[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 203 (Monday, December 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18801-S18803]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I see my friend and colleague from 
Arkansas is on the Senate floor and I heard part of his comments in 
regard to the budget impasse. I say as a person who has been in on many 
of these negotiations, I have been very frustrated that the 
administration has not kept its commitment to come up with a balanced 
budget in 7 years using honest economics. We have had 4 weeks since 
passage of the continuing resolution. That was 4 weeks of time almost 
totally wasted, and we have not had a fruitful or real productive 
effort by the administration. Their last budget submission did not use 
Congressional Budget Office economics which, because they have been 
revised, include $135 billion of savings, enabling it to be easier to 
balance the budget.
  They did come up with a back door Gramm-Rudman to raise taxes if you 

[[Page S18802]]
  do not meet the deficit targets. That is not what we have done in the 
past. In the past if you did not meet the deficit targets we had an 
automatic sequester, or across the board cut, of spending. This 
administration did the opposite. They say if you do not meet the 
deficit targets--and they did not give us the specific language--but 
they said if you do not meet deficit reduction targets we will have tax 
increases or postpone tax reductions. In other words, taxpayers, you 
come out short if we are incorrect. If our spending exceeds our limits 
or if the deficit continues higher, instead of cutting off the money 
coming out of Washington, DC, we will take more money from taxpayers. 
Taxpayers beware--that is a bad deal.
  I hope the administration will step back and say, ``Wait a minute we 
committed to do this. We will do what we say.'' I tell my friend from 
Arkansas that I think it is in President Clinton's interest to do it. 
Some say we have to have Republican winners or Democrat winners. We 
should not be doing that. Mr. President, we should be doing what is 
right for this country: Balance the budget. Can we balance the budget? 
Yes. Can we balance the budget and give modest tax relief? Yes. Have we 
said it is negotiable? Yes, but we need to negotiate. You cannot 
negotiate apples and oranges. This administration has yet to put down a 
real budget so we can compare figures.
  They have engaged in a lot of demagoguery. It was very frustrating to 
me to hear the President of the United States on his radio program a 
week ago Saturday say, ``I cannot support that budget because it 
devastates Medicare, devastates Medicare. Unacceptable cuts in 
Medicare.'' The facts are we are spending $178 billion in Medicare 
today. The facts are in the year 2002 we will spend $293 billion in 
Medicare. That is not a cut. That is an increase of over 50 percent.
  Mrs. Clinton when testifying before Congress in the summer of 1993 
said, ``We want to not cut Medicare. We want to reduce the rate of 
growth in Medicare to 6 percent or 7 percent.'' That is not a cut. It 
is reducing the rate of growth to twice the rate of inflation. Mr. 
President, under our proposal Medicare grows by over 7 percent per 
year--more than what Mrs. Clinton called for 2\1/2\ years ago. Yet this 
President and many in Congress have tried to say play political 
Mediscare and see how many senior citizens they can scare into 
believing we have a bad budget and score political points instead of 
doing what needs to be done.
  I was on the conference to help write the Medicare provisions and I 
think those provisions make sense. They offer senior citizens options 
and choices and medical savings accounts. They keep the premium at 31.5 
percent for part B beneficiaries. To me that makes sense. Originally it 
was at 50 percent.
  Some people believe it is better to score political points. Maybe 
they have been successful in scoring points, but certainly they have 
not been successful in doing what is right. What is right is balancing 
the budget and being fair and being honest. This administration has not 
been honest. That probably bothers me more than anything.
  It bothers me when you have an administration that says ``Yes, we 
signed a continuing resolution''--it became law--``that says we will 
balance the budget in 7 years using updated Congressional Budget Office 
numbers,'' and they have not done so. Not in their first budget, their 
second budget, their third budget after the continuing resolution was 
signed, and last Friday on the fourth budget. They did not do it then, 
either. To me, that bothers me as much as anything else.
  I would like to say we have an honest administration. I would like to 
say they are dealing in good faith, but that has not been the case. 
That has not been the case. It should be. We should have the President 
of the United States, when he signs something, does it. If he says he 
will submit a balanced budget in 7 years, he should do it. We did not 
use hocus-pocus numbers. We used revised Congressional Budget Office 
numbers, and they have yet to do it. To me that is very, very 
unfortunate.
  Mr. President, I regret that the President of the United States 
vetoed the Interior bill. I regret that he vetoed the Department of 
Veterans and HUD and other agencies bills and the Commerce, State, 
Justice bill. That means there are hundreds of thousands of people that 
are furloughed. I will not say they are out of work. They may not be 
working today but most everyone assumes they will be paid. The 
President should have, in my opinion, signed those bills, and should be 
contacting the majority leader of the Senate, Senator Dole, and the 
Speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich, and saying, ``Let's work out a deal 
and balance the budget.''
  The numbers are not that far apart. I tell my colleagues under our 
proposal we were saying, according to Congressional Budget Office 
figures, our proposal would spend about $12 trillion in the next 7 
years. The President's proposal in his June budget said they would 
spend about $12.8 trillion over the next 7 years. Since then, we have 
come up and said we are willing to spend a little more, and went to 
$12.1 trillion.
  The President has never given us their outlay figures for the next 7 
years. I asked for that weeks ago. They said they had a budget but they 
never told us, ``Here is how much money we want to spend in Medicare 
the next 7 years.'' They never said, ``Here is what we want to spend in 
Medicaid for the next 7 years.'' They never said, ``Here is what we 
want to spend for defense and other categories.'' They worked in broad 
categories and never gave us specifics on a year-by-year basis. So we 
have to say, where are their figures? They did not give them to us. How 
are we supposed to negotiate with them? We have figures. We can tell 
you what dollar amount we are going to spend in every single category 
in the Government for the next 7 years. How can we negotiate with an 
administration that will not give us the same thing?

