[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2243-S2255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me just associate myself with the 
very, very thoughtful and important remarks of the Senator from 
Pennsylvania. I thank my colleague for the timely and I think judicious 
and very important statement that he made on the floor.
  Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Utah for his 
graciousness. I know he wanted to respond to some of the remarks of my 
colleague from West Virginia and the Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. President, let me, first of all, present a little bit of context, 
which I think is important to this debate. The Congressional Budget 
Office has calculated that to reach a balanced budget by 2002, 
subtracting interest that we would save from projected spending cuts, 
still we would have to cut a trillion dollars. The question is, where 
are we going to make the cuts? The question is, what kind of standard 
of fairness will be employed, and will this be some standard of fair 
sacrifice, shared sacrifice, if you will?
  I have a lot of passion about this issue because I think this is the 
central issue of this Congress in this decade. But I think objectivity 
serves my subjectivity. I believe I can marshal evidence that will 
support my point of view, evidence that I want the people in Minnesota, 
our State, and people around the country, to carefully consider.
  If you add to the equation the proposed $82 billion of defense 
increases over the next 5 years in the Contract With America, and in 
addition the $364 billion that would be required to pay for additional 
Republican tax cuts, Mr. President--by the way, tax cuts which I have 
not supported since I think it is difficult, to use the old Yiddish 
proverb, to dance at two weddings at the same time, and to be talking 
about deficit reduction while you are also in a bidding war to cut 
taxes yet further.
  I believe the Senator from South Carolina was trying to speak 
directly to that contradiction.
  Then we have $1.481 trillion of cuts before us. The question that the 
people in Minnesota and people around the country deserve an answer to 
is: Where are we going to be making the cuts? Who is going to be asked 
to sacrifice? Is it going to be by some standard of fairness? What is 
its impact going to be on people in Minnesota and around the Nation?
  So far, Mr. President--and I would say this to my colleague from 
Arkansas who has been really trying to push hard for defense and other 
cuts to be made according to some standard of fairness--so far, what 
the Senator from North Dakota has called the Republican credibility gap 
really sort of just stares you in the face, because all we have heard 
so far from Republican proposals is that there will be $277 billion of 
cuts. Not as in tax cuts, but budget cuts.
  So on the one hand we have $1.481 trillion of budget cuts that have 
to be made to have a balanced budget in the year 2002 and so far the 
only thing we have had listed is $277 billion.
  Mr. President, that is one huge credibility gap. That is $1.200 
trillion to go.
  Mr. President, given this credibility gap, it is in this context and 
knowing that we would be involved in this historic debate that, from 
the very beginning of this 104th Congress, I have tried to push forward 
on the idea of accountability.
  Mr. President, what I worry about is simple. Given a bidding war to 
cut taxes, given a bidding war not to decrease the Pentagon's budget 
but to increase the budget, understanding full well that Social 
Security is not going to be a part of this plan and is taken off the 
table, understanding that interest that we have to pay on debts can't 
go unpaid, then it is crystal clear to me that there are only a 
relatively few other areas where cuts can take place.
  Mr. President, my concern is that the deficit reduction that will 
take place and the way in which we will meet a balanced budget 
deadline, if in fact we pass this balanced budget amendment, will be to 
make the cuts according to the path of least resistance; that is to 
say, ask some of the citizens in this country to tighten their belt who 
are least able to tighten their belt.
  Mr. President, I came to the floor early on in the session and I had 
an amendment on the unfunded mandates bill. It was a sense-of-the-
Senate amendment that we in the U.S. Senate would go on record that we 
would not pass any legislation, make any cuts that would increase 
homelessness or hunger among children. I could not get a majority vote. 
It was defeated on essentially a party-line vote. I want people in the 
country to know that. I could not get a majority vote.
  Then I had another amendment that said if we are going to talk about 
accountability, we ought to have a child impact analysis. When we pass 
legislation out of committee, if there is a report that accompanies 
that legislation, there ought to be a child impact statement. Mr. 
President, I could not get a majority vote for that.
  Then I came to the floor several weeks ago and offered a motion very 
similar to the amendment that our leader, Senator Daschle, has 
presented, which is now before us.
  This amendment came straight from our State of Minnesota, where the 
Minnesota State Senate unanimously, and the House of Representatives, I 
think, three votes short of a unanimous vote, signed by the Governor 
January 20, sent a resolution here. I took the wording of that 
resolution and brought it to the floor of the Senate as an amendment 
which essentially said that if we pass a balanced budget amendment, 
before we send that amendment to the States, we should present to the 
States a detailed analysis of the impact of this amendment on our 
States.
  Where will the cuts take place? What is the budget over the next 7 
years? How will it shape the lives of the people we represent? Will 
this become some shell game where a State like Minnesota sees cuts, and 
then is required to raise taxes to make up the difference?
  Under the balanced budget amendment, there will be cuts in higher 
education, in K-12 education, child nutrition programs, early childhood 
development programs, veterans programs, agriculture programs, health 
care programs, and others on which regular middle-class Minnesotans 
depend. No question about it. In fact, they would have to cut them 30 
percent across the board to reach this target, given the parameters 
that have been set.
  By the way, Mr. President, nowhere in the Contract With America, and 
not once in the debate that has taken place in the Senate from those 
who have been pushing so far for a balanced budget amendment, have I 
heard any analysis of all of the benefits of the tax loopholes and 
deductions that go to large corporations and large financial 
institutions in America. We will cut child nutrition programs; school 
lunch and school breakfast; women, infants, and children's programs, 
but we will not cut subsidies for oil companies.
  Mr. President, this is the reason there is such resistance to this 
right-to-know amendment. I raise the question again on the floor of the 
Senate: What is it that we do not want the people in our States to 
know? Were the Minnesota Legislature, Democrats and Republicans alike, 
and the Governor correct in saying before they send the balanced budget 
amendment, please present an analysis of the cuts that will be ahead, 
and how it will affect our States so we know what we will have to pick 
up through an income tax or sales tax or property tax? And we are not 
willing to do that. That goes against the very essence of 
accountability.
   [[Page S2244]] Now, Mr. President, about a week ago, I filed a 
motion that I will make on the floor of the Senate at the appropriate 
time that would refer this House joint resolution to the Budget 
Committee with instructions to report it to the Senate with a report 
containing a detailed description of the 7-year budget plan.
  I say to my colleagues, here is the one irony to the debate. There 
are many ironies, but here is one central irony. If we believe, and 
many do, that State legislators and Governors ought to understand the 
impact of this balanced-budget amendment, if we agree that they have a 
right to know exactly what it is that they will be voting on for 
ratification, if we agree that decisionmakers ought to know what they 
are voting on, if we agree that the people back in our States ought to 
have an understanding of what exactly is going to happen, where will 
the cuts take place, and how will it affect them, then it seems to me 
that we as Senators ought to also know what the impact of this plan 
will be on the people we represent before we vote on it.
  That is why sometime during this very historic debate, I will move to 
refer this to committee so that the Budget Committee can present to 
Senators a detailed 7-year plan on how to get to balance by the year 
2002, and then we will know what we are voting on.
  Mr. President, I am not in favor of constitutional amendment, for all 
the reasons that Senator Byrd and others have spelled out, I think in a 
more profound way than I can. But as far as deficit reduction and 
moving toward balancing the budget, of course we should do that. But 
how can anyone vote on it until we know what the choices are? If we 
were going to have cuts in the Pentagon budget, if we were going to 
look at tax expenditures, if we were going to look honestly at how we 
knew to raise revenue, or if we were going to do this by some standard 
of fairness, I might be all for it; that is to say, an effort to move 
toward balancing the budget. But there is no accountability here.
  Now, Mr. President, in the last part of my remarks today, I want to 
speak to one issue that I think tells the large story of what is going 
on. I also want to ask unanimous consent that the amendment that I will 
be filing today be printed in the Record. It would, at the appropriate 
place in section 1 of this balanced budget amendment, amend the section 
which reads ``total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total 
receipts for the fiscal year unless,'' to add ``unless a majority of 
the whole number of each House of Congress shall determine that 
compliance with this requirement would increase the number of hungry or 
homeless children.'' I believe we should all be held accountable on 
this issue.
  It seems to me a reasonable proposition that we do not want to do 
anything that would increase hunger or homelessness among America's 
children.
  Mr. President, I will file another amendment, and I am not sure I was 
clear in my unanimous consent. I would like to have both amendments 
printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will file another amendment that will 
say again, in the same place as the first, ``a balanced budget unless a 
majority of the whole number of each House of Congress shall determine 
that compliance with this requirement would not provide for the common 
defense and promote the general welfare.''
  Mr. President, that comes from the Preamble to the Constitution and 
from section 8. When we are talking about the general welfare, it 
strikes me that if it becomes clear that we are going to cut Medicare, 
cut Medicaid, slash and burn, make higher education not affordable for 
young people, cut into child nutrition programs for our children, we 
are moving away from investing in our people, in our communities. That 
has had a lot to do with the general welfare.
  Mr. President, there is one issue that I do not think has been 
discussed thoroughly on the floor that I want to talk about for a few 
moments, and then I want to yield because I know Senator Bumpers is 
anxious to speak. That issue is Medicare.
  Mr. President, let me be crystal clear with my colleagues: You cannot 
dance at two weddings at the same time. You cannot say you are for this 
balanced budget amendment but you are unwilling to lay out where you 
will make the cuts. But you already made it clear you want to increase 
the Pentagon budget, you already made it clear you want tax cuts, you 
already made it clear that Social Security is off the table, and then 
we look at the big expenditure items that are left, and Medicare is 
clearly one of them. Of course, Medicare will be cut deeply.
  Now, let me take Members back to last year's debate. We had some 
health care proposals, the single-payer plan being one of them, about 
which the Congressional Budget Office and General Accounting Office, 
depending on which estimate we want to look at, talked about projected 
savings of up to $100 billion a year.
  And Mr. President, we had other health care proposals--for example 
the President's plan--that talked about putting a limit on insurance 
company premiums. Some of us during that debate were talking about how 
we could contain costs. The single-payer plan contained health care 
system costs while also providing universal coverage with choice of 
doctor and a huge administrative savings. But, granted, the insurance 
companies would have to give something up.
  And that's why Mr. President, very early on in the health care 
debate, the whole issue of how we contain health care costs by putting 
some limit on insurance company premiums was taken off the table. Huge 
amounts of money were pouring into the Congress in the form of campaign 
contributions. We saw a huge amount of lobbying from powerful 
interests. No way were they going to see any of their profit hurt. So 
what happened was, the special interests made the argument that premium 
limits--the only way you can do cost containment--would lead to 
rationing. What they neglected to say was that rationing only happens 
when you limit spending on one population without limiting the spending 
on the whole system.
  Mr. President, I want to be clear on the floor of the Senate today 
that the very Senators who were most vociferous in their opposition to 
universal health care coverage--and we could not do universal coverage 
unless we could contain costs--the very Senators who blocked that 
legislation, the very Senators who yelled about rationing, right now 
when it comes to deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, which will lead to 
rationing among the elderly and the disabled and the poor, have nothing 
to say.
  Their silence is deafening. And Mr. President, here is why. Looking 
at some Treasury Department estimates, total Medicare cuts would total 
$404 billion between 1996 and 2002. Medicare cuts in 2002 alone would 
equal $106 billion. That translates into roughly $10,000 per senior 
citizen over a 7-year period.
  I hope that I was clear with these numbers. Let us not be fooling 
people in any State. I do not want to fool people in Minnesota. There 
are going to be deep cuts in Medicare. There have to be. There is no 
way you can get there any other way: $404 billion between 1996 and 
2002; $106 billion in 2002.
  Now, there are a number of ways that you could make these cuts. And 
none of them makes any sense in a country where we are trying to 
improve coverage and contain total system costs. One of the ways you 
could do it would be to reduce provider payments. Most hospitals--and I 
know, Mr. President, that you know this, especially in rural 
Minnesota--are already reimbursed by Medicare at less than cost. Let me 
just say this as best I can. We should be trying to improve health care 
in this country, not ruin it. When you cut the Medicare reimbursement, 
either your hospitals close--especially your rural hospitals--or your 
providers have to make it up some way, and this leads to charge 
shifting. Those people who have private health insurance are charged 
more and then their premiums go up and then less people can afford it. 
That is where we are heading.
  Not only are we going to have this kind of vicious cost shifting, but 
in addition, those people who are going to be most severely hurt by 
these severe cuts in Medicare are going to be precisely the rural and 
public hospitals 
[[Page S2245]] that have been providing care to those citizens who have 
had the least care in this country and who have the most trouble 
accessing services.
  A few days ago, I met with John Stindt, the CEO of Swift County-
Benson Hospital in Benson, MN. Swift County-Benson is a small rural 
hospital 30 miles from Willmar, MN. Seventy-five percent of Swift 
County's revenues come from Medicare and 11 percent from Medicaid.
  Last year they had a loss of $148,000 from operations. They have two 
family practice physicians and are desperately trying to hire more to 
handle their patient load. Mr. President, they do not have any room for 
any further cuts. Do not ask people who cannot tighten their belts to 
tighten their belts. Do not sacrifice the health care of citizens in 
this country who most need it. Cut the oil company subsidies, cut the 
insurance company subsidies, cut some of the large global corporation 
subsidies. I do not hear a word about cuts there. Deep cuts in 
Medicare, that is what is going to be. That is exactly the direction we 
are going in and that is why our colleagues do not want to spell out 
where they are going to make these cuts.
  Mr. President, I lived 20 years in Northfield, MN and I can just tell 
you that severe cuts in Medicare are going to have just a cruel impact 
on rural communities. Hospitals in communities like Rush City, Aitkin, 
Grand Marais, Comfrey, Karlstad, Virginia, and Bigfork are all 
struggling to make ends meet.
  Closing down local hospitals does not make a lot of sense, either 
from a health care or an economic development perspective. There was an 
article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled ``When a Hospital 
Closes Its Doors.'' It talked about a hospital in Karlstad that closed 
last week because of financial difficulties--low Medicare 
reimbursements--and the inability to recruit doctors. It left a 
northwestern community in shock and limbo.
  Mr. President, in Minnesota, 10 percent of the population already 
lives 30 miles from their doctor. We are seeing an increased reliance 
on helicopters to move people from rural areas to our cities to get 
care. It is not cheaper to transport people by helicopter. And in 
Minnesota, helicopters cannot fly in the fog and in the snowstorms.
  We should be supporting community-based health care, not dismantling 
it. The reason that many of my colleagues do not want to vote for a 
right-to-know amendment and lay out where the cuts will take place and 
the impact these cuts will have on people that we represent is because 
they know we are going to have to make these cuts, they know it is 
wrong, they know what its impact will be and they are unwilling to step 
forward and be accountable.
  In Minnesota, there is a shortage of 300 physicians and 180 midlevel 
providers in the rural communities. Places like University of Minnesota 
Duluth do a phenomenal job of training and retaining family 
practitioners who practice in rural communities. But, they need more 
than a pat on their back and a cut in their training budget to continue 
this work.
  There are a number of other ways that these cuts will take place, but 
I just want to focus on one other. One option is to shift more of the 
cost back on the beneficiaries. Seniors already spend close to 25 
percent of their household incomes on health costs, about $2,803 per 
person, and I am not including the health care costs of people that are 
in nursing homes.
  I have received more than 1,000 letters from elderly citizens in 
Minnesota who are concerned about Medicare costs. Let me just read a 
few of them. A couple from Detroit Lakes, MN, writes:

