[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 194 (Thursday, December 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18120-S18121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     PROMISES TO BALANCE THE BUDGET

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. President. I rise today to echo the 
comments made by my friend from Idaho and my friend from Alaska with 
respect to the President's decision to veto our Balanced Budget Act.
  Mr. President, I am new to the Senate. I was elected last year, but 
for years I have followed the actions in Congress. I have observed the 
various people who came to Washington, including Presidents, and talked 
about how important it was to balance the budget. In fact, the 
President himself promised to balance the budget when he was a 
candidate in 1992. He promised to balance the budget in 5 years.
  We have now gone 25 years without a balanced budget, 25 years of red 
ink, 25 years in which the people who ran for office promising to get 
the job done failed their fellow countrymen and constituents.
  Over that period of time, a lot of finger pointing has gone on. Each 
side of the political arena has said, ``Well, it's the other side's 
fault.'' Yet during that time, no balanced budget was ever presented to 
a President by a Congress, and, as I recall, no President has come to 
Congress with a balanced budget. Instead, all we've had is partisan 
rhetoric. 

[[Page S 18121]]

  This Congress has been different, Mr. President. This Congress has, 
for the first time during this period of red ink, actually acted on its 
campaign commitments, actually had come to Washington mindful of the 
needs of this country, and actually produced a balanced budget, not 
just a balanced budget resolution, not just a balanced budget 
conference report back in the spring and the summer, but a real 
balanced budget act which was passed in the House, passed in the 
Senate, and then adopted as a conference report just a few days ago.
  So this President became the first President, as my colleague from 
Alaska said, in years to actually have on his desk a balanced budget 
bill. It was an opportunity to do what he said he would do in his 
campaign and what Presidents and Congresses have said they would do for 
decades, to fulfill their commitment to put the Federal Government's 
fiscal house in order.
  Unfortunately, the President chose to veto this legislation. He chose 
to veto the balanced budget. I hope that by his actions, the American 
public now understands exactly why it has been so long since we have 
had a balanced budget.
  I would like to speak just for a minute about what the implications 
are of this veto for a balanced budget for my State of Michigan, 
because we have been studying the statistics, and it is a very unhappy 
picture.
  Had the President signed the Balanced Budget Act, we would see in our 
State a dramatic change in the well-being of our families. Two things 
would have happened that would be very good for the hard-working 
middle-class families of my State.
  First, interest rates would begin to go down and go down 
substantially. And second, those families would be able to keep more of 
what they earned instead of sending tax dollars to Washington.
  In terms of interest rates, Mr. President, we would be talking about 
an estimated $4,000 of savings annually on the mortgages paid by the 
families in my State. I do not know one family in my State that would 
not be able to put that $4,000 to good use for themselves and their 
children. We would be talking about something like $500 per year in 
savings for people who are paying student loans, and we would be 
talking about hundreds of dollars of savings for people who pay 
interest on their auto loans, not just in my State, I might add, but 
across the country.
  For a State like Michigan which is so dependent on the sale of 
automobiles, that is especially good news. So in that sense, the impact 
on interest rates will have a rippling effect in my State which will 
undoubtedly mean fewer car sales and fewer jobs in the auto industry.
  So for all of those reasons the people of Michigan are going to be 
disappointed by the President's action. But they are also going to be 
disappointed when they realize the President's veto also denied the 
families in my State substantial tax reduction, tax reduction that 
would have affected something in the vicinity of 1 million Michigan 
taxpayers.
  In particular, they are going to be disappointed because the 
provisions we included in this legislation to provide a family tax 
credit are not going to be forthcoming as so many families in our State 
had hoped.
  That $500 per child would mean that families in Michigan will spend 
more on the necessities of their life for their kids. We talk here in 
the Senate all the time about children and the need to help children. I 
cannot think of anything that would be more beneficial for the kids of 
our country than to provide $500 per child in the form of a tax credit 
so that their moms and dads can provide them with extra things they 
might need in the year ahead. So for that reason, families in our 
State, I think, are going to be extraordinarily disappointed.
  Mr. President, I close by saying the President says he will finally 
come forward with a new budget plan. I hope this plan is different than 
the previous ones. From what I gather this morning in the media, that 
is unlikely to be the case. He says he has a balanced budget, but if 
you look at the portions already reported in the press, it is apparent 
his new plan will not get us to a balanced budget.
  Indeed, it is implausible it is a balanced budget plan, since it 
appears it will only reduce spending over the 7-year-period of time we 
are discussing by approximately 2 percent.
  I do not think there is anybody in this country who thinks the $5 
trillion of debt we have run up and the hundreds of billions of dollars 
of annual deficits we have can be brought into balance simply by 
reducing total spending by 2 percent over 7 years. It simply does not 
add up, Mr. President.
  These are funny numbers, and if the numbers presented by the 
President today correspond to the ones he offered in the previous 
budget, which received zero votes in the U.S. Senate, I think we all 
have to say, Mr. President, it is once again time to go back to the 
drawing board, time to go back and use real numbers, honest 
evaluations, and, hopefully, move in support of the Republican goal of 
a balanced budget that is going to help American families.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.

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