[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 12 (Tuesday, January 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H953-H956]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ABERCROMBIE APPEARS ON SPEAKER'S LIST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Young of Florida). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I come here today in a rather 
interesting position, having recently been the recipient of what might 
be regarded, and I do regard it as a compliment.
  You may recall that in years past there was a so-called enemies list 
that President Nixon ostensibly had, the Nixon enemies list, and people 
after awhile were quite pleased to have been on it, and those who were 
not on it were a little bit disappointed. Well, I take it similarly as 
a compliment to be on Mr. Gingrich's target list.
  Mr. Speaker, I notice that one of our colleagues has come to the 
floor. I take it that he is maybe making an inquiry whether he might 
have been able to take some of the time from one of the previous 
speakers from the Republican side.
  Have I guessed correctly on that?
  Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes, I will.
  Mr. SHAYS. I would love to have some time. You have an hour, we have 
an hour afterwards. Just curious how long you might be going.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I just started because you folks missed your time.
  Mr. SHAYS. You can have it.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But I tell you what. No, I understand that running-
down-the-aisle situation.
  Mr. Speaker, if it is all right with you, I would cede a half-hour of 
time right now to my good friend.
  Mr. SHAYS. I would be happy to come back in a half-hour, if the 
gentleman would like to speak, and I will come back in a half-hour.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. All right.
  Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Of the 60 minutes, I would like to cede 30 minutes 
to my good friends.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Hawaii is recognized for 
30 minutes minus the 2 that he has already used.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
  I think that was a good example, Mr. Speaker, of the fact that we do 
have comity on this floor. Some of our colleagues might think we are 
spelling that ``comedy'' rather than ``comity'' but I think that you 
and I both are committed to this institution.
  I have been the beneficiary of your wisdom, Mr. Speaker, and your 
leadership in this House, and I would hope that I could make a similar 
contribution in whatever role I find myself on this floor or in any 
committee, in any post. I think we both view this as a privilege that 
has been given to us, an honor bestowed by the voters in our districts. 
But as I indicated, nonetheless, this is an institution in which the 
politics of this country are played out in a setting which I think is 
most appropriate for coming to those decisions.
  In the process of engaging in political debate, inevitably sides are 
taken. I think perhaps that is one of the reasons why for some 
individuals they fail to understand that, the proposition, well, why 
can they not all get along? Why is there what is called bickering?
  I would hope, Mr. Speaker, you and I have never been in a position of 
bickering with one another. I think we have probably had a division of 
thought and philosophy and possibly policy at one time or another, and 
other times we were not only able to agree but to work in concert with 
one another toward a common goal, seeking to achieve it. Nonetheless, 
there are different political philosophies that are put forward by 
individuals who put themselves up for public office, and people make a 
decision on those philosophies.
  So as a result, we often find ourselves in opposition to one another, 
not necessarily personally, Mr. Speaker, but in terms of political 
parties and policies that might or might not be pursued.
  I say all of this by way of preliminary remarks because, as I 
indicated before my friend from Connecticut came to the floor, there 
was this list that was put together. I suppose it had a bit of drama 
attached to it because of the press, journalists categorizing it a 
certain way, but it was called the enemies list and it was associated 
with 

[[Page H954]]
then-President Nixon. Some people were wont to even brag a little bit 
after that list became known, that they were on that list, and it was a 
source of some disappointment to some people that they were not on the 
list.
  Well, for the 1990's, we have a list, too. The Speaker of the House, 
Mr. Gingrich, has put together a list, a target list, for next year--I 
should say for this year, rather--for the congressional elections 
this year, some 20 to 30 Members of the Congress who are being targeted 
by Mr. Gingrich for defeat in November for one reason and another, I 
presume perhaps because of opposition on policies, perhaps, I would 
hope, effective refutation of the Speaker's positions.

  In any event, I find myself on that list. I am one of the Speaker's 
targets this year. I am on the Gingrich target list. I do take that as 
a compliment. I am very pleased to be on it. I trust and hope that 
perhaps some of the commentary that I have been making on the budget, 
and on what I see as the lack of solid policy on Mr. Gingrich's part 
and his leadership with respect to the budget, I hope that some of the 
things I have had to say have led him to designate me as a target in 
this upcoming election.
