[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 165 (Tuesday, October 24, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15563-S15568]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FOLLOWING THE BUDGET DEBATE

  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I listened with interest to the comments 
of my friend from Minnesota, and I guess in a way as I listened to him 
I sort of felt sorry for Americans who try to follow this debate. It is 
going to be difficult because the rhetoric flies fast 

[[Page S 15564]]
and furiously, and a lot of people evidently are going to have 
difficulty trying to figure out what is really true and what is not 
true.
  The Senator from Minnesota talked about the amount of taxes that were 
raised in 1993 and what a terrible thing it is the Democrats have 
perpetrated on the country. But the truth is--the truth, which often 
gets hidden in these debates--yes, taxes were raised in 1993, but only 
on 1 percent, the upper 1 percent of Americans, and that for 98 or 99 
percent of most Americans taxes went down. The burden of the average 
working person went down in the United States.
  So when our Republican friends come to the floor and start lamenting 
the 1993 bill that gave this country a continued economic growth--I 
might add 7.5 million jobs added to the economy of this country in the 
last 3 or 3\1/2\ years compared with about 2.5 million during the 
entire 4 years of the Bush administration--that 1993 bill raised taxes 
only on the very wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, and yet our friends 
keep coming to the floor in defense of that 1 percent. And that is 
really what divides our parties at this point in time.
  Certainly, we are not divided by a desire to have a balanced budget 
because the vast majority of Democrats voted for a balanced budget this 
year. I voted for a balanced budget that will take place in 7 years. We 
did cut Medicare. We did cut Medicaid. But we did not turn around when 
the country has an extraordinary deficit problem and give back to 
people individually what amounts to a very small amount of money. I 
believe it is something like $1.69 a week that most people in America 
will get with this famous $500 tax credit that everybody is going to 
get, which incidentally does not go to everybody. The truth is that 
while our Republican friends talk about a $500 tax credit for every 
family in America, not every family in America will get that $500 
credit because it is only a credit against income tax. The biggest tax 
that most Americans pay is the payroll tax. And for workers at the low 
end of the income scale, they are not going to get the benefit of that 
$500 income credit because it does not show up in their income tax. So 
it does not go to every family in America--another one of the 
deceptions in the rhetoric that people hear.
  We have heard a lot about how we are going to put taxes back in the 
pockets of Americans, but the CBO itself, which we keep hearing quoted 
by our Republican friends, will tell you that the Republican plan 
raises taxes on 49.5 percent of Americans. If you are earning $30,000 
or less, you have a tax increase in the Republican reconciliation bill. 
For 17 million American families, a tax increase, an average tax 
increase of $352; for about 7 million families, if you have a family of 
two, it is about a $400 increase; for 4 million some families with one 
child it is again about a $410 increase, and for a family with no 
children, it is about a $300 increase. That is just the reality, a tax 
increase for $30,000 and less; a tax break for $350,000 and of over 
$5,600 a year.

  Now, the last time I looked, I really did not think that somebody 
earning over $350,000 a year really needed that $5,000 tax break this 
next year if it is at the expense of somebody earning $30,000 or less.
  Now, somehow in this country a fundamental notion of fairness has 
been distorted, and somehow, unfortunately, not enough Americans get 
the facts or the truth of what is happening. Mr. President, today I 
stood up with Senator John McCain of Arizona, Senator Fred Thompson of 
Tennessee, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and we offered some $60 
billion of cuts that could be made in the budget that are based on 
fairness and common sense.
  One of them, for example, is this now infamous program called the 
Market Promotion Program. Now, we had a vote on that, and we lost. It 
does not mean we should not offer it and offer it and offer it until we 
finally win, as we did on the wool and mohair subsidy; as we finally 
won on the ALMR, the advanced liquid metal reactor; as we finally won 
on the supercollider, which the Senator from Arkansas and others fought 
so long to get rid of; as we finally won on the mink subsidy.
