[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15181-S15183]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     A TIME FOR HISTORIC DECISIONS

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, we have a long, hard few weeks ahead of us, 
probably the most crucial 6 or 7 weeks or so that we have had in many 
years--at least 12 or 15 years, in my own experience. Between now and 
Thanksgiving, every Member of this Congress will make decisions that 
can only be described as historic. The votes we cast in the weeks ahead 
on Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and the whole legislative package known 
as the reconciliation bill, will determine the course of the American 
Republic for at least the next generation.
  When I go home to Mississippi and I use this word ``reconciliation,'' 
constituents ask what that means. I explain that ``reconciliation'' is 
just a fancy word for saying this is the time when we keep our word, 
when we actually do what we said we were going to do in earlier 
legislation we passed this year--in the budget resolution, for 
instance.
  So, this is an historic time. That is no exaggeration. This year's 
budget showdown is quite different from the budgetary experiences of 
past years. In the past, we have implemented budgets with so-called 
spending cuts that never seem to reduce spending and with revenue 
increases that got spent before the taxpayers ever saw what they had 
earned. This time I really believe it is going to be different. This 
time the reductions in spending are going to be real. They are going to 
be structural, that is, actually changing the nature of many programs 
to build into them fiscal safeguards.
  As long as most of us have been in the Congress, everyone has talked 
a good game about entitlement reform. It never happened. But this time 
it is actually underway. This time around, the taxpayers are going to 
get the benefit of our holding down spending.
  Radical as it may seem to much of official Washington, we are going 
to leave more money in the hands of those who actually earn it; the 
workers, the families, and investors of America. That is the goal we 
have been working toward all year. It has been our guiding light, our 
polar star during the tough contests over the budget, the balanced 
budget constitutional amendment, the appropriations bills, and 
entitlement reform. We have won some. We have lost a few. But all the 
while we have kept our focus on the greater goal of the financial 
independence of the American home.

  In that way, we have laid the groundwork for reducing the size and 
scope of the Federal Government. We started the process of returning 
decisionmaking to the States and to the citizens of the States. What we 
are doing this year is only the beginning of the most profound power 
shift this country has seen since King George's colonial governors were 
sent packing back from where they came. 

[[Page S 15182]]

