[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 20 (Tuesday, March 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I voted against the Simon amendment, and I 
feel that I must at this time explain my vote and say why I voted the 
way I did.
  I listened with bemusement to the statement made by the Senator from 
South Carolina when he said the only way we are going to do this is to 
mandate the Congress with a constitutional amendment. But just as the 
majority leader pointed out, they added a clause which took the Supreme 
Court out and said the Supreme Court could not review it, so who is 
going to mandate it? The whole thing I think evolved into almost 
ridiculousness toward the end.
  I must at the outset, Mr. President, say that I do philosophically 
support a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. I support 
such a change first because of my own personal belief in frugality. 
That is the way I was raised. Except for two houses that my wife and I 
have purchased and a car I bought once when I was a younger man, I have 
never gone into debt because I do not believe in it. My wife and I have 
always saved and then bought things or invested. I think that is 
probably due to the influence of my father. My father worked in the 
coal mines most of his life. When he saved up enough money, he bought a 
small farm. His timing was bad. It was about 1928. The Depression came, 
and he lost it. He impressed upon me during my early years a great fear 
of debt and what debt meant to him, how it destroyed his dreams.
  In 1981, after the Reagan tax cut was passed--I voted against it--
Speaker O'Neill asked me to appear on a television program, I believe 
it was the MacNeil/Lehrer program, to talk about it. I remember at that 
time I held up my credit card on the show and I said President Reagan 
and the Congress in passing this just put the country on your credit 
card. And it is going to feel mighty good when you are out there 
spending money and borrowing it. But sometime the bill is going to come 
due. And what I am afraid is that when that bill comes due, the people 
who are going to have to pay it will be the working people of this 
country. They are the ones who will have to pay it.
  Well, by 1986, after phony Gramm-Rudman I and phony Gramm-Rudman II, 
we kept getting deeper into debt. I did not see any way out, and so in 
1986 I supported the amendment to balance the budget. That was then 
called the Hatch-Simon amendment.
  I was pulled in the direction of supporting that because of my 
upbringing, because of my background, and because what I had seen 
President Reagan do to this country, pushing us deeper into debt and 
putting us on a credit card.
  But I must also say the issue of constitutional integrity also 
concerns me. Our distinguished President pro tempore has spoken on that 
very eloquently, and I have listened as often as I could and I have 
read just about all that he has spoken on this issue.
  Thomas Jefferson has often been quoted in this debate. I will proffer 
another quote from Thomas Jefferson when he said:

       A permanent Constitution must be the work of quiet leisure, 
     much inquiry and great deliberation.

  And further Thomas Jefferson defined the Constitution as ``an act 
above the powers of ordinary legislation.''
  So we must, Mr. President, justify clearly and beyond doubt why it is 
necessary to act above the powers of ordinary legislation.
  The deficit, our inability to come to grips with it and to make the 
hard choices, what it will mean in cost to future generations, the 
specter of monetizing the debt in the future, I believe, gives us some 
justification to act above the powers of ordinary legislation.
  The question then becomes what type of an amendment? How is it 
worded? What is in? What is out? Well, today we had two before us. 
Neither was perfect. I believe the Reid amendment was better, and that 
is why I supported it. There were three reasons why I did.
  I believe the Reid amendment was superior to the Simon amendment, 
first, because it exempted Social Security. The Simon amendment did 
not. I would quote Robert Ball a renowned expert on Social Security 
issues, in the February 22 Congressional Record, when he said that 
``the Social Security system is self-financed and responsibly 
financed.''
  Social Security has always paid its own way. From 1937 to 1992, 
Social Security collected $3.900.7 trillion. It paid out $3.569.2 
trillion, leaving $331.5 billion in assets. Social Security has always 
paid its own way.
  But no matter. The Concord Coalition and others want to destroy this. 
They want to turn Social Security into a welfare program and impose 
turn a means test. That is unfair and unacceptable.
