[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 27 (Friday, March 11, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: March 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET--FISCAL YEAR 1995
The Committee resumed its sitting.
{time} 1221
The CHAIRMAN. It is now in order to consider amendment No. 4 printed
in House Report 103-429.
amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by mr. kasich.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a
substitute.
The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment in the nature of
a substitute.
The text of the amendment in the nature of a substitute is as
follows:
Amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by Mr.
Kasich:
Strike all after the resolving clause and insert the
following:
SECTION 1. CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL
YEAR 1995.
The Congress determines and declares that this resolution
is the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year
1995, including the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal
years 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999, as required by section 301
of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
SEC. 2. RECOMMENDED LEVELS AND AMOUNTS.
The following budgetary levels are appropriate for the
fiscal years beginning on October 1, 1994, October 1, 1995,
October 1, 1996, October 1, 1997, and October 1, 1998:
(1) The recommended levels of Federal revenues are as
follows:
Fiscal year 1995: $971,300,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996: $1,010,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997: $1,057,500,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998: $1,106,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999: $1,150,800,000,000.
and the amounts by which the aggregate levels of Federal
revenues should be decreased are as follows:
Fiscal year 1995: $6,706,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996: $21,012,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997: $22,489,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998: $29,972,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999: $39,154,000,000.
and the amounts for Federal Insurance Contributions Act
revenues for hospital insurance within the recommended levels
of Federal revenues are as follows:
Fiscal year 1995: $100,270,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996: $106,324,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997: $111,933,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998: $117,830,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999: $123,669,000,000.
(2) The appropriate levels of total new budget authority
are as follows:
Fiscal year 1995: $1,194,600,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996: $1,236,700,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997: $1,298,300,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998: $1,372,200,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999: $1,440,300,000,000.
(3) The appropriate levels of total budget outlays are as
follows:
Fiscal year 1995: $1,204,600,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996: $1,229,600,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997: $1,290,800,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998: $1,106,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999: $1,150,800,000,000.
(4) The amounts of the deficits are as follows:
Fiscal year 1995: $233,300,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996: $219,600,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997: $233,300,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998: $244,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999: $272,100,000,000.
(5) The appropriate levels of the public debt are as
follows:
Fiscal year 1995: $4,963,100,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996: $5,269,100,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997: $5,593,900,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998: $5,971,400,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999: $6,292,000,000,000.
(6) The appropriate levels of total Federal credit activity
for the fiscal years beginning on October 1, 1994, October 1,
1995, October 1, 1996, October 1, 1997, and October 1, 1998,
are as follows:
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New direct loan obligations, $26,000,000,000.
(B) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$196,500,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New direct loan obligations, $30,400,000,000.
(B) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$170,300,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New direct loan obligations, $31,900,000,000.
(B) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$160,600,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New direct loan obligations, $33,700,000,000.
(B) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$159,800,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New direct loan obligations, $35,900,000,000.
(B) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$160,800,000,000.
SEC. 3. MAJOR FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES.
The Congress determines and declares that the appropriate
levels of new budget authority, budget outlays, new direct
loan obligations, new primary loan guarantee commitments, and
new secondary loan guarantee commitments for fiscal years
1995 through 1999 for each major functional category are:
(1) National Defense (050):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $269,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $275,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $266,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $270,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $265,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $269,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $275,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $272,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $284,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $275,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(2) International Affairs (150):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $15,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $16,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,900,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$17,000,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $12,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $15,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,800,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$17,500,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $12,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $14,600,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,600,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$17,500,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $12,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $14,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,400,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$17,500,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $13,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $14,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,400,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$17,000,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(3) General Science, Space, and Technology (250):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $16,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $17,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $17,300,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $17,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $17,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $17,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $18,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $18,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $18,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $18,400,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(4) Energy (270):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $4,500,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $3,600,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,400,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $2,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $2,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $2,300,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $1,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $2,500,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $1,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $1,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(5) Natural Resources and Environment (300):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $17,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $19,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $16,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $18,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $17,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $17,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $17,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $17,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $16,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $16,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(6) Agriculture (350):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $11,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $11,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $9,900,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $6,300,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $11,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $9,900,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $8,400,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $4,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $11,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $10,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $8,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $4,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $11,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $10,400,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $8,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $4,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $11,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $10,700,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $8,800,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $4,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(7) Commerce and Housing Credit (370):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $5,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$11,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,800,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$117,900,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments,
$130,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $2,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$13,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,800,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$103,200,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments,
$110,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $1,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$6,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,800,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$95,900,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments,
$110,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $1,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$6,600,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,800,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$96,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments,
$110,000,000,000.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $1,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$5,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,800,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$99,500,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments,
$110,000,000,000.
(8) Transportation (400):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $29,500,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $33,900,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $29,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $33,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $31,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $33,700,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $32,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $34,400,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $33,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $35,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(9) Community and Regional Development (450):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $5,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $11,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,200,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $2,800,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $5,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $8,400,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,100,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $2,800,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $5,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $6,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,000,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $2,800,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $6,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $6,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,000,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $2,800,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $6,300,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $6,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $2,000,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $2,800,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(10) Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services
(500):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $48,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $50,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $5,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$19,200,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $47,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $46,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $11,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$14,400,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $48,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $47,400,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $13,200,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$13,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $49,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $48,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $15,100,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$12,700,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $51,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $49,900,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $16,900,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$11,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(11) Health (550):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $122,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $121,700,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $400,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $130,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $130,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $400,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $143,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $142,700,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $400,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $158,500,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $157,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $175,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $174,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(12) Medicare (570):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $156,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $155,400,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $172,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $170,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $189,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $187,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $208,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $205,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $230,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $227,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(13) Income Security (600):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $214,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $220,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $224,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $223,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $238,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $238,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $255,400,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $249,400,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $260,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $264,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(14) Social Security (650):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $6,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $6,700,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $6,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $6,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $8,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $8,100,000,
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $8,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $8,900,000,
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $9,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $9,600,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(15) Veterans Benefits and Services (700):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $36,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $36,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,300,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$32,900,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $37,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $35,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,300,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$27,400,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $38,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $37,900,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,300,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$25,800,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $39,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $38,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,400,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$25,600,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $40,500,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $40,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $1,500,000,000.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments,
$25,300,000,000.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(16) Administration of Justice (750):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $16,300,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $16,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $17,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $17,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $16,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $16,700,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $17,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $17,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $17,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $18,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(17) General Government (800):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $11,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $12,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $11,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $12,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $11,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $11,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $12,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $11,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $12,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $11,900,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(18) Net Interest (900):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $246,200,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $246,200,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, $264,100,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $264,100,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, $276,600,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $276,600,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, $289,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $289,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, -$303,300,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$303,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(19) Allowances (920):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, $3,000,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $2,600,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, -$6,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$5,800,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, -$8,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$8,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, -$10,700,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$10,600,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, -$12,500,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$12,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(20) Undistributed Offsetting Receipts (950):
Fiscal year 1995:
(A) New budget authority, -$36,800,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$36,800,000,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1996:
(A) New budget authority, -$32,500,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$32,500,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1997:
(A) New budget authority, -$31,900,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$31,900,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1998:
(A) New budget authority, -$33,300,000,000.
(B) Outlays, -$33,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
Fiscal year 1999:
(A) New budget authority, $34,300,000,000.
(B) Outlays, $34,300,000,000.
(C) New direct loan obligations, $0.
(D) New primary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
(E) New secondary loan guarantee commitments, $0.
SEC. 4. RECONCILIATION.
(a) Not later than May 16, 1994, the House committees named
in subsections (b) through (p) of this section shall submit
their recommendations to the House Committee on the Budget.
After receiving those recommendations, the House Committee on
the Budget shall report to the House a reconciliation bill or
resolution carrying out all such recommendations without any
substantive revision.
(b) Committee on Agriculture shall report changes in law
within its jurisdiction that provide direct spending,
sufficient to increase outlays as follows: $637,000,000 in
fiscal year 1995, and to reduce outlays as follows:
$7,682,000,000 in fiscal year 1996, $5,884,000,000 in fiscal
year 1997, $4,733,000,000 in fiscal year 1998, and
$1,759,000,000 in fiscal year 1999, and program changes in
laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient to result in a
reduction of outlays as follows: $3,042,000,000 in fiscal
year 1995, $3,780,000,000 in fiscal year 1996, $4,777,000,000
in fiscal year 1997, $5,367,000,000 in fiscal year 1998, and
$5,933,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(c) Committee on Armed Services shall report changes in law
within its jurisdiction that provide program changes,
sufficient to result in a reduction in outlays as follows:
$17,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $27,000,000 in fiscal year
1996, $32,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $33,000,000 in fiscal
year 1998, and $34,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(d) Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs shall
report changes in law within its jurisdiction that provide
direct spending, sufficient to reduce outlays as follows:
$510,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $297,000,000 in fiscal year
1996, $613,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $814,000,000 in
fiscal year 1998, and $1,022,000,000 in fiscal year 1999, and
program changes in laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient
to result in a reduction of outlays as follows:
$2,332,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $2,170,000,000 in fiscal
year 1996, $2,777,000 in fiscal year 1997, $3,062,000,000 in
fiscal year 1998, and $3,263,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(e) Committee on Education and Labor shall report changes
in law within its jurisdiction that provide direct spending,
sufficient to reduce outlays as follows: $1,339,000,000 in
fiscal year 1995, $9,230,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$7,517,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $6,383,000,000 in fiscal
year 1998, and $3,409,000,000 in fiscal year 1999, and
program changes in laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient
to result in a reduction of outlays as follows: $951,000,000
in fiscal year 1995, $3,024,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$3,541,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $3,695,000,000 in fiscal
year 1998, and $3,808,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(f) Committee on Energy and Commerce shall report changes
in law within its jurisdiction that provide direct spending,
sufficient to reduce outlays as follows: $2,685,000,000 in
fiscal year 1995, $7,056,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$7,538,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $9,319,000,000 in fiscal
year 1998, and $11,482,000,000 in fiscal year 1999, and
program changes in laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient
to result in a reduction of outlays as follows: $107,000,000
in fiscal year 1995, $227,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$340,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $316,000,000 in fiscal year
1998, and $354,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(g) Committee on Foreign Affairs shall report changes in
law within its jurisdiction, program changes, sufficient to
result in a reduction of outlays as follows: $602,000,000 in
fiscal year 1995, $1,319,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$1,579,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $1,712,000,000 in fiscal
year 1998, and $1,824,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(h) Committee on Government Operations shall report changes
in law within its jurisdiction that provide program changes,
sufficient to result in a reduction of outlays as follows:
$704,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $2,092,000,000 in fiscal
year 1996, $2,802,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $3,258,000,000
in fiscal year 1998, and $3,406,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(i) Committee on House Administration shall report program
changes in laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient to result
in a reduction of outlays as follows: $0 in fiscal year 1995,
$0 in fiscal year 1996, $52,000,000 in fiscal year 1997,
$84,000,000 in fiscal year 1998, and $94,000,000 in fiscal
year 1999.
(j) Committee on Judiciary shall report changes in law
within its jurisdiction that provide direct spending,
sufficient to reduce outlays as follows: $0 in fiscal year
1995, $0 in fiscal year 1996, $56,000,000 in fiscal year
1997, $58,000,000 in fiscal year 1998, and $60,000,000 in
fiscal year 1999, and program changes in laws within its
jurisdiction, sufficient to result in a reduction of outlays
as follows: $94,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $419,000,000 in
fiscal year 1996, $577,000,000 in fiscal year 1997,
$675,000,000 in fiscal year 1998, and $503,000,000 in fiscal
year 1999.
(k) Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries shall report
changes in law within its jurisdiction that provide direct
spending, sufficient to reduce outlays as follows:
$103,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $103,000,000 in fiscal year
1996, $103,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $103,000,000 in
fiscal year 1998, and $103,000,000 in fiscal year 1999, and
program changes in laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient
to result in a reduction of outlays as follows: $3,000,000 in
fiscal year 1995, $108,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$112,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $114,000,000 in fiscal year
1998, and $114,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(l) Committee on Natural Resources shall report changes in
law within its jurisdiction that provide direct spending,
sufficient to reduce outlays as follows: $233,000,000 in
fiscal year 1995, $2,433,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$1,177,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $1,190,000,000 in fiscal
year 1998, and $1,196,000,000 in fiscal year 1999, and
program changes in laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient
to result in a reduction of outlays as follows:
$1,089,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $1,505,000,000 in fiscal
year 1996, $1,810,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $2,125,000,000
in fiscal year 1998, and $2,440,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(m) Committee on Post Office and Civil Service shall report
changes in law within its jurisdiction that provide direct
spending, sufficient to reduce outlays as follows: $0 in
fiscal year 1995, $2,050,000,000 in fiscal year 1996,
$3,100,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $3,150,000,000 in fiscal
year 1998, and $3,250,000,000 in fiscal year 1999, and
program changes in laws within its jurisdiction, sufficient
to result in a reduction of outlays as follows:
$1,751,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $3,578,000,000 in fiscal
year 1996, $5,353,000 in fiscal year 1997, $7,198,000,000 in
fiscal year 1998, and $8,753,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(n) Committee on Public Works and Transportation shall
report changes in law within its jurisdiction that provide
direct spending, sufficient to increase outlays as follows:
$2,251,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $2,490,000,000 in fiscal
year 1996, $2,782,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $3,079,000,000
in fiscal year 1998, and $3,388,000,000 in fiscal year 1999,
and program changes in laws within its jurisdiction,
sufficient to result in a reduction of outlays as follows:
$6,660,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $7,686,000,000 in fiscal
year 1996, $8,749,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $9,742,000,000
in fiscal year 1998, and $10,638,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(o) Committee on Small Business shall report changes in law
within its jurisdiction that provide program changes,
sufficient to result in a reduction of outlays as follows:
$114,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $182,000,000 in fiscal year
1996, $214,000,000 in fiscal year 1997, $238,000,000 in
fiscal year 1998, and $251,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(p) Committee on Veterans' Affairs shall report changes in
law within its jurisdiction that provide program changes,
sufficient to result in a reduction of outlays as follows: $0
in fiscal year 1995, $0 in fiscal year 1996, $0 in fiscal
year 1997, $0 in fiscal year 1998, and $327,000,000 in fiscal
year 1999.
(q)(1) Committee on Ways and Means shall report changes in
law within its jurisdiction that provide sufficient to reduce
outlays as follows: $5,219,000,000 in fiscal year 1995,
$15,451,000,000 in fiscal year 1996, $15,190,000,000 in
fiscal year 1997, $15,258,000,000 in fiscal year 1998, and
$14,818,000,000 in fiscal year 1999.
(2) Committee on Ways and Means shall report changes in law
within its jurisdiction sufficient to reduce revenues as
follows: $6,706,000,000 in fiscal year 1995, $21,012,000,000
in fiscal year 1996, $22,489,000,000 in fiscal year 1997,
$29,972,000,000 in fiscal year 1998, and $39,154,000,000 in
fiscal year 1999.
SEC. 5. SENSE OF COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET ON SCORING HEALTH
REFORM.
It is the sense of the Committee on the Budget that all
financial transactions associated with the President's health
reform legislation or similar health reform legislation
relying on mandated payments to a Government entity be
treated as part of the Federal budget, including premium
payments by individuals and employees to health alliances
(which should be treated as receipts) and payments by health
alliances to providers (which should be treated as outlays),
for all purposes under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
SEC. 6. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS REGARDING RESERVE FUNDS FOR
EMERGENCIES.
It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the emergency designation under section 251 of the
Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 has
repeatedly been invoked to circumvent the discretionary
spending limits for other than emergency purposes;
(2) amounts for emergencies should be set aside within a
reserve fund and subject to the discretionary spending limit;
(3) the reserve fund shall total 1 percent of annual
domestic discretionary budget authority; and
(4) emergency funding requirements in excess of amounts
held in the reserve fund should be offset by a reduction in
appropriations.
SEC. 7. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS REGARDING UNFUNDED MANDATES.
(a) It is the sense of Congress that legislation and
appropriate House and Senate rules amendments should be
adopted that--
(1) requires the Congressional Budget Office to estimate
the cost of unfunded Federal mandates in all legislation
before such legislation is considered by a full committee or
by the full House or Senate;
(2) prohibits consideration in the House or Senate of
legislation creating or expanding a Federal mandate that
increases the net cost to State and local governments of
complying with all Federal mandates (subject to a waiver by a
three-fifths majority);
(3) charges the Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget with
monitoring all unfunded Federal mandates and identifying
those mandates that should be repealed; and
(4) codifies the recommendations of the National
Performance Review for broad agency waiver authority and
bottom-up grant consolidation.
SEC. 8. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS REGARDING REGULATORY BUDGETING.
(a) Findings.--The Congress finds that the cost of
compliance with Federal regulations--
(1) constitutes a real, albeit an invisible, tax on
America's private and public sectors;
(2) will cost the American private sector over
$600,000,000,000 in 1995; and
(3) will exceed 9 percent of the Nation's Gross Domestic
Product and annually cost the average household between
$6,565 and $8,869.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of the Congress
that the Federal Government should adopt a regulatory budget
that encompasses the economic impact of Federal regulations
on the national economy. The ultimate goal of the regulatory
budget should be to limit the cost of private and public
compliance with Federal regulations to a fixed percentage of
the Nation's Gross Domestic Product.
SEC. 9. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS REGARDING BASELINES.
(a) Findings.--The Congress finds that--
(1) the baseline budget shows the likely course of Federal
revenues and spending if policies remain unchanged;
(2) baseline budgeting has given rise to the practice of
calculating policy changes from inflated spending levels; and
(3) the baseline concept has been misused to portray
policies that would simply slow down the increase in spending
as spending reductions.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of the Congress
that--
(1) the President should submit a budget that compares
proposed spending levels for the budget year with the current
year; and
(2) the starting point for deliberations on a budget
resolution should be the current year.
SEC. 10. ADJUSTMENT OF PAY-AS-YOU-GO SCORECARD.
It is the sense of the Congress that upon enactment of a
reconciliation bill pursuant to section 4, the Director of
the Office of Management and Budget shall reduce the balances
of direct spending and receipts legislation applicable to
each fiscal year under section 252 of the Balanced Budget and
Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 by an amount equal to
the net change in the deficit achieved through the enactment
in that Act of direct spending and receipts legislation for
that year.
The CHAIRMAN. Under the rule, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich]
will be recognized for 30 minutes, and the gentleman from Minnesota
[Mr. Sabo] will be recognized for 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich].
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume,
and I yield to the gentlewoman from New Jersey [Mrs. Roukema].
(Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the budget offered
by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich].
The Kasich budget resolution moves this Nation in the right
direction, and for the most part, is consistent with the pressing need
for our Nation to regain its prominence in the global economy.
I would commend to my colleagues, attention a series of articles in
the New York Times this week on ``Staying Afloat in the 1990's.'' It is
an excellent analysis of the fears and frustrations facing the American
middle class, and I would ask that these articles be included in the
Record as part of my statement. They are the stories of young college
graduates who cannot find jobs, let alone good ones, and of hard-
working Americans who see their jobs evaporating, next week or next
year. These people rightfully see themselves falling, ever more
rapidly, from the middle class. We must take action to reverse these
trends.
The Kasich budget moves to get our fiscal house in order so that this
generation of Americans and the next can confidently look forward to a
future of good jobs at good pay, and a rightful place in a growing and
economically secure middle class.
No, I don't agree with every detail of this budget. For example, I
strongly oppose the $500 tax credit per child, for those with $200,000
per year incomes. If a deduction is included at all, there should be an
income cap to target the deductions for middle-income families. But
this can be taken up in the tax bill and appropriately targeted.
I also do not agree that cuts and adjusted means testing of higher
income seniors and Medicare should be defined today. This needs much
more work, and a much more thorough examination. Moreover, it should
only be done, if at all, in the context of health care reform that
preserves Medicare, and expands coverage for prescription drugs and
extended care.
