[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 15, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5104-H5133]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 1997

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
Tuesday, May 14, 1996 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in 
the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the 
consideration of the concurrent resolution, House Concurrent Resolution 
178.

                              {time}  1609


                     in the committee of the whole

  Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole 
House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the concurrent 
resolution (H. Con. Res. 178) establishing the congressional budget for 
the U.S. Government for fiscal year 1997 and setting forth appropriate 
budgetary levels for fiscal years 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002, 
with Mr. Camp in the chair.
  The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the order of the House of Tuesday, May 14, 
1996, the concurrent resolution is considered read the first time.
  The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] and the gentleman from Minnesota 
[Mr. Sabo] each will control 90 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich].
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, for purposes of debate, I yield 11 minutes 
to my friend and the very distinguished gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. 
Franks].
  Mr. SABO. Before my friend from New Jersey starts and lest I forget, 
I request unanimous consent that the last 30 minutes of debate on the 
minority side, which is allocated to the Joint Economic Committee, be 
controlled by the gentleman from Washington [Mr. McDermott], and that 
he have the authority to yield time to other Members.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Minnesota?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, the measure before us is not simply about thousands of 
individual numbers. It is not about economic assumptions. It is not 
about green eyeshades and sharp leaded pencils. Budgets are about 
people. Budgets are about ideas.
  Mr. Chairman, the budget of the Federal Government speaks to who we 
are as a country. It looks at our hopes and our aspirations, our 
dreams. It looks at our challenges and our problems. It looks at our 
opportunities.
  But no budget, Mr. Chairman, exists in a vacuum. A budget is 
developed against the backdrop of the environment that we find today. 
As family across this country are looking at their own economic 
circumstances, they are saying very clearly that America can and must 
do better. While the economy may be showing signs of improvement for 
some, many families are still struggling. Tens of thousands of workers 
continue to lose their jobs, many the victims of corporate downsizing.
  In fact, between June of 1994 and June of 1995, fully half the major 
corporations in the United States eliminated jobs, less than a third of 
the workers who lost their full-time jobs found new jobs that paid as 
much money. On average, workers who lost their jobs had to settle for 
jobs that paid 8.2 percent less. And for dislocated workers between the 
ages of 45 and 55, their incomes declined by fully 14 percent. We have 
watched high-paying manufacturing jobs continue to disappear at an 
alarming rate. Between March of 1995 and March of this year, 326,000 
manufacturing jobs were lost.

  In the past 2 years, there has been a 10.2 percent increase in the 
number of Americans who hold two or more jobs. Today more people are 
working two jobs than at any time in our Nation's history.

                              {time}  1615

  Yet, despite working longer and harder than ever before, too many 
families feel as if they are not moving ahead. They are working harder 
merely to stay in place, and it is no wonder. The American family has 
seen no increase in their wages over the past 3\1/2\ years. Meanwhile, 
taxes are taking a bigger and bigger bite out of the family's annual 
income.
  It is interesting to note that back in 1950, Federal taxes consumed 
just 5 percent of the average family's income. Today, 26 percent of a 
family's income goes just to pay for Federal taxes. Most families 
across the country, Mr. Chairman, remember that back in 1993, just 3 
years ago, President Clinton raised their taxes, bringing the tax 
burden to its highest level in history. The Clinton tax package 
increased taxes on gasoline, increased taxes on individual incomes, 
increased taxes on married couples, increased taxes on Social Security 
benefits, increased taxes on inheritances. As a result, every family, 
every year, is seeing their tax bill escalate. Last year, the average 
family with a single wageearner took home $803 less in their paycheck 
than they did in 1992.
  What does all this mean to our children as we look to the future? If 
we stay on the current path and we do not stop our deficit spending, a 
child born today will face a very bleak future. Seventeen years from 
today, when that child is prepared to graduate from high school, every 
tax dollar sent to Washington, DC, will be consumed by just five 
programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal employee 
retirement benefits, and the interest obligation on the national debt. 
That means that when that child gets ready to graduate and go to 
college, there will be no money available in the Federal budget to help 
with his college education, no money to keep his neighborhood safe from 
crime, no more Federal aid to build new roads or mass transit systems, 
and no money available to protect and defend our country. Over his 
working lifetime, that child will be paying off a huge debt, a debt he 
inherited from all of us. That child's lifetime obligation as his share 
of the interest payment on the national debt will be $18,000.
  The fact is that America needs a budget that saves our children's 
future. Our children deserve a better and brighter future than this 
scenario. They deserve one filled with hope and opportunity and a 
chance to live out the American dream. Since the start of the Great 
Society programs in 1965, we have spent $5 trillion on a vast 
assortment of social spending programs. That is more than we spent to 
win World War II.

  What has that enormous investment produced? The number of children 
living in households dependent on welfare has tripled, from 3.3 million 
to 9.6 million. There has been an explosion in the number of mothers, 
many of them children themselves, who are having children out of 
wedlock, a 326 percent increase over the last 30 years.
  We need to make sure that Washington is there to lend a temporary 
hand in time of need, helping the people to get back on their feet 
again so they can lead independent, self-sufficient lives.
  As we look ahead to the vast changes that await us in the twenty-
first century, just around the corner, we must empower individuals to 
take advantage of new opportunities, and to do that, America needs a 
budget that empowers people to be self-reliant.
  To accomplish that objective, we need a budget that reduces the power 
and influence of Washington over our everyday lives. In just 30 years, 
Government spending has exploded. The cost of running the Federal 
Government has moved from $134 billion a

[[Page H5105]]

year to $1.5 trillion a year, and along with all this spending, we have 
created a wasteful and bloated bureaucracy. Every year that bureaucracy 
churns out thousands of pages of new rules and regulations that affect 
all aspects of our lives, from the food we eat to the car we drive to 
the houses we live in. And it is not just businesses that pay the price 
for all this Government redtape. Families pay, and pay quite dearly.
  Government regulations cost the average family $6,800 every year. 
Just think about how time-consuming and confusing it is to fill out 
your own income tax form. That is because the IRS has 480 different tax 
forms, and another 280 forms to tell you how to fill them out. It is no 
wonder it takes the average taxpayer over 12 years just to figure out 
their own taxes.
  America needs a budget that lowers taxes and spends less of our hard-
earned money. There is something fundamentally wrong when the average 
American family pays more on taxes, taxes to the Federal, the State and 
local governments, than they spend on food, clothing and shelter 
combined. The average worker spends 2 hours and 47 minutes out of his 
8-hour workday just to pay his tax burden. Twenty years ago, that same 
worker was spending half that amount of time to meet his tax burden.
  Mr. Chairman, our budget plan will help America to do better. It will 
end 30 years of reckless deficit spending. It will shift power, money, 
and influence out of Washington, DC, and give it back to the American 
people. It trusts our neighbors and our communities to develop 
thoughtful and compassionate solutions to today's problems.
  This budget attacks waste and inefficiency, and by lowering taxes and 
reshaping our Federal Government, it will help American families to 
move ahead so they can earn more, keep more, and do more.
  Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, here we are again, a repeat of 1995. I represent a 
party that in 1993 produced real deficit reduction. We did not simply 
talk about it. We produced it, and the deficit has fallen in half.
  We come today to face the question of how we continue to put our 
Federal fiscal house in order, but how to do it in a fashion that is 
fair and workable.
  One of the most important programs that America passed some 30 years 
ago was Medicare, to assure that elderly Americans had adequate health 
care. I congratulate my Republican friends on finally making one change 
in your proposal. You have accepted the President's position that the 
base premium for part B Medicare should not exceed 25 percent of total 
cost, and I congratulate you on that change.
  Unfortunately, as I look at the details of your program, however, I 
discover that while you appear to have been easing your Medicare cuts 
over the 6-year period before 2002, that in reality, at the end of that 
time, the provider cuts in the final year, 2002, will actually have to 
be deeper and make Medicare more vulnerable than was your program as it 
passed the Congress and was vetoed by the President. That is hardly 
progress, my friends.
  We find throughout this budget a variety of sugar coating to make it 
look a little bit better than the radical agenda of 1995. But when we 
look at its long-term impact, we find that in many cases, it is as bad 
or worse than what the President fortunately had to veto. And Medicare 
is one of those cases. The cuts, let me say again, to that program in 
2002 under your program of today, they are going to have to be deeper 
than the cuts that you were proposing just a few months ago that the 
President, fortunately, vetoed.
  We will have some more to say on that subject, much more, as we 
discover that your budget of 1996 is just simply a repeat of the 
unfortunate program of 1995.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from 
Virginia [Mr. Payne].
  Mr. PAYNE of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my colleague 
from Minnesota for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Republican budget 
resolution and in strong support of the Democratic substitute offered 
by the conservative Democratic coalition. The people back home who are 
listening to this debate will hear echoed many of the same themes we 
debated in last year's budget debate. But while the Republican budget 
resolution has come closer to the coalition substitute in terms of 
numbers, it still represents a political philosophy that does not 
reflect the views of the American people, and one that will hurt our 
economy and our citizens. Because the Republicans insist on borrowing 
$122 billion to pay for a tax cut, their resolution achieves $142 
billion less in deficit reduction than does the coalition budget.
  As it did last year, the coalition substitute still represents an 
honest path to a balanced budget, that protects both the middle class 
and our most vulnerable, and nowhere is this more true than in the 
Medicare Program.
  Last year the Republicans proposed over $28 billion in Medicare 
spending reuctions. This year, they are down to $16 billion. Last year 
the President proposed $98 billion in spending reductions, and this 
year he proposes $124 billion. So both sides have made substantial and 
significant progress forward toward a centrist compromise toward the 
coalition's budget. But yet while the numbers are moving closer, 
serious and substantive differences remain. Republicans have backed 
away from their radical cuts, but they have not backed away entirely 
from their radical policies.
  The Republican plan turns Medicare managed care into a voucher 
program and forces seniors to pay the difference. The coalition plan 
prohibits from charging extra and protects seniors from unscrupulous 
and unfair billing.
  The Republican plan spends $4.6 billion, over $7,000 a person, on 
medical savings accounts, at a time when the trust fund's solvency is 
in jeopardy. The coalition plan handles MSA's in a prudent and 
thoughtful way by having a test program, a demonstration project.
  The Republicans spend $4.6 billion on medical savings accounts, but 
not one penny on preventive benefits. The coalition Medicare package 
spends $2 billion on benefits for prostate and colon cancer screening, 
mammographies and pap smears, and diabetes self-testing equipment, a 
preventive benefit that will save over $100 million a year for the 
Medicare Program when it is fully implemented.

  The Republican budget cuts $123 billion from hospitals, home health 
agencies, and skilled nursing facilities. Under this new baseline, 
these cuts are even larger than those proposed by the Republicans last 
year, and they will devastate health care in rural areas such as mine.
  The Republican Medicare plan represents the majority's misplaced 
priorities. It benefits some of those who manage the care, but it harms 
many of those who receive the care. In doing so, it cuts $22 billion 
more from Medicare than does the coalition's bill.

                              {time}  1630

  The coalition's Medicare policy represents sensible middle ground, 
without gimmicks, without surprises, or without reversals in policy.
  I urge my colleagues to support our Medicare reform package and to 
support the coalition's budget resolution and to vote against this 
Republican budget resolution.
  Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth].
  (Mr. HAYWORTH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend from new Jersey 
for yielding the time. I listened with interest to the comments of the 
ranking member of the Committee on the Budget and to the comments of my 
good friend from Virginia. It is not my intent to indulge in venom or 
vitriol this afternoon, but, instead, I think it is a time for truth.
  The gentleman from Minnesota seems to be saying, ``Well, you have 
almost learned your lesson, new majority.'' Therein lies the most clear 
difference between the two overwhelming philosophies, for those who 
champion the Washington bureaucracy and the Washington approach as 
knowing all and knowing best put their faith in that bureaucracy 
instead of putting their faith in the people of America.

[[Page H5106]]

Those of us in the new majority put our faith in the American people, 
not the Washington bureaucracy.
  And this, Mr. Chairman, is what is truly radical, this fact, this 
piece of truth: That the average person pays more in taxes and the 
average family pays more in taxes today than it pays in food, clothing 
and shelter combined. That is a fact.
  It is time for truth, and the truth is the largest tax increase in 
American history, and this is a fact that my friend from Virginia, who 
champions deficit reduction, gets away from. The fact is the Clinton 
budget and the Clinton tax increase costs every household in America 
$2,600 in additional taxes. We can do better.

  My friend from New Jersey brought this check up. We do not need the 
fictional Baby Jane Doe. I can put a real name there, John Mica 
Hayworth, who is now 2 years of age. If we fail to resolve these 
problems, if we fail to live within our means, John Mica Hayworth will 
pay in interest on the debt over $185,000 in his lifetime. That is 
unconscionable.
  This budget dispute is not about numbers, it is about flesh and blood 
and the future, and despite the rhetoric and the playground taunts, the 
fact is we can do better for today's seniors, for the youngsters of 
today, for generations yet unborn.
  Say no to the Clinton crunch, yes to our new budget and yes to a new 
plan for the future.
  Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to simply say that 
was about the most inaccurate description of what has happened I have 
seen.
  The fact is the bulk of the new revenues last year applied to changes 
in the income Tax Code for people with taxable incomes of over 
$140,000, which means they have close to a gross income of $200,000. 
The surcharge applies to incomes over $250,000, probably gross taxable 
income over $250,000, gross income of $300,000 or more.
  I have to indicate also to the gentleman that the numbers he is using 
on this chart of average taxes assumes or averages in the Ross Perots 
with the rest of everyone. That is clearly inaccurate. It assumes that 
the cost of shelter is only 15 percent, and all of a sudden here a 
while ago, in the housing bill, the gentleman was trying to increase 
rents to over 30 percent of income for people in low-income housing. 
Grossly inaccurate.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from 
Maryland [Mr. Cardin].
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my friend, the gentleman 
from Minnesota, Mr. Sabo, for yielding me this time, and really 
congratulate Mr. Sabo for working with Members on both sides of the 
aisle, Democrats and Republicans, people of different persuasions, to 
try to get us together on a budget that will balance the Federal budget 
by the year 2002.
  I thought we were making progress and I thought Mr. Sabo had done a 
great job in bringing us closer together as we ended 1995. 
Unfortunately, as I look at the Republican budget that is being brought 
up under this resolution, it seems like we are no further together than 
we were a year ago. That is very unfortunate. A missed opportunity. The 
budget should speak to the framework on which we want to see the 
priorities of this Nation, on raising revenues and on spending 
priorities.
  Let me just talk, if I might, in the few minutes I have, on Medicare, 
one part of that budget. The Medicare proposal in the Republican budget 
will cost my seniors more, they are going to receive less care, and it 
seriously jeopardizes the quality of our Medicare system.
  Last year the Republicans suggested cutting $270 billion from the 
Medicare system in order to finance $245 billion of tax breaks. Well, 
we are not dealing with a 6-year budget rather than a 7-year budget, so 
this year the cut in Medicare is $168 billion, the tax breaks of $122 
billion going basically to wealthier people.
  That is not what our seniors want. That is wrong. Instead, we should 
be looking at ways of preserving the Medicare system, which the 
Republicans talk about, but by their own admission they do nothing on 
the long-term solvency of the Medicare system and a large part of their 
savings do not go into the Medicare Part A Program.
  We talk about giving our seniors more choice, and they do if a person 
happens to be wealthy or healthy, under the Republican program. But the 
vast majority of my seniors do not fall into that category. They will 
not be able to choose a health care plan that will cover their needs.
  The Republican proposal removes the protections in Medicare about the 
plans charging more or the doctors charging more. Sure, if an 
individual is wealthy they can afford that extra money, but if they are 
of modest income, as most seniors are, they cannot and they will be 
forced into a plan where they do not have choice.
  We talk about people going into a private plan and returning the 
Medicare but we offer no protection on their Medigap plans. Most 
seniors rely on Medigap, and yet the Republicans have removed that from 
their proposal.
  We do have a choice. We do have a choice in order to preserve the 
Medicare system. We can vote for the President's budget, we can vote 
for the Congressional Black Caucus' budget. I favor the coalition 
budget because it is a responsible way to bring down the cost of 
Medicare without robbing our seniors to pay for tax breaks for wealthy 
people. It also preserves the quality of our Medicare system.
  I urge my colleagues to reject the Republican proposal and support 
the coalition budget.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes and 15 seconds to the 
gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth] and ask the gentleman if he will 
yield to me.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Chairman, I gladly yield to my friend, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the chairman of the Committee on the 
Budget.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, for those folks that are watching this 
debate, what the last speaker said is just so far from being accurate 
it almost ought to be on the Tonight Show in the opening dialog.
  I think we ought to stop scaring our senior citizens, our most 
vulnerable people. We have massive increases in Medicare spending, the 
program will be enhanced, preserved and improved, and I just really 
wish that these scare tactics would come to an end.
  The President blamed it on the press. He said, ``The press made me do 
it,'' and I think he may be getting around to the point where he is 
going to stop, and maybe the rest of the people scaring the seniors 
ought to stop as well.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend and colleague from 
Ohio. It would be laughable if it were not so tragic.
  My colleague from Maryland speaks of a missed opportunity. It is a 
missed opportunity when we fail to allow the American people to hang on 
to more of their hard-earned money and send less of it here to 
Washington, DC. That is tragic.
  It is a missed opportunity when a Medicare trust fund under this 
administration is already $4 billion in arrears, instead of moving to 
solve the problem by allowing seniors the chance and the opportunity 
they have at every other phase of life to make their own choices, 
somehow try to lock them into a government bureaucracy.
  Again, Mr. Chairman, it comes down to this question: Who should we 
trust? Should we place more trust in the hands of the Washington 
bureaucrats, who in the wake of that largest tax increase in American 
history have only delivered 49 percent of the revenues this tax 
increase was supposed to bring in, in our breakneck pace of spending; 
or do we trust the American people to make the right choices for their 
families and their futures?
  We can play scare games all day, but in the final analysis, Mr. 
Chairman, we must stand at the bar of history with the American people 
as our judge; and, as for me and the new majority, we stand firmly in 
the column of the American people. We reject the outmoded notions that 
Washington knows best. Join us, save this country.
  Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to my good friend the 
gentleman from Washington [Mr. McDermott].
  (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. McDermott. Mr. Chairman, I listen to this and I think that 
anybody who is watching it or listening to it in their office would ask 
themselves, who should I believe?
  Now, the last Speaker got up here and said that we ought to stop 
scaring

[[Page H5107]]

the seniors. I agree with that. It was the Republican proposal that 
scared the seniors in the first instance. And for those individuals who 
know who Yogi Berra is, Yogi Berra once said, when asked about a 
particular event, it is kind of deja vu all over again. What we are 
seeing today is the same plan they rolled out here last year. They did 
not change anything.
  Oh, they have tinkered with it a little bit. They said they are not 
going to fool with the senior citizens premiums. They are not going to 
raise it up to 31 percent; they are going to hold it at 25 percent.
  Now, of course that is the House. Now, we all know it will pass out 
of the House and go over to the Senate. Is there any agreement with the 
Senate on that; does anybody know? No, there is no agreement. This is a 
House proposal, and we will get the same wrangle and, just watch, we 
will get the same jerking around.
  Now, instead of the part B premiums, the House GOP is going to cut 
hospitals because they do not want to cut doctors. The part B, as my 
colleagues know, pays for the doctor bills, and they do not want to cut 
doctors because they made a deal with them. They said, ``If you will 
support our plan, we will give you a couple of things, and one of them 
is balance billing.''
  Now, remember the history of balance billing. Back in 1985 we said 
that doctors had to accept what Medicare paid when it paid a senior 
citizen's bill. The doctor could not balance bill. For almost 11 years 
they have not been able to balance bill. But the Republicans said to 
the doctors, ``Look, if you will support our plans to cut the daylights 
out of Medicare, we will let you balance bill.'' So whatever Medicare 
pays, senior citizens can expect that the doctors will pile on an 
additional balance bill on top of that.
  Now, in addition to that, we have to remember that the Speaker said, 
public statement, that he expects the traditional Medicare plan to 
wither on the vine. Now, how do they expect to cause this withering on 
the vine? The traditional plan that most people are in, they simply are 
not going to give the kind of increases that will make it possible for 
doctors to stay in that, so doctors will say, we do not want any 
seniors, and the only place a senior will be able to get their health 
care is to go into a managed care plan.
  Now, by doing that, that means they will have moved all senior 
citizens into managed care and they simply are going to squeeze people 
down. It is very clear the plan the laid out. It is going to cost 
seniors $1,000 more a year by the year 2002.
  Mr. Chairman, this is the kind of scaring that has gone on. It ought 
to stop. This same plan is being rolled out here again, and this should 
be enough in itself to defeat this budget resolution.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes and 15 seconds to the 
gentlewoman from Washington [Ms. Dunn], and ask if the gentlewoman will 
yield to me.
  Ms. DUNN of Washington. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, let me just say, you can fool some of the 
seniors some of the time but not all of the seniors all of the time.
  This trust fund is on the road toward bankruptcy. Our program is 
designed to significantly increase the amount of dollars in Medicare 
and to guarantee that this fund will be solvent well into the next 
century so our senior citizens can have a very viable program.

