[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 59 (Friday, May 13, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         THE BUDGET RESOLUTION

  Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I voted against the conference report on the 
fiscal year 1995 budget resolution for two primary reasons.
  First, under this budget resolution, our defense capabilities will 
face significant--and in my view--very harmful reductions. I cannot 
support these additional defense cuts, on top of the real reductions 
that have been occurring for the past 9 years.
  Second, this budget resolution does not seriously address the real 
culprit in our deficit picture--the runaway growth in spending on 
mandatory, or entitlement, programs.
  The budget resolution before the Senate yesterday reduced the cap on 
total discretionary spending by $31 billion in budget authority and $13 
billion in outlays over the next 5 years. The Senator from New Mexico 
and I offered an amendment to make these savings in the area of the 
budget where we need to make savings, the mandatory side, rather than 
the discretionary side. Our amendment got only 35 votes and was 
defeated.
  So these cuts will come out of the discretionary budget, which is the 
third of the budget that Congress acts on each year through the 
appropriations process. The discretionary accounts fund such programs 
as defense, Federal law enforcement, highways, and Federal aid to 
education. Defense spending is half the discretionary request for 
1995--5 years ago it was 60 percent of the discretionary budget--but if 
past history is a guide, a large majority of this reduction--not just 
half of it--will come from the Defense budget. Coming on top of a 
future years defense program that is already underfunded, and a 
backdrop of 9 years of reductions in real defense budget authority, 
these cuts would be very damaging to our defense effort.

  I do not blame this budget resolution for all the problems in the 
Defense budget. I want to briefly recount the cuts that have already 
been made and the cuts that are looming on the horizon.
  First, the administration's proposed defense program, the so-called 
Bottom-Up-Review force, cuts forces below the so-called Base Force 
levels proposed by the Bush administration. While one can argue about 
whether the base force or the bottom up review force represents the 
better post-cold war strategy, the fact remains that the base force the 
administration is cutting from was not a cold war force. The base force 
was already a 25-percent reduction in force structure from the level we 
had in 1990. The Bottom Up Review takes the force structure from a one-
quarter reduction to a one-third reduction below the 1990 level.
  Second, the administration's own budget does not fully fund the force 
structure the administration is proposing. The Secretary of Defense 
testified before our committee that there is a $20 billion mismatch 
between the force structure and the budget. This shortfall results from 
underestimating inflation, among other things.
  Third, although the Secretary of Defense testified that he opposed 
making any cuts in defense in anticipation of procurement reform 
savings before we have a plan in place to implement procurement reform, 
the administration budget went ahead and assumed procurement reform 
savings of $12 billion over 5 years. A budget amendment allocated about 
half those savings to the Defense budget.
  Fourth, I am also concerned that the pay raises for military and 
civilian personnel assumed in the budget are unrealistically low and 
that the quality of our forces will suffer if we do not keep pay rates 
competitive. The budget assumes that military and civilian pay raises 
will fall 1.5 percent below private sector raises each year for the 
next 5 years. The cumulative effect would be to widen the gap between 
Government and private sector pay by an additional 7.5 percent over the 
next 5 years.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office, military pay in the 
Department of Defense is $8 billion below the amounts required to keep 
pace with current law--current law calls for raises one-half percent a 
year below private sector raises--over the next 5 years. There is an 
additional shortfall of $18 billion in DOD civilian pay. Civilians are 
also supposed to be getting a raise of one-half percent a year below 
private sector raises. In addition, current law provides for locality 
pay increases for Federal civilian employees to close the existing pay 
gap with the private sector.

