[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 163 (Friday, October 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15387-S15389]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE RECONCILIATION BILL

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from California 
and to some others today discussing the issues of priorities. And this 
Chamber, while now empty, will be full with aggressive debate and much 
interest next week when we deal with what is called the reconciliation 
bill. Frankly, most people do not know what reconciliation means. It is 
a long term that relates to reconciling, to spending, to revenues, and 
to what was determined in the budget resolution passed by the Congress. 
That is what reconciliation means. So the bill is brought to the floor, 
cuts spending, changes the Tax Code, and it reconciles.
   We have substantial differences in priorities and differences of 
opinion about what is important, and that represents the debate. Some 
people get very upset because there is a debate going on. I think it is 
a sign of health. That is what politics is. Politics is not a 
pejorative term. It describes the process by which we make public 
decisions.
  I said before that John F. Kennedy used to say every mother hopes her 
child grows up to be President, provided the child does not have to get 
involved in politics.
  Of course, getting involved in politics is a method by which we make 
decisions in America. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a noble, 
honorable thing to do, and I happen to feel proud and privileged that I 
am a part of it in the Senate.
  The Senator from California talked about her heritage, and I was 
thinking yesterday about this. I was on a radio call-in program and 
someone called who had read an account of my great grandmother settling 
in North Dakota. I had attended a Scandinavian event and someone in the 
press had done a story about how my grandmother came to North Dakota.
  The story just in thumbnail sketch was that she, Caroline, and Otto 
met and fell in love in Oslo, Norway, and got married as young 
Norwegians and then moved to the New World and settled in St. Paul, MN. 
After some time Otto died and Caroline, with her children--I believe it 
was six children--moved to the prairies of North Dakota and pitched a 
tent and with her children built a house and homesteaded 160 acres of 
land.
  Someone had read that account in a press story last week as a result 
of my attending a Scandinavian festival and they called the radio 
station I was on and said is it not interesting, the story about your 
grandmother, this gritty, courageous Norwegian woman who comes from 
Norway to the United States, and then her husband dies and she takes 
her children to go to North Dakota to homestead on the prairie--pitches 
a tent, builds a house, raises a family, and homesteads 160 acres.
  And she said, what do you think would have happened to your 
grandmother had we had a welfare system back at the turn of the 
century? Would there not have been the incentive to do that?
  I thought about the question. It was an interesting question. I said, 
who do you think she got the land from? Who do you think created the 
Homestead Act? Who do you think passed a bill that said we are going to 
have a Homestead Act to say to people if you go out and homestead on 
the prairies and do the right things, we will give you 160 acres of 
land?
  Yes, that is right, the Government. The Federal Government. Did it 
play an instrumental role in my great grandmother's life? You better 
believe it did. The Government has played a constructive role in a lot 
of lives. We are the Government, all of us. Every citizen in America is 
the Government. I know people want to just compartmentalize and say, 
boy, everything is awful, everything is evil, nothing works.
  The fact is, from the Homestead Act to the GI bill, together, people 
working together, people making the right choices and right decisions 
about what is a priority for this country, have had an enormously 
important influence in the lives of people.
  It is the Government, us together, we have built the education system 
in our country. We have something like 140 world class universities in 
this world. Over 120 of them are stationed where? In the United States 
of America. Let me say that again. We have something like 140 world 
class universities. Over 120 of them are located in our country. 
Chance? Accident? No, it is people working together. A lot of them are 
public institutions. People working together doing the right thing, 
saying education is important. We not only have done it at the top 
level, building world class universities, the best in the world, judged 
by everyone, but where are people going to school? Are they rushing to 
Iraq to go to college? I do not think so. No, people are coming to 
America to attend some of the greatest universities in the world. We 
have not only done it at the top, but we have done it at the bottom.