       Dear Senator Wellstone: My husband and I are concerned 
     about Medicare cuts. When we reached 65, we were advised to 
     sign up for Medicare, so we did, also taking out medigap 
     insurance. We pay over $3,000 for medigap insurance plus the 
     Medicare that is withheld from our Social Security. Medicare 
     is a great help to decent taxpaying people. The GOP have a 
     contract for the American people. We feel that Social 
     Security and Medicare is also a contract with the American 
     people.

  A woman from Coon Rapids writes:

       We paid into both Social Security and Medicare all the 
     working years of our life. Reducing the deficit must be done 
     in a fair and balanced way. They did not ask our wealthiest 
     citizens and corporations to share the burden by giving up 
     their tax loopholes.

  And she is absolutely right, absolutely right. Not one word, not one 
word in the Contract With America asking large corporations to share.
  And finally a woman from Watertown, MN:

       I am writing to you about the proposal to cut Social 
     Security and Medicare. I hope you will say no to these unfair 
     and irresponsible cuts. I am 86 years old. My husband and I 
     worked hard all our lives. He died 8 years ago after being in 
     a nursing home for 5 years. That took all of our savings. I 
     receive $489 a month from Social Security and I think I have 
     saved enough for my funeral. We never wanted to be a burden 
     to our children or anyone else. I recently had to go on 
     medical assistance. I have enjoyed good health, and I am a 
     foster grandparent to a child center three mornings a week. 
     We never missed voting and really worked hard for 
     conservation and betterment of our country. I hope this has 
     not inconvenienced your time. Perhaps you did not find time 
     to read it, but I surely hope you will vote ``no'' on that 
     proposal.

  Well, Mr. President, for me that letter pretty much says it all. And, 
of course, we hear discussions about also restructuring Medicare. I'm 
willing to hear some more details on this--none of which have been 
outlined for us--but it sounds to me like a poorly disguised way of 
forcing seniors into managed care and cutting their benefits. Managed 
care should be an option for seniors--not a mandate.
  I conclude this way with first, a policy discussion and second, a 
ringing denunciation and enunciation.
  Policy statement: We will have premium death spiral in health care if 
we go forward with this balanced budget amendment which will 
necessitate deep cuts in Medicare. What will happen is we will have to 
reduce the payments for our public programs--and many citizens are 
dependent on those programs--and providers will cost shift to those of 
us who have private insurance. The insurance premiums will go up, fewer 
people will be able to afford coverage and
 the base of payers becomes smaller and smaller. Then you get more cost 
shifting and premiums keep going up.