  Sometimes it takes time for people to understand the full measure of 
common sense the American people are asking us to exercise. But the 
fact is, the Market Promotion Program--how do you turn to the average 
American and say, ``We're going to ask you to pay more in your premiums 
in Medicare, we're going to cut working families off of Medicaid, we're 
going to cut school lunches and take away science research that 
produces more jobs for the future, but we're going to continue to let 
the Gallo Wine Co. get a subsidy from the Federal Government to sell 
its wine abroad, we're going to continue to let Japanese-made 
underwear, that happens to be made with American cotton, be advertised 
abroad, we're going to continue to allow major companies like McDonalds 
to be able to sell their products even though they make money''? They 
all make money. We are going to tell a senior citizen on a fixed 
income, ``You pay more, but we're going to help these companies that 
are making millions of dollars to sell their products.'' It does not 
make sense.
  I am not saying that in an ideal world I would not love to help our 
companies sell abroad, but we are living in a very tough world now 
where the average family in America, on a daily basis, is being asked 
to make tough decisions. ``Can I buy clothing for my family? Can I 
afford to take a vacation? Can I send my kid to even the parochial 
school where there may be a $4,000 or $5,000 tuition, let alone to a 
private school''?
  There is not a parent in America who does not feel the implosion of 
the school system around them, who is struggling to get their kid the 
best education possible. And these folks know that on a daily basis 
they are making decisions that are based on what they can afford and 
what they must get for their survival and for their kids' future.
  We ought to be making the same decisions here in Washington. What do 
we need? What must we provide for the American people? Must we provide 
a market promotion program when we are cutting people from a hot lunch 
that might be the only meal they get a day that is hot? Must we provide 
the Gallo Co. with an additional subsidy to sell wine at a time when we 
are asking senior citizens on a fixed income to tighten their belt and 
pick up more of the cost of absolutely predictable medical costs or in 
a time when we are telling certain people that they have to sell their 
home and go into poverty in order to qualify for the health care that 
they may need? It just does not make sense.
  You know, we woke up this morning to the umpteenth statistic of 
violence in the city of Washington. A young diplomat's son, sitting on 
the doorsteps of his home on Massachusetts Avenue, blown away, dead. 
That is an act of repetition that occurs in this city every day. And it 
occurs in New York, in Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami, you name 
the city. And it does not have to be a big city. All over this country 
today the acts of random violence are increased. And where are the 
police? Where are the police? That is something we must do in America, 
is put more police on the streets.
  But instead we are going to build B-2 bombers. Even though the 
Pentagon does not want the B-2 bombers, even though the Pentagon never 
submitted a request for the B-2 bombers, even though Boris Yeltsin and 
President Clinton are meeting, talking about the cooperation of former 
Soviet troops now Russian troops in Bosnia. We are building B-2 
bombers. For what threat? For what reason? The military did not even 
ask for an additional $6 or $7 billion. But this budget provides it, 
and provides it even while they are asking all these folks below 
$30,000 and all these other folks to tighten their belt.
  Mr. President, it does not make sense. And in the next hours, as we 
debate this, and in next days as Americans come to confront the 
realities of this budget, America is going to understand it does not 
make sense.
  Now, I keep hearing my colleagues say, ``Well, what do you guys want 
to do? You just want to continue the deficit? You just want to spend 
more money? You just want to build up the debt of this country?'' The 
answer is no. We voted this year for a balanced budget in 7 years, but 
we did not do it at the expense of asking education costs to rise, we 
did not do it at the expense of trying to make life miserable for those 
for whom it is already hard enough to find a job and break out of 
poverty. We did it by fairly deciding 

[[Page S 15565]]
that you should not give this enormous tax cut to those who least need 
it at a time when you are complaining about a deficit and the debt of 
this Nation.
  The Wall Street Journal the other day had an article that showed that 
even under CBO's own analysis, this ``reconciliation package,'' as it 
is known, will add to the debt of this country over the next 7 years, 
add to the debt service of the country, and that it will, indeed, raise 
taxes on people.
  Jack Kemp came before the Small Business Committee just last week, 
and he said, ``I hope you guys''--referring to those in the committee--
``will not cut the earned-income tax credit, because if you do, that is 
a tax increase.''
  Ronald Reagan called the earned-income tax credit the greatest 
antipoverty program, profamily program in this country. What is 
happening in the next hours is that $43 billion will be cut from the 
earned-income tax credit which will make it harder for people at the 
low end of the income scale to do what so many people on the other side 
of the aisle talk about, going to work, making work pay, living out the 
values of work, and being able to break out of poverty.
