[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 12 (Wednesday, February 9, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 9, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         PRIVILEGE OF THE FLOOR

  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a member of 
my staff, Nancy Lescavage, be granted the privilege of the floor during 
the debate on this measure.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California [Mrs. Boxer] is 
recognized.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I want to offer, first of all, my thanks 
to Senator Feinstein, my teammate here in the Senate. On this 
earthquake issue, we have worked together, seriously, night and day, 
and I am very gratified that we see perhaps a milestone here today that 
we will get the help that is needed to our people, and not only to our 
people in California, but to others in the country who rely on this 
supplemental.
  I also thank Senator Byrd, the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee. He moved with deliberate speed--and that has meant a great 
deal to Senator Feinstein and me--when we phoned him in the middle of 
what has been a very shattering experience for so many of our people.
  I want to say the same to Senator Mikulski, who placed a call to us 
in the very early hours as we were just finding out how badly we were 
damaged.
  I also want to thank Senator Reid, if he would give me that 
opportunity, because Senator Reid sat in on the first hearing in a 
series of two that were held on the damage to California. This one was 
in the Environment and Public Works Committee on which I have the 
privilege to serve with him. He stayed through most of that hearing, 
expressing his concern, and he himself actually felt this earthquake 
all the way in Nevada and described that to us at the time.
  I know that Senator Reid has proffered an amendment here today. 
Senator Feinstein has addressed it, and I know he does not offer that 
amendment in any way to inhibit our moving this bill. I have spoken 
with him about it on the telephone. I then called James Lee Witt, 
talked to him about Senator Reid's problem. I then phoned Senator 
Feinstein and we talked about it. Senator Reid, I believe, is working 
as hard as he can to reach some kind of an accommodation. I hope we can 
do that, because I do not want to see anything happen in the course of 
amending this bill that would slow it down in the conference committee. 
So I am very hopeful that we can work it out.
  Mr. President, with this emergency supplemental appropriation, we 
seek to bind the wounds of southern California, as well as the wounds 
that have still not healed in other parts of the Nation. These wounds 
have been caused by Mother Nature.
  Mr. President, the provision of emergency assistance in times of 
disaster is a compact between the Federal Government and its people 
wherever and whenever a disaster strikes. Only the Federal Government 
has the ability to move quickly to protect lives and property during a 
disaster and to help rebuild in its wake. That does not mean we do it 
all. We look to the States and, of course, we look to private insurers. 
But without our help, there can be no rebuilding, there can be no 
binding of wounds.
  Today we act, and it is our duty and responsibility to send relief to 
the people of southern California in the same way we acted with all due 
speed to aid South Carolina, Florida, Hawaii, and the riverside towns 
of the Midwest.
  That 6.8 Richter scale earthquake that erupted in the early morning 
of January 17 dislocated the entire region. The earthquake crashed 
through the Earth from a previously unmapped fault. And, Mr. President, 
it had a vertical thrust to it. When I talked before about it, I talked 
about the energy that was released from a 6.6 Richter scale earthquake, 
and that alone would equal the thrust of about 2 million NASA space 
shuttles going off at once. This is far more than that, Mr. President, 
with a 6.8 Richter scale reading.
  We believe this earthquake is among the costliest disasters in the 
United States. I have to say to my colleagues that I pray for you, 
wherever you live, be it in Nevada, be it in Nebraska, be it in New 
York, I pray that you never have to deal with such a disaster.
  I see the Senator from Hawaii here. He has been most supportive. He 
knows what it means when people are completely stunned, thrust out of 
their homes, with everything they lived for, everything they dreamed 
about in those homes, and sometimes they lost relatives and friends.
  James Lee Witt, the FEMA Director, told us that more people applied 
for assistance in the first 12 days after this earthquake than all of 
the victims of Hurricane Andrew and the Midwest floods did in 6 months. 
We are talking about a disaster of enormous proportions.
  When I was asked how did the Federal Government respond, I have said 
``magnificently,'' as did, frankly, the State and the local people. But 
everyone in the Federal Government underestimated the scope of this 
disaster. I do not blame them for it. If you are not familiar with the 
Los Angeles region, you do not understand the incredible density. There 
are about 17 million people in the metropolitan area. My goodness, that 
is larger than almost all of the other States in the Union, just in 
that area. The economic tremors resound across the continent when 
something happens in that size of an area.
  California has provided 14 percent of the economic output of this 
Nation. In a recent analysis by Dunn & Bradstreet, it showed that one-
third of California's manufacturing base lies within a 40-mile radius 
of the earthquake's epicenter. As the President said in Los Angeles 
when he was there 2 days after the earthquake, ``This is a national 
problem; this is a national responsibility.''
  California will pay its fair share, as it should.
  Mr. President, Federal aid will provide needed relief for the State's 
immediate needs. We will heal, and with our help here today, southern 
California will once again retake its economic place in the Nation, and 
the people will thrive.
  I have right here behind me, Mr. President, a map of the city of Los 
Angeles. You can see the red and yellow dots. Each one of those dots on 
this map, Mr. President, indicates a home that has been either red 
tagged or yellow tagged. Red tagged means you cannot go back in. Yellow 
tagged means you have a problem and you have to fix it before you go 
back in.
  So what we are talking about here is a loss of perhaps 20,000 units 
just in this area where people cannot go back into their homes and 
live.
  Now mind you, Mr. President, this is just Los Angeles. I am not 
showing you a similar map for Santa Monica or the other cities, Santa 
Clarita and many other cities. Many people think this was just the city 
of Los Angeles, this was a Los Angeles regional disaster.
  So every one of these tags, which show the wide spread of the damage 
here, represents, Mr. President, a household, a family dislocated, 
children dislocated, people at their wits' end. Today we have a chance 
to move that help to them and move it quickly. I believe that as we 
work with Senator Reid and we work with, hopefully, other Senators who 
may have problems, we will in fact speed this through.
  The funds we are voting on today will help to give temporary housing 
to these good citizens so they can begin to get their lives back to 
normal.
  The funds here today, Mr. President, will rebuild the freeways. We 
are talking about the busiest freeways in the country, if not the 
world. Interstate 10 carries about 250,000, 300,000 cars a day. That is 
what it carried before it was damaged. Interstate 5 is the link between 
the San Joaquin Valley, where all the produce comes from for this 
country. It goes through Interstate 5 into the ports of Los Angeles and 
Long Beach, and it gets shipped.
  The fact is, Mr. President, we have to move quickly. We have to 
rebuild these freeways. They are the economic lifeline of California 
and the personal lifeline of the people who live there and the regional 
lifeline for their economy and the national lifeline for this economy.
  Despite all the wonderful efforts that have been made by Secretary 
Pena, and they are heroic--by the way, we had heroes here: Secretary 
Pena, Secretary Cisneros, to name just two; James Lee Witt, to name a 
third; extraordinary people who rose to the occasion. But they are 
running out of money, and we have to move. That is why we need this 
bill to pass.
  So with these heroic efforts of Secretary Pena getting people on the 
metro link, which is rapid transit--and they are going on the metro 
link, they are finding alternate routes, they are doubling up and 
tripling up in cars--we still can only accommodate, really, 50 percent 
of the problems. We must rebuild these freeways quickly.
  And we know when we rebuild them, they will stand up. That is the 
good news of this quake. The only good news we could see is that where 
seismic retrofit was done, it worked, it held. Under a bill that this 
Senate passed--which I am very proud it passed--on Monday, all the 
overpasses in the country will now be eligible for seismic retrofit. So 
we are moving.
  We need to rebuild these freeways swiftly. In this bill, we will fix 
the Cypress Freeway, which collapsed during the Loma Prieta quake in 
San Francisco. Most of the people who were killed in that quake were 
killed because of that freeway. I will tell you we need to move on 
that, and that is included as well. It is finishing up that disaster 
that we had.
  Mr. President, on the first day of the quake, they said to the 
children, ``Don't come to school,'' and 800,000 kids were stranded. 
After 2 days, they said 250,000 kids cannot come to school. Why? 
Because there were 150 schools damaged, Mr. President, and that is what 
this money is going to do. We will pay a share; the State and locals 
will pay a share. It must happen.
  I had one little boy came up to me. He was devastated. You know how 
kids usually have the sparkle in their eye. This little child did not 
have a sparkle. ``When are you going to fix my school? When can I go 
back to school? I want to go to school.''
