[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15201-S15202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          ECONOMIC ASSUMPTIONS

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, one habit or custom that the President and 
I have in common is that we are runners--I know I can say in my case, I 
believe in his case, not particularly gifted or particularly fast, but 
nonetheless we are runners as a method of keeping in good physical 
condition. I believe that the President, as I have, has on some 
occasions run in these rather large races where there are a large 
number of people and one tests oneself against the clock.
  We always will attempt to beat our previous best time in a given 
race, but at least in this connection, we never attempt to do so by 
saying, ``Gosh, I just can't break 45 minutes for 10 kilometers, so 
I'll shorten the race. I'll shorten it to 8 kilometers, but I'll call 
it 10, and then I will have broken 45 minutes.''
  The President of the United States would not consider doing that in a 
road race, but that is precisely what he has done with respect to our 
dispute over a balanced budget.
  Shortly after Mr. Clinton took the Office of the Presidency of the 
United States, he sought to lay to rest a dispute, which the Presiding 
Officer will remember, as I do, over economic assumptions. Through all 
of the Reagan administration and all of the Bush administration, we on 
this side of the aisle were criticized for using assumptions about the 
future state of the economy that were too optimistic, too rosy and, 
thereby, underestimating the challenge presented to us by continuing 
huge deficits in the budget of the United States.
  Almost without exception, those budget assumptions in the Reagan and 
Bush administrations presented by the administrations were more 
optimistic than those presented to us by the Congressional Budget 
Office.
  So President Clinton, on taking office, said, ``Let's end this 
dispute. Let's all agree that in the past, the Congressional Budget 
Office has been both more cautious and more conservative and more 
accurate and we will debate substance in the future. We will all work 
off the same set of projections. We will all work out of the same 
books.''
  I think everyone, both Republicans and Democrats, took that as a 
statement of good faith and a significant step forward, because the 
motivation to overestimate growth in the economy on the part of an 
administration and, thus, to make its budgeting job easier is not 
limited either to Republicans or Democrats. There is always an easy way 
out.
  Unfortunately, Mr. President, when push came to shove, the President 
abandoned that salutary way of making estimates and has gone back into 
exactly what he criticized his predecessors for--estimating or 
projecting his way out of difficulties. And so while this Congress, 
both in the Senate and in the House, has accepted without reservation 
the economic projections of the Congressional Budget Office and has 
proposed to balance the budget within 7 years, under the rules which 
the Congressional Budget Office has set out, as difficult as they are 
and although as a consequence we, in order to bring the budget into 
balance, have been forced to propose relatively drastic changes in 
policies which would reduce the growth of spending in the United States 
across the broad spectrum of all of the items which the Government of 
the United States funds, we find a President saying, well, there is not 
really much difference between us. The President says: I want to take a 
little longer, 9 or 10 years to balance the budget, while the 
Republicans want to do it in 7. We can easily reach an agreement or an 
accommodation on those two goals, they are so close to one another. 

[[Page S 15202]]

