May 10, 2001 Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, first, I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for his courtesy as we have considered the budget conference report. I respect him. I admire him. I have affection for him. I disagree with him with respect to this budget, and I disagree with him strongly with respect to this budget. I do not believe this is the right budget plan for our country, and it is not an opinion limited to me. We have heard on our side of the aisle how deficient we believe this budget is. I noticed in this morning's New York Times the lead editorial was entitled ``An Irresponsible Budget Plan.'' I will read the first sentence: After several days of back room negotiations, the House approved a federal budget plan yesterday that is a model of fiscal evasion and irresponsibility. I echo those words. Earlier the Washington Post called this budget we are considering today an unreal budget. They concluded their editorial by saying: The theme of this budget is tax cuts first, sweep up afterward. It's the wrong way around. Budget resolutions are supposed to foster fiscal responsibility. This one will have the opposite effect. Unfortunately, that is the case. The reason for it is quite clear. First, this entire budget is based on a 10-year forecast--10 years. This is not money in the bank; these are projections over 10 years. The people who made the projections have warned us of the uncertainty. In fact, they told us that in the fifth year alone, based on the previous variances in their forecasts, we could have anywhere from a $50 billion deficit to more than a $1 trillion surplus. In fact, they have told us there is only a 10-percent chance the forecast number that is being used, that is being relied on, will come true. There is a 45-percent chance there will be more money; a 45-percent chance there will be less money. And that forecast was made 8 weeks ago before we saw additional weakness in the economy. Just yesterday, we saw the productivity growth forecast come out on the first quarter of this year. They were expecting a 1-percent increase. Instead, they got a reduction. If there is just a 1-percent reduction in productivity over the forecast period, instead of having a $5.6 trillion surplus, we will have a $3.2 trillion surplus. It seems to me that advises caution in what we do on this budget resolution. Those are not the only defects of this budget. There are huge chunks of spending that are not even in this budget, that have not been included. For example, here is a story from USA Today, Friday, April 27. ``Billions Sought for Arms.'' The story says that the Secretary of Defense and this administration are expected to seek a large boost in defense spending, $200 billion to $300 billion over the next 6 years. That money is not in the budget. None of that money is in the budget. Why not? Perhaps we heard the reason in an interview this last weekend on ``Meet the Press.'' The Secretary of Defense was there. He was asked: Will you get the $10 billion more in defense money this year that you need? His response: I don't know. I have not gone to the President as yet. He wanted to wait until after some of the studies had been completed and until the tax bill was behind us... That is the real reason this budget is unreal. It is the real reason this budget is irresponsible, because they are not telling us the full story. They do not really have the budget before us. What they have is a part of the budget because they know what we know. If they put the full budget in place on one piece of paper, on one document, it would not add up. That is the problem with this budget. It goes to education. The President says education is his highest priority, and yet there is no new money in this budget for education. In the Senate, when we considered the budget, we passed the Harkin amendment that added $225 billion for education. It took $450 billion away from the tax cut and put $225 billion into education and put $225 billion into paying down more of the debt. What came back from the conference committee? Not one penny of that amendment survived. We passed a bipartisan amendment on the floor of the Senate when the budget resolution was considered, with $70 billion of additional funding for education to address the disabilities act. Not one penny of that increase came back from the conference committee. That is true throughout the education budget. We have heard a lot of talk that somehow there is money in this budget, new money for education. Here is the document. Here it is by fiscal year. What it shows is the increase in budget authority and outlays over what is in the so-called baseline is zero. It is zero for 2002; it is zero for 2003; it is zero for every single year. There were a lot of brave speeches about education being the priority, but it is clearly not a priority in the budget because there is no new money in the budget for education. It doesn't stop there. Not only is it the case that the defense buildup that we all know is going to be announced, perhaps as early as next week, is not in the budget, the President says education is a priority, but that is not in the budget. And then we see the President has a meeting at the White House and says he is going to strengthen Social Security but there is no money in the budget for that. We have an editorial from the Columbus Dispatch that says: The tax-cut proposal works against [the President's] plan to begin privatizing Social Security.....experts differ on how much this ``transition cost'' will be, but it won't be cheap.....thus, the Bush's 