[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 79 (Friday, May 12, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6584-S6586]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     LOOKING AT THE FEDERAL BUDGET

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to say to my colleagues that 
the last time I looked at the Federal budget, which has been many times 
in the last few days, I did not notice that spending was increasing 
significantly in the discretionary domestic side of the budget. I did 
not notice that Americans were coming up to any of us and saying to us, 
Senator, we have too much drug treatment in America; we ought to cut it 
so fewer addicts can get treatment.
  I did not notice that a lot of people were coming up and saying, it 
is already easy enough for me to send my kid to school, so why not cut 
the tax deduction to send our kids to college and make it harder for us 
to send our kids to school.
  I did not notice people were suggesting that our train system is 
comparable to the Japanese or the Germans or the French, and therefore 
we ought to be reducing the investment in our railroads.
  I did not notice that our colleges and universities were so fat with 
money that their laboratories, which are 20 and 30 years old in many 
cases, are state of the art and so they do not need additional Federal 
funding to increase the science capacity or research of America.
  I could run down a long list of things that I do not think Americans 
are asking us to cut, but, Mr. President, we are cutting them. We are 
cutting them. And I respectfully suggest we are cutting out of this 
country the guts of our ability to be able to remain a great country 
and guarantee that our kids, who are increasingly growing up in a 
vacuum, are going to have the best education system in the world, the 
kind of opportunity that we have promised through these years.
  We had a period of know-nothingism in America once before, and I am 
not sure that we are venturing close to a new period of sort of put 
your head in the sand and pretend--pretend that a 15-year-old kid who 
has an abusive parent or a drug addict parent and whose other parent is 
absent, pretend that that kid, who is already at risk and dropped out 
of school, is somehow suddenly going to be saved by cutting access to 
the YMCA, YWCA, the Boys and Girls Clubs, Youth Build, the City Years, 
the AmeriCorps of this country.
  That is what we are doing. The one part of the budget that is 
increasing is entitlements. It is the only part of the Federal budget 
that is really increasing in real dollars. And the truth is that you 
are not going to solve that problem just by whacking away at a fixed 
amount of money when more and more Americans are turning 65, more and 
more Americans are living longer, and more and more Americans have a 
right to expect that they are going to get quality medical care.
  What will happen if we just lop off several hundred billion out of 
Medicare? Sure, we will cut out some waste. And, yes, some good 
entrepreneurs will respond and there will be an increase in managed 
care and HMO's, and so forth. But you will take the guts out of 
teaching hospitals. You will take the guts out of research and 
development. And those things that have provided the United States with 
the most extraordinary advanced technology and medical care in the 
world will suddenly begin to diminish, just like deferred maintenance 
on a building. Sure, we can cut the maintenance today, and we have been 
doing that, I might add, in many different sectors. But 5 and 10 years 
from now, after 10 years of cuts and deferred maintenance, the 
buildings begin to crumble, the bridges begin to fall down, the sewer 
systems fall apart, the water treatment facilities are not there.
  Mr. President, we have to stop and recognize that there are three 
deficits in this country. There is a fiscal deficit, but there is also 
an investment deficit, and there is a spiritual deficit. And we are not 
going to address the investment deficit, which is critical to dealing 
with the spiritual deficit, unless we treat all three of them 
simultaneously. And all this budget that we will be presented does is 
deal with the fiscal deficit.
  What do I mean when I say an investment deficit? Well, Mr. President, 
let me give you one example: railroads. The United States is ranked 
34th in the world in our investment in our railroads. We are just 
behind Ecuador and Bolivia and just ahead of Bangladesh. And there are 
only seven countries I think with railroads that are behind us--34th in 
the world.
  Now, I can tell you that in Boston, in New England, along most of the 
eastern seaboard and much of the west coast now, and in other parts of 
this country, rail transportation is essential to moving millions of 
people to their jobs, taking the burden off of our highways,
 and yet, we are disinvesting in those railroads, Mr. President.

