[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 15, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5044-S5046]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the concurrent 
resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, at this time, I yield to the Senator from 
Missouri such time as he may need, up to 15 minutes, to speak on the 
bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, my sincere thanks to the acting floor 
manager and to the Chair.
  A comment was made a few minutes ago when I was on the floor that 
maybe some of the newer Members of the Senate did not really understand 
how we have to balance the budget in the Federal Government.
  I am one who is not new around here, and I would like to say that I 
appreciate very much the interest and enthusiasm and commitment brought 
by the acting floor manager, the previous speaker, the Senator from 
Minnesota; the previous acting floor manager, the

[[Page S5045]]

Senator from Tennessee; and the occupant of the chair, a junior 
colleague from Missouri, all of whom have shown great dedication to the 
need to balance the budget and to come to this body without any 
preconceived notions that the old ways are the only way we can do it.
  Frankly, we have broken new ground. I do a little bit of sowing of 
seeds, and I know how difficult it is to break new ground. If you have 
tried breaking up sod that has not been broken up before, you realize 
that is not an easy task. We have benefited a great deal by the fact 
that we brought in people and we have in this body new Members who 
represent their constituents and who believe, as our constituents 
overwhelmingly do, that there is no reason why the old way of spending 
more and more than the Federal Government takes in is good enough for 
the future.
  Mr. President, we have put $5 trillion of debt on the backs of our 
children. Each year's deficit, if it is running $100 or $200 billion, 
adds to that debt. The interest rates build up, and our children are 
going to be looking at a time when they are working to pay tax dollars 
that could go almost exclusively to pay interest on the debt that our 
generation has run up because we are unable to balance the budget.
  Today, we are involved in what I consider to be maybe not the most 
exciting but perhaps the most important series of discussions and 
debates we have had on this floor. How do we get our national budget 
back on track? How do we ensure that continuing deficits do not 
bankrupt the Federal Government, do not allow vital programs, like 
Medicare part A, to go broke and do not ruin the economy by bringing 
back high rates of inflation, stagflation, high unemployment, and 
stagnating wages?

  It is very important that we be clear and that our colleagues and the 
people we serve understand what we are talking about.
  My good friend from Nebraska, the ranking member on the Democratic 
side on the Budget Committee, has said that there is little difference 
between the numbers in the Senate committee-passed budget and the 
President's budget. He gave us the admonition, ``Let's be honest,'' and 
I agree with him. I do not agree on the numbers that he presents, but I 
agree with him on the need to be honest. We both agree on the need for 
the St. Louis Cardinals to improve their record, but that is for 
another day's discussion. We do have many things in common, just a 
different set of figures that we are using.
  What we are working from are two different sets of numbers. I came to 
this floor yesterday with the very simple proposition that numbers do 
not lie. Or do they? It is the numbers that count. We heard in the 1992 
campaign, ``It's the economy, stupid,'' but when you are talking about 
the budget, it is the numbers that count.
  The President and his staff and the Office of Management and Budget 
have given us the numbers to work with. This is the budget supplement; 
this is the appendix. This has all the numbers the President is 
recommending. This puts forward the President's priorities. They are 
different from the priorities that have been included in the numbers in 
the budget passed by the Senate Budget Committee.
  Even though some may say they are close, I think there are very 
significant differences. That is why we have these debates. We do have 
an independent scorekeeper to keep us honest. I well remember President 
Clinton's stirring call in 1993 at the State of the Union Message that 
we needed to find a way that we could agree on what our proposals did, 
and he said we should use the Congressional Budget Office as the 
independent, objective professional scorekeeper, and that is what we 
have done. In the budget proposal passed out of the Budget Committee 
under the direction of Chairman Domenici, we have produced a budget 
that reaches balance, according to CBO, in the year 2002.
  The President sent us initially a budget which he obviously was not 
sure whether it was going to get to balance, because in his budget 
message, he included some fail-safe mechanisms. There is nothing wrong 
with fail-safe mechanisms, but when it comes to the point that you have 
to use these fail-safe mechanisms, it is important to recognize what 
they do.

