January 30, 1980
Page 1226
Mr. BELLMON. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. METZENBAUM. On the time of the Senator from Oklahoma, yes.
Mr. BELLMON. Mr. President, it is a very simple calculation. The workers with $12,000 incomes obviously pay taxes. They have certain costs of holding down jobs. When one of the workers becomes disabled and begins to receive these benefits, their combined take-home pay actually goes up by $100, under the terms of the committee bill.
Mr. METZENBAUM. Mr. President, the Senator has to submit a little more to me than that, because I do not accept those figures as being realistic. Each one makes $12,000. One goes off of the $12,000. How does that one now wind up bringing more money in?
Mr. BELLMON. If the Senator will allow me, if a man and wife with one child each earn $12,000, their net income, after taxes, will be about $16,600. That should not be too hard to understand. That is the way tax laws are written.
If one becomes disabled and the other continues to work, under current law their net income will rise to about $16,700, because one of them will be taking home disability insurance payments which are tax free.
It is for this reason that we feel the present law is a disincentive for this person to return to work.
The person who goes off disability insurance and goes back to work will actually have less real income than they were getting when one of the two partners was disabled and not working.
Mr. METZENBAUM. Mr. President, I would like to point out to the Senator from Oklahoma that, under the present law, if each is making $12,000, then that would be $1,000 a month and the individual would only receive 77 percent of what their average monthly earnings had been.
I do not understand how — and the income tax rate would not make up that difference.Therefore, I have difficulty, still, in following the point.
But I will continue on with my discussion, because I want to make it clear to the Senator from Oklahoma, who mentioned something about getting more money—
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator yield to clarify a point? The Senator said under present law the benefit would be 77 percent.
Mr. METZENBAUM. Yes. I will yield on that point, because that is correct.
Mr. MUSKIE. I do not carry these tables around in my head, but I know the size of benefits depends upon the size of income — the lower the income, the higher percentage of benefits. It also depends upon the size of a family.
You have to take into account all of those variables in comparing one illustration with another.
I sat here and suddenly heard the Senator say that under the present law the example used by Senator BELLMON would be 77 percent. It may be, but I do not know the basis for that.
Mr. METZENBAUM. The maximum you can get under the present law with a full size family is 77 percent of your average monthly earnings if you are making $1,000 a month.
Mr. MUSKIE. What is a full size family, 14, 20, 5?
Mr. METZENBAUM. Four. I think the maximum family benefit would be 77 percent.
Mr. MUSKIE. And Senator BELLMON had two parents working in his example.
Mr. BELLMON. That is right.
Mr. METZENBAUM. Therefore, the disability benefit would be something less than 77 percent. I cannot say what it would be.
Mr. MUSKIE. I have a paper which shows that in 1976 the average newly entitled disability beneficiary family got 90 percent of the pre-disability earnings. That is before the Finance Committee bill, before the Bellmon amendment, before the amendment of the Senator from Ohio. I have not made the analysis that underlies this figure, but as I understand it, the figure is valid.
Mr. METZENBAUM. I have to say I know of no one for whom I have more respect than the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I say to the Senator, respect for me personally has nothing to do with this figure because I did not generate it and I cannot vouch for it.
Mr. METZENBAUM. I have before me a chart showing that at a $400 average monthly income, it would be 90 percent; at $477 it would be 88 percent; at $1,000 it would be 77 percent; at $1,500 it would be 63 percent; and continuing down.
Mr. MUSKIE. The difference is that the Senator is talking about income at $1,000 a month.
Mr. METZENBAUM. That is correct.
Mr. MUSKIE. This figure represents an average of all beneficiaries. Well, $1,000 is not too high in today's terms.
Mr. METZENBAUM. It is pretty low. I do not have the figure the Senator referred to. At this point, I have never heard the figure that the average beneficiary under disability insurance gets 90 percent. If I am wrong, I would like to be corrected. But at this moment I do not know that to be the fact and, therefore, I do not want to proceed on that assumption. I do not think it is the fact, but if I am wrong I will be prepared to recognize that fact.
Let me further point out to my friend from Oklahoma that at the very beginning of his remarks he talked about persons who are on SSI who get disability.
