a god of love and judgment show us your mercy and forgiveness today pardon us for neglecting to do right for remaining silent when we should speak for ignoring the whisper of conscience for looking away from the zero press and for being poor stewards of your bounty show us your mercy for our failure to embrace humility for our excessive dependence upon our wisdom and for our reluctance to build stronger bridges of cooperation and friendship god of love and judgment gently lead our lawmakers to a growth in ethical fitness that will enable to glorify your name may their moral development bear such visible fruits that people will lift praises to you we a communication to the senate washington d c may seventeenth two thousand and seven to the senate under the provisions of one paragraph three of the standing rules of the senate i hereby appoint the honorable john tester a senator from the state of montana to perform the duties of the and conrad of work on this through the entire process they are two of the veteran legislators they understand this issue more than anyone else in the senate and probably in the country and we will have that vote hopefully mr president around three thirty between three thirty and four thirty this afternoon after all things go well we're waiting for the house to pass that on i think they will do that around three thirty this afternoon under the previous order the leadership time is reserved of the previous order the senate resumed consideration of h r two to a six which the kirk will report kalar number one forty six h r twenty two zero six an act making emergency supplemental appropriations an additional supplemental appropriations for agricultural and other emergency assistance for the fiscal year ending september thirtieth two thousand and seven and for other purposes under the previous sort of the time till ten thirty shall be equally divided and controlled by the two leaders or their the senator from minnesota i yield myself ten minutes mr president today i was shocked to read in the washington post but tom helpful finger the former u s attorney for the district of minnesota was among those recommended for removal by the justice department under attorney general alberto gonzales tom half a finger had previously been appointed u s attorney from minnesota by the first bush administration in hundred one and had the distinction of being appointed again in two thousand and one by george w bush during his second term as u s attorney i had the privilege of working with tom as  district attorney and chief prosecutor from minnesota's largest county the relationship mr president between the u s attorney and the district attorney for a large metropolitan county is a very important one but also a difficult one i can tell you this that has been my experience that the people of this country don't care who prosecute a case they don't care if it's a local attorney or a state attorney or a federal attorney they just want to get the job done that was the spirit with which i worked with have a finger and his predecessor the todd jones who was appointed by president clinton when i was first elected in one thousand nine hundred jones had been appointed by president clinton t and i forged an excellent relationship we spoke often about the various cases in our jurisdiction in the surrounding area and together we worked when jurisdictional lines were blurred deciding if a case would be prosecuted federally or locally this not a small thing mr president in all their jurisdictions there is often disputes that are not in the best interest of the citizens but we were able to forge that relationship i remember that we made a plan early on and that is that we were going to work together and i remember when mr jones and i decided that we would have a party for our joint offices and he invited the county attorneys prosecutors over the u s attorneys and i have to tell you there's traditionally kind of  a little jealousy that goes on the county attorneys always look at the u s attorneys and figure they can have less cases and more resources to do those fewer cases and the u s attorneys may look at the county attorneys and say oh why can't they spend more time on a case so we decided we'd bring the people together i still remember when we had the party at their beautiful offices i got there first and i never told my office but u s attorney todd jones got on the intercom and before my office came over said democrat you might think that there would be problems while there weren't things are basically ran the office the same way that todd jones did in a professional manner many of the same people continued to work there and in fact the chief are remained the same under both the republican appointed u s attorney and the democratic appointed u s attorney an example of tom's professionalism comes to mind when there was an armored truck robbery  the southern suburbs in our metropolitan area the victim was killed execution style he was kneeling next to a truck he was a bring truck driver in the case a gun on fall for a number of years and tom came to my office i want you to know that he didn't have to do this he could have had just a press conference and announce the charges and that would be the end of it but he came to my office weeks before the case was charged to tell me that he thought that they were closing in on the suspect to tell me that he knew that for the most case murders were handled by our office but that this case was going to be different it was different because the feds had been investigating it for a number of years it was different because it involved an armored truck it was also different because it could potentially be eligible for the death penalty and he knew that i was personally opposed to the death penalty and that minnesota didn't have a death penalty but nothing required him to come and talk to me about that case but tom helpful finger did it because he had the respect for me and he had the respect for our office that you don't always see in people in government service office jointly prosecuted many cases and when there was a jurisdictional issue tom and i would always talk about it we did a mint number of criminal focused initiatives together we saw our offices as partners not as rivals and as time went on as the years went on the respect between both our offices grew and as i said came to see each other the people in our office not as rivals but as partners in justice that is why i am so appalled that tom helpful finger was targeted for firing i take tom at his word and we've talked many times in the last few months that he had made a decision to leave the office he never knew he was on such a list that he made a decision based on the fact that his wife was going to retire but the issue is not mr president that he made the decision the only issue is that someone of such integrity as tom hafele family finger was ever targeted by the justice department for firing i have always believed that as a prosecutor you do your job without fear or favor it may not be easy but whatever your decision and you know they're not going to make everyone happy but whatever your decisions you want to know at the end of the day that you did the right thing and then you had no regret but we have learned these past few months that our nation's chief law enforcement officer are leading guardian of the rule of law in this country has allowed politics to creep to close to the core of our legal system this administration has determined that washington politicians not prosecutors out in the field and even perhaps in some cases not the facts themselves would dictate how prosecution should proceed the consequences are simply unacceptable good prosecutors like tom have a thinker who by all accounts have been just doing their job of holding their own following the principles of their profession we find out we're targeted for firing and the new information we also got this week as well this administration or police said when we were only focusing on these a prosecutor that turned out it was twenty six people that they were during that's why i'm asking the justice department today that they tell us why would someone of such integrity even be on this list and i'm asking our judiciary committee to look into the fact that this man this good man was even on this list we have seen cases all over the country now where prosecutors were pressured that they were fired that they were unfairly slandered by this administration and all of this it would seem was motivated by rank politics this was the week that was law enforcement week mr president and it made me a little melancholy from my previous job i had a number of police come in and talk to me so many of them that i had known and worked with and we talked about cases and i also treasured the relationships in the work that i did with prosecutors throughout our state from the smallest counties to the u s attorney's office this is what our justice system is about in america it's about putting justice first it's about doing our jobs without fear or favor that is why i believe that this attorney general must resign i've been saying it for months but you simply cannot have a cloud over the justice department where they can't be doing their jobs because they're constantly plagued by investigations and by everything that's been going on because of the brute political decisions made by this administration this is just wrong i call for the resignation of this attorney general and i ask that the country understand what a great man tom have a finger is that he should never been on this list and i will stand tall to tell the people of my state this is a man of integrity and i respect him very much thank you mr president year fifty years of occupation the u s death toll in iraq is over three thousand three hundred and eighty the death toll of innocent iraqis is largely unknown but it probably provident numbers in  united states of america has spent over three hundred and seventy eight billion dollars in iraq was it out against united states of america that's  has spent over three hundred and seventy eight billion where the united states is america has spent over three hundred seventy eight billion dollars in iraq and we're all familiar yes we are oh for live and shot a medical care than shoddy medical care if they make it back home to treat moons of the body and of the min now the president is threatened to veto the house veil which is before the senate because it said today but withdrawal provides funding until late and quote could unreasonably bush is also objected to funding for rebuilding the gulf coast states after hurricane katrina funding to improve health care for our troops and our veterans funding for the shortfall in the state children's health insurance program funding for low income heating assistance and more funding for homeland security as a single minded obsession with iraq and he appears to see no value in anything except continuing his chaotic mission impossible wild children at windmills may have been a harmless enough pursuit for don quixote mr bush's war is turning the sands of exist in the bush kingdom after setting aside the constitution whenever convenient about the nature of these purported constitutional  representatives a power over the purse and the power to declare war and it's a statement of administrative policy  what do we have now what do we have now now now if chaos concerning our purported liberation liberation of iraq iraq is at war with his help iraq is at war with its cells america cannot create a stable democracy in iraq at the point of a gun while our troops succeeded in toppling saddam hussein it is the president's profound profound misunderstanding of the dynamics in iraq that have led to the savior of his iraq policy why why in the world should we now believe the claims that he makes in his veto threat there must be an end to this occupation of iraq yes i say occupation for it is no be asked to serve as targets in a religious conflict between sunni and sh soldiers in iraq in april congress set a new course for the war in iraq sadly the president president our stubborn uncompromising president chose to veto that reality in iraq an urgent need for a new direction whatever decision is made income will not be the we need to conclude this terrible terrible also a mistake that we have made in iraq i said at the beginning we ought not to go in iraq year that anti american or immoral bust now than in any period and here in the senate they will begin debate this morning on a new iraq spending bill after the president vetoed the last last one a week ago or so the bill contains language supporting the troops but senators prefer rafat prefer to pass this this version this placeholder version it's been called and go into negotiations with the house on actual amounts for war spending we expect votes in about a half hour or so on that also today they'll turn to the conference report on the fiscal year two thousand and eight federal budget with a vote expected between a three thirty and four thirty courting to majority leader reid this morning on the floor the house by the way capital news dot org our poll of the day wants to know what would you do to balance the federal budget you can log on and cast your vote your opinion known and get the latest political news there at capital news dot org meanwhile the house is back in for legislative business today to finish up work on defense programs for fiscal year two thousand and eight they too will take up the the budget conference report for two thousand and eight and also begin work on a fannie mae bill so lots of legislative action in the house you can follow coverage of that on c span we're also covering this morning president bush and prime minister tony  blair the u k prime minister making his last official appearance in washington the two will hold a joint press availability this morning at the white house we'll cover that and you'll see it later in our program schedule than four years of war thirty four hundred american deaths almost thirty thousand wounded and more than five hundred million five hundred billion mr president almost a trillion in leaving a trillion dollars in tax dollars spent we need action not more reports especially those without consequences yet while i supported one vote and oppose the other i'm encouraged by both they show a real and growing momentum on both sides of the aisle away from this tragic and endless war the los angeles times reported this morning and i quote the votes illustrated congress's dramatic response to public dismay with the war end of quote and  abash said and i quote again it was a milestone in the iraq war debate for the first time the vast majority the president's fellow republicans voted to directly challenge his iraq policy which presents no wonder that a broad bipartisan consensus for changes emerging we're well into the fourth surge of the forces since the start of the war yet april was one of the deadliest months of the entire war and attacks on our troops show no sign of decreasing firing some of the top law enforcement officials for doing too good of a job of combat ing violent shiite militias conditions are so chaotic according to a report this morning by the chatham house research institute which is a respected institute out of england they say the iraqi government is and i quote on the verge of becoming a failed state with her nice scene fighting and continuing continued struggles for power threatening nations very existence and the united states that's and to quote mr president and the united states mission goes further and further disconnected from our strategic national interests instead of focusing on force protection qaeda and other terrorists and training the iraqi military missions that will make us more secure help the iraqi people and reduce our troops exposure to sectarian violence the united states forces as we speak of patrolling baghdad streets extremely vulnerable to snipers kidnappers and these explosive devices which become so well known over there our brave fighting force they've done everything that we've asked of them and even more every day we debate the war our troops remain in harm's way the overwhelming veto proof bipartisan majority of the senate now on record saying that the status quo is unacceptable with that reality as a backdrop this morning we'll vote for cloture on senator murray since the senate resolution that will move us to conference on the emergency supplemental bill and the important go she says it will take place in the near future on the iraq situation as president last evening i spoke to a father of one of the hostages in iraq he lives in reno nevada and we talked to him it was a difficult loves his son he praised her son's return and we all do that but we talked about how fortunate that we have hope that he is alive four years and as we move this debate conference american people deserve to know the democrats commitment to bring this war to a responsible and has never been stronger and if enough of our republican colleagues decide to join with us even the president united states will the interest of the senate if we had go ahead and start the vote and i haven't had an opportunity to check with the minority and i don't want to do that before i move to do that and we'll know in just a minute but probably better for everybody if we got this what started there's no one here to speak the next supplemental appropriations that signed by seventeen senators by unanimous consent the mandatory quorum call has been waived the question is is it the sense of the senate the debate on amendment number eleven twenty three offered by the senator from nevada and the senator from kentucky expressing the sense of the congress that no action should be taken to undermine the safety of the armed forces of the united states or impact their ability to complete their assigned or future missions shall be brought to a sort of please come to order please take conversations out of the chamber any senators wish to cast their votes on this vote the yeas are ninety four the nays are one three fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative the motion is agreed to under the previous order all other amendments and motions are withdrawn in the substitute amendment is agreed to the court will read the bill for the third time kalar number one twenty six h r twenty two zero six an act make an emergency supplemental appropriations and additional supplemental appropriations for agriculture and other emergency assistance for the fiscal year ending that temper thirty of two thousand and seven and for other purposes the question is on passage of the bill all in favor say a all oppose nay the i's appear to have it as you know is there a sufficient second this time there is not a sufficient second  the ayes have it the bill as amended is passed under the previous order the senate insists on its amendments and requests the conference with the house and the chair is authorized to appoint conferee senate will come to order senators are instructed and staff instructed to take your conversations out of the hall that senator from pennsylvania is recognized as president and i have sought recognition to comment about the pending efforts to structure a comprehensive immigration reform bill there are many questions which are being asked in the corridors today by members of the media as to what is happening on the efforts to structure a bill to come before the senate next week where a cloture vote is scheduled for monday afternoon to proceed the efforts to structure legislation that i have been in process now for three months there have been approximately thirty meetings held duration customarily of two hours or longer town or twelve senators are usual to have a dozen senators sit still in a room for two hours but that has happened repetitively as we have struggled through the very complex issues on trying for comprehensive immigration reform we have bypassed the judiciary committee in this effort perhaps it was  a stay in the one hundred and live congress we laboriously worked through and produced a bill which came to the senate floor and which was ultimately passed and there's a great deal to be said to utilize regular order in the traditional to many system in that way well i've been in error as we have been struggling to come to terms with a consensus first there were extensive meetings with republicans alone democrats met separately now there have been no bipartisan meetings as we have struggled to come to terms  the meetings have virtually gone around the clock and it has been a come to order please take conversations out of the hall center from pennsylvania is recognized by staff as literally work around the clock of the past weekend saturday and sunday the previous weekend the administration has been  dedicated the president has been personally involved in discussions group of us met with the president yesterday immigration was discussed the administration has devoted the time of the secretary of homeland security and the secretary of commerce who have been parties to these lengthy meetings always present for the full duration of the of the session where we think we're coming very close but as we move through the analysis and the discussions it has been apparent that no matter what legislation is produced it will be i'm satisfied actor a to both ends of the political spectrum of the bill has already been criticized for being too lenient on undocumented immigrants and providing amnesty criticize at one end of the political spectrum criticizes the other end of the political spectrum for not being sufficiently humanitarian and compassionate for the immigrants even though we have yet to produce a bill that's been subjected to the criticism but we have found around the country some ninety cities have been engaged in legislative efforts nationwide with either passed or rejected laws to try to deal with immigrants and landlords my state city of hazleton is try to deal with the issue of recently we had a conspiracy by six men charged with a terrorist plot to attack the soldiers at fort dix three of those who have been charged  undocumented immigrants we have criticism expressed at one end of the political spectrum that there is amnesty here well that is factually wrong those who will be placed at the end of the citizenship line will be those who have criminal records where we have those with criminal records and deport them you can't deport twelve million undocumented immigrants who are here illegally but you can deport those who have criminal records those who will be placed at the end of the chain for citizenship will be those who have paid their taxes those who have a straggler star good work record those who are contributing in a constructive way to the american way of life when the objections are raised as to amnesty the question is return what more can be done with these twelve million undocumented immigrants more hurdles can be placed to be sure that we do the maximum to avoid the charge of amnesty and we are still open and open for suggestions about the consequences of not moving to a solution on this issue is that we have anarchy we have an uncontrolled borders the legislation which we are working on it goes a long  it increases the number of border patrol from twelve to eighteen thousand they will have two hundred miles of vehicle barriers and three hundred seventy miles of fencing seventy ground brazed radar and camera towers unmanned aerial vehicles detention space on an annual basis to have the whole some twenty seven thousand five hundred we have interior security  provisions we have tough employer sanctions because we are structuring a system where we can make a positive identification as to who is legal as it was illegal so that it is an appropriate on employers if they hire illegal immigrants because they're in a position to make you determination as to who is legal or who is illegal at the other end of the political spectrum there are objections that the program is not sufficiently humanitarian not sufficiently compassionate there's not sufficiently provide for family unification  if we are to handle the backlog of people who have been waiting to come into this country in the existing requirements to gain citizenship and if we were to deal with the millions of undocumented immigrants we have to have additional rain cars so that there will have to be limitations and not have what is for mystically referred to as as chain immigrations immigration we are working on a point system which we are trying to balance very hard to satisfy all the competing a gris to have the high skilled work there is a demand for ph d yes and highly skilled people to balance that off with opportunities for people who are not highly skilled and certain points are being given to recognize the family to have as many family members and as much on family reunification as we can within a within a balanced system the whole immigration issue is really another third rail in politics social security has been described as the third rail of our political system well there is no doubt that immigration is another third rail it may supplant the social security as being the third rail of the political system because no matter what we do here both ends of the political spectrum will criticize us criticize us for amnesty on one hand criticize us on the other end of the political spectrum for not being sufficiently compassionate politically it is a loser for those who are engaged in it but we have a public duty to come to grips with this issue and to have comprehensive immigration reform we can do that and insist on having border controls and employer sanction before we work through the guest worker program as it is truly as we are structuring a temporary worker program where people come to the united states for a period of time and go back to their to their native country this is a system where we are giving as much support as much preference for the families as we can on a balance system much to the high skilled workers to balance off against the low skill workers but the most important thing as i say it is to move ahead and per serving here to try to structure a bill which is now three hundred eighty pages long it is intact thanks to the dedicated work of the strath presented on the floor of the united states senate and have the senate work its will but aside from the political perils of the object to restore the rule of law and to bring these eleven to twelve million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows the advantage on to the society generally is to eliminate this massive underclass this massive number of individuals who are in the shadows to structure a system where they well of the outset have visas to stay here for as long as they lie so long as they comply with our laws and to get into the citizenship line of the rear and we are we are looking to reestablish the order the time until three pm shall be equally divided between the senator from north dakota mr conrad and the senator from new you're from new hampshire mr gregg or their designees friends and i'd ask a further unanimous consent that all quorum calls be equally divided not objection to present word i'd further ask that we have seven unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders i ask c n n s consent that these requests be agreed to and that these requests be printed in or around jackson so honored mr president we bring to the floor the conference report on the budget mr president it is a conference report that i believe is worthy of our support and let me say why mr president under this budget plan we will balance the budget in five years in the fifth year two thousand and twelve we will have according to the projections a forty one billion dollars surplus this is after six years of deficit and an additional four years we'll finally be returning to balance mr president the budget resolution that we bring to the floor will reduce spending as a share of gross domestic product each and every year from twenty point five percent in two thousand and eight down to eighteen point nine percent and twelve it is that spending discipline that helps us reach balance in the fifth year it also has the positive effect of bringing down the debt as a share of gross domestic product in every year after twenty ten this is gross debt if we look at publicly held debt it will actually be bringing it down every year after two from two thousand and nine  so mr president i believe this is a responsible budget that really turns us to a fiscally responsible approach to our nation's spending mr president some of said there's a big difference  spending between this budget and the president's budget we have put it on a chart to visually compare over the five years the difference in spending in this proposal and what the president proposed and you can see there is virtually no difference virtually no difference in spending between this proposal and the president's spending proposal yes it is slightly more spending but the money is going the slight addition is going for veterans health care to expand children's health care and