[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 163 (Friday, October 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15389-S15390]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   WHERE IS THE STANDARD OF FAIRNESS?

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate what the 
Senator from North Dakota said about our country. And I would say to my 
colleague who is presiding, the Presiding Officer, that I have said 
probably every week, when I go home, to someone that when I come to the 
floor of the Senate I still get goose bumps. It is a real honor to 
serve in the U.S. Senate and for Minnesota. If you look at these 
buildings here in Washington, DC, and you think about what they stand 
for--my father was a Jewish immigrant who fled persecution in Russia. 
It is a wonderful country, and we ought to emphasize the positive.
  Mr. President, next week we will have debate--not hate, but rather a 
debate. And I would like to lay out my framework just for really not 
more than 10 minutes.
  Mr. President, I came to the floor of the Senate at the beginning of 
this Congress, and I had a resolution. It was nothing more than a 
sense-of-the-Senate amendment that it was the sense of the Senate that 
we would not take any action that could create more hunger or 
homelessness among children. Actually, it was defeated twice. Then the 
third time it was passed by a voice vote. I now regret that I accepted 
a voice vote, because I think it was a symbolic vote, because if I look 
at this deficit reduction, the issue becomes deficit reduction based 
upon what standard? Is it deficit reduction based on the path of least 
political resistance? Are we asking some of the citizens to tighten 
their belts who cannot? And are we leaving a lot of special interests 
untouched? I think we are.

  I certainly will be active in the debate next week with amendments to 
force some discussions on these issues, and I want to know where 
Senators stand.
  We have something like $35 billion slated for cuts in nutrition 
programs for children. Food stamps and the Women, Infants, and Children 
Program, the WIC Program, is an incredibly important program, because 
if you were to ask me as a former teacher what is the most important 
education program, I would say to make sure every woman who is 
expecting a child--I just had a grandson, our third grandchild, a week 
ago. That grandson, Joshua Paul, I think is going to have a good life. 
He was born healthy, but my daughter, Marcia, had an adequate diet. She 
had the resources to make sure she did.
  My God, children at birth are not going to have the same chance if 
their mothers have not had a decent diet. We are cutting the Women, 
Infants, and Children Program.
  The Food Stamp Program is not perfect; we ought to make it more 
accountable. The fact of the matter is, imperfections and all, we 
dramatically expanded the Food Stamp Program after the expose on hunger 
and malnutrition in America, and we did it in the early 1970's. We had 
some national standards, and we implemented this program across the 
country. We do not have all the children anymore with distended 
bellies. We do not have the same amount of hunger and malnutrition, 
though we still have too much. We are cutting into these programs.
  When it came to the Pentagon budget, which was $7 billion more than 
the Pentagon asked, when it came to the military contractors, when it 
came to star wars or Stealth or Trident, we just gave the money away. 
They have the clout. They are the heavy hitters, they have the 
lobbyists, and they did just fine. But the children in America did not, 
especially poor children.
  I just do not think there is a standard of fairness. I think there is 
consensus that you have to pay off the interest on the debt. That is 
what this is all about. There is not a Senator here that could be proud 
of the building up of the debt in this country. The question becomes, 
when you make the cuts and you do the deficit reduction, where is the 
Minnesota standard of fairness? That is the question.
  Mr. President, the Finance Committee met and came out with $245 
billion of tax cuts. But here is the interesting thing. If you have 
family incomes below $30,000 a year, which is about half the people in 
this country, you have the earned-income tax credit taken away from you 
and you pay more. You are paying a tax all the way up to families 
$30,000 a year and under. But, by golly, if you are in the top 1 
percent of this population with incomes over $350,000 a year, you get a 
$5,626 break. And if it is $200,000 a year, you get $3,416. This is a 
subsidy in inverse relationship to need.
  If you are at the top of the population income-wise, the top 1 
percent, you get a huge tax break. If you make over $200,000 you do, 
and if you make over $100,000 you do. But if you make under $30,000 a 
year, you do not get any break; you pay more. This is like a subsidy in 
inverse relationship to need. Same issue.
  This is what I am going to zero in on next week: Why have the 
military contractors got everything they wanted? Why do the children 
lose some of their nutritional programs? Who has the power in America? 
Who has power in the Congress? Special interests dominate.
  Why does the top 1 percent of the population get a huge tax break and 
the bottom 50 percent of the population get an additional tax? Who has 
power? Who has the lobbyists? Who are the special interests? Who is 
well represented here? There is no Minnesota standard of fairness in 
this plan.
  Finally, Mr. President, I have two other issues to mention. One is 
student financial aid. It is not coming up enough. I was a teacher for 
20 years, and when we marked up the cuts in financial aid out of 
committee, I asked colleagues--and maybe they have done 

