[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 194 (Thursday, December 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18119-S18120]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                PRESIDENTIAL VETO OF THE BALANCED BUDGET

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, yesterday, President Clinton, with a 
great deal of fanfare and theatrics, vetoed the first balanced budget 
legislation sent to any President in the last three decades. Think 
about that a moment, Mr. President. The first balanced budget 
legislation sent to any President in nearly three decades was vetoed 
yesterday by President Clinton.
  What is the accumulated debt of this country? It is $4.9 trillion. 
That occurred as a consequence of prevailing Democratic control of both 
the House and Senate during those decades.
  The veto was very well orchestrated, with the President deciding to 
use the same pen that the late President Lyndon Johnson used to sign 
the original Medicare legislation back in 1965. However, in what may be 
a metaphor for this President, when he put pen to the paper, nothing 
happened; the pen was out of ink, just as the President is out of ideas 
and just as Medicare is out of money.
  Mr. President, the American public deserves better. Throughout the 
entire year, Republicans in Congress have worked night and day to 
develop and pass a real balanced budget along with family tax relief. 
There were some Democrats who worked with us. And what has the 
President done this year? Absolutely nothing. He has spoken empty 
rhetoric about wanting to balance the budget.
  Mr. President, there is a difference between wanting and doing. 
President Clinton has submitted two budgets this year. The first one--
think about this--the first one did not receive a single vote, Democrat 
or Republican, when we voted on it in the Senate, not one single vote, 
because the President's first budget would have led us to unending 
deficits and a sea of red ink for the indefinite future.
  He came along and said his second budget would balance in 10 years. 
But like everything else with this President, rhetoric and reality are 
inconsistent. It is what the polls say that motivates the actions down 
at the White House.
  When the Congressional Budget Office scored the President's second 
budget, they again found endless annual deficits--in excess of $200 
billion. Now the President says he is going to send us a third budget, 
and this one will be balanced in 7 years. I am a little cynical simply 
because I have been there before. I am from Missouri--maybe--when in 
reality I am from Alaska, but the same point is applicable. After two 
false starts, I wish to see something real.
  I hope the President does send us a balanced budget, but I have had 
an opportunity this morning for a preview of what we anticipate is his 
effort, and it does not balance. It simply does not balance. So as a 
consequence, I fear we are facing a third situation where the President 
has sent us something that is totally unacceptable.
  I hope that the President will be willing to recognize and give the 
American family the relief they need from taxes. I hope he will give 
Americans incentives to invest in our future and save. I hope that he 
would give Americans an opportunity for hope--hope that Government can 
be downsized, more efficient, more responsive. And I hope he will give 
America the economic security that will come from allowing oil 
exploration to proceed in ANWR, which I note in his veto statement he 
rejected.
  On that point, I would like to defer to his veto statement where he 
suggests, under title V, the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge to oil and gas threatens a unique, pristine ecosystem in hopes 
it will generate $1.3 billion in Federal revenues, revenues based on 
wishful thinking, and outdated analysis.
  Mr. President, the wishful thinking is in the eyes of some of 
America's environmental community that focuses on this as a cause for 
membership and a cause of raising dollars at the expense of our 
national energy security, and at the expense of our jobs and at the 
expense of American technology.
  Geologists have indicated that this area is the most likely area in 
North America where a major oil discovery could take place. And to 
suggest the arguments that prevailed against Prudhoe Bay 20 years ago 
are now being applied to the opening up of ANWR are not realistic is 
really selling American technology and ingenuity short. This could be 
the largest single job producer in the United States for the remainder 
of the century. It could be the largest contributor, if you will, to an 
increase in tax revenue for the Federal and State governments. The 
consequence of the President's shortsightedness in dismissing this 
really underestimates the capability of America's can-do spirit and 
advanced technology.
  Mr. President, I think it is fair to say the American public today is 
fed up with this lack of leadership. The American public wants a 
balanced budget 

[[Page S 18120]]
they can understand. They do not understand the dispute between the OMB 
and the CBO figures. They want a balanced budget that simply says the 
revenue will equal the outflow. We got into this situation as a 
consequence of spending more money than we generated in revenues, and 
there is only one way to correct that: Either through increased 
revenues or reduced spending.
  We Republicans, I think, have delivered a responsible pledge. It is 
now up to the President to transform his words into deeds. It is time 
for the President to get serious, to send us his proposals for 
balancing the budget with no phony numbers, no rosy scenarios. And it 
is time for the posturing to end and the serious business of balancing 
the budget to begin.
  I thank my colleagues and wish them a good day.
  Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, before I yield to the Senator from 
Michigan, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a study 
by the Heritage Foundation called ``Balanced Budget Talking Points: The 
$500-Per-Child Tax Credit,'' which discusses what it would mean to a 
typical middle-income family in this country to have the middle-class 
family tax credit that was in the Balanced Budget Act vetoed yesterday. 
In having this printed in the Record, let me suggest that a family of 
four spends on the average $3,986 a year in groceries, or about $332 a 
month. What the President did yesterday was take away from the average 
American family 3 month's--3 month's--worth of grocery bills.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

The $500-Per-Child Tax Credit Means One Month's Food and Mortgage for a 
                        Typical American Family

   (By Scott A. Hodge, Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary 
                                Affairs)