Nevertheless, the Kasich budget has great merit. It puts into
concrete responsible spending and tax policies, and an economic
blueprint for the country.
Our deficit and profligate spending ways are undermining our economy,
both short-term and long-term. In other words, as I have repeated time
after time over recent years like a mantra: We need to save and invest
in America.
save and invest in america
Saving and investing in America is all about improving our economy
and international competitiveness, enabling Americans to get quality
jobs, and continued deficit reduction.
The fact is the Kasich substitute incorporates many of the very ideas
I have so vigorously supported, including full deductibility for IRA's,
a neutral cost recovery system, and an extension of the R&D tax credit.
It is measures like these that will encourage U.S. business to invest
in new plants and equipment to become more competitive in the ongoing
global economic wars.
deficit reduction/truth-in-budgeting
The Republican budget package provides real deficit reduction. The
Kasich substitute would reduce the deficit by roughly $310 billion over
5 years. I am also pleased that this plan, unlike the President's
budget, incorporates the cost of reforming our Nation's health care
system, welfare reform, and crime control. Admittedly, these subjects
are complex and the estimates we include are subject to close reviews
legislatively. But it remains that if we are to be intellectually
honest about our spending priorities, we must have truth in budgeting,
and at least acknowledge some cost of these efforts now. The American
public has told Congress that these important issues are their top
priority. Now it is the Congress' job to give these issues top priority
in the budget.
Every Member of this body supports health care reform, although we
may disagree as to how our Nation's health care system should be
reformed. However, it is irresponsible for the Sabo substitute
amendment to ignore the substantial budgetary impact of health care
reform. If Congress is really serious about enacted comprehensive
health care reform, we should be building the necessary funding into
the fiscal year 1995 budget right now. Once again, only the Republican
substitute amendments budget for health care reform.
health care reform
The Republican budget resolution, in stark contrast to that offered
by the majority, includes funding for health care reform, notably
comprehensive health insurance reform, and the provisions of H.R. 3080,
the Affordable Health Care Now Act of 1993.
I am a cosponsor of this legislation, introduced by Republican leader
Bob Michel. The Michel bill represents a solid first step toward
comprehensive health care reform. Foremost, H.R. 3080 would enact
comprehensive health insurance reform, restricting insurance companies'
ability to deny coverage for preexisting conditions; ability to deny
coverage for preexisting conditions; requiring insurers to enroll
applicants regardless of health status; and limiting premium increases
through community rating.
In addition, the Michel bill includes comprehensive medical
malpractice reform; an expanded use of small employer health insurance
purchasing pools; administrative simplification; and and expansion of
Medicaid to cover more low-income individuals. Each of these
provisions, which enjoy broad support, is funded in this budget.
Moreover, the health care funding provisions in this budget addresses
the most glaring problems of our system, and can improve the lives and
health care of millions of Americans, without radical restructuring of
our health care system, vast increases in spending and taxes, and
decimation of our Medicare Program.
welfare reform
The Kasich substitute also includes funding for the comprehensive
welfare reform provisions offered by House Republicans.
The funding contained for the welfare reform provisions in this bill
reaffirm our fundamental belief that we must enact reform based on
individual responsibility. Furthermore, welfare reform must restore our
public assistance system to its original purpose: A temporary safety
net for those in need--not a permanent way of life or web of
dependency.
Foremost, our legislation would limit welfare benefits to 2 years--
after that time, welfare recipients would have to work for their check.
Furthermore, our bill would require welfare recipients to enroll in job
training and education programs designed to get them off welfare; allow
States to eliminate separate AFDC benefits for families with parents
under age 18; require under-age children to be attending school
regularly; and finally, eliminate welfare benefits for illegal aliens
and other noncitizens.
This budget also includes funding for the bipartisan Roukema
amendment, which would require women, as a condition of receiving a
welfare check from the government, to have their children vaccinated
and up to date on their immunizations, and greatly restricts the
ability of States to increase AFDC benefits for additional children
born to mothers already on welfare.
This budget tells mothers already on welfare that if they decide to
have another child, the Federal Government will not subsidize that
choice. Or as one supporter put it: Welfare families must be faced with
the same tough choices every working American makes--can we afford
another child, and how will we make our budget meet these choices?
Finally, this budget resolution makes a down payment on what must be
the most crucial element of welfare reform, effective child support
enforcement. Too many parents fail to pay court-ordered child support,
neglecting their legal and financial obligation to their children.
Failure to pay timely support ultimately pushes families into our
welfare system, and the taxpayer picks up the tab for these deadbeat
dads and sometimes moms. By improving our child support system, we can
take action as welfare prevention.
I have introduced a comprehensive child support enforcement reform
bill (H.R. 1600) which largely tracks the recommendations of the U.S.
Commission on Interstate Child Support Enforcement. The funding in this
budget for welfare reform incorporates some of these provisions,
including increased paternity establishment initiatives; a national W-4
reporting form for child support obligors; and increased access to the
national computer networks for locating and dunning deadbeat parents.
More must be done in this critical, welfare prevention, effort. But
this budget resolution takes solid first steps toward the comprehensive
reform of our child support enforcement system which must be central to
the welfare reform debate.
crime control
Finally, this budget provides funding for one of the most critical
issues facing Americans today: crime control.
Our crime situation is out of control, and in need of urgent action.
Citizens are not safe in their homes, and children can not work to
school or play in the yard without fear of mounting crime and violence.
Clearly, we must act now to control crime, and close the revolving
door of justice that puts criminals back on the streets. Our laws must
act to punish the criminal, and safeguard law-abiding citizens. We must
take back our streets.
This budget does exactly that, fully funding the comprehensive
Republican anticrime bill. This budget resolution includes $2 billion
for more cops on the beat, and $3 billion for Federal-State
partnerships for building new prisons.
If we are to be serious about three strikes and you're out sentencing
reforms--which the public demands of us--we must make good on the
commitment to providing more police to enforce the laws, and more
prisons to house violent criminals. This budget does that.
If we are to do more than just talk about crime, we must adopt this
budget today, providing the funding, then enact the comprehensive
anticrime bill which Democratic leaders have refused to allow on the
floor of the House.
conclusion
In closing, Mr. Chairman, the Republican budget resolution represents
the much needed policy reforms and budgetary thinking that will start
us down the road toward genuine deficit reduction and economic growth.
We owe it to the American people to take these important steps to
regain our national economic footing. We must get our fiscal house in
order so that this generation of Americans and the next can confidently
look toward a future of good jobs at good pay and a rightful place in a
growing and economically secure middle class.
Support the Kasich amendment.
[From the New York Times, Mar. 10, 1994]
Low Pay and Closed Doors Greet Young in Job Market
(By Tamar Lewin)
Kansas City, Mo.--Andrew Flenoy has ironed his white shirt
until there are sharp creases down the sleeves. His hands are
folded in his lap, his back is ramrod straight, and his feet
jiggle nervously as he begins his fifth job interview in as
many weeks--this one at Sprint, the long-distance telephone
company that is Kansas City's largest employer.
Mr. Flenoy, 21, comes across as nervous and sweetly sincere
as he tells the interviewer how much he wants the $17,274-a-
year job selling long-distance service.
Mr. Flenoy, a high school graduate who completed a year-
and-a-half training course at a business trade school, is
scrambling for a foothold in a work world that has turned
inside out. Even in an economy that has created three million
new jobs in the last three years, career positions--the old-
fashioned jobs offering benefits, vacation, and room for
advancement--are increasingly hard to come by.
hard reality
For millions of people across the country, young and old,
economists' predictions of the late 1980's have now hardened
into the reality of daily life. While there are still plenty
of good jobs for computer engineers, nurses and others whose
skills fit the changing economy, other workers have had to
reconcile themselves to a job market that has little use for
them.
The recovery started almost three years ago in this
heartland metropolis of 1.6 million people. In its
demographic makeup and economic indicators, Kansas City
closely mirrors the national average--and these days, it is a
perfect exemplar of the profound changes that have
transformed the American workplace for young workers like Mr.
Flenoy, including these:
Once reliable employers like T.W.A. and Sears have dumped
workers, and executives with master's degrees remain as
vulnerable to layoffs as productionline assemblers. The
unskilled castoffs of shrinking industries, used to earning
$20 an hour, are finding that the new labor market offers
them no more than $6. Many now work two or three jobs,
without matching their former salary or benefits.
Temporary jobs are at their highest levels ever. There are
24.4 million part-time and temporary workers, representing 22
percent of employed Americans. In Overland Park, Kan., a
well-off suburb of Kansas City, one branch office of
Manpower Inc., a large temporary employment agency, filled
out 4,500 W-2 forms in 1993 for employees who had worked
anywhere from a day to a full year--30 percent more than
the previous year.
For some skilled workers, the increasing flexibility of the
work world is a boon, allowing them to change jobs at will,
work when and how much they want, and earn more as employers
compete for them. This group includes not only the computer
engineers and other bastions of the changing economy, but
also electricians and other blue-collar workers whose skills
remain in demand.
With the layoffs of so many men whose paychecks once kept
the family afloat, women are not merely bolstering household
incomes--their salaries have become essential to maintaining
a tenuous grasp on a middle-class life style. And even though
women streamed into the work force during the 1980's, the
median household income in Kansas City was $31,637 in 1980
but had slipped to $31,613 by 1990.
While the public's perceptions of the national economy may
have improved in recent months, Americans' insecurity about
their own jobs is substantial and widespread, according to
The New York Times Poll. Two-fifths of the work force voiced
worry that during the next two years they might be laid off
or forced to take pay cuts. And in the last two years, 24
percent said that in the last two years they have personally
experienced layoffs, pay cuts or reductions in hours,
according to the poll, taken in mid-February.
For economists and workers alike, the big question is
whether the recovery will eventually spur the creation of
plenty of good new jobs. Some experts say that is bound to
happen, now that the explosive growth of temporary jobs has
flattened.
But others say the American work force has undergone such
basic structural changes that many high-paying jobs--from
factory foremen to office supervisors and professionals--are
gone for good.
their market--amid a recovery, more layoffs
Whatever the future, the ``downsizings'' and
``rightsizings'' that began in the recession are continuing,
as the largest companies here, as elsewhere, keep pruning
payrolls in 100- and 1,000-worker sweeps.
Last year, Sears Roebuck here closed a distribution center,
leaving more than a thousand people jobless. Other companies
have also shrunk their work forces, including Marion Merrell
Dow, a pharmaceutical company; Allied Signal Inc., which
makes nuclear bomb parts here; Hallmark Cards, renowned
around town as a benevolent employer; Colgate-Palmolive and
A.T.&T.
Even a young, growing company like Sprint, with 9,000 local
workers and 50,400 nationwide, had a round of layoffs in
August cutting 1,000 workers nationwide, 120 of them in
Kansas City. Overall, the telecommunications industry laid
off 60,000 workers in the country last year.
Certainly some businesses are adding full-time, well-paying
jobs with good benefits. Twentieth Century Services Inc., a
mutual fund company here, has seen its work force grow from
fewer than 300 eight years ago, to 1,900 now, and there are
plans to add 300 to 400 this year.
Transamerica Life Insurance and Annuity Company of Los
Angeles is moving 500 jobs here, and hundreds of small
businesses are picking up abandoned workers and keeping the
unemployment rate down to 5.4 percent last year, below the
national average of 6.8 percent. And at least one employer,
Ford, is adding people to its 4,000-worker plant to make the
new Contour and Mercury Mystique, the successors to the Ford
Tempo and Mercury Topaz.
But new jobs are not coming on stream the way they did
after previous recessions. Frank Lenk, the senior economist
at the Mid-America Regional Council here, calculates that in
the three years since the last recession ended, the Kansas
City region has gained about 20,000 jobs--compared with
93,000 jobs created after the previous down-turn in the early
1980's.
Their Jobs--$6 an Hour, 7 Days a Week
To their bitter disappointment, Mr. Flenoy and most other
young workers are finding that ``McJobs''--jobs that pay $6
an hour or less, and offer little in the way of a career
path--are about the only openings around.
``It just seems really difficult for my generation,'' said
Mr. Flenoy, the oldest of six children in a rural Arkansas
family.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that
impression: in the last decade, the average wage has fallen 5
percent, adjusted for inflation. And median full-time weekly
earnings for those aged 20 to 24, expressed in 1982 dollars,
dropped to $199 in 1993, from $215 in 1989.
While some young people with specialized skills--those with
training in fields like nursing--have employers clamoring for
their services, most others have a string of disappointments
to recount.
Some are mailing dozens of resumes a month, and getting
nothing but form-letter rejections. Others wonder why, with
more education than their parents, they still cannot find
work anywhere near as stable or well-paying as their parents
have.
Reese Isbell is one of the lucky ones: He found work he
liked just a month after graduating from the University of
Missouri-Kansas City in 1992.
But these days, even lucky young people are likely to land
in part-time jobs, if not internships or temporary
assignments.
``I had an internship my last semester of college, working
20 hours a week in the public affairs office at Planned
Parenthood, and I really liked it,'' said Mr. Isbell, who was
a sociology major. ``My father couldn't believe I would have
any trouble getting a job when I graduated. He thought there
would be all kinds of people recruiting me. But there
weren't. I went to a temporary agency, and got a data entry
job, but I hated it so much that I quit after two days.''
So, Mr. Isbell leapt at the chance for a paid job at
Planned Parenthood--still 20 hours a week, but now earning $8
an hour. To make ends meet, he also took a $7-an-hour weekend
job as an admitting clerk at a hospital, a position he has
kept even as the Planned Parenthood job expanded to 30 hours,
and soon, to full time.
``I'm working seven days a week but I know I'm really
lucky, and it wouldn't have happened without the
internship,'' Mr. Isbell said. ``My father is a computer
programmer, which used to be a shoo-in, but a couple years
ago he lost his job and was out there pounding the pavement
at the age of 40.''
Their Prospects--When College Is Not Enough
``Reality Bites,'' the current movie hit about
twentysomethings, reflected young workers' profound
uneasiness about their job prospects. The heroine graduates
as valedictorian of her college class, then is promptly
dismissed from a television job where she had been warned
that she could be replaced by an unpaid intern. Her boyfriend
has been dismissed from 12 jobs, and she says, is ``on the
inside track to Nowheresville, U.S.A.''
Her mother urges her to get a job at a burger place. Her
best friend tries to recruit her to work at the Gap--and is
offended when she says she is not interested. And when she
applies for media jobs, she is rejected as overqualified at
one, underqualified at the next.
``It all sounded very familiar,'' said Dan Wulf, a graduate
of Wesleyan University in Connecticut who came to Kansas City
a year and a half ago to set up a summer program for
children. He now works as a secretary at the University of
Kansas Medical Center during the week, and at Kinko's copy
center from 2 P.M. to 11 P.M. on weekends. On Sunday
mornings, he teaches Hebrew school.
He and Mr. Isbell have both concluded that to get more
challenging jobs--and avoid seven-day workweeks--they will
have to go to graduate school.
``We're getting more college graduates than we are college-
level jobs,'' said Dan Hecker of the labor statistics bureau.
``About 20 percent of the college graduates end up in non-
college-level jobs.''
The number of college graduates working as street vendors
or door-to-door salespeople grew from 57,000 in 1983 to
75,000 in 1990, the last year the statistics were compiled,
according to the bureau. In the same period, the number of
truck or bus drivers with college degrees grew from 99,000 to
166,000.
From Carhop to Paralegal
For those without college degrees, the struggle for a good
job is even tougher: Renda Rush married at 17 and had her
first child the following year. She began working as a carhop
at Sonic Drive-In two years later and stayed there--with
breaks for the birth of two more children--until the end of
1992.
What started me thinking was seeing a lot of high school
girls, home for the summer, working at Sonic,'' said Ms.
Rush, now 26. ``Then in the fall, they'd go on to college, or
whatever, and I'd still be there. And I finally thought,
they're moving on and I've been here five years, I've got
kids, and I'll be left behind forever if I don't do something
about it.''
Ms. Rush went back to school, choosing a two-year paralegal
training program at Penn Valley Community College. And she is
on her way to a career: She started as a receptionist at a
personal-injury lawyer's office, but is now doing paralegal
work too.
Ms. Rush, who earned $4.85 an hour at Sonic, earns $7 an
hour, with the understanding that her pay will rise when she
gets her degree later this year.
Their Fallback--A Generation Of Temps
In the recession, many employers, here and elsewhere, tried
to keep their costs low by increasing their use of part-
timers and temporaries, who work only during busy periods and
usually get no benefits.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
employment with temporary agencies accounted for 15 percent
of the new jobs created last year and 26 percent the year
before--compared with less than 3 percent of the new jobs
created in 1989.
In dozens of interviews with young workers in Kansas City,
temping seemed to be an almost universal experience: Mr. Wulf
had a weeklong job in a real estate office through a
temporary agency; Mr. Isbell had his data-entry job, and Mr.
Flenoy did a market-research project surveying theater-goers.
And for some young people it becomes a way of life. For a
year and half now, Cabrenna Clark, 24, has been working for
Kelly Services, a temporary employment agency, earning about
$6 an hour, plus some overtime. But every six months, she
sends out a round of resumes for the business jobs she
covets.
``I work every day, and there always seems to be another
assignment when one ends,'' said Ms. Clark, who has completed
a year and a half of college and plans to return later this
year. ``I've had a couple places call me back as a temp. But
it seems like right now, people are more interested in
working with temps than hiring for permanent jobs.''
Ms. Clark said her parents, both civil servants--her mother
working for the state, her father for the Federal
Government--tell her she is wasting her time working as a
temp.
``I don't think they understand how hard the job market
is,'' she said. ``If you're in Kansas City, and you're not in
medicine or telecommunications or the military, you can just
forget it. Temping is what I can do right now.''
For Mr. Flenoy, what started as a temporary job has become
more permanent than he ever intended. He was hired as a
temporary dishwasher at Myron Green, a Kansas City company
that runs cafeterias and catering in offices and schools.
After 90 days, he was offered a permanent dishwashing job,
for 5.50 an hour, then was quickly promoted to cafeteria line
server ($5.75), grill cook ($6.00) and catering manager
($6.25).
Mr. Flenoy, the first in the family to go beyond a high
school education, has come tantalizingly close to several
good permanent jobs in the last two months. He was almost
hired as a secretary-administrator for a church, and was one
of the two final candidates for a corporate data-entry job.
But the Sprint job was the one he coveted, both because it
paid more than the others, and because the company offers a
generous benefit plan including tuition reimbursement that
Mr. Flenoy hoped to use to further his education.
At the interview at Sprint, Mr. Flenoy began to relax as
the recruiter, Mary Reiter, worked through her list of
printed questions, asking him to talk about a time he tried
hard and failed, a time he was too persistent, how he knows
if he has done a good job. Ms. Reiter smiled encouragingly as
Mr. Flenoy told about making a special effort to arrange a
beautiful food tray; and thinking he had done a spectacular
job--until he heard the customers' reactions.
``Normally in interviews when they ask questions, I'm
completely blank, but this time it just flowed along,'' Mr.
Flenoy said after the interview.
But a good interview was not enough: on Sprint's multiple-
choice telemarketing aptitude exam, Mr. Flenoy scored too low
to win another interview. So for the time being, he must stay
at the food-service job.
``I'll do it as long as I have to,'' Mr. Flenoy said one
recent morning, as he took a break from arranging a taco-bar
luncheon. ``But I really want some kind of business job. My
resolution for 1994 is that if nothing comes along, I'll
relocate and start from scratch somewhere else.''.
Mr. Flenoy said he knew from the time he was in high school
that he wanted to leave Marianna, Ark., where his only job
prospect seemed to be packing cotton or farming. He always
wanted a career in business. After a semester at a community
college, he moved to Kansas City, where he had relatives, and
attended Wright Business School in the mornings, while
working in the evenings.