                              {time}  1645

  Ms. DUNN of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I want to switch the discussion 
to welfare, because welfare reform is included in this balanced budget 
resolution.
  During the past 30 years, the Federal Government has spent more than 
$5 trillion on welfare programs intended to alleviate poverty, but the 
problem is getting worse, not better. The system is getting more and 
more cruel. Today one American child in seven is raised on welfare. 
That is what this budget debate is all about: the children and their 
families. The current welfare system encourages a life of dependency 
and weak families, and that has a devastatingly negative effect on a 
child's development.
  Every one of us feels sick when we read in the paper, we see on 
television the real life stories of how the current welfare system has 
failed. Think of this: 19 children found together in a cold, dark 
Chicago apartment. Police found them sharing a bone with the family dog 
for food. Or the Boston family that has 14 out of its 17 adult children 
now living on welfare, right now, and receiving close to $1 million a 
year from taxpayers.
  Our solutions are focused on promoting families and work, moving 
families into the work force and off welfare is the only way to break 
this cycle of dependency. Most Americans on welfare want to work, but, 
sadly, our Government offers them a better short-run deal to stay 
dependent.
  To make our approach work, the amount of time someone stays on 
welfare must be limited. Our bill does that. The President says he 
supports a 5-year time limit on cash welfare benefits, but he includes 
so many exemptions that the current welfare system would no be 
significantly changed. Furthermore, under the President's plan, 
recipients are guaranteed noncash benefits forever.
  We understand that families, especially mothers, need a helping hand 
in moving from welfare to work. That is why we provide over $6 billion 
in additional child care assistance over what is currently contained in 
the current welfare system. This gives parents the peace of mind to go 
off welfare into the work force.
  We also understand that children are hurt when our system fails so 
pitifully in enforcing court-ordered child support. Right now today, 
$34 billion are owed in court-ordered child support not being paid to 
custodial parents from these children's own parents. Our program finds 
a way to locate those dollars, especially those deadbeat parents who 
move out of the State to avoid supporting their flesh and blood 
children.
  Mr. Chairman, what is at stake is real welfare reform. Imagine what 
our country will look like in 5 years if we do not pass it. The system 
continues to hold millions of poor families in its grip. The problem is 
not the people who are involved. The problem is the failed process. The 
President recently asked for a welfare bill with personal 
responsibility, work and family. We give it to him. Sign this balanced 
budget proposal, Mr. President.
  Mr. SABO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the hard-working 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone], a real knowledgeable Member on 
health care.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say the seniors in this 
country are scared and they have reason to be because of these 
Republican proposals on Medicare. There is no question in my mind what 
is going on here again is the same thing that we saw last year. That is 
that senior citizens are being made to pay for the cuts that are being 
proposed in this budget and that Medicare is taking a bigger hit, 
almost as big a hit as it did last year, and all to pay for tax breaks 
essentially for wealthy Americans.
  Now why should a senior citizen be scared? They should be scared 
because when the Medicare program was established in 1963, they were 
basically told that they were going to have at least three things: One, 
they were told they were going to have an unlimited choice of doctors 
and hospitals. Medicare would reimburse for that. Second, they were 
told that they would have protection against having to pay a lot of 
money out of their pocket. Right now it is limited to 15 percent. And 
then they were told they would have guaranteed coverage of all Medicare 
benefits for the premium that was established by law.
  All these things are at risk in this Republican budget today. First 
of all, because of the reimbursement rate, the fact of the matter is 
that seniors will be pushed into HMO's or managed care. They will not 
have their choice of doctors and hospitals.
  Secondly, the protections against balanced billing are eliminated. 
The doctors, if you stay in the traditional Medicare program, can 
charge anything beyond the 15 percent that is provided under current 
law. So more money out of pocket means you do not have the health care 
if you cannot afford it.
  Lastly, with the MSA's, with the medical savings accounts, basically 
seniors are going to be encouraged to go into this two-tiered system 
where

[[Page H5108]]

they have only catastrophic coverage, and they have to pay out of 
pocket for anything short of a catastrophic health care. So why should 
not senior citizens be scared?
  All the basic tenets, if you will, of the Medicare program are at 
risk under the Republican budget. They do not know for sure if they can 
have their doctor anymore. They could very easily have to pay a lot 
more out of their pocket for going to a doctor or other Medicare or 
other health care expenses, and they do not even know if they choose an 
MSA that they will be able to have a lot of the services that Medicare 
now provides.
  I would be scared. They should be scared because of what the 
Republicans are doing here today.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 20 seconds.
  Of course the gentleman obviously has not read our program because 
our program would give senior citizens more choice. In fact, most 
senior citizens would love to be in the Arizona plan which offers them 
prescription drugs, eyeglass coverage with no charge, no part B premium 
and no deductibles. We want to give senior citizens more choice. In 
that system they would not have more copayments and in fact get to 
choose whatever kind of system they want.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina 
[Mr. Sanford].
  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, it is interesting that if one looks at the 
polls today, for the first time in American history when folks were 
asked: do you think your children will do better off or worse off than 
you did, they are answering ``worse off.'' That is the absolute 
opposite of the American dream, because the American dream is built on 
the idea that I did this well, my father did a little bit poorer than 
that, and my children are going to be doing better than that.
  One cannot build a civilization, one cannot build a country around 
the idea that my children are going to do worse off then I did. So I 
think at the core of this debate and the core of this budget, what we 
are really talking about is the American dream.
  Mr. Chairman, I would say second what those polls show is that 
Americans at the gut level understand what history has well documented 
over the course of time. Rome fell in 476 after controlling essentially 
the entire known world. The Byzantine empire, the Italian renaissance 
came to an end, the Spanish empire came to an end, the Dutch empire 
came to an end, the Ottomon empire came to an end. A host of 
civilizations came to an end because everyone of them reached a 
crossroads wherein they had to decide: Do we go back to what made us 
competitive and a world power in the first place, or we stay on this 
cozy but ultimately unsustainable cycle of upward government spending 
and upward government taxation?
  We are at that same crossroads today. A child born into America today 
will pay an 82-percent tax rate if we stay on the course we are on. 
That either means economic enslavement or it means a collapse of the 
financial system as we know it. It took every single personal income 
tax return filed west of the Mississippi River simply to pay for the 
interest on the national debt. A child born in America, as you saw by 
the check earlier, will pay $187,000 in taxes on their share of 
interest on the national debt if we stay on the course we are on. So we 
are at that crossroads.
  I think what this budget does is point us at the right fork in the 
road, because it begins to move decisions back to people in their local 
communities, in their local towns, and in so doing restores the 
American dream, and I think has a lot to do with saving the 
civilization.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.
  (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
her remarks.)
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to express my strong 
opposition to the Republican budget resolution and to advise my 
colleagues to carefully consider the implications of this budget on 
domestic discretionary spending. My colleagues need to understand there 
is simply no growth in this budget for important programs. Defense is 
the only area where they have proposed real growth. It makes no 
investment in safe highways, airline traffic safety, safe streets, safe 
schools, education, health care, public safety, clean water, clean air, 
research and development, business development, and transportation. The 
tough choices we made in 1990 and 1993 controlled the growth in 
discretionary spending. The caps have worked and we have the discipline 
to control future discretionary spending. There is simply no 
justification for further assaults on critical domestic programs. It is 
also difficult to understand how my Republican colleagues could propose 
slowing the growth in domestic discretionary spending to such low 
levels that by the year 2002, the purchasing power of overall 
nondefense discretionary appropriations will be 26 percent below this 
year's level. At the same time that they plan on eliminating any real 
investment in our economic security, they are proposing $13 billion 
more for defense than requested by the Pentagon.
  Let me remind my colleagues again, that these cuts are in the most 
basic programs. Education, environmental protection, medical research, 
Head Start, civilian research and development, nutritional assistance, 
transportation, and criminal justice. All of these programs, regardless 
of what you may hear will be adversely affected if we enact the 
domestic discretionary level proposed in the Republican budget 
resolution.
  In addition to the funding levels proposed, my Republican colleagues 
are also proposing some significant changes and eliminations. Included 
in this budget resolution is an assumption that 25 important 
educational programs will be block granted; the Governors will get to 
decide how to spend this money. While I have yet to see the list of 
these 25 programs, I can tell you that in some cases, the States will 
not act to serve vulnerable populations of children. It was because of 
the refusal of the States to address the unique educational needs of 
homeless children that I worked to create the Homeless Education 
Program. States and local governments simply did not reach out to these 
children and I can assure my Republican friends that under the block 
grant proposal, homeless children will be denied basic educational 
services.
  Once again the Republicans are proposing to dismantle the one agency 
whose mission is job development and growth. Did we learn nothing from 
last year's budget battle. We need a strong and effective Department of 
Commerce. The late Secretary Brown accomplished this objective and I am 
fully confident that Secretary Kantor will meet the same challenge.
  This Republican budget resolution also proposes the elimination of 
the Legal Services Corporation. Guaranteeing the basic protection of a 
citizen's constitutional rights is one of our responsibilities as 
Members of Congress. We take an oath to protect and defend the 
Constitution. Shouldn't we be concerned about guaranteeing every 
citizen, regardless of their income, the right to due process and the 
right of fair and just representation? Apparently only those who have 
the ability to pay are allowed adequate legal counsel.
  I am gravely concerned about the direction of this country as we 
enter the next century and firmly believe that this budget will not 
guarantee that we are prepared to meet the challenges. I urge my 
colleagues to vote no on the Republican budget resolution. We can 
balance the budget without jeopardizing our economic future.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from the State of Oklahoma [Mr. Watts].
  Mr. WATTS of Oklahoma. Mr. Chairman, there was a cultist popular 
humanistic theme in the 1960's that said ``God is dead.'' I am afraid 
that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided that 
they were left in charge, and what they did was drive us into the ever-
deepening quicksand of more and more Government spending without 
results.
  Our budget resolution offers more savings so that Americans can 
ultimately keep more of what they earn and they can decide what is best 
for them, not the Government. Bottom line, in our budget we trust the 
American people. In their budget, they do not,
  Do I hate my Government? No. I just believe that we can do better for 
this

[[Page H5109]]

country and for our kids, our grandkids, working families, and seniors. 
We can do better than $200 plus billion annual deficits, a $5 trillion 
national debt. I think we can do better than an anemic welfare system 
that penalizes mothers for saving money and penalizes them for wanting 
to marry the father of their children.
  Mr. Chairman, I believe we can do better by saving Medicare from 
bankruptcy. In this country, we expect the best from our high school, 
our college, and our professional athletic teams. Why should we not 
expect the same from our Government? We are the greatest, freest, 
wealthiest country in the world. I believe we can do better and we 
should as Americans. Red, yellow, black, and white, we should demand 
the best from our Government, and our budget starts us in that 
direction.
  Am I an optimist? I am reminded of the guy who defined an optimist as 
going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with 
him. Am I an optimist? You bet I am. I do believe we can do better by 
trusting the American people and figuring out the right answers for 
this time in our Government.
  I believe that our budget resolution starts us in that direction. Our 
budget gets us another year down the road of accomplishing a balanced 
budget in the next 6 years. If we balance the budget, it opens the 
gateway to the future for our kids and our grandkids. If we do not, we 
can only look forward to more financial despair and burdens on 
families, a bankrupt Medicare system and keeping the caged eagles in 
the poor community locked up just waiting to soar.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to open the gateway to the future 
for our kids and our grandkids by voting for this budget resolution. 
Trust the American people.

                              {time}  1700

  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Coyne].
  (Mr. COYNE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. COYNE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to point out the many 
deficiencies in the Republican budget resolution.
  The Republican budget is fundamentally flawed. It places the burden 
of deficit reduction on health care, education, environmental, 
infrastructure, and safety net programs while leaving defense spending 
and corporate welfare virtually untouched. It still provides a 
substantial tax cut at a time when the Federal Government is running a 
sizable deficit. Defense spending is actually increased in this budget 
while critical domestic needs are ignored. Finally, the Republican 
budget puts a whole new spin on redistribution by increasing the burden 
on low- and moderate-income Americans and reducing the burden on the 
well-to-do; the Republican budget, for example, provides a child tax 
credit for middle- and upper-class families while cutting earned income 
tax credit assistance to low- and moderate-income households.
  The Republican budget also resurrects a number of policies discussed 
last year. It eliminates the Commerce Department, the Energy 
Department, AmeriCorps, the National Endowment for the Arts [NEA], the 
National Endowment for the Humanities [NEH], the Legal Services 
Corporation, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and 
Health, just to name a few. These agencies provide valuable services to 
the people of this country. The proposals to eliminate them are short-
sighted efforts to pander to the public perception that all government 
is bad. If you doubt that this is the case, then ask yourself why many 
of the functions, operations, and even the staff of the Departments of 
Energy and Commerce will merely be shifted to other agencies, much like 
the transfer of the Interstate Commerce Commission's responsibilities 
and staff to the Department of Transportation last year.
  In addition, the Republican budget would provide more than $2 billion 
less than the President's budget on crime-fighting programs. It is 
inconsistent to enact tough anticrime measures on the one hand and then 
deny law enforcement officials the resources that they need to carry 
out those measures on the other.
  One of the most important investments the Federal Government can make 
is its investment in its human capital. And yet, the Republican budget 
would freeze Federal funding for job training programs at roughly 60 
percent of the 1995 appropriations level for these programs. It would 
reduce funding for the Job Corps by nearly 10 percent as well. And it 
would eliminate AmeriCorps and the Direct Student Loan Program.
  Despite the strong public reaction to the Republicans' 
antienvironment initiatives last year, the Republican budget resolution 
would once again undermine Federal efforts to protect the environment 
and improve public health. It would cut the EPA's operating budget by 
11 percent for fiscal year 1997. Cuts of this magnitude would damage 
the agency's ability to enforce existing environmental statutes. It 
would also eliminate EPA programs to develop advanced environmental 
technologies. This budget would also phase out energy conservation 
programs, renewable energy research, and fossil energy research and 
development. Such policies are incredibly short-sighted.
  One of the functions most dramatically reduced under the Republican 
budget proposal is community development. Funding for programs like the 
Community Development Block Grant Program would be reduced from $11 
billion in 1996 to $6 billion in 2002. The Economic Development 
Administration would be eliminated altogether. Such cuts would 
devastate communities like Pittsburgh. Federal community development 
funding leverages billions of State, local, and private sector dollars 
into important development and revitalization efforts. Without this 
Federal seed money, many communities across the country will be at a 
loss to address many critical community needs.
  American workers are also adversely affected. The Republican budget 
would reduce funding for programs like OSHA that ensure workplace 
safety. It would eliminate the National Institute of Occupational 
Safety and Health [NIOSH], the only Government agency that conducts 
research on workplace injuries. It would repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and 
the Service Contract Act, legislation that guarantees that employees of 
Federal contractors are paid locally prevailing wages for their work. 
And it would extract another $9.4 billion in savings from Federal 
civilian and military retirees, the same people who have been called 
upon again and again in recent years to bear a disproportionate share 
of the burden of balancing the budget.
  The Republican budget assumes dramatic changes in Federal housing 
assistance programs as well. While these programs are in need of 
reform, current funding for these programs falls far short of meeting 
the need for affordable housing in this country. The Republicans would 
reduce spending on housing assistance from the current level of 
services by roughly $20 billion over the next six years.
  The Republican budget would also make dramatic changes in important 
Federal transportation programs as well. The local matching rate for 
transit capital grants would be increased to 50 percent. Transit 
operating assistance would be phased out. And mass transit new starts 
would be eliminated. Research and development of advanced high speed 
rail would be eliminated as well. In total, transit funding would be 
reduced below a freeze level by more than $6.5 billion over the next 
six years. This policy shift would have a devastating impact on 
congestion, energy consumption, economic growth, and air quality in 
many of our urban areas.
  The Republican budget would eliminate or dramatically reduce 
technology transfer programs like the Advanced Technology Program and 
the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, programs that provide 
valuable technical assistance to small manufacturers across the country 
and promote the development of advanced technology and innovative 
products. These programs help American businesses compete with foreign 
manufacturers. They produce an incredible return on the Federal 
Government's modest investment.

  The Republican budget still makes dramatic changes in the Medicare 
and Medicaid Programs. The proposed savings are large enough to 
devastate

[[Page H5110]]

these critical health care programs. It is interesting to note that the 
difference in Medicare savings from last year's budget resolution to 
this year's is roughly the same size as the reduction in the size of 
the tax cut that the Republicans are proposing. That would suggest to 
me that the Medicare savings in this budget are motivated by the 
Republican tax cut package, and not by concern over the future of the 
Medicare Program. Regardless of the motivation, it should be clear to 
all Americans that attempting to save $168 billion from Medicare over 
the next 6 years is simply irresponsible, as is the plan's reliance on 
medical savings accounts to cut costs and impose fiscal discipline on 
Medicare beneficiaries and providers.
  The Republican plan would also adversely affect Medicaid 
beneficiaries as well. The Republican's budget resolution would garner 
substantial savings, $72 billion, from Medicaid by converting it to a 
block grant, and it would eliminate the current guarantee of health 
care coverage for 2.5 million low-income children between the ages of 
13 and 18.
  Finally, the Republican budget would pull a number of additional 
threads from the already fraying Federal safety net. The Republican 
budget would make $53 billion in savings in programs like AFDC, food 
stamps, and SSI, primarily by eliminating the Federal guarantee of 
assistance for the needy and converting them to block grants.
  Where does that leave us? With a Republican budget resolution that is 
fundamentally flawed. I voted against this resolution when it was 
considered by the House Budget Committee, and I shall vote against it 
when it is considered by the full House.
  Any of the Democratic alternatives would be preferable. The 
President's budget is a responsible attempt to balance serious deficit 
reduction with important investments in our future and the need to 
preserve Federal safety net programs, although I believe that it would 
be better to balance the budget before we cut taxes substantially. The 
coalition budget also deserves credit for its commitment to deficit 
reduction, although I also have concerns about some of the provisions 
it contains. I believe, however, that the Progressive Caucus-
Congressional Black Caucus budget proposal provides the Federal budget 
strategy that best addresses the needs of this Nation over the next 6 
years. This budget substitute balances the budget, invests in our 
communities and our human capital, and even expands Federal safety net 
programs. It does so by reducing defense spending to a level 
commensurate with the reduced military threat we face with the end of 
the cold war, and by eliminating corporate subsidies and tax breaks 
that are wasteful and inefficient.
  Consequently, I urge my colleagues to reject this improvident budget 
resolution and to adopt the Progressive Caucus-Congressional Black 
Caucus budget.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from the city of Cincinnati, OH [Mr. Portman].
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say I support this budget 
without reservation. It is a great budget for all the reasons we have 
heard up here today.
  I have got three kids at home. It is about the kids, it is about the 
next generation. We do not want to leave them with this crushing debt, 
now $5 trillion. We do not want to increase their taxes to the extent 
we would have to in order to service that debt. We want them to have a 
shot at the American dream.
  So this budget is at least one important step toward getting that 
budget under control and to get it into balance in 6 years.
  But let me mention something else, and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Kasich] talks about it a lot. Forget the numbers. This is also about 
shifting power and responsibility and authority and money out of this 
city, out of Washington and back to our States, back to our local 
communities and back to people, and that is very important, and it is a 
big distinction between the way we have been going and the way we like 
to go.
  For 40 years we have increasingly aggregated that power and authority 
here in Washington. This budget is all about getting it out. Medicaid 
is a good example of that. Education is a good example of that. Welfare 
is a great example of that. Let me give my colleagues one example in 
Ohio.
  For years Ohio tried to get a waiver to be able to do something 
innovative and creative in the area of welfare to try to help people 
actually move from welfare rolls to payrolls. Finally we got some of 
the waivers. We were able, in the last 3 years, to reduce our welfare 
rolls in Ohio by 23 percent. We could do twice that well, maybe three 
times that well, if we could get real flexibility that is in this 
budget proposal in the area of welfare reform.
  Let us trust the people that sent us here. Let us do this budget 
because it is the right thing to do for our kids, to get our fiscal 
house in order, but also let us do it because it is time to start 
moving some of the power and authority out of Washington where it is 
increasingly aggregated and reverse that trend. This is one small step 
and an important step toward doing that.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Stenholm].
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, there are two budgets; no, there are four 
budgets being considered tomorrow. The one that I support borrows $137 
billion less than the majority budget. I listened to a lot of speeches 
today, and I do not understand how anyone can propose that borrowing 
$137 billion more is going to make good economic sense.
  We are talking about spending cuts. I hope my colleagues from rural 
America take a good hard look at our colleagues' budget. Cutting 46 
percent more out of the agriculture discretionary function over the 
next 6 years does not make good economic sense by anybody's standards. 
Cutting 13 percent from research extension this year, 1997, does not 
make good sense. Whoever proposed that, I do not understand how they 
could possibly come up with that.
  The idea that there is that much more overhead down at USDA 
completely ignores the fact that we have spent the last 3 years 
reorganizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We have cut $4.2 
billion from that overhead. Now to come in and say we are going to take 
another $695 million because somebody keeps saying there is unnecessary 
bureaucratic overhead downtown, they are not looking at what has 
already been done over the last 3 years in the current administration, 
and they are truly going to do irreparable harm to agriculture, rural 
health.
  Eliminating the office of rural health in the block grant program 
that has allowed rural hospitals who have been struggling to just keep 
their doors open, the success of that program, to suggest that is going 
to be eliminated does not make sense.
  So, a lot of cuts. Yes, we need to cut; yes, we need to make 
decisions along these lines. But I would say take a good hard look at 
rural health, and that also includes urban health because what I say 
about rural health applies exactly the same way to the inner cities, 
and there are being many decisions made in this budget in the name of 
cutting the bureaucracy that are going to have the opposite effect. 
They are going to have a devastating effect on the food supply of this 
Nation some day.
  Mr. Chairman, as Representative for the very rural 17th District of 
Texas, as a founding member and former cochairman of the House Rural 
Health Care Coalition, and as a 16-year veteran on the House 
Agriculture Committee, I find the degree to which this budget 
resolution assaults rural America truly stunning and enormously 
disturbing. In the past, rural Members, which of course can be found in 
both parties, have always managed to put aside partisanship in rural 
issues for one fundamental reason: An overriding worry about the 
potential loss of access to quality health care, loss of business, and 
ultimately, loss of economic viability in rural areas.
  The programs and offices which this budget targets for elimination in 
the health function are the very programs and offices originated by the 
bipartisan Rural Health Care Coalition. I realize that constituents of 
urban Members do not worry about whether there is going to be a doctor 
to deliver their babies, an emergency room to treat the tractor 
accidents, a nurse to treat daily illnesses. But these are things my 
constituents do worry about. The programs targeted by this budget 
certainly do not respond to all of those needs by themselves but the 
programs and their coordination play a vital role at the edges.

[[Page H5111]]

  The assault on agriculture is even more remarkable, with total 
agricultural discretionary spending cut a staggering 46 percent from 
1997 to 2002. I understand Republicans think that this nearly 50 
percent reduction will come from overhead, which I find particularly 
interesting since the Agriculture Department has just completed a major 
reorganization and downsizing. Since most of those cuts are 
unspecified, it's hard to know whether they will be taken from the hide 
of research and extension programs, conservation programs, or nutrition 
and safety programs. What is clear, however, is that with the Ag 
discretionary budget virtually cut in half, the impact will be felt in 
each and every function of the USDA. And that means the impact will be 
felt in each and every rural community.
  I find it hard to believe that my many friends across the aisle who 
serve with me on the Agriculture Committee or on the Rural Health Care 
Coalition have focused on the aspect of the majority's budget. I have 
little doubt, though, that as these numbers are implemented into 
policies and as constituents across the country notify their 
Representatives of their concerns, my friends will become as alarmed 
about the impact of this budget on the future of rural America as I am 
today.
  Mr. Chairman, for this and other reasons, I urge a ``no'' vote on the 
Republican budget and a ``yea'' vote for the coalition substitute which 
approaches a balanced budget in a far more humane and reasonable 
manner.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
  I dearly love my colleague from Texas, but as my colleagues know, 
talk about a vain effort, I mean there is no one that I have yet met 
outside of the beltway who thinks that we have cut bureaucracy and 
redtape and travel expenses and supplies and equipment enough in any, 
virtually any, piece of this Federal Government.
  This Republican majority believes that there is tons of money 
available in the travel allowance, the supply allowance, the equipment 
allowance of virtually every single department, bureau and agency of 
this Government, and frankly, I do not even think we started to 
downsize and save money.
  So we are after the overhead accounts of everything in this Federal 
Government, and I have not yet gone home and had one taxpaying citizen 
say to me, ``You have really cut the bureaucratic overhead too much in 
Washington.'' Not one single person has told me, and I think we are 
absolutely on the right track.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman 
from the State of Arizona [Mr. Kolbe].
  (Mr. KOLBE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, at the outset of this debate, the gentleman 
from New Jersey laid out the case very eloquently for this budget. A 
budget is not really about numbers. It is not about whether we spend 
$1,500 billion on the Federal Government or $1,600 billion. It is not 
even about whether we cut a program, whether we increase a program, 
whether we add a program, or whether we eliminate a program.
  No, Mr. Chairman, a budget is an opportunity for this body and for 
our political parties to make a philosophical statement about the 
direction we believe this country should be going. It is an opportunity 
for us to say something about where we think our future is. It is an 
opportunity for each party in Congress to set forth its vision, its 
vision for America, its hopes, its dreams for our future and for our 
children's future.
  Mr. Chairman, our budget makes such a statement. It says very clearly 
what we believe the National Government's priorities should be. It 
insists that we should decide what this Government can do, what it must 
do, and what it should do. It says that we should reduce the burden on 
our children, the burden that a new child born today in this country, 
assumes upon his or her birth. That burden is a burden of $188,000 just 
to pay the interest on the national debt.
  Our budget says we believe other levels of government, the private 
sector, and nongovernmental organizations, can perform government 
functions better than Washington can. We say this about education, we 
say this about some aspects of welfare, about some aspects of health 
care, we say it about such things as economic development. And, yes, 
most importantly, it says that we believe the burden of taxes on 
American citizens should be reduced. Our budget would reduce the burden 
of taxes on American citizens.
  The gentleman from Texas talked about having to borrow more money. 
But we reach a balanced budget as soon as any of our other budgets that 
are proposed. What we do differently is leave some of the money in 
people's pockets, leave money in the pockets of American citizens so 
they can decide how to spend the money on their health care, on their 
education, on their schooling, on their housing, on all the needs that 
they have. We do this because we believe that Americans who work hard 
and earn it should keep it.
  That is what this budget is about; that is the statement this budget 
makes. I urge my colleagues to support it.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Brown].
  (Mr. BROWN of California asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the 
budget resolution before us and I would like to comment on the 
treatment of research and development therein.
  Last year, the Republican budget resolution initiated an all-out 
ideological and budgetary attack on our Nation's R&D establishment. 
That resolution proposed a reduction in civilian R&D by over 30 percent 
in real terms by the year 2002. Moreover, the detailed but misguided 
assumptions imbedded in the House version of the resolution report 
language became an iron-clad mandate for the Committee on Science and 
we were forced to follow its every detail in the authorization bills 
that were reported out. This budget resolution renews the attack.
  Overall, this budget resolution cuts the nonhealth civilian science 
agencies by over $3 billion below the President's request just for 
fiscal year 1997. Over the entire 6-year period, this resolution cuts 
over $15 billion from the President's request. In inflation adjusted 
terms, our science investment will be cut by over 25 percent by the 
year 2002.
  These cuts come on top of extraordinary efforts on the part of the 
administration to identify cost savings in all of the science oriented 
Federal agencies. NASA, NSF, NOAA, DOE, EPA and other agencies have 
dramatically downsized over the past 2 years. They have eliminated 
thousands of jobs, they have privatized major portions of their 
operations and they have cut overhead through reinventing Government. 
This budget resolution rewards them with additional cuts that go beyond 
streamlining management. These reductions are emasculating the core 
missions of these agencies and the fundamental role of Government in 
supporting research and development.
  This is not a matter of simply balancing the budget. Indeed, the 
President's budget is balanced. The Republican plan contained in this 
budget resolution has established a rigid set of ideological 
principles, set forth in the accompanying report, with which to make 
judgments on the value of R&D. The authors of this resolution have 
asserted that this blueprint represents the only acceptable way to 
balance the budget.
  For example, a balanced budget, according to the report language, 
must include the elimination of one directorate--namely the Social 
Sciences Directorate--at the National Science Foundation. It must 
include the elmination of solar and renewable energy research, fossil 
energy research, and energy conservation research at the Department of 
Energy. It must include a virtual elimination of any environmental 
research within NASA. The list goes on.
  Mr. Chairman, these are not just recommendations for balancing the 
budget. They are demands that we conform our thinking to the misguided 
views of a few. These are also the demands that will be made to the 
Appropriations committees in the coming months.
  In general, the goals of this budget resolution are to cut back and 
eliminate wherever possible applied research in the Federal Government 
and to block any attempts to partner with the private sector. This bias 
towards applied research and towards technology partnerships is 
particularly disturbing in view of the widely acknowledged need to link 
our investments in R&D more closely with the goals of economic 
development in the coming years.
  I would call the attention of my colleagues to a recent report by the 
Office of Technology Policy entitled Effective Partnering. This report

