[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 171 (Wednesday, November 1, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16451-S16455]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         BUDGET RECONCILIATION

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume 
on the hour that has been allocated to the minority leader.
  Mr. President, today the Senate will select conferees to go to 
conference on the reconciliation bill. Conferees from the Senate and 
conferees from the House will meet and debate and try to reach an 
agreement on what kind of a reconciliation bill will be passed from the 
Congress to the President.
  This all does not mean very much to the American people, the words 
``reconciliation,'' ``conferences.'' What means something to the 
American people will be what effect will it have on their lives, what 
effect will it have on their health care system, on Medicare, Medicaid, 
the ability to send their child to college, on young 3-, 4-, 5-year-old 
kids who are in Head Start--what effect will this have on all of those 
people. That is what means something to the American people.
  The debate that people have heard coming from this Chamber is a 
debate not about one side of the aisle that wants to be obstructionist 
and the other side that wants to do something wrong, it is about people 
who have different views of what the priorities ought to be.
  One thing that is certain about this Senate meeting this year is that 
100 years from now, all the Members of this Senate will be dead and the 
only record we will have left that historians can evaluate from our 
service is to evaluate what we spent the public's money on and, 
therefore, what we felt was valuable and important and would advance 
the interests of this country. People can tell something about our 
value system by looking at the Federal budget. On what did we elect to 
spend the public's money? How did we invest it? How did we spend it? 
That is what historians will be able to use to view what we felt was 
important.
  The priority in this reconciliation bill by the Republican Party is 
to say, ``Let's have a tax cut.'' I thought the priority when we 
started this year was one that said, ``Let's balance the budget.'' In 
fact, we had people on the floor 

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of the Senate saying we must change the U.S. Constitution to require us 
to balance the budget. Of course, the budget can be balanced without 
changing the Constitution.
  We have people in this Chamber who call themselves conservatives who 
view the Constitution as merely a rough draft, something they can 
improve upon every single day. Although I do not see many Madisons, 
Masons, Jeffersons, Franklins, or Washingtons around to contribute to 
change this Constitution, we have had well over 100 proposals since the 
first of January in this year to change the U.S. Constitution.
  The priority at the start of the year was we must eliminate the 
Federal budget deficit. In fact, we must ensure that happens by 
changing the U.S. Constitution. And then the act by which that happens, 
the budget and the reconciliation bill, comes to the floor of the 
Senate, and we discover that the priority is different than that. The 
priority is a tax cut, a substantial part of which will go to the 
wealthiest Americans.
  The priority is to add money to the defense bill that the President 
and the Secretary of Defense and the chiefs of the branches of the 
services said they did not want. Those are the priorities, and that is 
what this debate is about.
  Let me just put up a couple of charts to describe some of the 
elements of this debate.
  The Head Start Program. We know the Head Start Program works. Anybody 
that has ever toured a Head Start center, and I have toured plenty, and 
sat on the little chairs and had lunch with 3-, 4-, 5-year-olds and 
watched them do their art projects, watched them learn about health, 
watched them begin to get a head start, because they come from homes of 
disadvantage and often poverty, watch them feel that this contributes 
to their lives and having us know it does, we understand this program 
works.
  The priority now is to say, ``We're sorry, we can't afford the Head 
Start Program the way it is,'' so roughly 55,000 kids will be dropped 
from the program, and every single one of those kids has a name and has 
a hope and gets some advantage from this program. But we are told we 
cannot afford that. Instead, we are told, Let's pump nearly half a 
