[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 17 (Thursday, February 24, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                     THE BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I rise in support of a balanced budget 
but against the balanced budget amendment. The reason is that I believe 
this amendment, if passed, would have precisely the opposite effect of 
that for which it is intended. The amendment is not to go into effect, 
according to its terms, until 1999 at the soonest, and more probably 
somewhat later because it would take somewhat longer for the States to 
ratify the amendment.
  In my judgment, if this amendment passed, the effect would be to 
postpone any real action on bringing the deficit down, pending the 
ratification of the amendment. In effect, Senators and Congressmen who 
voted for the amendment would be able to beat their breasts and say, 
``I voted for the balanced budget amendment,'' and therefore they would 
not need to do anything about the tough work of reducing the deficit.
  Mr. President, to adopt this amendment is to take the general over 
the specific, the marginal steps toward budget reduction over real 
steps, to take an exhortation over a command. By that I mean, Mr. 
President, we have in place at the present time under the Gramm-Rudman-
Hollings bill the machinery which is calculated to balance the budget. 
All Congress needs to do is set those limits for spending on a glide 
path that leads to a balanced budget.
  Mr. President, that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings machinery is very specific. 
It is enforced by a whole series of points of order. Its definitions 
are very specific and very exacting. And, as my colleagues know, it 
constitutes a legislative straitjacket on spending.
  Now, to be sure, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill has not brought us to 
a balanced budget. And that is not because of the machinery of the 
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill. That is because of a number of things:
  First of all, because of the failure of the will of the Congress to 
set the limits.
  Second, because of the inability to estimate what the economy is 
going to do. It is one thing to estimate that the rate of growth next 
year is going to be 3 percent. It is another thing for the economy 
actually to grow at that rate.
  It has also been caused, Mr. President, by various accounting 
gimmicks which have been used in the past. But the gate has been closed 
for those kinds of accounting gimmicks.
  So, Mr. President, if this Congress is serious about balancing the 
budget, if it is serious indeed about reducing the deficit, then what 
we ought to do is put in place a series of step reductions leading to a 
balanced budget at some specific time in the future, beginning with 
fiscal year 1995.
  Mr. President, the silence is deafening about the proponents of this 
amendment proposing anything for fiscal year 1995. Do they propose that 
we spend less in 1995 than the President's guidelines, than the 
President's limits? The answer is a deafening ``No.'' They do not 
propose any action for this year.
  Any real action is to be put off, I submit to you, to sometime in the 
next century. Let things rock along in the meantime. If angry 
constituents write and say that you have done nothing to balance the 
budget, then all you have to do, Mr. President, is point to the fact 
that you have the balanced budget amendment.
  Mr. President, I hear from many of my colleagues that the American 
people want the balanced budget amendment. Indeed, I have seen polls, I 
have seen polls in my own State, that say people want the balanced 
budget amendment.
  But then you ask people, as I have in polling at home, do they want 
cuts in Social Security? Overwhelmingly they say, ``No cuts in Social 
Security.'' You ask do they want cuts in Medicare or Medicaid, and the 
answer overwhelmingly is no. And if you put taxes on the list, the 
answer is always a resounding no on new taxes. If you want to cut 
retirement programs, the answer is no. If you want to cut defense, the 
answer is no.
  What the American people, or at least those who say they want a 
balanced budget, want is a painless balanced budget; that is, a budget 
that is balanced by eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse.
  Mr. President, those who would mislead themselves in believing that a 
balanced budget, and particularly the steps that would lead to a 
balanced budget, is sought by the American people are only kidding 
themselves. I think the buzzards would come home to roost if this 
matter was really passed and the court really began to order these cuts 
that it would take to have the balanced budget. I think there would be 
the biggest turnover in Congress you have ever seen.
  What we really need is for the American public to be involved in this 
business of balancing the budget and to understand what it really 
takes, and to be involved with it in making the tough decisions to 
balance that budget. I, for one, am willing to do that, but it is going 
to take some cuts and some taxes. And not just some little taxes. It is 
going to take some big taxes in order to get this budget balanced.
  Mr. President, we are caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one 
hand, if this matter is really binding, if the court is really going to 
order that the budget be balanced, then it is the worst of all possible 
worlds. If it can be avoided, it is also a very bad situation because 
it would lead to disrespect for the Constitution, it would render 
nugatory a provision of the Constitution, and it is hard to say whether 
it would be altogether avoided.
  I believe when push came to shove, and when all of a sudden, in the 
year 2000, if that is the year of its taking effect, suddenly we had to 
cut $200 billion from the deficit, I believe the Congress would summon 
up the 60 votes that it would take to do so. But you will notice that 
this amendment is skewed in favor of taxes. The reason I say it is 
skewed in favor of taxes is it takes 51 votes to increase taxes, but it 
takes 60 votes in order to spend more than you take in. So where is the 
natural majority going to come? It is going to come in favor of taxes.
  Those who have a dream that by passing this amendment, you are 
somehow going to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse, all of those easy 
cuts that nobody cares about--they do not involve Social Security, they 
do not involve somebody's medical provisions--they can forget that. 
They better get ready for a big tax increase, because you can increase 
taxes under this amendment by 51 votes whereas it takes a full 60 votes 
to spend more than you take in.
  If we got to the situation where the court was going to order a cut, 
how would the court determine what cuts to order? I contend that the 
court would order taxes and cutting in retirement programs--spell that 
Social Security--and let me explain why I believe that is so.
  It takes an enormous amount of bureaucracy to understand exactly how 
the Federal Government works, how it spends money, and how you would 
budget money. Let us say, for example, that you would want to cut the 
Corps of Engineers--which happens to be one of the agencies that is 
under my appropriations subcommittee. If you wanted to cut the Corps of 
Engineers, the court could not simply say to order a 6 percent cut in 
the Corps of Engineers, because all functions cannot be cut by the same 
amount. For example, contractual obligations have to be paid 100 
percent. Property purchases, if you are going to purchase property to 
build a levy, for example--which the Corps of Engineers must do--must 
be paid 100 percent. You do not go out and make an offer for a piece of 
property or condemn a piece of property and pay only 90 percent; you 
have to pay 100 percent.
  So then the question would come, how would the court know how to cut 
the Corps of Engineers? And the answer is, they would not, because they 
would not know what could be cut and what could not be cut.
  They could cut employee salaries, perhaps. Could they close the 
division? Or would they close a district? Or would they simply cut 
employees across the board--those needed and those not needed?
  Or would they discontinue whole projects? Would they, for example, 
say the Corps of Engineers has 10 projects and we are just going to 
stop garrison diversion, for example? They could pick that out if they 
knew about garrison diversion. How would they know about garrison 
diversion? Or the Red River project? Or flooding on the Mississippi 
River? The answer is, they would not know and they would not have the 
machinery to find out. All they would have is a lawyer who would come 
up and argue a case on a legal principle, but they do not have the 
machinery to tell them how to cut. So what are they going to do? I can 
tell you what they would do, in my view. It is very clear.
  They know about transfer payments. You do not have to be an expert to 
cut Social Security payments. You just enter a simple order and say we 
are going to cut Social Security payments or retirement payments by x 
dollars--so much per person, so much percentage per person. It is a 
mathematical thing. The appropriations and the outlays are 100 percent. 
It is easy to do.
  The same thing is true for taxes.
  Mr. President, this is an invitation to the court to order cuts in 
Social Security and the retirement programs, and to order taxes. How 
can it be otherwise? How is the court going to know? For example, let 
us say there is a Trident submarine being built that costs $1 billion. 
