April 2, 2001 Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair and I thank the Senator from New Mexico. I thank all of my colleagues who have worked hard to bring us to this position today. However, we don't believe we ought to be on the budget resolution tonight. We don't believe we ought to be on the budget resolution because we don't have a budget from the President. Not only do we not have a budget from the President, because he has not even provided sufficient detail for the Joint Committee on Taxation or the Congressional Budget Office to give us an independent review of what his tax proposal costs, but we believe we should have waited until that analysis was available. Third, there has been no markup in the Budget Committee. Always before, with one exception, we have had a markup in the Budget Committee. And always we have at least tried in the Budget Committee to mark up a budget resolution for our colleagues on the floor. This year, there was not even an attempt. Fourth, there will be an attempt in the budget resolution to use reconciliation for a $1.6 trillion tax cut, which we believe threatens the constitutional role of the Senate. Now ``reconciliation'' is a word that I am certain many of our listeners really have no idea of its meaning. I must confess I didn't fully understand reconciliation until a detailed review of that process. What it provides is that the typical operation of the Senate was to provide a ``cooling saucer'' in our constitutional construct, so that the House of Representatives reacted immediately and responded to the will of the people at the moment. The Senate was designed to be the cooling saucer, where calmer and cooler reflection could permit a further analysis, unlimited debate, with every Senator having the right to amend. Those are the fundamental constructs of this institution. All of that is short-circuited under reconciliation. All of that is out the window, and the Senate becomes a second House of Representatives. We believe the Bush budget puts this country in the hole because if you start with the projected surplus of $5.6 trillion and subtract out the trust funds of Medicare and Social Security, that leaves you with an available surplus of $2.5 trillion. When we look at the cost of the Bush tax cut as partially reestimated, and the alternative minimum tax that will have to be reformed because of the Bush tax cut, which costs another $300 billion, and the associated interest costs of $500 billion, and the spending proposals in this budget of $200 billion, you have a total cost of the Bush plan at $2.7 trillion. That tells us this President's plan puts us right into the trust fund and puts us in the hole by $200 billion. On our side, we will offer an alternative that does the following: We will protect the Social Security and Medicare trust funds in every year. We will pay down the maximum amount of the publicly held debt. We will provide for an immediate fiscal stimulus of $60 billion. I might add, that is what we think we should be doing this week. We think we should be passing on the floor of the Senate an immediate fiscal stimulus. That is what we think should be done. Fourth, we will provide significant tax relief for all Americans, including rate reduction, marriage penalty relief, and estate tax reform. Finally, we will reserve resources for the high priority domestic needs, including improving education, a prescription drug benefit, strengthening our national defense, and funding agriculture. Finally, we will provide $750 billion to strengthen Social Security and address our long-term debt. So this is a fundamental debate about the economic future of our country. We look forward to it on our side. We look forward to a healthy and vigorous and polite debate. Mr. President, I yield the floor.