May 9, 2001 Mr. DORGAN. I thank Senator Conrad. What I would like to do at the beginning is to ask a few questions and see if I can get some information from Senator CONRAD. It is interesting to me, we now have this budget agreement on the floor of the Senate. We have a Senate that is divided 50/50--50 Democrats, 50 Republicans, elected by the American people to come and serve. We have a Budget Committee, and that Budget Committee worked and produced a budget. We had a vote on the floor. Then we had a conference between the Senate and the House. I ask Senator Conrad whether, as the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee of the Senate, he was part of the conference. Was he, along with the other Democrats, part of the budget conference which produced this conference report? Mr. CONRAD. No. What happened was, we had an initial meeting in which statements were made, the opening statements that are traditionally done in any conference. Then we were invited not to return. So this is a budget that has been written wholly by the other side of the aisle. Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I further ask the Senator, isn't it the case that at the start of this year we heard all of this talk about, "this is a new day, a new approach; we are all going to work together, have a great deal of bipartisanship; we are not going to do things like we used to do them"? Isn't it the case that when you have a 50/50 Senate and you have a Budget Committee that is 50/50, equal membership on each side, and then you have a conference but only one side is invited to the conference, that that somehow sounds like the old way, sounds like the partisanship we used to see? Would the Senator from North Dakota agree with that? Mr. CONRAD. It certainly is not a new way. It is certainly not what we were given to believe we were going to see when the President came to town, saying he was a uniter, not a divider. We have seen precious little of his moving in any way but insisting that it be his way or no way. This budget is certainly an example of that. Not only was there no involvement of our side or any Member of our side in the budget conference, there was not even a markup in the Budget Committee--none. There was not even an attempt to mark up a budget resolution in the Budget Committee. Mr. DORGAN. The reason I ask the question is I think most people would be very surprised by that. They see a Senate that is 50/50, a Budget Committee that has 50 percent of its membership Democrats, 50 percent Republican. Then you go to a conference, and the Democrats are told they are not welcome. The American people would be mighty surprised by that. Let me ask a couple other questions because this is a very important area. I want to try to understand it. I heard the chairman of the Budget Committee talk about this conference report with respect to defense. He said: This is not a blank check with respect to defense. He said: What we have done is we have created a circumstance where whatever number the President would ask us for will be ``subject to appropriation.'' In other words, we don't have the right number in here. Whatever it is the President wants, he is going to get, subject to appropriation. I ask Senator Conrad, is there any other area of this budget that is treated quite that way? For example, have they decided that for education we won't put the right number in, whatever somebody else wants at some point, subject to appropriation? Is there any other area that is treated quite that generously? Mr. CONRAD. No, not to my knowledge. I find it really rather incredible that we have a circumstance in which one person is going to be able to decide the defense budget for the United States--one person in the Senate, one person in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the Budget Committee chairman for 1 year will be able to decide what number goes in, and in the House, the chairman of the Budget Committee there can decide for 10 years what the defense budget is going to be. It is fairly breathtaking. Think about what we read in the textbooks: That we have a representative democracy, that every State has two Senators and they have Members of Congress determined by the population of their States. They come here, they vote, and they decide. But in this circumstance, with the Republicans in control of the House and in nominal control of the Senate, because they have the Vice President prepared to break a tie, they are in complete control. They are in total control. This is their document. Mr. DORGAN. Without using all of my time, let me further propound a question on the subject of debt. I have here the conference report, and it says the following with respect to (5), under title I, recommended levels and amounts: (5), public debt, the appropriate levels of public debt are as follows: Fiscal year 2001, $5.660 trillion; 10 years later, $6.720 trillion. It looks to me as if we have gross Federal debt increasing by $1.1 trillion with this conference report. Would that be accurate? Mr. CONRAD. The Senator would be correct, if he is on page H1958 of the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. Mr. DORGAN. That is correct. Mr. CONRAD. Dated May 8, it shows there the public debt increasing during this period. There has been a lot of talk out here that we are reducing the debt. That is true of the so-called publicly held debt, that debt which is held outside of Government coffers, outside of Government hands. The publicly held debt of the United States as we sit here today is some $3.4 trillion. By the end of this year, it will be $3.2 trillion. That is being reduced to the $800 billion referred to by the chairman. But the gross debt, the combination of the publicly held debt and the debt to the trust funds of the United States from the general fund, is actually growing. Mr. DORGAN. Further asking a question, that gross debt, the debt that is owed to the trust funds, the debt that is a debt that represents a liability by Government agencies, is that real debt or is that just a number someplace? We hear people saying: We can have very large tax cuts; that is not a problem; and we are also paying down the debt. I look at this and I see gross debt is increasing by $1.1 trillion. I just heard a statement a few minutes ago by a Senator who said: Here is what we are going to give the taxpayers, referring to tax cuts. Are we also in this budget going to give the taxpayers $1.1 trillion in an increase in gross indebtedness in this country during the 10 years? Mr. CONRAD. I don't know of any other way to read it. This chart I have shows the two debts that we have. The debt held by the public is the red line on this chart. The debt held in Government accounts, debt that is owed to the trust funds, is the green line. We see the debt held by the public going down, which is what has been described by the Senator from New Mexico. We see the debt that is owed to the trust funds going up. And the reason for that is, what is being done to pay off the publicly held debt is to use the surpluses from the Social Security trust fund--money that is not used now. That money is going to pay down publicly held debt--debt that is held by companies and individuals and other countries that is in U.S. securities--that debt is being paid down. But it is being paid down by using trust fund surpluses of the United States and, of course, they are then owed from the general fund of the United States, the money that has been borrowed from them to pay down the publicly held debt. So at the end of this time, the gross debt of the United States--the combined debt--will actually be more than when we started. So I think it is a little misleading for people just to talk about the publicly held debt. Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask how much time remains.