They cost more than that, but let us assume they cost $1 billion. The 
first year into that contract the court is not going to know what the 
termination costs are. They are not going to know how many of those 
people they can fire immediately in order to save money. They have no 
way of knowing how to run the Federal Government, and they have no 
machinery for bureaucrats or Senators to go and give them that 
information because they do not have the staff to do that. I think each 
Justice has three or four law clerks, and they are skilled in the law. 
They are dealing with death penalties and habeas corpus, and all that.
  Mr. President, I think it is very, very clear the enforcement 
mechanism here really involves taxes and Social Security and other 
retirement payments.
  I hear rumors, here on the floor, that there is going to be some 
amendment which would deprive the court of the power to enforce the 
amendment. Would that not be a new and interesting wrinkle for the 
Constitution of the United States, a constitutional amendment which 
could not be enforced? Mr. President, we might as well put a sense-of-
the-Senate resolution into the Constitution. That is silliness. That is 
a perversion of the Constitution. If it is worthy of being in the 
Constitution, then it must be enforced. And if it must be enforced, 
then you have to know how to enforce it.
  Mr. President, we are told on the State level all of the States live 
under balanced budgets. Two things are wrong with that statement. The 
first thing is, States define their balanced budget in a totally 
different way than the United States does. If the United States defined 
its balanced budget as the States do, we would be balanced too, because 
they take their capital budget and they do not consider it in the 
budget, and they only deal with the operating budget on the State 
level. Every State in the United States would be unbalanced and would 
be in red ink--all of those who come up and beat their chests and tell 
us how responsible they are--they would all be unbalanced if they had 
the same bookkeeping methods that we have.
  Would we change to that level of bookkeeping method? I do not know. 
You can read the language, as I can. The Congress is given the power 
and the mandate to enforce the article--that is the amendment--by 
appropriate legislation. Is that appropriate? We would have to wait for 
the court to tell us. I do not know how long it would take them to 
figure out whether that is appropriate, to differentiate as the States 
do between operating budgets and capital budgets. But I assume the 
Congress would have that power --which means the Congress would have 
the power, even if the court could enforce it, as they can under the 
present language--the Congress would have the power to write itself out 
of the amendment. And I would suppose that would happen.
  The second thing wrong with saying that States operate under balanced 
budgets is that there is a whole body of law by which States avoid 
balanced budget requirements, even as to their operating budgets. They 
create taxing districts. They create--in Louisiana at one time, they 
created the Board of Liquidation of the State Debt. You know, that was 
separate so it did not involve going through these constitutional 
prohibitions. I myself was involved in litigation with respect to the 
Dome Stadium of Louisiana. The issue there was not the balanced budget, 
but it was a kindred question. The Constitution provided that no bond 
issued under the Dome Stadium constitutional amendment could be secured 
by the faith and credit of the State.
  It said it just as clear as it could be. And yet they had this 
method, they created a stadium district which leased the property to 
the State and the State leased it immediately back, the amount of the 
lease being the debt service on the bonds. The Supreme Court said that 
is OK. It was a totally fictitious transaction, but it avoided this 
constitutional prohibition about the bonds bearing the faith and credit 
of the State.
  Mr. President, you can look in the law books and there is a whole 
wealth of law about these kind of devices where States have avoided 
constitutional prohibitions. Would the Congress do that? I do not know, 
Mr. President. I am saying if they did not do it, then the effect would 
be to cut Social Security retirement payments and raise taxes. I think 
the American public would be shocked. Those people out there who say 
they want a balanced budget amendment, do you think they have in mind 
the kinds of taxes which it would take?
  I calculated recently that it would take more than a doubling of the 
personal income tax in order to balance the budget this year--more than 
a doubling of the personal income tax to balance the budget this year. 
Is that the way we would balance the budget? I do not think it would be 
a good idea.
  I think, in the first place, in addition to having a revolution out 
there among the people, among the voters--some of those who are for 
this amendment--I think you would also put this economy into a deep 
depression, more than a recession. I do not think there is any way you 
could balance the budget in 1 year. Indeed, if you balanced it over 5 
years, you cannot do so without some real pain, some real revenues and 
some real cuts.
  That is what the Clinton reduction plan was all about. It was real 
pain and real taxes and a lot of people said there were not enough real 
cuts.
  I would like to see what the plan is, the so-called glide path 
between here and that balanced budget that my friends, the proponents 
of this amendment, have in mind. Do they have nothing in mind? Are they 
just going to throw the ball up and wait and see what happens? I think 
that is it. They will say, ``Well, we passed the amendment, now 
somebody do something about it.''
  Mr. President, this quest for the magic asterisks, for the painless 
cut is nonexistent, it cannot happen. There is no such thing. It never 
has been and never will be that you can cut budgets without cutting 
budgets, without eliminating things or that you can raise taxes without 
extracting that money from someone. It just does not happen. Why does 
someone not tell us what they have in mind and let us vote on it? At 
least let us get started this year.
  If those who are for the balanced budget amendment are really serious 
about it, I challenge them to put up a budget resolution and a spending 
plan that begins this year--let us say 5 years. The amendment says it 
takes effect not before 1999. It is 1994. Give us a 5-year plan and 
start off with this coming fiscal year with a 20-percent cut. If you 
are serious, show us where that 20-percent is going to come from, 
keeping in mind now that the first 20 percent is a lot easier than the 
last 20 percent. It is like losing weight. That first pound you lose is 
a lot easier to lose than 20 pounds from now when you are already 
skinny.
  So let them at least give us a start with that first 20 percent in 
fiscal year 1995. What is it going to be? No, not Social Security. 
Everyone says, ``No, we do not want to touch that radioactive issue 
called Social Security.'' Are we talking about civil service 
retirement? ``No, that is akin. That should not be touched.'' OK, I 
agree. Taxes? ``Oh, we already have too many taxes, retroactive taxes, 
big increase in taxes; we do not want those.''
  What the American people want is to cut fraud, waste, and abuse. Mr. 
President, if fraud, waste, and abuse existed in the amount some people 
think it does, we would have no problem and it would have been 
accomplished a long time ago.
  This amendment leads inexorably to taxes and big taxes and cuts in 
Social Security and big cuts in Social Security, and it leads to those 
cuts that would be ordered by the court because that is all the court 
would know how to do.
  The court does not have an army of hundreds who can interface with 
the people who are running these agencies. They do not. They have two 
and three or four law clerks is all they have. It is justice. They do 
not know how to do anything except cut transfer payments which are 
outlayed at the 100-percent rate; that is, you can tell exactly where 
that money is going and you can tell where that tax money is going.
  So, Mr. President, those of my colleagues who believe as I do that 
the Congress needs to face up to its responsibility and cut budgets and 
say where we are going to cut budgets, and if it is necessary to raise 
taxes say which taxes we are going to raise and how much and what kind 
of bill, then I say it is time for the Congress to take that 
responsibility, and those who are not willing to do that, Mr. 
President, this balanced budget amendment is no answer to the problem. 
It is simply going to make the problem worse.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Yes, I yield.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I congratulate the distinguished Senator 
from Louisiana on the statement that he has just made and also on the 
stand that he has taken. He mentions the danger, the utter folly of 
doing something here that would allow the courts, that would result in 
the courts interjecting themselves into the balancing of Federal 
budgets.
  Does he not also feel that the amendment not only runs the terrible 
risk of having the judiciary in this country get involved in levying 
taxes and appropriations, but also, under the amendment, the President, 
be he Republican or Democrat or Independent, the Executive will decide 
matters of taxation and appropriations as well, the power of the purse?
