[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 29 (Tuesday, February 14, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2669-S2675]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE 11 ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, last Sunday I had occasion to be attending 
church at the First Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, OK, which is not 
unusual since I was married in that church 35 years ago. Dr. James 
Miller, who is the head minister there, preached a sermon on Matthew 
28, verses 16 and 17.
  For somebody who may not remember that last chapter of Matthew, it 
was after Christ had been crucified and had been resurrected. During 
that timeframe, there were some women who said that they had seen 
Christ somewhere around the hills above the Sea of Galilee, so they 
told the disciples to go up there and they could find the living 
Christ, who had surely arisen. So 11 disciples went up. Those 11 
disciples saw Christ with their own eyes. They heard him with their own 
ears, and still they doubted him.
  It occurred to me if such incontrovertible truth could have been 
doubted by the disciples back then, then maybe we have been worrying 
too much about the American people. Because certainly if they doubted 
truth like that, then the American people would see through the phony 
and transparent arguments against the balanced budget amendment.
  So I went home and I got the Congressional Record out. I do not think 
many Members of Congress of either House spend a lot of time reading 
the Congressional Record. I know I do not. But I did that morning. I 
looked up to find the 11 strongest arguments that were made in 
opposition to the balanced budget amendment.
  I decided I would have one argument for each of the disciples. That 
seemed to be a reasonable thing. Most of these were arguments that were 
articulated by the very gifted Senator from West Virginia, [Mr. Byrd].
  I would like to run over these arguments, the 11 arguments, that have 
been used over and over and over again in opposition to the passing of 
the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
  The first one, which I will read verbatim is:

       Proponents have refused to lay out a detailed plan to get 
     to a balanced budget. How can you tell if it will be good for 
     the country if you do not know the details?

