[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 82 (Wednesday, May 17, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6767-S6769]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WHERE IS BILL?

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to talk 
about an issue that greatly disturbs me at a time when we are debating 
in this country how we are going to get to a balanced budget and what 
steps we need to take and the tough decisions in setting priorities 
about where Federal spending should go in the next 7 years.
  We had a process that went through here in the Senate and over in the 
House that just came from the conference committee to cut $16 billion, 
$16 billion of funding that has been appropriated by this Congress over 
the past year or two--a truly minor downpayment on reducing the Federal 
budget deficit. It is about 1 percent of what we will spend this fiscal 
year. We are talking about cutting 1 percent, not just in this fiscal 
year but this fiscal year and the next combined. About $16 billion is 
what the rescission package will do.
  I see the headline in the Washington Post, not the one I am 
particularly proud of, which is ``Capitals Dismantled by Penguins,'' 
which I am happy to see that, but one which greatly disturbs me under 
that which is, ``Clinton To Veto $16 Billion Rescissions Package.'' The 
President--who has presented a budget that is going to add almost $2 
trillion to the national debt over the next 7 years, who refuses to 
come to the U.S. Congress and present a balanced budget, who says there 
is no problem in Medicare, who says that everything is just fine--now 
decides he cannot support cuts in spending. He cannot support cuts in 
spending: That $16 billion is too much. We just cannot do it. We cannot 
tighten our belt to do that.
  So he is going to go to some group. I am sure he will wrap himself--I 
do not know, I did not read this completely--wrap himself with either a 
group of seniors or a group of children because that is what you do 
when you do not want to change things. You hide behind children or you 
hide behind seniors, and you say: ``We cannot hurt these vulnerable in 
our society.'' But the fact of the matter is this is a drop in the 
bucket. These are spending cuts, many of which he advocated, to 
programs many of which do not work.
  Sure there are some tough cuts in here, things I am uncomfortable 
with. We cut, in this bill, low-income home energy assistance, not this 
year which I am happy to see, but next year, by $300 million. I think 
that is a painful thing. But we have to share. We cannot do everything. 
We cannot continue to spend everything we are spending now. I think 
that is a good compromise.
  There are other things in there that cause me some problems. They may 
be good programs but we have to be able to say we are going to tighten 
our belts [[Page S6768]] a little bit. And here you have a President 
who is holding dialogs with himself about his relevancy, showing he is 
not going to be relevant to balancing the budget, he is going to stand 
in our way every step of the way to block any kind of reducing the size 
of Government or cutting spending here in Washington, DC.
  Mr. President, $16 billion out of $1.6 trillion and we cannot do 
that. It is too tough. I think the American public should see this for 
what it is, a President who just wants to blame the other side for 
being mean and being cruel and offers nothing in return, who offers no 
balanced budget to this body, who says he is not for the balanced 
budget amendment to force us to get there, who says there is no problem 
in Medicare when it is going to go broke in 7 years. His own trustees 
say it is going to go broke in 7 years. Denial, denial, denial; no, no, 
no.
  Where is the President? You know, we had the great debater from the 
State of Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, stand up and say, ``Where is 
George? Where is George?''
  Where is Bill? Where is Bill? Where is he going to be if we are going 
to balance this budget? Where is he going to be if we are going to put 
this country back on sound footing again? Is he going to continue to 
hide behind the status quo, to be the President who goes down defending 
this policy that has just continued to pile up debt after debt after 
debt?
  Where is Bill? Where is he when it comes to setting this country back 
on the course of fiscal responsibility?
  I will tell you where he is, hiding behind a group of people, vetoing 
legislation to get us back on the right track. We deserve better.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Under the 
previous order, the Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan] is 
recognized to speak for up to 30 minutes.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it is always entertaining to listen to the 
morning discussions on the floor of the Senate. I should not say always 
entertaining. It is at least occasionally entertaining. As to the 
question of ``Where is Bill?''--which I assume really asks ``Where is 
the President?''--he is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He was there 
yesterday. I assume he is there this morning, reachable by phone if 
someone really wants to visit with him about policy issues.
  But I would say that at least yesterday, when some of us visited with 
the President about the budget issues, we talked about a lot of things. 
There is no disagreement, in my judgment, among those of us in the 
Senate or with the President or Members of the House of Representatives 
about the goal. We have a budget that is out of balance and it must be 
balanced. We must, it seems to me, develop a plan that is thoughtful, 
that establishes the right priorities, but especially in the end 
balances the budget.
  It is interesting. I hear people stand up here on the floor of the 
House and bellow and crow about how they are the ones that have all the 
answers, they are the ones that know how to balance the budget, they 
are the ones with the guts, and they are the ones with a plan. What a 
bunch of nonsense. Add it all up, just back up and add it up, and you 
will find that there is not a nickel's worth of difference between 
Members on either side of the aisle, in the House or the Senate, about 
how much money they want to spend. Oh, there is a big difference in how 
they want to spend it. Some want to build more jet airplanes, jet 
fighters, and bombers, and build more missiles. Some want to stay as 
deep in debt as we are; that we ought to rebuild star wars right now. 
That is a proposal before us.
  So they want to spend money, all right. Others of us want to make 
sure that a poor kid gets a hot lunch in the middle of the day at 
school, or that we have a Head Start that is fully funded, or a WIC 
Program that works, or health care available to the elderly when they 
need it. So there is a difference in how we want to spend money. There 
are differences in our priorities. But there is no difference in 
appetite.