Now he is tired of the burgundy and black uniform he must
wear, and of the sense that he works every day from 6 A.M. to
2 P.M. just to earn enough money so that he can come back and
work some more the next day.
But he does not tell his family how disheartened he is. He
does not want to discourage his younger siblings.
``I'm trying my best to be very, very positive for them,''
he said.
____
[From the New York Times, March 11, 1994]
Family Struggles To Make Do After Fall From Middle Class
(By Dirk Johnson)
Kansas City, MO.--With two cars in the garage and a swing
set in the backyard, Craig Miller and his family fell easily
into the suburban rhythms of Johnson County.
He was a sheet-metal worker for T.W.A. His middle-class
status was stamped on the pay stub: $15.65 an hour. And the
shopping mall clerks didn't care if the paying customer wore
steel-toe boots or tasseled loafers.
But the airline was troubled, and it laid Mr. Miller off in
the summer of 1992. When he began to search for another job,
he quickly learned the market value of a blue-collar worker
with a strong back and a good work ethic but few special
skills: about $5 an hour.
Mr. Miller, a 37-year-old father of four, now works behind
the counter in a McDonald's hustling orders for Quarter
Pounders and chicken fajitas and deferring to teen-age
customers with ``Yes, sir'' and ``Thank you, ma'am.''
Mr. Miller also drives a school bus. And on the side he has
started a small business, changing furnace filters. He
printed up cards for the venture, ``Sani-Max,'' but there has
not been much demand for his service.
For the last eight years his wife, Susan, 34, has worked
part time as a stock clerk at Toys R Us at night, when her
husband can watch the children. She recently got a raise and
now makes $5.95 an hour.
In most ways, the nation's economy seems to be racing
ahead, evident here in the spiffy shops of Country Club Plaza
and the big new crop of $200,000 houses sprouting in the corn
fields on the outskirts of town.
new jobs, but not enough
Throughout the country, some two million new jobs were
created last year. But for people like Craig and Susan
Miller, who lack college degrees as well as coveted skills,
the statistics on an increasing number of jobs offer little
comfort.
``Sure, we've got four of them,'' Mr. Miller said, managing
a chuckle. ``So what? So you can work like a dog for $5 an
hour.''
In nearly three years since the 1990-91 recession,
employers nationwide have taken on three million workers, but
that is less than half as many as they hired after the 1981-
82 recession. And many of the new jobs are part time or
temporary.
At the same time, the number of manufacturing jobs has
fallen 8.3 percent from 1989 through February 1994. Tens of
thousands of jobs have moved abroad; advances in technology
have taken others.
As the Millers gaze into the future from their brick-and-
frame house in Overland Park, Kan., they see an employment
landscape shaped like a barbell. At one end are bankers and
lawyers and accountants exulting in the high-flying stock
market; at the other end are countermen at fast-food
franchises and clerks at big discount stores struggling to
pay the bills. The solid, working-class middle ground, where
the Millers once stood, has meanwhile grown narrow--and
slippery.
Counting all their part-time jobs, the Millers will make
about $18,000 this year, less than half what Mr. Miller
earned as a union sheet-metal worker. They have found the
fall difficult to fathom, and even harder to accept. They
could probably qualify for food stamps but refuse to consider
applying. ``We're middle-class people,'' Mr. Miller said.
``It's just that we have a lower-class income,''
the daily routine
The work day starts in darkness. Mr. Miller, an Army
veteran, crawls out of bed about 6 A.M., careful not to wake
his youngest child, 3-year-old Amanda, who shares her
parent's bedroom. By 7 A.M. he is behind the wheel of a
school bus, stopping and going along tree-lined suburban
streets of Overland Park. He will do it again in the late
afternoon. The daily pay is $35, no benefits.
After completing the morning bus route, he stops back at
his house to change into his blue McDonald's uniform with his
``Craig'' name-plate pinned onto it. His restaurant job
starts at 9:30 A.M., in a strip mall on Highway 69.
The pay in a fast-food restaurant is low, but the work is
relentless. customers are often lined up six deep. Mr.
Miller, a man who once fixed dents in the fuselages of jets
and felt pride in his craft whenever a plane soared overhead,
darts between the counter and the food pickup shelf, back and
forth, a hundred times a day, careful not to misfill an
order.
In the slower moments, he comes around the counter, dips a
mop in a bucket and drags it across the floor. With the
customers, he always tries to wear a polite smile, but he
doesn't always meet their eyes.
``I still have some pride, you know,'' he said. ``But what
am I going to do? I think the needs of my children are a
little more important than my ego.''
When he took the job, Mr. Miller expected to be the oldest
worker at McDonald's. He was surprised to find several people
past 30.
Still wearing the McDonald's uniform, he climbs back in the
school bus at 2:30 P.M. for the afternoon run. About 5, he
arrives home.
Dinner is served right away, often pasta with ground
turkey. The Millers never buy beef anymore.
Just before 6, Mrs. Miller leaves for her job, six hours of
bending and lifting to stock the shelves with toys. It will
be midnight by the time she returns home. She also works one
day a week at the same McDonald's as her husband.
battle with bills
Every time the telephone rings, the Millers instinctively
fear that a bill collector is calling. They are $3,000 behind
in medical bills. Mrs. Miller's part-time job provides health
benefits, with the company paying 80 percent of medical bills
and the employee 20 percent. But with four children, even
paying just 20 percent adds up. And one child recently had
surgery.
When a bill collector got huffy on the phone the other day,
Mrs. Miller told him wearily, ``Oh, get in line.''
The couple buy one newspaper a week, for the food coupons,
and only one light burns in the house at a time. When a child
forgets to flip off the switch, Mrs. Miller chides gently:
``Have you got stock in the electric company? Well, neither
do I.''
Not so long ago, such worries would have seemed absurd. The
Millers were saving so they could exchange their rented house
for one of their own. At backyard barbecues and church
picnics they moved comfortably in a social circle that
included college graduates, people who wore suits to work and
were therefore deemed ``professional'' but who often earned
no more than the Millers.
When a child in school boasted of a parent who was a doctor
or a lawyer, 7-year-old Peter Miller was known to reply, ``My
daddy can fix planes so they can fly high in the sky.''
A quarter century ago, Mr. Miller remembers feeling the
same kind of pride in his own blue-collar father. But the
rules and rewards were simple then: if a man wasn't afraid to
sweat, he could succeed.
Mr. Miller had watched his father make good on the bargain,
factory worker who provided a two-story house, a decent
savings account and summer vacations to the California
redwoods and Yellowstone National Park.
I miss it a lot
That was the kind of life that Mr. Miller had always
planned for his own family. But now there doesn't seem to be
much point in even talking about it.
``Oh, yeah, I miss it a lot,'' he said, referring to the
old job, and perhaps to the old rules.
He clings to the hope that the fortunes of T.W.A. will
improve and that the company will then re-call him and others
who were laid off.
One recent evening, Mr. Miller pulled out some old work
tools, grasping them in hands that are now much smoother, and
explained the purpose of each.
On the floor next to the sofa was a two-year-old airline
magazine, with a cover article titled, ``How to make good
landings.'' On the wall, an art print carried a quote from
Isaiah: ``We grope for the wall like the blind.''
Mr. Miller doesn't care to talk much about McDonald's. He
sat in the living room with a visitor for two hours one
evening, never taking off the jacket that covered his
McDonald's shirt. Finally, for a brief moment, he unsnapped
the buttons to reveal the uniform.
``There, you see it,'' he said, with a blush of
embarrassment and perhaps a glint of rage. Then he closed the
jacket again.
Sad Stories Abound
Now and then, Mr. Miller checks with some of his old
buddies from the T.W.A. hangar, men who used to talk about
rushing yardage and batting averages on coffee breaks. Now
they share rumors about the latest threatened corporate
`'downsizing.''
One of the men, Joe Tomczuk, could not find a job that paid
more than $6 an hour. He moved back home with his parents, at
age 39, and wondered if he should abandon the hope of ever
getting married and starting a family.
``Women are just like me; they want security,'' Mr. Tomczuk
said. ``What are they going to see in me?''
Another former colleague is now a janitor in a
school.Others seem to have disappeared.
In the months after T.W.A. laid off several hundred workers
like Mr. Miller, some marriages collapsed. Alcohol took a
toll. And union officials say perhaps a dozen men peered into
the bleakness of the future and committed suicide.
Mr. Miller said some friends had encouraged him to move to
a city where good blue collar jobs were more plentiful. But
where was that? Even at this father's old factory, in
Muscatine, Iowa, a ketchup plant, technology was phasing out
workers.
Keeping Up for the Children
But moving is simply not an option. The Millers' eldest
child, 11-year-old Jeremiah, has several learning
disabilities but has been making significant progress, which
his parents credit to the top-notch teachers at the affluent
Blue Valley School District. The couple will not consider
risking Jeremiah's future in a mediocre school; nor are they
willing to put him through the emotional strain of starting
over in strange surroundings even if the schools were
superior.
``We try not to tell the kids too much,'' Mr. Miller said.
``This belongs on our shoulders, not theirs.''
But some things are difficult to avoid. Not long ago,
Jeremiah asked if he could take his friends to a restaurant
for his birthday, a custom with many children at his school.
``We'll have to talk about that,'' Mr. Miller told the boy.
Mrs. Miller glanced toward the children and shook her head.
``I hope they choose their careers carefully,'' she said
later. ``Everything is geared to the college people anymore.
If your job isn't sitting in front of a computer, watch
out.''
Mrs. Miller said she and her husband should have seen the
writing on the wall. But when times were good, they seemed
like they would last forever. Now she has scant hope that
those days will ever return.
``For people like us,'' she said, ``I'm afraid the good
time are gone for good.''
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
Republican leader, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Michel].
(Mr. MICHEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. MICHEL. Mr. Chairman, my finest compliments to the distinguished
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] and all the members on our side on the
Committee on the Budget. Last year they acquitted themselves in fine
fashion, coming up with facts and figures and a very credible budget.
The same applies for their work product this year. That is why I rise
in strong support of the budget offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr.
Kasich], which we in the Republican leadership adopted as our official
position. Once again, they provided us with a credible and complete
budget proposal.
Let me give the Members the three major reasons why I support this
budget. First, it is a complete one. The Democratic leadership budget
makes some adjustments to the discretionary portion of the budget, but
that is only one-third of the budget controlled by the appropriation
process.
What about health care reform and welfare reform? The Democratic
leadership tells us we will be dealing with them this year sometime.
How come they are not in the budget? Not even Sherlock Holmes,
Lieutenant Colombo, or the entire cast of ``L.A. Law'' could find a
single clue in the Democratic leadership budget as to how these
initiatives will be financed.
The Kasich budget, on the other hand, reflects the priorities and
initiatives that we Republicans seek to further this year, and details
exactly how those initiatives would be financed.
Are the Members looking for specific health care, welfare reform, and
crime control proposals? They will find them in the Kasich budget.
What about reforming foreign aid or a family tax credit? They will
find them in the Kasich budget.
Do they seek specific information on which lower priority programs
must be reduced? They will find it in the Kasich budget.
The second major reason for supporting the Kasich budget is this: It
is the only budget alternative that contains a more realistic level of
defense funding. The Democratic defense figures are not sufficient to
fund even their own defense program, as determined by their own Defense
Department's recent Bottom-Up Review. If they will not take their own
program seriously enough to fund it, then what are the rest of us
supposed to be thinking?
Furthermore, the Democratic budget figures do not support a full
military pay raise, as we do.
Finally, the Kasich budget provides approximately $150 billion more
in deficit reduction over the next 5 years, when the Kasich budget is
adopted and implemented. A real budget with real savings, is that not a
refreshing idea? Compare it with a Democratic leadership budget that
has as many holes in it as the New York Mets' infield.
The Kasich budget is a reality. The Democratic budget is only virtual
reality. I would urge my colleagues to vote for the only real budget in
town, as exemplified and reflected by the good work and handicraft of
the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] and his colleagues on the
Republican side of the Committee on the Budget.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from California [Mr. Waxman].
(Mr. WAXMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Kasich
substitute. This substitute is bad medicine for our health care
programs. It cuts Medicare, it cuts biomedical research, it cuts
immunizations, it cuts substance abuse treatment, it cuts women's
health initiatives.
The substitute is designed, I want the Members to understand, to
embarrass the President of the United States by enacting in this budget
the Michel alternative to the health care proposal that the President
has submitted to us. It would do that by putting in this bill the so-
called Michel substitute, even though the bill has never been referred
to the Committee on the Budget and has not yet been reported out of the
committees that have jurisdiction.
However, this substitute does more than try to trick us into a health
care proposal that does not provide universal coverage. The substitute
would shift an additional $30 billion in out-of-pocket costs onto
Medicare beneficiaries over the next 5 years. It would cut Medicare
payments to teaching hospitals by $13.5 billion over the next 5 years.
The Kasich substitute would propose almost $30 billion in new out-of-
pocket costs on Medicare beneficiaries, and would do this by imposing
coinsurance requirements for home health care and clinical lab
services. It is true that some of the proposals in Medicare cuts are
also in the President's bill, but look at the context. The President's
bill would use some of those savings for pharmaceutical drug coverage
for the elderly, for some home health care services for them as well.
That is what they would get in exchange for these proposals under the
President's health care reform, but in exchange for these higher cost-
sharing requirements, what do Medicare beneficiaries get under the
Kasich substitute? Nothing, except for higher out-of-pocket costs if
they do get sick and happen to need home health care or laboratory
services.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, the Kasich substitute would reduce the
Medicare indirect teaching adjustments from 7.7 to 3 percent, taking
$13.5 billion away from teaching hospitals bearing the responsibility
for caring for the uninsured.
Make no mistake, Mr. Chairman, a vote for this substitute is a vote
against the President, a vote against the elderly, a vote against
teaching hospitals, and a vote against universal coverage for health
care for our people.
I urge a ``no'' vote on the Kasich substitute.
{time} 1230
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the very distinguished
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde].
(Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, the very distinguished gentleman who just
spoke represents the 29th District of California, and I would like him
to know that under the Kasich budget his district would get $31.1
million worth of family tax relief.
The Kasich substitute, Mr. Chairman, represents more than sound
budgeting. It represents sound social policy as well.
It is high time that Congress understands that the Federal budget
must be thought of in terms of people's priorities because we are
spending the people's money.
A distinguishing feature between the Democrat budget and the
Republican budget is simply the Republican budget says ``We the
people,'' and the Democrat budget says ``We the government.''
These priorities which have shaped the Kasich substitute include
health care reform, welfare reform, tough and sensible crime control,
incentives for job creation. It is all in there. And it is capped off
with the most important proposal to emerge from the 103d Congress, a
$500-per-child tax credit that begins the process of restoring a
profamily prochild tax code.
Imagine doing something explicitly for the family of America. What do
they think they are, a special interest? Well, indeed they are our most
important special interest, shielded and strengthened by public policy.
Instead, the average American family has been a cash cow harnessed to
pull the Federal gravy train.
The Kasich substitute represents a radical reversal of all of that.
For the last 14 months the Congress' message to the taxpayer has been,
``More for Washington, less for you.''
Last year's budget blared it with higher taxes and more spending:
``More for Washington, less for you.''
The reconciliation bill of 1993 repeated it, and the defeat of the
Penny-Kasich package of spending cuts last November locked in ``More
for Washington, less for you.''
The same message sums up the budget fashioned last week by the House
Budget Committee. It is just more for official Washington to spend, to
borrow, to allocate, to redistribute, and less for the workers, the
savers, the investors, the mothers and fathers of America.
We want to turn that around. We want to put families first. We want
to put them at the head of the line, ahead of the bureaucrats and the
grantees, the contractors, the planners, the regulators, and do not
forget the consultants.
Putting families first means first and foremost letting them keep
more of what they earn. It means recognizing that the people that do
the most important work in this country are not Congressmen, they are
mothers and fathers raising kids.
I concede the good intentions of those who really believe that the
best way to help families is to expand Government services and to pay
for those services by billing other families. But we have spent decades
now trying to ameliorate symptoms of the decline of the family, teenage
pregnancy, drug abuse, welfare dependency, to educational failure. We
not only have not accomplished much in those years, but we have
weakened the families even more by heavier tax burdens and more and
more Government intrusion.
We have spent decades and uncounted billions trying to make
Government assistance a substitute for strong family life, and it has
not worked. The Kasich substitute points us in a more promising
direction, letting families control more of their own resources and
making more of their own decisions.
Trust the people. That is the key now, and over that long run to
restoring the family as the force that holds people together, holds
neighborhoods together, instills values, curbs violence, promotes
health, and helps young people learn and prepares them for productive
work.
We the people, not we the Government.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SABO. I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi.
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Mr. Chairman, I am concerned about he veterans'
funding under the Kasich amendment. We have examined it very closely.
It seems that the bottom line for veterans' health care for 1995 under
the Kasich amendment is that health care will lose $475 million.
The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], on page 17 of the Republican
substitute or of his amendment give us $110 million. That is great.
That is for health care, for helping process claims. But back on page
24 under the 1994 investments that were put in our legislation for
veterans' health care in 1994, he eliminates that, which is around $585
million. If you subtract the $110 million he gave us on page 17 from
the $585 million he takes away on page 24, the veterans come up short
$475 million.
Am I right or wrong? I just need an answer.
Mr. SABO. The gentleman is correct. My number is $472 million. It is
either $472 million or $475 million, but the gentleman is essentially
correct, and I thank him for asking me the question.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from West Virginia
[Mr. Wise].
(Mr. Wise asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. WISE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the
time.
I say to the gentleman who just spoke, I do not know whether he is
aware that in the State of Illinois families that were eligible for
earned income tax credits this year, which he and every Member of his
party voted against in last year's reconciliation bill, numbered
599,300. That is a tax cut for working families with children already
in effect, and he and every Member of his party, including the
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], voted against it.
In my own State of West Virginia, 105,000 working West Virginians now
are getting a tax cut as a result of the budget package that was passed
and has already been implemented, and while they dangle a $500 tax
credit for children in front of people, let the Record show who voted
against the tax relief for children of working families in the last
bill.
I might add in Ohio alone, over 500,000 working families are getting
a tax cut right now, working Ohioans, which the gentleman from Ohio
[Mr. Kasich] voted against.
So I think it is important to recognize that this $500 tax credit,
which incidentally really does not apply to those under $15,000 a year,
so the sons and daughters of 50 of those in the lowest tax bracket will
now be paying in years to come to the sons and daughters who enjoyed a
tax bracket, those up to $200,000 a year. That is real reform.
Then of course they do not talk about the Medicare cuts, pitting
grandparents against grandchildren to pay for this.
This is a tough budget, the House budget, the Democratic budget for
West Virginians, make no mistake about it. The Appalachian Regional
Commission is cut.
I do not enjoy the prospect of that. There are Medicare cuts in
there, agriculture offices will close, Federal employees are already
being laid off, programs eliminated, frozen or cut. But in West
Virginia we like the facts.
So when we hear the facts, so-called, coming from this side, let us
remember the words of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] last year in
August:
Come next year, we are going to find out whether we have
higher deficits, we are going to find out whether we have a
slower economy, we are going to find out what is going to
happen to interest rates, and it is our bet that this is a
job-killer.
Here are the facts, ladies and gentlemen: Deficits are down, record
deficit reduction in just 1 year with the passage of that bill.
Unemployment is up. So much for the job-killer. It was a job-gainer.
And finally, when looking at the facts, economic growth is at a record
peak, 3.2 percent in 1 year, which exceeds 4 years of the previous
years.
These are the folks who just a few moments ago told you to vote for
this as a job-killer. Take that into consideration when voting.
The House budget is the one that continues the progress that we are
on. The Kasich budget is from the same folks who voted unanimously
against the package that put us back on track.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Chairman, I want the people of the Second District of West
Virginia to know that there are 113,085 children that the gentleman
from West Virginia [Mr. Wise], does not feel ought to get the tax
credit to the tune of over $56 million.