I just want to say that as I understand it, that is a totally different program than that with which we are dealing here on the floor of the Senate today.
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. METZENBAUM. Yes.
Mr. MUSKIE. I would like to give the source for the figure I gave earlier, which is on pages 38 and 39 of the committee report:
An analysis by the social security actuaries has indicated: The average replacement ratio of newly entitled disabled workers with median earnings and who have qualifying dependents increased from about 60 percent in 1967 to over 90 percent in 1976.
Mr. METZENBAUM. The Senator is reading from what?
Mr. MUSKIE. The bottom of page 38 and the top of page 39 of the committee report. It is not my figure; it is out of the committee report.
(Mr. MATSUNAGA assumed the chair.)
Mr. METZENBAUM. I am frank to say I recognize the language but I do not know what the language refers to as far as "newly entitled disabled workers with median earnings who have qualifying dependents."
I will accept the language of the report, however. The figures I have, which I am sure come from credible sources, indicate that depending upon what your earnings are, your ratio of benefits goes down to the point so indicated by the figures that I gave previously.
The Senator from Oklahoma talked about the fact that some persons might receive more under disability benefits for not working than for working. I want to point out to him — and I mentioned it in my earlier remarks — that that is in the law as it is at the present time, but the fact is that my amendment would provide a limitation on that and specifically prohibit receiving anything in excess, as disability benefits, over and above the average monthly earnings.
The Senator also commented on the fact that the disabled do not have to pay other expenses.
I would like to point out to him that the disabled do have their special kinds of problems. In the average family, if the family goes to work, if everyone leaves the home and both members of the family go to work, they turn down the heat and save some money. They do not have to have anybody staying with the disabled worker, if that worker has to stay at home alone. Those are expenses that must be recognized as a reality of life if they are totally disabled individuals.
Furthermore, I want to point out that there are expenses which have to do with that which are not covered by medicare or medicaid, and the totally disabled worker has that problem to contend with.
The Senator from Oklahoma says that this is not a welfare program, and I could not agree with him more. This is a program that the Congress enacted.
They made a contract with the people who paid into the fund. Would anyone realistically suggest that if we bought an insurance policy 5, 10, or 15 years ago, and that insurance policy provided for a certain amount of disability benefits at a certain point in our life if we should become disabled, that under those circumstances the insurance company could cut back the amount of those benefits?
That is what we are talking about doing here. The Finance Committee is talking about cutting them back substantially, $1.5 billion. The Senator from Oklahoma is talking about cutting them $3.5 billion. The Senator from Ohio is attempting to restore $900 million of the $1.5 billion of the cut of the Finance Committee.
There is not any logic, reason, fairness, or equity to say to people, "You have paid in for a number of years and now we are changing the amount of disability benefits for some reasons that have to do with the procedures that the Congress has decided upon."
Once we make a contract and say that we are going to pay a certain amount of dollars, we ought to live up to that contract.
I think in simple terms that is what this issue is all about. It is not a question of whether you believe in welfare or are opposed to welfare. We can all say we would like to get everybody off of welfare. But this is a contractual relationship. This is a relationship where the people have paid their money in and they have a right to expect to be paid when they become totally disabled. That is the issue as I see it which is before the Senate.
I think the Finance Committee bill is bad, very bad. I think the amendment proposed by the Senator from Oklahoma would just exacerbate the problem.
Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, will the Senator from Oklahoma yield me some time?
Mr. BELLMON. Mr. President, I yield as much time as he needs to the Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, for the purpose of making clear in the RECORD the purpose of the Finance Committee bill and the Bellmon amendment, I ask unanimous consent that there be printed at this point in the RECORD the lower third of page 38 of the committee report, all of page 39, all of page 40, and the top of page 41 of the committee report.
Mr. METZENBAUM. Not wishing to object, Mr. President, I shall object only for one purpose. I now note that at the top of page 38, it is indicated that the average replacement rate percentage is 58 percent; using the high 5-year indexed earnings in the last 10, it is 49 percent. I have no objection if the entire page 38 is printed.
