[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15193-S15195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am very, very proud of the Republican 
Senators who have taken to the floor today to talk about the most 
significant issue for the American people, all of the American people. 
I know some ask, on whose side are we? We are on everybody's side. 
Because if you do not get a balanced budget, sooner rather than later, 
you are probably never going to get one. And if you do not get one 
soon, you are literally giving away a legacy to the next generation and 
the next generation that could have been prosperity, economic gain, a 
better chance to take care of yourselves--you are giving that away by 
imposing a silent tax on all the young people, all the children yet 
unborn, where they will have to pay our debt.
  You cannot escape it. Some say, what is this debt? This debt means 
that millions of people, banks, insurance companies, foreign countries, 
lent us money. We gave them a nice little promissory note, and we said: 
``Thank you for lending us the money. We will pay you back.''
  So we owe it--in fact, we owe part of it to the Social Security trust 
fund. Frankly, sooner or later, the bell will toll. And this is our 
last best chance to get a real balanced budget. When they ask who are 
they who are for it, a vision comes to my mind of a big American 
shopping center with people in the center from all walks of life. If 
you are in a shopping center in New Mexico, you will see a cowboy with 
cowboy boots, and you will see a dressed up, almost aristocratic 
person, and then you will see all ages, some with new T-shirts with 
their latest words on it of support for the Bulls or the Cavaliers or 
even the march.
  All of those people--not one piece of them, all of them--anxiously 
expect that the U.S. Government will not let them and their children 
down as we promise them a decent life and, if they will work hard, a 
decent return and if we will do our job, that they expect a little 
better life with each passing decade.
  Almost all of that is tied up in whether we get a balanced budget, 
Mr. President. And I thank you very much, I say to the Senator from 
Tennessee, for your comments of just how important to every day events 
a balanced budget is.
  I wish to talk today about the President's budget, and I do not know 
if Members on the other side are up here in the Chamber defending the 
President's budget. I think we voted on his first budget, did we not, 
in the budget debate? And I do not think one Senator voted for it. We 
all forget that. Not one. I think every single Member including 
everyone on that side voted no.
  Now the issue comes, since the President gave us a new budget about 3 
months ago, how many on that side of the aisle would vote for it. I am 
going to try in about the next 5 or 6 minutes to convince the American 
people that 

[[Page S 15194]]
none of them would, and that a great big hoax is being perpetrated on 
the American people by the President.
  So let me start by saying to all of you if you do not have to cut 
anything because you have jimmied up the numbers, you can run across 
America beating up on the Republican budget. You can say I did not do 
that. I do not have to do that. You can say I wish to go slower. I do 
not want to change the programs that fast.
  Let me remind you. The only way you can do that and have a balanced 
budget is to phony up the numbers.
  Let me give you a little history. In the Reagan era, there became a 
rather famous asterisk which I think my friend, Senator Simon, recalls, 
the Stockman asterisk. My memory is not precise; it was either $24 
billion or $34 billion. It was sort of we don't know how we are going 
to get that last amount, but let's just put an asterisk there and say 
we will get it.
  Now, friends, the President of the United States has a $475 billion 
asterisk. And it says I changed what the Congressional Budget Office 
says, the authenticator of the budget. In whose name and under whose 
power did the Congressional Budget Office become the authenticator of 
the budget? None other than the President of the United States.
  Two years ago, in a State of the Union Message, he said the CBO was 
normally more conservative in what is really going to happen and closer 
to right. Why is it, I say to my good friend, Senator Simon, who is 
advocating a balanced budget, who came down here talking about a 
constitutional amendment, why is it that the President of the United 
States decided 1 year after he admonished us to abandon the 
Congressional Budget Office and do what? Use his own numbers. You know 
he has experts. The Congressional Budget Office is the expert for 
everybody. He has an OMB. He has economic advisers, I say to my friend 
from Tennessee, and what he decided to do was to let them make the 
predictions for the future--make the predictions for the future.
  The best I can tell you, fellow Senators and Americans, it is tough 
to explain, but I looked around for an explanation of what the 
President has done, and the best I could find is the former 
Congressional Budget Office Director. If he is not a Democrat, he is an 
independent but, indeed, he is independent and here is what he said 
about how this administration got to the balanced budget that they run 
across America now and say we are not like those bad Republicans 
because we do not have to do all those things.
  Listen to a quote from the former Director, a very simple quote:

       The administration conveniently lowered the bar and jumped 
     over it.
       The administration conveniently lowered the bar and jumped 
     over it.