[[Page H5112]]

reviews the efforts of successive Congresses and Presidents to increase 
the effectiveness of mission based R&D within the Government to enhance 
technology-based economic growth. Programs such as the Manufacturing 
Extension Program and the Advanced Technology Program that are slated 
for extinction in this budget resolution represent our best hope for 
the generation of future jobs. Moreover, these programs are aimed at 
the emerging small, high-tech industries that will form the backbone 
for our future economic competitiveness.
  Mr. Chairman, this budget resolution is anti-science, anti-jobs, and 
anti-education. It will do irreparable damage to our investments and 
our commitments to research and development in the future. By 
drastically cutting clean coal and other fossil energy R&D it may 
stifle economic progress in important regions of our country.
  I will close by stressing that these attacks have nothing to do with 
balancing the budget. In addition to the President's plan, there are 
many alternatives to balancing the budget that better preserve R&D. For 
example, I plan to vote for the conservative coalition budget which 
restores funds for investments not only in basic science, but also in 
NASA and in energy and conservation programs.
  I urge a ``no'' vote on this budget resolution.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentlewoman from the State of North Carolina [Mrs. Myrick].
  Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Chairman, this debate today is about one thing and 
that is trust. As my colleagues know, we trust the folks back home to 
manage their own lives better than the bureaucrats in Washington, DC. 
Our budget resolution demonstrates that trust. For the last several 
decades Congress has said, ``Hey, folks, you know, you don't know what 
you are doing; the Federal Government needs to tell you how to do it, 
how to take care of your life.''
  Mr. Chairman, I know from firsthand experience as a mayor of a city 
that the people back home do know how to take care of themselves. As my 
colleagues know, our city did not sit around and wait for Congress to 
tell us how to do it. We just got in there and did it. We believed that 
there is a better way.

                              {time}  1715

  We say that the American people have the answers. This country was 
built on self-sufficiency and free enterprise, with families making 
their own decisions. All over this country folks are finding the 
answers. They are overcoming adversity. They are solving problems. They 
are helping one another. This budget supports that effort.
  Families need our help. Do Members know that it costs the average 
family $6,731 a year just for Government regulations? They need tax 
relief as well as control of their lives. Families are hurting. Our own 
son and daughter-in-law, our daughter-in-law had a terrible auto 
accident. She is unable to work. Their earning ability has been 
severely limited. They know firsthand how this budget is going to help 
them. It will give them some relief. It is going to provide a better 
future for our two granddaughters, Amanda and Savannah, and for all the 
other families in America. We truly want to take the power out of 
Washington and send it back to the people, where it belongs. Let us 
manage our own lives.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Olver].
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to 
me.
  Mr. Chairman, the Republicans have insisted once again on enormous 
unrequested increases in defense spending in their budget. To do it, 
they are taking billions of dollars from discretionary accounts, 
thereby killing investments that are critical in a whole series of 
areas. Let me mention just three of those countless areas.
  First, the Republican budget wipes out energy conservation and 
efficiency research, and stops the further development of solar and 
renewable energy sources, all of which are going to be necessary if 
this country is going to achieve energy independence from foreign 
sources, and all of which would be part of creating new jobs for 
American workers trying to compete in an international market.
  Second, this budget phases out our commitment to public 
transportation, which is critical to take people to their jobs, to 
their doctors, to recreation, all of which are investments in the 
construction, in the operation, of the buses that move people in urban 
areas, large and small, large communities and small communities, all 
over this country.
  No. 3, it turns its back on young people and the investment in those 
young people seeking an education by eliminating direct student loans 
and national service scholarships. Such extremism, Mr. Chairman, is not 
necessary to balance the budget. We can do a better job, and we should 
go back to the drawing board and get it right.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from the State of Arizona [Mr. Shadegg].
  (Mr. SHADEGG asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, one of my colleagues came to the floor a 
few minutes ago and said that this debate is not about numbers, it is 
about philosophy. It is about vision. It is about where America is 
going, about whether America is going forward or going backward.
  We need, America needs, a budget that saves our children's future, 
but that is not the budget that the Democrats will offer. The budget 
the Democrats will offer is a budget based on fear and class warfare. I 
hope my colleagues in America are listening to and watching this 
debate. Their budget is based on fear, is representation, and class 
warfare. Our budget is based on hope, growth, and opportunity. The 
difference between these budgets is that we trust the American people 
to take care of themselves.
  Members heard the last speaker bemoan all the different cuts. He 
would have us cut nothing. Indeed, he would have us grow spending more 
and more and more, and debt more and more and more. These two children 
are the grandchildren of one of my colleagues. They face a debt in 
their lifetime of $188,000, each of them. Look at their faces. Their 
answer is more debt and more spending.
  What has that spending gotten us? Let us take one issue, the 
education issue. They would tell us, the President would tell us, that 
we are gutting education and that we are stealing from education funds 
in America. They would tell us we should spend more and more and more.
  Let me say about spending: It is not true that Washington knows best, 
and more spending does not necessarily make better education. Since 
1980, the budget for the Department of Education has more than doubled. 
It has grown at a pace of more than 7 percent. That is twice the growth 
of the economy. The United States today spends more per primary and 
secondary pupil than any country in the world.
  What have we gotten for it? What has that side that wants to take you 
back to more spending done for you? What that has gotten, what their 
excessive spending has gotten us, is 187 different studies that show 
there is no significant correlation between education spending and 
performance.
  What has their spending done? SAT scores have dropped nearly 60 
points in the last three decades. Math and science scores for students 
in America ranked behind China, Korea, Taiwan, the former U.S.S.R., 
England, and Slovenia. What has failed is their centralized big 
government solution.
  If America is to move forward, we must trust the American people. We 
cannot burden them with more debt. I urge my colleagues to reject the 
past, to reject excessive spending, and to join us in passing a budget 
which protects their future and does not burden them with an immoral 
debt.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SHADEGG. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I understand what the gentleman is saying. 
The figure that the gentleman is referring to, it so happens that the 
President of the United States was Republican, in his party, for that 
period of time.
  Mr. SHADEGG. The statistics I have cited are accurate.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
West Virginia [Mr. Wise].
  Mr. WISE. Speaking of education, Mr. Chairman, I find it interesting 
to talk about this great Federal monolith,

[[Page H5113]]

since 94 cents of every dollar in public education is at the State and 
local level.
  Let us talk about the Department of Commerce. If you were a business 
person, Mr. Speaker, and I came and said to you that I have a great 
idea, and you asked what is that, and I said we have this agency, the 
Department of Commerce, that because it developed for the first time 
ever a national export strategy, and because it has had an aggressive 
Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown, and now Mickey Kantor; has generated 80 
billion dollars' worth of contracts over the last 3 years; and because 
this department was so effective that it took $1.5 billion, half of it 
private money, and generated 220 public-private partnerships to promote 
civilian technology, and because we have this Department of Commerce 
that has increased exports 26 percent over the past 3 years, and 
because we have this Department of Commerce that has increased tourism 
and provided the first White House conference ever on this growing 
industry for much of America, and you might be saying, yes, yes, what 
are you going to do with this agency, their answer would be, we are 
going to eliminate it?
  Because that is what this budget does. It eliminates the Department 
of Commerce, breaks up some functions and ships them off into lower 
categories in other agencies, sets up a whole lot of new boxes, but 
eliminates the one means by which business has been getting 
increasingly a place at the table.
  Take the Economic Development Administration, for instance. Every 
Member has had an EDA project in their district which has helped 
generate many dollars over what went into it. For Swearinger 
Industries, for instance, in Martinsburg, WV, $2 million of EDA 
investment helped trigger $130 million in private sector investment, 
800 new good-paying jobs, and a significant civilian increase and a 
technology industry boost.
  Eliminating the Department of Commerce? those who speak of their 
children, I understand the concern about debt, but how about the 
future? How about opportunity, how about jobs? How about somebody that 
is fighting for them to make sure they get their piece of the pie as 
well? That is where this budget is wrong, and that is why the 
Department of Commerce should stay.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio].
  Mr. LAZIO of New York. Mr. Chairman, I want to begin by complimenting 
the great chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from 
Ohio, John Kasich, for his leadership and dedication in moving this 
forward.
  The debate today is really about the future of our children. It is 
America's children. We must be concerned not only for our own children, 
but all America's children.
  Last week on this floor I spoke of the children growing up in public 
housing in Chicago's State Street corridor. In that neighborhood 
unemployment is almost universal. More young women become teenage 
parents than graduate from high school. Guns outnumber books. Children 
murder children. It is a community filled with despair.
  Mr. Chairman, the budget we offer today is one filled with hope, hope 
for a brighter future for all Americans, including the children of 
State Street and all of our inner cities. The Republican budget keeps 
us on the path we started last year toward opportunity and economic 
growth. The 1997 budget endorses the landmark housing bill that passed 
the House last week, and is designed to give the people at the local 
level the power to deal with the problems in their communities without 
being strapped by Federal regulations and bureaucracy. We want to 
continue to shift responsibility, power, and money and influence out of 
Washington and back to neighborhoods, communities, and people.
  House Republicans are doing what we said we would do: balancing the 
budget, freeing people from the trap of welfare, and providing genuine 
tax relief for working Americans. Who could be against a higher 
standard of living for our children and our grandchildren? That is 
exactly what this debate about the 1997 budget is all about.
  There are two clear paths before us. We can return to the path we 
left last year and deliver a future of unsustainable spending and 
increase, crushing debt, huge increases in taxes that dash hopes and 
dreams, and that in the end promise fewer opportunities and not a good 
quality of life for the smallest among us who are still too young to 
vote. Or we can stay on the brighter path that we started last year. It 
will require courage, but it is filled with the hopes and aspirations 
that every parent has for their children.
  The Republican budget for 1997 makes possible a future filled with 
hopes and dreams and opportunity. I urge its passage.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from Texas [Mr. Doggett].
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time 
to me.
  Mr. Chairman, last year our Republican colleagues, self-described 
Gingrich revolutionaries, caught Government shutdown fever and brought 
this Nation to a halt, until the country spoke up and rejected their 
budget. Now they are back again with the same type of zealotry that 
they had in 1995. I think the Four Tops wrote their theme song long 
before they got to Congress when they wrote ``It's the same old song, 
just a different verse, since you have been gone,'' because they have 
not given up their revolutionary zeal to change their country in a way 
the country does not want to be changed.
  Let me give just one example of what this budget resolution assumes 
and how it affects Austin, TX. Today, Austin, TX, got 10 more law 
enforcement officers. They are young people, just like these who 
graduated from our law enforcement academy last year. It brings to our 
community a total of over 100 law enforcement officers, over 5 million 
Federal dollars to support local community policing efforts.
  This budget proposes to give billions of dollars to star wars. It 
forgets we have real wars in our streets. Our community is safer 
because of the commitment that this Congress made to 100,000 new police 
officers across this country--8,000 communities have benefited from 
that program. Yet this resolution assumes the termination of the cops 
on the street program, and some blockheaded block grant program that 
will not guarantee the safety of our neighborhoods and which can easily 
be trimmed.
  Let us stand up for safe communities and reject this Republican 
budget.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.
  Mr. Chairman, we have a very unique way in which we would put police 
on the street. Rather than putting police on the street in some cities 
that do not experience high violent crime rates, we have decided to let 
local people decide that police are going to be put on the streets 
where there is the most violent crime.

                              {time}  1730

  So where there is the greatest need is where we want the people to 
be. We think that makes a lot more sense than distributing police on a 
per capita basis. Send them where they are needed, that is our motto.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman 
from the sunny State of Florida [Mr. Stearns].
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the budget 
resolution. This budget says to the American people, ``We think you are 
taxed too much.'' Since 1981, under Democrat control, we have had 19 
separate tax increases. We think the economy is growing much too 
slowly. We know that slow growth coupled with enormous tax rates will 
leave our children with a lifetime tax rate of 80 percent just to pay 
interest on the debt.
  Why is a balanced budget so important? Americans will have more take-
home pay because our budget includes a $500-per-child tax credit and a 
reduction in the capital gains tax which would stimulate economic 
growth. We also have true welfare reform, which is the No. 1 priority 
of most Americans.
  On the present course our children and their children will be left 
with immense debts and a tax bill of $180,000 a year just to pay the 
interest on the debt. That is why we cannot buckle in the face of 
adversity. We must stick to our principles.
  The President's plan has given the American people a tax increase of 
$241

[[Page H5114]]

billion and a deficit that will increase dramatically after the year 
1997. In other words, slow growth, high taxes, and weak economic growth 
will continue unless we stick to our principles.
  Our country needs to go in a new direction. We must cut taxes and cut 
spending. Currently future generations will have to deal with this 
soaring debt and these high taxes. Let us pass this budget.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentlewoman from California [Ms. Roybal-Allard].
  Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD. Mr. Chairman, the Republican budget is short-
sighted in its policy assumptions on transportation spendings.
  By singling out mass transit for executive cuts in transportation 
programs, the Republicans retreat from the ISTEA agreement of 91 
[ISTEA].
  Although transit represents approximately 10 percent of the 1996 
transportation budget, it receives nearly 50 percent of the cuts in 
outlays. And while maintaining the Federal match on highway projects at 
80 percent, the majority jeopardizes mass transit by lowering the 
Federal match to 50 percent.

  Under these revised incentives, local planners will inevitably choose 
highway projects at the expense of much needed mass transit.
  Also, the phasing out of operating assistance will lead to fare 
increases, service cuts, and layoffs. This proposal would disconnect 
thousands of low-income workers from their jobs, isolate many elderly 
from their daily business and from health care.
  In addition, the budget terminates funding for new start programs 
which provide commuting alternatives to some of our fastest growing 
cities.
  Rail expansion in areas such as St. Louis, Los Angeles, Portland, New 
Jersey, and the Sunbelt States will be directly threatened by 
elimination of new starts funding.
  The majority's budget is shortsighted and wrong in its effort to pull 
Federal support from transit planning and programs until the transit 
needs of urban America are fully met.
  I urge a ``no'' vote.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Smith].
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, who do we want to please with 
this budget? I think we want to please the American people. The 
Republican Budget Committee for the first time in many, many years held 
hearings across the United States the last couple of years to ask the 
people what kind of a budget they wanted.
  They said they would like a budget that allows them to keep more of 
their hard-earned income in their pockets rather than paying it out in 
taxes. They said America needs a budget that shifts power, money, and 
influence out of Washington and back to the people and the States and 
their communities.
  This budget is based on these principles. It takes less of each 
person's income by reducing the massive tax burden we have placed on 
our people. The average person in my State of Michigan now works 86 
days a year just to pay their share of taxes at the local, State, and 
national level. Since President Clinton had his huge tax increase of 
1993, my Michigan workers now have to work 7 additional days just to 
earn all of that money that goes in additional taxes. The Heritage 
Foundation estimates that the 1993 Clinton tax increase has cost 
Americans 1.2 million jobs, private sector jobs, and $208 billion in 
economic output.
  This budget calls for studies, Mr. Chairman, to say to States maybe 
it is going to be better if they keep the Federal tax money, rather 
than detour it through Washington to have Washington politically decide 
how that money is going to be distributed, and what they do send back? 
They send back massive regulations and restrictions.
  Andrew Jackson realized that transportation is primarily a State 
issue. This budget gives seniors a choice in their medical coverage. 
This budget reduces the deficit every year and finally balances.
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Stenholm].
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time. 
A moment ago I spoke about agriculture and rural health and was 
challenged by the chairman of the committee, whom I deeply respect, and 
I would just say that we will continue that discussion any time, any 
place, regarding the facts of agriculture. But now I wish to speak to 
the debt and the deficit.
  I have seen the charts, I have seen the kids, and I have seen the 
accusations about this side of the aisle. But the budget that I support 
with the gentleman from Utah [Mr. Orton] and others on this side, we 
propose to borrow $137 billion less so that those same children do not 
have to pay interest on that debt. I do not understand why it makes 
good sense to borrow $137 billion to give a tax cut. That is all we are 
saying. Let us confine ourselves to the spending cuts.
  I want to ask the gentleman from Utah a question. Last year the 
budget resolution contained a provision preventing Congress from 
considering a tax cut until CBO certified that we had found the 
spending cuts to balance the budget first. Is that language in the 
resolution that the Committee on the Budget reported last week?
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. ORTON. No. In fact, Mr. Chairman, the language that the gentleman 
from Texas [Mr. Stenholm] is referring to was section 210 of last 
year's conference report on the budget resolution, which in fact was 
entitled Tax Reduction Contingent on Balanced Budget in the House of 
Representatives.
  The Congressional Budget Office in describing that particular 
provision of the act stated, ``Both procedures in the House and Senate 
require CBO's certification that enacting the proposed reconciliation 
legislation would lead up to a balanced budget in 2002 before the 
Senate or the House can consider proposals to cut taxes.''
  Both Senate Majority Leader Dole and chairman of the Senate Committee 
on the Budget Domenici are on record with regard to this provision, 
Senator Dole saying the tax cuts, quote, ``do not take effect unless 
and until the nonpartisan CBO certifies that we are absolutely on the 
path to a budget that is balanced in the year 2002.'' That is the 
safety valve. They do not take effect until certified. Chairman 
Domenici said, ``But let me suggest that in the final analysis we will 
have tax cuts for the American people only when we get a balanced 
budget.''
  These particular provisions and protections in last year's budget 
reconciliation act are not in this year's budget. As the gentleman 
knows, we attempted in the committee to amend the budget to put these 
provisions back in, these safeguards, and the committee refused to do 
so.


                      announcement by the chairman

  The CHAIRMAN. The Chair must caution all Members not to make personal 
references to Members of the other body.
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, these were merely quotes.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, let me just ask the gentleman another 
question. I have heard referenced today that in the tax cut proposal by 
my friends on the other side, that they are making provision for a 
$500-per-child tax credit. Is it possible, for $122 billion, to get a 
$500 tax credit?
  Mr. ORTON. If the gentleman will yield further, not according to the 
Joint Committee on Taxation. They have scored that over the 6 years as 
costing $135 billion. If in fact you only have a $122 billion tax cut 
provided for in the budget, as they do, you are $13 billion short.
  Mr. STENHOLM. What would happen to the deficit numbers in the 
Republican budget if it included a tax cut large enough to pay for the 
child tax credit in every year?
  Mr. ORTON. They would be $13 billion additional in the hole.
  Mr. STENHOLM. The resolution that is before us contains a net tax cut 
of $122 billion. At the same time information put out by the majority 
indicates they can pay for a permanent repeal of the gas tax, a cut in 
the capital gains, which I happen to support, estate tax relief, small 
business expensing, AMT relief, expansion of IRA's and extension of 
expiring tax credits. By my math, that is more than $122 billion.
  Mr. ORTON. In fact that adds up to a total according, to the Joint 
Economic Committee, of $216.1 billion in cuts. If in fact you only have 
$122 billion provided for in tax cuts, you are $94 billion short.

[[Page H5115]]

  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.
  I think what is important for people to understand is that we laid 
out a program that said that we would downsize Washington and we would 
take the savings from downsizing Washington to pay for part of our tax 
relief program, which is the family tax credit. We also have said that 
we intend to close loopholes that large corporations' lobbyists have 
been able to secure during my lifetime, and we have suggested that we 
would close those loopholes and give some of the money that the big 
corporations with lobbyists in Washington, take some of their breaks 
away and create additional tax relief for hardworking ordinary 
Americans.
  In our proposal, we are going to downsize government and at the same 
time we are going to close these loopholes that were passed by the old 
Democratic majority. We decided that all those loopholes that my 
Democratic friends have complained about for 40 years, finally some of 
them are going to be closed by Republicans, because we do not think 
lobbyists ought to win in this town.
  What I have a hard time understanding is the great concern on the 
part of my Democratic colleagues about giving tax relief to Americans. 
We did not support raising taxes in 1993, and I would assume some of 
them who are complaining about our tax cuts did not support it then, 
either. We intend to systematically repeal as much of that tax increase 
so Americans can have more of their money in their pockets, rather than 
systematically taking it out of their pockets to put it into the 
pockets of bureaucrats. We do not favor that. We want Americans to keep 
more of what they earn.
  We as a majority in this Congress, joined by many on the other side 
of the aisle, are going to systematically reduce the power, the money 
and the influence of this city so that the American people can have 
more, more empowerment, more wealth and more of their own paycheck.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. 
Brownback].
  (Mr. BROWNBACK asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Chairman, just to follow up on those excellent 
comments by the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, what we all 
can agree to that is truly excessive here in Washington is the size of 
the Federal debt and the size of the Government. We have got over $5 
trillion in debt and a government that takes up 22 percent of the 
overall economy of the country. We just think the debt is too big, it 
has got to be smaller for our kids, and we think the Government is too 
big and it needs to be smaller so that we can carry it.
  To put a little meat on the bones factually, the Joint Economic 
Committee says that if we can cut the size of government, if we can cut 
it slightly, get it from 22 percent of the economy to even around 19 
percent of the economy, we will create a growth rate in this country 
that is double the current growth rate. We are going to create jobs, 
better jobs at higher wages, so not only do we get the size of 
government down, not only do we shrink the overall deficit, not only do 
we get to balance over a period of 6 years but we are going to create 
jobs, we are going to create growth in the economy. This is a win all 
the way around.
  I would like to report to the American people, if they do not know, 
we have hit our first-year balanced budget targets. We wanted to get 
the deficit down to $158 billion. Instead it is around $150 billion. We 
are below the target that we wanted to hit this year. And we are now on 
6 years to balance the buget, and we are doing it fairly and 
compassionately and predictably so this economy can grow, so the 
American people can do better and so that we can restore the American 
dream. That is what this is all about.

