[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2308-S2311]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           SOCIAL SECURITY EXCLUSION AND THE BALANCED BUDGET

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, following on the comments by the Senator 
from Nevada, let me ask the Senator from Nevada a question. The right-
to-know amendment was an amendment 
     [[Page S2309]] offered by the Senator from Nevada, myself, 
     and many others who felt that it was important to try to 
     understand: Is this a promise to balance the budget, or is it 
     a promise with a plan this time to balance the budget? Lord 
     knows the American people have had a barrel full of promises.
  Was there something behind it? If there is, as one of the leaders in 
the other body said, the plan is so significant it will make America's 
knees buckle. It will make the knees buckle of the American people if 
we ever told them what is required. The question many ask is, should 
not the American people understand what it is they are talking about? 
What will buckle people's knees? Is there a plan? Is this a mystery 
plan that we are not allowed to understand or see? Well, we had a vote 
on that and the vote was no. This is a program, but we do not want you 
to see the plan, if there is one. We are not sure there is one.
  Second question: Will, in the process of balancing the budget, the 
Congress decide to take Social Security trust funds and use them to 
balance the Federal budget? After all, the Social Security trust funds 
come from dedicated taxes to be used for only one purpose. They go into 
the Social Security trust fund to be used for Social Security. It is a 
contract between those who work and those who are retired.
  The question is, yes or no, does someone intend to use receipts from 
the Social Security trust fund to balance the budget? The Social 
Security system has not caused one penny of the Federal deficit. This 
year it is running a surplus of $70 billion. This is not a difficult 
question. It is easy to understand, and it is even easier to answer--
yes, or no.
  I think the Senator from Nevada understands, because of the way the 
constitutional amendment that is on the floor is proposed, the wording 
says receipts mean all receipts including Social Security receipts. 
Because it is worded that way, one cannot correct this problem in any 
other way except to amend the constitutional amendment that is on the 
floor.
  I hope the Senator from Nevada will move as quickly as possible and 
that when we debate that amendment--I hope that is the next amendment 
the Senate will consider--we will get an up or down vote. I do not 
think we should have a ricochet vote on this, I do not think we should 
bounce around on various procedural motions.
  I think the question can be answered simply yes or no, are we going 
to use the Social Security trust funds to balance the budget? Is it the 
Senator's intention to offer this as the next amendment if that is in 
order, and do we hope to get a recorded vote on the question, yes or 
no?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend from North Dakota asked two 
questions. Is there a plan? I have to answer that, yes, I think there 
is a plan, and it is not one that people who are now depending on 
Social Security would like. I think the plan is to raid the Social 
Security trust fund.
  The second question, do I want to vote on my amendment? The answer is 
yes, I think we have to have a vote on the amendment. It is the only 
thing that would be fair to the American public. Is the Social Security 
trust fund a separate trust fund? The answer to that is yes.
  I would also say to my friend from North Dakota that it is 
interesting that those Members who are pushing so hard for the Social 
Security exclusion are people who support the balanced budget 
amendment. The Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Nevada 
are not people here trying to deep six the balanced budget amendment. I 
believe in a balanced budget amendment. And I have heard speeches on 
this Senate floor by our colleague, who I do see on the floor in front 
of me, from North Dakota, the senior Senator from North Dakota. He has 
talked many, many times about the need to balance this budget. Those 
people that are pushing for the Social Security trust fund to be 
excluded are people--the most vocal--are people who support the 
amendment.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, can the Senator think of any reason that 
someone would want to vote no on an amendment like this, unless one had 
designs on using the Social Security revenues to balance the budget? I 
cannot think of any other reason.
  I came here this morning and said I do not ask anybody for five 
reasons or even three if it is hard for somebody. I just ask for one 
simple, easy-to-understand reason from somebody that would say, ``Here 
is why we do not want to include this,'' because, I guess, the only 
reason that is plausible is that we would like to use the Social 
Security revenues at some point to balance the budget. Is there any 
other possible reason for someone not wanting to vote for this?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to my friend from North Dakota, as I 
have said on this floor on another occasion, the answer is, that is 
where the money is. As Willie Sutton, the famous bank robber said when 
he was let out of prison, they asked, ``Why do you rob banks?'' And he 
said, ``That is where the money is.''