billion dollars into lead production for 20 more B-2 bombers that will 
cost us $31 billion, B-2 bombers, incidentally, that the Secretary of 
Defense has not asked for; B-2 bombers that the Department of Defense 
has not requested.
  So we say Head Start does not quite matter as much; B-2 bombers, let 
us build them, even though those who would fly them and use them have 
not asked for them.
  Job training for displaced workers. These are people who have lost 
jobs but want to find jobs and get new skills to do it, half a billion 
dollars cut from that, which means you will have more unemployment, not 
less. You will have less opportunity, not more, for people whom we want 
to put back on the payrolls. And at the same time we say we just cannot 
afford the kind of money that is necessary to get people ready to go 
back into a job, we say, By the way, let's gear up for a star wars 
program. It will cost about $48 billion. That has not been asked for by 
the Defense Department either. There is no demonstration that we need 
this program, but we are told, ``Let's stick $375 million in it this 
year and demand it be deployed in 1999,'' including a space-based 
component of a star wars program because we can afford that. Again, the 
Secretary of Defense and the armed services have not asked for it, but 
we can afford that, we are told.
  Mr. President, $1.4 billion invested in kids and that goes to helping 
kids get to college, financial aid to help middle-income families send 
their kids to college, so we say we are going to make it more expensive 
for middle-income families to send their kids to school.
  But we say when confronted with the question, shall we build an 
amphibious assault ship this year, the answer in this Congress was--
some said no, we should not build one. Others said we should build two 
of them. Do you know what the answer was in this Congress? ``Let's 
build both. Let's build one for $900 million and one for $1.3 billion, 
because we're loaded, we've got all the money in the world when it 
comes to this. There is no sense being frugal here. Let's spend money 
like it is Saturday night and the town's opened up for us and we have 
the parent's checkbook here.'' We can buy all this, despite the fact no 
one asked for it, no one requested it.
  And there is more. Mr. President, $989 million from veterans' health 
care, 1 million fewer outpatient visits, 46,000 fewer hospitalizations 
because we have to cut there, we are told. This is the second 
amphibious assault ship. We can order that. In fact, we can buy both of 
them, a billion dollars, an amphibious assault ship that was not 
ordered and a cutback on a promise made to veterans before they went to 
fight for this country's freedom.
  Low-income home energy assistance. That does not sound like much, but 
that is what keeps people warm in the winter. Poor people who have no 
money, often poor elderly people with no money who live in the frigid 
climates of this country rely on this to keep their homes heated. We 
cannot afford that, but let us buy six more F-15's, despite the fact 
the Secretaries of Defense and Air Force have not asked for them. We 
now have 1,103. Let us stick that in. That is $311 million. It is more 
important to buy jet fighters nobody asked for than it is to help old 
people and poor people keep warm in the winter.
  There is a $137 million cut for critical accounts dealing with Indian 
problems on reservations; $140 million spent for 14 Warrior 
helicopters. We now have 360. The Defense Department did not ask for 
these, but they were put back in the budget and they said we should buy 
14 of these helicopters, $140 million. And then we are told we have to 
cut $137 million for these crucial services on Indian reservations and 
that deal with kids, mostly Indian children--education, health, and a 
whole range of other services for young children who want a chance and 
want a start.
  Somebody is going to look at all this and say, That is a bunch of 
pointy-headed liberalism. It is not about liberalism, it is about 
making choices. We are told what we are going to spend in this Chamber. 
The question is what do we spend it on? Do you buy an amphibious 
assault ship that was not asked for? Or do you cut back, as a result of 
that, on veterans' health benefits? Do you decide to kick kids off Head 
Start and build B-2 bombers that nobody asked for? That is the priority 
in this reconciliation bill. That is what is wrong with it.