  Well, I know we have already voted on that amendment, and we were 
able to successfully table the amendment. But what we can tell and what 
we do know is that the status quo is bad for the country. Continuing 
business as usual, doing nothing, just keeping on doing the same thing 
we have been doing for the past 40 years, is not going to work, and the 
public is not demanding a detailed plan.
  I think that is very significant. We hear so much about, ``Tell us 
exactly what you are going to do. Tell us where you are going to cut. 
Tell us, play by play, what is going to happen in the next 7 years.'' 
They are not asking about that. That is not what this amendment is all 
about.
  What we do not realize, many Members, is that this is really, truly a 
historic time in America. When we think about the other historic 
decisions that were made throughout the history of this country, they 
were never followed by detailed plans.
  We can remember so well when John Fitzgerald Kennedy made a 
commitment that within a decade we would put a man on the moon. Now, I 
think there may have been some around that time that said, ``Show us 
how you will do it. We do not want to make that commitment. We do not 
know what it will cost. We do not know how to do it. We need the 
details.''
  But at that time, the rockets were not built. The astronauts were not 
named. There were not any spacecrafts designed. No one could say 
exactly how to do it. Yet, following the same line of reasoning, we 
would say that we would have expected President Kennedy to have said: 
All right, on February 20, 1962, we are going to get an astronaut by 
the name of John Glenn to orbit the 
 [[Page S2670]] earth three times. Then, 3 years later, on December 15, 
1965, we will go get a great Oklahoman named Tom Stafford, along with 
Wally Schirra, and they are going to achieve the first rendezvous in 
space between Gemini 6 and Gemini 7. Then, 3 years later, Christmas of 
1968, we are going to have the first manned lunar orbit by Apollo 8 
spacecraft. Three astronauts are going to go up and they are going to 
read aloud from the Book of Genesis. And then, finally, on July 20, 
1969, we will have two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, that 
are going to land and walk on the moon.
  No one believes that that is a reasonable request, that he should 
have done that.
  Some Members in this Chamber are old enough, as I am, to remember 
when Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war in the Axis powers, and 
that threat that was out there--and there were many people in Congress 
at that time who did object to it, who did not want to go to war, who 
did not think it was necessary. They actually did ask for the plan at 
that time.
  How could he have given any details? Could he have said that on June 
6, 1944, we are going to send 156,000 troops into Normandy onto five 
beaches? Then, 6 months later, December 26, we will time this to the 
day after Christmas, we will have the Battle of the Bulge, and General 
Patton will send his third army in and do their thing. And then, 
finally, on August 6, 1945, if you declare war with me, we will drop an 
atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and I think we will use a B-29 to do that, 
and we will name it the Enola Gay.
  Now, all Senators know that that is not reasonable. Yet, that is the 
way we went into war, and there were people expecting more details than 
we were able to give them at that time. I suggest, Mr. President, that 
this is war that we are in the middle of now. We have been waiting for 
this time, this opportunity, for 40 years. It is here. We must seize 
this opportunity.
  The second objection that was made by the very distinguished Senator 
from West Virginia was that proponents want to treat people like 
children, hiding the hard truth from them.
  Well, now, I take exception to that, because I have four children. I 
never hid the hard truth from them. I remember once, when my number two 
child, whose name is Perry, was a very small child, and he looked a 
little bit like this guy here. We got him his first bicycle and we live 
in kind of a hilly neighborhood, and we taught him to balance. He was 
so excited. Finally, he was ready to go all the way around the block, 
and he came back to his home in triumph. He was sweating; he was hot. 
He came up to me and said, ``Dad, I wish the whole world was 
downhill.'' So I told him the hard truth is the whole world is not 
downhill. The world is uphill and downhill.
 And I never hid the truth from them. The hard truth is that continuing 
business as usual will lead to disaster, procrastinating and avoiding 
the problem, acting like it does not exist. It is time for our country 
to grow up into this stage of maturity where it understands the 
significance on what we are to embark. The hard truth is the world is 
not all downhill, you have to pedal uphill. The balanced budget 
amendment is not going to be easy--it will take sacrifice--but we have 
  to do it for our children.The third argument that was made was that 
proponents say they are tired of Washington telling people what to do, 
the Washington-knows-best mentality, but the balanced budget amendment 
is the ultimate Washington mandate. No, Senator, you have it backward. 
Those who oppose the balanced budget amendment, who have been running 
things in this town for the last 40 years, they are the ones with the 
Washington-knows-best mentality. They have continued business as usual 
for the past 40 years, in spite of the fact that 70 to 80 percent of 