  The Social Security trust fund is where the money is. That is why 
there are some who do not want to exclude it.
  Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate the Senator's comments. The problem with 
those of us here is we get confused by labels--what is conservative and 
what is liberal. You get totally confused, because the conservative 
approach, it seems to me, is to balance the budget the way it is 
supposed to be balanced. And the way it is supposed to be balanced is 
you set the Social Security trust fund aside and balance the budget 
deficit. That it seems to me is a conservative approach.
  Yet, it seems to me that most who call themselves conservatives say, 
``Gee, we don't want to do that.'' That position, apparently, is a 
liberal position. Maybe we ought to all change seats here for a while, 
because I just do not understand why we are in this quandary.
  This ought to be the simplest of questions to answer: Do we want to 
balance the budget by raiding the Social Security trust fund? The 
answer is, of course not. Do we want to balance the budget? The answer 
is, of course.
  I take a back seat to nobody on this subject. I have been in charge 
of waste task forces, identified $80 billion of Federal spending we 
ought to eliminate, much of which we have not. The fact is that still 
does not deal with the deficit. We have an abiding deep deficit problem 
that we have to deal with. That is why I voted for balanced budget 
amendments in the past. It is why I likely will in the future, but 
there is a right way and wrong way to do things.
  Those who come to the floor say, ``We want to cut taxes and increase 
defense.'' I want them to come to the floor to say to us, if we intend 
to do that, cut taxes and increase defense, how do you get to where you 
want to get to, how do you balance the budget? Do you do it by taking 
Social Security funds? Not with my consent you do not. That is not 
honest. That is not an honest approach.
  I hope when the Senator from Nevada offers his amendment that we can 
have an up-or-down vote on the merits of the amendment and we can 
understand what are the virtues of conservatism here: Pay your bills 
and treat money the way you promised people you would treat money. 
These principles hold especially true with Social Security.
  We told people, we promise you we will put it in a trust fund, we 
promise you we will keep it there. That will not be the case, if it is 
then used sometime later to offset tax cuts, much of which will go to 
the wealthy, and offset defense spending increases at a time when we 
are choking on Federal deficits. That is the dilemma. I hope we can 
clarify this and have a very simple vote after an honest debate.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, the reason this debate is so important is 
because we are talking about issues that have enormous implications for 
the future, and the implications are a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States that would have, as its predicate, 
that we would loot the Social Security trust funds of $636 billion over 
the next 7 years in order to have the operating budget of the United 
States balanced.
  That is just a fundamentally flawed strategy. It is not right. Any 
CEO in this country, if they went before their board of directors and 
said that their 
[[Page S2310]] plan for balancing the operating budget of the 
corporation was to loot the trust funds of their employees, that 
individual would be on his or her way to a Federal facility and, as I 
said moments ago in the press gallery, it would not be the U.S. 
Congress, it would be the Federal facility they would be headed for. 
They would be headed for a Federal penitentiary because that is fraud. 
Unfortunately, that is what is occurring with respect to the budget of 
the United States now.
  Social Security trust fund surpluses are being used to fund the 
operating expenses of the United States. What is fundamentally wrong 
about that is that we are using a regressive payroll tax to fund not 
the retirement systems of Americans but instead we are using those 
funds to understate the real budget deficit we confront in this 
country. And now we have a constitutional amendment before us that 
would take that approach and put it in the Constitution of the United 
States.
  Mr. President, that cannot be the result of this balanced budget 
amendment debate. We should never allow a trust fund to be looted in 
order to achieve balance, and we should never put that kind of 
construct into the Constitution of the United States. That is 
profoundly wrong.
  I am just very hopeful that we can get to a vote and a debate on the 
amendment that Senator Reid and others of us will be offering. It is an 
amendment Senator Reid and I offered last year, along with my colleague 
Senator Dorgan. I understand that there are others who are proposing an 
alternative mechanism and vehicle for the implementing language. Let me 
just say, this Senator would never accept that kind of pale imitation. 
That is not going to suffice.