  That is what makes our work this autumn so historic. By themselves, 
tax cuts come and, sadly, tax cuts usually go. But once you downsize 
Government, once you break its appetite for the public's purse, once 
you take away its reason for devouring so much of the public's 
resources, then you have started a process that is almost impossible to 
reverse. You have rewritten the equation of power, if you can do that. 
You have changed the rules of the game, and that is what we want to do. 
That is what is happening in Congress this year, and that is what we 
will be focused on for the next 6 weeks or so.
  The transfer of power is seldom a neat process. Our effort to return 
power to the American people through the reconciliation bill of 1995 is 
no exception. None of us will get exactly what we want in this 
legislation. There is bound to be something in there that makes each 
one of us swallow a little hard, perhaps something that hits too close 
to our own home States. So be it. Some losses will be well worth the 
overall result: Medicare preserved and strengthened, welfare finally 
tied to work and to personal responsibility, the tax burden eased for 
families with children, and the Federal Government locked on track 
toward a balanced budget within 7 years.
  That last item is worth repeating. The bill will put the Federal 
Government on track to budgetary balance by the year 2002.
  Through all my years in the House and Senate, I have heard the 
naysayers insist that it could not be done, it just could not be done, 
but now that we are actually doing it, they have changed their tune. 
Now they say it should not be done. It is too fast; it is too much; it 
is too soon; too little spending; too much tax relief. In short, just 
too much change.
  And yet in today's Washington Post, a very interesting editorial 
column by James Glassman pointed out that even with these spending 
controls, Federal spending will increase by $2.6 trillion over the next 
7 years, while revenues will increase by $3.3 trillion. Yet there are 
those in Washington who are screaming: Oh, you are cutting things so 
deeply. How do you reconcile an increase of several billion dollars 
over what we are now spending with the accusation that we are cutting 
spending? In fact, we are not really cutting. We are just controlling 
the rate of growth of Government. In fact, in my State, many people 
say: Why is it taking 7 years to balance the budget? You really should 
do it sooner.
  But the important thing is that we are doing it. We are getting 
locked in on this path, and the Congressional Budget Office is going to 
certify that we are actually getting the job done.
  When it comes to restraining the size and spending of Government, the 
citizens I hear from do not think there is such a thing as too much 
change. They do not understand why their elected officials cannot 
restrain the spending appetite and habit in this city. They do not 
understand why a handful of Senators abandoned their longstanding 
support for the balanced budget constitutional amendment and voted to 
kill that amendment earlier this year. And most of all, they do not 
understand why the President has made himself the defender and guardian 
of the status quo.
  I do not know how to explain President Clinton's extraordinary record 
this year on the budget except to describe it as ``Bill's Peculiar 
Adventure.'' This is why; here is the script.
  Earlier this year, the President submitted to Congress a budget that 
was so shamelessly out of step with the wishes of the public that the 
Senate voted 99 to zero to reject it. That vote, for the record, 
occurred on May 19. Thereafter, both the Senate and the House passed 
budget resolutions which the Congressional Budget Office said would 
result in a balanced budget in the fiscal year 2002. CBO's assurance 
was, of course, critical because, as President Clinton said himself, 
the ``Congressional Budget Office was normally more conservative than 
what was going to happen and closer to right than previous Presidents 
have been.''
  Those were wise words then, and I believe they still are applicable 
today. For whatever reason, perhaps because he was left behind in an 
untenable position, President Clinton took the exceptional step of 
devising another budget, President Clinton's Budget II. This he 
submitted to Congress on June 13, contending that it would achieve 
balance in the fiscal year 2005. This second Clinton budget was an 
interesting effort and in some ways a definite improvement over the 
administration's first try.
  CBO estimates that it would achieve savings of $120 billion in 
Medicare through the year 2002, and $295 billion through 2005. Note 
these savings were not described as cuts but as savings. CBO also 
estimated that Clinton II would reduce Federal revenues--that means 
allowing for tax cuts--by $97 billion over 7 years and $156 billion 
over 10 years. Those amounts were more than offset by President 
Clinton's proposed savings--not cuts--from Medicare. That did not mean, 
of course, that he was using Medicare money for tax breaks because, as 
we all know, the two items are entirely separate, as should be our 
decisions concerning them.
  So far so good. But the CBO had some bad news, too. The President's 
second budget would result in deficits in excess of $200 billion in 
each of the next 10 years. Let us add that up. By my calculation, that 
comes to a 10-year deficit of more than $2 trillion. In fact, even that 
figure of $2 trillion underestimates the President's proposed deficit, 
for he included in revenues the surpluses that are expected in Social 
Security. He counted against his deficit spending the resources of the 
old age, survivors and disability insurance trust funds. Whether this 
was an ominous sign of long-range intentions or whatever else might 
have been involved, perhaps just sloppy bookkeeping at OMB, I leave for 
others to determine. But it is an area of concern for those who have 
looked at how these trust funds might be impacted.
  In any case, the Congressional Budget Office, in which President 
Clinton had, quite accurately, told the Nation to repose its trust, 
scored President Clinton's second budget as a loser. But even so, the 
President has never renounced it. In fact, he still refers to it on 
occasion, though only in passing, and he still cultivates the illusion 
that he has offered Congress something to work with when really there 
is not much there except some broad principles.
  I wonder how many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
believe that Clinton II is something with which we can work. Perhaps we 
should find out. We will be casting scores of budget-related votes in 
the weeks ahead, and a vote on Clinton II might well be one of them. 
That would be a clear referendum on what the President has done and has 
not done with regard to spending, taxes, Medicare and the deficit. I 
suspect it would fail by a wide margin.
  With all due respect to the Presidency and to President Clinton, the 
office he holds has a way of insulating its occupants from the 
realities the rest of us have to face. That is the most charitable 
explanation I can devise from some of the things that are being said 
from the White House. For example, in a conference call with hospital 
administrators last week, President Clinton opined that ``the budget 
cuts that Republicans are pushing in Congress are excessive and not 
necessary--not necessary--to balance the budget.''
  How would he propose to do it? Obviously, he does not propose to do 
it. His inaction in that regard is as unacceptable as his proposal just 
last week that we move toward a grand compromise on spending and taxes 
by adopting the administration's economic projections. Never mind what 
he said in the past to a joint session of Congress about the accuracy 
of the Congressional Budget Office as opposed to the politically 
slanted estimates that come from OMB. All of a sudden, we are being 
told we have these big differences between what the Congress is trying 
to do and what the President wants to do, and the way to solve that 
problem is just to have different economic assumptions.
  I have seen that happen before, unfortunately, in previous 
administrations and previous Congresses. It is not the way to do 
business.
  We have not come this far in fulfilling our pledges to the American 
people just to cop out by using phony numbers. Speaker Gingrich spoke 
for many of us in his response to the President when he said, ``This is 
exactly what's sick about this city. [Somebody says] Let's find another 
smoke-and-mirrors. 