  Here we are taking this extraordinary program that Republicans and 
Democrats together voted to support in the past years, and cutting it. 
Mr. President, in the next few hours, in the next 2 days of debate and 
1 day of just rapid-fire voting, because of the situation the Senate 
finds itself in, we are going to be debating on what I call the 
antivision, the counter reform 1995 reconciliation act.
  I know one thing in the midst of this debate, Mr. President. The 
American people want to put this country back on track. They want, and 
they deserve, a balanced budget. They want, and they deserve, a 
reduction in the deficit. But they also want us to exercise common 
sense in a way that is fair and that talks and thinks about the future 
of this country.
  What began in January of 1995 as an effort to work on a bipartisan 
basis to achieve change, Mr. President, has regrettably turned into a 
very partisan war of rhetoric and, I think, even some deception. Why do 
I say ``deception?'' Because under the guise of saving the Medicare 
Program, we have colleagues who have basically misled the public by 
calling for a massive change to Medicare that will increase the out-of-
pocket costs to seniors. It will result in hundreds of thousands of 
health care jobs lost. And it will also change the fundamental 
relationship of seniors to their health care delivery system, while at 
the same time telling them they are going to get more money.
  Mr. President, what is the deception in that? Let me be very frank, 
very straightforward. The deception is that all seniors know, because 
they also listen to the trustees, that the trustees did not describe a 
$270 billion problem.
  The trustees described a $90-billion problem. I agree there is a $90-
billion problem. But everybody understands that the real deception here 
is the effort to take a $90-billion problem and turn it into a $270-
billion solution so that you can give a tax cut to the folks who least 
need it.
  I might add that one of the great acts in turning the table topsy-
turvy was last year with Harry and Louise. Remember how everybody 
argued about, ``Gosh, we don't want the Government telling you what to 
do, and we don't want people to have choice taken away.''
  And here, all of a sudden, is a formulation for Medicare that is the 
Government telling people what to do and narrowing their choices by 
requiring that they go into a certain kind of managed care as the only 
means of providing the savings that they are providing.
  What is equally egregious is, we keep hearing people say, ``We're not 
cutting Medicare; we're just slowing the rate of growth. It is still 
going to grow. There is still going to be a fixed amount of money 
additionally that everybody is going to get each year.''
  So with that sort of great statement, that bond, that verbal bond, 
everybody is supposed to feel good: ``Wow, I'm going to get an 
additional $2,000 over the next 7 years.''
  But the difference is, Mr. President, and everybody knows it, when 
you have a fixed amount of budget available and the costs of Medicare 
are going up at a fairly steady rate, even if you diminish that rate to 
what most people would accept as a reasonable rate of increase, the 
population is growing, the population of seniors in America is growing 
at a predictable rate.
  So you take this fixed pot of money, say to everybody, that fixed pot 
of money, even growing a little bit, is going to have to take care of 
the same costs as it did the year before, even though the costs are 
increasing, and it is going to have to do it for a larger population.
  Ask anybody in elementary math, any school in America and even with 
the problems we have in math in America, I believe they will understand 
that with a fixed amount of money, a growing population, increased 
costs, you have a problem in delivering the same level of care. That is 
why they want to take the standards off the nursing homes, because if 
you take the standards off the nursing homes, people can deliver 
nursing care without a registered nurse. We can have a turning back to 
the time when people were strapped in wheel chairs and where they were 
just, basically, drugged out as a means of taking care of people. We 
can step back, and that may be the antivision that a lot of our friends 
are expressing here. It is certainly a form of deception.
  Mr. President, at a time when this country is desperately in need of 
serious tax simplification, a tax simplification that really cuts tax 
rates for all Americans and American businesses, the Republicans are 
increasing taxes on the middle class and increasing the number of 
loopholes for business, contrary to the very reform effort that we 
tried to put in place in 1986.
  The Republican antivision, counterreform, tax-and-spend legislation 
sends a clear and unequivocal message to middle-income Americans across 
this Nation, which is: ``You're really not that important.''
  How else can you explain to people who earn $30,000 a year, who 
comprise just about 50 percent of the people in this country, why it is 
that their taxes are going to go up? Nowhere in the legislation that 
will come to the floor tomorrow is there a demonstrated commitment to 
the 2 million Americans who work slightly at or above the minimum wage. 