  We are talking about an amendment to the organic law of the United 
States: The Constitution of the United States. That is the document 
that each of us swore to uphold when we took the oath of office. We are 
talking about a Contract With America; that is the contract with 
America that counts.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I have been listening with interest to the 
debate on what very likely will be an upcoming amendment with regard to 
whether or not we are eventually going to get to a vote on the balanced 
budget amendment.
  As the Chair knows, this Senator has been very much involved in all 
of this because while I think that there are many good reasons for not 
having a balanced budget amendment as a part of the Constitution, I 
think after the years that I have served here and on the Budget 
Committee, I must say that without that discipline that I think we have 
exhibited in the past by the tendencies that seem to prevail and by the 
fact that we have not even come close to balancing the Federal budget, 
I am convinced that with the reservations that are obviously in order, 
and many of them well taken, this Senator believes that we have to have 
a constitutional amendment to balance the Federal budget.
  I think the arguments that are being made today with regard to Social 
Security are good ones. Many of my close friends, with whom I have 
worked for many, many years in this body, are supporting that kind of 
an amendment.
  I guess the question comes down to in this Senator's mind: How are we 
going to fashion, if we can, 67 votes in this body to pass a 
constitutional amendment? The more I see and the more I hear, the more 
fearful I come to the conclusion that maybe it is not possible, maybe 
some of these votes that were taken pro and con on this issue are going 
to simply give cover to one group or one party or one Member to vote 
against the balanced budget amendment.
  I say in all candor, Mr. President, one of the big problems we have 
is that I am not sure a majority of this body understand the difficulty 
we have once we have passed a constitutional amendment and assume that 
will be ratified by three-fourths of the States.
  Another way of putting it would be that passing the constitutional 
amendment to balance the budget, as was done with great fervor, with 
great fanfare, and with great flag waving on the Contract With America, 
was the easy part. That was not necessarily the time for celebration. 
That was done in the House of Representatives, I would suggest, without 
fully informing the Members of the House of Representatives, 435 of 
them, and certainly not informing the State legislators who are going 
to have to vote, three-fourths of them, before such a constitutional 
amendment, if it passes the Senate, would be enforceable.
  Certainly last, but far from least, I do not believe the American 
people have been afforded an opportunity to fully understand what all 
of this means. In fact, I am very much concerned because I saw a poll 
the other day that I suspect is accurate. I think it kind of represents 
what I have heard from various sources. That is, that 72 percent of the 
American public strongly support a constitutional amendment to balance 
the budget, but 47 percent of the American public think the budget can 
be balanced by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.
  I say to the people of the United States that they have been sorely 
misled, indeed, if they believe the Federal budget can be balanced by 
the year 2002 with the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse. No one in 
this body and no one over on the House of Representatives side really 
believes we should have one dollar or one penny of waste, fraud and 
abuse. And I can understand how the public has been abused on that 
because of the time and attention that has been paid to $1,400 toilet 
seats and $200 hammers and other things of that nature, which is 
ridiculous on its face.
  There was a half an hour program on the prominent show called 
Nightline a couple of weeks ago, a whole half-hour devoted to whether 
or not we should dispose of the $268 million we are spending annually 
to subsidize public radio and public television, and that is a very 
legitimate debate. There are two sides of discussion on that, and both 
of them can make a point. But when you talk about that, even if we 
would eliminate any and all assistance, taxpayer assistance to public 
radio and public television, that $238 million, although it is an awful 
lot of money, is such a small, infinitesimal amount of the deficit that 
if we eliminated that and all such programs it would not even put a 
minor, thimble-sized dent in the budget deficit.
  Another way of putting all of it is that far too much attention is 
being focused on shortcomings in the budget process and not enough 
attention is being given to the significant cuts that are going to have 
to be made to balance the budget in the year 2002 as would be required 
under a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.
  I guess another way of saying this is that I am not sure all of it 
has been put in proper perspective. I voted earlier today for the 
amendment offered by the Democratic leader called the right-to-know-
amendment. I voted for that amendment not because I was particularly 
excited, nor did I really feel we should go so far as to incorporate 
such language as the Daschle amendment, of which I was a cosponsor, 
into the Constitution of the United States of America.
