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




             THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS MUST WORK TOGETHER

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, this morning I was asked by a reporter from a 
radio station why the President and Congress cannot work out this 
budget impasse, why the Government has to shut down.
  That is a good question, and it deserves an answer. Of course, the 
answer is we will work it out, but it is going to take a little time, 
and here is why.
  Yesterday, my offices received about 600 telephone calls from 
constituents, and they were running about 10 to 1 in favor of the 
Congress staying the course to achieve a balanced budget in 7 years.
  The letters and the phone calls, all had a common theme: Do not give 
in. Do this for our grandchildren. We need a balanced budget. We have 
to get the fiscal house in order. Do not cave in to the President.
  Those were the general sentiments of the people who were calling my 
office yesterday, and today, just before I came to the floor, I noted 
the same general theme and the same relationship of numbers in these 
calls.
  So many of us, particularly those of us who were elected in the last 
election and heard the message from the people that they want to stop 
business as usual in Washington, DC, and get the Federal budget 
balanced, are committed to achieving a balanced budget in 7 years. I do 
not understand why the President will not concede that point.
  I think part of the reason why it is taking time is that the 
President is looking good in the polls and op-ed pieces, and so on. He 
is finally standing firm for something, and so he is getting a lot of 
press. So there is not a great deal of pressure on the President to 
concede anything at this point, and that is why we have the impasse. We 
feel the pressure from our constituents to stay the course and have a 
balanced budget and, on the other hand, the President is not willing to 
agree to a balanced budget.
  The first thing the President said when he vetoed the bill which 
would allow the Government to keep on operating was that he did it 
because we had Medicare cuts in the legislation.
  That is not true. The Medicare legislation which we included with the 
bill to keep the Government running, because we knew the President 
would veto it if it was part of our reconciliation bill, called the 
Balanced Budget Act of 1995, that bill provides for precisely the same 
percentage of premium payment for part B Medicare as you have today and 
you have had for the last 5 years. The President would like, he says, 
to reduce that to 25 percent of premium instead of 31 percent. But that 
is the difference between the two of us as to the percent. We are not 
increasing the percent of premium. It is at 31.5 percent today. It will 
be 31.5 percent under our bill, and so that is not true.

  I submit, by the way, that in the end the President will have to 
agree with us that it is fair to ask the seniors who are paying 
voluntarily for part B Medicare benefits to pay 31 percent of it after 
our children and our grandchildren are paying the other 68 or 69 
percent. I submit that it is an unfair burden to ask them to pay any 
more of the part B Medicare.
  So the bottom line here is the balanced budget. The President has 
said he agrees with the balanced budget, but he just does not agree 
with the numbers we would use to calculate it. And yet the numbers are 
precisely the numbers he asked us to use in his State of the Union 
speech, the Congressional Budget Office numbers. He said those were 
more accurate.
  We said, OK, we will use them. Now that we have used them, he said, 
no, he wants to use a different set of numbers. And some people have 
said it is the rosy scenario numbers which would enable us to get a 
balanced budget without making some of the tough decisions which we 
have tried to make.
  Let me conclude by noting why it is so important for us to have a 
balanced budget. If we can achieve this balanced budget by the year 
2002, we will have reduced interest rates by about 2 percent in this 
country, and that means that a family of four with a $75,000 home 
mortgage, for example, a $15,000 car loan, an $11,000 student loan, 
could save about $2,000 a year in interest costs. My grandson Jonathan 
was just born this year, and he immediately took a burden of $187,000 
just to pay the interest on the national debt during his lifetime. That 
is unfair.
  What this debate is all about is stopping the spending in Washington, 
DC, that creates this kind of liability for our children and 
grandchildren. It is time to stop handing the blank credit card to the 
big spenders in this city.
  And so what this impasse between the President and the Congress is 
all about is getting to a balanced budget in the year 2002, reducing 
interest rates so that our citizens can enjoy the savings that are 
achieved as a result and stopping this additional spending which 
requires our children and grandchildren to continue to pay for our 
debts.

  Mr. President, I find it ironic that at the very time we are trying 
to get to this balanced budget in the year 2002, the President is 
talking about committing an additional $2 billion to the quagmire in 
Bosnia without congressional authorization of any kind in direct 
violation of the principle that the Congress and the President should 
both consult before we commit United States troops to this kind of an 
operation.
  And so I find it ironic that that is the action the President is 
taking at the same time that he shut the Government down by vetoing the 
legislation and refusing to agree with us to balance the budget in 7 
years.
  It is time to get serious about balancing the Federal budget.
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

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