[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 69 (Thursday, May 16, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5111-S5140]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The Senate will now resume 
consideration of Senate Concurrent Resolution 57, which the clerk will 
report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 57) setting forth the 
     congressional budget for the United States Government for 
     fiscal years 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002.

  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous 
consent that it be charged equally on both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 3965

(Purpose: Setting forth the congressional budget for the United States 
  Government for fiscal years 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002)

  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, as agreed to yesterday, at this time I send 
an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Exon], for himself, Mr. 
     Daschle, Mr. Dodd, and Mr. Kerry, proposes an amendment 
     numbered 3965.

  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under 
``Amendments Submitted.'')
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, in the arrangement between myself and the 
Budget Committee chairman, Senator Domenici, I am offering this 
amendment today as a substitute for the basic Republican amendment that 
was laid down when we began the budget debate yesterday by the chairman 
of the Budget Committee.

[[Page S5112]]

  The amendment that I am offering is very clear cut. It is not 
difficult to understand. I am proposing the President's 7-year, CBO 
certified balanced budget as a substitute to the Republican budget that 
is now before the Senate.
  Let us turn back the clock to a year ago. That is when my Republican 
colleagues pulled our leg on the Senate floor. The Republicans offered 
the President's budget recommendation as a substitute for their own 
amendment. They offered that as a substitute resolution. As a result of 
that, they had a good laugh at our expense as the amendment was voted 
down 99 to 0, with this Senator, the ranking Democrat on the Budget 
Committee, voting with the 99.
  But what a difference a year makes. It is not only a different year, 
Mr. President. It is a different budget. And I do not think my 
colleagues on the other side would be smirking if they did the same 
thing this year as they did last year, but, of course, there is no 
indication that they will do that. It would not be the meaningless, 
hollow political gesture that it was in May 1995. This President's 
balanced budget is real in every sense of the word, and it is certified 
to be in balance by the Congressional Budget Office.

  Throughout last year I heard one chorus from the Republican majority. 
They repeated it over and over again: ``Mr. President, give us a 7-year 
balanced budget, certified by the Congressional Budget Office.'' I was 
urging the President to do the same thing. The difference was that I 
was interested in sound budget politics rather than partisan politics. 
It is now a done deal. The President has complied with what the 
Republicans were seeking and what this Senator was seeking.
  Now we hear something different from the Republicans. In order to 
avoid dealing with the President, House Budget Chairman Kasich has now 
reversed course and tells CNN, ``The problem is, of course, not in the 
numbers.'' It is the extremist Republican philosophy that President 
Clinton and mainstream Americans have soundly rejected, but they are 
still on that course. For my colleagues who still believe that honest 
numbers are important, here is a product, the President's budget, far 
superior to the Republican budget that is now on the floor. For, as the 
Republican budget delivers fresh and needless pain, across the years, 
the President's budget is a smart mixture of fiscal constraint and 
compassion.
  The President's budget achieves balance in 7 years, but it does so 
without the terrible burden being brought on our senior citizens, 
working families, and the most vulnerable in America. It reflects the 
values and the priorities of the American people. It protects Medicare 
benefits and it protects Medicare beneficiaries. It invests in our 
children's education, it protects the environment from the search-and-
destroy right wing radicals. It preserves nursing home standards and 
nursing home benefits. It prevents ordinary Americans from going broke 
to pay for nursing home care.
  As I noted a few moments ago, this will be the last budget resolution 
of my Senate career, and I thank President Clinton for saving the best 
for last, as far as this Senator is concerned. In my 18 years in this 
great body, I cannot think of another budget that better hits the mark 
right from the start. I cannot think of another budget that I could 
endorse so eagerly. I cannot think of another budget that ordinary 
Americans could so readily call their own.
  Having said that, of course the President's budget is not without 
some flaws as far as this Senator is concerned. We could all find 
things on which we would disagree. There is always a pea under the 
mattress that irritates one or more of the 100 Members of this body. 
And there are some things in the President's budget that cause me some 
concern. But what we are talking about here is a document that I am 
introducing today that I hope would be the basic model that we would 
begin from, rather than the budget proposal endorsed and put together 
and offered by the Republican majority. In other words, I, too, would 
hope we could do some fine tuning on the President's budget, which I 
think is necessary.
  But I want to be clear on this point: The underlying mechanism in 
this budget, which is fiscal restraint coupled with protecting our 
economic investments so vital to America, is synchronized and in fine 
working order, but I would certainly entertain some amendments to it.
  After 18 years in the Senate, I harbor few illusions that there will 
be a mass conversion on the other side of the table to what I consider 
to be my reasonable appeal. I ask my colleagues, however, to have a 
serious discussion and have a serious look at the amendment I am 
offering.
  For too many months we have been talking at each other and not with 
each other about how to balance the budget in 7 years. This 
Presidential proposal is a serious and a honest budget, and I hope all 
of my colleagues will approach this amendment in that spirit so we can 
move ahead in an expeditious fashion.
  Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time, and I yield the 
floor.
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, we are now beginning a debate over the 
President's budget proposal for 1997 and for succeeding years. In a 
very real sense, the fact that we are debating this proposal represents 
a major step forward from the situation in which we found ourselves 
last year.