[[Page S 15183]]
It's only been, after all, 60 years of deficits.'' It is time to get 
the job done.
  Now, I am no stranger to differences between parties. We have a two-
party system. That is so we can have good, wholesome debates between 
competing programs. But eventually we need to vote and get the job 
done, and I think we are prepared to do that.
  We can take our politics straight up, face to face, but when that is 
done, we have got to face the budget problems. We must deal with tax 
relief for the American people, and we must move toward a balanced 
budget.
  Official Washington is looking toward mid-November for what is 
commonly called a legislative train wreck. I think it is a misnomer, 
but that's the term being used to describe a showdown over the budget, 
the appropriations bills and the debt ceiling. I prefer to think of 
that conjunction in a different way. I think of it as a day of 
accounting, a time when truth will finally prevail.
  The President and his senior staffers have been talking a lot lately 
about using the veto to block virtually everything that would move this 
country toward a balanced budget. President Clinton has made his veto 
pen the last desperate defense of big government.
  Over the past 20 years, I have watched the budgets we have dealt with 
and the appropriations bills. I don't remember a President threatening 
to veto appropriations bills because they did not spend enough. It was 
always because Congress could not control its insatiable appetite in 
spending too much. Now we have a President who is threatening to veto 
almost all the appropriations bills, with only one or two exceptions, 
because he wants more spending, increases over last year, increases 
that will add to the deficit.
  So we have a tough task before us. Many people wonder if we will be 
able to get the job done. I believe we will. I would like for it to be 
done with cooperation between the two Houses of Congress, across the 
aisle between the two parties, and, yes, with the President. I 
encourage the President to join us in this discussion.
  This is a crucial time. Over the next few weeks we have to make tough 
decisions. It is time that we engage. We need the President to get 
involved, to roll up his sleeves and say we are going to do what is 
right for our country's future.
  Today Senate Republicans look both to the immediate opinion of the 
American people and to the judgment of their posterity. It is, after 
all, our children and our grandchildren, most of all, for whom we are 
doing this. They, rather than any party, will be the big winners in the 
reconciliation bill in 1995.
  That is why I and my colleagues approach the arguments, the 
decisions, and perhaps the crises ahead with a confidence that goes 
beyond political assurance. Like the Quaker poet of the last century, 
John Greenleaf Whittier, said, we know we have ``the safe appeal of 
truth to time.'' That is what this is all about. And now is the time 
for historic decisions.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. And I observe the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum 
call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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