  In this book, ``Budget Supplement: A Vision for the Future,'' page 
13, it says:

       In case the new assumptions produce a deficit in 2002, the 
     President's budget proposes an immediate adjustment to the 
     annual limits or caps on discretionary spending, lowering 
     them enough to reach balance in 2002. The President is 
     committed not only to proposing a budget that reaches balance 
     according to CBO, but reaching an agreement with Congress to 
     enact such a budget.

  I think that is very forthright and that is good. The problem is that 
the numbers presented by the President to CBO do not really reach a 
balance in the year 2002. There are almost $77 billion in cuts or 
increases in revenue that have to be made in the final years to get to 
a balance.
  So the CBO, in scoring the President's budget, has assumed what the 
President put into his budget, and that is, he will put a tax increase 
for families in it, as well as a $53 billion cut in discretionary 
spending outlays in the years 2001 and 2002.
  Let us be very clear about it. The President's budget has said, if 
CBO does not score us as reaching balance, then here are the automatic 
steps that must be taken to get to balance. CBO found, in fact, the 
budget did not get to balance; therefore, CBO said, we will impose the 
cuts he proposed as an automatic offset to the deficit. That, Mr. 
President, is what we need to talk about.
  Some of my colleagues earlier today on the other side have presented 
budget charts showing the spending initially proposed by the President. 
It does not look like much difference. But those are not the charts 
that reflect what happens when the CBO performs its duty under the 
President's budget to cut spending to bring it to a deficit of zero in 
2002.
  I remind my colleagues on this side and the other side that if we are 
talking about the President's budget, any time a colleague puts up a 
budget showing the President's number, if I am on the floor, I will ask 
if that budget reflects the CBO cuts as directed by the President in 
his budget message. For those of my colleagues who may be here, I 
invite them to do the same thing, because I think it is very, very 
important that we talk about apples and apples. If we are going to get 
to a balanced budget as the President says, then how we get there is 
the vitally important number that we have to consider as we go forth 
and vote on these competing proposals for the budget for the next 6 
years.
  These are the numbers the President has proposed. These are the 
numbers in these books. Mr. President, unless and until he sends up to 
this body and to the House another set of books and releases them to 
the press to say that they have come up with a new budget, then this is 
the budget we have to work with. These are the figures that he has 
presented to us.
  Let me take my colleagues through a description of some of the things 
what the Clinton budget, as scored by CBO, would actually do and see 
how it measures up to some of the claims that are made for it in the 
text.
  In the description of the budget plan, a little book called, ``A 
Citizen's Guide to the Federal Budget,'' this book says, ``The 
President's 1997 budget would reach balance over the next 7 years by 
cutting unnecessary and lower priority spending.'' Remember that; 
``lower priority spending'' is going to be cut.
  It goes on to say, at the bottom of page 31, or down in the lower 
part of it:

       The budget saves $297 billion in discretionary spending, 
     cutting unnecessary and lower priority spending, 
     but investing in education and training, the environment, 
     science and technology, law enforcement and other 
     priorities that will raise living standards and improve 
     the quality of American life.

  Mr. President, I also serve as chairman of the Senate appropriations 
subcommittee dealing with a number of these important areas. I think it 
might be well to take a look at some of these more interesting areas 
and also some of the areas funded in other budgets which are handled by 
other subcommittees on which I serve.
  Let us start off with the Food and Drug Administration. It is vitally 
important for ensuring safety in the food supply and drugs. This green 
line across the top shows what the Senate Budget Committee reported 
out. Essentially that is a flat line. That is tough. That is holding 
their feet to the fire.

