[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 190 (Thursday, November 30, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17831-S17833]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             FRESHMAN FOCUS

  Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Mr. President. I do not intend to take the 
hour.
  We did set aside some time, however, and I hope to be joined later by 
some of my colleagues from the freshman class who have sought to come 
to the floor from time to time to talk a bit about what, in our view at 
least, our collective view, we are seeking to do during this session of 
Congress. What we have sought to do, of course, along with the other 
Senators in this body, throughout this year, is to make some 
substantial changes.
  I think those of us who have just come this year perhaps feel more 
strongly about making changes, more strongly because we are not as 
wedded to the operations that have gone on here for 30 years as some 
may be. I think we are probably more sensitive to voters, having just 
come fairly recently off an election, an election in 

[[Page S17832]]
which most agree that people said we have too much Government, it costs 
too much, we need to be as fiscally and financially responsible as a 
country as you and I expect to be as individuals in our families and 
our homes and our businesses.
  So we feel very strongly about that. Balancing the budget has been 
and continues to be the prime issue, I think, for a number of reasons, 
not only because of the arithmetic, not only because for 30 years this 
Congress has not balanced the budget. We have spent more than we have 
taken in for a very long time. In order to do that, we have maxed out 
our credit card. We have charged it to our children and to our 
grandchildren and continue on at that rate, continue on to add to the 
debt to where we now have a $5 trillion debt, which is more money than 
most of us can imagine. Maybe even more directly, we have an interest 
payment every year we must make of $260 billion, probably next year the 
largest single line item in the budget, one that, of course, cannot be 
adjusted or changed. If it continues to grow at the rate it has, it 
will absorb more and more of the available funds.

  So, balancing the budget is something that we have not paid a lot of 
attention to, collectively, over the years. The deficit sort of 
happened. Nobody felt much pain, and we continued to do that. It is 
financially irresponsible. As we look to moving into a new century we 
must ask ourselves, I think, what kind of a Government, what kind of a 
country do we pass on? One that is continuing to grow a $5 trillion 
debt, adding on every day? Or do we, in fact, want to make some changes 
that will bring about different results?
  In addition to that, however, balancing the budget has some other 
fundamental changes. It has to do with spending. I suppose you can 
balance the budget by raising income, raising taxes, raising revenue, 
which of course was what the President did in 1993. It was the largest 
tax increase the world has ever known. It did, to some extent, reduce 
the deficit. I guess you can do that. The real issue, however, is what 
do you want to do about spending? If, in fact, the message was that 
Government is too big and spends too much, then in addition to 
balancing the budget, you also have to balance it on the basis of 
holding spending, or at least reducing the increase in spending, which 
has an impact on Government. If you have too much Government, if you 
have too much regulation, if Government is too intrusive in your life--
as many people believe it is, as I believe it is--then balancing the 
budget and the level of spending have something to do with that.
  I have a hunch that one of the rules of nature or science or whatever 
is that government grows to the extent possible by available funds and 
available debt. Until you do something about that, it continues to 
grow. So this has been the pivotal issue and continues to be. We have 
done a number of things this year with respect to it. One of the early 
ones was to seek to have a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution. I support that idea. Some do not. Some say you do not 
need to do it. You do not need to tamper with the Constitution. You 
just do it.
  The evidence is that does not work very well. We have been saying 
that for a long time. It has not happened. It has not happened. Others 
say we just have to get at it. I am for a balanced budget amendment, 
but that proposal died by one vote here in the Senate. I believe it is 
necessary, frankly, to have a constitutional amendment to provide some 
discipline. Public bodies are awfully hard to discipline. Everyone 
comes from a constituency. Everyone has a constituency that needs a new 
bridge or new road or whatever. So it is very difficult to have the 
discipline to say no to some things, to live within a budget. The 
constitutional restraints help do that. I come from a State that 
requires a balanced budget in the State constitution. And no one thinks 
a lot about it. We know that you cannot spend more than is available, 
more than you take in. So you have to make adjustments. I think it is a 
great idea.

