[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 181 (Wednesday, November 15, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17047-S17048]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BUDGET PRIORITIES

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President I have great respect for my friend from 
Arizona. It is interesting, and this is a good example of the 
differences in the way we approach things. He is talking about 
spending, and he is absolutely right. We need to cut spending. 
Everybody agrees with that. There is no disagreement about goals. We 
ought to have a balanced budget. Nobody disagrees with that. I happen 
to think we ought to spend money in education and other investments. 
The Senator from Arizona and I have had a debate on this floor about 
star wars. He thinks we ought to build star wars. We will have that 
debate again later, I guess, but everybody seems to have their own set 
of priorities. It is interesting to me; this whole disagreement is 
being recast as a question of whether some want to balance the budget. 
That is not the question. Everybody wants to balance the budget. The 
question is what plan to do you use to get there.
  I say this to my colleagues, that the journey we are on at the 
moment, that is, the journey that leads to the shutdown of the Federal 
Government, is not a spur-of-the-moment trip.
  It has been planned for and packed. Back in April, April 3, Speaker 
Gingrich vowed to ``create a titanic legislative standoff with [the 
President] by adding vetoed bills to must-pass legislation increasing 
the national debt ceiling.''
  September: ``I don't care what the price is,'' Speaker Gingrich says. 
``I don't care if we have no executive offices and no bonds for 30 
days--not this time,'' he says. Speaker Gingrich has said he would 
force the Government to miss interest and principal payments for the 
first time ever to force Democrat Clinton's administration to agree to 
his 7-year deficit reduction. 

[[Page S17048]]

  The point is, this is not an accident; this is a destination that has 
been long planned. There are some around here who now gloat about it, 
that they have caused a shutdown. They may well cause a debt default. 
It is my judgment there is no good reason for anybody to gloat. There 
is no credit in this set of circumstances. We need to solve these 
problems together.
  I want to tell you what the problem is in the differences in 
priorities. The 7-year plan--and I have no problem with 7 years--the 7-
year plan to balance the budget is a plan that is fundamentally unfair. 
Let me describe it this way: You take the poorest 20 percent of the 
people and you say to them, ``We are going to burden you with 80 
percent of all the spending cuts.'' To the poorest 20 percent of the 
American people, we are going to say, ``We are going to burden you with 
80 percent of the spending cuts.''
  Then you turn to the wealthiest 20 percent of the American people and 
say, ``Guess what, get ready to smile. We are going to give you 80 
percent of the tax cuts.'' The poorest 20 percent is burdened with most 
of the spending cuts, and the top 20 percent is rewarded with tax cuts.
  Now, I do not know what school you attend to take a course in 
fairness that comes out that way, but it is a school that ought not be 
accredited. That is what this debate is about.
  The other side says, ``Well, we're for the middle class.'' I did not 
know what they meant until I saw one of our colleagues on the House 
side, a Congressman from Pennsylvania, and he said his salary of 
$133,000, plus a $50,000 pension that he also gets, ``doesn't make me 
rich.'' He said, ``That doesn't make me middle class. In my opinion, 
I'm lower middle class.''
  This Republican Congressman said, ``When I see someone who is making 
from $300,000 to $750,000 a year, now, that's middle class.'' I guess 
now I understand what they mean when they say they are here to help the 
middle class--somebody making $600,000, $700,000 a year. Well, you 
know, there are a lot of folks that are not middle class making 
$600,000 or $700,000 a year in this country.

  Ronald Reagan, when he proposed a budget plan, he said, ``We're going 
to have a safety net for the most vulnerable Americans, and there will 
be seven things in the safety net. We're not going to cut them--Head 
Start, Medicare, Social Security, veterans, SSI, school lunches and 
summer jobs for youth.''
  Guess what? Six of these are under the budget knife. Six of what 
Ronald Reagan said was in the safety net over a dozen years ago are now 
under the budget knife of this crowd.
  No, this is not about whether there should be a balanced budget. Of 
course there should. It is about the priorities. It is about describing 
$600,000-a-year people as middle income and saying, ``By the way, we're 
helping the middle-income folks.'' What about the people that work all 
day, every day, for 8, 10 hours, work hard, come home, take care of 
their family, making $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, and 
then discover that much of what they rely on is gone, going to make it 
harder for them to send their kids to college, going to kick some of 
their kids off the Head Start Program--55,000 of those kids. Every one 
has a name. They are told, no Head Start Program; 600,000 summer youth 
do not get a job because we cannot afford it. But we are off building 
star wars and B-2 bombers.
  No, these priorities are wrong. We ought to balance this budget and 
we ought to do it soon, but we ought to get the priorities squared 
away. Let us not talk about middle-income families as $600,000 a year 
and give them a big, fat tax break and say, ``By the way, we're here to 
help the middle-income folks.''
  What a bunch of nonsense. There is no school in America that teaches 
us this is the definition of ``middle income.''
  There is nothing wrong with someone making $600,000. God bless them. 
I wish everybody could do that. But there is something wrong to tell 
vulnerable people, kids, families who are struggling, that we cannot 
afford you, but we can build B-2 bombers and star wars because that is 
where our priorities are. Those are bad priorities, and we ought to 
change.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. DORGAN. I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

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