Kent Conrad

First I rise to compliment my colleague, the Senator from Ohio, on his presentation. I think it was a very useful one. I personally enjoyed it and learned from it. I thank my colleague for the effort that went into that presentation on our…

I must say, I didn't recognize the policy that was being ascribed to me. Somehow, people have taken what I have proposed and twisted it and distorted it in a way that is almost unrecognizable. I want to assure Mr. Novak and anyone else who…

This is the first test of fiscal discipline in this Chamber. Do we adhere to the Budget Act or do we abandon fiscal discipline? That is the question on this vote. Are we going to spend money that is not offset and thereby violate the…

Some have said: But we are paying down the debt. Make no mistake, we are paying down the publicly held debt, but the gross debt is going up, because the debt to the trust funds is skyrocketing under this proposal. Let me just end. This is…

This amendment improves our debt reduction by ending the repeal of the estate tax. The estate tax is ended just before we begin the second decade, right at the time the baby boomers start to retire and the cost of this tax bill then…

If I may conclude, the only way to eliminate all of the 60 places the Tax Code imposes the marriage penalty is to give couples a choice. That is what I supported.

Yes. Actually, overnight they changed it. It was not going to take affect for 5 years. In other words, this chart says, marriage penalty relief for middle-income taxpayers was going to be delayed until 2006; it did not do anything for 5…

Under the bill that is before us, not until 2008. Under my proposal, there would not be any phase-in. We would do it all the first year.

No. The way it works, authorizations mean nothing without appropriations. And the money for appropriations is not available unless it is made available by the budget resolution. The hard reality here is all of this talk about money for…

There is no increase for education beyond simple inflation. I think the most honest direct answer that I can give is that there is no real increase for education, period. In addition to that, the pool of money from which education spending…

It was a disappointing way to do business. I think the result has suffered. I will follow up on the point the Senator made about slower productivity growth. We saw in the first quarter, instead of 1 percent increase, it was negative…

It is interesting, it is mostly speeches. All the speeches that were given, all the votes that were cast when we had the budget resolution on the floor, all the money added for education, all of it has been taken out. We are in the middle…

Unfortunately, the Senator is correct. In fact, the alternative minimum tax that affects now 2 million Americans, if the President's plan is passed, will affect 35 million American taxpayers, nearly 1 out of every 4. Just to fix the part…

Not only is there no adjustment for population growth, in truth, there is not a full adjustment for inflation. This was done in the dark of the night in one of these closed rooms when none of us was able to be there. They actually took out…

This is a budget with many missing pieces. Not only do we have missing pages, we have missing numbers. The defense buildup that the administration will ask for next week, after we finish with the budget, will ask for a massive defense…

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…

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…

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…

We are talking a real increase for education. It would require more than inflation, would it not, because the student populations are growing. It isn't enough to just offset inflation. The school population is growing. So the truth of the…

As I read the conference report, there is no increase in any year for education, other than the sense-of-the-Senate language buried deep in the document that every Senator knows isn't worth the paper it is written on because it means zero.

I believe this budget is a very poor product for the conference committee. One of the reasons I believe it is a poor product is because the fact is that Democrats were locked out completely from the process of writing this budget. There…

Might I request that given the importance of the budget, in terms of the sequence, there be at least one amendment preceding it so people are here to actually hear the debate?

I am pleased that the Senator from Iowa, who is a champion of education, shares my strongly-held view that Congress must continue work toward current statutory federal funding goals for the tribal colleges.

And is it the view of the Senator from Iowa that this funding has not reached the level authorized by the Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities Assistance Act?

We see this as a budget-neutral amendment because of the language of the amendment that provides that only if the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources reports a bill that provides full, permanent, mandatory funding for PILT, this…