  We always think that kids are happy when they cannot go to school. 
They get to stay home and play. The kids want to go back to school. 
This bill is necessary so that we can fix up those school rooms now. 
Those kids are our future. They are counting on us. It is our 
obligation.
  We can fight over where we can cut the budget. As a matter of fact, I 
just came from the Budget Committee. We are fighting now. We are 
cutting this deficit. It is going to be $126 billion lower than we 
projected; $176 billion rather than $302 billion. And, yes, I can enter 
into a debate on where to cut more. I will tell you right now, I know 
where you can cut more. But I do not think this is the moment to get 
into that debate. This is the moment to pass this supplemental.
  I think the committee found some very uncontroversial rescissions 
that do not require a lot of debate. We should not begin a debate on 
where to cut more or where to raise taxes more because, in my humble 
opinion, that is not something you do in the middle of rebuilding a 
part of this country that needs to be rebuilt.
  Hospitals. Hospitals are damaged. Hospitals are closing. Wings of 
hospitals are closed off. The money here will provide the match needed 
to rebuild those hospitals.
  Let me conclude, Mr. President, on this note. I look forward to a 
budget debate on how we can cut more from this deficit, but I do not 
think this is the time and place to do it.
  I want to work with Senator Reid, but I hope and pray we can come to 
an agreement. This is a man who has more sympathy for what happened to 
us. He felt it, as he was sleeping, all the way in Nevada. He knows the 
power of this quake and the devastation. I think we can make it work.
  I am afraid if we do something different from the House, we will get 
to a contentious conference. And, my God, what am I going to say to 
those kids? What am I going to say to the people who need those 
hospitals, the people in Santa Monica that saw their hospital so 
severely damaged that it went from 500 beds to 100 beds? What am I 
going to say to those people? That we could not work out our 
disagreements, people of good will, good faith? That is who is here in 
the Senate. We can do it.
  We do not have the luxury of time. FEMA is essentially out of money.
  When Senator Feinstein and I had an opportunity to question James Lee 
Witt at Senator Mikulski's hearing, Senator Feinstein asked, ``Tell me 
in straight talk, are you running out of money?'' He said, ``Yes.'' She 
asked for a report. I joined in. We got that report. What do we know? 
We know that FEMA is running out of money. The fact of the matter is, 
they are not just running out for California; they are running out for 
the Midwest floods. And if, God forbid, we had another tragedy or 
disaster anywhere in this country from the State of Oregon to the State 
of Florida or anywhere in between, FEMA would not have the money.
  In 8 days, they tell us, in 8 days, they run out of cash. So, please, 
I really make a plea to my colleagues here in the Senate. You have come 
up to us. You have cared with us. You are compassionate about what has 
happened. You have been with us in spirit. Today we ask for your help. 
I believe with this supplemental we will deliver that help to people, 
many of whom have never asked for one thing from their Government. This 
is a time we should pull together.
  Thank you very, very much, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.


                    Amendment No. 1436, as Modified

  Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. I know my friend from Nebraska has been here for a long 
time. I want to get to him real quick.
  I send a modification to my amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has a right to modify the 
amendment. The amendment is so modified.
  The amendment, as modified, reads as follows:

       In title IV, section 403; insert at the end the following 
     paragraph:
       ``(3) Any federal entity or official who makes available 
     funds under this Act other than for the purposes set forth in 
     subsection (2) above shall take reasonable steps to determine 
     whether any individual seeking to obtains such funds is 
     lawfully within the United States.''

  Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The yeas and nays have been requested.
  Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I am going to offer two amendments to this 
dire emergency supplemental. On the one that requires us to pay for the 
supplemental, I will not require a rollcall vote on. It can be disposed 
of relatively quickly.
  The second is an attempt to amend the rescission portion of this 
bill. There are a number of us who have been working for quite some 
time to try to develop an amendment to the rescission in the bill. 
Rescission was incorporated into this dire emergency supplemental, and 
thus our target is the rescission, not the supplemental.
  I assure my friends from California that I have no desire to slow 
down this supplemental bill. I have no opposition at all to the 
supplemental. What the Senator from Nevada said, I think, is quite 
accurate. This dire emergency supplemental is an expression of the 
generosity of the American people. I have met few who are unwilling to 
spend this money, few who are unwilling to acknowledge that significant 
damage has been done, that the lives of the people of southern 
California have been altered irreparably, and that we have an 
obligation to move as quickly as possible.
  I would point out that the time constraint here is as much driven by 
our desire to leave on recess as it is by other considerations. What we 
will attempt to do is to make sure that we deal with this in a 
reasonable time. I have been here early, Mr. President, in part because 
I wanted to get it up as quickly as possible and mostly to make sure 
that there were no delays, to make sure that anybody who wanted to 
speak for or against this attempt to amend the rescission package had 
an opportunity to come to the floor and speak so we would have an 
opportunity to get this rollcall vote out of the way.
  As the distinguished Senator from Nevada has said and as I have just 
reiterated, this is an act of generosity by the American people, an act 
of generosity that requires us to say that we care about the damage and 
that we are willing to respond to the damages detailed in this 
legislation. Let me point out one thing that is required in addition to 
generosity. Generosity alone is not enough. The people of Mexico are 
generous, the people of Russia are generous. What is also required is 
for us to have a sufficient amount of wealth for it to matter.
  We will be taking from the national stock approximately $10 billion 
for this piece of legislation and I support that. I make it clear I 
think it is appropriate for us to do so. But there is a connection 
between our capacity to be generous and our ability to generate wealth 
and income in the first place.
  That gets to the heart of what we are attempting to do with a larger 
amendment, which is to reduce by $94 billion over a 5-year period the 
spending of the U.S. Federal Government. In a couple of weeks' time we 
are going to have a great debate here on the floor about amending our 
Constitution. A large number of people on the Appropriations Committee, 
and I suggest a majority of Senators--perhaps a sufficient number to 
amend our Constitution--will stand on this floor and say we should 
balance our budget by 1999 or the year 2001 or some other point out in 
time.
  In order to balance the budget we would have to take, over a 5-year 
period, $600 billion out of this budget. This is merely an attempt to 
take $94 billion. I say that because I am sure during the course of 
this debate we are going to hear some who will come and say this 
deficit reduction package, this second step as I see it, is going to be 
hurtful to the economy--that somehow we cannot do it. I point out to 
those who are prepared to make that kind of argument that if that is 
the argument, stand ready to defend your belief that our Constitution 
ought to be amended. That would require even more draconian action than 
this.
  The Federal Reserve last week raised the interest rates charged to 
American borrowers. It is not apt to have a great impact upon the 
economy at this point but it is a signal. The Federal Reserve is 
concerned about a return of inflation to our economy. There are two 
sides to this effort to keep our economy growing coming from 
Washington, DC. One of them is the monetary policy of Mr. Greenspan and 
the Federal Reserve. The other one is the fiscal policy that we put in 
place here. Our spending and our borrowing has an impact upon the 
economy. It has a direct impact upon the economy.
  If we were successful in agreeing to this amendment, if we were able 
to agree to it quickly--as it seems to me we ought to be able to, given 
the rhetoric we had around here last August and the desire to cut 
further and the enthusiasm for doing it, particularly the enthusiasm I 
am quite certain will be here in a couple of weeks' time when we are to 
debate an amendment to the Constitution. We will fill this room with 
words, glorious words in tribute to balancing our budget, talking about 
the urgent need, for tomorrow's generation, to take this action.
  We are talking about a very small step in this regard. Yet I am 
certain I am going to hear arguments that say, ``Now is not the right 
time. Let's do it later.''
  There has never been a better time. We have low interest rates, low 
inflation rates, a growing economy. Now is the time to take the next 
step. The only reason we resist it is it is unpopular. I note 
particularly the unpopularity of the deficit reduction action taken in 
1993 with President Clinton's courageous plan, as well as President 
Bush's in 1990. It is never popular to come home to the American 
people, to our constituents, to the people who have sent us here and 
say we are going to cut spending and raise your taxes. It is never 
popular to do that.
  It is far more popular to vote for a balanced budget amendment. That 
is what is popular, to stand here on the floor and say I am for 
balancing the budget. But when it comes to actually going from theory 
to the concrete--well, I have a reason why I cannot go along with it.