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax cut would deprive the Government of the cash it would need to pay for the $1 trillion transition cost for the first 10 years of Bush's Social Security privatization plan. The goals are contradictory. Do you see a pattern? The administration is calling for a major defense buildup but the money is not in the budget. The President says education is a top priority but the money is not in the budget. The President says he is going to fix Social Security but the money is not in the budget. Why? I think we all know the reason why. Because if the money were in the budget for the defense buildup, if the money were in the budget for the education initiatives, if the money were in the budget to strengthen Social Security, then the budget does not add up. In fact, it would show they are raiding the Medicare trust fund by over $200 billion. They are raiding the Social Security trust fund by over $200 billion. That is the dirty little secret of this budget. It is the reason whole chunks of what is really intended have been left out. Over in the House they had two missing pages. It stalled the budget work for a week. Two missing pages? There is more than two missing pages. There are whole chunks of the real budget that have been left out because they know it doesn't add up. As we look ahead, it is critical to understand we are in a period of surplus now. These projections of surpluses may hold. They may not. But at least we have a projection of surpluses. We know when the baby boomers start to retire that these surpluses turn to massive deficits. Then the question will be: What did we do when we had the opportunity to prepare for what was to come? This is what we are doing. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 5 minutes remaining. Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair for advising me of the time. If we go back to the budget that is before us and put back the defense buildup the administration is going to call for and which is authorized in this budget, although the numbers are not included, if we would go back and correct the alternative minimum tax that is going to affect over 35 million taxpayers in this country, one in every four taxpayers who think they are going to get a tax cut but are going to be surprised when they find out they are caught up in the alternative minimum tax and it costs $290 billion to fix it; if we put in the education amendment that passed on the Senate floor last week on a unanimous consent basis; if we put in the emergencies that we all know are going to occur that run on average $5 billion a year; and if we put in the associated interest costs with those items, what we find is that we would be deep into the Medicare trust fund; that we would be deep into the Social Security trust fund. That is the reason all of those items have been left out--because this budget does not add up. There has been a lot of talk about reducing the public debt, but the part of the debt they have been talking about is the publicly held debt. It is true, the publicly held debt is going down under this budget. It is going down from $3.2 trillion at the end of this year to $800 billion at the end of this 10-year period. Do you know what? While the publicly held debt is going down, the debt to the trust funds of the United States is going up. As a result, the gross debt of the United States, which is currently $5.6 trillion, will be $6.7 trillion at the end of this time. It is very interesting--just about the amount of the tax cut is the amount of additional debt our country will have at the end of this 10-year period. I believe these are the top six reasons to oppose the budget resolution conference report. No. 1, no new money for education; No. 2, unaffordable tax cuts crowd out priorities, especially paying down this national debt; No. 3, it hides defense spending increases by providing a blank check to the Bush administration; No. 4, it sets up a raid on the Social Security and Medicare trust funds; No. 5, it cuts spending for high-priority domestic needs by $56 billion over the next 10 years. They are $56 billion short of just keeping pace with inflation, not to mention population growth. Finally, No. 6, it fails to set aside funds for the long-term Social Security and Medicare reform needs we all understand are before us. Perhaps it is time to review history. Those who are advocating this budget are the very ones who, back in the 1980s, advocated a similar policy, a policy of a massive tax cut combined with a substantial buildup in defense. What was the result? The result was an explosion of the deficits in the Reagan administration and a further growth of the deficits in the Bush administration. It was only when we had a new administration and a new fiscal plan that deficits started coming down and we began to pay down debt. Here is the record. It is as clear as it can be. President Reagan came in; he had about a $80 billion deficit. That exploded to over $200 billion, with exactly the same kind of economic analysis that has been done and with the same advocates that put in place that plan. Then the deficit further exploded under President Bush to over $290 billion. It was only when a new administration came in and we put in place a 5-year plan to bring our fiscal house back into order that we began to reduce deficits, reduce debt, and put this Nation in a position to have the longest economic expansion in our history. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired. Mr. CONRAD. I ask our colleagues to oppose this budget resolution so we do not repeat this history.