to provide further investment in education that those are the fundamental places where we have modest additions to spending and as you can see on a fair comparison basis when you put the two spending lines together on the same axis comparing apples to apples you see the difference in spending is quite modest president on the revenue side we have included a one year fix to the alternative minimum tax the old millionaire's tax is rapidly becoming a middle class tax trap if we hadn't acted over twenty three million people would be caught up by the alternative minimum tax in this next year we have avoided that providing dramatic tax relief to those people we also extend the middle class tax cuts in this proposal that includes a continuation of marriage penalty relief the child tax credit and the ten percent bracket these provisions will benefit tens of millions of the american taxpayers we also include a state tax reform mr president it's well known under the current estate tax law well we'll go to three and a half million dollar exemption per person in two thousand and nine then there's no estate tax in two thousand and ten then we go back to an estate tax in two thousand and eleven that provides only a million dollars of exemption per person or two million a couple instead of having that anomalous situation we will continue providing a three and a half million dollar exemption per person or seven million a couple indexed for inflation i think that just makes common sense now we've heard from some that there's a big tax increase in this budget there's no tax increase in this budget let me reemphasize that there is no assumption of a tax increase in this budget i don't know what i could say to be more clear mr president here is what the president said his budget would produce in revenue over the five years this is the president's own estimate of what his budget would produce he said that his five year budget would produce fourteen trillion eight hundred and twenty six billion dollars of revenue over the five years that's according to the scoring by his own office of management and budget our budget produces fourteen trillion eight hundred and twenty eight billion dollars of revenue over the five year period there is virtually no difference between what the president claimed his budget would produce in revenue and what our budget produces in revenue now our friends on the other side will be swift to say ah but wait a minute senator you're using office of management and budget estimates and see below estimates are two different estimates that's true the point i'm making is that the president said it was entirely reasonable to expect to raise fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty six billion of revenue over this five years that's his own estimate of what his budget would produce c b o says our budget would produce fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty eight billion a two billion dollar difference on a fifteen trillion dollars base that is statistically the same mr president that's what the president said if you put them both on a c b o baseline in other words have estimates done of both the president's revenue and our revenue by the  have two percent more revenue than the present two percent we believe that two percent can be achieved with no tax increase of any kind let me that we believe if you look at the c b o scoring that says we have two percent more revenue than the president that that can be achieved without any tax increase of any kind and i'll explain why in just a moment and if you look at this this is a five year budget but all of us know we're going to write another budget next year so what really matters is next year and here's the revenue line in our budget and the president's revenue line you will notice they are identical there is no difference none not a penny not a dime and in two thousand and nine there is virtually no difference in the two so let's be serious when somebody jumps up here and says there's a biggest tax increase in history the only way that's possibly true is if the president's proposed the biggest tax increase in history because there is for next year and will write another budget next year for next year there is no difference in the revenue in our proposed mr president how can it be that we could get two percent more revenue under the c b o scoring than the president proposes without a tax increase how is that possible well first of all we have the tax  gap which back in two thousand and one was estimated to be three hundred forty five billion dollars a year i believe that tax gap now is in the range of four hundred billion dollars a year that's the difference between what is old and what is paid i believe that is now four hundred billion dollars a year or thereabouts over five years that would be more than two trillion dollars money that is zero debt that is not being paid but that's not the only source of revenue without a tax increase the second area of opportunity to get revenue with no tax increase is the explosion and the abuse of offshore tax havens the president i've shown this building it out in the cayman islands many times on the floor of this five story building is the home to twelve thousand seven hundred forty eight company it's remarkable that all those companies twelve thousand seven hundred forty eight are doing business in this little five story building but that's what they are they really doing business down there mr president the only business being done out of this built this building is monkey business because what they're doing is engaged in an enormous tax scam they claim they're doing business down there because they don't have any taxes down there so how does it work that's a giant shell game they have into the is in the united states that they say they are making no profits and then they move them offshore into these cayman islands subsidiaries where there are no taxes and ali all of sudden they show enormous profits i mean who is being fooled by this shame on us of we're being fool currently we are i'd suggest we close down this camp the permanent subcommittee on investigations has said we are losing one hundred billion dollars a year through these offshore tax havens let me just quote from their report from earlier this year experts of estimated the total lost of the treasury from offshore tax havens alone approaches one hundred billion dollars a year including forty to seventy billion from individuals another thirty billion from corporations and gauging an offshore tax evasion abusive tax shelters add tens of billions of dollars more mr pres one hundred billion a year in tax havens and tens of billions more abby happen to the center as i was listening to the description of these offshore tax havens and senator conrad and i have worked on distillation on these issues for some while and it's interesting with respect to the revenue stream into this country if we closed down some of these tax shelters the result would be increased revenues for the federal government and a requirement that those that benefit from the opportunities of being an american company the requirement that they would start paying taxes now we've had example after example the senator used a chart called the ugly in house a little quiet four story building on church street in the cayman islands  twelve thousand seven hundred forty eight corporations call it home of course none of them are home there if you go there and there's an enterprising reporter named david evans that worked on that particular issue he went there and they're not knows nobody there i mean there's just some windows in the building and it's quiet in the lobby nothing's going on this is a legal fiction created by lawyers for the purpose of allowing companies to avoid paying their u s taxes it is not just that building though that building is  example of i think the unbelievable abuse of the creation of massive offshore tax shelters there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tax shelters i just ask you to yield to make a point when i chaired the hearings on the enron scandal had ken lay come by and raises hand take an oath then refused to testify jeffrey skilling you could not only get him to stop talking he's now in prison but the fact is the enron corporation in addition to all of the other things and part of that we did we understood now was a criminal enterprise with the evidence exists for that in addition they had hundreds of offshore entities why for the purpose of avoiding taxes that's the purpose of offshore entities in texas no one runs to these countries like the cayman islands for the purposes of of creating a big manufacturing plant say that's where we want to move our business seems to me what they do is they hire a lawyer create a legal fiction saying we now want to be a resident of a tax haven country because we don't like the obligation of paying taxes in the federal government and i would just ask the senator is not the case that your proposition and mine the one i introduced with legislation is very simple it says if you're going to be an american company why don't you simply decide to pay taxes in this country if you move your operation somewhere else we understand that we don't support ought not be a tax incentive for it but if you're creating a legal fiction through lawyers telling us you're moving we were going to treat you for tax purposes if you're right here an american company that is required to pay their appropriate taxes and so you know the senators probably also going to talk about the sale leaseback of sewer systems and trolley cars and all the nonsense is going on i would just commend senator conrad for doing this first for finally saying in this budget we're going to shut all this down those of you who want to get the revenue in order to move us towards fiscal sanity here if you really want to help us get the revenue then join us in shutting these tax scams down shutting down these tax havens and i'm sorry i took more time for this link the question that turns out not to be much of a question after all but i did want to point out that i think this is a very important part of this budget agreement and i commend senator conrad and those who put this together because this can significantly benefit our country thi president that ursula burns on just in answering the question of the center i would say it is quite stunning what you find we went out on the internet i'd say to my colleague first of all i want to thank him because this is the picture of this building down in the cayman islands came from him and i have used it repeatedly because i think it tells such a powerful story twelve thousand seven hundred forty eight companies call this little building home we know what's going on it is a giant scam i'd say to the center we went on the internet and we entered in offshore tax planning  you know how many hits you get if you enter in that phrase you get a million two hundred sixty thousand hits and here's my favorite you go out and you look at what's on the internet in relationship to the senators from they have to know i noticed in the paper today new york times they were reviewing the financial statements of the candidates for president and i notice that the senator former senator from north carolina who's running for president john edwards received a half a million dollars in payments last year for his work with the fortress hedge fund i also notice that the new york times represents that the fortress hedge fund is incorporated in the cayman islands probably in that building you're referring to and i'm just wondering because you used the term who is being foo here is it the position of the senate from north dakota that senator edwards has been fooled here or that he's fooling the american people here look i no i do not know what the status of that particular hedge fund is what i do know is that these offshore tax havens are being abused by lots of different entities not only corporations but wealthy individuals i don't have any evidence that would suggest that that particular hedge fund did anything improper and certainly you can be engaged in business in the cayman islands or not be engaged in anything improper that point that we're making is that in this particular building there are twelve thousand seven hundred companies calling it home but more than that when you go out on the internet and by the way we have yet to see the financial reports of some of the republican candidates for president some of whom report that they have met worse over one hundred million dollars it'll be interesting to see their financial arrangements and i hope the senator will be just as focused on abuse that might be in their portfolios that will be very interesting i'd be happy to feel that was a clever question from our colleague from new hampshire i would observe that the discussion i just had about the enron corporation i think the largest financial supporter of the current occupant of the white house for us first run for the presidency was a corporation that had hundreds hundreds of offshore tax havens subsidiaries and it's also the case that it is not new for us to try to shut these down and as we've tried to shut these down it is not new either to find that the current white house by and large opposes the legislation on the floor of the senate to shut down these tax scams i hope that perhaps we can get some support to do what senator conrad and i and others believe ought to be done to shut down these kinds of tax scams for the question reclaiming my time and i have to be happy when i've just completed my presentation the senator has half the time and i know he will use it well i hope he'll give me the opportunity to complete my presentation and i'm happy to answer all of his questions mr president mr president when you go out and look on the internet this is my favorite one live tax free and worldwide on a luxury yacht moving offshore and living tax free just got easier that is the kind of scam that is going on that is costing the treasury of the united states according to our own permanent subcommittee on investigations over one hundred billion dollars a year mr president didn't stop there this is a picture of a sewer system in europe what is a sewer system in europe got to do with the budget the united states well as it turns out it's got a lot to do with it because this sewer system in europe was actually purchased by wealthy u s investors and depreciated on their books for u s tax purposes and then released back to the european city in which it is actually located it has no business purpose there's only one purpose and the purpose is to operate as a scam and mr president this is the kind of thing that should be shut down nobody can justify this nobody can defend this and that's what's going on and so i believe the combination of closing the tax gap or just a tiny portion of combined with shutting down these offshore tax hav combined with shutting down these abusive tax shelters could easily provide the two percent of revenue that we have that's over and above the president according to a congressional budget office score with no tax increase to anyone mr president the budget conference report that we bring to the floor also funds a number of critically important priorities for the american people including expanding health care coverage for children if we look at the comparison the president's provided two billion for this purpose over the five years we provide fifty billion dollars so that there is the prospect of covering every child in america who is not otherwise covered with health insurance that's good policy it's a good investment and it's morally right we ought to ensure that every child in america has health care coverage that's good policy because if you solve a health care problem for a child you get a return on that investment for their lifetime mr president another area that has been a priority in this budget is education under this budget we provide some six billion dollars in this next year over and above what the president provided because we think education is the future if we're not world class in education we're not going to be a world class power and so we have provided that in additional investment in education in the third area of initiative is in health care if there is any scandal that i think is more trouble the american people than what we saw at walter reed where heroes returning from iraq and afghanistan have been subjected to medical treatment i don't know of anything that is so angered so many people at least in my constituency and so we have adopted a budget here that closely follows the independent budget that is put forward by the veterans organizations themselves that provides for forty three point one billion dollars in funding in the next fiscal year compared to the president's thirty nine point six billion dollars mr president to recap the budget resolution that we bring bring to the floor the conference report puts the nation back on a sound fiscal path it balances by two thousand and twelve with a forty one billion dollar surplus and twenty two while it reduces ending as a share of gross domestic product each and every year the five years of the budget it reduces the debt as a share of gross domestic product from two thousand and ten and it adopts spending caps and restore is a strong pay go rules what does pay go they go simply says if you want to have more mandatory spending or more tax cuts you can have them but you've got to pay for them and if you don't pay for them you've got to get a supermajority vote mr president this budget also meets the nation's priorities it fully funds the president's defense and war cost requests and rejects the president's cuts in certain key priority areas provides increases for children's health for education and for veterans health care areas that overwhelmingly the american people want us to invest in addition it this budget resolution keeps taxes low it expands specifically the middle class tax provisions including marriage penalty relief the child tax credit the ten percent bracket it provides alternative minimum tax relief so that more and more middle class people don't get swept up in the alternative minimum tax it provides for fundamental este tax reform it includes a deficit neutral reserve fund for additional tax relief for the extension of other expiring provisions and it includes no assumption of a tax increase to present this budget also prepares for the long term it provides for program integrity initiatives to crack down on waste fraud and abuse in both medicare and social security it includes health information technology and comparative effectiveness reserve funds to address rising health care costs according to the rand corporation the health information technology provisions alone could save eighty one billion dollars a year and adopts a new budget point of order against long term deficit increases mr president i just want to conclude by saying this budget has specific proposals addressing our long term fiscal challenges it provides program integrity initiatives to crack crack down on waste fraud and abuse it provides a new mandatory spending that new mandatory spending and tax cuts must be paid for in the paygo provision it provides that long term deficit increase face a point of order a supermajority hurdle on the floor of the senate it provides for the health information technology reserve fund that i've already indicated the rand corporation indicates could save eighty one billion dollars a year and finally mr president it includes a comparative effectiveness reserve fund so that we look at the technologies and the approaches that are being used to cross this country and how we could save money by using the best practices in health care mr president we think this is a responsible budget it is one that meets the needs of the american people and we believe it merits our colleagues support i thank the chair and yield the floor before i do so i want to thank my colleague senator gregg i acknowledge that we have differences about this budget that's healthy that's the strength of our democracy we have a debate that we have differences but i want to say that senator gregg as always has conducted himself as a professional and has been extremely helpful as we've gone through the process he and his staff have cooperated with us closely while they have disagreed very strongly with respect of some of the conclusions we reached and i do wan acknowledge the way in which he has conducted himself in a staff as conducted themselves as we've gone through this difficult process and i want to thank him for the many courtesies he has extended to us as we've gone through the budget resolution this year i  thank the chair and yield the floor present senator new hampshire let me begin by returning the appreciation of an expression of appreciation obviously there are strong disagreements on philosophy and policy here and the differences between the party a senator from north dakota represents the party of tax and spend we represent the party of restraint fiscal responsibility and those differences are quite clear in this budget but independent of those differences the relationship is friendly and courteous professional and i think constructive for the institution generally and quite honestly i think if the whole institution function the way the budget committee functioned we get a heck of a lot more done around here that  must point out some difference since i'm i'm inclined to almost use that to paraphrase that quip i think it was mark twain it might have been bill buckley it was bill buckley i really apologize not a good budget it does have the largest tax increase in history and it's a tax increase which is it especially unfortunate because it's going to take place in the context of a tax law which we finally sort of got right around here as is shown by the revenues that are flowing into the federal government and the fact that the president law is generating more revenues the federal government than historically the federal government has received and is doing it in a more progressive way than has historically been the federal tax system in fact our present law actually has high income people paying more in taxes and they've historically paid and low income people getting more that back in the way of tax benefits and they've historically and so this bill which basically will repeal most of the major tax proposals that were put in place in the early part of this administration which generated this economic recovery that's gone on for twenty two months in this cause us to have seven point four million dollar jobs and created and in fact yesterday or today the report came out that the jobs number actually fell another five thousand so we're literally under three hundred thousand jobs claims which is a number that shows the worst actually at full employment as a nation we're under four point four percent unemployment number and the jobs that are bickering being created are good jobs and they're generating revenues to this government which is cause us to have a huge burst in revenues which is cause the deficit to come down that is all going to put it be put at risk by this tatt by the tax increases in this bill this to tax increases in this bill are going to dramatically affect the capital gains rate the dividends rate the child tax credit the education cash credit this marriage tax penalty relief the middle class income tax rates all those things are at serious jeopardy and in fact will probably end up being repealed under this tax on this budget if this budget goes forward on this present structure and we'll get into that in a second because they first created this extremely complex trigger mechanism which can be undermined and well undermined by their own budget should have go forward and make making it virtually impossible for any of these tax cuts to survive in the process that's been proposed here seven hundred and twenty five billion dollars in tax increases in this budget over five largest tax increase in the history of this country no question about it in addition the spending in this budget the discretionary spending this budget is huge two hundred five billion dollars of new discretionary spending over the president's request of the president's request were very generous very significant increases in spending and it's ironic the as it left the senate there was less spending than this there was still a significant increase i think was one hundred forty billion dollars in news  spending about the president's request in discretionary accounts as i left the house it was less than this i believe i don't think it was two hundred billion that comes back at two hundred five billion it's sort of like one of those microwave popcorn cookers where you put it in the stove in the stove being put the house democrats in the senate democrats together and it blows up into a great big huge spending package and a great big huge deficit great big huge tax package too and debt goes up under this bill two point five trillion dollars of debt will be added to the famous wall of debt for those of you have seen the wall of debt you'll see it some time somewhere it's coming two point five trillion dollars in new debt is added here and remember most of that on top of that they're raiding the social security fund to tune of a trillion dollars now originally when the budget left the senate at least the social security funds under their projections which were rosy scenarios to say the least under their projections in the least in the last year wasn't going to be rated that they were going to be and there was going to be an on balance budget here but now as it comes back again from this tax and spend microwave called the senate democrat house democrat budget conference which we weren't loaded there's no on budget surplus everything comes out of the out of so security funds all this debt is added to our children's backs and it's going to have to be paid for by our children in addition there is absolutely no attempt to address the entitlement crisis we're fed in facing the fact that our children and our children's children are going to have to pay a cost which they simply will not be able to afford in the area of maintaining the benefit structure because of the retirement of the baby boom generation the fact that the that cost will actually exceed twenty to thirty twenty twenty five percent of gross national product just for that the programs of social security medicare and medicaid and there's no attempt to reign that coming fiscal meltdown in order to address it totally irresponsible in fact not only there's a there are no attempt to address the coming fiscal meltdown as a result of entitlement spending there's actually a huge exercise in gamesmanship in this budget which will allow the health committee under the leadership of ten kennedy to dramatically expand in thailand spending dramatically expand in thailand spend so instead of reining in in thailand spending there is a huge there is under this budget a proposal to use reconciliation which is supposed to reduce the deficit on the spending side ledger to expand spending expand the size of the federal government grow the government and why do they do that because they only need fifty one votes on reconciliation and they know that they couldn't get that proposal through here because it would be subject to a filibuster if they had to use those regular water so they have used reconciliation which is supposed to limit the size of government to expand government dramatic a very cynical act in my opinion a very cynical act because that was never the purpose of the budget and in fact there are some very good quotes from them and from the senate from the chairman of the committee reflecting that exact position toward the position i just related said because he didn't believe what he just said because actually what he said was just the opposite where he did say the opposite the direct association shouldn't be used this way the way it's being used in this bill and in fact the senator from north dakota made a couple other statements that i think were on point when they were made unfortunately the budget doesn't reflect those states he said we need to be tough on spending and yet in this budget there are zero cuts zero cuts in spending in fact there's this two hundred five billion dollars fashion discretionary spending entirely spending wil expand on the reconciliation instructions and under the reserve funds the government will grow dramatically as a percentage of gross national product and will have to bear the burdens that senator also said i have said i am prepared to get savings on long term entitlement programs but there are no savings in long term entitlement programs there was once a representation they were going to fifteen billion dollars of savings but of course that representation was a little bit incomplete in the sentence because the rest is essentially said but we're going to spend fifty billion dollars so there's actually no savings i think it ended up at thirty billion dollars but many of that is a net loss in the entitlement accounts