[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2844-S2846]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESIDENT CLINTON'S BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 1997
Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, tucked into the 2,000-page, 9-pound-11-
ounce stack of documents that make up President Clinton's latest budget
was a small booklet that many people might have overlooked. That
booklet is called ``A Citizens Guide to the Federal Budget.'' I would
like to read to you a couple of the paragraphs from chapter 2, and that
chapter deals with where money comes from and where it goes.
It says:
In a typical American household, a father and mother might
sit around the kitchen table to review the family budget.
They might discuss how much they expect to earn each year,
how much they can spend on food, shelter, clothing,
transportation, and perhaps a vacation, and how much they
might be able to save for future needs.
If they do not have enough money to make ends meet, they
might discuss how they can spend less, such as cutting back
on restaurants, movies or other entertainment. They also
might consider whether to try to earn more by working more
hours or taking another job. If they expect their shortfall
to be temporary, they might try to borrow.
This is from the ``Small Citizens Guide to the Federal Budget.'' I
agree with every word of that--the situation it describes is precisely
what American families are facing today. But then the booklet continues
and says:
Generally speaking, the Federal Government plans its budget
much like families do.
Generally speaking Mr. President, the Federal Government plans its
budget nothing at all like a family across the country has to do.
A family does not have unlimited access to a credit card access that
has allowed the Federal Government to amass a national debt of more
than $5 trillion.
A family would not be allowed to spend beyond its means forever--it
would reach its credit limit and the family would eventually have to
tighten its belt and begin paying back its debt. The Federal
Government, on the other hand, just continues to steal from our
children.
A family does not have the resources of foreign investors they can
turn to when the bill come due. The Federal Government does, and
expects the taxpayers to foot the bills and the massive interest
payments those bills generate.
And finally, a family could not impose hundreds of millions of dollar
worth of new taxes and fees on its friends and neighbors to help offset
its own extravagant spending. But the Federal Government can, and it
does.
[[Page S2845]]
For years, I have used the story of the family sitting around the
kitchen table as an example of how middle-class Americans understand
budgeting in a way Washington never will.
The methodical, commonsense approach to reconciling expenses against
revenues represents everything that Washington is not.
So to suggest that the Federal Government's free-spending,
unaccountable ways have anything in common with the way the working-
class people of this Nation plan their budgets is ludicrous.
Librarians take notice: The Government will recommend that ``A
Citizen's Guide to the Federal Budget'' be filed in the bookshelves
along with the rest of the official Federal publications.
I say it ought to go up alongside Louis L'Amour and the Harlequin
Romances, because it is pure fiction.
Mr. President, there is no question that families are facing tough
times.
Money is tight, and there is not much left at the end of the day to
put away for savings.
They are cutting back in order to make ends meet--skimping not just
on entertainment, as the authors of ``A Citizen's Guide to the Federal
Budget'' would have us believe, but too often on necessities like new
clothes, insurance, or even groceries.
Their credit card bills are straining under the load, They are
working two or three jobs and taking on overtime hours just to make
ends meet.
But why are things so tight for American families? A close look at
the President's latest budget offers some answers.
In his State of the Union Address delivered just 2 months ago,
President Clinton boldly declared that ``the era of big government is
over.''
Big government presumably meant the high taxes that have squeezed the
middle class, the gigantic bureaucracy that has made redtape a synonym
for Washington inefficiency, and the wasteful spending that has drained
the taxpayers of their precious dollars.
But maybe big government means something different to the President.
Under the budget he outlined Tuesday, big government is far from dead.
In fact, it is off the respirator, breathing on its own and taking
nourishment.
The Clinton budget--the ninth budget he has sent to Congress in the
last 12 months--is nothing more than the status quo his administration
continues to deliver, because it calls for increasing Federal spending
every year over the course of the 7-year plan, until we're spending
nearly $1.9 trillion just after the turn of the century.
The President claims he will pay for all that new spending with
unspecified cuts in domestic programs sometime in the future. Most of
the cuts would not come until after the year 2000, meaning Bill Clinton
will never have to make any of those tough choices.
As the President's budget grows, so does the Nation's debt, again,
rising every year of the President's plan. By the time we have reached
the year 2002, the national debt will have ballooned from $4.9 trillion
this year to almost $6.5 trillion. That is an increase of nearly 27
percent in just 7 years.
And where are the tax cuts the President has repeatedly promised
American families? It is practically nonexistent. The President claims
he is cutting, but in reality, most of his tax reductions are offset by
new tax increases. This is unacceptable.
It is nothing but token tax relief, and his child tax credit is a
sham. It begins at $300 per child, is slowly ratcheted up to $500, and
then eliminated just 2 years later. By the way, teenagers are too old
to qualify.
The President pays for all this big government not by controlling
Washington's appetite for spending, but by spending the savings
Americans have sacrificed over the last year toward a balanced budget.
Other areas of the budget that demand the President's immediate
attention are virtually ignored.