  Mr. President, last session we were talking about universal health 
care coverage. We were talking about decent health care for our 
citizens. And last session, when we tried to do that, my colleagues, 
too many of them, talked about rationing. They said cost containment 
would be rationing--a catastrophic end to quality health care. Now we 
really are about to ration because we are talking about cuts for only 
certain programs. Now we are about to ration care for the elderly, 
ration care for the poor, and ration care for the disabled. But do you 
hear any of those same voices yelling now? No. As I said before, their 
silence is deafening.
  I come from a State that had probably one of the greatest Senators 
ever to serve in the Senate, Hubert Humphrey. Hubert Humphrey said the 
test of a government and the test of a society is how we treat people 
in the dawn of their life, our children; in the twilight of their life, 
the elderly; and in the shadow of their life, people who are struggling 
with an illness or struggling with a disability or those who are needy 
and those who are poor.
  I did not come to the Senate to vote for a balanced budget 
amendment--which is essentially a pig in the poke--when I do not even 
know what it means, and when I have no idea as a decisionmaker where 
the cuts are going to take place. I know full well, given the 
parameters of what has been laid out, that some of the deepest cuts and 
some of the cruelest cuts will have to affect the very people that 
Senator Humphrey talked about. I am not going to be a Senator who is 
going to vote for cuts directly or indirectly in nutrition programs for 
children, and I am not going to be a Senator who is going to vote for 
cuts in a way that takes one of the most successful parts of health 
care in this country and begins to dismantle it. I am talking about 
Medicare.
  My mother and father both had Parkinson's disease, and every time I 
hear people criticize Medicare, I remember that for them Medicare was 
the difference between being able to make it and utter financial chaos 
and disaster.
  So, Mr. President, I just want to remind my colleagues that this 
amendment in the Chamber right now, the minority leader's amendment, 
which has been superseded by the majority 
[[Page S2246]] leader's amendment, is right on the mark.
  It is irresponsible, it is not being accountable, it is not being 
straightforward to vote for a balanced budget amendment unless we have 
the courage to lay out specifically where those cuts are going to take 
place, what kinds of choices we are going to make, and how it affects 
the people we represent. For my own part, I think people have made a 
big mistake. I think this 2002 date makes very little sense, given the 
parameters that have been spelled out. For myself, we need to have 
deficit reduction, and we need to invest in our people. That is the 
challenge for us, and we should do it. But we ought to be 
straightforward and lay out for the people in this country what that 
means to them. That I think is the only responsible approach to take, 
and as a Senator from Minnesota that is the position I take in this 
debate.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, there is a great story about Winston 
Churchill. It is probably apocryphal. Somebody was introducing him one 
night at a dinner, and they alluded to his drinking habits. And whoever 
it was that introduced him drew an imaginary line on the wall and said, 
I bet if all the whiskey Winston Churchill had drunk were put in this 
room, it would fill this room up to this mark. Churchill looked at that 
line, looked at the ceiling and said, ``Oh, so much to do and such a 
short time in which to do it.''
  Now, here we have a constitutional amendment, and everybody has said 
everything that needs to be said--well, I guess everything that needs 
to be said has been said but everybody has not said it. So I come late 
to the debate, 10 days after it began, to put in my 2 cents' worth and 
express my undying opposition to this proposal.
  When it comes to the Constitution of the United States, I belong to 
the wait-just-a-minute club. I confess that I voted for a 
constitutional amendment early on in my career in the Senate. I would 
not do it again.
  I have taken plenty of political heat in my lifetime. I remember that 
great school prayer amendment in 1984 which would have allowed the 
school board or the State legislature to compose prayers or adopt 
prayers composed by others and demand their recitation by the students 
in school. And now it has become so commonplace to offer an amendment 
to cure every seemingly intractable problem.
  As to the Contract With America, I join my colleague from West 
Virginia. I am not a party to that contract. My contract is with the 
people of America: the Constitution of the United States. But right in 
this session, there is a proposal to require a balanced budget, which 
is the debate now, a proposal to again address the prayer in school 
issue, and a proposal to limit the terms of Members of Congress, which 
I also consider to be a very bad idea. Every time we demonstrate to the 
people of America that we do not have the spine or the political 
courage to deal with a pressing problem, somebody says, ``Well, let's 
amend the Constitution.''
  In 205 years, Mr. President, the Bill of Rights, the first 10 
amendments to the Constitution, have not been tinkered with. So far as 
our Constitution is concerned, 205, coming on 206 years old, we have 
amended it 27 times including the 10 amendments which constitute the 
Bill of Rights. So actually, the people of this country in their 
infinite wisdom have seen fit to tinker with the Constitution only 17 
times.
  When you take out the constitutional amendment that said, ``We will 
not drink,'' and the ensuing constitutional amendment of 1933 that 
said, ``We will drink,'' only 15 times in 205 years have we chosen to 
tinker with this very precious document. There is a fellow named Robert 
Goldwin at the American Enterprise Institute. I do not know him, but I 
was reading an article by Robert Samuelson the other day where he 
quotes Robert Goldwin as saying, the first principle of a conservative 
should be ``Don't muck with the Constitution.''
  Now, I do not agree with the American Enterprise Institute very 
often. I do not always agree with Robert Samuelson. But I can tell you 
there is infinite wisdom in that statement for everybody who considers 
himself or herself a conservative. ``Do not muck with the 
Constitution.''
  When the House of Representatives came back into session, and Speaker 
Gingrich told Members of Congress that they ought to read some of these 
early documents. Two that he mentioned were the Federalist Papers and 
Alexis de Tocqueville's ``Democracy in America.''
  I read those in political science 103A. I read them again in law 
school, and have read them a couple of times since then. The Federalist 
Papers, written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, 
were published in New York newspapers explaining to the people what the 
Constitution would do, and why they ought to vote to ratify it. New 
York and Virginia were key States and were absolutely essential for the 
ratification of the Constitution.
  Incidentally, do you know how old James Madison was when he wrote 
that magnificent series of papers? Hamilton wrote most of them. 
Hamilton was 31, and Madison was 37. I think John Jay was the old man 
in the crowd, and he was 44. But the point is that the most important 
point that Madison made in the Federalist Papers was that we have three 
separate branches of government, and we have created all these checks 
and balances so that one branch does not run amuck or usurp the powers 
of another. He said we should let the President nominate Supreme Court 
Justices, but Congress is the one that is going to have to sign off on 
them. Time after time Madison returned to the theme of checks and 
balances. Lets not muck with it now.
  I will come back to this in a moment. There is absolutely no question 
that this amendment is utterly foolish, totally unenforceable, unless 
the courts, the judiciary branch of Government, enforce it. Who wants 
that? You go back home to the coffee shop, Senators. Go home this 
weekend and walk into small town America in the coffee shop, and say, 
``We are passing that balanced budget amendment up there. We are going 
to get our house in order.''
  Maybe some old farmer or small business owner says, ``Well, now, 
Senator, how you going to enforce that amendment?''
  You say, ``Well, we are going to let the courts do that.''
  And he is going to say, ``Wait just a minute. Are you telling me that 
you people are so spineless that you cannot deal with this deficit, and 
so you are going to put a few words in the Constitution and buck it 
over to the courts?''
  I promise you that you just lost his vote.
  If there is anything America does not need or want it is for the 
Court to say, ``Congress, you must raise taxes. Congress you must cut 
spending.'' Where? When? How much? In what programs? It is the height 
of folly.
  You know sometimes we all ought to go listen to the folks at the 
coffee shop more often. I never will forget in 1979 speaking to the 
Nevada County Cattleman's Association. Jimmy Carter had just imposed a 
grain embargo on the Soviet Union. I voted for it. I thought, ``We will 
show those Soviets.'' And the embargo had an effect precisely opposite 
what we expected. It did not bother the Soviets at all. They just 
bought wheat in other places, and the American wheat farmers saw the 
price of their product go down dramatically.
  So this old cowboy said, ``Senator, you voted for that grain embargo 
against the Soviet Union?''
  I said, ``Yes. I did.'' By that time, I knew I had done the wrong 
thing, and, I said, ``I am sorry about that. I will never do it 
again.''
  Then he said, ``I hope you won't Senator, because I think a fat, 
happy Russian is a lot less dangerous to us than a starving Russian.''
  I said, ``You are wiser than most of the people I serve with in the 
U.S. Senate.''
  I remember in 1981 when President Reagan came to town, he said, ``We 
are going to grow our way out of this deficit. We are going to have an 
economy so hot people will be paying more taxes, and we are going to 
balance this budget in nothing flat.'' That was in 1984. Those were his 
words. They were not mine.
  Ronald Reagan is the one who said we will balance the budget by 1984, 
and that we might even do it in 1983. I remember it so distinctly. When 
we 
[[Page S2247]] asked him how, he said, ``We are going to cut taxes, 
double defense spending, and balance the budget.'' And with the utmost 
respect to everybody who was here at the time, I say it was a lunatic 
idea; sheer lunacy. When I die I want my epitaph to say, ``Dale Bumpers 
was 1 of the 11 Senators in the U.S. Senate that voted no.'' Very 
shortly after that vote we saw the deficit start zooming. That was $3.5 
trillion ago, Senator; 14 years and $3.5 trillion ago that we were told 
that was the way to balance the budget.
  Did you know that if we had not done that, if we did not have those 
mammoth deficit increases during the 12 years before Bill Clinton 
became President--the deficit today would be $800,000, less than $1 
million. Virtually every dime of the interest we are paying on the 
national debt today is due to the deficit from 1981 to 1992.
  So everybody says, well, we mucked that up. We forgot something. What 
did we forget? We forgot to put a few words in the Constitution.
  Mr. President, you could put all the words in the Constitution you 
want to put in, and it will not matter. I do not mean to be denigrating 
to anyone, but I can tell you what this is all about. It is about two 
or three things.
  No. 1, it is about putting the balanced budget amendment into the 
Constitution, your simply declaring that we will achieve balance by the 
year 2002. Then everybody hoped and assumes that by the year 2002 the 
American people have forgotten what was said in 1995.
  No. 2, what we are in effect saying is that we do not have the spine 
or the courage to do what we have to do to get the deficit under 
control. Therefore, let us put a few words in the Constitution that we 
can hide behind for at least another 7 years. Members will say, ``I 
probably will want to be out of here then anyway, so what difference 
does it make?''
  Finally, Mr. President, the Contract With America says we will amend 
the Constitution, and we will balance the budget by 2002 or 2 years 
after the States ratify the Constitution, whichever is later.
  I want you to think about that. What does that mean? It means that 
the people who are championing this amendment and saying ``Trust me,'' 
are also saying that we will cut spending by $1.6 trillion to $2 
trillion over the next 7 years, and we will do it while increasing 
defense spending and we will not touch Social Security, and obviously, 
we cannot touch interest on the debt.
  So what does that mean? That means that at least 30 percent of all 
