[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 94 (Friday, June 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8058-S8061]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LACK OF PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP
Mr. SANTORUM. I rise to continue my vigil in pointing out the lack of
leadership of the President in coming forward and offering a balanced
budget resolution. I have been in the Chamber noting the days that have
passed since the Republicans in the Senate brought to the floor a
balanced budget resolution which lay out a chart, a plan in specific
detail, of how we would achieve a balanced budget over the next 7
years. Since that time, the President has played coyly with this issue
and unfortunately has not come to the table. In fact, he has done a
whole lot of things that lead many of us to believe we are not so sure
he is ever going to come to the table.
Mr. KERREY. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. SANTORUM. I would be happy to yield for a question.
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I have not been in the Chamber before when
the Senator brought this chart down. I am 51 years old, 51 years old. I
spent 3 years in the world's largest, most powerful Navy. And I was
taught, when I was in the Navy, the Commander in Chief, the President
of the United States, deserved respect, and I never called the
President of the United States by his first name in public, let alone
on the floor of the Senate.
I just ask my colleague, do you feel this is respectful? You can
disagree with the President, say you have something you do not like
about what he is doing, but, for God sakes, ``Where is Bill?'' I ask my
colleague----
Mr. SANTORUM. If I can reclaim my time, I would suggest to the
Senator from Nebraska that the reason this chart was put forward really
is as a response to some of the comments made by the Senator from
Massachusetts about the previous President. You remember the famous
statement repeated over and over and over again in the 1992 election,
``Where is George?'' How many times?
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. SANTORUM. Excuse me. How many times did we hear that refrain
throughout the course of the election? So I would just----
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a followup
question on that?
Mr. SANTORUM. I would be happy to yield.
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, is the Senator from Pennsylvania saying
essentially then if somebody else does something that he finds
objectionable, because the other person has done it, therefore it
establishes a precedent and he does not mind doing it as well? Is the
Senator from Pennsylvania saying he is following the example of the
Senator from Massachusetts, that whenever the Senator from
Massachusetts does something, even though he may object to it, he is
going to cite it as a precedent? The question that I asked was, does he
respect the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States,
enough to call him by a name that is worthy of that respect, regardless
of whether he disagrees? If you want to bring up these opinions, bring
up these policies, bring up whatever you want to the floor----
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I would like to reclaim the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania has the time.
Mr. SANTORUM. I think you will find the dialog that has occurred in
charting the number of days that the President has refused to offer a
budget has been very respectful of the President in referring to him as
the President.
The point of the chart is apparent.
I find it ironic that when this was going on by the Senator from
Massachusetts, I do not remember anybody coming to the well, much less
the Senator from Nebraska coming to the well, defending President Bush
from those similar attacks. So I think it----
Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a moment?
Mr. SANTORUM. Depends on whose ox is being gored as to who is
offended by the remarks. I can appreciate the constructive dialog, but
I think it is a suitable poster and will continue with it.
Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator would yield for a moment.
Mr. SANTORUM. I would be happy to yield for a question.
Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate it very much. The Senator refers to the
Senator from Massachusetts. My recollection of the dialog ``Where's
George?'' was that it occurred at a political convention. Is the
Senator from Pennsylvania equating the floor of the Senate with a
political convention?
Mr. SANTORUM. I am not equating the floor of the Senate with a
political convention, no.
Mr. PRESSLER. If my friend will yield.
Mr. SANTORUM. I would be happy to yield to the Senator from South
Dakota.
Mr. PRESSLER. I think in American society we refer respectfully to
our President. I have heard various Presidents referred to by their
first name on the Senate floor. I do not want to start digging it out.
We have a friendly society. We refer to our President by first name or
last name. We have good, healthy debate. I think that this whole
objection here is nonsense. And I urge----
Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
Mr. PRESSLER. I urge the Senator from Pennsylvania to proceed.
Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania has the time.
Mr. KERREY. Parliamentary point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his point.
Mr. KERREY. I just heard my comment referred to as nonsense. Is that
correct?
[[Page S8059]]
Mr. PRESSLER. I did not refer to the Senator's comment as nonsense. I
just said this whole debate I think----
Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I believe you have to look long and hard
to find a Member who comes here and refers to the President by his
first name, whether it is President Clinton, President Bush, or
President Reagan. You have to look long and hard to find it. I
appreciate the Senator from Pennsylvania thinks it is humorous. I do
not.