coupled with this reconciliation after exercise which could be as high as a thirty to forty billion dollar increase in spending he also said here is where we are headed yet is up up and away yes it is up in a way under this budget that that was correct statement it's up in a way it's up up and away by two point five trillion dollars in new debt which american people which our generation passed on the next generation totally inappropriate and unfair and he said i believe first of all we do need to have more revenue well again he at least stuck to that statement there's a hundred seven hundred thirty six billion dollars of new taxes in this bill seven hundred thirty six billion dollars and what go to the one that has the well how we're doing it now had twenty two consecutive quarters of economic growth actually had twenty three now and that's pretty darn good that's pretty darn good we have had we've added seven point four million new jobs and or seven point eight million new jobs and that's people being put to work how did that happen well it happened in large part because we had an economy that was growing as a result of a tax policy which said to people in america go out invest take risks be entrepreneurs create jobs and we're going to give you a reason law return on the money that you've invested this is just called common sense and human nature if you tax people at a rate that they appreciate is fair they're going to be willing to take a risk with their money go out and invest it and create jobs if you tax them at a rate which they don't think is fair and what they do is they invest in tax shelters and efficiently use their money and as a result the government gets less and the economy doesn't grow as much in fact the growth in federal revenues over the last few years has exceeded projections and been dramatically hi growth in federal revenues has been in the last three years the highest rate of growth in the history of our country and has represented huge amounts of revenue coming into the federal huge amounts of revenue this revenue of course has allowed us to reduce the deficit from what was projected to be four hundred fifty billion dollars deficit just a couple of years ago it's now going to fall probably fall all below two hundred billion dollars or less than one percent probably of gross national product or somewhere in that range and it's in large part a function of two things one the fact that these revenues have jump so high and to the fact that this administration has been very aggressive in controlling this non defense discretionary spending but under this proposal which has been brought forward today by their par colleagues on the other side of the aisle the tax policies which have generated this economic expansion are targeted for extinction capital gains rate will jump back to almost thirty percent twenty five percent tensional a dividend rates will jump from one to twenty five thirty to thirty five percent the bottom rate for most taxpayers who are in the low income end of the economic scale will be increased and there will be created a huge disincentive for people to be productive in our society we'll go back to the days when it just didn't make a whole lot of sense to go out there and take that risk because the government was going to take so much of your money and we hear a lot from the other side of the aisle well these tax cuts they disproportionately benefited the wealthy in america i think it's important to remember this that under the new tax law where the tax lower functioning now under which is generating all this huge revenue high income people pay a larger percentage of the general burden of taxes income taxes than they did under the clinton years the top twenty percent of people with income paying tax income taxes are paying eighty five percent eighty five percent of the income tax burden borne by the top twenty percent on the clinton years eighty dollars phone saying that same income bracket for eighty one percent of the tax burden and the lower end of our economy people who don't make quite so much money or don't make a great deal of money so bottom forty percent they don't pay any taxes actually on balance any income taxes they actually get money back on to the earned income tax credit and today they're getting twice as much back twice as much back as they did under the clinton years and it's interesting to note in fact is in that group that the low income households receives far more in government benefits than they ever pay in taxes and that's an interesting fact which should be pointed out as well as the fact that just on the tax side of the ledger they get more money back where's the higher income individual of course pays a lot more into the federal government than they ever get back from the federal government that's what this chart shows if you if you her income is up to twenty three thousand dollars you're going to get about thirty one thousand if your income is over sixty five thousand you're going to pay about fifty thousand it's a very interesting fact that when you take not only the tax burden to americans but the benefits which are americans receive that low income americans are under this government under the bush administration getting a huge benefit from the government in the area of tax benefits and also benefits which are structured on the basis of income and high income americans are paying a significant amount more for the cost of the government so we have a tax structure which is extremely progressive and which is much more progressive than under the clinton years and in addition this budget which has such an anticipated towards productive america which essentially says to productive americans we don't like you we want to tax you some more in trying to get at those folks who the other side of the aisle thinks are cells such scofflaws because they make money and have income and actually pay eighty five percent of the burden of income taxes in this country and trying to get at those folks by raising the dividend tax and raising the capital gains tax which is the primary target of the other side of the aisle they're actually significantly impacting low income seniors are seniors generally and you know yours because and this is should just be common sense because most seniors receive income other than social security or that that is dividend base because they're not working any longer and when the other side of the aisle decides they want to people who have given an income which is exactly what this budget proposes they're going to get postal folks because they're the enemy who they're really getting for the most part are senior citizens fifty one percent of american seniors have dividend income so when they decide to double or triple with dividend in dividend tax a double or two and a half times increase it which is what this bill will do the people who are go impacted are fifty percent of the seniors and in the area of capital gains it's also interesting that given that in the area of capital gains the same is true when they decide to get people who make money by selling assets you know all those wealthy small businessman you know the guy who's all his life work to build a restaurant or a small company or maybe a gas station is whole life working to get that business up to a level where it had some asset value and then when he or she retires they're not going to run it any longer they're going to sell it and i take that those revenues and they go to use it to live on in their retirement years or maybe to self help their children up that evil person who's done that in our society is the other side of the aisle views that person they're going to get that with by doubling the capital gains rate and how do they get well they get people who are sixty five seventy four years old thirty percent of those people have capital gains income and people as a stock to age into their retirement years back to generate capital gains in common obvious and it's logical you know when you when you get to that age you're going to want to sell those assets which probably you built of hard sweat of yourself and your family farmer or a restaurant or a small company so that you can take those assets and live on them in retirement and live a good return armalite or simply help your children out as they move forward in their lives and so when they get those people who are they getting they're getting retired with this they're raising their taxes now we're going to hear some of this wizard of oz language about how well we really don't we really don't raise those taxes we really tell there's a hundred eighty million billion dollars of adjustment in the here that we're going to be able to put towards capital gains or or something else or you know i mean it's such a fraudulent statement it's almost not worth responding to but let me were put it moved to the factual response which is this there is no capacity in this budget to institute any significant attempt to continue or to make permanent dividends and capital gains r none and in fact that hundred eighty billion dollars were even to appear which it will not under this budget which point i'll get to in a second would benefit miscellaneous the doctrines which are good and right and appropriate but actually don't help the economy all that much because mostly they're socially driven they involve the marriage tax penalty they involve children's tax credits involve tuitions cash credits but they're not economic drivers they're not like dividends rates and capital gains rates which may translate immediately into a better investment of funds but this trigger that but what they've done is they've said well we'll give you that hundred eighty billion dollars or certain events occur in the third or fourth year of this budget well this is a real rube goldberg exercise here i mean it's like one of those things where you've got sixteen different moving parts and you know none of them are going to work but your claim they're going to work so that you can claim you're actually going to do something that you know is never going to occur that's exactly what this is all about for this hundred eighty billion dollars kick in the democratic tax trigger wires the following a budget resolution all we've got the group goldberg chart that's hot off the press that's one of our better charts it took a little little bit of thought on that one  in order to get this tax cut or any part of the following as to happen there has to be a budget resolution promising to middle class tax cuts well that's that's here we got that we get we're going to give you the promise we're just not to give it to you the tax writing committee marks up the legislation but it stall why does it stall because the way this thing works is there has to be offsets that can be found to satisfy the tax cuts but if the congress continues to spend money that undermines the capacity to reach the factual obligation which would create the tax cuts so you can basically spend your way out of doing the tax cuts which is exactly what the budget proposes i mean promises the tax cuts and then it proposes two hundred five billion dollars of new spending in the discretionary accounts it proposes a huge expansion in spending in the and of course that leads to the big business community getting a little skittish it leads to the investors getting a little skittish and lazy economy starting to contract which leads to a lower slower rate of growth which leads to less tax revenues which leads to surprise they're not going to give you the tax cuts a self fulfilling prophecy it's a trigger the guarantee is guaranteed that when it's polled nothing happens it's like a group goldberg event defines how you get to this tax cut such optus cation that you know on the face of it that nobody seriously takes take seriously the idea of doing a tax cut and that's reasonable because let's face it the that is not the philosophy of the party of the other side of the aisle party the other side of the aisle is shown itself historically to be a party that believes it's not your money it's not your money you know it really isn't your money it's their money you just haven't figured out yet that you earned it and you really think you should be able to spend it you haven't figured out yet that they think you earned it for them and it's the government should be able to spend and that's been the philosophy of this party for a long time doesn't change over the years very much and now that they're back in a position of some responsibility considerable responsibility their parties of both governments in the senate and the house yeah there's a part both the senate in the house they have the capacity to execute that strategy which is we'll take your money and we'll spend it on what we think is important because we're smarter than you we know better what you need and therefore shouldn't be your money in the first place just because your and at the government has a right to it and the government found as they always do the language which i had seen in the conference report which is so so interested has to be read for the record this is how this trigger works it's written like a reserve trust fund which is on its face use the long term very inappropriate terms to reserve a reverse reserve fund in the house and this is the way work in the house the chairman of the house budget committee will increase the revenue aggregate and other words will take away the tax cut role if determines the future tax relief legislation in this is the language i love quote does not contain a provision consistent with the provisions set forth in the joint statement of the managers and quote and what's the joint statement of the measure say the statement of manager says that the future tax relief legislation must contain a provision that makes the tax relief continued on zero and the projection of a surplus the second trigger would turn off the task us unless the minimum surplus materialized in the task got to be one hundred  seventy nine point eight billion dollars or eighty percent of the projected surplus whichever is less rove goldberg couldn't have written this language any better i mean this language is designed to fail designed to make sure that the government gets that money you don't get to keep it and the government makes a decision as to where it's spent and it's unfortunate we also have in this budget regrettably a total failure to address the entitlement counts entitlement accounts are by far the most serious issue we have as a government and as a people beyond the threat of being attacked by islamic extremists with a weapon of mass destruction and why do i say that that sounds like a statement that's a little over the top well it's not the simple fact is that as the baby boom generation retires and it is going to retire and we exist there are eighty million of us we are going to double the size of the number of retirees in this country and as i've said before on this floor and i know the senator from north dakota agrees with me this system is not structured to handle the retirement of a generation is that large the whole concept of our system of retirement benefits was that there would always be a pyramid that there always be many more people paying into it than took out of it that was the genius of franklin roosevelt and when he created the social security system that in fact when it started there were there are about twelve people paying in for every one person taking out nine hundred fifty and today there still are there about three and a half people paying in for every one person taking but by the time to be able generation is in full retirement we will have two people paying in for every one person today taking out and the practical effect will be a meltdown of our system and this chart reflects i've shown this before because i think this is probably the most serious issue which we face beyond the issue of the threat of islamic fundamentalist fundamental place those three social cues those three programs will have so up twenty percent of gross national product twenty percent of gross national product is what the federal government spends today another way to state this is that at that time the federal government will have no money left over for national defense education laying out roads environmental protection all that money will have to go to those three programs but doesn't stop there the number continues to go up at a rate which is incredible and which is all just to unsustainable still has about twenty seven twenty eight percent of gross national product just for those three programs by about twenty thirty five now this is a situation which would mean if it and it's going to occur which well it means because it is going to occur that our children our children's children these pages down here would do such a great job and we're so personable and put up with our foolishness around here sometimes they're going to have to pay a burden in taxes in order to support our generation which will make it virtually impossible for them to have as high a quality of life as we've had in this generation they won't be able to buy that home or put their children through college or just have the enjoyment of a lifestyle that has discretionary funds because those funds will have to be spent through taxes to support these programs these three programs and regrettably this budget does nothing to zero to address this looming crisis and it's an act that i think fails araba as a generation we're the governance  party now we are in the sense that most of us in this room we serve here today are baby boom members there are some large it is inappropriate of us as a generation not to try to solve a problem which we're going to create for our children and grandchildren and yet this budget does nothing to do that and in fact it aggravates it by suddenly creating this new concept that you can use reconciliation to expand and grow the size of government dramatically which is exactly what it does which is unfortunate and which is a terrible precedent for us as we go to pursue there was a proposal that came from the administration which was reasonable which would have reduced the mess out your medicare liability unfunded liability by almost twenty five percent it would not have affected recipients except for those at the high end because all it did that impact the recipients was suggests that people like warren buffet or retired senators for example should pay a fair share of their burden of their cost of medicare part d on the medicare part d today which is the drug program if you are retired it doesn't matter how wealthy you are you still get the benefit fully subsidized by working americans so that person is working on as a waitress or on an industrial line somewhere or in a gas station that person's taxes are subsidizing warren buffet's drug benefit so mean he takes advantage of part d which being the conservative individual i think he is even probably does maybe doesn't i don't know whether he does but that a retired senator's drug benefit is subsidized by by working americans a day well that's wrong i mean obviously if you've got that type of income and what the president suggested was that people have over eighty thousand dollars of individual income or one hundred sixty thousand dollars of joint income that's a lot of money should have to pay the full cost of their drug benefit or at least a high percentage of the cost of their drug benefit and that was rejected it was rejected by the other side  what a small step which would have translated into a very significant savings in the long run which was totally reasonable which was simply not pursued or brought to the table by the other side the i mean if they're go do reconciliation instructions which expands program in this country dramatically which is what this bill does they ought to at least on reconciliation which said the finance committee make former senators pay the full cost of the drug benefit and people with income over two hundred sixty thousand dollars for a large percentage of the cost the drug benefit but they did they pass completely on that opportunity even though it was a totally reasonable opportunity and something that should be done should be done soon because the problem is it's like that fram oil filter ad that the used to have ten years ago i think that said you can pay me now or you can pay me later well the later is going to bankrupt our children and our children's paying today doing the fixing today translates into long term huge savings and it's certainly something that should be done but was passed on in this budget so what the practical effect of this budget is pretty soon it's a big spending big taxing classic budget that comes from the left increases taxes by seven hundred thirty billion dollars increases discretionary spending by two hundred five billion dollars raise the social security fund to the tune of a trillion dollars increases the debt of the federal government by two point five trillion dollars dramatically expands the obligation which we're passing on to our children our children will have to pay a lemonade some tax cuts which of caused this economy to grow and be vibrant and have created jobs and generate huge revenues to the federal government and fails even just a little bit like asking former senators and wealthy americans to pay the cost of their drug benefit to address the looming crisis which we face as a nation which is the medicare social security burden which we're going to pass on to our children so it is not a budget which i would recommend and i do appreciate the senate from north dakota and his energy in pursuing it and oh there's one other just small point it in the area of discipline fiscal discipline we hear all this talk of pay go they should call this they shouldn't call this pay go they should call the swiss cheese go because it's targeted to just pick up the things that they don't like like tax cuts but the things that they  they basically exempted from it like agricultural entitlement spending and so it's a it's a it's a choose the things you like pay go or choose things you don't like paco so that enforcement mechanism is really it's a nice hermit's term of motherhood but it's it's a very it's not going to have much discipline on the on the spending side a ledger and in addition there are no caps out in the out years  for some reason even at these very high standing numbers which are really egregious in their excess they have put no caps in for two thousand and nine or two thousand and ten and they've got them in there for two thousand and eight but not beyond that and they've used advanced appropriations david do they expand in advance appropriations which is a way to basically get around caps to begin with over what they've traditionally been i understand that the president has sent up a letter or his o m b director has it says that they're going to try to discipline the fiscal process through the v a using a veto on on appropriations bills but we know the way that can also be at the present can also be put in a in an untenable position because they can roll all these appropriations into the fence bill and make it virtually impossible for the president  to aggressively and effectively use the veto but it shouldn't be up to the president to discipline this place we should do it and there should be effective and there should be effective points of water retained out in fact the paygo point of order they so neutralize that that that is cited they would even do it year by year they decide to put a five year a five year calculation that they go this is all inside politics around here inside substance but the practical effect that is you can take credit for something you think's going to happen in the out years when you know five years scoring sometimes a little sketchy and do spending this year in the claim that you're going to save something five years from now and claim that you've avoided paygo it's to ga so weight again paygo the spending side of the ledger so they've basically eviscerated a whole series of what are important spending restraints around here or at least they've skewed them in a way that makes the spending more capable of occurring and of course tax cuts will be aggressively disciplined so that they can't occur because it's not your money it's their money you can always remember that this budget is based on the basic theme that really it's not your money it's the government's money and we do we do as a congress to allow you to keep some percentage of what you weren't but most of what you are and we when he suggested at the beginning of his statement that his party is the party of fiscal responsibility wow that is breathtaking their party as the party of fiscal responsibility let's look at what's happen their watch when they controlled everything they control the house they control the senate they control the white house here's what happens with the debt and their watch they have built a wall that is going to take us a generation to recover from when this president came to office at the end of his first year we won't hold him responsible for the first year although he inherited balanced bu though the gross debt the united states started five point eight trillion at the end of this year it's going to be nine trillion so they've run up the debt three trillion dollars in five years and if the president's plan is followed the next five years again to run it up to twelve trillion mr president their claim that they have been fiscally responsible is unfortunately contradicted by the facts now they talk about the performance of the economy let's talk about the performance of the economy because we've looked at what's happened in this recovery compared to the nine previous recoveries major recovery since world war two and here's what you find and or this recovery we are running on revenues one hundred and twenty seven billion dollars short of the typical recovery since world war two on job creation in the previous administration in the first seventy five months they created clinton administration eighteen point seven million jobs in this administration for the same period five point two million the clinton administration produced three times as many jobs on job creation compared to the nine previous recovery since world war two they are seven million private sector jobs short of what's happened in the typical recovery and business investment again repaired to that compared to the nine recovery since world war two they are sixty nine percent below the typical recovery since world war two the president when he talks about this burst of revenue under their fiscal management you'll notice that all of his charts start in the year two thousand and four they forgot about two thousand and one when they were in charge two thousand and two when they were in charge two thousand and three when they were in charge and in fact if you look back on the revenue of the united states here's what you see if you tell the american people the whole story not just the bits and pieces they like to talk about you go back to two thousand the revenue base of the united states was just over two trillion dollars it has taken us until last year taken us six years to get back to the revenue base this country had in two thousand so let's look at their record simple fact is they increased spending and they controlled every dime that was spent here every dime they increased spending by more than forty percent they stagnate in the revenue base and the result was an explosion of debt that's their record and it's indelibly indelibly etched in the history of the country and unfortunately we're going to pay a long time now one this present i just wanted to the first chart the senator used would show the steps of additional debt i was intrigued as i was walking through the chamber to hear our colleague from new hampshire say this is your money which i understand the origin of that  comment the implication however is that you know we don't have to fund schools and roads and law enforcement and the defense and so on so we all have some responsibility the country so part of the money is asked to go in revenue to the federal government or the state governments pay for that but when he says this is your money should he not also when you hold up that chart say to the american people this is your debt what was that i mean isn't it isn't the case that in the years in which they ratchet up that debt by spending money and not asking for the the revenue ford they're just saying to the american people will load you up with some debt and by the way this is your debt you pay it later will probably be gone but you pay it later shouldn't that be the second verse of that song what they really should say is that they have become the party of borrow and spend because they spent the money they increased spending here more than forty percent but they didn't pay for their spending instead they put it on the charge hard and they've run up the debt in a way that's unprecedented in american history they will have doubled the debt of the country and doubled foreign holdings of our debt i've got another chart it took two hundred