[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 190 (Thursday, November 30, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17854-S17855]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           A BALANCED BUDGET

  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, first of all I, too, want to commend the 
Senator from Nebraska. I am sure he will not get used to it, but, for 
today, I do. Because I think the work he and Senator Danforth and 
Senator Simpson and others have done regarding the Entitlement 
Commission is probably the single most important effort that has gone 
on in this town for a long, long time. They probably feel like voices 
crying in the wilderness right now. But it will not always be that way. 
It is something that will grow. People pay more and more attention, 
because it is the fundamental truth and the most important truth that 
is in existence with regard to this entire effort.
  I think the Senator from Washington, a few minutes ago, was 
absolutely correct in terms of his assessment of the current situation. 
We are talking about a short-term consideration and we are talking 
about a long-term one. The current situation is we have struggled 
mightily this year, with great difficulty, and we have produced a 
balanced budget. The President, while giving lip service to that 
proposition, is apparently going to do everything he can to avoid a 
balanced budget because it means giving up power, it means giving up 
spending authority, it means giving up prestige with regard to certain 
interest groups that elect people in this country.
  But, hopefully, we will resolve those differences and we will wind up 
with a balanced budget. I know we are committed to it. The Senator from 
Washington is committed to it. That is what we promised we would do. 
That is what the American people said they wanted. We are going to take 
them at their word. It is just that simple. We can negotiate around the 
edges, but, as far as a commitment to a balanced budget, a real 
balanced budget, we are there.
  The Senator from Nebraska makes a very fundamental point. In the 
middle of all this, it is very important that we keep in mind what we 
are doing now is just child's play with regard to the important issues 
facing this country. He is absolutely right that we are doing the more 
easy part of it now and putting off the more difficult parts for later 
on.
  The thing that has been disturbing, I think, to many of us throughout 
this entire debate who are somewhat new to this process and just having 
come to the Senate is, as we take a broad view of it, it becomes so 
difficult even to get 

[[Page S17855]]
to the first step. We are just really nibbling around the edges. The 
Government is still going to be growing at a tremendous rate. All these 
programs are going to be going at very substantial rates. Yet it is so 
difficult.

  We are going to have to do more next year, as the Senator from 
Nebraska says. We are going to have to do more the year after that. We 
are going to have to behave and perform so well for so many years that, 
when you look at the current state of events, it is very depressing.
  Frankly, that is one of the arguments I use for term limits. I am not 
at all sure we have what it takes as an institution to bite the bullet 
and do what we know has to be done, because we are bankrupting the next 
generation. These figures are not sustainable. The figures the 
Entitlement Commission has put out are not refuted. A handful of 
programs are going to take our entire gross national product in about 
17 years in this country.
  The question becomes, fundamentally, in a democracy can a democracy, 
once people have discovered that they can pay money to themselves, can 
they ever stop or can they ever restrain themselves or can they ever 
restrain the rate at which they are paying themselves from their own 
treasury?
  Europe is going through the same kinds of problems that we are right 
now, and we do not have an answer to that question yet. So, either by 
getting people to come to this body and getting people in the White 
House with a different view, with a longer term view, or by having us 
have a change of heart in this body--these are the only ways that we 
going to solve these longer term problems that are lying out there, 
that are down the road.
  I have always thought, and am more convinced every day, that in order 
to solve this problem, ultimately it is going to have to be both 
parties pulling in the same direction. It is going to have to be the 
White House and the Congress pulling in the same direction. As long as 
you have somebody in the White House who is going to demagog and scare 
old people and take millions of dollars worth of television time 
misrepresenting what the other side is trying to do, and as long as you 
have people in both parties who are timid about facing up to these 
problems that the Senator from Nebraska has been talking about and 
really just want to push them over and make the real tough cuts and 
heavy lifting 7 years down the road when they may or may not even be 
here, we are never going to get the job done.
  I think it just points up, when we look down the road, the 
fundamental truths that the Entitlement Commission laid out before us, 
the disastrous consequences of even moving along the road we are on if 
we do not do even better. It sheds, really, I think, new light on what 
we are doing here. If we cannot do this, if we cannot make these 
incremental adjustments now without really hurting anybody--when we are 
talking about the difference of $4 a month in part B, the difference 
between what we are saying and what the President is saying--if we 
cannot get past that, if we cannot reduce the rate of spending by 3 or 
3.5 percent a year in these programs that are eating us alive, if we 
cannot do that now, we do not have any hope as a nation.
  Again, hopefully, the President will see fit to look past next year's 
election, on into the future and the kind of world our kids and 
grandkids will be growing up in, and try to do what is necessary to 
preserve these programs we say we all want, and we will get together 
and we will have a balanced budget for ourselves and for the benefit of 
our kids and the future and strength of this country.
  I yield the floor.

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