a friend of mine named Matt Urban passed away over the weekend, leaving a legacy of superlative achievement in a military career that will enlighten generations to come about what it means to be a soldier, a patriot and a hero. I would…

I wish to thank the Senators from Delaware and Arizona for the modification. It now makes it apply only to those reports which are filed annually, semiannually, or at other regular intervals, regular periodic intervals. It will not include…

I want deficit reduction and I am willing to work for it. That is why I supported the President's deficit reduction package in the last Congress. But while I have stood up for real deficit reduction, what I am not prepared to do is to…

It will, in fact, plunge this constitutional amendment into the courts to interpret as to whether or not the Vice President can break a tie. It should not be left open. It should be resolved in this amendment as to whether or not the Vice…

But the issue that I raise, the Senator from Maryland has raised, and the Senator from Utah has raised relates to that question. It is, what is a supermajority and whether the Vice President's vote counts? And on that one, I think 100 of…

I do not think we ought to have an open question in a constitutional amendment, because this is a life and death matter.

the key test of any welfare reform is how quickly and how effectively people on welfare move into work. The main objective must be not to penalize children but help put to work their custodial parent and hold both of their parents…

let me answer my own question since my friend from Illinois has not; that is, there is no limit that I know of in statute on the publicly held debt. So when the Senator from Illinois points to that provision as being the self-executing…

I agree with that. We can interpret history, but we cannot change it. Part of the history of this body is that if we put the onus on future Congresses to do something instead of doing it ourselves, it is unlikely to get done. We pass…

The bottom line for me, Mr. President, is that this proposed constitutional amendment does not balance the budget. It dodges the issue because it depends on Congress passing implementation legislation by the year 2002. What if it were…

If my friend would again be willing to yield, obviously if we had adopted a constitutional amendment 6 years ago, or 60 years ago, which led to a balanced budget we would probably be in better shape than we are now depending on whether or…

I understand. But my question is not that, because this section 2 does not say that limit of the debt of the United States shall not be increased unless three-fifths vote. The sponsors have gone over the words very carefully. This is an…

No. But my question to the Senator from Illinois--by the way, it is not that clear. But assuming for the moment it is clear as to what is meant by ``publicly held debt,'' assuming for a minute it is clear--I do not think it is; I will…

I favor major reform. I think there has to be a major change. But I think this is an extreme change. What was true of special ed I think would have been true and would be true today in terms of clean air, in terms of clean water. I am not…

First of all, let me say, Senator Glenn was the chief sponsor of last year's bill. He is the cosponsor of this year's bill. He is not filibustering, nor am I, nor anyone else who offered amendments to improve this bill. The committee…

I will restate my question. I understood the Senator from Idaho to say that the Chair would not be precluded basically from upholding a point of order, or ruling that the threshold has been exceeded even if there is a statement from the…

I will simply say that last year we were told any amendment to last year's bill would be viewed as a bill killer. That is what we were told by the National Governors Association, the legislatures, and counties. Last year's bill had a…

last year we had a bill which came out of the Governmental Affairs Committee, S. 993. It was a good bill, a bill that I believe had something like 60 cosponsors or more, 67 cosponsors, including the Senator from Ohio, the Senator from…

I have expressed the concern that there is a feature in this bill that would require estimates for the life of a mandate which could go 20, 30, 40 years. It could be unlimited, and that becomes an impossible task. We are kidding ourselves…

earlier today, I asked the Senator from Idaho some questions about how this whole process would work on an amendment. He gave me the best answers he could, which were that, well, if the CBO was unable to make an estimate and if the Budget…

One of the problems with S. 1 is that this new point of order that was created originally delegated significant authority to the agency. That language was corrected by the Byrd amendment yesterday. But the Byrd amendment created in the…

amendment No. 173 corrects a problem in this bill. The bill does not provide that individual Members can seek an estimate from the CBO that is so critical to the survival of their amendments and bills. This is a different bill from last…

the trouble with this sense-of-the-Senate language is that it delegates the legislative responsibility to the Congressional Budget Office. This is what the Senator from Ohio was alerting us to in his last couple of minutes. The…

And is it the intention then, for instance, if somebody offers an amendment and it has an estimate in it but nobody knew that amendment was going to be offered, and then somebody wants to come and offer a second-degree amendment and then…

I have no time to yield to myself and comment on that other than to simply say that this is a new estimate, the likes of which has not been made before, involving costs indefinitely into the future on 87,000 local governments. That is very…