  We created a Head Start Program, and we said to little kids 3, 4, 5 
years old, who were in trouble, living in circumstances of poverty, 
living in dysfunctional families, we are going to give you a head 
start. We are going to give you an opportunity. And we created a Head 
Start Program to give those little kids an opportunity. And guess what? 
It works. It works really well. Everybody understands it works.
  Now, the majority is saying that we cannot afford that. We are going 
to kick 55,000 kids off the Head Start Program. Every one of those kids 
has a name, and they have in their hearts some hope that things are 
going to change in their lives. And Head Start has been helpful to 
those kids--helped them to hold on to that hope.
  It is a long way of getting to the point of saying this is all about 
priorities, this debate. It is not a debate, as the Senator from 
Wyoming alleged a while ago, about people do not want to balance the 
budget and people do. What a bunch of nonsense. That is not what the 
debate is. Everybody in here believes we ought to balance the budget. 
The question is not whether. The question is how.
  I voted for a balanced budget in this Chamber. I voted for a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution for that matter. We had two 
versions, one that did not raid the Social Security System and one that 
did. I voted for that one that did not. But in any event, this is not 
about those who believe we should balance the budget and those who do 
not. All of us want the same goal. We want to balance the budget. This 
is about priorities.
  The priorities that have been chosen by some in this Chamber--and it 
is their business. They have a vote. They have a right to choose 
priorities--say this. When the defense bill came to the floor of the 
Senate, they said to us we are conservative, we are frugal, we are 
penny pinchers, but when it comes to defense we want to spend $7 
billion more than the Secretary of Defense asked for. The Secretary of 
Defense says we need a certain number of trucks. These folks say, I am 
sorry, you need a lot more than that. We insist on building you trucks 
you did not ask for. Ships, we demand that you buy ships you say you do 
not want. Jet airplanes, F-15's, F-16's, we will write them in. You did 
not ask for them. Well, we are going to build them for you anyway. How 
about the B-2 bomber? I supported 20 B-2 bombers. I supported 100 B-1 
bombers. But now we are told by people who are conservative, penny 
pinching, frugal Members of Congress, we want to build 20 more B-2 
bombers at a cost of $20 billion. It does not matter the Secretary of 
Defense says he does not want them. We insist you take them. And the 
hood ornament on this excess is the star wars program. We insist on an 
astrodome over America, a new star wars program, and we demand, by the 
way, that we go out and put it in the field by 1999, accelerated 
development--$7 billion they want to stuff in the trousers of the 
Pentagon that the Secretary of Defense did not ask for.
  Again, is this frugal? Is this penny pinching? Is this conservative? 
I do not think so. I think that is reckless, wild-eyed spending. This 
is my judgment.

[[Page S15388]]

  The same people who say we want to build star wars, when it comes to 
talking about star schools, say we are sorry; we do not have enough 
money. And 55,000 Head Start kids, we are sorry, you are out of luck. 
The poor kid going to school, we say you are no longer entitled to a 
school lunch in the middle of the day. We are going to remove the 
entitlement. Somebody might not want to give you lunch. As far as we 
are concerned, they do not have to.
  In the whole series of priorities, including and especially the issue 
of Medicare and Medicaid, do we have to fix Medicare? Yes. There is no 
debate about that. Is there a solvency problem? You bet. Do we try to 
address it? Yes. But should we cut $270 billion from Medicare? I do not 
think so. Some people say, what do you mean, cut? There is no cut in 
Medicare. Of course, there is a cut--$270 billion less than what is 
needed to fund Medicare in the next 7 years.
  Now, who do you think that is going to come out of? It is going to 
come out of somebody. Rural hospitals maybe. Senior citizens are going 
to pay more and get less. That is exactly what is going to happen--pay 
higher premiums and get less health care. Should we cut health care? 
Should we cut $270 billion? Of course not. Why are we doing that? Why 
the proposal to cut $270 billion? Because some feel they erected a tent 
with the center pole being a tax cut. The center pole of this new tent 
is a tax cut. And they insist on a tax cut. In order to pay for a tax 
cut, you are going to have to cut Medicare and Medicaid and those other 
things with the depth that they are discussing.