[[Page S15390]]
this--but I said to colleagues, ``Have you had any town meetings on 
your campuses? Because the picture you seem to have of students is not 
the same picture I get from holding community meetings back in my 
State''--Moorhead State, Inver Hills Community College, Minneapolis 
Community College, University of Minnesota at Duluth. Because what 
happens to me is fully half the students, if not more, come up to me 
and they say, either publicly or someone who is not good at speaking in 
a public meeting will come up afterwards and say, ``Senator, I'm a 
nontraditional student.'' That is the first sentence.
  The next sentence, especially at the community colleges, is, ``I am 
older than you''--they always like to say that--``and I lost my job. I 
am going back to school. I don't have the resources. Don't cut the 
financial aid. I am a single parent. I am the welfare mother you say 
you want to go into workfare. Don't cut my financial aid. Senator, we 
can't afford it.''
  Or if it is the 18-to-22-year-old group--many of our undergraduates 
are going to school 6 years, not 4 years and they have two and three 
minimum wage jobs and we are cutting financial aid for students. And 
then, Mr. President, there are the students who sell plasma to buy 
textbooks to begin the semester.
  What in the world are we doing ending the grace period on the 
interest on loans 6 months after graduation? Why are we ending the 
parent plus loan program for moderate- and middle-income families? Why 
are we putting a tax on the institutions based on their loan portfolio? 
Why do we not understand that 75 percent of the student financial aid 
package are loans now, not grants? What in the world are we thinking?
  The missing piece here is the impact on people. I have held these 
town meetings on campuses. I do not know, maybe other Senators have 
gotten a different picture from students, but that is the picture I 
get.
  So, again, $245 billion of tax cuts, but cuts in students financial 
aid; $7 billion more than the Pentagon wants, but cuts in student 
financial aid.
  Mr. President, I am not talking about Medicare and Medicaid and 
health care today, but I will tell you this, this is a rush to 
recklessness and it will not work in my State of Minnesota. We have 
done something of which I am proud. We have 300,000 children that 
receive medical assistance. It is a safety net program. Is that going 
to be cut?
  I meet with people from the developmental disabilities community, and 
I have people say to me--I remember a woman in another town meeting. 
Are we holding town meetings? Are we talking to people back in the 
States that are going to be affected by this? She says to me--and this 
Chair is a close friend of mine, I respect the Chair, the Senator from 
New Hampshire--she says to me, ``Paul, the Americans With Disabilities 
Act is going to be a cruel lie for me if I don't have someone to help 
me get out of bed in the morning, a personal attendant. I can't go and 
own my own small business, and I do own my own small business. I am 
intelligent and I am smart and I live a life of dignity. Do you know 
what you are doing with cuts in medical assistance? Are you going to 
restrict eligibility, less access to personal attendants? Are we going 
to have to be poor to be eligible for any of this? What are you doing? 
That is the question. Don't be so reckless with our lives.''
  I hear the same thing in rural Minnesota. I could go on and on, Mr. 
President. But the question I have, by way of summary, because I do not 
want to dominate the floor today, is why, if we are going to do deficit 
reduction, not do it based on some standard of Minnesota fairness? Why 
do we have a disproportionate number of cuts that affect the most 
vulnerable citizens in this country, the poor, namely women and 
children? Why are we cutting financial aid for higher education? Why 
are we cutting into health care and the quality of health care that is 
delivered to people?
  I am willing to argue this issue of quality later on for 20 hours 
plus in terms of what this is going to do for Medicare and medical 
assistance. But at the same time, Mr. President, you have the tax cuts 
that mainly go to people on the top. You have more than the Pentagon 
asked for. And then, finally, and this is going to be the piece that I 
am looking most forward to in this debate, what about all of the 
subsidies that go to the oil companies and the tobacco companies and 
the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies? What about 
all those loopholes in deductions and giveaways?
  I will tell you something. I think what makes people more angry about 
the political process in the Nation's Capital is the feeling that some 
of these special interests who are the heavy hitters and hire the 
lobbyists and are the big players and the big givers get their way.
  This is a perfect example. I am going to come out here on the floor 
and I am going to say--and we are going to have votes on these 
amendments--if you want to have deficit reduction, why do you not ask 
some of these large corporations that get tax giveaways to tighten 
their belts? Should they not be a part of deficit reduction? You know 
what? Every time you do that, all sorts of colleagues think of a 
million reasons why we should continue to give them special tax breaks. 
Middle-income people do not get these breaks; working people do not get 
these breaks; low-income people do not get these breaks. But, oh, boy, 
oil companies do, pharmaceutical companies do, gas companies do, coal 
companies do, tobacco companies do. They all get these breaks.
  So I think the debate next week ought to be about, where is the 
standard of fairness? Who is being well represented and who is not 
being well represented?
  We will have a sharp debate, I say to my colleague from Georgia. It 
will not be hate, it will be debate, because I believe all of us have 
mutual respect for one another. We feel strongly about what we are 
doing, and I am sure we are all doing it in good faith. But I have a 
lot of indignation about the priorities of this deficit reduction plan. 
I believe it goes against the grain of the basic Minnesota standard of 
fairness.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

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