  As my friend, the Senator from Nebraska, has pointed out, last year 
it was members of the Republican Party who put up the President's 
budget to be voted on and voted down. Members of his own party were not 
willing, systematically, to defend that budget. Because, Mr. President, 
as you will remember, last year the debate was fixed very firmly on the 
proposition that one side, the new Republican majority, felt it vitally 
important not only to promise a balanced budget at some time in the 
future, but to make the very difficult policy decisions that were 
required to assure that the budget was, in fact, balanced.
  We succeeded in doing so. We succeeded in doing so so well that 
during the entire period of time in which it looked as though this 
promise would be kept, interest rates declined all across the country. 
What did that mean? It meant that people buying homes paid less in the 
way of interest on their mortgages and therefore were more likely to be 
able to afford to buy a home or to buy a better home. It meant that 
businesses, small and large, paid less in interest and were therefore 
able to increase their productivity and increase the jobs that they had 
to offer and increase the quality and compensation for the jobs which 
they did offer. In other words, even a binding promise to reach balance 
in the future that was believable had a positive impact on our economy, 
and by the year of balance, 2002, it would have meant at least $1,000 
per family in the pockets of the average American family.
  During the entire development of that balanced budget, the other side 
refused to come up with any alternative that would reach that balance, 
and the struggle was between a group of Republicans who felt it 
absolutely unethical and immoral to continue to spend money by the 
hundreds of billions of dollars, the bills for which we sent to our 
children and grandchildren, and a side led by the President who felt 
this was not relevant and was unimportant.
  Beginning in December, however, and culminating with the offer of 
this Presidential budget, we have had, in fact, at least lip service--
and I must say that lip service is important to the proposition that a 
balanced budget is of great help to all Americans by removing some of 
the burdens of Government from their shoulders, by freeing them up and, 
implicitly, leaving more of their hard-earned money in their own 
pockets.
  Unfortunately, however, doing that job is more difficult. It is 
harder work than the President of the United States is willing to 
undertake.
  His dedication to the proposition is welcome. The product itself is 
seriously flawed. As a consequence, that makes even less valid his 
characterization of our efforts as being extreme in nature. In fact, 
the President has never made any real steps in our direction, even when 
compromises and modifications were made on the part of the Speaker of 
the House and the majority leader of the Senate and the distinguished 
chairman of our Budget Committee, Senator Domenici.

[[Page S5113]]

  So we now have a unity with respect to our goals, but a dramatic 
difference in connection with the way in which those goals are reached. 
What we have in this proposal, the amendment that is the subject matter 
before the Senate right now, is spending increases in 1997, rather than 
a move on a steady path of lowering spending so that we reach a goal on 
a gradual but even path between now and the year 2002, 6 years from 
today.
  What we get are a series of mechanisms and gimmicks rather than 
choices that do require the Congressional Budget Office to show reduced 
spending and reduced deficits, though there is not a single detail as 
to how we get there in the key years right after the turn of the 
century.
  More accurately, if we look at the policy judgments that are 
contained in this Presidential budget, we see that it has a deficit of 
$84 billion in the year 2002, according to the Congressional Budget 
Office. Mr. President, $84 billion is not a modest amount of money by 
any stretch of the imagination, just under $100 billion after 6 more 
years of lip service to a balanced budget and at that--to get to that 
figure, our one-time savings and assets sales, which is immediately 
after that year, will have resulted--the budget deficit would increase 
very, very substantially.
  So this proposal is a very modest step in the right direction, but it 
is not a balanced budget. It is not a serious attempt to make decisions 
now that will lead to a balanced budget. It is, in fact, a promise of 
very difficult choices for the President after next, for the President 
who is elected not in 1996 but in the year 2000.
  What are the gimmicks, what are the mechanisms that allow this to be 
determined as a balanced budget that are, in fact, no more than 
gimmicks? A discretionary trigger, No. 1; an end to the tax reductions 
that are called for in the bill, No. 2; outrageous shell games with 
respect to Medicare, one of the vital social safety nets in our entire 
society; welfare reform that is not reform; and a number of other 
sleights of hand.

  Let us go to some of the gimmicks first. This proposal increases 
domestic discretionary spending for next year, the one year of the 
budget that is absolutely binding, by $10 billion, so that the 
President, during the course of the reelection campaign, can point to a 
wide variety of increases in programs supported by various interest 
groups and by large numbers of people.
  Then from 1998 to 2002, there are a significant number of cuts, none 
of which is specified, none of which can be attacked because they are 
amorphous. They are simply figures on the wall without any detail to 
back them up.
  Finally, for the last 2 years, the President calls for increased 
discretionary spending, even though the Congressional Budget Office 
says that the trigger mechanism to balance the budget included in this 
proposal will reduce discretionary spending by $45 billion in the year 
2002 alone. But worse than that--worse than that, Mr. President--as 
gimmicky as it is, is the President's treatment of Medicare. This 
budget takes one of the most vital elements of Medicare, an element 
that is now protected by being in the Medicare trust fund, paid for by 
the payroll taxes that each of us at work pays every single year: Home 
health care, not an insubstantial program, Mr. President, which costs 
$55 billion. It is taken out of the trust fund by the President's 
proposal, out of the protection of the trust fund in order that the 
President can show that the trust fund stays solvent for a longer 
period of time than would otherwise be the case, and transfers it we 
really know not where.
  In one sense, this Presidential budget says, ``Well, we're going to 
transfer home health care to Medicare part B,'' the part that pays for 
physicians' fees in Medicare, an element of Medicare that is not 
covered by the trust fund, an element of which about 75 percent is paid 
by general taxes, that is to say, the deficit, and 25 percent by 
premiums paid by the beneficiaries.
  Medicare part B, of course, is voluntary. It is such a good deal that 
there is practically no one eligible for it who does not take it when 
you are only paying 25 percent of its cost. But it is voluntary. So 
home health care at one level is transferred into part B. But it does 
not become voluntary, it is still there. It is not subject to any of 
the copayments that are a part of part B. It is not subject to the 25-
percent premium cost that part B is subject to otherwise. So, in fact, 
it simply becomes a completely, totally, absolutely unfunded 
entitlement, Mr. President.
  What does that mean? It means $55 billion a year more in bills 
transferred to working Americans, out of the trust fund, which they are 
already paying and--incidentally, those payments are not cut at all--
simply into the general fund to be added to the deficit.
  That does one of three things, Mr. President: either it greatly 
increases the deficit by that $55 billion, or it will result in a tax 
increase of $55 billion on the American people, a new tax, or at some 
point or another, when things get tough, it just will not be paid for 
at all, and it will disappear, home health care will disappear.