Nowhere is there a clear commitment to continued environmental cleanup 
and the progress that we have made over the last 25 years, and for the 
working mothers of this country who cut the strings of welfare 
dependence and sought and secured employment.
  This legislation is saying to them that it is going to remain silent 
and even absent from helping them by proposing an increase in the 
minimum wage that has gone down now to a 40-year low level. For middle-
class families that have an aging parent living in a nursing home, we 
may now find that those young people who once thought that their 
mothers and fathers were taken care of are now going to help them with 
the costs of care. And having already bankrupted the elderly nursing 
home resident because of the requirements we have, we are going to 
place additional burdens on their children.
  In contrast to that, the wealthiest Americans will reap a substantial 
bonus from this legislation. The richest 12 percent--and I do not want 
to get into a class distinction here, but fair is fair and we have to 
measure the notion of fairness.
  The fact is that at the upper level of the income scale, the upper 12 
percent are going to receive a whopping 48 percent of the tax benefits, 
and people with annual incomes greater than $200,000 are going to find 
their taxes decreased by over $3,400, and the 13 million families that 
earn more than $100,000 annually are going to enjoy a new tax break of 
$1,138. I do not know how you explain that when the other people are 
paying more taxes. I do not know anybody who can argue that that is a 
sensible idea of tax equity or tax fairness.
  In the end, if you look at the various breaks that are continued and 
loopholes that are created, there is, in this reconciliation bill a new 
definition of welfare reform for those who are at the upper end of the 
scale, and I think it is part of a deception, or a counterreform, if 
you will, that literally turns back the clock to the time before we 
learned 

[[Page S 15566]]
in this country that you needed to have a Government that was willing 
to respond and make a difference in people's lives.
  It strips away those protections that were developed through harsh 
and bitter experiences, through the Depression years and through the 
long years prior to the Depression where we began to understand what 
abject poverty and racism did to the Nation. We learned that you needed 
a response. All we hear about is the failure of that response, even 
though, in fact, most people who dispassionately and apolitically 
analyze it will tell you that it is not that so many of those things 
have failed, it is rather that they have not been permitted to be 
completed or to go to fruition.
  Maybe this is what the real Contract With America is all about, Mr. 
President, creating a lesser America for those who are struggling at 
the middle and lower end of the scale and then increasing privilege for 
the few.
  The statistics on what has happened to income in the last 13 years 
dramatize this. From 1940 to 1950, 1950 to 1960, 1960 to 1970, 1970 to 
1980, everybody in this country saw their income grow together. If you 
were at the lowest end of the income scale, the lowest 20 percent of 
Americans during that period of time, your income went up in the area 
of 138 percent every 10 years. If you were in the upper end of the 
income scale, your income went up in the area of 98 percent. That is 
not a bad balance. But from 1980 to 1993, the income of the lowest 20 
percent of workers went down.
  Over a 13-year period, the income of the lowest 20 percent of 
Americans went down in the area of 17 percent. The next 20 percent, 
their income went down in the area of 4 percent. The middle two stayed 
the same, but the top quintile of America went up in the area of 105 
percent. That really is the story of what has happened in this country 
in the last 13 years.

  Not very long ago, Speaker Gingrich talked about creating an 
``opportunity society,'' as he called it--a society where problems 
would be turned into opportunities, where Americans of all ages, 
ethnic, or racial backgrounds would be afforded equal opportunity.
  Well, Mr. President, that rhetoric should be measured against the 
reconciliation bill we will debate in the next hours--a reconciliation 
bill where we see spending on middle income and average Americans 
decrease, where we see an increase of taxes on the middle class, an 
opportunity society that has really been left to the ``haves,'' and for 
those who have not, the opportunity is clearly going to continue to 
escape their grasp.
  Ironically, the choices made in this budget make some very, very 
strange and even bewildering opportunities. I do not think anybody 
wants the opportunity to drink dirty water. But for the first time in 5 
or 6 years, the Federal share of helping Boston clean up its harbor and 
relieve the rates--what are now the highest rates of water in the 
country--is going to be diminished--diminished even from what President 
Bush was willing to give it.
