[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15188-S15189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HISTORIC DECISIONMAKING

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, as my good colleague from Wyoming has 
noted, the contemporary custodians of this great democracy are coming 
upon a decision in the next several weeks that will be historic. For 
the first time, we will be considering major questions with regard to 
how we are going to govern ourselves. We will be taking under 
advisement major changes. We will be talking about balancing the budget 
for the first time in 32 years. We will be talking about dramatically 
changing the welfare system that has been developed over the last 30 or 
40 years. We will have before us a proposal to protect Medicare, and we 
will be talking about lowering the economic burden on every working 
family and business by lowering taxes.
  Obviously, when you are talking about changes of this magnitude, 
which I believe the vast majority of Americans believe should occur, 
they want taxes lowered. They are tired of a welfare program that does 
not work. They cannot believe we do not balance our budgets, and they 
are worried about a Medicare Program that is collapsing.
  In the midst of this, of course, you will have very adversarial 
debate, contentious debate. Essentially, the debate is centered between 
two very different ideas about governing America. On the one hand, 
mostly on the other side of the aisle, we have defenders of Washington 
as it is, that we should not balance our budgets, it is too difficult 
to balance our budgets; we do not need 

[[Page S 15189]]
to lower taxes--in fact, we should raise them; Medicare is just fine 
the way it is, put a Band-Aid on it and it will be OK; and we ought to 
leave the welfare system just the way it is today. Obviously, these two 
views take the country into the new century very differently. If we 
leave things the way they are, I think we are turning our back on the 
American people.
  Coming back to my point, though, about the contentious debate, I was 
with a group of people from my State last week. I was very interested, 
as they tried to sort out these two presentations, change or leave it 
the way it is, and I purposely asked them were they aware of the 
Medicare trustees' report? They really were not.
  Then I asked them: Do you know about the bipartisan entitlement 
commission work that was issued earlier this year? They had not even 
heard of that.
  So the point I would like to make this morning to every citizen who 
may be listening is, in addition to listening to this debate, which is 
historic, on their own they ought to get a copy of the bipartisan 
entitlement commission report, which was chaired by Senator Kerrey, a 
Democrat, and Senator Danforth, a Republican, appointed by President 
Clinton, and they should for themselves read the report, or scan it. 
Beyond listening to the debate going on back and forth, go get a copy 
of the report. It was issued early this year. Get a copy of the 
Medicare trustees' report for themselves and their family and look at 
what it says. That is not a political ad. That is not a political 
speech. That is just an objective statement about the condition of the 
financial affairs of the United States. Read it for yourselves. You can 
skip the ads. You can almost skip these debates, but just look at the 
documents themselves among your own family.
  What does the bipartisan entitlement commission report say? It says 
that within 10 years, maybe 8, maybe 12, all U.S. resources are 
exhausted--all of our revenues, the vast revenues of the United States 
are exhausted--by just five expenditures.
  The five expenditures are: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, 
Federal retirement, and the interest on our debt. And then there is 
nothing left. So we will not be arguing about the size of the Defense 
Department; there will not be one. And the debate that went on in the 
House about school lunches, we will not have to worry about that; there 
will not be enough to deal with it.
  Five expenditures; nothing left. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, 
Federal retirement, and the interest on our debt, and it is all gone. 
That ought to be a wakeup call for anybody.
  Now, the Medicare trustees' report came out in April. It says the 
first entitlement to run out is Medicare in 2001, 6 years and it is all 
over; there will not be any money to write a check. And then it goes on 
to say the Congress and the President need to take bold and corrective 
actions to make this program solvent.
  The balanced budget that we will be dealing with in the next 3 to 4 
weeks attacks all of these issues. It balanced the budget so it quits 
adding debt. That is a plus. It takes Medicare and tries to reconfigure 
it, save money, so that it stays solvent longer. That is a plus. It 
takes Medicaid and starts to restructure it and move it to the States 
so that it can be more efficiently run. That is a plus. It lowers 
taxes, which expands the economy, which makes it easier for us to deal 
with these problems. That is a plus.
  Now, meanwhile, the President first said he was not going to give us 
a budget. Then he gave us a budget that was unbalanced as far as the 
eye could see. And then he said, ``I'm going to give you a balanced 
budget. It will balance in 10 years.'' He has gone across the country 
saying that. And the Congressional Budget Office says that is phony, 
that that budget does not balance in 5 years, which he promised when he 
ran for President. It does not balance in 7 years, like the majority of 
this Congress is trying to do. And it does not balance in 10 years like 
he said it does. It is never balanced.
  I do not think you have to be a math major to understand that if you 
just keep submitting budget after budget and it never balances, we are 
not going to solve these problems that these two reports have told 
America about.
  Mr. President, in conclusion, let me just say that while these are 
sober messages and this is an important debate, we ought to remember 
that if the United States, this great democracy, this only superpower, 
takes control of its own finances and manages them, we will create 
unlimited opportunity for America as it comes into the new century. And 
we will start reaping the benefits very quickly.
  We are going to lower interest rates because our budgets are 
balanced. That means every family that buys a car, borrows money to 
educate, or buys a refrigerator or new home saves money that they can 
use to carry out their mission in their own family. It means we are 
going to create millions of new jobs. And it means America is going to 
be strong when it comes into the new century, able to defend itself and 
its stature in the world and make this a more peaceful world and a more 
secure world for every son and daughter of America and the world 
itself.
  Mr. President, we have everything to gain and everything to lose. And 
the decision about what this country is going to be as we get into the 
new century is going to be made on our watch. I like to tell Americans 
whenever I am speaking to them that they are sitting next to the 
American right now that is going to make the decision. We cannot pass 
this to another generation. We are going to make this decision.
  If we do it right, we will have done what every generation of 
Americans has done, protected the great democracy and given it to the 
future with broader and greater opportunity.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

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