subsidies for the tobacco companies; do not spend more money on stealth bombers and Trident and all of the rest, and do not have tax cuts that disproportionately go to the wealthiest people. Do not do deficit reduction by denying all too many young people--and not-so-young people because many of our students are older--their opportunity for a higher education. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Kennedy amendment. It speaks to basic economic justice. I hope 100 Senators vote for it.

Mr. WELLSTONE. When I heard what my colleague from Idaho said, I could not be in more profound disagreement. The debate is not on a balanced budget, deficit reduction; it is on a Minnesota standard of fairness. This agenda here is not connected to the reality of the lives of people that we represent back in our States: ``Senator, I am a student at Moorhead State, I work three minimum-wage jobs. The college years are not the best years of my life.'' ``Senator, I am a nontraditional student. I am older than you and I lost my job; I am going back to school, and I do not have much money. If you cut my financial aid, I will not be able to get back on my own two feet.'' ``Senator, I am a single mother, and I am going back to school, and I have two small children. If you cut my financial aid, I will not be able to move from welfare to workfare.'' I hear it in community colleges; I hear it in public universities; I hear it in private schools. I asked my colleagues, I say to my colleague from Massachusetts, during markup, ``Have you held town meetings in the campuses? Do you know what the consequences of what you are doing here in the Senate will be for students in this country?'' Mr. President, this is outrageous. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of a petition from 515 students at Inver Hills Community College and Lakewood Community College.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. OK. Thank you.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield? Could I ask the Senator from Michigan how much time will be yielded to the Senator from Idaho?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Florida, I do not have much confidence about this 2,000 pages plus and what it is going to mean for people in my State of Minnesota that I represent. The other day in the Chamber of the Senate I had an amendment. I did not mean for it to be symbolic. I thought there would be 100 votes for it. My amendment said that if by virtue of action we take in this reconciliation bill there are fewer children with medical coverage, also more children that are hungry, then we will revisit what we have done over the next year and we will take action to correct this damage. I could not get votes for that. I received 45 votes. I come from a State with 425,000 Medicaid--we say medical assistance--beneficiaries, projected to be, I say to my colleague from Florida, 535,000 by the year 2002. My State of Minnesota does not have the slightest idea what in the world we are going to do in response to anywhere from $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion--we do not even know yet--of cuts in medical assistance. And I can tell you right now, in all due respect to my wonderful colleagues, in my not so humble opinion, I come from the greatest State in the United States of America. We have done some wonderful things. We are a compassionate State, and we will not walk away from the most vulnerable citizens. So this a shell game for Minnesota, and for all too many of our States it is a shell game. Mr. President, 300,000 children are medical assistance beneficiaries in my State of Minnesota, many of them in working families. We will not walk away from those children. So the counties are going to have to pick up the cost. It will be the property tax, Minnesotans. In my State of Minnesota, we have done some wonderful things to make sure that people in the developmental disabilities community can keep their children at home, do not have to become indigent and poor to get assistance; that people with developmental disabilities may live lives with dignity. But I will tell you what is going to happen. With draconian cuts in medical assistance, my State will not walk away from this community. It all gets put back on the State, all gets put back on the counties. This is nothing but a shell game. In my State of Minnesota, 60 percent--60 percent--of our medical assistance payments go to our nursing homes. I have been to a lot of those nursing homes, and a lot of the people who are the care givers ask the following question: Senator, what are we going to do with these reductions? We cannot live with these reductions and live up to standards. Are we going to let staff go? Are we going to redefine eligibility? Are there going to be fewer benefits? This is not just the elderly. These are the children and the grandchildren as well. This amendment really cuts right to the heart and soul of what we are about here. I was in a debate earlier. We have an estate relief tax break. For those Minnesotans who have $5 million in an estate, they are going get a tax break, I say to my colleague from North Dakota, of $1.7 million. Those are the kinds of giveaways we have. But at the same time we have draconian cuts in medical assistance for people with disabilities, for children and for elderly citizens. And in many ways, I say to my colleague from Florida, I think these reductions are perhaps the most problematical for the States we represent, the most problematical, the most awful, the most god-awful for the counties and local communities that we represent, because in my State of Minnesota we are not going to walk away from the citizens. Somebody is going to have to pay the bill. We are going to have to do it out of the local property tax, and that is going to be the most difficult way of all. This makes no sense at all. This is, as I have said 1,000 times in the Chamber of the Senate, a rush to recklessness. This is a fast track to foolishness, and I wish my colleagues would look at their language and look at their statistics and look at their charts and read their sentences and understand what the consequences are going to be for the lives of the people we represent. Let us have deficit reduction, but let us go after some other folks that can tighten their belts. Let us look at the subsidies to the oil companies, coal companies, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, estate breaks, and all the rest. Let us not cut medical assistance to the point where we are denying quality health care for the people we represent. This is an extremely important motion. It is about fairness. It is about economic justice. And I say to my colleagues, it is also about good health care policy. The numbers should drive the policy. We need to have deficit reduction, but we cannot be reckless with the lives of the people we are here to represent.