[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 103 (Thursday, June 22, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8841-S8846]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BALANCING THE BUDGET

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise this morning to begin the 
freshman focus. The freshman class, all 11 of us of the 104th Congress, 
have taken about the role of coming to the floor on a regular basis to 
focus the Senate on issues of importance really to the next generation 
of Americans. We believe that as freshmen we have a special role to 
play in looking toward the future and seeing how we can focus the 
attention of the Senate on solving the long-term problems that face 
this country.
  Today, under the able leadership of Senator Thomas from Wyoming, who 
has been a real champion in organizing this effort and bringing the 
freshman class in the Chamber on a very regular basis, we are going to 
talk about the Clinton ``budget.'' When I say Clinton ``budget,'' I use 
the term ``budget'' in quotes because we do not really have what I 
think anyone would seriously consider a detailed budget of how the 
President is going to solve the deficit problem that faces this 
country. In fact, we have 6 pages--photocopied on both sides, that is 
12 pages total--of budget specifics as to how he is going to reduce the 
budget deficit to zero over the next 10 years.
  Now, it is interesting; if you look at what is going to be required 
to balance the budget over the next 10 years, it requires about $1.6 
trillion in spending cuts. That is according to the Congressional 
Budget Office.
  Now, you say: How do they figure that out? How does the Congressional 
Budget Office come up with the assumption that we need to cut spending 
an aggregate amount of $1.6 trillion? They make certain basic 
assumptions, economic assumptions.
  The economic assumptions that the Congressional Budget Office makes 
is a percentage growth in the economy. They say, well, we estimate over 
the next 10 years that the economy will grow on average a certain 
percentage per year. The estimates, frankly, if you look at them, are 
pretty flat. I think about 2.3 percent growth per year over the next 7 
years because they were doing a 7-year budget.
  Now the President has come up with 10. They extended it up to 10 
years. It does not take into account recessions. And most economists 
will tell you, over the next 10 years we are scheduled to have at least 
one recession, probably two recessions. Now, they may not be deep 
recessions, but they will talk about much lower rates of growth and 
maybe even some negative growth during that period of time.
  Now, what happens when we have recessions? Well, when we have 
recessions, tax revenues go down, expenditures to the Federal 
Government go up because unemployment claims go up, welfare payments go 
up, other kinds of Government supports, safety net programs, are much 
more in use.
  The Congressional Budget Office, I think, was sort of averaging out 
the high and low periods of growth above 2 or 3 percent and periods of 
growth below and saying, on average, it is roughly 2.3 percent or maybe 
a little higher, 2.4 percent in the future.
  They also make an assumption on interest rates. Why are interest 
rates important? Well, when you have nearly $5 trillion of debt that 
you have to finance, interest rates are important. The higher the 
interest rates, the higher the interest costs, the higher the [[Page S 
8842]] deficit. So interest rate projections also affect what the 
bottom line deficit will be. So they have projected out interest rates, 
again on a conservative basis, because again interest rates fluctuate. 
If you look at the last 10 years of the history of this country, the 
interest rates went from double digits to 3 to 4 percent. So you may 
see a wide variation in the next 10 years. In the next 10 years, you 
will see a wide variation. They try to work it out, act conservatively. 
You want to have realistic numbers here. And they came out with some 
interest rate projections.
  Now, they use the combination of growth projections and interest rate 
projections to determine their basic economic assumptions of what the 
deficit will be. And then they say, ``Now, to meet zero, you have to 
cut so much money out of Government programs or raise taxes to get to 
zero.''
  How does the President accomplish his 10-year balanced budget? Well, 
he does not do it by looking at what the Congressional Budget Office 
has done and then making the spending cuts or tax increases necessary 
to get to a balanced budget. In fact, in his plan he has, instead of 
$1.6 trillion over 10 years which is needed to balance the budget 
according to the Congressional Budget Office, he has $1 trillion in 
cuts, substantially less than what is necessary. Yet he gets the 
balance.