  France has its TGF, Japan has a bullet train. And instead of thinking 
about how we are going to provide millions of jobs for Americans 
building an adequate transportation system, we are disinvesting.
  No country on this planet has a railroad system that does not have a 
subsidy. There is not a country in the world that does not subsidize 
its railroad system. And yet the House of Representatives has zeroed 
out--zeroed out--money for support of railroads.
  Now I can give you dozens of other examples like that. Global climate 
change. We do not know all the answers. We know that there is a 
phenomenon taking place. We do not have a complete understanding of it. 
We need to have an understanding of it, because the consequences could 
be cataclysmic. And yet we are cutting that research.
  The Coast Guard, the admiral in charge of the Coast Guard told me 
they 
 [[Page S6585]] have a $600 million capital expenditure requirement 
just to keep their ships running properly to stay current with the 
demand--Cuba, Haiti, fishing enforcement, drug trafficking. But, Mr. 
President, we are not providing that money. We have cut significantly 
the amount that they need.
  Science and research. There is not a public university in this 
country that is not struggling to have the capacity to be able to raise 
the standards of learning for our children. And yet, we are going to 
have a harder time than ever before in providing the wherewithal for 
those universities and for those entities to carry on to meet that high 
standard.
  Mr. President, there are so many examples like this that it defies 
the imagination.
  The last time I looked, this was a very rich country. And not only is 
it a very rich country, but it is a country that is increasingly seeing 
a huge division growing between those who have and those who do not.
  From 1940 to 1950 to 1960 to 1970, Americans all grew simultaneously, 
at every sector of American society. If you were at the lowest quintile 
of earnings in America, your income grew in 10 years by 138 percent. If 
you were in the next two quintiles from 1940 to 1980, for 40 years, if 
you were in those middle two quintiles, you grew at 98, 99 percent over 
a 10-year period. And if you were in the top quintile, Mr. President, 
you grew at about 98 percent.
  In the last 12 years in America, the bottom quintile went down 18 
percent, the next quintile went down 4 percent, and the top quintile 
went up 105 percent.
  Now, while income has become tougher and tougher for the average 
American to earn, they have been witnessing the phenomenon of 
globalization and technology, where more and more the labor of human 
hands and hearts is not applied to work. You have automation, robotics, 
artificial intelligence, and technology advancements which are what 
provide most of the productivity increases of this country.
  It is very clear that America is not going to compete, by and large, 
except for niches here and there with low-wage, low-scale jobs. 
Increasingly, Americans are being forced into low-wage, low-scale 
service sector jobs. And we are not increasing the manufacturing base 
of this country in a way that creates the high value-added jobs that 
allows an American to earn more money and be able to move up the 
ladder.
  That, Mr. President, accounts for most of the anger that we feel in 
America today; that, coupled with the accompanying disintegration of 
families and communities.
  Now that gets you to the spiritual deficit.
  Mr. President, in 1965, our colleague, Pat Moynihan, warned us about 
what happens in America when children are having children out of 
wedlock--children born into a single-person family. In 1965, Senator 
Moynihan told us of a 27-percent-out-of-wedlock birth rate in the inner 
city. He was accused of being a racist. Most of America put its head in 
the sand and did not pay much attention.
  Today that 27 percent is 80 percent. Thirty-six percent of all 
American children are born out of wedlock.
  And I ask my colleagues how they think they are going to deal with a 
15- or 16-year-old kid who has already dropped out of high school, who 
does not relate to their home, who has no organized religion, who does 
not have in his or her life any of the normal ingredients of teaching 
values--family, church, synagogue, school--how are you going to reach 
that 15-year-old in order to prevent that 15-year-old from becoming the 
next inhabitant of a $50,000-a-year jail cell?
  I am not proposing to my colleagues that Government ought to do it or 
that Government is the solution. But I do know that Government can make 
a difference in helping to create a framework which will allow those 
kids to have a shot. And that framework can be the support that we give 
to nonprofit entities, the support that we give to a boys club, a girls 
club, support we give to the YouthBuilds, the Americorps and other 
efforts that try to intervene where there has been such a total failure 
otherwise.
