[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18910-S18911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           A BALANCED BUDGET

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, earlier this year the House of 
Representatives passed by substantially more than a two-thirds majority 
a constitutional amendment which would have mandated a balanced budget 
in the year 2002 and in every year thereafter. Later in the Senate of 
the United States that constitutional amendment was defeated by a 
single vote. The reason, of course, that the constitutional amendment 
had that kind of prospective application was that to undo the disparity 
between spending and revenue which has built up over the years, 
contributed to by administrations both Republican and Democratic, would 
in all probability require that amount of time.
  Since many of the Members in both Houses who voted against that 
balanced budget in the year 2002 did so on the stated ground, at least, 
that Congress should take responsibility into its own hands and balance 
the budget without what they called the crutch of the constitutional 
amendment, Members primarily on this side of the aisle took that 
counsel seriously. That was the origin of the drive toward a budget 
resolution and a series of changes in our laws which would bring the 
budget into balance by that year.
  Mr. President, I do not know what Members of this body will think in 
the year 2003 or 2004 and 2005, and it was for exactly that reason that 
I voted in favor of that constitutional amendment, so that the kind of 
games of backloading, about which my distinguished friend from Nebraska 
complained, simply could not take place in the future. In fact, Mr. 
President, I am quite optimistic that a Congress will soon be elected 
wiser in that respect than this one, a Congress that does in fact 
submit such a constitutional amendment to the people.
  In the meantime, however, Mr. President, I believe that it would be 
an accomplishment beyond anything dreamed of by more than a handful of 
Members of our predecessor Congresses actually to pass a series of laws 
that would create that balance in the year 2002. And it is to that end 
that we have been driving over the course of the last 6 months and 
more. It was that goal which we finally thought, believed, hoped that 
the President of the United States had joined when he signed a law 
creating a continuing resolution before Thanksgiving Day which included 
the statement that there would be a balanced budget using honest 
numbers derived by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this 
year, a year that is almost over.
  The disappointment, the bitterness, here and elsewhere, the shaking 
of faith, the faith that has caused interest rates to drop by a full 2 
percent over the last year, the faith that has sustained our economy, 
the shaking of 

[[Page S18911]]
that faith in recent days has been derived, Mr. President, solely, I am 
convinced, from the failure of the administration to meet the 
obligation which it entered into jointly with those of us here in 
Congress.
  This Congress passed a balanced budget, a set of proposals that would 
balance the budget by the year 2002. Every Member who voted for that 
budget believed not only that obligation, but every one of the other 
priorities set forth in our continuing resolution just before 
Thanksgiving with respect to the protection of Medicare, the more 
favorable tax treatment of working Americans, education, the 
environment, the entire list. It was perfectly appropriate, I suppose, 
for the President to disagree with that proposition. That is what makes 
up political debate. It is perfectly appropriate for Members of the 
other party to disagree with that proposition. What was inappropriate 
was the absolute, total, complete, abject failure to come up with an 
alternative that met their priorities, and met the legal requirement 
for balance using these honest figures.
  It is for that reason, and one other that I will mention in a moment, 
that we have this second crisis, this second partial shutdown of the 
executive branch.
  Now we are given hope once again that in a relatively short period of 
time between this evening and the end of the year in fact we will be 
able to work out a truly balanced budget using the honest figures, the 
conservative figures supplied by the Congressional Budget Office. 
Perhaps--perhaps--tomorrow we will see for the first time, for the 
first time a submission by the President of the United States that 
meets those requirements, and then we can join in a discussion of how 
significant the tax reductions for working Americans should be, how 
dramatically we should reform and strengthen Medicare, what we should 
do about education and the environment. But to this point we have only 
budgets which say we ought to spend money in these various areas but 
not pay for those services, send the bills to our children and to our 
grandchildren. And that is the cause of the situation in which we find 
ourselves today.
  Even so, Mr. President, we could be discussing this issue more 
objectively perhaps if there were not the constant interference of the 
shutdowns of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of 
Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Interior, our museums, 
our national parks, and the like.
  Well, Mr. President, in that connection, this Congress passed and 
sent to the President appropriations bills for the whole next year 
pursuant to which none of those departments would have been shut down 
whatsoever and bills that were consistent with reaching a balanced 
budget in the year 2002. And yesterday, the President vetoed those 
bills. He vetoed those bills and closed down the national parks, closed 
down the Department of Veterans Affairs, closed down our museums and 
tourist attractions here in this city. Why? At least in part because we 
did not appropriate enough money for them, appropriations inconsistent 
with ever reaching a balanced budget, and often on rationales which 
contradicted what he has done earlier during the course of this year.
  And so now we have a bit of static in public opinion. We have 
departments shuttered, closed down, parks shuttered and closed down 
because of Presidential vetoes on particular appropriations bills 
passed by this Congress and sent to him but interfering with the far 
more important long-range goal of seeing to it that we finally give up 
the habit of determining that today we cannot do without various 
services, however important they sound, whatever the interest groups 
are that support them, but that we are not willing to pay for them 
ourselves. And so we sent the bills to those who cannot vote today, 
those who are already born, who are children in school but who are 
under the age of 18 and those who are not yet born. They can pay for 
what we want for ourselves today.
  Mr. President, that is fundamentally wrong. It is wrong from the 
perspective of our economy. We know that if we honestly balance the 
budget, we will retain and strengthen lower interest rates. We will 
strengthen our economy, or new job opportunities that we have. We will 
give people hope. It is morally wrong to demand services today that we 
are unwilling to pay for. And the one thing we have not heard in this 
debate at any time from either the President or the Members of the 
other party, we ought to spend what the President asked us to spend and 
we ought to increase taxes. By what, Mr. President, half, two-thirds, 
three quarters of $1 trillion over the next 7 years? So that we can 
have these services but pay for them ourselves. They have not suggested 
that. Their suggestion remains let us have these goodies now and let us 
send the bill to someone else, someone without a voice in this 
Congress.