Mr. DORGAN. Parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time belongs to the Senator from
Pennsylvania.
Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. He has done an effective job in
moving this debate along to a vote at 10:30, and I appreciate the
opportunity to have this discourse.
I think it may indicate that there is a sensitivity of the members of
the President's party about the President's lack of leadership. And I
understand that sensitivity. I understand that there may be justifiably
some embarrassment about the lack of leadership by this President and
jumping into his defense on something other than the substance of what
we are discussing here.
We are not discussing substance in this little interplay. We sort of
got off the track. Let us talk about the substance. The substance is
that I have to put--I did not get a chance to get to the floor
yesterday, but I have to put now ``22''--22 days with no proposal to
balance the budget from the President.
I will show you the chart I had the other day that was in the
Washington Times. And again I understand the embarrassment of the other
side on this issue. I understand they are a little sensitive about this
because I am sure it is something I would not be proud of if it was my
President on the Republican side.
But here is what Michael McCurry in a dialog with the reporter from
the Washington Times said about the balanced budget amendment and the
President on Larry King earlier this week suggesting that he may have a
balanced budget resolution. The question was:
Where does President Clinton stand on writing his own
budget now?
The answer from the press secretary:
As he indicated last night in his television interview,
he's prepared to contribute his ideas to the budget at the
appropriate time.
Washington Times question:
What does that mean?
Michael McCurry, White House Press Secretary:
It means we're ducking the question for now.
``We're ducking the question for now.'' The President of the United
States, who has the responsibility to lead this Nation, is ducking the
question for now.
I understand the embarrassment. I understand the sensitivity that
many Democrats in this Chamber have about a President who is ducking
the question, who is ducking the issue, who is refusing to lead, who is
taking a back seat to all domestic policy in this country as we work
here in the Congress to get it done and work, as we see in this case,
on a bipartisan basis to get it done, but again without the leadership
of the White House. Here we are debating probably one of the most
important pieces of legislation that we are going to get a chance to
debate that is going to affect our economy for a long, long time. We
have very important fiscal matters to be concerned with here in getting
our budget in order and tax policy and other Government program
policies like welfare. But when it comes to regulating the private
sector, this bill is probably as important as ever and the President
has not been offering his own telecommunications bill, not putting
forward leadership on that area, basically standing back and sniping,
saying, well, I do not like this or I do not like that.
But where is the leadership? Where is the leadership on welfare
reform as he goes around the country talking about how the Republican
plan is mean spirited and terrible, and yet he has offered no plan this
year. The plan he offered last year was cast aside by his own Congress,
the Democratic Congress, as a joke, as irrelevant, as a nonstarter, as
not even meeting the straight-faced test of incremental reform.
And so we have a President on that major issue domestically, who has
just taken a walk and now this week he trots out the veto pen, on what?
On reducing the deficit. On reducing the deficit, on a bill that was
bipartisan, that was signed. This bill was signed on by the ranking
member of the Appropriations Committee on the Democratic side as well
as on the Republican side and passed with over 60 votes in the Senate,
and he vetoed it.
I have to quote the Senator from Oregon, Senator Hatfield, who came
to the floor during the debate and said in his tenure on the
Appropriations Committee, which spans six Presidents--six Presidents--
he has never been in a conference committee where the President of the
United States did not send a representative to negotiate the conference
report. Every President has always sent a member of his staff to sit in
the conference committee when they are drafting the report, to
negotiate the final deal so we could settle it. The President did not
send anybody. He said that is the first time in his history on the
Appropriations Committee.
Now, there is a complete abdication of leadership. And so after an
honest bipartisan effort was put together in the conference report,
voila, the President decides it is not good enough for him even though
he had no input into the process. I think it just goes to show you that
what we have is a President who has decided to start running for the
1996 election and forget about serving in the office of the President.
The whole concept now is just simply to run for office, to run against
the Congress, not to offer anything, because if you offer anything,
then you can be held down to specifics and people can criticize you. If
you just criticize the other side, well, then all you do is pander to
the different groups that you have to get to get elected.
And that is what is going on here. There is no substance coming out
of that White House whether it is telecommunications, whether it is
welfare, whether it is rescissions, whether it is balancing the budget.
