[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H144]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1700
                        A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Metcalf). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, as we meet here on the eve of a new year, as 
we begin 1996 with the budget still unresolved, I think it is important 
to speak of the situation in historical context. In the 15\1/2\ years 
that I have been in Congress, I only experienced about 9 months of 
Government that was not divided where the House and the Senate and the 
White House were controlled by the same party. For most of that time, 
we have enjoyed or suffered through divided Government in America. The 
White House was controlled by one party, and the Congress was generally 
controlled by the other party. We are in that same situation today, 
only a little differently.
  In most of those 15 years, the Republican Party controlled the White 
House and the Democratic Party controlled the Congress. In the course 
of that 15-year period, we have had Government shutdowns. This is, I 
think, the fifth one we have experienced in the course of those 15 
years. Most of them have been rather brief. They have been total 
shutdowns over a weekend or a few days, and eventually things were 
worked out. Unfortunately, the way things were worked out was typically 
business as usual. There were compromises made; there was gives and 
takes. There were deals cut. There was a sentiment that, well, it is 
better to take a bad deal and go home than to duke it out and see if we 
cannot resolve our budget problems and somehow eventually balance the 
U.S. budget.

  The product of business as usual over those 15 years of budget 
battles that led to temporary shutdowns and eventually continuing 
resolutions was a deepening and a worsening U.S. public debt. It has 
reached a point today, now, where every young person today is likely to 
spend as much as 80 to 90 percent of their income in taxes to some 
government, State, local or Federal, during their lifetime. That is 
what economists tell us the debt is doing to us.
  It has reached a point today where a young child born today will 
spend $187,000 just paying interest on the debt we have accumulated. It 
has reached the point today where if we do not begin solving the 
Medicare crisis in this country, we will have two choices 7 years from 
now. We will face a Medicare system completely bankrupt and we will 
either have no Medicare system for our elderly, or we will have to 
double payroll taxes on working Americans. That will be the choice 7 
years from now if we do not stick around and resolve this budget debate 
in this, the early days of January, or, if necessary, through 1996 
until we reach election day and let the voters decide who is right or 
wrong.
  At some point Americans are going to have to make a decision. Do they 
really like business as usual, where deals are cut at the end of every 
fiscal year and we go deeper and deeper into debt or would they rather 
some President at some time design a balanced budget amendment based on 
honest numbers within a reasonable period of time that will end this 
fiscal insanity both for ourselves and for our children?
  If you are conservative, you certainly want that done. If you are 
liberal and you see every year more and more of the Federal budget 
spent on interest on the debt instead of on programs for Americans, you 
ought to also want that done. We ought to agree upon that.
  And so during the course of the last few months and the year, we 
offered an amendment to the Constitution requiring that Congress do 
that. We were met with objections here in the House. We succeeded in 
passing it in the House. We were met with objections in the other body. 
They did not pass it in the other body.
  The objections generally ran like this. We do not need the 
Constitution to tell Congress to balance the budget. We can do it 
ourselves and we ought to do it now. That was the objection of the 
balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We do not need a 
constitutional amendment. We can do it and we ought to do it now.
  Well, why not now? Why not a budget agreement that balances the 
budget in 7 years on honest numbers right now?
  That is what this historic fight is all about. That is why we are in 
this awful period of partial Government shutdown, why we have this 
awful debate on our hands were sometimes it gets acrimonious and 
personal, and it should never get to that point, but that is why we 
stand here in the course of these early days in January struggling with 
the notion of how do we negotiate eventually to a position of a 
balanced budget in 7 years using honest numbers without doing business 
as usual, without caving in to all those who want to keep on taxing and 
spending as we have done for generations to the point that our children 
now are deeply in debt and will remain in debt for the duration of 
their lives. How do we resolve it. We resolve it by agreeing now to a 
balanced budget plan.

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