                              {time}  1745

  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds simply to respond 
to the chairman. There is not great disagreement between us. What we 
have said is we ought to pay for the tax cuts first, before going 
deeper into the hole.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Levin].
  (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Chairman, let me sum up the Republican majority 
budget. They have softened some of the terrible numbers, but many of 
the terrible, harsh policies remain.
  For example, Medicare. Balanced billing, seniors will pay more under 
their provision. And also hospitals in southeast Michigan, the proposal 
of last year would have cut them $2.3 billion. No one thought that was 
sustainable. This would probably be even worse.
  Medicaid, block granting it. Seniors as a result will get less long-
term care. EITC, look, there is one clear conclusion under their 
proposal: When you combine EITC as they have drafted it with their 
child tax credit, 3 million hard-working families with kids are going 
to be worse off.
  Let me say a word about taxes in general, and your $122.4 billion. I 
have heard a lot of rhetoric on this floor about the 1993 tax 
increases. You do not touch a single one of them, not a single one that 
you complain about, except the gas tax, and that you repeal for 7 
months as an election year ploy.
  Why do you not in addition to your rhetoric do something? And then 
second, the $122.4 billion is not really that. As the gentleman from 
Utah [Mr. Orton] has said, it is $60, $70, $80 billion. The New York 
Times caught on to you in the article of May 12. It says, ``The $122 
billion allotted in the budget for a tax cut is a net figure, and House 
leaders have said they will eventually cut an additional $60 billion or 
so in taxes on investors, businesses, and individuals.'' That raises 
the tax cut to $180 billion. ``The added tax breaks,'' I continue 
reading, ``were not plugged into the budget that was made public on 
Wednesday, in part because there is yet no clear way to pay for them 
and in part no doubt because the lower figure is a less attractive 
target for Democrats accusing Republicans of giving tax breaks to the 
rich.''
  So last year it was $270 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for $245 
billion in tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy. Now you are $168 billion 
in Medicare, and what are you, $180 billion in tax cuts, $190, $200? 
You shake your head, Mr. Shays. I said at that budget meeting it was 
$122 billion, plus an amount you are going to give to the Committee on 
Ways and Means. You say it is going to be raised by closing loopholes? 
What loophole did you close last time? Forty billion dollars in pension 
assets belonging to workers, giving it back to corporations? To raise 
$10 billion? You call that a loophole? You were out of touch last year, 
you are out of touch this year.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to correct the 
gentleman on a number of points.
  First off, the earned income tax credit under the Republicans last 
year went from $19 to $25 billion. The school lunch went from $5 to 
$6.8 billion. The Student Loan Program went from $24 to $36 billion. 
Medicaid went from $89 to $127 billion. Medicare went from $178 to $289 
billion.
  Only in this city when you spend so much more do people call it a 
cut.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. 
Nussle].
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, my friend from Michigan said that this is about 
numbers. This is not about numbers, this is about people and families. 
We can do better. Our plan helps, because we allow people to earn more. 
We allow families to earn more, and we allow them to keep more so they 
can do more.
  Let me tell you about a person. We are going to talk about people. I 
had a woman come to one of my town meetings who I think put our budget 
in perspective, all these speeches we hear. She had a simple message 
for me. She said, ``You guys out in Washington don't get it. The 
problem with America today is air-conditioning.''
  I said, ``What are you talking about?''
  She said, ``The problem is air-conditioning.'' She was 90 years old. 
She said, ``When I was a little girl, we used to sit out on our front 
porch to keep cool during the summertime.''
  In the neighborhood that she lived in, neighbors would watch 
neighbors. She said they would take care of one another. Her neighbors 
were worse to the

[[Page H5116]]

kids in the neighborhood than their own parents. They were stricter, 
and would take care of one another. In Iowa, a covered dish solves 
about everything for a neighbor.
  Obviously that is not what we are suggesting here. She was suggesting 
with the invention of air-conditioning, people began to move inside. 
They began to move away from their neighbors, to move away from their 
neighborhood.
  For 40 years in Washington, we have been asking them to move even 
further away from their front porches of America. We have been asking 
them to move to Washington to solve problems, instead of the 
neighborhood, the family, the community. And we have taken from them so 
they cannot earn more and so they eventually cannot do more.
  Let me give you an example of this. I have a town in my district hit 
by a twister. That is the popular movie right now. We got hit by a 
twister about 5 years ago, a town by the name of Worthington, IA. This 
town was devastated. It destroyed just about the entire town.
  Most people who have been watching the movie I am sure would think 
after the kind of devastation you see in a town like that, that maybe 
people would just leave. It is a town of about 800 people.
  This town decided they would pull together. With volunteer money, 
because they knew they could not raise taxes like the Democrats did in 
1993, this town decided with volunteer help, volunteer contribution, 
they built a city hall, a fire department, a community center, and they 
even went together and put in a library. This is a community that 
decided to help themselves. And when asked how did the Federal 
Government help you, there is not a program in the world, there is not 
a program the world, that would have helped them. Nothing at all. They 
could not get any help from the Federal Government. But they decided to 
pull together as a community, and, with local help, they were able to 
get this job done.
  I think that is the kind of attitude we need again in this country if 
we are going to solve problems. $5.3 trillion since the 1960's to solve 
the war on poverty. What has it gotten us? Not less poverty. It has 
gotten us more poverty.
  But what are the community action agencies and groups doing in our 
communities, such as the Salvation Army, organizations that derive 
their strength and their spirit from individual initiative and 
opportunity and responsibility for others?
  That is exactly the kind of spirit that we need. It gets money out of 
Washington. Our plan puts money back in communities and families, back 
to the front porches of America.
  So when you look at this budget and you say to yourself, what is this 
really as a bottom line? It is a question do you want it at a 
bureaucracy, a fancy white building, downtown Washington, filled with 
bureaucrats, or do you want that money on the front porches of America, 
the great front porches, that for years in this country solved our 
problems and in the future will continue to solve our problems if we 
will just let them.
  Families need to earn more, they need to be able to keep more, and, 
with that, they will be able to do more. And when it comes right down 
to it, it is a matter of who you trust. We know who Republicans trust. 
We trust individuals and families, because they make better decisions. 
In Washington, unfortunately, the opposition says bureaucracy makes 
better decisions.
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlemen from 
Texas [Mr. Doggett.]
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me 
time.
  Mr. Chairman, this budget has no true balance. It is rather only a 
retread of the same old Gingrich budget resolution that America 
rejected last year. And the understanding that the American people have 
of this budget is proven correct again today. You will remember, this 
is a budget whose main theme was how much it could cut Medicare in 
order to pay for tax breaks for the privileged.
  Well, today's resolution proposes to cut Medicare $100 billion less 
than last year's resolution, and guess what? Just by coincidence, the 
tax breaks are $100 billion less than last year's resolution, or more 
or less in that range.
  It demonstrates that the American people were correct in 
understanding that there is a direct relationship by how much Medicare 
gets cut, how much health security gets jeopardized, and how many tax 
breaks there are for the privileged.
  But what does this resolution omit? It refuses to do a single thing 
about the billionaire expatriates who renounced their U.S. citizenship 
in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. That would have 
gotten us over $2 billion in revenues. It refuses to cut a single 
corporate tax loophole. It imposes, you might say, a means test for 
welfare. But if you have got the means, every one of your tax loopholes 
and your corporate subsidies is protected. That is the thrust of this 
budget resolution, and it ought to be rejected.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds, to once again 
correct the gentleman for his inaccurate comments.
  Medicare under our bill goes from $196 billion to $283 billion. That 
is a 45-percent increase in spending from this year to the sixth year. 
Under our Medicaid Program, it grows from $95 billion to $140 billion.
  Only in this city, when you spend so much more do people call it a 
cut. We are spending more because we need to improve this program.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from New 
Hampshire [Mr. Bass].
  Mr. BASS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Texas talks about tax cuts for the 
privileged. Of course, that is not true, and it is part of the rhetoric 
we have been hearing in this body now for a year and a half. It is 
totally unsubstantiated.
  You know, we are interested in the privileged, because we consider 
all Americans in this country to be privileged. We are proposing a 
budget this year that continues along the path of balance, to relieve 
Americans from the tax burden that is going up and up and up year after 
year. And in 1995, we passed the first balanced budget in generations. 
Unfortunately, it was vetoed by the President. We continued to work to 
save taxpayers money, and we ended up with a budget that cuts over a 2-
year period $43 billion. That is $668 for every American family. Those 
are our privileged Americans, all American taxpayers.
  There are a bunch of Chicken Littles walking around over here saying 
the sky is going to fall, that we have got this problem and that 
problem. The fact is that we have passed two budgets now and changed 
the debate in Washington, hopefully forever. The debate now is when we 
will balance the budget, not whether.
  Mr. Chairman, here is what we do now. We end once and for all three 
decades of reckless spending. We stop forcing yours and my children to 
continue to pay the bills. As our Federal Reserve Board chairman says, 
if we continue on our course, we are going to raise, and substantially, 
the standard of living for every American in this country. Those are 
the privileged people for us, working Americans.
  The difference between our budget and their budget is that we trust 
Americans. We trust Americans. We want to send power, money and 
influence back to the States and localities. And long after the shrill 
rhetoric dies from this debate, the people who will really benefit from 
this budget that we pass are going to be my children and your children. 
They are the people that are going to be the winners in this debate.
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Olver].
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, the debate today truly is about the future of all of 
our children. This budget resolution is a repeat of many of the extreme 
proposals from last year. Just look at the 1980's and the deficits that 
gave us our current $5 trillion debt. Fiscal year 1982 was the pivotal 
year; a huge tax cut, assurances of future spending cuts, and our 
Nation's very first more than $100 billion deficit.
  From there the deficit exploded. It was exceeding $200 billion 3 of 
the next 4 years. When you begin a budget balancing plan with a big tax 
cut, you invite failure. They deliberately created the illusion of the 
necessity of extreme

[[Page H5117]]

cuts from health care, from education, from job training, from 
environmental protection, from transportation, extreme cuts that 
Americans have said very clearly that they do not want.

                              {time}  1800

  Or they have to do things like raising $20 billion in taxes from low-
wage working Americans whose only sin is to earn less than $25,000 a 
year.
  Their tax cut has nothing to do with balancing the budget. What it 
does do is leave us in the year 2002 with close to $6 trillion of debt 
that we have no revenue to begin to pay back, and $240 billion a year 
in interest on that debt that is going to have to be paid year after 
year after year, without end, into the future of all of our children.
  I urge my colleagues to reject this budget, the committee's product. 
It makes too many of the mistakes of a year ago.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, would you inform both sides how much time is 
available, subtracting 30 minutes from each on the Committee on 
Economic and Educational Opportunities. How much time does this debate 
have?
  The CHAIRMAN. Under the previous order of the House of May 14, 1995, 
the 3 more provided for general debate includes 1 hour on the subject 
of economic goals and policy. So that is 30 minutes of the time 
controlled by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] and 30 minutes of 
the time controlled originally by the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. 
Slaughter], but now the gentleman from Utah [Mr. Orton] is reserved.
  Total time remaining is 39\3/4\ minutes for the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Kasich] and 48\1/2\ minutes for the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. 
Sabo].
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Kasich], chairman of the Committee on the Budget.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I want to point out to the folks watching 
this debate, our problem has been that we have consistently transferred 
resources from people who are young savers to people across the 
spectrum who are consumers. In our society we have destroyed the 
concept of savings.
  When a nation does not save, a nation cannot invest. When a nation 
cannot invest, it cannot put the tools in the hands of the workers to 
compete and win, and we end up with job insecurity and stagnant wages. 
Mr. Broder on Sunday talked about the need to boost savings and 
investment and risk taking and opportunities so that our people can 
have the tools to win. That is what our document does.
  Part of it is about huge deficits that kill the ability to save, but 
the other part of it is to transfer money from savers to consumers, and 
over time this country finds itself in a stagnated position. Our plan 
is designed to reward savings, to reward investment, to reward risk-
taking, so that this country can have higher productivity and so that 
our workers can win and gain and earn more into the next century.
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Maryland [Mr. Hoyer].
  (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, this is about our children and it is about 
trust. Unfortunately, we are not being as honest with the American 
public as we ought to be.
  In 1981 we talked about supply-side economics. We passed the 
Republican program in 1981. I say to my Republican colleagues that we 
passed it as they wanted to pass it and President Reagan signed it in 
August 1981. He said, after passing the tax bill as well, ``We will 
balance the budget by October 1, 1983, under my program.''
  That is what was said to the American public and to this House. This 
is what happened. We went from $945 billion in total debt, I tell the 
chairman of the Committee on the Budget, to $4.5 trillion in debt. Why? 
Because we pursued the same kind of economic program that is included 
in the Republican budget today. The same kind. It is a supply-side 
budget which created gargantuan debt for the grandchildren and children 
that we talk on this floor.
  Yes, it is about trust, and there is a responsible budget to be 
offered to this House, the coalition budget, which is a bipartisan 
budget that creates $137.5 billion less in debt. Why? Because it is 
honest with the American public, and says if we are going to buy 
education and environmental protection and health care, we need to pay 
for it, not so our children pay for it.
  Let us not pursue supply-side economics once again to the detriment 
of future generations.
  I rise to join my colleagues in expressing my deep concern about the 
nearly $124 billion of tax breaks for the wealthy included in the 
Republican leadership's budget proposal.
  I am a strong supporter of adding a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution and believe that we must get our fiscal house in order 
before we cut revenue.
  The alternative budget proposed by members of the Democratic 
coalition and the distinguished ranking member of the Budget Committee 
is a responsible and genuine way to balance our budget.
  By delaying tax breaks until 2002 when the budget would be balanced, 
the plan allows continued investment in our future.
  The coalition plan provides $21 billion more for Medicare.
  It includes $45 billion more than the Republican budget for 
education, head start, and job training.
  It provides $14 billion more than the Republican plan for basic 
scientific research, such as NASA and its mission to Planet Earth 
Program, as well as energy conservation.
  And I am especially pleased that the coalition does not include the 
unwise and unfair cuts in Federal employee benefits that are again in 
the Republican plan.
  There is a sensible, real, CBO-scored way to balance our budget in 7 
years. It does so without compromising investment in America's future 
and I urge every Member to support it.
  Then, in 2002, when our fiscal house is in order, this Congress can 
approve tax reductions for all Americans-including the middle class and 
the poor who would be so devastated by the Republican proposal before 
us.
  I urge a ``no'' vote on the Republican proposal and a ``yes'' vote on 
the coalition alternative.
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Meehan].
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, it is foolish and irresponsible to propose 
increasing the deficit as part of a plan to balance the budget, but 
that is exactly what the Republicans want to do. Their much touted 6-
year budget plan will order the Congress to borrow $17 billion next 
year in order to pay for 1 year of tax cuts, tax cuts that in the end 
will cost $175 billion in just 6 years, even though the Republicans 
only have enough to pay for $124 billion.
  Are we not supposed to be cutting the deficit? Every year we fail to 
balance the budget we add to the growing national debt. The nearly $5 
trillion debt sops up national savings, leaving increasingly less money 
for private investment, new equipment, technology, and worker training. 
Balancing the budget involves some very difficult choices.
  We just passed a defense authorization bill this year that added $13 
billion to what the Pentagon asked for. Last year we added, that is 
right, we added $7 billion to what the Pentagon asked for.
  We have tough choices to make. How about the $200 billion we could 
save in corporate welfare over a 6-year period if Republicans would 
forget about the special interests and really try to make the tough 
decisions to balance this budget? The short-term consequences of 
expanding free trade pale in comparison to the long-term effects of a 
growing national debt, lower wages, a poorly trained work force and 
lagging economic growth.
  The Republican plan foolishly sells tax cuts to the public in 
exchange for increasing the debt while drastically reducing investments 
in technology, economic development, education and the environment, 
ironically the very resources we need to be competitive worldwide and 
to reestablish high growth rates that our next generation needs to 
enjoy.
  Let us forget this plan and support the coalition's budget 
alternative. This involves tough decisions. The coalition budget does 
that.
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
  The real issue here that we are asking is that we be honest with the 
American public. Section 210 in last year's conference report, titled 
``Tax Reduction Contingent on Balanced Budget in the House of 
Representatives,'' at least promised the people we would not cut taxes 
first and then abandon spending cuts and end up increasing the deficit.

[[Page H5118]]

That is, if anything that we have learned from the decade of the 
1980's, that should be it.
  What is in this particular budget? We do not know. It says a net $122 
billion tax cut. What is it? It does not even pay for the one item that 
has been identified. What about the gas tax? If we are going to repeal 
it more than just 6 months until the day after the election, that is 
going to cost an additional $30 billion. That is not paid for.
  Even without the gas tax in it, the numbers are $64 billion off. 
Where are we going to cut spending? Where are we going to raise other 
revenues to make up that $64 billion? That is a giant hole in this 
budget resolution which no one has identified, no one has talked about. 
The public deserves to know what is in it or what is out of it, and the 
public deserves to have a promise that we will not increase the 
deficit.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, the state of the budget for 19--
--
  Mr. SHAYS. Point of order, Mr. Chairman.
  The CHAIRMAN. Does the gentlewoman yield herself such time as she 
might consume?
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.
  The CHAIRMAN. Has the gentleman from Utah transferred control of the 
time?
  Mr. ORTON. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. Meek] 
will be controlling the remainder of the time until the 30 minutes, at 
which time the gentleman from Washington [Mr. McDermott] will control 
the time.
  The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, the gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. 
Meek] is recognized for 3 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  (Mrs. MEEK of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, last Thursday the Committee on 
the Budget met and deliberated for quite some time, and as we 
deliberated I made some assumptions about what I saw going on there. It 
appeared that the bottom line of that budget resolution was that the 
Republicans had changed the budget to some extent but there was still 
the same theme with some variations; the same theme of being able to 
work very hard to be sure that we would balance the budget in 7 years.
  That was done with their budget, but as they did it, it appeared that 
the same people who were negatively affected in the first budget were 
still the same in this one. They assume tax cuts of at least $176 
billion, which include a cut in the tax rate on capital gains. Part of 
these tax cuts is paid for by cuts in the rate of growth of spending 
for such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare.
  It goes back to my original assumption, Mr. Chairman, that the same 
people that were negatively impacted in the first budget resolution, 
well, here we are again impacting them negatively again. But another 
part of the tax cut for the wealthy is paid for by raising taxes on 
working Americans.
  The theme of the entire Republican budget resolutions all the time 
has been to help working Americans or to save for working Americans. 
Here we come back and show in this budget resolution that they are now 
raising taxes on working Americans who are at the very bottom of the 
income scale.
  The Republicans want to cut the earned income tax credit by $20 
billion. Now, we all know that is a cash payment from the IRS to low-
income working families. The total Republican cuts in entitlement 
spending in this resolution came to $310 billion. The Medicare cut, 
$158 billion, accounts for 51 percent of the total cuts in 
entitlements. Almost all the other entitlement cuts, 47 percent, come 
from the three programs that I and my colleagues are going to debate 
for the next 15 minutes, Medicaid, welfare, and the EITC.
  Mr. Chairman, I will talk briefly and focus on the EITC. At the 
markup, the majority said this year's proposal on the EITC essentially 
is the same as last year in the so-called Balanced Budget Act of 1995, 
and that bill was vetoed by Mr. Clinton. That is not quite true.
  We now know what this EITC proposal means for those responsible, 
hardworking Americans who have chosen work over welfare. A few months 
ago the staff of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation released an 
analysis of the impact on working Americans of the majority's EITC 
proposal as set forth in last year's conference report. The Joint 
Committee on Taxation found that 6.3 million families with annual 
incomes below $30,000 will face higher taxes because of the cutbacks in 
the EITC.
  The Joint Committee on Taxation further found that the Republican 
plan would have raised taxes on many working Americans even after 
taking account of the $500-per-child tax credit in H.R. 2491. The 
report of the Joint Committee on Taxation concludes that 2.8 million 
families with children and with annual incomes below $30,000 would be 
worse off under last year's proposal even after taking into account of 
the $500-per-child tax credit. According to the Joint Committee, these 
2.8 million families with children will be worse off by $29 a year even 
after taking into account of the $500 child credit.
  Some of you may think an average tax increase of $29 is not very 
much. But that $29 is an average. That means some will face a larger 
tax increase. Moreover, this tax increase of $29 is more than the 
average American family will save because of the proposed repeal of the 
4.3-cent-per-gallon gas tax. So what you're giving with one hand, 
you're more than taking away with the other.
  The current Republican attack on the EITC is somewhat surprising 
because the EITC has historically had bipartisan support as a way to 
encourage people to choose work over welfare.
  The EITC was originally enacted under President Ford in 1975, when 
the maximum annual credit was set at $400. Five times--under each of 
the next four Presidents--the maximum credit was raised, and in 1986 
the schedule for the EITC was also indexed to keep pace with inflation. 
This year the maximum annual credit for a family with two or more 
children is $3,564.

  But on a party-line vote the Committee on the Budget rejected my 
amendment to limit the changes in the EITC to those designed to reduce 
errors and fraud. According to the Congressional Budget Office, my 
amendment--which would fight fraud but still protect the working poor--
would save about $2 billion over 7 years. The Republican majority was 
primarily interested not in reducing fraud, but in balancing the budget 
on the backs of the poor.
  I've asked the Rules Committee to make in order my amendment to give 
Members the opportunity to goon record in support of people who tough 
it out every day, working in low-paying jobs, supporting themselves and 
their families. I doubt the Rules Committee will grant my request.
  Many Members of the majority are using the existence of the current 
EITC to justify their opposition to an increase in the Federal minimum 
wage.
  For example, on April 23, the majority whip made that argument to the 
House of Representatives. He relied on a Congressional Research Service 
[CRS] study he had requested. For each State, CRS added government 
payments for the EITC, Food Stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent 
Children [AFDC], and day care to the wages of a single person working 
full time at the minimum wage. CRS found that a single parent with two 
small children living in Florida and working full time at the minimum 
wage would have annual gross wages of $8,840 and would pay social 
Security payroll taxes of $676. This parent's wages would be 
supplemented, according to CRS, by an EITC payment of $3,536; food 
stamps worth $2,992; and an AFDC payment of $1,258. So this parent's 
total annual income after Federal taxes is $15,950.

  Living in Miami, a single parent with two small children would find 
it hard to provide food, shelter, full-time day care, and clothing for 
$15,950 a year. Cut that EITC payment, and you hurt that family 
terribly. If the Republican majority really wants people to choose work 
over welfare, they would support both an increase in the minimum wage 
and the current level of EITC.
  During the Budget Committee debate on my amendment, the Republicans 
asked how I proposed paying for the $20 billion in EITC spending over 6 
years that my amendment would have protected. The answer to their 
question is contained in their own discussion on reducing corporate tax 
subsidies. In explaining how the Republicans would pay for their 
proposed cut in the tax on capital gains, the majority's draft report 
on the budget resolution ``assumes a reduction in provisions in the Tax 
Code that can be clearly identified as benefiting one industry or a 
limited number of corporations and derive no public benefits.'' The 
draft report goes on to say that the Committee on Ways and Means has 
identified such changes in the Tax Code that ``raise approximately $26 
billion.''
  It appears that the Republicans have clearly stated their preference: 
to use this $26 billion to pay for tax cuts for wealthy Americans 
rather than to avoid raising taxes on working Americans.

[[Page H5119]]

  There are almost 1 million hard-working families in Florida who will 
be affected by the Republicans' proposal to cut the EITC by $20 billion 
over 6 years; 46,000 of these families are in my congressional 
district.
  In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, under the current Republican budget 
proposal, surely the rich will get richer, and the poor will pay for 
it.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota 
[Mr. Pomeroy].
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, one of the greatest errors made by the 
majority in their budget of last year were the devastating reductions 
they proposed in the future funding of the Medicaid Program. 
Unfortunately, they have done it again.
  What is Medicaid? Medicaid is the joint venture of the Federal 
Government and State governments to meet the health care needs of 
children from homes falling below the poverty line, of disabled 
individuals unable to work and otherwise cover their health care 
expenses, and the long-term care costs of destitute elderly citizens. 
There are no more vulnerable people in this country than kids raised in 
poverty, disabled, and seniors who require long-term care but lack the 
funds to pay for it.
  I am convinced much of the public reaction against last year's GOP 
budget was because the American people would not walk away from these 
kids and these seniors as they struggled to meet their health care 
needs.
  A central problem with the GOP budget before us is that once again it 
clobbers kids and destitute seniors with Medicaid reductions that will 
dramatically reduce the quality of the health care these Americans can 
access.
  Now, on the surface, the differences in Federal spending between the 
proposals may not look like much. The administration proposes a $54 
billion reduction; the coalition $70 billion; the GOP budget $72 
billion. The dirty little secret, however, behind the GOP proposal is 
that it would allow State funding toward the Medicaid program to fall 
off dramatically.