  The list could go on and on, Mr. President. The recent buyout bill 
made buyouts of civilian employees at the Defense Department--where 
most of the buyouts are occurring--more expensive. Every base closure 
round is more expensive than DOD says it will be. Some people have 
suggested that we delay the base closure round scheduled for 1995. I 
hope we do not do that because it will only make the Defense budget 
crunch worse in the years ahead.
  Finally, there is a scorekeeping disagreement of $3 billion between 
the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget 
over what the discretionary outlays would be in 1995 if Congress enacts 
the President's discretionary proposals. Although only about 10 percent 
of this scorekeeping dispute involves Defense, Defense could be liable 
for much more than its fair share of this $3 billion outlay cut when 
the Appropriations Committee allocate the reduction they will have to 
make to the President's discretionary budget.
  So, Mr. President, I do not lay all these problems at the Budget 
Committee's door. I know the chairman of the Budget Committee opposed 
the Exon-Grassley cut. There were several attempts to eliminate the 
cut, to exempt Defense from the cut, to substitute other cuts, and so 
on. But those attempts failed, and as a result we have a budget 
resolution that makes additional deficit reduction in only one area, 
Mr. President, and that is the Defense budget--the only area of the 
budget that has been cutting spending. And at some point we have to 
draw the line and say we are cutting too much. I believe we have 
reached that point.
  I know proponents of the Exon-Grassley amendment have said the cuts 
do not come out of Defense, they come out of discretionary spending. 
Some of it may come out of Defense, they say, but it is not a Defense 
cut. Mr. President, I have been around here long enough to hope for the 
best but prepare for the worst. I do not believe we should make 
additional reductions in the Defense budget. But the lower 
discretionary caps in this budget resolution will also certainly force 
us to do just that.
  People may say that $13 billion over 5 years is not that much money 
and that surely we can save $13 billion without harming out defense. 
Viewed by itself, this so-called Exon-Grassley cut of $13 billion in 
outlays does not sound that big, but the point is this cut cannot be 
viewed in isolation. This cut will be piled on top of all the other 
cuts I have already described.

  Mr. President, I agree with the goal of achieving more deficit 
reduction. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, and this 
is the wrong way. By trying to make modest cuts in discretionary 
spending and not including any meaningful reductions in entitlement 
growth, this resolution leaves the back door wide open for continued 
uncontrolled mandatory spending.
  We all know what has to be done to reduce the deficit. You have to 
hold down spending and raise revenues. Last year's reconciliation bill 
raised revenues significantly. But are we doing our part in holding 
down spending? The answer is ``no.'' Sure, this budget resolution takes 
the discretionary caps that were already essentially flat for the next 
5 years and takes out another $13 billion. But at the same time, the 
so-called uncontrollable side of the budget--that is, the 50 percent of 
the budget composed of entitlement programs that send out checks each 
month without any action by the Congress or the President--continues to 
grow without restraint.
  Mr. President, this approach is like trying to save the patient by 
amputating the right leg when we all know the cancer is in the left 
leg. It just is not going to work. We are raising revenues. We are 
holding down discretionary spending--and this is because we are cutting 
Defense spending, not just holding it level but cutting it. But the one 
thing we have to do to bring the budget into balance, we are not doing, 
and that is to bring entitlements under control.
  Over the next 5 years, Defense spending will be $190 billion less 
than it was over the past 5 years, even if Defense gets the full amount 
the President requested. Spending for domestic discretionary programs 
like education and law enforcement will be $250 billion higher than it 
was over the past 5 years. Health care spending, which is the major 
cause of the rise in entitlement spending, will increase by nearly $800 
billion over the amounts we spent over the past 5 years.
  The reason we keep taking another chunk out of discretionary spending 
when discretionary spending is not the problem is it is the only part 
of the budget we can take a cut in and make it stick. If we make a cut 
in discretionary spending, we know the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee is going to carry it out. That is why I have been calling for 
comparable discipline on the entitlement side of the budget. But, as I 
understand it, this resolution not only does not reduce the growth of 
entitlement spending, it actually allows for the expansion of an 
existing entitlement program without the required pay-as-you-go 
offsets.
  This conference report does contain a modification of the Domenici-
Nunn sense of the Senate language that the Senate adopted, calling for 
an enforceable cap on mandatory spending programs, excluding Social 
Security. I am disappointed that the language was weakened from the 
version the Senate adopted by removing any reference to sequestration 
or any other credible means of enforcing an entitlement cap. Clearly, 
Mr. President, sense-of-the-Senate language is not enough. We will have 
to address this issue on the health care reform bill.
  Everyone acknowledges that health care cost are the main culprit 
driving the deficit. It follows that we cannot balance the budget, or 
even significantly reduce the deficit, if health care reform does not 
reduce the deficit. Yet what this budget resolution requires is merely 
deficit-neutral health care reform.
  Mr. President, it is almost as if we are oblivious to the obvious. If 
the only way to balance the budget is to control health care costs, yet 
we are not prepared to require health care reform to reduce the 
deficit, then we are giving up on balancing the budget in this decade, 
and perhaps for good.
  We are prepared to deal with the fact that our health care system 
needs an overhaul, but we have not prepared ourselves to face the 
fiscal reality that health care reform has to save money.
  We need to do better Mr. President. When the economy is recovering 
and the deficit is falling like it is now, nobody sees the need to make 
the hard choices. And when the deficit starts rising again people will 
say the problem is too big to handle and now is not the time. But 
eventually the baby boom generation will start retiring, and we will be 
out of time.

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