twenty four years and forty two presidents to run up a trillion dollars of u s debt held abroad this president's more than double that amount just six years to president that's that's a record they can't run away from it because they own it and when they say there's this huge tax increase please this is what the president said he was going to raise in taxes fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty six billion here's what we raise fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty eight billion virtually no difference now that's what the president said his budget would raise see below as a little different take on a congressional budget office they show a difference over the five years of two percent that we have two percent more or more money than they are proposing and the important thing about this budget we all know we're going to write another budget next year what's the difference in revenue for next year between our budget in the president's budget you know what it is mr president zero nothing no difference where is this big world class tax increase they're talking about you certainly can't find it in the budget when he talks about spending here's what's happened to the spending under our budget they're the ones ran up the spending increased it forty percent we're taking spending as a share of gross domestic product down each and every year under this budget from twenty and a half percent of g d p in two thousand and eight down to eighteen point nine percent of g d p in two thousand and twelve on debt we're turning the corner on debt they've had it explode on their watch we're turning the corner and starting to take debt down as a share of g d p mr president i heard a lot of talk about this big increase in spending well where are the increases that are in our budget well first of all we increase the funding for veterans health care by six point seven billion dollars over last year i'm proud of it because we're going to keep the promise that was made to our nation's veterans that they were going to receive quality health care we've seen the scandal of the veterans being mistreated at walter reed under this administration their watch when they were in charge mr president we are going to fix the problems in veterans health care by putting money where the speeches are an education and training we increased by three point six billion dollars because we understand that investment in our kids education ought to be a top priority and i'm justice and law enforcement we had three billion dollars because we're not going to cut the cops program ninety four percent and take police off the street when those additional hundred thousand cops all across america have helped us reduce rates of crime the president inexplicably says cut the cops program ninety four percent we have rejected that proposal we say keep the police on the street let's keep our streets safe and on health care two point nine billion dollars so that we can begin to insure the children of america provide them with health insurance mr president when we look at the reasons for the increases in spending under the budget resolution thirty four percent is because of defen and war costs twenty five percent is because of social security and medicare it's no change that we have made it is simply the increased cost of those programs we also have seven percent interest increase in veterans benefits and services to take care of veterans health care net interest up ten percent nothing we did that's the debt that this president's run off run up we got to pay the bill the president when he talked about this big increase in spending you know what it is two point six percent we've added two point six percent over the baseline to address veterans health care to address the nation's needs in education and health care of our kids and that's exactly what the american people expect and want us to do mr president he says the tax cut will never come about we've got the middle class tax cuts and the estate tax reform in this proposal he says none of it a lever happened because of the trigger well mr president the way the trigger works the office of management and budget controlled by the president tells us what they expect the surplus to be in two thousand and twelve and we can only use eighty percent of it for tax cuts that's the way the trigger works under the current scoring by o m b there is sufficient room as this chart shows to fund all of the tax cuts that are in this budget all of the middle class tax cuts and the estate tax reform under current office of management and budget scoring and you take eighty percent of their projected surplus in two thousand and twelve they're projected sir fluster eighty percent of it in two thousand and twelve is two hundred thirty two billion the cost of the tax cuts one hundred eighty billion we can fund the tax cuts that are provided here that go to hardworking middle class families exactly where they ought to go mr president he says we're raiding so security well he forgot how we got into this position we got into this position because this president chose to provide tax cuts to the wealthiest among us instead of protecting social security and under the president's plan he's going to take from two thousand and eight to two thousand and seventeen two and a half trillion or so security funds to use it to pay other bills for me to say this if anybody tried this in the private sector what the president is doing they'd be on their way to a federal institution but it would not be the congress the united states it would not be the white house they'd be on their way to the big house that's a violation of federal law but unfortunately they've dug a hole so deep it's going to take us a time to dig out of and that's exactly what we've done under this budget because unlike them we have balanced the budget by two thousand and twelve unlike the president who even now has an balance the budget by two thousand and twelve under his proposal we'd still be thirty billion dollars in the red by two thousand and twelve we balanced the budget by two thousand and twelve and have a forty one billion dollars surplus that's a real american value paying your bills mr president when they say their tax relief has somehow magically benefited the middle class at the expense of the wealthiest among us where there's a whopper here's what's happened the millionaires of our society and i have respect for those who have succeeded i applaud them i am delighted their success i hope everybody is financially successful but when they say somehow the middle class has been the ones that have gained by their tax policy and not those at the highest in the income ladder come on i don't know who they think they're fooling with that one but here are the facts this is according to the brookings institute tax policy center those earning more than a million dollars in two thousand and six this isn't a projection this is what happened in two thousand and six those earning over a million dollars a year got on average a tax cut of one hundred eighteen thousand dollars those earning between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand got thirty seven hundred dollars those earning less than less than one hundred thousand dollars got less than seven hundred dollars please there's no question who are the primary beneficiaries of these tax cuts hit is overwhelmingly gone to the wealthiest among us and i'm not here being critical of the wealthy i have absolutely applaud their success one of the great things about america is if you work hard and you're inventive and you're entrepreneurial you can succeed that's a great thing about america we want to preserve it and one of the ways you preserve it is the pay our bills and quit running up the debt and quit running these massive deficits that's why we've about the things that are done with the long term we have these reserve funds that were in our budget but let's reflect our our friends on the other side they criticize reserve funds here all the reserve reserve fund after there are fund are after reserve funds and they criticize the ones that are in our budget please that's the pot calling the kettle black finally with respect to the long term i  said repeatedly is one place where senator gregg and i entirely agree we've got to tackle the long term entitlement challenges absolutely the only way that's going to happen is bipartisan agreement neither party can tackle the long term challenges on their own look this is a five year budget resolution our long term entitlement plan problems are can and fifteen your problems the sooner we deal with it the better the budget resolution is not going to be the place because only one party is carrying the burden there it is got to be a joint agreement between the two parties that's why along with senator gregg he and i have proposed a plan to give to empower sixteen members eight democrats eight republicans a responsibility to come up with a long term plan that would be would be dealt with separately then a budget resolution with that mr president  i noticed that the senator from washington is here and i think i don't know if the senator was mr chairman i'd like to have an opportunity to make some comments if i might i want to do you know we've always alternated this back and how much time with the to two people on your side after we have the final and before that i think the center for his courtesy i think the senator freshman senator from washington i think senator as well i really appreciate that this president i just signed to come to the center for a few and in critical needs of all americans i am very proud to be able to say i support it and it is strong which is exactly what we need to be doing today here in the united states first and foremost i do wan thank our chairman senator kent conrad for his tireless work on this most difficult task i have served with him on this process time and time again and i'm always amazed and impressed and inspired by his attention to detail and easy senator conrad has again this year proven that he is up to the task and i am proud to call him a colleague and a friend mr president senator conrad and all of us as democrats want a budget that reflects the priorities of american families and we do do that in this budget by investing in our schools in our infrastructure and in our communities and we still provide every dollar the president spending over the next five years at the same time mr president americans want us to return to fiscal responsibility here in washington d c every family knows the importance of balancing their own checkbooks and paying their own bills and the federal government to be responsible with their money as well unfortunately senator conrad pointed out for too many years under republican control we have seen a failure to manage those taxpayer dollars year after year they have produced some of the largest debt this country's ever seen this budget it says no more our plan does include strong pay go rules and that means that we are being responsible for today and not burdening our grandchildren with future priorities and still producing a surplus by two thousand and twelve as president we recognize in this budget that american families want relief from taxes as well this budget support for middle class tax relief extends marriage penalty relief child tax credit and supports reform of the estate tax just to make sure we protect small business and and family farms and importantly provides relief from the alternative minimum tax for one year a tax that increasingly is a burden to m family mr president especially proud of what we have done in this budget that pays attention to our veterans when they come home from stories we have heard of veterans who have been struggling to get mental health care for post traumatic stress syndrome who had to wait months if not years to get the benefits that they need or the lack of focus on traumatic brain injury the signature issue of this war that is affecting thousands and thousands of our soldiers who return turn from what we have seen clearly as the president has not adequately funded care this budget reverses that terrible trend and provides forty three point one billion dollars for addressing those problems and that is a critical component of this budget that every member of the senate ought to vote for importantly mr president our budget rejects the president's proposal to impose new fees and hi co payments on veterans the president's budget that came to said that he wanted the input and co pays on to our of the veterans themselves to pay for veterans health care we say no we say these men and women have paid the price by serving us we're not going to charge them again and very importantly we keep the promise to our nation's heroes and restore that by saying we will not impose on our veterans to bounce this nation's budget as  president's budget to invest in critical port security needs it's very proud to work last year a bipartisan basis to pass the safe ports act but that bill did not adequately the critical infrastructure we need to keep our ports safe this sure that this bill actually works on education mr president our budget reverses the painful cuts that we have seen year after year to education and provides the largest increase in funding for elementary and secondary education right thing to make sure our children get a good education our budget this budget that's before us increases department of education funding by nine and a half billion dollars above the president's request and keep the promise we made when no child left behind was an actor mr president as a parent form a former teacher i know the importance of investing in our children's education i am very proud that this budget does this budget also mr president provides a very important funding for s chip that is the program that senator conrad talked about which is the children's health insurance program everyone talks about the incredible burden of health care in this country and who it is impacting most of our nation's children this budget expands health care coverage to nearly six million children certainly in this country today that ought to be our top priority that's what democrats are saying in the budget before us and we provide a very important step forward for american children with the investment in this budget this president i think it's important to know that in the last three of the last five years the republican majority failed to pass a budget now they had a much larger majority than we do here in the senate today and we saw what happened when a bunch of didn't happen during the debt that were passed on to our children and grandchildren well last november in the elections americans demanded a change and i believe mr president that this budget really reflects back home in return discover responsibility to washington d c and importantly ensures our nation's priorities are addressed i'm very proud mr president support this fellow and i encourage all of our coll there is no more valuable member of the senate budget committee than senator murray she was a conferee she has participated throughout the committee's deliberations on this budget again there's really no one played a more constructive role than senator murray she has been a fierce advocate for education for expansion of children's health care coverage and for the transportation needs of the united states so i want to thank senator murray for her very thoughtful participation in the deliberations of the budget committee i also want to just take this moment to thank my colleague senator allard again for his courtesy and i yield the floor presidents in colorado mr president  first of all i want to thank the chairman for his leadership on the budget committee and and willingness to to work with republicans to a certain degree and  i do appreciate his leadership we have the differences of opinion and i think these are reflected in the budget also like to recognize the ranking republican judd gregg i think he has it just right and i'd like to myself with many of the comments that he made here on the floor because i agree with him if you've been listening to this debate and what the democrat side of the aisle been saying you may be a getting as confused desire and you know i listen to this  and it seems as though they want the argument always at least four ways that they want to argue that they're not increasing taxes but yet are increasing taxes they want to argue that they're holding down spending but yet they want to take credit for all the spending that they put in the budget and so that i think that that's confusing and i think that we're missing an opportunity here to do more for future generations and what's reflected in this budget fact i think this is a budget is a disaster in the making for future generations it just took the majority democrats only four months and fifteen days to figure out how to raise taxes now they're going to say they say they're not raising taxes but taxes are going to go up because of inaction on their part because they make the rules in the procedures around here in the senate so complicated that there's not going to be an opportunity for those of us who want to see taxes held down to make that effort without these very very high hurdles they want to ignore the fact that the u s economy has done well it's grown and prospered over the past several years with the creation of seven point nine million new jobs and tax revenues that have outpaced projection by three hundred billion our economy you know that democrats don't want to recognize that when you reduce taxes as somehow the other the economy has grown we've had this argument over the years and budget committee with my with the now majority leader on the budget committee  who doesn't want to recognize that when you're reducing taxes you do actually have an opportunity to increase revenues particularly when we have a high tax rate and if we look at what ha s happened to taxes before the president came through with this economic growth packages we had two growth packages our economy was struggling you know own we just finished in two thousand  terrorism we had moved into a time when we had a record hurricane year but despite all those negative impacts on the economy it did well i can recall during the last part of the seventy's when we had high energy prices and we had a struggling economy remember we got into double digit inflation lation double digit unemployment we refer to all this is  the misery index because our economy was doing too well most of that was attributed the fact that energy prices were so high but look at today and look where energy prices are and look at how the economy continues to grow which i think speaks to the strength of the economic package that the president has put in place with the help of a republican congress and what we did is we took in reduced taxes in those areas where we thought we could really cause the economy go particularly targeting the small business sector of our economy you know that's where that's where innovation occurs that's where the where you can expect the greatest economic growth when you have the right tax policy one of the things we did that really targeted the small business was when we increased the amount of exposure expenditures as they could write off so that small businesses could go and make some investments in their business maybe it was computers maybe it was if they're in construction it was a bobcat or something like that but it impacted all sectors of the small business and the economy responded and it still responded but this particular plan that we have the force and that's what this budget is it's a plan it's a plan that's put together by the house and the senate it's not us it taxes by some seven hundred thirty six billion dollars over five years increases non defense spending at least two hundred five billion dollars we look at the debt debt increases two point five trillion dollars over five years and we don't do anything on mandatory spending but we had several hearings in the budget committee about the problem with the entitlement area which is the a mandatory spending area that's a social security medicare and medicaid and how we need to be doing something to control the future obligations in those programs because they're getting ready to bankrupt this country we had testimony and from the budget committee that says that those programs the way they're currently designs of congress is going to have sooner or later is unsustainable and so we completely so it's completely ignored in this five year plan that's been put out and how they're going to grow the economy i think is headed in the wrong that direction i think it's going to be a disaster for future generations democrat budget imposes a huge tax increase the argument was made on the other side but you know as always when you have a tax saying you want to increase taxes you blame the rich you know they're making too much money but everybody when they want to start this they don't want to ignore the fact that the top twenty percent of taxpayers are paying eighty five percent of the taxes the bottom forty percent is actually getting a refund they're getting a handout from the government so it's easy to point to to the to the wealthy and say well they're they're not paying enough but in reality they're already paying a lot and if we allow these tax plan that we put together republican tax plan to return to expire without taking any future future action the result is going to be a negative impact on our economy i believe that this budget spends twenty three in dollars over what the president has put as far as discretionary spending for two thousand and eight tolling about eighty two billion dollars through fiscal year over over the tooth out over two thousand and seven the budget spends two hundred five billion over the president's discretionary spending over five years time as spending grows unchecked by four hundred sixty bit sixteen billion over four years and it creates all these reserve funds you know we  create a few reserves and we did create twenty three reserve funds which just an opportunity to to build a shield of smoke and mirrors which allow spending to go on unchecked  i'm really concerned about the opportunity that we're giving for spending on the various committees you know the budget if we do this right we can really do a lot of things that will  down taxes and actually provide a future for our gender for future generations of americans i'm i'm disappointed that we haven't done more in those areas in fact we haven't done anything but move in the wrong direction you know i  had an amendment that i put in the committee offered in committee and that's when offered it here on the floor which said well let's look at just the ineffective programs you know this president to his credit has put together what they call the part program and what they do on the part program this the general accounting office goes into the various agencies and evaluates their programs and then they they read them well was it was affective was a moderately effective or is it  ineffective or they made no effort at all and i think we you know you can easily look into these programs where they didn't do any effort all to make any effort all just try and establish a process where there's accountability in way they're spending tax dollars or they could go in and make and or they could go into the program that was raided in effect i said you know if we go ahead and we just reduce spending in twenty five percent of th ineffective programs in the first year of this budget we could save about four billion dollars which is very minimal when you think about it and have a total budget of two point nine trillion dollars and over this was this could have been a budget put together that actually had some action in it so we've ignored all the recommendations the herion just gone ahead with business as usual increasing taxes increasing spending the democrat budget it just literally ignored the entitlement crisis and they've done some manipulation in there so they can go and talk four  ways about how they're not increasing taxes but in reality they are increasing taxes about how they're holding down spending but in reality they're increasing spending much more than than what republicans are supporting would have been interesting to have seen how they would have created a budget during those three years that the chairman of the budget committee criticized republicans on when we had nine eleven we had the internet bubble break and we had record hurricanes we had a lot of pressure on our budget and i think as a republican we did a good job of those were tough times and this budget and these economic times they're much better provide this was an opportunity for us to do something to really hold down spending we could done something to hold down the taxes so that we could sustain our economic growth which is just phenomenal me talk about one other thing that i think deserves if you notice in the democrat chair when they talked about spending they talked about it as a percent of gross domestic product you know that's an easy argument to make because the growth this economy has done so well that the gross domestic product is growing at a phenomenal rate so you can you can increase spending at a phenomenal rate and your figures can still look good so when you talk about spending as a percentage of gross domestic product you're really not talking about what is really happening in the budget you need to talk about in terms of real figures from year to year and within the five year window of this budget and when you do we have a tax increase of seven hundred thirty six billion dollars you have non defense increase spending of two hundred five billion dollars debt increasing at two point five trillion and nothing as far as the entitlement spending is concerned so mr president i'm not going to vote for this budget and i courage my colleagues in the senate to join me because we can do better than this budget forgets about the future generations of americans and we should do better on their behalf that's the reason i came to the congress because i felt like it was important that we eliminate deficit spending and by the way you know he talks about eliminating deficit spending here by two thousand and twelve you know if we really work at i think we could have got deficit spending at the curb current rate of growth of the current revenues are coming eliminated in two years if we really made that effort but it ignores that effort we continue to spend in taxes usually so i'm very disappointed in this particular budget and i think we could have done much better i think it's a disaster for future young americans and hopefully we can not have this budget passed and have another budget that really deals more seriously with the future of this country in the future of americans yield man president senator from south dakota madam president the conference report on the fiscal year two thousand and eight budget resolution that we debate here in the senate isn't just about a bunch of numbers it's about our priorities for america it's about our vision for america a budget in a lot of ways madam president is like a checkbook checkbook tells you about a person and individuals priorities well this is like our national checkbook what it does it tells us where we are and where we want to go as a nation of proponents of this budget are proud of their budget they're claiming that it's fiscally responsible that it reduces the deficit that it makes our choices that lead to a balance budget opponents of the budget resolution say it's nothing of the sort they say it ad spending raises taxes does nothing about long term entitlement programs and that in the entitlement crisis that america faces they say that's a tax and spend budget doomed to fail because it grows the government slows economy will fail to balance the budget and the question madam president for the american people is who is right and this is no trivial matter it's not just a our government's finances a nation prosperity is about our job it's about our paychecks it's about a family's budget it's about our hopes and our dreams so who is right is this a tax and spend budget or a fiscally responsible budget now in america everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not everyone is entitled to their own facts unfortunately madam president we have plenty of facts by which to judge this budget we have the facts of this budget we have the facts of history and we have the hard facts of the i r s forms and forty to determine exactly what this budget is and exactly what this budget does for america for tax payers and for families and i believe that a reasonable review of those facts will sadly conclude that this is in fact a tax and spend budget that is based upon hundreds of billions of new spending and almost a trillion dollars of new taxes that will grow the government and slow the economy that it will fail to balance the budget because no and spend budget ever has and that is diametrically opposed the only solution we know we factually know to