  I do not know anybody who wants the opportunity to go to school 
without books or even be able to go to a decent school at all. But the 
chapter 1 education assistance and the Goals 2000 is going to be 
stripped away. I do not know anybody who thinks it is an opportunity to 
eat contaminated meat, but we saw that proposed in the course of this 
last few months. And even the taking of unsafe medicines--is that an 
opportunity?
  So how do our Republican colleagues come to the floor and tell the 
American people that opportunity means cutting cops on the streets, 
when children are being shot in cold blood on some of the streets of 
America. How do they say it is an opportunity when they raise $43 
billion in taxes on low-income working Americans, who are struggling to 
make ends meet on what Ronald Reagan called the best antipoverty, 
profamily program in America and give a $245 billion tax break to the 
wealthiest Americans while increasing the national debt in the process?
  How is it an opportunity for students when we cut $11 billion from 
student loans and then increase the amount of taxes their parents are 
going to have to pay? In fact, Mr. President, over the course of the 
next 7 years, this reconciliation bill is going to now end the direct 
loan program for maybe 50 percent of the schools in this country that 
have entered into that program in the last few years. It is going to 
raise the burden on the average American borrowing money in order to 
send their kids to school and put that money through the tax benefit in 
the hands of the banks and the lenders even though it has been one of 
the most successful door openings to the information age that we ever 
could have anticipated.
  What kind of opportunity is it when this budget cuts $182 billion 
from Medicaid, but leaves intact an $11 billion international space 
program? What kind of opportunity do seniors get when our Republicans 
colleagues have chosen to cut $270 billion from Medicare and give the 
Defense Department a $6 billion bonus--money that it did not even 
request?
  What do I tell the people of Massachusetts when, if these Medicare 
cuts hold, we lose 129,000 health service jobs, when the State loses 4 
percent across the board in general fund spending and has to make up 
for the $1.3 billion loss in Federal aid. When seniors in Massachusetts 
have to pay $1,000 more per year for Medicare and the interest on 
student loans for 4 years of college goes up $3,000? What do you say 
about opportunity in the face of the largest income earners in America 
getting a tax break?
  I was here in 1986, Mr. President, when we voted for the biggest tax 
decrease in the history of the country. We took the rates down to 28 
percent and, for a few people in the bubble, 33 percent. We have been 
giving tax breaks to all Americans across the board. But in the face of 
these other reductions, it is unconscionable to suggest that that 
represents a definition of opportunity.
  Mr. President, I really think there is a reform agenda which we could 
have embraced in a bipartisan way, and I reemphasize that there are 
many of us on both sides of the aisle that I know could have found a 
common middle ground here, if politics and ideology and hot-button 
pushing did not put such a premium on the agenda of the House and on 
some who were elected in 1994.
  It seems to me that what we are seeing here is a program that, not 
intentionally--although, in some I am not sure--turns out to be 
anticommunity, even antipeople, certainly anticommon sense, in the 
context of the real agenda of this country. When those who espouse that 
agenda choose not to fund a successful program like YouthBuild in 
Boston--when they strip youth employment opportunities and educational 
funds that can keep kids in school or give kids structure in their 
lives--that disempowers communities and prevents people from helping 
themselves.
  We hear an awful lot of talk in the U.S. Senate about values, and we 
hear a lot of talk about family; but the truth is, Mr. President, that 
36 percent of all the children in America today are born out of 
wedlock. The truth is that you can go into any community in America 
today and find kids who talk with a level of anger and alienation 
unlike anything any of us have ever known historically. The truth is 
that these are kids who do not have contact with church or school or 
parents. That is why they are in trouble.
  Now, we can talk about values all we want. But if somebody does not 
have some contact with that child, ages 9 to 16, where are the values 
going to come from? Most of us would come to the floor and extol the 
virtues of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Brownies, boys and girls clubs, 
YWCA's, YMCA's. But the truth is that, for the vast majority of the 
children in this country, they are just not available. Who is going to 
provide the structure? Or are we going to wait until we are forced to 
spend $50,000 a year to incarcerate that new felon?
  I keep hearing my colleagues perpetuate one of the great 
misstatements and myths of American politics today. They sweep every 
one of these efforts to reach children under the same rug. They brand 
it all with one great sweeping brush and say, ``The liberal programs of 
the past failed.''
