[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15268-S15269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I will just take a few minutes of the 
Senate's time to comment on the set of issues that we will be spending 
much time on over the weeks ahead, those specifically related to our 
budget, the reconciliation legislation, which will also include 
legislation to reduce the tax burden on Americans, and the whole issue 
that surrounds that concerning the economy of our country.
  As I traveled throughout my State during last year's campaign and as 
I have traveled since that campaign, I have heard Americans and 
Michiganites in particular tell me two things. Both of the things they 
have told me I believe are included in and really are the centerpieces 
of the budget that we are working to achieve here in the U.S. Senate.
  The first thing they tell us is that they want a budget that is in 
balance. Americans and people in my State are frustrated by the fact 
that the U.S. Congress has gone a quarter of a century without bringing 
the budget into balance. They have to do that in their families. Most 
of our States and our local communities have to balance their budgets. 
The American people are frustrated when Washington cannot do the same 
thing, when we cannot bring ourselves to establish priorities, to set 
an agenda that allows us to spend no more than we take in.
  People in my State also want a budget that is balanced and that is 
balanced legitimately. They are tired of fancy bookkeeping in 
Washington, bookkeeping which allows us to think we are doing better 
than we really are. That is why, I think, many people in my State 
applauded the President of the United States when he came to Congress 
not too long ago and, with bipartisan encouragement, said that we 
should use the statistics and the revenue estimates and the budget 
figures of the Congressional Budget Office at both ends of Pennsylvania 
Avenue to make determinations as to where our Federal Government's 
deficit was.
  Interestingly, of course, we now have a slight change in direction 
here in Washington. Here in the Congress, we have stuck to the ideal of 
balancing the budget and we have used legitimate statistics compiled by 
the Congressional Budget Office in calculating our budget to make sure 
it would be in balance based on the accurate readings of the CBO.
  Unfortunately, now, as the actual rubber hits the road, at the other 
end of Pennsylvania Avenue, we have a detour. There what we see is a 
diversion away from the use of CBO statistics, a diversion away from 
the idea of using the same budgeting calculations that are used on 
Capitol Hill, and instead a throwback to days gone by when statistics 
that are used in rosy scenarios, to balance the budget not with tough 
choices and setting priorities, but rather making unrealistic estimates 
as to the economy's growth and unrealistic estimates as to the needs 
for various promises and a variety of things allowing to balance the 
budget through fancy bookkeeping.
  I have to ask today, Mr. President, why has this occurred? Why have 
we moved backward, and why has the White House chosen this course of 
action? Most people know the answer is simple. Without making those 
kinds of calculations that only can be made inside the Office of 
Management and Budget, tough choices would have to be made. Politically 
unpopular choices would have to be made.
  I ask another question today as well: Where was the balanced budget 
fervor in the White House earlier this year? Why has it come about so 
late in the game? Again, I suggest that it is more politics than it is 
public policy objectives.
  Indeed, I sit on the Budget Committee, and earlier this year, in the 
spring, we had several representatives of the administration come 
before us to discuss the President's budget. When they did, of course, 
that original budget was not in balance. It did not project a balance 
in years 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7.
  I asked, did you ever go through the exercise within the 
administration of coming up with a balanced budget or a budget that 
would reach balance in 7 years, recognizing that you might have done 
it, and concluded, for whatever reason, not to offer it because you did 
not want to establish the priorities that would be required to balance 
the budget? To my surprise, I was told that no one had ever gone 
through the exercise. This is as recently as the spring and, indeed, 
the budget we had been offered by the White House, by the 
administration, was the only budget that had been put together.

