[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 86 (Tuesday, May 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7231-S7232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BALANCING THE BUDGET

  Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair very much.
  I think we have had some tremendous debate on the whole issue of the 
budget. We have heard people say, yes, there is enough that has been 
taken out or added or there is too much.
  The fact is that on this budget debate, whether or not we should 
balance the budget, if we follow the status quo, which is by far the 
easier thing to do today, because we will not have to make the tough 
votes if we follow the status quo that we have been on for so many 
years--the fact is if we follow that status quo, we will lose this 
country.
  The spirited, the polite, partisan debate that we have had during the 
course of this discussion will give way if we pursue the status quo to 
an absolute crisis situation. Shock waves will be sent throughout the 
world if in fact the United States reaches that point of financial 
collapse. And in that situation, Mr. President, as you well know, there 
will not be a United States to bail us out.
  The last balanced budget was 1969. I was a junior in high school in 
1969. Now, I can tell you that was not that long ago. I can relate back 
to that. I now have a daughter who next year will be a junior in high 
school. So you see, it has been a generation since we have had a 
balanced budget.
  In high school, the last thing that I ever thought about as a high 
school student was a balanced national budget. It just did not cross my 
mind, and yet at that time, we had a balanced budget.
  But $5 trillion later, I wished that the adults of that era would 
have realized what should have been done--$5 trillion later. Now I am 
the father of two great kids, Heather and Jeff. Next year they will 
both be in high school. But the difference between their being in high 
school and when I was in high school is that they now will owe, as 
every other American in this country will owe, $19,000 on the national 
debt, and they did not do anything wrong except to inherit this $5 
trillion debt.
  In the State of Idaho, the State law requires that we must have a 
balanced budget every year, and in the same world that our Federal 
Government operates today in its red ink, Republican Gov. Phil Batt 
gave the people of Idaho a $40 million property tax relief. The fact of 
the matter was, it was their money, just as it is the money of the 
people of America that we are talking about. It is not the Government's 
money.
  So we owe it to our kids to deal with this issue, and we owe it to 
our parents to deal with this issue, our parents who came through the 
recession and the Depression and tell us the stories of that 
[[Page S7232]] and how it made it very clear to them: You do not live 
beyond your means. You just do not do that.
  The interest payments on the national debt are the third largest part 
of the budget. And the interest payments do not buy a single school 
lunch, and they do not buy a single road and they do not make a single 
payment on a Medicare bill.
  The national debt rises $355,000 every minute. In 1 second, $6,000--
just now. That is how fast this is growing.
  All of this talk about budget cuts, a budget cut in Washington means 
something very different than a budget cut in Idaho. In the Nation's 
Capital, when a Government program asks for a 5 percent budget 
increase, and it is only granted a 3 percent budget increase, we do not 
call that a cut. That is an increase. But that is not how Washington, 
DC, deals with it. We are simply slowing the growth. The budget package 
that I am backing will bring us a balanced budget over the next 7 years 
by holding the growth of Government spending to around 3 percent a 
year.
  What about Social Security and Medicare? Well, we do not touch the 
Social Security pension trust fund, and we should not because it is not 
the problem. Medicare, on the other hand, must be fixed. The trustees 
say that it will be bankrupt in 7 years if the escalating growth is not 
stopped.
  When you think about that, if you are now 55 years old after spending 
a lifetime paying Medicare taxes, there is no assurance that there will 
be enough money to pay doctor bills when you become eligible. That is 
unacceptable, and that is why we are going to deal with that in this 
budget.
  The next tough issue is taxes. I oppose tax increases, but what about 
tax cuts? I will support tax cuts that meet these tests. First, they 
must not slow the effort to balance the budget. And second, they must 
encourage investment, help families with children, help small business, 
encourage savings that will pay for college, care for the elderly and 
the purchase of first homes.
  I will just conclude by saying that after all of this discussion, I 
think we need to realize that what we are talking about is the money of 
the American citizen. Again, not the Government's money. It is time 
that we start leaving more of the American citizen's money with the 
citizen and not the Government.
  This 104th Congress, I think, will go down in history as that session 
of Congress that finally stopped the financial decline which would lead 
to the ruin of this country and will return it to a financial stability 
that we will look back to with a great deal of pride some day.
  Yes, we have some real tough votes that are facing us. But what 
Idahoans tell me is that we absolutely must balance the Nation's budget 
and we must do it by making it an evenhanded approach so that we can 
look and see that our neighbors also are taking part in the sacrifice. 
As long as all of us are sharing in this, this is absolutely the right 
thing to do for this Nation.
  Mr. President, I want to commend Senator Pete Domenici and all the 
members of the Budget Committee that has brought us this budget 
resolution which is going to put us on that course so that we will have 
financial stability, so that the greatest nation in the world can look 
with pride to know that its future will be bright, that we will avoid 
that financial collapse we have been headed toward and, again, that all 
Members of this 104th Congress will know that some day we will be 
judged as that Congress that did the right thing by action and not 
rhetoric.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. NUNN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

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