  As I listen to my colleagues in the House and elsewhere, they say, 
``Well, it is the family's responsibility. Cut it off and people are 
going to have to take care of themselves.''
  The problem is, Mr. President, that this country already has a track 
record of doing that. In the 1920's, 1930's, 1860's, 1870's and 1880's, 
we saw what happened when everybody was left to their own devices. That 
is when we had sweatshops. That is when we had slums and squalor. That 
is when we had no ability to cure half of these things.
  The truth is, Mr. President, that over the course of the last years, 
in the last 40 years, particularly, in America, we have learned that 
some of these interventions truly make a difference in the lives of our 
communities and of our kids.
  I respectfully suggest that the U.S. Senate, the House, the Congress, 
the country, are on their way to creating a clash unlike any we have 
ever known before in this country.
  The summer job money has been cut. Let me ask you: What are those 
kids going to do this summer in the heat of New York City or Los 
Angeles or Detroit or Chicago or Boston when they have no job? The 
Government said, ``We don't care. We're taking the money away. Go fend 
for yourself.''
  But we all know that the economy, historically, carries 6 percent 
unemployment or more. So even though we, the leadership, know that 
America is going to have at least 6 percent of its country unemployed, 
are we still going to say, ``Go take care of yourself,'' and cut them 
off? What are they going to do?
  So I think, Mr. President, we are heading for a cropper. I remember 
the 1960's, when I came back from Vietnam. I can remember people out in 
the streets with guns. I remember cars being overturned. I remember 
bombs. I remember firestorms of automobiles burning. I respectfully 
suggest that we better stop and think carefully about the consequences 
of the steps we take and the choices we make.
  Those children that Pat Moynihan talked about in 1965 turned 15 and 
16 in 1980. All you have to do is go and look at the increase of 
juvenile violence in America in 1980, and you can begin to project what 
those children born today in the 80-percent category are going to do in 
the year 2010 when they turn 15 and 16.
  The increase of murder among juveniles is up 250, 260 percent. There 
were 29,000 juveniles murdered in America in the last 10 years, and 
4,000 juveniles are currently under arrest charged with murder. The 
highest level of murders in America today are juveniles between the 
ages of 14 and 25 who are murdering other juveniles between the ages of 
14 and 25.
  I absolutely guarantee you, it is inescapable, unavoidable, 
incontrovertible that if you have a kid born today in a country that is 
providing less work, in a country where information and education are 
more important to your ability to work than ever before, in a country 
where it will be harder for these kids to get that education, not 
easier, there is an absolute predictability to what those kids will be 
like 15 and 16 years from today.
  Mr. President, I used to prosecute some of those kids. I used to be a 
prosecutor, and I talked to some of them back then. It was OK, you 
could have a conversation and you could learn something about what they 
felt and about their anger. In the last 2 years, I have spent time 
going to some of the at-risk programs that we are now running, which 
are the last link between these kids and total loss. I have never, ever 
in my life heard such a level of anger that is without explanation. 
They cannot explain it to you. They do not know where it is coming 
from. But you can hear those kids talk about being runaways in Florida 
or New York, about how they left their families at age 10, 11, 12.
  Mr. President, do you know that the median age of handgun ownership, 
or gun ownership, in America today, the median age of first-time gun 
ownership is 12\1/2\ years old?
  So as we think about the budget choices that we are going to face 
over the course of this next 1\1/2\ or 2 weeks, it is my prayer that we 
are not going to put our heads in the sand and ignore the other two 
deficits this country faces: The investment deficit and the spiritual 
deficit.
   [[Page S6586]] In the end, I have no question that Government is not 
even the right entity to ``deal with the spiritual'' or attempt to. But 
Government needs to understand the connection with those entities that 
should be doing it, or can be doing it, and their capacity to do it, in 
the world that we are creating.