  The President's advisers would certainly advise him, I should think, 
not as they have heretofore, that he ``has the inherent power as 
Commander in Chief,'' but once this amendment is welded into the 
Constitution, would they not then say, ``Well, Mr. President, the 
Constitution now says that outlays shall not exceed receipts. 
Therefore, you now have a Constitution that says you have impoundment, 
rescission, and item veto powers.''
  He would say, ``Well, you must have forgotten, Mr. Senior Counsel. 
You must have forgotten the 1974 Impoundment Act. That says I cannot 
impound money.''
  His counsel would say, ``Oh, that was just a statute. Now we have the 
Constitution which trumps the statute. Now, Mr. President, you have the 
obligation to make outlays and receipts balance. You now have in the 
Constitution an amendment that says that you have the power, you have 
the inherent power, to impound money, to line-item veto, to rescind 
funds.'' I would add, may I say to Senator Johnston, you not only have 
the judiciary, but also the executive branch which would aggrandize 
legislative powers. And furthermore, if the judiciary were somehow to 
be excluded by an amendment here, then the pressures would be all the 
greater on the Chief Executive.
  Then his counsel would say, ``Well, now, Mr. President, you have in 
the Constitution an amendment that says the judiciary cannot do it.'' 
They are powerless under the language of this amendment. They are 
powerless to do anything about taxation or to do anything about cutting 
funding.
  ``Now, Mr. President, the pressure is even greater. The 
responsibility is even greater on you. Your duty is even greater to cut 
funds for defense, for Social Security, for veterans' compensation, for 
military pay, for military retirement, for Federal employees' pay, 
Federal employees' retirement. You have the whole field now. You can 
choose wherever you think you need to, but you have to do something. 
You took an oath, Mr. President, to uphold the Constitution. And you 
have that duty.
  ``Congress, they all honor the Constitution, too, but Senator so-and-
so wants to raise taxes in order to make outlays and receipts balance. 
But another Senator wants to cut the military. And then there is 
another group of Senators that want to cut domestic discretionary. Then 
there is another group that want to cut Social Security and veterans' 
benefits. They all want to honor this new constitutional amendment, but 
we have no mechanism to coordinate their differences and come up with a 
majority.
  ``So, Mr. President, you took the oath. And that Constitution is the 
basic law of the land. That is positive law. It is higher than any 
statutes. You have that responsibility.''
  My question then, may I say to my friend, Senator Johnston--he is 
quite right about the courts and not only the possibility but the 
likelihood of the courts intervening in this--does he not also feel 
that the danger to the constitutional system of checks and balances and 
separation of powers is just as great when the executive gets into this 
situation and takes the steps that his advisers would tell him to take, 
and to keep his oath as President to uphold the Constitution he too 
would be saying what taxes ought to be increased, what taxes ought to 
be line-itemed out of revenue bills, what taxes ought to be negated, 
what funds ought to be cut, what funds ought to be impounded, what 
funds ought to be rescinded? Is that not the case?
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, my distinguished colleague with his 
piercing legal mind and his reverence for the Constitution has 
identified one of the core problems, which is that this amendment would 
not just rewrite budgetary matters in this country; it rewrites the 
whole formulation of the balance of power.
  Now, what the extent of power of the Executive would be under this 
amendment, the full limits of that we cannot know. We would have to 
wait for years for the Court to decide about whether the President has 
the impoundment power, the impoundment duty; how can he exercise that; 
must he do so across the board or can he go in and eliminate individual 
projects; can he, for example, take all the money out of Social 
Security or must he treat all the retirement programs alike? This would 
be enormous power and discretion in the Executive.
  The people out there say, well, we vote for the President and we can 
talk to the President. I wonder how my constituents who call me up and 
call their Congressman up--and they are able to get us and able to 
write us--would feel about writing the President to come out and fix a 
levee on the Red River. I wonder how they would feel about calling the 
President to get a Federal building or whatever in their district.
  The point of the matter is that the President with his power of the 
bully pulpit, with his enormous knowledge, particularly this President, 
about everything that goes on cannot know all that detail and the 
people could not get to him. It would be an imperial--not just an 
imperial Presidency; it would be an Executive power that rewrites the 
Constitution. It would be greater power than the President of France 
has. I guess the President of France has among the democracies probably 
more unfettered authority to do things than most anybody.
  Now, some people might like that. But, Mr. President, I say to my 
colleague that it would totally rewrite our Constitution, to rearrange 
that kind of power. It would be the Supreme Court not only ordering, in 
my judgment, increases in taxes and cuts in Social Security, because 
those are the only things that they have the ability to understand--I 
do not mean the smarts to understand; I mean they do not have the staff 
to understand how these other agencies work--but in addition to 
ordering those taxes and those cuts in Social Security, they would be 
acting as a referee on the limits of power of the President under this 
new amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises the Senator from Louisiana 
that under the consent agreement Senators are recognized for up to 10 
minutes in morning business. The Senator from Louisiana has just 
consumed his 10 minutes.
  Mr. BYRD. I thank the distinguished Senator. I see the distinguished 
Senator from Kansas [Mrs. Kassebaum] is in the Chamber. I would pursue 
this further but for now I will not.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Kansas.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the 
proposed constitutional amendment to balance the budget. This is an 
issue we have debated before. I opposed it then. I oppose it now. I may 
be wrong, Mr. President, but at least I have been consistently wrong. I 
still believe this remains a sham. I would like to go through a little 
bit of the history of the debate that I think is revealing and consider 
three events.
  In 1982, the Senate passed a constitutional amendment to balance the 
budget by 69 votes. It failed in the House of Representatives at that 
time. Only 2 years later, I helped lead an effort on the Senate floor 
to freeze Federal spending across the board for 1 year. This included 
the COLA's, it included everything for just 1 year. We got 33 votes. 
That is revealing, I think, Mr. President, that 69 Senators would vote 
to declare in the Constitution that the budget should be balanced but 
fewer than half that many would vote even to temporarily stop the 
growth of the budget.
  To put it another way, two-thirds of the Members of this body thought 
amending the Constitution was less painful than to freeze spending.
  In 1986, the Senate again voted on a balanced budget amendment, this 
time narrowly rejecting it with 66 votes in favor. One year later, I 
again helped propose a 1-year budget freeze. This time we got only 25 
votes. Nearly two-thirds of the Senate would amend the constitution but 
only one-fourth would freeze the budget for 1 year.
  Two weeks ago, the Senate voted on a package to cut $94 billion in 
Federal spending over the next 5 years. This Kerrey-Brown amendment 
would have been painful. It would have reduced certain Medicare 
payments, deferred cost-of-living adjustments for military retirees. It 
would have cut our own pay and cut or eliminated dozens of other 
Federal programs. It was too painful for most Senators and it got only 
31 votes, including mine.
  Today, we are again preparing to vote on a balanced budget amendment 
to the Constitution of the United States.
  I predict that, once again, a vote to promise restraint will win more 
than double the support of a vote to restrain.
  Mr. President, there is an enormous gap between what we say must be 
done and what we are willing to do. I do not know of one Senator--not 
one--who said, ``I would have voted for that budget freeze or for that 
Kerrey-Brown package if only a constitutional amendment had told me 
to.'' No, Mr. President, Senators opposed those measures because they 
were too politically painful. But those were pin pricks compared to the 
pain that will be needed to balance the budget now. Let me describe 
that pain.