I would say to the gentleman, just keep banking on raising people's
taxes and raising Federal spending and defending the pork-barrel
politics of the leaders of your State, and you will find yourself with
a slower economy.
{time} 1240
In addition to the arguments that have been made here, Medicare and
Medicaid, under the Kasich substitute, Medicare increases by $87
billion; Medicare increases by $87 billion under our plan. Medicaid is
$63 billion.
The Clinton plan, of course, makes $130 billion worth of Medicare
cuts.
So I would warn my friends to be very careful of that, and
furthermore, the Veterans' Administration gets funded at the same level
under the Republican plan as under the Democrat plan. We get more for
veterans and less for bureaucracy. We have the numbers for the
gentleman from West Virginia to show you the raw numbers.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from
Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson].
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Kasich budget.
It supports economic growth, it cuts the deficit $150 billion more
than President Clinton's and provides real tax relief for the American
family.
During the last 40 years, the Federal income tax burden for a family
of four has increased by 250 percent as a share of family income.
Today, most American families pay more in Federal taxes than they pay
for food, clothing, transportation, insurance and recreation combined.
That's tragic.
A recent poll reveals Americans favor family tax relief 3 to 1, even
if it means cuts in entitlements.
The Kasich budget provides a $500 per child family tax credit--for
three children that would be $1,500 more in purchasing power. Ninety
percent of this relief goes to families making less than $75,000 a
year.
The family is the first and best Department of Education;
The first and best Department of Health and Human Services;
The first and best Department of Housing;
And the first and best Department of Energy and Transportation.
There is no instrument of economic growth, savings, and job training
as effective as the middle class family.
It is the repository of values.
It is the sustainer of society.
And our Government has chiseled away at its foundation for 40 years.
The question that confronts us is this: Is our faith in the big
brother of big Government, or is our faith in the moms and dads of
America?
The mantra of the Beltway is: The Government giveth and the
Government taketh away. Blessed be the hand of big Government.
The Kasich budget says, ``No more.'' It strikes a blow for the most
neglected special interest in America--the family.
For once, let us forget party loyalty and party discipline.
For once, let us forget the marching orders and let us do right for
the family.
Let us return over $20 billion per year to the families of 50 million
American children.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Hawaii [Mrs. Mink].
(Mrs. MINK of Hawaii asked and was given permission to revise and
extend her remarks.)
Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Chairman, today we are debating the
Republican alternative to the budget resolution, and we are being more
or less sidetracked on an issue with respect to tax credits.
It is important to remember that the Democratic bill that passed last
August provided the largest tax break to ordinary working families in
this decade, so do not be fooled by the talk about the tax credit that
is contained in the Republican alternative. What we must remember is
what they are doing to the budget. The so-called appeal to family is
entirely decimated in the Republican alternative. It is bad for the
children, it is bad for the families, it destroys the underpinning of
educational and job training support that we have had as a tradition
and as a policy in programs that have been enacted in the past by the
Congress.
The Kasich substitute decimates the investment policy and priorities
of the Clinton administration. The Kasich substitute cuts $1.9 billion
from the committee resolution in the area of education, training, and
social services which over a 5-year period will amount to $53 billion.
It cuts $1.1 billion from our investment in Head Start. Everybody says
they are for Head Start. His substitute cuts this program and reduces
the investment in our young people. It completely exacerbates support
for child care programs by consolidating them and not providing the
kind of focus and priority which is needed. It consolidates all the
hunger and nutrition programs that have been the real bulwark of our
support for poor people, and food stamps, school lunches and school
breakfast programs; it cuts about 5 percent of that funding for
schoolchildren supported by impact aid. It completely wipes out this
program and eliminates it in 5 years.
Do not be fooled by the Kasich substitute.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker].
Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
In the explanation just given by the gentlewoman from Hawaii, you
have heard precisely, precisely the difference between the two budgets
you have before you today.
The gentlewoman from Hawaii just told you about all of the Government
programs that the Kasich budget would cut. She is absolutely right.
Programs would be cut. People would be helped.
That is the big difference. We are attempting to help people, real
working familie people, middle-class people; 134,000 kids in the
gentlewoman's district would be eligible for this tax credit, $67.1
million of family tax relief would go to her district in Hawaii under
the Kasich budget.
That is the big difference here.
They want to talk about all of the good Government programs that they
want the money to go to, bigger and bigger Government, more and more
bureaucrats doing things supposedly to help America.
We want to talk about helping America by giving people tax relief, by
giving people the ability to help themselves. That is the big
difference here.
There is a major difference between these two approaches: More and
more big Government on behalf of the Democrat budget; the Kasich
budget, the Republican budget, talks about helping people for real,
helping families for real.
And how do we do that? Not just with the tax relief. We help them
because we put in health care reform. We help them because we put in
welfare reform. We have crime reform in here.
Families are being devastated on the streets of America. Mothers
cannot walk across the parking lots at shopping centers because they
fear the crime going on in this country. We fund the crime bill in our
bill.
And the bottom line is we also protect the kids better in the future,
because we put $150 billion more in deficit cuts in the Kasich budget
than are in the Democrat big-Government budget.
We do what is necessary to help middle-class families for real.
People are helped by the Kasich budget. People are undermined by more
and more big Government and by the refusal to deal with reform in the
Democrat budget.
Vote for Kasich.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Oregon [Mr. Wyden].
(Mr. WYDEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
[Mr. WYDEN addressed the House. His remarks will appear hereafter in
the Extensions of Remarks.]
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Fawell].
(Mr. FAWELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. FAWELL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Kasich substitute.
I think it is a sound and responsible piece of legislation.
Last year, we had a clear choice of visions for the Government's role
in our society. Republicans, ably led by John Kasich, offered a budget
proposal to achieve greater deficit reduction entirely through spending
cuts. This plan was unfortunately defeated on a party-line vote.
President Clinton and his Democrat allies in Congress, instead,
shepherded through Congress the largest tax increase in U.S. history,
with few--if any--spending cuts.
Once again this year, we have a clear set of choices. The Republican
members of the Budget Committee have drafted a proposal to reduce the
budget deficit by $150 billion through specific reductions in
Government spending, provide necessary funding for defense, reform our
welfare and health care systems, enact a tough anticrime package,
provide families with a $500-per-child tax credit, and index capital
gains for inflation.
The Kasich budget also provides for real reform of the Government by
contracting out for services which could be more efficiently provided
by the private sector, combining programs into block grants to enable
States and localities to determine how best to provide the actual
services, and ending duplication of Government services. The Kasich
budget calls for real change and real deficit reduction. I commend the
Republican Members and staff of the Budget Committee for their hard
work, and urge Members to vote for the Kasich alternative.
{time} 1250
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the very distinguished
gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay].
Mr. DeLAY. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me.
Mr. Chairman, I think everyone should be aware that the gentleman
from the Third District of Oregon, who just spoke, ought to be aware
that the Republican budget provides $56.9 million of family tax relief
for 113,746 children in his district. That is what we are talking
about.
You know, as I moved around the floor the last couple of days, I
talked to one Member in particular of this House about the family tax
relief. His response to me was very clear about the big difference
here. He says, ``We can't afford to give families, to give families tax
relief,'' as if he owned the money.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. DeLAY. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. KASICH. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
Also, at the same time, giving families tax relief, we are also
providing for growth in Head Start. I ask the gentleman, is that
correct?
Mr. DeLAY. Absolutely. And that is an excellent point. The point I am
trying to make is: ``Give the families tax money''? What we are talking
about is allowing them to keep the money to raise their families. This
is a big distinction here. The gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums]
in his excellent presentation in support of the Congressional Black
Caucus budget, made a very poignant argument when he said, ``If you
want to build a nation, you go read the budget of that nation.'' That
is what we are being presented with here.
Mr. Chairman, I have the utmost respect for the Black Caucus because
they are being true to the American people about their vision of
America and what kind of Government they would have. I do not agree
with it, but at least they are being honest about it.
We are being honest about it also with the Kasich budget. We are
showing you what we would do if the Republicans were in charge of this
House and in charge of the Senate. It would be a much different
America, it would be a much different Government.
The Sabo budget is showing politics and business as usual; more
Government, keep the Government's money so that they do not have to
give it to families in tax relief.
If you are serious about reforming health care and paying for it
without passing on more debt to our children, vote for Kasich and
oppose Sabo. If you are serious about overhauling the welfare system
and paying for it without passing on more debt to our children, vote
for Kasich and oppose Sabo.
If you are serious about locking up criminals and making our streets
safe and paying for it without passing on more debt to our children,
vote for Kasich and oppose Sabo.
If you are really serious about ensuring our national security with a
strong defense and paying for it without passing on more debt to our
children, vote for Kasich and oppose Sabo.
If you are really serious about tax relief to families, allowing
families to keep their own money with a $500-per-child tax relief
credit and paying for it without passing on more debt to our children,
vote for Kasich but oppose Sabo.
Mr. SABO. I yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentleman from
Minnesota [Mr. Oberstar].
Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me and
for the superb job that he has done in crafting this serious, solid
budget resolution.
In response to the three previous speakers on the other side, I would
say that if they are serious about tax relief for families, they would
have voted last year for the reconciliation bill, the earned income tax
credit. In the State of Arkansas, that would have benefited 202,800
families; State of Pennsylvania, 510,100 families; State of Texas,
1,441,000 families would have benefited from the earned income tax
credit, which they voted against in the reconciliation bill.
Most of those same families will not get the tax credit proposed in
the Kasich bill because it is not refundable.
I want to address myself to what I consider a very serious, what I
consider a dangerous-to-safety proposal in the Kasich budget plan: to
totally privatize the Air Traffic Control Corporation. As they claim,
it will reduce the budget deficit. But it will do so by taking air
traffic control expenses out of the budget while not making a full
offsetting reduction in taxes. The proposal would increase user fee
costs by 65 percent, some $2.5 billion per year. Airlines would still
have to pay a 6-percent ticket tax to support the rump FAA.
In addition, airlines would also have to pay new fees to cover the
costs of the Air Traffic Control Corporation. We have done a careful
analysis of this in my subcommittee, and we estimate these fees to be
the equivalent of an additional 10.5-percent tax. Take a close look,
airlines and air travelers, passenger payments would be the equivalent
of a tax of 16.5 percent compared to today's 10-percent airline ticket
tax.
These are costs that would be borne directly by the traveling public
in the form of higher airline ticket prices. They will be paying twice.
What this means, very simply, is this little feat of budgetary
legerdemain and its cousin, the administration's corporate privatizing
scheme, will sock the airline industry and air travelers at a time when
that industry has lost $11 billion over the last years. This proposal
is bad safety policy and worse budget policy.
Mr. KASICH. I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman
from Minnesota [Mr. Grams].
Mr. GRAMS. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield briefly?
Mr. GRAMS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. KASICH. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I do not know where the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Oberstar]
quotes his numbers from. He must be reading his own budget or
something. But we do not raise the ticket tax. In fact, we lower the
ticket tax. They have a higher ticket tax.
Second, our proposal does not impact on safety. Our proposal is
designed to privatize the air traffic control of this, and if the
gentleman read the Washington Post last Friday, he would see what a
terrible shape we are in with respect to the technology.
Mr. GRAMS. I thank the gentleman for his comment.
Mr. Chairman, everyone should be aware that for the previous
speaker's district, Mr. Oberstar's 8th District of Minnesota, the
Republican budget provides $61.4 million of family tax relief for
122,815 children.
Mr. Chairman, in a few minutes, every Member of this House will have
to make a fundamental decision between supporting bigger Government or
stronger families. The vote on the Kasich substitute will tell the
American people whose side you're on.
I believe families are the most basic and effective form of
Government. Families are the first Department of Education, Health and
Human Services, Housing, and Transportation. Whatever Government can do
for children, strong families can do better.
But Government interference has made it more difficult for families
to make it on their own. Higher taxes, overregulation, and Federal
mandates have resulted in poorer families. And who has benefitted most
from the improverishment of the American family? Big government and the
Bureaucrats who live off it. The Democrats talk about their tax credit,
but not their record tax increase. By giving families a $500-per-child
tax credit and using specific cuts in Federal spending to pay for it,
the Kasich substitute offers us an opportunity to right these wrongs.
It takes power away from those who run the Government and returns it to
those who pay for the Government. It finally gives a voice to those
families who have worked hard, paid their taxes, and watched Government
grow at their expense for so many years.
Yet, some in this body complain that the family tax credit is
unfair--that low- and middle-income Americans lose out. They're wrong.
Fully 75 percent of the tax relief in this package goes to those
making less than $60,000 a year. And those are the folks who are
getting squeezed--the ones who are not rich enough to hire tax
lawyers--who are not poor enough to get Government benefits. The middle
class.
The Kasich substitute is not simply a Republican budget--it's an
American budget--an American family budget. It's the budget Clinton
promised the American people in 1992, the one he could have--and should
have--introduced this year, and the one his political advisers will
tell him to propose next year.
But now, my colleagues, it is time to find out whose side you are on?
Make the right choice--choose American families. Vote for the Kasich
substitute. American families will be voting on your performance in
November.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Oregon [Mr. DeFazio].
Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me.
The proposal before us has been promoted as family-friendly and
fiscally responsible. Let us focus on just one provision that puts the
lie to those claims.
This proposal would charge market rates for the power supplied by
three of the Federal Government's power marketing administrations.
Republicans estimate that charging these rates would increase revenues
by $1.2 billion a year beginning in 1996. Sounds great.
The problem is that $1.2 billion in electric rate increases, not a
penny to the Federal Government because you do not change the term of
the repayment. You will raise the electric rates. But the money will
rest with those utilities, those power marketing administrations.
Beyond that, there would be a net loss to the Treasury. We have
electric rates of 25 to 60 percent across 13 Western States, which
would trigger a series of business collapses, job losses, and all to
make the deficit look better on paper; for millions of ratepayers,
workers, and small business owners in the States of northern
California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota,
South Dakota, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Arkansas.
{time} 1300
Mr. Chairman, I say, if your Representative comes from one of those
States, if you live in one of those States, there is nothing family
friendly about this proposal because your electric bill is going to go
up more than the tiny amount of tax relief that's being falsely
promised to you in this bill.
Mr. Chairman, this is not family friendly. It is antibusiness. It is
antiworker. It is antifamily. And it is not even fiscally responsible
because it will not reduce the deficit except on paper or provide
revenues to the Federal Government except on paper by one penny.
Vote ``no.''
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
California [Mr. Hunter].
Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make the point that what we
do with power marketing is decide that the whole rest of the country
should not be subsidizing the operation of these units out in some
parts of the West.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Ohio [Mr.
Kasich] for yielding this time to me, and I would just want to let my
friend, the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] know that 114,544
children would be eligible for the tax credit under the Kasich budget,
and I know he will have some energetic conversations with the families
of some of those kids.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Eligible to pay more bills----
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I did not yield to the gentleman from
Oregon.
My colleagues, a lot of people have driven around this country,
literally millions of them, with bumper strips that say, ``I support
our troops.'' Well, the American people support our troops
rhetorically. They have given them moral support. They send their young
men and women to serve in the Armed Forces. But only this House, this
Congress, can support our troops with the defense budget.
Mr. Chairman, the Democrat budget hollows America's defenses, and it
threatens to return us to the days of the 1970's when 50 percent of our
aircraft were not fully mission capable, when we had a thousand petty
officers a month getting out of the Navy because they could not make it
any longer, when we had large numbers of our young men and women on
food stamps, and let me commend to everyone the McCain report entitled,
``Going Hollow,'' because I think it prints the pathway that the
Democrat program and the Democrat budget is following. We are hollowing
our forces with the Democrat budget in terms of readiness, in terms of
modernization.
And for those who say we are at peace, Mr. Chairman, let me just
remind my Democrat friends that we have now carried on an airlift in
Bosnia longer than the Berlin airlift. We have now flown more sorties
over Iraq since Desert Storm than during Desert Storm. Keeping the
peace is expensive.
I would say to all of my friends, all of my colleagues on both sides
of the aisle, ``Support our troops. Support your freedom. Support the
Kasich budget.''
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Washington [Mr. Kreidler].
(Mr. KREIDLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. KREIDLER. Mr. Chairman, the Kasich substitute is like a hot fudge
sundae--rich, tempting, and full of empty calories. It is wrapped in an
awful pretty package, but there is nothing but trouble inside.
Sure, I would like to give every family $500 per child--who wouldn't?
But what those who support Mr. Kasich's proposal don't tell you is that
his bill raises electric bills more than that in the Northwest.
Yesterday, on the Solomon substitute, we had an intellectually honest
opportunity to level with the American people--to show them the true
shape of a balanced budget.
Well, we failed. And here they go again, playing the same old shell
game.
I say to parents in the Pacific Northwest--the tax credit is just an
illusion. What we need--and what will truly help your family budget--is
a steady reduction in the Federal deficit so interest rates stay low
and we keep creating new jobs.
I am going to pass up this hot fudge sundae. I urge my colleagues to
do the same and vote no.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the
District of Columbia [Ms. Norton].
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, let the last speaker, the gentlemen from
California [Mr. Hunter] know that in his State 2,146,900 families are
eligible for the earned income tax credit which his side voted against
last year.
Mr. Chairman, the Kasich priorities are clear. This budget lives in a
time warp. It adds more to deficit reduction at a time when the deficit
is being dramatically reduced. It adds more to defense at a time when
the cold war is over and the United States is the only military power
in the world. And what and where does it cut? It cuts increases that
were modest indeed, that fund domestic programs that have been on a
starvation diet: Head Start, educational reform, dislocated worker
training, compensatory education, infrastructure, mass transit, and
many others.
But, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] missed one.
There is no cut in private contractors while career civil servants are
facing layoffs. We could actually find modest raises for our career
people if we cut personnel services for private contractors.
How are we going to reinvent government by laying off some people and
denying the rest raises? From the private sector we have borrowed the
notion of buyouts, if we can just get them passed and to conference.
But there, Mr. Chairman, I say to my colleagues: ``You do buyouts so
that you can give regular increases for those who remain to make your
business more efficient.''
We should be cutting private contracting no matter what we do with
the savings. It is wrong to cut the workers we can see while giving a
free ride to the shadow government.
We cannot strip the country down any further, in its domestic
programs, Mr. Chairman. They are close to the bones. That is why we
made modest investments on the domestic side last year.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey] the conference chairman of the House
Republicans.
Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. ARMEY. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make the point that we give
a larger cost-of-living increase to Federal employees than the
administration does, so if my colleagues are worried about that, they
should vote for us.
Second, of course we do reduce private consultants in our overhead
reduction, and I appreciate the gentleman having yielded to me.
Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Chairman, I think everybody should be aware that for
the previous speaker's district, the city of Washington, DC, in the
Republican budget we provide $41.8 million of family tax relief which
covers 83,637 children.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to congratulate the gentleman from Ohio
[Mr. Kasich] and the other Republicans on the Committee on the Budget
for assembling the best budget I have seen in my 9 years in Washington.
This Kasich budget is much more than a budget. It is the Republican
agenda. It is a blueprint that illustrates how Republicans will govern
when we are the majority.
Our initiative expands individual freedom and economic opportunity,
while limiting the size and reach of the Federal Government. Reducing
the Washington bureaucracy allows us to cut taxes for American
families, offer incentives for growth in the private sector of the
economy, and reduce the deficit $150 billion more than the Democrat
budget.
In our proposal, we provide families with a tax credit of $500 per
child, leaving more income and discretion in the hands of ordinary
people and less in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. We
encourage saving and investment, which will lead to more jobs and
higher take home pay. Republicans believe in the ability of the
American people to create the jobs of tomorrow and reject the notion
that higher living standards come from a bloated public sector.
In our welfare bill, which we pay for in our budget, work and
families are rewarded--ending the perverse incentives in the current
welfare system. Our health reform bill, which we pay for, protects the
sovereignty of the health consumer. We leave health care decisions to
ordinary Americans and their doctors, not to a national health board.