  You say, How does he do that? How does he cut less money than is 
required to get the balance and still get there? Here is how he does 
it. He does it by changing the assumptions. He assumes a higher rate of 
growth in the economy. He assumes lower interest rates. Sort of wishes 
it away. Just decides, ``Well, we know we will have higher growth and 
lower interest rates, and as a result we will have less financing 
costs. Because interest rates are lower, we will have higher rates of 
growth, which means more tax revenues and less Government expenditures. 
So we will reduce the debt through economic assumptions.''
  Well, that is nice. It is an easy way to do it. I guess if he wanted 
to, he could go back and just estimate even higher growth rates and 
lower interest rates and not have to do anything. But that is not real.
  What is the actual effect on the numbers? It is interesting. Look at 
Medicare. Under the President's budget, if you look at the President's 
Medicare number, not what he says he is going to have to reduce 
spending by in Medicare, but the actual amount of money he spends on 
Medicare every year over the next 10 years, in the first 3 years the 
President spends less on Medicare than we do, but it is not as big a 
cut as we have. Now, you say, ``Wait a minute. How can that be? If he 
spends less on Medicare next year than we do under the Republican 
budget, less on Medicare in year two than we do on Medicare and less on 
Medicare in year three, how can his cuts be less?''
  Well, he assumes a lower rate of growth in Medicare and then cuts 
from that. So what he has done is--we have growth of 10 percent per 
year programmed in because that is what Medicare is doing. It is 
growing at about 10 percent a year. We have that programmed in for the 
next 10 years. What the President has done is he assumes, first, that 
Medicare growth is not going to continue at 10 percent, it will only 
continue at 7 percent and then cuts from that. So, as a result, the cut 
is not as much, but the number is actually lower than the number that 
we are using. So he sort of cuts in part by assuming it away and cuts 
the other part by actually doing it.
  So, to suggest that the President is going to cut Medicare less than 
we are or change Medicare less than we are is just ridiculous. His 
numbers actually are lower than our numbers.
  So, I would just suggest, if you look at the specifics of what the 
President has done, he has assumed away this budget deficit. He has 
suggested that we can get rid of the budget deficit by having rosy 
economic projections, rosy projections on growth and interest rates and 
not do the hard work of actually having to make decisions on how we are 
going to pare back the size of Government.
  As a result of that, as a result of his unwillingness to face the 
music, to use the Congressional Budget Office projections, which he 
said in the State of the Union, just down at the other end of this 
hallway, right down here. Walk out the middle door here and just keep 
walking and you will come to the House of Representatives. And you walk 
through that door and keep walking, you will walk right into the podium 
of the House of Representatives. Right there, right at the other end of 
the hall, the President got up and said, ``We will use the 
Congressional Budget Office scoring because they have been the best at 
doing it. We all have to use the same numbers.'' He said that.
  Now, I know it is going to come as a shock to many that he has not 
lived up to his promise, but he did not. He is not using their numbers 
anymore. Why? Well, the same reason every President has not used their 
numbers. Because their numbers are tougher. It is harder to balance the 
budget when you use real numbers. It is easier when you get your 
friends at the Department of the Treasury to sort of wish this stuff 
away. Well, unfortunately we cannot wish it away.
  Mr. THOMAS. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. SANTORUM. If the Senator will suspend for 1 second. I want to 
make sure that we end with day 34 of the President's unwillingness to 
come to the American people with a serious budget proposal to balance 
the budget. We are now in day 34, as I said before. We only have 101 
days to go before the next fiscal year. As I said before, I will 
probably put a little thing over here for the ``1.'' Hopefully I will 
not have to. Hopefully I will not have to come back. But until the 
President gets serious about this and is honest with the American 
public about how they are going to balance the budget, I am going to be 
back.