the rest of Government spending has to be cut. There is not one person 
in this body, Republican or Democrat, who believes that is even 
remotely possible--not even remotely possible. Yet, we plow ahead 
asking the American people to not probe too deeply into what we are 
doing here, hoping they will not expose us for our hypocrisy and our 
cynicism.
  When the year 2002 rolls around and the deficit is still soaring, we 
will have done exactly what Alexander Hamilton said we should guard 
carefully against, and that is: Do not raise people's expectations 
beyond the point of fulfillment. Every time you promise the American 
people something you fail to deliver, they become that much more 
cynical.
  Mr. President, let me show you a chart here regarding the space 
station. Everybody knows that I think the space station is an utter 
waste of money. I saw the picture this morning of the Russian cosmonaut 
waving at the American astronauts. That is heady stuff--sending a 
shuttle up there and to come within 35 feet of the Russian space 
station Mir. I do not want to berate the space station, but that is the 
seventh space station Russia has had orbiting the Earth. One guy aboard 
has been on it 2 years. We say we want to put one up there, too. That 
is going to cost about $70 billion.
  So last year, 63 Senators voted for a constitutional amendment to 
balance the budget, yet within 3 months, 43 of them voted to plow ahead 
with this $70 billion boondoggle, the space station. Some of the other 
amendments I offered last year to cut spending were just as 
embarrassing, or more so. So now we have people saying, ``Well, it did 
not work in 1981 when we proposed to cut taxes, raise defense spending, 
and balance the budget. But this time we really mean it, and we are 
going to put some words in the Constitution, and now it will work.'' 
Some very wise reporter here in Washington has properly called it deja 
voodoo.
  You remember the comedian Flip Wilson, who use to say ``The Devil 
made me do it!'' I suppose people in this body think that in the future 
when they have to make the tough choices and cut spending, they will 
have the Constitution to rely on. They can go home, and when everybody 
is irritated because their program got cut, they can say, ``The 
Constitution made me do it!'' If we just put a few lines into the 
Constitution, you can go home and say, ``We had to cut Medicare, Social 
Security, and all of those things because the Constitution made me do 
it.'' But did it? Will it?
  This proposal, as the Senator from Utah well knows, provides that if 
60 people in this body want to vote to unbalance the budget, the budget 
will be unbalanced and we can have all the deficit spending we want. If 
you do not think they will do that, look at this chart. This bar 
represents the 60 votes it would require to unbalance the budget and 
these bars represent the votes we made on the 13 appropriations bills 
last year. The lowest vote on any appropriation bill was 71. On average 
the appropriations bills, where we do the real spending, passed with 
84.5 votes.
  So, do you think the Members of the Senate are not going to vote to 
unbalance the budget if it means a cut in Social Security and Medicare? 
When you mention those two programs, 100 Senators dive under their 
desks. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that 60 Senators will 
not vote to unbalance the budget. Where does that leave you? Let us 
assume that the economy is in a recession, as it was in 1929 and 1930 
and 1931, and only Government can bring it out and avoid a depression. 
So somebody comes on the Senate floor and says we have to vote for 
spending money we do not have because people are homeless, out of work, 
and they are hungry; we have to vote to unbalance the budget until we 
get over this recession. Forty-one Senators--a very slim minority--can 
say, no, we are not going to unbalance the budget. Forty-one Senators 
can bring this country to its knees by refusing to address a dramatic 
economic crisis in the country.
  Do you know another thing I remember about the Reagan years and the 
Carter years? Senators, especially on that side of the aisle, decided 
they would quit voting to raise the debt limit to match spending. 
That's liking going into a restaurant and eating the biggest steak and 
when they bring the bill, you say, ``I am not going to pay it.'' So 
everybody thought this it would be a great campaign issue to vote not 
to raise the debt ceiling. They said, ``I voted for all these 
appropriations bills, all the spending; but now I have decided I am not 
going to vote to raise the debt ceiling.'' That happened five times in 
5 years. And one time we brought the Government to a halt over the 
weekend and a good part of Monday and Friday, and it cost the taxpayers 
of this country $150 million. That is just peanuts compared to the 
damage we risk under this amendment. Under this amendment, 41 Senators 
can bring this country to its knees.
  Do you think when that thing comes up on the floor, though, and 
somebody says we are going to have to cut Social Security 10 percent, 
cut 20 percent out of Medicare, we are going to have to close 18 
veterans' hospitals, we are going to have to cut back civil service 
pensions, do you think 60 Senators will not vote in a minute to 
unbalance the budget?
  (Mrs. HUTCHISON assumed the chair.)
  Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, to the lay people who may not 
understand the workings of Congress, here is the way it works. The 
Budget Committee goes into session when we first come into session, and 
they decide what revenues next year are expected to be, how much we are 
going to take in. And then they go through the various budget functions 
and they say, here is how much we are going to spend. And they say, in 
order to have a balanced budget, we have to cut spending by this 
amount. Let us assume, just for easy figuring, that they say we are 
going to have $2 trillion in revenues and here is our $2 trillion in 
expenditures, the budget is balanced.
  They bring it before the Senate. It passes by a lopsided majority. We 
pat 
[[Page S2248]] ourselves on the back, give ourselves the good 
Government award, and go home happy as a clam.
  Then, October 1 rolls around and it looks as though the economy is 
not doing so well. Within 5 or 6 months, it is obvious that we are 
going to have a $50 billion deficit.
  So what happens? Well, somebody goes to court and says, ``Why, those 
clowns told us they had a balanced budget, and look here. They are 
going to run a $50 billion deficit.''
  Who can sue? First of all, will the Federal courts have jurisdiction? 
We do not know. Not one person in this body can answer that question.
  Second question: Who has standing to challenge the budget in Federal 
court? Everybody? Taxpayers? State and local governments? Foreign 
nationals? We do not know.
  Third question: What will we do while the current budget is tied up 
in court? We do not know.
  Fourth question: How will the amendment force Congress to reach an 
agreement as to what they are going to cut or what tax hikes they are 
going to adopt? We do not know.
  Fifth: Would the courts find that enforcement of the balanced budget 
amendment is a political question on which they refuse to rule? We do 
not know.
  Sixth question: Can the Congress just ignore the amendment as 
drafted, and go merrily on their way? They probably can, and they 
probably would.
  Another scenario: Let us assume that even before October 1, in the 
beginning of the year 2002, as soon as Congress adopts the budget 
resolution, 6 months before October 1, somebody says, ``Why, you guys 
are crazy. What are you talking about? You're projecting a $2 trillion 
income. You're not even going to come close.''
  They go to court even before the year starts and say, ``Those people 
are mucking with the figures, cooking the books. They say they are 
going to have an income of $2 trillion when they are going to be lucky 
to have $1.9 trillion. Make them do it right. Make them cut more 
spending or raise taxes.''
  And let us assume for the purposes of argument that court then says, 
``You're right. I agree with you. Those people have overestimated 
revenues by $100 billion,'' and issues an order to Congress to close 
the gap and Congress does not do it. Can the court raise taxes to make 
us comply with this amendment? Maybe.
  Would that not be a beautiful thing to see? Would that not be 
something? James Madison would be whirling so hard in his grave, it 
would be like a fan in the kitchen. He would be saying, ``What have 
those clowns done to abdicate their responsibility to another branch of 
Government, the one thing I warned against?''
  Madam President, I could go on with scenarios like this.
  Senator Johnston has an amendment that is going to clarify this. It 
is going to say the courts can take jurisdiction over these questions. 
I think it ought to be clarified. Can they or can they not? And if the 
courts cannot take jurisdiction, if the courts have no role to play in 
this, who is going to enforce it? There is nobody left but us. If we 
are the ones that are already flagrantly violating the constitutional 
amendment we are debating here today, we are flagrantly violating it, 
do you think we are going to correct it?
  Let us assume, finally, one further scenario. Let us assume that my 
colleague, Senator Pryor over here, is so upset about the fact that he 
does not believe we have a balanced budget, and maybe the court has 
already said ``You are right. The budget is $100 billion off, but this 
is a political question and we are not going to get involved in it. 
This would be meddling in legislative affairs and we are not going to 
do it.''
  So then Senator Pryor goes to court and says: ``I want an injunction 
to prevent the Treasury Department from issuing one single bond, T-
bill, or note to pay off that $100 billion deficit for this year.''
  A court might take jurisdiction of a case like that. The plaintiff 
would simply be saying that if compliance with the balanced budget 
amendment is a political question and the courts are not going to make 
Congress pass a balanced budget, then keep them from doing anything, 
namely, issuing scrip, bonds, notes to cover the deficit.
   Some will say the courts will not do that, but in fact they already 
have. Most people here have heard of Missouri versus Jenkins, the 
Kansas City segregation case where the courts ordered the city of 
Kansas City to raise taxes. The Supreme Court affirmed it.
  You know something, Madam President, if I went home to that same 
coffeeshop I talked about a moment ago and I told my friends sitting 
around the coffee shop in Charleston, AR, that the effect of this 
amendment would be to turn the budget over to the courts and the courts 
would have jurisdiction to raise taxes or cut spending, the balanced 
budget amendment would not have a 75-percent approval rating; it would 
be lucky to get a 25-percent approval rating.
  Madam President, we keep dealing with distractions and issues that 
are not relevant to the real problems of this country.
  The Contract With America has some things in it which are legitimate 
and which Democrats ought to join Republicans in passing, as we have 
already done on the congressional compliance question. In thumbing 
through the Federalist Papers yet once again this weekend, I found that 
James Madison talked considerably about the House. Strangely, he did 
not say Congress or the Senate. He said the House of Representatives 
should be very careful not to pass a law from which they are protected.
  So we are 205 years late passing a bill to make us comply with the 
laws other people have to comply with, and I was happy to vote for that 
bill.
  But this idea that we are going to do middle-class tax cuts--when it 
comes to doing what is popular, Madam President, let me tell you 
something that is interesting. Seventy-nine percent of the people say 
they favor a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Over 80 
percent favor the right-to-know amendment, which is the pending 
business here. The right-to-know amendment simply says if you people in 
Congress are so hot for this amendment and you can balance the budget 
by the year 2002, you tell us now how you are going to cut between $1.5 
and $2 trillion between now and the year 2002.
  That is an absurdity on its face. It is as utterly impossible as my 
soaring out of here into the heavens, flapping my arms.
  We have a right to know. And the reason everybody is silent is 
because they do not have a clue as to how they would even come close to 
cutting that kind of spending. It is ridiculous in the extreme.
  Yesterday, the Joint Tax Committee, which does the best job of 
estimating, says the Republican tax cuts over the next 10 years--listen 
to this, I say to the Senator--those tax cuts are $704 billion.
 Add that to the trillion-dollar base line just for the first 7 years, 
$704 billion in lost revenue for the middle-class tax cut plus the 
capital gains tax cuts and the IRA's. That ought to cause people to 
wake up screaming.