successfully balance the budget and that is to cut spending and to reduce taxes how do i reach that conclusion it begins with two facts of any budget the first fact what does a government spend and the second fact that a president is what does a government tax bill from this budget we can tell three things about spending first we know every dime that the government is spending today this budget says what the government will spend tomorrow plus more to account for inflation and population and whatever factors come into play this budget does not require a single program terminations not a single program reduction not a single program freeze so we know that spending doesn't go down it goes up in a business as usual approach next we also know that new spending is added over two hundred billion dollars in new spending over the next five years with none of that offset and finally we know madam president that there are some twenty four reserve funds added where billions of new spending can be added some of them allow for to actually but mostly they add new spending programs or expand existing ones now the authors of the budget will tell us that any of these new initiatives have to be offset with either spending cuts or new taxes or given the fact that not one penny of spending is cut in this budget and that billions of new spending is added i don't think we can expect to see any future spending cuts and so that only leaves one thing to pay for it and that's taxes that's we see every penny of existing government kept we see billions of new spending and we see promises of even more new spending beyond that however to be fair democrats do point to one spending cut that they may do they point to provision the so called reconciliation instructions to cut education spending by seven hundred fifty million dollars over a five year period the reconciliation process so that the provision cannot be filibustered so to get this straight madam president out of a budget of two point five four two trillion dollars this year out of a cvo estimated spending of twelve trillion dollars over the course of the five year period thirty and thirty seven billion twelve trillion thirty seven billion over the next five years the democrats are going to try and squeeze seven hundred fifty million dollars not billion with a b but million with an m in savings that is six one thousand of one percent of this budget as may turn out to be i'm a spending cut but consider two facts first the seven hundred fifty million cut that might actually or might occur is dwarfed by the two hundred five billion in new spending that is scheduled to occur second the sieve seven hundred fifty billion dollar a sponge spending cut not to shrink government but actually to grow government the education reconciliation struction is part of an effort to transfer subsidies that private lenders give to student loans and put the government back in control of student loans is  cut not to shrink government but a cut to shrink the private sector and expand the government so in this budget what do we have on the spending side well as i said before we have no spending cuts no terminations no freezes we have two hundred four two hundred five billion dollars in new spending we have numerous new spending initiatives promised in the single potential cut is infinitesimally small is a fraction of new spending and is a design to use a special process to shrink private lenders and expand government lending i think on the basis of no spending cuts billions of new spending promises even more spending and a miniscule cut that is actually a government expansion from all that i think any reasonable person could conclude that this budget spends more and more what about taxes second part of our equation is this budget raise taxes does it help or harm taxpayers or democrats and says that there are no tax hikes in this budget nolan's taxes are going to go up they assure but is it true if you're kind of boring and you care about budget numbers you might come up with a different answer if you're a taxpayer and know what it means to fill out your i r s forms and forty you definitely will not agree with that assessment but those who care about the budget here are the facts every budget passed since two thousand and one has excluded from its future revenue levels the tax cuts that were passed in two thousand and one in fact each budget is as excluded the revenue reductions from the two thousand and one tax release the two thousand and three to actually and the two thousand five to actually these budgets does not count as federal tax revenues any of those revenues transferred back to taxpayers by those three tax cuts instead everybody said the tax cuts are in your family's budget and not in the government's budget that is until now this budget says that those tax cuts are no longer part of your family's budget but they are now part of the federal government's budget madam president money cannot have two masters in this budget says the money moving going to your tax cut has a new master and it's not you it's the government in fact over the next five years some seven hundred thirty six billion dollars in tax relief that americans enjoyed yesterday and today to pay their bills to feed their families to invest in their dreams will not be in their family's budget tomorrow but in the federal treasury coffers by transferring seven hundred thirty six billion up to actually if you enjoy today out of your family's budget and into the government budget the federal government revenue baseline makes a huge leap and from that a deficit projected at two hundred twenty nine billion in two thousand and twelve suddenly become surplus the tax hikes account for that swing in the deficit we know spending as been cut in fact we know spending is going up so the only reason that the budget could swing from a deficit to a surplus into two thousand twelve is because something has happened on the revenue side and judging how big the deficit swings to surplus something big must happen on the revenue side in this budget and the facts bear that out at seven hundred thirty six billion dollars that tax hike in this budget is not only the biggest tax hike in history but it's more than double the largest tax hike in history in fact this tax hike is the second second record tax site to signs i should say the record tax hike of the two hundred ninety three billion dollars tax hike that was enacted back in one thousand nine hundred three by president clinton and a democratic congress in fact it's interesting to note because we're talking about seven hundred thirty six billion dollars here in the conference report but if you look at the house passed budget resolution when it left the house and when the conference the tax increase was really nine hundred seventeen billion dollars and at that level that would exceed and be greater than all the revenues collected to run all the federal government budgets for a hundred and fifty six years from seven hundred eighty nine to one hundred fifty seven from washington t eisenhower it is a huge tax hike so from a budgetary perspective we know that spending goes up and we know taxes go up it is not the government that will be spending less the only folks spending less than or this budget will be the american taxpayers and that leads to the next tax hike tess the view of the taxpayer this one's easier but it's also more point painful if you look at the i r s form ten forty that most of us filled out a month ago and and if we ask the hard question about those of us who filled out the tax the form ten forty in the last few weeks or months if losing tax changes constitutes a tax hike in the mind of the average taxpayer so let's take a look at the form and for the tax changes this budget is specifically based upon and would include now obviously as i said earlier the house passed version was a nine hundred seventeen billion dollar level the conference report that's venerate that's come out of the conference is that seven hundred thirty six billion dollars increase in taxes but if you look at it in a form ten forty madam president you can see that when we started with started this process when the budget was passed earlier this year eliminated the marriage marriage penalty relief that was enacted a few years back it took the dividend income and capital gains income that a lot of people have realized when they have sold stocks or for tat perhaps seniors  particular who have dividend income and it takes the increase of the rate on dividend income from fifteen percent whom up to thirty nine point six percent capital gains right down here as well you look at capital gains that currently is jack's at fifteen percent rate that's going up your tax rate right there is also going up to twenty percent so you've got to dividend income tax capital gain income tax rates going up on both those areas in this budget now we turn to the next page of the tax form and you can see other areas in the budget that that are also going to going to see where taxpayers are going to see increases now the the democrats in the conference have senate when they passed the senate budget restored a few of these items in the tax bill which i'll get back to in just a moment here but at where we started out in this whole thing we saw standard deduction itemized deductions mortgage interest deduction charitable contribution to ducks and all those sorts of things that normally taxpayers are able to take those went down and if you look at the credit for child care which is a thousand dollars today in the original budget that would have gone down to five hundred dollars so you would have seen a decrease in that area of the tax code if you look down to earned income credit that a lot of our men and women in uniform our soldiers are able to take advantage of that too would have been slashed and gone down  you can go up and down this tax code madam president you can pretty much see every area in the tax code there was addressed in two thousand and one two thousand and three two thousand and five the tax relief that's been provided the american taxpayer those tax cuts are all going to expire and tax rates thing else going to go back up now the last chart i want to show you is aware that the tax rate schedule which i think is also important and i want to come back to this just a minute because in fairness to my colleagues on the other side they attempted in the senate budget resolution to restore put back some of this tax relief but if you look at the original proposal as it came forward from the house the ten percent lowest tax rate in the rate schedule that benefits the lowest income taxpayers in this country would have been slashed all the way through completely cut on no ten percent rate now in fairness as i said to the democrats here in the united states senate they put that back in an amendment or at least they have alleged to put it back in it some point so that some of these tax relief items that were knocked out in the house budget resolution get restored but the one thing they didn't fix they may have done something that again as i said we want time will tell whether or not we're actually going to realize that benefit and have the chance percent restored but the one thing that's clear is in the tax rate schedule everything else in the tax every other tax rate is going to go up so today if you're paying at the twenty five percent ra your taxes are going to go up to twenty eight percent rate if you're paying at the twenty eight percent rate your taxes are going to go up to thirty one thirty one percent rate if you're today paying at the thirty three percent rate your taxes are going to go up to thirty six percent from thirty three up to thirty six and if you're again paying at the higher rate the thirty five percent tax rate today when this is all said and done your tax rate is going to go up t thirty nine point six percent so as you can see madam president throughout the entire rate schedule and this is even assuming that we the ten percent rate gets restored for low income taxpayers every other taxpayer in this country and every other rate in the rate schedule is going to go what does that mean webb means higher taxes for a lot of americans across this country on this base that basis i think it's fair to say that a typical tax payer's going to say yes these changes constitute a tax hike on them or senate democrats insist there's no if there's no tax hike in this budget so who is right tax payer or the senate democrats in their budget well there's one  my colleague from north dakota who sees the democrat budget probably less like a tax payer maybe more like a budget committee chairman but this budget originally as i said was proposed they got rid of the thousand dollar tax credit th ten percent rate it restored some of the or got rid of the debt to actually that we are going to experience and their claim now is that they put an amendment in the senate budget which is adopted in conference that will restore  hundred eighty billion dollars of tax to actually that this budget assumed to expire now if in fact there is no tax increase in this budget why was it necessary to go through the exercise of having an amendment to expand the existing tax relief like the ten percent tax break or the child credit or some of the death tax relief that that was enacted a few years ago and that will expire here in just a few years mr president i think the senate democrats billions of tax hikes in this budget like the tax payer didn't decided not to extend not to extend some or did did decide to extend some but not all it's actually that this budget will allow to expire now by the action of the baucus amendment that was adopted here there was an admission i believe by the democrats that billions and billions of dollars of what average taxpayers would call tax hikes actually are in the democrat budget if that weren't true we would have needed an amendment the baucus amendment to attempt to reach dor some of the actually that is is set to expire in just a few years constituting as i said earlier the largest tax increase in american history and so it looks to me like what happened here was an attempt to try and camouflage or disguise what clearly is a very very large tax increase on the american people and no matter how they try with this other chart up here here  this budget cannot camouflage or disguise the extent to which taxes are going to go up on the american people the purpose of this whole exercise in having an amendment that allegedly would as i said restore some of the actually was to provide a tax that would fight a fig leaf not for the taxpayers in this country but for the tax raisers right here in the congress and again i want to illustrate this was the nine hundred sixteen billion dollars  new taxes that will come and they came out of the house budget resolution and the bill that last year the senate in conference report that we have before us today as i said earlier attempts to restore some of that to actually and so what did  because this really is a fig leaf for the tax raisers and provides no cover whatsoever for the tax payers and that's the american people so even if you say madam president that we're going to restore the ten percent tax rate some of the death tax benefit that would occur to and if not extended would expire and even if we do some of these other things that they say they've done in their budget you just can't address all the additional tax increases that are going to happen as budget let's say you cover some of the child tax credit let's say do some of the debt to actually feel it's even maybe even do something provide some of the marriage penalty relief that was enacted in two thousand wanted two thousand three and a lot of that to be restored you still just make a small dent in the overall tax increase of nine hundred billion dollars so what we have your one hundred eighty billion basically put back restored to try and provide a cover or some fig leaf for over nine hundred billion dollars in tax increase and so what we've ended up with is a seven hundred thirty six billion dollar increase as opposed to a nine hundred billion dollars increase so madam president the bottom line in all this is the amendment that passed the senate the hundred eighty billion dollars in the conference report provides some level of coverage apprise little coverage a little there's a little fig leaf of coverage there but in the end the american taxpayer it's about one fifth of the expected tax hike and it looks pretty doubtful that even we will realize that so let me just if i might say and if you put the the the other chart back up here on form forty that even if you assume that the democrat budget or the democrat amendment that puts that hundred eighty billion dollars of fig leaf coverage back in there and does something about the child credit which was a thousand dollars now goes down to five hundred what they'll say is go back up to one thousand you're still going to pay more taxes because you're going to lose some of your mortgage interest deduction in the area of itemized deductions let's say for example that they did something on the alternative minimum tax which they say they held correct in their hundred eighty billion dollar fig leaf amendment but you still are going to pay higher taxes on line forty three because your tax rates are going up so the point of this whole thing mr president is that is that in the in the tax in the tax  you look at a typical ten four and you're a tax payer it's very clear what's happening here if you're a tax raiser in washington in the sea obviously you come to a very different conclusion but if you're someone who is out there and you're looking at your tax code you're looking at your let's just pop up for purposes here one last time this this other chart and you're going through this exercise and you say ok gee whiz they gave us the marriage penalty relief back well you're still going to see if you've got dividend income that gone from fifteen percent rate up to thirty nine point six percent in you're going to see capital gains rates if you've got any kind of a mutual fund or anything like that that shows a capital gains tax rate going from fifteen percent up to twenty percent you can't deny what is the reality of this whole exercise and the other thing i'll point out is that if you look at what works in terms of balancing a budget it's pretty clear that this formula isn't the one that works now back in one thousand nine hundred seventy i was a member of the house of representatives and at that time as we went through the process of balancing the budget we had a republican congress a democrat president they agreed to a balance of a balanced budget plan that actually got the job done in fact the republican budget plan that president clinton signed into law had two primary features it had spending cuts of two hundred sixty three billion dollars and it had ninety five billion dollars in tax cuts so what did it do it cut spending and it cut taxes and what that was what was a result of that well we saw the economy grow we saw government revenues grow and pretty soon we were running surpluses this budget is very different from that one this budget has two hundred five billion  spending and as i said earlier seven hundred thirty six billion dollars in new taxes on two in one thousand nine hundred seven when we had record spending cuts two hundred sixty three billion dollars over a five year period and tax cuts of ninety five billion dollars over a five year period we saw a good result we saw an economy that was started to grow we saw that the guy start generating surpluses and that is the exact opposite model of what we are talking about here today we are talking about a budget today that increases spending by two hundred billion dollars a year that increases taxes by seven hundred thirty six billion dollars a year and i think mr president that that ends up being a that ends up being a formula for  higher spending higher taxes a slower growing economy and that is the mirror opposite the mirror opposite this budget is a mirror opposite of what was done in one thousand nine hundred seventy and yielded the good results that came as a result of the republican congress working with president clinton at that time to get it to get a balanced budget that actually cut taxes that cut spending spending went down taxes went down and the economy grew we saw more government revenue and that is exactly what we'd like to see this budget but i as i said earlier mr president this budget is the mirror opposite of that budget this budget increases taxes it increases spending and my fear is that we're going to see the government grow which it will and we're going to see the economy slow and i hope that doesn't happen but i don't think that when you increase spending in washington d c and grow the government and increase and raise taxes that you're going to see the kind of an effect on the economy that we saw in one thousand nine hundred seven when we cut government spending and cut taxes so matt mr president appreciate the opportunity to come down and speak to this budget resolution i will join with many of my colleagues in the polls this because i believe it is the wrong formula for america's future higher spending higher taxes and more government is not what this economy needs is not what the taxpayer of america needs the person who fills out that ten forty every single year and we ought to keep them in mind because they're the ones who are paying the bills but mr president that  president the senator has a vivid imagination i don't know what these charts refer to but they certainly don't refer to the conference report this before the oddie now he has mixed up so many different proposals that have been before various bodies but he has not referenced the matter that is before the body what is before the body is the conference report on the budget the conference report on the budget does not increase spending conference report in the budget take spending down as a share of gross domestic product which all the economists say is the right way to measure it because it takes out the effect of inflation we're taking spending down from twenty point five percent which is where they took it when they had control they ran up the spending they ran when they ran everything here they controlled the house they controlled the senate they controlled the white house on their watch they ran up the spending we're taking it down from twenty point five percent of g d p down to eighteen point nine percent of g d p that's one of the key reasons we're able to actually balance the budget something they have never done something they still have no proposal to do that is the fact this is not increasing spending this is taking spending down as a share of the gross domestic product now the senator puts up charts that are of people's tax returns and talks about this rate going up at that rate going up and the rate increases here they just aren't i know that republicans have given the speech so many times it's habit and so it doesn't really matter what the budget is they just try it out the same speech they gave five years ago the problem with that is the didn't fit the facts the president said in his b by his own estimate that he would raise fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty six billion over the five year life of the budget budget raises fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty eight billion virtually no difference now this is using his own agency's estimates the office of management and budget we're using the congressional budget office on ours because they're the official scorekeeper for the congress if you put them on the same basis the congressional budget office basis we do have two percent more revenue than the president's but our revenue doesn't show up until the end twenty ten so we're going to write another budget before th this budget controls this next year there's no difference in revenue there's no difference in revenue i don't know what speech you're going to give next year when there's been no tax increase i know you'll be terribly disappointed there got to be a tax increase we're going to be here next year and then we're going to have to trot out all these speeches that have been given here and i'm afraid some of the those who have given these speeches are going to be terribly embarrassed  what some may have heard is a major achievement for our nation's veterans with children without health insurance for the middle class and for the millions of americans struggling to make ends meet and none of these achievements would have been possible without the strong work of sen commend you as a member of the budget committee for all of your efforts mr chairman as you know one of the major issues that i have been working on has been to expand federally qualified health centers in this country and on that subject i'd just like to ask the chairman the following question does the conference report accompanying the budget resolution assume that two point six billion is federal funding would be provided with federally qualified health centers in fiscal year two thousand and eight five hundred thirty six million more than two thousand and seven level adjusted for inflation and five hundred seventy five million more than the president's request i would say in response to the center that it does this conference report includes the amendment that was offered by the senator to increase funding for a community health center says the senator knows this is one area of spending that the president has supported  more than that this is an area that i think almost all of us believe as had remarkable success i have visited the community health centers in my own state i seen the remarkable work they are doing in fargo north dakota we have a community health center that is serving thousands of people and doing it in an extraordinarily cost effective way but also getting very good health care results for their clients and so i was pleased to support the amendment of the senator from vermont i think this is one of the most cost effective things we can do to expand health care coverage for the people of our country and the people of our individual states and i want to salute the senator for offering that amendment we we vigorously defended that approach in the conference committee and the conference agreed to support that level of funding well i just want to thank the chairman very much and i concur with everything that he has said before to use federally qualified health centers have provided high quality primary health care for the millions of americans regardless of their income and as the chairman just indicated they do that in a very cost effective way if the appropriations committee provides this funding at least four million more americans would gain access to high quality affordable president i want to thank very much the senator from vermont is an extremely constructive member of the senate budget committee and a fierce advocate for those things that he believes in  occurred part of the increased spending that doesn't occur in this budget let me just say that the spending in this budget as i have said over and over i'd be happy to put up the chart again spending as a share of gross domestic product goes down under this budget each and every year goes down from twenty point five percent of g d p eighteen point nine percent of g d p the senator will recall it was on their watch at the not only did the spending go up dramatically but the revenues stagnated the result was to explode the debt of the country that's the record of the party opposite and and unfortunately falls on our watch to begin to clean it up and this budget does so as the senator from texas prepared with the this president deal that ten minutes i appreciate that mr president listening to the comments of the distinguished chairman of the budget committee just trying to summarize reminds me of the saying in my part of the country but it's the same in his part of the country the most feared words in the english language are i'm from the federal government and i'm here to help that's what that's basically how we summarize is this this budget we're just here to help the american people the problem is that this budget puts us on a tax and spend budget which is really the worst of both worlds it dramatically grows the size of government over the next five years is not just one year this is a five year budget and it it contemplates a record increase in taxes and explodes the debt it contemplates the largest tax hike on the middle class families and farmers of r and entrepreneurs in our nation's history about seven hundred thirty six billion dollars over the next five years unfortunately the tax increase will take place without a vote of the congress because what it will do is take advantage of expiring temporary tax relief that we passed back and two thousand and three which has produced an economic explosion in this country and the creation of about seven point eight million new jobs just over the last four years we all know this tax relief has helped the economy grow and create jobs on