  I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. THOMAS. If the Senator would yield. Let me first say how much I 
appreciate and congratulate the Senator on his continuing efforts to 
get some real understanding. I think some time ago the freshman class, 
those elected to the body in November, came here more dedicated to more 
serious work to balance the budget than about any other issue. One of 
the most difficult things for all of us, particularly people listening 
and voters, is what are the real facts? I mean, we start out and 
everybody wants to balance the budget. ``Well, we do not need an 
amendment,'' they say. ``We will do it.'' Then we come down to do it. 
But we cannot do it on the backs of these. You cannot do it here.
  I guess my question is: It is sort of interesting that most of the 
President's budget is backloaded, and it happens after the year 2000. 
Now, that is 6 years from now. That is the rest of this Presidential 
term and one other term. Is there any significance to the fact that 
most of the pain comes after the year 2000?
  Mr. SANTORUM. As a matter of fact, if you look at the percentage of 
the cuts the President makes in discretionary and mandatory programs, 
all the cuts he has to make, 20 percent of them--we have 10 years in 
the President's budget. You would think that the responsible thing to 
do would be to cut the budget--if you are going to do 100 percent of 
his cuts, if you take all the cuts he is going to make, you do it 
equally over the period of years, a straight line, 10 percent a year; 
10 years, 100 percent of the cuts.
  What the President does is cut very little the first year, cuts 
virtually nothing. In fact, of all the cuts he suggests, only 2 percent 
occur in the first year. If you look at the second year, only 3 percent 
occur in the second year. After the first 2 years, when you should have 
cut 20 percent to get on your line of 100 percent, he has cut 5 
percent. You go to the third year, he cuts 5 percent. So over the first 
3 years he has cut 10 percent of the amount needed to cut over the 10 
years.
  Where are the big cuts? Where is the big lifting, the heavy burden 
the last 2 years, the last 3 years? Twenty percent in the last year; 18 
percent the year before that; 15 percent the year before that.
  I mean, well over--well, about 50 percent of the cuts occur in the 
last 3 years. So he back-end loads this thing. He does not do heavy 
lifting early on. It is left to the next generation, not surprisingly, 
and next Presidents to deal with this.
  Again, that is another form of wishing it away. I am sure every 
President has presented budgets at one point in [[Page S 8843]] time 
that suggest they will balance the budget, but they never suggest we do 
it starting now, they always suggest we do it down the road sometime. 
That is not the responsible way to do it.
  Mr. ASHCROFT assumed the Chair.
  Mr. THOMAS. It is interesting that Mark Phillips from the Concord 
Coalition says:

       Funny thing about these elusive outyears, they never seem 
     to arrive.

  Is it not also true that the tax reductions, the tax cuts the 
President has go into effect much earlier than do the spending cuts?
  Mr. SANTORUM. That is always the way it is with taxes. For example, 
you can look at the Clinton budget in 1993. We had tax increases and 
spending cuts. Tax increases went into effect right away. We felt all 
those tax increases immediately. What we have not felt yet from the 
first budget in 1993 of the President is the spending cuts. They do not 
come around. They have not occurred. So now we are back and having to 
make the tough decisions on actually reducing spending.
  Again, the Senator is right with the tax cuts. The President wants to 
get the tax cuts in now because it is election time; you want to help 
people out, give back a little of their taxes. Now he wants to cut them 
right before the election. It is clear, the spending cuts do not come.
  Mr. THOMAS. One question. This is sort of unclear. We had the 
President, of course, and his advisers saying it was not prudent to set 
a time. That is when we had 7 years and he had no budget. Now he has a 
time and Mrs. Tyson says that is exactly what we should do, even though 
she decried it before.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Decried it, she was outraged that someone would do 
this. This was going to be the fatal blow to our economy. She went at 
great length to say that setting a time certain to bring the budget 
into balance would be disastrous for the economy, and now that the 
President has been convinced to do it, it is now a good idea.