Mr. MUSKIE. I have no objection to the entire page being printed.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
Both approaches to measuring replacement — i.e., either long or recent periods of a worker's earnings history — show that there are a substantial number of DI awards which by themselves result in replacement rates in excess of pre-disability earnings. Using 80 percent of gross pre-disability earnings as an approximation of pre-disability disposable earnings, about 23 percent of the awards in the sample were above that level using AIME as the base period for measurement, and approximately 10 percent of the awards in the sample were above that level using the high 5 years of indexed earnings during the 10-year period prior to the onset of disability as the base period for measurement. Approximately two-thirds of these cases involved the payment of dependents benefits in addition to those of the worker.
Actuarial studies in both the public and private sector have indicated that high replacement rates may constitute an incentive for impaired workers to attempt to join the benefit rolls, and a disincentive for disabled beneficiaries to attempt rehabilitation or return to the work force. An analysis by the social security actuaries has indicated:
"The average replacement ratio of newly entitled disabled workers with median earnings and who have qualifying dependents increased from about 60 percent in 1967 to over 90 percent in 1976, an increase of about 50 percent. During this time the gross recovery rate decreased to only one-half of what it was in 1967. High benefits are a formidable incentive to maintain beneficiary status especially when the value of medicare and other benefits are considered. We believe that the incentive to return to permanent self-supporting work provided by the trial work period provision has been largely negated by the prospect of losing the high benefits."
("Experience of Disabled Workers Benefits Under OASDI, 1972-1976," actuarial study No. 75, June 1978.)
An actuarial consultant's report to the Committee on Ways and Means also concludes:
disability income dollars are, in general, much more valuable and have much more purchasing power than earned dollars. The DI benefits are fully tax exempt, as are Insured benefits except for employer-provided benefits in excess of $100 per week. For a worker with a spouse and a child, paying an average State income tax, 50 percent of salary in the from of disability benefits may well equal 65 percent or more of gross earnings after tax. In addition, the disabled individual is relieved of many expenses incidental to employment such as travel, lunches, special clothing, union or professional dues, and the like."
It is a cause for deep concern that gross ratios of 0.600 or more apply to all young childless workers at median or lower salaries and to nearly all workers with a spouse and minor child for earnings up to the earnings base. In other words, all workers entitled to maximum family benefits are over-insured except older workers whose earnings approach the earnings base, middle-aged workers who earn not more than the earnings base, and young workers except those earning substantially more than the earnings base.
Although these excessive replacement ratios have not been in effect long enough to have been fully reflected in the disability experience, overly liberal benefits may have played some part in the 47 percent increase, between 1968 and 1974, in the average rate of becoming disabled. Other than the indexing provisions, statutory changes during this period could have had no great effect.
There is no evidence that the health of the nation has deteriorated. Rising unemployment has clearly been a factor, but the increasing attractiveness of the benefits must also be an important influence.
(U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on Social Security of the Committee on Ways and Means, Report of Consultants on Actuarial and Definitional Aspects of Social Security Disability Insurance, 94th Congress, 2d Session, 1976.)
Testimony heard by the Finance Committee from a private actuary on behalf of a number of insurance companies includes similar observations. This actuary states the following about private disability insurance experience:
" . . . claim costs increase dramatically when replacement ratios exceed 70 percent of gross earnings, and are unsatisfactory when replacement ratios exceed 60 percent of gross earnings . . . Expected claims is the level of claim costs that is assumed in determining premiums, so a ratio of 100 percent would be what a company would expect to achieve when it sets rates . . . large exposures show claims at 87 percent of expected when the replacement ratio was 50 percent, 93 percent of expected when the replacement ratio was 50 percent to 60 percent, 106 percent when the replacement ratio was between 60 percent and 70 percent, and a jump in the ratio of actual to expected claims of 219 percent — more than double what the premium allowed — when the replacement ratio exceeded 70 percent of gross earnings."
(U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Finance, testimony of Gerald S. Parker on H.R. 3236, Social Security Disability Legislation, October 10, 1979.)
Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office further indicates that it is not correct to assume that a typical disabled worker family is dependent entirely or almost entirely on social security benefits. Disabled workers in families with children derive on average only about 40 percent of their total cash income from social security benefits. The analysis indicates that very few worker families have more than a 10 percent reduction in disposable income as a result of disability.