  Do not let anybody tell you different. Add up the priorities in the 
1980's, and you will see that those who call themselves conservatives 
have an unending appetite to spend the public's money just on different 
things. This is evident even now. As tough as times are in this 
country, they are over pushing to cut back on the hot lunch program, 
and they have decided that it should no longer be an entitlement for a 
hot lunch for a poor kid in the middle of the day at school. But if a 
hot lunch for a poor kid in school is not an entitlement, they sure 
want to build star wars at a time when there is no longer a Soviet 
Union. That is the difference. There are differences in priorities.
  No one should believe that there is not a grim determination on both 
sides of the political aisle in the House and the Senate this year to 
balance this Federal budget with a plan that gets there in a real and 
in an honest way. The quarrel is about priorities. It is a legitimate 
quarrel. We sometimes fight for and believe in different things. We 
come from different parts of the country. We represent often different 
ideologies. But the quarrel is not the goal. The destination is 
something that I think is well accepted. We must get to a balanced 
budget.
  I sent earlier this month recommendations to the Senate Budget 
Committee totaling nearly $800 billion in spending cuts. I want to send 
them some more. There are plenty of spending cuts--some of them very 
aggressive, some of them controversial--that should be, could be, and I 
hope will be made in order to reach a balanced budget. I happen to 
think it is a priority as a goal.
  But these days when we find ourselves in a circumstance where we are 
up to our necks in debt, spending more than we take in and charging the 
balance to our kids and grandkids, some say what we really need to do 
is to have a tax cut. They construct a middle-income tax cut. In fact, 
I was asked by a radio moderator the other day about what I think of 
the middle-income tax cut or the middle-class tax cut passed by the 
House of Representatives. I said, ``Gee, which tax cut could you be 
referring to?'' The middle-class tax cut passed by the House of 
Representatives provides, on average, a $124 tax cut for those families 
with incomes under $30,000 a year, and an $11,000 tax cut for those 
families with incomes over $200,000 a year. That is what they define in 
the House as middle income? They have been reading different math books 
than I have been reading, I guess.
  I do not think a tax cut is advisable at the moment. I think the 
first job is to reduce the deficit, not to run over and curry favor 
with popular programs like tax cuts. But if we were going to have a tax 
cut, we ought to have a tax cut that benefits working families, not 
just the upper income families, not just the affluent in our country.
  So I would like folks to take a look at this chart. This chart shows 
the kinds of priorities that some stand up here and bust their buttons 
about, calling them middle-class priorities. This tax cut is a tax cut 
that benefits disproportionately the most affluent in this country and 
gives a few pennies to the rest.
  I do not happen to think we ought to have a tax cut at this point. I 
think we ought to keep our nose to the grindstone, cut spending, and 
use the revenues to reduce the Federal budget deficit. When we have 
that done, I will join others in this Chamber to propose a tax cut that 
then will be helpful to middle-income families. But to decide you ought 
to have a decrease first--let us go ahead and serve dessert at this 
meal first, which is a tax cut, because that is enormously popular--
that has a ring to it that is only political, not substantive. That 
says let us curry favor, and not do the hard work of dealing with the 
deficit.
  At the same time that some who propose a contract say let us have a 
tax cut that they call middle class but really, as you can see from the 
chart, benefits the most affluent in our country, they say we have a 
plan to cut Medicare. But they do not have a plan to protect health 
care for the elderly. [[Page S6769]] They would just cut the dollars. 
More and more people are growing old in this country. Some months--most 
months, in fact--we have 200,000 Americans in 1 month become eligible 
for Medicare. Why? Because America is growing older.
  So as more and more people become eligible for Medicare, to cut the 
funding without worrying about how an elderly person gets health care 
is hardly a priority I think which stands the test of good sense. And 
if you say to a country that faces real challenges in its future that 
the way to face them is to make it harder for a kid to go to college 
and cut back on money for student aid, then you are not in my judgment 
investing in our future.
  Why do that? We do that at least in part because some want to give a 
big tax cut to the most affluent in America. Again, I do not quarrel 
with the goal. I think the goal of balancing the budget is a goal we 
must march toward and meet. That is our challenge, and that is our 
test. I think there is substantial room to quarrel about the priorities 
at this point. There is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do 
it. And the right way to do it is to understand that the economic 
engine in this country is the working family. You do not help the 
working family in this country by doing the kinds of things that they 
are talking about in this budget. That is the wrong way.
  I would say that maybe 50 or 60 percent of the budget recommendations 
brought out by the Budget Committee make a lot of sense, and I would 
sign up immediately for them. I support a lot of those proposals. A lot 
of them are good. I give Senator Domenici and other members of the 
Budget Committee great credit for some of those provisions, and I will 
support them in a minute and vote for them. But I am just saying that 
in the Contract With America in the House and also in the Senate, there 
are some provisions that reflect in a traditional way the difference in 
priorities.
  We believe in education. Let us invest in education and not withdraw 
the help for those who want to learn, those who want to produce, and 
those who want to go on to become citizens who will help build this 
country. Let us not withdraw health care assistance from the elderly 
and the poor who need it. Let us not increase taxes for the low-income 
working families, which is also a part of this budget proposal. But 
there are many other areas where we can cut, and cut significantly, and 
cut much more than is now proposed by the Senate Budget Committee 
recommendation.
  So I hope when we get this to the floor, I hope you will not hear one 
word from any Member of the Senate who quarrels about the goal. We must 
balance the budget by 2002. It is doable. It is doable without the 
greatest of effort by Members of the Senate. But it ought to be done 
right away, investing in the right things still for this country, even 
as we cut those things we no longer need, those things that waste money 
and those things that are extravagant.

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