[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 40 (Friday, March 3, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3453-S3454]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could move on to another subject, I 
listened with a great deal of interest this morning to the 
distinguished minority leader, Senator Daschle, of South Dakota, and I 
think maybe his remarks will help to begin to get things back on the 
right track. The past few days have been very difficult here in the 
Senate. Some things, perhaps harsh things, have been said here on the 
floor of the Senate and in the public arena, and I think we have to 
stop and take stock of how much damage was done by the debate and all 
that went on during the discussion on the balanced budget amendment to 
the Constitution.
  I agree that we need a bipartisan effort to achieve a balanced 
budget, and in fact if we had the will, we could achieve a balanced 
budget without a constitutional amendment. But I have been in this city 
for 26 years, as a staff member, as a House Member, and as a Senator, 
and it has not been happening. I do not believe it will happen without 
a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. I think we need 
the additional leverage.
  However, we took the vote. We were one vote shy. Any one of 34 
Senators could have passed that constitutional amendment to balance the 
budget and send it to the American people for their legislatures to 
vote on that amendment. It did not happen. But we should go forward. We 
should set a process in motion that would lead to deficit reduction 
this year and next year. We cannot have a situation where for every 
year as far as the eye can see President Clinton's budget would call 
for $200 billion deficits.
  So we need to make the tough decisions for the process to get there, 
and then we need to have the budget itself. So we will see what happens 
when we get to the tough votes on amendments and on the balanced budget 
resolution later on this year. We will have disagreements on both sides 
of the aisle. Every one of us will find that there is something we feel 
very strongly about, and we will fight for it. That is the way it 
works. But I have also watched over the years Members of Congress in 
both bodies stand up and say, why, we want a balanced budget but not 
here, not there, not in my State--in your State, somewhere else, some 
other day, some other time.
  When we had the Gramm-Rudman process, when we got up to the lick log, 
so to speak, we moved the dates or we exempted this group and that 
group. When it started off, it was 3 or 4, and it was 21 the next thing 
you know. So we will see if we can have a bipartisan effort to achieve 
a balanced budget. And once again, I heard the minority leader say we 
should exempt Social Security.
  Republicans will have a budget resolution, a 5-year plan, that will 
move us toward a balanced budget by the year 2002 without touching 
Social Security. The leader said that. I have said it. Republicans have 
said it. Democrats have said it.
  That is where we started getting in trouble this past week. We 
started showing evidence we did not trust each other. Our word is not 
good enough anymore. When the leader stands here and says we are not 
going to touch Social Security benefits or raise taxes, that is not 
good enough anymore. We had people making speeches about, oh, we have 
to do this to protect Social Security. Where were they last year when 
we voted on the same, identical balanced budget amendment? Why were 
they not worried then? Why is it now, all of a sudden, after all these 
years with Social Security being in the unified budget, we had to take 
it off at that particular moment? Where were they last year when we had 
relevant votes--actually, it was in 1993--when we had relevant votes on 
Social Security?
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point 
the votes that I refer to, a vote to table the McCain-Brown amendment. 
And I think there are six or seven of those.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       The relevant votes are:
       A vote to table the McCain/Brown amendment to the Omnibus 
     Budget and Reconciliation Act of 1993 (OBRA 93), which would 
     have required that revenues from the increased tax on Social 
     Security benefits be credited to the OASDI trust funds (Vote 
     No. 184, June 25, 1993).

  Mr. LOTT. I really do believe that was just a cover to use as a 
reason not to vote for the balanced budget amendment. But again, if we 
can work together in a bipartisan way to get a glidepath toward a 
balanced budget, certainly we should try to do that.


                         Progress in the Senate

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I also want to take this occasion to say 
that I do not think the Senate has looked very good this year. I do not 
think the length of the debate necessarily improves the quality of the 
legislation. I think you need to have reasonable debate, adequate 
debate, understand what is in legislation, but I think debate just for 
debate's sake is not good legislating.
  When I look at what we have done this year, we have been in session 
now for the most part for 2 months, and 
[[Page S3454]] what do we have to show for it for the American people? 
We got off, I thought, to a pretty fast start, although it took longer 
than it should have. On the congressional coverage, we did say, oh, we 
are going to make the laws apply to us, and the vote was 98 to 1--98 to 
1. We got that one passed, and it went to the President.
  That is the only bill--I believe this is correct--the only major 
bill, and maybe the only bill, that we have sent to the President for 
his signature this year, in 2 months.
  Now, we went then to unfunded mandates, a process to try to stop the 
cavalcade of unfunded Federal mandates we are putting on States--
overwhelming support for it, but here in the Senate we spent 58 hours 
and 34 minutes discussing this legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises the Senator from Mississippi 
he has exhausted his 7 minutes.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I may proceed for 2 
more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. For 58 hours and 34 minutes we talked about unfunded 
mandates. You would have thought this was really a controversial issue. 
Now, we needed time to look at the bill and, yes, to look at the report 
to make sure we fully understood it, but 58 hours and 34 minutes? And 
then we got to a vote on final passage and it passed 86 to 10--86 to 
10. That is good. You would think, great, now we are on the move.
  The bill has not gone to the President yet. It is still languishing 
in conference.
  And then, of course, there was the balanced budget amendment --116 
hours of debate. We covered a lot of territory in that debate. It 
ranged far and wide, quite often far from the subject at hand--116 
hours. And then we voted, and the vote was, in the final analysis, 
really 66 to 34, although the majority leader changed his vote in order 
to offer the motion to reconsider--65 to 35.
  I do not think the American people want the Senate to just react or 
act on what the House has done. But I think they have a right to expect 
that the Senate would get the message of the election in 1994 as well 
as the House. I think the American people want us to act in an 
affirmative way. And sometimes they want us to act to stop and reverse 
some of the policies of the past 20 to 40 years that have gotten us 
into the difficulty we are in with our Federal debt. We do not seem to 
be doing a very good job of moving forward that agenda, or any agenda. 
And when I say it that way I am assuming some of the blame on this side 
of the aisle, too.
  So I guess my conclusion here today, as we run out of time, is yes, I 
hope we can run in a bipartisan way. There have been ruptures. I had 
looked forward to working with the new leadership on the other side of 
the aisle. I have known Senator Daschle, Senator Dorgan, Senator Breaux 
and Senator Kerrey for years and have a lot of respect for them. I 
thought we could cut out some of the acrimony and some of the 
partisanship, that we could talk and communicate and understand each 
other and have a schedule that the Members could rely on that would 
make sense. I hope we can still do that. But we lost a little bit of 
that opportunity in the past few days in my opinion.
  I think the Senate needs to take stock of itself. Maybe this is the 
way it has always been done. I do not believe that. I have gone back 
and looked at history and I do not think necessarily what we have done 
in the last 2 months is the way it has always been done. But I have an 
answer to that. If it has, so what? If it needs to be changed, if we 
can do a better job, let us do it. Yes, I am a former House Member. No, 
I do not want to make the Senate a replica of the House. But can we 
make the Senate a better legislative body, if we make some changes or 
we work together in a way that provides--yes, more efficiency? I think 
it is worthy of effort. And I hope we will begin it next week.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Florida.
  Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senate as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is the regular order, Senator.

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