  The tough choices necessary to balance the budget today go far beyond 
merely freezing the growth of Federal programs, as we proposed in 1984 
and 1987. It will require deep cuts or steep new taxes. In the 
reconciliation law passed last August, Congress promised to find 
roughly $430 billion in deficit reduction through 1998. Beyond that, 
the Congressional Budget Office has issued an illustrative scenario 
showing that we would need roughly $580 billion in additional deficit 
reduction to balance the budget by 2001, which will be the requirement 
under the balanced budget amendment. These numbers closely parallel a 
separate projection made by the Congressional Research Service. In 
other words, we must find $1 trillion in deficit reduction over the 
next 6 years to balance the budget by 2001.
  Yet, let us not forget the Kerrey-Brown amendment that we voted on 
only 2 weeks ago. It would have cut $94 billion over 5 years--one-tenth 
of what will be needed to balance the budget by this amendment's target 
date. And it got only 31 votes.
  The White House has turned this painful truth into scare tactics. In 
hearings last week, administration witnesses testified of gloom-and-
doom hardship that would befall citizens if this amendment passes. The 
administration has issued frightening State-by-State accounts of tax 
increases and service cuts that could result.
  These scare tactics describe the tough choices necessary to balance 
the Federal budget. That is not the issue here--the issue is whether to 
amend the Constitution. The President opposes this amendment because he 
fears it might work; I oppose it because I am convinced it cannot.
  Many support this amendment out of frustration. If this will not 
work, they ask, then what will? I do not have an easy answer to that, 
Mr. President, because there is none. But I do know that pandering to 
fears or falsely casting simple solutions does nothing to help us make 
tough choices.
  Passing this do-nothing amendment will let us proclaim victory, vent 
built-up public pressure, and withdraw once again from the fight for a 
balanced budget. This amendment is a license to spend. It does not call 
for a balanced budget until at least 2001. The promise it makes today 
is that tough choices must be made--tomorrow. And we know from 
experience that in the world of the Federal budget, tomorrow never 
comes.
  Mr. President, opposing a constitutional amendment that would call 
for balancing the Federal budget is risky business for those of us in 
public office. The amendment has taken on a symbolic significance that 
far surpasses any possible economic benefits.
  But this debate should not be about symbolism or about political 
security. It should be about solving this Nation's addiction to debt 
and, specifically, whether amending our Constitution can wean us from 
that addiction. It cannot.
  Let me make clear that I fully agree with my colleagues who believe 
that we must balance the budget and begin paying off our debt. I have 
worked with many of them over the years on sincere proposals to reduce 
spending or to reorganize and streamline programs. We have had more 
failures than successes, but we keep trying.
  But I simply do not believe amending the Constitution will do one 
thing to balance the budget. If and when the Federal budget is ever 
again balanced, it will not be because of constitutional prohibitions 
against deficits. It will be because the public--and the Congress, 
which reacts to public opinion--stops believing in the free lunch.
  Overwhelming majorities in this country oppose the steps necessary to 
achieve a balance budget. A majority opposes significant cuts in Social 
Security or other retirement programs; a majority opposes deeper cuts 
in national defense.
  Let me just suggest, Mr. President, that we face an immediate problem 
because we have to find at last $10 billion in a forecasted shortfall 
to meet our budgeted needs in the current defense spending.
  A majority opposes cuts in health care including Medicare. We cannot 
default on interest payments on the national debt. Taken together, 
these spending categories represent well over three-fourths of all 
Federal spending.
  At the same time, a majority also opposes higher taxes to pay for 
these services. The numbers that majorities support just do not add up. 
As long as the public calls for mutually exclusive goals, we will 
respond. Circumvention of the balanced budget amendment will not only 
be possible, it will be routine.
  The most obvious way to avoid making those tough choices would be to 
do precisely what the amendment provides--waive its provisions by a 
three-fifths vote in Congress. I have no doubt, Mr. President, that 
Congress will invoke that three-fifths provisions frequently to waive a 
balanced budget requirement. We need look no further than the current 
procedures used under the Budget Act, which allows points of order to 
be lodged against certain spending provisions. Yet, it is not unusual 
to waive those points of order simply because Senators agree with the 
underlying policy objectives--and we waive them by three-fifths vote, 
just as we would under this amendment.
  Even if we do not waive the amendment by vote, Congress will find 
other ways to circumvent it. The possibilities are endless. As just one 
example, consider the manner in which States have handled their own 
balanced-budget requirements.
  My own State of Kansas, Mr. President, has a cash-basis law, which is 
similar to many State balanced-budget requirements. That law is dear to 
my heart, not only because it has given us responsible State government 
but also because it was enacted when my father was Governor. Since May 
1, 1933, Kansas government agencies--State and local--have been 
required to operate on a cash basis, incurring debt only by referendum 
or for expenditures made by specific items.
  Let me emphasize that last part, Mr. President--Kansas can borrow 
money for specific projects, and we often do. Our State issues bonds 
for highway construction, school renovation, sewer improvements, and 
various other infrastructure projects. In essence, we have created a 
capital-outlay budget, as have many other States. Our State's operating 
budget must balance, but we are constantly in debt to finance long-term 
capital projects. That is true with most States.
  I believe Congress will do much the same thing to avoid the 
requirements of this amendment. We will redefine ``outlays''--a crucial 
term used but not defined in the amendment--to set up separate funds, 
such as for capital outlays or for the savings and loan bail-out, and 
use word games to avoid counting those expenses. We will move items 
off-budget to make the numbers work on paper--but with no real effect 
on our indebtedness.
  Indeed, we will surely move many items off the Federal budget 
entirely--and onto the budgets of the States. As Federal budget 
constraints have grown increasingly tighter over the past two decades, 
Congress has enacted a growing volume of legislation that orders 
business or State-and-local governments to act but provides no Federal 
money.
  Within the past year there has been a backlash against these unfunded 
mandates. Indeed that is what they are, and they are troubling, Mr. 
President. Yet, nothing in this amendment prohibits this sort of 
mandate. I am convinced that its passing would result in a new way of 
passing the buck. These are but two of many ways that I think, in the 
creativeness and inventiveness of the U.S. Congress, that we, in the 
absence of political will to make tough choices, will circumvent a 
balanced budget amendment. And in the process, I suggest it will 
trivialize the trust in our Constitution.
  A constitutional prohibition against deficits is not going to reduce 
the public demand for services or the public aversion to taxes; nor is 
it going to give Congress the courage to act against the mandate of the 
electorate. If Congress had the courage to balance the budget, and if 
the Nation agreed on how that should be done, we would have no need for 
a constitutional amendment. In the absence of such courage, an 
amendment would simply prove an embarrassment to our Nation.
  I do not intend to sound like a scold, but I have grave reservations 
about this course of action, and I hope that the public will think 
carefully about what is involved in an action such as this proposed 
constitutional amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  (Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN assumed the chair.)
  Mr. BYRD. Will the Senator yield before she leaves?
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Yes.
  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I have had the pleasant opportunity to 
serve with Senator Kassebaum for several years now, and I have observed 
her on many occasions when there were critical, controversial, very 
important votes in the Senate; and I have observed on many occasions 
that she has taken a path and chosen the unpopular approach and voted 
her convictions--after very careful study. I have noted that she 
reaches her decisions in matters of this kind after the most careful 
thought and reflection, weighing the pros and cons, and finally making 
her decision. She has the courage to stand up for her convictions, and 
I salute her.
