[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 7 (Monday, January 22, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S173-S174]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          A BUDGET COMPROMISE

  Mr. DORGAN. I did want to mention a couple of other points on the 
floor today. This is a new year. It is January. I hope all of us have 
thought through some New Year's resolutions, one of which ought to be 
for all of us in the Congress, both in the House and the Senate, and 
for all of us on both sides of the political aisle, to see if we 
cannot, in 1996, solve problems rather than create problems.
  It has been a year in which we have had shutdowns, threatened 
defaults, and chaos, and a year in which there were days when this 
looked a lot more like a food fight than it did serious legislating in 
the U.S. Congress. I think most of us coming back would believe it 
would serve the country's interests if there were less rancor, if there 
were a little more understanding, and if we turned down the volume just 
a bit.
  It does not mean that these are not very important issues that are 
being debated. But it does mean you cannot, in a democracy, create a 
situation where you say, ``Here is the way we approach our legislative 
duties. You are all wrong, and we are all right.'' That does not make 
sense. That is not the way it works. One side is not all right and the 
other side is not all wrong. There are good ideas on both sides of the 
political aisle. But you cannot, in this process, say it is all or 
nothing, it is our way or no way, and we have seen too much of that in 
1995.

  Both political parties, in my judgment, contribute to the well-being 
of this country. I have said it a dozen times and I will say it again: 
The Republicans do this country a service by advancing and continuing 
to push on the issue of Federal deficits. The Democrats do a service to 
this country by saying, yes, let us balance the budget, let us deal 
with the deficit, but let us also worry about the priorities, let us 
worry about a program like Medicare, which is important to low-income 
elderly people in this country. Both sides do us a service. But we 
ought to, it seems to me, be willing to engage in more thoughtful 
discussion about how we get the best from each rather than ending up 
with the worst of both.
  Most of all, we ought not be in a circumstance in January 1996, 
again, in which we see another Government shutdown. That, it seems to 
me, pokes taxpayers in the eye by saying to taxpayers, ``We are going 
to insist you pay for work that we prevent from being completed,'' and 
dangles Federal workers out there on the end of a string saying, ``You 
are the pawns in this dispute we have about the Federal budget.''
  The majority leader talked about the budget debate. He did so, in my 
judgment, in very thoughtful terms. I just want to respond to a couple 
of points.
  If you simply took the offers of the Republicans and the Democrats 
that were last laid on the table in these negotiations and said we will 
accept the least savings in each of these categories offered by either 
Republicans or Democrats, and just took the lowest amount of savings 
from each proposal, you end up in 7 years with $711 billion in savings. 
That is sufficient to balance the budget, if you simply take the 

[[Page S174]]
lower of both offers that have been laid on the table in the last 
meetings that occurred on the balanced budget.
  We are not so far apart. But the major difference is over the tax 
cut, about $130 billion extra in tax breaks especially for upper income 
people. I am not talking about the lower tax cut for children. I am 
talking about the upper income tax breaks in the corporate welfare area 
and $132 billion in extra cuts for Medicare, Medicaid, and the earned 
income tax credit. That really represents the see-saw, the difference 
between the two positions in negotiations.
  There ought to be a way to bridge that, and I hope there will be. I 
hope, in the next month or so, this issue will be put behind us and we 
will have balanced the budget and we will have balanced the budget with 
a plan that does it in the right way for this country.

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