  I want to read a list, just so that people can be disabused of who 
the big spenders are. We are told the big spenders are the Democrats, 
the folks who always want to spend money. This is a list of what is 
added to the defense bill, mostly by folks on that side of the aisle--
things that were not asked for, requested, needed, or ordered by the 
Defense Department. I will read the list: 60 Blackhawk helicopters; 
Longbow helicopters; Kiowa Warrior helicopters; M109A6 howitzer 
modifications; Ml tank upgrades; heavy tactical vehicles, trucks that 
were not requested; AV-8B fighter aircraft; B-2 bombers; F/A-18C/D 
fighter aircraft; C-135 cargo aircraft modifications; Comanche 
helicopters' R&D ship self-defense R&D national missile defense, or 
star wars; T-39N trainer aircraft; EA-6 strike aircraft modifications; 
LPD-17 amphibious ship; F-16's, F-15's; WC-130 cargo aircraft; LHD 
amphibious assault ship.
  None of these things was asked for, and all of them were ordered by 
this Congress--$5.2 billion to spend money on things we do not need, 
money we do not have on things we do not need. This by conservatives, 
by people who call others big spenders?
  Well, this is all about priorities. It is about health care. It is 
about education. It is about agriculture. It is about the Head Start 
Program. We are going to have some votes today in the Senate on 
instructing conferees because the conferees will be appointed now to 
discuss the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill. It 
is between the far right and the extreme right. That is where the 
modification will be made. This will be a compromise between the far 
right and extreme right, and it will be sent to the President, and this 
will be vetoed, and then we will get some serious negotiations, I 
expect.
  One vote we will have today is priorities with respect to Medicare. 
The 

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Medicare Program, I think, is an important program. We, on the 
Democratic side of the aisle, understand full well that the budget must 
be balanced. We understand that the credibility of Government is in 
serious question. We understand that, and we need to do the things that 
solve problems for this country and for the American people.
  But we also understand there are some things we have done in this 
country that have been good, which advanced this country's interest. 
Medicare is one of them.
  It is interesting to me that 97 percent of the Republicans voted 
against Medicare when initially proposed in the U.S. Senate. Now they 
are saying they are going to save Medicare. Generally, that would not 
be very believable, and it is probably less believable now because 
Speaker Gingrich last week said:

       Now, we don't get rid of it in round 1 because we don't 
     think that that's politically smart and we don't think that 
     is the right way to go through a transition. But we believe 
     it is going to wither on the vine because we think people are 
     voluntarily going to leave it.

