[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 3 (Friday, January 5, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S77-S78]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                FUNDING THE OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT

  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I was interested in listening to my good 
friend from Idaho. And, you know, the devil is in the fine print. I 
have heard that earlier in my life: The devil is in the fine print. You 
can talk about the CR that comes over here. That is the continuing 
resolution that pays employees. I hope that we will put Federal 
employees back to work. Well, that is fine. I want them to go back to 
work, too.
  I do not think anybody likes to pay people for not working. That was 
what the majority leader said the other day, that he grew up in Kansas, 
and he felt like if you worked you got paid, if you did not work, you 
did not get paid. So I support his position.
  But in this continuing resolution that is coming over here we are 
going to pay the employees retroactively, and we are going to pay them 
for coming to the office. But we are not funding the necessary 
ingredients for them to work.
  They talked about the DEA agent. They had a drug bust, and he wanted 
to go. They needed him--several of them. They did not have any money to 
buy gasoline to put in the car under this continuing resolution. That 
does not make sense to this country, boy, that you say, ``Go back to 
work. We're going to pay you, but you can't do anything.''
  Look at the schedule of the leadership in the next 25 days: Iowa, New 
Hampshire, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, all over the country. I do not 
think that is working here, trying to work out the budget.
  Let us just be sure that the American people understand what this 
continuing resolution does. It sends Government employees back to the 
office. It pays them retroactively, to sit there and do nothing. 
Employees cannot make a long-distance phone call, cannot buy gasoline 
for a car, cannot do the things that the American people would like for 
them to do, that they have been shortchanged in the last 21 days. In my 
opinion, I have never heard so much of a continuation of the same 
thing, same thing, same thing.
  I watched the House as they spoke this afternoon, and all the 
President has to do is agree to a 7-year balanced budget with CBO 
figures and everything will be all right. Well, the President has 
agreed to a 7-year budget, balanced budget in 7 years. He has agreed to 
that. No. 2, he has agreed to CBO figures. There is no problem with 
that.
  Now, what is the problem? The problem is, how do you get there?
  My Republican friends want to cut or reduce--however you want to say 
it--Medicare by $270 billion. We think that is wrong. They want to 
reduce Medicare, want to reduce education, want to reduce the 
environment. To do what? To get to the point of giving a $245 billion 
tax cut. That is the whole fight--to give a $245 billion tax cut.
  Now, who is going to get it? If you owe taxes, as I understand it, 
and you have children under 18, you can get a credit. But if you do not 
owe any taxes, you do not get any refundable tax. Therefore, you do not 
get anything. If you make too much money--hopefully, we will give some 
kind of tax break to those under $100,000. We stood here on the floor 
not too long ago and asked if you would put a limit in the bill giving 
a tax break to those that made a million or less. We even lost that.
  Now, when you send the budget to the President, when he has agreed to 
balance the budget in 7 years, to be using CBO figures, but to get to a 
$245 billion tax cut, you put 80 percent of the cuts on 20 percent of 
our population, the lowest 20 percent, and you give 80 percent of the 
help to the upper 20 percent of income, Mr. President, as we say down 
in my part of the country, something about that ``ain't'' right.
  I want to tell you, the so-called middle income--I know a family 
where the man worked for the railroad. He retired. They shifted that to 
a Social Security payment rather than a railroad retirement payment. He 
had a few thousand dollars in the bank, had a house with no mortgage on 
it, and Social Security checks coming for he and his wife. He thought 
he was in pretty decent shape. Lo and behold, he and his wife both had 
to go to a nursing home. They had too much money to draw Medicaid. So 
they kept paying and kept paying and kept paying, and finally they had 
nothing left. Nothing. They had to go on Medicaid.