  Let us take the tax cut just for a moment. We are told that the tax 
cut is perfectly appropriate because those who propose it are proposing 
to balance the budget. Well, why then in their proposal do they add 
hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to the debt at the same 
time they are talking about a tax cut?
  Some of us happen to feel you ought to deserve less. You say, ``Set 
up the table. We will serve dessert first.'' Politically, I guess, it 
is very attractive. I would like to be one of those who say my 
existence here is predicated on the ability to deliver a tax cut for 
the people whom I represent. My guess is most of them would prefer much 
lower taxes. They would like a tax cut.
  But they would also believe, I think, that, just as in a family 
budget, you should deal with your spending problems first, balance your 
budget first, and then deal with a tax cut. I think that is how they 
would feel.
  Now, with respect to this issue of priorities, I mentioned the other 
day I come from a town of 300 or 400 people. Actually, it was 400, but, 
like most rural communities in small counties, it is shrinking. But let 
us take this town of 300 or 400 people and use that as an example of 
what we are doing here in this Chamber. Let us consider this budget, 
the budget for my community.
  Here is what we do. We get in the car, and we get all of our little 
envelopes telling people what this is going to do to them, and we just 
start driving around town. First, we come to the part of town where 
people do not have it so good. The houses are not quite so big. Some 
people are home because they cannot find work. Some people do not have 
much. They are hungry. But it is a part of town where there is not much 
in resources and people are struggling to make ends meet, working hard 
but not gaining ground.
  And we stop at their home and we say to them, ``Here is an envelope. 
This tells you what our plan is for you. Our plan for you is we're 
going to cut back on the earned income tax credit. That means you will 
pay higher taxes.'' In fact, all families with under $30,000 in income 
largely will face higher taxes, or put another way, 50 percent of the 
American taxpayers will end up with a slightly higher tax bill.
  We also say to some of those people that ``Your child is now in Head 
Start, but we cannot afford to keep him or her there. We will have to 
take your kid out of Head Start. Your grandma is on Medicare. Her 
premiums are going to be increased and she'll have managed care and she 
won't have the choice of a doctor or hospital anymore. Your daughter 
who is unemployed is now on Medicaid. We have a problem with Medicaid 
funding.''
  We go on down the list in terms of what the bad news is for those 
families who are struggling and not making it very well.
  But then we keep driving around this same town and when we stop at 
the biggest houses in town, the folks who have the most money, the 
folks who have the house on the hill, who have done very well, we say 
to them, ``Here is the envelope for you. Here is what this means. By 
the way, this is awfully good news for you because you happen to get 
your income from stocks and bonds. You have been enormously successful. 
And you are very wealthy. You get your money from stocks and bonds. So 
we have decided that people who get their money from stocks and bonds, 
they need a lower tax rate. So you are going to be blessed with a very 
substantial cut in your taxes.''
  And then we say that when you add all of this up, we come out with a 
balance. We have taken from those who do not have very much. We have 
given to those who have a lot. And then we have established essentially 
a balance. But no one is told that in order to get to that point we 
have taken all the trust funds out of a pension program that existed in 
that town and brought them over to use them as revenues when we count 
whether or not we have reached a balanced budget.
  And that, in a nutshell, is the plan we have coming to the floor of 
the Senate. Some of us feel there is a better way and a different way 
and a way with better priorities and choices for the future of this 
country to address these budget issues.
  No one disagrees we should reach a balanced budget. And we ought to 
reach a balanced budget, by the way, without raiding the Social 
Security trust funds to do so.
  I had a short discussion with my colleague from Pennsylvania today. I 
showed my colleague from Pennsylvania the October 18 letter, which was 
Wednesday's letter trumpeted on the floor of the Senate, which says 
this reconciliation bill brought to the floor is going to have a 
balanced budget, in fact, a slight surplus.
