[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H739-H740]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 HOW BUDGET IS BALANCED A KEY QUESTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCULLUM. Mr. Speaker, I come today to address the budget impasse 
issue that has been on the minds of us and many Americans for quite 
some time. We are all very concerned, I know, about why we have not 
gotten to a balanced budget and what the skinny is on what is going to 
happen with respect to it.
  I think that this needs to be put in perspective. President Clinton 
took 11 months and four offers before he got a budget proposal to 
Congress that was balanced according to the Congressional Budget 
Office, the only objective arbiter of such matters around here. It took 
him 11 months to do that. 

[[Page H740]]

  I think it is also important to recognize that when he got there, 
that that budget was back-ended. What he sent to us has most of the 
savings that he has proposed to occur in the seventh year of this 
budget, after he has left office assuming that he would be reelected 
President again this fall.
  It is a good start. It was important to get him to put it on the 
table. But it was never the objective of the new Republican majority in 
Congress simply to get a balanced budget. How we balance the budget is 
just as important as getting a balanced budget. The manner we go about 
it is just as important as achieving a balanced budget.
  When the President put his budget that was in balance for the first 
time on the table in December, it should have been the starting point, 
not the end point, for negotiations to get us to a product that we can 
all agree to and accept. It is not a dollar question alone by any 
stretch of the imagination. To that extent the President is right. This 
is a debate much more fundamental than that. Republicans in this new 
majority believe in reducing the size and scope of the Federal 
Government. We believe in taking programs wherever we can and sending 
them back to the States and local governments for them to carry out 
their responsibilities, for them to make the decisions in welfare, in 
Medicaid, in crime fighting and many other areas. Big government in 
Washington and the way liberal Democrats that have run this place for 
40 years before we came to be the new majority obviously did not 
believe that. President Clinton's rhetoric for quite some time in his 
first election campaign and through the past 3 years or so would have 
led one to believe that he somewhat sympathized with this. But I want 
to make it perfectly clear from my observations that that is not the 
way at all he is conducting himself now. He is kicking in with the big-
government liberals that have run this place all these years. I think 
there is no better illustration of this anywhere than what has been put 
on the table in the negotiations here in January.
  The Republicans in the congressional leadership put on the table a 
Medicaid proposal that was supported by 68 Democrats in this House, 
written by them basically, and the President said ``no'' to that. The 
Republican leadership put on the table a Medicare proposal that had the 
endorsement of 47 Democrats, and the President said ``no'' to that. And 
the Republicans put on the table a welfare reform proposal that had 
passed the other body that only had nine Democrats dissenting on it and 
the President said ``no'' to that. He does not want the changes that 
are proposed in that. He does not want to send the responsibilities 
largely back to the States to handle the programs that we have been 
unable to handle effectively and efficiently up here all the years we 
have been here.

  We cannot have a credible balanced budget without doing that. We 
cannot have a credible balanced budget without addressing the two-
thirds of Federal spending that are in entitlement programs. Yes, we 
proposed some substantive changes in Medicare. The President proposes 
to demagogue that issue instead of addressing those substantive issues. 
What we have proposed, as I said, have been endorsed by a lot of folks 
as positive common sense.
  We would protect under Medicare all of those opportunities for 
anybody who is on Medicare now to stay in traditional Medicare. If one 
wanted to take choices and leave and go and do some other things that 
we might suggest, we propose that, but we would increase, not cut, 
Medicare spending. It would be increased by more than 50 percent over 
the 7 years in the proposal we have put on the table, and anybody who 
says otherwise to the contrary is telling something that is not true.
  We would increase the spending on Medicaid by more than 50 percent as 
well. There is absolutely no truth to the argument that Republicans are 
out to gut or cut or do anything dastardly to Medicare or Medicaid or 
any of these other proposals. We simply want to allow the States the 
opportunity to make many of these decisions and we want to have 
fundamental reforms that give people choices about how they are going 
to handle and conduct their affairs with regard to their future years 
and retirement. But President Clinton and the liberal cronies that 
created big Federal Government spending do not want any part of that.
  When the President is serious and ready to negotiate a true balanced 
budget deal over 7 years, not just the numbers within the CBO system, 
but that gets us and moves us in the direction of reducing the size and 
scope of the Federal Government, then I believe we will sit down and 
have some hope of getting to a balanced budget. Until and unless that 
occurs, it is apparent that he wants to please the big government 
interests in his party as he goes into the election this fall and he 
does not want to face the tough choices that are involved that would 
have to drive some wedges in that core base of his, and he wants to 
spend the time demagoguing the Medicare and Medicaid issues for his 
campaign purposes. He does not sound serious to me.
  If he wants to get serious, it is time that he get serious over the 
substance of this matter instead of the way he has conducted it so far. 
Let us get a balanced budget, but how we do it is just as important as 
doing it.

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