[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 108 (Thursday, June 29, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9346-S9348]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BUDGET PRIORITIES

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this debate is about priorities, fairness, 
and choices, and I am talking about the debate on the budget that we 
are on today. I guess we will be voting on it a little bit later this 
afternoon.
  It is not just about numbers. This debate is about, really, the 
choices we will make as a society, how we deal with the fundamental 
issue of fairness, being fair to people in our country, and on what we 
will choose to spend the tax dollars that we collect from our hard-
working citizens. We all agree on the bottom line. We agree on 
balancing the budget and bringing deficit down. I voted that way. But, 
unfortunately, how we get there is really what we are debating.
  If you take a look at the national budget, what you see are pages and 
pages of numbers, numbers of statistics. But on every page and behind 
every number there are real people, there is a real individual 
someplace. So this budget debate is not just about numbers, it is 
about, as I said, choices and priorities, and about people and how 
people are going to be affected in their daily lives in this country.
  All through this year I have listened to people in meetings I have 
held across my State. Iowans have shared their thoughts and concerns 
about the budget. Everywhere I have gone I have heard the same message: 
Yes, we want to balance the budget; yes, we want to bring the deficit 
down; but let us do it responsibly and let us be fair about the way we 
do it. So the question we have 

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to ask ourselves is how fair and how responsible is this budget? How 
fair or responsible is it to cut and gut the investments that we have 
made in education?
  The previous speaker, Senator Dorgan from North Dakota, I think laid 
it out very well. What will we say? What will our children and 
grandchildren say 50 years from now--he said 100, I do not think it 
will even be that long; 25 to 50 years from now--when we find an ill-
educated society; when we find we cannot compete in the world 
marketplace because we just did not invest in education in this 
country?
  As a Nation, how can we deal with the growing number of children who 
will grow up to be burdens on our society instead of being productive 
taxpaying citizens? How can we deal with that when, No. 1, we are going 
to eliminate the in-school interest subsidy?
  What this is, Mr. President, is we are levying a tax. There is a new 
tax in this budget on college students. And it is going to amount to 
$3,000 or more on about 4 million college students and their families. 
It is an additional tax burden they are going to pay that they do not 
have to pay right now. One million college students can lose their 
college aid or have it drastically reduced because of cuts in Pell 
grants. We are going to cut as much as half a million preschoolers from 
the Head Start Program. We are going to gut the Safe and Drug Free 
Schools Program.
  Again, let me talk a little more about this tax we are levying on 
students. Some people say, ``Why should we, as taxpayers, support the 
sons and daughters of sometimes middle-income wage earners in this 
country to go to college? After all, when a young person goes to 
college that person stands to gain and make more money during his or 
her lifetime, so why should we foot the bill?''
  I think to look at it that way is to look at it very narrowly, too 
narrowly. The more young people who get through college and become 
better educated, the better off we are as an entire society. So we have 
an interest in education. We are better off if we fund education for 
young people. We had the GI bill after World War II; this was not even 
loan money. We just gave money to young people to go to college. We did 
not even ask them to pay it back. But they paid it back a thousand fold 
over in increased earnings, increased taxes, and increased productivity 
for our entire Nation. So it is a national responsibility that we 
ensure that our young people have affordable quality education.
  How responsible or fair is it to break our contract with seniors and 
impose the largest cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in history, socking 
seniors with perhaps as much as $900 more every year in out-of-pocket 
costs, and burdening families who are struggling to take care of their 
ailing parents? The original Senate budget resolution cut Medicare by 
$256 billion. This conference goes from bad to worse by slashing 
Medicare by $270 billion.
  Just think about that, we are slashing Medicare $270 billion, 
affecting one of the most vulnerable parts of our society, seniors, the 
elderly. How responsible or fair is it to these seniors? To students? 
To families? While we lavish tax cuts on a privileged few, the upper 1 
percent of our income earners?
 And we refuse to even consider the swamp of waste in the Pentagon. 
This budget actually increases military spending by $36 billion in just 
the first 4 years by $7 billion next year alone. We are giving money to 
the Pentagon for programs which even the Pentagon does not want. The 
Pentagon does not want the B-2 bomber, but we are going to say, ``You 
have to take more; you have to have more.'' So we are throwing money at 
the Pentagon when they do not even need it.

