August 4, 1976
Page 25605
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I wonder if I could have 2 minutes?
Mr. CURTIS. I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Oregon.
Mr. PACKWOOD. I shall not take 5 minutes, Mr. President.
I rise in support of the amendment. We considered this in committee. I think it is a follow-on to the chairman's proposals on the employee stock option plans.
If we want to bring stability to this country, if we want to give people a piece of the action, I think this is a particularly appropriate program.
I think this country would be better off if everyone who wanted to own a single family home with a piece of ground around it could own one, if everybody in this country could have three or four or five or $6,000 worth of stock in half a dozen companies and have some pride of ownership and some personal satisfaction in receiving the dividend.
I think there is nothing that would do more to encourage the support of our free enterprise capitalist system, and I would defend it very stoutly. Instead of 25 or 26 million stockholders in this country we should have 65 million, 75 million or 85 million stockholders in this country, all with a stake in American business, and all of them receiving some dividends, some payment, some feeling of attachment to that corporation.
I very strongly support the amendment, and I yield back the remainder of my time to the Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. CURTIS. Mr. President, we reserve the remainder of our time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. LONG. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Maine unless he wants more time.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I listened, of course, to the description of the amendment, and I have read the 1½ page description. I am impressed by the objective. I am impressed by the objective of the committee provision which we acted upon during the last recorded vote.
May I say to my colleagues, it is time we began to look at the price of this bill. I know that is a very unpleasant responsibility, but it is what I have as chairman of the Budget Committee, and I think it is one that we all share. But I think it is particularly appropriate for me, as chairman of the Budget Committee, to make this point at this time: If this amendment is adopted, we will have totally lost everything by way of revenue gainers toward the $2 billion goal that we set for ourselves in the budget resolution that we needed to achieve in order to meet our budget targets this year by way of tax expenditure reform. We have spent it all.
The committee gave us $1 billion of that $2 billion. The House gave us a little more than that. We are down close to zero before we act on this amendment. We are down to $150 million. That is our count. If the Joint Committee has a better count, I would appreciate getting it.
This amendment is estimated by the Joint Committee at $300 million the first year, over $600 million in the fifth year down.
I know the Senator from Nebraska tells us that is not very much money. I find that rhetoric from him rather unusual, but that $300 million in the first year puts us below the zero mark. Then I guess we will begin counting in the other direction.
Frankly, gentlemen, one of the purposes of the Budget Act, you know, was to focus our attention on priorities.
Now we are told this amendment is to take care of the little fellow. Well, I listened to the debate on the last provision we debated. I was told by proponents that that was for the little fellow. I mean, have we done so little for the little fellow up to now in these weeks of debate on the tax bill that at last we have decided we have got to do something for him after having taken care of all the big fellows? I mean, when are we going to begin to exercise a sense of priorities?We have spent $2 billion that the budget resolution said we had to gain on this bill in order to hold the deficit down.
I have listened to this debate, I have listened to these provisions, I have listened to the arguments, persuasive arguments, for all the benefits we are going to hand out, and I just cannot resist telling you at this point what is a fact. We are about to spend the last dime of that $2 billion that we said we were going to save in tax reform.
Now, it is not that I have got anything particularly against this amendment, but I am going to vote "no," and I voted to table the previous one, and I am going to move to table some other ones.
Mr. RIBICOFF. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. Yes, I do yield.
Mr. RIBICOFF. Not only will this lose$300 million the first year, but the revenue loss for the next 5 years will be $2.588 million.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator is exactly correct, and I appreciate his reminding me of that figure; $2,588 million. The provision we voted on in the last recorded vote over that 5-year period is $3,200 million cumulatively so that between the two of them that is a 5-year bill of approximately $6 billion.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CURTIS. I yield myself 1 minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. CURTIS. Mr. President, we never have a tax reform bill that gains revenue. Any expression of hope that this one was going to reveals a lack of information. The object of tax reform is to do justice, and often times that costs some money.
Now, suppose you got your $2 billion by perpetuating some injustices, how much would that affect the deficit? How much would it affect the deficit running at $50 billion, $60 billion, and more? It would not meet the problem at all. The only way we are going to ever deal with this deficit is to have less government.
Forty cents of every dollar spent go for benefits to individuals; another 15 cents out of every dollar go to States and localities. That is 55 cents. Our national defense costs 26 cents; interest on the national debt is 8 cents, and there you have 89 cents. All the rest of the cost of government is only 11 cents.
We are just making noises around the edges when we pretend that we can deal with the budget problems of this country by a little change here and there in the tax laws:
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. CURTIS. Yes, I am happy to yield.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am just struck by the fact that the Senator from Nebraska who, for the last couple of minutes, has been using rhetoric that I have heard him condemn when it comes from this side of the aisle over and over again that so many programs, you know, that so many provisions of law, you know, thebleeding hearts, as we are described, are justified in the name of justice.
Justice is a very elastic phrase. But I never expected to hear the Senator from Nebraska using that sort of philosophy in defense of a spending proposal.
Mr. CURTIS. This is not a spending proposal. This is permitting individuals who earn their own money to save some of it.
I reserve the remainder of my time.