[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 171 (Wednesday, November 1, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16462-S16463]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BALANCING THE BUDGET

  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, first of all I commend the Senator from 
Minnesota for his excellent presentation. After listening to those who 
are always for higher taxes and will use any means to fight any kind of 
tax cut on the basis that it is just a giveaway to the rich, it is 
refreshing to hear actually what this tax cut would do, the $500-per-
child tax cut the Senator from Minnesota has fought so long and so hard 
for. The letters coming from people who work hard, pay their taxes, 
raise their kids and obey the law, and find it tougher and tougher to 
get by--that is obviously who this tax credit will go to benefit. It 
belies the accusations on the other side that, of course, this is just 
a tax cut for those who do not need it.
  Our friends on the other side of the aisle have made a profession of 
trying to decide who in America deserves to keep more of the money they 
are earning and who deserves to have it sent to Washington for those 
enlightened Members of this body to spend for them.
  So I think we are making substantial progress when we are obviously 
getting our message across to the American people as to exactly what 
this tax cut is all about. It goes to help those people who everybody 
in this body says they are concerned about. We are hearing all this 
rhetoric about the rich, the rich, the rich, and how everybody is for 
the working person and the working family. If everybody was for the 
working family and everybody is concentrating on doing something for 
the working family, why is it the working family feels they are getting 
worse and worse off every year? As I said, those people who work hard, 
raise their kids and pay their taxes--this, finally, will do something 
to reach the people that everybody says they are trying to reach in 
this country. This will actually serve that purpose.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. THOMPSON. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Just for 30 seconds.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Wyoming, 
Senator Thomas, and all those who are helping him. I think it is 
imperative that we respond when the other side comes to the floor 
making statements that are half truths and irresponsible. I commend him 
for it. I hope he does it every time they come to the floor. Across 
this land, the real facts of what we are trying to do are getting lost 
in the plethora of facts that are coming out that have very little to 
do with what we have done.
  I hope the Senator does one on Medicare. Just put a chart here and 
show what we did, so the American public will see it. We know when the 
people see what we have done they favor what we are doing. It is when 
they are told things we are doing that we are not doing that they begin 
to wonder about this balanced budget.
  So I commend my colleague for it, and those who are helping him, very 
much. I am hopeful they will continue to do it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from New Mexico 
who has been a leader with regard to responsible budgeting in this 
country. It is always easier to give somebody something. It is always 
easier to maintain the status quo and to tell people they can continue 
on indefinitely the way we have been going and hold yourself up to 
accusations of hurting those in need, of not caring for the elderly.
  Some Member on the other side of the aisle said, apparently, the only 
elderly that you know live in Beverly Hills. Those kinds of tactics are 
designed to scare people and appeal to the greedy side of people's 
nature, the implication being that as long as we can get ours today we 
do not care about our children, and we certainly do not care about our 
grandchildren.
  We heard the statement earlier, ``Social Security is not in trouble. 
Social Security is not going bankrupt. Of course, in about 30 years it 
is going to run out of money.'' But the implication is, we do not have 
to worry about that because most of us will have gotten ours by then.
  I am concerned, not only about today and my own mother who is 
dependent on it, I am concerned about my children and my grandchildren, 
as we all should be. That is what we are talking about here. That is 
the difference, I think, in the debate nowadays from what it has been 
in times past. That is the reason that many of us ran for political 
office for the first time in our lives, because people are sick and 
tired and fed up with business as usual. We see the results of it. We 
see in many respects our country is going downhill.
  So we passed a reconciliation package to do something about that. 
People said they wanted a balanced budget. We are on our way to a 
balanced budget, to save Medicare--not to destroy it, but to increase 
spending for Medicare, but at a reduced rate of growth; to change a 
failed welfare system from something that was supposed to do good for 
people that has changed into something that has done an immeasurable 
disservice to many, many people in this country; to give more back to 
people who are earning hard-earned dollars to keep in their pockets.
  The President, I thought, pretty much agreed with those concepts. We 
have come a long way, because some time ago the advisers to the 
President were saying we really did not need a balanced budget; and 
then, yes, maybe we need one but in 10 years; then, yes, maybe we need 
one and then OK, maybe 7 years.
  The President pledged to reform welfare as we knew it back during the 
campaign. He acknowledged that Medicare was going bankrupt, and that we 
had to do something about it. He has proposed increasing Medicare 
spending by 7.1 percent a year. We have proposed increasing spending by 
6.4 percent a year. It seems pretty close to me. It looks to me like we 
are fairly close together, at least on some of these basic concepts. 
And, yet, what does the 