  One of the problems with spending in this country is that we are over 
here talking about the benefits of spending but we do not then relate 
it to the cost of paying for it. One of the simplest and most direct 
cost-benefit ratios comes from the local school district. You say to 
the constituents that we need a new junior high, and it is going to 
cost you $220 a year on your property tax. So you say to yourself, OK, 
is it worth $220 a year? Then you go vote, and you decide based on what 
the benefits are of the school based on what it is going to cost. We 
are too far removed from that on the Federal level. So spending is over 
here. You pay for it over here, and the two never come together in 
terms of a cost-benefit ratio. That is not good for government.
  So we did not get a balanced budget amendment. So then we set about 
to balance the budget over a period of 7 years by doing it through 
appropriations, and beginning to decrease the growth of spending in 
appropriations. And we have worked on that all year and have not yet 
finished, as a matter of fact.
  I introduced yesterday a bill that would provide for a biennial 
budget, thinking we would be much better off if we had a 2-year budget 
so that at some time, when we would get through doing appropriations, 
we would have time to do other things like health care, and 
environmental issues, and have oversight of the spending that we have 
approved. At any rate, that is another matter. We are still working on 
it. It is not finished.
  We still have out of the 13 appropriations bills I think 7 that are 
not completed. That is what brought us, of course, to the shutdown of 
the Government several weeks ago and to the controversy over that which 
allows for the potential of another one on the 14th or 15th of December 
when this continuing resolution runs out.
  Some folks in the media have said, ``Oh, my gosh. That is just an 
adolescent food fight going on in Washington. These guys ought to grow 
up.'' It is not that, Mr. President. It is a very fundamental 
controversy over the direction of this Government--whether you are 
going to continue to spend more and more, or whether you are going to 
reduce the level of spending and come to a balanced budget. That is 
what it is about.
  You will recall in the last one the confrontation between the 
Republicans and the Democrats and the administration, which turned out 
to be a continuing agreement that said, yes, we will have a balanced 
budget. We will participate in putting together a balanced budget. We 
will commit to a balanced budget. We will commit to a balanced budget 
in 7 years, and we will commit to a balanced budget that is based on 
real numbers, in this case the Congressional Budget Office numbers. 
However, there were some other words added--some words that are a 
little less easy to define, such as we are going to protect Medicare, 
we are going to protect Medicaid, we are going to protect farmers, and 
we are going to protect the environment. I do not know what that means. 
I suppose protection of those things can be interpreted to mean many 
things. So that is where we are.
  In addition, of course, to the appropriations comes a balanced budget 
bill which makes the changes in programs necessary to over 7 years 
balance the budget. The toughest ones are entitlements. Congress really 
has very little to do with the amount of money spent on entitlements. 
You set up an entitlement. If you qualify, you get paid. Welfare is 
one. So if you really want to do something about the rate of growth, 
you finally have to do something about entitlements.

  That is what this is about--and welfare, to make block grants to the 
States so that they can, indeed, find growth that fits. My State of 
Wyoming has different needs than Pennsylvania or New York. So the block 
grants would allow for States to have the flexibility to put together 
programs that do work.
  Medicare--to change Medicare so that it does not go broke in the year 
2002, and, if we do not change it, it will. The question is not whether 
you do something. The question is what do you do if you want to 
continue to have health care for the elderly.
  So what has happened is that I think some have taken the position 
that we need to make the changes needed, that you are going to have 
different results, and you have to do some things differently. Others 
have said, ``Well, I really do not want to do that. We can talk about 
balancing the budget, but I am not sure I am for that today.'' Everyone 
who stands up starts by saying, 

[[Page S17833]]
``I am for a balanced budget'' and then goes on for another 30 minutes 
announcing why he cannot, and becoming a defender of those programs 
which are kind of scare tactics. Some have called it mediscare, and 
somehow you are going to do away with the benefits. It is not true, of 
course. We reduce the growth rate from 10.5, to 6.5. We reduce the 
amounts available per beneficiary that will grow $4,700 to $6,700 over 
this 7-year period.
  So they say, ``Gosh. This is radical stuff. And you are tearing it 
all apart.'' Let me see how radical you think some of this is.
  Mandatory Medicare spending will increase each and every year from 
$178 billion in 1995 to $289 billion in the year 2002. That is a 62-
percent increase. That is radical reduction? Overall mandatory 
spending--overall mandatory spending would increase in each and every 
year from $739 billion in 1995 to $1.93 trillion in 2002, a 48-percent 
increase. Overall, Federal outlay--listen to this--will increase every 
year from $1.518 trillion in 1995, what we spend now, to $1.856 
trillion in 2002, a 22-percent increase in total spending. But if you 
listen to some of the Members of this body, if you listen to the media, 
draconian cuts are taking place. And we are going to do something about 
it.
  Here is what the minority leader said:

       So, if we cannot get the Republicans to come off those 
     extreme positions, then I think we are advantaged in not 
     reaching an agreement.

