[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 86 (Tuesday, May 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7240-S7242]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, I want to pick up where the Senator 
from Iowa left off. I think he made some very good points with respect 
to where the President's budget is. I noted also the same Washington 
Post article today. It suggests ``President to Counter Hill Budgets. 
Plan Would End Deficits in 10 Years.''
  This was not released by the White House. This was released from a 
private interview up in New Hampshire that was leaked out somewhere, 
that the President is coming up with this secret plan to balance the 
budget in 10 years.
  It struck me. It tickled my memory, that I heard this about this 10-
year plan before. It was from my first year in the Congress. I 
remember, as a member of the Budget Committee, I was a freshman member 
of the Budget Committee and then chairman of the Budget Committee, Leon 
Panetta, now over at the White House, came up with a 10- 
[[Page S7241]] year balanced budget. They worked on it most of the fist 
year that I was there and I think released it in about October of the 
year. It was after the debate. This was for the next fiscal year.
  It was interesting. I do not know whether the budget the President is 
considering is going to look like the budget the Congressman--then 
Chairman of the Budget Committee--Panetta offered. But at the time, to 
get to a balanced budget--this was in October of 1991, I refer to the 
Congressional Quarterly article--at the time Chairman Panetta said that 
it would take $1.3 billion in cuts or tax increases to get to a 
balanced budget in 10 years. What we are doing here in the Senate today 
with Senator Domenici's budget, the Republican budget, is roughly a 
trillion dollars, not quite a trillion dollars in spending reductions 
to get to a balanced budget. Then we have obviously interest savings 
which get us the rest.
  I had the Budget Committee staff run the numbers. If the President is 
proposing to get to a balanced budget over 10 years, not 7 years, he 
will not be able to do so by cutting the trillion dollars over 10 
years. That is the fallacy. You cannot just cut $1 trillion over 10 
years, and balance the budget because you have to get on sort of a 
longer curve. Your spending cuts do not occur early enough. You build 
up more debt. It is a lot more costly to balance it over a longer 
period of time. The Budget Committee told us that it would require $1.6 
trillion in spending cuts or tax increases to balance the budget in 10 
years, $1.6 trillion.
  The $1.3 trillion in the Panetta proposal of 1991 included deeper 
cuts in defense, entitlement spending reductions--I remind people 
entitlements are things like Medicare, Medicaid, welfare spending, 
things that are now being lambasted by the other side of the aisle--a 
broad cut back in the size and cost of government, and $250 billion to 
$400 billion in new taxes; $400 billion in new taxes.
  Is this a harbinger of things to come? Have we fished out of the 
files from the old Budget Committee in 1991 the 10-year budget proposal 
for the Clinton administration to balance the budget with a third of 
the money coming from new taxes? But this is just all speculation 
because we have not seen the President's budget.
  So I have the unpleasant task of returning to the floor to add to the 
list of numbers on my chart of days with no proposal to balance the 
budget from President Clinton. Since I had objections from the other 
side of the aisle about using staff to actually put my numbers up, I 
will do the chore myself, and put ``day 6,'' potentially a significant 
date.
  We might have learned about the secret budget, the existence of this 
document. We may have learned just from some of the detective work I 
have done that there may be a plan out there that existed a few years 
ago that may be resurrected because under the democratic rule in the 
House of Representatives this balanced budget that the Budget Committee 
chairman put together never saw the light of day, never was voted on, 
never was debated in committee, never moved past the draft stage.
  Maybe we will get it past the draft stage this time. Maybe the former 
chairman of the Budget Committee will be able to resurrect this 
handiwork that he did some 4 years ago and bring it on the scene as the 
new budget for the President.
  I will tell you that it would be a long time coming, not just the 6 
days, but to provide some leadership out of the White
 House on this very important issue to this country.

  I remember during the Republican administrations the then-chairman of 
the Budget Committee, Chairman Leon Panetta, coming to the floor time 
after time after time making statements about how it was the 
responsibility of the President to be relevant to the situation, to not 
put up these budgets that were dead, that had no chance, but to be bold 
and to move forward.
  I quote from March 13, 1986. This is Leon Panetta speaking:

       We begin a game of ``budget chicken'' in which we wait for 
     the other side to make the tough choices that have to be made 
     to try to get our budget in line. It is a lousy way to do 
     business; we all understand that. It is what gave birth to 
     the Gramm-Rudman approach, and it is what creates the 
     frustration that we now deal with here.
       The hope is that the President would exercise leadership in 
     presenting a budget to the Congress that is realistic and 
     that is serious. But instead of pulling together, he pulls 
     apart. Instead of providing leadership, he plays games. The 
     danger is that we too fall into the same trap. This budget is 
     wrong; we know it is wrong, and it will fail for several 
     reasons.