[[Page S5046]]

 That is making them absorb inflationary increases, additional 
workload. That is tough, but that is doable.
  But take a look at what happens to this spending when CBO implements 
its cuts. It drops from over $850 million down to just below $700 
million, just above $650 million, by the year 2000. This is, I would 
say, about a 30 percent cut in the Food and Drug Administration. That 
is 25 percent. This is in the body that is supposed to keep our food 
supply safe and make sure we get good quality, reliable, efficacious 
drugs. That is something I challenge. Can we afford to cut the FDA that 
much? I do not think so.
  Let us take another one. This one is very important. We are talking 
about the research that is done to deal with diseases and promoting 
cures for many of the diseases we have and the things that are of great 
concern to many people--the National Institutes of Health.
  The President starts off with a nice little increase, but you can see 
by the year 2000, that has to fall off the table. That is almost a $2 
billion cut in the budget of NIH to reach balance by the year 2002. 
Overall it is a 14 percent cut. Are we not going to need the research 
done by the National Institutes of Health in the year 2001 and 2002? I 
think we will. I am optimistic that we are going to discover cures. But 
I do not think we are going to make all the progress we can possibly 
make and then be able to shut down research at NIH. So I question the 
priority of slashing the NIH budget.
  How about some of the other priorities? I have a responsibility for 
acting on, in our appropriations subcommittee, the budget for EPA. You 
all heard a great deal about the President and his support for EPA. Who 
would have believed just a few months ago that the President's budget 
would leave EPA with less money 6 years from now than it got from 
Congress last year, and well below the budget proposal we are 
presenting this year? As I have said many times over, numbers do not 
lie.

  This is what happens to funding under our Senate-passed budget 
resolution. We hold EPA at a flat line. We want to work to improve the 
way that EPA does its business. We think that there are new ideas that 
are being developed both within EPA and by groups supporting EPA that 
can give us tremendous progress as we shift more responsibilities to 
State and local governments and maintain a vitally important monitoring 
function at the national level and using more flexible means of 
achieving goals.
  The President said it well in his budget: ``If industry can come up 
with a better way, a cheaper way of doing it, let's do it the most 
effective way.'' We can live with it. But take a look at what happens 
to the President's budget under the numbers presented by the President 
and as scored by CBO. This EPA budget takes a very sharp drop from just 
above $7.2 billion to below $6.4 billion by the year 2002.
  This is a tremendous slash for the environment. He said, I thought, 
in his message in here that one of his priorities is making sure we 
take care of the environment. I do not think his budget does that. He 
says, ``We need to invest in education, training, the environment, 
science and technology.'' I think our budget does a lot better job of 
doing that than his does.
  Oh, yeah, by the way, science and technology. Our subcommittee also 
finances the National Science Foundation. We provide funding for it. 
Look what happens to the funding in the National Science Foundation. 
The Senate budget includes a slow but steady upward path. The 
President's budget gives us a little bump up here and then it drops off 
the table again because it has to. The President himself ordered that 
cuts be made to bring the budget in balance in the year 2002. Under CBO 
scoring that is the only way it is going to get to balance.
  Finally, I addressed yesterday the budget of the Veterans' 
Administration, the agency which provides care to the medically 
indigent veterans and those veterans who have been injured in the 
service of their country, a very, very important group of people who 
depend solely on the Veterans' Administration.
  These people would see the money devoted to their health care cut by 
almost 25 percent. The Clinton budget cuts $12.9 billion out of the VA 
budget by the year 2002. We maintain essentially level funding. That is 
a cut that the veterans of this country cannot live with, and we in 
good conscience cannot live with.

  I mentioned to this body yesterday that the President's people have 
said, ``Don't believe these numbers.'' The Secretary of the Veterans' 
Administration, Jesse Brown, when he testified before my subcommittee, 
said, ``The President has assured me that these will not be the 
numbers. He is going to negotiate with us.'' A representative of the 
White House Office of Management and Budget was quoted in the papers in 
our home State saying these numbers that are being presented, we are 
misrepresenting, because we took the numbers out of the book and out of 
the CBO. He said, ``Those are just rough general guidelines. Don't 
believe them.''
  So it is the official policy of the administration not to believe the 
official policy. Until they send us up new numbers, send us a new 
budget, that is what we have to work with. That is what the priorities 
are: Cutting veterans, cutting national science, EPA, NIH.
  Mr. President, that is not the way to get to the balanced budget we 
need. We can do so by following the plan outlined by Chairman Domenici. 
I urge all my colleagues to look at the contrasting numbers and make up 
their mind. I hope they will support the budget supported by the Senate 
Budget Committee.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

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