In our budget, Republicans put more police on the beat, require tough
sentencing for violent criminals, and build more prisons, and we pay
for it.
More income for families, less for Washington. More investment and
jobs in the private sector of the economy. Reinventing and reducing
Government. Welfare and health reform. A tough crime bill. And greater
deficit reduction.
This is our Republican agenda for freedom. I urge my colleagues to
support the Kasich amendment and, Mr. Chairman, let me just add that it
has been amazing to me to watch, after the American people have made it
so very clear to us that they want cuts in spending and reductions in
taxes, to hear all the bleeding, and moaning, and groaning, that has
come from the other side of the aisle in light of the only honest
effort to cut spending and reinvent Government. The fact that they have
only been able to reply by citing their adoption of the Republican idea
to give families the earned income tax credit shows us once again that
it is much better to go with the original than those who copy us.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to my hard working,
dedicated colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Penny].
Mr. PENNY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr.
Sabo] for yielding this time to me.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Kasich budget, but I do so
with compliments to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Ohio
[Mr. Kasich], for his diligence in putting together a responsible
alternative. John Kasich has been one of those Republicans who has on
many occasions been willing to reach across the aisle and work with
Democrats for a real solution to our deficit problem. Last fall he was
willing to step forward and engage in a process that led to the
development of a plan to cut spending by $90 billion over 5 years.
{time} 1310
Bipartisan support was registered for that effort, and I was proud to
stand with the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] in making that fight
for fiscal responsibility. Our differences today are not because of any
fundamental disagreement about the need for bipartisanship to solve
this budget problem once and for all, and it is not because I believe
that this budget as presented by the gentleman from Ohio is an
irresponsible budget. The difference simply stems from the focus of
this budget alternative, and in my judgment it does not focus enough on
deficit reduction.
It does include 150 billion dollars' worth of deficit reductions over
5 years, but we have a much larger problem than that will solve. It
falls short because of a $60 billion add-back for the Pentagon which we
cannot afford and should not adopt. It falls short because it promises
over $100 billion of tax cuts for American families, which may sound
good but does not represent responsible tax policy in the face of a
$200 billion deficit.
Mr. Chairman, we need deficit reduction first. This budget
alternative does not focus enough on that important goal, and it is for
that reason that I must oppose the plan.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for
yielding me the time.
Mr. Chairman, this time we have a new mantra as we get the March of
the Siamese Children on the other side. Each one is programmed to say
his little piece when he comes in. This year it is about the tax cuts.
That is probably because they want to forget last year's mantra. Last
year they were all programmed to come up and tell us how many jobs we
would each lose in our districts if we voted for the budget. In fact,
that prediction has turned out to be totally and completely wrong, so
that all the Republican Members who marched up very carefully and
recited what they were told to recite about job loss would like us to
forget the unremittingly inaccurate predictions they made about last
year's budget.
We now have in this budget confirmation that one of the great stage
plays of all time will take place here shortly when many of the Members
on the other side vote for the balanced budget constitutional
amendment, because that, I believe, calls for the budget to be balanced
by 2001.
Here is the budget presented officially by the Republican Party. Five
years from now they call for a deficit of $172.2 billion. There deficit
5 years from now will be up from the deficit this year, but then they
would have us believe next week that right after they present us a
budget in which in 1999 their deficit will be $172.2 billion, up from
what it was this coming year, they are going to balance the budget in 2
years and abolish that altogether.
So let us think when we evaluate their rhetoric about the predictions
last year of the gentleman from Texas, who told us the budget bill
would be a job cutter or the gentleman from Ohio, who said it would put
the economy into the gutter. These are people who spent all last year
walking around with signs saying that the world is going to end
Tuesday. It is now Wednesday afternoon and the sun is shining, and they
are a little distressed.
I say to the Members, remember when you hear their mantra how
inaccurate last year's was, and remember when you hear them talk about
the balance budget, by their own admission, 2 years before their
balanced budget is to take effect, they will not even be close to the
goal they are going to profess so piously next week to be supporting.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes.
Mr. Chairman, let me say that last year we were given a challenge by
the President. The President said, ``If you don't like our tax-and-
spend bill''--and, by the way, the only reason you have any earned
income tax credit in your bill is to try to offset the tax increases on
working poor people in this country--``give us your specifics.'' And,
of course, we did, and we did better than you did in terms of reducing
the deficit.
Let me say to my friends on the other side of the aisle that I think
this debate is perfect, because if my friends in the Democrat Party
think that higher taxes, more Government spending, more regulation, and
that putting the power of Washington bureaucrats over the power of the
American family is the way to go, I will tell them that they are wrong
and we will be back on this floor again. And I would suggest to my
colleagues, ``Don't count your chickens before they hatch in terms of
investing in Government as the answer for our country.''
This year we did much better. The President delivered a wonderful
speech up here in which he talked about welfare reform and health care
and a crime bill. They he sent us the budget, and did he have welfare
reform on it? Of course not. Did he give us a crime bill? Of course
not. He withdrew his health care bill because the health care bill
sends the deficit through the roof. But the President promised us all
the way back in the Democrat debates that the middle income Americans
would get tax relief, and that any economic program would give
hardworking American families some tax fairness.
I say to the Members. You didn't give us the crime bill and you
didn't give us the welfare bill and you didn't give us the health bill,
and you haven't given us the middle income tax relief, so we decided we
needed to keep the promises that they made. In the Republican bill we
do have health care, with a down payment, beginning to solve the
problem, not by turning health care over to the Federal Government but
by using the private sector.
We have a welfare reform bill that I trust the Members will believe
the American people will support which gives training and imposes some
discipline. And, of course, we also have more money in our crime bill
for more prisons and more police on the street, and lo and behold, not
only growth incentives, all of which are paid for, but we have
delivered on the middle income tax cut the President has been
promising.
Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and I think this President
will come in with tax relief for middle income families because middle
income families want him to keep his word, and they believe that as the
Government of the United States begins to be downsized, when we finally
accept the principle that Washington is not as important as the
heartland across this country, they believe that Americans should share
in the benefits of reducing the Government.
The bottom line on this proposal is simple. We have included all
these programs, including trying to help the besieged American family,
and in the course of doing it we have cut deficits by $150 billion more
then the Clinton plan. And I say to my colleagues who say they do not
think the American family ought to get any of their money back because
our deficit cuts are not deep enough, that they cannot vote for the
Clinton plan because our budget is $150 billion more in greater deficit
reduction, 5 out of 5 years better.
Mr. Chairman, the bottom line is that we should support the
Republican proposal that says we should have less for Washington and
more for the American family, and that is what the American people
want.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished
majority leader, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt].
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
{time} 1320
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong opposition to the
Kasich substitute to the House budget resolution. I believe it would be
a painful step backward--at a time when we must keep moving forward.
One year ago, in this very Chamber, when we passed President
Clinton's first budget, we voted for fiscal responsibility--for fiscal
sanity.
We said we had to start making the tough choices--reining in the
runaway spending and borrowing, the lop-sided policies that favored the
rich over middle-class America--policies that had been a proud
Republican legacy.
We said it was time for the wealthiest handful of Americans to pay
their fair share--instead of soaking up huge tax cuts while hard-
working American families watched their paychecks grow smaller and
smaller.
We said it was time for basic fairness--fairness to the families that
sent us here in the first place.
Fairness to the families who know that, for all the Republican
rhetoric about ``big government'' and ``tax and spend,'' Democrats have
been fighting for them for decades. And for a dozen years of Reagan and
Bush, it was clearly an uphill battle.
Today, we can choose to continue down that path of fairness and
fiscal responsibility. A path that has brought more new jobs, and
higher economic growth, than in all the Bush years. A path that has
brought a lower deficit, and lower interest rates--lower than we have
seen in years. A path that has brought more new homes, more family
investment, and more consumer confidence, than we've seen in a long,
long time.
We can keep travelling down this path. Or we can vote for the Kasich
substitute. We can vote for Congressman Kasich's slap-dash package of
cuts in crucial programs, and deep tax cuts for the wealthiest
Americans.
I believe that would be a grave mistake--and we would pay the price
for decades.
We would pay the price for significantly reducing biomedical
research, child immunizations, drug treatment, and AIDS funding.
We would pay the price for gouging a whopping $45 million out of
Medicare.
We would pay the price for deep cuts in medical care for veterans--
and the outright elimination of legal aid for those too poor to hire
their own lawyer.
And for all these catastrophic cuts, you would think that Congressman
Kasich would at least propose some measure of tax fairness, tax relief,
for American families.
But in fact, his tax proposals are regressive, unfair, and downright
dangerous to our working people.
He wants a capital gains tax cut for the wealthy. He wants big tax
breaks for big business.
His highly trumpeted child tax credit would go to many of the richest
Americans, and would not even apply to the families who need it most--
those earning less than $16,000 a year.
So let us make it clear that we have had enough of the rusted
Reaganomics that hurt us so badly in the 1980's.
Let us make it clear that, now that we have a budget that works for
America's middle-class families, we are not going to turn back the
hands of time.
And let us reject the Kasich substitute budget--before it has a
chance to wreck our economy, and our society, and be unfair to the hard
working middle income American families.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the
distinguished gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], the Republican
whip.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] is recognized
for 4 minutes.
Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend from Ohio for
allowing me this opportunity. Let me say that it is a delight to follow
the very distinguished gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt], who is
such an eloquent advocate of his side.
We have one difference of opinion I think about the direction of the
country, and another difference of potentially fact about where our tax
benefits go. So I just want to make very clear to everybody, first of
all, I am very, very grateful to all allowed to serve with John Kasich
and the team he has put together on the Committee on the Budget,
because these Members, as the Washington Post, hardly a Republican
bastion, has said, they have produced a budget that adds up. You may
not agree with their direction, and certainly Members who are too
liberal to vote for this, Members who believe in big Government,
Members who want to sustain the welfare state, will not want to vote
for the Kasich budget, because it represents a basic change in where
America is going. And I respect that.
That is a difference of opinion about America's future. And those who
believe that the welfare state has worked in Washington DC, that the
murders we see every night are just a random accident, that the
President was wrong when he came during the State of the Union and said
beginning 30 years ago families began to decline, a date which is in
fact the Great Society, according to President Clinton's own words in
the State of the Union.
Those who think President Clinton was wrong to say we must strengthen
families, I can appreciate that in order to protect the welfare state
they are going to vote no on the Kasich budget.
But I want to make two points of fact. The $500 per family tax credit
for children is, in fact, going to help working American families. This
chart shows it clearly. Ninety percent of the money will go to families
under $75,000. Ninety percent. That is the families where people get up
every morning and go to work, often both the husband and the wife, and
sometimes it is a single head of household, and they go to work. And
the taxes that over the years the Democrats have raised again and again
and again leave them with tragically less money than they would have
had under Harry Truman.
What we do in this Republican budget, for the first time, is begin to
give families the money to take care of their children, for a very
profound difference of opinion.
Our good friends who wanted to maintain the welfare state believe
that bureaucrats love your children more than parents. They believe
that bureaucrats are smarter about raising children than parents. They
want to take the money out of that family, transfer it through
Washington, and hire a bureaucrat to reach into that family, so the
bureaucrat can do what the parents cannot, because the parents do not
have the money. If you are a family of three children, that is $1,500
in your pocket, to help you raise your child, to help you save for
college, to help you buy clothing. Fifteen hundred dollars may not be
much if you are very, very wealthy. But it is a lot if you are a
working family or if you are a single mother trying to raise those
three children.
Second, we do not have a capital gains tax cut in the traditional
sense. We do one thing. We index capital investments against inflation.
We say to you if you buy a family farm, over the next 30 years you
should not be cheated by your Government with inflation. If you save,
you should not be cheated by your Government with inflation. If you
have a little investment or you start a small business, and you happen
to have that business grow for 10, 15, or 20 years, you should not be
cheated by your Government through inflation.
Now, the Democrats I understand may favor inflation. The Democrats
may want to in fact push that family farm into a higher tax bracket.
They may want to push that small business into a higher tax bracket. We
think it is only fair to people willing to save to let them keep the
money, instead of having the Government take it away.
But what it comes down to is something very simple: We believe that
Government is too big and it spends too much. We believe that
Washington has too much of your money, and when you realize that over
the next 5 years it will have over $9 trillion to spend, we think
cutting the deficit deeper, which the Kasich budget does, we think
cutting taxes for families, which the Kasich budget does, we believe
that returning power back home by having an unfunded mandate provision,
to send power back to the counties, cities, and States, which the
Kasich budget does, we think these are the right steps, because we
think America is healthier when Americans get to keep their own money.
Our good friends in the Democrat leadership who believe in the
welfare state, who believe that this whole structure of public housing
and public relief and all these things which are destroying the country
work, let me just say to you, you cannot maintain this civilization
with 12-year-olds having babies, with 15-year-olds killing each other,
with 17-year-olds dying of AIDS, and 18-year-olds getting diplomas they
cannot read.
The Kasich budget begins to move us away from that system. The Kasich
budget begins to return money back to families so they can raise their
children in a decent environment and have a chance to do something
about their education and give them a better future.
The Democratic leadership will presently ask you to vote for more of
the same tired welfare state spending, and I just ask you, look at the
murder in Washington in that high school, look at what is happening in
this Nation's Capital, look at the death and devastation the welfare
state has wrought, and vote for a change. Vote to help families. Vote
for the Kasich budget.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the
distinguished Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Washington [Mr.
Foley].
(Mr. FOLEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
{time} 1330
Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Chairman, we are at the end of this debate and
virtually at the end of this bill. I would say this has been a good
debate, a useful debate, and I think, largely, a helpful one. But we
now have to make the choice between a number of alternative budgets.
The immediate choice is to decide whether to pass the Kasich budget.
I want to salute the gentleman from Ohio. I think he is one of our
talented and able Members, and I think he has made a positive
contribution to this debate, both with this substitute and with his own
exceptional efforts.
But I cannot agree with him, nor with the distinguished Republican
whip, that this is the wiser course for us to take, or that the Sabo
budget represents an endorsement of some mythical welfare state.
It is not a welfare state that provides for basic nutrition for
nursing mothers in WIC; or provides for educational benefits for our
children in school; or deals with the problems of our senior citizens
in Medicare; or provides student loan opportunities for students to
prepare for their responsibilities in work and citizenship. None of
these things that this Sabo bill provides, and the Kasich bill cuts
would, I think, raise any serious question among the American people.
The Sabo budget is a sound, responsible, effective budget, and it is a
budget that is reducing the deficit.
I do not want to go over what has been mentioned before, but last
year we heard terrible predictions of what would happen if the
Democratic leadership budget was adopted. We had Members on the other
side saying that we would have a recession, that the country would see
huge increases in unemployment levels, and the collapse of the economy.
Instead, we have an economy that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve
described recently as underlyingly more healthy and promising than at
any time in the last two or three decades--two or three decades.
And we have an economy which is producing lower interest rates,
providing greater investment levels, and greater employment levels than
in many, many years.
I am not going to go into the specifics of the Kasich amendment. I
think we have talked about that already.
But it does strike me as exceedingly strange, if we are interested in
helping children, as the gentleman from Georgia keeps saying, and we
are interested in being fair to the American people, that this
amendment provides tax credits for people who earn $200,000 a year and
more, and denies them to families who earn under $16,000. If that
represents fairness to American families to my colleagues on the other
side, then I am perplexed.
We have a chance to continue to build on last year's great and
important budget decision, a decision which is reducing our deficit and
building a healthy and strong economy, which is providing the jobs,
investment, and growth that we want for the immediate future and
beyond.
We can take great pride, every Member of this House who voted for the
Democratic budget last year. We can, indeed, welcome the opportunity
that our friends on the other side offered us, to stand up and say,
this year, ``We were right last year; you were wrong last year.''
We can be right again this year by voting for the Sabo budget and
against the Kasich budget.
Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the
Kasich budget substitute amendment. My Republican colleagues on the
Budget Committee have crafted a budget proposal that contains over 250
real spending cuts and real reforms in how the Federal Government
works. These recommendations would reduce the deficit by $152 billion
more than the Democrat resolution.
In contrast to the Democrat budget, which continues the trend of high
taxes, high spending, and high deficits, the Republican budget
alternative offers a real choice to the American people.
The Democrat budget fails to address the issues of family tax relief,
welfare reform, crime reform, health care reform, and job creation
incentives. The Kasich budget includes provisions dealing with all
these issues, and still achieves more deficit reduction than the
Democrat budget.
The Kasich budget plan provides a $500 tax credit for each child in a
family earning less than $200,000 a year. The 16th Congressional
District of Illinois contains 138,310 children. That means that the
16th District would receive $69,155,000 in tax relief. Nationally, 86
percent of the tax credit would go to families with a gross annual
income below $75,000 per year. For the taxpayers in the 16th District,
and across the Nation, this is well-deserved break.
In 1992, while running for President, then-Governor Bill Clinton
supported a middle-class tax cut. But as President, Bill Clinton
reneged on that promise. His excuse was that faced with an unexpectedly
high budget deficit, we simply could not afford it. Well, by his
administration's own updated numbers, the budget deficit has shrunk to
$176 billion. The excuse of a high deficit is no longer valid.
Lawmakers who oppose tax cuts paid for by spending reductions usually
rely on taxpayers' ignorance of who actually gains from such spending.
Federal programs primarily benefit small and powerful interest groups
at the expense of all taxpayers. But the Kasich budget reverses this
trend. It benefits millions of American families at the expense of a
few Washington interest groups by cutting many unneeded Federal
programs.
The Kasich plan also includes the House Republican welfare reform
proposal which stresses work instead of welfare, and seeks to put
people on payrolls instead of public assistance rolls. It combats crime
by including $2 billion for additional local police officers and $3
billion to fund Federal-State partnerships for new prisons. The Kasich
budget also fully funds the Affordable Health Care Now Act, which
expands access to health coverage while containing costs and assures
that medical decisions remain in the hands of patients and doctors, not
government bureaucrats.
But it also includes job creation and economic growth incentives. The
Republican budget makes changes in the Tax Code to boost economic
growth by encouraging higher levels of saving, investing, and risk
taking. Specifically, it indexes capital gains, establishes a deduction
for capital losses on the sale of a primary residence, makes IRA's
fully deductible, allows expensing of business equipment, and extends
the research and development tax credit.
I don't agree with every spending cut in the Kasich plan, but that
should not detract from the overall goal of this well-drafted budget
alternative that addresses the needs of what the American people have
been saying over the last year--cut spending first and make government
more responsive to its owners: the taxpayers.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, the question before us today is quite
simple--should we keep more money in the hands of Americans back home
or should we have them send it to Washington so that Congress can
decide how to spend it?
The Kasich alternative to the President's budget for fiscal year 1995
reverses the trend that we have seen since World War II, in which a
growing percentage of family income gets taxed and spent by the
Government.
Mr. Kasich's budget goes well beyond not raising taxes. It changes
the way the Government does business. It offers reforms to control
spending now and in the long run. It not only brings down the Federal
deficit by $310 billion over the next 5 years--$152 billion more than
the President's budget would--it provides mechanisms to help ensure
that spending not only goes down now, but stays down in the future.
It recognizes that the financial and regulatory burdens placed on
small businesses by government have been creating disincentives for
employers to create jobs. The Kasich budget offers creative changes to
encourage savings and investment.
Unwilling to merely maintain the status quo in such areas as welfare,
crime, and health care, Mr. Kasich includes in his amendment creative
new approaches to each of these critical national issues.
Unwilling to just keep business as usual in such areas as job
training and counseling, the Kasich budget takes 80 separate Federal
Government job training programs--each with their own bureaucracies--
and consolidates them into seven block grants. These grants would then
be given to States, whose Governors and legislatures know how best to
utilize these funds. In addition, by eliminating program overlap and by
better targeting our resources in this way, we're able to save close to
$2 billion and use it to bring down the deficit.