                              {time}  1815

  The ultimate comparison is revealed on this chart and shows just how 
devastating their hits would be. The administration combined hit of 
$105 billion, coalition $125 billion, but the GOP budget, $257 billion 
in future expenditures, nearly at the reckless levels of their last 
year's budget.
  The difference between the proposals means this: Under the GOP plan, 
fewer kids in impoverished homes will be able to get health care. The 
services currently available to disabled Americans will be reduced and 
in some cases eliminated. And the long-term care for our seniors, 
people like our parents and our grandparents but they do not have 
ability to pay for it themselves, will fall and it will fall in terms 
of accessibility and in terms of quality of care.
  If we are to negotiate toward a historic balanced budget agreement, 
Mr. Chairman, we will not be able to bridge differences as great as 
those contained in their Medicaid proposal. I urge the majority to 
change their Medicaid plan, preserve the State-Federal partnership in 
meeting the health needs of impoverished kids and destitute elderly.
  Until changes are made in this regard, however, I urge my colleagues 
to reject these devastating reductions in future Medicaid spending. Our 
kids and our seniors deserve better.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond once 
again to the inaccuracies of my colleague.
  From 1991 to 1996, we spent $463 billion on Medicaid. Under our 
proposal it increases. We will spend $731 billion, 463, 731. The 
President would spend only slightly more, 749. What is interesting is, 
our colleagues in the coalition budget would spend 732, $1 billion 
more. They call ours a cut and they call theirs an increase.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the 
gentleman from North Dakota [Mr. Pomeroy].
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, Medicare is joint, State and Federal. If 
you look at the combined reductions in spending in the Medicaid 
Program, their proposal is recklessly, dangerously different than 
either the President or the coalition proposal.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentlewoman from California [Ms. Woolsey].
  (Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her 
remarks.)
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, here we go again.
  As the only Member of this body to have actually been a single, 
working mother on welfare, I rise, once again, to make it clear that 
this budget is no kinder or gentler to children and families than the 
welfare reform plan peddled by Speaker Gingrich and the new majority 
last year.
  That should come as no surprise to anyone because this budget is just 
a rehash of the majority's same old cruel policies and skewed budget 
priorities that were rejected by the American people last year.
  They were rejected, my friends, because the American people want real 
welfare reform--reform that helps families get jobs and stay off 
welfare for good--reform that expands the earned income tax credit; 
boosts the minimum wage and invests in education; job training; health 
care; child care and child support.
  However, this budget, like all of the majority's welfare reform plans 
that came before it, tells children in this country: if you're poor, 
you had better not get sick, don't get hungry, and don't get cold, 
because the majority doesn't think you're important.
  It says to families: Republicans in Congress don't want to provide 
you with a guaranteed level of health care; food; and general 
assistance for your children.
  Just by ending the guarantee of Medicaid alone, almost 4.9 million 
children may lose their health coverage.
  And, by its cuts to the earned income tax credit and failure to boost 
the minimum wage, this budget tells working parents that you might as 
well go on welfare because the majority doesn't think work should pay.
  In fact, approximately 3 million working families will come out worse 
thanks to the majority's cuts to the earned income tax credit.
  Mr. Chairman, this is not the way to be treating our working 
families, and it is certainly not the way to be treating our children.
  It's time for the majority to stop recycling it's misplaced 
priorities and it's extreme policies.
  It's time for the majority to work with us to pass a balanced budget 
that moves our Nation forward without leaving behind those who depend 
on us most--our children, our families, and our seniors.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Arizona [Mr. Kolbe].
  (Mr. KOLBE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, twice now I have heard the gentlewoman from 
California, the gentlewoman from Florida talk about cuts in the earned 
income tax credit. Let me point out to my colleagues what we are 
talking about here.
  Here is what we have spent the last 5 years on the earned income tax 
credit, $109 billion. This is what we are talking about spending the 
next 6 years, excuse me, the last 6 years versus the next 6 years, $155 
billion. It must be some very special accounting that is used here in 
Washington by some of my colleagues that calls an increase from 109 to 
155, $1 billion over the next 6 years, as some kind of a cut.
  What we are talking about changing, what we are talking about 
eliminating is the earned income tax credit for illegal aliens. We do 
not think they should be eligible for the earned income tax credit. We 
are talking also about eliminating payments, ending payments to persons 
that have substantial sources of nontaxable or unearned income: for 
example, Social Security, tax exempt interest, IRA distributions, child 
support payments, those would be counted as part of the income, not 
currently included there.
  So, yes, for those people there would be an elimination because they 
have other sources, in many cases government sources, of unearned 
income. We are talking about ending payments to childless workers. That 
was not ever the original intention of the legislation to have people 
who are childless workers. I would like to know the logic from my 
colleagues on this side of the aisle as to why a couple that earned, 
individual who has two children, is trying to

[[Page H5120]]

raise them, should work extra hard to pay for taxes to provide an 
earned income tax credit for somebody who is childless and working part 
time.
  An individual who is working full time at the minimum wage would 
qualify for a total of $40 under the earned income tax credit. In other 
words, basically a full-time person who is childless working at the 
minimum wage does not qualify for it anyhow. So you are talking about 
part-time people anyhow.
  For the first 18 years of the earned income tax credit, it was not 
available to childless workers. That was one of the things that was 
added much later.
  My colleagues also often mention that this is one of Ronald Reagan's 
favorite programs. They ought to remember that when Ronald Reagan was 
President, he was talking about in 1986, the total cost of the earned 
income tax credit was $2 billion. Today it is $25.3 billion, that is an 
1165-percent increase in just 10 years.
  We are not talking about eliminating or cutting the earned income tax 
credit. We are talking about getting rid of some of the abuses and 
trying to target those who need it the most and allow working people 
who have families to keep some of the money in their own pocket and not 
have to pay for childless couples who do not really need the earned 
income tax credit.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to 
respond to my colleague's point of view.
  I think what my colleague said did not present the whole picture of 
the cut that they have made in the EITC, because according to a study 
by the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, the changes which the 
Republicans have recommended in their resolution would increase taxes 
on 6.3 million hard working families, that needs to be talked about, 
with an annual income below $30,000 a year.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from the State of New Jersey [Mr. Martini].
  (Mr. MARTINI asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. MARTINI. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the American 
people and in support of the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution. Two 
years ago Americans were restless and concerned. No longer was the 
status quo good enough. I shared that concern and that is why I ran for 
Congress in 1994.
  Now, 2 years later, our record shows that we have succeeded in 
changing the status quo. We have taken action to make America fiscally 
sound once again. We have proven we can cut wasteful spending and 
protect our most important priorities and do so with caring and 
compassion while addressing the need of working families. The reason is 
obvious. The difference between our budget and theirs is that we trust 
the American people and they do not.
  We know the very richness and quality of our lives is not defined 
solely by government but, rather, by the opportunity to be involved 
with our community, schools, neighbors and of course our places of 
worship. In my mind, these ideas are not revolutionary. Rather, they 
are inherent in the very role of being a Congressperson, managing the 
financial affairs of Government responsibly and fairly.
  Yes, this Congress pushed the envelope of fiscal responsibility at 
the President, and we pushed that envelope again. He could no longer 
ignore that. It was not always pretty but real change never is.
  The result has been saving the American taxpayers $43 billion, the 
first such reduction since World War II, a cut in deficit without an 
increase in taxes. Contrast this with the 1993 Clinton Democrat 
Congress budget of more spending, ballooning deficits, and the biggest 
tax increase in American history, $245 billion.
  Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have come far in the last 2 years. I say to my 
colleagues, now is not the time to succumb to the scare and fear 
rhetoric that we have heard from the other side. I might add the party 
that for years stood for the party that said we have nothing to fear 
but fear itself today offers us only fear and more fear.
  Now is not the time to retreat. Now is the time to go forward with 
courage and to continue on the path of change that we have adopted. I 
say we pass the budget resolution.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentlewoman from Hawaii [Mrs. Mink].
  (Mrs. MINK of Hawaii asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that it was 
not too long ago that we were saying, read my lips, no tax increases. 
Our majority party has been saying no tax increases, we are going to 
have tax cuts because that is what this economy needs. Yet we know this 
budget resolution is going to reduce EITC by $20 billion. What does 
that mean for those childless families? That means a tax increase.
  If they have under existing law been enjoying an EITC from the 
Government and suddenly this bill is passed, reducing that EITC benefit 
to this family because they are childless, that, my friends, is a tax 
increase to that family. There will be millions of families so 
affected.
  A family without a child in the household that they can consider a 
dependent may suddenly be strapped by someone becoming very ill, a 
heart attack or a stroke or someone has to go out and work and perhaps 
under this devastating minimum wage not be able to survive. And the 
Government is going to say, now that childless couple needing the 
support from this Government just as poor as any other family is not 
going to have the EITC benefit because there is no child in the 
household?
  We want to help all families that are poor, that are entitled to this 
support. I cannot believe that the majority would stand up and say that 
this is not a tax increase on that poor family that heretofore has had 
this benefit.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute and 30 seconds.
  Can we imagine a family where the income of two children at $30,000 
who are being taxed to give benefits to a childless couple making 
$28,000, can we imagine the mother and father telling their children we 
cannot go to McDonald's tonight because we had to pay more taxes to 
give more benefits to a childless couple that is making $1,000 less 
than we are.
  What does the family get who goes to work every day and is struggling 
to support their children? What do those people get? They do not want 
food stamps. They do not want housing. What they want is an 
opportunity. And what we aim to do is to give opportunity to those 
people trying to climb out of welfare.
  We are trying to give benefits to those people who desperately need 
it. We are trying to help those people who cannot help themselves. But 
do my colleagues know who else we are very concerned about? Low income 
working Americans who give more and more and get less and less back. 
They are the forgotten Americans in this country. Those Americans are 
struggling every day to support their children, and all they ask for is 
an opportunity.
  That is what this budget is all about, rewarding those people who get 
up every day and go to work, and all they ask for is a chance, and more 
of their money back in their paychecks for them to spend on their 
children. That is what is right.

                              {time}  1830

  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 more seconds to the 
gentlewoman from Hawaii [Mrs. Mink].
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Chairman, the distinguished gentleman from 
Ohio [Mr. Kasich], I think, misses the point. We all want to benefit 
working families. It was never the intention to make a distinction 
about a childless family. The formula currently includes benefits for 
childless workers because clearly there are circumstances where there 
are two individuals in a family, one perhaps disabled and unable to 
work, suffering some kind of disability where only one sole individual 
in that family can go out and work, and that family is as entitled to 
this benefit as any other family, and I do not believe the law ought to 
be changed. And the $20 billion that our colleagues are taking out of 
the program is to hurt that family. It is a tax increase.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise today to ask my colleagues to take notice of a 
small, but important provision in this budget resolution. It expresses 
the sense of Congress that we should not enact or adopt any legislation 
that will increase the number of children who are hungry, homeless, 
poor, or medically uninsured,

[[Page H5121]]

and further stipulates that Congress must revisit any legislation 
enacted to comply with this budget resolution which does cause an 
increase in the number of children who are hungry, homeless, poor, or 
medically uninsured.
  I authored this amendment which was accepted by the Budget Committee 
on a voice vote. I must say that I was quite pleased when the chairman 
of the Budget Committee accepted my amendment without hesitation. 
Accepting this provision may have been easy, but I would caution this 
House that complying with it will be difficult given the budget 
proposal before us today.
  As we have seen in the past, this budget seeks to sacrifice the most 
vulnerable in our Nation in exchange for a balanced budget by the 
arbitrarily chosen year of 2002.
  It is difficult for me to see how we are going to prevent more 
children from becoming hungry, homeless, poor, or medically uninsured 
under this plan, which disproportionately targets those programs 
dedicated to assisting the poor, most of whom are children. Medicaid 
will be cut by $72 billion over the next 6 years, $53 billion will be 
taken away from welfare programs and the EITC will be cut by $20 
billion. With the exception of Medicare, no other Federal program takes 
a larger hit in this budget than these three programs which make up the 
basic social safety net for our Nation's children.
  It is obvious that the intention of their budget is to dismantle 
those very programs that work to keep children from being hungry, 
homeless, poor, and medically uninsured.
  Most devastating is their decision again to do away with the basic 
guarantee, the entitlement, for children in this Nation to receive a 
minimum level of financial support and guaranteed health care, no 
matter where they live in this country, who their parents are, or the 
most difficult circumstances they may live in. Make no mistake, the 
adoption of this budget will end the Federal Government's commitment to 
a guaranteed safety net for our children.
  We already know that if welfare legislation similar to H.R. 4 is 
adopted as this budget resolution suggests that at least 1.2 million 
more children will be thrown into poverty. This is based on analysis of 
the Senate version of H.R. 4 by the Department of Health and Human 
Services and the OMB.
  Welfare reform as proposed in this document has nothing to do with 
giving families the tools to become self-sufficient and everything to 
do with cutting the budget. If we were truly interested in helping 
families on welfare we would be retaining the entitlement, especially 
for child care; increasing funding for education and job training, not 
decreasing it; and expanding health care for the poor, not reducing it.
  In addition to the elimination of the safety net for children, this 
budget adds insult to injury by making it more difficult for low-income 
working parents to provide for their children without government 
assistance by cutting the earned income tax credit [EITC] by $20 
billion over the next 6 years. According to the Joint Committee on 
Taxation, the EITC reforms proposed by the Republican budget would 
increase taxes for 6.3 million working families with incomes less than 
$30,000. We hear the Republican majority spout rhetoric about personal 
responsibility and the need to be self-sufficient, yet here we have a 
program that truly helps working families stay off welfare, and what do 
the Republicans do? They cut it.
  Instead of supporting policies that lift people out of poverty like 
the EITC and an increase in the minimum wage, this budget relies on the 
failed policies associated with the trickle down economics. Worse, it 
destroys the safety net under current law for our 5 million children in 
welfare. To hurt these children is absolutely the wrong policy.
  This budget resolution is seriously flawed. It eliminates or severely 
cripples some of the most important functions of the Federal 
Government, that which assumes our children and the most vulnerable in 
this Nation are cared for. The only hope we have is that provision I 
added in the Budget Committee which requires us to revisit this budget 
if it results in more children becoming hungry, homeless, poor, or 
medically uninsured. I ask my colleagues to reject this budget because 
it hurts children, it hurts the poor, the elderly, and the sick.
  The gentleman from Arizona earlier said this budget is about 
priorities. Clearly, the majority's priorities do not lie with our 
children, or their families.
  This budget resolution calls for the end of Americorps, terminates 
Goals 2000 which is local education reform, freezes Head Start, freezes 
WIC, cuts Job training by 25 percent below fiscal year 1996 levels, 
freezes funds for title I, freezes college student financial assistance 
programs like Pell grants, Work study cuts library funds by 20 percent, 
phases out legal services for the poor, phases out funds for the arts 
and humanities, and privatizes Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and 
cuts bilingual education.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman 
from Mississippi [Mr. Thompson]. He is a new member of the Committee on 
the Budget.
  (Mr. THOMPSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to the 
Republican budget due to the fact that it cuts deeply into programs 
that help children, seniors, and working people. This budget will have 
a devastating effect on my constituents in the Second Congressional 
District of Mississippi. Cutting $72 billion in Medicaid will decimate 
nursing home residents and cause many seniors to be put on the streets. 
This is a mean-spirited effort and is equivalent to Robin Hood in 
reverse.
  While the Republican majority refuses to raise the minimum wage, they 
insist on reducing the earned income tax credit. The only help 
available for working-class Americans, the earned income tax credit, 
goes to people who work, not people relying on welfare. This is very 
unfair and a slap in the face. Of the persons who receive earned income 
tax credit in Mississippi, 234,000 had a gross income of under $15,000. 
This is about 25 percent of the working families in Mississippi--
63,000, Mr. Chairman, live in my district.
  I urge opposition to the budget.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox].
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is recognized 
for 2\1/4\ minutes.
  (Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, our budget plan will help 
America do better. We have passed the first balanced budget in a 
generation. While the President vetoed our balanced budget, we have 
changed Washington forever. The debate is no longer about whether we 
need a balanced budget, it is about the best way to achieve one. We 
fought for one, the single largest reduction in spending since World 
War II, a savings to taxpayers of $43 billion. This budget will help 
seniors, working families, and children. We end nearly decades of 
reckless deficit spending. We stop forcing our children to pay our 
bills.
  As Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says, a balanced budget 
would enable families to look forward to their children doing better 
than they did, to give States the freedom to develop welfare programs 
that promote personal responsibility and break the cycle of welfare 
dependency. It restores the authority, Mr. Chairman, and responsibility 
for pubic education back where it belongs, in the hands of parents, 
principals, and local school boards, not with the growing Federal 
bureaucracy.
  It allows decisionmakers in the States, not Washington bureaucrats, 
to design Medicaid programs that are tailored to meet the special needs 
of the poor and elderly.
  This budget helps families move ahead through a $500 per child family 
tax credit, a special $5,000 adoption credit, a rollback of the Clinton 
tax hike. American families will get to keep more of what they earned.
  Our balanced budget will also lead to lower interest rates. That will 
lower mortgage costs, car payments, student loans, and create hundreds 
of new jobs. Right now the Federal Government borrows so much available 
long-term capital that anyone else looking to borrow money is forced to 
pay higher rates. Once we stop deficit spending, interest rates will 
drop, saving the average family $1,700, almost $1,800.
  This budget also attacks waste and inefficiency and puts an end to 
billions of dollars in corporate subsidies and special-interest tax 
breaks. It helps our veterans with $5.1 billion more than the 
administration's funding for hospitals and medical care.
  Mr. Chairman, this budget is fair, compassionate, and it helps our 
constituents have a better life.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton], and I ask unanimous consent 
that he be allowed to control the time.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Ohio?
  There was no objection.

[[Page H5122]]

  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the 
gentlewoman from California [Ms. Roybal-Allard].
  Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD. Mr. Chairman, last year, the American people 
rejected the Republican budget, and the President justifiably vetoed 
it.
  This year's Republican budget is no better. Instead of moderating 
their extreme policies, the majority's plan continues to hurt hard 
working Americans.
  Raising the minimum wage is supported by over 80 percent of the 
American people because it will help over 7 million working adults to 
pay for groceries, health care, rent, or their children's education.
  The majority, however, is denying Congress a clean vote to raise the 
minimum wage, while at the same time proposing to cut the earned income 
tax credit for low-paid workers.
  The EITC cuts of $21.6 billion will negatively impact 60,000 families 
in my district alone and 6 million low-income families across this 
country.
  It makes no sense that as Congress debates the needs and the value of 
America's workers, the majority proposes to raise taxes on the poorest 
workers.
  This is an unfair and unjust budget, and I urge my colleagues to vote 
``no.''
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens].
  (Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, this fiscal year 1997 budget of the 
Republican majority continues the same extremism of the fiscal year 
1996 budget. American people have rejected that extremism, but it goes 
on and on. It is an assault on the majority of the American people, 
starting with the poorest people who need Government most. The 
children, the elderly and the people with disabilities are attacked 
first.
  The Medicaid entitlement, the removal of the Medicaid entitlement, is 
the thrust of that attack, which is most dangerous. Are we going to 
take away the possibility of life itself from many people? The Medicaid 
entitlement, means-tested Medicaid entitlement, is probably one of the 
most noble actions of our Government. As my colleagues know, it is a 
prolife action in the most profound sense of the concept of prolife. It 
is for all life. But by taking away the Medicaid entitlement, we are 
going to condemn people to a situation where the funds will not be 
there to preserve life when it is needed. We are taking a step backward 
from the possibility of ever realizing universal health care. This is a 
step forward toward decentralized genocide.
  By giving it out to the States, by having the States with less money 
try to meet these needs, we are going to ratchet down the benefits and 
make more and more people suffer and more and more people will die, and 
eventually we are going to get into a situation where there is a whole 
class of people which we are throwing overboard, a whole class of 
people for which life itself has no meaning, the Government will not 
help to preserve it, and that kind of step is what this extremist 
budget takes us into.

  Medicaid entitlement must be preserved.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton].
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding this 
time to me.
  I want to emphasize something that has already been stated, that 
indeed the Republicans are at it again, they are really attacking the 
poorest of the poor. Contrary to what they say, they are actually 
raising taxes on more than 6 million low-income persons. At the same 
time, they are giving a capital gain to the wealthy. Why not give tax 
breaks to all America rather than putting it all on the poor? On 7.7 
million low-income people, taxes were raised in 1995. They did it in 
1995; they are at it again. The poorest of the poor is being hurt.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Chairman, in closing, I just would like to say that the 
Republicans are not facing the facts. Families with children will still 
be worse off in this new budget resolution. The Joint Economic 
Committee has already revealed that the $29 that the chairman talked 
about, that is an average figure. That is not the figure for every 
family. Some families will be hit harder by that, and we will have a 
large tax increase.
  Mr. Chairman, we can balance this budget together, the Republicans 
and the Democrats, but we cannot balance it unless we work both with 
the poor, and the near-poor, and the rich.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes.
  Mr. Chairman, first let me commend the chairman of the Committee on 
the Budget and his colleagues and the staff of the Committee on the 
Budget for providing us with the opportunity to consider what I 
consider a very, very find budget.
  This next hour will be controlled by the members of the Joint 
Economic Committee, and it is our function, along with deciding on what 
our priorities should be, to try to shed some light on the fiscal 
implications of our Federal budget, of our proposed Federal budget, and 
our past actions on the economic performance of the private sector in 
our country.
  Mr. Chairman, I find it quite interesting to do that because over the 
years that I have served on the Joint Economic Committee we have found 
that there are certain things that happen here in Washington that have 
a profound effect on the American economy.
  Today many middle-class Americans are deeply concerned about their 
lack of economic progress, and I would like to speak for just a few 
minutes about that because that is one of the issues that we are trying 
to address with this budget. Ordinary Americans in many walks of life 
feel that they are on a treadmill where they have to run faster and 
faster to stay in the same place, if not fall behind. Unfortunately, 
they have every reason to be concerned because not only is income 
growth nonexistent but taxes have gone up.
  I would like to just point out that over the last 10 months we have 
released a number of Joint Economic Committee studies and reports 
documenting the middle-class income meltdown. The sad truth is that a 
variety of statistics show that economic well-being of the American 
middle class has declined or stagnated under the policies of this 
administration, and we are going to try to fix it.
  For example, take one standard measure, median family income: This 
statistic charts changes in the level of middle-income families over 
time and can be adjusted for inflation as well. The Joint Economic 
Committee found that during the Clinton administration there has been 
no progress in inflation-adjusted median income. In other words, 
families that earned $40,000 3 years ago on average continue to earn 
$40,000 this year. This chart exemplifies that.
  During the last decade, during the 8 years of the Reagan 
administration, each year American families could anticipate a 1.7 
percent increase on average in their income. Now, if we extrapolate 
that out during that period of time, that means that income went up 
during that 8 years almost 14 percent.
  Now, just to take an example of what that meant to the average 
American family over that 8 years, it meant that a family that started 
the decade of the 1980's making $50,000, by 1988 was making $57,281, 
and so that kind of growth took place because we had in place growth 
policies here in Washington.
  Now, by contrast, since the present administration took office, we 
have had goose eggs, no growth in median family income. And so one of 
the things that this budget tries to address is that problem by 
bringing into control Government spending and lowering the thresholds 
that we anticipate for future Government spending as well.
  Unfortunately, we know that median income did not treat all Americans 
the same.