this point i am especially disappointed that this conference report does not include an amendment that i authored and which passed the senate on a bipartisan vote by sixty three to thirty five that amendment that is not included in this conference report created a sixty vote budget point of order against any legislation that raised income tax rates on tax payers including middle class families college students and entrepreneurs in addition to senate unanimously voted instruct its con erees to include the point of order in the conference report but once again i guess we're asked to suspend our disbelief because here in washington inside the beltway things happen differently we pass amendments by a vote of sixty three senators we manage sleep vote instruct the conferees to include that point of order in the conference report that prohibits an increase in tax rates unless at least sixty senators agree and then miraculously it doesn't appear in the conference report while i'm aware of the procedural ramifications i think it would have been a powerful message from the senate to make taxpayers across the country that are to  to make this point to them that the distinguished chairman of the budget committee has say that there will not be an increase in taxes to reassure them that there won't be because frankly i think the numbers the lie some of the statements being made to the extent that we're not contemplating tax increases over the next five years when in fact this budget contemplates a historic increase in taxes just to be able to keep up the fact is this amendment highlights an essential point that sixty three members of the united states senate a bipartisan majority believe that tax rates should not be raised unfortunately the way i read this budget does contemplate dramatic increase in taxes and i don't see anything else at the end of the day happening finally a few comments on the spending side of the ledger while the chairman of the budget committee said that there will not be higher rates next year under this budget there will be with no question higher government spending approximately twenty three billion dollars above what the president requested which i may add is not paid for which goes directly to the debt in other words an iou we hand on down to our children and grandchildren in fact this budget contains billions of dollars in new spending on washington programs two hundred five billion dollars over the president's request over the next five years and when it comes to entitlement reform this budget does absolutely nothing to address sixty nine trillion dollar long term entitlement crisis that we are facing you know i really wonder when things are going to change around here when our rhetoric is matched by action and we on this side of the aisle have said that we are determined to work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to deal with this growing mountain of entitlement spending and debt and yet we're told no not this year maybe sometime in the future but not this year and my question is if not now then when we need the answer to that question the american people need to answer that question because the de continues to pile up through uncontrolled spending on a title and programs that are on autopilot and the bill is being sent to our children and grandchildren and that's wrong and we need to fix it and if not now i'd like to know when in fact mr president if we do nothing over the next thirty years we won't have a dime to pay for anything else except four things social security medicare medicaid and a part of the interest on the debt we will not have the resources necessary for other important priorities things like national security fighting the global war on terror securing our borders veterans health care or education for these resist president i cannot support this budget which will dramatically increase spending and return is to an area of the era of big government known as tax and spend it passes the iou on down to our children and grandchildren and at the same time increases the debt by two point five trillion dollars this president  kind words from our budget chairman and i have to say it's been a tremendous pleasure working with him and knowing that given what he inherited in terms of lack of budget resolutions and the deficit man created he has done an extraordinary job of putting the fiscal ship of state back into order and it's man just a pleasure to work with somebody who's grounded and what's really important to the american people you know i find it so interesting first of all there's all of the rhetoric is thrown around about government about tax and spend what we've seen in the last few years is really man a borrow and spend mentality basically not paying for what we've been spending mr chairman and mr president we had a five point six trillion dollars surplus when i came into the budget committee in two thousand and one with president bush coming into office was handed a five point six trillion dollars surplus pretty nice gift for somebody coming into office we debated what to be done with that and unfortunately a more balanced approach to focus on middle class tax cuts to grow the economy and investments in science and health care and education and jobs and and putting some money aside for social security for the long term was rejected and that was our plan on our side of the island for trent was rejected by the majority at the time and instead  plan was put into place that has borrowed and spent into the largest deficits in the history of the country and in fact when you look at the total debt right now we're looking at a  that is estimated to be nine trillion dollars by the end of this year and mr president what concerns me as well about that debt is who's buying that debt half of our foreign debt owned by two countries china japan they turn around and don't follow rules on trade they manipulate their currency which means their products come in with a big discount and compete unfairly against  american workers and american businesses and when we ask the administration to get tough they don't do it and why because it's pretty tough to get it to really try when force against your bank or so this huge deficit that has been created is not only something that we need to be concerned about from a fiscal standpoint but jobs and what's happening in the global economy in our ability to fully enforce our trade lives is also impacted that's why i'm so pleased that what we're seeing with this budget resolution you know we haven't had a budget resolution for a few years when our colleagues were in charge there wasn't one put together for a number of years but now we've made a commitment to put together a budget resolution that's based on a couple of very important principles returning to fiscal discipline you know we're going to stop digging that hole that has put us into a  deficit and we've stopped digging and now we're going to work our way back out to fiscal responsibility and in fact our budget comes in the balance within five years very proud about that secondly we're putting middle class families first throughout this budget whether it be tax cuts whether it be investments in education whether it be health care for our children making sure that we reinstate law enforcement whether we're fully funding the military or homeland security we're focusing on americans and middle class families the folks that are working hard every day that have been saying hey hey what about us what about us as we've seen jobs go offshore and more and more dollars going to fewer and fewer people in terms of spending so we've turned that around this is a new direction and i'm very proud of the work that's been done with the house in the senate are proud of our leader senator reid and our leader on the budget our chairman senator conrad who's done such an extraordinary job and what are the elements that we have put together as a late for this budget and there  pieces of it i mean we basically reversed with the president has done in terms of cuts in investments and medicare medicaid and the cap program and a variety of things but let's start with basically that six areas where we have focused we have focused on as i said before returning to fiscal responsibility we have put into place something that's called pay as you go in my house it was just called common sense paying the bills not spending more than you have coming in and that process has been put back into place so that we can in fact balance the budget and return to fiscal responsibility we also reserve present have made investing in education in innovation kept top priority we all know we're in a global economy we all know that we're in a time in place where it's harder and harder for families to be able to afford college and yet college is needed now more than ever advanced skills as well as people going back to work or back to school from work whether they lost their drive or need to train for another type of job and that education from preschool and head start all the way up to college is a critical part of investing in the future for our country as an america where we are competing in our young people are competing with students from around the world and we're competing in a global economy higher skills focusing on education opportunity is absolutely essential and so is innovation because we know we have been the engine of great ideas but we have to keep that up whether it's the national institute of health where whether stavans technology program relating to manufacturing technology all kinds of ways in which america has man the leader and to maintain that we have to make an investment just like any individual business makes an investment in the future in innovation in ideas to be able to create more jobs so our budget says we're going to return to fiscal responsibility or to put education innovation right up there at the top for our families and for our future and then we're making a major commitment to cover health care for children we want to and in fact this  puts a major commitment forward for the next five years of this budget resolution to cover every child with health insurance and we're talking about children of parents who are working they may be working one job to job three jobs we know that the average single parent the average mom today to make ends meet they have to figure out how to put together three different minimum wage jobs and they don't have health care probably most likely and we don't want and we don't think it's right that in the greatest country in the world wealthiest country in the world that moms and dads are going to bed at night saying please god don't let the kids get sick please help us be able to get through to mound the next day don't don't let our son break his arm have to go to the hospital because he's been playing in sport or our daughter gets sick because she's been playing in sports and break a leg we want to make sure that every child in america has health insurance we make that commitment in this budget to fully fund what's called s chip the children's health care program and that's really a down payment now i'm president on making sure that we provide health care for everyone so i hope we're going to in this budget say we start with children making sure every child in america has access to health care and then i hope we're going to take the next up within the next couple of years to do what really needs to happen which is to fundamentally say health care is a right not a privilege in the greatest country in the world and fully provide access to health care for every american so we have education as an investment we have health care as an investment and then we do something incredibly important that i think every american agrees with and frankly is shacked hasn't been done has not been done in previous budgets in the last six years under the previous majority and the president and that is we're going to keep our promises to our veterans we have fifty different veterans organizations service organizations supporting what we're doing because we are taking their numbers about what is needed they put together a budget called the independent budget they estimate how many new veterans are coming home from the war there and how many current veterans are going to need help and for the first time we are meeting that number on health care and in other areas that's absolutely critical so we're saying we're going to keep our promises to our veterans that the american people want to keep our promises to our veterans which by the way all of these things aren't quote washington or government it's all of us together is what we do in a civilized society the greatest democracy in the world when we come together and decide how to allocate precious resources that's what we're doing here and they are all of our resources how do we do how do we invest these in a way that keeps our promises to our veterans and creates opportunities for the future for the american dream for people in this country we then very important piece here have middle class tax cuts we make sure that that middle class tax cuts that have been passed that are in place and the child credit can and the it living the marriage penalty and the tax cuts that affect middle class families are extended we make sure that we put our focus were ought to be on middle income families because those are the folks being squeezed and all the rest of us those are the folks that see their college costs go up their health care costs go up if they have it all their wages go down if they have a job their gas prices go up and lord knows they're going up and up and so it's our is how working families are middle class families are those those who are barely scraping by who are seeing all these costs descend on them so when we look at that we say you know what we ought to make sure that they're the ones that get the break and that's what our budget does and then finally we make sure that we reverse the president's continual assaults on the cops program and other key investments in health care and technology areas where every year the president has tried to eliminate cutbacks we have now in michigan since two thousand and one sixteen hundred fewer police officers on the street people can't believe that since nine eleven that we actually have fewer police officers and that numbers when going up fewer police officers on the streets in our communities than we had before nine eleven we reject the president's further cuts in law enforcement we we store those dollars we put back dollars in increased dollars for homeland security so that's that's the picture madam president this is a picture of responsibility we want to be fiscally responsible at the same time we want to focus on putting middle class families first that's wh our budget is all about now i will also say it is true that there are some areas of the budget where we are raising revenue and that comes in the category of closing what are outrageous tackles tax loopholes from businesses and individuals who owe taxes who is estimated anywhere up to three hundred forty five billion dollars a year of folks who've decided to take the money offshore take the jobs offshore as our chairman has shown so many times the picture of the building in the cayman islands with over twelve thousand businesses saying that that's their business location obviously it is not we don't think they ought to get away with that we think again middle class families of people the majority of the people in this country have a right to know that if they're following the law if they're paying their taxes that we're making sure everybody is following the law and paying their taxes and so it's true we do take some dollars from those folks that treat that leave the country that too many times take jobs with them and we say you know what you need to be following the law like everybody else and we take those dollars and we put it back into making sure that education developable health care for every child police officers firefighters in our communities paying for our armed services keeping our promises to our veterans i call that setting the record straight turning things around and creating the white kind of priorities for our country the budget is always about values and priorities that's what it is it's about values and priorities and man i'm president i'm very proud of the values and priorities reflected by this budget or his use of fifteen minutes and i would urge my not much time remains on both sides twenty three minutes on the on your side thirty three minutes and on the minority side is twenty three and president senator from new hampshire  say senator cornet of texas raised concern about an amendment that he offered that was passed both in committee and on the floor with respect to creating a sixty vote hurdle for any increase in rates and he raised concern about that being dropped in conference i had buys the senator it was going to have to be dropped in conference because the parliamentarian advised us that if it would came back from conference the whole privilege nature of a budget resolution would be eliminated and that's the reason it was dropped it is a simple procedural matter that we could not include why couldn't we because the budget committee does not have the authority to tell the committees of jurisdiction how to raise money or how to spend it i know that seems odd but the the reality is the budget committee is able to tell the finance committee how much money to raise and the appropriations committee how much money they can spend we do not have the authority to tell the finance committee how to raise it we do not have the authority to tell the appropriations committee how to spend it and if we exceed our authority then the whole privileged nature of the budget resolution that is that a budget resolution comes to the floor under special rules there are fifty hours dedicated to the budget resolution and other special rules that apply all of those would be out the window if we would have allowed the senator from texas amendment to be included in the conference report that's just a simple fact we could not do that nobody would want to eliminate the whole budget process here that's what would have happened because the budget committee would have exceeded its authority now and the question of spending senator from texas raises that let me just in indicate this is this spending as a percentage of g d p under this administration when they came in spending was eighteen point four percent of g g d p they've raised it to twenty point three percent of g d p that's their record under this budget we're taking spending down it'll be at twenty point five percent of g d p in two thousand and eight and we're taking it down each and every year so we get to eighteen point nine percent of g d p in two thousand and twelve again the senator said we got a big tax increase here but no tax increase  r it just isn't let me just indicate that the president in his budget we've got that the president in his budget said that he was going to raise fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty six billion dollars over the next five years our budget according to the congressional budget office which is nonpartisan and professional says our budget raises fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty eight billion dollars of virtually no difference virtually no difference that's what they said their budget would raise i see the the senator from new mexico is here and we have an order that the senator from louisiana would have the next five minutes and then we're supposed to go back to our side to senator wyden and senator vitter it's his time and i'm president arrives very briefly to turn away from the budget for just a few minutes and focus on a matter of extreme importance for louisiana and indeed the country and announce a very important and positive resolution to this matter to give us the right leadership we need in place at the u s army corps of engineers in time for this upcoming hurricane season which is due to begin just june first and a president today general carl strock is ending his tenure as the chief of engineers and commander of the us army corps of engineers you serve the army honorably for thirty six years and for the last two years of his career i would say he's gone under intense work and pressure as we lead the chorus through the extraordinary events of hurricanes katrina and rita and those recovery efforts i want to join everyone here democrat and republican and sang king general strock for his service and wishing him all the best in the next phase of his life this comes as i mentioned right as our next hurricane season is due to begin on june first and as we go into that threat and into that battle as it were it's very important that we have a new commander in place to lead us the president nominated general robert van antwerp to replace general straw and i came to this floor literally just a half an hour ago very concerned  his nomination was being held up by a democratic cold and that threatened that we would not have our new commander in place for this new hurricane season we don't go into battle without a leader and that battle as i said is just a few weeks away and i think it's important to acknowledge that nobody wanted to rush in to this nomination we all wanted to make sure that this nominee general van antwerp was the right person for the job and indeed we have i spent weeks looking very carefully at the nomination as did my colleague from louisiana senator landrieu we held hearings on this jurisdiction for the koran which i served the senate committee on environment and public works and everyone over that period of time got comfortable and very supportive of this nomination and so that's why it's very appropriate madam president that we move forward and make sure that this nominee this leader is in place for the start of the next hurricane season and a president as i mention literally came to the floor a half an hour ago and this was very much i'm certain because there was a democratic hold on the nomination i'm very relieved and very happy to say that in that short period of time that has been cleared up that hold on this particular nomination has been less than and the nomination of the new head of the corps general robert van antwerp will be cleared through the senate later today i think this is very positive i thank the majority leader leader reid far agreeing to this literally in the last hour in the light of the crucial nature of this position and the impending start of this next hurricane season june first and so i again thank everyone for working toward this important goal it is important that we have the right leader at the helm in time for the battle in time for the start of the new hurricane season and first now clearly our work continues our work and overseeing the corps continues our work in funding key work of the court in the gulf coast region continues and i will certainly redouble my efforts in that regard but at least we have our general in place our leader in place for the hurricane season which is very appropriate and very necessary thank you madam president without i yield back the floor i we had we had previously thought that that he might go next would that be acceptable  the center from oregon and i want to thank the senator from oregon and only a c an extremely important member of the senate budget committee he was one of the conferees somebody who has been incredibly important to these deliberations and i thank for his cooperation and his leadership arman for his comments and i would just say that i think the conrad budget goes a long way to restoring some fiscal sanity  the federal government but also allows for an opportunity for the united states senate on a bipartisan basis to get behind to fixes to the critical domestic issues of our time and that is health care and taxes i think if you listen to the technical lingo over the course of the debates and senator from missouri president of the senate comes from the campaign trail we're glad to have her she's just been through the debates and in her state people don't in missouri are oregon talk about paygo and fire walls and reserve funds and that kind of technical washington lingo but they do talk an awful lot about what's going to be done to fix health care and what's going to be done to fix taxes and one of the reasons i am so supportive of this conrad budget is it really does lay the foundation for the congress to get serious about tax reform and serious about health reform one of the areas that chairman conrad has zero down on as it relates to taxes for example have been this problem of tax havens and cat scans there's an opportunity as a result of this budget to come together in a bipartisan way and fix the tax system if you're really serious about closing the tax gap this hundreds of billions of dollars that we can't collect and chairman conrad and chairman baucus have been working hard to try to approve measures would make it easier to collect that money you've got to fix the tax system and simplify and i've offered a proposal a fair flat tax that would allow for just that kind of effort others here in the united states  ideas that relates to tax reform the point is the conrad budget makes it possible for the united states senate to come together on the tax issue and fix this code chairman conrads talked about the scams he talked about the tax havens he's talked about the hundreds of billions of dollars that we're losing i've got a proposal the fair flat tax act that would deal with it there are other proposals here in the united states senate that would be the collection of these billions of dollars that is lost in the tax gap the conrad budget lays the foundation for tax reform i would say to my colleagues we have had more than fourteen thousand changes in the tax law in recent years it comes to three for every working day three for every single working day the tax system is broken in this country we are laying the foundation in this proposal a tax system based on simplicity a one page ten forty form progress city where where a fair to those who are vulnerable in our society but also reform that is sensitive to the question of holding down rates for all so that everyone would have a chance to get ahead in addition to taxes which i think the congress budget deals with in a responsible fashion the  legislation louse for a bipartisan effort in this congress to fix american health care because of the reform reserve fund the has been a stablished that would allow for bipartisan health reform efforts senator bennett of utah and i are offering the united states senate the first bipartisan effort to insert teen years to fix american healthcare everybody would be covered which is essential because if you don't cover everybody those who are uninsured shift their bills to those who are insured but we also fix the broken private marketplace right now we've got a awful lot of insurance companies that cherry the take just healthy people and send sick people over to government programs more fragile than they are we spend hundreds of billions of dollars through the federal tax code disproportionately rewarding the most affluent in our country and also promoting inefficiency senator bennett and i are very hopeful that this year not in two thousand and nine not after the next presidential election but this year the senate will come together on a bipartisan basis we have the healthy americans act other senators have other proposals the conrad budget lays the foundation for fixing health care in this session of congress i also believe that as a result of the letter that can united states senators sent five democrats and five republicans to the president indicating that we want to work in a bipartisan way that if this budget passes and if the white house will join the health care in two thousand and seven finally mr president i appreciate the thoughtfulness of the senator from new mexico let me mention that senator conrad has included in his budget a provision that  critical to the survival of kimber dependent communities in my state and around the country his budget includes a reserve fund provide for extension of the secure rural schools act also known as the county payments program this law provides funding for schools roads and other essential services and hundreds of resource dependent communities around the country this is a survival issue for many in rural america with out county payments rural communities around this country are counseling us they are going to vanish from the map these communities in my view should not be turned in to sacrifice zones i'm hopeful that extension of the county payments law will be addressed during the conference on the emergency supplemental  spending bill earlier this year seventy four united states senators voted to include an extension of the county payments program and we were very pleased to have the support of senator domenici who has been involved in this discussion and  include county payments when the new version of the supplemental spending bill comes out of conference but if that doesn't happen we're