[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 23, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, about 3 weeks ago, with a lot of press 
fanfare, we received the President's budget. As a member of the Senate 
Budget Committee I was very interested in getting the details of this 
budget that was going to reduce the deficit and change priorities.
  Well, I have been startled by many of the things that I found. In 
fact, I found that it is pretty much the same thing that we have seen 
year after year in this administration and previous administrations. 
What that is is an increasing deficit that adds to the debt every year.
  There is no balanced budget in sight any year as far as the eye can 
see or any economist could possibly dream.
  Let me give you some startling statistics. The Federal debt at the 
end of fiscal year 1993 was $4.35 trillion. The projected Federal debt 
at the end of 1997 will be $5.65 trillion. The projected rate of growth 
in the national debt for the next 6 years--fiscal year 1994 to 1999--
will be $1.9 trillion. The deficit may not go up as much this year as 
it did last year, but the deficit continues to go up every year. The 
debt continues to grow every year. So over these next 5 years, we will 
see an increase of about $1.9 trillion on the debt.
  Obviously, enough has not been done. The net interest payments will 
be $343 billion by the year 2004. So, Mr. President, we have a lot of 
work to do.
  We have heard a lot about what is in the President's budget. We have 
heard talk about changing priorities. Let me give you just one example 
of the type of change in priorities we are talking about.
  It is getting to be more and more common knowledge that our national 
parks are deteriorating all over this country. I saw a program on 
television about the tomb of former President Grant is literally 
corroding and falling down. It is not being kept up. I know that is 
true in parks in my district.
  Yet in the President's budget, 404 personnel were cut in the National 
Park Service, reducing the number that looks after our parks across 
this country, but 359 new lawyers were added to the Secretary of the 
Interior's office.
  Now that is all we need--more lawyers at the Interior Department and 
fewer people to look after the national parks, those great treasures we 
have in this country.
  But what really concerns me, and what I want to talk about this 
morning, is what is not in this budget. We have heard promised over the 
past few weeks a number of things: health care reform, welfare reform, 
a GATT agreement--all of these are well and good--funding for the 
Bottom-Up Review of the Department of Defense, a new entitlement 
program to assist dislocated workers, and more policemen on the 
streets, more prisons, tougher sentences, and deficit reduction.
  I believe we would all support a number of these items, if not all of 
them, in some form or another. But the problem is that the President 
has said one thing and done another. The budget he sent to the Congress 
that we are reviewing in the Senate Budget Committee does not include 
complete funding for any of these programs which I just mentioned--
either none at all or incomplete funding. Despite the fact the budget 
is 4 volumes, 2,013 pages, and weighs 6 pounds, it is a porous 
document. If all of these new programs are enacted with no new offsets, 
the budget will have significantly greater deficits--probably wiping 
out what is now being claimed as a great reduction in the deficit for 
this next year. We see the deficit projections coming down because many 
of the bigger programs we are going to be dealing with this year are 
not included.
  There has been much talk about hard choices in the budget, about how 
we are cutting spending. What people do not understand is that the 
spending cut in Washington is not a spending cut that most people would 
think about. Each year we start from last year's actual spending plus 
an additional inflation factor. This, then, becomes the so-called 
baseline. In other words, we allow for an increase before we ever start 
figuring what the spending is going to be that year. Any reduction in 
the inflated baseline is considered a cut. In reality, the budget 
proposed by the President proposes higher spending in each of the next 
5 years.
  The budget calls for increased spending on various programs by $127.8 
billion over 5 years, and Federal outlays will increase by 17.1 percent 
from fiscal year 1994 to 1998. So you see we are getting a lot of 
double talk here in Washington, talking about the deficit reduction 
every year. That is one of the major reasons why I am for the 
constitutional amendment for a balanced budget proposed by Senator 
Craig of Idaho and Senator Simon of Illinois, that we are debating at 
this very time, because we have gotten to be very expert at using the 
numbers to make them say what we want them to say. Yet the thing that 
is driving the deficit and the debt is that we never control spending. 
That is the problem; not insufficient taxes, not insufficient revenue. 
We even have economic growth. What we should be doing is cutting 
spending, controlling spending--not just in the discretionary programs 
that the appropriators deal with but in the entitlements. We should do 
a few things to encourage more growth and to allow the people to keep 
some of their money with their families in this country.
  I do think we need the mechanism of the constitutional amendment for 
a balanced budget. It has been argued by some of the opponents, ``well, 
it is just a gimmick.'' And then they say, ``Oh, but it will cut so 
many programs so drastically.'' You cannot have it both ways. Is it a 
gimmick or will it really drastically cut spending?
  I think we need to look further at this budget before we vote on it. 
I yield the remainder of my time we have on this special order to the 
Senator from Iowa, Senator Grassley.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa has 3 minutes 
and 30 seconds.

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