[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 55 (Friday, March 24, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4562-S4564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  THE BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT DEBATE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there was a column in the Washington Post 
this morning entitled, ``More `Trust Fund' Whoppers'' by a columnist 
named Charles Krauthammer. I felt it necessary to come over and respond 
to this column. Mr. Krauthammer was upset about a response that Senator 
Conrad and I had written to the Washington Post in response to his 
first column about us that was titled ``Social Security `Trust Fund' 
Whopper.''
  His first column was so devoid of facts and reasonable conclusions 
that we wrote a column back and said, in our part of the country we 
expect people to tell the whole truth. We did not like what he had done 
in his first column in which he called our arguments with respect to 
the constitutional amendment to balance the budget and looting of the 
trust funds in Social Security to do so as ``fraudulent.'' Now he is 
upset at the column we wrote back and so he wrote a second long column, 
a long-winded column this morning.
  As I read that, I was thinking, I come from ranching country in 
southwestern North Dakota. And occasionally you refer to people as 
``all hat and no cattle.'' I thought about that when I finished reading 
his column this morning. It was hard for me to understand how, with 
facts so evident, he can reach a conclusion so flawed.
  The Presiding Officer, the Senator from Wyoming, also comes from 
ranching country, and I brought along a piece of cowboy poetry that I 
thought might describe the difference in perspectives, and the 
difference, sometimes, is simply that some do not have the capability 
of understanding the clear perspective. It is sort of described as the 
difference between tongue and egg in this poem.
  A cowboy poet, whose name I do not have, wrote a piece and I thought 
about this piece as it might apply to the disconnect of logic in Mr. 
Krauthammer's column. Let me read the piece to you, the poem called 
``The Disputed Epicure.'' It is about a cowboy who is queried by a 
high-born lady.

     ``What's your favorite cut of beef?''
     The high-born lady queried.
     Of an old cowboy who long ago
     Had grown, both wise and wearied,
     Of direct infernal questions
     On the ways of cowpoke lore.
     So he considered on this question
     That he'd not been asked before.

     With rapt anticipation,
     On his pause, the lady hung.
     Until, at last the cowboy said,
     ``I'd have to say it's tongue.
     Tongue's got flavor, `n texture,
     And nary a bit of bond.
     A cinch to cook. I'd put her up
     On top there, all alone.''

     Recoiling, the lady said aghast,
     ``Surely air, you jest.''
     The idea is disgusting.
     Your grossness I protest.
     Eat something from out a cow's mouth?
     Your suggestion's crude, I beg.''
     The cowboy then said softly,
     ``Don't s'pose you've ate no egg.''

  Sometimes cowboy poets are able to say simply and clearly what we in 
politics fumble around to try to express.
  I guess this difference between us and Charles Krauthammer is really 
kind of the tongue and egg difference here. Mr. Krauthammer, in his 
column today, first is upset that I responded to his first column on 
the balanced budget amendment and the misuse of the Social Security 
trust fund by saying on the floor of the Senate that, based on his 
column, I thought he might qualify as a candidate for O.J.'s defense 
team. He seems almost unmoved by facts and evidence.
  He was upset by that, and, maybe I overreached. It may be I 
overreached because the column Mr. Krauthammer writes today 
demonstrates his talent is not in law, his talent truly is in fiction. 
Let me go through, if I might, the fiction that I see in Mr. 
Krauthammer's column, and perhaps just briefly review the dispute.
  The dispute is that, briefly, in 1983 we had to solve some problems 
in the Social Security System. We did that by deciding to save for the 
long term. We, in fact, forced a national pool of savings so that each 
year we would raise more money in Social Security than we spent. This 
year we will raise $69 billion more than we spend. That surplus in the 
Social Security System is not an accident. Mr. Krauthammer, in his last 
column, said this is a pay-as-you-go system. But that is not true. This 
is not an accident. This is a deliberate strategy to force a national 
pool of savings in the Social Security trust funds to meet the time 
when the baby boomers retire after the turn of the century.
  Since the surplus began to accumulate it has been used as an offset 
to show a lower Federal deficit. I do not think there is much dispute 
about that. And it is also true, and demonstrably true that, since 1983 
when I offered the first amendment on the Ways and Means Committee, and 
time after time after time on the floor of the House and on the floor 
of the Senate, I have raised the question, offered the amendments, and 
objected to the looting the Social Security trust fund or using those 
moneys to offset against a lower budget deficit because I think it is 
dishonest budgeting.