  I am very pleased to be recognized. It is not always those of us from 
some of the smaller States at such great distance, particularly being 
out in Hawaii, where we would certainly welcome the Speaker after the 
election in November, hopefully as the ex-Speaker. We will be happy to 
have him come out and take a little rest with us out there, and I will 
be happy to provide some hospitality for him, and I certainly hope to 
be in the victors column when that election takes place despite being a 
target.
  But I bring this up about being a target because I do not want to 
deceive any one of our colleagues who may be tuned in, or others who 
may have access to our deliberations here, that I am anything other 
than partisan when it comes to defending what I believe are the 
interests of the people of the United States, the public interest of 
the United States with respect to the budget and with respect to the 
other issues that I have a difference with the Speaker on, and 
apparently have contributed to me being this target.
  As the target, I invite the Speaker yet once again to come to the 
floor. I have done this in the past and do it now.
  I recall at one point being in the chair, even as the Speaker is now, 
and had the opportunity to listen to with great interest, Mr. 
Gingrich's recitation on various subject matters having to do with 
policy. He has indicated that as Speaker that he does not deal with the 
day-to-day floor activity here. He has entrusted that to Mr. Armey and 
his whip structure.
  He says now that the deal, the supposed deal or the possibility of a 
deal on the budget has broken down with the White House. So he does not 
have anyplace to go, I guess, in the afternoons now that he is not 
speaking with Mr. Clinton, so he should have the time to come down 
here.
  Inasmuch as I am going to be a target, I would like to deal with the 
issues that apparently have upset him, particularly with regard to the 
budget or any other issue that has caused me to be put into this 
position by Mr. Gingrich. I invite him to do so. I would like to think 
that our academic backgrounds, perhaps, might be an inducement to 
lecture. I suppose some people might see what we are doing here in 
special orders as lectures, but that is all right. I think it is good 
to have the opportunity to lay out, in a detailed and comprehensive 
way, one's position.
  So I invite him once again and would be happy to see him and yield 
him time, any time that he wishes to take advantage of it.

                              {time}  1645

  In the meantime, let me then state a couple of propositions with 
respect to the budget process and build upon the commentary that I have 
made to this point. Mr. Speaker, perhaps you recall a bit of my 
discussion with the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Doggett, in the hour just 
passed in which I indicated that I thought perhaps, I will not say the 
Speaker, Speaker Gingrich, misspoke himself, but perhaps I would 
characterize it as being a bid disingenuous in indicating to the public 
that he thought that is was not possible to have a balanced budget 
agreement with the President this year.
  Now, I am sure you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that I have been very 
reluctant to endorse the bona fides, if you will, of a 7-year balanced 
budget agreement, whether it was certified by the Congressional Budget 
Office or by the Office of Management and Budget which is the Executive 
accountants, if you will, the scorekeeper. The Congressional Budget 
Office is our; the Congress', the Legislative scorekeepers. I am 
reluctant to believe that this could be done without causing a great 
deal of pain regardless of whether it is a Democratic budget, 
Republican budget or anybody else's budget. But nonetheless, the 
indications from the Republican side of the aisle, from the office of 
the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], was that if the President 
would only present to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] a 7-
year balanced budget as certified by the Congressional Budget Office, 
that that would be sufficient unto the day, that would involve the 
kinds of savings the Speaker was looking for, et cetera. Over and over 
again, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] and other Members of 
the majority would come to the floor and state with no equivocation, 
``Just give us a 7-year balanced budget as certified by the 
Congressional Budget Office, and have got a deal.''
  Well, Mr. Clinton did that. I have my reservations about the 
bookkeeping, as I indicated, in that just as I do with the Republican 
proposal. I think I have gone over that in detail before. There are all 
kinds of gimmicks associated with it. There are all kinds of 
bookkeeping maneuvers and tricks, all kinds of accounting gambits that 
put such a budget together.