  It amazes me, it absolutely amazes me how they just--as 
Representative Obey from Wisconsin said about the President of his 
party--President Clinton's decision is like the weather, if you do not 
like it, wait and it will change. I think that is pretty much the way 
his advisers see it, that he has no responsibility to tell the country 
what they believe; their responsibility is to tell the President a line 
on what they believe.
  Mr. THOMAS. The Senator is right. Mrs. Tyson, on February 6, said 
that their deficit path is a sound deficit path, both for the economy 
in the near term and forcasting the economy, something she said they 
were dealing with, that they have it under control.
  This was in February, and then this body rejected that budget 99 to 
zip. She said more recently that we have to balance the budget, we want 
to get a balanced budget and to do it in a time certain that makes some 
sense.
  My question is, though, under the best analysis--it is confusing--
will this 10-year budget that has been sent down by the President 
balance in 10 years?
  Mr. SANTORUM. This is hard. It is very hard for Members of the Senate 
and I know the general public to look and say, How does this all work, 
because you are looking 10 years down the road, in the case of the 
Republican budget 7 years down the road.
  How do they know what they are going to do is actually going to 
accomplish a balanced budget? Like anybody else who has to deal with 
projections in the future, whether you are a businessman making 
projections or a family trying to save for a college education, 
whatever the case may be, if you are looking into the future and trying 
to plan things, everyone will tell you, every financial adviser, 
everybody else will say,

       Be conservative in your projection; don't assume that 
     things are going to be great, and everything. Let's try to 
     take a realistic, not worst case--because you don't want to 
     always assume worst case--but take a realistic 
     underestimation of what you think will happen and plan on 
     that. That is sort of a good conservative way to look at it. 
     Don't give it up, don't give the store all away by wishing 
     rosy projections.

  That is what the Congressional Budget Office has done. What the 
President has done has really not been the prudent thing to do. What he 
has done is just assume everything is going to be great, that we will 
not have a recession.
  Think about this, that we will not have a recession in the next 10 
years; that we will not have high interest rates over the next 10 
years, that everything is going to continue to grow at a very steady 
and healthy pace over 10 years. Never has that occurred in a post-World 
War II economy. Never has that occurred. But yet the President 
estimates that to be able to achieve his goals.
  So as a result, I think most economists who have looked at this have 
said this is unrealistic, this is not going to happen and what the 
President has done is simply not belly up to the bar and tell us how he 
is going to really do this. As a result, we are going to see deficits. 
If we go the Clinton route, we are going to see deficits well into 
triple figures, well into the billions.
  Mr. THOMAS. I thank the Senator. I have to say, again, I cannot think 
of anything more important to this country and more important to all of 
us than having a legitimate debate about facts with regard to balancing 
the budget, and the idea that somehow we can politically balance the 
budget and the pain comes in 10 years and we doctor the figures so that 
it looks good simply does not deal with the problem that is a real 
national problem to you and to me and to our kids and our grandkids.
  So I appreciate very much the efforts that the Senator has made to 
seek to get these facts out.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I say to the Senator that the view he just expressed is 
a view that is shared by folks across the political spectrum. The 
Washington Post yesterday, or the day before, I do not remember which, 
editorialized--one of the great staunch defenders of this President--
editorialized against the President and his budget and his assumptions 
and how he went about coming to his balanced budget and said that the 
President hurt himself and his credibility, which is difficult to do, 
but it hurt his credibility by proposing a budget that simply is a 
smoke-and-mirrors, wishing-the-problem-away kind of budget.
  So I think objective sources have looked at what the President has 
done and rejected it out of hand as a political document, going up on 
national television, with a 5-minute address trying to, again, through 
speeches, convince the American public he is on their side. But when 
you see the actions, the actions do not match the words. Whether it was 
on his health care speeches or whether it is on his welfare reform 
speeches or whether it is on the budget deficit, the President will 
give a great speech. He will give a great speech. He always does. He is 
a good communicator, and he will get up and give a great speech about 
what he believes in. But do not listen to the speech, watch what he 
does. Look at the documents. Look at the plans. Look at what he 
actually is proposing. Ignore the speech and watch the actions, and you 
will find that the speech does not match the actions and the actions 
come well short of what is needed to solve these problems.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield on that point for a moment?