In summary, this analysis shows that the combined impact of high social security disability insurance replacement rates and substantial other sources of family income is to insulate disabled worker families, as a group, from any major reduction in income as a result of their disability.
Committee bill.— The committee is concerned about the impact these high benefit levels and replacement rates have had on the growth of the program, in that they may have caused both incentives for impaired workers to stop working and apply for benefits, and disincentives for DI beneficiaries to leave the benefit rolls. The Committee further is concerned about the inappropriateness of having situations where benefits exceed pre-disability earnings in a program intended primarily to replace lost earnings.
The Committee bill would address these concerns through a provision which limits total DI family benefits to an amount equal to the smaller of 85 percent of the worker's AIME or 160 percent of the worker's PIA. Under the provision no family benefit would be reduced below 100 percent of the worker's primary benefit. The limitation would be effective only with respect to individuals becoming entitled to benefits on or after January 1, 1980, based on disabilities that began after calendar year 1978. The limitation would not apply to individuals who join the benefit roll after the effective date of the provision who were on the rolls (or had a period of disability) at another time prior to calendar year 1980. This will preclude the new limit on family benefits from applying to anyone who was on the roll in the past. Approximately 120,000 family units, encompassing 355,000 beneficiaries, will be affected by the limitation in the first full year after enactment.
The Secretary would be required to report to the Congress by January 1, 1985 on the effect of the limitation on benefits and of other provisions of the bill.
The committee further is concerned about situations where the payment of disability benefits to an individual from a number of public disability pension or like systems results in aggregate benefits which exceed the individual's pre-disability earnings. While coordination exists between the DI program and State worker's compensation programs for the purpose of keeping the two forms of disability benefits at an aggregate level no higher than the worker's net pre-disability earnings, there are numerous other Federal and State programs providing disability benefits or compensation which are not coordinated at all with the DI program. The General Accounting Office has already undertaken a study of the relationship between social security and workers' compensation under the existing provision. The Committee requests the General Accounting Office to also study the prevalence of multiple receipt of disability benefits from DI and other programs (in addition to worker's compensation) , as well as various approaches to better coordinate the overall benefits provided to an individual for the purpose of precluding them from exceeding the worker's pre-disability earnings. This report and the recommendations of the General Accounting Office will be the subject of hearings which the committee intends shall be held next year by its subcommittee on social security.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I find myself at a disadvantage by not being familiar, in a statistical way, with the very complicated problem of analyzing the benefit structure and the benefit distribution, but a point very clearly stated over and over again in those pages of the report is found in these words:
Actuarial studies in both the public and private sector have indicated that high replacement rates may constitute an incentive for impaired workers to attempt to join the benefit rolls, and a disincentive for disabled beneficiaries to attempt rehabilitation or return to the work force.
If that is the effect of the present benefit levels of the program, then, clearly, we have a program that increases costs to the disadvantage of the taxpayers and also reduces resources available for other worthwhile purposes. So we have to look at the effectiveness and efficiency of many of these programs.
Mr. President, I support Senator BELLMON's amendment to Senator METZENBAUM's amendment.
A major purpose of the Finance Committee bill is to limit social security disability benefits to assure that a family will not have higher income than before the worker became disabled. The effect of the amendment offered by Senator METZENBAUM is to defeat this purpose of
the bill and to virtually wipe out the savings that the bill achieves.
The Senate has already adopted the amendment proposed by Senator BAYH to eliminate the waiting period for the terminally ill. If the Metzenbaum amendment is also adopted, the bill will be changed from one saving $0.9 billion over the first 5 years to a measure costing $0.6 billion over the 5-year period.
The Bellmon amendment would accomplish an important objective — reducing the incentives for people to file for disability benefits and to stay on the benefit rolls. The present high level of benefits acts as a work disincentive — one-fifth of disability beneficiary families get benefits that exceed 80 percent of the worker's pre-disability earnings. Also, disability benefits are tax free, as the Senator from Oklahoma has emphasized, and disabled beneficiaries get medicare protection after 2 years, creating a further disincentive to work.
It is interesting to know what average medicare benefits amount to. In 1979, actual average medicare benefits for the disabled were $1,346 per year; in 1980, an estimated $1,538; in 1981, an estimated $1,749.