  Then we had a constitutional amendment brought to the floor of the 
Senate and the constitutional amendment was written very precisely. It 
prescribed that by the year 2002, the U.S. budget shall be in balance 
and it shall be in balance when you use all expenditures and all 
receipts counting towards that balance. Under that constitutional 
amendment to balance the budget it would enshrine forever the practice, 
that I have objected to in recent years, of looting the Social Security 
trust funds to balance the budget. In fact, the way the constitutional 
amendment to balance the budget was written, it was clear that is the 
case. Senator Reid offered an amendment to provide that would not 
happen. That amendment was defeated. So it was clear that is exactly 
what would happen and we were told, my colleague Senator Conrad and I, 
that those who offer this amendment had no intention of using the 
Social Security trust funds to balance the budget.
  But back in that room behind this Chamber we were told by the same 
people, ``Look fellows, let's all be honest. We cannot balance the 
Federal budget without using the Federal trust funds.'' Those are 
direct quotes. Then they gave us handwritten pieces of paper that said 
we will stop using the trust funds in the year 2012; and then the 
second piece of paper said we will stop using the trust funds--that 
they were saying we will not do any time--by the year 2008; in other 
words, we will stop doing something we claim we are not doing 13 years 
from now. What twisted sense of logic that is.
  [[Page S4563]] Senator Conrad and I refused to budge. We said we will 
support the constitutional amendment to balance the budget, but you 
must guarantee we are not going to enshrine in the Constitution the use 
of the Social Security trust funds to get there. They refused to do 
that. We refused to budge.
  I happen to think that the Social Security System is important in 
this country. I happen to think the principles that I was involved with 
in 1983 when I helped write the Social Security Reform Act were 
important. I just refused to change the Constitution in a way that 
would have guaranteed in the next 13 years what I consider the misuse 
of $1.3 trillion of Social Security trust funds.
  So the Krauthammer column was calling our argument fraudulent. We 
responded and said Mr. Krauthammer was clearly misinformed. He was 
offering a misinformed defense of an indefensible practice, some neat 
trick for a pundit.
  Now, there is a new column from Mr. Krauthammer. And I would like to 
go through just a couple of points in this new column. Mr. Krauthammer, 
if I can review this column, says a number of things. First, he says 
that he had checked with our offices because he says he wonders about 
the sincerity of our charge about looting the Social Security trust 
funds. He says if we were sincere about that, could we provide evidence 
that we had complained about that before? Well, yes. He did call our 
office. My first thought was to respond by telling his assistant: ``Do 
your own research. You make lots of money.'' But then I thought better 
of that.
  So we sent many examples of what I said on the floor of the Senate 
and on the floor of the House--yes, during President Clinton's 
Presidency and during previous Presidencies--saying this practice is 
wrong; this practice is dishonest budgeting. So he had the examples. He 
apparently chose to ignore them or misrepresent them by saying we had 
not been sincere because we had not complained about that before. 
Speaking for myself, he knows better than that, and he has an 
obligation to put that in his column.
  Second, he says that Senators Conrad and Dorgan then accused him of 
seeking to enshrine a procedure in the Constitution of counting Social 
Security in calculating the deficit in the Constitution. He said this 
is pure invention. This balanced budget amendment is entirely silent on 
the issue. ``It is up to Congress to decide whether to count Social 
Security surpluses in calculating the budget,'' he says. Oh, really? I 
am trying to figure out what Mr. Krauthammer is reading. Has he read 
the proposal before the Congress, the proposal that says in the 
Constitution, ``all revenues and all expenditures'' would be counted? 
Is there some new law school that you can apply to on the back of a 
matchbook that teaches a different kind of law, one that allows you to 
misread these proposals?
  Well, you know. Some of us believe, especially out in western 
ranching country, that things mean what they say they mean. If you 
write it, that is what you mean. If you say it, that is what you mean.
  Mr. Krauthammer says no, that is pure invention. Apparently a 
Washington thought, not one that I subscribe to. The constitutional 
amendment means what the words in the amendment say it means, and until 
Mr. Krauthammer wrote this column, I did not think there was any 
serious dispute about that.
  Mr. Krauthammer says, third, until 1969, it was not our practice to 
use surpluses in calculating the deficit. Only since 1983 have we begun 
developing a consistent, deliberate strategy of very large surpluses to 
save for the future. So what counts is after 1983, Mr. Krauthammer 
would probably know.