  That maybe voices a little of the frustration that I have working 
with this administration. I hope they will change. I hope they will get 
on the phone. I hope President Clinton will contact the congressional 
leaders and say: Let us work it out. Let us balance the budget. Let us 
do it and let us do it now, because it is the right thing to do. It 
should be done. It is irresponsible not to do it.
  We have a chance to make history. We have a chance to do what is 
right. We have a chance to balance the budget. We have a chance to stop 
this process of $200 billion deficits forever, and that is what 
President Clinton's budget is. His June budget had $200 billion 
deficits forever, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That is 
not acceptable. That is totally not acceptable.
  So, I think it is awfully important for us not to continue this kind 
of irresponsibility, in my opinion, by the administration. It cannot 
continue. We need to change it. I hope the President will contact the 
leaders and say: Let us sit down, let us talk, let us use real numbers, 
let us use the same numbers, let us work out our differences and come 
up with a package that will benefit all Americans--not really be a 
benefit for the Republicans or Democrats but be a real benefit for the 
American people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition?
  Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, in a moment I want to make a few remarks 
about the defense bill. Before the Senator from Oklahoma, my good 
friend, Senator Nickles, leaves the floor, I would like to pose these 
questions.
  First, why is it that we have to shut the Government down in order to 
continue negotiating? Second, who do you think benefits from that?
  Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator will yield, I will say, the President had 
the opportunity today to sign three bills--there are six bills that are 
still outstanding. In my opinion five of those six bills could be 
signed by tomorrow. The only bill that is left outstanding is the 
Labor-HHS bill, which is not being held up by Republicans; it is being 
held up by Senate Democrats. I think that is very unfortunate.
  Mr. BUMPERS. But, Mr. President, would the Senator not agree that, 
under the Constitution, if the President does not like a bill he not 
only has the right, but the solemn duty, to veto it? And Congress has 
the right and the solemn duty to try to override it. 

[[Page S18803]]

  Yet, while we have operated that way for 206 years, all of a sudden 
we have a new deal, that if you do not have the votes to override a 
veto, you shut the Government down, and, in addition to that, send 
250,000 people home this morning, saying do not come to work but we 
will pay you for it anyway. Who benefits from that?
  Mr. MACK. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. NICKLES. I will be happy to yield to my colleague from Florida in 
a moment. The President of the United States is the one who sent most 
of these individuals home because of his vetoes today and tomorrow. 
Those bills affected hundreds of thousands of people. The President had 
the right; he could veto the bill. But the President is the one who 
sent those individuals home. If he were to sign those bills, my 
colleague, I am sure, would concur, there would be no furloughs. Those 
employees would work. He had that option. He chose to veto bills. So he 
is directly responsible for sending those hundreds of thousands of 
people home today.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, if I may say so, I have only been here 21 
years; not as long as the Senator from North Carolina who I see here on 
the floor, but pretty near. I have never--I have never--witnessed 
anything like this and hope to goodness I never witness it again, 
where, instead of passing a continuing resolution to allow people to 
operate at even a severely constrained level, even much less than they 
got last year, we shut down the Government instead. Actually, if I were 
the President I would be a little ambivalent about this, because, if we 
continue operating on a continuing resolution, we might get a balanced 
budget faster because a lot of these people are operating on a severely 
constrained budget.
  But my point is this. We have never--we have never--taken the option 
of shutting down the Government simply because we disagree with the 
President. It seems to me we might wind up having to have a 
constitutional amendment one of these days to say that is absolutely 
prohibited. Congress would be solemnly bound to pass a continuing 
resolution or something.
  I must tell you, I am at an absolute, abject, total loss as to how 
anybody can possibly believe that the country's business is being well 
served by shutting the Government down. I do not care how much you 
disagree with the President.
  Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator will yield, I hope you will contact the 
President and tell him to sign those bills, and those individuals would 
go to work.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Even if I did, he would not because he disagrees with 
them. And that is his prerogative as President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I think the Senator from Oklahoma and I, 
if we sat down and talked about this for a couple of weeks, we might 
work something out even though we have very serious disagreements. I 
know the Senator was euphoric, and I was depressed, in November 1994 
when the American people took away the long, long, 40-year Democratic 
majority in the House and, I guess, about a 10-year majority in the 
Senate. They were voting for a whole host of reasons. Some of them were 
mad about gays in the military. Some of them were mad because we had 
not passed a constitutional amendment on prayer in school. Maybe some 
of them wanted a flag desecration amendment to the Constitution, or 
term limits. Maybe some of them missed a Social Security check that 
month. I do not know. I do not think there was one single thing, one 
single thread that ran through the election of 1994 that caused people 
to vote the way they did.
  But I will tell you one thing. They did not vote for chaos, and that 
is all they have had.

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