  Mr. SANTORUM. Yes, I yield.
  Mr. INHOFE. I had an experience I will share with the Senator. As I 
do every Thursday morning, I did a talk radio show back in my State of 
Oklahoma. I am sensing something that I did not sense in the last few 
years and that is an awareness--and I think maybe this came with the 
election of November 1994--the people are finally aware of what is 
really going on in this country.
  They brought this up and I went back and looked it up. They said they 
have added up the figures--maybe you already talked about this--but in 
this revised budget he sent down, the figures come up, according to 
CBO, to over $1 trillion added to our debt.
  Keep in mind, this is from a talk radio show, listeners calling in 
from Oklahoma today stating that they are actually aware of how much 
this is being added to the debt. For so many years, the average person 
in America did not really stop and think about the difference between 
deficit and debt. So they listened to the President come in and talk 
about, as President Clinton did during his campaign, that he had a 
program that was going to eliminate the deficit and had great deficit 
reductions. [[Page S 8844]] 
  I have often recommended to people to read an article that was in 
December's Reader's Digest called ``Budget Baloney'' where they 
describe how politicians try to deceive the people back home as Clinton 
is trying to do today
 by making them think that they have a program that is going to 
eliminate or cut the debt in some way. They describe it this way: 
Suppose you want a $10,000 car but only have $5,000; you tell everybody 
you really want a $15,000, so you settle for a $10,000 car, so you have 
cut the deficit by $5,000. That is essentially what he is trying to do.

  The American people are awake now and the people know the difference. 
They are better informed. And if any message came from the election of 
November 8, it is that we are tired of the smoke and mirrors, as the 
Senator from Pennsylvania describes it so accurately, and we want 
action for a change.
  I remember in 1993, in his budget message, the President stood in the 
House Chamber and said that the CBO is the most reliable operation 
here--not OMB, not any of the rest, but CBO. Yet, CBO says that his 
deficits are going to average, over the next 10 years, about $200 
billion. So we are talking about a $2 trillion increase in our national 
debt. The people are not going to tolerate that.
  Mr. THOMAS. If the Senator will yield, it seems to me there are a 
couple of reasons why we are becoming more aware--tangible reasons. We 
have had a debt and deficit for a long time and we all kind of brushed 
it off and put it on the credit card. But now we are going to have to 
raise the debt limit $5 trillion this year and probably another one 
before this administration is out.
  Second, interest payments become probably the largest single line 
item in the budget next year--probably more than defense. So that 
becomes real. It takes money out of people's pockets and from other 
things. Finally, there is the example, it seems to me, of Medicare. It 
is not a question of whether you do something; it is a question of 
whether you have reform, or you will be into reserves in 2 years and 
broke in 7 years. So we have played with this as an abstract thing over 
the years, I believe, and now all of us are beginning to believe it is 
not abstract. It is very real and it is there. I just think it is so 
important that we deal with facts. There is some pain involved. But to 
try and act as if there is none, that just will not handle the problem.
  Mr. INHOFE. I agree with the Senator. But when you say there is pain 
involved, look at the pain that is associated with continuing on the 
road we are on right now. The Senator from Pennsylvania just had a 
young child, and I congratulate him. I hope people realize this young 
man just had a brand-new baby boy. During that baby boy's lifetime, if 
we do not change the pattern that we are on right now, according to all 
of those who are prognosticators of the future, he will have to pay 82 
percent of his lifetime income just to support Government.
  I remember the other day during our national prayer breakfast we had 
somebody from one of the Communist countries prior to the time they got 
their freedom. He bragged and said they only have to give the 
Government--he said, ``We get to keep 20 percent.'' I said, ``What do 
you mean?'' He said, ``Every month or so, we have to give the 
Government 80 percent of everything we make.'' And he is celebrating 
that. I thought about that. Senator Santorum's newborn baby is going to 
have to pay 2 percent more than that to support Government if we do not 
make a change. He is too young to be able to come in and lobby and say 
do not do that to us.