  Now, my friend from Nebraska, who has stayed in the Chamber, has made 
what I think is an excellent suggestion, and I know that he does share 
our goals with us. He has said that he is troubled by the fact that so 
much in the way of these spending reductions are deferred to the end of 
this 7-year period. And can we continue beyond the year 2002? Well, Mr. 
President, even if the Medicare reforms that we have proposed were 
passed lock, stock, and barrel, without any change, we would not have 
solved the problem of the burden that creates for the American people 
in perpetuity by any stretch of the imagination.
  Oh, yes, Mr. President, I say in response to my friend from Nebraska, 
there would still be more to do in the year 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and 
probably before then. But most of the objections to what we are doing 
from his party have not come from the proposition that many of these 
spending cuts take place in the last 2 years. They come because the 
spending cuts are there at all. They simply do not want to do them at 
all. And I believe, Mr. President, that if we will look a little bit 
beyond ourselves, look across the Atlantic Ocean, we will see the 
ultimate result of a refusal to deal with the social and financial 
burdens imposed on a society by unrestrained entitlements. We simply 
have to look at what is going on in France today, a much worse 
situation than we have here: Strikes and disruptions in services all 
across the territory of a free country caused by a set of social 
policies which have choked its economy, which have created unemployment 
more than twice that in the United States and with no hope for any 
change whatsoever.
  This task that we are taking on now would have been easier had our 
predecessors taken it on 5 years ago or 2 years ago. It will be more 
difficult if we defer it until next year or into the next century and 
the longer we defer it, the more we will look like France.
  The time is now. If the Senator from Nebraska has a suggestion that 
will cause more of these spending cuts to take place earlier rather 
than later, and to be more permanent, I think he will find many who 
will support him on this side. Nor does this Senator nor most others 
say that any one of the numbers within this budget is sacrosanct, 
whether it is particular spending numbers, particular tax numbers or 
the like. What we do regard as the bottom line is that we really get to 
balance; that we provide that dividend to the American people of half a 
trillion dollars or more which we are told will come from a truly 
balanced budget using honest figures.
  Perhaps we will look back and say today was a major day in the course 
of reaching that goal. Perhaps this is the day on which the President 
truly joined in the search for that balanced budget and those 
dividends. I sincerely hope that that is true. I am certain that if it 
is true, this will no longer be a partisan exercise but will be one in 
which the Senator from Nebraska enters into enthusiastically and 
successfully.
  Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
  Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. I yield to my friend from Virginia.

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