I have no figures estimating the value of the tax-free nature of these benefits but obviously, this ought to be taken into consideration. Obviously, on the record, there is now some work disincentive. There is no disagreement here. Even Senator METZENBAUM, in his setting his
benefits at no higher than 100 percent of pre-disability earnings, acknowledges that anything above that figure operates as a disincentive. So what operates as a disincentive? Or what is the appropriate level of disability benefits — when added to the tax-free advantages, when added to the medicare advantages and other benefits, whatever they may be? We have to take all of this into account in making a judgment as to whether or not we have created work disincentives that add to the cost of the disability program.
The level of disability benefits has been rising in recent years. In 1967, on the average, as I have said already, newly entitled disability beneficiaries with families got benefits equal to 60 percent of their pre-disability earnings. That percentage grew to 90 percent by 1976.
Mr. President, the President has been criticized for not balancing his fiscal year 1980 budget. He was criticized this morning in the Budget Committee hearings and has been criticized in the press and by others. But responsibility for budget balancing, Mr. President, is not the President's alone. We must demonstrate by our actions today that we intend to move toward bringing this budget into balance.
We have had two votes now and are about to have a third inside of a week which show the same trend — demonstrating the attractiveness of converting social programs from spending programs under control of the Congress to entitlement programs that are beyond our control unless we change the law.
That is the reason why every chart — in the newspapers analyzing the budget, in the budget documents, and in the magazines next week displaying charts showing where budget growth has taken place — will show the growth has taken place in the entitlement field.
The President's representatives this morning were specifically criticized for not offering proposals to reduce uncontrollables by controlling entitlements. The administration said, "Well, quite frankly, we see no disposition on the part of Congress to control entitlements." We in Congress and the Budget Committee saw it last year. We adopted a reconciliation instruction in this Chamber, which was directed in part at achieving savings in entitlement programs. It is dead — dead in both Houses, getting nowhere.
A number of Senators who have been voting for these entitlement programs in the last 2 weeks have been coming before the Budget Committee in support of budget-balancing amendments to demonstrate their commitment to balanced budgets. Mr. President, how are we going to balance budgets when these entitlement programs are described as contracts with the people, as sacrosanct and, once enacted, not to be tampered with? Mr. President, there is no way of doing it.
According to the President's Budget, uncontrollable programs will increase, in 2 years, from a total cost of $366.1 billion in fiscal year 1979 — 74.2 percent of the budget — to $471.6 billion in fiscal year 1981— 76.6 percent of the budget.
If that trend continues, they will amount to over 80 percent of the budget in this decade, and early in this decade. Then I am asked by Senators to sit there, presiding over these balanced budget amendments, and to take seriously their assertions that those amendments would help us control these programs. Nothing could be more ridiculous in the face of the record that this Congress has set in the last 2 years.
If that is the will of the Congress, if that is the will of the Senate, I accept it. But I think it is time that the American people, through their press, through our actions, at least see where the problem is.
We all get letters and respond to them in a reassuring way — "Balance the budget." "Oh, yes, we will." Then we all find a way to blame something; a lot of us have been blaming uncontrollables.
I can see the letters going out now. I heard the chairman of the Appropriations Committee say that we cannot touch entitlements. They are contracts, matters of law. So we blame entitlements, but refuse to do anything about them.
Mr. President, it is for that reason, more than this particular amendment — although I think the merits of this amendment are very clear — that I am making this statement. The Senate must confront that issue: Once we have written entitlements in the law, are they forever sacrosanct, beyond any claim to budget perfections, ever, immune from budget balancing? Are they priorities ever set in concrete, never to yield to programs better suited to meet the problems of those who are its beneficiaries?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from Oklahoma has expired. The Senator from Ohio has 16 minutes left.
Mr. METZENBAUM. Mr. President, I am frank to say to the Senate that when my good friend, the Senator from Maine, referred to a paragraph on page 39, saying: "The average replacement ratio of newly entitled disabled workers with median earnings and who have qualifying dependents increased from about 60 percent in 1967 to over 90 percent in 1976, an increase of about 50 percent," the Senator from Ohio was totally amazed by those figures and at this moment cannot fully understand them, because when we look at page 38 of that same report and get the breakdown of what the actual benefits are that are being paid, we find totally different figures. They are not close, just totally different figures.