Thus, we have the opportunity today to say ``no'' to the status quo
and ``no'' to the proposition that Washington's answer to our problems
is more government. We also have the opportunity today to say ``yes''
to reforming government, ``yes'' to changing the way we do business,
and ``yes'' to making real progress at bringing the Federal budget and
deficit under control. We also can go home to our constituents and tell
them that the Government's answer to our Nation's ills is less
government and more reliance on the individual citizen and the private
sector.
Let's answer the question posed to us today by voting for the Kasich
budget alternative.
Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, House Budget Committee Republicans
have a budget that encompasses four major issues facing our country:
health care reform, crime, welfare reform, and deficit reduction. It
also contains tax relief for American families suffering from
successive tax increases over the past several years. I am proud to
associate myself with this visionary budget. I hope that one day soon a
budget similar to the Kasich GOP budget will be the last to pass under
the King of the Hill procedure employed by the Democrats again this
year to ensure passage of their lackluster budget resolution.
By including full funding for the Affordable Health Care Now Act, the
Republican welfare reform proposal, and a down payment on the Crime
Control Act, this budget responds directly to these crucial issues. The
President's budget includes funds for only one-half of the new police
officers he has promised. The President fails to include funds for
welfare reform altogether. On health care, the President excludes from
the budget at least $1.4 trillion in health care spending he has
proposed over the next 5 years, including in excess of $100 billion in
payroll taxes that will devastate job providers.
President Clinton promised tax relief to families in 1992, reversed
his position and hit Americans with a tax hike. Profamily rhetoric
served the President well on the campaign trail. However, Republicans
deliver in this budget by providing a $500 per child tax credit to
families earning less than $200,000 a year. Sadly, while the President
aggressively sought to fulfill pledges to abortion rights and gay
advocacy groups upon inauguration, the tax relief promise to American
families went out the window. A vote for this budget will remind
American families that some elected officials still view the family as
the most important component of our society.
Finally, the GOP budget cuts the budget deficit by $278 billion over
5 years, $152.6 billion more than the Clinton-Democrat budget. The
priorities in the GOP budget as proposed by the Budget Committee
Republicans reflect a philosophy of limited government, fiscal
responsibility, and the virtue of the American family. I stand in the
strongest support of this bold proposal.
Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the
Republican budget resolution offered by Mr. Kasich and in opposition to
the Budget Committee's Clinton budget.
Once again, I believe the Members have an opportunity to demonstrate
who is committed to curbing Congress' appetite to spend and who is not.
The Democrat alternative furthers the Clinton administration's
philosophy of creating more government, more spending, and higher
taxes. On the other hand, the Republican budget takes bold steps, many
of which will affect my constituents, to reduce the size of government
and annual deficits. But it does so fairly, honestly, and specifically.
The Republican budget shaves the deficit by $162 billion next year
alone, and outsaves the Democratic budget by more than $152 billion
over the next 5 years. And it does so while covering the costs for
market-based health care reform, the Republican welfare reform plan,
and a $500 per child tax deduction for middle-income families.
Although I am supporting the Kasich substitute because it is the only
choice that is fiscally responsible, I strongly oppose the provision to
increase revenue from the Power Marketing Administrations [PMAs]. While
I am not opposed to sharing the sacrifice, this proposal to increase
PMA revenues by $4.8 billion over 5 years does not meet the definition
of shared sacrifice. My PMA customers, who are served by the Bonneville
Power Administration [BPA], have already weathered severe rate impacts
as a result of droughts and the Endangered Species Act. This is hardly
the time to increase burden on ratepayers and Northwest businesses,
such as our aluminum companies, who depend on BPA power for survival.
As the ranking member of the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over
the PMAs, I can assure my constituents I will continue to fight for
reasonable and competitive power rates. It is important to remember the
budget resolution is only a blueprint, and it is the authorizing
committees who have the final say. You can be certain I would delete
such a proposal at the authorizing level.
I want to congratulate Mr. Kasich for his outstanding work in
crafting a credible Republican alternative. While not perfect, it is a
big step in the right direction.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the
Republican Budget Committee alternative. I commend my colleague, John
Kasich, for his hard work in formulating a comprehensive alternative to
the resolution reported by the Budget Committee. In developing this
budget, Mr. Kasich went to authorizing committees seeking advice. He
sought a plan we could stand behind, instead of resorting to a ``this
is what you get'' approach. As a Republican leader on the Education and
Labor Committee for work force issues, I sat down with John Kasich to
discuss my recommendations to consolidate overlapping and redundant job
training programs. I was extremely pleased that many of my ideas were
included in this alternative budget. As Republicans, we may not like
all, or even most, of the individual cuts. But I can say that we were
consulted. This budget's merit is the result of many innovative and
creative Republican ideas which, if enacted, will save the taxpayers
billions.
I support many of the concepts in the Republican alternative. While
President Clinton promised a tax cut for middle-class families, many of
my constituents called to let me know that they are still waiting. This
budget does just that--it contains a $500 per child tax credit,
delivering on the President's campaign promise. This is one small step
we can take to help families. Furthermore, there is no comparison
between the levels of deficit reduction achieved between the Democratic
and Republican Budget Committee proposals. The Republican proposal goes
$15 billion further in deficit reduction than the Democratic proposal
in fiscal year 1995 alone. Our Republican budget pays for welfare,
health care, and crime initiatives. And national defense is funded at a
much more responsible level.
To be quite honest, Mr. Chairman, I disagree with specific cuts and
increased spending in each of the alternatives before us today. None of
the proposals is perfect. But to say that I would vote against all of
them is not responsible governing. So, when I looked at each, I decided
that the Republican Kasich alternative is much closer to my
expectations for any plan which guides our Government's spending for
the next year. The Republican plan pays--instead of looking the other
way--for the President's ambitious domestic agenda. It has more deficit
reduction, more incentives for working families, and lays a reasonable
groundwork for reform.
But I do have concerns with the Kasich plan. My primary concern is
that this budget cuts $9.4 billion next year in education, training,
employment, and social services while increasing defense spending by
$6.4 billion. Although I believe that the Democratic proposal brings
defense spending to a point where national security could very well be
jeopardized, it is just as wrong to cut job training and social
services to a point where we are jeopardizing the future of our work
force and its ability to compete in a global, high-tech economy. Times
have changed. We can certainly do better in allocating limited Federal
resources.
Mr. Chairman, the Democratic Budget Committee proposal, which
essentially is a rubber stamp of President Clinton's budget request,
does not go far to reduce the deficit. The Kasich/Republican plan does
not eliminate the deficit, either. Since, once again, a balanced budget
amendment has been effectively killed for yet another Congress, I am
supporting the Kasich resolution today because it moves the debate
about deficit reduction in the right direction. By continuing to hammer
away at this issue, I hope future budget debates can focus on less
partisanship and more genuine concern for fiscal responsibility and
cooperation.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the Kasich substitute.
Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Chairman, I enter in the Record the language of two
amendments that my Republican colleagues on the Budget Committee
approved for inclusion in the Kasich alternative. The amendments deal
with health care reform and should have been printed in the report to
accompany House Concurrent Resolution 218.
The first amendment makes clear the Republican view that all
Government-mandated health care reform should be on-budget. The second
expresses the Republican view that health alliances and similar
governmental entities should be prohibited from borrowing through the
Treasury.
Budgetary Treatment of Health Care Reform
For purposes of budget scorekeeping by the Office of
Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office,
any proposed change in law concerning health care reform
shall be properly reflected in the Federal budget.
Any obligation, payroll tax, assessment, premium or fee
required of an employer or of any other individual and which
is to be paid to a particular entity established pursuant to
Federal law shall be treated as a Federal receipt. Any
related expenditure made by any such entity required pursuant
to Federal law shall be treated as a Federal outlay.
This provision is particularly important in light of the
administration's failure to include the true cost of its
health care reform plan in the fiscal year 1995 budget
submission by OMB. The administration's health care reform
plan would constitute the largest tax increase and largest
expansion of entitlement spending in U.S. history.
Alliances or Other Government Health Entity Borrowing Prohibited
No health alliance or other government health entity shall
be granted the authority to engage in public borrowing
through the Department of the Treasury.
Ms. SCHENK. Mr. Chairman I agree with my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle that we need to further cut Federal spending. I agree that
we need to continue to reduce our Nation's deficit. But, there is a
right way and a wrong way to reduce spending and the Kasich substitute
is the wrong way to accomplish this goal.
Last year I helped craft and voted for a package of spending cuts
along with Mr. Kasich and Mr. Penny. While I did not like everything in
Penny-Kasich, I was willing to make tough choices for the sake of
deficit reduction. Next week, we will have the opportunity to vote on a
balanced budget amendment and I will vote for this amendment because I
believe it is time for this Government to live within its means.
The debate here is not only about how much money the Government
should spend, it is also about how we should reorder our national
priorities. And while I agree that we need to reduce the deficit, I
don't agree that we should do it by cutting funding for AIDS research
or funding for research for breast and ovarian cancer or funding for
student loans. I don't agree that we should cut in half funding for
fusion research which offers hope for an endless supply of clean
energy. This is exactly what the Kasich substitute would do.
The Kasich substitute is not about cutting spending--it is a policy
statement that, if enacted, would turn our country in the wrong
direction. There is a difference between making tough choices and
making irresponsible choices. The Kasich substitute makes irresponsible
and unacceptable decisions about how we should allocate scarce
resources and for this reason it should be defeated.
Mr. Kasich has been a leader in the fight to reduce the deficit. I
have worked with him in the past and I look forward to working with him
in the future as we attempt to eliminate wasteful spending. But on this
substitute and with these choices, I cannot support his effort.
Mr. BONILLA. Mr. Chairman, I have the honor and privilege of serving
the people of the 23d District of Texas. I ask my colleagues to
remember that all of us were sent here to represent the people. Each
and every one of us has a responsibility to support a budget which
serves to increase the individual freedom of our employer, the American
citizen; and vote against any budget alternative which seeks to turn
citizens into subjects by expanding the size and power of the Federal
Government.
Out in the Davis Mountains, deep in west Texas, is the McDonald
Observatory. It has one of the world's most powerful telescopes,
capable of viewing distant galaxies. My colleagues, we do not need that
great telescope to look into the hearts and minds of the American
people, we only need to open our eyes and ears.
I have carefully reviewed the various budget alternatives before us
and am very disappointed and discouraged to report that most fail to
serve the needs of the American people. These proposals are just the
latest jumble of high taxes and deficit spending that Washington has
concocted. My colleagues, the American people have had enough of these
business-as-usual budgets. If you can't hear your constituents' voices,
come to Texas. Come to Laredo, come to Odessa, come to Del Rio, come to
Alpine--the common sense will be deafening. The jig is up. Government
must once again serve the people.
My colleagues, if you are willing to listen to the American people
there is a bright spot. Mr. Kasich has offered a commonsense
substitute. Voting for this substitute will be an important step in
restoring the people's trust in their Government. The commonsense
budget includes fully funded comprehensive reform of the welfare and
health care systems. The commonsense budget provides a needed $500 per
child tax credit for working Americans. The commonsense budget insures
that our military forces are adequately funded. The commonsense budget
reduces deficit spending by more than $152 billion.
My colleagues, let's use common sense when spending the people's
dollars and cents. Remember, it's their money, not ours. All of us have
promised to serve the American people. It is time for this Congress to
keep its word. Vote for the commonsense budget and restore to the
American people their income and freedom.
Mr. DORNAN of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong
opposition to the President's business as usual budget and in strong
support of both the Republican alternatives.
Mr. Chairman, there is no doubt that the economy is improving. How
much this has to do with the President's policies and how much it has
to do with the business cycle is another matter. Indeed, polls show
that a majority of Americans, 64 percent, do not credit Bill Clinton's
policies with the economy's resurgence. They seem to agree with one
well-known economist who said the economy would have improved, ``if
voters had elected Bugs Bunny.'' That seems to be the prevailing
attitude in the financial community as well. No one seriously believes
that the President's budget, which did not go into effect until
October, is responsible for what happened all last year. Positive
trends were already well in place, but that may not last long.
Take the employment picture, which, though improving slightly, is
still very shaky. The economy is simply not creating the types of jobs
that will propel the economy strongly forward. In the past few months
we have seen many large companies, GTE, Westinghouse, and others,
announce huge layoffs. And statistics show that many of the high-wage
jobs lost during the recession are being replaced with jobs of a lower-
wage, higher-turnover variety, a trend that has been a boon for the
temporary employment industry.
One of the reasons temporary workers are so attractive is that they
are not subject to many of the rules and regulations full-time workers
are. And if the Clinton administration is successful in enacting its
labor agenda--which includes a higher minimum wage indexed to
inflation--and I noticed where the head of the House, Speaker Tom
Foley's task force on homelessness, recently called for a minimum
hourly wage of $6 or more, a ban on striker replacements, increases in
pension plan premiums, and new OSHA regulations--they will succeed only
in exacerbating the unstable employment situation. The result would be
even more temps, more overtime, more mechanization, and fewer jobs.
There is also the need to consider the higher tax bills facing upper-
income Americans this year. Remember, President Clinton raised the top
marginal rate on income to 39.6 percent and made it retroactive to
January 1 of last year. So many Americans will be faced with a big tax
bill come April 15. And even though they can take 3 years to pay it
off, it will still have a restraining effect.
Furthermore, the new, higher withholding rates have gone into effect,
which will reduce take-home pay and is likely to result in less
borrowing, less investment, less spending, and less saving. And if that
is not enough to make tax season rougher than usual, many Americans
will find that refinancing their house has cut the amount they can
deduct for mortgage interest--by far the largest deduction most people
take--making their tax bill even higher.
So I would warn my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to put
away the ``Happy Days Are Here Again'' sheet music. There is still a
long way to go before we can assess the effects of Clintonomics.
Let me return to the specific budgets we have been presented with
today, starting with the President's plan.
By the administration's own admission, the Clinton defense proposal
is underfunded by at least $20 billion. This would require defense
spending to fall from $292.4 billion in fiscal 1993 to $258.1 billion
in fiscal 1999. Realistically speaking, how can we possibly project
American power and protect American interests on an isolationist
budget? The post-cold war world, as we discover almost every day, is
still a very dangerous place. I know that is said an awful lot, but it
is true. The geopolitical map of the world may have changed, but man
hasn't. As Plato said, ``only the dead have seen the end of war.'' So
we must still maintain readiness, while planning for a shift in defense
requirements.
Further weakening our defense posture is the fact that, under
Clinton, critical funding is being siphoned away from core defense
needs to noncore missions such as defense conversion and environmental
research. We don't have a dime to waste on this type of liberal
nonsense.
You know, we on this side of the aisle have taken to calling the
Clinton budget the MIA budget, because there is so much that is missing
from it. For example, the budget leaves out $100 billion in mandatory
premiums paid by businesses and individuals as well as the benefits
paid out from those receipts. Welfare reform, which is estimated to
cost some $7 billion a year, is also missing. Neither does Clinton
offer any clue as to how he is going to pay for implementation of the
GATT accord, the Superfund, or his crime package. For these initiatives
alone he will need to come up with $34 billion.
And what do we get for all this flim-flammery? More deficit spending,
to the tune of $370 billion over 5 years, and higher deficits. That's
right. Higher deficits. According to the President's own numbers, the
budget deficit will increase from $176 billion in 1995 to $201 billion
in 1999. And another $1.7 trillion will be added to the national debt.
I am proud to say, however, that two Republicans, Mr. Kasich and Mr.
Solomon, have offered alternatives that are light years ahead of the
Clinton plan.
The Solomon plan does something that Clinton promised to do during
the campaign, but hasn't come close to achieving--a balanced budget in
5 years. It does so with a package of 500 spending cuts totaling over
$600 billion. It does not reduce Social Security, cut veteran's
benefits, or raise taxes. It does lower the spending caps to ensure
that the bulk of the savings achieved will be used to balance the
budget, while including funding for such important initiatives as the
Republican welfare reform proposal, the Republican crime proposal, and
the Republican health care reform bill.
The other Republican plan, the Kasich plan, provides not only more
deficit reduction than the Clinton plan, but also provides job creation
incentives, family tax relief, and Government reform, while also
including health, crime, and welfare reform bills. Among its best
features is a $500 per child tax credit, which would keep $63 million
from leaving my district. This would help countless other working
families throughout America. It also indexes capital gains to
inflation, something I have strongly advocated for years. Further, it
would provide for immediate expensing of business equipment. And it
would do all this and still achieve $153 billion more in deficit
reduction than the Clinton-Democrat plan.
In sum, the Clinton administration came in promising change, but it
is the Republicans who are offering real change. I therefore, urge all
my colleagues to oppose the President's plan and support the Republican
alternative of your choice.
Mr. CLINGER. Mr. Chairman, this afternoon we must decide whether to
stay the course or set out in a new direction.
The budget before us today was prepared by the Clinton administration
and rubber stamped by the Budget Committee. It follows the basic
directions laid out last year in the 5-year plan devised by President
Clinton.
I had serious reservations about that plan when it was discussed in
this room a year ago, and today I am absolutely convinced that it is
taking us in the wrong direction.
Granted, objecting to any initiative is easy if one fails to put
forth some alternative proposal. Indeed, I would not waste your time,
Mr. Chairman, or that of my constituents by suggesting that the
President is wrong unless I held a superior plan in my hand--the Kasich
budget.
Why is the Kasich plan better? I'll give you five reasons.
First, the Kasich alternative would refrain from spending $152
billion over the next 5 years that would otherwise be borrowed and
spent under the Clinton plan. That is fiscal discipline and it results
in lower interest costs in the short term and less accumulated debt
over the long term.
Second, the Kasich alternative calls for the adoption of specific,
tangible reforms in the decision-making process here in Washington. A
cost-benefit analysis would be performed before we ask private citizens
and the business community to comply with any new bureaucratic rules
and regulations.
Of particular interest to me is the section reviewing the need to
relieve State and local governments from the burden of unfunded federal
mandates. County commissioners from all over the country met here in
Washington earlier this week to discuss this matter and I am delighted
that their concerns have been recognized.
Third, the Kasich alternative makes a good faith effort to fix our
ailing health care system and reform Federal welfare programs. And,
unlike the Clinton health care plan and yet-to-be released welfare
reform proposal, the Kasich plan locks in savings provided by these
reforms for deficit reduction.
Fourth, the Kasich alternative provides a more realistic Defense
budget that will allow the United States to pursue a sound post-cold
war national security policy. The Clinton administration has conceded
their proposed Defense spending levels are insufficient to adequately
fund their Defense program outlined in the Bottom-Up Review. The Kasich
plan restores and reprioritizes Defense spending in an effort to
preserve our military capability and clearly define the United States
role in the world.
Finally, the Kasich plan also recognizes the contributions and
sacrifices our veterans have made in protecting the peace, liberty and
interests in our country. I strongly support and applauds the Kasich
plan for increasing veterans medical care by $110 million, restoring
the Clinton administration's $52 million cut in medical and prosthetic
research, and adding 50 FTE's to the Board of Veterans Appeals to help
reduce the 2-year backlog.
The Kasich alternative is a voluminous, multifaceted document, but I
believe that these five elements alone would put us on a fundamentally
different course than that advocated by the President.
For those of my colleagues who favor this new direction but are
concerned about the fate of a particular program, I would ask you to
resist the temptation to reject the entire plan on the basis of a
single line item. It would be difficult to find two people, much less a
majority, who could agree on where every penny goes in a budget of $1.5
trillion.
Indeed, in my capacity as a Pennsylvanian and as the ranking member
of the Aviation Subcommittee, I have concerns about elements of the
Kasich alternative.
The consolidation of all economic development programs into a single
block grant program troubles me greatly. Before I was elected to the
House of Representatives I served as general counsel in the Economic
Development Administration, and since being elected I have worked hard
to see that EDA effectively leverages non-Federal money to help
communities develop the infrastructure that is needed to retain and
attract new industry.