  But the truth is, Mr. President, that I can show you thousands of 
young people across this country who are working at jobs today, who are 
graduating from college today because one of these 

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entities intervened in their life, whether it was a City Year, 
YouthBuild, or a host of other entities. I know a young man who 
graduated--I do not know him not personally, but I know of him--and I 
have seen his curricula and history, in the context of YouthBuild, 
extolled for having graduated from Rutgers this past year. He came out 
of the streets through a YouthBuild program and saved his opportunity. 
I know a young woman currently working as a project manager on the 
Boston third harbor tunnel project in Boston. She came out of gangs and 
drug use and a prison record, or at least a court-associated record. By 
virtue of this program that entered her life where there was no parent, 
where there was no affirmation, she got it from the friends that joined 
her in this effort to save their lives.

  Much of that is being done away with, with this effort by the 
Republicans.
  There are many of these efforts that are enormously successful across 
the country, Mr. President, and we should not have to fight for basic 
support to have a successful program to give some of these kids a 
chance.
  I think that what we need is a positive vision for a truly 
progressive revolution in this country that reforms the Government, and 
not just a negative vision that is guaranteed to take us back to darker 
times. The right choice is to empower communities to come together to 
do what needs to be done and to help them do it.
  I am not in favor, nor am I coming to the floor, to advocate that we 
should stay with the old programs that have failed. I am not even 
coming to the floor to advocate this ought to all come from Washington. 
It should not, Mr. President.
  I am not even advocating Government programs. I am advocating a new 
partnership between the Federal capacity to help distribute some 
resources and do it in an administratively cheap way that gets that 
money to those nongovernmental entities, to the nonprofit entities by 
the thousands that are out there, struggling to make a difference in 
the lives of young people.
  But we do not do that, not in this piece of legislation, even with 
this extraordinary opportunity to really create a blueprint for the 
future of this country.
  I think we ought to be encouraging partnerships for community 
progress all across the country between the Government and the private 
sector and churches and schools and community groups. We should rely on 
the community groups and on those local entities and on the local 
people to help define those efforts.
  One thing I know, Mr. President, when you have only 82 kids in a 
YouthBuild program in Boston and 400 kids on the waiting list, it is 
unconscionable to be continuing some of these other subsidies in giving 
tax breaks when we could be saving some of those 400 kids and providing 
the same kind of self-help program that truly embodies the notion of 
giving people values.
  Mr. President, the people in this country are really sick and tired 
of the lack of common sense that emanates from Washington. They are 
tired of the gamesmanship. They are tired of the rhetoric that comes 
off of this floor. It is hard.
  I must say I listened to C-SPAN a couple nights ago and I said, 
``God, I really hope I do not sound like that,'' because the words just 
sort of bounce around. They sometimes have no real connection to the 
lives of the people that we were sent here to represent. There is more 
finger pointing and more gamesmanship.
  Sadly, we have arrived at a point where we have this extraordinarily 
important budget, and truly it can be said that there has been no real 
outreach, no real effort to try to find a bipartisan approach.
  We are implementing the Contract With America. We are implementing an 
agenda that was set in a campaign document, a document that does not 
even mention the word ``children.'' The word ``children'' does not 
appear in this contract. The words ``health care'' do not appear in 
this contract. ``Environment'' does not appear in the contract except 
under the concept of regulatory reform.
  Most importantly, those things that really matter to people, which is 
how am I going to get a job? How am I going to raise my income for the 
additional work I am putting in on a daily basis? That is the primary 
thing that most Americans are concerned about.
  People want to know whether or not they will have their kids be able 
to have an adequate enough education to be able to get that kind of 
job. They want to know whether or not they will be able to go home at 
night and literally not be so exhausted and burned out and frazzled 
that they can spend some time with a child, truly imparting values, and 
that they can have time for something we used to call quality of life.
  I think the people of this country want us to move inexorably to a 
stronger, richer, safer, better, and saner America for everyone--
everyone--on a fair basis.
  They want to fix what is wrong. They want to keep what is right. 
There is a lot that is right.
  Unfortunately, in this budget we are not going to have the 
opportunity to really present those choices to the American people. I 
am convinced that most Americans very quickly will understand what is 
fair and what is real and what is not.