  The General Accounting Office has done an evaluation of deficit 
financing. I have previously had printed in the Record an analysis of 
why we should do this. Let me say, this does require a strong belief. 
You have to really believe the economy of the United States of America 
is going to be stronger if we do this. If you do not believe it you are 
not going to ``suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'' to 
do this. If you do not believe it, you are not going to vote to cut 
spending. Because many of these items we have on our list, the 57 
specific items that total $94 billion over the next 5 years, are not 
the sorts of things that win you popularity contests. You have to 
believe it is worthwhile doing.
  The General Accounting Office has done an analysis of what happens if 
we were to bring our budget--not close to balance, but in balance, 
slightly in surplus. So we could go home to our citizens and people and 
say, ``We are paying off debt. We are not accumulating debt. We are 
paying off debt.'' We do not have to pay off a lot. All we have to do 
is be slightly in surplus, according to the General Accounting Office. 
Their evaluation--I do not have one of the large economy-size versions 
of charts--but the General Accounting Office has indicated that within 
15 years of the balancing of the budget our economy would be 
significantly stronger, the per capita income in America would be 
significantly higher, that Americans would benefit.
  One could question it. I will be glad to engage in a debate about 
whether or not the GAO's analysis--the Federal Reserve's analysis, 
which is the foundation of this report, is valid. There may be some who 
come to the floor and say we think deficit financing is good and can 
present facts and figures and charts as to why we ought to do it.
  I am of the opinion and of the belief that our Federal budget should 
not just be in balance but slightly in surplus so we are paying off 
debt. I believe the economy of the United States of America would be 
stronger. I believe our political system would work better. I believe 
the American people would trust us more.
  One of the reasons the American people do not trust us today is 
because they hear us talking about deficit reduction and then giving 
all kinds of reasons why this is not the right time. ``Let's do it 
later. Let's wait until the economy has really kicked in. Another 
couple of quarters maybe will do the trick. Maybe we can wait until 
after 1994. Maybe 1995 is better.''
  Mr. President, now is the time, in my judgment, to take that second 
step.
  The budget the President has submitted I think bears some examining, 
as we consider this. The budget the President submitted calls for 
$1.597 billion worth of spending. Let me say I believe the President 
has his priorities right, first of all. He is talking about spending 
more money on children, spending more money on families, trying to put 
investment in people. It is key if we are going to have the capacity 
for wealth-generating that we need so we can be generous where we feel 
like, as we do today.
  I do not think anybody is going to vote against this dire emergency 
supplemental bill. That is not the issue: Are you for or against 
helping California? Are you for or against adding another $700 million 
to the Midwest, to a region that I come from, that will benefit? That 
is not the issue.
  The question is where are we getting the money? This budget calls for 
about $273 billion of spending on Medicare and Medicaid; $177 billion 
on Medicare, $96 billion on Medicaid.
  It calls on the retirement accounts for $400 billion to be spent: 
Social Security gets $335 billion, military and civil retirement is $65 
billion--$400 billion.
  Other entitlements, all the other entitlements that are typically 
targeted when people stand up and talk about mandatory programs--the 
farm program, AFDC, food stamps--all the rest of them are $171 billion.
  (Mrs. FEINSTEIN assumed the chair.)
  Mr. KERREY. For the record, those other accounts decreased from last 
year. Those who are looking for sort of an easy way out of the 
entitlement program need to be alerted to that fact. There is unlikely 
to be an easy solution to this problem. That totals $844 billion. Net 
interest, Madam President, is estimated to be $212 billion.
  It would be significantly higher were it not for low interest rates. 
We are getting a bonus today, as the President has talked about. The 
reason that interest rates and low inflation stay in place is that we 
had the courage last August to vote for deficit reduction. That is what 
is producing it, on top of the deficit reduction action that occurred 
in 1990 that I voted for as well.
  So we are going to spend $1.56 trillion on Medicare, Medicaid, Social 
Security, civil, military, retirement, other entitlements, and the 
interest accounts; $541 billion is left for discretionary spending, 
approximately half of that going into this Nation's defense.
  I am merely laying that out so we get an understanding that we are 
about, this year, to spend $1.6 trillion, $1.597 trillion with the 
press releases, $1.970 trillion with the proud statements about 
investments. But, understand, as I said in the beginning, that in order 
for us to be generous, in order for us to build schools, to build 
roads, to have a health care program, a safety net of any kind, this 
Nation has to generate wealth. That is the source of our capacity to 
spend anything in Washington, DC.
  I would like to read the accounts where we are going to get the 
money, just so colleagues understand there are patriotic Americans out 
there who are going to be shipping checks to Washington, DC on April 
15: $500 billion with individual taxes--three-fourths of the people in 
Nebraska do not even itemize, they patriotically send their check into 
the IRS because they believe it is their obligation--82 percent 
compliance in this country, and I point out, unfortunately, on the way 
down--$131 billion of corporate taxes being paid; $428 billion of 
social insurance taxes being paid.
  I made the point before, I will make it again. We are overtaxing 
people who get paid by the hour. For the first time in the 50-year 
history of our Social Security Program, we broke a pay-as-you-go system 
and began to generate a surplus. Fifteen percent payroll taxes are 
collected on the American people today. If you are self-employed, as 15 
percent of the work force is in the State of Nebraska, you paid 15 
percent of your wages. That accumulates as $428 billion estimated 
between October 1, 1993 and September 30, 1994.
  We will go beyond that. We have $55 billion in excise taxes, $13 
billion in estate taxes, $19 billion collected by Customs, and $20 
billion miscellaneous. That is a lot of money we are collecting from 
the American people. If they do not have income and wages, we do not 
collect anything. If there are no jobs, we do not collect anything. All 
of us understand that. The President most particularly understands 
that. He has made a point to say that we have to invest in the American 
people, invest in their capacity to increase their earning power. That 
is the key to our being able to have any kind of revenue.
  I pointed out before, and I will do it again, the most important 
fact, I think, of all in 1993 that has contributed to our capacity to 
be able to stand here and say that the economy is growing and 
everything looks good is that the productivity of the American worker 
increased 4.7 percent, reversing a 20-year decline and outstripping all 
of our OECD competitors--a significant fact.
  Yes, I believe the reconciliation bill that we passed on August 5 was 
extremely important. But were it not for the increase in productivity 
of the American workers, were it not for increased productivity of men 
and women who are out there on the shop floors today, we would not be 
enjoying a reduction in the deficit. We would not be enjoying growth in 
the economy. We would not be sitting here right now feeling a sense, I 
think, of false security and satisfaction that we no longer have to do 
anything more, the deficit is going down--$176 billion, Madam 
President.
  I ask you to get a round of applause from a town hall meeting saying, 
``Congratulations, the deficit is only $176 billion.'' I give President 
Clinton full credit for getting it down to that. If the allies had 
stopped at the Rhine River, had MacArthur stopped at the Philippines, 
World War II would have been much different.
  This is a war, and if you do not believe it, if you do not believe we 
ought to balance our budget, that is fine, say so, declare your 
opposition to balancing the budget and we can have a good debate.
  I believe that the standard of living of our children, I believe the 
economic security of this country, I believe, in fact, our capacity to 
govern ourselves is in jeopardy unless we take this action.
  (Mr. GRAHAM assumed the chair.)
  Mr. KERREY. The total amount of revenue, Mr. President, we are 
collecting from the American taxpayers, we are estimating to be 
collecting, is $1.249 trillion against $1.5 trillion in receipts. We 
have some offsetting accounts to get the deficit number down. The fact 
of the matter is, we are not going to collect enough money to pay the 
bills and, thus, what we have to do is sell Treasury bonds. We borrow 
from the already too small pool of savings, restricting the growth of 
the economy, restricting our capacity to invest, restricting our 
ability, Mr. President, to grow and generate the wealth and income that 
we need to be generous.
  It makes no sense for us to sit here in Washington, DC, and say that 
we are the source of power just because we are willing to come and 
spend money. It is not our money. The money comes from the American 
people. And I believe that our fiscal policies, long-term, are 
undercutting our ability to be generous, undercutting our capacity to 
build a social safety net, undercutting our ability to be competitive 
and, in fact, we drain the hard work that produced the 4.7 percent 
increase in productivity. How can we stand in front of workers and say, 
``We're providing you all that you need to be competitive,'' when we 
know, in fact, that we are eroding that capacity with the fiscal 
policies of the U.S. Government?