  Mr. President, I use the word ``gimmick.'' This does not really get 
appropriately covered by the word ``gimmick.'' This is a fraud. This is 
something to which people are entitled now, that is being paid for now, 
that is in a trust fund now, that suddenly is just hanging out there 
with a new bill for the American people.
  There are other gimmicks in the Medicare cuts that are in the 
President's budget. The amount of money he claims to save is not saved, 
according to the scoring of the Congressional Budget Office, what they 
come up with for it. There are more triggers on the amounts of money 
for outpatient hospital services. There is a new entitlement program 
for workers temporarily unemployed, but it sunsets in the year 2000.
  Taxes on working families, college students, and small businesses 
will be increased in the year 2001. Payroll taxes will be accelerated 
at that particular period of time, Mr. President. And these really are 
gimmicks. A whole slew of asset sales are pushed into the year 2002 to 
show a one-time balance with, of course, no balance thereafter.
  There is a spectrum auction of spectrum for the year 2002, of 
spectrum that will not be returned to the Federal Government until 
2005, even if it is ready to be returned at that particular time. Will 
it get less money than if it were auctioned at the time it is actually 
available? Obviously those will be lower.
  So as CBO indicates that they will be $6 billion short, there is just 
a contingent $6 billion charge on broadcasters to make up the 
difference for the year 2002. Governors Island in New York Harbor is 
going to be deserted after 1998, but it will not be sold until 2002 so 
that it can balance the budget in that year. The strategic petroleum 
reserve, the Weeks Island Naval Petroleum Reserve--the same thing, they 
get sold long after we have assumed that they would be sold to balance 
the budget in that year.
  In welfare, the President's welfare reform program does not require 
its recipients to be enrolled in Work First until 2003 so that the 
payment for their new education and training management does not begin 
until later.
  So even if you accept all of the gimmicks, all of the tax increases, 
all of the unspecified spending cuts, to get us to balance in 2002, it 
all goes to hell in a hand basket immediately thereafter.
  Mr. President, I have only begun to list the gimmicks and the 
outrageous transfers of responsibility that are included in this 
proposal. It just is not serious. Successive speakers will speak to 
some of the circular reasoning that is contained in this proposal. It 
is a proposal that is very comfortable for next year, one in many 
respects in connection with discretionary spending I wish that I could 
support, but one I cannot support when it does not really reform 
entitlements, when it leaves all of the heavy lifting to the President 
after next, and when it leaves that President after next with a huge 
unfunded liability in the third year of his or her Presidency.
  As I said to begin these remarks, Mr. President, it is a major step 
forward to have a commitment to a balanced budget on the part of the 
President of the United States. But when that commitment is lip service 
only, when there is no heavy lifting, when there are no serious 
reductions or serious policy changes, we have not even gotten halfway. 
We should be and we are grateful that we are halfway.

[[Page S5114]]

  I am grateful that the Senate is actually seriously debating two--no, 
three before we are done--serious possibilities. I will support two of 
those possibilities, the bipartisan budget which will come up, I 
suspect tomorrow, and the Republican one because, while they take a 
slightly different path, they both deal seriously with the problem of 
balancing the budget. They have a real balanced budget. They have 
policy decisions that will affect the years not directly covered by 
this budget as well as those that are covered by it. I regret to say 
that the proposal that we have before us this minute does none of those 
things. Lipservice, Mr. President, is not enough. Action is required.
  Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, we are hearing repeatedly today what we 
heard from the Republican side of the aisle yesterday--every time it is 
said I intend to correct it--and that is that the President's budget is 
not in balance.
  As I said in my opening remarks yesterday, and in my opening remarks 
this morning, contrary to the statements that are being made from that 
side of the aisle, the President's budget is certified to be in balance 
by the Congressional Budget Office. Lest we forget what that is, the 
Congressional Budget Office is run and managed by a Republican 
appointee whom I supported to be the head of that organization.
  The Congressional Budget Office, whether run by a Democrat or 
Republican, has always been considered to be about as fair as you can 
get with regard to certifying numbers.
  I quote once again, as I did yesterday--and I will keep quoting it 
today every time somebody on that side of the aisle says that the 
President's budget is not balanced--and that is this quote from the 
Congressional Budget Office headed by June O'Neill.

       The President's budget proposes policies that the 
     Congressional Budget Office estimates would balance the 
     budget by the year 2002.

  Yet that side of the aisle keeps saying, ``It does not. It does not. 
It does not.'' I am not going to get into ``You said that, she said 
that, he said that.'' But their claims are fundamentally wrong and they 
do not not contribute to a legitimate debate on the budget when they 
keep saying, ``the President's budget doesn't balance.''
  Likewise, I would say, that the Congressional Budget Office has said 
that the Republican budget proposal introduced by Chairman Domenici 
yesterday does balance. There are several things that I could pick 
apart on that. There are several things that I could get up and say, 
``I don't agree with CBO. I think that the Republican budget does not 
balance in the year 2002 for this reason, for that reason, for the 
gimmicks that are included in their budget.''
  But it seems to me that when I take that kind of an argument, I am 
undermining the basic context that I think is important; that is, that 
CBO has certified that in their best judgment and by their best 
estimates both the President's budget, that I have just offered, and 
the Republican budget offered yesterday by Chairman Domenici, have been 
certified to by CBO as balancing the budget by the year 2002.
  Now, I do not think we accomplished very much since both of the basic 
budgets that we are arguing about here have been certified by CBO. Last 
year, I repeat again, the Republicans hounded the President, hounded 
the Democrats and challenged the President to come forth with a budget 
that could be certified to as being balanced by the year 2002 by the 
Congressional Budget Office. Now that it has been done, as I said 
yesterday, they are moving the goal posts once again.
  I think we can have legitimate debate on what are the rights and what 
are the wrongs in both the President's budget and, the Republican 
budget. I admitted and conceded in my opening remarks this morning, 
that there are some parts of the President's budget that I do not agree 
with. I think we accomplish very little by getting up on the floor of 
the U.S. Senate, as Republicans did yesterday and as they are starting 
out to do today, to say the President's budget is not balanced. Says 
who? Says the Republican majority. The Republican majority is a 
partisan referee and therefore their claims should not be considered as 
authentic with regard to whose budget balances best and in what 
timeframe.
  As I say, I think there are many policy problems with the Republican 
budget, and I think there are policy problems with the President's 
budget. I suggest we could expedite the proceedings and come to more 
intelligent debate if we stop saying this budget does not balance and 
that budget does not balance, and agree, if we can, that the CBO has 
certified both the Republican budget and the President's budget that I 
have just introduced as being balanced by the year 2002. If we are 
going to go down that road, we are just going to be throwing stones at 
each other's budget without getting to the specifics of what we would 
like to see done.
  Once again, to bring that point home, I want to talk for just a 
moment about the Medicare part A and B trust funds that have become 
focal in the debate, and justifiably so. Once again, I am going to 
introduce for the Record and read a very short letter from June 
O'Neill, the Republican-appointed Director of the Congressional Budget 
Office. The letter is dated May 9, 1996:

                                  Congressional Budget Office,

                                      Washington, DC, May 9, 1996.
     Hon. J. James Exon,
     Ranking Minority Member, Committee on the Budget, U.S. 
         Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator: At your request, the Congressional Budget 
     Office (CBO) has examined the effects of the Administration's 
     budgetary proposals on the Hospital Insurance (HI) trust 
     fund. Under current law, the HI trust fund is projected to 
     become insolvent in 2001. CBO estimates that the 
     Administration's proposals would postpone this date to 2005.
           Sincerely,
                                                  June E. O'Neill.
                                                         Director.

  Mr. President, in listening to the Senator from Washington, he seems 
to assert that the home health care part of the budget would be safer 
in Medicaid part A than it would be in Medicaid part B. I find this 
association somewhat ironic in view of the fact there is no place in 
the entire Republican budget where the majority seeks to find more 
savings, or, placed in a better context, there is no place where 
reductions from real needs have been more savaged by the Republicans 
than in Medicare part A. Yet, the majority wants to reduce $123 billion 
from protected Medicare part A spending. If that is what they do to 
programs that they claim are safe, I hate to see what they would do to 
programs they dislike.
  What I am saying is the sound and fury from the other side with the 
President's shift in home health care--he is shifting it into an area 
that would make it safer. The President is taking and transferring this 
out of the part of the budget that the Republicans are savaging with 
cuts that would be far below real needs.
  Once again, I am not sure we are talking about apples and apples and 
apples and oranges here. Suffice it to say, I think so far the attack 
on the President's budget, while, once again, I say is not perfect in 
my eye, is not honest and straightforward. I think some of their 
arguments are somewhat suspect.
  Mr. President, one more quote, again from my remarks of yesterday, 
that are found on page 203 of the committee report:

       The Republican budget is rife with gimmicks. The tax cuts 
     mysteriously drop off from $23 billion to $16 billion by the 
     year 2002. The Republicans count on savings towards balancing 
     the budget from spending cuts that they already used in the 
     Kennedy-Kassebaum health bill. They similarly count twice the 
     savings in housing. Without these gimmicks, the Republican 
     budget would not be in balance.

  I only cite that, Mr. President, to say this Senator, too, could be 
charged with trying to undermine the Republican budget. The term 
``gimmicks'' in the President's budget was used by my friend and 
colleague from Washington in remarks just concluded. This Senator used 
the term ``gimmicks'' yesterday explaining shortcomings that I see in 
the Republican budget.
  I do not believe that either of us should keep hounding the other 
side on gimmicks because the facts of the matter are, there are lots of 
things in the President's budget and there are lots of things in the 
Republican budget that could be deemed as gimmicks. Those of us who 
call parts of the Republican budget gimmicks and, likewise, when the 
Republicans call parts of the President's budget gimmicks, we are 
voicing

[[Page S5115]]

an opinion. Only time will tell whether it is true or not.
  While I have attacked parts of the Republican budget as gimmicks, I 
say in the end what we should all do is recognize and realize that 
gimmicks or no gimmicks, the Congressional Budget Office, which we all 
recognize as a legitimate referee, has certified that, in their 
opinion, both budgets reach balance by the year 2002. And I suspect, 
because I respect the professionalism of the Congressional Budget 
Office, that they are not necessarily blind-sided by what the Senator 
from Nebraska calls gimmicks in the Republican proposal, or likewise, 
when the Republicans charge that parts of the President's budget has 
gimmicks in it.