  It makes me very suspicious, now, as we come to the end of this 
process, that suddenly we are told there is a budget, suddenly we are 
told there is a commitment to a balanced budget, and 

[[Page S 15269]]
suddenly we are told the CBO numbers are no longer the ones that will 
be used to attain that budget. It leads me to believe that we are 
basically being told these things as we come upon an election year in 
which a central part of the debate in America will be whether or not 
the American Government should spend no more money than it takes in.
  Balance the budget and do it in a way that is credible and 
legitimate, is one thing I hear in Michigan. The other thing I hear in 
my State is that people want to be able to keep more of what they earn 
and that, in particular, the middle-class families of my State want to 
be able to keep more of what they earn. Here, in Washington, inside the 
beltway, in many of our committees and on the floor of the Senate 
itself as well as on the House side of the Capitol Building, we are 
told by people who purport to represent constituencies back in their 
States that there is no demand for reductions in taxes in America, that 
this desire to reduce taxes is somehow a myth created by people on our 
side of the political aisle for whatever purpose, I guess, happens to 
be convenient at the time.
  I just want to know what constituencies those who claim Americans do 
not want a tax cut represent, because I cannot go to any part of my 
State without being told by people how hard it is to make ends meet in 
America, and in Michigan today. What people tell me is not that they 
wish somehow Government would intrude on their job site or their 
business or their community and start dictating what salaries they 
should earn. They do not tell me that. They do not tell me they want to 
see Washington begin to create some kind of central economy management 
system here inside the beltway. What they tell me is, if you will just 
let me keep a few more dollars that I earn in my paycheck, I would feel 
a lot better.
  It is interesting to me to hear people tell us they do not hear any 
cries back in their State for tax relief when, at the same time, many 
of the very same Members of Congress come to the floor, bringing charts 
with them, to talk about the so-called middle-class squeeze that 
middle-class, hard-working, average American families are feeling 
today. Why is that middle-class squeeze being felt? The answer is quite 
simple. It is because American families--hard-working families, where 
people go out to work every day, and in some cases where more than one 
person is in the work force, and they work very hard--find at the end 
of the week or the end of the quarter or the end of the month they do 
not have as much money left after withholding and the payment of taxes 
as they need to make ends meet.
  So, I think it is very disingenuous to, on the one hand, decry the 
fate of the middle class because of the difficult time middle-class 
Americans are having making ends meet and at the same time claim 
middle-class families do not want a tax cut. The fact is, if we reduce 
the taxes on families in this country there will be less of a squeeze, 
in particular less of a squeeze on the middle class. In my judgment, 
those are simply mutually exclusive positions. I have a very hard time 
believing that in the constituencies of other Members of this body or 
in the House there is not the same yearning for an opportunity to 
attain the American dream, more chance of people keeping what they 
earn, that I hear from the constituents that I represent.
  Here in the Senate we are trying. We tried during the budget 
resolution debates and we will try again in the next few weeks to 
deliver on commitments we made to our constituents from one end of this 
country to the other, our commitments to bring the budget into balance 
and to do so with a legitimate, credible budget and at the same time 
allow hard-working, middle-class families to keep more of what they 
earn.
  The alternative to that is business as usual. The alternative to that 
is more fancy, funny bookkeeping. The alternative to that is big 
Government in Washington calling more shots, making more decisions that 
affect the lives of our families.
  So, as the debate proceeds, I hope, as people hear these arguments 
that we cannot move to a balanced budget or that we cannot do it in 7 
years or we cannot have a tax cut, they will reflect on the fact that 
the people making those arguments are the same people who have tended 
to be in charge for the last 40 years here in Washington as the budget 
deficits have increased, as the Federal debt has increased, as taxes 
have increased, and as the middle class has felt the corresponding 
squeeze that comes about when too many of the dollars of hard-working 
Americans are sent to Washington to fulfill the priorities of somebody 
else.
  I think if one reflects on that debate, they will conclude that that 
budget which we passed here in the Senate earlier this year and that 
budget we are going to try to now bring to conclusion in the weeks 
ahead, puts us on the right path to achieving not only our objective of 
making sure our economy is strong, but achieving the other goals of 
balancing the budget credibly and reducing the tax burden on hard-
working families.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

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