  So we hear from all these people saying they are going to cut these 
social programs. Here we are with a defense system right now that is 
going to be down below what it was in 1980 when we could not afford 
spare parts. Those things we really need Government for are being 
neglected by this administration, and I think the people have awakened.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I want to say that the Joint Economic Committee is 
going to have a hearing on the President's budget. I am a member of 
that committee. I am looking forward to hearing the President's people 
on his budget and these economic assumptions.
  It is, in my opinion, a very cruel hoax on future generations, and on 
the current electorate, to suggest that we can balance the budget 
without doing the things that are necessary in reducing spending and 
changing Government, and that are required by any sound economic view 
of the future. We are going to talk about that today. Senator Mack has 
stepped up and said we are going to look at the Clinton budget, examine 
it and give him an opportunity to convince us that he is right. I am 
looking forward to that. I am willing to give the President and his 
people their day, but I am very distressed at this continuing pattern 
of this President, just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the 
American public.
  The fact of the matter is that the folks, like my son, Daniel, who 
was born on Father's Day, are the people that are going to have to pay 
the price and consequences of the actions we have today. Somebody has 
to come to the floor of the Senate and defend those children's future. 
The Senator from Oklahoma is right. They do not have a chance to talk 
for themselves, so someone has to stand up and do it for them.
  My father is an immigrant to this country, and I remember talking to 
my grandfather on many occasions about why he came to this country and 
brought my father over as a relatively young person. He said, ``Well, 
the biggest reason he came to America is because he wanted a better 
life for his children.''
  Now, have we gone so far in this country, where this generation of 
Americans cares more about themselves than about their families and 
their futures? If we have, what does that say about the likely 
prospects for the future of this country?
  What we have is a bunch of people, including the President, who come 
before the American people and try to scare them into believing that 
somehow we are going to hurt them and that we, the Republicans, do not 
care about them, and scare them into keeping the status quo in place, 
which they know hurts future generations, but, frankly, future 
generations do not vote now.
  Mr. INHOFE. I suggest to the Senator from Pennsylvania, your father 
sounds like he was a student of history and he looked at what this 
country is all about. It reminds me that if we remember in our history, 
when de Tocqueville came here, he came over to study our business 
system. He was so impressed with the great wealth this Nation had 
accumulated that he wrote a book. The last paragraph says that once the 
people of this country find out they can vote themselves money out of 
the public trust, this system will fail.
  We are so close to that point, and yet, this great discovery that was 
reflected in the election of November shows me that people are saying 
that we are almost there and we cannot afford to let it continue.
  The one thing that the three of us have in common is we are all 
freshmen, we are new here. I think maybe that is why we are a little 
bit more exercised on this. We remember the mandate very well. That is 
all I heard during not just the election, but I have had 77 town 
meetings since the election. The first thing coming out of the chute is 
the budget. ``I do not care what you do, do something to stop the 
deficit.'' That is what we are committed to doing.
  Mr. THOMAS. The Senator mentioned something about de Tocqueville. 
Earlier in his book he said, as he looked at the new democracy and he 
looked at the new system of people governing themselves, which at that 
time was a new experiment, he said that the strength of this country 
was people doing for themselves and helping each other on a local 
community basis. That is very true. Now we move more and more--and the 
budget has to do with the direction we take in Government, certainly. 
When we decide to have less Government which is less costly, we do that 
as a philosophy, and most everybody subscribes to that. This is the 
labor that goes with it to cause that to happen. You know, it is all 
tied together, and we cannot be responsible morally and fiscally, 
unless we do something about this imbalance that has gone on for 25 
years.