  Now, in this budget that the Republicans are attempting to pass and 
say the President ought to accept, it says to their children, ``You use 
up all your money to pay for mom and dad before we trigger in 
Medicaid.'' A lot of people around this country, Mr. President, that 
are making $35,000 to $45,000 a year, they have children, they are 
trying to educate them and all that, and lo and behold, their parents 
are in the nursing home, they are drawing Medicaid, they get the Social 
Security check. You take about all of it, with the exception of $10 a 
week for personal items, which is all the individual has left out of 
the Social Security check. You say to them that your kids have to pay, 
and they are trying to educate their children, trying to make ends 
meet, trying to pay a mortgage on the house and all that--the 
Republican budget did that. To get to what? For a $245 billion tax cut 
that will go to the upper 20 percent of income.
  If that is the kind of budget that you want the President to sign, 
then I hope he never does, because there are too many people out there 
that would be hurt by this type of budget.
  I represent Kentucky, born and bred there, and proud of it. We had a 
Senator that came here that made quite a mark. His name was Henry Clay. 
Henry Clay was called ``the Great Compromiser.'' He knew how to 
compromise. But Henry Clay said that compromise was negotiated hurt--
negotiated hurt. If you are going to hurt a little bit, let everybody 
have a little bit of hurt instead of some having a whole lot and others 
not having any. Negotiated hurt--let everybody hurt a little bit. I do 
not think you would have any objection to that.
  Just take the farmers in the next 5 years. The Senator from Idaho 
understands farming very well. But the President has offered a $4 
billion cut and the Republican budget takes about $14 billion. Just 
take $10 million off of the tax cut, you still have $235 billion; 
instead of taking a $270 billion reduction in Medicare, just take the 
$89 billion that the President offered.
  Talk about real numbers, let us put real numbers in front of real 
faces and real places. That is how you are going to understand the 
numbers. It is all numbers. It is all dollars. What will you do to the 
individuals and the families, the young and the elderly, by just 
looking at numbers? There are faces and places behind those numbers, 
and we have to have that part of the discussion when we come to talking 
about the budget.

  When you talk about real numbers, let us talk about real people. Let 
us talk about real places. Let us talk about real hurt. Let us talk 
about being fair. Let us talk about being compassionate. That is the 
kind of country we are. That is the reason we are strong. We reach out 
not only to our own but to others. That has made us the leader of the 
world.
  To come in here and say we are going to say to the President that we 
will 

[[Page S78]]
give him a clean CR when he sends us a budget that is certified 
balanced by CBO and signed off by the Speaker of the House, I know what 
Senator Dole would say if he was President of the United States, and a 
Democrat Speaker over there--I know what he would tell him. I think you 
do, too.
  So let us look at the budget that the Republicans gave us. If you 
were not using Social Security, you would be $106 billion short--$106 
billion short--in the year 2002. But when you dig in and use the Social 
Security numbers, you get down to--I do not want to answer any 
questions.
  Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. FORD. Happy to yield for a question.
  Mr. CRAIG. The question is, have not the Democrats used the Social 
Security trust fund figures in numbers just the way the Republicans are 
currently using them? We learned----
  Mr. FORD. Not for the last 12 years.
  Mr. CRAIG. Yes, you have, Senator.
  Mr. FORD. The President of the United States signed--the President is 
responsible for that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senators will address through the Chair.
  Mr. FORD. It is awful hard to address through the Chair.
  Here on December 15--Mr. President, we talk about never wanting to 
offer anything. What bothers me is that on December 15, the President 
offered some numbers based on a budget he had submitted previously. He 
eased toward the Republican side on December 15; the Republicans eased 
toward the President on December 15. They moved closer to each other on 
discretionary cuts, on Medicare, on Medicaid, on welfare and EITC. I 
thought that was negotiation. That was on December 15.
  Mr. President, we have agreed to a 7-year balanced budget. We have 
agreed to the CBO certification. Now let us get down to trying to 
figure out how we help our young kids and give them an education.
  They talk about increasing the Pell grants. Sure they did, but they 
forget to tell you they cut off the bottom half. It is the way you use 
the words. So you increase Pell grants by $100, but you cut off from 
$600 down. A lot of people get by on $600. That is all they need. That 
is all they should be given. But if they do not need more than that, 
they do not get anything. They want to get an education; just need a 
few dollars.
  So this is the kind of budget that the President of the United States 
has said no to, has said no to.
  So, I hope we will just leave this rhetoric behind us and look at 
where we need to work, and that is Medicare, that is Medicaid, that is 
education, that is the environment; and that we put a face on it 
instead of the numbers and we put a place instead of the numbers. And 
once we decide the faces we want to help and the places we want to 
secure, then we can put the numbers with them. I think then we will 
have a budget.
  But the President, in my judgment, is trying to protect those people 
who are being hurt so severely by the Republicans saying ``We won't 
give.'' It is not here, it is over on the other end of the Capitol 
Building, but ``We won't give unless we get the $245 billion tax cut.'' 
In April the Speaker of the House said, ``We're going to shut 
Government down.'' Lo and behold, it did. But we have had bills vetoed 
before under Republican Presidents and we have offered a continuing 
resolution, we have continued Government while we sat down and 
negotiated those things that were objectionable to the Republican 
Presidents and we finally arrived at something that could be sent to 
the President that we agreed upon and he could sign. That is where we 
ought to be now.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished President pro tempore, the 
Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, what is the pending business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business. There is no 
pending business at this time.

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