  Mr. President, I have used this chart a few times in the past. I want 
to refer to it again today in the budget debate to give you a graphic 
illustration of what we are talking about in defense spending. Right 
now the United States is spending about $206 billion for the Pentagon. 
I have along the bottom here all of our potential enemies in the world. 
There is Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, and 
Cuba. You add them all up. The total they spend is about $54 billion 
next year on their defense, their military spending. So right now we 
are spending about five times more in this country than all of our 
potential enemies put together.
  But then when you add the United States and our allies together, we 
are spending over $500 billion, a half a trillion dollars. That is 
almost 10 times more than what our potential enemies are spending. Yet 
we are being told that we have to spend more; this is not enough; we 
have to increase Defense Department spending next year.
  So is it fair, or is it responsible when we throw money at the 
Pentagon to buy items that they do not even want? Yet, we take food 
away from hungry people, we increase taxes on our college students and 
make them pay for their college education, we cut down on Medicare and 
health care for the elderly, we cut Medicaid and health care for the 
poorest of our citizens? Is this fair? Of course, it is not fair. It is 
not fair at all.
  So in simply human terms, what does the budget say? Forget about the 
numbers. What does it say? It says if you are a part of the privileged 
few, this is your lucky day. It is going to be Christmas in June. If 
you are in the top 1 percent of the income earners, you are going to 
stuff your stocking with a brandnew credit card with thousands of 
dollars of new credit.
  But guess what? You do not have to worry about paying, this budget 
resolution says. We will send that bill to the students. We will sock 
them with another $3,000 for their college education. We will send the 
bill to the seniors who depend on Medicare. They are going to pay 
another $900 per year. They will pay the bill. We will send the bill to 
the family farmers and the working families making the minimum wage. 
They will pay the bill.
  This budget, in simple human terms, says that one child in Waterloo, 
IA, who needs a Head Start Program will be forced to pay more through 
budget cuts than the entire Pentagon. One senior living in Dubuque, IA, 
on a fixed income, one family farmer struggling in Albia to get by this 
year, one student in Storm Lake working their way through college, one 
family in Mason City who has lifted themselves up from welfare to work, 
each one of those will be forced to pay more for deficit reduction than 
the entire Pentagon. Talk to me about fairness and responsibility. That 
is what is lacking in this budget--fairness and responsibility. What 
happened to the notion of shared sacrifice, responsibility, and 
fairness?
  Mr. President, this budget is about priorities and choices. This 
budget chooses the Pentagon over hungry kids. It chooses tax cuts for 
the top 1 percent of wage earners over health care for seniors. It does 
not close the corporate tax loopholes, but it does tighten the family 
budget for those trying to pay for a college education.
  Some call this resolution a compromise. They are right about that. It 
compromises the promise of good, reliable health care for our seniors. 
It compromises the opportunity for middle-income families to afford a 
college education. It compromises our commitment to the family farmers 
who feed the world.
  Yes, we need to balance the budget for the good of our Nation and our 
future. But, plain and simple, this is not the way to do it. Let us 
scrap this plan and do what the American people want us to do; that is, 
work together not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as concerned 
Americans. That is what we are going to do with the rescissions bill. 
The Senate passed it 99-0. It went too far to one side in conference. 
Now it has been reworked. I think we have an excellent chance of 
passing it.
  So now let us craft a responsible budget, a fair budget that does not 
tax seniors, students, and families. Let us craft a responsible budget 
that recognizes that the cold war is over. We can do it if we work 
together, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as responsible 
legislators adhering to the concepts of justice and fairness and 
equality for our people. So we can do it. We ought to surprise the 
American people and do it right for once.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I will be very, very brief. I just want to 
compliment my friend and colleague from my neighboring State of Iowa 
for his excellent remarks.

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  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair informs the Senator that the time 
for morning business is concluded.
  Mr. EXON. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed as if 
in morning business for 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I want to thank my friend and colleague from 
Iowa for his excellent remarks, especially with regard to the fairness 
on the budget that we are going to vote on today. I think this is a 
very, very critical vote that is upcoming. I thank the Senator from 
Iowa for his input, and the excellent remarks by the Senator from 
Massachusetts yesterday, and all of the other constructive suggestions 
that have been made.
  Let us scrap this bill and try to come up with something, almost 
anything, that would be better.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I see the Senator from Delaware on the 
floor at this moment. I would like to address the Senate for 8 minutes. 
I could ask consent to proceed in morning business, or we can lay the 
bill down, whatever is the desire of the floor manager about the way to 
proceed. I am glad to have the bill laid down and ask that my remarks 
be printed in the appropriate place in the Record.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I suggest that the Senator just proceed on 
that basis.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend the 
morning hour for 8 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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