the people in America want a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution.
  You might wonder, why do they want a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution? Why can they not just say, ``Let's elect people who are 
going to balance the budget?'' It is because for 40 years we, in this 
body, have demonstrated very clearly that we are incapable of balancing 
the budget.
  I cannot remember one person that I have seen campaigning in the 
years I have been in politics who said, ``Elect me and I want to go to 
Washington, I am going to spend more money and raise taxes and we are 
also going to raise the deficit and increase the national debt.'' They 
never campaign on that. And yet when they get here, that is what they 
do.
  That is what the last election was all about. Those who stood up in 
the last election and caused the revolution of November 8, as it has 
now become familiar with most of the people, have done so because they 
know that the time is here and those standing in the way, like the 
Senator that is making these statements, are saying that they know 
better than 70 or 80 percent of the people know.
  In a way, though, he is right, the balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution is a mandate, but it is a mandate on Congress that says, 
``Do what you are elected to do but whatever you do, you have to 
balance the budget by'' a certain date, which happens to be the year 
2002.
  What this would do is force Congress to do what it should have been 
willing to do without being forced to do. We had a Congressman in the 
State of Oklahoma that used to take exception to me when I talked about 
passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. He would say, 
``Why? That is what we are elected to do, we are supposed to do that.'' 
The point is, for 40 years, we have demonstrated that we are incapable 
of doing it and we have not done it.
  Argument No. 4 was that proponents of the balanced budget amendment 
are saying swallow the snake oil but do not read the label. In fact, 
there is no label.
  The problem, I say to that Senator, is we have been swallowing the 
snake oil now for 40 years and every year they have been buying votes 
by spending the taxpayers' money on program after program. But where 
was the label that ever warned that if you keep spending money like 
this our future generations are going to have to pay for it?
  The problem is the politicians never told us how their well-meaning 
spending programs would affect the future generations and put us on the 
brink of bankruptcy. The day is here and the public is demanding 
change.
  If anybody has to swallow the snake oil, I rather it be us and not 
our children and grandchildren.
  The fifth argument that was used is all these Governors who are 
boasting about cutting taxes in their States should know that the 
balanced budget amendment will require them to impose huge State tax 
increases.
  That is simply not true, and we hear this over and over again and 
yet, why do the majority of the Governors of the States throughout 
America want a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution? If what 
the Senator says is true, they would not, but they know that they are 
in a position to cut tax rates, to encourage economic growth and to 
actually do something about increasing revenue through economic 
activity.
  This is exactly what happened in the 1980's. I stood on the floor 
today and I watched four Senators refute the fact that in the 1980's we 
increased revenues by cutting taxes. In fact, they stood up and they 
said, ``Look what happened in the 1980's. Reagan came along and he cut 
taxes and we had huge deficits as a result of it.''
  Let us look at what happened in the 1980's. In the 1980's, yes, we 
did cut the tax rate. We had the most devastating cuts that we have had 
in contemporary history. The total revenues after those cuts--keep in 
mind the marginal rate, the top rate, went from 70 percent down to 28 
percent, and what happened as a result of that? We dramatically 
increased revenues because people were free to participate in the 
profits that they could make that they knew the Government was going to 
let them keep. So we lowered the rate and we increased economic 
activity and we increased revenues. This all happened in the 1980's.
  In 1980, the total revenues generated for the Federal Government 
amounted to $517 billion. In 1990, after all of these cuts, the total 
revenues had grown to $1.31 trillion, almost double. And look at the 
income tax. That is where all the cuts took place, capital gains tax 
 [[Page S2671]] and income tax. The total gross revenues that were 
derived from the income tax of 1980 amounted to $244 billion. In 1990, 
it was $466 billion. It almost doubled, and that is after the greatest 
tax cuts in the marginal rates.
  And yet people in this body will not understand that. They do not 
understand that America was founded on a principle that if you go out 
and work harder, you are able to keep that which you have earned and 
pass it on to future generations. It is no wonder when you look at some 
of the leaders of this country; look at Laura Tyson. Laura Tyson, in 
case some are not familiar, was chief economic adviser to the President 
of the United States. Laura Tyson was quoted in 1992 in the Wall Street 
Journal as saying, and I am going to read this quote because I do not 
want to get it wrong, and I may read it twice because it is hard for 
people to understand that this actually was a person in this kind of a 
position who would make this statement. Listen to what she said:

       In direct contradiction to 12 years of Republican ideology, 
     there is no relationship between the level of taxes the 
     Nation pays and its economic performance.

  No relationship between the level of taxation--in other words, you 
could raise the level of taxation to 100 percent so that a person would 
not be able to keep anything and that person would end up having to 
take nothing home and would still be motivated to risk his capital to 
go out and participate in this great economic system.
  It is just not true. But we have top leaders in this country that are 
saying it is true. It is just incredible to believe that this could 
happen. We had two Senators from North Dakota today that said, ``Look 
what happened in this country during the 1980's: We cut taxes and the 
deficits went up.'' Do you know why the deficits went up, Mr. 
President? They went up because people in this body and the body down 
the hall kept increasing Federal programs, kept spending more money, 
and as more and more money came in, as the revenues doubled between 
1980 and 1990, they still insisted on raising the number of programs 
and Government expenditures to the point where the deficits went on up 
and up and up and up.
  The balanced budget amendment will require the rate of increase in 
Federal spending to be slowed, we know that, but it does not mean that 
any programs actually have to be cut.
  And all the scare tactics--they are calling veterans and saying your 
benefits are going to be cut, your COLA's are going to be cut. They are 
calling Social Security recipients and telling older Americans--what an 
inhuman thing to do to them--telling them their Social Security is 
going to be impaired, their Medicare is going to be impaired and that 
just is not true. Those who are saying it know it is not true.
  There was a study made a couple years ago and updated the other day, 
that said if you take the Government programs we have in place today 
and increase these Government programs by 2 percent a year--in other 
words, put growth caps on--have every Government program increase by 2 
percent a year, we would be able to balance the budget by the year 
2001, and that is without cutting one program.
  We know in reality it would not happen that way because there are 
some programs that are good programs and maybe they should increase, 
but the average would have to stay down within that growth cap.
 And that is realistic. That is something that can happen. And the 
people of America understand this. The States understand this. Three-
quarters of the States right now are just waiting, just waiting to be 
  in a position to ratify this amendment.Objection No. 6 was that the 
balanced budget amendment is a pig in a giant poke. I am not sure what 
he is talking about. Maybe you know what it means, Mr. President, but I 
am not sure I know. But if it means that a pig in the poke is something 
bad that is made to look like something good, and if that is true, then 
the chronic deficits as far as the eye can see are the real pig in the 
poke.
  I had an experience the other day. I got a call from a young lady who 
is a brilliant intellectual. She instructs at the University of 
Arkansas, coincidentally, the home State of our President, and yet she 
is a conservative intellectual scholar. Her name is Dr. Molly Rapert.
  Anyway, I got a call and she said, ``You know, Senator, I know 
something about pigs.''
  Well, now, for those of you not familiar with Arkansas, it is the 
home of the Arkansas Razorbacks, and so they kind of use pigs and hogs 
and razorbacks interchangeably. And she said, ``I know something about 
pigs. And if there are pigs in a poke, then those pigs are in 
Washington and they are the ones that are at the trough eating all that 
is out there, raising the deficit, increasing spending. Those are the 
true pigs in the poke.'' And that comes from someone in academics, a 
very bright young lady.
  It is kind of interesting because it was not long ago I had a 
conversation with the young lady and she made a reference that an awful 
lot of people her age are not having families because they know if they 
have families, those families are going to be born into an environment 
where children are going to have to pay, according to the CBO, 82 
percent of their income in taxes. And I can understand that. Why give 
birth to someone who is going to be enslaved working for the 
Government?
  The other day at the National Prayer Breakfast, I was entertaining 
international visitors that came in, and there was one from one of the 
Baltic States who said, ``How much money can you keep of the money that 
you earn?'' And I said, ``Well, you keep about 60 percent of it.'' And 
that was just kind of somebody I grabbed out of the air. He said, 
``That's wonderful.'' He said, ``Did you know in my country we can only 
keep about 20 percent of it?''
  Mr. President, if we do not do something to change the course we are 
on, the young people like Dr. Molly Rapert are going to give birth to 
children who will have to pay 82 percent of their income in taxes, more 
than in that Baltic country that was represented here at the National 
Prayer Breakfast. But I can say to the Molly Raperts and others around, 
do not worry about it. It is time to have families because we are going 
to pass this balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and we are 
going to downsize Government. The time is here to do it.
  The next statement that was made by one of the Senators on this floor 
that I pulled out of the Record was, ``The balanced budget amendment 
will give the politicians license to cut and slash and burn needed 
programs.''
  If you change one word in that sentence and substitute the word 
courage for the word license, it would read this way and I would agree 
with it: ``The balanced budget amendment will give the politicians 
courage to cut and slash and burn programs that we are currently paying 
for.''