  The American people believe unquestionably in their hearts that we 
have not been wrong to do what both Republicans and Democrats joined 
together in doing in the last years. Republicans joined with Democrats 
to guarantee that those who work at the low end of the scale of America 
have a reasonable wage. That we did together.
  They joined together to guarantee that we would put 100,000 cops on 
the streets of America. And yet here we are with a proposal that blocks 
it all into a grant, makes those cops compete with floodlights for 
prisons, computers for the precinct, new cruisers, all the other 
things--except that we so desperately need cops on every street in this 
country.
  Mr. President, the budget debate that we will embark on in the next 
hours really should not be so honed in political ideology or 30-second 
sound bites. I think it really ought to be a much more thoughtful 
discussion to the American who is listening and who wants to really 
consider how we will build the future of this country.
  It ought to be a debate based on facts, not on distortions and side 
bars and fictions but really on the facts. The implacable and 
irrefutable facts about where we are heading in terms of income and 
jobs, violence, education, environmental cleanup, and the other things 
that make up the quality of life.
  Mr. President, I think it is a discussion that should not be limited 
in this arbitrary 20-hour way of jamming all of the legislative effort 
and the 1,000 pages that most people have not even had time to read.
  The tax provisions contained in this legislation certainly require a 
great deal more time and exposure in order to really flesh out their 
fairness and also their long-term impact on the economy of this 
country.
  Maybe it is time we changed our rules, Mr. President, by voting to 
recommit the legislation of the Budget Committee to ensure that a tax-
writing committee has had sufficient time to explore and debate all the 
issues not addressed, including real tax reform and simplification.
  This legislation leaves us with many, many questions, Mr. President. 
Why is it that we could not have used this as a great opportunity to 
try to make a stronger set of choices for the American people? Why 
could we not have lowered the tax rates for lower-income Americans and 
been fairer in the distribution at the upper end? Why could we not have 
used this as a means of debating how we will break people out of that 
lower end cycle, rather than sending them back into it by doing away 
with the earned income tax credit.
  Why could we not have used this to have a stronger real fix for the 
problem of the inequity of the delivery of health care in the country 
and the problem of the distribution of resources and the increasing 
numbers of Americans who have no coverage at all? Why could we not have 
spent the time on the floor really expressing the stronger vision of 
where it is that we are headed.
  I know my colleagues will come to the floor and they will say the 
Senator has it all wrong. What we are going to do here is we are going 
to balance the budget. We are going to end this cycle of spending. 

[[Page S 15568]]

  I agree, Mr. President. Balancing the budget is good for America, and 
reducing this deficit is good for America. That is not the issue. That 
is not what is at stake here because we are going to do that.
  The question is, how are we going to do it? Are we going to do it 
fixated only on the fiscal deficit, or are we also going to think about 
the spiritual, moral, cultural deficit in this country? Are we also 
going to think about the investment deficit in this country?
  You do not get from here to there in America on an old FAA computer 
system and call it safe. You do not get from here to there in America 
on trains that are predestined to crash because we do not invest enough 
in safety measures for our country. You do not get from here to there 
in America on roads that were not built in the National Highway System 
with the commitment of Federal participation. There are hundreds of 
examples, where responsible action at the Federal level has improved 
the capacity of this country to provide for its people and to help 
people provide for themselves.

  I am absolutely one who accepts the notion that we have to rethink 
how we deliver services. I am prepared to shrink the size of 
Washington. In fact we have been doing that. We will soon have around 
200,000 fewer bureaucrats. It is the smallest Government we had since 
Jack Kennedy was President of the United States. You would not know 
that from listening to our colleagues. We have had 3 straight years of 
deficit reduction. And now we will move on to balance the budget, which 
is what we ought to do.
  But Americans are going to ask whether, as we did this, we did it 
sensibly; whether it is fair; whether we had a vision for what we want 
the future to be. Americans are going to ask whether or not this 
document represents an antivision, or a vision. I am confident that, 
because it represents an antivision, the President of the United States 
will ultimately veto it, because it is not bipartisan, because it is 
not reflective of the higher plane of vision of what this country ought 
to be and what we want it to be.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.

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