                              {time}  1845

  For example, male earnings from 1992 to 1994 actually fell. In 1992 
the median male income for males in this country was $31,897. It 
decreased by 2.2 percent by 1993 and fell to just over $31,000; and 
decreased another 1.1 percent in 1994 and fell to $30,854. So because 
of, we think, bad things that Congress did and the President did during 
those years, it

[[Page H5123]]

crested a disincentive for the economy to grow.
  Secretary Reich has tried to explain this away by saying that 
corporate profits are up; therefore, median income must be down. Not 
true. Not true. This chart shows what happened with corporate profits 
and total compensation. The red line shows what happened with corporate 
profits.
  During the years of John Kennedy back in 1963 and 1964, corporate 
profits consumed or took up about 14 percent of total compensation. 
Today you can see over in the other end of the chart, it is only 10 
percent. It has actually fallen. The black line does represent total 
compensation for American workers, 55 percent in 1959 and just about 55 
or 56 percent today.
  Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the 
chairman, for the great effort he has put into this budget to treat all 
Americans fairly, and yet recognize the economic implications of what 
it is that we have created. Naturally, I am going to urge everyone to 
support this budget.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Chairman, we are now probably talking about what we should have 
started this discussion with, and that is the whole of how the economy 
is doing. The question we have to ask ourselves, Mr. Chairman, is 
whether or not anybody believes a Republican and their analysis of the 
economy. Most of us on our side of the aisle have some doubts, but 
occasionally the light goes on on the other side, and somebody makes a 
statement that makes sense.
  In February 1996, Robert Dole, who just left the Senate because he 
could not cope with these radicals on the other side of the aisle, 
said, ``It is true, as some have said, that our economy is the 
strongest it has been in 30 years.'' If Members do not believe Bob 
Dole, if they do not believe Bob Dole, Members can listen to what they 
are now going to say. But the fact is that the economy today is the 
strongest that it has been in 30 years.
  The second chart which I will put up here, do Members believe the 
Congressional Budget Office? We have had a discussion in this House 
over and over again as to whether or not we can balance the budget in 7 
years, according to CBO numbers. Everybody on the other side said that 
the CBO numbers, they are absolutely correct.
  Mr. Chairman, when President Clinton took over, if we follow this 
line, that is what CBO said was going to happen. The deficit was just 
going to go out of sight. As a result of the policies that the 
President instituted in 1993 and 1994, we now see that the deficit is 
coming down, and the President's projected budget will take it down in 
the course of 7 years to zero.
  The President has done what has to be done in terms of dealing with 
deficit reduction. The fact is we still have real problems in this 
economy. The middle class, their incomes have been stagnant for 20 
years. It did not start when President Clinton came in. It started 20 
years ago. The lower classes have been drifting down. Their incomes 
have actually been falling in real money. We have serious problems. We 
have people out there who are permanent temporary employees: our 
children whom we sent to college, who accumulated debts, who have come 
out of those colleges in debt, and cannot find a permanent job.
  The largest employer in this country is Manpower. People work 40 
hours a week, they work 50 weeks a year at $10 and $15 an hour in my 
own city of Seattle, and they do not have health care benefits, they do 
not have a pension, they cannot buy a house. If you take a manpower pay 
stub into a bank and try to get a loan to buy a house, you are laughed 
out of the place. You simply cannot get a loan if you have a temporary 
job. There are thousands of people.

  In my city, in the music industry there are no permanent jobs. 
Seattle rock music, everybody knows about it. They know about Nirvana, 
they know about Pearl Jam. They know all those companies. Those people, 
none of them have permanent jobs. So there are real problems in this 
country, because we have people with a temporary job trying to pay off 
school loans. It is no wonder that people are anxious.
  But the problems are not solved by the policies in the Republican 
budget. The Republican budget wants to jerk the safety net out from 
under people. It wants to take away Medicare so that people in their 
middle years, who are trying to help a kid get through college, are 
suddenly going to have to help their parents with their health care 
bills. They want to take away Medicaid, which guarantees nursing home 
care for senior citizens in this country, and want to throw it back 
onto the families and say, ``You come up with the $30,000 a year to 
take care of your mother in the nursing home.''
  Mr. Chairman, if you have to do that in the middle class, how are you 
going to help your kid go to a community college or pay for going to a 
university? Those are safety net issues.
  The President said, it was a very interesting thing, he came out to 
Seattle a few months ago, 2 months ago, and said,

       There is enough money on the table to balance the budget. 
     We have agreed, there has been enough agreement between the 
     House and Senate and the Presidency on the numbers, but we 
     will not balance the budget if your intention is to destroy 
     the safety net.

  That is the essence of this budget debate. It is not about numbers. 
These numbers, we could argue about numbers, $50 billion here and $25 
billion there and whatever. The issue is whether or not the Federal 
Government is going to be able and willing to provide a social safety 
net for the people in this country, whether we are talking about 
educational loans or we are talking about Medicaid for nursing homes or 
Medicare for senior citizens. Whatever we are talking about, it is a 
question of whether the Government should be involved in providing that 
safety net and trying to help people make it up. We have done it in the 
past, we will do it again, but not with the policies that are in this 
budget.
  Mr. Chairman, I think that this budget resolution makes no sense. The 
people of this House ought to reject it and go for a budget that makes 
some real sense in terms of helping people make it up the ladder, not 
pull the bottom rungs out from under them. That is what their budget 
actually does.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Clarendon, TX [Mr. Thornberry], another member of the Joint Economic 
Committee who believes that big government acts as a drag on the 
economy.
  Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time 
to me.
  Mr. Chairman, we have heard a lot about the trillions of dollars 
involved in the Federal Government's budget today, but I think it is 
also important to focus on the family budgets in this country, because 
in truth, the economic security of the country is only as strong as the 
economic security of the American family.
  There may be some who think that the family budgets in this country 
are the strongest they have been in 30 years. That is not what I am 
hearing in my district. Everywhere I go people are squeezed. People are 
working harder and harder and having a tougher time making ends meet.
  If we look at the statistics, they bear out that feeling. Since 1992, 
median family income in this country has gone down. Since 1992, the 
average Federal tax rate has gone up. The result is that Americans are 
left with less money in their pockets because the Federal Government is 
taking more and more money away from them.
  Recent surveys show the American people across all lines think the 
Federal Government, government at all levels, should take about a 
quarter of what they make; it should take about a quarter of someone's 
income to pay for government, and yet the number today is more like 
38.2 percent. That is, of course, as opposed to about 5 percent in 
1950. Today parents are working harder and longer and have less time to 
spend with their children.
  If Members do not think this country is experiencing the effects of 
people having to spend more time making ends meet, just to pay for food 
and shelter and away from their kids, I do not think they are in touch 
with what is happening. This budget includes a $500-per-child tax 
credit, so a family with two kids is going to get $1,000 more a year.
  Some people say that is not enough to make a difference. I will tell 
the

[[Page H5124]]

Members, that is. That $1,000 for a typical family will pay for 3 
months of groceries, it will pay for 1\1/2\ months of mortgage 
payments, it will pay for 3\1/2\ car payments, it will pay for 14 
months of health insurance.
  In my district alone, it will mean $322 million more dollars over 7 
years. That makes a difference in people's lives. It makes a difference 
at times that they need some relief.
  The bill has a lot of other good things for families. It allows 
senior citizens to keep more of the money they earn and not be 
penalized on their Social Security. It repeals the gas tax and the 
rest. The problem with taxes is sometimes people in Washington get 
confused about whose money it is, but it is a fundamental issue, I 
think, on who can better spend the people's money; whether the 
Washington bureaucrats can spend it better or whether the families 
themselves can spend it better. I put my trust in the American people.
  I think this country will be better off by letting people keep more 
of the money that they earn and spend it on themselves and their 
families and their food and their shelter and their communities and 
their churches, rather than sending it all to Washington. That is a lot 
of what is at stake here. That is a fundamental difference in this 
budget. It is the reason the American people need this kind of tax 
relief.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, as a member of the Joint Economic Committee, I want to 
raise a number of objections to the GOP budget resolution for fiscal 
year 1997. This proposal that we have before us is little more than a 
rehash of the Contract With America and its assault on working 
families, senior citizens, students, and the environment, all of which 
have been rejected by the American people in each of the renditions 
that it has come to this House.
  This budget is bad for the economy. It is bad for working people, and 
I believe it should be rejected. Just a few weeks ago after a year-long 
struggle on the budget, this body showed that it had the ability to 
compromise on fiscal matters and pass a budget reduction measure with 
support that was bipartisan. The omnibus appropriations bill cut the 
deficit by an additional $23 billion, while at the same time protecting 
our Nation's commitment to providing affordable health care, housing, 
and education.
  The bill was the product of productive dialog between the parties; 
long, tough negotiations and compromise by Members on both sides of the 
aisle. That is why I voted for it, and that is why Democrats and 
Republicans alike in this House supported it and provided it with an 
overwhelming majority.

  Now, Mr. Chairman, the majority party here in the House proposes to 
take several steps backwards and rehash the debate once again to limit 
health care services for the elderly, undercut health care providers in 
my district and across the Nation. We are again debating whether we 
should end our Nation's longstanding commitment to help provide food 
and medicine for those who need it, and raise the cost of education for 
working families. In the end, this budget would have a devastating 
impact on the economic security of working families across America.
  Under the bill, Medicare would be cut by $168 billion. Medicaid 
coverage would no longer be guaranteed, and spending on education is 
reduced below its level of just 2 years ago. One and one-half million 
fewer students would be aided by Pell grants, as opposed to those who 
would be aided under the President's bill. In other words, the 
President's bill would provide Pell grants for an additional 1.5 
million students over that which is proposed in the Republican budget.
  In addition, the earned income tax credit would be cut by $20 
billion, essentially raising taxes on thousands of working families in 
my district, and a total of about 6 million working families across the 
country. The debate on this budget plan has been a loser for the 
Republican majority throughout the past year. This budget promises to 
continue this losing tradition today, tomorrow, and on until November.
  It is symbolic and ironic that on the same day the majority has 
rejected a modest increase in the minimum wage to help working families 
achieve a decent standard of living, it presents this House with a plan 
to raise taxes on those very same families by cutting the earned income 
tax credit.

                              {time}  1900

  If we cannot raise the wages of working families, then why should we 
also provide tax breaks for the most affluent members of this society? 
Why should the House vote for a budget that provides capital gains 
reduction that largely benefits the wealthiest 1 percent of families 
when we are telling working people that we cannot afford to raise the 
minimum wage above the lowest level it has been at in 40 years. It is 
time that we stand up for the economic security of working Americans 
instead of trampling on their standard of living.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge that we reject this losing budget proposal and 
we vote for one of the Democratic alternatives that will be presented 
tomorrow.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Manzullo], a Member who has been particularly active this 
year in understanding what it means to the American family to have less 
income and at the same time pay higher taxes.
  (Mr. MANZULLO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Chairman, we all use charts in this body, and 
different figures are thrown out; but every day millions of Americans 
get up, get out of bed, they have their breakfast, they pack their 
lunch box, send their kids off to school. In many households both 
spouses work. We talk about the forgotten American, the people that go 
to work every day, the people in this country that are working harder 
and harder and taking home less money. Nobody is talking about that 
portion of the American people. Think about it.
  The people in this country who get up every day and go to work, they 
say to me, ``Congressman, I don't understand it. I'm working harder 
than ever in my entire life, and the money simply isn't enough to make 
the expenses. I'm not buying new cars, I'm not buying new houses, I'm 
just trying to do the best I can to survive in this economy.''
  Mr. Chairman, here is a chart. Here is the reason why. Americans 
today are working harder and taking home less money. Americans today 
are working harder and taking home less money. Americans today are 
working harder and taking home less money because governments of all 
sizes are growing and taking away the money.
  The Federal Government continues to grow. The number of Federal 
employees declines, but the number of nongovernment employees who 
receive grants from the Federal Government to carry on the work of all 
the 10,000 Federal programs we have continues to grow. The man who gets 
up in the morning and packs his lunch and kisses his kids good-bye to 
go off to school and perhaps his wife goes off to work also, he takes 
home less money. And who cares about him? Who is caring about that man 
in America? He is down here taking home less money. Do you know why? 
Because government is too big. It is too intrusive. It is too 
pervasive. One program after another. Try to cut down the size of the 
Government, and the President adds AmeriCorps.
  ``Just give me another program. Just one more investment. Just 
another program. Just have this investment.''
  Mr. Chairman, every single one of the 10,000 programs in this Federal 
Government has its own constituency, its own lobbyists, its own special 
interests. But who cares about the man who gets up in the morning and 
packs his lunch and kisses his kids off to school and perhaps his wife 
has to go to work, also, just to make ends meet? Who cares about him?
  Let me just reiterate the words I have heard this evening from the 
other side. The Republicans are extreme. Decentralized genocide. Mean-
spirited. Cruel. Radicals on the other side. Assault on America.
  Do my colleagues know where the assault is taking place? On the 
American family. Taxes continue to go up.
  Rob Yedor runs a factory called Myco in Rockford, IL, about 125 
employees. ``Oh, with the great budget in 1993, we're going to raise 
the taxes of the

[[Page H5125]]

rich, we're going to increase the subchapter S taxes.'' What happened? 
He pays $250,000 a year more in taxes.
  Mr. Chairman, where was that money going to go? For three things for 
his employees: to purchase additional capital, that is new machinery, 
to fund more fully his 401-K retirement plan, and to increase the wages 
of the people who work for him. That was the 1993 Clinton budget. Do my 
colleagues know who got hurt by it? The man who gets up in the morning 
and packs his lunch and sends his kids off to school, the average 
American worker. Here is the chart. He is taking home less money 
because this Government is too big.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. MANZULLO. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Quinn] 
wanted to be here to add to what we have said tonight but he lost his 
voice today, the poor guy. What he wanted to say was that we also did a 
study which showed that, when the Federal Government consumes more than 
about 17.4 percent of GDP, every dollar that we spend after that 
actually has a negative impact in pulling down the productivity and the 
production that takes place in the American economy.
  Today, as the gentleman knows, the Federal Government consumes a full 
22 percent of GDP. And so the optimum level, at about 17.5 percent, has 
been far surpassed. We are 4.5 percent above where we should be. This 
budget takes a small step toward getting us back to where we should be 
so that the guy who gets up in the morning and packs his own lunch and 
maybe the lunch for his kids, as the gentleman so eloquently pointed 
out, does not have to look forward to a future where we see diminishing 
returns on work, which is what is happening in the American economy.
  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Chairman, there is a chapter that normally appears 
in every budget called the generational forecast. It has not been in 
the last couple of budgets. That states because of the $5 trillion 
national debt, unless something is dramatically done, the children born 
after 1992 entering the work force would have a combined State, local 
and Federal tax rate of between 70 and 90 percent. That is 
unconscionable.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton].
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Chairman, there are many parts of the Republican's 
proposed budget that I find objectionable, but there is one part that 
is particularly inappropriate.
  They propose, once again, to eliminate the Department of Commerce by 
abolishing certain programs and by restructuring others.
  The Department of Commerce, under the able leadership of Secretary 
Ron Brown, has been a shining example of what good Government can do.
  And with the appointment of Secretary Kantor, continued good things 
are promised.
  Why eliminate the one agency that has aggressively expanded American 
exports, has effectively pursued business opportunities abroad for 
American companies--big and small--has helped to ease our balance of 
trade deficit and, most importantly, has had a big hand in creating 
jobs here in the United States?
  I am particularly distressed by their proposal to transfer the 
functions, but not the resources, of the Economic Development 
Administration [EDA] to the Small Business Administration [SBA].
  This proposal would appear to be a classic example of seeking to make 
change for no reason, rather than change for good reason, change for 
the sake of change rather than change for the better.
  The Economic Development Administration has been an effective and 
vital resource in helping communities, especially rural communities, 
respond to problems of economic distress.
  In my district, EDA has been working to support the Global Transpark, 
an innovative and creative venture that will allow the rapid 
transportation of goods and services from my State to markets abroad.
  With similar lack of logic, they propose to eliminate the Technology 
Administration, the Economics and Statistics Administration, the 
Minority Business Development Agency, and other important parts of the 
Commerce Department.
  Our colleagues propose to save money through this dismantling and 
restructuring, but their math is misplaced.
  The Commerce Department has already undertaken plans to consolidate, 
reengineer, move operations, delete regulations, change certain 
policies and save.
  If our Republican colleagues are serious about passing a budget 
resolution in a timely and bipartisan manner, that will be signed by 
the President, they should start with a new beginning, not with an old 
ending. The Department of Commerce should not be eliminated.
  Indeed, the Department should be funded at a level adequate to 
continue its good work.
  Economics require it. America needs it. Good sense demands it.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
South Carolina [Mr. Sanford] who is going to report on yet another 
Joint Economic Committee study which shows the negative effects of 
large Government on the free enterprise system.
  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, in this whole debate about the budget, I 
would remind everybody that Mother's Day was this weekend.
  One of my mother's sayings was that too much of a good thing is 
actually a bad thing. Benjamin Franklin said, ``I would rather urge 
moderation in all things,'' and farmers back in my district had this 
saying that you can only squeeze but so much blood out of a turnip.
  What these sayings say, I guess, is a word of support for a recent 
Joint Economic Committee study entitled ``The Impact of the Welfare 
State on the American Economy,'' by Lowell Gallaway and Richard Vedder.
  Its findings were highlighted in a recent Investors Business Daily 
article entitled ``Cut to Grow.'' What both the report said and what 
the article said was that there is a price tag to Government spending. 
If you look at this chart, that price tag is that you can only go so 
far before Government spending becomes a problem. Keynes was right up 
to a point that Government spending creates economic activity, up until 
about this 17.6 percent that the chairman alluded to, and then beyond 
that it is actually detrimental. Beyond that it is actually a drag on 
the economy.
  Mr. Chairman, here we are at about 22 percent of the size of our 
economy right now with Government spending, and what that means is that 
it is actually hurting us. For every $1 of additional Government 
spending beyond that 17.6 percent, it slows us down by about 38 
percent, or, if you were to go out and find $100 of Government cuts, 
you would come up with about $138 of benefit to the total economy.
  So I would say that this debate in large part is about who is best at 
spending your money. If you think it is bureaucrats, then you probably 
do not want to support this budget resolution. But if you think you are 
best at spending your own money, this graph and this study support that 
idea. Therefore, I would urge us all to support this budget resolution.
  Mr. Chairman, I include the article referred to for the Record.

                        Perspective--Cut To Grow

       Many supply-siders focus on cutting taxes as the best way 
     to lessen the load of government and raise economic growth. 
     But a new study suggests cutting federal spending can also do 
     the trick.
       The best size of government is about 17.6% of gross 
     domestic product, says a recent study from Congress' Joint 
     Economic Committee.
       When government is very small it can do a lot to raise 
     economic growth, say Ohio University economists Lowell 
     Gallaway and Richard Vedder, authors of the study.
       These include providing a strong defense, fighting crime, 
     creating courts where people can resolve disputes and 
     building a basic infrastructure, such as roads and highways.
       But more government spending faces diminishing returns. 
     That is, each additional dollar spent brings fewer benefits 
     than the last one.
       So the bigger government gets, the less likely it is that 
     the benefits of more spending outweigh its costs.
       Eventually, the study says, spending slows economic growth 
     as government focuses on programs that dampen output rather 
     than help it, such as regulating businesses and 
     redistributing incomes.
       For example, in 1948 less than 10% of spending went to 
     social programs. For the twelve years after that, 25% of 
     added spending went to these programs. That moved up

[[Page H5126]]

     to one-third in the 1960s, and half in the 1970s.
       From 1990 to 1995, the government added more money to 
     social programs than it added to the overall budget.
       As a result, from 1947 through 1951, government spent about 
     15% of GDP, while GDP grew at a yearly rate of 4.2%. Through 
     1974, government spent 19% of GDP, and the economy grew at a 
     3.3% rate. Since then, government has spent 22%; GDP has 
     grown at a 2.5% rate.
       The government has exceeded the 17.6% spending level every 
     year since 1965, ignoring gains to the economy from cutting 
     spending, says the study. This excess spending has curbed the 
     economy by an average of about 2% year, leading a cumulative 
     loss of about $2.3 trillion in output.
       That leaves a good deal of room for today's lawmakers to 
     raise economic growth by cutting spending.
       This year the government spent about 21.4% of GDP, 
     according to the Treasury Department. The GOP budget plan 
     would bring spending down to 18.5% of GDP by 2002, says the 
     Congressional Budget Office.
       For every $1 of spending cuts, the private-sector economy 
     will expand by $1.38, Gallaway and Vedder say.
       If sustained for seven years, that $1 budget cut would add 
     $2.45 to total output, they say.
       Supply-siders have long urged Congress to change the way it 
     forecasts how much revenue the government would forego if it 
     cuts tax rates. By raising economic growth, tax cuts need not 
     lose as much as Congress thinks, and may actually raise 
     revenue.
       This study suggests that a similar effect may also work 
     with spending cuts, meaning that cutting spending by $1 may 
     close the budget gap by more than $1.
       This effect should hold until the government whittles the 
     budget down to 17.6% of GDP, and perhaps further.
       Gallaway and Vidder got the 17.6% figure by assuming that 
     government spending shouldn't be treated as a cost of 
     production. If it were treated as a cost of production, then 
     much less spending should be justified.
       Then, the best spending level for government would be 
     between 10% and 11% of GDP, they say. But treating spending 
     simply as a production cost may overlook other reasons for 
     it.
       Also, the numbers may not tell the whole story.
       For example, what if lawmakers trimmed government back to 
     17.6%, but did so by getting rid of spending that Gallaway 
     and Vedder say is good, leaving things like welfare and 
     regulating agencies?
       That's unlikely, but it suggests a different route to the 
     same theme of less government.
       Instead of focusing on numbers, perhaps we should focus on 
     the kinds of spending government does, no matter the amount. 
     For example, during wartime the best level of government 
     spending may rise as it costs more to defend ourselves.
       By contrast, in a peaceful world, 17.6% may be much too 
     high. Staying at that level might require welfare programs or 
     wasteful defense spending.

  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Georgia [Ms. McKinney].

                              {time}  1915

  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, here we go again. Instead of offering a 
budget that protects middle-class families in this changing economy, 
the Republican Party has once again lived up to its reputation as 
defender of Wall Street's barons.
  Why do we need to cut Medicare, only to give $124 billion in tax 
breaks. Moreover, Mr. Chairman, the Republican budget does virtually 
nothing to go after corporate welfare. In fact, the conservative Cato 
Institute issued this news release today which says, ``Eliminating 
corporate welfare would cut the deficit in half--business subsidies 
cost $75 billion per year, Cato study says.''
  Why must our seniors, schools, environment, and the poor be first in 
line to face cuts when we give away at least $75 billion in corporate 
welfare every year?
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to defeat this budget which is 
nothing more than the same old, same old.
  In addition, Mr. Chairman, the Republicans have innovated a new form 
of governance. I call it kitchen sink legislation. They throw in 
everything--including the kitchen sink--and wait to see what survives 
the conference committee. This is no way to govern and we need to 
defeat this Republican budget.
  Mr. Chairman, I include the following for the Record:

          [From the Cato Institute News Release, May 15, 1996]

   Eliminating Corporate Welfare Would Cut Deficit In Half--Business 
          Subsidies Cost $75 Billion Per Year, Cato Study Says

       ``In 1995 the corporate safety net was left largely 
     intact,'' says Stephen Moore, director of fiscal policy 
     studies at the Cato Institute. ``If members of Congress balk 
     at cutting aid to dependent corporations again in 1996, they 
     will look like fiscal frauds and fools.''
       In a new Cato Institute study, ``How Corporate Welfare Won: 
     Clinton and Congress Retreat from Cutting Business 
     Subsidies,'' Moore and Cato fiscal policy analyst Dean 
     Stansel note that the federal government currently spends $75 
     billion per year on corporate welfare--the use of government 
     authority to confer targeted benefits on specific firms or 
     industries. They identify the 35 ``least defensible'' 
     business subsidies and show that Congress moved to cut only 
     $2.8 billion, or 15 percent, from the 1995 level.
       The Clinton administration has been hostile to even the 
     modest corporate welfare cutbacks proposed by Congress, Moore 
     and Stansel argue. ``If Congress's performance was a 
     disappointment, the Clinton administration's was dismal. In 
     fact, we find that for the 35 corporate welfare programs 
     identified in this study the administration's 1996 budget 
     actually requested a slight increase in spending.''
       Moore and Stansel recommend eliminating or sharply scaling 
     back programs including the Export Enhancement Program, 
     Foreign Agriculture Service, Market Promotion Program, 
     Advanced Technology Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
     Administration, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Mines, 
     Export-Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment 
     Corporation.
       ``If all federal assistance to business were purged from 
     the budget, the budget deficit could be cut in half,'' Moore 
     and Stansel write. ``Both the social welfare and corporate 
     welfare states needed to be reformed with equal urgency.''
       Policy analysis No. 254--contact: Stephen Moore, director 
     of fiscal policy studies, 202-789-5252 Dean Stansel, first 
     policy analyst, 202-789-5250; Dave Quast, director of public 
     affairs, 202-789-5266; and Peggy Ellis, director of 
     government affairs, 202-789-5284.