  What is the biggest item on the budget now? Interest. Interest on the 
debt. But talk about how popular this amendment is, the right to know 
is popular, too. Know what else is popular? The idea that if we can 
find $80 or $200 billion in spending cuts to provide for a middle-class 
tax cut, we should apply that money to reducing the deficit, rather 
than a tax cut. And 81 percent of the people favor that idea, Senator.
  I disagree with the President's budget to this extent. I am not 
willing to accept $190 to $200 billion a year in deficits for the next 
7 or 8 years. We can do better. We can do a lot better. I have seven 
bills pending that will save $133 billion over the next 15 years, $33 
billion over the next 5 years.
  Madam President, we have big problems. We have a crime problem. We 
have welfare problems. Our educational system has been failing 
miserably. Our culture is degenerating. On that point, is it not 
curious that when people are becoming increasingly uncivil to each 
other and we have crime on every street corner, the proposals in the 
House are to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 
the one station we can watch without getting blood all over ourselves. 
One small piece of culture left, and they want to torpedo that.
  That is not enough. They want to abolish the Education Department. 
Take ourselves back to the stone age 
[[Page S2249]] while we are at it. And abolish the National Endowment 
for the Arts, without which the State of Arkansas probably would not 
have the Arkansas Symphony. Who cares about the old music that Bach and 
Beethoven and all those guys wrote 200 or 300 years ago? Get rid of 
that, too. The National Endowment for the Humanities who gave Arkansas 
a $50,000 grant when I was Governor and allowed Betty Bumpers to start 
artist programs in every first grade in the State. Get rid of that. 
What are we doing teaching first graders about art? What a waste. They 
are trying to scrap every smidgen of culture left in this society.
  There are not any words that we can put into the Constitution, Madam 
President, that are going to stiffen one single spine. Not one word in 
the Constitution will make somebody vote against Social Security or the 
space station, the latter, particularly if there is a contract 
providing 500 jobs in your State. No, words in the Constitution do not 
change people's character. We vote for what is popular around here.
  James Madison, again, ``Do not take that stale bait of popularity * * 
*,'' as opposed to what is best for the country. Many of the people of 
this country think there is enough waste, fraud, and abuse to balance 
the budget. A lot of them think if we change our salaries and the 
pension fund we could balance the budget. Take away our airport 
parking, install term limits. With issues like that, nobody will notice 
much of anything we do around here.
  In August 1993 we did something that we are asking the Republicans to 
do this year. I will never forget the month or the year. We said we 
would get the budget deficit going down, and keep it going down. We 
said we would do that by raising taxes on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of 
the people in this country by $250 billion, and cutting spending by 
$250 billion. And we did it. We did it just before the August recess. I 
voted for it, unhappily. Even though we told people exactly what we 
were going to cut, exactly what the tax hike would be, we still did not 
get one single Republican vote. Not one.
  Now the $500 billion in deficit reduction we promised over the next 5 
years, has turned into nearly $600 billion, maybe headed for $700 
billion. It was the most courageous thing, the most important thing 
that has been done since I have been in the Senate.
  I have screamed my head off about the deficit. I have offered 
amendments here every fall to cut spending. I might as well be shouting 
in a rain barrel. But we passed that bill, 50 votes from Democrats 
alone, plus the Vice President in the Senate Chamber. Everybody knew 
exactly what we were doing.
  And now we are saying, You tell us exactly how you will come up with 
almost $2 trillion in spending cuts in the next 7 years. Why should 
they not? People on Social Security want to know if they are included. 
People on Medicare, people on Medicaid, people who pay taxes, want to 
know what it will do to them.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, would the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I am happy to yield.
  Mrs. BOXER. I say to the Senator, Madam President, he is so eloquent 
in bringing home this point to the American people. We put ourselves 
out here on the line and we cast a tough vote.
  By the way, I serve on the Budget Committee. I will tell the Senator 
that Members should have heard the Republicans in the Budget Committee. 
I have their comments in writing. ``This thing will lead to higher 
deficits. This budget will lead to unemployment. This will be the worst 
thing that ever happened.'' In fact, we have the best economy that we 
have had in 25 years.
  So I would say to my friend, since our colleagues will not tell 
Members what they have in mind for the American people, we have to make 
some educated guesses on that point. I would ask my colleague this: Is 
it not true that the Republicans said they would not touch Social 
Security even though they are not supporting removing it from this 
amendment? Have they not said they are taking that off the table?
  Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, the Senator is absolutely right. They 
have said they will not touch Social Security, and obviously they 
cannot avoid interest on the debt. Although they did not say defense 
was off the table, they said, ``We will increase defense spending.'' I 
think one could assume if they increase spending it is also off the 
table.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I was going to make that point.
  The contract calls for increases in military spending, even though, 
as we know, we are spending in excess of two to five times than of all 
our enemies combined. So if they take Social Security off the table, I 
say to my friend, and if defense is taken off the table, and if they 
come through with a $700 billion tax cut, I ask my friend what is going 
to happen to Medicare? What is going to happen to veterans' benefits? 
What is going to happen to crime fighting? What will happen to the 
Border Patrol? What will happen to roads and highways and freeways and 
research on breast cancer that is so important, and AIDS and other 
things that are real threats to the people of this Nation.
  If the Senator, who has been around here a lot longer than I, could 
paint that picture I would greatly appreciate it.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, let me just say that common sense 
dictates three or four conclusions that seem obvious to me.
  No. 1, the Contract With America says we will not include Social 
Security or interest on the debt. Obviously we cannot do anything about 
interest on the debt. We have to pay it. As I said, they are proposing 
to increase defense spending. That leaves Medicare, and Medicaid, and 
it leaves nondefense domestic discretionary spending.
  In order to reach a balanced budget under that scenario, we would 
have to cut crime prevention, education, highways, law enforcement, 
everything that goes to making us a decent civilization. We would have 
to cut every one of those by at least 30 percent. In my opinion, in 
2002 we would still have a deficit. I appreciate the Senator raising 
the question.
  If you want to do what is popular, vote for this amendment. There is 
not any question about its popularity. Public opinion is contradictory 
about it because the people also support the right to know amendment 
which would require to say what we are going to cut. Seventy-four 
percent of the American people want the middle-class tax cut to be 
applied to the deficit instead of their tax bill. They want that to go 
on the deficit. Yet, the same people who are hot for a middle-class tax 
cut ignore the popular will of the people on that one.
  But I am willing to admit I am going to vote ``no'' on this, and that 
is not the popular vote. So if you want to do what is popular, you vote 
``aye.''
  If you really, in your heart of hearts, believe that you can meet the 
mandate that I just laid out for you about balancing the budget in the 
year 2002, for God's sake vote ``aye'' if you think you can do that.
  If you think the Founding Fathers did not know what they were doing 
when they crafted this most magnificent of all organic laws in the 
world, vote ``aye.''
  If you are one of the 11 new Senators who came to this body in 
January and you do not have the courage to do what you told those 
voters you were going to do when you were campaigning about spending 
cuts, you vote ``aye.''
  If you want to postpone the tough choices until the problem is even 
worse than it is now, vote ``aye.''
  With an ``aye'' vote, you get 7 more years of grace in which the 
budget will balloon. The Senator from Utah has a chart over there 
showing how much the debt has gone up since we have been debating this. 
If this constitutional amendment were on the books right now, or any 
time in the future, that chart would be exactly the same. Nothing would 
be changed by a balanced budget amendment.
  But if my colleagues believe that the highest calling they have is 
their duty to the Constitution, to be honest with their constituents, 
if they believe that their constituents can handle the truth no matter 
how unpleasant, even though all they have been getting is talk-show 
idiocy, distortions, pap, and partisan snapping, then they should vote 
``no.'' And then they should follow that with a few courageous votes on 
cutting spending, even if it tears their hearts out to cast those 
votes.
  Ten times nobler is the man who bit the bullet in his quest to 
fulfill the promise of a great nation than the man 
[[Page S2250]] who reaps the contempt and hatred of historians and, 
thereafter, the people, because political expediency overcame our 
nobler instincts.
  If you take that stale bait of popularity over what is best for our 
country, you are, in effect, saying, ``Let this great Nation perish.''
  I yield the floor, Madam President.
  Mr. PRYOR addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I am happy to have the Senator from 
Arkansas recognized. I hope he will be the last speaker of the day. I 
would like to say a few words in closing, and we can recess the Senate. 
I am hoping he will be the last speaker.
  Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, I thank my distinguished and good friend 
from Utah for allowing me to speak at this time. I want to compliment 
my worthy friend and colleague from Arkansas for delivering one of the 
eloquent, forceful, and thoughtful speeches of this debate on amending 
the Constitution with a balanced budget amendment.
  Although we always marvel at this great constitutional system that we 
have, somehow or another, we cannot help tinkering with it. We love to 
mess with our Constitution. Over 10,000 proposals in our some 200 years 
of history have been introduced in the Congress to amend the 
Constitution. But over this same 200-year period, we have adopted only 
17 since our Bill of Rights containing the first 10 amendments was 
enacted.
  These relatively few amendments which have actually survived the 
amending process suggest how very difficult it is to amend the 
Constitution, as our Founding Fathers intended it to be, and also just 
how high the stakes really are.
  Efforts to make our Government budget more responsible date back not 
just 2 or 3 years ago, but they date back to the early days of our 
forefathers. And these efforts have taken on various forms from 
reorganizing our budget process to amending the Constitution.
  Today's debate, whether to authorize a constitutional amendment to be 
sent out to the States to balance the Federal budget, has been 
unfolding, Madam President, since 1982 when the Congress first 
attempted and failed to write a constitutional amendment to balance the 
budget.
  After this first attempt, proponents have pushed and failed to 
authorize the amending process in 1986, 1990, and 1994.
  I have participated in each of these four very difficult debates, and 
I have argued at length, not only here but in my home State of 
Arkansas, on the merits and the demerits of amending our Constitution 
with such an amendment.
  In these debates, the U.S. Senate, and my friends on each side of the 
aisle--all of us together--have struggled during this debate to 
overcome our differences. But what is so striking today is not our 
differences, but our common goal, a goal that every Member of this body 
agrees with: The goal of achieving a balanced budget.
  No one quarrels with this debate. No one quarrels with this notion. 
No one quarrels with this goal. It is the one unifying idea that binds 
us. At the same time, it is the course of this particular devise of 
achieving our common goal, a constitutional amendment, which fractures 
us so very deeply, and there is a fundamental reason for this.
  Americans have shaped their lives through laws, and for more than 200 
years, the Constitution has been at the very core, the very center of 
our Nation of laws. It is the world's oldest written charter in 
continuous effect.
  When we change the Constitution, Madam President, we alter who we are 
as a people. We change our lives by changing the way we govern 
ourselves. So before taking this ominous step of changing who we are as 
a people, we have an obligation to fully explore the consequences of 
amending our Constitution.
  These consequences are neither obvious or simple. By this, I mean 
that by solving one problem, we may be creating a whole new set of 
problems. Certainly the consequences of balancing the budget will 
create a wide range of hardship and difficulty for some Americans--some 
of which will be foreseen and some of which will not.
  So before we launch into this long and complex process of changing 
our Constitution of changing our lives, along with those who will 
follow, the American people deserve and expect our honesty and they 
deserve our leadership.
  Madam President, I have been carrying around with me for the past 
several weeks a report from the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement 
and Tax Reform. We call this effort in the Senate the Kerrey-Danforth 
commission, cochaired in a bipartisan manner by Senator Bob Kerrey and 
Senator John Danforth. Senator John Danforth, of course, is no longer a 
Member of this body. I want to congratulate the authors of this report 
and I hold it out to my colleagues and the American people as an effort 
of true leadership and honesty in explaining today's budget dilemma in 
which we find ourselves.
  Finding No. 3 in this report, on pages 10 and 11, tells us a story we 
just cannot run away from. It is found actually on this chart, Madam 
President, and it starts in 1963, when mandatory spending, which is 
comprised mainly of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military 
retirement, civil retirement, and interest on the debt, amounted to 
29.6 percent of our Federal outlays. We see those combined, net 
interest on the debt and entitlements, on the chart as mandatory 
spending of 29.6 percent of our Federal outlays.
  Madam President, we see in the blue-green area of the pie chart what 
happened also in 1963 in the area of discretionary spending. The 
remaining portion represented some 70 percent of the total Federal 
outlays, while some 30 percent was mandatory.
  Chart No. 2, Madam President, shows the story when 30 years later, in 
1993, mandatory spending is now at 61 percent, that is, entitlements of 
47 percent, and net interest of 14 percent. Add the two and we find 61 
percent of our budget is comprised of mandatory expenditures and 
discretionary spending shrunk to only 39 of total Federal outlays.
  The third chart is revealing, Madam President, because the third 
chart indicates what is going to happen in 8 years. Eight years from 
now, only 1 year after this proposed constitutional amendment to 
balance the budget will go into effect. If we continue as we are at 
this time, we are going to see mandatory spending increased to 72 
percent. That is net interest on the debt, 13.8; entitlements, 58.2, 
and discretionary spending, Madam President, down to the very small 
percentage of 28 percent.
  Now, what does all this mean when we actually put ourselves in this 
straitjacket of a constitutional amendment over the next 7 years to 
balance the Federal budget.
  Two weeks ago, Dr. Robert Reischauer was before the Senate Finance 
Committee. He was testifying before our committee, and I asked him what 
does this mean if we are to balance the budget? His answer, and I 
quote, Madam President,