  The amendment that we have prepared calls, as I said, for 57 specific 
items totaling $94 billion over 5 years. Again I say with all due 
respect, compare $94 billion of what is going to have to happen if we 
enact a balanced budget amendment. I know there are going to be some 
who will come here and have great arguments about why they cannot 
support this, and 2 weeks from now they are going to talk about their 
support for amending the U.S. Constitution, saying essentially this, 
Mr. President: ``Look, we know this deficit financing is wrong, it's 
bad, we shouldn't do it and we would like to stop, but we can't. But in 
order to solve this problem, we will amend the Constitution to prevent 
us from doing what we know is wrong.''
  On that basis, we would have great constitutional debates about 
shoplifting or any other sort of behavior we think is wrong that we 
cannot stop. Why do we not amend the Constitution to make it illegal 
for any crime? This is a crime. We ought to stop it. We ought to simply 
say we have the courage to take the second step. I believe the third 
step is going to come with entitlements, to keep moving toward the goal 
of having our fiscal accounts in balance.
  There are 57 items that we have listed, some not terribly 
controversial, some extremely controversial. Perhaps I might begin with 
the most controversial.
  I believe that we have to set an example in Washington. We call for 
reductions in spending not just for the purpose of eliminating the 
deficit, moving closer to being in balance, but we also call for 
reinforcing what the President is trying to address by saying that we 
have to have priorities, by doing what Vice President Gore is talking 
about as well by saying we have to reduce Government overhead, we need 
to reduce the size of the bureaucracy and duplication and we need to 
increase accountability. We have to address the mandatory programs. We 
have to ask the American people essentially to take less. But if we are 
going to ask the American people to take less, in my judgment, we have 
to demonstrate our willingness to take less.
  This amendment does call for a reduction in Members' pay, as well as 
all other executive pay over the $100,000 level, of 5 percent, not what 
I would call a draconian cut, not what I would call an unreasonable 
reduction given what we are going to be asking the American people to 
accept from us.
  This has a proposal to address the COLA's for retired military and 
civil retirees over $30,000 a year. In good faith, I have to come to 
them and say I have given up something.
  We reduce the Executive Office of the President appropriations by 5 
percent. We limit departing Members' purchase of office equipment. We 
reduce the legislative branch appropriations by 7.5 percent. We reduce 
the franking account by 20. We freeze the 1994 COLA for Members and 
Members' future COLA's. We reduce travel accounts by 15 percent and, as 
I said, take a 5-percent pay cut as well.
  Mr. President, this does not add up to a lot. I am sure there will be 
plenty who will point out, ``For gosh sakes, that is only $1.8 billion 
over a 5-year period. On the order of things, $1.8 billion is not much.
  The proposal on salaries is only $297 million. But more important to 
me, this has us coming forward and saying, as I said, that we are 
prepared to set an example. We are prepared with our own pay, we are 
prepared with our own benefits, we are prepared to set an example for 
the American people that in order to get the deficit not just under 
control but eliminated so we are in the surplus and paying off our 
debt, to arrive at that point we all have to take a little less.
  Unless you are prepared to come to the floor and say that the way to 
do it is to take a little more from the American people in taxes--and I 
do not hear a lot of enthusiasm for that these days--unless you are 
prepared to say somebody is going to pay a little more, then all of us 
have to take a little less, Mr. President.
  I see the distinguished Senator from--
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. KERREY. Yes.


                           Amendment No. 1438

  Mr. REID. My amendment is pending. I know the Senator wants to offer 
his amendment. What I would do--the Senator has yielded to me--I send 
an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Nebraska yield for the 
purposes of the Senator from Nevada offering an amendment?
  Mr. KERREY. I do yield.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows.

       The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1438.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:
       In the amendment strike all after the first word and insert 
     the following: ``federal entity or official who makes 
     available funds under this Act, other than for the purposes 
     set forth in subsection (2) above, shall take reasonable 
     steps to determine whether any individual or company seeking 
     to obtain such funds is lawfully within the United States.''


                           Amendment No. 1439

   (Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate that disaster relief 
assistance provided by this bill should be funded through the enactment 
                of a temporary Federal tax on gasoline)

  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I have a second amendment that I would 
like to send to the desk. My first amendment I am not prepared to send 
to the desk yet, but I send my second amendment to the desk on behalf 
of myself and Senator Robb.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have no objection to my amendment being 
set aside for his offering the amendment.
  Mr. KERREY. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment of the Senator 
from Nevada be set aside for the purpose of considering these two 
amendments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  The amendment is set aside for purposes of considering the amendment 
offered by the Senator from Nebraska. The clerk will report the 
amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Kerrey], for himself and Mr. 
     Robb, proposes an amendment numbered 1439.

  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the appropriate place in the------, insert the 
     following:
       Sec.   . It is the sense of the Senate that disaster relief 
     assistance provided by this bill should be funded through the 
     enactment of a temporary Federal tax on gasoline.

  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, as I said, I would like to deal with this 
relatively quickly. I may have to wait until the managers of the bill 
come back. This is identical, almost an identical amendment to one I 
had last year to the disaster assistance which went to the Midwest. It 
merely requires us--I should not perhaps say ``merely''--it requires us 
in our moment of generosity to declare that we are going to pay for 
this appropriation. I do not believe that we should look for offsets. I 
am not an advocate of offsetting in order to pay for this disaster. 
What we have is I think a situation where we are responding generously, 
and we ought, in my judgment, to pay for it.
  This particular amendment is merely a sense of the Senate that, as I 
said, I offer on behalf of Senator Robb and myself. Last year, we 
actually had an amendment that I offered which directed the conferees 
to include a gas tax. This year, I am merely offering a sense of the 
Senate. I think last year I got eight votes. I do not intend to ask for 
a rollcall on this particular year.
  But I do, Mr. President, point out that I think this is a very needed 
and healthy check. I appreciate very much that the chairman and the 
ranking member, the distinguished Senator from Oregon, have asked for a 
special commission to look at disaster programs and make 
recommendations about how disaster programs ought to be addressed in 
the future.
  One of the things I would urge and hope is included is that if we 
have a disaster and we appropriate money, we ought to designate a 
source of those funds. In this particular case--as I said, I also did 
this last year--I am asking for a gasoline tax to be levied on a 
temporary basis to generate such funds as necessary to pay for the 
disaster. It is a very important check to make sure that our 
generosity, indeed, is in line with what the American people are 
willing to pay.
  We can come here, as I do, saying that the people of Nebraska want to 
help the people of California, that the people of Nebraska want to help 
the people who were damaged by the Midwest flood, that the people of 
Nebraska want to help the people of Hawaii who were damaged by the 
hurricane, or the people of South Carolina, or the people of Florida. I 
can say that we want to be generous, and we want to extend our 
generosity. But if I do not have a requirement to pay, if there is no 
requirement for me to actually collect the money, it is a hollow 
extension of generosity because all we are doing is borrowing the 
money.
  Worse than that, as I indicated, there is no check, there is no way 
for me to measure whether or not I am asking for something that the 
American people or the people of Nebraska would support. We all know 
that basically what we have done is we have taken the disaster in 
California now, we have looked back, and we have added some additional 
things. I have been invited to participate in a number of meetings 
dealing with the Midwest: Should we add additional money?
  One of the suggestions was that we use this opportunity with the 
disaster in California to add money so that we can pay for nurseries 
and orchards that were destroyed in the flood of 1993.
  Perhaps we should. Perhaps that is something we ought to do. But I am 
just saying that unless I have some kind of funding mechanism which 
requires me to collect the money--to pass the collective hat, Mr. 
President--I must say all I am really doing is trying to sort of 
satisfy some additional requirements for spending without being 
terribly responsible.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. KERREY. I will be glad to yield to the Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, if I may, I would like to most 
respectfully suggest that this amendment be temporarily set aside and 
the Senator bring up the second amendment. I make the suggestion 
because it includes a tax, and I believe as a matter of courtesy the 
chairman of the Finance Committee should be advised of this, because we 
have been advised by the leadership of the House that if this is 
presented as an amendment, not as a sense of the Senate, we will not go 
to conference because of the tax feature involved.