  So, gimmicks or no gimmicks, I think we should get on with the debate 
by recognizing that while there is legitimate criticism in order to 
both of the budget proposals, I hope that we can get off the kick of 
saying it over and over again that the President's budget does not 
balance and that the Republican budget does not balance. We can say 
that, but I think it contributes not a great deal to the legitimate 
discussion, since it is a moot point.
  The Congressional Budget Office has said that both budgets are 
balanced. I think there is plenty of room for debate on changes that 
should be made to improve the two budgets. But let us, hopefully, agree 
that we are talking about two budgets that do meet balance by the year 
2002, and that should not be a key part of the debate.
  I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Washington. Let me 
say, I am going to agree with----
  Mr. EXON. If the Senator will withhold for a minute so we can talk 
about time here, a lot of people have asked me when we are going to 
vote. I simply say--and I have not had a report from the Senator yet 
this morning--that we have about 34 amendments that Democrats are 
intending to offer. We asked last night that they try and advise us, 
and your side advise you, what amendments we have. We are trying to 
complete this effort by tomorrow night. We are certainly going to have 
to have some discipline somewhere along the line to get that done.
  I would like to ask, first, about how many amendments do you see on 
your side, or do you know about at the present time? When we have that, 
we will add that to the 34 that we have here and multiply that out by 
the number of hours that each one of those amendments are entitled to. 
Then we will begin to see the difficult task we are going to have by 
trying to finish this by tomorrow night.
  The second question I want to ask to move this debate along is this. 
Last night, Senators on both sides suggested that we put off this 
debate until this morning and not have a vote before noon. I am 
wondering if we could possibly get an agreement that we would try and 
balance out time so that we could have a vote in the vicinity of noon 
today on this matter. Is that a feasible proposal? Does the Senator 
think that might move things along?
  Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Nebraska has me at a certain 
disadvantage. As he knows, I am sitting in for the chairman of the 
Budget Committee this morning. I cannot give him definitive answers to 
either of his questions. I can say, however, that I have no 
anticipation that we would vote before noon. I am sure we can 
informally divide the time between now and noon and give Members 
assurance we will not vote before then. It may be that it is after noon 
before we get to do so.
  As was the case with the Senator from Nebraska, our chairman asked 
Republican Members to report to him on all the amendments they would 
have by noon today. Well, it is still an hour and a half from noon. We 
have only a relative handful.
  Mr. EXON. That is a good sign.
  Mr. GORTON. That is certainly a good sign. We will be able to answer 
his question, of course, more definitively in a relatively short period 
of time. I think that, on an informal basis, we can agree to simply go 
back and forth. We have yielded time to the Senator from Missouri. I 
see the Senator from South Carolina. It would be appropriate for him to 
go next, and then back and forth for a period of time, at least.
  Mr. EXON. I thank the Senator. That helps answer some of the 
questions. Let us move forward.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe.) The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I assume that did not count against my 10 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It did not.
  Mr. BOND. If we can start afresh, let me thank my distinguished 
colleague from Washington and warn my good friend from Nebraska that I 
am going to agree with him. I know that maybe this will help the 
process move along. But we have before us the President's budget. This 
is a massive work that would cost about a hundred dollars if you want 
to buy it. It has the numbers in here that the President proposes.
  Mr. President, in one sense, the Senator from Washington is right. 
The numbers here do not balance. The numbers in the book do not come to 
balance. Now, the President has done something in this budget. You have 
to look at the supplement to see what he has done. He said, if it does 
not work, I have a trigger. On 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 limit, or caps on discretionary 
spending, lowering them enough to reach balance in 2002.''
  I agree with the Senator from Nebraska. When you impose those caps, 
the President's budget does come to balance in 2002. I am not going to 
call that automatic cut a gimmick, or that trigger a gimmick. Let us 
just take it for what it does. The President has presented a budget, 
and he said if it does not balance, you take a whack at it. Well, that 
whack is a $16 billion tax increase on families in the year 2002. It is 
a $67 billion cut in spending, 10 percent in 2001 and 18 percent in 
2002.
  So when you take a look at all these numbers, remember that these 
numbers do not balance. You have to apply the trigger. You have to 
shoot that budget down to get it to balance. I am going to show you 
what that does to some of these discretionary spending programs. I hope 
that my colleagues, before they vote on the President's budget, will 
understand the impact of these cuts triggered because the President 
claims he wants to get to a balanced budget.
  Now, that may sound kind of complicated. Let me reduce it to common, 
everyday terms. It is as if you went to the grocery store and you 
filled up your basket; you gathered all the things you needed and all 
the things you wanted. You took it to the checkout counter, and the 
clerk ran it up at the checkout counter, and all those bar scanner 
codes recorded the numbers. At the end, the bill comes out to be $100. 
You look in your wallet and you say, ``Whoops, I only have $80.'' You 
have $100 worth of wishes and wants, but you only have $80. So you are 
going to have to start putting some things back. So you put $20 worth 
of stuff back, and you pay your $80 and take the goods home.
  Well, when we talk about the budget that the President proposes, let 
us talk about that $80 that he is actually going to spend. Do not be 
misled if somebody talks about the $100 he wants. Do not be misled 
about the tax cuts because there is going to be a $16 billion increase 
for individuals and families. There will be a $16 billion tax increase 
for families in 2002 because, unless you do that, these numbers do not 
add up.
  Mr. President, the point I made yesterday and the day before is that 
numbers do not lie. Let us take a look at the numbers.
  Mr. President, I think it is important that we take a look at some of 
the vital impacts on health and children in this. I mentioned yesterday 
the Food and Drug Administration. The budget we have before us reported 
out of the Senate Budget Committee essentially keeps funding for the 
Food and Drug Administration on an even keel. The Food and Drug 
Administration is vitally important because its diverse 
responsibilities include licensing blood banks, monitoring clinical 
investigations, reviewing and approving prescription drugs, generic 
drugs, animal drugs, vaccines, biologicals, medical devices, and food 
additives. The FDA ensures the quality of a trillion dollars

[[Page S5116]]

worth of products. This year it proposes to certify over 10,000 
mammography facilities across the country--vital to the health and 
well-being of our country.
  What happens when the President applies that trigger, those caps, 
those cuts to the FDA? Look at this red line that shows the dramatic 
reduction in funding for the FDA from almost $900 million to under $700 
million in 2001 only coming up above $700 million in 2002. This is a 
tremendous cut in the vitally important activities of the Food and Drug 
Administration.
  I mentioned yesterday the National Institutes of Health looking for 
new cures, new ways of dealing with the diseases. The President has a 
nice little blip up here. But when he gets over to get to balance and 
you apply the trigger, you take the cuts, you take the whacks, that 
funding drops off the map. It goes from almost $12.5 billion to below 
$11 billion, $1.5 billion cut year to year from 2,000 to 2002--$1.5 
billion.
  Are we going to have all the answers to health and well-being? Are we 
going to still need the National Institutes of Health? I think so. We 
cannot afford the cuts that the President proposed. We are dealing with 
real numbers.
  This is what would happen, if you believed the President and if you 
believed this budget will get to balance.
  Child care and development block grant. I was very pleased to work 
with my colleague from Connecticut on the act for better child care. We 
turned it into a development block grant because we recognized the 
importance of assisting working families with care for their children. 
The President has a little upswing this year. This is an election year, 
of course. But then look what happens. From over $1 billion, about $1.5 
billion, this thing drops off the cliff to about $800 million in the 
year 2002--almost a $250 million cut in child care because of the 
President's trigger.

