[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S59-S60]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TIME TO BALANCE THE BUDGET

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I have come for the first time to a 
disturbing conviction. That conviction is that I do not believe this 
budget process is going to succeed. I am beginning to believe that any 
amount of negotiating in the future is not going to result in 
agreement. I have come to this point because 44 days after the 
President said he agreed that we should enact a balanced budget, 
nothing has happened, and I am not sure that negotiating and bargaining 
is being done in any way that would fulfill that commitment.
  The President, first of all, has not demonstrated any history of 
supporting or proposing a balanced budget and has yet to put a balanced 
budget as scored by the agency that he insisted it be scored by, on the 
table.
  He has vetoed the only real budget that has come before his desk, and 
even now, today, January 4, as I said, 44 days after he agreed to enact 
a balanced budget, he has yet to propose a balanced budget. President 
Clinton has now proposed four budgets, none of which has produced a 
balance. The third so-called balanced budget he proposed was scored by 
the Congressional Budget Office as $200 billion per year over balance 
as far as the eye could see, and then his fourth budget only managed to 
reduce the deficits to $100 billion a year for every year ad infinitum.
  Not one Member of the Senate, Republican or Democrat, has voted for 
the President's budget. In one vote, it was defeated 96 to nothing, in 
another 99 to nothing. So this is just not Republican rhetoric. This is 
a unanimous rejection of the President's attempts to balance the budget 
by all Republicans and all Democrats in the Senate.
  So for anybody who is under the illusion that the President has 
proposed a balanced budget with honest numbers, no one in this body, 
Republican or Democrat, agrees to that.
  It seems to me, third, that at every stage of the negotiations the 
President has purposely tried to distract the Nation's attention from a 
balanced budget.
  First, he talked about the number of years it would take to balance 
the budget and finally agreed, under duress I think, that 7 years would 
be the right number. But he was quoted as saying, and I quote again, 
``[As President] I would present a 5-year plan to balance the budget.'' 
He said that on Larry King in June.
  And then in July, he said, ``But I do not believe it is good policy, 
based on my understanding of this budget--which is pretty good, now--to 
do it in 7 years.'' That he said in a Rose Garden ceremony in July.
  Then he said, well, I think we ought to ``balance the budget in 10 
years. It took decades to run up the deficit, it's going to take a 
decade to wipe it out.'' That was during his Presidential address to 
the Nation.
  Then he used the scoring issue, that is, determining whether or not 
the numbers were real, as a distraction. He challenged us--and I sat 
over at the House of Representatives during his State of the Union 
Address--when he said, ``Let's at least argue about the same set of 
numbers so the American people will think we are shooting straight with 
them.'' That was in his address before a joint session of Congress on 
administration goals in February 1993.
  And so we accepted that challenge, and we said we will agree, Mr. 
President; let us use the agency that you want to use. That is the 
Congressional Budget Office. And then we argued back and forth, back 
and forth, and the President said, well, the Congressional Budget 
Office, I do not agree with them. I wish to use my own numbers.
  For nearly 9 months he was able to distract the press, the Congress, 
and the American people from the real issue of balancing the budget by 
focusing the debate on how long it ought to take, on what numbers we 
ought to use. So he--I have to give him credit--he masterfully 
maneuvered and shifted the debate for month after month after month 
when the real issue was balancing the budget.
  The President's attitude is particularly destructive because we are 
at a unique moment in recent history. We have the opportunity to pass a 
real balanced budget, interestingly enough, at a time when the 
differences between us are not that great. We have a chance to 
negotiate because really we are quite close. A number of Democrats have 
worked with Republicans in trying to put together an alternative budget 


[[Page S60]]
that would reach balance, and the number differences really are not 
that far apart.
  The differences between the Republican budget and the President's 
only amounts to 2 percent of the entire budget. Even on the most 
divisive issues, those issues of Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare 
reform, we are quite close.
  On the most contentious issue of all, Medicare, both the President 
and the First Lady have essentially stated that they would do more to 
slow the rate of growth than what the Republicans have done. In 1993 
the President said:

       . . . Medicare and Medicaid are going up at three times the 
     rate of inflation. We propose to let it go up at two times 
     the rate of inflation. This is not a Medicare and Medicaid 
     cut.

  The First Lady in 1993 said:

       We are talking about beginning to reduce the rate of 
     increase . . . in the Medicare from about 11 percent . . . 
     increase annually to about 6 or 7 percent increase annually.

  So what the Republicans have done in their budget is exactly what 
both the President and the First Lady had indicated that we ought to 
do. And yet now it is politically turned to the fact that the 
Republicans are trying to cut when it is not a cut. We are trying to do 
what they suggested.
  My point is, not necessarily that the President is playing politics 
with this, although clearly he is, my point is that we are not far 
apart at all.
  I think we need to understand also that this partial shutdown of 
Government could be solved overnight if the President had simply signed 
the appropriations bills that were sent to him. He chose to veto the 
Interior appropriations, the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations, 
and the VA-HUD appropriations bills. Those hundreds of thousands of 
workers, Federal workers that are not now working that we hear about 
every day at drumbeat out of the White House could all be at work if 
the President had just signed the bills that we sent to him.

  What is discouraging, Mr. President, is that we have come so close 
for a result so important and that the remaining differences between us 
are narrow. But it seems to me that the President is willing to 
sacrifice perhaps one of the most important things the U.S. Congress 
could do in this decade if not this century. We are sacrificing that, 
the demands of history for the demands of politics.
  Look, this game cannot continue indefinitely. We have to end this 
political posturing. I think we have a moral obligation to do so. I am 
convinced that we should set some kind of firm deadline and prove once 
and for all if the President has any intention of supporting a balanced 
budget. That deadline ought to be set in weeks, not months.
  If the President refuses to negotiate in good faith to reach that 
agreement and do what he said he would do, that is, put a budget on the 
table that actually balanced, if he is not willing to do this, then I 
think we should end this politically motivated pretense that is going 
on.
  It would then become an issue to be decided in the 1996 elections. 
Voters would be presented with a very clear choice: The status quo, 
continue the Government growing as it has, leave it the same, that 
Government needs to do more, keep spending, keep taxing, or change the 
fundamental direction and course of Government and achieve a balanced 
budget.
  If we do that, we can pass appropriations bills that produce enough 
savings to ensure that we can still reach a balanced budget in 7 years 
during this interim period between the time we cut off negotiations and 
the election of 1996.
  Mr. President, I suggest that it is time for the games and the 
politics and the distractions to end. There is one issue, and one issue 
only that we must decide: Will we fulfill the promise of this unique 
moment in passing a balanced Federal budget? All the rest can be 
negotiated if both sides negotiate in good faith. If the President 
refuses to do so, as he has done to this moment, then the question will 
need to be put to the American people--is it enough for a President to 
talk about a balanced budget or do we need a President who will 
actually agree to a balanced budget?
  Mr. President, I yield back any time I have remaining.
  Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.

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