  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
South Carolina [Mr. Inglis].
  Mr. INGLIS of South Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, I have had the opportunity now to sit here and listen 
to some of the comments of our colleagues between the time of the 
Committee on the Budget's allocated time and now the Joint Economic 
Committee's allocated time, and it has been very instructive. It has 
been instructive because particularly these very valuable studies of 
the Joint Economic Committee point out that this Government is a drag 
on our economy. It is too big and needs to be reduced in size and 
scope.
  As the gentleman from South Carolina just said, for $100 in cuts, you 
get $138 in expansion of the economy. That is a god bargain, so we 
should listen to folks on the Joint Economic Committee and have the 
courage to make these changes.
  The second observation I would make is really I think it is very 
interesting to hear some of the comments from this side of the aisle 
about this budget. I had hoped that maybe this year we were going to be 
a little bit some candid in our debate, a little bit more forthcoming; 
that maybe this time we would not subject seniors in America to 
MediScare, that we would not subject poor people in this country to 
Medicaid scare. But it is pretty apparent we are going to go through it 
one more time, round two. In fact, the gentleman on the floor a little 
while ago said they are going to ``Take away Medicare.'' Take away 
Medicare. The gentlewoman who just spoke said there were going to be 
cuts to Medicare.

  Well, I defy anybody in this body to describe where there are cuts to 
Medicare. There is a reduction in the rate of growth, and per 
beneficiary the spending goes from this year, 1996, $5,200, to $7,000 
in 2002.
  The gentleman from Washington State said we are going to take away 
Medicare. I wonder if that sounds to any of my colleagues like it is 
taking away Medicare? We are going from $5,200 per year per beneficiary 
to $7,000 per year in 2002. $5,200 to $7,000. That is not taking away 
Medicare. That is not a cut to Medicare. That is an increase in 
Medicare spending.
  I wonder how it is that our colleagues, particularly on the other 
side of the aisle, have the ability to say these are cuts? I suppose 
they are encouraged by the polls that indicate that MediScare works. 
You can scare seniors in America. They get worried and they decide that 
they will support you and your political campaign, even though you are 
imperiling the future of Medicare and of the whole country.
  I hope as the debate goes on that just maybe, somehow, there will be 
some additional candor released here in

[[Page H5127]]

Washington, and we will be able to have an honest debate.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee].
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, we have come here again for 
the budget for 1997, and I thought we would have had an opportunity 
through the series of continuing resolutions that we attempted to pass 
in this last year and the reasonable disagreement that Democrats have 
had with my Republican friends, that we might have had a more 
bipartisan effort on this new budget.
  We all recognize that it was the Reagan years when we began to use a 
new term in budget deficit, and that is a trillion dollars, when under 
President Reagan there was an attempt to cut taxes, but to continue to 
spend for programs that benefited many of those who did not need.
  We now have a budget that portends to give money back to working 
Americans, but yet it damages and undermines the needs of children.
  The Republican plan folds 20 separate child protection programs into 
two block grants, at a time when the GAO and others report current 
resources are failing to keep pace with the needs of a national child 
protection system in crisis; we cut funds that provide for reporting of 
abuse and neglect; and we do not give enough money to protect abused 
children and to protect them to make sure they are safe and in loving 
and permanent adoptive homes.
  The plan potentially guts accountability for State child protection 
systems, over 20 of which are operating under court mandates. The 
Republican budget assumes more strict definition of disability for 
children, and the creation of a two-tiered system of benefits for 
children. Eligible children who require personal care assistance and 
without such assistance would require specialized care outside the home 
receive 100 percent of the Federal SSI benefit. However, children with 
disabilities who do not meet this personal care assistance test get 75 
percent. This affects children with disabilities such as cerebral 
palsy, Down's syndrome, cystic fibrosis and AIDS. Then what we do is we 
do not protect the future for our children.
  Through this budget we cut the Commerce Department. Then we move on 
to cut $330 billion out of the research and development budget for our 
country. It cuts the Advanced Technology Program, which is a program 
that has sought an opportunity for form a partnership between our small 
businesses and the Government.
  This budget is proposed by Republicans to suggest that we give a $500 
per child tax credit to low-income families. What they do not say to 
the American people is that the children's tax credit will not benefit 
34 percent of the Nation's children.
  This budget proposed by Republicans is deja vu, but it is the same 
old song. It takes away the future of our children. It ensures that 
they will not have Medicaid by making this a modified block grant, and 
therefore ensuring that our children will not have good health.
  Mr. Chairman, I ask that we support the Democrat alternative, for 
this budget is not one that helps all Americans.
  Mr. Chairman, the Republican leadership, just in time for 
Presidential election year politics is talking about a balanced budget 
again. The is deja vu for the American voter who well remembers the 
campaign promises of Ronald Reagan who predicted that he could balance 
the federal budget by cutting taxes and increasing spending. Candidate 
George Bush called that budgetary slight of hand Voodoo Economics.
  The results of two Reagan terms was a budget deficit which for the 
first time in any country's history used the term trillion to quantify 
the extent of the deficit.
  In my Houston, TX district the minimum wage provides a less than 
minimum standard of living. For families it is not a matter of 
competing priorities but a matter of survival skills. These families 
are lead by mothers, and/or fathers who will in many cases no matter 
what the circumstances are will seek out a job with pay that few of us 
could imagine providing the sole means of support to our own families.
  It is time for working families to get the raise they deserve. A few 
things to consider in the argument to raise the minimum wage. When 
adjusted for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is now 29 percent 
lower than it was in 1979. Raising the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 
an hour would lift an estimated 300,000 people out of poverty, 
including 100,000 children. Women make up 59 percent of minimum wage 
earners and nearly three-quarters of them are adults.
  Taken individually each of the aforementioned facts is enough to make 
this a top legislative priority for the 104th Congress. My hope is that 
as this Congress works through its second session that this and other 
issues of vital importance to women and children are brought before the 
House for serious consideration.
  We speak so often in this House about family values and protecting 
children. At the same time however, my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle, have presented a budget package that will effectively 
eliminate the Federal guarantee of assistance for poor children in this 
country for the first time in 60 years.
  The majority's plan is antifamily and antichild. It calls for 
unprecedented cuts in programs serving children and would remove the 
basic protections for hungry, abused, disabled and poor children while 
using the savings to offset tax breaks for wealthy individuals.
  The Republican plan folds 20 separate child protection programs into 
2 block grants at a time when GAO and others report current resources 
are failing to keep pace with the needs of a national child protection 
system in crisis. Under this plan, funds could be inadequate to respond 
to rapidly increasing reports of abuse and neglect, and insufficient to 
protect abused children and find them safe, loving and permanent 
adoptive homes. The plan potentially guts accountability for State 
child protection systems, over 20 of which are operating under court 
mandates for failing to provide adequate service to abused and 
neglected children.
  The Republican budget assumes a more strict definition of disability 
for children and the creation of a two-tiered system of benefits for 
children. Eligible children who require personal care assistance and 
who, without such assistance, would require specialized care outside 
the home receive 100 percent of the Federal SSI benefit. However, 
children with disabilities who do not meet this personal care 
assistance test receive 75 percent of the SSI benefit amount. This 
system could result in a large majority of disabled children having 
their benefits reduced--children with disabilities such as cerebral 
palsy, Down syndrome, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, and AIDS.
  The Republican plan would also deny most Federal, State, and local 
benefits--including school lunch--to illegal aliens and would deny SSI 
and food stamps to legal aliens until they become citizens. That 
plainly is an unfunded mandate on the States.
  The Republic budget fails to provide adequate resources for work 
programs and child care which are critical to effectuate a transition 
from welfare to work. The Republican plan significantly increases the 
need for child care while reducing the resources for child care 
services as well as the funds available to states to improve the 
quality of care.

  This strategy of welfare-to-work is doomed to fail. Mandatory 
welfare-to-work programs can get parents off welfare and into jobs, but 
only if the program is well designed and is given the resources to be 
successful. The GOP plan is punitive and wrong-headed. It will not put 
people to work, it will put them on the street. Any restructuring of 
the welfare system must move people away from dependency toward self-
sufficiency. Facilitating the transition off welfare requires job 
training, guaranteed child care and health insurance at an affordable 
price.
  We cannot expect to reduce our welfare rolls if we do not provide the 
women of this Nation the opportunity to better themselves and their 
families through job training and education, if we do not provide them 
with good quality child care and most importantly if we do not provide 
them with a job.
  Together, welfare programs make up the safety net that poor children 
and their families rely on in times of need. We must not allow the 
safety net to be shredded. We must keep our promises to the children of 
this Nation. We must ensure that in times of need they receive the 
health care, food and general services they need to survive.
  Finally, the Republican budget resolution proposes to cut the earned 
income tax credit [EITC] by $20 billion over the next 7 years. This cut 
includes eliminating the EITC for childless workers as well as families 
with children who have modest incomes. In fact, over 6 million families 
with children could receive a reduction in their EITC.
  This program was designed to assist the working poor of America. The 
Republicans argue that in exchange for losing the earned income tax 
credit, many low-income families would receive the $500 per child tax 
credit. The fact of the matter, however, is that the children's tax 
credit will not benefit 34 percent of the Nation's children because 
they live in families that are ineligible because their income is too 
low.

[[Page H5128]]

  Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare are on the top of the list for cuts 
right now, but I think that we can find ways to be fair and just when 
we make budgetary reduction decisions without shutting the Federal 
government down.
  I would hope that this next attempt to seriously deal with this 
Nation's budget deficit will include compassion for the poor, our 
children and the elderly.
  We should not play election year politics with this country's budget.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I believe that I am at least for now our last speaker, 
so I just wanted to kind of recap regarding the statements that my 
colleagues on the Republican side of the Joint Economic Committee have 
made here this evening and why they are important.
  Before I do that, Let me just pick upon something that the last 
speaker mentioned, and that was the performance or relationship between 
the performance of our taxing and spending during the decade of the 
1980's.
  Yes, it is true that there was a tax rate cut which took place in the 
early eighties. I believe the gentlewoman said or inferred it was 
because of that tax rate cut that the deficit occurred.
  Well, I would just like to remind everyone, or if people do not know 
this to tell them this for the first time maybe, we started the decade 
of the eighties, before the tax cuts, with about $500 billion in 
revenue, half a trillion dollars in revenue, money for us to spend, 
decide on the priorities, $500 billion.
  By 1990 that had grown, in spite of the tax cuts, I should not say in 
spite of, because of the tax cuts. 1990, that money grew and became 
twice as much, $1 trillion. that is right, from 1980. In the early 
eighties when we had the tax cuts, the tax cuts provided an economic 
stimulus, and because we had more people working, more people packing 
their lunch in the morning, more people going to work and coming home 
on Friday afternoon with paychecks, larger paychecks, I might add, 1.7 
percent each year, because they had more paychecks and higher income, 
they paid more taxes, and our revenue doubled during the decade of the 
eighties.
  It was not, it has been proven not to be, true that someone can point 
their fingers at the Reagan tax cuts and say that it why we have a 
deficit. The fact of the matter is that we more than doubled spending. 
It is Congress' function. We are in the middle of the function right 
now tonight of determining how much money to spend for fiscal year 
1997. We will make that determination just like we did every year 
during the eighties, and every year during the eighties we increased 
spending by or 7 or 8 percent. It was not the tax cuts that did that; 
it was done right here in this very process that we are engaged in 
tonight.
  Spending is the problem, folks. Spending is the problem for the folks 
that the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Manzullo] talked about also. A 
man goes to work, comes home, in 1992 making a median income of 
$31,897. It dropped down to $31,186 in 1993, and all the way down to 
$30,854 in 1994.

  Once again, we see the effect of tax policy here, because we had a 
large tax increases, two large tax increases, bipartisan tax increases, 
one advocated by President Bush and the Democrats in this House in 
1990, and the second by President Clinton and the Democrats in this 
House in 1993.
  I just hold this up for emphasis. This is what happens when we 
increase taxes on the American families. It slows down the economy, 
less income for workers, or at least stagnant income for workers, and 
as a result of that, I think we can learn from history.
  We were not the first people to say this. The first person to say 
this, and believe in this theory, was a member of your party. That was 
John Kennedy. He said in the State of the Union Address in 1963, ``We 
cannot for long expect to lead the cause of peace and freedom around 
the world if we cease to set the economic pace at home.''
  He proposed massive tax cuts. Revenue grew and the economy grew, and 
it was the same story. So we can go back and make this a bipartisan 
argument.
  Let me just conclude with this one chart, to reemphasize the point. 
Starting back in 1973, we anticipated what the American family, or have 
anticipated since, what the American family should have earned if we 
had not increased the size of government and the cost of government 
beyond the optimum size and the optimum cost.
  If we had kept the size of government at 17.5 percent of GDP, this 
red line exemplifies what should have happened in terms of median 
income. Steady growth. Instead, we increased the cost of government to 
18 and then 19 and then 20, and now 22 percent. This dotted line shows 
what actually happened to median family income, a large deficit of 
another kind that is even more meaningful to many American families 
than the deficit we talk about all the time.
  This gap represents over the last 10 years to the average American 
family a loss of $106,000 in wages. So we are trying with this budget 
to correct a situation which we have allowed to develop here over the 
last several decades, Republicans and Democrats working together on the 
wrong path, on many occasions, and we are trying to correct that 
situation by slowing the rate of growth of government, because if we do 
not slow the rate of government and begin to consume 22.5 percent and 
22.6 percent of GDP and 23 percent of GDP, this situation with wages 
and the long-term growth in our economy can only take one path, a 
negative one.
  So, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] and his committee and his 
staff in my opinion have done a great service to the country in 
bringing this budget to the floor this evening. So I ask Members on 
both sides of the aisle to consider not just how much we will spend, 
but the priorities of what we are going to spend, and please, please, 
consider the effect on the pocketbook of the average American, middle 
class, upper class, lower class, all classes of American workers.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
New Jersey [Mr. Pallone].

                              {time}  1930

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I am glad that I followed my colleague 
from New Jersey, who I have the greatest respect for. But I think that 
the point that I would like to make this evening is that it is 
certainly true that our goal with this budget and with every budget has 
to be to achieve a balanced budget over the next 6 or so years, and 
that in the process of doing that certain types of tax breaks, if you 
will, if they help the average American, can be accomplished.
  The President's budget does that. The President's budget achieves a 
balanced budget, if you will, by the year 2002. There is a family tax 
credit and there are education tax benefits, if you will, to pay for 
tuition for higher education.
  So I would maintain that the difference between the President's 
budget and the budget that we are going to be voting on tomorrow, that 
has been presented by the Republican leadership, is not over which 
achieves a balanced budget, because they both do; or over which 
accomplishes giving certain tax credits or benefits for families or for 
education, because I beleive actually in that respect the President's 
accomplishes more; but rather over the priorities in spending. That is 
where I think the difference really lies between these two proposals, 
that of the President and that of the Republican leadership.
  The priorities are the same priorities that Democrats articulated 
last year during the budget battle, and our point was then and our 
point again now is that we can protect senior citizens' health care, we 
can protect Medicare, we can protect Medicaid, and we can also protect 
our environment and we can protect education programs at the same time 
that we balance the budget. There, I think, is the major difference 
between what the Republican leadership has proposed and discussed 
tonight and what the President has proposed.
  Essentially, if we look at this Republican budget, it is more of the 
same on the issues of Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the 
environment. I thas a negative impact on each of those areas for the 
average American.
  I talked earlier this evening about the Medicare Program, and I 
believe strongly that the $167 billion in Medicare cuts over 6 years 
will definitely have a negative impact of the Medicare Program. It will 
cause many hospitals to close. In our own State of New Jersey, both 
myself and the gentleman

[[Page H5129]]

from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton] have hospitals that are more than 60 
percent dependent on Medicare, and I believe that many of those 
hospitals are going to face the real possibility of closure bacause of 
the level of Medicare cuts in this Republican budget.
  But I would also like to talk about Medicaid. Medicaid is the program 
that exists right now. It is a Federal and State joint program that 
pays for poor people, or people below a certain income, and primarily 
pays for mothers with dependent children, and children, as well as for 
senior citizens who are in nursing homes.
  What the Republicans are proposing is a $72 billion cut in Medicaid 
funding but block granting the program, just as they did in 1995, so 
they are essentially sending less money in real terms back to the 
States and leaving it up to the States to decide who is going to be 
covered and what kind of coverage there will be.
  So what is going to happen is that many States will simply not 
provide the same level of funding. They will decide not to cover 
certain senior citizens, perhaps certain nursing home coverage; or they 
will say that certain children at a certain age, for example are not 
covered by Medicaid; or certain families, because they do not fall 
below a certain level of income, will not be covered by Medicaid.

  We will see a larger and larger number of people who do not have 
health insurance, or a crisis perhaps in the nursing home situation, 
where many senior citizens will either not have access to nursing home 
care that they need, or they will not have the quality of care that 
they have now because there will not be a certain amount of supervision 
or nurses checking on the situation in nursing homes, for example.
  So we are seeing a ratcheting down, if you will, of the Medicare 
program and the Medicaid program, and that is the same thing that we 
saw last year; that is hurting average Americans, particularly the 
senior citizens and those who depend on Medicaid.
  Now, what about on the education front? Well, on the education front, 
it is pretty much the same thing again. We see the elimination of the 
direct student loan program. In my home State of New Jersey, Rutgers 
has depended on this a great deal. It has expanded educational 
opportunities, provided more money for loans for students in various 
universities and colleges around the country.
  We see an end to new funding for Perkins loans, another form of 
funding to pay for higher education for many students. We see the 
elimination of the AmeriCorps Program; and the Republicans have been 
very critical of the national service program.
  So whether it is education, whether it is Medicare, Medicaid or even 
the environment, which once again has significant cuts, that is the 
difference here between those two proposals.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
  The continued claims from the other side that there are cuts in 
Medicare and Medicaid are no more true this year than they were last 
year. My friend from New Jersey, I believe, knows that I spent untold 
hours in hospitals during the debate on Medicare last year. There was 
no thought among the hospital administrators at the conclusion of that 
period of time that any hospitals were going to close anywhere in New 
Jersey, and seniors would expect the same level of benefits that they 
had received before.
  It is true that the rate of growth in the program would have been 
reduced somewhat, but there was not a single penny of cuts in that 
budget, nor is there in this.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro].
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York for 
yielding me the time.
  Mr. Chairman, there has been much discussion about the new Republican 
budget and about how moderate it is, but in fact this budget is in most 
ways as harsh as the budget that was proposed by the Republicans last 
year, and which the American public said to the President of the United 
States, 60 percent of them, veto this budget because it does not treat 
seniors well. It hurts seniors, it hurts education, it hurts the 
environment and it hurts those who are in nursing homes.
  The plain truth is that under the Republican Medicare plan, this time 
around, deja vu all over again, seniors end up paying more and getting 
less. In the end, the worst fear of all is that seniors are going to be 
left with a second-rate health care system.
  Rural hospitals are in danger of closing. Hospitals in my district 
came to see me in the last budget debate about their concern and their 
inability to be able to provide services.
  The Republican proposal cuts Medicare by $168 billion. My Republican 
colleagues say they are cutting Medicare to ensure its solvency, but in 
fact the President's budget protects Medicare solvency for the same 
number of years, but does so without making these same deep cuts.
  Do not believe the argument about slowing the rate of growth. If we 
have more seniors in the program and we have inflation costs, and we do 
not meet those needs and we do provide an increase, we have left these 
people shortchanged and some people will not get services.
  The Republican cuts in Medicare are unnecessary. So why are we 
proceeding with them? Could it be that they are cutting Medicare more 
than they need so that they can pay for some other things, like tax 
breaks for the wealthiest Americans? No coincidence, again, that their 
tax package is $175 billion.
  This budget unravels 30 years of progress in protecting our seniors. 
That should not surprise us. We should not pass this budget.
  I will finish with this quote, where we get a sense of what the 
Republican leadership is about. The Speaker of the House said, and I 
quote. ``We don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think it 
is politically smart and we don't think that's the right way to go 
through a transition. But we believe it's going to wither on the vine 
because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it.''
  They would like to see it wither on the vine. Medicare should wither 
on the vine. That is not the value, that is not the priority, that is 
not a safe, secure, dignified retirement for seniors in this country 
who have earned it.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Meehan].
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, we want to balance the budget. There is a 
Democratic plan to balance the budget. The question is this: Are we 
going to ask for shared sacrifice? Who is going to pay the price to 
balance the budget?
  The budget actually increases the deficit in the first year by $17 
billion. We are going to have to borrow $17 billion to pay for tax cuts 
in the first year of this budget.
  In addition to that, we have corporate welfare cuts that would be 
difficult politically to institute because the special interests are 
supporting it in the Halls of Congress. We could do a better job of 
cutting corporate welfare. This budget does not do that.
  This budget looks at education and again cuts education, again cuts 
the growth in the Medicare program. We have to make difficult 
decisions, Mr. Chairman. Let us make them fairly. Let us ask all 
Americans to share that burden.
  We just passed a defense authorization budget that increases the 
defense budget above what the Pentagon asked for by $13 billion. Is 
that shared sacrifice? We should vote for a budget that is fair. This 
budget is not fair.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Florida, Ms. Corrine Brown.
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this 
Republican budget which, once again, balances the budget of this 
country on the backs of our poor, our elderly, our veterans and our 
children.
  This budget represents the philosophy that those who have the money 
make the rules. It rewards those who have, and punishes those who have 
not.
  Instead of evenly distributing the burden of responsibility in this 
fiscally challenging time, the Republicans have decided to rob the poor 
and working people to pay the rich. In other words, more reverse Robin-
Hood.
  Mr. Chairman, this budget denies assistance to children if they're 
born into a family already on welfare. It cuts $20 billion from the 
earned income tax credit--which currently helps the poorest in this 
country who are working for a living.

[[Page H5130]]

  It cuts Medicaid by $72 billion, so that disabled people, senior 
citizens, children and pregnant women will suffer unjustly. In my State 
alone there are more than 3 million senior citizens. They make up more 
than 20 percent of the population. This budget is a slap in their 
faces.
  Another inefficient move by the Republicans is cutting job training 
and education programs, which will have an adverse effect on this 
country.
  It ensures that poor people will have an even harder time getting 
student loans, financial aid and work study. And it guarantees that 
people who need the job skills won't get them. This isn't sound fiscal 
policy.
  This isn't just a bad budget, it's a mean-spirited budget. I urge my 
colleagues to accept the responsibility of representing the people of 
this country in a fair and decent manner. Oppose this budget.
  In closing, I would like to say that ``To whom God has given much, 
much is expected.''
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton] has 1 minute 
remaining, and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hinchey] has 2 minutes 
remaining, and the gentleman from New Jersey has the right to close.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Chairman, over the course of this debate we have tried to 
demonstrate that there are substantial differences in priorities 
between the Democratic party in this House and the Republican party. 
Nowhere are those priorities more clearly defined than in the context 
of budgeting, and this budget continues that clear definition.
  We want to balance the budget, too, and we are in the process of 
doing precisely that. When I came to this Congress, coincidently when 
President Clinton was elected, the annual budget deficit was 
approximately $290 billion. If we had continued the economic policies 
of the Bush Administration, by the year 2002 the budget deficit would 
be pushing $600 billion. As a result, however, of the budget resolution 
of 1993, the deficit has been coming down substantially.
  As a matter of fact, today the budget deficit is not $290 billion, as 
it was in January of 1993, it is approximately $140 billion, less than 
half of what it was approximately 3 years ago, and it continues to 
decline. We have reduced the deficit without cutting Medicare, without 
cutting Medicaid, without cutting education, without cutting protection 
for the environment, without cutting veterans benefits.
  Although our friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
protest when we claim that they are cutting it, the fact of the matter 
is if we follow their priorities, fewer people will get health care in 
this country next year and the year after that and the year after that.