  You stop to think about the amount of money that is thrown around in 
this Government that we could save. Right now we are talking about 
bailing out Mexico. We have a President of the United States who 
unilaterally said that we are going to spend as much as $40 billion 
bailing out Mexico. And then we find out that most of the money is not 
going to go to Mexicans when they need it; it is going to go to 
creditors.
  It happens that the President of Mexico prior to this President, 
Carlos Salinas, did a very fine job; he did a lot to stabilize the 
economy, so all of a sudden we had European investors, multinational 
banks--we had investors from all over the world that heretofore would 
not invest, would not buy Mexican debt and now they are doing it. And 
they are getting paid high interest rates for it. All of a sudden 
something happened to the economy down there. They looked at dear old 
America, and we have a President--I just heard something today. That 
figure dropped down to $20 billion. It may be back up to $40 billion of 
our taxpayers' money could be impaired to bail out Mexico.
  How many people in America know that it was not long ago, the 21st of 
October, that the President of the United States unilaterally said to 
North Korea, we are going to offer up to $4 billion of our American 
dollars to help you with a light water reactor because you promise you 
are going to get out of the nuclear business and we want to help you do 
it--$4 billion. In the meantime, until you get it built, we are going 
to give you $25 million worth of crude oil between now and the time 
that it is built. This is taxpayers' 
 [[Page S2672]] money we are talking about. How recklessly it is 
handled.
  Back in the real world, I had a number of businesses. I was in real 
estate development, insurance, and I was also in aviation, and here a 
couple years ago I had the honor of becoming the first Member of 
Congress--I was serving in the other body at that time --to fly an 
airplane around the world--at his own expense. And so I did, and we 
went across, to follow the tracks of a very famous aviator from 
Oklahoma. His name was Wiley Post. Some may remember, Mr. President, he 
was the one with the patch over one eye and you wonder how could he be 
such a good pilot with one eye.
  Anyway, he flew the Winnie Mae around the world, and we were 
celebrating in Oklahoma, since he was one of our two famous Oklahomans 
that we are very proud of. I was going to retrace his tracks, and I 
did. We went across Siberia, at a very unique time in history, that is, 
when it was still the Soviet Union but the wall was down so we were 
able to go places that no one from the United States had been in 60 
years since Wiley Post was there 60 years ago.
  One place right here was Sovetski, Sovetski in Northwestern Siberia. 
Sovetski is so remote that in northwestern Siberia they still harness 
reindeer as their primary mode of transportation. I landed there. I saw 
one man who had not seen an American in 60 years since he saw Wiley 
Post there 60 years ago. And I spent a night there. They live in the 
communes we hear about. It was a beautiful, big, log structure. They 
all not only slept in the same big room; they ate in the same kitchen 
at the same table out of the same bowl. We think, well, how barbaric 
that is by our standards. These are the happiest people I ever saw. It 
is so remote in Sovetski that they never got into anti-American 
propaganda. They did not know we were ever bad guys.
  And so we rejoiced together, made new friendships, and I spent the 
night in that same room, ate from the same bowl with them. I never saw 
a happier bunch of people in my life up in Sovetski in northwestern 
Siberia. That was in July and the snow was on the ground then.
  We got back, and it was not more than a month later we had a bill 
that was going to take care of the housing needs in Russia, in that 
former Soviet Union. I looked at it, and I saw that a lot of that money 
was going to a little village called Sovetski in northwestern Siberia 
to help them with their housing needs.
  Now, first of all, how presumptuous of us to say that those people in 
Sovetski would want to change and adopt our way of life. They are 
perfectly happy doing what they have done for a thousand years there, 
and they were doing quite well, I thought. And yet we are going to 
spend thousands and thousands of American taxpayer dollars to help 
those poor people in Sovetski that were so happy.
  Wiley Post was the one who was flying the airplane when the other 
famous Oklahoman, Will Rogers, was killed. It crashed at Point Barrow, 
AK.
  I think that Will Rogers is one of the great philosophers of history 
and I will read a quote from Will Rogers. Keep in mind, this was in 
1934. He said: ``Lord, the money we do spend on Government. And it's 
not one bit better than the Government we got for one-third the money 
20 years ago.''
  Do you know what the total budget was that year, in 1934? Mr. 
President, $6.5 billion is what it cost. And that was three times more 
than it was 20 years before that. So we keep growing and growing and 
spending and spending and we do not have to do that.
  There is no group that comes into our office that tells us to spend 
less money. A study was made the first year I was in the other body, 
which was 1987. And they analyzed and they talked to everyone when they 
came in the door of one particular Representative's office, and they 
did that for the entire year. They found out that 95 percent of the 
people who walk across the threshold of a congressional office are 
walking across to talk to the Congressman or the Senator to convince 
him or her to spend more money on a program. There is nobody out there 
coming in saying we want you to spend less money; it is to spend more 
money. So the people who stay here in Congress year after year and 
decade after decade, they get to thinking those are real people who are 
coming in. They do not realize the people out in America, real America, 
do not want that type of thing.
  It is not the lobbyists and the individuals who come in who want 
money for a particular cause that are destroying us. It is the 
Congressmen in the House, and Senators in the Senate, who are voting 
for these massive increases.
  The balanced budget amendment will work. In the State of Oklahoma it 
worked. We put it in in 1941. I went back and read some of the debate 
on the floor of the State senate in Oklahoma when we were installed, 
and some of the same arguments we are using here today they were using 
in 1941 in the State legislature. While liberals in the State 
legislature fight it every time, every year they try to figure out ways 
to get around the balanced budget amendment in Oklahoma, they cannot do 
it.
  Several of my liberal friends came up to me over in the other body 
when we were considering this a couple years ago. They said, ``You 
