[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 163 (Friday, October 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15379-S15380]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I came to the floor this morning to 
offer a resolution concerning the President's budget, and I have been 
informed that my offering of this resolution and asking for its 
immediate consideration would be objected to by the other side.
  I will not offer the resolution. The resolution is actually very 
simple. It goes to a very important item that is being discussed in the 
general public and by the Members of Congress and the White House; that 
is, the President's budget and whether the President's budget comes 
into balance, and whether we as a Congress should be adopting what the 
President wants to do in the area of the budget.
  The President has been traveling around the country for several 
months now, talking about, waving around his balanced budget proposal, 
saying he has a budget that will balance over 10 years.
  Incredibly enough, the American public actually believes what the 
President is saying. I say ``incredibly enough,'' because the only 
person who has said that the budget balances is the Director of his own 
Office of Management and Budget, not any other independent agency, and 
certainly not the Congressional Budget Office.
  Nobody believes this budget is balanced. In fact, it does not come to 
balance in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years. It never balances, except 
in his own interim shop. He has cooked the numbers, made all of these 
ridiculous assumptions about how fast the economy will go and how low 
interest rates will be and, all of a sudden wishes away all the budget 
problems.
  Yet he goes out there every day and talks about how he balances the 
budget: ``It is just a matter of whether you want my balanced budget or 
the Republicans' balanced budget,'' and the Republicans' balanced 
budget is cruel and draconian and mean-spirited and all these sorts of 
things, ``and mine is kinder and gentler and I really care about 
people,'' and we can accomplish the same things.
  The fact of the matter is he does not balance the budget. What I 
wanted to do was to present a resolution as a sense of the Senate that 
we should adopt the President's budget his second budget.
  You may recall his first budget was voted on here on the floor of the 
Senate. His first budget that he came out with back in February of last 
year, which did not produce a balanced budget, he did not claim it 
produced a balanced budget, and it was defeated 99 to 0 on the floor of 
the Senate. He then went back and revised his budget to present his 
new, improved, balanced budget over 10 years and has been running 
around since.

  I think it is time for some truth here. Let us have a debate. Let us 
have a debate on the President's budget. Let us examine what the 
President has done and whether he really does make the decisions that 
are necessary to bring this budget into balance over 10 years. Now we 
say he was willing, yesterday, to accept 9, or 8, or even 7. We do not 
know where he is at this time, but his budget says it balances in 10, 
so let us talk about it.
  Unfortunately, there are Members on the other side who do not want to 
talk about it, they do not want to debate the resolution, do not want 
to vote on the resolution, refused to give us an opportunity to bring 
it to a vote. I do not understand why. If they support their President 
and believe his budget is in balance, then why the fear of coming to 
the Senate floor and having a good and open debate about what the 
President's budget does?
  I am confident that there is someone on the other side of the aisle 
who believes enough in the President's budget that they will be willing 
to take up the mantle and run with it and offer the President's budget. 
So, what I will do is I will put this resolution over here on the desk. 
If there is someone on the other side of the aisle who would like to 
offer the President's budget and begin a debate, here is the resolution 
that will begin this debate. We can have a full and open debate on the 
President's budget. We can see whether it brings us into balance. We 
can see what cuts he wants to make. We can see how he is going to 
accomplish it. Then we can look at what he wants to do and what the 
Republicans are doing and see what the American public thinks.
  That is the kind of dialog I think the American public would like to 
see. They would like to see what the options are. And the Senator is 
right, you are hearing one side saying one thing, the other side saying 
the other. Let us put them out here on the table. Let us see what the 
specifics are with both. I will give someone on the other side of the 
aisle the opportunity to do that.
  If, for some reason, no one on the other side of the aisle picks up 
that resolution and decides to offer it, next week I will find an 
appropriate vehicle and offer it as an amendment to a bill that is 
coming through and have this discussion, because I think it is a 
discussion that needs to be opened up to the American public.
  There is a lot of tomfoolery going on in this debate. There is a lot 
of misinformation being spread around in this debate. And there is no 
better place to straighten it out and talk about the facts than right 
here on the Senate floor.
  What are the facts as we know them? We have a letter from the 
Congressional Budget Office that says the President's budget does not 
balance. It does not balance over 5 years, or 6 years, or 7 years, or 
10 years, or 20 years, or 50 years. It never comes into balance. What 
we hope is the intent here, of this whole debate, is to balance 

[[Page S15380]]
the budget. The budget does not do that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The 5 minutes under the order for the Senator 
from Pennsylvania has expired.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.

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