going to make an effort on every single vehicle in this congress our bipartisan group is going to try to get this support for county payments legislation done as soon as possible we believe it ought to be done along the lines of what seventy four united states senators have already voted for it ought to be done in the summer a mental  spending bill that is going into conference but if it doesn't happen we are going to try to make it happen on every single vehicle that comes before the united states senate because of that extraordinary  importance to our communities and i want to thank him and conrad for making the inclusion of the county payments reserve fund in the budget so as to provide a backstop so there would be another option to extend county payment quickly if for some reason it doesn't happen in the budget in closing i would urge our colleagues to support this budget especially because of the foundation it lays to tackle the two biggest domestic issues of our time health care and taxes there are certainly major issues that come before us with iraq obviously being the issue of paramount importance as it relates to the international fr but the big issues here at home are fixing health care and taxes the conrad budget allows for democrats and republicans to come together on both of those it is a budget that responsibly allows the senate to address the critical issues do so in a responsible way i urge the passage of this budget madam president and y president senator from new mexico i gather that i'm next under the time agreement and i have up to fifteen minutes is that correct respect his views i i just want to say after going through this budget process the thought that the senator from new mexico has been involved in the writing of twenty budgets more than twenty budgets here  respect for the senator has grown geometrically after going through this one so i really do want to commend the senator for truly an extraordinary thing to be involved in extraordinarily good things and some where you know you just had to do what you had to do but i can remember you know how long and hard we worked and worried about giving up drugs to our senior citizens as part of medicare and anybody that's interested in when the budget that when the budget act has any force just go back and look at how that happened we did it with the reconciliation instruction  started with four hundred million i think we ended up with about five or six hundred before we finished it but that's what we reconciled and said you can only use it for this it was an experiment as to whether it would work because there's nothing in the law that says you can do that but when you do the right thing things that people are right to do otherwise they'll let a budget act do things that it would not they wouldn't otherwise be let happen it wouldn't be part of the x expectation when you read the fine lines in the budget act and you've done some of that here you've extended it and i commend you for it i don't like it but that's what we are here for to agree and disagree on i don't like the budget as you prepared it but let me say i give you a great credit for getting it done it is a most difficult job and the side you hadn't and the house and that it just changed and that was very hard for you to figure out who how you were afterwards but it is something very extraordinary to get it done and be able to say we're through tonight so i commend you for that having said that madam president i want to say that i want to start with the letter tauriel piece that was found in the wall street journal on a couple of days ago and it's called a pro revenue shower sh o w e r april revenue shower in it it says there was a surge of revenue that you aren't reading about it continued flood of tax revenue into the federal treasury tax receipts for april were seventy billion dollars above the same month in two thousand and six and april twenty fourth marked the single biggest day of tax collections in u s history forty eight thousand seven hundred million dollars according to the latest treasury report and it goes on to compare other months and do further document the validity of the april shower of revenue coming to the government now if i were on the other side and writing a budget i would be very frightened to read about april showers and see how much april showers continue you'd into the next two or three years how much it would do to correct and rectify the deficit of the united states and take care of the biggest problem we've got of deficit spending each year in just a few years two years it continuing at april shower rates of revenue we would be approaching a balanced budget in the united states senate and i for one would have liked to see a stay closer to the budget that brought us those april showers then to change dramatically away from those budgets those budget concepts that got us those a potion hours for so many months now we all know that it wasn't just one month it was many months you look back now we have had many months of strong economic performance by this economy and it brought that strong performance bro showers of revenues to the treasury of the united states beyond anything we expected we never put down as an estimate during the last two or three budgets anything close to the revenues that came spilling into the treasury because things were going right now that leads me to the conclusion that you are to be careful when things are going right you ought to be careful with changing big concepts within that budget for fear that it may stop the stop going right and april showers may turn into something far different instead of showers it may turn into hail stones may turn into blizzards instead of nice friendly showers that are yielding tax dollars and revenues to the to the american treasury so from my standpoint this budget goes the wrong way this budget that i've seen the estimates that i've spent shall on say that this budget before us would increase taxes by seven hundred thirty six billion dollars these tax increases include all marginal rates except the ten percent bracket capital gains rates dividend rates and the alternative minimum tax and education tax relief as we understand from those to do the estimating in my state so it must be in all states ninety three thousand new mexico that investors including senior citizens would pay more because of an increase in capital gains and rate and dividend rates in this budget right off i believe that we ought to be careful with that maybe it's the capital gains in the dividends which were major changes in policies they might have had more to do with sustaining the budget and you and bringing those april showers that didn't just occur in april but occurred in may june july and august those large revenue chunks that were coming to the federal government which weren't expected i would submit that it's extremely easy to balance a budget and show or surplus when you utilize one of the largest tax increases in  our country's history now obviously when when you have a budget like we had where you had tax cuts and they were multi year and you just stop them and you can say you didn't increase in a taxes but the impact on the tax payer will be felt as a tax increase because if they were expecting what it what they had last year and it goes up because you did not in continue with a cut then they obviously look around to see who cut their taxes and obviously if you stop the tax cuts then you get increases and the public won't should know where they come from it's obvious they'll come from this budget and carrying it out once again let me add color to the attentions of the senate that according to this wall street editorial in april alone the united states government collected seventy billion dollars in tax receipts more than this and the same month last year for the current fiscal year taxes tax receipts are eleven point three percent or one hundred and fifty three billion dollars from last year i'm not sure if most people are aware of the fact that on april twenty fourth two thousand and seven the united states collected a record setting forty eight billion dollars in tax taxes i'm sure the people don't know and there is no reason they should but we ought to tell him on a day like this that they did the taxes tax receipts went up enormously as as i've indicated and as this editorial indicates and that means that the changes in policy in this budget are such that they change the wins that brought these showers that the that the wall street journal is talking about then you will stop getting showers of dollars that are there and you'll get something that will be bad for the american people the economy will go down instead of up and the kinds of things that yield a good april showers filled with revenues will stop being the order of the day i think that we should we should worry and look long and hard at these numbers before we consider making changes to the budget policy because of these record tax revenues the budget deficit could be slashed in more than half and this year the same time next year the deficit could be reduced by one hundred fifty billion dollars this year which equates to the approximately one percent of the gross domestic product i believe our current budget policy is paying off the next eighteen to twenty four months the deficit could be could be caused to disappear if we do not do your off the course this is one point in time where the status quo may just be  better alternative let me ask at the remainder of my remarks slightly more than one page be made a part of the record as if i read i thank the chair and i thank the senate for listening today without objection thank you other side twenty two and a half thirty two on our side twenty two i'd say to the manager on the other side i might just take a few minutes and sen dorgan is our next speaker and that being acceptable to the manager yes madam president i would recommend the center take thirty two minutes you know i that is an interesting endorsement of the persuasiveness of my appeal  let me just say in response first of all again i want to say of my respect for the senator from new mexico the thought of being the person who produced over twenty budgets through the budget committee is and is just a stunning concept to me after going through this budget but i want to go back to the question that he raised about tax increase because i must say there's been a certain consistency on the other side with respect to tax increases they have said over and over and over and over and over and over their seven hundred billion dollars tax increase here there's only that big a tax increase of the president had a five hundred billion dollars tax increase because you know do the math there's only a two percent difference between what our budget raises and the president budgets raises on a congressional budget office scored two percent of fifteen trillion dollars is three hundred billion and they're talking about seven hundred thirty six billion so they are arguing that the president had a four hundred thirty six billion dollar tax increase i don't the president would agree with that math so if that math is wrong their assertions about our budget are wrong it's very simple least in the math i learned in bismarck north dakota again i just go back to what the president said about his own budget previous president said facts are stubborn things indeed they are the president's budget estimated by his own office of management and budget which he controls said that they would produce fourteen trillion eight hundred twenty six billion in revenue over the next five years that's the president's estimate of what his budget would do our budget according to the congressional budget office will raise fourteen trillion eight hundred and twenty eight billion dollars of revenue over five years that is virtually identical so the president said it was reasonable to raise this amount of revenue guess what that's what we're doing now some will say yeah but wait a minute you're using o numbers for the president and c b o numbers for congress yes because the president controls o m b that's his own estimate of what is budget would do let's use c b own numbers for both then you get that our budget will raise two percent more money than the president's two percent and fifteen trillion dollars which is the amount over five years is three hundred billion dollars i believe you can easily get two percent more revenue by going after the tax gap the difference between what's owed and what's paid going after these tax havens which the permanent committee and invest the geisha says it's costing the treasury a hundred billion dollars a year and these agree just tax shelters which i have shown repeatedly on this floor where we have the remarkable circumstance where wealthy investors in this country are buying european sewer systems european metro systems european city hall depreciating on the books in the united states to lower their tax obligation here and then leasing them back to the cities in europe that built them in the first place come  of us don't engage in that kind of this is a budget for five years but we all know we're going to write another budget next year so let's look at the revenue for next year in our budget and the president's budget these two lines represent the president's budget request for next year and ours do you see any difference you see any daylight now because they're identical no tax increase in this budget and i don't know what our colleagues are going to next year when there's been no tax increase i don't know what they're going to say mr president with respect to spending i want to go back to that question because the spending under our budget is going to go down as a share of g d p here it is we're going to go from a spending of twenty point five percent in two thousand and eight and each and every year we're going to bring it down until in the fifth year we have spending at eighteen point nine percent of g d p now let's look at the record on the other side let's just look at what our friends did when they controlled the budget they took spending from eighteen point four percent of p and ran it up to twenty point three percent of g d p that's the difference in the spending records an f we go even back further to the previous democratic administration let's look at what they did when president clinton was in office he inherited a spending level of twenty two point one percent of g d p and look what happened under his administration each and every year spending as a share of g d p which is what the economists say should be the measure because that corrects for inflation under the clinton administration they took spending from twenty two point one percent of g d p which is what they inherited from the previous bush administration and they took it down to eighteen point four percent of g d p and again i know this is painful for my colleagues but it's the record this is no projection this is what actually happened they took that eighteen point four percent of g d p that they inherited in spending from the clinton administration and they ran it up to twenty point three percent of g d p so when we're talking about who's spending around here the record shows it's been the side opposite who have been the ones that increased the spending and at the same time the increase the spending they basically froze the revenue of the united states meant it would put that chart up for a minute because it's good to look at history and look at facts and not just use kind of these tired old nostrums here's what's happened to the revenue while our side the other side has been in charge in two thousand the revenue of the united states was just over two trillion dollars the bush administration came in and read new went down they had two thousand and one they had tax cuts two thousand and two revenue went down further two thousand and three revenue went down further two thousand and four it stayed down two thousand and five it stayed down only in two thousand and six did we get back to the revenue base that we had in two thousand in real terms mr president it is that combination of hammy that chart if you could place it is this combination under our colleagues a stagnant revenue base for six years combined with a forty percent increase in spending during their period of control because in dollar terms two thousand and two spending was two trillion they've run it up to two point eight trillion on their watch a forty percent increase stagnant revenue base and what's the result and the result is exploded if we could put up the chart that shows what's happened to the debt of the united states and there watch the debt explode the word that you will never hear leave the lips of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that they will never mention it because here's what's happened to the debt while they've been in charge it's gone from five point eight trillion at the end of this president's first year we won't hold him responsible for the first year and it's gone to nine trillion dollars on his watch and if his budget is followed over the next five years of goes to twelve trillion dollars even worse foreign holdings of u s debt have more than doubled under this president putting as deep in hock to the japanese the chinese the british the drug exporting countries or the oil exporting countries i sometimes get confused because we're borrowing money from so many different entities right around the world under this president putting us deep and deep they could inform us of the time remaining perhaps we could work it out so senator grassley could go next how much time do we have the senator from new hampshire has twenty two and a half minutes i think the fair thing says senator from north dakota has twenty one and a half minutes i think the his how much time senator like no more than two minutes in the first point is this it truly is a budget from the land of oz when you make the representation that you're not increasing spending and by your own terms you're increasing just question every spending two hundred billion two hundred five billion dollars over the president's number it's equally a budget for the land of oz when you say you're not raising taxes when in fact you're raising taxes not seven hundred twenty six billion dollars but not two hundred sixteen billion dollars because you've put in place a phony trigger mechanism to allege that one hundred eighty billion dollars of taxes tax increases will not go into effect when it's absolutely clear that they well it's equally disingenuous or from the land of oz the claim that you're not increasing the debt of federal government when the debt of the federal government's going to go up two point five trillion dollars and almost all the surplus that you allege to have reached is going to be borrowed from the social security gone from the social security fund and all the deficit over this period is going to be debt borrowed from the social security funds here it's an attack on the social security fund it's an attack on the taxpayers of america with the largest increase in history and melted and caused a significant recession which was impre increased dramatically by the attack of nine eleven and that's why your g d p numbers are skewed during that period because the gross national product did not grow in the face of a recession  and what happened as a result of nine eleven and that you're out your numbers are equally skewed because you basically presume we're not at war which hopefully won't be and hopefully we can all take credit for that but the fact is you don't even account for the cost of the war us the wizard of odds budget i would accept that characterization of courage brains and heart that is a budget present that was not and was devised that was the lion that was crow and clearly if dorothy looked at this budget she'd find the wizard of oz was the still behind the curtain and that this is still a fantasy courage brains and heart taxes it's provide us the necessary resources usually in a bipartisan manner to realistically address the demands of tax trade health and welfare policies all things  jurisdiction of our committee so all reading this budget compromise i'm very disappointed to say that this year is very much different than over the last few years now i know that the people spoken on november and for the first time in twelve years the democrats are in the majority and in control of the congressional budget process as ranking republican on the finance committee i was not consulted at any point our distinguished chairman of the budget committee on this year's budget resolution on fortunately after reviewing the resolution conference agreement the agreement this before us now it is clear that it does not realistically address the needs of the very important work of the finance committee despite claims to the contrary this budget does not provide for even one year not even one year of alternative minimum tax relief the taxes going to twenty three million americans this very year right now that weren't paying that a m t last year now that's even for one year let alone two years or even a one year extension of the provisions that are that one expire this year so this budget puts a burden than on the finance committee the tax writing committee to come up with the offsets to pay for the alternative minimum tax relief and for other extenders that it's necessary for us to pass on these immediate needs on the a m t and the other extenders the democratic budget committees press release says quote a m t really the conference agreement prevents the spread of the alternative minimum tax so that it does not impose a higher tax on middle income families it ensures that the number of taxpayers subject to the a m t will not be allowed to increase in two thousand and seven protecting some twenty million middle class taxpayers from being subject to that tax and a quote now if that were what really were happening out applaud it now mr president i have looked over the resolution i've looked over the state managers and i can find the basis for what's in the press release if you look at the numbers unlike the past six years of republican budgets you won't find tax relief rooms to accommodate the alternative minimum tax you won't find any tax relief room for anything including the very important standards that are popular around here that everybody wants to expand from year to year the chairman i'm sure will respond that the finance committee tax staff will find revenue raising offsets on that in a few minutes without question how however mr president this resolution does not provide the tax writing committee both houses with the resources to bring van the spread of the alternative minimum tax for this year or next year to those more than twenty three million middle income taxpayers that were never supposed to be paying the alternative minimum tax it is simply not in the black and white print of this resolution regardless of what the press releases say let's turn to the offset point as a farmer i'd like to think that we country folks can teach people in the city a lesson or two the first chart involves the method a lot of us farmers use to get water in so well here's the top of the well pointing to the top of the well you can see it is a long well and there is some water way down at the bottom of the well but you will see that the well is almost dry now as i indicated a few months ago the budget resolution doesn't contain tax relief rooms sufficient to cover the revenue loss of the alternative minimum tax and other time sensitive tax extenders what we're told by those who drew up this budget is that the tax committee will find the money the offset wells shows about forty four billion dollars in known identified and scored revenue raisers by the senate democratic that the senate democratic caucus has supported in the past uses chart about two months ago and i've updated it to account for two billion dollars in new revenue raised here's developed by the finance committee tax day that's fager that figure of one billion per month is in line with historical average how reliable is that average and can we count on as a farmer i know something about the predictability of well water your hope you'll get rain and it will give you a decent level of well water and as a former chairman and now ranking member of the committee i know something about revenue raisers i've been here done that been through all that when i was chairman i a grass of really led efforts to identify and in a sensible revenue raisers aimed at closing the tax gap and shutting down tax shelters and as ranking member i continue to look for ways to shut off unintended tax benefits so i consider myself to be credible on what is realistic when it comes to revenue raisers from two thousand and one through two thousand and six congress extended over one hundred offsets with combined and we enacted over one hundred offsets with combined revenues scars of one and seven hansberry and over one year fifty one billion over five years one hundred fifty seven billion over again years that figure is reflected in this chart because it's reflected in that fifty one billion dollars figure that you got up there at the top so if you look at the recent history we can realistically realistically figure that the tax staff will find about one billion dollars a month right now all we can find that is specified drafted and scored by those scores of the joint tax committee is a big amount of money but compared to what's needed a mere forty four billion dollars the revenue raising well shows about forty four billion in available the fine and scored offsets at the waterline these are  defenders of this resolution then we'll say a virtual cornucopia of revenue raisers are there in this well from the tax gap and shutting down offshore can i take a back seat to no one on reducing the tax gap and shutting down offshore tax shelters i've got the scars to show for those efforts over the past few years but that the fine and scored tax gap proposals are already included because that's that figure of six billion dollars up there on the chart likewise a proposed a proposal targeted attacks even countries and other offshore activities is included at at two billion dollars the well has then about forty four billion dollars of offset bucket will be very busy on the demand side i've talked about the alternative minimum tax fix there's one hundred fifteen billion dollars for that fix for this year and next year that's what it's going to take to get that job done one hundred fifteen billion dollars there that's a big a sum of money that's going to be demanded there's twenty billion for other extenders that run out of the end of the year  then there's fifteen billion dollars for the children's health insurance program expansion and there's another thirty billion for the rest of the so called reserve funds here's a chart that lists the other twenty some odd reserve funds so you can see that there is a massive demand for revenue out there amassing demand for revenues each and every one of those would be popular expenditures since we know from almost a decade of fiscal history that the democratic leadership can't propose spending cuts we know the new reserve fund spending will be paid for with tax increases these figures reflect only the demands of the first year of a five year budget and if you add them up they add up to one hundred eighty billion dollars in demand on the spending and tax side as you can see there's about forty four billion dollars in revenue offsets if you assume the tax staff will follow the historical average of one billion dollars per month then figure about fifteen billion more at bats so if we assume in a manner most favorable to the proponents of the resolution then there will be fifty nine billion dollars and then if you do that then this budget is short by one hundred twenty one billion dollars for just the first year of the five year budget the demands on the tax and spending side then exceed projected offsets by one hundred twenty one billion dollars for the first year of the resolution so it's time for all of us to get real about what the proposed spending is in this budget the need for tax policy that's promised in this budget and the small amount of offsets that are available so what's going to happen how do we bridge that one hundred twenty one billion dollar gap these are either the tax relief and new spending is not going to happen or will add that to the deficit that is a frightening proposition adding it to the deficit let's take a look at the rest of the agenda to those numbers over the five year budget going out to the year two thousand and twelve keeping existing policies in place will have a revenue effect of nine hundred sixteen billion dollars this includes a m t really if they're if they're serious about not having those twenty three million middle income tax people pay taxes that they were never supposed to pay in the first place and extending other broadly supporting expiring for his agents in the aggregate this budget appears to provide one hundred eighty billion dollars in new resources for extending