  Do we really want to say to people who are trying to get off welfare, 
``Hey. Get off welfare this year. We are going to assist you with your 
child care expenses. But sorry about the ensuing years. There is not 
going to be the money there.''
  That is what the President's budget does. That is if you implement 
the mechanism the Senator from Nebraska rightly pointed out is in the 
President's budget. That is how it gets to a balance.
  WIC, funding for women, infants, and children. We both support this 
at least in the early years. The President's line goes up. The 
Republican line goes up. But, whoops. The President had said he wants 
to balance the budget. So you fire the gun, you put on the cap, you 
pull the trigger, and what happens to funding for women, infants, and 
children? It goes, in his budget, from over $4.2 billion down to about 
$3.7 billion.
  This is a significant cut. If you believe and advocate and want to 
stand up for the President's budget, you have to be willing to say, 
``Hey. We are going to get to balance in the year 2002 by taking this 
much of a whack out of the feeding program for women, infants, and 
children.''
  Mr. President, I do not believe that is going to happen. That is not 
a realistic budget. But the President is standing by that budget. 
Anybody who votes for it says, ``I am voting for it. I believe in it.'' 
If you vote for the President's budget, then, Mr. President, you have 
to be saying, ``I believe these numbers, and I will support these 
numbers.''
  I have talked a good deal about the Veterans' Administration because 
that happens to be one of the vital functions that is funded in the 
appropriations subcommittee which I chair. The Veterans' Administration 
budget has been very contentious. Last year we had a floor amendment, 
an amendment sponsored by the Senator from West Virginia, Senator 
Rockefeller, and Senators Mikulski, Leahy, and Wellstone.
  They said, if we kept an even spending level, we would have to close 
four veterans hospitals. The Republican budget has even funding. This 
cuts almost $13 billion--25 percent. That means that one out of four 
facilities, or more, in the United States would have to be closed. Here 
are the States with veterans facilities. Florida has 6, Massachusetts 
has 5, New York has 13, and California has 11. One out of four--that 
means California is going to have three, four, or five closed. The 
Senator from California [Mrs. Boxer] was complaining that we did not 
open a hospital last year. The question is, Which of these is going to 
be cut?

  Mr. President, the budget provided by the President is not workable. 
Those numbers do not lie.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. HOLLINGS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I yield such time as is required for the 
moment.
  Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Missouri talks about 
assumptions. With respect to assumptions, I only have to point out that 
when I asked the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee, 
Senator Domenici from New Mexico, about the budget assumptions, he 
said, ``No. That is no magic asterisk. Assumptions are not binding on 
anyone. Use the assumptions in the President's budget. Do what you want 
to be bound by it. It does not make any difference.''
  With respect to the trigger, I remember that trigger when they had it 
last year in the Republican Medicare assault. Unfortunately, the 
distinguished President of the United States, coming from Arkansas, 
having balanced budgets for 10 years, had taken on some of the bad 
habits of this Republican crowd.
  Right to the point, Mr. President: I was listening this morning to 
the chatter on the early morning shows, and the pundits were all 
allowing that the distinguished Senator from Kansas was having to 
retire from the Senate because he wanted to get away from the Senate 
itself; that the Senate had such a bad reputation.
  I take exception to that, Mr. President. It is the Republican program 
that has such a bad reputation. I feel for the distinguished Senator 
from Kansas as the Republican nominee going around the country because, 
though he physically removes himself, he still has to carry that load. 
I told him so yesterday afternoon.
  It is a ridiculous contract. Get rid of plans that are working and 
the programs on crime. The policemen on the beat; they were all here 
yesterday in support of those programs.
  That is what is really frightening the American people. It is a 
ridiculous plan: let us get rid of the Department of Commerce, the 
Department of Energy, the Department of Housing, the Department of 
Education. Whoever heard of being elected to public office and then 
trying to tear down the office itself? We are elected to come to 
Washington to make the Government work. But this pollster party is 
running on hot button items like 5-cent gas taxes and that kind of 
thing, trying to throw the long pass play. They are not really giving 
the American people a program of responsibility and direction, a sense 
of where we are headed in the next 4 years. The truth of the matter is 
that the wrong man resigned from the Congress. We ought to have gotten 
the distinguished Speaker to be gone with that silly contract. Let him 
move out and maybe the pollster party would have a chance in November.

  But my point this morning is that yes, I am going to vote for the 
President's budget. It is the nearest to a factual approach to this 
particular dilemma. It does not use the CPI. It does not have these 
mammoth tax cuts that are down to $8 billion. We do not have any taxes 
to cut.
  That is another flaw in the contract, it leads the American people to 
believe that you can balance this budget by merely cutting spending. I 
have voted for many, many cuts in spending. I voted, as did a third of 
the Senate, to do away with a good part of the payroll tax--$190 
billion in tax cuts to put Social Security on a pay-as-you-go basis. 
But I do not believe in cutting taxes when we are running these 
horrendous deficits, when the debt is going up and the interest cost on 
the debt ruining the land. And so what I am trying to do is get the 
nearest as I can. We tried every approach. In January 1993, we put in 
what would be required of a really true, honest balanced budget. It 
included both the horrendous cuts that would be necessary in 
discretionary spending and taxes. I challenge and continue to 
challenge. At the Commerce Committee the other day, the distinguished 
Senator from Texas said that she believed the budget could be

[[Page S5117]]

balanced by spending cuts. I challenge her. I challenge anyone in the 
Congress to give me a 7-year balanced budget without a tax increase. I 
want to see it. You can eliminate the Government as they call it, but 
we have worked our way into such a dilemma that, if you did away with 
Government as the people know it to be--foreign aid, the Department of 
Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Justice Department, the FBI, the DEA, 
do away with the President, the Congress, the courts--it would still 
only be $228 billion.
  Now, look at the bottom line, what are we spending? This pollster 
party has got us to the point that we are required to spend $353 
billion in interest costs on a national debt that they quintupled. They 
did it, not President Clinton--$353 billion, $1 billion a day spending 
on automatic pilot for absolutely no Government. We do not get anything 
for it. It is merely the carrying charges. If they had not engaged in 
that misconduct, we could have two Departments of Commerce, two 
Departments of Energy, two Departments of Education--double the 
Government. We are spending the money for it, but we are not getting 
the Government.
  And that is this particular Senator's dilemma. We are supposed to be 
rebuilding our economy in the wake of the cold war, putting more into 
education, more into technology, more into the Department of Commerce. 
Instead the Republicans pursue their political endeavors solely for 
reelection purposes. They are not looking at the next generation but at 
the next election. And we have to go through this false nonsense of a 
budget fraud because it is their contract.
  Unfortunately, we Democrats, to get any kind of results, have to go 
along with this kind of thing. President Clinton put out a good budget 
when he first came. We had to cut $500 billion in spending. We had to 
increase taxes on cigarettes, beer, liquor, gasoline. Yes, we voted to 
increase taxes on Social Security, we performed a real act of fiscal 
discipline and responsibility without a single Republican vote in the 
Senate, without a single Republican vote in the House of 
Representatives. And they have the audacity, the unmitigated gall to 
come around here talking about hoaxes.
  Let me get everybody to turn to pages 4 and 5 of this wonderful 
document, Senate Concurrent Resolution 57, by the distinguished Senator 
from New Mexico [Mr. Domenici], for the Committee on the Budget. This 
is the budget resolution now in debate. Look on pages 4 and 5 under 
``Deficits.'' For fiscal year 2002 you will see a deficit of 
$108,300,000,000.
  Mr. President, for Heaven's sake, you pick up the morning paper, the 
Washington Post, and it is talking about the ``Republican Balanced 
Budget Proposal.'' There is no idea of balancing this budget by 
Republicans or Democrats. It is one big political exercise, one grand 
budget fraud. And that is what everybody is running on. I am trying to 
get them to state what the law is and what the truth is.
  The fact is here in the budget book itself: ``Budget Process Law 
Annotated,'' up to date, 1993 edition. You will find in this book no 
such word as ``unified.'' That is a political gimmick that the press, 
the money market in New York and politicians use. We have to hear about 
fraud; we have to hear about hoaxes; we have to hear about trickery, 
but the truth of the matter is there is no such thing as unified. There 
is such a thing as not being able to rob the Social Security trust 
fund. Look at it. Section 13301 of this particular document says thou 
shalt not use the Social Security funds to obscure the size of the 
deficit. We owe Social Security at this moment $503 billion, and in 
this particular budget that I hold up, this document here, they 
continue to rob the Social Security trust fund in violation of the law. 
They are robbing other trust funds as well that are not written in the 
law. I wish they were. But we continue to rob the Social Security trust 
fund of approximately $500 billion over a 6-year period and over $600 
billion over 7 years. So that by the year 2002, 2003, we come around, 
under this political drama--the best off-Broadway show you are going to 
find, running currently on C-SPAN--and they will say, ``Oh, we have 
balanced the budget. We are the party of responsibility and we balanced 
the budget.''

