[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 10, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S116]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I compliment the distinguished majority 
leader, Senator Dole, and all parties to the budget negotiations and 
urge them to continue their talks after hopefully only a brief 
suspension. It seems to me likely that an agreement can be reached 
since the parties are reportedly $100 billion apart. While that is a 
large sum of money in absolute terms, it is relatively a small 
percentage of the more than $12 trillion of a 7-year budget. It is 
eight-tenths of 1 percent. If an agreement cannot be reached, it is my 
strong view that the Government should not be closed because of 
gridlock. We should not try to run Government by blackmail. If an 
agreement cannot be reached, I suggest, as strongly as I can, that we 
should keep the Government running and crystallize the issues and 
present them to the American people for their decision in the 1996 
Presidential and congressional elections.
  During the first week of the shutdown--actually, on the second day, 
back on November 14 of last year, I urged this course of action. It is 
a fundamental principle of U.S. constitutional government that the 
Congress and the President are partners, really equal partners, unless 
each House of Congress has a two-thirds majority to override a 
Presidential veto. And if we can get a two-thirds majority by appealing 
to the centrists on both sides of the aisle, then we can structure a 
budget agreement without the President and without closing the 
Government. But, absent that, it is my strong view that we ought to 
keep the Government running and crystallize the issue for the 1996 
election.
  I understand those in my party who seek to enact our agenda through 
the political pressure of gridlock and shutdown. I agree with the 
majority leader, Senator Dole, who has rejected that approach. I remain 
totally committed to a balanced budget within 7 years with genuine 
Congressional Budget Office figures. Since my first vote for the 
balanced budget amendment in 1983, I have stood fast for this important 
principle. But it is time to acknowledge that it is a failure with the 
American people to try political pressure through gridlock and 
shutdown. It is like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about 
obscenity, that he could not define it, but he knew it when he saw it. 
The American people, similarly, know the difference between Government 
by blackmail and legitimate political pressure.
  Had there been any doubt about the difference, it was reduced to 
plain arithmetic by last night's NBC poll, which showed that 50 percent 
of the American people approved the President's handling of the budget 
crisis with 46 percent against, compared with 22 percent who support 
the Republican handling of the budget crisis with some 78 percent 
against.
  One further word on blackmail versus legitimate political pressure. I 
urge my colleagues not to try to use the debt ceiling to bludgeon the 
settlement on the budget dispute. I personally have grave legal 
reservations about the procedures currently being used by the 
administration to avoid exceeding the debt limit, and I have said that 
directly to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. If they have violated 
the law by keeping the Government running without raising the debt 
limit, let them be impeached or subjected to other appropriate legal 
procedures.
  When Treasury Secretary Jim Baker borrowed from the Social Security 
trust fund in the mid-1980's, I spoke up on this floor and objected to 
the conversion of trust funds for an unintended purpose. If any other 
person violated the trust fund, they would be subjected to criminal 
prosecution for fraudulent conversion. But I suggest that is a 
fundamentally different proposition for Congress to use that kind of a 
nuclear weapon in the budget battle. It is not proportionate and I 
suggest it is not proper.
  The full faith and credit of the United States would be damaged 
worldwide. So I hope my colleagues will reject that approach.

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