[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S727-S729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

  NOMINATION OF ROBERT E. RUBIN, OF NEW YORK, TO BE SECRETARY OF THE 
                                TREASURY

  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to go into 
executive session to consider the nomination of Mr. Robert E. Rubin to 
be Secretary of the Treasury.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report the nomination.
  The bill clerk read the nomination of Robert E. Rubin of New York to 
be Secretary of the Treasury.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I believe we are ready to vote.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I have known Bob Rubin for many years. He is 
a man of honesty and integrity who is certainly qualified to be 
Treasury Secretary.
  Mr. Rubin has an excellent background as a lawyer, an investment 
banker, and most recently as the assistant to the President for 
economic policy.
  His reputation on Wall Street, and more recently here in Washington, 
DC portrays a man who is not only hard-working and capable--but an 
effective consensus builder.
  As we heard this morning in the Senate Finance Committee hearing, Bob 
Rubin is rare in that he has shown humility, and his self-effacing 
attitude toward getting things done has earned the respect of many of 
us on Capitol Hill.
  If his frank and candid performance at the Senate Finance Committee 
is any indication of how he will serve as the Secretary of the 
Treasury, I believe that the U.S. Congress will have a Secretary who is 
not only capable, but will listen to us and engage in dialog that will 
be honest and fair.
  I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this nomination.
  Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in 
wholeheartedly supporting Robert E. Rubin for the position of Secretary 
of the Treasury. I have no doubt but that Bob will serve our country 
with a steadiness and honor similar to that evidenced by my old friend, 
and our former Senate colleague, outgoing Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.
  I believe that Mr. Rubin has a full understanding and appreciation of 
the critical link between spiraling entitlement spending and the 
challenge of deficit reduction. I also believe that he shares my 
opinion that all tinkering at the margin of deficit reduction, such as 
eliminating Federal spending for a tse-tse fly program, or Lawrence 
Welk's boyhood home, or even foreign aid, or eliminating ``Waste, Fraud 
and Abuse,'' will do little to slow future deficit growth so long as 
entitlement spending remains unreformed.
  This morning during Mr. Rubin's testimony before the Finance 
Committee, he assured the committee that deficit reduction was on the 
administration's

[[Page S728]]

list of priorities, although not its top priority. One reason he gave 
for this ordering of priorities was that annual deficits were poised to 
shrink in the short term. That is true, but this is only because of a 
temporary lull in the growth of the number of retired Americans, a 
trend which will reverse at the end of this decade and set deficits 
soaring again. I urge Mr. Rubin and the administration to thoughtfully 
review that priority list and reconsider placing deficit reduction at 
the very top. If we postpone our commitment to deficit-reduction, the 
choices facing us later will be grievous.

  I have spoken with Mr. Rubin about my commitment to deficit reduction 
and entitlement reform, and he has responded by citing anew the 
administration's commitment to health care reform. I was pleased that 
he made clear that it would be unrealistic to expect that a huge new 
entitlement such as was presented in last year's Health Security Act 
would pass this Congress. We agreed that incremental reform was a far 
more realistic goal, and he spoke first about the necessity of cost 
containment in any health care reform package. I was pleased by that. 
Too often health care reform pitches are given in terms of what 
wonderful promises the Government is going to make in the area of 
expanded coverage, as opposed to the tough choices which must be made 
to reduce cost growth. Mr. Rubin focused first on cost containment in 
his comments to me, and I took favorable notice of that emphasis.
  Mr. Rubin's credentials are well known to the Finance Committee and 
to the Senate, and there is no significant opposition that I know of to 
his nomination, aimed either at his qualifications or his temperament. 
He is clearly an outstanding choice and I commend the Senate for 
approving his nomination.
  Mr. MOYHIHAN. Mr. President, as ranking member of the Committee on 
Finance, I join my distinguished colleague, the newly installed 
chairman of that committee, in recommending in the strongest terms that 
the Senate vote to confirm the nomination of Robert E. Rubin as 
Secretary of the Treasury. The Committee on Finance reported out his 
nomination earlier today, with a favorable recommendation.
  As Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and head of the 
National Economic Council, Mr. Rubin was one of the principal 
architects of the administration plan, enacted in 1993, to get our 
Nation's fiscal house in order. As a result, we have witnessed 3 
straight years of declining deficits--the first time that has happened 
since the administration of Harry S. Truman. The deficit for the 1994 
fiscal year, which ended last September 30, is $100 billion lower than 
it would have been without the 1993 deficit reduction legislation; that 
is, the deficit had been projected to be over $300 billion; with the 
1993 act changes, it has been reduced to $203 billion.
  This serious, indeed historic, undertaking to reduce the deficit has 
had its rewards. Enactment of the 1993 deficit reduction legislation 
produced the lowest interest rates in 20 years. In the 2 years since 
President Clinton, took office, 5.6 million new jobs have been created; 
the unemployment rate during this period has dropped from 7.1 to 5.4 
percent. There has been an average growth in real GDP of 3.5 percent 
per year. And with the exception of 1986, when oil prices plummeted, 
the economy has experienced the lowest inflation rates since the 
1960's.
  Mr. Rubin played a key role in these accomplishments, and the country 
is fortunate to have him take the helm at Treasury. He has been 
involved professionally in matters involving financial markets and the 
national and international economy for over 28 years, first in a series 
of positions in the distinguished investment banking house of Goldman 
Sachs, culminating in the cochairmship of the firm, and more recently 
in his economic policy role in the administration.
  I was heartened to hear at this morning's hearing Mr. Rubin emphasize 
his commitment to Treasury's important law enforcement mission.
  I believe I reflect the view of every member of the Committee on 
Finance in enthusiastically urging his confirmation as the next 
Treasury Secretary. Should he be confirmed, he will be the 68th 
individual to occupy that post and, I might add, the 13th New Yorker--a 
New Yorker by professional and civic association, even if he was reared 
in Florida.
  Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support the confirmation of 
Robert E. Rubin as the next Secretary of the Treasury.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Will the Senate advise and 
consent to the nomination of Robert E. Rubin, of New York, to be 
Secretary of the Treasury.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia [Mr. 
Rockefeller] is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 99, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 12 Leg.]