  That being the case, I think it would be most appropriate if we could 
advise the chairman of the Finance Committee of this development; and 
therefore I suggest, if we can, we set this aside and the second 
amendment may be considered.
  Mr. KERREY. I say to my friend from Hawaii out of respect for that 
particular consideration, this is merely a sense-of-the-Senate 
resolution.
  Mr. INOUYE. I realize that.
  Mr. KERREY. It does not instruct the committee to designate a tax for 
this effort. Is the Senator from Hawaii still of the opinion that--
  Mr. INOUYE. Because of the tax feature, whether it is a sense or not 
a sense of the Senate, I hope that we will be given the opportunity of 
advising the chairman of the committee. I think it is just a matter of 
courtesy.
  Mr. KERREY. Very well. I would be pleased to.
  I will say, Mr. President, we did notify the Finance Committee. They 
were concerned about language that would instruct the conferees, so we 
changed it to a sense of the Senate in part to accommodate that 
concern; but I must say in part out of recognition that it was very 
unlikely this amendment was going to be accepted.
  All I am trying to do in making this proposal is make a suggestion to 
this task force that in the process of considering the recommendation, 
one of the things we consider is, rather than getting in this debate, 
should we have an offset, which I think is not right--I do not think we 
should in the case of a disaster in California say that we are going to 
make somebody else suffer as a consequence of the suffering that is 
going on out there. I am merely trying to make the point, and I will be 
glad to set it aside for the purpose of informing and allowing the 
chairman of the Finance Committee to come to the floor.
  Mr. President, I should like to get back and discuss again precisely 
what it is this proposal does. I saw earlier the distinguished Senator 
from Colorado come to the floor, and there will be others who want to 
come and speak in favor.
  Again, it is not my desire nor my intent to slow down this dire 
emergency supplemental, a supplemental that I believe is needed and a 
supplemental that I intend to vote for, as I did last year with the 
disaster programs of the Midwest. But, Mr. President, because a 
rescission package was attached to the dire supplemental bill, I have 
an obligation as a consequence of believing that the rescission should 
go further, to attempt to amend that rescission which is now a part of 
this dire emergency bill.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. KERREY. I will be glad to yield.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Senator. I am trying to follow the Senator's 
reasoning. I completely respect the dedication of the Senator from 
Nebraska to reach a balanced budget at the earliest possible moment.
  I share that desire, and I have my own ways of how to get there. The 
Senator at the same time says he does not want to slow down the 
supplemental, for which I am indeed grateful. As I understand the 
Senator's proposal--and if you could clarify it for me--is it $94 
billion overall in rescissions? And how much in tax increases?
  Mr. KERREY. There are no tax increases. They are all rescissions.
  Mrs. BOXER. How much would that be?
  Mr. KERREY. Ninety-four billion dollars.
  Mrs. BOXER. In terms of the sense of the Senate on the gas tax, is 
that the part that you would be offering next?
  Mr. KERREY. No. There are two--that is correct--amendments. One is a 
sense-of-the-Senate resolution on the gasoline tax, and the other is an 
amendment to the rescission portion of it.
  Mrs. BOXER. I would like to say to the Senator that although I 
completely believe that he is genuine when he says he does not want to 
slow this down, I believe that if you were to change the rescission and 
if this were to pass, to go from $3 billion to $94 billion, and the 
unbelievable impact that would have on this economy, having listened to 
Treasury Secretary Bentsen, OMB Director Panetta--what they are trying 
to achieve is a very good balance between growth and stimulation of 
this economy, as well as, frankly, streamlining. They have worked hard 
to do that.
  I would say that passage of this amendment of $94 billion would in 
fact slow the supplemental down dramatically, absolutely, because the 
difference between the $2.5 billion in the House, and if we were to 
achieve this amendment and it were to pass, $94 billion in rescission, 
I would venture to say knowing the way things work around here, that 
would be an enormous difference and would take a great deal of time. I 
have never seen a conference that would be so disparate in rescissions.
  So I would just say to my friend and my colleague that I know he does 
not want to slow the supplemental down. But the impact of this passing 
would slow this supplemental down very, very much. I would hope that 
perhaps he could reconsider offering this at this time. We will have 
the budget debate. God knows, we will have many debates. We are just 
getting down to the Budget Committee, and it will flow to all the 
committees.
  I would respectfully make the comment that, with all due respect, I 
think passage of it would slow the supplemental down. It would hurt the 
people not only in California but in the Midwest, Hawaii, and other 
places where they are anxiously awaiting this help.
  Mr. KERREY. I say to my friend from California in response, Mr. 
President, that I would vastly prefer to have a rescission bill before 
me. Indeed, we indicated that it was not our intent to try to amend the 
supplemental. But the rescission bill was placed and the supplemental, 
and thus we are now in this particular position.
  I am prepared to agree to a time agreement at some point. I am not 
standing here and filibustering this bill. I want the bill to pass. But 
the driving force here is our desire to get out of here on Friday. What 
is causing the potential dilemma is that we have a recess. We want to 
go home. I am conscious of that. I know many of my colleagues who 
either want to vote for or against are not going to be able to vote 
because many of them are planning to leave early.
  So I say with great respect that I think that there will be many who 
will vote against this amendment because they will say it is going to 
slow down the supplemental. There will be many who will vote against 
this amendment for all kinds of other reasons.
  But the truth of it is, Mr. President, when it comes time to spend 
money, we can do things in record time. When it comes time to spend, I 
say with great respect--I made this exact point last year when it 
affected the Midwest. When the Midwestern flood was the issue, I have 
never seen anything like it. At a time when every single person in this 
body almost was coming to the floor saying we have to have more cuts, 
then that flood hit. There was bipartisan enthusiasm to spend money 
because we knew it was not going to be accounted for.
  We could load that thing up and spend money however way we wanted. We 
can ask for 100 percent funding. We could ask for things because we 
knew that we were not going to have to pay for it.
  So we had extraordinary speed, extraordinary bipartisan cooperation. 
There was no gridlock last year when it came time for the supplemental 
disaster program for the Midwest. We had no excuses then, no procedural 
reasons then, no sense of ``I have to get this sort of considered.'' We 
had to have it done right now.
  So as I said, I am not going to slow this down. I will agree to a 
time agreement. I will make certain that this supplemental is done, and 
in an expeditious fashion. There will be plenty of other reasons that 
people who will oppose this package.
  I would vastly prefer to have a straight up-or-down vote on the 
rescission bill, and would love to hear the arguments against it then, 
Mr. President. Because there will be plenty of arguments against it on 
that basis. There will be lots of reasons why those who are for a 
constitutional amendment to balance the budget who are not going to be 
able to vote for $94 billion over 5 years. There are lots of ways to 
change it.
  There are lots of ways to amend it, and lots of ways to add to it, 
and alter it. Indeed, that is precisely what we have done in the dire 
emergency supplemental. We marked it up in the Appropriations 
Committee. The distinguished Senator from Oregon has already indicated 
if anybody wants to amend title II they have to have an offset if they 
want to spend more money. When it comes to trying to spend less money, 
we have all kinds of procedural reasons why it cannot be done, why it 
should not be done.
  So I say I have great respect for the distinguished Senator from 
California. I am 100 percent behind this supplemental. I will do 
nothing to slow this up, including allowing a time agreement so this 
amendment can be considered so that Members have the opportunity to 
vote on it.
  Mr. INOUYE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a question--
--
  Mr. KERREY. I would be glad to yield.
  Mr. INOUYE. The Senator mentioned $94 billion. I have gone to the 
clerk and requested to have a copy of your amendment. The amendment is 
not here yet. Am I correct?
  Mr. KERREY. That is correct.
  Mr. INOUYE. I have before me a 3-page or 4-page listing of 57 
proposals. Was this prepared by the Senator's office?
  Mr. KERREY. It was prepared not just by my office but by a number of 
Senators who participated in the bipartisan effort.
  Mr. INOUYE. I bring this up because I just got hold of this about 15 
minutes ago. This constitutes the amendment?
  Mr. KERREY. No. It does not. Legislative counsel is preparing the 
amendment. As a consequence of weather and other considerations, they 
have not completed the drafting of the amendment.