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague from Florida. I rise to support this motion and ask unanimous consent to be included as an original cosponsor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. If I could amplify a point made by the Senator from New Jersey, it is not good politics either because people in the country--in case anybody has not noticed--yearn for a political process that they can believe in, a political process where they think they are represented. This does not look like such a process. This looks like something good for big players, heavy hitters, those who have all of the influence, with the vast majority of the people shut out. This is not a regular person's standard with this kind of break.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, is there any time left?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the motion by Senator Bradley. Let me start out by saying, last night I think we had a good technical discussion and an important policy discussion. I must say, I think all of my colleagues are enormously impressed with Senator Bradley's mastery of the material. Mr. President, what I would like to do today in the 5 minutes that I have, is to talk about this vote before us in a slightly different context. I say to my colleague from Wisconsin, my good friend, I have been thinking about the first class I will teach again at the college or university, community college, or University of Minnesota. In this class, which I hope to teach in 7 years from now, the first lecture is going to be about this week. It is going to start out with a definition of politics, and I am going to say politics is, in part, about values and what we all care about, and we can have honest disagreements. The second part of the lecture I am going to give when I go back to teaching is going to be titled: Who decides? Who is asked to sacrifice? And how do these decisions take place? That really summarizes this motion that the Senator from New Jersey has offered, which I am so proud to be a cosponsor of. A question: Who decides that we are going to have $245 billion of tax giveaways to people already high-income and wealthy, least in need of those breaks? And whose parents, or whose children, go without adequate health care? It is that simple. Or, Mr. President--and this refers to some amendments that I will later on make sure that colleagues vote on--who decides that we are going to, essentially, leave untouched this area of corporate welfare, that if you have a $5 million estate, you are going to get a tax cut, as my colleague from New Jersey pointed out last night, to the tune of $1.7 million? But at the same time that you have that kind of tax giveaway, at the same time you have special tax loopholes and breaks for oil companies, or insurance companies, or you have citizens who work abroad in other countries that do not have to pay any taxes on the first $70,000 they make, or special breaks for pharmaceutical companies and, at the same time, Mr. President--and there is no better example--a $5 million estate. How many people ever have that, and you get a $1.7 million tax break. Who decides that we are going to have that kind of tax giveaway to the wealthiest of the wealthiest citizens in this country, and not those whose children go hungry and whose children are not able to afford a higher education? In the lecture that I give, when I teach again, I am going to continue to raise these questions. I will ask the question: Who decides that we are going to raise taxes for more than 200,000 people in Minnesota, families in Minnesota, with incomes under $30,000 a year, hard-pressed people and, at the same time, we are going to let the one person in my State--or maybe two--with a $5 million estate get $1.7 million in a tax giveaway? We make choices here, and these are the questions: Who decides? Who benefits? Who is asked to sacrifice? In my State of Minnesota, I say to my colleague from New Jersey, we have an interesting situation where back in 1991 we decided that we would have a 15-percent EITC at the State level, tied to the Federal EITC. So working families in Minnesota get an added benefit. The final point in my lecture: How did this decision get made? I would tell you that what we have going on here in the U.S. Senate is deficit reduction based on the path of least political resistance, deficit reduction in inverse relationship to economic justice. If you have the big bucks, if you have a $5 million estate, you get the tax breaks. If you are low or moderate income, your taxes are raised, or you cannot afford health care, or you cannot afford to send your kid to college. Mr. President, it is clear that the big givers are getting their way. The heavy hitters are getting their way. All these large financial institutions and corporations are not asked to tighten their belts at all. Mr. President, what we have here is decisionmaking, democracy for the few, not democracy for the many. This motion brings back some fairness and justice to this process. Mr. BRADLEY addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I would say to my colleague from Massachusetts his question is right on the mark, because what people are saying in Minnesota and around the country is, please permit us to be suspicious because you are cutting much more than is necessary for the trust fund, and we think you are making Medicare the piggyback for tax cuts for wealthy people. And if, in fact, you would give