  For example, what is called backloading or a look-back provision; in 
other words, you do not really make the savings until 3, 4, 5, 6 years 
from now when you have already gone through a presidential election, 
when you are going to go through two, possible three, congressional 
elections, when you cannot quite be sure what the economic stability or 
instability of the country might be.
  Mr. Speaker, I noticed my good friend from American Samoa is here. I 
noticed that you had called his name previously, and he is only able to 
arrive right now.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from American Samoa.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I just want to, if I could, have a 
dialogue with the gentleman on the topic he is just taking up. I will 
ask for my own time at a later point in time.
  I thank the gentleman for bringing the issue up and his interest. He 
wanted to conduct a dialog with our Speaker, and given the fact that we 
have had some very serious problems with our budget, and I noticed 
earlier that the gentleman mentioned about the 7-year cycle that our 
Republican friends have advocated so strongly for the past several 
months, that it is as if we have got to have the 7-year balanced 
budget.
  Can I ask the gentleman, to his knowledge, where do we come up with 
this number 7? Is it so much that it has to be 7 years? Are there 
assurances without 7 years we will never have had a balanced budget? 
Why can we not do it in 5 or 10 or 8 or 9?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. The answer to that question comes from the gentleman 
from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], and he said that he felt that the 7-year 
was intuitive on his part. Now, if intuitive is taken to mean generally 
or generically a kind of sense that this was the right time, a kind of 
emotional and mental guesswork, that might be the correct phrase, but I 
think he intuited, I would project, that this was the number of years 
in which the kind of accounting gymnastics that I have mentioned would 
allow him to say that the budget was balanced even only for the 
briefest of bookkeeping moments.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Is it the gentleman's understanding also that our 
Republican friends did make a request to our President, come up with a 
7-year budget plan and we will consider it, and did not the President 
issue a 7-year budget plan?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That request was made of the President over and over 
and over again, and obviously a brief reading and overview of the 
general press will show that he did, in fact, do exactly that.

[[Page H955]]

  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. What were the objections that our Republican 
friends now have with the President's proposed 7-year budget plan?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, they did not like the numbers. After all, it 
did not do to Medicare what they wanted to do.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. But it did provide a 7-year balanced budget?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Oh, yes. It gave them exactly what they wanted. As 
you know, the old saying is be careful what you ask for, you might get 
it. That is exactly what happened. What they asked for was a game plan 
according to the rules that they said they wanted established. The 
President appeared on the field with that game plan, and I am sorry to 
say some of our poor Republican friends then turned around to their 
quarterback, but he had left the field after moving the goal posts and 
was now hiding in the locker room under the bench.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. So now what are our Republican friends trying to do 
to off-balance what the President set out? ``Here is your 7-year 
balanced budget plan.'' What are they going to do now?
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Of course, they are claiming now a deal cannot be 
reached, that we cannot come to an agreement even through the American 
people in poll after poll and inquiry after inquiry are requesting, is 
the nicest way I can put it, the Government, that is to say, the 
Congress of the United States regardless of whether they are Democrats 
or Republicans, and the Executive in the person of President Clinton, 
to come to an agreement so that there can be some stability in our 
economy and in our political life.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Do you think, in my good friend's opinion, that our 
Republican friends have a high esteem for education as part of this 
proposed budget plan that they have in mind.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am sure many of our Republican friends, if not all 
of them, esteem education, including the Speaker. The problem is not 
esteem. The problem is paying for it. The problem is setting it as a 
priority. The problem is do you have education as a priority, or do you 
have a tax giveaway as a priority.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. That is basically the platform our side of the 
aisle has in conjunction with the President's proposal.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes. The proposal coming from the President, with 
all attendant difficulties associated with balancing the budget, 
nonetheless, has as its priorities the Medicare, Medicaid, environment 
and education. Those are priorities that the President has consistently 
stated from the very beginning as elements which he felt had to be 
protected in any budget proposal that came forward.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I thank you very much.
  That bit of Socratic dialog, Mr. Speaker, I think has stated the 
essence of it.