  Mr. INOUYE. I thought the preparers of the amendment of the Senator 
were aware of what is involved here. There are 57 proposals. They range 
anywhere from reducing Public Law 48, titles 1 and 23 by 20 percent; 
reduce RDA to the Senate level; means test unemployment compensation; 
allow industry to cogenerate power at DOE labs. It just goes on and on. 
If we are to seriously consider these amendments in this process, we 
would be lucky if we are concluded in a week's time.
  There are some matters in here that I am certain would evoke much 
controversy. For example, I am certainly Alaskans would like to know 
what this business about selling the Alaska Power Administration is all 
about, what eliminating funds for the high-temperature gas reactor is 
all about. We have TVA involved; eliminate reports on Davis-Bacon 
projects; phase in 10 percent reduction in arts and humanities; 
terminate the honey program. We have no honey program in Hawaii but I 
suppose this is important for some.
  Is the Senator from Nebraska seriously hoping that the Senate will 
consider these amendments today?
  Mr. KERREY. I say to my friend from Hawaii, Mr. President, that is 
precisely what I hope. I would have preferred, as I indicated, that we 
would be offering this amendment to a clean rescission bill only that 
the President introduced last fall and was voted on the House side. I 
say with great respect that on the details of this amendment, the 
printed copy, the Senator from Hawaii is quite correct because we have 
been making some alterations in this and was just debatable this 
morning.
  We have had this amendment out to the American people since last 
fall. Indeed, I say, Mr. President, that I have had phone calls, 
letters, lots of opposition to this amendment. I am quite clear that 
there is opposition. There is opposition from some people in Nebraska, 
who do not want to terminate the hunting program. There is opposition 
from people in Nebraska who do not want reductions here in this farm 
program. There is opposition from people who say, ``Can you not make a 
reduction someplace else?'' ``Is it not possible for you to find a 
reduction in some other area?''
  Well, Mr. President, again I point out what is going on here. We can 
demonstrate how easy it is to put together a Republican and Democrat 
coalition and get things done in record time if there is an urgency, or 
a dire supplemental appropriation. But it is difficult to come up with 
a list. We tried, I say to my friend from Hawaii, to be as specific as 
possible so we would not be standing here with an across-the-board cut 
or some other sort of thing like that. We tried to be as specific as 
possible. We put out a request to any Senator that wanted to 
participate in the development of this amendment. There are 
disagreements within the group itself. Occasionally, we have one person 
fall off as a result of something being included, or we have a person 
fall off as a result of something not being included.
  The whole process of cutting spending is a difficult process because 
you must--if, in the end, you believe we ought to arrive at a point 
where we are paying off debt, you must inescapably say ``no'' to a 
friend. You must inescapably say that you are going to reduce--or in 
some cases eliminate--programs that you can make a good case for in 
isolation.
  Mr. INOUYE. I understand what the Senator is trying to achieve. But, 
first, we have no amendment before us. We are not able to submit this 
to CBO and ask for their opinion. We have no idea whether the numbers 
presented in this four pages are correct or incorrect, and this is an 
almost impossible task for the Senate, if I may most respectfully say 
that.
  Mr. KERREY. We have run into a problem, and counsel is saying that 
within 15 or 20 minutes we are going to have an amendment here. We 
expected to have it by 10 o'clock when we started business. Actually, 
in previous conversations with the leadership, I was under the 
understanding that the rescission bill was going to be offered later 
and not attached to the dire emergency supplemental. We have been under 
some time constraint, in part, as a consequence of the unexpected 
acceleration of the consideration of this bill.
  We will have an amendment for Members to consider. I say again that 
this amendment has been under deliberation since last fall. And the 
proof of that is, I say to any American who happens to be listening to 
this thing at 12:20 in the afternoon, I have been receiving letters, 
and I received phone calls from people all over the country saying, 
``Do not cut NEA.'' I have received angry phone calls from people who 
do not like the adjustments we are making in the COLA for military and 
civil retirees. I have heard protests from people who do not like 
specific parts of this list.
  This has not been a proposal that has any stealth qualities about it. 
We have been working on it in a very open, deliberative fashion since 
last summer, and the details of it are well known by the people who 
oppose it. The administration came out in opposition to it last year. 
They began to organize that opposition, to generate enthusiasm amongst 
a variety of groups, describing how this is going to bring the Republic 
to an end.
  I say, Mr. President, the opposition is itself an illustration of the 
fact that we have had an open process and have declared that we believe 
we have to cut spending if we are going to get the budget in balance 
and be able to keep our economy growing. It is a very difficult 
proposition to say no in this fashion. I say, with great respect to the 
chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the ranking member, and the 
distinguished senior Senator from Hawaii, who know far more about this 
process than I, I appreciate that they have been through the battles on 
this thing before. But those of us who feel strongly that this ought to 
be done get very frustrated when we are told: Well, the process does 
not allow it.
  Mr. INOUYE. My only concern, Mr. President, is that we have nothing 
to deal with. We have not seen the amendment. I am certain the 
amendment is not at the clerk's desk. When will that amendment be here 
so we can debate it?
  Mr. KERREY. Counsel has assured me that it will be here within 15 or 
20 minutes now. They told me 15 or 20 minutes ago that it would be 
within a half an hour.
  I emphasize that our initial understanding was that the rescission 
bill would come up later. We have had to accelerate the detailed 
writing of the amendment, and I alert those who wonder about this kind 
of a process that when you are not on the Budget Committee you are not 
in a position to be able to command the staff to do this sort of thing. 
It is very often more difficult to get that job done.
  I say to my friend, he has raised another point having to do with 
CBO. We have very explicitly not lowered the caps because there was 
disagreement about whether we ought to do that. As a consequence of not 
lowering the caps, we are in the position of not, under any 
circumstances, being able to get a score from CBO on this. Regardless 
of what is on the amendment, as a result of not lowering those caps, we 
are not in a position to have a score from CBO.
  Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator from Nebraska yield for a question?
  Mr. KERREY. Yes.
  Mr. GREGG. I wish to commend the Senator for his initiative, and I 
can understand the concern of the Senator from Hawaii about being 
familiar with the specifics. I acknowledge the fact that this has been 
publicly presented. I believe it was last September that there was a 
formal presentation of this package. It has been discussed at 
considerable length in the press and, of course, a lot of this package 
is drawn from a proposal of Congressman Kasich and Congressman Penny on 
the House side, and much of it is drawn also from proposals of Vice 
President Gore and from the proposals of the President himself in the 
area especially of the 252,000 reduction in the area of personnel.
  So the elements of this package were put together by a fairly large 
group of Senators from both sides of the aisle, and it was publicly 
discussed with considerable exposure throughout the fall. It has come 
forward today because the manner of procedure around here requires that 
it be brought forth today, because this is really the only vehicle, as 
I understand it--and that is the element of my question to the Senator 
from Nebraska--we are going to have available to us for a long time if 
we want to address this type of spending restraint. Is that not 
correct?
  Mr. KERREY. That is correct.
  Mr. GREGG. So the appropriate manner in which this body functions 
requires us to bring it forth today. I certainly congratulate the 
Senator from Nebraska for his energy and initiative in putting this 
package together and bringing together a large number of Senators who 
support it.
  It is a logical step in the process which we have been trying to 
undertake here as a Government and as a Congress in our efforts to 
reduce the cost of the Federal Government and to get under control the 
spending of the Federal Government.
  Last year, Congress passed the President's package. That included $5 
billion of spending restraints in the first year of a 5-year period. 
That $5 billion is going to be completely eliminated by today's 
supplemental emergency appropriation, which is going to require us to 
spend upwards of $10 billion to help out the folks in California, 
primarily. And that is an understandable and necessary expense. But the 
fact is that if you undertake the California expenditure--and I think 
we should, obviously, in order to benefit the people who suffered from 
the earthquake--you are essentially creating a situation where there is 
no spending restraint this year within the President's budget, because 
the $5 billion would have been wiped out. In the outyears, there was 
also not a great deal of spending restraint in the budget. This is an 
attempt to address the spending side of the ledger of the Federal 
Government through a bipartisan package of spending cuts.
