[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S18908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BALANCED BUDGET

  Mr. ABRAHAM. I echo the statements made by the floor leader on our 
side who has very concisely outlined the importance of the issues 
before us. I agree with him that we should not only pass this 
resolution but we should stay here as long as we have to to get the 
bigger job of passing a balanced budget done.
  Today I was struck by comments made in the Washington Post business 
section from various financial market experts who said that people are 
waking up to the stalemate here in Washington. Yesterday was the wake-
up call that we might not get real entitlement reform and bring the 
deficit under control.
  We saw the result with the stock market dropping dramatically. There 
is a real fear on Wall Street, as was indicated in that article, that 
Washington might be contemplating a plan that fails to reform our 
entitlement programs.
  Mr. President, that is a prescription for disaster, not just in the 
short term but for the long term, as well. What we have tried to offer 
with the Balanced Budget Act adopted earlier was a solution to the 
entitlement problems that have confronted Congress for a long time. We 
have understood that while there is a need to act quickly to address 
the solvency of Medicare part A, this is just the first step in a long 
series of reforms needed to accommodate the changing population that we 
will confront as the baby boom generation ages.
  Mr. President, I hope that the resolution which the majority leader 
offered earlier will be available for us to vote on very soon. I 
strongly support the principles that are enunciated in it. I think the 
American people and certainly the people in my State support it as 
well. They are impatient with Congress. They cannot understand why it 
is taking us so long to get to the finish line. By combining reductions 
in the growth of Government with an opportunity to allow hard-working 
Americans to keep more of what they earn, we can dramatically shift the 
whole equation of government in this country.
  For too long we have watched as dollars flow from hard-working 
Americans to fund Washington-knows-best rules dictating how our 
Nation's welfare, health, and other domestic programs will be run. We 
need to change from that approach to one where we let people keep more 
of what they earn, in which we let the States and the people on the 
front lines address the problems of our needy citizens more effectively 
than the Federal bureaucracy could hope, and ultimately in which we 
reshift the balance in this country from Washington-knows-best to a 
reliance on initiatives that take place at the States, and the 
initiatives that come from the people themselves.
  Mr. President, that is the solution I think would work best and why I 
support this resolution as it was pronounced by the majority leader 
earlier. It is why I hope we will soon enact a balanced budget plan 
that yields, at least for the people in my State, lower interest rates, 
a chance to keep more of what they earn, and most importantly for the 
children in my State, a chance to grow up without spending most of 
their working lives paying off the bills that their parents left them. 
Instead, they should be free to spending their incomes on their own 
priorities. I yield the floor.

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