  Now, obviously any of our colleagues who were tuned in can say, well 
this is just a partisan observation or series of partisan observations 
by myself and the gentleman from Samoa, and that is OK. It does not 
bother me any it would be seen as partisan.
  The problem is, is it fair, is it accurate, is it factual? I will not 
say truthful. Truthful is always a matter of debate. What the truth is, 
is a matter of debate.
  I do think that people nonetheless come to conclusions. They 
nonetheless reserve judgment, if they are prudent, and when they think 
that they have heard the facts and contemplated the factual basis for a 
judgment, they then make it.
  Now let us take somebody outside the political system itself, the 
electoral system, and see what they have to say about it. I am 
referring now to Jodie Allen. I do not know Jodie Allen, if he is male 
or female. I have not met Mr. or Ms. Allen. All I know is Jodie Allen 
is editor of the Outlook section of the Washington Post where 
columnists are found of a Sunday.
  I do not blame Jodie Allen one way or another for the headlines. I 
think, Mr. Speaker, you and I are sufficiently well versed in dealing 
with newspapers as elected officials to know that the person who writes 
the story does not necessarily write the headline, and the headline 
does not necessarily refer to what is in the story, and you can find 
yourself reeling from what it says, but these headlines over the Allen 
columns say, ``Who won the budget battle?'' The sub headline is: 
``Clinton's phony plan beats the GOP's phony plan.'' So I would guess 
that Jodie Allen has not got too much good to say about either. I will 
not say either of us, Mr. Speaker, but about either of these plans.
  But the whole point of the headline, I think, is to try and summarize 
the position of the Allen editorial which nonetheless contains some 
very interesting material which I would like to quote very briefly in 
what will be a series of remarks from me in time to come with respect 
to the budget and its realities as well as the debt limit and its 
connection to the budget.
  Just the opening commentary, and I am quoting now from Jodie Allen's 
editorial of January 28 in the Washington Post Outlook section, ``To 
hear the President tell it in his masterfully ingratiating State of the 
Union message last week, the country came very close to solving its 
Federal budget problem once and for all.''
  Quoting further then the President within the column, ```There is now 
broad bipartisan agreement that permanent deficit spending must come to 
an end,' said President Clinton last Tuesday evening,''' again quoting, 
```though differences remain among us which are significant.' He also 
noted, `The combined total of the proposed savings that are in common 
to both, that is to say, the White House and the congressional 
Republican plans, is more than enough using numbers from your 
Congressional Budget Office to balance the budget in 7 years and 
provide a modest tax cut. These cuts are real.' '' Jodie Allen then 
goes on to say, ``Are they? It is a question worth asking as the 
country, having clearly decided the President got the best of Congress 
in the blame affixing event tries to decide whether it should now care 
that the overall competition has been called on account of political 
rain. In fact, the details of the competing proposals suggest that at 
least as far as the cause of fiscal solvency is concerned, less has 
been lost than either side would care to admit. No doubt some elements 
in both plans are real enough. Both sides, for example, were and 
apparently still are, determined to give out a pre-election tax cut, 
deficit be damned. It is also a pretty safe bet the agreements Congress 
extracts from the President in return for allowing the Government to 
keep running and borrowing more money will make substantial cuts in the 
immediate operating budgets of the many Federal agencies. Beyond 
that,'' and I think this is the important point here, I say 
parenthetically, ``Beyond that, things get a lot less real. For 
example, even had the White House embraced the GOP's harshest cuts, the 
deficit would still be upwards of $150 billion this fiscal year and 
still higher in 1997. By the end of the century, it might or might not 
dip below $100 billion. After that further progress against the deficit 
would likely be arrested and ultimately reversed under either plan'' 
from the Jodie Allen column.

  Mr. Speaker, that has been the essence of the observations that I 
have made from this podium again and again during this whole budget 
process. I have maintained from this podium, while all of the broader 
discussion is going on, about the balanced budget and all the posturing 
was taking place and all the puffed up rhetoric was being stated on 
this floor and in press conferences and covered by television cameras 
and radio microphones with breathless anticipation, nobody wanted to 
talk about the fact that regardless of what kind of balanced budget 
proposal was coming forward, it was actually increasing the deficit.

