Kent Conrad

The budget resolution does not determine any specific tax policy. All of us know that. This does not eliminate the marriage penalty or anything else. It simply adds $69 billion to the tax cut, which raids the Medicare trust funds in each…

This is a nongermane amendment. As a result, this is subject to a 60-vote point of order. This amendment has some parts that are good, but, unfortunately, it also contains a fatal flaw. It would establish a 60-vote point of order against…

It should sober us up to understand that if we don't show some restraint and self-discipline, we face 50 hours of straight voting. That is the harsh reality of what confronts us tonight--50 straight hours of voting every 10 minutes. That…

I remind the Senator form Iowa it was entirely appropriate to use reconciliation in 1993 because that was a deficit reduction piece of legislation. That is the difference. This is not deficit reduction.

Not as a substitute, as a first degree. I am suggesting this for this reason: We are going to want to get a vote on the amendment of the Senator from Louisiana. We can go through all kinds of parliamentary maneuvers to do that and…

I publicly acknowledge the leadership he has provided in an area that is critically important. I have seen in the lives of some of my constituents how important the NIH can be and what an incredible contribution it has made to improving…

So to compare 1993 to this year does not really stack up, does not hold up under much scrutiny because, as the Senator from West Virginia has made so clear, we had full reestimates then of the cost of the President's tax-and-spending…

I will go on, if I can, when we look at the level of detail that has been provided by President Bush versus President Clinton, there is a very stark and glaring set of differences. For example, the Clinton document had tables that provided…

Isn't it true that while President Clinton had not submitted a full budget, he had submitted sufficient detail so the cost of his budget proposals could be estimated by the Committee on the Budget, the CBO, the Joint Committee on Taxation…

And is it not true as well that President Bush has not submitted sufficient detail for the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation to do the reestimates that were done on the previous President's budget, so we do not…

The question of the amount of money is guided by what our competitors are doing. The Europeans, who are our major competitors, are outspending us by a very wide margin. The amount of money in the Johnson amendment is intended to approach…

Dear Chairman Domenici and Senator Conrad: We request that at least $10 billion in emergency economic assistance for agriculture for the 2001 crop year be included in the fiscal year 2002 budget resolution. We also ask that the budget…

That is the description they gave. But the problem is, their budget doesn't work. When you break it down year by year, it doesn't add up. And that is the problem they have. Maybe they were hoping nobody would notice or hoping nobody would…

They are--as can be clearly seen with the combined effect of the amendment they adopted yesterday on prescription drugs and the amendment they seek to adopt today --raiding the Medicare trust fund in the years 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008…

It goes to the fundamental problem of the Bush budget and the fundamental problem of the Republican budget which is trying to match the Bush budget. Of course, we don't even have the Bush budget before us. But with the kind of rudimentary…

I would love for him to go to my home State and tell the farmers that farm prices are rising. They are not rising. They have the lowest farm prices in real terms in 75 years.

I hope it is not too late to have a bipartisan approach to this budget. We are rapidly running out of time. Very soon we will be casting the final votes that will set this budget in place. Nobody should doubt what that will mean for the…

It has come down to this: We both agree roughly on the amount of money necessary to fund a meaningful prescription drug benefit. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are $300 billion; we are at $311 billion. There is not much…

It could be clearer if you did not raid the Medicare trust fund for a new benefit, a new promise, when you need the Medicare trust fund money to keep the previous promises. That is how clear it is.

What happens, if you take a prescription drug benefit out of the Medicare trust fund, to the solvency of the Medicare trust fund?

That is in red because we believe it would be profoundly wrong to use any of the Social Security trust fund money or any of the Medicare trust fund money for other purposes. That has been done in the past. We have just stopped doing it in…

It goes from $5.6 trillion today--that is where this chart leaves off. And under their proposal the public debt goes up every year until it reaches $6.7 trillion.

I am saying what this document says. This is not my calculation. This is their calculation. This is their document. This is their amendment.

I think people in North Dakota have a great deal of common sense. They know that we have piled up an extraordinary Federal debt. As we visit here today, we have a $5.6 trillion gross Federal debt. Under the President's plan, that will…

I tried to make clear in my presentation, and I know the Senator wasn't here, there are two different sets of numbers. One is the President's number from the Office of Management and Budget. He says there is $500 billion in the Medicare…