April 2, 2001 Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, the Senator from New Mexico has talked further about reconciliation. Let me make it clear this will be one of the most consequential votes in the Senate in any of our memories. If this precedent is adopted that says you can totally take away the safeguards of the Senate, change the constitutional structure of this body by using that methodology for a $1.6 trillion tax cut, then the door is wide open for every kind of abuse. The Senator from New Mexico says reconciliation can be used by either side. That is true. It is also true it can be abused by either side. I remember very well in 1993 and 1994 when we had massive health care legislation being considered and a group of Senators were approached and asked if we would support the use of reconciliation that short-circuits Senators' rights to debate and amend, to pass that legislation. A group of Senators said, no; that would be an abuse of the process to pass a $138 billion spending initiative based on limited debate and limited amendment. That is not what the Senate was designed for; that is not what the Founding Fathers intended for this body. The Founding Fathers intended for this body to be, as I described before, the cooling saucer, where we could have extended debate and unlimited amendment to determine the outcome to protect the American people, to protect the rights of a minority. We are on the brink of sweeping all of that aside in the name of a tax cut, to take away those protections for a minority, to take away those protections for an individual Senator to represent his or her constituents, to take away those protections for this institution. It is wrong; it is dead wrong. It was wrong in 1993 and 1994 to use it for a spending provision. It would be wrong, dead wrong, to use it now for a tax cut. The whole purpose of reconciliation was for deficit reduction. The Senator from New Mexico quite correctly says in 1993 reconciliation was used by our side--he is exactly right--for deficit reduction. That was a package that cut spending and raised taxes to reduce deficits. This package is the opposite of that. This package is the opposite. When the Senator talks about previous precedents, he cites 1997. Yes, reconciliation was used. But, again, that was part of an overall package of deficit reduction. We have gone over the precedents with respect to budget reconciliation. We find only one case, back in 1976, where reconciliation was used for a tax cut, absent other deficit reduction provisions. That was a $6 billion item. It was vetoed. In 1993, reconciliation was used. It was used for deficit reduction. In 1997, reconciliation was used. It was used for deficit reduction. That is the reason we have those provisions. I cite Senator Domenici himself in a letter I wrote to the Parliamentarian. Senator Domenici said: Frankly, as the chairman of the Budget Committee I am aware of how beneficial reconciliation can be to deficit reduction. But I'm also totally aware of what can happen when we choose to use this kind of process to basically get around the rules of the Senate as to limiting debate. Clearly, unlimited debate is the prerogative of the Senate that is greatly modified under this process. I have grown to understand this institution. While it has a lot of shortcomings, it has some qualities that are rather exceptional. One of those is the fact that it is an extremely free institution, that we are free to offer amendments, that we are free to take as much time as this Senate will let us, to debate and have those issues thoroughly understood both here and across the country. That was Senator Domenici, on October 24, 1985. The Senator was right then. He is wrong now. He said later, on October 13, 1989: There are a few things about the U.S. Senate that people understand to be very, very significant. One is that you have the right, the rather broad right, the most significant right among all parliamentary bodies in the world, to amend freely on the floor. The other is the right to debate and to filibuster. When the Budget Act was drafted, the reconciliation procedure was crafted very carefully. It was intended to be used rather carefully because, in essence, Mr. President, it vitiated those two significant characteristics of this place that many have grown to respect and admire. Some think it is a marvelous institution of democracy. And if you lose those two qualities you just about turn this U.S. Senate into the U.S. House of Representatives or other parliamentary body. The Senator was right then. He is wrong now. It is an absolute abuse of reconciliation to use it for purposes other than deficit reduction. If we allow it here, we are going to open the floodgates. Someday it may be used or abused for spending, as was attempted back in 1993-1994, when a group of us on our side stood up and said: No, don't you dare. Because we will not be any part of damaging this institution or undermining the constitutional role of the Senate. It is as wrong to have used reconciliation for a $138 billion spending initiative as it is to propose it for a $1.6 trillion tax cut. Both of them are dead wrong. Reconciliation was designed, not for spending, not for tax cuts, but for deficit reduction. Senators agreed to restrict their fundamental rights to amend and debate in the interest of deficit reduction. Now we are talking about Senators giving up their fundamental rights to debate and to amend--for what? For the opposite of deficit reduction. That would be a profound mistake. As Senator DOMENICI himself observed in 1989, that could change for all time this Chamber and its role in the United States and the Congress of the United States. I hope very much we do not go down that road. I hope very much that wiser and cooler and calmer heads will prevail. We can address the President's tax cut under the regular order. We can use the normal procedures of the Senate just as was done in 1981 with the big Reagan tax cut. They didn't use reconciliation; they used the normal procedures of the Senate that permitted debate and amendment and not a short circuiting of the process or an abuse of the process. Mr. President, How much time have I used? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 10 minutes. Mr. CONRAD. Will the Chair notify me when I have used another 10 minutes? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair will. Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I would like to run through a number of charts and use those for a broader discussion of the budget resolution as we embark on its consideration. Mr. DOMENICI. Did the Senator ask for an additional 10 minutes? Sure. Mr. CONRAD. I just asked the Chair to notify me when I consumed another 10 minutes. Mr. DOMENICI. OK. Mr. CONRAD. I think one of the most important things about this debate is the question of whether or not we learn anything from history. The chart I have put up behind me talks a little about history. It talks a little about history in this country from 1960 through 1999 and the increase in the gross Federal debt of the United States. You can see after 1990, the gross Federal debt of our country absolutely exploded. It exploded because we adopted a fiscal policy that was fatally flawed. That fiscal policy included a massive tax cut, a dramatic increase in defense spending, and was based on a rosy scenario economic forecast. All of those things conspired to put us in a deficit ditch that exploded the debt of the United States, and it took us 15 years to recover. I believe we are in danger of repeating that series of mistakes in a way that will take us back into deficit, back into the bad old days of raiding trust funds, and put us on a course that is not fiscally sustainable. The debt of our Nation quadrupled because of those failed economic policies. Curiously enough, many of the very same voices who were the architects of that failed plan are back today, advocating this one, the Bush budget plan. Many of the same people who were there at the birthing of the dramatic increase in the deficits and debt of this country are back again. You have to ask the question, Did we learn nothing in the 1980s? Let's first deal with the economic forecast that underlies this proposed budget. I indicated in the 1980s, when we saw the explosion of deficits and debt, one of the key reasons was a flawed forecast, an overly rosy set of economic assumptions. Once again I believe we face an uncertain forecast. This time it is a 10-year forecast. This time, the forecasting agency itself warns us of its uncertainty. We are told they have gone back and looked over their previous forecasts to see the variance between what they predicted and what actually occurred. What they have found is this chart that they have provided to us. I call it the fan chart. It is from the Congressional Budget Office. What it tells us is in the fifth year of this 10-year forecast we could have anywhere from a $50 billion deficit to more than a $1trillion surplus based on the variances in their previous forecasts. That is how uncertain this forecast is. The Congressional Budget Office, which did the projection, tells us that this number of $5.6 trillion surplus that the Senator from New Mexico discussed has a 10-percent chance of coming true--10 percent. There is a 45-percent chance there will be more money, 45-percent chance there will be less money. This forecast was done 8 weeks ago. What has happened in the economy? Do you think it makes it more likely or less likely that the number will be greater or less than the $5.6 trillion the Congressional Budget Office tells us has a 10-percent chance of coming true? It seems pretty clear to me that this is a river boat gamble. This is betting the farm on a 10-year forecast that has very little chance of ever coming true. We are offering an alternative that we think is more cautious, more conservative, and more balanced. We take the forecast surplus of $5.6 trillion, and then we reserve every penny of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds for the purposes intended. That leaves us with $2.7 trillion remaining. We separate that amount into equal thirds: A third for a tax cut; a third for the high-priority domestic needs of a prescription drug benefit, strengthening our national defense, improving education, and funding agriculture; and, with the final third, we set that money aside for strengthening Social Security and dealing with our long-term debt because just as we have surpluses now in this 10-year period, we know that when the baby boomers start to retire these surpluses turn to massive deficits. We think it is only prudent and wise that we begin to prepare for that future--that we have a downpayment on this long-term liability that is building. As I indicated, we believe the top priority ought to be to aggressively pay down our publicly held debt. When we look at a comparison between the Republican plan and our plan, we see that they are leaving a greater share of the publicly held debt than are we. They leave $818 billion of publicly held debt at the end of this 10-year period. We leave less than $500 billion because we are more aggressively paying down the publicly-held debt than their plan. In addition, as I have