       I do not think that you can find them out of discretionary 
     spending, especially if you listen to the concerns that many 
     of your colleagues have about defense spending and think that 
     defense spending is over one-half of discretionary spending. 
     Clearly, the major portion of the answer has to lie in the 
     entitlement area or in the tax code. And there is no escaping 
     that.

  Clearly, Madam President, the major portion of the dollars needed to 
be cut to balance the budget has to come from entitlements or the Tax 
Code, and there is no escape from that fact.
  In the next question, I asked Dr. Reischauer before the Senate 
Finance Committee, if we exclude Social Security, which we should, from 
a balanced budget amendment, then what is going to be left for us to 
find the funds to balance the budget?
  Dr. Reischauer responded by citing among others Medicare, Medicaid, 
civil service, military retirement, veterans pensions, and veterans 
compensation, student loans, farm price support systems, AFDC, food 
stamps, and SSI.
  The point is, Madam President, the consequences of a balanced budget 
will definitely be felt by all Americans, present and future, who 
depend on these programs which Dr. Reischauer cited in his testimony a 
few days ago.
  Now, how will these Americans be affected? This is the question that 
we in Congress must do our dead level best to be honest with the 
American people about. With no plan set forth to 
[[Page S2251]] achieve a balanced budget by the year 2002, it is 
impossible, absolutely, totally impossible to tell the people even our 
best guess of the consequences of balancing the Federal budget.
  Madam President, I do not wish to blame any one person or any 
political party or any sponsor of this particular amendment before the 
Senate today for not having a specific plan because the cuts would be 
extremely painful, extremely unpopular, and standing alone both 
Democrats and Republicans have much to lose by offering such a plan at 
this time.
  In the absence of a plan at this date, a number of studies and 
reports are now coming out, that are now being issued which break down 
in very real terms the effect of actually balancing the budget with 
across-the-board spending cuts.
  Madam President, I can say that those findings from these reports are 
sobering. CBO estimates that the balanced budget amendment would 
require a cut of $1.2 trillion in Federal spending over the next 7 
years. What does that mean? The Treasury Department has now reported 
that a balanced budget amendment for the State of Arkansas would 
require reducing Federal grants and other annual spending in the State 
by some $3 billion--$416 million lost per year in Medicaid, $65 million 
lost per year in highway funding, $225 million a year in lost funding 
for education, for job training, environment and housing, and $1.1 
billion per year in lost benefits for the elderly.
  These are enormous, unthinkable numbers that mean little when we say 
them, but what does it mean to actual people? It means that seniors 
will see massive reductions in health care benefits along with the 
hospitals and the doctors who serve them. In turn, the cost of the 
public health care burden is going to be shifted to private employers 
and their employees. It means millions of requests by seniors for rides 
to the doctor's office, grocery store, and pharmacy will go unanswered. 
It means millions and millions of home delivered meals will not get 
delivered, will not go to the homes of the elderly persons who are 
disabled.
  Some now claim that these findings are meant only to spread fear and 
to scare people about the balanced budget amendment. However, Madam 
President, I think that the people making this claim are missing the 
point. Sometimes being honest in budgeting is a very, very frightful 
proposition, but it is my responsibility, it is our responsibility 
collectively to explain in advance the best way we can--what we are 
going to do and how we are going to do it--even if it scares us all.
  I know, Madam President, that the President has received a lot of 
criticism in the last few hours about the submission of his budget that 
he sent to the Congress yesterday.
  Here is the budget. ``A Citizens Guide to the Federal Budget'' is the 
first booklet. We have all of the appendices to the budget that he has 
proposed. We have an ``Analytical Perspective of the Budget of the 
United States Government.'' We have ``Historical Tables, Budget of the 
United States Government,'' and then finally the document that most of 
us hopefully have seen, the ``Budget of the United States Government,'' 
in a form that I think most of us hopefully can comprehend.
  What this says, Madam President, is our President has kept faith with 
his part of the contract. He has submitted a budget. It may be 
controversial. As my colleague Senator Bumpers just said, we may not be 
willing to accept $180 billion deficits into the outyears. But be that 
as it may, this is at least a good faith effort to let the people of 
America know where we stand with the budget, and to know what our plans 
are with the budget.
  However, as we look around the Senate Chamber today, on the eve of a 
very critical vote on the balanced budget amendment, the right-to-know 
amendment, offered by the distinguished minority leader, Senator 
Daschle, and several colleagues, we find that there is absolutely not 
one scintilla, not one scintilla of a plan offered by the proponents of 
the constitutional amendment to balance the budget, to show us how that 
budget is going to be balanced, to show us if it is going to require 
new revenues, or to show us the number of dollars that we are going to 
have to cut spending.
  Madam President, here is a blank piece of paper. There is nothing on 
it. And, thus far, this is about all we have from the proponents of 
this amendment to tell us how they plan to balance the budget.
  Our colleague, Senator Domenici, the distinguished Senator from New 
Mexico and chairman of the Budget Committee, has been very 
straightforward from the outset of this debate. But should not we be 
just as straightforward about the consequences to millions of Americans 
who are going to be impacted by these cuts? We should know the plan of 
action. We should know how they propose to balance the budget.
  No one who is a part of this debate is suggesting we do nothing to 
balance the budget. That is not an option. We all want to balance the 
budget. The price of doing nothing is too high. What is at the core of 
this debate is the right of Americans to see the direction we are 
heading to achieve this goal before we take this drastic step of 
amending our 200-year-old Constitution. Without this direction, I 
believe such a proposal is going to do more harm than good.
  During this debate an amendment to exclude Social Security from this 
balanced budget amendment is going to be offered and I am going to be 
supporting that amendment. The Social Security System is a 60-year-old 
contract with the American people. It has worked. It has worked well. 
And if changes need to be made, I am willing and ready to consider 
them. We made some changes back in 1983 that put our Social Security 
System back in a very good financial posture. But I will consider them 
on their own merit, not as a part of any across-the-board spending cut 
because I think our contract with the elderly people of our country as 
they pay into Social Security is a separate contract which they started 
some 60 years ago. And this is a contract of 60-year standing that I 
plan to honor and I hope our colleagues in the Senate will honor.
  The Democratic Joint Economic Committee has recently estimated that 
if both Social Security and Medicare were included in across-the-board 
spending cuts, the average senior citizen in America would lose some 
$2,000 a year in Social Security benefits; some $1,500 a year in 
Medicare benefits. The consequences of this debate to retirees, to 
widows, to the disabled are too important to subject them to broad 
brush budget cuts. And I will not support a constitutional amendment 
that allows this to happen.
  In last week's debate it was pointed out the balanced budget 
amendment does not require a balanced budget. This is true. Section 1 
of the proposed amendment that is before this body at this time allows 
for three-fifths of both the House and the Senate to waive the 
requirement for a balanced budget. So, if the amendment as proposed 
does not require a balanced budget, what does it do? That is the 
question today.
  One, this proposal gives the President and two-fifths plus 1 of 
either Chamber a procedural lock on deficit spending and debt ceiling 
limits.
  Let us place to one side the argument that we are frustrating the 
democratic process by allowing minority rule of our economic order. 
That point has been made repeatedly. I think it has been made well.
  Madam President, let us take another look at the amendment and 
compare that, to see how this proposal fits into the framework, the 
overall global framework of the Constitution. Compare it to, say, the 
first amendment.
  The proposed amendment before us is going to allow, if adopted, a 
supermajority to waive the requirement of a balanced budget. In this 
respect, this amendment is truly a first. It is a first in the 200-year 
history of our constitutional Republic. We have never had such an 
amendment. This is the first time. Let us compare it, if we might, to 
the first amendment:

       Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
     religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 
     abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the 
     right of the people peaceably to assemble; and to petition 
     the Government for a redress of grievances.