  Then yesterday, at my request, the same person, the Director of the 
Congressional Budget Office, wrote a letter that said, if you count 
this the way the law requires you to count it--she does not say that, 
but I asked her that--and do not use the Social Security trust funds, 
because they are not part of the budget and shall not be counted, what 
then do you have? And the answer is, well, in the year 2002 you do not 
have a balanced budget, you have a $98 billion deficit.
  Mr. President, we will have a very substantial debate on all of these 
issues. I believe that we have to trim spending in many areas--
Medicare, Medicaid, they will be trimmed some, the farm program, yes, 
somewhat--but I do not believe that you take the most vulnerable 
Americans and put them right smack in the bull's-eye and say, ``By the 
way, when all the dust is settled and all is said and done, you are 
going to pay up.'' And then we say to others, ``You have been so 
blessed in this country. By the way, when all the dust settles and all 
is said and done, guess what? You are going to be much better off 
because these sets of policies decide that you are more worthy than 
others.''
  I think there is a better way. And many of us will offer amendments 
next week, amendments that will get us to a balanced budget, really get 
us to a balance where it is not misusing the Social Security trust 
funds but really balancing the budget and doing it with different 
priorities. I do not want the message to be to family farmers, ``You 
are in trouble? Well, move to town. We could not care less.'' ``You are 
poor? Tough luck.'' ``You are poor and old? That is even tougher 
luck.''
  I mean, I would like our sense of policies to be to say to people 
that are important, little kids going to Head Start, ``You matter. Your 
life matters to us. We care about you.'' We can make room in these 
priorities because we can shift some of that money, because we can buy 
one less B-2 bomber and maybe not buy the fuel gauge or landing gear as 
spare parts for one B-2 bomber and pay for all of it for 55,000 
children. Maybe that is the priority. Maybe we decide star wars is not 
the priority. Maybe we accept the judgment of the military people and 
the 

[[Page S15389]]
Secretary of Defense, who says we should not do this.
  We say, all right, that is $48 billion. So what could we do with $48 
billion? Maybe we reduce the deficit, first of all, or, if you insist 
on spending it, did not want to do that, if it is not star wars, how 
about star schools? How about deciding kids are as important as 
bombers? Those are the priorities that we will debate next week.
  No one in this country should lament the fact that we are going to 
have a debate. If we at the end of the day can maybe reach some 
understanding between all of us of what the right priorities are, what 
really advances America's interests, which investments make life 
worthwhile for all Americans, what expands opportunities in our 
country, if we can develop better understandings of what achieves all 
of that, then our country is better served, in my judgment.
  I am not someone who believes the Republicans are all wrong and we 
are all right. That is simply not the case. All of us have made 
mistakes in this country. This country is blessed with people who make 
good decisions, Republicans and Democrats. And I hope at the end of 
this reconciliation fight we can find a way to create more of a 
bipartisan approach to addressing some of the wrenching, real problems 
we have.
  I have often thought it would be useful, perhaps, for us to restrict 
ourselves someday, and it would be useful, probably, for talk radio, 
for example, to restrict themselves, maybe to have a day a month and 
talk about what is right with America, what is right with our country. 
Would that not be hard for some people because there are so many who 
are only willing to talk about what is wrong. The fact is, most people 
are coming here, not leaving. Can you think of someplace you would 
rather live? I cannot. This country is the best place in the world to 
live.
  The question is, What is right with it? How do we build on what is 
right with it? I think it would be nice for talk radio and, I guess, 
the U.S. Senate from time to time to set aside a period and say, this 
is a period where we are going to talk about what works and what makes 
it work and how we build on that. And, I mean, maybe someday we can get 
to that kind of discussion, which I would also like to have.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague from North Dakota for his 
remarks. And I will pick up on his last point.
  First of all, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that morning 
business be extended for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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