The chart is called "Disability Insurance Replacement Rates Computed From Two Different Measures of DR Disability Earnings," and they use two different charts.
The first one uses the average indexed monthly earnings, and they talk about the replacement rates, and they talk about the number of cases and the percentage of the total.
Now, the replacement rates, meaning what percentage of the gross earnings is received by the disabled, we find 39 percent, or below the 49 percent level.
In other words, 39 percent of all the people receiving disability insurance are receiving less than 49 percent of their total earnings, of their average monthly earnings.
If we go over and take the highest 5 years of their indexed earnings in the last 10, we find that 57 percent of the total are receiving less than 49 percent of their disability insurance.
If we move that figure on up and go from 50 percent to 59 percent of their disability insurance, we add another 15 percent of the total.If we go from 60 to 69 percent, we add another 10 percent. If we go from 70 to 79 percent, we find another 13 percent.
We have a total of 92 percent receiving less than 89 percent, but the great majority of those are at the lower portion.
If we look at the figures, using the highest 5 years of the indexed earnings in the last 10, we will find 57 percent, as I previously mentioned, are receiving less than 49 percent of their indexed earnings averaged out on a basis of the highest 5 years of the last 10.
Then if we go to the 59 percent of disability insurance figures, we add another 12 percent, another 14 percent if we go to 69 percent, another 8 percent if we go to 79 percent, or 91 percent of the total receipts, something less than 79 percent of their average earnings based on the top 5 years of the last 10.
When we look at the average, the average replacement rate for the average indexed monthly earnings is 58 percent, and if we use the highest 5 year basis, it is 49 percent.
Mr. President, I think it is easy to be misleading on an issue of this kind. I am frank to say that when I saw the 90 percent figure on the average, I did not know what it meant, and I still do not know what it means.
I do know what the specific breakdown means. I do know what the figures are that have heretofore been submitted. That is that people on disability are receiving but a shadow of what they were receiving if they worked.
There is no incentive to be disabled. Anyone who comes to the Senate and suggests there is a great incentive to lie on one's back and to be unable to do anything and not go back to work is not reporting the facts to the Senate in accordance with the reality of what is taking place.
We made a commitment, a commitment to the people who were paying into the disability insurance fund, that the levels would be at a certain point, and almost with no exception the Congresses in the past have seen fit to increase those levels, not to decrease them.
This is the first impact. This is the first invasion of the disability insurance funds.
I believe we have a right to be proud of the fact that there is that much money still in the disability funds that the President is talking about borrowing from them. But I do not think we ought to be finding any argument to cutting an additional $2 billion from those disability benefits in addition to the $1.5 billion the Senate Finance Committee is wanting to take away from them.
I hope the Senate sees fit to reject the Bellmon amendment. I hope the Senate sees fit to keep the cap at the present level, not to increase it, but to keep it at the present level, with the proviso that in no instance shall any particular individual receive in excess of 100 percent of the average of monthly earnings, and that would only be applicable in the extremely low levels of people earning less than $300 to $400 a month.
Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. TALMADGE. Mr. President, I yield such time as I may need on the bill. Mr. President, this is a very complex and a very controversial issue. It is difficult to understand without understanding every formula and every table involved.
The House sent to the Finance Committee a bill on this issue that would save over a 5-year period approximately $2.664 billion.
The Senate Finance Committee, after mature deliberation, devised a bill that was a give-and-take compromise, and over a 5-year period the Senate Finance Committee would save approximately $914 million.
The amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from Ohio would negate virtually, if not all, the savings of the Senate Finance Committee, reducing it to virtually zero.
The Bellmon amendment, if agreed to, would save over a 5-year period approximately $3.644 billion.
We think the result of the Senate Finance Committee is a fair compromise. I hope the Senate will reject the amendment of the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, reject the amendment proposed by the distinguished Senator from Ohio, and approve the bill as submitted by the Senate Finance Committee.
Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time having been yielded back, the question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma to the amendment of the Senator from Ohio. The yeas and nays have been ordered and the clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced — yeas 24, nays 70, as follows
[Roll call vote tally omitted]