  Madam President, nowhere in this language of the Constitution in the 
first amendment does it even suggest about providing that: Congress 
shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion unless 
three-fifths of 
[[Page S2252]] each House passes legislation specifying otherwise. And 
to suggest so would be ludicrous.
  When we take the oath of office to protect and defend this 
Constitution, do we do so unless three-fifths of each house of Congress 
passes legislation specifying otherwise? Of course not. If the 
proponents of a balanced budget amendment believe it is so important to 
our way of life, why is this procedural loophole included?
  This is not the only loophole. Let us look at section 6, which 
provides that the ``estimates of outlays and receipts may be used by 
Congress when drafting legislation to enforce and implement the 
provisions of this amendment.''
  This may be the biggest loophole of all. The amendment will be 
enforced by ``estimates,'' agreed to by Congress. Even on our best, our 
luckiest days, estimates are just that, good faith estimates, but often 
they differ greatly. They change over time. And estimates in the wrong 
hands for the wrong reasons can be very, very destructive.
  Do we really want to introduce this notion into our Constitution? I 
think not. It is just one more example of why the balanced budget 
amendment will not balance the budget. And what happens, finally, Madam 
President, if Congress does not balance the budget? What happens if 
this straitjacket that we have placed ourselves in is such that we 
cannot abide by those rules? Would the Federal courts be called upon to 
enforce them? Are we going to be like Kansas City when the Federal 
judge, who was unelected, appointed for life said: I will raise the 
taxes, I will run the schools? Many have grave doubts whether the 
courts should assume this role. This is the role for the Congress. This 
is a role for the President. Further, even Federal judges today are 
very skeptical that the courts would assume this particular role.
  Judge Robert Bork has predicted that ``hundreds, if not thousands, of 
lawsuits would arise from such an amendment.''
  No tinkering with our Constitution is going to substitute for the 
courage it will take actually to balance the Federal budget. The 
introduction of gimmicks and loopholes and uncertainty into the 
Constitution will not give us the courage or the political cover to 
reach this goal.
  The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of 
Rights--are housed just a few blocks from here. In fact, this morning I 
was sitting in my office and I was thinking about this vote that we are 
going to have tomorrow, Wednesday, at high noon; a vote whether to 
require that the public and the Congress have the right to know 
basically the glidepath or some of the numbers as to how we are going 
to achieve a Federal budget, if we support this constitutional 
amendment.
  I got to thinking about the Declaration and the Constitution and the 
Bill of Rights. We talk about them all the time in this body. I 
remembered I had not seen those documents since I was about 16 years of 
age.
  So I called up the Archives. I said, ``Would it be possible for me to 
come down on short notice and have explained to me how we protect and 
look after these very sacred documents?'' So I got in the car. I went 
to the Archives. I found that on each day at 10 o'clock sharp every 
day, except Christmas, on display we find the Declaration of 
Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
  These founding documents of our country are in cases shielded by 
tinted glass and inert gases. Each evening these cases are lowered into 
a recessed, reinforced vault. If the Capital of our country were 
attacked, the vault would continue to protect its contents long after 
the city above ceased to exist. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, 
and the Declaration of Independence for this country would survive long 
after all of us were gone.
  The scene at the National Archives, I think, reinforces the reverence 
we have for these documents. This scene, I think, demonstrates the 
degree of respect for the Founding Fathers who wrote these particular 
documents.
  While I was standing there this morning--and I took several members 
of our staff, Madam President, to the National Archives to see the 
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights 
once again--I watched the people as they walked in. As they approached 
these documents, they approached them with reverence, with quiet, and 
deep respect for the environment in which they were in.
  There was a couple. I started visiting with them quietly. They were 
from Washington State. I introduced myself. They introduced themselves. 
They said that this was their very first trip to Washington, DC. They 
said that they thought they would never have the opportunity to be so 
close to the reason that this country has become so great and so 
powerful as it is today.
  It makes me shudder to think that we would, in effect, remove this 
Constitution from its specially protected environment in the National 
Archives and inscribe on its parchment something that we believe is a 
bad idea. The reverence inspired by the Constitution comes from the 
impression that it is permanent and that it is enduring. A bad idea 
cannot endure, and we should not discolor the Constitution with it. We 
should not taint it. We should not stain this magnificent document with 
such an untried extreme as this particular amendment presents.
  Madam President, can we balance the budget without this amendment?
  Madam President, I see my distinguished friend from Utah rising. I 
want him to know, if he will allow me about 2 or 3 more minutes, I am 
going to sit down and let him conclude today's activities in the 
Senate, if that would be permissible with the distinguished manager.
  Can we balance the budget without a constitutional amendment? The 
answer is ``yes.'' Is it going to be easy? The answer is ``no.''
  The 1990 and 1993 deficit reductions which were passed represent over 
$1 trillion in deficit reduction. I voted for them. We did this without 
a balanced budget amendment. We can do it again, and we can do it by 
keeping the Constitution intact. It is very difficult, and some may not 
have liked it. It was uncomfortable. It caused heartburn. But I think 
very few would disagree with the fact that we reduced the deficit of 
the U.S. Government, and once again, we did it by keeping the 
Constitution of our country intact.
  Some Democrats lost their seat in this Congress to vote on the 1990 
and 1993 deficit reduction bills. But these individuals did it anyway 
because they knew that their first obligation was to their country, to 
their children and to their grandchildren, and they knew they must make 
tough choices. Many who support this balanced budget proposal have 
never voted for a tough deficit reduction package. To vote on this 
amendment does not in any way ensure that they will in the future.
  Whatever the outcome of this debate might be, Madam President, I hope 
that I will be able to continue to make the tough votes to reach this 
goal. I support a balanced budget. But I will not support a bad idea to 
achieve it.
  To our colleagues in the Senate who have just arrived here--and I 
note that all 11 have signed a letter recently, dated January 18, 1995. 
The new freshmen Members of the U.S. Senate which have come from 10 of 
our great States in this Union, have all supported this balanced budget 
amendment. I would like to say a word, Madam President, in closing to 
those fine new colleagues of ours. That is this: This is going to be 
the easiest vote that they have ever cast. This is an easy vote for 
them. It is an easy vote for anyone in this body because it says that 
we are going to propose an amendment to the Constitution that requires 
a balanced budget, but it ultimately does not require a balanced 
budget; that we are going to propose an amendment to the Constitution 
that says we are going to let the next Congress basically balance the 
budget. We are going to let the next President basically balance the 
budget. And what we will be doing in the meantime is sending out press 
releases and stating what a great thing we have done by supporting a 
constitutional amendment to balance the budget.
  Madam President, I hope our colleagues will rethink this position. I 
know they realize--because they are not only good people, they are 
smart people--we did not get ourselves as a country, as a Nation, into 
this predicament in 7 years. And let us be honest, we are not going to 
get ourselves out of it in 7 years.
  Madam President--and I say to my wonderful friend of long standing 
from Utah who has been eloquent in his 
[[Page S2253]] management and his statements on this issue--I would 
like to conclude my statement this afternoon by quoting a paragraph 
from a 1993 book that has just come out. It is called ``Amending 
America,'' written by Richard Bernstein and Jerome Agel. Up here on the 
top on the cover, I say to my colleague from Utah and the distinguished 
occupant of the chair, it says: ``If We Love the Constitution So Much, 
Why Do We Keep Trying to Change It?''
  A paragraph from page 185 in the book states this, which is relative 
to the debate in 1992 on the constitutional amendment:
  In June 1992, Stanley Collender, the director of Federal budget 
policy for Price Waterhouse, pointed out another problem with enforcing 
the amendment. Under present law, no person would have standing to 
bring suit to compel Congress to obey this amendment. If the courts 
could not enforce it, then the amendment would have no teeth and its 
failure would breed contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, 
again, echoing the disaster of constitutional prohibition.
  Mr. Collender concluded, ``This whole effort is nothing but a scam.''
  Madam President, I am not calling this effort a scam, but I do call 
it misguided, and I truly believe that there is another way to attack 
the national debt and our deficit, and at the same time keep our 
revered and respected Constitution intact.
  I thank the Chair and I thank my colleague from Utah, Senator Hatch, 
for having the patience to sit and listen and for managing this 
legislation.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I want to make a few comments before we 
close for the day. If the courts cannot enforce the balanced budget 
amendment--and they will not be able to--I do not believe there is any 
way people can meet across the board the standing justiciability and 
the political questions in order to have the courts enforce the 
balanced budget amendment. The only way it is going to be enforced is 
through moral suasion, because it will be part of the Constitution and 
it will be enforced just like the States enforce their amendments to 
their constitutions. They revere their State constitutions and the 
State Governors and legislatures balance the budget in accordance with 
the State constitution. It will be the same here.
  Every Member of this body is sworn to uphold the Constitution, and 
the moral suasion alone will cause us to do what we should. That does 
not mean we cannot get a three-fifths vote or a constitutional 
majority. Maybe we can, in cases of severe distress and difficulty. 
This is the only chance that we have to pass something that will get 
spending under control.
  If there is ever an argument as to why we need a balanced budget 
amendment, the Senator from Arkansas was extremely eloquent in talking 
about the importance of this budget. The fact of the matter is that 
this budget agreement, I think, is a great argument for the balanced 
budget constitutional amendment. It is not because I want to criticize 
it so much as it is that the President has thrown in a sponge.
  If you read this budget, over the next 12 years, we are not going to 
go toward a balanced budget at all, but we will be at a $200 billion 
deficit for the next 12 years. What happens to our kids and grandkids? 
Who cares about them? Can we not do something to stop this incessant 
spending? I think we can. Here we have a Democrat and Republican 
amendment to do this.
  Madam President, by codifying these terms and concepts in our 
Constitution, the supporters of the Daschle amendment will 
constitutionalize the very processes that have produced trillions of 
dollars in red ink. This is the politics of the past. It is business as 
usual.
  We may find that we have to go about the budget process differently 
at some point in the future. But the Daschle amendment locks us pretty 
much into one particular process.
  Instead of working for change, the supporters of the Daschle 
amendment want to freeze the status quo in place. Is that what the 
American people want?
  I must say, the Daschle amendment fits hand in glove with the Clinton 
budget--there is no real change there either. President Clinton 
promises at least $200 billion in deficits as far ahead as we can 
project, year after year.
  Instead of attacking the deficit, the President's budget plans attack 
the wallets of our citizens. Our citizens will wind up paying more 
taxes to pay the ever growing interest on our skyrocketing national 
debt. And our citizens will pay more for the material things they want 
in life, from housing to automobiles to everyday consumer spending. 
These deficits will keep interest rates higher than they otherwise 
would be. These deficits will crowd out the private sector, resulting 
in fewer jobs and lower wages.
  The President campaigned on change. He has demonstrated he is part of 
the status quo.
  I ask unanimous consent that a letter to me from Lincoln Oliphant be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                                      U.S. Senate,


                                  Republican Policy Committee,

                                 Washington, DC, February 7, 1994.
     Hon. Orrin G. Hatch,
     Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 
         Washington, DC.
     Re the Daschle amendment is anti-constitutional
       Dear Mr. Chairman: This is the first of two letters that 
     assess the constitutional implications of the Daschle 
     amendment.
       H.J.Res. 1, proposing an amendment to the Constitution 
     relative to a balanced budget, is being debated on the Senate 
     floor. On Friday, February 3, 1995, Senator Daschle moved to 
     commit H.J. Res. 1 to the Judiciary Committee with 
     instructions to report back forthwith with a Daschle 
     substitute amendment.
       The Daschle substitute would add to H.J. Res. 1 a new and 
     lengthy and complicated section 9 that requires Congress to 
     use the processes of the Congressional Budget Act to reach a 
     balanced budget. Senator Daschle's section 9 is longer than 
     the original H.J. Res. 1, and it is far more complicated. For 
     example, subsection 9(b) of the Daschle amendment reads as 
     follows:
       ``The directives required by subsection (a)(3) shall be 
     deemed to be directives within the meaning of section 310(a) 
     of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Upon receiving all 
     legislative submissions from Committees under subsection 
     (a)(3), each Committee of the Budget shall combine all such 
     submissions (without substantive revision) into an omnibus 
     reconciliation bill and report that bill to its House. The 
     procedures set forth in section 310 shall govern the 
     consideration of that reconciliation bill in the House of 
     Representatives and the Senate.''
       The Daschle amendment sounds like it came out of the Code 
     of Federal Regulations, not the Constitution of the United 
     States, but Article V of the Constitution which governs 
     amendments does not require constitutional amendments to be 
     written elegantly or even well. This paper is not, however, 
     concerned with the coarseness of the Daschle language, nor 
     with its merits per se, but with its fitness for inclusion in 
     the Constitution of the United States.
  What the Daschle Amendment Means for the Constitution of the United 
                                 States