                              {time}  1700

  I will state without equivocation again: No one can come to this 
floor, at least no one has to this point, despite my invitations again 
and again and again, to refute the position that I am maintaining that 
there has not been a balanced budget proposal put forward by anybody of 
either party that will stand the scrutiny of an honest appraisal as to 
whether or not it is increasing the deficit.
  It might be possible, Mr. Speaker, to achieve a balanced budget at 
some 

[[Page H956]]
point in the future. Going into debt is no sin and no crime. Anybody 
who has purchased a home over time or a major appliance, an automobile, 
et cetera, understands that. In fact, it is encouraged.
  The question is, are you able to pay? Can you acquire debt in such a 
way and such a manner and for such a length of time that enables those 
or that institution doing the lending to be reasonably sure you are 
going to be able to make the payment, be able to sustain the debt, and 
sustain your life and its requirements monetarily.
  That is all this is about. I do not think that can be done in 7 
years, but I am in the minority. I have been in legislative life in a 
State legislature, in the house of representatives at the State level 
and the State senate, in a city council, and in the Congress of the 
United States. I have been part of the board of directors of nonprofit 
organizations in many venues, Mr. Speaker. In other words, just about 
every community and electoral venue there is, I have participated in a 
legislative function where you had to deal with budgets, where you had 
to deal with coming to grips in most of those instances with balancing 
the budget.

  I have participated both as the chairman of an authorizing committee 
and as a member of an appropriations committee in balancing budgets in 
every legislative venue. So this is not something strange and new to 
me. I have better than two decades of experience in this area. So I am 
quite willing to come to grips with the idea that I am in the minority 
on this floor with the question of the number of years that should be 
reasonably made available to deal with the balanced budget.
  But I am not required, Mr. Speaker, simply because I am in the 
minority at the moment with respect to the numbers of years that would 
be required to do this, I am not required in that context to keep quiet 
about the fact that those who are putting forward a proposal that they 
can balance in 7 years cannot do it, and that to delude the American 
people, deliberately or otherwise, I am not trying to at this juncture 
cast some sort of aspersions on those who say they want to attempt it 
at least. All well and good, if that is what the proposition is.
  If someone wants to come to the floor and say no, I do not think it 
can be done, or on paper it cannot be done in 7 years if we are being 
honest about it, and the word ``honesty'' has been used over and over 
and over again on this floor, we want honest numbers. If that is the 
case, fine. You want to make an attempt over 7 years to do it, possibly 
it could be done. I think it would entail the kind of cuts that would 
cause incredible pain to people in all kinds of areas.
  Part of the pain that would come would come after 2002, after the 7-
year period, when I am maintaining, and I think the burden of the rest 
of the article by Jodie Allen is that once you pass 2002, to the degree 
that you are able to achieve anywhere near the kind of goal that has 
been set in 1996 over that period of time, that 7-year period of time, 
there will be an explosion of debt, an explosion of indebtedness, an 
explosion of deficit spending.
  One of the categories that would, I think, harm us the most would be 
in Social Security. The Allen article, again I am citing it because I 
wanted this to be an outside person. It justifies not Neil Abercrombie 
by standing up here and tossing out facts and figures as suit me and 
then could be dismissed as a result of simply being partisan, no matter 
how accurate it might be. I am citing these columns, and I am glad to 
see the Jodie Allens and some of the other people I am going to be 
citing are beginning to pick this commentary up. I will be going over 
that in greater detail in time to come.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe my half hour is almost up. Let me conclude 
simply by saying that it is not a question of who wins the budget 
battle, it is a question of who loses. If the American people lose the 
budget battle, believe me, we all lose here politically. I hope in days 
to come to be able to shed a little more light on not only what the 
process is to this point, but what we can do about it in a practical 
way to bring a successful conclusion to this budget confrontation.

                          ____________________