  In any event, he misses the point on the 1983 amendment. He 
apparently just missed the whole body of law in which we decided that 
we would enforce a national pool of savings. Mr. Krauthammer said, you 
know, the Social Security system is a pay-as-you-go system, and the 
reason we have all this money is because we have these baby boomers 
working. False! Wrong! As with a lot of the rest of his column. He 
knows it. We told him he was wrong, of course. He did not point out in 
his column that, yes, he had made an error. Had he read the 1983 
amendments, he would have known it is not a pay-as-you-go system. It is 
a system designed now with a tax base to create a deliberate national 
pool of savings with which to meet our future obligations.
  Mr. Krauthammer says the amendment that Conrad and Dorgan killed 
would have required a balanced budget by law--it would not be by law, 
of course. It would have to be by Constitution, unlike other such laws 
that could not be changed by a movement of truth, by a cowardly 
Congress. ``It would have forced people like Conrad and Dorgan to stop 
scaring the electorate and buckle down to the real deficit reduction 
problem.''
  I wonder what Mr. Krauthammer would write with respect to buckling 
down in 1993? We buckled down. In 1993, we passed the deficit reduction 
package through this Chamber that raised some taxes that were 
unpopular. I understand that. It cut some spending that was unpopular. 
I understand that. It was an act to reduce the deficit of over $500 
billion, and the actual experience is over $600 billion in deficit 
reduction in 5 years.
  Do you know something? We did not even get one accidental vote from 
the other side of the aisle, Mr. Krauthammer's friends. You would 
expect somebody to vote wrong by accident now and then. It took every 
single vote we could muster to win on that issue because it was 
unpopular, and we knew it. We had the courage to do what was necessary 
to reduce the deficit. We did not get one single vote from Mr. 
Krauthammer's friends.
  So I say, when Mr. Krauthammer uses words like ``cowardice,'' and so 
on, he might want to rethink who has exhibited courage in recent years, 
who has decided that they are willing to do what is unpopular if it is 
right, in order to help their country.
  Well, we will, of course, send another response to try to correct 
some of the whoppers in Mr. Krauthammer's column. Again, I keep 
thinking that Mr. Krauthammer must believe that double-entry 
bookkeeping means you can use the same money twice. Of course, the 
first accounting course you take tells you that is not what double 
entry means. You cannot use the same money twice. There are some 
bookkeepers in America that have done that. They are now doing 4 years 
of hard tennis in minimum security prisons. You cannot use the same 
money twice. You cannot do it in businesses, and you cannot do it in 
the Federal budget.
  When I finished reading his column this morning, it reminded me of 
something Clement Freud's grandson said. Clement Freud's grandson said 
this: ``When you hit someone over the head with a book and get a hollow 
sound, it does not mean the book was empty.''
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coats). The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from North 
Dakota.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask my friend from North Dakota how 
much time he would like?
  Mr. CONRAD. Ten minutes.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am happy to yield 10 minutes off the 
bill to the Senator from North Dakota.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New York for his 
courtesy, and I thank my colleague from North Dakota for his discussion 
of the latest Krauthammer column.
  Let me just say that it is very apparent to me why Mr. Krauthammer is 
a columnist and not an accountant, because he clearly does not get it. 
He just does not understand why it is wrong to take Social Security 
trust fund moneys to balance the Federal operating budget. He does not 
understand why it is wrong to take a dedicated trust fund and use it to 
pay the other operating expenses of Government. But most people 
understand why that is wrong. Most people understand that you do not 
take a trust fund and loot it in order to pay other expenses and then 
say you have balanced the budget.
  Mr. Krauthammer, in his latest work, indicates that the balanced 
budget amendment is ``entirely silent on the issue.'' The issue he is 
talking 
[[Page S4564]] about is taking trust funds and using them for the other 
operating expenses of Government. It makes me wonder if Mr. Krauthammer 
has ever read the amendment that was before this body.
  I brought along just one section of the balanced budget amendment 
that was before this Chamber. It says very clearly. ``Total receipts 
shall include all receipts of the United States Government * * * total 
outlays shall include all outlays of the United States Government.''
  By definition, this amendment was including the Social Security funds 
because they are receipts of the U.S. Government. And, of course, 
Social Security is not contributing to the deficit. Social Security is 
in surplus.