                                YEAS--99

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Brown
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Faircloth
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Packwood
     Pell
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner
     Wellstone

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Rockefeller
       
  So the nomination was confirmed.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I am delighted that we have shown a 
unanimous vote of confidence--we did in the Finance Committee this 
morning--in Bob Rubin to be Secretary of the Treasury. He is an 
eminently qualified man.
  I have had occasion to talk with him over the last 2 years from time 
to time, but one of my best memories of him was when he and I were 
speaking at a conference in Williamsburg, a conference by and large of 
business leaders and chief executive officers and boards of directors 
of the larger corporations in America. I though he handled with great 
aplomb a particular question.
  One questioner got up and said, ``Mr. Rubin, you asked us to come to 
the aid of the administration last year and to lobby hard on behalf of 
the North American Free-Trade Agreement. You asked us to spend a lot of 
money and effort and manpower to support the administration in that 
effort, isn't that correct?''
  And he said, ``Yes, sir''
  And then the questioner said, ``Why is it then you won't let us 
deduct the expenses for that lobbying on behalf of the 
administration?''
  To Mr. Rubin's credit he said, ``Sir, I cannot give you a good answer 
to that question.''
  I thought, rather than trying to finesse that, that was as good an 
answer as you could give. I flew back on the plane with him from the 
conference that day, complimented him on the answer, and also 
complimented him on one other thing.
  Most people do not realize outside the beltway that Mr. Rubin, for 
the last 2 years, has been at a very significant and powerful position, 
and the reason they do not realize it is he did not use that position 
to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows or to give interviews. He 
was very much a behind-the-scenes operator, feeling it was not his 
place to garner publicity. In the position for which he has just been 
confirmed, he will no longer be able to have that kind of anonymity. He 
is going to have to appear on behalf of the President and this 
administration and this country.

[[Page S729]]

  I am proud to know him, proud to have supported him, and I am 
delighted that the Senate has given him a unanimous vote of approval.
  I ask unanimous consent that the President be immediately notified of 
the confirmation of the nomination.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I should like to join my dear friend and 
once again my chairman, the Senator from Oregon, for having so 
graciously handled this important, if not indeed, Mr. President, 
urgent, nomination at the earliest possible time, in the second week of 
the Congress.
  The Committee on Finance met this morning. We may have hit upon an 
innovation, Mr. President. This morning we voted to confirm Mr. Rubin, 
and then we asked questions of him. This evening we voted to confirm 
him and then we are making speeches about our action. This might 
expedite procedures very considerably.
  But this is a fortunate moment; at a time when a Secretary of the 
Treasury is urgently needed, we have a message which goes out to the 
Nation and to the world that an officer of the Cabinet with fullest 
confidence of the Senate has been confirmed directly.
  Senator Packwood was kind enough to mention the work of Mr. Rubin as 
chairman of the National Economic Council for the past 2 years. It 
would not be wrong to note that during that period we have created 5.6 
million new jobs in the Nation. We have had an average growth of real 
gross domestic product of 3.5 percent. We have had an extraordinary 
recovery in which the rest of the world we hope will now join with us. 
And we have had 3 years running a declining deficit, the first time it 
happened since the Presidency of Harry S. Truman coming off the Second 
World War.
  I would note sir, Mr. Rubin will be the 68th Secretary of the 
Treasury. Of these 13 have been from New York. We might also add 
Nicholas Brady and Douglas Dillon, but they chose to live in New 
Jersey.
  But this is a special moment for all of us. I congratulate the 
Secretary as he now is.
  I thank the chairman.

                          ____________________