[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 203 (Monday, December 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18812-S18814]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       THE BUDGET AND ENERGY ASSISTANCE FOR THE POOR AND ELDERLY

  Mr. WELLSTONE. I wanted to respond to some of my colleagues that had 
spoken earlier, and I will try to do this in a very substantive way. 
When colleagues speak and then they have to leave because they have 
other engagements, I think what you need to do is respond but in a very 
civil way, because you do not really have an opportunity for the debate 
when we are not all on the floor at the same time.
  Let me first of all thank Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts for his 
kind remarks about the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. I 
would like to thank the administration as well for releasing these 
funds on Sunday.
  Many people called from Minnesota today. Mr. President, this is a 
good example of a program that really affects people's lives. It is not 
a lot of money nationwide for the whole country. It is about $1 
billion. And for Minnesota--it is a cold weather State, I say to my 
colleague who is presiding from North Carolina, a little colder than 
North Carolina right now, though I think the Presiding Officer has some 
pretty chilly weather.
  The problem is that for all too many people in my State, elderly, 
families with children, there were people who just could not afford the 
heat. And 

[[Page S18813]]
they have relied upon this small grant, which really was more of a 
survival supplement than an income supplement. It is called a cold 
weather lifeline program. We had situations that were being reported by 
the newspapers and by television, and I met with some of the families 
where people were trying to heat their homes by turning on their oven 
or people were just living in one room. It is very cold. It is about 8 
degrees above zero, actually warmer today, but had been around 8 
degrees above zero last weekend. Two weekends ago it was a 50-below 
wind chill.
  So it is extremely important to get some assistance out to people. We 
do not want people to go cold in America. None of us does. I thank the 
President for releasing that money. It makes a huge difference.

  Mr. President, my disagreement--and I think it is a profound 
disagreement--with some of my colleagues about where we are at this 
moment in Washington is two or threefold. First of all, the Government 
shutdown, I do not think it is necessary. I think it is quite 
independent of what decisions we make about what kind of a budget we 
have over the next 7 years and how we balance that budget. I mean these 
are big decisions. They are choices we make.
  We have some real sharp differences among us. I think we should 
continue to negotiate. I hope we can reach agreement. But I do not 
think the Government should be shut down. I think that is just sort of 
exerting leverage at its worst, and I think a lot of innocent people 
are being asked to pay the price. It is inappropriate, and I hope that 
no later than tomorrow we will go forward with a continuing resolution 
and we will continue to go forward with the negotiations on how it is 
you balance the budget.
  My second point is priorities. Talking about the energy assistance 
program, on the House side for the future it has been eliminated. This 
is the other debate. The total cost of this program to make sure people 
do not go cold in America is less than one B-2 bomber. The Pentagon is 
telling us they do not need all the B-2 bombers that have been funded 
over the next number of years in the Pentagon budget.
  So, Mr. President, I really believe that the debate is about 
balancing the budget, not so much whether we should or not. I think 
that all of us--and there is plenty of blame to pass around if you look 
at how this massive debt was built up. We are not even paying the debt 
off, we are trying to pay the interest off on the debt. That is what we 
are really talking about when we talk about balancing the budget. But 
the real question is how do we do it and whether or not it is based 
upon what I would call a Minnesota standard of fairness.

