[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    COMPROMISE ON BUDGET NEEDED NOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Gilman] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I think our goals are all similar, having a 
balanced budget. We are pleased to hear the President in his State of 
the Union Message adopt the call for a balanced budget and challenge 
the Congress to make certain we have a balanced budget.
  None of us wants to put the Government in default. We want to have a 
good debt measure. We want to have a good balanced budget adopted 
before we leave the Congress for any recess period. But we do need 
cooperation. People are willing to negotiate across the table. Too 
often in the process it has been finger pointing and one party or 
another walking out of the negotiating area.
  I think the American public wants to see us get down to work, develop 
a balanced budget, and develop a clean debt ceiling measure, and I 
think most of us in the House would like to see that happen. But that 
means good intentions by all parties and the willingness to stop the 
finger pointing, and an intense desire to bring these problems to a 
halt by finding a proper solution.
  I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Rohrabacher].
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I thank the gentleman very much. I think we should 
all really tone down our rhetoric, if we could. I have to say, I use a 
lot of descriptions of my friends, but let me say to my friend from New 
York, telling us that we are a bunch of extremists and you now are 
centrists, does not further the debate. You must have used the word 
``extremist'' five or six times. We will let the American people 
determine who is in the extreme and who is in the center and who most 
closely reflects their point of view.
  I do not accept the notion that we Republicans closed down the 
Government. I heard that this morning as well. I believe it was the 
President of the United States and his refusal to act that resulted in 
the shutdown of the Federal Government. In fact, if we indeed were 
putting pressure on the President to do certain things, you might say 
that we came to the point where we had to put him in a position of 
shutting down the Government himself before he would come forward with 
even a semblance of a balanced budget plan. If you remember, the 
President did not feel compelled even to put a balanced budget plan on 
the table.
  So what we are talking about, all of these things, whether you are 
talking about default or closing the Federal Government, all these 
things, I do not believe we are doing. We are doing what is responsible 
and putting the President in the position of saying he will have to 
make the decision in terms of default or shutting down the Federal 
Government.
  One last point. In order to achieve his objective, his objective is 
opposite from what he ran on. He ran on a balanced budget, he ran on 
changing welfare as we know it, but now he is willing to shut down the 
Government, he is willing to default, rather than come forward with an 
honest discussion and negotiation of how we get to a balanced budget.
  Mr. GILMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my friend from New York, and thank him for 
coming to this floor and responding in measured tones to some of the 
shrill rhetoric we heard this morning. I have one comment in particular 
about blackmail. The record will show in our discussions with the White 
House, the new majority has moved some $400 billion in the direction of 
the White House, and the White House has responded with only 
incremental efforts to reach some sort of consensus.
  Therein lies the rub here, because, again, in the wake of the 
rhetoric, I would simply make this statement: The only thing extreme on 
this floor is the extreme good sense the new majority is showing in 
trying to put our fiscal house in order. As my friend who chairs the 
committee so vital to international relations understands, it is fiscal 
responsibility, not only in our own financial markets, but 
internationally, that builds and expands the full faith and credit of 
the United States. And after almost a half century of runaway deficit 
spending, now trying to put our house in order should be paramount.
  So let the record reflect that this new majority has moved in the 
direction of trying to reach some sort of consensus. But as everyone in 
any business knows, a bad deal is not the answer. No deal may be better 
than a bad deal.
  Mr. GILMAN. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for reflecting on how 
important our economic status is, not only domestically, but 
internationally.

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