May 21, 2001 Mr. CONRAD. I thank Senator Reid on behalf of the leadership for the time. Madam President, the New York Times said it best of all: ``More Tax-cut Follies.'' They made the point that while some of the provisions have been improved over what President Bush proposed, nonetheless, overall this bill amounts to ``another gross abdication of fiscal responsibility.'' That sums it up. That is what this tax bill is, an abdication of fiscal responsibility. Sometimes I wonder if we learn anything from history. If we look back at the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations, we can go back to the time of the Reagan administration where we saw a proposal for a massive tax cut, a massive defense buildup, and an overall package that did not add up. The results were to absolutely explode the budget deficit of the United States. We went from an $80 billion deficit to over $200 billion. We quadrupled the national debt. Then President Bush came in and the deficits doubled again to nearly $290 billion. It was not until 1993, when we put in place a plan that actually raised income taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent and cut spending that we were able to get back on a path to fiscal responsibility, balancing the books. Then in 1997 we passed a bipartisan plan that finished the job that put us into surplus. Madam President, it seems we are forgetting those lessons completely. We are now headed back to deficits, back to debt based on a rosy scenario, based on a massive tax cut, based on a massive defense buildup. The numbers we have not yet seen; they are not even part of the budget resolution; that is the fatal flaw of the budget resolution. We don't have the defense numbers. We don't have the money to strengthen Social Security even though President Bush says we should. We don't have the money to fix the alternative minimum tax. We don't have the money for item after item. The reason is, that when we get all those items together, we will find that the overall package does not add up. The Philadelphia Inquirer said it well: "Tax-slashers at Work: Once Started, They Can't Seem to Stop." Just like the frat brothers, the Senators are going through weird contortions. In the bipartisan mess of a bill that the committee worked on yesterday, one gimmick is to phase in ballyhooed tax breaks over periods as long as a decade. With other tax breaks, the bill does the opposite trick: Providing tax relief right away, then supposedly ending it a few years down the road. That is called backloading, and this bill is loaded with it. The bill costs $1.35 trillion in the years 2001 to 2011. But look what happens in the second 10 years. It explodes. The cost goes up to over $4 trillion. That is because item after item is back-loaded. The estate tax is one example. The cost in the first 10 years is $1.45 billion. Look at what happens in the second 10 years when they completely eliminate the estate tax. The cost goes up to $790 billion right at the time the baby boomers retire. The same thing happens with the estate tax rate. The 2011 repeal masks massive costs. We can see the cliff effect of the estate tax. It does not end there. It continues with the marriage penalty but in a different way. With the marriage penalty, they don't put it into place until the year 2004. There is no marriage penalty relief until then. Then they increase relief so it takes full effect in the year 2008. But it doesn't stop there because they have done the same thing with the alternative minimum tax. They hide backloading by sunsetting the alternative minimum tax relief right in the middle of the period. It is bizarre. They start out by providing alternative minimum tax relief, and then they take it away. What will happen with the alternative minimum tax? We are going to go from 1.5 million people being affected by the alternative minimum tax to, when this bill passes, nearly 40 million people. It is just not the back end loading that makes no sense; it is the lack of fairness. This bill we have before the Senate gives the top 20 percent of taxpayers 70 percent of the benefits. It gives the bottom 20 percent 1 percent of the benefits. It doesn't strike me as fair. But the evidence of unfairness goes on and on. The top 1 percent gets twice as much of the benefits as the bottom 60 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers who earn on average $1.1 million a year get 33.5 percent of the benefits. The bottom 60 percent of American taxpayers get 15 percent of the benefits, one-half as much. The evidence of the unfairness in this bill is in item after item. Perhaps the most interesting part of this bill is the various rate brackets. There are five rate brackets. Every one of them gets rate relief except one. What do you think the one is? The one is the 15-percent bracket where 70 percent of American taxpayers are; 70 percent of American taxpayers get no rate relief under this bill. But as you go up the income ladder, you get more and more generous relief. The big bucks, the big benefits go to those at the very top. The biggest, highest income folks get the biggest rate relief of all. It is not fair. We have heard discussion in this Chamber that it is a big improvement over what President Bush proposed. There is some improvement but not much. Under the Bush plan, the top 20 percent of taxpayers got 72 percent of the benefits. Under this plan, the top 20 percent get 70 percent of the benefits. The other thing that has been said about this bill is it is a stimulus to lift the economy. There is precious little stimulus in this bill. We passed in the Senate $85 billion of stimulus. What came back from conference and what is in this bill is $10 billion, $10 billion in nearly a $9 trillion economy. There is precious little stimulus in this bill. As I pointed out, this bill is flawed in even more ways. The number of taxpayers affected by the alternative minimum tax explodes under this bill. Boy, are those folks in for a big surprise. Today, 1.5 million people are caught up in the alternative minimum tax. Under this bill, at the end of the 10-year period nearly 40 million people will be affected by the alternative minimum tax. Those folks, nearly 1 in 4 American taxpayers, are not getting a tax cut. They are going to get a tax increase. They are going to have it as a result of the flaws of this bill. There has been a lot of talk that this bill is reducing the debt. It is reducing the publicly held debt. That is this red line on this chart. It will go from $3.4 trillion today down to about $800 billion. But another part of the debt is increasing. That is the debt that is owed to the trust funds of the United States. You can see that this debt is going to go from about $2 trillion to over $5.5 trillion. And the overall, the gross debt of the United States is actually increasing from $5.6 trillion today, to $6.7 trillion at the end of this 10-year period. So all the talk about paying down debt, one part of the debt is being paid down, but the overall debt is actually increasing. Here is the sad history of Federal debt. This is what has happened to it from 1950 to 1999. In 1981, the last time we followed the fiscal policy that is embraced by this bill, we saw the debt of the United States absolutely explode to $5.6 trillion, which is where it is today. At the end of this period, the gross debt of the United States is going to be $6.7 trillion. Here we are passing a massive tax cut. Shame on us. Shame on us for pushing this debt onto our kids. We are the ones who ran up this debt. This was during our time. This was on our watch. This is while we were in charge and we ran up this debt and it is going to continue. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired. Mr. CONRAD. I ask my colleagues to think carefully and oppose this bill.