  That is what is at work here. Some people say what they mean in an 
off-guarded moment, and that is what happened here. In a speech to a 
Blue Cross/Blue Shield audience, the Speaker told us what his 
impression of Medicare was.
  We are going to offer an amendment on the instructions to conferees 
that says, look, why do we not decide on this reconciliation issue. If 
you are going to have a tax cut, some of us think we ought to balance 
the budget first and talk about tax cuts later. If you are going to 
insist on a tax cut, why do you not at least limit the tax cut?
  We have offered proposals before. We can limit it to people whose 
incomes are under a quarter of a million dollars a year. At least limit 
it to that. And you can use the savings from that, about $50 billion 
over 7 years, to reduce the cut in the Medicare Program, much of which 
will hurt some of the lowest-income senior citizens in this country, 
who, as a result of this reconciliation bill, will pay more for 
Medicare and get less health care.
  We will offer that motion today to at least limit the tax cut, at 
least limit it to working families. At least limit it so we are not 
giving very big tax cuts to people making $1 million or $5 million or 
$10 million a year, and use the savings from that to try to reduce the 
hit on the Medicare Program.
  Someone will say, ``Well, why are you discriminating against somebody 
who makes $5 million a year?'' I am not. God bless them. I think it is 
wonderful. They have done very well in recent years. Their increases in 
income have been astronomical.
  The upper 1 percent of the American income earners have had an 
enormously beneficial period. Most Americans have not. Sixty percent of 
the American families are now earning less money than they were 20 
years ago. Not the top 1 percent, or 5 percent; they have had an 
astronomical increase in income. They have benefited substantially from 
this income system of ours.
  While I think working families deserve a tax cut, I think we ought 
not to provide a tax cut at the moment. I think we ought to balance the 
budget first. Then I think working families deserve a tax cut. I see no 
compelling national need to cut benefits for the oldest and poorest 
citizens so we can provide a tax cut for some of the richest citizens 
in America.
  We are going to provide another opportunity this afternoon to vote, 
and we will likely have a motion on instructing conferees on something 
that happened on the floor Friday that was just mindboggling. The last 
amendment passed by the Senate on reconciliation was an amendment that 
deals with the Social Security issue. It takes an amount of money on 
the Social Security issue--about $12 billion--that will be presumably 
saved by having a lower COLA, and uses that to fund a series of changes 
that was offered as a result of the Roth amendment.
  Well, the $12 billion, it is clear, comes out of the savings in 
Social Security. By law, that cannot be used for other purposes in the 
unified budget. That is what the law requires.
  We raised a point of order, and Senator Graham inquired of the Chair 
whether the Social Security outlay reductions were used as offsets. The 
Chair responded that it was ``not in a position to answer that 
question.'' Everybody else in the Chamber was in a position to answer 
that question. Anybody who could read could answer that. But, from a 
parliamentary standpoint, the Chair said he was ``not in the position 
to answer that question.''
  The Budget Committee chairman stated, ``I am satisfied with the 
ruling of the Chair.'' In other words, he was satisfied that the Chair 
is not in a position to answer that question. The result was that the 
Roth amendment took $12 billion from the Social Security accounts and 
brings it over so it funds the Roth amendment. That is what happened 
with that. We will likely have a motion to instruct this afternoon that 
will try to right that wrong.
  I want, just for a couple of moments, to discuss in a broader context 
the issues that I think most concerns the American people. A lot of 
folks, as I said, do not spend day-to-day to understand reconciliation 
bills and budget bills and conference committees. What people in this 
country understand is whether the system in America works in their 
interest. Is this a tide that lifts all boats, an economic system that 
helps everybody? Or is this an economic system where the rich get 
richer and the poor get poorer and there is a distribution of income 
that is not fair?
  The challenge and opportunity for all of us, I think, that lies 
ahead, is to try to find a mechanism by which this economic system 
works for everybody once again.
  We have seen statistics about America's economic health. Every month, 
we are told the statistics on consumption describe that our economy is 
moving right along. Boy, if you take a look at consumption, consumption 
is up; therefore, America is doing better. It seems to me that a 
measure of economic health in our country is not whether or not we are 
consuming more or less, it is whether we are producing. Consumption, 
not production, is a barometer of economic health. Production relates 
to wages. If you have good jobs in the productive sector, productive 
jobs, especially manufacturing jobs that pay good wages, that means you 
advance the economic interests of everybody in this country.
  Take a look at what is happening to wages in this country. We talk 
about GDP, which means nothing. Every quarter they trot out GDP 
figures, every month consumption figures, and it seems to me they are 
using barometers that mean very little to the economic circumstances of 
working families.
  The GDP increases. The stock market goes up. Productivity is on the 
increase. Corporate profits are up. Guess what? American wages are down 
and have been down.
  Some information from MBG Information Services, October 31: 
Compensation to all U.S. workers grew at its slowest pace on record in 
July to September. If you take a look at the bottom quadrant of 
workers, what you find is a circumstance where they are earning less 
money now than they were some 20 years ago.
  There was a piece in the New Yorker done by John Cassidy recently 
that was very interesting and I think describes some of the problems in 
this country and some of the concerns that people have. He talks about 
the average American. He said if you were to line all Americans up in a 
row, put all Americans in one row, from the wealthiest over here to the 
poorest over here, and then pick right in the middle and say, ``You are 
Mr. and Mrs. Average, the middle person in America, you are right in 
the middle, you are middle-income, middle America,'' that person in 
September 1979 was earning $498 a week; in September 1995, when you 
adjust for inflation, that same person was earning $475 a week. In 16 
years, that person has lost about $100 a month in real wages.
  Now, that is the middle of the line. We know that 60 percent of the 
American families who sit down for supper tonight and start talking 
about their circumstance will understand they are working harder for 
less money than they did 20 years ago.
  I talked about the middle of the line. After 16 years they have lost 
$100 a month in real wages. Now we will talk about the upper side of 
the line, the top 