It is a continuation of, as the majority leader so eloquently said, the
a.w.o.l. strategy of the President, absence without leadership. I think
we should demand better.
And so I have set myself on this mission of coming here. I try to get
here every day, but sometimes because of the floor schedule and the
business we have at hand, I have not had a chance to do it every day.
But I get here just about every day and put up the chart and count. I
have been informed by my staff that we have, I think it was, 135 days
between the time----
Mr. DORGAN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President. Is the morning
business time requested 5 minutes?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). There was no limit placed on the
morning business.
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, so I will probably have to have another
little doohickey over here so we can put the ``1'' here, because it
will be 135 days where the President is not going to offer a bill.
Again, he made comments on the Larry King show earlier this week that
he was going to come up with a plan. He had talked about a plan that
was going to balance the budget. This was, I think, day 6. He talked
about a plan that was going to balance the budget over 10 years. That
was his mission; that he was going to come up with that.
I did a little homework and found out that the last plan that was
around here to balance the budget in 10 years that was offered never
actually came to the floor of the House, but it was put together. It
was by the chairman of the Budget Committee at the time. The chairman
of the Budget Committee at that time was Leon Panetta, now Chief of
Staff at the White House. But at the time of putting this budget
together in 1991, he was chairman of the Budget Committee. This was
after the Bush budget battle of 1990, and he thought it would be
responsible.
I give him credit for this, because I was on the Budget Committee at
the time and worked very closely with then Chairman Panetta. I had the
utmost respect for him and his ardor in putting forward plans to put
this country back on sound fiscal footing. I was not always in
agreement with how he did it, but I know then Chairman Panetta really
had a strong motivation to deal with these problems, face up and
[[Page S8060]] to do it in a way that was honest, no gimmicks. This was
a legitimate attempt by then Chairman Panetta to deal with these
issues.
I found it ironic that when he actually put the document together--it
was in late 1991--he not only did not even bring it up in the Budget
Committee, but he was roundly criticized by those on his side of the
aisle, so he pulled it down.
I must tell you, it was a budget to balance the budget over 10 years.
There were some interesting points in it. What you find is that, very
much like the Republican budget that was put forward and passed by the
Senate and the House, it called for reductions in growth in entitlement
spending. It called for reductions in growth in Medicare. It called for
reductions in growth in Medicaid. It called for reductions in growth in
Federal retirement programs. If you go on down the list on what the
Republicans are now being roundly criticized for, the Panetta budget in
1991 was very similar in respect, maybe not to degree, but certainly
similar in the programs that it went after, the recognition of where
the problem was, and focused on entitlements as the biggest area for
resolution of that problem.
The other interesting thing is that only two-thirds of the deficit
reduction was achieved as a result of spending reductions. Two-thirds
were achieved through spending reductions. The other one-third of
deficit reduction was achieved through a tax increase. A little over
$400 billion in new taxes, not specified, but new taxes that were going
to be placed on the American public.
Maybe it goes back to the reason why the President has been so shy
about offering this or bringing to light this 10-year budget. I am of
the opinion that maybe what the Chief of Staff of the White House did
was rummage through some of his old budget files when he was Budget
chairman or have someone dig up his 1991 proposed budget and offered
that to the President: ``See, Mr. President, we can do it.''
I know again how concerned the Chief of Staff is about the budget
deficit and how honest he was in dealing with that. I believe he has
been a voice in the White House saying, ``Let's be responsible. Let's
go out and show how we are going to do it, and let's bite the bullet
like the Republicans have in the Congress, and lead this country into
the future. Mr. President, here was my plan to get there. You should
look at it.''
So what the President probably did was read it and probably voiced he
has a plan he is looking at, a 10-year plan, to balance the budget. But
it, unfortunately, contains another big tax increase. This tax increase
would actually pale by comparison to what the President and the last
Congress passed in 1993. This was, as I said before, close to $\1/2\
trillion dollars in new taxes on the American public to solve this
problem.
I think if you looked at the debate during consideration of the
budget resolution, there certainly was not a fervor to go out and raise
taxes. I know there were a couple of Members who voiced that concern,
but frankly, that sentiment was roundly dismissed by both sides of the
aisle as something that was not only not in the public's interest but
certainly not in the interest of the economy.
