[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 186 (Monday, November 20, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H13351-H13352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        FACES BEHIND THE NUMBERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Levin] is recognized during 
morning business for 2 minutes.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, there are many key lessons of the last week. 
A key one is that we must have a balanced budget. Americans also care 
deeply about how it is done. They do want us to focus on the overall 
budget numbers.
  They also want us to look at the faces behind those numbers, at the 
faces of 70 percent of Michigan seniors with annual incomes less than 
$15,000 who would be hurt by doubling Medicare premiums as proposed by 
the majority; the faces of seniors who would lose quality care and 
choice of provider if hospital reimbursements were so drastically 
reduced as originally proposed, and those with private insurance to 
whom these costs would be shifted; at the faces of 8 million working 
people whose taxes would be raised by the 

[[Page H 13352]]
present proposal to cut the earned income tax credit by $32 billion, 
those working people who have three or more kids, those with a small 
amount of Social Security payments or who are childless and earn less 
than $9,750 a year; at the faces of 500,000 hard working families with 
incomes under $29,000 who have a seriously handicapped child and would 
see their SSI benefits reduced by 25 percent; at the faces of 119,000 
students in Michigan alone who might see the cost of education go up 
because of cuts in student loans.
  It is not just the public that is concerned about the faces behind 
the numbers. More and more mainstream economists share this concern, as 
evidenced in the New York Times of yesterday.
  Since coming to Congress, I voted for every major deficit reduction 
package signed into law by both Republican and Democratic Presidents. 
It is interesting that so many of those who now say they champion a 
budget, a balanced budget, were champions of the policies in the 1980's 
that were a substantial cause of raising the national debt by four 
times.
  It is time to finish the job of balancing the budget and rightsizing 
Government. We must stop mortgaging the future, but we will get to the 
zero in the long run if we ignore the faces behind the numbers in the 
short run.

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