[[Page S 16463]]

President do when we passed the reconciliation package? He says he will 
veto it, and basically he is not willing to negotiate--that we are 
destroying Medicare: that his 7.1 percent is a responsible percentage 
of growth but our 6.4 percent would destroy Medicare. These are scare 
tactics, even though we are spending twice the rate of inflation under 
our proposal; appeals to greed; appeals to grandparents. And there is 
the implication that, if you are making $100,000 a year, or if you are 
retired, you do not have to make any kind of incremental adjustment, we 
can continue on not only just increasing spending, which we are all 
saying that we will do, but increase spending at the rate that we are 
increasing now or closer to it.
  So people must be confused as to what the President's position is. Is 
he for a balanced budget? Is he for changing welfare as we know it? Is 
he for doing something about Medicare, or not? He says he is. Yet, he 
seems to not be willing to even sit down at the table to work out these 
differences that some might interpret as being not all that great, that 
we might be able to work out.
  I think the answer is clear that we are in the era now of political 
posturing, that the President feels he must come into this process 
feeling strong, feeling tough--and that is OK--delivering the message, 
and posturing himself. That is OK. A deal will be worked out of some 
kind, and, if it is not, that will be up to the President. But I think 
probably even more important than this particular resolution is that we 
will get by somehow. Even more important than that is the question of 
whether or not we have a commitment to these basic things. We can argue 
and fight over the details. That is why we have two branches of 
Government. That is why we have separation of powers, and checks and 
balances in this country. That is fine.
  But the real question we have to face up to is whether or not we as a 
people, as a Congress, and a President are committed to the underlying 
propositions, for example, of a balanced budget because, if we are not, 
we are going through all of this for nothing. We are going to have to 
do so much more for so long. If we cannot pass this first hurdle, we 
will never make it past the others because we are making the initial 
downpayment on the balanced budget. We are going to have to own up to 
our responsibilities year after year after year. If we cannot solve 
these problems that merely have to do with numbers, how are we going to 
address the other major problems that are facing our country--with the 
problems of the world economy where wages are stagnating, especially 
among our younger people; the problems of the inner city where we see 
youth violence skyrocketing, youth drug use skyrocketing, illegitimacy 
skyrocketing; all of these social problems. If we cannot solve these 
numbers problems, how in the world are we going to address those? How 
are we going to address the underlying problem, probably that 
overshadows the rest of them? And, that is the cynicism that some of 
the American people have in this country toward their own Government, 
toward their own Government's ability to get things done.
  Those are the underlying questions. Those are the more serious ones. 
I think that we can make a statement to the American people as we have 
tried to do in Congress by taking the tough votes, taking the tough 
measures, saying we cannot have everything exactly the way we have 
always had it, and we are going to speak the plain truth. We can tell 
the American people that we can do this, and because we did do this we 
can address these other problems that lie down the road before us.
  So I urge the President, if he is serious about balancing the budget, 
changing welfare as we know it, saving Medicare, if he is serious about 
the statement that he made that he raised taxes too much, if he is 
serious about the position that, yes, we should have a tax cut, then I 
would urge him to sit down at the table and let us talk about those 
details. Because I think the message that I would like to deliver--and 
there are a lot of the new Members here who would like to deliver it, 
along with some of the maybe not-so-new Members--is that regardless of 
what the policies that have been around here in times past, things are 
different now, and we are not going to continue to roll over these 
problems to the next generation.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, thank you.

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