know, Inhofe, I have to vote against the balanced budget amendment but 
I sure hope you get it passed.''
  I said, ``Why is that?''
  They said, ``That gives us an excuse so when people come in and they 
want me to vote for a program that I know I should not vote for, I can 
say, ``If it had not been for those guys passing the balanced budget 
amendment I would do it.'''
  I know it is difficult to cut down the size of Government. One of my 
heroes in politics--and I think many Republicans share my notion about 
this man--was Ronald Reagan. I remember a speech that Ronald Reagan 
gave way back in 1964. I have often said that speech should be required 
reading for young people who are coming into the marketplace and into 
the society. One of the things he said in that speech I remember so 
well was, ``Immortality--there is nothing closer to immortality on the 
face of this Earth than a Government program once installed.''
  That is true, because Government programs come along, at least 
theoretically, to take care of problems that exist in the country. If 
we have an environmental problem they form a Government agency and that 
Government agency comes in and says we are going to go ahead and take 
care of this problem. Then, when the problem goes away, the Government 
agency stays.
  I had an experience many years ago, back in 1978. I was elected to be 
mayor of the city of Tulsa, a city of about a half-million people. I 
decided to conduct an experiment. Those cities that were large cities--
they used the benchmark of 250,000 people--large cities at that time 
had a tendency to double in size every 5 years. I thought, why is this? 
What is the very nature of the bureaucracy? Bureaucracies want to grow.
  I was on a radio talk show tonight and they talked about zero-based 
budgeting. Sure, great idea. The problem is, your bureaucrats will 
merely take a zero base, justify the budget they spent last year, and 
then come up and say why they need to spend more this year. It is a 
status symbol for bureaucrats to grow. They do not want to get small; 
they want to grow.
  Anyway, I was the mayor of the city of Tulsa and I remember I was 
going to try to cut down the size of government. I knew there was a lot 
of waste so I found people who were inefficient or were not performing 
a function and I would fire them. A couple of weeks would go by and I 
would see the same people in the elevator. I would say ``I thought I 
fired you,'' and they would say, ``Well, you did, but I have been 
reinstated.''
  Back then I found you cannot fire people for inefficiency in 
government. I developed a program and started defunding agencies and 
got them all. It worked beautifully.
  No. 1 was a public television station. I never will forget, when I 
was first elected a guy came up to me and said, ``Congratulations, 
Mayor Inhofe, on your overwhelming victory. We are looking forward to 
having you as mayor of the city of Tulsa. When would you like to have 
Inhofe Hour? Every month? Or every week? Or every day?''
  I said, ``What is Inhofe Hour?''
  He said, ``That is when we take your programs and we put it on 
television, 
 [[Page S2673]] on cable. We have designated a time for that purpose, 
and the people out there can know what your program is, what you are 
trying to do as mayor of Tulsa.''
  I said, ``You are using taxpayers' money to propagandize the 
taxpayers.''
  They said ``I guess it's that way.''
  I said, ``I do not want the Inhofe Hour every month and I do not want 
the Inhofe Hour every week or every day. As a matter of fact, I am 
going to defund you.''
  And I will never forget, across that screen for several weeks was, 
``Call the mayor's office. They are trying to shut the doors of 
government.''
  But you see, we did it anyway and it worked. We went through 5 years 
of holding government stable in terms of the size and the cost of 
government and expanding services at the same time. If you can do it in 
Tulsa, OK, and you can have a balanced budget amendment in the State of 
Oklahoma, you can certainly do it in our Federal Government.
  The eighth statement that was made was, ``Senators are sent here to 
make intelligent and well-informed decisions on the people's behalf. 
How can they do that without the details?'' They are bringing up that 
same argument again and again.
  They do it by looking at the record of the last 40 years. Nobody gave 
us the details when 40 years ago we started spending money that future 
generations are going to have to pay back. No one give us any details 
when we ran up a debt of $4.8 trillion. All they told us was the great 
things they were doing by opening the Federal Treasury, time and time 
again. Now we find a crisis which threatens the future, especially that 
of our children.
  The balanced budget amendment is not a fly-by-night thing. It is not 
something that just was thought of recently. It is something that has 
been with us for a long time. I think someone may have already said 
this on the floor during this debate. Keep in mind, we are in the 12th 
day of debating the balanced budget amendment, the same one that passed 
the other body over there in 2 days.
  Someone, I think, already mentioned the fact that a great Democrat, 
Thomas Jefferson, many years ago was not here, as many thought he was, 
during the construction of the Constitution. I believe he was in France 
at the time. When he got back over here he made a statement and said 
that if I could have one thing I would improve in this great document, 
the Constitution of America, it would be a mechanism that would 
prohibit Government from borrowing money. That was Thomas Jefferson.
  It has been around for a long time. The first time I was exposed to 
the balanced budget amendment was many years ago when there was a very 
conservative and well-known U.S. Senator from the great State of 
Nebraska by the name of Senator Carl Curtis. Carl Curtis had an idea. 
Carl Curtis said, ``What we need to do is get the point across to the 
people in Congress, in both Houses of Congress, that Americans want to 
have a balanced budget amendment.'' He said, ``I have devised a way to 
do it and, State senator out in Oklahoma, I want you to help me.'' He 
came out in Oklahoma and this is what we did. We put together a program 
where we would preratify--since it takes three-quarters of the States 
to ratify the Constitution--we would preratify it by passing a 
resolution saying we are ratifying it the second it passes the U.S. 
Congress.
  We started the first one in Oklahoma. I introduced the resolution. It 
says: We hereby ratify the balanced budget amendment that will be 
passed in the U.S. Congress. In fact, this is the first one that was 
there. There was a guy, Anthony Kerrigan, who was a syndicated 
columnist at that time. He wrote a column--this is 22 years ago. He 
called it ``A Voice in the Wilderness.''