  There was another Senator, I believe, from Kansas, whom we often hear 
of as having demonstrated great courage during the impeachment trial of 
Andrew Johnson, and there was a Senator from West Virginia who also 
took an unpopular course in that instance--Peter Van Winkle. Peter Van 
Winkle, in voting not to convict Andrew Johnson, sealed his own 
political doom. He never came back to the Senate. He was never 
successful in politics again. I have often wondered why he has not also 
been recognized as one of those Senators who demonstrated great 
courage.
  Again, here is a Senator from Kansas, who has the intellectual 
honesty to carefully examine a matter and then reach what she thinks is 
the right decision and she takes her stand, regardless of its 
popularity or unpopularity. I admire her and congratulate her for her 
courage.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Madam President, I will respond to the Senator from 
West Virginia, whose leadership on constitutional matters is of the 
foremost guidance to many of us and to the Nation. I just suggest that 
I hope both the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Kansas 
have not sealed their political doom.
  I yield the floor, Madam President.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, let me also--although I very much 
disagree with the Senator from Kansas--recognize without question her 
integrity as a Senator and as a legislator and her commitment to the 
service to her State in the last good number of years.
  I would have hoped she would have spoken differently and as 
passionately about bringing an end to a process that is accumulating in 
our country at such an accelerated rate that I think today we are amiss 
if we fail to recognize what has occurred during my tenure in the U.S. 
Congress, which is considerably less than the tenure of the Senator 
from Kansas.
  When I came to the House in 1981 and the deficit was somewhere in the 
$40 or $50 billion range, and the Federal debt was $1.2 trillion, 
within about 12 months of service in the Congress it became very 
obvious to me that the appetite to spend here was so great that if we 
did not change the environment in which the budgeting process went 
forward, in which special interest groups preyed against us, or to us, 
or on us, as to expending the public Treasury for their benefits and 
their interests' benefits, that we some day would get into trouble in 
this country of a kind that we could not just summarily pass by.
  I have joined in budget freezes. I, too, voted for the Kerrey-Brown 
amendment for a $54 billion cut. I have never in my 14 years failed to 
vote for a budget cut. But what is the answer then to all of that 
effort? The Senator from Kansas has exerted that effort, and so have I. 
Our credentials on being fiscally responsible are probably as good as 
anybody's. Here is the answer: We no longer have a $60 billion deficit; 
it is $200 billion. We no longer have a $1.2 trillion debt; we now have 
a $4.5 trillion debt.
  I do believe that the day has come when we can no longer stand here 
and say, ``but I did all the right things. I voted to cut the budget.'' 
Because history says--and history is not oftentimes written in just a 
decade--but in the history I have been involved in, 14 years, the 
writing is very clear that this Congress cannot, nor will it try to, 
curtail its appetite to spend. Within a very short time after I had 
been here, the famous Gramm-Rudman bill passed--a pathway to fiscal 
sanity. I voted for it, and I suspect the Senator from Kansas did. She 
indicates she did not. I will be happy to yield.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Madam President, at the time I expressed reservations 
about the Gramm-Rudman bill because it excluded some significant 
spending. In fact, a major portion of the spending was excluded and I 
felt Gramm-Rudman would not, as a matter of fact, accomplish what it 
was set out to do.
  Mr. CRAIG. That was a concern about Gramm-Rudman. I voted for it 
because it was one of those things I could reach for on cuts, and it 
did for a time.
  The rate of growth slowed. If you were to graph it, it would have 
been a slight downward dip in the rate of Federal expenditure, although 
budgets were still larger the next year than they were the year before. 
Then times got tough. Or, I should say, times did not get tough, 
decisions got tough. Politicians got the heat put on them and they 
squirmed and they took just a little more off Gramm-Rudman than had 
been the year before, and we know the rest of the story.
  Gramm-Rudman is now history. It is one of about six documents that 
are now gathering dust on the shelves of some library as to the good 
intentions of a Congress failed, and the debt clock ticks.
  And what is the end result? Well, many are saying the Congress will 
not respond until there is a cataclysmic financial event where we no 
longer can pay for our bonds, where we no longer can accommodate or 
respond to our indebtedness. And that is when Congress will change 
things.
  Let me tell you what happened, though, that is unrecorded, that is 
now the wolf at the door of the average American family, because there 
is something happening out there as a result of this profligate 
spending of our Government.
  Starting in 1976 the average income of the American family as it 
related to buying power began to decline, and it has declined every 
year since then.
  You say: ``Senator Craig, how can that be? Families are making more 
money today than they ever were.''
  We are talking about buying power. From 1976 to 1986, dramatic things 
happened in the American family. The other spouse went to work. Why? 
Partly because he or she wanted to and found their fulfillment in the 
workplace, but also because they had to because their ability to pay 
for that which was average to the American family was rapidly 
declining.
  I believe and economists believe that part of that and a major part 
of it was that the Federal Government was consuming more and more 
money, making it more and more difficult as a family to survive, and 
not rewarding the family as it had through past tax law. And we have 
seen the end result--or the progressive result, it is not the end 
result--of a $4.35 trillion debt.
  So there are very real consequences to what we do. The cataclysmic 
event has not occurred because we are still borrowing. We are allowed 
to borrow. We have not forfeited. We are not yet bankrupt. But we all 
know that a $200-plus billion deficit at 1980 interest rates would not 
be $200 billion today; it would be $500 or $600 billion. And we as a 
Government would be in astronomical trouble.
  Alan Greenspan now once again has to use monetary policy to try to 
begin to manipulate the economy of this country because fiscal policy 
really is not working very well, and that is what we are in charge of.
  Let us be cautious; let us be concerned; and let us not pass go, as 
we have passed go all through the decade of the eighties and now into 
the decade of the nineties, with one cut after another cut after 
another cut, most of them never passed.
  We passed a great budget bill last year. I opposed a big tax bundle. 
Why? Because the cuts were promises. Bill Clinton did not cut $500 
billion out of the budget. He promised to cut it in the outyears. It is 
yet to be done. It has to be done by this Congress.
  Will it be done? Probably not as much as must be done to meet those 
budgetary targets. And even if we meet them, we are still generating 
over $200 billion every year in deficits.
  In the Bill Clinton years, and I respect this President for his 
effort, but in his years as President, in the projected 5.5- to 6-year 
budget that he has laid before the Congress of the United States, there 
will be a new debt of $1.94 trillion.
  Ronald Reagan gets blamed for all the debt structure that we have 
right now, which in his 8 years as President he generated by his 
budgets. He has to take the blame for it. They were his budgets. Nancy 
Kassebaum from Kansas and I either voted for them or against them, but 
we worked with them. They are called the Reagan years, the Reagan 
budgets. How much total debt did his budgets accumulate? $1.8 trillion 
in 8 years, versus a Bill Clinton budget of 6 years of $1.9 trillion. 
That is not a blame on Bill Clinton, because he inherited a debt 
structure that is requiring over $200 billion a year just to finance.
  Let us stop passing go. Let us do not play the horror games that were 
played here on the floor a few moments ago about Social Security being 
slashed. Who says it is going to be slashed? I would not vote for that. 
The Senator from Kansas would not vote for that.
  We have to make budget priorities, though, where we can stand here on 
the floor of the U.S. Congress and say, prior to passage of this 
amendment, that this will be cut and that will be cut. The 
Appropriations Committee has not acted. We do not have an 
appropriations bill on the floor to say where those resources would go 
or where they would not go.
  So let us quit using scare tactics and look at the real fear, and the 
real fear is $4.5 trillion of debt and a $200 billion annualized 
finance charge.