  I believe the prediction I made in 1981 when I said the country was 
going on a credit card and when the bill came due it would be put on 
the backs of workers would come true if we passed the Simon amendment, 
because in 2001, when the budget would have to balanced where is all 
the money going to be? It is going to be in the Social Security Trust 
Fund, and that is what we will be going after. Congress will go after 
the payments that workers put into the Social Security trust fund and 
will go after the benefits that retirees receive to balance the budget.
  I do not think that is fair, and I do not think that is right. That 
is why I voted against the Simon amendment, because the Simon amendment 
would have required our workers and the elderly to pay for the 
profligate spending of the 1980's.
  Now, again, according to Robert Ball in a February 5 Washington Post 
op-ed, he said Social Security revenues will exceed outlays for the 
next 30 years. Even Mr. Simon agreed with that. But then he said then 
it starts to go down.
  But that is 30 years from now. Who can say what our situation will be 
like. By then we might find a cure for cancer. I hope we do. We might 
find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. We will have health care reform, I 
hope, and all of these could save us untold billions of dollars which 
would help our economic situation.
  But if the Simon amendment were to pass, by 2001 the Social Security 
trust fund would start to be raided; you can count on it.
  The second reason I thought the Reid amendment was better than the 
Simon amendment was because it provided for separate capital and 
operating budgets. Most States have these. I think we need to delineate 
what is capital and what is operating. It would be subject to debate. I 
happen to believe very strongly that education is one of the most 
fundamental capital investments that we can make, not an operating but 
a capital investment.
  The third reason that I believe the Reid amendment was better than 
the Simon amendment was because of its recession provision. We are a 
diverse Nation, Mr. President. Recession may hit one area but not 
another. In the 1980's we had a big depression in the Midwest. But the 
coasts were booming. We enacted legislation to help our people, help 
our farmers who were in crisis. We passed it. But I am not so certain 
we could do that with a three-fifths majority in the Senate sometime in 
the future. Senator Simon says if there is a recession you will get 
over 60 votes. I am not so certain taking a look at the past looking at 
what happened to the reconciliation bill last year. I do think that the 
Reid amendment should have been improved to say that deficit spending 
during a recession must be paid back within a set period after the 
recession ends.
  But again, Senator Simon in his closing remarks--he is not here, and 
I should not refer to him too often since he is not here--you can check 
the Record. In his closing remarks he said that every generation has 
paid its own way. I beg to differ. In the Great Depression from 1934 to 
1939, under the Roosevelt administration, under the direction of Harry 
Hopkins, we spent over $9 billion on relief in this country. Did it 
stop the depression? Not really. It never really got us out of the 
depression. But it saved a lot of lives. It kept people from starving 
to death. It kept people from freezing in the wintertime, and I ought 
to know. When my father lost that farm in 1929 and could not find work, 
he had to go on WPA later on in the 1930's. Had it not been for WPA, I 
do not know what would have happened to my family.
  That generation did not pay its way. But thank God we had a 
Government that cared. We had a Government that knew that by investing 
in people during that period of time we would go to a stronger country 
and future generations would be secure.
  So I beg to differ. Each generation has not paid its own way. And 
sometimes when we have a recession, we are going to have to make sure 
that this country responds by taking care that people do not fall 
through the bottom, that they do not starve, and that they do not 
freeze to death.
  So that is not taken care of in the Simon amendment. Again, you have 
to have supermajority support to pass that. I am not certain that that 
would be there.
  So in essence, I believe the Simon amendment was seriously flawed. 
Again, my vote should not in any way be interpreted that I will not 
vote in the future for a balanced budget amendment. In the past, I have 
supported some and I have opposed some. I would point out that Mr. 
Simon changed his amendment at least twice since 1986. So it is not 
written in stone.
  Others say this issue will come back. Well, perhaps it will. I will 
look again at how it is written. But it must provide, I think, No. 1, 
to keep Social Security out; No. 2, it must provide for a majority 
vote, not just supermajority, but a majority vote to take care in times 
of recession when we might need to spend money in order to keep people 
alive.