  I would guess that probably, if we would have passed that and it had 
been included, it would be the first time in the history of the United 
States of America such language would have been incorporated in with a 
constitutional amendment. And so I caution with regard to what we 
should be putting into the Constitution.
  I was a cosponsor, and I voted for that amendment, trying to have a 
better understanding, trying to bring the two sides, the Democrats and 
the Republicans, together on this issue. And even had it passed, which 
I suspected that it would not have, we maybe could have taken that out 
and gotten back to a constitutional amendment at least somewhat in the 
form of the constitutional amendments that have been passed in the 
past. Certainly I would be one of those to say we should amend the 
Constitution with considerable restraint.
  Now, back to the matter of Social Security. The Senator has stood at 
this 
[[Page S2311]] desk before, as I stand here today, to say I think many 
good points have been made by those who do want to protect the Social 
Security trust fund. And I wish to do that also. I have said that even 
if the coming constitutional amendment would be passed without such 
protection, at least this Senator very likely would not ever agree to 
raid the Social Security trust funds. My only appeal is that possibly 
there is a way we could sit down and work together to come up with some 
type of arrangement offering proper guarantees to the logical 
protection of the Social Security trust fund which I think have been 
outlined very effectively and precisely by many of my colleagues who 
have spelled out this matter in this Chamber.
  Let me put it another way, if I might, Mr. President. I would be 
willing to sit down with anyone, any group, any combination of groups 
to see if we could factor in some type of workable compromise which 
would get us the 67 votes that are necessary, and I think we should try 
to get, to proceed to have a constitutional amendment to balance the 
budget and then refer it to the States.
  So I would simply like to ask, Mr. President, if there is any way 
that we could assure--and under those conditions I might vote with my 
colleagues who are offering the Social Security amendment, if I could 
have the assurance of some of those who are proposing the amendment 
that they then would turn around and be one of the 67 votes we need to 
pass the constitutional amendment.
  Putting together 67 votes in the Senate on this issue is going to be 
a very difficult task. From the counting that I have done as of now--it 
is not infallible because I think there is some shifting going on, but 
it would appear to me very likely, if we had the vote today, the final 
vote on sending a constitutional amendment to the States by the Senate 
would fail.
  Given that concern of mine, I would simply say to my colleagues on 
both sides of this issue, and both sides on the many other issues that 
are likely to be brought forth on this matter: Let us try to work 
together. I do not think anyone has the wisdom, the knowledge, the 
intellect to be able to solve all of these problems. As a body of 100 
people who are charged to represent their constituents and the people 
of the United States as a whole, I just hope we can get together. I 
think there are many of us who share the goal. All of us do not----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 5 minutes has expired.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I ask for 1 additional minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. EXON. I hope we can maybe come together on some kind of 
compromise, some kind of understanding that does not so weaken and 
change the constitutional amendment to balance the budget that it will 
not work.
  Last but not least, whatever we do, I think we must--we have the 
obligation to go far further than we have as of now, to explain how 
difficult this will be, and the sacrifices that probably every American 
is going to have to make to get it accomplished.
  I outlined in a speech 10 days ago some of the major concerns in this 
area, that I would reference as a part of my speech. That might be 
referred to.
  Mr. President, I call for cooperation to get a balanced budget 
amendment passed by the Senate. That is most important of all.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin is recognized.
  Mr. KOHL. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Kohl pertaining to the introduction of S. 274 are 
located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and 
Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       Unanimous-Consent Request

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now 
turn to the consideration of the original joint resolution to be 
offered by Senators Simon, Breaux, and others regarding Social 
Security, and that during the consideration of the Senate joint 
resolution, no amendments be in order and debate be limited to 2 hours 
to be equally divided in the usual form. I further ask that immediately 
following the conclusion or yielding back of the time, the Senate 
proceed to vote on the resolution without any intervening debate or 
motion.
  Finally, I ask unanimous consent that immediately following the 
disposition of the Senate joint resolution, the Senate resume 
consideration of House Joint Resolution 1.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I respectfully object to the leader's 
request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Nevada.

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