up on these tax giveaways--and we were not talking about the $245 billion-- then I think we can get down to a discussion where we can focus on what we need to do, I say to my colleague from Massachusetts, for real reform. Real reform, Mr. President, is universal coverage. Real reform is making sure that elderly people can afford prescription drug costs. Real reform is home-based care so that people can live at home in as near a normal circumstance as possible, with dignity, and not have to be institutionalized. Real reform is where there is a standard of fairness. I tell you what is not real reform--reverse reform, where we cut $270 billion from Medicare and at the same time we have a $245 billion tax giveaway. I have been in debates with colleagues, and they have said, I say to my colleague from Massachusetts, over and over and over again, no, this is all for Medicare. This is what we need to do. This makes Medicare solvent. This reforms Medicare. This is for the good. This amendment puts them to the test. If that is the case, then vote against this amendment. Vote it up or down. I find it just unbelievable that after all the speeches that have been given and after all the reassurances that have been given, my colleagues are unwilling to vote on this. That is what the second- degree amendment is all about. It is a huge dodge from a vote that people should have the courage to make. One more time, in my State of Minnesota, 50 percent of senior citizens have incomes under $20,000 a year. In my State of Minnesota, many of our elderly live in rural communities, and those hospitals and those clinics have a huge percentage of their patient payment from Medicare and they do not have a profit margin. If you go ask those providers--has anybody asked them? Anybody asked the clinics? Anybody asked the doctors? Anybody asked the nurses? Anybody asked the physician's assistants much less the beneficiaries? They will tell you that they cannot survive some of these reductions. They will not be there to deliver health care. So this is not about scare tactics, I say to my colleagues. This is about some unpleasant realities. And one more time, we have in our State 635,000 Medicare beneficiaries. It will be about 685,000, or 675,000, I believe, by 2002. Later on, we will talk about medical assistance. We have 425,000 beneficiaries of medical assistance. It will go up to 535,000. And anybody who wants to look at the policy carefully and understand its impact on citizens understands that the way you view health care is you look at the number of people who are going to be eligible, what the existing benefits are that people will need to have for quality health care and what the medical inflation level is, and these reductions fall far short of that. I say to my colleagues, you just do not have the credible argument. You cannot cut $270 billion from Medicare at the same time you have $245 billion of tax giveaways, mainly going to wealthy people. You cannot do it. It makes no sense. And with this amendment, introduced by Senator Rockefeller, we give you the chance to vote on what you say you believe in. We give you the chance for an up-or-down vote where you can match all of your speeches with your votes, where you can look the American people in the eye and you can say we believe that all $270 billion is necessary in order to, as you say, save Medicare. I do not think you are saving Medicare. I think in the name of saving Medicare you are destroying part of Medicare. That is what this vote would have been about. I think the only people who are terrorized are colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are terrorized that they have to vote what they have been talking about for the last 6 or 7 months.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I really welcome this debate, and in the spirit of debate, colleagues, I say to my colleague from Colorado that the problem with the tax credit proposal is that it is not refundable and that if you are a family with an income under $29,000 a year, you are not going to receive it. It makes no sense whatsoever. Where is the standard of fairness? In my State of Minnesota, we are talking about a significant percentage of the population, families with incomes under $29,000 a year. If it is not a refundable credit, it does not do any good at all for that family. Mr. President, I just want to respond to a couple of comments by my colleague that were made earlier. And in the main, what I would like to speak to is this argument that somehow part of this debate is a scare tactic or this is an effort to ``terrorize senior citizens.'' Mr. President, I think that, as a matter of fact, that is a bit insulting to senior citizens. It is a bit insulting to citizens in our country, period. People have their own wisdom. I was in a debate the other day with several of my colleagues at U.S. News and World Report. I said, forget all of this discussion about scare tactics. I wish we were talking about scare tactics so I would not use it. People have their own intelligence. People can figure this out for themselves. And, one more time, we have an amendment here that now is in the second degree. Why are my colleagues afraid to have an up-or-down vote on this? We had the debate. Now the rubber meets the road. We have been saying to you that $89 billion--which is what you needed for the trust fund--what you are doing is cutting $270 billion for Medicare. In addition, we have said, what is the meaning of $270 billion of cuts in Medicare juxtaposed with tax giveaways, in the main, and $245 billion that goes to people with higher income? You can vote that up or down, colleagues. It is time now to match your votes with your rhetoric. Why are you afraid of an up-or-down vote? Mr. President, the only people that are terrorized here right now are some of my colleagues on the other side who are in terror that they might have to vote what they have said they believe all along.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I would be pleased to alternate, if my colleagues want to do that.

Mr. WELLSTONE. The people do not know about this.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Not anything.