  Madam President, today in Roll Call, 250 economists endorsed the 
balanced budget amendment. I ask unanimous consent that that article be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

            250 Economists Endorse Balanced Budget Amendment

       It is time to acknowledge that mere statutes that purport 
     to control federal spending or deficits have failed.
       It is time to adopt constitutional control through a 
     Balanced Budget Amendment. In supporting such an amendment, 
     Congress can control its spending proclivities by setting up 
     control machinery external to its own internal operations, 
     machinery that will not be so easily neglected and abandoned.
       Why do we need the Balanced Budget Amendment now, when no 
     such constitutional provision existed for two centuries? The 
     answer is clear. Up until recent decades, the principle that 
     government should balance its budget in peacetime was, 
     indeed, a part of our effective constitution, even if not 
     formally written down. Before the Keynesian-inspired shift in 
     thinking about fiscal matters, it was universally considered 
     immoral to incur debts, except in periods of emergency (wars 
     or major depressions). We have lost the moral sense of fiscal 
     responsibility that served to make formal constitutional 
     constraints unnecessary. We cannot legislate a change in 
     political morality; we can put formal constitutional 
     constraints into place.
       The effects of the Balanced Budget Amendment would be both 
     real and symbolic. Elected politicians would be required to 
     make fiscal choices within meaningfully-constructed 
     boundaries; they would be required to weigh predicted 
     benefits against predicted tax costs. They would be forced to 
     behave ``responsibly,'' as this word is understood by the 
     citizenry, and knowledge of this fact would do much to 
     restore the confidence of citizens in governmental processes.
       It is important to recognize that the Balanced Budget 
     Amendment imposes procedural constraints on the making of 
     budgetary choices. It does not take away the power of the 
     Congress to spend or tax. The amendment requires only that 
     the Congress and the Executive spend no more than what they 
     collect in taxes. In its simplest terms, such an amendment 
     amounts to little more than ``honesty in budgeting.''
       Of course, we always pay for what we spend through 
     government, as anywhere else. But those who pay for the 
     government spending that is financed by borrowing are 
     taxpayers in future years, those who must pay taxes to meet 
     the ever-mounting interest obligations that are already far 
     too large an item in the federal budget. The immorality of 
     the intergenerational transfer that deficit financing 
     represents cries out for correction.
       Some opponents of the Balanced Budget Amendment argue that 
     the interest burden should be measured in terms of percentage 
     of national product, and, so long as this ratio does not 
     increase, all is well. This argument is totally untenable 
     because it ignores the effects of both inflation and real 
     economic growth. So long as government debt is denominated in 
     dollars, sufficiently rapid inflation can, for a short 
     period, reduce the interest burden substantially, in terms of 
     the ratio to product. But surely default by way of inflation 
     is the worst of all possible ways of dealing with the fiscal 
     crisis that the deficit regime represents.
       Opponents also often suggest that Congress and the 
     Executive must maintain the budgetary flexibility to respond 
     to emergency needs for expanding rates of spending. This 
     prospect is fully recognized, and the Balanced Budget 
     Amendment includes a provision that allows for approval of 
     debt or deficits by a three-fifths vote of those elected to 
     each house of Congress.
       When all is said and done, there is no rational argument 
     against the Balanced Budget Amendment. Simple observation of 
     the fiscal record of recent years tells us that the 
     procedures through which fiscal choices are made are not 
     working. The problem is not one that involves the wrong 
     political leaders or the wrong parties. The problem is one 
     where those whom we elect are required to function under the 
     wrong set of rules, the wrong procedures. It is high time to 
     get our fiscal house in order.
       We can only imagine the increase in investor and business 
     confidence, both domestic and foreign, that enactment of a 
     Balanced Budget Amendment would produce. Perhaps even more 
     importantly, we could all regain confidence in ourselves, as 
     a free people under responsible constitutional government.
       Dr. James Buchanan, Nobel Laureate--Economics, George Mason 
     University; Dr. Ogden O. Allsbrook, Jr., University of 
     Georgia; Dr. Sheila Amin, Gutierrez de Pineres, University of 
     Arkansas; Dr. Robert V. Andelson, Auburn University; Dr. 
     Annelise Anderson, Hoover Institution Stanford University; 
     Dr. Martin Anderson, Hoover Institution Stanford University; 
     Dr. Terry L. Anderson, Montana State University; Dr. Peter H. 
     Aranson, Emory University; Dr. D.T. Armentano, University of 
     Hartford; Dr. Charles W. Baird, California State University, 
     Hayward; Dr. Charles Baker, Sr., Northeastern University; Dr. 
     Badi H. Baltagi, Texas A & M University; Joseph L. Bast, 
     Heartland Institute; Dr. Nicholas Beadles, The University of 
     Georgia; Dr. Richard Bean, University of Houston; Dr. John H. 
     Beck, Gonzaga University; Dr. Joseph A. Bell, Southwest 
     Missouri State University; Dr. Don Bellante, University of 
     South Florida; Dr. James T. Bennett, George Mason University; 
     Dr. Bruce Benson, Florida State University; Dr. John E. 
     Berthoud, Amer. Legislative Exchange Council; Dr. Walter 
     Block, College of the Holy Cross; Dr. Peter J. Boettke, New 
     York University; Dr. Cecil E. Bohanon, Ball State University; 
     Dr. Thomas E. Borcherding, Claremont Graduate School; Dr. 
     Samuel Bostaph, University of Dallas; Dr. Donald J. 
     Boudreaux, Clemson University; Dr. William Breit, Trinity 
     University (Texas); Dr. Dennis Brennen, Harper College; Dr. 
     Charles R. Britton, University of Arkansas; Dr. Edgar K. 
     Browning, Texas A & M University; Dr. Barry Brownstein, 
     University of Baltimore; Dr. Herbert Brubel, Simon Fraser 
     University (Burnaby, B.C., Canada).
       Dr. Richard C. K. Burdekin, Claremont McKenna College & 
     Claremont Graduate School; Dr. Glenn Campbell; Hoover 
     Institution, Stanford University; Dr. P. Rao Chatrathi, 
     College of Business & Public Administration, Old Dominion 
     University; Dr. David K. W. Chu, College of the Holy Cross; 
     Dr. J. R. Clark, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga; Dr. 
     Will Clark, University of Oklahoma; Dr. Kenneth W. Clarkson, 
     Law & Economics Center, University of Miami; Dr. R. Morris 
     Coats, Nicholls State University; Dr. Richard B. Coffman, 
     University of Idaho; Dr. Elchanan Cohn, University of South 
     Carolina; Dr. John W. Cooper, The James Madison Institute for 
     Public Policy Studies; Dr. Michael Copeland, Political 
     Economy Research Center; Dr. John F. Copper, Rhodes College; 
     Mr. Wendell Cox, Wendell Cox Consultancy; Dr. Mark Crain, 
     George Mason University; Dr. Ward S. Curran, Trinity College 
     (Hartford, CT); Dr. Albert L. Danielson, University of 
     Georgia; Dr. Patricia Danzon, The Wharton School, The 
     University of Pennsylvania; Dr. Audrey Davidson, University 
     of Louisville; Dr. Otto A. Davis, Carnegie Mellon University; 
     Dr. Ted E. Day, University of Texas at Dallas; Dr. Henry 
     Demmert, Santa Clara University; Dr. Arthur T. Denzau, 
     Claremont Graduate School; Dr. Arthur De Vany, University of 
     California, Irvine; Dr. Arthur M. Diamond, Jr., University of 
     Nebraska at Omaha; Dr. Charles Diamond, University of 
     Louisville; Dr. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Loyola College 
     (Baltimore, MD); Dr. James A. Dorn, Cato Institute; Dr. 