  Mr. President, I have to tell you, I would agree with the commentator 
Kevin Phillips, who two mornings ago essentially said, as I remember, 
that he thought that this balanced budget proposal on the part of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle actually was not a serious 
effort to balance the budget. It was more about tax cuts or tax 
giveaways for wealthy people in the main and, in addition, 
eviscerating, ending safety net programs in this country for the most 
vulnerable citizens and very good for the bondholders.
  I think he is right. The reason I think Kevin Phillips is right--and 
I paraphrased his analysis, it is not a direct quote--is because there 
are all sorts of ways in which we can balance the budget, but it is 
interesting how much has been taken off the table. I say to people in 
the country who might be listening to this debate right now that when 
my colleagues talk about balancing the budget, one piece they leave out 
is the whole Pentagon budget.
  Here we are in a post-cold-war period, there is no longer a Soviet 
Union, and we are talking about $245 billion plus for the Pentagon 
budget--star wars, Stealth bomber, Trident submarine, lots of money 
spent on military forces to protect many countries in Western Europe 
and in Asia.
  I think that can be changed and scaled down with no threat to our 
national security, and it should be. As a matter of fact, the real 
national security of our country is not more Stealth bombers, more star 
wars; the real national security is jobs and adequate housing and 
affordable child care and decent transportation for people who live in 
our communities. The national security of the United States of America 
is the security of our local communities where people do not have to 
worry so much about the violence and the crime, where they have some 
confidence their children are going to good schools, where they can 
believe their children will do well economically, where they have 
decent jobs at decent wages, where they can look forward to a pension 
and, yes, where they do not have to worry about health care costs as 
they become elderly. That is the real national security.
  There is all this money on bombers and missiles and all of the rest, 
no reductions in the Pentagon budget, at the same time you have these 
deep reductions in nutrition programs for children, for God's sake. I 
think the Democrats are doing too much in that area, but it is a huge 
difference from what I see the Republicans are doing in cuts in 
education and cuts in health care, whether they be Medicare or whether 
they be medical assistance or whether they be environmental protection.
  People in our country, I think, want to see us fiscally responsible. 
They want to see us get serious about getting our economic act 
together. But there is a sense of fairness that people have in the 
country, and that is what is so wrong with this budget proposal that we 
have had before us, and that is why the President of the United States 
is doing exactly what he should do and which the vast majority of 
people want him to do. I think he commands a tremendous amount of 
respect for this, because what he is saying is, ``There are ways to 
balance the budget and there are ways to balance the budget, and I am 
interested in doing that, and I make a commitment to doing that, but 
I'm not going to do it if it means hurting children; I am not going to 
do it if it means taking away the quality of health care for elderly 
people; I'm not going to do it if it means we are moving away from a 
commitment we made as a national community to make sure there is care 
for the elderly or disabled or those people in nursing homes; I am not 
moving away from protection of the environment; and I am not moving 
away from the earned income tax credit which has been so important in 
encouraging families with incomes under $28,000 a year to work and 
provides people with incentives to work.''

  He is on the mark.
  I just say to the Chair, and I say to my colleagues, if you want to 
balance the budget, you have to do it based on some standard of 
fairness. You cannot target so many of the cuts at working families, 
middle-income people, low-income people and, at the same time, have so 
many of these multinational corporations and the most wealthy citizens 
and the military contractors all essentially not asked to tighten their 
belts. It makes no sense by any standard of fairness, which I think the 
vast majority of people in this country are committed to. That is what 
this debate is all about.
  Mr. President, I could go on and on. I will not. I just simply wanted 
to, as long as we are having some discussion tonight on the floor of 
the Senate, inject a somewhat different perspective than the ones I 
heard from some of my friends on the other side of the aisle. I guess 
if I had a Hanukkah wish, being an American Jew and Hanukkah started 
last night, if I had a Hanukkah wish, much less Christmas wish, it 
would be that we tomorrow reach an agreement that there will be a 
continuing resolution, the Government will not be shut down. We should 
not have people who are really worried about being able to make a 
living not being able to work.
  We, of course, are involved in negotiations in good faith. We are not 
going to resolve these major questions in the next 3 days, but we will 
resolve these questions, hopefully, over the next month. I think we 
have to be involved in serious negotiations, substantive negotiations 
and good-faith negotiations, and if the differences are irreconcilable, 
then I suppose those differences and what people think about the 
position we take, as opposed to my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, the differences between President Clinton and Speaker Newt 
Gingrich will be resolved in the election.
  But I do not think we should continue to hold a lot of people 
hostage. I do not think we should continue to 

[[Page S18814]]
make a lot of innocent people pay the price.
  So my hope is that tomorrow there is no more Government shutdown; 
that tomorrow we look forward to substantive negotiations in good 
faith, honest debate, not hate, with civility, trying to reach an 
agreement. These are big decisions we are going to make that are going 
to affect our country going into the next century. We ought to do it 
thoughtfully, carefully, and if we can reach an agreement in January, 
great, and if we cannot reach an agreement, then maybe, in fact, the 
differences are irreconcilable. Then the people of the country can make 
the decision. That is the way it is supposed to be in a democracy.

  Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas. I hope we soon get home to be with 
our loved ones. I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I see on the floor the esteemed senior 
Senator from Rhode Island. I will be happy to yield to my senior 
colleague if he wishes to speak. I am going to take 15 or 20 minutes.
  Mr. PELL. I thank my friend very much.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

                          ____________________