April 4, 2001 Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, maybe I can review the points the Senator from Iowa is making on the amendment that we will vote on very shortly. The Grassley amendment, while well intended, has a very unfortunate consequence. We have gone back now and looked at the year-by-year numbers in the Republican budget resolution. What we find is very clear. If the Grassley amendment for additional support for agriculture passes, he is going right into the Medicare trust fund in the years 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. I believe strongly that we ought to increase support for agriculture. We have an amendment to do that. It is the Johnson amendment that will follow the Grassley amendment. But we do not raid Medicare trust funds to do it. That is a profound mistake, and it is precisely what the Grassley amendment does. If one looks at the budget we are considering this year and then the following 10 years, if you take out the Grassley amendment that previously passed for prescription drugs and the funding in each year for that initiative, then you take out the Grassley agricultural amendment and the funding it requires in each of the years, you find that you are raiding the Medicare trust fund by $15 billion in the year 2005, by $13 billion in the year 2006, by $10 billion in the year 2007, and by $4 billion in the year 2008. So that is a total raid on the Social Security trust fund of $42 billion. It is just wrong. But it is what the amendment of the Senator from Iowa does, perhaps unwittingly.