     ``If you take the $500 a year tax credit, and I figure, you 
         know, $5 for a bottle of wine, that is 100 bottles of 
         wine for a family.'' \1\--Congressman Jim McDermott (D-
         WA)
       Contrary to what elitists in Washington would have the 
     public believe, for most hard-working American families 
     raising children a $500 tax cut for each child is not an 
     insignificant amount of money. This is especially true as 
     many families no doubt are wondering how they will be able to 
     afford the $432 some surveys report each household expects to 
     spend this holiday season.\2\ Yet the families of 51 million 
     children, or over 28 million families in all, will be denied 
     relief from their financial worries by President Bill 
     Clinton's expected veto of Congress's seven year balanced 
     budget and tax cut plan, which had as its centerpiece a $500-
     per-child tax credit. This tax cut would pump over $22 
     billion per year into family budgets across the country so 
     that working parents can provide for their children in a way 
     no government program can.
     \1\ Tax Provisions in the Contract With America Designed to 
     Strengthen the American Family, Hearings before the Committee 
     on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, January 17, 
     1995 p. 30.
     \2\ Bureau of National Affairs, ``Conference Board, Arthur 
     Anderson Polls Put Moderately Upbeat Face on Holiday,'' 
     November 24, 1995.
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       As congressional Republicans negotiate with the White House 
     on a compromise plan to balance the budget by 2002 and 
     provide tax cuts, they should resist pressure to scale back 
     the $500-per-child tax credit as a price for cutting a deal. 
     Those who argue that Washington cannot ``afford'' such 
     generous tax cuts while the government is trying to balance 
     the budget are, in effect, arguing for higher spending. The 
     budget will not be balanced any faster if the amount of the 
     per-child credit is reduced below $500 or if the income for 
     which families are eligible is lowered from its current level 
     of $110,000 for joint filers.\3\ Any money not put back in 
     the checkbooks of working families with children through tax 
     cuts, is more money in the checkbook for politicians and 
     bureaucrats to spend while the budget is moving toward 
     balance.
     \3\ For taxpayers filing jointly with incomes above $110,000 
     the credit phases out at a rate of $25 for each $1,000 above 
     the threshold (a range of $20,000), thus fully phasing out at 
     $130,000 in income. For families with two children, the two 
     credits this family is eligible for are fully phased out at 
     $150,000 in income. For single filers, the credit begins to 
     phase out at $75,000 in income.
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       Congressional and White House negotiators should keep in 
     mind that for parents with two children, the $1,000 tax cut 
     they would receive under this plan could mean the difference 
     between paying the mortgage and not. Indeed, as the table 
     below shows, a $1,000 tax cut for the typical family with two 
     children is enough to pay one month's mortgage and grocery 
     bills, or 11 months worth of electric bills, or nearly 20 
     months worth of clothing for the children. In other words, a 
     $1,000 tax cut is a significant amount of money for most 
     families' household budgets.

 WHAT THE $500-PER-CHILD TAX CREDIT MEANS FOR A FAMILY WITH TWO CHILDREN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                How many
                                           Annual              months of
                                         household             this item
           Family budget item             cost for   Monthly     can be 
                                          a family     cost    purchased
                                            of 4                  with  
                                                                 $1,000 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Groceries..............................     $3,986       $332        3.0
Mortgage payment (principal, interest,                                  
 and taxes)............................      7,972        664        1.5
Natural gas............................        333         28       36.0
Electricity............................      1,085         90       11.1
Telephone..............................        803         67       14.9
Water..................................        331         28       36.3
Children's clothing....................        612         51       19.6
Auto payments..........................      3,325        277        3.6
Gasoline purchases.....................      1,397        116        8.6
Health insurance.......................        817         68       14.7
Medical services.......................        749         62       16.0
Drugs and medical supplies.............        366         31       32.8
Personal care products and services....        526         44       22.8
Educational expenses...................        739         62       16.2
Life and other personal insurance......        557         46       21.5
Personal services (babysitting, child                                   
 care, etc.)...........................        536         45      22.4 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source.--Heritage calculations, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics,    
  Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1992-93.                                 

       There are also sound policy reasons to cut taxes for 
     families with children:
       Families with children are overtaxed.--In 1948, the average 
     American family with children paid only 3 percent of its 
     income to Uncle Sam. Today the same family pays 24.5 percent.
       Giving a family of four a $500-per-child tax credit is 
     equivalent to giving them one month's mortgage payment.--The 
     average family now loses $10,060 per year of its income due 
     to the 45-year increase in federal taxes as a share of family 
     income. This tax loss exceeds the annual mortgage payment on 
     the average family home. The $1,000 in tax relief the 
     congressional tax-cut plan would give to a family with two 
     children would help this family pay one month's mortgage 
     payment.
       Millions of families stand to benefit.--The families of 51 
     million American children, or 28 million taxpaying families, 
     are eligible for the $500-per-child tax cut.
       Family tax relief helps families in every state.--The 
     typical congressional district has some 117,000 children in 
     families eligible for a $500 tax credit. Thus families in the 
     typical district would receive $54 million per year in tax 
     relief.
       Congress' $500-per-child tax credit would eliminate the 
     entire income tax burden for 3.5 million taxpayers caring for 
     8.7 million children.--These 3.5 million families will 
     receive over $2.2 billion per year in tax relief. Families 
     with two children earning up to $24,000 per year would see 
     their entire income tax burden eliminated by a $500-per-child 
     tax credit, and families with three children earning up to 
     $26,000 also would have their income tax bill eliminated.
       Most families are middle-class.--The $500 child credit plan 
     will direct 89 percent of all benefits to families with 
     adjusted gross incomes below $75,000 per year--middle-income 
     by any standard--and over 96 percent to families with incomes 
     below $100,000.
       Cutting taxes for all families--regardless of income--is 
     fair.--Congress' plan will cut the income tax burden of a 
     family of four earning $30,000 per year by 51 percent and the 
     income tax burden of a family earning $40,000 per year by 30 
     percent. Meanwhile, a family of four earning $75,000 would 
     see their tax burden reduced by 12 percent, and a family 
     earning $100,000 per year would receive a tax cut of just 7.4 
     percent.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I now yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Michigan, Senator Abraham.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.

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