  Mr. INHOFE. We also have to realize--I do not want to take us off the 
track of the budget, but de Tocqueville [[Page S 8845]] was also 
concerned about some of the social problems he saw forecast in this 
country. He said,

       America is great because America is good. When America 
     ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

  So a lot of people in our history, going all the way back to 
Washington, talked about and addressed public debt, and Jefferson was 
also outspoken on this. I think we are here in a political revolution 
in this country, and I think it is an exciting thing. The President 
will have to be very persuasive.
  Mr. THOMAS. Does Senator Santorum have a de Tocqueville quote, also?
  Mr. SANTORUM. No, I do not, but I do have an editorial from one of my 
papers, in the Lancaster Intelligencer, which said that the difference 
between the Republican budget and the President's budget, and they were 
very supportive of the President's budget, is that the President's 
budget is compassionate. The President's budget is compassionate 
because it does not tear apart all these programs that are here in 
place in Washington.
  I would suggest to them that compassion--if compassion is measured by 
a group of people in Washington willing to take people's hard-earned 
money and give it to people that they see fit to give it to, if that is 
the measure of compassion I can tell you it is very easy for me. It is 
no skin off my back to vote money from somebody else and give it to 
somebody else.
  Some people say that is compassion. If I go to someone who is working 
16-hour days, 6 days a week, and I tax him more money and give it to 
somebody else who may not be working as hard or may have a problem, 
whatever the case may be--I am sort of removed from this. It is not 
hurting me. I am not taking any money from me here. I am taking it from 
somebody else and giving it to somebody else. Where is that compassion?
  The word compassion, if you look at the derivation of the word 
compassion, it means ``with suffering.'' I am not suffering with 
anybody. I am not suffering with anybody. I am telling you to give 
money. And I am taking it from you and giving it to him. Where am I 
involved in the suffering here? There is no suffering.
  It makes you look nice. It is great to be able to go into a community 
where you are handing out money. Look, I love to present checks. Oh, it 
is great to take other people's money, who worked hard for it, and have 
me give it to people. It is a wonderful feeling. You feel great. But 
are you really compassionate? Is that action truly compassionate? Is 
there any ``suffering with,'' that is going on here? No, no, it is not 
compassion at all. It is politics. And it is easy and it is fun. Oh, I 
know it is fun to just take that money away from those people who are 
making too much money and give it to folks who are not making enough. 
It is sort of the modern day Robin Hood. But there is no suffering 
here.
  What the Senator from Wyoming said is absolutely right. This country 
is a great country because we have people who cared about people, who 
did ``suffer with,'' who did care about their neighbor, who did know 
who their neighbors were and went out and did something about it. And 
because Government has gotten so big and is starting to do so much for 
people, we stop doing so much for each other because it is not our job 
anymore. It is not our job to help take care of our fellow neighbor. 
There is a Government program that does that and just call this office, 
toll free.
  That is not what made America great. Toll-free numbers for calling a 
Government bureaucrat is not what made America great. What made America 
great, what the Senator from Oklahoma said, is the goodness of America. 
I can tell you there is nothing good about taking money away from 
people who work hard for it and giving it to people who we want to for 
whatever reason we want to. That is not good. That may be necessary in 
some cases. There are people in this country who do need help and there 
are Government programs that do it. But do not come here and say that 
is good, or that is compassionate. It may be necessary sometimes.
  What is good is if you participate individually, if you get out there 
and help your neighbor and become part of the fabric of community, 
which is what de Tocqueville wrote about over 100 years ago. That is 
what makes America great. That is what we are trying to get back to--
understanding that families and communities and neighborhoods are 
important to the fabric of our society. And if we continue to lose them 
we will lose America.
  So, the Lancaster Intelligencer is dead wrong. There is nothing 
compassionate about keeping the Federal Government in control of 
people's lives. It is anything but compassionate because there is no 
suffering here. There is only more suffering out there.
