[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 27, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1375-S1376]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TELL THE TRUTH ON THE BUDGET

 Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I would like to draw everyone's 
attention to a column written about 2 weeks ago by Washington Post 
writer William Raspberry. In ``The Awful Truth About a Tax Cut,'' he 
outlines chapter and verse on how America simply cannot afford a tax 
cut at a time that a fiscal cancer is eating away the country. While 
pollster politicians are talking about a tax cut, the debt grows and 
interest payments on that debt are spiraling out of control.
  We have to wake up and take responsible action to kill this fiscal 
cancer. Otherwise, the America we know will cease to exist.
  Mr. President, I ask that Mr. Raspberry's February 12 column be 
printed in the Record.
  The column follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 12, 1996]

                    The Awful Truth About a Tax Cut

                         (By William Raspberry)

       If telling unpalatable truth is political suicide, Sen. 
     Ernest F. Hollings must have a death wish. He's not just 
     figuratively shouting from the rooftop the politically 
     unspeakable--that there can be no balanced federal budget 
     without a tax increase; he's threatened to throw himself from 
     the rooftop if anybody proves him wrong.
       ``If anybody comes up with a seven-year balanced budget 
     without a tax increase,'' he said again the other day, ``I'll 
     jump off the Capitol dome.''
       But surely that's an empty threat. Aren't the White House 
     and congressional Republicans both claiming to have achieved 
     what Hollings says is impossible? Isn't the only substantial 
     difference between them the size of the tax cut? So why isn't 
     Hollings jumping?
       ``None of the plans they're talking about balances the 
     budget--or comes near it,'' the South Carolina Democrat told 
     me. ``Just the service on the debt is growing so fast it's 
     just not going to be possible without a tax increase.''
       What masks this painful truth, he says, is a ruse practiced 
     by Democrats and Republicans alike: counting the Social 
     Security trust fund as an asset that reduces the apparent 
     size of the budget shortfall.
       With the huge ``baby boom'' cohort now paying more in 
     Social Security taxes than current retirees take out, the 
     system is running a theoretical surplus. But this surplus is 
     being spent along with the general revenues for current 
     government expenses. The trust fund gets an IOU that must 
     eventually be redeemed by--guess who?--taxpayers.
       The point Hollings wants to make, though, is not just that 
     this amounts to dishonest bookkeeping. It is, he insists, 
     also illegal.
       He ought to know. It was legislation he wrote (along with 
     the late John Heinz ``who did the work on this'') that made 
     it illegal. Nearly six years ago, Congress passed--and 
     President Bush signed into law--Section 13301 of the Budget 
     Enforcement Act that includes this language:
       ``The concurrent resolution shall not include the outlays 
     and revenue totals of the old-age, survivors and disability 
     insurance programs established under title II of the Social 
     Security Act or the related provisions of the Internal 
     Revenue Code of 1986 in the surplus or deficit totals 
     required by this subsection...''
       ``That says in plain language they can't use the trust fund 
     to cut the deficit,'' Hollings observes. ``And yet they keep 
     doing it. The president and the Congress like to spend the 
     Social Security money because it makes the budget look like 
     it's moving toward balance. Wall Street likes it because if 
     we don't come scurrying in to borrow from Wall Street, 
     interest rates don't go up.
       ``But it's illegal, and they know it. I complain, they 
     shrug their shoulders; they call it a `unified budget,' as 
     though that changes something. If they don't like the law, 
     why don't they change it? The truth is they're 

[[Page S1376]]
     afraid to repeal it, and they're afraid to obey it.''
       Hollings insists it's not wounded pride of authorship that 
     has him shouting into the wind. The important issue is not 
     the technical violation but the disaster it hides. Says 
     Hollings:
       ``Everybody is wringing their hands about what will happen 
     on Social Security seven years from now, or in the year 2025, 
     or whatever. The problem is here and now. We are broke right 
     now. Not Social Security. Social Security is paid for. 
     Medicare is paid for. It's the general government--defense 
     and the rest of it--that's not paid for. And because it's 
     not, interest on the debt is running about a billion dollars 
     a day. And here's the point: There's just no amount of 
     spending cuts and loophole closings and freezes that is going 
     to produce a savings of a billion dollars a day.
       ``Unless we raise taxes, we are just `fiddling while Rome 
     burns.' ''
       He says it, knowing that a call for a tax increase (while 
     his colleagues debate the size of the tax cut) is, if not 
     suicidal, at least politically dangerous.
       ``Look, we all have to run for reelection, and we all take 
     polls,'' he said. ``To do what I'm doing is sheer stupidity--
     unless you can get a movement going to face up to what has to 
     be done.''
       Unfortunately, no such movement seems in the offing. The 
     people are in a mood to punish any politician who tells them 
     the truth as they know the truth to be about our fiscal 
     disorder. It's time to pay the piper. And that's the 
     truth.

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