[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 180 (Tuesday, November 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H12320]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   BALANCED BUDGET PLAN IS REAL ISSUE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Duncan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to briefly make a couple of 
points, and I do not think I will take all the 5 minutes, but I wanted 
to read just the first part of an amazing story that was in the 
Washington Post just this morning. The Washington Post is certainly no 
conservative publication, it is no Republican newspaper. In fact, its 
political policies are considered to be very liberal, and yet this 
morning they had a news analysis by two of their staff writers, and the 
headlines said this: Balanced Budget Plan is Real Issue.
  Let me repeat that, that the Washington Post said this morning, 
``Balanced Budget Plan is Real Issue,'' and then the story says this 
for the news analysis:

       For all the vitriol, all the finger-pointing and all the 
     carefully staged, photogenic events, the current bickering 
     between the White House and Capitol Hill has very little to 
     do with the actual bills in question. The real issue is not 
     Medicare premiums, temporary approval to spend government 
     money or even the government debt limit--it is the coming 
     confrontation over the Republicans' plan to balance the 
     budget by 2002.
       For congressional Republican leaders--especially those in 
     the House--the goal is getting the president to the table to 
     negotiate a deal on their terms to wipe out the deficit in 
     seven years.

  Now this is from the Washington Post, and they say the real issue is 
the balanced budget. Our Republican leaders went to the White House 
last night with no preconditions. The only thing they have said, they 
said they will be willing to negotiate anything except they want the 
budget to be balanced within 7 years. Most of the people around this 
country think that we really should be able to do it much faster than 
that, and I can tell you that I think almost anyone with ordinary 
common sense and average intelligence probably could come here and 
balance the budget much faster than 7 years, but with all the competing 
interests involved, that seems to be the best that we can do. But I am 
sure there are many people across the country tonight who are sitting 
there thinking, ``Well, yes, the balanced budget would be good, but 
would it really make a difference to me?'' and I say to them that, yes, 
it would because almost every leading economist in this country tells 
us that this $5 trillion national debt we have is like a gigantic chain 
hanging around the neck of our economy. It is holding us back.
  Mr. Speaker, times are good now for some people, but they could and 
should be good for everyone if we had handled our fiscal affairs in a 
better way and we were not so deeply, deeply in debt. People making $5 
and $6 an hour could and should be making $10 or $12 an hour. In 
addition to that, while we do not have much of an unemployment problem, 
Mr. Speaker, we have a tremendous underemployment problem. We have many 
college graduates who cannot find jobs except in fast-food restaurants 
and jobs like that, and that should not be, Mr. Speaker, and things 
could be so much better if we would get our fiscal house in order and 
try to balance our budget, and the downside of it is, if we do not, we 
are headed for some major economic problems in the years ahead.
  Mr. Speaker, we frequently say that what we are talking about doing, 
that it is for our children and grandchildren, and, yes, it certainly 
is. But it is also for the people who are in the prime of their life 
right at this time because we are headed for very serious problems, not 
in the distant future, but in the near future. The President's own 
trustees over Medicare have said, they said in their report issued in 
April, that the Medicare system was going to be broke in 6 or 7 years 
if we do not do something. A few months ago the Office of Management 
and Budget, the President's own Office of Management and Budget, put 
out a memo that said that by the year 2010, if we do not change things, 
we will have annual yearly deficit losses each year of over a trillion 
dollars a year, and by the year 2030, Mr. Speaker, have over $5 
trillion a year.

  Mr. Speaker, if we have losses, yearly losses, of $5 trillion, we 
would absolutely destroy the standard of living of our children and 
grandchildren. They could not buy a tenth of what we buy today.
  In 1994, last year, Paul Tsongas, the former Senator from 
Massachusetts who was a liberal Democrat when he was in the House and 
Senate, he wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor, and he 
said that the young people of today will pay average lifetime tax rates 
of an incredible 82 percent if we do not make some changes. Is this 
what we want to do to our children and grandchildren, make them become, 
as he put it, indentured servants for the Government? I do not think 
there is anybody out there who wants us to do that.
  James K. Glassman wrote a few days ago in the Washington Post a 
column entitled ``The No-Cut Budget.'' He pointed out that under our 
budget that we passed in both the House and Senate, the so-called 
Republican budgets, there are no cuts, that each year Federal spending 
goes up about 3 percent. It increases about $50 or $60 billion every 
year.
  Medicare, we have gotten into that, and that is the second big point 
I want to make. We did not cut Medicare. We have not cut Medicare. In 
fact what we have passed is to give huge increases in Medicare 
spending. In my own State of Tennessee Medicare spending goes up from a 
little over $5,000 a year to over $7,000 a year at the end of this 
time.
  We need to get this message out, Mr. Speaker, because the American 
people are being fooled by lies, distortions, and propaganda at this 
time, and I certainly hope they do not fall for it.

                          ____________________