  Just as the President's budget came to the floor of the Senate. It 
was wrong, and it failed completely, and did not get one vote.
  I say that the former Congressman from California, Leon Panetta, made 
a good point about that back on May 1, 1990, talking about a Bush 
budget. He said:

       The fact is that the test of a budget is not what it says 
     it does nor even its author. It is whether or not you get a 
     majority of votes on the floor of the House and in the 
     Congress. That is the ultimate test of the success or failure 
     of any budget.

  The fact is that the test of a budget is not what it says or does or 
even its author. It is whether or not you get a majority of votes on 
the floor of the House and in the Congress. That is the ultimate test 
of the success or failure of any budget.
  That speaks volumes about the President's budget that he sent up 
here; speaks volumes about how serious the President was when he 
presented his budget to the U.S. Congress and in the U.S. Senate of 
which there are 54 Republicans and 46 Democrats. He got no votes.
  Then chairman Panetta went on to say:

       According to that test, the President's budget is a 
     failure. The failure to offer the budget by the President 
     also makes clear how tough it is to develop a budget that 
     balances the priorities, that recognizes that we have to 
     provide new directions for this country and that tries to 
     achieve a majority vote on the floor of the House.

  How things can come back to haunt you. We had a chairman of the 
Budget Committee who was pleading for the President of the United 
States to provide leadership, to stand firm, and move our country 
forward in a bold, new way. Now that person sits as the right hand man 
of the White House, and from all the press reports is advising the 
President to do just the opposite. I guess it all depends on where you 
sit.
  I must read one more thing that Leon Panetta said during his time in 
Congress because my staff gave it to me. I actually thought it was 
something that I had just said the other day because I was talking 
about the fact that my father is an immigrant to this country and how 
important it was for us to leave the next generation better off than 
the generation that we now live in.
  Back on May 4, 1989, Congressional Record, Leon Panetta said:

       We have presented over the last 8 years a pleasant message 
     that somehow everyone can have a free lunch in this country. 
     That is not the case. That is not the message that my parents 
     heard when they came to this country as immigrants with 
     little education, little money, but a great deal of hope. 
     They came for the opportunity that this country offered and 
     the willingness to make a sacrifice for their children so 
     their children could enjoy a better life. We now face a 
     situation where our children may not enjoy a better standard 
     of living than we had. That, I think, is the worst testament 
     in terms of the future that we face in this Nation.

  He is right. That is the biggest question that faces us. What are we 
going do leave to the next generation? He was right in 1989. He was 
right in 1986. He was right in 1990, and hopefully he will convince the 
President to be right in 1995 to join the debate, to lead, to be 
relevant, to show this country, to show this Congress what direction he 
believes we should take to balance this budget.
  I hope this is the last day; I hope that day 6 was lucky, that this 
little inkling that we got about this secret budget might come out 
somewhere, that there is a plan, and that we will be able to know this 
plan. I do not want to be up here for the next 129 days between now and 
the end of the fiscal year talking about why the President has not come 
to the party and express his vision for the future of this country.
  I am confident tomorrow we will pass the balanced budget resolution. 
I hope it is bipartisan because I know there are many on the other side 
of the aisle who also would like to see this budget brought to balance.
  I wish to commend the Senator from New Mexico for his fine work on 
this budget. I wish to commend the Presiding Officer for the tremendous 
job she [[Page S7242]] has done every day of this debate in rallying 
the forces to come here to the floor to talk about the positive aspects 
and how meaningful it is to get to a balanced budget for this country 
and not just the next generation. A lot of the talk is just for the 
next generation. When we talk about Medicare, it is not the next 
generation. It is this generation of Medicare recipients. When we talk 
about economic growth, it is this generation that is going to benefit 
from lower interest rates and higher growth rates.
  This balanced budget is for everyone. As the Senator from New Mexico 
said in answering the question Senator Lautenberg posed: Whose side are 
you on? We are on America's side. We are on the side of all Americans. 
That is the beauty of a balanced budget. It is good for everyone. It is 
not about class warfare. It is not about picking winners and losers. It 
is about giving everyone opportunity.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
  (Mr. SANTORUM assumed the chair)

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