[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 206 (Thursday, December 21, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H15554-H15555]
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 Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, there is not a dime's difference between the 
two major political parties, was the observation of a political writer 
some years ago. I think that that description can be in a broader sense 
applied to the negotiations that are now taking place even as we speak 
and which have so much to do with the eventual outcome of the cherished 
balanced budget.
  Why do I say there is very little difference in applying it to the 
current negotiations? If we would recall only in a brief recent 
history, the President of the United States, when he was candidate 
Clinton, offered a tax cut and said that, when he became President, he 
would make certain that the middle class would at his hands receive a 
middle class tax cut, much needed tax cut.
  When the current negotiations began, one of the big issues was 
whether or not we should have a tax cut. So it seems that both parties, 
the Republicans, who want this tax cut and who have promised it in the 
Contract with America, have matched the President, who offered it when 
he was candidate Clinton in the 1992 elections. So has not the issue of 
tax cuts been resolved once and for all? Should not the American people 
expect a tax cut?
  If they have agreed on that, what are they arguing about with respect 
to whether or not there should be a tax cut? President Clinton, after 
he became the Chief Executive, criticized the Republican tax cut as 
being unworthy of consideration for one reason or another. Yet he has 
proposed a tax cut. Now let us skip over to the other big element in 
the negotiations: Medicare reform.
  The Republicans are being excoriated on an hourly basis by the 
opposition on their daring to try to slow the growth of Medicare. Will 
we not recall, Mr. Speaker, that it was the President and the 
President's people who first brought that consideration before the 
public by offering, in the 1993 session, 1993, the first year of that 
session, a plan to slow the growth of Medicare? So now the second 
largest issue which is on the table in these present negotiations is 
also one on which the major parties show that there is not a dime's 
worth of difference between them.
  The President's people want the Medicare growth to slow. The 
Republicans offer as part of the balanced budget the slowing of the 
growth of Medicare. What is left to negotiate? It seems to me that all 
that is left is proportions of those two elements. We ought to be able 
to settle it.
  My gosh, I would be willing to do anything to have the President 
actually agree to the balanced budget. Maybe we could offer the 
President, look, Mr. President, perhaps we, the Republicans, would 
offer you, you take your choice. Take the Medicare proposals that are 
offered by the Republicans, and we will give you your tax cut. That way 
both parties, both sides of the table will have earned something on 
which they both agree.

                              {time}  1900

  They both want a tax cut, they both want Medicare reform. The 
President now takes the Republican version of Medicare, and we give him 
his version of a tax cut.
  I know that that will not work, but the point should be made clear to 
the American people that both sides are 

[[Page H15555]]
saying the same thing in different ways and that neither side should be 
accorded more credibility than the older.
  I hope that the President begins to reduce his rhetoric against the 
Republicans who want the same thing he does, and I hope that the 
Republicans will understand that a tax cut that is offered by the 
President is not out of consideration altogether. Someplace we should 
have both a tax cut and Medicare reform.
  One final point, Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge here and now that we 
Republicans have failed the public-relations war to make clear to the 
American people why we seek a balanced budget, because every time we 
say we want this cold steel unattractive item called the balanced 
budget, we are met by the opposition who say, ``What are you doing to 
the children, the orphans, to the disabled,'' and all of that. They win 
that battle, but the balanced budget that we seek will bring an era of 
prosperity in which all the needs of the American people will be met, 
and the balanced budget that the Republicans seek here and to which the 
President has agreed over 7 years will reduce the chaos that we have in 
this country and all the segments of the society.

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