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1 percent on that end of the people you have lined up--the top 1 
percent.
  Between 1977 and 1989, the years we have numbers for, their average 
incomes rose from $323,000 to $576,000 per person. That is the top 1 
percent. They went, in about a 12-year period, from $323,000 to 
$576,000, or a 78-percent increase. It is the average working person 
who finds himself $100 a month worse off after 15 and 20 years, but the 
top people at the top 1 percent find themselves far better off with 
spectacular increases in income.
  This is at a time when corporate profits are up, productivity is on 
the rise, the stock market reaches new gains, new highs, and wages keep 
falling.
  Is it any wonder that the average American family is a little 
disaffected? The fact is, they find themselves working harder and 
getting less. One of the things I think is most interesting is we are 
talking a lot about the fiscal policy budget deficit, and we should. It 
ought to be balanced. We ought to deal with that. We ought to solve 
that problem.
  Do many Americans know that the merchandise trade deficit in this 
history is higher this year than the fiscal policy deficit? You cannot 
find more than four people in the Senate that will come and talk about 
it.
  Let me say that again: Our merchandise trade deficit is higher than 
our fiscal policy deficit in this coming year.
  What does that mean when you have a trade deficit? It means you are 
shipping jobs overseas. We will hit nearly $190 to $200 billion 
merchandise trade deficit this year. What that means is American jobs 
are leaving. That means we are buying from foreign countries.
  We have decided an economic strategy is fine as long as profits are 
on the way up. As long as productivity goes up and the stock market 
goes up, wages can go down and jobs can go overseas because we measure 
economic health by what we consume, not what we produce. We measure 
economic progress by what happened to the GDP, not what has happened to 
the American family.
  I do not know how anyone in this country can view an economic system 
through the prism that says that when the American family is doing 
worse and losing money and working harder, but if the consumption 
figures are up and if the GDP figures are up, America is in better 
shape. That is simply not the case.
  We need one of these days soon to bring legislation to the floor of 
the Senate and have an honest-to-goodness debate about the center pole 
of this tentative economic policy--that is trade and related issues--to 
try to determine what really advances American economic interests.
  I will bring some legislation on the subject of NAFTA to the floor of 
the Senate at some point in the future. NAFTA is part of this trade 
deficit problem. Two years ago we had all of these economists flailing 
their arms around Washington, DC, saying if we would only pass a free-
trade agreement with Mexico, we would have 270,000 new American jobs.
  Well, we passed a free trade agreement with Mexico--not with my vote, 
but it was passed. We had a $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico at the 
time. Two years later, our trade deficit this year with Mexico will be 
around $17 billion. We went from a $2 billion surplus to a $17 billion 
deficit.
  What does that mean? It means jobs are leaving this country. What are 
we importing from Mexico that causes that deficit? The very thing that 
represents the foundation for good jobs in this country--automobiles, 
automobile parts, electronics. The very thing that represents good jobs 
and good wages in our country are being exported out, transported out 
on a wholesale basis.
  We have to construct a different economic system. It is not, in my 
judgment, in this country's interest to allow multinational 
corporations to describe their economic interests as consistent with 
the economic interests of the American family. It is their economic 
interest to produce in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia 
and ship the product they produce to Pittsburgh, Fargo, Denver, and Los 
Angeles. That increases profits for them. It is not in our economic 
interest. It might be in the short-term interest of the consumer who 
can presumably--not necessarily factually, but presumably--buy some of 
those products for less. It is not in the interests of consumers who 
will lose their jobs because their jobs left this country as a result 
of a trade strategy that is bankrupting America.
  We will have a lot of votes and a lot of debate about priorities on 
the floor of the Senate today and in the coming weeks with respect to 
the reconciliation bill--what do we spend money on, what do we not 
spend money on. That is fine. That is the way it should be. Those are 
legitimate areas of discussion between Republicans and Democrats.
  My hope is at the end of the day, perhaps, we will have reached a 
compromise that we all think is good for the country, a fiscal policy 
that will lead to a balanced budget. But even if we do that, and even 
if we reach a compromise, and even if the President signs that 
compromise, we will not have achieved the job of setting things right 
in the economic order of this country.
  We will do that only when we address the larger questions that cause 
this family, this family that is in the middle of the line of American 
earners, from the richest to the poorest, this family right in the 
middle that finds themselves working harder but after 15 years earning 
less, finds themselves after those years between 1979 and 1995, finds 
themselves after those years $100 a month behind where they started.
  Balancing the budget will help, but it will not solve that problem. 
That problem relates to, I think, more endemic economic problems in 
this country. We have to, it seems to me, decide one of these days as 
Democrats and Republicans, to address these questions.
  I have said previously there are two major challenges that I think 
most Americans now confront in this country. One is the economic 
challenge. That is the challenge to get America to grow again in which 
it provides opportunities to all Americans--not just the wealthiest, 
but to all Americans--so we are talking about an economic system that 
rewards all who seek those rewards and are willing to expend effort for 
those rewards.
  Second is the issue of the diminution of values in this country. That 
relates to the coarseness we see on television that has been described 
by others recently, the violence on television that I have described 
recently, and a whole range of things.
  Some of these problems, economic and values issues, can and should 
and must be addressed here in the Congress. It must be a product of 
debate in our country generally. Some of them cannot be addressed by 
Congress, cannot be addressed by public-sector debate in the House or 
the Senate, and must be addressed in the family, in the home, in the 
community, in the neighborhood. All of us, it seems to me, need to take 
responsibility to do that.
  While we attempt to address the thorny issues of deficit reduction, a 
fiscal policy program that will work for the benefit of this country in 
the future, and while I hope we will attempt, following that, to 
address the issue of trade, fair trade, and the issue of trying to 
advance the economic interests of workers with good jobs and good wages 
in the future, while we do all that, it seems to me it would be helpful 
if all of us could call on the American people to join in our common 
interest.
  As I said previously, we are going to have an Olympics next year in 
Atlanta. I bet we all are going to sit on the edge of our chairs 
cheering for the people wearing the red, white, and blue. We want 
American athletes to win. That is a wonderful thing: team spirit and 
nationalism and pride.
  The fact is, the economic competition in the world is not unlike the 
Olympics in a lot of ways, except it is much more serious. There are 
winners and losers in economic competition. The losers are consigned to 
the British disease of long economic decline. The winners are given the 
opportunity of economic expansion and hope and better jobs and better 
wages.
  I think soon, sooner rather than later, this country needs to decide 
to come together and develop an economic strategy that advances the 
economic interests of all Americans in a real way. We can no longer 
measure consumption as a barometer of economic health. It is what we 
produce in America that counts, because that is what creates the good 
jobs. We can no longer measure GDP on a quarterly 

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basis to determine whether America is moving ahead, because it alone 
does not determine that. We must, and I think can, do much better.
  Mr. President, I notice the Senator from Wyoming is waiting for the 
floor.
  I will yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I yield to myself such time as required, 
under the previous order of morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.

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