  And, yes, all of these spending cuts will be unpopular to the 
constituencies that are impacted. There is no question about that. That 
is always the case. But if we are going to be true to the directive 
which I believe the American people sent us here with, which is to 
bring under control the Federal budget hemorrhaging which has occurred 
over the last few years, we have to address not only the revenue side 
of the ledger but also the spending side. And this is a legitimate 
attempt to do that.
  If you go down through the list of issues which are raised here, I 
think the Senator from Nebraska deserves a significant amount of 
commendation for having pulled together ideals for which there is 
strong bipartisan support. He has not chosen to target, through this 
proposal, one specific area which might be egregious to a certain 
region or to a certain group of Senators of a political philosophy.
  You look at this proposal and everybody gets their toes stepped on, 
and in some cases their ox is gored. This is a bipartisan effort, and 
it is one which impacts a large spectra of functions of Federal 
activity. It is, therefore, in my opinion, a legitimate and honest and 
fair attempt to bring under control the Federal deficit.
  So I just want to commend again the Senator from Nebraska for 
bringing this item forward. I hope he will offer it as an amendment to 
the supplemental, because that appears to be the only vehicle 
available. As such, it is the only game in town. And if that is the way 
the process works and if we are going to be participants in that 
process, this amendment has to go forward at this time. It is a 
legitimate and substantive attempt to reduce the deficit, over a 5-year 
period, by approximately $95 billion. That is a lot of money. But it is 
something that has to be undertaken if we are going to be sure that the 
trends which are presently occurring in the deficit area continue and 
that we will continue to see a drop in the outyears in the Federal 
deficit.
  It is also a critical effort if we are going to address what should 
be all of our concerns, which is that we not continually pass on to the 
next generation more and more costs which are spent on funding this 
generation.
  There was a very interesting item in the President's budget which was 
submitted just a couple of days ago, which talked about the fact that 
the generation which is now coming up will be paying up to 50 percent 
of their earnings over their lifetime to the Federal Government for 
purposes of supporting the activities of the Government. That is a lot 
of money. But the next generation after that, their children, are going 
to end up paying upwards to 85 percent of their wages and earnings to 
the Government to support the Government.
  We cannot allow that to happen. We cannot allow ourselves to continue 
to pass laws in our generation which benefit our generation but end up 
being paid for by the next generation.
  What this amendment attempts to accomplish is to start to address 
that problem by putting in place a very substantive and very 
thoughtful, some bipartisanly supported, spending reductions which are 
appropriate at this time, because the procedure requires that it go 
forward at this time.
  I again congratulate the Senator from Nebraska for bringing it 
forward.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from New 
Hampshire, Senator Gregg. He has been involved from the beginning. If 
Senator Gregg had prepared this amendment, it would probably be twice 
as big as this one.
  I do not recall a single situation, where one of the members in this 
group said, ``I would like to do this,'' and the Senator from New 
Hampshire said, ``No, if you put that on there, I will not vote for 
it,'' clearly understanding that we have to vote for things that we may 
not like under normal circumstances. We have to vote to reduce and in 
some cases eliminate some things that we would prefer to have funded.
  I appreciate very much the Senator's steadfast support of the effort 
to say we have to reduce spending because we believe it will be good 
for the economy. We believe it will give Alan Greenspan and the Federal 
Reserve some room to move. We believe it will sustain a low-inflation, 
low-interest-rate economic recovery if we do.
  But now is not the time to rest on our laurels. Now is not the time 
to sit down and say, ``Well, we went through all that mess last August, 
and we got the deficit down to $176 billion, and, gosh, we know we took 
a lot of heat for doing that, a lot of criticism for doing that, so let 
us just hope the economy continues to grow.''
  Mr. President, I do indeed see this connected to downward trends in 
inflation that probably began with deficit reduction action in 1990. We 
made some adjustments in some areas in 1993. We have taken additional 
steps. This merely says that we have to keep going. Now is not the time 
to stop. There is never a good time to do this. But economically there 
has never been a better time. The economy is growing, interest rates 
are down, inflation is down. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board 
has given us an indication of what he intends to do if he sees the 
economy overheating. We can help the Chairman of the Federal Reserve 
Board by accepting this amendment.
  Mr. President, I would also like to take a little bit of time to 
point out one of the more difficult and contentious problems that we 
have in all of this, and that has to do with the mandated programs. 
There is no question that there are large numbers of other things. I 
heard the distinguished Senator from California talk about other 
appropriated items that could be reduced. There is no question that 
there are still some areas out there that I would vote to reduce if we 
thought we could put together a majority.
  But, Mr. President, I will read again the numbers of the President's 
budget--$177 billion in Medicare and $96 billion in Medicaid; $273 
billion just on those two health care programs. That does not include 
the VA, does not include the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. 
It does not include the National Institutes of Health. Probably $330 or 
so billion of total Federal health care spending.
  By the way, bringing some reality into some of the argument that I 
have heard on this floor, people say they are against a big-Government 
takeover of health care. Mr. President, the Government started taking 
over health care long ago. And $330 billion is a significant 
contribution, over 30 percent of the bills being paid right now, with 
taxpayer money. Regrettably, we do not fund all of that. We deficit 
finance about 20 percent of it.
  We basically say, yes, we want the doctors to take care of us when we 
get sick and, yes, we want hospitalization and, for gosh sakes, we do 
not want to have to turn anybody away if they have a need, but we just 
do not want to pay the bill.
  What we are going to do instead is borrow about $60 billion of that, 
sell Treasury bonds for about $60 billion and say to our kids, ``Even 
though our interest rate is not a big deal, only about $60 billion of 
additional interest, you can pay. We need these hospital bills paid. 
But we do not want to pay the bills. We would rather it not come out of 
our earnings, for gosh sakes. We want it to come out of your 
earnings,'' which is what interest represents, Mr. President.
  In addition to that, we have $335 billion of Social Security, $65 
billion in military and civil retirements, $273 billion of health care 
spending--$400 billion of retirement spending--and then another $117 
billion, totaling 844 mandated programs.
  We are going to debate these things this year. We did not debate them 
last year. All the rancorous debate we had about the budget last year, 
there was not a single word--we had one opportunity to vote to control 
the growth of entitlements, but other than that, they just go on.
  It is a $32 billion increase, by the President's estimate--CBO 
actually estimates more than that--an increase from President Bush's 
first budget to President Clinton's second budget, a $32 billion 
increase in spending that is going to occur with almost no debate at 
all.
  If you add that interest in, out of a $1.6 trillion budget, $1.56 
trillion goes for essentially checks that we are writing out to 
individuals and institutions. with almost no debate at all, almost no 
concern at all. We are really only arguing whether we come to cutting 
the budget with $541 billion for discretionary spending. We make an 
attempt to get into it here with military and civil retirement.

  I must say, I cannot stand here and say with a straight face that the 
method we are using is altogether fair. But what we said was we are not 
going to be able to do anything with Social Security. We cannot do 
anything really significant with Medicare. So we will just make some 
kind of a gesture to indicate to all people in this country that we 
have to keep our economy growing if we want to maintain the safety net. 
It just is a mistake, whether the issue is health care or the issue is 
retirement, for us to say to the American people: All I have to do is 
give you a card to make you eligible and that secures your income. It 
does not.
  I support President Clinton's effort to get the American people a 
health security card that declares we are all eligible for the same 
system. I do not think it is going to happen, but I support that 
effort. I think we ought to have simplified eligibility. But it is 
wrong for us to say in the process of handing somebody a card that that 
card guarantees him or her high-quality health care. It does not. 
Nobody here in Congress can do that.
  We can pass a law and say you are eligible. We can guarantee 
eligibility by the law. But the law does not guarantee high-quality 
health care. Only our ability individually and collectively to generate 
wealth and income determines whether or not we have high-quality health 
care, as well as the willingness of people to train themselves and 
educate themselves to acquire the skills to do the job.
  This safety net we began to erect in 1935 with the enactment of the 
Economic Security Act, that we began to fund in 1940, and we added 
disability income, we added health care income--that safety net all of 
us want to provide because we know the marketplace can be cruel. We 
know we cannot just let the marketplace run to take care of people. All 
of us are proud about what Medicare has done, about what Social 
Security has done. Nobody wants to reverse that. Nobody wants to leave 
individuals out there in the lurch.