       Way out in Oklahoma the State senators have found a way to 
     balance the Federal budget.

  By the way, that was 1972. The total debt in 1972 was $240 billion. I 
remember when the National Taxpayers Union, or one group like that, 
they had an ad on television. They were trying to impress upon the 
people of America how significant $240 billion was. That was our debt 
at that time. Today it is $4.8 trillion. It was $240 billion. So they 
took $100 bills and started stacking them up until they were the height 
of the Waldorf Astoria. That was a high building in those days. That 
was to impress upon people how significant it was that our debt had 
reached the level of $240 billion. The deficit that year, by the way, 
was $15 billion.
  I hope that if nothing else is accomplished from the debate that is 
taking place in both bodies on the balanced budget amendment, that the 
people of America are now so much better informed as to what is really 
going on when we talk about the deficit and the debt. We are talking 
about two different things. They are hardly related to each other 
because the deficit increases the debt.
  Let me get to the ninth argument. I want to expand on that in just a 
minute. This was a rather long argument that was made. Argument No. 9:

       The proponents talk of the balanced budget amendment, talk 
     about the public opinion. Years ago Talleyrand said, ``There 
     is more wisdom in public opinion than is to be found in 
     Napoleon, Voltaire, or all the ministers of state, present or 
     to come.''

  But this is true only to the extent that public opinion is informed 
opinion. In the case of the balanced budget amendment public opinion is 
not informed. Even Senators do not know the details.
  I see this as an insult to the people of America because people are 
informed. But you know, he was right when he said that there is more 
wisdom in public opinion than there is to be found in all of the great 
leaders. But this is not about details. This is about responsibility. I 
would submit that Talleyrand was right. There is more wisdom in public 
opinion than is to be found in the President, the Vice President, the 
entire Cabinet, and all of the rest of the ministers of the Clinton 
administration along with the Democratic Party who are all out lobbying 
against the passage of the balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution.
  The fact is the public is informed. People know that we cannot get 
serious and have a discussion about details unless we first make the 
commitment that we are going to pass a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution, and that we cannot spend more money than is coming in.
  I am glad that the Senator brought up Talleyrand because he was a 
brilliant guy. If you remember, Talleyrand was the French foreign 
minister during the Napoleonic stage. One of the quotes was, ``It seems 
to me, sir, to be the beginning of the end.''
  You know, I think he was right. I think this is the beginning of the 
end of big spenders in Congress in America.
  He said, ``Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.''
  I have seen a lot of that around here, too. I have seen a lot of 
Senators and Representatives making statements about all the bad things 
that were going to happen and all the trauma that would exist if we 
passed the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Yet they know 
better. They know this has to be done.
  Talleyrand also said, ``Throw mud, throw mud. Some of it may stick.'' 
We have seen a lot of that in the last 12 days. Throw mud and hope some 
of it will stick.
  But lastly, Talleyrand said--I kind of like this one; this is neat. 
He said, ``The wine is drawn. The wine is drawn. It must be drunk.''
  I think what he was saying there is there comes a time when action 
has to take place. That time has come. The wine is drawn, it must be 
drunk. There are some partisan Republicans who have come up to me, and 
I probably should not divulge this. They said, ``If you were half as 
smart, you would let the Democrats defeat the balanced budget amendment 
to the Constitution. Then in 1996, we would wipe out everybody in 
office who voted against you.'' I guess looking at it from a purely 
partisan perspective, maybe that is the right way to do it. I do not 
believe that. I believe the Democrats and Republicans alike are going 
to respond to the people who are out there. But it is time. We cannot 
go any longer. We are going to have to do something.
  There was a very famous person 150 years ago that came over to the 
United States of America. His name was Alexis de Tocqueville. A lot of 
people do not know this. But de Tocqueville came over here to study our 
system. When he got here he was so impressed with the 
 [[Page S2674]] wealth of this Nation, with the fact that people could 
work and take home the products of their own labors, and that that had 
produced an incredible wealth that had not been dreamed of any time in 
the history of the world. It was all happening right here in this new 
world. But he was a very intelligent man. And de Tocqueville wrote a 
book about the wealth of this country. I am paraphrasing. He said once 
the people of this country find they can vote themselves money out of 
the public trust, the system will fail.
  Are we almost there now? Yes, we are. They say that when that moment 
comes, it is when you have the majority of people on the receiving end 
of government and the system will fail because productivity will be 
gone.
  The 10th argument that has been used by the well-meaning Senators, 
those who are very articulate, is one that I hope you will listen to 
very carefully, Mr. President. They said:

       The 1990 and the 1993 budget deals worked. The way to deal 
     with the deficit is to continue the successful deficit 
     reduction efforts of the last 5 years.

  This is a Senator saying this on this floor.

       Since 1990, we have achieved over $900 billion in deficit 
     reduction. We did not do it with a balanced budget amendment. 
     But we did it with two major budget agreements, detailed 
     blueprints which raised revenues, cut expenditures, and made 
     hard choices. These budgets were on the table. All the 
     details were fully debated.

  Remember they said the 1990 and the 1993 budget deals worked, the 
successful deficit reduction efforts of the last 5 years.
  This is the big problem we have in America. A lot of people believe 
that stuff. We have a President of the United States who stood up in 
the State of the Union Message and talked about all of this deficit 
reduction. Yet, while he is in there, every day the debt goes higher 
and higher and higher. Please do not think I am disrespectful when I 
talk about our President.
  Teddy Roosevelt said:

       Patriotism means stand by your country. It does not mean 
     stand by the President of the United States or any other 
     elected official, save exactly the degree that he stands by 
     his country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the same 
     degree that he by inefficiency or otherwise fails to stand by 
     his country.