indicated, we are reserving $750 billion to strengthen Social Security for the long term; they provide nothing for this purpose--a clear difference, and one that we think is a compelling argument for our alternative plan. We agree that we can afford a significant tax reduction. But our tax reduction is about half as big as the President's proposal. That is because, as I have indicated, we reserve more resources for debt reduction and we reserve more resources to strengthen Social Security for the long term. We still have a tax reduction of $750 billion over the next 10 years in comparison to the President's $1.6 trillion. We have other differences in priorities as well. As I have indicated, we reserve more resources for the high-priority domestic needs of prescription drugs, national defense, and education, as well as others. On prescription drugs, the President's proposal has $153 billion for a prescription drug benefit; we have $311 billion. Unfortunately, the President's proposal will only provide benefits to about 25 percent of those eligible. That is an inadequate prescription drug benefit. We believe if we are going to have a prescription drug benefit, it ought to be universally available, it ought to be voluntary, but it ought to have enough money behind it to do the job, and not just be limited to low-income people in this country. The same is true in education. While the Republican budget dedicates $21 billion over the 10-year period over the baseline, we have provided $151 billion. We believe this is America's top priority. And it is our top priority. We believe that ought to be reflected in the budget resolution. If we are going to meaningfully improve education for our kids, it is going to take resources. That is not the only thing it is going to take, but it is certainly going to take that. We provide those resources in this budget resolution. We also have provided more resources for our national defense. We believe it is very clear that we are going to require more dollars for defense. We provide them. The Republican budget resolution provides $68 billion in additional funding for defense over the 10-year period. We provide an additional $100 billion in our budget resolution. Our budget also provides environmental protection. While the Republican budget dramatically slashes those provisions of the law--the Republican budget, $53 billion--our budget provides a $19 billion increase over the 10-year period. Our budget protects the Nation's veterans. At the same time that the Republican budget slashes funding for veterans by $19 billion, we provide a $15 billion increase over the 10-year period. But it doesn't stop there. We have also provided additional resources for the energy crisis that is hitting our country. We had testimony before the Budget Committee that indicated there will be an additional need for Federal resources to deal with the energy shortfall sweeping the country. We have provided an increase of nearly $10 billion while the Republican budget has cut $1.4 billion over the same period. Our budget responds to the farm crisis by providing $88 billion over the 10-year period to level the playing field between our country and our major competitors, the Europeans. The Europeans currently are spending 10 times as much to support their producers as we spend supporting ours. They are spending over $300 an acre in support for their producers while we spend $30. On the question of export support, the Europeans are providing 84 percent of all the world's agricultural export assistance while we provide one-thirtieth as much. No wonder we have a crisis in American agriculture. No wonder our producers are faced with financial ruin. Our budget addresses the crisis in agriculture. The Republican budget absolutely fails it. These are the different priorities of the two budgets. If I were to briefly recap, it would be simply this: While we support a significant tax reduction for all amounts, we have a smaller tax cut than they have provided, so that we can have more resources to pay down our publicly held debt; more resources to strengthen Social Security for the long term; so that we can reserve additional resources to improve education and strengthen national defense; and, yes, to provide a prescription drug benefit. Even within that context, our overall spending as a share of the gross domestic product has the Federal role shrinking. We have seen the Federal Government's role go from 22 percent of gross domestic product in 1993 to 18 percent today. Under our plan, the Federal role would continue to shrink to 16.4 percent of gross domestic product, the smallest role for the Federal Government--the smallest role for the Federal Government--in 50 years. That is a conservative plan. It is a balanced plan. It is one that is in line with the priorities of the American people. I hope very much that we can take the budget that has been laid down by my colleague from New Mexico and improve it; that we can add to the debt reduction; that we can set aside funds to strengthen Social Security for the long term; that we can reserve additional resources to improve education and strengthen our national defense and provide a meaningful prescription drug benefit. That is what the American people want us to do, all within the context of continuing to shrink the role of the Federal Government, all within the context of paying off this publicly held debt, all within the context of preparing for the baby boom generation, and strengthening Social Security so that when those liabilities come due, the American system of Government is prepared to respond. Mr. President, I yield the floor.