     William M. Doyle, University of Dallas; Dr. Gerald P. Dwyer, 
     Jr., Clemson University; Dr. Thomas R. Dye, Florida State 
     University, Dr. Ross D. Eckert, Claremont McKenna College & 
     Claremont Graduate School; Dr. Michael R. Edgmand, Oklahoma 
     State University.
       Dr. Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., Auburn University; Dr. Jerry 
     Ellig, George Mason University; Dr. Kenneth G. Elzinga, 
     University of Virginia; Dr. David Emanuel, University of 
     Texas at Dallas; Dr. T.W. Epps, University of Virginia; Dr. 
     Edward W. Erickson, North Carolina State University; Dr. 
     David I. Fand, George Mason University; Dr. David J. Faulds, 
     University of Louisville; Dr. Paul Feldstein, Graduate School 
     of Management, University of California, Irvine; Dr. Burton 
     W. Folsom, Murray State University; Dr. John Formby, 
     University of Alabama; Dr. Andrew W. Foshee, McNeese State 
     University; Dr. William J. Frazer, Jr., London School of 
     Economics; Dr. Jann E. Freed, Central University of Iowa; Dr. 
     Lowell Gallaway, Ohio University; Dr. James F. Gatti, 
     University of Vermont; Dr. David E.R. Gay, University of 
     Arkansas; Dr. Martin Geisel, Owen Graduate School of 
     Management, Vanderbilt University; Dr. William D. Gerdes, 
     North Dakota State University; Dr. Micha Gisser, The 
     University of New Mexico; Dr. Fred R. Glahe, University of 
     Colorado; Dr. Paul C. Goelz, A.H. Meadows Center, St. Mary's 
     University; Dr. Scott Goldsmith, University of Alaska, 
     Anchorage; Dr. Phillip D. Grub, George Washington University; 
     Dr. Gerald Gunderson, Trinity College (Hartford, CT); Dr. 
     James Gwartney, Florida State University; Dr. Gottfried 
     Haberler, American Enterprise Institute; Dr. Randy H. 
     Hamilton, University of California, Berkeley; Dr. Claire 
     Hammond, Wake Forest University; Dr. J. Daniel Hammond, Wake 
     Forest University; Dr. Ronald W. Hansen, William E. Simon 
     Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester; Dr. 
     John R. Hanson II, Texas A & M University; Dr. Lowell Harris, 
     Columbia University; Dr. Will C. Heath, University of 
     Southwestern Louisiana.
       Dr. Robert F. Herbert, Auburn University; Dr. Dale M. 
     Heien, University of California, Davis; Dr. John M. Heineke, 
     Santa Clara University; Dr. Ron Heiner, George Mason 
     University; Dr. A. James Heins, University of Illinois, 
     Urbana-Champaign; Dr. Davis R. Henderson, Hoover Institution, 
     Stanford University; Dr. Alan Heslop, Claremont McKenna 
     College; Dr. Robert Higgs, Seattle University; Dr. P.J. Hill, 
     Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL); Dr. Mark Hirschey, University 
     of Kansas; Dr. Randall G. Holcombe, Florida State University; 
     Dr. Steven Horwitz, St. Lawrence University; Dr. James L. 
     Hudson, Northern Illinois University; Dr. David Huettner, 
     University of Oklahoma; Dr. William J. Hunter, Marquette 
     University; Dr. Laurence R. Iannaccone, Santa Clara 
     University; Dr. Thomas R. Ireland, University of Missouri at 
     St. Louis; Dr. Joseph M. Jadlow, Oklahoma State University; 
     Dr. Gregg A. Jarrell, William E. Simon Graduate School of 
     Business Administration, University of Rochester; Dr. Jerry 
     B. Jenkins, Sequoia Institute; Dr. M. Bruce Johnson, 
     University of California, Santa Barbara; Dr. Ronald N. 
     Johnson, Montana State University; Dr. Thomas Johnson, North 
     Carolina State University; Dr. David L. Kaserman, Auburn 
     University; Dr. W.F. Kiesner, Loyola Marymount University-Los 
     Angeles; Dr. Robert Kleiman, Oakland University; Dr. Daniel 
     Klein, University of California, Irvine; Dr. David C. 
     Klingaman, Ohio University; Dr. Charles R. Knoeber, North 
     Carolina State University; Dr. Michael I. Krauss, George 
     Mason University; Dr. David Kreutzer, James Madison 
     University; Dr. Michael Kurth, McNeese State University; Dr. 
     David N. Laband, Salisbury State University; Dr. Everett C. 
     Ladd, University of Connecticut.
       Dr. J. Clayburn LaForce, Anderson School of Management 
     UCLA; Dr. William E. Laird, Florida State University; Dr. 
     Harry Landreth, Centre College; Dr. Dwight R. Lee, The 
     University of Georgia; Dr. Kenneth Lehn, University of 
     Pittsburgh; Dr. Stan Liebowitz, University of Texas at 
     Dallas; Dr. Cotton Lindsay, Clemson University; Dr. Charles 
     A. Lofgren, Claremont McKenna College; Dr. Dennis E. Logue, 
     Tuck School, Dartmouth College; Dr. James R. Lothian, Fordham 
     University; Dr. Robert F. Lusch, University of Oklahoma; Dr. 
     Rufus Ashley Lyman, University of Idaho; Dr. Paul W. MacAvoy, 
     Yale University; Dr. Paul Malatesta; University of 
     Washington; Dr. Yuri Maltsev, Carthage College; Dr. Allan B. 
     Mandelstamm, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State 
     University; Dr. J. Stanley Marshall, The James Madison 
     Institute; Dr. John Mathys, DePaul University; Dr. Merrill 
     Matthews, Jr., National Ctr. for Policy Analysis; Dr. 
     Margaret N. Maxey, The University of Texas at Austin; Dr. 
     Thomas H. Mayor, University of Houston; Dr. Donald McCloskey, 
     University of Iowa; Dr. Robert E. McCormick, Clemson 
     University; Dr. Paul W. McCracken, University of Michigan; 
     Dr. Roger E. Meiners, University of Texas at Arlington; Dr. 
     Larry J. Merville, University of Texas at Dallas; Dr. John H. 
     Moore, George Mason University; Dr. Stephen Moor, The Cato 
     Institute; Dr. John C. Moorhouse, Wake Forest University; Dr. 
     Laurence S. Moss, Babson College; Dr. J. Carter Murphy, 
     Southern Methodist University; Dr. Charles Murray, American 
     Enterprise Institute; Dr. Gerald Musgrave, Economics America, 
     Inc.; Dr. Ramon H. Myers, Hoover Institution, Stanford 
     University.
       Dr. Sheridan Nichols, American Enterprise Forum; Dr. 
     William A. Niskanen, The Cato Institute; Dr. Geoffrey E. 
     Nunn, San Jose State University; Dr. Tim Opler, Southern 
     Methodist University; Dr. Dale K. Osborne, University of 
     Texas at Dallas; Dr. Allen M. Parkman, Anderson School of 
     Management University of New Mexico; Dr. E.C. Pasour, Jr., 
     North Carolina State University; Dr. Judd W. Patton, Bellevue 
     College; Dr. Ellen Frankel Paul, Bowling Green State 
     University; Dr. William Peirce, Case Western Reserve 
     University; Dr. Steve Pejovich, Texas A & M University; Dr. 