  But the President gets there by cooking the books. He gets there by 
abandoning his commitment of 1993 and doing exactly what he criticized 
others for doing and getting more than 50 percent of the way to a 
balanced budget simply by saying, ``I do not think we are going to 
spend as much as the Congressional Budget Office says. I think interest 
rates are going to be lower, and I believe that the tax system will 
take in more money.'' It amounts to a tremendous amount of dollars, Mr. 
President.
  President Clinton simply estimates $55 billion more in Medicare 
spending savings, without changing Medicare at all; he estimates that 
Medicare will cost $68 billion less; he estimates that farm programs, 
pension programs, and other welfare programs, will cost $85 billion 
less; he estimates that we will save $70 billion more in interest costs 
because interest rates will be lower; and he estimates that we will 
take in $175 billion more because the economy will grow more rapidly, 
for a net of $475 billion between now and the year 2002--a trillion 
dollars over the next 10 years, Mr. President.
  Well, he could just as easily have made these estimates a little bit 
more optimistic and we would not have any deficit problem at all. It 
would go away without doing anything.
  That is the great difference in the debate which we are about to 
begin. Are you willing to look realistically at the future of our 
economy and the growth in our spending programs and do something about 
them as a matter of substance? Or, on the other hand, Mr. President, do 
you just say times are going to be good, the problem will go away by 
itself? That is the difference.
  Well, if the experience of the last 15 years holds true, the problem 
will not go away by itself. We need to begin from a common basis. The 
President is simply wrong in overestimating the strength of the economy 
and telling the American people that no sacrifices are needed, no 
changes in policies are needed. All we need to do is reestimate the 
economy and everything comes up smelling like roses.
  Now, Mr. President, I started speaking about 10 kilometer versus 8 
kilometer races. I must admit that there is one difference, one with 
respect to that analogy, that does not work. Neither of us, those of us 
who depend conservatively on the Congressional Budget Office nor the 
President, can be precisely certain that that side is correct. Economic 
projections are notoriously difficult to make even a year in advance, 
much less 7 years in advance. And we must admit that it is clearly 
possible that the President might be right in spite of the experience 
of the last 15 years, just as he, I suspect, if he were forced to 
answer the question, might be willing to admit that perhaps he is wrong 
and that the Congressional Budget Office projections are better.
  But what are the contrasting consequences of being wrong in this 
case, Mr. President? Well, if President Clinton is wrong and we are 
correct, the budget deficit will never be less than $200 billion a 
year. In the next decade, another $2 trillion will be added to the 
burden of debt imposed on the people of the United States, money which 
we spend, the bills which we send to our children and to our 
grandchildren. That would be the consequence, Mr. President, of 
President Clinton being in error. The problem of the budget will never 
have been addressed if we accept his policies.
  By contrast, Mr. President, what would the consequences be if we are 
wrong, if we are too conservative, too cautious, and if in fact the 
economy does grow as rapidly as the President predicts in his easy-
does-it budget? Well, Mr. President, the budget might be balanced in 
the year 1999 or 2000 rather than in 2002. Is that a horrendous 
consequence? No, Mr. President, that is exactly the goal we seek with 
our conservative projections and with the very real policy changes we 
propose. We only claim we will get to balance by the year 2002. But 
even that claim carried out by changes in policies will, from the 
perspective of almost every economist, itself build a stronger and 
better economy, provide more opportunities for generations looking for 
those opportunities in the future, lower interest rates, lessen the 
burdens of Government on not only this generation but the next 
generation and the generation after that. And if we do better than we 
thought, that burden will be even lighter and we will get rid of the 
deficit even earlier.
  So if we are wrong and too cautious, we reach the goal all of us 
share more quickly. If President Clinton is wrong, we never reach that 
goal at all, and we continue to add to the burden of debt on our 
children and on our grandchildren.
  Mr. President, both from a policy standpoint and from the point of 
view of having an intelligent debate, the rights and wrongs of which 
the American people can understand, and from the moral point of view of 
bringing to an end this huge addition to the burden of debt on future 
generations, we must and we should agree on the starting point, on the 
projections we are going to use. What better way in which to start that 
part of the debate, Mr. President, can there be than to have President 
Clinton keep the commitment that he made 2\1/2\ short years ago.
  We are not going to debate the projections. We will take the 
projections of the neutral objective Congressional Budget Office and 
work our debate. We will work our debate off of them.
  If we do that, we will see clearly how necessary the budget is that 
we have already passed, the reconciliation bill which we will debate in 
the next 2 or 3 weeks in order to enforce it.
  Mr. President, we should start from a common ground and make that 
common ground the ground the President of the United States himself 
stood on 2\1/2\ short years ago. We should not try to shorten the race 
and pretend we are running faster.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I may proceed for 
up to 10 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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