  Mr. President, reaching an agreement is I believe our responsibility. 
I believe it is the thing that we have to do.
  I forgot to mention, of course, that what is going on here is the 
President has submitted two budgets, and neither of them balance. 
Neither of them were accepted. Neither of them have gotten any votes in 
this Senate.
  So we have to say, Is there a real effort made to do this? I hope so. 
I hope so. Collectively, for this country we need to make a move to 
balance the budget. We have the best chance we have ever had. We are on 
the way to doing that. We can do it in 7 years. We can do it with real 
numbers. We can do it, and provide the benefits that need to be 
provided. We simply need to have the will. Frankly, we need to have the 
will to come to the snubbing post, and say, ``Here is what we need to 
do.''
  Now the notion is that it is all pain. Let me tell you it is not. A 
balanced budget will bring a good deal of stability to this country 
that will help the markets, that will reduce interest rates so that on 
your home, as some have suggested, it could be up to $2,000 a year in 
savings in interest on a long-term date.
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. THOMAS. Certainly.
  Mr. INHOFE. I have been listening to the Senator from Wyoming. He hit 
upon something here I do not think people are fully aware of or 
sensitive to, and that is the effect what we are doing here is having 
on the markets. We keep hearing if something happens, that there is an 
impasse, it is going to have a deteriorating effect. The markets have 
been very good. Interest rates are low. Things are going very well 
right now mostly because of the anticipation of the fact we are going 
to have a balanced budget.
  I can remember so well, as the Senator can remember, when we had the 
discussion on the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and we 
lost it by one or two votes and what happened to the markets after that 
and the devaluation of the dollar against the yen and the mark. The 
deterioration was unprecedented. And so I would suggest that what the 
Senator from Wyoming says is true. There is nothing we could do that 
would enhance the optimistic future of the economy than to go ahead and 
take this Balanced Budget Act of 1995 and pass it.
  I do not think most people are aware, Mr. President, that we have 
passed a Balanced Budget Act of 1995 which essentially does what the 
President committed to do during the last continuing resolution. It 
does provide for a balanced budget, and it uses real numbers, CBO 
numbers, those numbers that come from the Congressional Budget Office, 
which the President stood before a joint session of the legislature and 
said is the most reliable source that we can use, so we can end smoke 
and mirrors and we can handle what is out there.
  The thing that concerns me more than anything else, and I ask the 
Senator from Wyoming if he agrees, is that we have passed a budget. It 
does what the American people asked us to do in November of 1994. And 
the President does not have a budget. So while I am not in on the 
negotiations, how do you negotiate when you have a budget and the other 
side does not have one? I wondered if the Senator had figured that out 
yet.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, the Senator from Oklahoma asks a difficult 
question. I do not know, nor am I in on the negotiations. If there is 
bona fide negotiations, both sides need to put their proposals on the 
table and find some common ground and there can be some adjustment.
  I think the key feature to the Republican proposal to balancing the 
budget is to have a spending limit. Within that spending limit, there 
are choices, priorities of how you do that. The key is to be able to 
have projections out into the future using CBO numbers with the 
contribution of the OMB and whoever else has knowledge, to have that 
projection and use the same numbers so that you are not using smoke and 
mirrors. Most anybody can balance the budget if they find some numbers 
that show revenues increasing out all the time and then it does not 
materialize. We have done some of that before. On the contrary, we 
ought to use the more conservative number so if we are wrong, we will 
err to have more surplus rather than less and add that to the reduction 
of the deficit and keep spending down.
  So the Senator from Oklahoma is exactly right. If there is going to 
be bona fide negotiation, you need to come to the table with some 
ideas. And we are dedicated to doing that. So I hope that we do.
  Let me yield the floor so that my friend from Oklahoma may proceed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator for yielding.

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