[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 145 (Friday, October 7, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 7, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               THE RETIREMENT OF SENATOR DENNIS DeCONCINI

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, the senior Senator from Arizona will be 
retiring from the Senate at the end of this Congress, and I want to 
take a brief moment to congratulate him on his public service.
  Though I have been privileged to serve with the Senator for only a 
brief 2 years, I have fortunate to have gotten to know him through our 
common interest in addressing the Federal budget deficit, and 
especially because of his leadership in helping to establish a deficit 
trust fund.
  I was pleased to cosponsor the Senator's amendment to the Budget 
Resolution of 1994 to establish a deficit trust fund. That deficit 
trust fund, eventually created by executive order of the President, 
ensured that any new revenues passed as part of the Omnibus Budget 
Reconciliation Act of 1993, as well as all savings generated by the 
spending cuts made in that act, would be used solely to reduce the 
deficit.
  Mr. President, for the Senator who shares a birthday with former 
President Harry S. Thurman, the creation of the deficit trust fund 
guarantees that, rather than be used for additional spending, any new 
bucks will stop there.
  Mr. President, deficit reduction and balanced budgets have been a 
focus of much of the work done in the Senate by the senior Senator from 
Arizona. In addition to sponsoring a constitutional amendment to 
balance the budget, he as a founder and cochairman of the Senate Grace 
Caucus, a bipartisan group of Senators looking for ways to eliminate 
waste and abuse within government.
  He also led the fight to reduce government waste by cutting 
government spending on consulting, public relations, printing and motor 
vehicles, and be cosponsored legislation, now law, establishing an 
inspector general in the Department of Defense to scrutinize our 
military spending.
  He has not been afraid to take stands that were unpopular among his 
colleagues to hold the line on spending, including opposition to a pay 
raise for Member of Congress. And when a pay raise was adopted, he 
donated his own pay raise back to the Treasury to help reduce the 
Federal debt.
  Mr. President, I congratulate the senior Senator from Arizona on his 
18 years of distinguished service in the Senate. Though I have known 
him and worked with him for only the last 2 of those 18 years, I will 
very much miss him, his thoughtful counsel, and his willingness to take 
a freshman Senator under his wing and teach him the deficit reduction 
ropes.

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