  I will close on that note. I believe quite frankly after reading the 
Constitution and looking at the rules of the Senate--I see the 
distinguished President pro tempore here. He knows it much better than 
I do. I really believe that the filibuster rules are unconstitutional. 
I believe the Constitution sets out five times when you need majority 
or supermajority votes in the Senate for treaties, impeachment. We all 
know the five. I believe by having a filibuster rule that provides for 
a minority to determine the course and the outcome of legislation and 
to decide whether something is enacted into law or not. I do not know. 
It has never been tested in the courts.
  But I hope that when the new Congress reconvenes next January we will 
take a look at changing the rules on the filibuster so that the 
majority can indeed rule here as was envisioned by our Founding 
Fathers.
  So for all these issues, I believe that the Simon amendment was 
seriously flawed and I could not in good conscience support it. That is 
not to say as I said that sometime in the future I might not support 
some amendment that might be crafted differently, that might provide 
for the things that I spoke about. But if it is another Simon 
amendment, I could not do it.
  There are those who will say that I voted for the Simon amendment in 
1986 and I changed my vote. I have changed my views. It was Robert 
Lowell who once said that, ``Only the foolish and the dead never change 
their views.''
  I like to think that I at least have enough intelligence and I am 
alive enough that as times and conditions change I can look more 
accurately and closely at legislation and determine how it is going to 
affect our country.
  So in those intervening years between 1986 and 1994 I saw the 
problems in the Simon amendment and what it would mean to Social 
Security, and what it would mean to our country if we indeed found 
ourselves in a recession.
  Again, for those reasons, my conscience compelled me to vote against 
it.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The President pro tempore.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the Scriptures instructed that, ``A word 
fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.''
  I trust that it would be fitting for me to speak just a very few 
words to congratulate those Senators who voted against the amendment 
today. It took courage.
  Before the Senator from Iowa leaves the floor, I express my 
commendation as well as my thanks to him for the vote that he cast; my 
thanks because he voted to save the Constitution; my commendations 
because it was an extremely difficult matter for him. I know he 
wrestled with it up until the time of the vote.
  So I commend him. I have no doubt that he can sleep well tonight. His 
conscience is clear. He can look at his children, if he has 
grandchildren, and say, ``I did my duty as I saw it.''
  I also, Mr. President, express my appreciation to those who supported 
the Simon amendment. I found in this debate Mr. Simon, as we have 
always known him to be, to be courteous, tenacious, and he worked hard. 
He went from office to office and from Senator to Senator. He worked 
very hard; Senator Craig, and Senator Hatch, as well.
  I thank my colleague on the other side of the aisle, the Senator from 
Oregon, Mr. Hatfield. And I thank my colleague, Senator Stevens, and my 
colleague, Senator Kassebaum. It was extremely difficult for them to 
take the stand that they took. But we are not to be concerned so much 
about difficulties in taking difficult stands. That is what we expect 
to do. And we take the oath to support and defend the Constitution. We 
expect to have to take difficult stands. I thank them.

  I also thank Senator Reid and those Senators who supported him in the 
amendment that he had so carefully drafted. It was an exquisite piece 
of genius on his part, I think, to craft that amendment, and it would 
obviously have made some improvement. As I said earlier, I could not 
support any amendment to amend the Constitution that would be 
destructive of the separation of powers, checks and balances, and would 
result in a shifting of the power of the purse away from the 
legislative branch.
  Lastly, I commend and salute the distinguished majority leader. 
Without his support, his hard work, his consistently and constant hard 
work, the amendment, in all likelihood, would have carried. It was a 
difficult choice for him. But leadership is expected to be difficult, 
and Senator Mitchell has done the Senate and the Nation a good deed in 
helping to defeat the amendment.
  Finally, let me say that once again the Senate has justified my faith 
in the institution, and the Constitution still lives.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.

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