     Sam Peltzman, University of Chicago; Dr. Charles R. Plott, 
     California Institute of Technology; Dr. Jeffrey Pontiff, 
     University of Washington; Dr. Philip K. Porter, University of 
     South Florida; Dr. Barry W. Poulson, University of Colorado; 
     Dr. Jan S. Prybyla, Pennsylvania State University; Dr. Gary 
     M. Quinlivan, St Vincent College; Dr. Alvin Rabushka, Hoover 
     Institution Stanford University; Dr. Donald P. Racheter, 
     Central University of Iowa; Dr. Robert Reed, University of 
     Oklahoma; Dr. William Reichenstein, Baylor University; Dr. 
     Barrie Richardson, Frost School of Business Centenary 
     College; Dr. James R. Rinehart, Francis Marion University; 
     Dr. Mario J. Rizzo, New York University; Dr. Jerry Rohacek, 
     University of Alaska, Anchorage; Dr. Simon Rottenberg, 
     University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Dr. James Roumasset, 
     University of Hawaii; Dr. Roy J. Ruffin, University of 
     Houston; Dr. John Rutledge, Rutledge & Company, Inc.; Dr. 
     Joel W. Sailors, University of Houston; Dr. Katsuro Sakoh, 
     Institute for Pacific Studies; Dr. Thomas R. Saving, Texas 
     A&M University; Dr. David Schap, College of the Holy Cross.
       Dr. Loren C. Scott, Louisiana State University; Dr. G. 
     William Schwert, William E. Simon Graduate School of Business 
     Administration University of Rochester; Dr. Gerald W. Scully, 
     University of Texas at Dallas; Dr. Richard T. Selden, 
     University of Virginia; Dr. Larry E. Shirland, University of 
     Vermont; Dr. William F. Shughart II, University of 
     Mississippi; Dr. Randy T. Simmons, Utah State University; The 
     Honorable William E. Simon, Former United States Secretary of 
     the Treasury; Dr. Gene R. Simonson, California State 
     University, Long Beach; Rev. Robert A. Sirico, CSP, The Acton 
     Institute For The Study of Religion and Liberty; Dr. Daniel 
     Slottje, Southern Methodist University; Dr. William Gene 
     Smiley, Marquette University; Dr. Barton A. Smith, University 
     of Houston; Dr. Lowell C. Smith, Nichols College; Dr. David 
     L. Sollars, Auburn University, Montgomery; Dr. John C. Soper, 
     John Carroll University; Dr. Frank G. Steindl, Oklahoma State 
     University; Dr. James A. Stever, University of Cincinnati; 
     Dr. Hans R. Stoll, Financial Markets Research Center 
     Vanderbilt University; Dr. Richard L. Stroup, Montana State 
     University; Dr. W. C. Stubblebine, Claremont McKenna College 
     & Claremont Graduate School; Dr. David J. Teece, University 
     of California, Berkeley; Dr. Clifford F. Thies, Shenandoah 
     University; Dr. Henry Thompson, Auburn University; Dr. Walter 
     N. Thurman, North Carolina State University; Dr. Richard 
     Timberlake, University of Georgia; Dr. Robert D. Tollison, 
     George Mason University; Dr. Robert H. Trent, University of 
     Virginia; Dr. Charlotte Twight, Boise State University; Dr. 
     Jon G. Udell, University of Wisconsin--Madison; Dr. Hendrik 
     van dem Berg, University of Nebraska; Dr. Terry Wm. Van 
     Allen, Oregon Health Sciences University.
       Dr. T. Norman Van Cott, Ball State University; Dr. Charles 
     Van Eaton, Hillsdale College; Dr. Karen I. Vaughn, George 
     Mason University; Dr. Richard Vedder, Ohio University; Dr. 
     George J. Viksnins, Georgetown University; Dr. Warren R. 
     Wade, North Park College; Dr. Richard E. Wagner, George Mason 
     University; Dr. Alan Rufus Waters, California State 
     University, Fresno; Dr. Bernard L. Weinstein, University of 
     North Texas; Dr. John T. Wenders, University of Idaho; Dr. E. 
     G. West, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada); Dr. Lawrence 
     H. White, University of Georgia; Dr. G. C. Wiegand, Southern 
     Illinois University; Dr. Thomas D. Willett, Claremont 
     Graduate School & Claremont McKenna College; Dr. Walter E. 
     Williams, George Mason University; Dr. Michael K. Wohlgenant, 
     North Carolina State University; Dr. Alexander Worniak, 
     Catholic University of America; Dr. Gene C. Wunder, School of 
     Business, Washburn University; Dr. Thomas L. Wyrick, 
     Southwest Missouri State University; Dr. Bruce Yandle, 
     Clemson University; Dr. Keith M. Yanner, Central University 
     of Iowa; Dr. Steven Ybarrola, Central University of Iowa; Dr. 
     Jerrold L. Zimmerman, William E. Simon Graduate School of 
     Business Administration, University of Rochester; Dr. Thomas 
     S. Zorn, University of Nebraska.
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, those economists are representing almost 
every major economic school in the United States. They are not 
politicians. They are not legislators. They are not crafters of a 
constitutional amendment. That is not their business. Their business is 
to crunch numbers, to look at the whole of the U.S. economy in a 
microsense or macrosense and say: Here is what it is, and here is what 
it is going to do.
  What they are saying is that we are in trouble, and they are 
endorsing a balanced budget amendment. Why? As a court of last resort. 
Maybe some of them are there. But I think most of them really do 
recognize the fact, as the Senator from Kansas and I recognize, that 
what we have done is not working, that there is without question, 
without any measurement of the mind or the imagination, the fact that 
we have failed and we are continuing to fail. And the debt gets bigger 
and the obligation on future generations becomes astronomical.
  Even this administration admits that a child born in 1994 must pay 82 
percent of his or her gross pay over their lifetime to finance 
Government. That is a testimony of tragedy. Without question, it is. 
And so, we are a Third World nation. Oh, we have beautiful Government 
buildings and we have millions of Federal employees. But the average 
taxpaying citizen could well begin to live as if he or she were living 
in a Third World nation, with no ability to spend and no ability to 
provide a roof over their head, and most importantly no ability to say 
to their children: You are going to live in a world, in an environment 
that was better than the one I lived in, because that has always been 
the promise of every generation of Americans, to be able to say we have 
made a better world for our children.
  Today, we are not doing that. The world we craft out of the public 
policy that is created on the floor of this Senate is saying that the 
world will be worse--not that we do not care, not that we are not going 
to try to have a new health care system, not that we are not going to 
try to address the people who are out on the streets and the people who 
are truly in need--but for the masses who pay the bills, the world will 
be worse. Or it will be less from a standpoint of opportunity, from a 
standpoint of the future that we would want to hand to our children.
  This is not just a technical constitutional amendment. In my opinion, 
this is an expression of phenomenal compassion. This is an expression 
that this Congress, after over 200 years, will have learned that it too 
makes mistakes and owns up to them and admits them and turns to the 
taxpayers and says, ``You know as a Representative under the 
Constitution, you are the ones in charge, and we are going to give you 
the power to assume that charge again.''
  So while all of that is being debated, we are going to be wringing 
our hands and saying the Court can do this or this or that, or the 
Executive cannot or will not or should not or could not.
  Who cares? I care about the future. And those who have brought this 
amendment to the Senate, Senate Joint Resolution 41, care that we will 
plan for a future world in this country that is greater than the one we 
left.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 
minutes as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator has that right.

                          ____________________