  Even if it were true, using their own figures we have decimated--
decimated, exhausted the Social Security trust fund. We will owe it 
over $1.1 trillion. Then we will not have to hear the arguments about 
the year 2012 or 2023--just by that year 2002 we will already owe that 
money. Who is going to raise $1 trillion to make Social Security 
solvent? You should have heard it--I wish I had that record before me--
the distinguished chairman of our Budget Committee in his prepared 
statement stated: We are making Medicare solvent for 10 years. Under 
this budget we are making Medicare solvent for 10 years; we are making 
Social Security totally insolvent in 6 years. It will be totally 
insolvent in 6 years. And they want credit for their so-called fiscal 
responsibility.
  Unfortunately, both sides are guilty. Why? Why do I say that about 
this budget fraud? I have not seen a budget yet that does not 
immediately start off by moving deficits--not eliminating deficits--
moving them from the general Government over to the Social Security 
trust fund to the tune of $500 billion. The Republican budget does it. 
The President's budget does it. And the so-called centrist coalition 
does.
  They think it is wonderful they can get together, Republicans and 
Democrats, in a fraud. I did not join them. I told them: It is a fraud 
on the face of it. You can see it. You know it. Look at it. You are not 
only robbing trust funds to the tune of what will amount to almost $1 
trillion, but we owe the civil service retirement, the military 
retirees.
  You go down the list. Medicare is solvent right now. They have been 
robbing the Medicare trust fund and on down the line to highway trust 
funds. Finally, over on the House side, they have been robbing the 
airport funding. There are not enough inspectors. We just had a hearing 
on that. Why? Because we have been taking the money that the traveling 
public has been putting in. While they have been paying their taxes in 
order to provide those inspectors, Congress has been using the moneys 
to politically obscure the size of the deficit. This way they can say, 
``Reelect me, I am fiscally responsible up there in Washington but the 
other crowd is a bunch of bums.''
  They know what they are doing. Not only do they rob trust funds, but 
all of their spending cuts are backloaded. There is the gimmick. That 
is why, when President Reagan first came to office, he said he was 
going to balance the budget in 1 year. After he got here he said it was 
such a disaster that it would take him 3 years. When Congress saw that 
was not working with the so-called Reaganomics, that we were going in 
the exact opposite direction, we tried the spending cut approach with 
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings. But all along, then after Gramm-Rudman-
Hollings--and I'm talking about the crowd that voted to repeal it on 
October 19 at 12:41 a.m--they are now all writing books now how 
responsible and how against deficits they were. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings 
worked. The reason the Senator from South Carolina asked for a divorce 
is that instead of using Gramm-Rudman-Hollings as a spear to prod 
fiscal responsibility, they were using it as a shield to obscure fiscal 
irresponsibility.
  When they started doing that, I said let me out of this thing. We 
raised the point of order, made cuts across the board. And Gramm-
Rudman-Hollings worked. Do not say it did not work. It was about to 
work too well, until they got into that cabal to reelect the President 
in 1992. Everybody knows what happened there, in 1990, when they voted 
for its repeal. But they all, then, started backloading. Now, instead 
of 5 years of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, we are going up to a 7-year 
budget. If this crowd can get reelected they will come back next year 
and they will have a 10-year budget. They keep moving the goalposts and 
getting the good government award.
  The fact of the matter is, two-thirds of these cuts occur after two 
Presidential elections. They come out here and talk about the 
President--a hoax. But it is not a hoax--come on. Everybody can see 
what is going on. Every one of them, including the centrist budget, 
uses tax cuts.
  If you look at the centrist document, the centrist document says the 
President cuts $8 billion in 6 years. The Republicans cut $122 billion, 
the Breaux-Chafee in 7 years cuts $105 billion. We