  Our ability to build that safety net rests upon our capacity to 
generate increased income in goods and services. Even though I believe 
that this deficit reduction action will enable our economy to grow 
faster and strengthen that safety net, it also alarms me that I am 
mostly going after discretionary accounts that are already under 
assault. All of us know, who have any military bases at all close to 
us--and we have a wonderful one at STRATCOM, in Omaha, NE--that these 
reductions in defense do not just mean we are getting dangerously close 
to lowering our guard too much. It also means we have to lay somebody 
off.
  We have seen the stress, the turmoil that occurs when that happens. 
These reductions in expenditures are opposed because somebody is going 
to lose his or her job over it in defense, or National Endowment for 
the Arts, or for legal services, or any other account.
  Somebody is out there getting a paycheck. I am conscious of that. I 
am conscious even when we build a $600 toilet seat, which is a 
disgrace, even when we waste money in discretionary accounts, at least 
somebody has a job in the process.
  I must say, and I am sure other colleagues feel the same way, when we 
get away from Washington, DC, and these hallowed Halls and listening to 
ourselves talk about all sorts of grand things, and go home and talk to 
the American people, we find out, oddly, at the end of the cold war 
when we ought to feel this enormous exhilaration now we no longer live 
in fear that tomorrow we may blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons--
that was the fear in 1988 when I was campaigning for this job; that is 
no longer there--you would think the American people would feel some 
sense of exhilaration, some release from this fear. But instead, what I 
am hearing people saying is: Something is going on here we do not like. 
There is a deeper fear. It has to do with making an observation we have 
rapidly increasing crime being perpetrated by 14-, 15-, 16-, 17-year-
old children who, instead of looking out there and seeing opportunity, 
have become predators.
  It comes, instead, from people saying moms and dads do not have the 
time to take care of their kids. They are not providing the support for 
their children. We are not investing, as the President has said over 
and over and over, enough in our children and families.
  We voted yesterday to approve the School-to-Work Program, a $100 
million program. I voted for that program; $100 million we are going to 
be able to appropriate. It will hardly get the thing going, hardly get 
the thing started. When we cut these domestic discretionary accounts, 
as we do, sometimes it is waste. Sometimes it is unnecessary. And we 
tried--I say with great respect to anybody who has been touched by 
these cuts--we have tried to express priorities. We tried to be 
careful. And we tried to set an example by saying we have to give up 
something, too.
  But I must say, I am alarmed by what I think is going to happen this 
year. I think, as a consequence of President Clinton's leadership, we 
are going to be spending more on children and families. We are going to 
try to begin to invest in people who have, in my judgment suffered a 
disinvestment in the 1980's. But we are still going to fall way short. 
And we are going to fall way short, in my judgment, not just because we 
have not been willing to go after those appropriated items that need to 
be cut--and there are still plenty that could be on anybody's list.
  I heard the distinguished Senator from California say she sees this 
amendment as being well intentioned but slowing down the supplemental. 
I assure my colleague, now for the fourth or fifth time, I will accept 
a time agreement, so it does not interfere with the progress of the 
supplemental. And she has some others I would put on. I am sure there 
are others to go on here. The Senator from Massachusetts, Senator 
Kerry, organized a group of people last fall and they had an amendment 
to the rescission bill we are now dealing with that and other items. 
The distinguished Senator from Wisconsin has been a leader in going 
after items that are wasteful, that are fraudulent, that ought not to 
be a part of our budget.
  I just have to tell my colleagues, when we look at the hard numbers 
here of what is going on in the mandated programs versus the 
discretionary programs, in my judgment we are beginning to get down to 
our seed corn. We are beginning to get to a point where it is going to 
be awfully difficult for us to say with a straight face we are 
providing the infrastructure and investment that is necessary.
  The State of Nebraska in this budget will receive about $22 million a 
year over the next 5 years to invest in our interstate highway system. 
It ought to be $50 million a year over the next 5 years, but we do not 
have the money in the discretionary accounts any longer. We do not have 
that money. It makes me ashamed that that is the case.
  The source of that shame is this fact. My dearly departed mother and 
father built the interstate highway system with cash, because they 
wanted my future to be better than theirs. They cared more about me 
than they did about themselves. They did not come to Washington, DC, 
and say take care of me, me, me. I received letters from citizens that 
say, ``Yes, do anything you want, but do not touch my benefits and do 
not touch my taxes. Go after somebody else besides me.''
  That was not the attitude that my parents had. They built that 
interstate highway system with cash. They were concerned about the 
future. They were grateful to be alive. They were grateful to have 
survived, won the Second World War. They came home with gratitude. They 
had gone through the Depression and knew what it was like to be 
without, and wanted to make sure their children were not without. And 
they did so by putting their money where their mouths were.
  Mr. President, we are not. Instead, we have a budget that, in my 
judgment, satisfies an increasing attitude that says, ``It is me, me, 
me. Take care of me right now. Do not take care of tomorrow. Do not 
take care of 20 years from now.''
  You hold a graph up today that shows the GAO analysis saying our 
standard of living will be higher in the year 2015 and people say, ``My 
gosh, 2015, I will never live that long. Why should I be concerned 
about 2015?''
  I hope Members realize we are not trying to do anything to this dire 
emergency supplemental to slow it down. I just believe very strongly we 
need to take a second step. I say with respect to colleagues who will 
look at this list and say, ``My gosh, it has things on it I do not 
like;'' there are things on it I do not like. There are things on here 
I wish were not, and there are things that are not on here that I wish 
were on here. This group has been working for almost 5 months now, 
trying to put together a respectable, straightforward amendment that 
addresses, I think, the problem that has economic consequences, that 
has political consequences--not reelection, obviously--but political 
consequences. The American people are losing their confidence that we 
will do what they want us to do.
  I think it has great moral consequences as well. It is difficult to 
look at these numbers, it is difficult to look at the accumulation of 
debt every single year and say we are doing the right thing. We are 
not. We are satisfying the short-term interests and short-term fear we 
have that if we go to the American people and say it is time for us to 
pay the bills, that they are going to get angry.
  Sure they are going to get angry. Fear of making somebody angry, it 
seems to me, is not the sort of fear we ought to act upon. This 
particular amendment, in my judgment, will enable us to continue a low-
interest rate, low-inflation economic recovery. Failure to take this 
action, I think, is going to cause us at some point out there in the 
future to say, ``Gosh, do you remember when the economy was growing 
back there in 1994? Do you remember those good old days back in 
February 1994 when the economy was booming and we had low interest 
rates and low inflation? That was the time to do deficit reduction,'' 
we will hear. When the economy slows down people will then come and 
say, ``Now is not time to do it. We should wait until the economy gets 
going.''
  There is never a good time. This is as good a time as any. With all 
due respect to the Members who may look at particular parts of this, 
saying, ``I wish it was not there''--I am prepared to accept change in 
this. I am prepared to accept some alteration in this. I am prepared at 
any stage in the game to sit down and say let us show the same 
bipartisan verve and enthusiasm we do at the time it comes to pass a 
dire emergency supplemental. There is no procedural roadblock at that 
time we cannot conquer. There is no rule, no provision, nothing in our 
way. We come together and we are patriotic Americans. And, because we 
are generous Americans--and we are right to be so, Mr. President. But 
when it comes time to cutting spending around here, all of a sudden, 
``I have a procedural problem.'' All of a sudden I have 1,000 reasons 
why I cannot do it: ``It's the wrong list, it's the wrong time, it's 
the wrong day, it's the wrong something-or-other.''
  I recognize this is going to be a difficult amendment for people to 
vote for.
  I am not standing here full of optimism that this amendment is going 
to be adopted. I understand it is very likely this amendment is going 
to be defeated. But under any circumstances, adopted or defeated, I 
hope this year we take a second step; that we do not tremble and fear 
for the consequences politically; that we, instead, tremble and fear 
for the consequences of the long-term future of our children if we do 
not take this action.
  I see the distinguished Senator from Michigan is here, and I will be 
glad to yield the floor.
  Mr. RIEGLE. I thank the Senator for his courtesy. I have an important 
item to present to the Senate. It is a matter separate from the 
amendment offered by the Senator from Nebraska. I asked his courtesy to 
be able to make a unanimous consent request to put the Senate in 
morning business for a period of 15 minutes so I can present this 
information and then resume consideration on the matter that is now 
before us. So I now make that request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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