As the ranking member on the Aviation Subcommittee, I take issue with
the Kasich proposal to privatize the air traffic control functions of
the Federal Aviation Administration. It is, I believe, premature to
make such a recommendation because the FAA is studying this proposal
and will make its recommendations to the Congress next month. The
Public Works and Transportation Committee will then carefully review
these recommendations.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, the Kasich plan is the better plan and I
urge my colleagues to support it.
Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, today the House is once again
presented with a clear choice: between yet another, business-as-usual
budget from the White House or a budget from this House that cuts
taxes, makes real spending cuts, and proposes major new reforms in
welfare and crime. If you want real change, the Kasich budget is the
one to support.
In New Jersey, our new Governor, Christie Whitman, has asked for and
received a 5-percent reduction in the State income tax. At the same
time, the Governor is committed to reducing government costs by
submitting all State programs to a strict priority ordering. Governor
Whitman is determined to give the citizens of her State better
government for less money. Here in this Congress, we should make the
same kind of commitment and we can, by passing the Kasich budget.
The White House still doesn't get it. They talk about serious
spending restraints, but they continue to increase funding for all non-
military discretionary programs. The Kasich budget does it better--real
cuts in both taxes and spending and even better deficit reduction.
Mr. Chairman, the Kasich budget offers the American people what we in
New Jersey know to be true. Government should pursue its central
mission--that of serving the people's needs, instead of the needs of
bureaucrats and their special interest groups. The Kasich budget
demonstrates that the American people can get better Government at less
cost, and also get to keep more of their own money which will help our
economy grow.
Mr. Chairman, I urge support for the Kasich budget.
Mr. KNOLLENBERG. Mr. Chairman, I would like to explain a few things
for those people across the Nation who are watching this debate.
We will hear a lot of numbers being batted back and forth in this
Chamber today. We will hear terms like baselines, out years, budget
authority, allocations, sequesters and CBO scoring.
But don't be fooled. We're not talking about quantum physics here.
This debate is really about power--the power of government versus the
power of the American people.
On the one hand, we have the Democrats' budget. It relies on the same
tired formula they have peddled for years: more social spending; more
careless defense cuts; more big deficits. Equally as interesting is
what's not in their budget: no health care reform; no welfare reform;
and no tough crime bill.
Taken together, this visionless document is the very essence of
status quo. It continues to feed the same failed Government policies
with the personal and financial freedom of America's middle-class
families.
In stark contrast, we Republicans have offered an alternative called
putting families first. This comprehensive package provides tax relief
for families, incentives for job creation, greater deficit reduction,
and funding for welfare reform, health care reform and a tough,
comprehensive crime bill--all paid for with meaningful spending cuts.
In short, the Republican alternative is a blueprint for the future,
that invests in people not government.
So as the debate carries on, ask yourself one question: Do I still
have faith in Government to take my money and look out for my best
interests? If you do, great--support the Democrats' budget. However, if
you don't--if you think that Government is too big and that America's
families need more freedom to look after their own best interests--
support the Republican alternative.
The choice is simple, and I believe the answer is obvious.
The CHAIRMAN. All time has expired. The question is on the amendment
in the nature of a substitute offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr.
Kasich].
The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the noes
appeared to have it.
RECORDED VOTE
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 165,
noes 243, not voting 30, as follows:
[Roll No. 55]
AYES--165
Allard
Archer
Armey
Bachus (AL)
Baker (CA)
Baker (LA)
Ballenger
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Bateman
Bereuter
Bilirakis
Bliley
Blute
Boehner
Bonilla
Bunning
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Canady
Castle
Clinger
Coble
Collins (GA)
Combest
Condit
Cooper
Crapo
Cunningham
Deal
DeLay
Dickey
Doolittle
Dornan
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Emerson
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Fingerhut
Fish
Fowler
Franks (CT)
Franks (NJ)
Gallegly
Gekas
Geren
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gingrich
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Grams
Grandy
Greenwood
Gunderson
Hancock
Hansen
Hastert
Hefley
Herger
Hobson
Hoekstra
Hoke
Houghton
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Inhofe
Istook
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Kasich
Kim
King
Kingston
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
Kyl
Lazio
Leach
Levy
Lewis (FL)
Linder
Livingston
Manzullo
McCandless
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McKeon
Meyers
Mica
Michel
Miller (FL)
Molinari
Moorhead
Myers
Nussle
Oxley
Packard
Paxon
Petri
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Quillen
Quinn
Ramstad
Ravenel
Regula
Ridge
Roberts
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Roth
Roukema
Royce
Santorum
Saxton
Schaefer
Schiff
Sensenbrenner
Shays
Shuster
Skeen
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Snowe
Solomon
Spence
Stearns
Stenholm
Stump
Sundquist
Talent
Tauzin
Taylor (NC)
Thomas (CA)
Thomas (WY)
Torkildsen
Upton
Vucanovich
Walker
Walsh
Weldon
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
Zeliff
Zimmer
NOES--243
Ackerman
Andrews (ME)
Andrews (NJ)
Applegate
Bacchus (FL)
Baesler
Barca
Barcia
Barlow
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Beilenson
Bentley
Berman
Bevill
Bilbray
Bishop
Blackwell
Boehlert
Bonior
Borski
Boucher
Brewster
Browder
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Bryant
Byrne
Cantwell
Cardin
Carr
Chapman
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Coleman
Collins (MI)
Conyers
Coppersmith
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Danner
Darden
de la Garza
de Lugo (VI)
DeFazio
DeLauro
Dellums
Derrick
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dicks
Dingell
Dixon
Durbin
Edwards (CA)
Edwards (TX)
Engel
English
Eshoo
Evans
Faleomavaega (AS)
Farr
Fazio
Fields (LA)
Filner
Flake
Foglietta
Ford (MI)
Frank (MA)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gilman
Glickman
Gonzalez
Gordon
Green
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamburg
Hamilton
Harman
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hoagland
Hochbrueckner
Holden
Horn
Hoyer
Huffington
Hughes
Hutto
Inslee
Jacobs
Jefferson
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (SD)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnston
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennedy
Kennelly
Kildee
Kleczka
Klein
Klink
Kreidler
LaFalce
Lambert
Lancaster
Lantos
LaRocco
Laughlin
Lehman
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Long
Lowey
Machtley
Maloney
Mann
Manton
Margolies-Mezvinsky
Markey
Martinez
Matsui
Mazzoli
McCloskey
McCurdy
McDermott
McHale
McKinney
McNulty
Meek
Menendez
Mfume
Mineta
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Montgomery
Moran
Morella
Murphy
Murtha
Nadler
Neal (MA)
Neal (NC)
Norton (DC)
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Parker
Pastor
Payne (NJ)
Payne (VA)
Penny
Peterson (FL)
Peterson (MN)
Pickett
Pickle
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reed
Richardson
Roemer
Romero-Barcelo (PR)
Ros-Lehtinen
Rose
Rowland
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanders
Sangmeister
Sarpalius
Sawyer
Schenk
Schroeder
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sharp
Shepherd
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (IA)
Spratt
Stark
Stokes
Strickland
Studds
Stupak
Swett
Swift
Synar
Tanner
Taylor (MS)
Tejeda
Thompson
Thornton
Thurman
Torres
Torricelli
Traficant
Tucker
Underwood (GU)
Unsoeld
Valentine
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Volkmer
Washington
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Wheat
Whitten
Williams
Wilson
Wise
Woolsey
Wyden
Wynn
Yates
NOT VOTING--30
Abercrombie
Andrews (TX)
Barton
Brooks
Collins (IL)
Cox
Crane
Dooley
Fields (TX)
Ford (TN)
Gallo
Gibbons
Gutierrez
Hastings
Hayes
Kopetski
Lewis (CA)
Lightfoot
Lloyd
McMillan
Meehan
Miller (CA)
Natcher
Orton
Pelosi
Reynolds
Rostenkowski
Shaw
Slattery
Towns
{time} 1353
The Clerk announced the following pairs:
On this vote:
Mr. Barton for, with Mr. Abercrombie against.
Mr. Fields of Texas for, Mr. Collins of Illinois against.
Mr. Gallo for, Mr. Dooley against.
Mr. Lewis of California for, Mr. Meehan against.
Mr. Lightfoot for, Mr. Orton against.
Mr. McMillan for, Mr. Slattery against.
Mr. FORD of Michigan changed his vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
Mr. WALSH changed his vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment in the nature of a substitute was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
final period of general debate
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, it is now in order for a final
period of debate.
The gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo] will be recognized for 5
minutes, and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] will be recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. FAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the House will vote today to continue the
unprecedented and successful economic growth and deficit reduction
initiatives that the Congress and President Clinton began last year.
We enter into this debate with an economy that is improving in all
sectors. Because of the aggressive and realistic deficit reduction
package enacted last year by this Democratic Congress and the
Democratic administration, nationwide unemployment is now down to 6.5
percent, job creation is up by 1.9 million private sector jobs,
inflation is in check, and the economic outlook is the best we have
witnessed in decades.
We achieved these goals through a combination of steady deficit
reduction and targeted investments. The budget resolution continues
these efforts by bringing down the 1995 deficit to $175.3 billion, the
lowest level in 5 year, and more than $100 billion below the
projections made last year. At the same time, the budget provides for
increased investment into critical areas such as education and
training, research and development, the transportation infrastructure,
and crime control initiatives.
Mr. Chairman, I want to continue these positive trends. As you know,
my own State of California is still lagging behind the rest of the
country. We have been hard hit by defense cuts, by natural disasters
and by a persistent recession. For this reason, I want our national
economy to continue to improve so that my State of California will also
have a chance to benefit more from the positive results of President
Clinton's national economic program.
This means adopting the Sabo budget resolution today. This means
continuing the effective economic growth plan we passed last year. This
means continuing our tough deficit reduction plan and holding down
interest rates.
I urge my colleagues to support the Sabo budget resolution and keep
our economy moving forward.
Mr. REED. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of House Concurrent
Resolution 218, the fiscal year 1995 budget resolution drafted by Mr.
Sabo and his colleagues.
House Concurrent Resolution 218 follows the steady path of deficit
reduction and general economic recovery initiated by the President's
deficit reduction plan.
This budget resolution reflects both the realities and the priorities
of last year's $500 billion deficit reduction package.
There is deficit reduction--the deficit will drop from $255 billion
in fiscal year 1993 to $175 billion in fiscal year 1995. Indeed, the
budget deficit will drop from 4.9 percent of the gross domestic product
to 2.5 percent of the GDP in fiscal year 1995. House Concurrent
Resolution 218 cuts $102 billion from domestic discretionary spending,
terminates over 100 programs, and cuts 200 other programs. Moreover,
for the first time in 26 years, total discretionary spending will
actually decline with passage of this budget resolution. It is
important to note that these cuts are a direct result of last year's
enactment of the President's deficit reduction package which many of my
colleagues from the other side of the aisle said would wreak havoc on
the economy.
The budget resolution targets $13.6 billion to a number of investment
priorities. Job training would be boosted by $497 million. Spending to
stop crime and put more police on the street would be increased by $2.5
billion. Head Start would receive $700 million, and efforts to reform
our schools would be augmented with $595 million in new resources.
This budget resolution is not all things to all people. It is the
best budget resolution that we will vote on today. In addition, there
will be plenty of opportunities during the appropriations process to
cut Federal spending.
While last year's deficit reduction package and this budget
resolution will help continue the current national economic recovery, I
believe that we need to do more to bring jobs to regions of this
country that have not fully emerged from the recession, like Rhode
Island. In light of this disparity, I urge my colleagues to consider
job creating legislation or a regional economic development plan.
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to support the Budget
Committee's resolution today. However, I want to alert you to one
outstanding issue contained in the budget resolution. In this
resolution, the House Budget Committee adopted a new baseline for our
crop insurance system--effectively combining mandatory spending from
the crop insurance program with ad hoc discretionary spending from the
disaster assistance program. North Dakotans are very familiar with both
these programs. North Dakota's producers rank first in participation in
the crop insurance system for most crops based on acres enrolled. North
Dakota has also unfortunately become all too familiar with disaster
assistance, with a severe drought in 1988 and most recently the 500-
year flood of 1993. The House acted in historic fashion today,
combining these funds to strengthen the crop insurance system in a
historic tradeoff for disaster assistance that is harder to get.
I want to caution my colleagues that I believe the House Budget
Committee did not go far enough and as a result, while the shift in the
baseline is historic, the funds available may not be enough to
accomplish our objective of increased individual risk management rather
than annual disaster appropriations bills.
Before we enter negotiations with our colleagues in the other body, I
encourage Members to remember that we cannot accomplish our goal of
eliminating off-budget, ad hoc spending without the necessary
investment to improve the Federal crop insurance system.
Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Chairman, the arrival of the President's budget on
Capitol Hill signals the beginning of the annual budget process in
Congress. It is a long process, taking the remainder of the year to
complete and requires the passage of many bills and resolutions. The
budget resolution and the alternatives debated today define a broad
guideline on how much the Government will take in through taxes and
other receipts and also spend on Federal programs. The President's
signature is not required on the budget resolution, and the final
product does not carry the force of law.
I am opposed to the spending plan crafted by President Clinton and
the House Democrats on the Budget Committee. The President and the
Democratic leadership have made promises to reform the welfare system,
provide tax relief, cut spending, reform the health care system, and
stop crime. Yet, the budget for fiscal year 1995 shows that once again,
these promises that the American people deserve have not been
fulfilled. For instance, the Democratic budget glosses over anticrime
legislation and only calls for funding 50,000 police officers, not the
100,000 the President promised. In contrast the Republican budget
initiative fully funds a Comprehensive Crime Control Act and adds $2
billion for new police and $3 billion for Federal-State partnerships to
build new prisons. The Democratic budget also fails to fund welfare and
health care reform proposals. Finally, on the issue of deficit
reduction, the Republican plan cuts the deficit to about $162 billion
next year, and includes about $15 billion more in deficit reduction
than the Democratic plan. Over 5 years, the Republican plan achieves
$152.6 billion more in deficit reduction than the Democrats.
On the other hand, the plan drafted by the Republicans addresses many
of the major problems that my constituents in North Carolina are
discussing. It establishes real priorities and pays for them. The
Republican budget initiative provides family tax relief, reforms the
welfare system, regains control of our streets and neighborhoods
through anticrime measures, provides incentives for job creations,
reforms the health care system, and reduces the deficit. Even more
importantly, this plan is paid for through 200 real spending cuts and
genuine reform. It lowers spending, taxes, and the deficit. Under the
Republican plan, the deficit will be reduced approximately $310 billion
over 5 years. In my considered opinion, it is a strong, well-thought-
out plan and deserves support.
In particular, one of the major highlights is the $500-per-child tax
credit. This tax credit will partially offset the burdensome taxes
imposed by President Clinton and the Democratic leadership last August.
Under the Republican plan, a $500-per-child tax credit will be
available to families earning less than $200,000 a year. Seventy-four
percent of this credit will go to families earning less than $60,000 a
year. Roughly, $59 million a year in family tax relief will be
available or about $80 more every month for a family of four for
groceries or savings. The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, DC, think
tank, estimates that in the 10th Congressional District there are
roughly 116,159 children eligible for the tax credit. The $500 tax
credit would return about $58 million to my district. And again,
because of spending cuts in the bill, these tax credits will not affect
the deficit.
Finally, I would like to say a word about a sincere proposal put
forth by my good friends Representatives Fawell and Solomon. Since I
was elected to serve in Congress in 1986, I have worked to reduce
deficit spending and balance the budget. The Fawell-Solomon plan is a
package of 500 spending cuts that would reduce the deficit by $600
billion. It is the only budget plan that does balance the budget. Given
that the House plans to debate a balanced budget amendment to the
Constitution next week, it seemed hypocritical to me to not support an
effort that achieves this goal. As with other bills considered and
debated by Congress, this legislation includes some cuts that I
consider painful and do not support, for example it eliminates the
tobacco subsidy for tobacco farmers. But, I considered a vote for this
budget resolution a vote for balancing the budget, not a vote for
specific policy changes. In fact, as noted above, the budget resolution
does not have the force of law and there is legislative language in the
plan that states that the appropriate committees must make the specific
spending reductions.
Mr. HUGHES. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of House Concurrent
Resolution 218, the fiscal 1995 budget resolution. I wish to commend
Chairman Sabo and his colleagues on the Budget Committee for their
outstanding work in developing this measure and bringing it to the
floor.
This resolution continues the progress we started last year with the
adoption of the 5-year budget agreement initiated by President Clinton.
That plan provided for some $496 billion in deficit reduction over 5
years, more than half of which comes from hard cuts in every category
of Federal spending.
That budget agreement has been enormously successful to date. Indeed,
the budget deficit was $300 billion when President Bush left office in
1992. It was $180 billion at the end of 1993. While that is still a lot
of red ink, clearly we are heading in the right direction.
The budget resolution we are considering today continues us along the
deficit reduction glidepath. It conforms to the spending caps for
discretionary spending which were established under last year's budget
agreement. In so doing, it actually reduces discretionary spending for
the first time since 1969.
For those who believe, as I do, that the best way to balance the
budget is to cut spending, this is certainly welcome news. Indeed,
under this resolution, the deficit will fall to $175 billion in fiscal
1995. That is some $115 billion less than the deficit was just 3 years
ago.
Just as importantly, it achieves these targets without increasing
taxes, and without forcing any single industries or sectors of the
economy to bear a disproportionate burden of the spending cuts.
While I am generally satisfied with the framework of this budget
agreement. I really believe we should be doing even more in the way of
spending cuts. I intend to continue my efforts this year, just as I
have always done in the past, to identify and vote against those
spending programs which we don't need or can't afford.
For example, I intend to vote once again to terminate funding for the
$30 billion space station, which we just can't afford. I also intend to
support across-the-board cuts where necessary, and to vote against any
appropriations bills which come before the House where spending levels
cannot be justified.
In other words, I view this budget resolution as only a starting
point for deficit reduction--one which we can and will improve on
through the adoption of additional spending cuts this year.
I also intend to oppose the substitute amendments which have been
proposed by Representatives Frank, Mfume, Kasich, and Solomon. While I
appreciate their efforts, and agree with some aspects of their
proposals, none of these substitutes represents sound budget or tax
policy at this time.
Both the Frank and Mfume amendments would cut defense spending below
the level requested by President Clinton. While I support the effort to
reorder our military priorities in the post-cold war era, we must
maintain an acceptable level of military preparedness. I place great
weight in the President's determination, as Commander in Chief, that
these proposals go too far in cutting defense spending at this time,
and could put our national security at some risk.
The Kasich amendment would add some $6.4 billion in defense spending,
which is too much. At the same time, it could threaten the very fragile
economic recovery we are experiencing by draining some $119 billion in
tax revenues from the Treasury.
The last time we enacted a tax cut of that magnitude in 1981--which I
voted against--the budget deficit quadrupled almost overnight. We don't
need to repeat that same mistake again.
Similarly, I believe the Solomon amendment would increase the deficit
significantly over the long run.
That is because much of the savings proposed under this amendment
would come from Medicare. That is the same source of savings which
President Clinton has proposed to tap to pay for much of his national
health care reform program.
As my colleagues know, health care spending is the single fastest
growing part of the Federal budget. If we are really serious about
deficit reduction, then we have to start by getting health care costs
under control.
The Solomon substitute would make it difficult, if not impossible, to
get the health care reform effort off the ground, by earmarking these
savings for deficit reduction instead of health care reform. Indeed, it
would lock us into a fiscal straightjacket, where long-term health care
spending--and the Federal deficit--will continue to skyrocket, in
exchange for some limited, short-term deficit reduction.
I believe we need to continue to scrutinize the Federal budget very
carefully, and to identify additional areas to cut. We also need to
examine ways to control the rising costs of Medicare and other
entitlement programs.
However, we have to do so in a manner which makes sense, and which
will not do more harm than good over the long run. I believe the
committee resolution is fair and balanced. It offers a reasoned
combination of spending cuts for the most part, and contains a viable
enforcement mechanism. I urge my colleagues to support the resolution.