  Government needs to be an empowerer of the local community to reach 
these children. For example, in Brockton, MA, there is a Boys and Girls 
Club, but only 10 percent of the kids in that community get access to 
that club. Simple question: What happens to the other 90 percent of 
those kids? They are out on the streets, nobody is there, there is no 
connection.
  That is our responsibility, it seems to me, to try to empower the 
communities to be able to help create the civic reaction that will 
begin to deal with these children. And the ultimate response will come 
from churches and synagogues, spiritual organizations, nonprofit 
agencies, schools, and parents, but you have to have a place to begin. 
You have to start somewhere. It seems to me, that if you have a kid 
sitting in front of you who is 12 or 13 years old and they are already 
dabbling in drugs, and they are already in trouble at home, and they 
are already disconnected to the school, we have a fundamental choice: 
Are we going to turn our back on that kid and cut that kid off, or are 
we going to try to channel that child toward some group or organization 
that will bring the child in, embrace the child with a notion that the 
child has a stake in the community and the community cares? I think 
this budget is draconian with respect to those efforts. I am not sure 
how in the next days, given the choices we have, we are going to fix 
it.
  Mr. President, none of what I am saying should be interpreted to mask 
over the deficit that we do face on the fiscal side. I am prepared to 
make tough choices about cuts that we ought to make and even reordering 
priorities to try to balance the budget, which I think we ought to do. 
But nobody has ever convinced me of why we absolutely have to do that 
in 6 years versus 8 or versus 10 years. Nobody has convinced me that 
there is some economic virtue in picking a target date that is so 
arbitrary that may wind up cutting capacity to meet other needs that we 
have.
  One other point, Mr. President. Increasingly in America, we are 
seeing the cash economy of this country grow. It is now, I am told, 
about a $600 billion economy. That means that we are losing annually 
about $100 billion of revenue because people just choose not to pay 
taxes. In fact, as a nation, we have gone from voluntary compliance in 
our income tax of 96 percent down to 81 percent. Each loss of a point 
of voluntary compliance is the loss of $5 billion of revenue. So your 
good taxpaying, hard-working family that is earning $25,000, $30,000 a 
year and paying their taxes is slugging it out to make ends meet, to 
pay for fire, police, schools, roads, everything we do, while an 
increasing number of American citizens are getting away with not paying 
their taxes.
  We have a choice. I read in the newspaper the other day that we are 
going to have a new thing called a lifestyle audit, and people in 
America are now going to be able to anticipate the IRS jumping into 
their driveways and asking them why there is a certain kind of car in 
their driveway, how they manage to go ski somewhere, what their 
vacation style is, why they eat at certain restaurants, and that is the 
way we are going to supposedly enforce the Tax Code. I do not think 
Americans are going to tolerate an IRS gestapo-like entity of people 
intrusively moving into their lives.
  So, Mr. President, if we are really going to make this system work 
and recapture that cash economy, we have to talk about changing the tax 
structure of this country and moving away from a dependency on income 
and into consumption where it is the only place that you can begin to 
shift to a reflection of what the cash transaction is while 
simultaneously, I think, increasing people's savings and moving in a 
new direction.
  Mr. President, I see that the manager of the bill is on his feet. If 
he has an amendment, I am prepared to conclude.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Yes, Mr. President, we have a couple of amendments we 
would like to have accepted, then the Senator is free to continue.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, what I would like to do--the Senator from 
Wisconsin has been waiting patiently. I talked longer than I told him I 
intended to--I will just conclude my comments. I will have more to say 
on this in the course of the next weeks. But I believe we are at a 
crossroads, and I think that the choices that I have outlined are only 
a few of the choices. But we cannot look at the needs of this country 
exclusively in terms of an arbitrary approach to the deficit reduction. 
We have to look at the other two deficits that the Nation faces.
  There is such a thing as investment, and there is such a thing as a 
return on investment, and there is such a thing as multiples of return 
on investment. I think that most people in the Senate understand that. 
The question is whether or not we are going to make those wise 
judgments.
  I thank my colleague from Wisconsin for his patience, and I thank the 
distinguished managers for their courtesy. I yield the floor.

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