these policies over the five year window look further mr president you'll find a trigger a trigger that trigger it's a very trigger i talked about last week senator gregg scribe in great detail how the trigger well worked so place that this say that the trigger conditions one hundred  eighty billion dollars in tax relief targeted for two thousand and eleven on no future spending is that the real world and all future spending does anyone really believe that this democratic majority will not spend future tax increases if given a chance if your answer is yes then you'll buy a pig in a poke a pig in a poke is what you're going to get if you believe that if you think you're getting a pig you're going to get cheated and i've grown a few pigs in my day so i know that they're doing a real pig and a pig in the poke the trigger mechanism is such a pig in the poke i don't buy you'll regret it so we've got a situation here where we got seven hundred thirty six  i want to say the gentleman from iowa the ranking member the finance committee has been a true gentleman during consideration of the budget resolution i'm usually we have strong differences with respect to some of the policies here but i just want to say that this man has been a gentleman and i also want to say we on our side will not forget his courtesy during consideration the budget i do want to say with respect to one of the charges that he had up here he had two years of anti relief and it's true in the senate budget we had two years of and two relief in the conference report we have one year so that would change the numbers of interest in his chart from one hundred  fifteen billion to fifty two billion seconds in what passed in the senate we had fifteen billion of s chip funding within the budget and up to another thirty five billion dollars in a reserve fun now all of the funding in what has come out of the conference committee is in the reserve fund so the senators chart which i know was prepared some months ago and it is really not consistent with what the conference report is i just want to make those two points again i would say to others who are listening we don't believe there is any requirement for a tax increase in this budget  we only have a two percent difference in revenue between the president's budget and our budget on a c b o score if you look at what the president said his budget would produce in revenue it is virtually identical to what our budget produces with that i want to yield eleven minutes to the senator from north dakota my colleague senator dorgan mr president first of all thanks to my colleague thanks for his leadership i don't know where to start with the issues of pagan the po rules and all these issues but i'm going to talk a little about issues that are probably close to something i called the huggable first let me say this mark twain once said when asked if he would get engaged in a debate he said  oh sure as soon as long as i can take the negative side they said well we haven't told you what the subject is he said oh it doesn't matter the negative side and take the preparation it's easy to oppose that takes no preparation we have brought a budget to the floor the night of state senate and got a broken tradition here we've got a budget on the floor that got passed for a while under the leadership of santa con red and i applaud him for that we're going to have a budget today that's a pretty big step forward now let me just say that with all the budget talk we went to war two years ago and we sent soldiers halfway around the world to go to war but the country didn't go to war this congress didn't go to war every single dollar with respect to the fiscal policy every single dollar that has been borrowed we say to the soldiers go fight put on america's uniform go represent your country but the fact is the president says i want an emergency supplemental appropriations for it all will just add it all to the debt an unbelievable fiscal policy send the soldiers to war americans go shopping that's what we're told to do by the president and by the way let's not ask anybody to sacrifice for all of this so we see real significant fiscal policy problems this budget begins to start to try to deal with them they've been growing now for about six or seven years this administration inherited a surplus very quickly turn into a very large budget deficit now this is a budget someone once asked the question if you were asked to write an obituary about someone and knew nothing about the person had never met the person but only had their checkbook registry as a frame of reference what kind of a bitchy way would you write about that person well you'd probably be able to take a look at what they spent their money unintelligible something about their value system what did they think was important what did they treasure what did they value you can do the same thing with this country's budget it's true that one hundred years from now we'll all be dead but history will record what we've done they can look at the budget that we passed and they can see what did we believe were the priorities for this great country now the president sent us problems here are my priorities let's  propose spending in a way that loses ground the issue of funding the national institutes of health and making the investments in needed cancer research and research another red diseases that's cut back on head start relative the money that's needed to continue headstart for these young kids that's the side that energy efficiency and renewable energy is not as important these are priorities from the president's but i could go on at some great length i disagree with that i think many of these things represented vestments in the country's future and so my colleague and those who work with him on the budget committee a put together a different set of priorities and it's a better set of priorities that says yes there are some areas that are just spending money there are other areas that represent an investment in the future and investment for this country that's why i think this budget is a good document and i'm pleased today to support it let me go to one other piece because i feel so strongly about  i've offered amendment after amendment on this subject on the floor of the senate my colleague has included proposed revenues in this budget from those who are now paying their fair share and some say oh that's all a mirage that's just a shell game  well you know what's happening in this country we have a pernicious tax break that says shut down your manufacturing plant in america fire your workers move your jobs overseas we'll give you a big fat tax cut i can't believe anything quite as fully says that but yet we have we voted on the four times here i'm going to offer an amendment this year again and maybe one day there will be at least half of the united states senate with the courage to say let's not subsidize moving jobs overseas with a tax cut for those who do it but even more than that i have used this for many many occasions for i guess two years now this is the ugly in house it is on a quiet little street in the cayman islands called church street as you can see it's a four to five story building it is home to twelve thousand seven hundred forty eight corporations thanks to some enterprising reporting by david evans from bloomberg and this point i regret i don't have the time i'll take it off my toe of course but it would sound like the question of my time not the answer let me finish my my comments and if i have time i'd be happy to engage this this represents fiction twelve thousand seven hundred forty eight corporations say that this is their home no it's not this is a play house for tax avoidance that's what this is about they get to run their income through here so they don't have to pay taxes to the united states government they want all the opportunities all the opportunities that come with being an american except the responsibility to pay a tax now more than this tax haven countries thousands of companies taking up residence in texas even countries for the purpose of avoiding taxes here's what savings i don't even understand how the transaction works to someone walk into an investment banking firm and say do you have a sewer section here already have a sewer specialist i can talk to because i'd like to avoid taxes by investing in a german sewer system so maybe the receptionist as yet we've got a we've got a section over here in our investment banking firm that actually specializes in foreign sewers well so well call the apparently found that they saved one hundred seventy five million dollars by buying a german sewage system does that mean that they use the sewage system no does that mean that they actually have a need for us no there's actually change hands know it's still underground in germany what it does it allows this company to avoid paying u s taxes well how about an american company buying a foreign city hall it's a town hall in germany purchased by an american company for what purpose to avoid paying u s taxes would it be great if the folks down the block or up the street or out on the farm who have to pay taxes in this country would say you know what irma i've got a new idea you and i are going to buy a sewage system in england she'd say are you nuts it's what's happening in corporate boardrooms belgium actually this is germany there's a there's one for belgium this is the sale and leaseback of street cars in germany american corporation wants to own german street cars why because they enjoy writing and street cars now they'll never get it in them it's because they particularly want to avoid paying u s taxes in chicago they put together something called a nine one one emergency call system put that together guess what when chicago shoppers hunted for bargains a few days after christmas last year two big financial firms landed their own sweet deal fleet boston and financial and sumitomo mitsui banking but chicago's nine eleven emergency call system kno chicago was in the throes of privatization the story says from the wall street journal this was companies again deciding we'd like to buy assets that we have no need for that belong to the public and what we'd like to do is use them to avoid paying u taxes that is unbelievable to me i mean i would think every single member of the united states senate would look at this and say that makes me sick and it's got to stop not tomorrow no we're not just going to begin to wean off th system but right now we're going to say that nobody's going to be able to buy a foreign source system in order to decide they're not going to pay us taxes go to any restaurant in this country any small town cafe in this country and s order a cup of coffee and ask the folks you're sitting with do you think this should be allowed they'd look at you and they'd say are you are you out of your mind well i the reason i talk about this this in this budget to be shut down senator conrad has said and i've offered amendments on the floor of the senate we're going to shut this down the other side kind of laughs and scoffs at this say well you really can't shut that down i know in fact no one will stand up if i ask will someone today come over to the floor the united states senate and just stand up and say you know what count me in i'm a big fan of having u s companies buy foreign sources tems sign my name to it give me credit it nobody will do that this is kind of in the dark of the night that all this tax policy gets made and that's what my colleague says in this budget let's begin to shut that down let's begin to collect the revenues reduce the federal deficits you know these deficits at some point somebody is going to have to pay them this administration inherited a very large budget surplus i stood on the floor of the senate said you know maybe we ought to be a little conservative here and the president and his minions said no no no no let's let's decide that we want to give it all back despite the fact we didn't have a chat it was ten years projected surplus well guess what in a matter of months we found out we were in a recession then we had nine eleven then we had a war in afghanistan then we had a war in iraq and huge deficits were huge surpluses were turned into huge deficits and much much much more spending for a war for which the president said oh by the way we're not going to pay for that we're going to ask that all of it be funded with zero requests in the budget because we're going to send you emergency request and you add it to the deficit so you send soldiers to war and when they come back they can help pay the cost of the war because we're not going to do it and that's what's wrong with this fiscal policy we were on a road to nowhere in a road to real trouble and finally we have a budget that begins to force change is it going to happen overnight like no it's not it's going to take some time but this budget is a budget that moves us finally in the right direction and i commend senator conrad and all those who worked on i'm proud to be part of it and will be proud to vote for it and present how much time remains important leadership on the senate budget committee he has been an extremely valuable member on the senate budget committee and helped us write this budget senator from new jersey senator menendez senator from new jersey's recognized thank you madam president let me say that as a member of the senate budget committee i'm extremely proud of the budget resolution report conference report before us and i i want to commend the distinguished chairman of the committee for his leadership  succeeding in the daunting gault putting together a final budget resolution that would not have happened without him and i appreciate his depth of experience and changing the direction of our values in this budget this budget accomplishes what we set  achieve at the outset of this congress it fulfills our responsibility in key priorities such as children's health care education and veterans services it sets us on a strong fiscal path balancing in five years and  ving a surplus in two thousand and twelve and it allows for key tax relief for middle class families now i've heard a lot of claims being made today about what the budget does and doesn't do so let's be clear i think americans should know the choices that are at stake because this budget makes them clear choices and sets a very different set of priorities than the budget the president sent to us our budget allows for up to fifty billion dollars to be spent on reauthorizing s chip so that we can ensure that america's neediest children get the care and health coverage they need now making the health coverage of the nation's most vulnerable children a top priority would seem like a no brainer for members of congress who have access to some of the best health coverage in the world but that was not the case in the president's budget his budget fell far short of what's needed just to continue coverage for children who are already in roles let alone enough to expand coverage moving forward our budget provides more than nine billion nine billion more than the president for education now why such a high increase well just look back at the past few years of education funding under the president and you'll see how much damage we're trying to repair but next year alone the president would have slashed one point five billion in federal education funds stifled student aid deep in the hole the no child left behind funding and eliminated forty four programs from education technology to dropout prevention to low cost parking loans this budget rejects the long list of c to education and we increased funding by three point five billion over last year so we can start to reverse the downward spiral that has plagued education under the president and the republican majorities of the past and provide students the opportunities they deserve our budget will increase funding for veterans benefits and health services by six point seven billion it meets the requests of the independent veterans groups and would it crease veterans funding by three point five billion over the president's requests for far too long under this administration's watch our veterans have been held hostage to a sub par system those failed to provide the care they deserve our budget puts an end to the funding deficiencies to set that system a failure it also rejects the present president's proposal to raise fees and copays for veterans our budget shows our first responders that we will put our money where our mouth this will not tell our firefighters police officers emergency responders that we support them day in and day out but then provide them a fraction of the resources they need to do the job so in addition to rejecting the president's mind boggling proposal to cut first responder grants by more than a billion dollars we provide key increases for homeland security programs including enough to double grants for port city rail transit and chemical security and we also we store funds that would have decimated the cops program that put police officers on the streets of our city and the safe from fire grants and despite all the rhetoric from the other side of the aisle about our budget plan the fact is we extend tax cuts that we all agree are pivotal for middle class families our budget would continue marriage tax relief extend the child tax credits lower tax brackets targeted to help the middle class and it would ensure that no new tax payers would fall subject to higher taxes because of the alternative minimum tax next year which is the this the chairman of an additional minute senator from north dakota then have additional money thank you but what is key in our budget is how we achieve this tax relief in the differences we pay for it under our strong pay go roll and days of promising tax cuts now and paying for them ten years down the road so madam president i think our plan is clear this budget is a significant departure from the debt drench plans we have seen from the president republicans year after year this budget ends an era of dumping the fiscal burden on our children our schools and our veterans and instead of undermining education abdicating our responsibilities in health care neglecting our veterans this budget restores a common sense balance to our values we should expect  greatest nation in the world we have a long road to stop digging ourselves out of the holes as president created but this budget is a first and sound step towards building a stronger nation with the senator would entertain a question  you listed specific numbers and numbers i added up to be about fourteen billion dollars that was an incorrect i don't have that list in before me right now but the bottom line is that in this budget whatever those increases that i just cited they are paid for and ultimately meet the challenges we have as a country i as a senator disagree with any of those priorities that we have i'm just trying to get to the bottom of this question of whether or not this increases this budget increases spending over the president's number  the senator from north dakota is represented doesn't and yet senator after senator from the other side the aisles come the floor and told us how much spending has increased i think it's a re prioritization of those values within the context of the budget or say it's not it's a two hundred five billion dollars increase over the presen president senator from north dakota i make i make no assertion i make no assertion that we have not increased spending over the president's proposal certainly we do because we have more spending for this nation's veterans and the health care for our veterans we have more spending for children's health care we have more spending for education and we have more money for law enforcement why because the president cut the cops program ninety four percent the cops program to put one hundred thousand police officers on the street the president says cut it ninety four percent we don't agree with that the president says that we're not going to have the funding for our nation's veterans which the nation's veterans say is essential and a president i'd ask for the time circumstance on both sides the senator from north dakota you have fifty five seconds and the republican side has four minutes and one second madam president i would ask unanim extending the time past three thirty the center of additional time the device without objection so order a president at center there is a consistent inconsistency about the presentation from the other side of the aisle in this budget the representation that it doesn't raise taxes is on its face not consistent with the language of the budget i mean why would we have had to have the baucus amendment which extended tax cuts and reduced taxes or represented did by hundred eighty billion dollars if there hadn't been a tax increase in the bill there is a tax increase the bill and in fact the trigger language in this bill which is now placed on top of the baucus language means that the top baucus tax cuts which were the original tax cuts of the president and they're being extended will not come into fruition and they can't possibly come into fruition because of the complexity of the trigger mechanism they're subject to sixty votes it's a it's a it's a it's just a pyrrhic statement that those those tax cuts exist and so this budget has nine hundred sixteen billion dollar checks in grace and then then that representation that doesn't increase spending increases spending dramatically this is a budget that does what democrats do it raises taxes spend a lot of money and that's that's the game plan and then the representation that somehow it doesn't attack address social so it doesn't mean that the representation the other side that they they don't want to impact social security and yet the budget takes a billion dollars out of social security so security trust fund in order to spend on their initiatives they have a two hundred billion dollar domestic spending proposal in the discretionary side over what the president has that spending comes directly out of the social purity trust as a direct attack on the social security trust  there's of course no effort on the entitlement side at all to control spending and the debt goes up by two point five trillion dollars but one of the key elements in this is this question  you put it up so i just thank you i asked my staff to try to explain in the layman terms what this mechanism is that will allow which is subject to conditions which only rube goldberg could appreciate so we took a rube goldberg chart and we put the side will goldberg chart the different numbers that reflect what's happening here project a surplus in two thousand and twelve so these tax cuts do not get extended if there's no surplus and we already know that the pasties spend money on the other side of the isle of wight that surplus has a surplus of such a close number secondly the tax relief can cost one hundred eighty eighty billion dollars or twenty percent of the projected surplus whichever is smaller so not only do they not probably have a surplus so they can have the tax cut that they allege they have that's not a tax extension of the tax policies which are in place today but they create a mechanism which says now you're not going to get all that you're only going to get twenty percent of it and you know it's not going to be a hundred eighty billion dollars now one of the tax writing committee and there was a do not include the contingency clause well because it happens to be a terrible way to legislate well then we switch to an entirely whole new set of miscellaneous conditions on the trigger the house budget committee then has the a thawing authority the chairman he will increase revenue numbers in the budget resolution to take away the taska if the budget is if the finance committee doesn't include that contingency and so instead of a budget increasing taxes seven thirty six billion dollars actually ends up increasing taxes nine hundred sixteen billion dollars so there are a number of people who wander in around this senate senate and after the last budget left here saying oh  credits for teachers who use money from their own personal accounts to help out in their schoolroom we get we extended all those paths but now we find out they did and they don't because they've created this trigger mechanism which came from the house which had none of those extensions which makes it virtually impossible to presume that these extensions are going to occur so there are a lot of folks around here are going to walk away with egg on their face i believe they're going to say they voted for a budget last time through where they extended those tax cuts and this time they're going to try to claim they're doing it again when in fact what they're doing is setting up a clear action that can't be accomplished it's  it's another example of the of the consistent inconsistency of this project the reserve of i know the senators opposed and he's done a very good job i might say of making his side of the case you know really the great thing about our country and about these institutions is that we have the right to come here and debate all openly and even passionately our different views and that we have a right at the end of the day here to vote and the majority rules and that three of the last five years this country has had no budget and hopefully at the end of the day we will have put in place a budget for our country that is our obligation and our responsibility and i believe at the end of the day we'll of accomplish that and even though the senator from new hampshire and i disagree with respect to the specifics of this budget we agree on certain very important things number one we agree on the importance of having a budget number two the senator and i happen to agree you'd certainly missed this of your listeners a debate today but the senator from new hampshire and i have strong agreement on the unsustainability of our long term budget situation the senator has talked about where we're headed in the long term and i entirely agree with him that in the long term we have a budget circumstance that is unsustainable and it's going to be important for us to discipline the long term entitlement it's also going to be important to address these fiscal imbalances that we face as a nation we have begun the process by writing a budget that does balance by senators question this whole trigger mechanism it is true that we did not have one in the senate the house insisted on a trigger mechanism in the conference and let me just indicate where we are with respect to the way the trigger works under office of management and budget numbers the surplus in two thousand and twelve will currently exceed the amount needed to fully implement the baucus amendment the budget resolution surplus excluding the baucus amendment in two thousand and twelve is two hundred ninety billion dollars the trigger says you can only so under the current only to be projections the full middle class tax relief that was provided for in the budget in the senate will still be eligible and that includes the relief for estate tax reform as well so in terms of how the trigger actually works under current scoring by the office of management and budget  there is a sufficient room to have all of the middle class tax reductions extended and to provide for estate tax relief what happens if this changes what happens is we go through the year for example what happens when we pass a supplemental appropriations bill that will certainly change the out year forecast there will be other things that may change the out your forecast hopefully revenue will come in above forecasts other things will occur none of us know what happens if there's a future military conflict what happens if there's a horrible natural disaster  we don't know what we do know is that if there is knots of there are not sufficient resources to permit the middle class tax cuts being extended that will not preclude us from providing the middle class tax cuts it would simply mean to whatever extent there is not budget room we would have to find offsets we would have to find a way to pay for it or or we would have to have a super majority vote in the senate we would have to have at least sixty votes does anyone doubt does anyone doubt that this chamber would produce a supermajority vote for middle class tax relief let's revisit the baucus amendment that passed here on the floor of the united states senate to provide those middle class tax relief and to provide a state tax reform what was the vote ninety seven to one that was the vote ninety seven to one in the house the vote was three hundred sixty four to fifty seven so let's not be scaring people are out across the country suggesting the middle class going to see their taxes go up that's not what this budget provides this budget provides all the money necessary to extend the middle class tax relief and to provide for a state tax reform and those provisions passed the united states senate on a vote of ninety seven to one and passed the house of representatives on a  of three hundred sixty four to fifty seven so even if we get to the