                              {time}  1945

  Most of them will be elderly people because mostly elderly people 
benefit from the programs of Medicare and Medicaid. If we follow their 
priorities, our educational programs will be seriously deficient. From 
the elementary and secondary level, in fact beginning at Head Start, 
right on through Pell grants, there will be less educational 
opportunity in this country. Middle-class people will be unable to send 
their children to college. We will have a country that is not 
benefiting from the benefits of their education.
  So these are the differences. They are basic, fundamental 
differences. Our budget is better. Their budget is worse. We need to 
defeat theirs and pass ours.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Let me just say to the folks here from the other side of the aisle, 
our goals are twofold. The goals of this budget are twofold. One is to 
set the right priorities, and the second is to get our economy moving 
again. I have tried to talk over the last hour about the economic 
implications of this budget as opposed to yours. I believe all 
Americans will be better off if we can get the economy going again and 
get median income on the way up again. Where I take some umbrage with 
my friends from the other side of the aisle is their incorrect use of 
the word ``cut.'' Anybody can see, this chart represents what our 
proposal is with Medicare. Over the last 7 years, we have spent $920 
billion on Medicare programs. Over the next 7 years, we propose to 
spend $1.479 billion. If you call that a cut, you have been in 
Washington too long. This is an increase, not a decrease. It is a 
substantial increase, not a decrease. So I say to my friends, let us 
play fair. Let us tell it like it is.


                      the price of big government

  Mr. QUINN. Mr. Chairman, recently the Joint Economic Committee 
released a major study on the impact of excessive Government spending 
on total worker pay and benefits. This study, the impact of the welfare 
state on workers, shows how excessive Federal spending has depressed 
the growth of productivity, wages, and benefits over the last two 
decades.
  According to this JEC study, when Federal spending as a share of GDP 
exceeds 17.4 percent, additional Federal spending becomes literally 
counterproductive. These negative results are reflected in lower 
productivity and compensation growth. As a result of excessive Federal 
spending over the last two decades, the typical worker has lost a sum 
total of $106,800, enough money to purchase a median price new home in 
1993.
  At current levels, each additional $1 of Federal spending lowers the 
sum total of workers compensation by 26 cents. In other words, an extra 
$100 billion of Federal spending would lower total compensation 
available to American workers by $26 billion.
  This study also debunks the myth advanced by Labor Secretary Robert 
Reich that seeks to blame the income stagnation under the Clinton 
administration on a recovery in business profits. This study refutes 
the notion that business profits cause income stagnation. And instead 
demonstrates that healthy business profits tend to generate 
compensation gains for American workers.
  This study also shows that when appropriate inflation measures are 
used, hourly wages and benefits received by the typical worker 
increased about 26 percent between 1973 and 1994, after adjustment for 
inflation. This study demonstrates that there is a very close 
relationship between productivity and compensation growth during this 
period.
  As we know, the real problem is that real median family income is 
stagnating under the Clinton administration. Other income measures of 
earnings are also flat or declining. We must do something to protect 
American families from the Clinton crunch. The tax relief provided in 
the Republican budget is a good first step.
  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Chairman, one of the key questions facing 
policymakers today is what can be done to help improve the standard of 
living for the average American. I hear from people all the time who 
tell me they are working harder and longer than ever, but they feel 
squeezed and are just barely getting by. I believe we must make a 
determined effort in this country for a higher rate of economic growth. 
That must become one of our Nation's top priorities. Higher growth will 
come from more saving and investment and from greater productivity, and 
it will do much to improve the outlook for working Americans.
  State of economy: All of us know that the overally economy is doing 
reasonably well. Growth and inflation are both around 2 percent. Many 
jobs are being created and the unemployment rate is low. The deficit is 
going down. Stock prices are at an all-time high. But at the same time, 
there is tremendous uneasiness about the economy. Layoffs and 
downsizing are continuing as the inevitable result of global 
competition and technological change. There is job insecurity, enormous 
income inequality, and significant pressure on families.
  I believe President Kennedy was right when he talked about a rising 
tide lifting all boats. We must have stronger economic growth.
  Economic growth: Economic growth is the rate at which the overall 
economy grows from each year to year. In 1994 our Nation's total output 
of goods and services--gross domestic product--was $7.1 trillion and in 
1995 GDP was $7.25 trillion, for a growth rate last year of 2 percent.
  The U.S. growth rate has slowed since the decades after World War II. 
Economic growth averaged a robust 3.9 percent per year in the 1950's 
and 4.3 percent in the 1960's, but it has dropped to 3.2 percent in the 
1970's, 2.7 percent in the 1980's, and, with the 1990-91 recession, 1.8 
percent so far in the 1990's. We need to do better. Many economists 
beleive that we should be striving for growth of around 3.5 percent per 
year over the long term. They believe that the structure of the economy 
has changed in recent years to allow that kind of growth without 
reigniting inflation.
  Growth in the material standard of living is obviously not the sole 
measure of success as a society. But strong, balanced, and sustained 
economic growth helps in many ways. Jobs multiply and wages rise during 
periods of solid growth. Prior to the 1970's when we had

[[Page H5131]]

strong economic growth, wage growth was also solid. But as the economy 
has slowed, wage growth has flattened out. Strong economic growth also 
makes it easier to balance the budget, as the growing economy boosts 
revenues and reduced social safety net costs, and it makes it easier 
for Americans to tackle a variety of domestic problems. Strong economic 
growth alone cannot solve the nation's problems, but without it they 
are likely to become increasingly difficult.
  We need, in short, an economy that will provide employment for 
everyone willing and able to work, and an economy that will provide 
opportunity for a consistently higher standard of living for those 
employed. The only way I know to get that is with strong private sector 
growth. That growth will come from higher levels of investment and 
superior public services.
  Pro-growth agenda: I believe there are several parts to a pro-growth 
agenda. First, we must balance the federal budget. Large Federal 
borrowing drains the pool of national savings available for productive 
private sector investment and it drives up interest rates. Progress has 
been made on the deficit, as it has been cut in half over the last 4 
years. We need to build on that progress, put aside our partisan 
differences, and balance the budget.
  Second, we need to reform the federal tax system so economic growth 
becomes a much more central objective. That means it has to do a much 
better job of encouraging saving and investment. How it should be 
restructured to achieve that is a matter of debate. We may need a 
variation of the flat tax, a lower tax on capital, or a system of 
taxing consumption instead of investment, but we must put at the top of 
our national agenda a search for a tax system that enhances growth.
  Third, we must expand our trade opportunities and open foreign 
markets to U.S. products. Jobs in exporting industries tend to be 
higher-paying, so our companies must have fair access to the rapidly 
growing markets overseas. We need to continually review and adjust U.S. 
trade policy to make sure it is working in our national interest and is 
helping to expand our economy and good-paying jobs.
  Fourth, we need to curb excessive and costly Government regulations. 
Many Federal regulations provide important health and safety 
protections. But overall we need to make sure their benefits exceed 
their cost and they are carried out in the least burdensome way. 
Regulations should recognize that a vibrant private sector is the best 
engine for economic growth and jobs.
  Fifth, I also think we need higher levels of public investment in 
infrastructure. Federal, State, and local governments need to invest in 
more and better roads, bridges, highways, water systems, sewer systems, 
harbors, ports, airports and all the rest that helps make the private 
sector more productive. We also need to promote investment in research 
and technology, which boosts economic growth.
  Finally, we need greater attention to upgrading the education and 
skills training of our workers. Improving educational performance is an 
absolute priority in today's world so all Americans--not just those at 
the top--can prosper as the economy grows. Education is, of course, 
primarily a State responsibility, but it is a national problem. Access 
to higher education and more skills training is a must.
  I do not suggest that such changes will come about easily. We must be 
prepared to deal with the human problems that emerge. We should do all 
we can, for example, to create a system of portable pensions and 
portable health care to cushion the transition for people who have to 
move from one job to another. We must find ways of providing profit 
sharing and stock ownership plans for employees, not just for the top 
corporate management, so everyone has a greater stake in the success of 
our companies.
  Conclusion: In sum, our objective is simple: higher growth in the 
American economy. That basic goal needs to become the much more central 
focus of what the Federal Government does on a variety of fronts--
whether it be our budget or tax policy or our trade, regulatory, and 
public investment policy. In the end I think what is important for 
working people is for this economic system of ours to grow and to 
create more good-paying jobs. We don't know all the answers about 
getting higher growth, but we know some of them, and we should get 
about the business of implementing them.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this budget 
resolution. If a budget is a statement of priorities, this document 
demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that the Republican majority 
still doesn't care about average, working Americans. It is mean 
spirited and short sighted.
  Although the Republican majority proposes to increase military 
spending--spending nearly $13 billion more than the Generals in the 
Pentagon say we need--they continue to attack programs that help the 
poor and the middle class, that make life better for the majority of 
Americans.
  They want to cut $215 million from the Health Resources and Services 
Administration, which funds Maternal and Child Health Block Grants, 
Ryan White AIDS programs, community health centers, family planning, 
and targeting programs for health professions.
  They cut $398 million from the Department of Health and Human 
Services.
  They freeze the National Institutes of Health at last year's level--a 
cut of 15.9 percent in real dollars by the year 2002.
  They freeze the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, 
Infants and Children.
  They slash housing programs by $20 billion over 6 years.
  They cut libraries by 20 percent, Aid to Higher Education 
Institutional Development by $46 million in 1997, and Job Corps by $88 
million.
  While they cry crocodile tears over the working poor, they cut the 
Earned Income Tax Credit which helps people who earn the lowest wages 
and work hard to raise families get by.
  They kill the NEA and the NEH.
  They eliminate operating subsidies for mass transit by 2002, even 
though it is the cleanest, most environmentally sound transportation 
alternative, but they are willing to destroy the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge to drill for more oil.
  We need a budget that helps low- and middle-income Americans, 
educates our kids, makes our infrastructure more efficient, enforces 
the law and preserves our environment and our health. I urge my 
colleagues to reject the Republican budget resolution.
  Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, the Federal debt is over $5 trillion. 
Interest alone on the Federal debt this year will cost $2,340 for every 
household in Indiana's Fifth Congressional District. The Federal 
Government will spend more than $4.3 billion each day this year; and of 
that amount, $446 million per day is deficit spending. Our Nation's 
Federal debt and yearly deficit continues to be one of America's 
darkest clouds. Even if we do balance the budget in 6 years, our 
Nation's debt will increase to over $7 trillion. The debt stymies 
personal economic growth, business development, job creation, and puts 
in doubt whether we will hand our children an opportunity for a better 
life that we have had.
  The national debt is still manageable. We can and we must balance the 
budget by fixing ineffective government programs and slowing the growth 
of government spending. It is a commonsense approach to balancing our 
budget. My hope is to balance our Federal budget using a thoughtful and 
caring process of time, as we move to streamline Federal programs and 
shift functions to the State and local level. It is unfortunate the 
President continues to embrace a big Federal Government in the hope it 
can be all things to all people.
  Just weeks after President Clinton told America during the State of 
the Union Address that the day of big government is over, he sent 
Congress a budget that is more of the same. Greater than 64 percent of 
his deficit reduction comes after he would leave office if elected to a 
second term, effectively ``passing the buck'' once again. In fact, his 
budget would raise the deficit from $158 billion this year to $164 
billion next year. The President's budget does not reform welfare as we 
know it, it does not preserve and protect Medicare which is going broke 
at a faster rate than the President previously stated, nor does it 
eliminate one Federal agency.
  I believe this is the wrong direction during a time when over 40 
percent of all the money taxpayers earn goes to paying taxes. That's 
right--for every dollar the average Hoosier makes, 40 cents goes to pay 
local, State and Federal taxes. Taxpayers know how to better spend 
their money than the government does. The President's budget increases 
taxes on capital gains that will result in Hoosiers paying more in 
taxes once again. At a time when Republicans are trying to decrease the 
capital gains tax, the President's budget increases taxes on capital 
gains to a tune of $4.1 billion.
  There is nothing in the President's budget that would encourage 
venture capitalists to put up money to provide new or existing 
companies with means to create and ensure Americans jobs. Wages are 
stagnated and more and more people believe the country is headed in the 
wrong direction.
  In contrast, the Republican Congress has a very different agenda. We 
have passed a number of measures to eliminate Washington's reckless 
nature when it comes to spending taxpayers hard-earned dollars. In the 
past year and a half we have passed:

  The Balanced Budget Downpayment Act II. This legislation saves the 
American taxpayer over $23 billion in 1996 alone. Signed by the 
President.
  The line-item veto. This legislation will allow the next President 
the ability to cut wasteful spending. Signed by the President.
  Tax Fairness and Deficit Reduction Act. Provides working Americans, 
senior citizens, farmers, and small businesses with $245 billion in tax 
relief. This bill was incorporated in the Balanced Budget Act. It was 
vetoed by the President.
  Senior Citizens Right to Work Act. Allows senior citizens who need or 
want to work to

[[Page H5132]]

earn income up to $30,000 without penalty to their Social Security 
benefits. Signed by the President.
  Balanced Budget Act. It balanced the Federal budget by the year 2002 
by eliminating over 163 wasteful Government programs while reducing the 
growth of many programs. Vetoed by President Clinton.
  Unfunded Mandate Reform Act. Restricts the ability of the Congress to 
pass laws which impose additional costs to State and local governments, 
unless Congress provides funding to cover such expenses. Signed by 
President Clinton.
  The Personal Responsibility Act. This legislation would have brought 
true reform to our failed welfare system. It focuses on strong work 
requirements, the preservation and importance of the family, the 
reduction of illegitimacy, and the elimination of certain benefits to 
noncitizens. The President vetoed this legislation.
  The Republican budget resolution continues our efforts to end the 
fiscal madness. It shifts the power, money, and influence out of 
Washington and back into the hands of Hoosiers. It provides at least 
$176 billion in tax relief--including a middle-class tax credit, a 
reduction in the capital gains tax rate and other incentives for saving 
and investing for economic growth and job creation.
  The budget resolution incorporates repeal of the 1993 Clinton gas 
tax, an adoption tax credit, enhanced health insurance deduction for 
the self-employed, medical savings account, and long-term care 
incentives.

  The budget resolution reforms the failed welfare and Medicaid 
systems, promoting work and self-reliance. It assumes a 27-percent 
increase in funding for welfare and a 46-percent increase for Medicaid. 
In addition, it calls for increasing Medicare spending from $179 
billion in 1996 to $304 billion in 2002--a 70-percent increase in 
Medicare spending. Under this plan, Medicare spending per beneficiary 
would increase from an average of $5,200 in 1996 to $7,000 in 2002.
  The plan cuts bureaucracy by terminating the Departments of Commerce 
and Energy and the elimination of 130 Federal programs. It recommends 
the elimination of special interest corporate subsidies and tax 
loopholes, including the advanced technology program. National defense 
spending would increase $12.1 billion. It provides $4.1 billion in 1997 
for the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund, and $5.1 billion more over 
6 years in discretionary spending for veterans than the President's 
budget.
  In education and the environment, the Republican budget resolution 
again calls for the elimination of Goals 2000, continued growth in 
student loan volume from $26.6 billion in 1996 to $37.4 billion 2002, 
elimination of the Government-run direct lending program, and level 
funding for title I programs. At the same time it calls for continued 
funding of Head Start, Pell grants, Aid to Disadvantaged Children, and 
the Drug-Free Schools Program at current levels and increases funding 
for total student loans. The budget resolution calls for funding to 
improve the quality of the Nation's parks and reform and increased 
funding for the Superfund Program.
  Balancing the Federal budget is vitally important to our Nation's 
ability to be a world leader. It also has very real effects on the 
personal pocketbooks of Indiana families. Balancing the Federal budget 
means a reduction in interest rates by approximately 2 percent. As a 
result:
  A family with an average mortgage of $75,000 will save $37,000 in 
interest rates over the life of the loan--an annual savings of $1,200.
  A student with an average loan of $11,000--over 10 years--will save 
$2,160 over the life of the loan--an annual savings of $216.
  A family buying a $15,000 car will save $900 in interest over the 
life of the car loan--an annual savings of $225.
  For the first time in over 40 years, the discussion has turned from 
not ``if'' we will balance the Federal budget but to ``when'' we will 
balance the budget. This is a significant achievement. The debate has 
been shifted and we must now pass a balanced budget that places our 
goals into law.
  Our current balanced budget debate involves two very different 
visions for America's future. The President defends the status quo of 
bigger government, deficit spending, and more government intrusion into 
our daily lives. I see a different future. Government over-regulates, 
has grown too big, spends too much, and taxes you too high. We must 
work together to achieve a balanced budget for a more prosperous 
future.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the fiscal year 1997 
budget resolution. This budget continues to build on the Republican 
promise to the American people to reign in our national deficit and to 
move power and influence from Washington, DC back into local 
communities. This is a responsible budget--one that every year while 
maintaining our commitment to our Nation's most precious resource: our 
children.
  Balancing our national budget is one of the best things we can do for 
our children's future. It is the primary responsibility of Members of 
this House--and a responsibility that Republicans have proudly 
accepted--to ensure that we do not leave our children a legacy of 
massive debt.
  The budget resolution before us today also returns the responsibility 
for a child's education back where it belongs--in the hands of parents 
and local communities. As chairman of the Economic and Educational 
Opportunities Committee, I know firsthand the size and burden of the 
Federal education bureaucracy. Over the past several months, my 
committee has identified 760 Federal education programs spread 
throughout 39 Federal agencies. I am pleased that the budget before us 
today encourages each of us to take a long, hard look at our education 
programs and to move the basic responsibility for our chlldren's 
education back to parents and local communities.
  I strongly support providing assistance to our young people to help 
make the dream of a college education a reality. However, I am 
concerned that the Department of Education, which administers the 
Federal student aid programs, is showing clear warning signs of 
mismanagement. Their recent problems in processing financial aid 
applications raise serious concerns about their ability to oversee the 
Federal Direct Loan Program. One-and-a-half million students were 
involved in this delay.
  The fiasco should serve as a wake-up call. Can we trust this 
Department to issue, track, and collect loans of millions of college 
students, who borrow billions in taxpayer funds, when they can't 
effectively manage the simple input of financial data into a computer? 
President Clinton thinks they can, and plans to completely replace the 
private-sector lending programs with his Direct Loan Program. 
Republicans think the end of big government should start here--
President Clinton's Direct Student Loan Program should end.
  In conclusion, I believe this is a responsible budget which protects 
our children's futures and returns power to the American people. I urge 
my colleagues to support the budget resolution.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend Chairman Kasich for his 
leadership on this budget. Once again, the Budget Committee is leading 
the way in downsizing the Federal Government.
  This budget shifts power, money, and influence out of Washington and 
back to the people. It keeps us on the path to balance and ensures that 
Congress will continue to make the tough choices necessary for deficit 
reduction.
  This budget will eliminate deficits entirely by 2002. We can then 
begin the very difficult task of reducing the $6 trillion debt that we 
will have built up by that time. Let us not forget, even when we end 
deficits we still have a huge bill to pay from past congressional 
excess.
  A balanced budget is about much more than numbers. It means higher 
wages and more jobs. This results from the lower interest rates and the 
greater saving and investment that become possible when Congress 
exercises the necessary discipline.
  This Congress has been responsible for a reduction of $40 billion in 
discretionary spending in 1995-96. We have already begun to see the 
fruits of that labor with lower interest rates. This means everything 
from lower mortgages to more affordable college loans for millions of 
American families.
  One thing that I have learned in the past year and a half is that 
achieving a balanced budget is going to be a long hard battle. We are 
going to fight that battle, and we are going to win that battle. But 
the tremendous struggle to get to this point proves why we need a 
balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
  Mr. Chairman, this is a budget for our children. It is time we start 
thinking about them and put an end to deficits. There is no free lunch; 
if we do not pay the bills today, our children will pay them tomorrow.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in strong support of this budget.
  As I stated in the Budget Committee, I have two recommendations for 
improvement as this budget works its way through the process. First, 
our welfare reform savings are too modest. While we reduce the growth 
of welfare programs, these programs continue to grow and they continue 
to be subject to excess Federal control.
  I recommend that we freeze welfare spending and then block grant all 
funding to the States. This would save the taxpayers far more through 
2002. It would also permit the States total freedom to reform welfare. 
The States could require work, job training, and education, they could 
limit the time on welfare, and they could include a cap or other 
reforms designed to end welfare and move ablebodied recipients from 
dependency to work.
  The States are where the true reforms are occurring with welfare. 
Unfortunately, States

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that now propose dramatic welfare reform must come to the Federal 
Government and beg for waivers. This is wrong; States should be free to 
design their own reforms.
  The second recommendation I make is that we use a portion of these 
additional welfare savings to make the proposed reduction in the 
Federal gas tax permanent. State and Federal gas taxes now total over 
40 cents a gallon. This is a tremendous burden on the middle class and 
working poor; it also hits particularly hard in the high mileage States 
out west. Repealing the 1993 increase would save taxpayers in my State 
of Colorado $70 million a year. Working families deserve welfare reform 
and they deserve tax relief.
  Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Chairman, the majority's budget proposal reads 
like a hit list of education programs from Goals 2000 to student loans 
to education improvement grants. If a budget proposal reflects a 
party's priorities, then education is the least of the concerns of the 
majority party. I am dismayed because my personal priority has always 
been education--my life's work has been in education. It is incumbent 
upon those of us who do understand the importance of the investment in 
our schools and colleges to call attention to the damage that this 
budget proposal will wreak on school systems.
  Some of these budget cuts are downright mean-spirited and are not 
based on the effectiveness of a program--the bilingual education 
programs are targeted for elimination as a consequence of an ongoing 
attack on immigrants and minorities.
  I remember the good old days when the majority even had a President 
boasting that he wanted to be the ``education President''. I urge my 
colleagues to oppose the cuts to education--if it is asking too much 
for us to be the ``education Congress'', let us at least avoid our 
going down in history as the ``slash and burn Congress''.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to express my concerns 
about the Republican efforts to radically alter the Medicare program. 
While the Republican budget resolution is short on details, I am 
assuming that they will follow the model that they proposed last year 
in order to meet their $168 billion reduction in Medicare spending over 
the next six years.
  Republicans are proposing changing Medicare from a defined benefit to 
a defined contrition program. It does not propose controlling costs, 
but simply shifts those costs form the Federal Government to senior 
citizens and providers. It will end the prohibition against balance 
billing and allow doctors and hospitals to bill senior citizens for 
extra or added charges. It would even allow HMOs to charge seniors 
extra for the basic Medicare package. My Republican colleagues need to 
remember that 18 percent of seniors--which is about 7 million people--
are living on less than $7,000 a year. Can they afford these new 
hidden, extra charges?
  I attempted to discuss these concerns with the Budget Committee, I 
was told not to worry--these terrible things simply will not happen. 
But, with little or no details, it is hard to understand how they plan 
on achieving $168 billion in savings without shifting costs or forcing 
seniors into restrictive managed care plans. We should not move to 
these radical changes without detailed and thorough hearings, which 
have not been planned. There are too many questions and the 
implications are far too serious to implement a $168 billion change. 
Medicare has worked and has provided access to affordable, quality 
health care for millions of senior citizens. Do we have to jeopardize 
this success in the name of tax cuts for the wealthy?
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the order of the House of Tuesday, May 14, 
1996, the committee rises.
  Accordingly the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Ney) 
having assumed the chair, Mr. Camp, Chairman of the Committee of the 
Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that that Committee, 
having had under consideration the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 
178) establishing the congressional budget for the United States 
Government for fiscal year 1997 and setting forth appropriate budgetary 
levels for fiscal years 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002, had come to 
no resolution thereon.

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