[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 170 (Tuesday, October 31, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S16350]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




[[Page S16350]]


                         ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS

  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I, too, would like to talk a little bit 
about the budget passed last week and the threatened veto.
  President Clinton reminds me lately of the weather vane we used to 
have atop the barn of my family's dairy farm. Ours happened to be 
shaped like a rooster, and we always knew which way the wind was 
blowing because that old rooster would spin around and around with the 
breeze. Like that old weather vane, the President is spending a lot of 
time on the roof these days, and he must get awful dizzy up there, 
testing the wind, shifting his position each time it changes.
  Last week, this chamber delivered on last November's mandate by the 
voters and passed a far-reaching, historic piece of legislation that 
turns this Government around by balancing the budget and cutting taxes.
  With the vote behind us, the budget reconciliation conference 
committee is now moving ahead with our plan, shaping a bill to send to 
the President. The newspaper columnists and the TV political panels 
have been busy reporting on just what President Clinton thinks about 
what we are doing.
  Or rather, on what the polls and his many political advisers tell the 
President he should be thinking. This is a President, after all, for 
whom ``taking a tough moral stand'' means finally admitting he raised 
taxes too much in 1993, and then recanting his story the very next day, 
blaming his confession on ``sleepiness.''
  What the President is apparently hearing when it comes to the budget 
is that he ought to veto the reconciliation bill.
  Let me quote from the Washington Times of October 20:

       The White House is already preparing the post-veto 
     campaign, mapping out travel schedules for Cabinet 
     secretaries and culling poll results to determine the key 
     issues the President will push.

  A top White House aide has even been promoted--a battlefield 
promotion, I guess--as ``assistant to the President.'' His new duties? 
To ``calculate the political impact of a veto.''
  Mr. President, this Congress is tackling the serious issues that come 
with fundamental reform of the Government, issues like how to preserve 
the troubled Medicare program, how to save our kids and grandkids from 
having to carry the load of our debts and deficits, how to stop the 
welfare system's cycle of dependency, how to give working-class folks 
the tax relief they desperately need. While we are doing all of that, 
the White House huddles in its War Room calculating how many political 
points the President would score by trying to squash our efforts.
  It seems President Clinton's advisers have told him that he needs to 
veto the reconciliation bill to, ``draw policy differences with the 
Republicans.''
  ``Without a veto,'' says a White House spokesman, ``you cannot draw 
the bright lines. And we are in a period where drawing that bright line 
is everything to the election.''
  That election is still more than an entire year away.
  Yet at a time when this Nation is desperate for strong leadership 
from its Chief Executive, a distant election has become the guiding 
force of this Presidency.
  Mr. Clinton's advisers say he is going to veto our budget 
reconciliation bill. Well, it surely cannot be because his agenda is so 
fundamentally different from ours.
  We are calling for tax cuts, and the President says he wants tax 
cuts, as well. He supports the child tax credit and has hinted lately 
that he is agreeable to cutting the capital gains tax.
  Our budget plan preserves Medicare by slowing its growth and offering 
seniors choices--proposals strikingly similar to the Medicare plan 
touted by the President in his health care reform bill just 2 years 
ago.
  We are also easing back the growth of Government spending, and that 
is something for which President Clinton has been an advocate. After 
all, is not that what reinventing Government is all about?
  Now, after months of adamantly denying it could ever be accomplished, 
the President has admitted that balancing the budget in 7 years--not 
10, or 9, or even 8, as he originally proposed--was a reasonable goal.
  Clearly, the President is moving closer toward us as this budget 
process continues. But still, he is going to wave his veto pen and just 
say ``no''--not because he believes in his heart that he must, but 
because the political winds suggest that he ought to.
  That is not leadership.
  I suggest to President Clinton that he resist playing politics and 
involve himself seriously in negotiations that will move this budget 
forward, on behalf of all Americans--and not stop it in its tracks to 
placate his political base.
  Mr. President, leadership does not mean having a finger sensitive 
enough to tell you which way the wind is blowing. And as any farmer 
knows, a flimsy weather vane that sits too long out in the elements is 
eventually going to wear out and need to be replaced.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed 1 
minute to close the order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CRAIG. I thank my colleagues for joining me on this Halloween 
day. I hope the message that we send to the American people is that the 
efforts we are involved in here in Congress are not a trick but a 
treat--a treat rewarding them for the profound statement they made last 
year in the dramatic realignment of the political structure of this 
country, toward a time when Government's budgets will be balanced, when 
its programs will be responsive, as concerned about the taxpayers as it 
is about those who should be the recipients of responsible and caring 
Government programs.
  So the day of Halloween ought not to be scary, but a profound 
statement to the American people that their Government in this 
representative form of government heard them and heard them well.

                          ____________________