  So we have a President who stands up and he passes these things. The 
first one we cannot hang on him. That was 1990. George Bush was 
President of the United States at that time. Several of us watched as 
he tried to accommodate the Democrats out at Andrews Air Force Base, 
when he had the Budget Committees from the House and the Senate out 
there saying, if you do not do this, we are not going to go along with 
any of your programs. And, finally, President Bush decided that he 
would agree to a tax increase, right after he had said in the campaign 
``Read my lips.'' Look what happened. That was the cause of his demise. 
Everybody knows that. He knows it himself. He knows he should not have 
done that. But it was a judgment call made in good faith, trying to get 
along, trying to reach a bipartisan agreement on a budget. And he 
agreed to a tax increase when he did not need to do a tax increase.
  I do not like all of this talk about what they talk about when they 
say that we cut the deficit. There is an article by the way, Mr. 
President. You ought to read it. I bet you have not read it yet. I 
believe it was in the December 1993 Reader's Digest, and the name of 
the article was ``Budget Baloney.'' Then in this article he describes, 
in a better way than I have ever seen it described before, just how we 
are able to tell it to the people at home that we are doing something 
and not let them really know what we are doing. He says, let us say a 
guy who has $5,000 wants a $10,000 car. He says, ``What I really want 
is a $15,000 car. So I will settle on a $10,000 car. I've just cut the 
deficit by $5,000.'' That is the losing game that we have been playing 
around here. The argument that we have had success in these budget 
deals is laughable. It has been a dismal failure. Yet, this is the 
strongest argument that they keep coming up with over and over again.
  The budget deals were the largest tax increases in this Nation's 
history. The one in 1993 passed by one vote in the Senate and one vote 
in the House. It was against overwhelming public opposition. It helped 
lead to the Republican revolution of November 8, 1994. In fact, it was 
characterized as the largest tax-and-spend increase in the history of 
America or in public finance in America or any place in the world.
  Let me repeat that: The largest tax and spend increase in the history 
of public finance in America or anyplace in the world. Those are not 
the words of conservative Republican Senator Jim Inhofe; those are the 
words of the Democrat Senator who was chairman of the Senate Finance 
Committee. Yet, this is used as an example of how we ought to behave in 
the future--to continue to pass these tax increases and spending 
increases and meanwhile the deficits go up and up and up.
  Let me give you some specific figures. The 1993 Clinton budget deal, 
between the years 1994 and 1998, those 5 years, would increase the debt 
by $1.4 trillion. How many people in America know that--with all this 
talk about deficit reduction--if we do his budget deal from 1994 and 
carry it through to his projections through 1998, it would increase the 
debt by $1.4 trillion. If we go on up to the year 2000, it increases 
the debt by $2.1 trillion. In 1990, the same thing was true at that 
time. We had a budget deal that was made to go, over a period of 10 
years, from 1990 to the year 2000, to $3.5 trillion.
  Mr. President, this is the last argument that has been used by 
Senators who are opposed to a balanced budget and specifically to the 
balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The argument is that the 
balanced budget amendment is nothing more than a slogan, an empty 
promise, and that most Senators who support it will not even be here in 
the year 2002 when it will take effect. Let me respond by saying that 
if the Senators vote against it, they are not going to be here at the 
end of their term.
  I would like to, for a moment, give you a profile of those 
individuals who are opposed to the balanced budget amendment. If you 
look over here at the chart, we defeated the Right-To-Know Act. These 
are the supporters, the cosponsors. There were 41 cosponsors to the 
Right-To-Know Act. Of those 41 cosponsors, all 41 of them voted for the 
$16 billion stimulus plan, which was the largest single spending 
increase under one vote, and they also are rated by the National 
Taxpayers Union a ``D'' or an ``F.'' A lot of people do not realize 
that there are many rating organizations in Washington.
  I never remember anyone going out and running for office saying ``I 
want to increase your taxes and increase spending.'' But when they get 
up here, that is exactly what they do. How is a voter to know how they 
are performing? Look at how they are rated. The National Taxpayers 
Union takes spending bills and says how we are rated in conjunction 
with the spending bills. If you look at those who wanted to kill the 
balanced budget amendment by having the right-to-know amendment on it, 
those individuals, all of them, voted for this $16 billion stimulus 
program.
  Let me just tell you what that stimulus program had in it. That 
program was a $16.3 billion increase in spending; $500 million for 
shortfalls in the District of Columbia budget; for Federal agency staff 
increases; $1 billion for summer jobs; $1.1 billion for programs for 
housing programs; for AIDS treatment; $1.2 billion for Amtrak 
subsidies; $2.5 billion for pork-barrel community programs such as 
swimming pools, parking lots, ice rink, warming huts, alpine ski lifts, 
and other pork-barrel projects. That was $3 billion for various rich 
projects located strategically in various districts of those Members of 
Congress who went along with all of this.
  Those are the individuals who voted for and who were cosponsors of 
the Right-To-Know Act. I do not say this in a disparaging way about 
these people, but you have to know who is opposed to the balanced 
budget amendment. The other chart we have, I think, addresses what this 
Senator--it happened to be the Senator from West Virginia that said 
most Members of Congress were not going to be around in 2002. This is 
why I say if they do not vote for this, they are not going to be around 
anyway. It does not matter. If you look very carefully, we not only had 
the spending bill increase, but the 1993 tax increase was the one that 
included a $267 billion tax increase and 
 [[Page S2675]] still would increase the debt by $1.4 trillion.
  There are eight Senators who are not here today who were here before. 
All eight of these Senators voted ``yes'' on the spending bill 
increase. All eight of the Senators voted ``yes'' on the Clinton tax 
increases--or seven out of eight of them. All eight of them have a 
``D'' or an ``F'' rating by the National Taxpayers Union. In the House 
of Representatives, the same thing is true there.
  So the conclusions I come to after having said all of this is that 
this is a war. This is the chance that we have to change all of this. 
And those of us who have been working for a balanced budget, by virtue 
of adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, are not just 
considering what is happening to us today but to future generations.
  Every dollar we spend now we are borrowing from future generations. 
That is why I have this picture. I will introduce you to these two 
people. This little girl is 21 months old. Her name is Maggie Inhofe. 
This little boy is 22 months old. His name is Glade Inhofe. They 
happen, by coincidence, to be my grandchildren. If we do not pass this, 
the CBO has said that during their lifetime--and there are 10 million 
more their age in America right now--they will have to spend 82 percent 
of their lifetime income on Government.
  This is our chance to take them out of their bondage and their 
chains. I really believe now that Talleyrand was right. He said, ``The 
wine is drawn, it must be drunk.'' The time is here to pass a balanced 
budget to the Constitution and to turn our future generations free.
  Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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