[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 179 (Monday, November 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H12168-H12169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       GOAL OF BALANCED BUDGET NOT EXCLUSIVE TO REPUBLICAN PARTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie] is recognized for 5 minutes.


 the leadership's inability to submit to the president legislation he 
                                can sign

  Mr. WARD. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. WARD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I 
rise here to speak to the issue that we are talking about tonight, the 
inability of the Republican leadership, Speaker Gingrich and the leader 
of the other body, to bring to us and take to the President a 
continuing resolution and an extension of the debt ceiling which he 
will sign.
  I do that with a special interest tonight, because I have two 
constituents here with me in the gallery who are nurses in my district. 
They are very concerned. They are concerned that we continue the 
commitment that we have in this country to seniors through our Medicare 
Program, to others through our Medicaid Program, and to their 
colleagues, who work in Federal facilities, so I appreciate the 
gentleman giving me a moment to make sure that we remember there are 
real people who are being discussed in these issues. This is not just 
theoretical.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, apropos of the remarks of the gentleman 
from Kentucky, reference has been made again and again this evening and 
in previous sessions of the House to a balanced budget, and reference 
has been made to the President. In fact, the President has been 
castigated for being unwilling, presumably, to move towards a balanced 
budget in a time certain, generally given to be 2002.
  What is constantly left out of the equation is that there is no 
presentation for a balanced budget. Every time I hear that being said 
very frankly by Members on both sides, but most particularly as a kind 
of challenge from the Republic side, I would find it amusing if it was 
not so sad that this is based upon a palpable fraud. I will tell you 
exactly what it is. It is no great secret.
  In previous times, Mr. Speaker, in order to mask the deficit that was 
accumulating, we have gone into what is called something off-budget. It 
is a bookkeeping trick. That is all it is, the Social Security trust 
fund. But before, at least we were honest about it with respect that it 
appeared from both the Republicans and the Democrats when we finally 
put budgets together that we were, in fact, utilizing the so-called 
surplus funds in order to achieve a budget. We were not pretending that 
we were trying to balance the budget at that point.
  As the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm] and others who have 
preceded me have indicated, that has been a goal of both Democrats and 
Republicans. This is not exclusive to the Republican Party. But the 
difference has 

[[Page H 12169]]
been that there was not the stench of mendacity in the air as I very 
sadly detect now.
  The plain, simple fact of the matter is that in the budget as 
presented by the Republican Party, we are going to take in the 
neighborhood of $636 billion out of a so-called surplus in the Social 
Security fund in order to balance the budget in the year 2002. We start 
in 1996 with $63 billion. There is $115 billion scheduled to be taken 
in the year 2002 in order to achieve a balanced budget.
  Now, this is supposed to be coming from surplus funds. So I put the 
challenge to those who will say that this is truly going to be a 
balanced budget as presented by the Republican Party in this House in 
2002. If that is a surplus, then give it back. If you do not need to 
have an IOU to the Social Security trust fund in the year 2002 of $630 
plus billion, let us hear it on this floor. I can come down here for 
special orders any night; I invite anybody to come down now and say 
that what I am saying is not true.

  I see a smile on the face of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm]. 
He knows that this is the case. My good friend from Indiana is not 
smiling, he is grimacing at the moment. But the plain fact is that 
while there are people in this body who are serious about balancing the 
budget, they are serious in a way that says that they will not try to 
fool the American people into thinking, because we have done a 
bookkeeping trick, namely putting it off budget, that phraseology, a 
phrase of art with respect to accounting, that we will not owe that 
money to the Social Security trust fund.
  There will be no balanced budget in 2002, and I would hope that the 
next Republican Member who gets up and recites this mantra will at 
least have the common decency to respect the intelligence of the 
American people who can add and subtract and read and write the numbers 
just as well as anybody else and admit that in the year 2002 when they 
claim, providing nothing goes wrong whatsoever with the projections, 
when they claim that there will be a balanced budget, on that day, at 
that moment, they will owe $630 plus billion to the Social Security 
trust fund.
  If we are going to balance the budget, I welcome the debate. Let us 
get to it, let us try and figure our how to do it, but let us be honest 
about it. Let us not start accusing anybody in this body, particularly 
on our side of the aisle, of being less than true to their faith, the 
faith that they have in what they want to do, and come forward with 
sensible, reasonable, honest figures with respect to the balanced 
budget.

                          ____________________