  Mr. THOMAS. The Senator has made a great point. One of the exciting 
things, it seems to me, about this Congress is that we have for the 
first time in many years an opportunity to take a look at Government 
programs that have been in place for 30 or 40 years, such as the War on 
Poverty--which has failed. There are more people in poverty now than 
when it began.
  So we are not talking about taking away the safety net. We are not 
talking about doing away with the assistance to people who need 
assistance. In welfare we want to help those, but help them back into 
the workplace. And that is exciting, to have for the first time a 
chance to say, Is there a better way to provide this assistance? Is 
there a more efficient way to do something, rather than just continuing 
to fund failed programs? I think that is the exciting thing we are 
doing.
  Mr. INHOFE. I think it is inherent in the bureaucracy. We have to 
address it that way.
  I can remember a very famous speech that was made, back in 1965. My 
colleague and I, we may be freshmen here but we are the two oldest 
Members of the freshman class. We can remember this well. The speech 
was called ``A Rendezvous With Destiny'' by Ronald Reagan. It was his 
first political speech. It was back during the Goldwater campaign.
  In this speech he said something very profound. He said, ``There is 
nothing closer to immortality on the face of this Earth than a 
Government program once started.''
  I learned this lesson when I was mayor of the city of Tulsa. This is 
kind of an interesting story and tells you what is happening here 
today.
  I went in and made a decision that over a 5-year period I would keep 
the level of government, city government, the same size yet increase 
the delivery of services. I did this because at that time the average 
large city doubled in size every 5 years. I thought, let us try to stop 
that. So I started firing people for inefficiency. And when I saw them 
later and said, ``I thought I fired you,'' and they said, ``Well I have 
been reinstated,'' I found out in government you cannot fire people for 
inefficiency. I found the way to do it. You defund departments and get 
them all.
  There are some bureaucracies that were at one time performing a 
function that was needed; the problem went away, but the bureaucracy 
continues. This is what we are talking about, going through, having 
sunset provisions where we can say, Is this thing really needed? Is 
this in the public interest anymore, as it was 40 years ago when that 
particular agency was started?
  It is not a lack of compassion, as the Senator from Pennsylvania has 
said in such an articulate way, because we are compassionate. But when 
I have town-hall meetings, I talk to senior citizens. Sometimes when I 
have them during the day, 90 percent of them are senior citizens or 
retired people. They come up. Of course when you tell them what is 
going to happen if we continue on this road, what is going to happen to 
their grandchildren and great grandchildren and generations to come, I 
find these people are not selfish. They just do not want to be cut 
unless others are cut.
  The Senator might remember when the Heritage Foundation did a study 
here a few years ago where they said if you put on a growth cap of 2 
percent for just a matter of 5 years on all Government spending, you 
will balance the budget in that period of time and will not have to cut 
or eliminate one Federal program. Just stop the increase, the 
accelerated growth. That is, I think, what we are trying to do.
  Mr. THOMAS. That is the interesting and not well understood point. 
Two years ago--when the President talks [[Page S 8846]] about deficit 
reduction, the fact is there was no cut in spending. The fact is the 
spending still continues at 5 percent and the cuts, the deficit 
reductions were bookkeeping things and raising taxes. We still 
continued. So we are talking not about cutting overall spending. We are 
talking about reducing the growth. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. INHOFE. The Senator might remember, he and I were both in the 
House of Representatives back when President Bush--I criticized him 
publicly because of some of the assumptions he came up with in his 
budget resolution as to growth assumptions. A lot of people do not 
realize for each 1 percent growth in economic activity, there is a 
generation of new revenue of about $24 billion. He was a little overly 
optimistic on some of the projections his people put forward for him 
also on gas tax revenues and some of the other things.
  I think we want to be realistic. We want to get to where we are going 
and that is to eliminate the deficit by the year 2002. I would like to 
do it by the year 2000 instead of 2002. I think most of us would. But 
we are on the road to doing something realistic. Let us stay with it.
  Mr. THOMAS. We are. I thank the Senator for his comments.
  Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  

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