If we look now at what is going on with the economy and the effect of
the 1993 tax increase on the economy and the fact that we had the
largest ever payment of taxes in April, the largest amount of money
ever written to the Internal Revenue Service at tax time was this last
April where they sent an enormous amount of money--I think the number
is around $20 billion in tax payments paid over what the previous
record was--some economists are suggesting that is one of the reasons
we may be seeing the slowdown now, because that tax time and that tax
increase drew so much money out of the economy that it had the
dampening effect of reducing the rate of growth and possibly even
spinning us into a recession.
So I think everyone realizes that tax increases are not the way to
deal with the budget deficit. I think we saw from the debate just a few
weeks ago--I do not remember an amendment that called for a tax
increase--that in fact suggested we should solve the problem by
instituting new taxes.
Mr. EXON. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. SANTORUM. I will be happy to yield for a question.
Mr. EXON. My question of the Senator from Pennsylvania is simply that
we have, as I understand it, very important business to transact. Can
the Senator advise me as to how long he intends to hold the floor on
the matter that we have heard from him on several occasions?
Mr. SANTORUM. I expect I will be talking for a few more minutes. I
know the leader would like to get a vote and is seeking a unanimous
consent agreement to get a vote on a----
Mr. EXON. If I might, I simply advise my colleague, as I understand
it, the Republicans have a golf game this afternoon. I am sure that is
a high-priority item. But this measure before us, which I would like to
get to, is a very important piece of legislation for America.
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I reclaim the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania has the floor.
Mr. SANTORUM. I do not know anything about that. I have some very
pressing business of my own which, hopefully, can wait. My wife is
expecting our third child, and we are hoping that will come tomorrow.
We are very anxious about that. Things are looking good. I would like
to be home tomorrow. But if Senate business calls, Senate business
calls, and I will be here if I need be.
I know what we would like to do is proceed on some of these
amendments. I have these notes passed to me saying no one wants to
agree to vote on anything; we want to stall and delay.
Mr. PRESSLER. If my friend will yield, I think what is going on,
Senator Dole is trying to get an agreement for a vote at 10:30 and has
been unable to do so. But I say respectfully to everybody, when I was a
lieutenant in the Army--a mere second lieutenant--LBJ was referred to
affectionately, at least by my superiors, as ``LBJ.''
Also on this floor I heard the term ``Reaganomics'' used a great deal
back at the point when it was thought not to be popular. I am very
respectful, as I am sure my friend is, of the President of the United
States.
Let me say, whether it is Ike, FDR, LBJ, Reaganomics, Bush-whack--I
have heard all these terms around the Senate over the years. I just
want to point that out because I am very respectful, as I am sure the
Senator from Pennsylvania is.
Military service was mentioned. When I was a second lieutenant, we
used to affectionately and supportively refer to LBJ as LBJ. Maybe we
need a new form of rules because past Presidents have been referred to
in a variety of ways on the Senate floor.
Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator.
Mr. KERREY. Will the Senator yield for an explanation? I say to my
colleague----
Mr. SANTORUM. I will not yield.
Mr. KERREY. The Senator brings an amendment to the floor and then
stands up for a discussion. It should not be a surprise the amendment
is being delayed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania has the floor.
Mr. SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. President. I will quickly wrap up my
remarks, and, hopefully, we can move to the vote soon.
In response to some of the comments, I know this amendment was made
available last night, and it is really a minor, technical amendment. I
hope that is something we can agree to down the road.
I think it is important. I understand telecommunications is
important, and if we can get agreements, we can move forward on it.
But this is also important. The role of the President in this country
over the next 18 months, and whether he is going to be a leader of this
country in moving forward on the domestic agenda, whether it is
telecommunications or balanced budget or welfare reform, or a whole
host of other areas, is important.
The Presidency--an office I respect--is important to this country. In
fact, that is the reason I am here, because I think it is important. I
think it is necessary for the President to step forward and offer
suggestions, to lead the [[Page S8061]] country. If I did not think it
was important, if I did not think the President had a role, if I did
not think the President was in fact the leader of the free world, then
I probably would not be here. He would be like any other American who
did not have to participate in the process.
Well, he was elected to participate in the process; he was elected to
lead this country; he was elected to change this country. What he has
done is elected not to participate. I think we need to point that out.
We need to continue to point that out until he elects to participate.
So I will be back and I will talk about the number of days with no
proposal to balance the budget from President Clinton.
____________________