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Chairman, as we debate the budget resolution for
fiscal year 1995, I can't help but recall a similar debate that took
place in this Chamber less than a year ago. At that time, much like
today, a lot of predictions were being made about the effects of the
deficit reduction bill. There were those who said then that the bill
was ``a recipe for economic and fiscal disaster''--Mr. Crane,
Congressional Record March 18, 1993. Some said ``it will raise your
taxes, increase the deficit, and kill over 1 million jobs''--Mr.
Hefley, Congressional Record August 4, 1993. Still others claimed that
the package simply ``would not lower the deficit''--Mr. Herger,
Congressional Record August 4, 1993. The ``gloom and doom'' predictions
of economic devastation went on and on.
There's one difference in the debate this year, however. The effects
of last year's deficit reduction bill are no longer a matter of
speculation. The naysayers have been proven wrong.
Because of the bill we approved last year, the Federal budget deficit
is finally moving in the right direction. The expected deficit next
year--fiscal year 1995--is $126 billion less than President Bush
predicted it would be under his policies. That's a 40-percent
reduction. And the size of the deficit compared to the overall economy
has been cut nearly in half, to the lowest percentage since 1979.
The economy and financial markets have reacted favorably to the
actions we took last year. Interest rates are at the lowest levels in
20 years, and these lower rates have helped many families buy their
first home and enable millions more to refinance their mortgages and
save hundreds of dollars each month. Inflation also remains low, and
consumer confidence and spending is up. And the best news is that more
new jobs have been created in the past year than in the previous 4
years combined.
And what about all those new taxes that were going to crush jobs and
hurt millions of hard working Americans? The reality is that income
taxes were raised on only 1.2 percent of the wealthiest Americans.
The gas tax you heard so much about--the one that was supposed to
drain your bank account and drive businesses into bandruptcy--hasn't
even caused a blip in the economy. In fact, gas prices are actually
lower now than they were before this tax was imposed.
Not only have taxes not gone up for most Americans, they've gone down
for the small businesses and start-up companies who've taken advantage
of the job-creating tax incentives in our budget bill.
Taxes have also gone down for millions of working Americans under the
earned income tax credit. This credit makes sure that parents who work
full time make enough money to put their families above the poverty
line--an important first step toward welfare reform.
The bill we passed last year has also laid the groundwork for long-
term economic growth. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently
said:
The underlying, long-term economic outlook in this country
is improving quite measurable and, indeed, I don't recall as
good an underlying base for the long-term outlook that we
have today in the last two or three decades.
The best outlook in 20 or 30 years. That's a far cry from what the
naysayers were predicting last year.
We achieved this progress by establishing in law a 5-year program to
cut spending by $255 billion, cut entitlements, eliminate entire
programs, and reduce the Government work force. We put tight caps on
what can be spent on the operations of the Government. The result is
that Federal spending in 1995 on everything other than entitlements and
interest will be held below 1994 levels, with no adjustment for
inflation.
Now we can and we must do more, especially on entitlement spending.
This year's budget resolution continues the program of serious deficit
reduction and fiscal restraint that started last year. It will end 100
Federal programs and reduce more than 200 others. It will being the
1995 deficit down to $175.3 billion, the lowest level in 5 years. It
contains no new taxes and still fully funds the President's anticrime
initiative.
The decisions we made last year are working. The economy is
recovering. Jobs are being created. The deficit is going down. Interest
rates are staying down. We're in the best economic shape in two or
three decades. We're building a strong foundation for long-term growth.
The right vote today is to continue this progress by voting ``yes''
on the budget resolution.
Mr. FRANKS of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, today the House of
Representatives will consider five directions that the budget of our
Federal Government can take in the next 5 years. The Clinton budget and
the four other substitutes that are before us today each have their own
positive and negative aspects. While deliberating over these five
plans, I kept certain concerns of my constituents in mind. I knew that
in a State with tax rates among the highest in the country, families in
my district would be looking for a break from the tax burden. I knew
that these same families do not want to leave a massive budget deficit
to their children. I knew that people in my district, especially those
in Waterbury, want relief from the terror of violent and random crime.
Finally, I knew that the supposed economic recovery that President
Clinton tries to create through words every day has not reached my
State. It is my feeling that the Kasich substitute best addresses these
concerns.
Let me speak a little about each budget alternative. First, the
Democrat budget supported by President Clinton is a continuation of the
flawed budget act that I voted against last year. That is, it is a
budget that focuses on tax increases enacted to fund new spending
programs. Despite the claims that the Clinton administration is cutting
spending to lower the deficit, this Democrat budget actually increases
total spending by $36 billion. Most of the spending cuts are again
coming from the defense budget and the hardware that Connecticut
workers have built with years of acquired expertise. While some Members
of Congress feel that the military and political threats to America are
gone, I feel that President Clinton and the Democrats are being too
unwary in their analysis of the world situation. The American military
was the major obstacle to the extension of Soviet power and influence
during the cold war. We should not disassemble it so casually. At some
point in the future, the United States may have to be involved in
conflict again. Let's make sure that we have the best equipment
possible to minimize the number of American casualties.
I was astonished to see that President Clinton did not include his
health care reform bill in the budget. Considering that health care
reform is supposed to be a major focus of this administration, I can
only guess that President Clinton is trying to hide the monster that he
and his wife created. We all know now that the Clinton health care plan
would be the largest expansion of Federal entitlements in history,
along with the largest tax increase in history. I will not vote for a
budget that does not contain a credible and complete health care reform
package.
The Frank substitute only differs from the Democrat budget in that it
reduces the defense budget by an additional $2.4 billion for 1995 and
by $25 billion over 5 years. I recognize that, year after year, some
Members think that national defense is a convenient place to cut
spending, but I disagree with this view. The Frank substitute is just
providing another source of funding for President Clinton's new
spending programs, still included in this version of the budget.
The Congressional Black Caucus has also offered a substitute budget
that attempts to deal with the problems of the Nation, especially those
of the urban poor. While I recognize these problems, I see that the
Congressional Black Caucus is promoting the same big-Government
approach that has failed for the past 30 years. How much more money are
we going to waste before we realize that the Federal Government cannot
solve problems of the urban poor with costly programs enacted in
Washington?
The Solomon budget on the surface seems to be a budget worthy of
support. It balances the budget in 5 years with a wide range of
spending cuts. However, upon closer examination, I see that the Solomon
budget contains too many egregious spending cuts. I have been a
relentless supporter of the space station as the next step in our space
program, and I have supported the Seawolf submarine and the C-130H
aircraft as key elements of our national security for this decade. A
balanced budget amendment and a Presidential line-item veto would allow
Congress and the President to make the most reasonable spending cuts
from the budget.
In contrast to all of these budget options, the Kasich substitute is
formed around the concerns that I hear from my constituents. It reduces
the deficit by $310 billion over 5 years--over $150 billion more than
the Democrat budget--with a variety of real spending cuts. And at the
same time, it includes policies that will enhance economic growth
through business incentives and more money for families to keep at tax
time.
The Kasich substitute includes a welfare reform proposal which
stresses work instead of handouts and seeks to put people on payrolls
rather than public assistance rolls. States and local governments will
have greater flexibility to shape aid to families with dependent
children and other programs. I am especially heartened to note that
this budget addresses issues that I have been stressing during this
Congress: illegitimacy and parental responsibility. Finally, the
welfare reform proposal takes the savings from these changes and gives
it back to the taxpayer--over $18 billion over 5 years. No more will
welfare be a income redistribution program perpetuating poverty.
In addition to welfare reform, the Kasich substitute tackles the
modern crime problem head on with a comprehensive law enforcement and
criminal punishment program. The measure includes $2 billion over 5
years for local police officers and $3 billion for Federal and State
partnerships for new prisons. These are crime-fighting initiatives that
Republicans have been advocating for years. President Clinton says that
he is open to proposals that get tough on crime. This budget contains
those proposals.
The Kasich substitute fully funds the Affordable Health Care Now
Act--The health care alternative that expands access to health
coverage, contains cost, and most importantly, assures that medical
decisions are made with patients and doctors, not Government
bureaucrats. President Clinton does not care about this plan, but it is
the only health care plan included in the budgets offered today.
Many of my constituents have been asking me what Congress has been
doing to improve the job situation. Those Clinton-backed defense cuts
and increased taxes have not encouraged job growth in my district.
Changes in the tax code under President Clinton have instead taken
money away from working people. The Kasich substitute encourages higher
levels of saving, investing, and risk-taking as a better way to improve
the economy. One incentive in this budget, fully deductible IRA
accounts, will allow Americans to save for their retirement while
providing money for business investment.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Kasich substitute is the tax
changes for families with dependent children. Families earning less
than $200,000 per household would be eligible for a $500-per-child tax
credit. Ninety percent of this tax break would go to families with
incomes below $75,000 per year. At a time in which more of our Nation's
leaders are acknowledging the importance of strong families, this tax
credit is welcome news
As I did last year during budget debate, let me repeat President
Clinton's campaign promise of a middle-class tax cut. Candidate Clinton
said that he would offer middle-class families $60 billion in tax cuts
over 4 years in the form of a $300 tax cut per couple or a $300-per-
child tax credit. Well, here's my vote for a $500-per-child tax credit.
I am still waiting for President Clinton's. While President Clinton
once had a vision for the future, the Kasich budget is the only budget
substitute that outlines one.
Mr. COSTELLO. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to voice my support for the
budget resolution as passed by the House Budget Committee. As a member
of the committee who spent many hours drafting this legislation, I know
this is a good budget. This budget keeps discretionary spending under
the caps established last year. For the first time since 1969,
discretionary spending will actually fall under this budget. This
committee was able to come up with $3.1 billion in additional cuts
beyond the President's proposal, and even with these cuts I believe
this budget is effective in carrying out the important initiatives set
forth by the President, including crime control and prevention and
criminal justice reforms, more funding for Head Start, health research,
and job training, and infrastructure improvements.
The four substitute budgets being offered today contain some
proposals with merit; however, it is my feeling these proposals have
not received appropriate scrutiny through the committee process. For
instance, two of these substitutes recommend the privatization of the
Federal air traffic control and safety system. While this idea and
others may be worthwhile, I find it difficult to support such broad
reform measures without time for careful examination.
Additionally, I have not seen CBO's estimates of the Solomon
substitute. And, while I share the goals of the Congressional Black
Caucus to increase resources for housing, health care, and education, I
am reluctant to impose any inequitable taxes on law-abiding citizens of
this country. I also agree with the President's recommendation that
defense cannot be cut any further. The Frank substitute which proposes
a $2.4 billion cut to defense could unnecessarily jeopardize our
national security.
The Kasich substitute reverses the change in priorities that Congress
enacted in last year's budget and that the President has tried to
further in his administration. This substitute proposes entitlement
cuts of $95.6 billion over 5 years. I agree that entitlement spending
must be controlled if we are to balance our Nation's budget, but we
cannot expect senior citizens on Medicare alone to restore our Nation's
fiscal health.
The Kasich substitute cuts domestic spending by an additional $282.4
billion over the next five years compared to the committee resolution.
The effects to the 12th District of Illinois could be disastrous. The
following domestic cuts will have a direct and substantial impact on
southern and southwestern Illinois:
A 25 percent cut in energy development programs will end research and
development of clean coal technologies. Future funding for the Clean
Coal Technology Program is totally eliminated.
The reduction in highway and mass transit grants will make the St.
Clair County extension of MetroLink impossible. Eliminating mass
transit operating subsidies will impose a huge local tax burden and
effectively shutdown MetroLink.
The elimination of campus-based student assistance programs such as
work-study and Perkins loans will limit the educational opportunities
of thousands of students enrolled at Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale.
The elimination of the entire impact aid program could easily
bankrupt Mascoutah school district and other school districts impacted
by a federal presence.
The repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act will put local laborers out of
work.
While a $500 per child tax credit may be appealing at first thought,
I cannot believe this is responsible fiscal policy. Exploding budget
deficits were brought under control by last year's deficit reduction
legislation, but future deficits are still projected to be over $160
billion per year. It is not realistic with this fiscal outlook to
expect a massive tax cut. The 1981 Reagan income tax cut helped drive
deficits out of control; this mistake should not be repeated at a time
when our Federal budget deficit is headed down as the result of the
Clinton plan.
Mr. Speaker, the committee-passed budget resolution is sound fiscal
policy that cuts our Federal budget deficit and builds on changes in
our national priorities. We must pass this budget to see the
initiatives--such as crime control and job training--a chance to work.
As a result of the enactment of the deficit reduction bill from last
year, the deficit as a percentage of the economy is projected to drop
from 4.9 percent in fiscal year 1992 down to 2.5 percent in fiscal year
1995--the lowest since 1979. This budget will help maintain these
projections. I urge a vote in favor of the budget resolution and
against the substitutes.
Mr. BARCA of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the
budget resolution as reported by the House Budget Committee.
This budget is an important step in further reducing the Federal
deficit. In fact, the budget will reduce the deficit an additional $53
billion from the fiscal year 1994 budget. This represents a 23 percent
reduction of the deficit in one fiscal year.
Much more remains to be done to cut unnecessary spending, and I look
forward to working with my colleagues from both sides of the aisle, as
the appropriations process continues, to find other areas to trim
federal spending.
Mr. Chairman, I want to mention one other item. That is the
importance of enacting a plan to bring health care costs under control,
because under the current system the Federal deficit will rise in the
out years due to uncontrolled health care spending. And so I also look
forward to addressing the issue of health care costs with my colleagues
and enacting meaningful reform.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo].
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Kasich] and I
have an agreement that we will yield this time back. But the leadership
first wishes to make an announcement.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, in an effort
for everybody to catch their planes, we are not going to do the last 5
minutes or whatever it is. But there will be a recorded vote, so nobody
should leave until we do that. But there will be no more talking. How
about a cheer for that.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr.
Gephardt] the majority leader, to make an announcement.
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to speak out of order.)
legislative program
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Chairman, I would like to take this moment to
inform Members that there will not be further debate; we will go right
to a vote on the budget. But following that vote there will be 4
minutes of debate before a vote to instruct on going to conference on
the employee Federal buyout bill. So there will be an additional vote
after the vote on the budget, but it will come very quickly.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.
Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
The CHAIRMAN. Under the rule, the Committee rises.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore [Mr.
Moakley] having assumed the chair, Mr. Serrano, Chairman of the
Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that
that Committee, having had under consideration the concurrent
resolution (H. Con. Res. 218) setting forth the congressional budget
for the U.S. Government for the fiscal years 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998,
and 1999, pursuant to House Resolution 384, he reported the concurrent
resolution back to the House.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the rule, the previous question is
ordered.
The question is on the concurrent resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Recorded Vote
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 223,
noes 175, not voting 35, as follows:
[Roll No. 56]
AYES--223
Ackerman
Andrews (ME)
Applegate
Bacchus (FL)
Baesler
Barca
Barcia
Barlow
Barrett (WI)
Becerra
Beilenson
Berman
Bevill
Bilbray
Bishop
Blackwell
Bonior
Borski
Boucher
Brewster
Browder
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Bryant
Byrne
Cantwell
Cardin
Carr
Chapman
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Coleman
Collins (MI)
Condit
Conyers
Cooper
Coppersmith
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Danner
Darden
de la Garza
Deal
DeLauro
Dellums
Derrick
Deutsch
Dicks
Dingell
Dixon
Durbin
Edwards (CA)
Edwards (TX)
Engel
English
Eshoo
Evans
Farr
Fazio
Fields (LA)
Filner
Fingerhut
Flake
Foglietta
Ford (MI)
Frank (MA)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Geren
Glickman
Gordon
Green
Hall (OH)
Hamburg
Hamilton
Harman
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hoagland
Hochbrueckner
Holden
Hoyer
Hughes
Hutto
Inslee
Jefferson
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (SD)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnston
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennedy
Kennelly
Kildee
Kleczka
Klein
Klink
Kreidler
LaFalce
Lambert
Lantos
LaRocco
Laughlin
Lehman
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Long
Lowey
Maloney
Manton
Markey
Martinez
Matsui
Mazzoli
McCloskey
McCurdy
McDermott
McHale
McKinney
McNulty
Menendez
Mfume
Mineta
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Montgomery
Moran
Murphy
Murtha
Nadler
Neal (MA)
Neal (NC)
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Parker
Pastor
Payne (NJ)
Payne (VA)
Peterson (FL)
Peterson (MN)
Pickle
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reed
Richardson
Roemer
Rose
Rowland
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanders
Sangmeister
Sarpalius
Sawyer
Schenk
Schroeder
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sharp
Shepherd
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (IA)
Spratt
Stark
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Studds
Stupak
Swett
Swift
Synar
Tanner
Tauzin
Tejeda
Thompson
Thornton
Thurman
Torres
Torricelli
Tucker
Unsoeld
Valentine
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Volkmer
Washington
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Wheat
Whitten
Williams
Wilson
Wise
Woolsey
Wyden
Wynn
Yates
NOES--175
Allard
Andrews (NJ)
Archer
Armey
Bachus (AL)
Baker (CA)
Baker (LA)
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Bateman
Bentley
Bereuter
Bilirakis
Bliley
Blute
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bunning
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Canady
Castle
Clinger
Coble
Collins (GA)
Combest
Cox
Crapo
Cunningham
DeFazio
DeLay
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Doolittle
Dornan
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Emerson
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Fish
Fowler
Franks (CT)
Franks (NJ)
Gallegly
Gekas
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Gingrich
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Grams
Grandy
Greenwood
Gunderson
Hall (TX)
Hancock
Hansen
Hastert
Hefley
Herger
Hobson
Hoekstra
Hoke
Horn
Houghton
Huffington
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Inglis
Inhofe
Istook
Jacobs
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Kasich
Kim
King
Kingston
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
Kyl
Lancaster
Lazio
Leach
Levy
Lewis (FL)
Linder
Livingston
Machtley
Mann
Manzullo
Margolies-Mezvinsky
McCandless
McCollum
McCrery
McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McKeon
Meyers
Mica
Molinari
Moorhead
Morella
Myers
Nussle
Oxley
Packard
Paxon
Penny
Petri
Pickett
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Quillen
Quinn
Ramstad
Ravenel
Regula
Ridge
Roberts
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Roth
Roukema
Royce
Santorum
Saxton
Schaefer
Schiff
Sensenbrenner
Shays
Shuster
Skeen
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Snowe
Solomon
Spence
Stearns
Stump
Sundquist
Talent
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Thomas (CA)
Thomas (WY)
Torkildsen
Traficant
Upton
Vucanovich
Walker
Walsh
Weldon
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
Zeliff
Zimmer
NOT VOTING--35
Abercrombie
Andrews (TX)
Ballenger
Barton
Brooks
Collins (IL)
Crane
Dooley
Fields (TX)
Ford (TN)
Gallo
Gibbons
Gonzalez
Gutierrez
Hastings
Hayes
Kopetski
Lewis (CA)
Lightfoot
Lloyd
McMillan
Meehan
Meek
Michel
Miller (CA)
Miller (FL)
Natcher
Orton
Pelosi
Reynolds
Rostenkowski
Shaw
Slattery
Smith (MI)
Towns
{time} 1414
The Clerk announced the following pairs:
On this vote:
Mr. Rostenkowski for, with Mr. Crane against.
Mr. Abercrombie for, with Mr. Ballenger against.
Mr. Brooks for, with Mr. Barton, against.
Mrs. Collins of Illinois for, with Mr. Fields of Texas
against.
Mr. Dooley for, with Mr. Gallo against.
Mrs. Lloyd for, with Mr. Lightfoot against.
Mr. Meehan for, with Mr. McMillan against.
Mr. Orton for, with Mr. Miller of Florida against.
Mr. Slattery for, with Mr. Shaw against.
Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota changed his vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the concurrent resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
____________________