  So, by definition, Social Security surplus moneys would have been 
used, and used to balance the operating budget of the Federal 
Government. And those surpluses would have been used to pay other 
expenses. That is precisely the point.
  Mr. President, to say you are balancing the budget when you are using 
trust fund moneys is a fraud. It reminds me of the Reverend Jim Bakker. 
Do you remember Rev. Jim Bakker, Jim and Tammy, that used to have the 
show ``PTL'' on television? He was an evangelist, a television 
evangelist. Does anyone know where he has been for the last several 
years?
 He has been in a Federal facility in Minnesota. He has been in a 
Federal jail. He has been there because he raised money for one purpose 
and used it for another, and that is called fraud.

  That is precisely what is happening with the Social Security trust 
funds. We are taking money from people's paychecks. We are telling them 
that is going to be used to secure their retirement. We are taking that 
money and the part that is in surplus is being used to pay for other 
operating expenses of Government. The trust fund? There is no money in 
the trust fund. IOU's are in the trust fund, but there is no money 
there because we have spent it.
  We are as guilty of fraud as Rev. Jim Bakker. And at some point the 
chickens are going to come home to roost in this country. To have put 
that kind of flawed policy in the Constitution of the United States 
would have been a profound mistake because then we would have had very 
little chance to change it.
  Let me give an example of what is wrong with the Krauthammer 
thinking. Let us take a company that is earning $1 million a year, has 
$1 million of income but is spending $1.5 million a year. That company 
is experiencing losses of $500,000.
  Now, of course, it could borrow from the retirement funds of its 
employees and say that it is balancing the budget. That is the kind of 
approach that apparently Mr. Krauthammer would endorse. I do not think 
many people in this country would think, if you were earning $1 million 
a year as a company and were spending $1.5 million, and you were making 
up the difference by looting the trust fund of your employees, you 
would balance the budget. But that is the policy that he endorses. That 
is the policy Mr. Krauthammer thinks makes sense. I think most people 
would recognize you may have balanced cash against cash, but you have 
run up a $500,000 liability. You owe it, and you are going to have to 
pay it back or you are going to renege on your obligation.
  Mr. President, that is what is wrong with the approach we are taking. 
That is what is wrong with what we would have done if we would have put 
that principle into the Constitution of the United States.
  Mr. Krauthammer apparently belongs to the school of thought which 
believes that in order to save Social Security we must loot the Social 
Security trust funds. I do not belong to that school of thought. I 
think that is a profound mistake.
  Mr. Krauthammer has one thing right. One of the threats to Social 
Security is the debt that we are accumulating in this country. When we 
spend more than we take in, we are mortgaging the long-term future of 
this country--no question about it. That is a threat to Social Security 
just as it is a threat to the economic security of the United States.
  There is a second threat. The second threat to Social Security is the 
raiding of the Social Security trust funds. The reason we are running a 
surplus now, and the reason we are going to be running surpluses for 
the next 10 or 15 years is to prepare for the day the baby boom 
generation retires. That generation, which is twice as large in terms 
of people who are eligible to receive Social Security as the current 
generation, is going to put enormous pressure on the system. When we 
changed the Social Security methodology in 1983, we changed it in order 
to prepare for the day when the baby boom generation retires. That is 
why we are running surpluses. That is why those surpluses ought to be 
preserved.
  The notion that the only way to save Social Security is to loot its 
trust funds is mere nonsense. That is the position Mr. Krauthammer 
endorses. I think he is entirely wrong in that proposition. I think the 
people of this country have the common sense to reject that theory. I 
think by all of the reaction we have received from the balanced budget 
amendment debate the people of this country recognize we are on a 
course that cannot be sustained. It ought to be changed. Mr. 
Krauthammer might want to be a guardian at the gate of the gridlock of 
the past, the policies of the past. Senator Dorgan and I do not choose 
to join him in that endeavor. We do not think defending the policies of 
the past is defensible. There ought to be a change. To have enshrined 
those failed policies in the Constitution of the United States would 
have been an insult to the Framers of that document who put together, 
after all, a method of operating for this Government that has made us 
the envy of the world. That document has made this Nation the greatest 
country in human history. We should not tamper with it lightly. We 
certainly should not enshrine in it a flawed policy, one that says you 
have balanced the budget when you have looted trust funds in order to 
do so. That is not a policy that belongs in the Constitution of the 
United States.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  

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