He does practically nothing to save the failing Medicare system and
bring it into the 21st century.
Under the Clinton plan, Medicare remains a relic from 1960's that
does not work in the 1990's, and will not survive much beyond it.
His budget does not reform Medicaid, either.
At a time when a bipartisan coalition of Governors is calling on
Washington to entrust the States with managing this vital program, the
President says Washington has all the answers.
He does not make fundamental changes in welfare to control spending.
The President would not ``end welfare as we know it''--he would extend
welfare as we know it.
The President's budget plan is just a bandage on a wound that's
demanding emergency surgery.
President Clinton is asking the American family to pay for his
campaign and he needs to pay off Washington bureaucrats and special
interest groups.
His demand for billions of additional taxpayer dollars to finance
bigger government, again, is consistent with his support for big
Washington government.
And President Clinton funds his new spending, again, through
increased taxes, increased user fees, and one-time sales of assets
financed directly by the taxpayers.
Mr. President, I am a firm believer that privatization is crucial to
reaching a balanced budget and protecting taxpayer dollars. But what is
the point in selling off assets if we are just going to spend it on a
bigger government?
Asset sales should be dedicated to deficit reduction--if they are
not, and are simply redirected by Congress into another Federal
program, how are the taxpayers any better off than they were before the
sale happened?
Unfortunately, this budget will do nothing to help working Americans
devastated by the Clinton crunch that has trapped them somewhere
between the falling wages and the President's economy has generated,
and the rising taxes the President's budgets have demanded.
That is why families are having trouble making ends meet--the middle-
class squeeze is squeezing them dry. A balanced budget would help, and
the people deserve one, but the President's budget is not the answer.
We have to inject a dose of reality into the proceedings: President
Clinton can claim to support all of these goals, but every time he has
had the opportunity to prove it, he has let us down.
Congress passed a budget that balances in 7 years, protecting our
children and grandchildren by freeing them from a legacy of debt and
tax increases.
Our budget lets taxpayers keep more of their own dollars, for
spending on things important to families, not on things Washington
thinks are important.
Our budget says a life on welfare is not much of a life at all, and
we offer encouragement to get people off the welfare rolls and into
society.
Our budget says seniors ought to have a Medicare system they can rely
on, so we save it from bankruptcy and offer Medicare patients the same
kind of health care choices that are now available to everybody except
seniors.
Our budget does all of that and more, and yet despite his claims that
he endorses each of those goals, as we all know, the President vetoed
every single one of those measures.
So you can see why it is hard to get excited about the President's
professed interest in a balanced budget, tax relief, and welfare and
Medicare reform, when his commitment to them seems to go no deeper than
the tip of his veto pen.
The President met with the distinguished majority leader and Speaker
Gingrich last week, and they will meet again. I wish them well, because
negotiating with the President is like boxing with a jellyfish--it is
hard to score any points when your opponent seems to have no backbone
or any firm principles of his own.
But if there is any hope of reaching an agreement on a budget this
year, we will need to see some encouraging signs soon.
So, Mr. President, on a closing note, if the Nation were to continue
along the path outlined by the President and the congressional
majorities which came before him, a pathway dominated by high taxes and
big government, I am afraid we might begin to parallel the experiences
of Sweden.
There is this article from the Associated Press that appeared in the
Minneapolis Star Tribune on March 15.
In this article it describes what happens when a nation guided by the
belief that as long as it was collecting plenty of taxes and building
plenty of government, it could provide a good life for everyone. But
that has met the realities of the 1990's.
[[Page S2846]]
With a top income tax rate of 49.9 percent, Sweden ranks as one of
the two highest-taxing countries in the world. ``But today,'' says this
article, ``Swedes are deep in debt, taxed to the limit, edgy about
unemployment, and cynical about the model in which they once took
pride.''
Even Soviet leaders once praised Sweden's welfare state. But now,
continues the story, ``the welfare dream is in crisis, along with the
Social Democratic Party that built it.''
While Bill Clinton and the liberal establishment try to push America
toward the kind of high-taxing, big-spending government Sweden has
tried and is now rejecting, Sweden's Social Democrats are pushing for a
balanced budget, tighter welfare rules, and entrepreneurship.
``There is a growing insight that you can't tax a society into
equality.'' Let me say that again. ``There is a growing insight that
you can't tax a society into equality.'' That is from a speechwriter
for Sweden's retiring prime minister.
Somehow, Mr. President, we have moved perilously close to following
in Sweden's footsteps, but it is not too late to take a step back.
If we are serious about giving our children a better future, the best
thing we can do is to cut taxes, end the current spending frenzy,
balance the budget, and begin paying off the national debt.
``Americans want a government that uses common sense when it makes
decisions that affect their lives,'' concludes the administration's
little budget primer.
I agree, as long as we're talking about the common sense of a family
crafting its budget around the kitchen table, and not the nonsense we
too often craft around the conference tables here in Washington.
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