       The Daschle amendment seeks to take a statute of the United 
     States, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and graft it 
     onto the Constitution of the United States. This appears to 
     mean that a future amendment to the Budget Act would 
     constitute a change in the Constitution of the United States.
       Section 310 of the Congressional Budget Act, 2 U.S.C. 641 
     (1988 ed. & Supp. V 1993), was enacted on July 12, 1974, P.L. 
     93-344, Sec. 310, 88 Stat. 315. It was amended on Dec. 12, 
     1985, P.L. 99-177, 99 Stat. 1053, and again on Nov. 5, 1990, 
     P.L. 101-508, 104 Stat. 1388-608, -618, -620. In the future, 
     these kinds of amendments (which were relevant to the Budget 
     Act), and all other amendments to section 310 (no matter 
     their relevance to budgetary matters), will be incorporated 
     into the Constitution of the United States through the 
     language of the Daschle amendment, if ratified.
       ``Constitutionalizing'' a statute of the United States is 
     unprecedented because it is antithetical to the Constitution 
     of the United States. The Daschle amendment allows Congress 
     and the President (or Congress alone when it overrides a 
     presidential veto) to re-enter the constitutional text at 
     will and change it. This is anti-constitutional.\1\
     \1\Footnotes at the end of article.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
       The Daschle amendment is open-ended, there is no limit on 
     future amendments. It would ``constitutionalize'' the 
     Congressional Budget Act on the date of enactment and forever 
     thereafter, however amended. The Daschle amendment could have 
     avoided the possibility of future amendments by providing 
     that the trust funds were to be ``constitutionally fixed'' on 
     a date certain. This would have been a large step away from 
     the charge of anti-constitutionalism, though it would have 
     brought charges of grotesque constitutional drafting because 
     it would have made chunks of the Budget Act a permanent part 
     of the Constitution of the United States. America's 
     Constitution-makers have stayed away from such rigidity 
     because 
[[Page S2254]] they have believed that laws like the Budget Act should 
be able to be amended without requiring a constitutional amendment.
       The Daschle amendment is at cross-purposes with the 
     structure and intent of the American Constitution--it 
     threatens such fundamentals as the separation of powers, 
     federalism, and the rule of law, as will be shown below.


The Practical Effect of the Daschle Amendment: The Example of Article V

       Article V of the Constitution provides the sole method for 
     amending the Constitution. It reads in relevant part:
       ``The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall 
     deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this 
     Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of 
     two-thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for 
     proposing amendment, which, in either case, shall be valid to 
     all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when 
     ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several 
     States * * *''
       The sole mode of amendment established by the Constitution, 
     therefore, involves only the States and the Congress, and 
     Article V requires the consent of a super-majority of both. 
     The President has no formal role in the proposing or 
     ratifying of constitutional amendments. Hollingsworth v. 
     Virginia, 3 U.S. 378 (1798). The Judicial Branch has no 
     formal role in the proposing or adopting of amendments and 
     only a limited role in reviewing Article V cases. Coleman v. 
     Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939) (many issues arising under 
     Article V are political questions which are nonjusticiable).
       In the ordinary Article V case (the convention method for 
     proposing amendments never having been used), two-thirds of 
     the Senate and two-thirds of the House of Representatives 
     propose an amendment to the Constitution which can be adopted 
     only by the consent of three-fourths of the States. There is 
     no other way to amend the Constitution--unless the Daschle 
     amendment is ratified!
       If the Daschle amendment is adopted, there will be two 
     additional ways in which the Constitution may be amended:
       First, if Congress passes a bill to amend relevant sections 
     of the Congressional Budget Act and the President signs the 
     bill, the Constitution will be changed.
       Second, if Congress passes a bill to amend the relevant 
     sections of the Congressional Budget Act and the President 
     vetoes the bill, Congress can enact the bill unilaterally by 
     overriding the President's veto by a two-thirds vote.
       By allowing Congress alone, or Congress with the 
     concurrence of the President, to change the Constitution, the 
     Daschle amendment overthrows settled understandings of the 
     separation of powers\2\ and federalism.\3\ The Daschle 
     amendment is, therefore, anti-constitutional.
       Additionally, the Daschle amendment is anti-constitutional 
     because it undermines the concept of a written Constitution 
     superior to all other enactments. U.S. Const. Art. VI. The 
     Federalist no. 78 (``No legislative act . . . contrary to the 
     Constitution can be valid''). See also, Marbury v. Madison, 1 
     U.S. 137, 177 (1803) (``Certainly all those who have framed 
     written constitutions contemplate them as forming the 
     fundamental and paramount law of the nation''). The excerpt 
     from Marbury v. Madison that appears in the Appendix 
     emphasizes this weakness of the Daschle amendment.
           Sincerely,
                                              Lincoln C. Oliphant,
                                                          Counsel.
                               footnotes

     \1\The word ``anti-constitutional'' signifies a proposal that 
     is contrary to the structure and purposes of the founders' 
     constitution. A statutory provision which is forbidden by the 
     constitution is said to be ``unconstitutional'' (and that is 
     the subject of our second letter on the Daschle amendment), 
     but a proposed constitutional amendment that would stand the 
     Constitution on its head is ``anti-constitutional.''
     \2\The Constitution of the United States is predicated on a 
     separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial 
     powers. U.S. Const. Art. I, Art, II & Art. III. The 
     Federalist No. 47 (``The accumulation of all powers, 
     legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . 
     . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. 
     Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable 
     with the accumulation of power . . . no further arguments 
     would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the 
     system. I persuade myself, however, . . . that the charge 
     cannot be supported'').
     \3\The Constitution of the United States is predicated on 
     federalism, a diffusion of powers between the national 
     government and the States, See, e.g., U.S. Const. Art. I, 
     sec. 8 (enumerated powers), Amend, X (reserving powers to the 
     States), & Amend. XI (protecting States against lawsuits). 
     The Federalist No. 45 (``The powers delegated by the proposed 
     Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. 
     Those which are to remain in the State governments are 
     numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised 
     principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, 
     and foreign commerce . . . The powers reserved to the several 
     States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary 
     course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and 
     properties of the people'').
                                                                    ____

                                Appendix


        marbury v. madison--1 cranch (5 u.s.) 137, 176-78 (1803)

       ``That the people have an original right to establish, for 
     their future government, such principles as, in their 
     opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the 
     basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. 
     The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; 
     nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The 
     principles, therefore, so established, are deemed 
     fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed is 
     supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be 
     permanent.
       ``This original and supreme will organizes the government, 
     and assigns to different departments their respective powers. 
     It may either stop here, or establish certain limits not to 
     be transcended by those departments.
       The government of the United States is of the latter 
     description. The powers of the legislature are defined and 
     limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or 
     forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are 
     powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation 
     committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be 
     passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction 
     between a government with limited and unlimited powers is 
     abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom 
     they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, 
     are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be 
     contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act 
     repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the 
     constitution by an ordinary act.
       ``Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The 
     constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable 
     by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary 
     legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the 
     legislature shall please to alter it.
       ``If the former part of the alternative be true, then a 
     legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if 
     the latter part be true, then written constitutions are 
     absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power 
     in its own nature illimitable.
       ``Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions 
     contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law 
     of the nation, and, consequently, the theory of every such 
     government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant 
     to the constitution, is void.
       `` * * *
       ``It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial 
     department to say what the law is. . . . If two laws conflict 
     with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of 
     each.
       ``So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both 
     the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so 
     that the court must either decide that case conformably to 
     the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the 
     constitution, disregarding the law; the court must determine 
     which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of 
     the very essence of judicial duty.
       ``If, then, the courts are to regard the constitution, and 
     the constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the 
     legislature, the constitution, and not such ordinary act, 
     must govern the case to which they both apply.
       ``Those, then, who controvert the principle that the 
     constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount 
     law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts 
     must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the 
     law.
       ``This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all 
     written constitutions. It would declare that an act which, 
     according to the principles and theory of our government, is 
     entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It 
     would declare that if the legislature shall do what is 
     expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express 
     prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to 
     the legislature a practical and real omnipotence, with the 
     same breath which professes to restrict their powers within 
     narrow limits. It is prescribing limits and declaring that 
     those limits may be passed at pleasure.
       ``[I]t thus reduces to nothing what we have deemed the 
     greatest improvement on political institutions, a written 
     constitution. . . .''
  Mr. HATCH. Two more things, Madam President. We started this morning 
by pointing out our balanced budget amendment debt tracker. You can see 
we have been in debate for 9 days now. You can see the green mark is up 
from the $4.8 trillion baseline we have. Each day, the national debt is 
going up almost $1 billion as we debate this. It is really mind 
boggling.
  Let me point this out to our general public. This chart is 
``Calculating the Deficit Under President Clinton.'' This budget puts 
us in this deficit picture. We are in 1995, right here. In 1994, the 
deficit was projected to be 3.2; in 1995, 194.7; in 1996, 192.5; in 
1996, 193.1; in 1997, 193.4, and then 194.4, and on into the future. 
This is all red ink for our children and grandchildren and everybody in 
this country.
  Over the next 5 years, we will have a $1.39 trillion total increase, 
projected increase in the deficit from 1994 to the year 2000--billions 
of dollars in debt, with not one hope for anybody of bringing that line 
down unless we pass this balanced budget amendment. That is why we are 
fighting so hard for it now and why we are asking colleagues to 
[[Page S2255]] consider voting for it. We are also asking the people to 
be heard with regard to this.
  Eighty-five percent of the people want a balanced budget amendment. 
There is good reason for it and that is a perfect illustration why. On 
both of these charts, this continual red-ink deficit, and the continual 
going up--even while debating it on a daily basis, it is going up $1 
billion a year.
  I do not want to keep the Senate any longer. We are prepared to close 
the Senate. I will end my remarks at this point.


                          ____________________