  That means if the world record was 6 foot 6 on the high jump, and the 
Republicans had jumped it, the President comes along and what does he 
do? He lowers the bar and then jumps it. So he puts it down to 6 feet 
and he jumps it, and he said, lo and behold, I set the same record you 
did.
  If the bar is the balanced budget and the President decides with his 
own experts to lower the bar and jump it, what does that tell us? Mr. 
President and fellow Senators and Americans, it tells us that the 
Congressional Budget Office is warning us that if you use the 
President's bar, the lowered bar, you will never get to balance.
  I do not want to take a lot of time talking about the manipulation, 
the smoke and mirrors. In fact, it is so much smoke and mirrors I was 
trying to find a new word or new words to describe it, but I cannot. 
Somebody suggested the fog machine instead of smoke and mirrors. But 
let me just give you an example of what has happened.
  I say to Senator Simon, had your balanced budget constitutional 
amendment passed and the Senate had come together and said it is law 
now, let us have a balanced budget in 7 years, and we said let us 
listen to the Congressional Budget Office on how we should do it, and 
we did it, along comes the President and he says, ``Whoa there. You do 
not have to do all that.'' In fact, he said in his second budget you 
can get there by doing $475 billion less. Got it. He lowered the bar 
$475 billion.
  Let me tell you just precisely how he did that. I do not know if in 
his negotiations he lowered the bar a little bit at a time or just 
waited around until his own estimators lowered it all the way, but here 
is what he did.
  First, Medicare spending will come down over 7 years by $55 billion. 
Got it. Fifth-five billion dollars less in Medicare savings, I say to 
the occupant of the chair. But he did not change anything about the 
program. He did not say this or that or the other. He just said it is 
going to cost less.
  I ask for 3 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. He merely said we have decided that Medicare will cost 
$55 billion less. Put it down. Take the bar down $55 billion. He did 
not change anything, did not reform anything, did not make it more 
solvent excepting that they came up with new numbers on what it would 
cost and disagreed with the Congressional Budget Office, which we were 
told to follow, which we think is closer to right over the last 14 
years, especially long-term figures, much more accurate than Democrat 
or Republican executive branch estimates.
  Medicare, the bar has been taken down by $55 billion. Now he comes 
along and says, do not worry so much about Medicaid because it, too, is 
going to come down, I say to the Senator from Illinois, on its own. You 
do not have to change anything. It is going to come down $68 billion. 
So he brought the bar down $68 billion.
  He has not done anything yet, has not changed the program, has not 
reformed an entitlement, has not cut a single program of any type but 
now that is $68 billion. And then he looked out at the farm subsidy 
program, other pensions and the welfare programs and he said oh, even 
if we do not change anything, they are going to come down $85 billion.
  Now the bar has come down $55 billion in Medicare without changing 
anything, $68 billion in Medicaid by wishing and hoping that it will 
not cost so much, $85 billion from farm pensions and others, and we are 
not there yet. Hold on--$70 billion from lower interest rates. And 
then, believe it or not, $175 billion because he assumes better 
economic assumptions, rosy economic assumptions. They will say they are 
small. The differences with the Congress are small. That one is $175 
billion without changing anything.
  When you add them up, $475 billion that we had to work at, to change 
programs, to say entitlements are coming down instead of going up, the 
President of the United States found them like a bird's nest on the 
ground by putting his team together and saying it really is not going 
to cost all that much to run our Government. So why do we not just 
change the numbers?

  Now, let me suggest to everyone who takes the floor and says to the 
Republicans, ``You should not be doing this, you should not be doing 
that,'' I ask them, are you following the President's blueprint in 
suggesting that we do not have to do that? If you are, you will be 
startled, and so will the American people, because if we did it your 
way, there would be no balanced budget come time that we commit it.
  I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute. I will wrap it up 
now.
  Mr. SIMON. I will be generous with my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
  Let me say this is part of the reason that the U.S. Congressional 
Budget Office has said the President's budget never comes into balance.
  But I think it is more serious than that. It is the real reason that 
the President can stop over here and there picking the issues and say, 
``The Republicans are cutting too much. We ought not have to do that. 
We can take a longer time to get it,'' when, as a matter of fact, if we 
did it his way, we would be inventing 475 billion dollars' worth of 
reductions that the experts say are probably not going to happen and 
running around and saying, ``It doesn't matter which budget, they are 
both in balance.'' I submit that is not the case.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the remaining time 
is under the control of the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from 
Iowa.

[[Page S 15195]]

  Mr. SIMON. I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, since we 
originally agreed to 45 minutes, that the time be extended to 12:45.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.

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