[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 205 (Wednesday, December 20, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H15263-H15264]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Linder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, let me just say that I just came upstairs 
from a Republican conference meeting, and it was very discouraging. 
There seems to be a whole lot less progress on this budget than we 
thought would be there.
  This President has said on so many times that he was in favor of a 
balanced budget. During the campaign it was 5 years. Later it was 10 
years, and then 8 years, and then between 7 and 9, and then 9 years, 
and then 7 years. And last night our leadership believed, and the press 
reported, that the President was prepared to put his numbers, his 
specific numbers for spending on the table for discussion using 
Congressional Budget Office numbers.
  Subsequent to that, this morning the Vice President goes live on C-
SPAN at the press room of the White House and, when asked that specific 
question, when will you have a budget, the Vice President responded, 
well, we will put all the budgets on the table, our OMB-scored budget, 
the Congress's CBO numbers, and other budgets that may be offered. And 
under insistent questioning by the media, he was asked, are you going 
to do what was said last night, put a budget on the table with CBO 
scoring numbers? And the Vice President said no.
  This is very, very discouraging. If we cannot even get in the same 
rules, play in the game with the same rules, we cannot get to the end 
of this. Each of us would like to be home with family for Christmas and 
New Year's and the work that we have to do in our districts during 
January. But I believe we are prepared to stay through Christmas until 
this is done, that what we insist happening is that we are going to not 
go home until we have a balanced budget now.
  The interesting thing about this is that we are not all that far 
apart. For all the talk we have heard about Medicare and gutting 
Medicare, we wanted to spend in year 7 on Medicare $289 billion. The 
President wants to spend $294 billion. That is not a large difference. 
It can be bridged easily.
  We want to grow the spending in this budget by 3 percent. The 
President wants to grow it by 4 percent. We want to use numbers that 
presume an increase in revenues of 5 percent. The President wants 
numbers that would presume an increase in revenues of 5.5 percent.
  None of these differences are too broad to sit down at the table and 
just cut a deal and go home with their families for the holidays. No, 
this is not about numbers. This is not about numbers. This is about a 
basic philosophy, because we believe and have believed all year that 
Medicaid and welfare can be handled more efficiently and more 
effectively by the States. So do the Governors, including many of the 
Democrat Governors.
  We want to take that money that we have been spending and turn it 
back to the States for them to handle in the community person to 
person, face to face. We think that welfare and Medicaid ought to be 
more in the form of caring than caretaking. The President disagrees. 
This is all about who decides, who chooses on behalf of others, who 
sets the power.
  In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith published a book entitled The 
Affluent Society. I always thought it was ironic that 7 years after he 
published a book entitled The Affluent Society, he enlisted in the War 
on Poverty. But in his book in 1958, the entire book was essentially 
this. It is not that Americans have too little or they have too much. 
But they make bad choices with their dollars. And it is the obligation 
of an educated government to tax those dollars from them and make 
better choices on their behalf.

                              {time}  1530

  I submit that is what the issue is about.
  The first 2 years of the administration the budget, welfare, health 
care, virtually everything proposed, was for more taxes, more Federal 
bureaucracy, more deciding on behalf of the American citizens. Indeed 
Mrs. Clinton said in the house of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] 
one evening, ``We have an obligation to make better choices on our 
citizens' behalf.''
  That is what it is about, the left versus the right. The left thinks 
that we should decide for the future and shape a future that our 
children and grandchildren will be secure in; it will be fair and warm. 
The right says if you gave us every lever of governance tomorrow, we 
would not have the slightest idea of what to do. I could not satisfy 10 
percent of the Members of this House because we all come to the table 
with different hopes, and dreams, and aspirations.
  I do know this: I could build a future that my daughter would love 
and my son would hate. So our side says return those choices to the 
people, let them keep more of the dollars in their pockets, and 260 
million Americans acting in their own behalf hundreds of times every 
day will shape the future, and it will be one with which most of them 
will be happy, Mr. Speaker.

  This is not about money. It is about the direction in the country. It 
is very 

[[Page H15264]]
serious, and I am prepared to stay here until we are done.

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