[[Page S5118]]

do not have any taxes to cut. So the closest to responsibility is 
President Clinton's budget. They are running around still trying to 
lead rather than demand. The consultants will demand. Poor Presidential 
nominee Dole will have to respond, run all over the land trying to tell 
people that which he knows not to be the case. He was chairman of the 
Finance Committee. He did not favor that Reaganomics. It was Kemp-Roth 
at that time. I know him, but now he is caught up with the Gingrich 
contract and he has to go around and sell it. That is his dilemma, not 
the Senate as a body. They will be here long after we are gone, long 
after the contract crowd is gone.
  Mr. President, we finally see the free world voting in free 
elections. We witness the spread of, not only capitalism, but 
democratic representative government; which is, according to Arthur 
Schlesinger, the greatest gift of the American people to free men the 
world around. And it has taken root, Mr. President, in 14 different 
countries. Over in Russia now, the Communists are getting ready for a 
vote. Over in China, where I recently traveled with the distinguished 
Senator from Maine, Senator Cohen, in the provinces they are beginning 
to have local elections. Now, when free democratic government is just 
taking root, the contract crowd says, ``Get rid of the Government. The 
Government is not the solution, the Government is the problem. The 
Government is the enemy.'' And they wonder why they are down in the 
polls.
  Back to the point: tax cuts. They talk about a dividend. I speak as 
the former chairman of the Budget Committee. I speak as an original 
mover, along with Senator Muskie. I am the last of the Mohicans on the 
House or the Senate side who was in on the game back in the mid-1970's. 
I voted for a balanced budget in 1968. I worked there with George 
Mahon. We said, ``Talk to President Johnson. Can we cut another $5 
billion?'' We cut another $5 billion. The entire Great Society and the 
cost of the war in Vietnam was $178 billion. Interest costs on the 
national debt is $353--double the amount. And you wonder at the trouble 
we are in? They do not want to talk sense. They want to engage in 
another fraud. A $254 billion dividend. That came up in 1990.
  We called it into question. They say, ``Oh, no, you look at the 1990 
budget.'' They have their charts and everything else. The 1990 budget 
said that by 1995, last year, we would not only be balanced we would 
have a $20 billion surplus. Can you imagine the word surplus in a 
Government document? They put it in there.
  Instead, the real deficit was in the neighborhood of $277 billion. 
There was not any surplus--using the dividend. So they play more games. 
Now the centrist coalition crowd has come up with a new one, the CPI. 
They come in and want to monkey around with the Consumer Price Index.
  So if you do one, you have to do the other, but they only do one. 
They are not only going to cut the benefits of the Social Security 
recipient, which could be done--this Senator has recommended a freeze, 
a freeze, if you please. But instead of inuring to the benefit of the 
Social Security trust fund, they take even more money, robbing Social 
Security and allocating it to the deficit. All the Medicare plans call 
for an increase in the premiums in order to get the benefits. Then they 
come around with this lower CPI and give them less money. A double 
whammy.
  They are doing it. But it is a political year and the media is 
supposed to cover Congress and give the American people the truth. And 
what is the headline? ``Balanced Budget.'' A balanced budget, come on. 
There is not any balance in the budget before us, and they know it.
  For Heaven's sake, deliver me from this characterization of the 
President's character. A hoax. The pollster says they have to attack 
President Clinton on his character. So every 10 seconds the Republicans 
get up: ``Hoax,'' ``Character.'' One Senator even said, ``Liar.'' 
``We'll just get in on a true-false quiz in November, and we are the 
truth and the Democratic Party is false.''
  I do not think the American people are going along with that 
nonsense. Deliver me from that, particularly when they are the ones 
engaged, with the misrepresentation. That is the nicest word I can 
think.
  Yesterday, May 15, 1996, I heard it again in the Budget Committee. 
This is a statement by the distinguished chairman of the Budget 
Committee:

       This budget will restore America's fiscal equilibrium. It 
     will balance the budget by the year 2002 without touching 
     Social Security.

  Absolutely false. He said that in the Budget Committee. I called his 
hand on it, but they continue to insist on it and the news media will 
write it. It touches Social Security. The best rationale the chairman 
can give is, ``We didn't cut, momentarily, the benefits.'' But he means 
the benefits for me at 72--old Strom and I are going to get ours. But 
that Parliamentarian is not going to get his money. And I have to ask 
the Parliamentarian if this really is a budget resolution. Because 
section (C) where they have in there a provision for tax cuts in 
September, will actually increase the deficit.
  But the truth of the matter is, Mr. President, they not only touch 
it, they emasculate the fund. I made that clear. Do not come along and 
say ``without touching Social Security.'' They know what they are 
doing.
  We have had a group of off-the-record sessions to try to get together 
on the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I favor such an 
amendment, and said I would vote for it in a flash. I voted for it 
before. But I am not going to vote by repealing section 13301. The 
proposal has been made time and again, ``Well, let's just use up Social 
Security until 2002 and stop using it.''
  I remember when I had Clement Haynesworth before the U.S. Supreme 
Court--he had been charged with using his office in conflict with the 
stock investments that he had. They said that under the law, he should 
have recused himself. One day, unbeknownst to me and Attorney General 
Mitchell, he came and said, irrespective of what occurred, he was going 
to take all these stock holdings and put them in a trust fund.
  The next morning, Herblock had that cartoon with the Congress as the 
court. The Attorney General is the lawyer and a little client who 
looked like a school boy with a school bag with stock tape and tickets 
streaming out on the floor. ``But Your Honor,'' said Mitchell, the 
Attorney General, ``my client hasn't done anything wrong, and he 
promises to stop doing it.''
  No, they have not done anything wrong--``We do not touch Social 
Security''--they just take Social Security to mask the deficit. 
Government is borrowing from itself and writing IOU's from $503 billion 
to $1.1 trillion. But they promise to stop doing it in 2002. By that 
time, who is going to put on the taxes to pay back $1.1 trillion?

  The New York crowd keeps talking about entitlements, entitlements, 
entitlements. In Time magazine and other major papers, they say: ``The 
trouble is, we have to get a bridle on this Social Security causing the 
deficits.'' Social Security has not caused a deficit. It is in the 
black. Every one of the 100 Senators would have to agree with that.
  What is causing the deficit, I say to the distinguished Presiding 
Officer, is all these general uses of Government, from defense to 
education to housing to foreign aid to law enforcement. I happen to 
handle the law enforcement budget. Everybody is for more policemen on 
the beat, everybody is for more FBI, more DEA, more Border Patrol, more 
immigration control, more this, more that. In 1987, it was just at $4 
billion. Now it is at $16.7 billion. They are complaining about the 
growth of Government, saying ``cut spending, cut spending.'' Do you 
think they ever recommended a dime to pay for it all the programs they 
demand? No.
  I joined with Republicans back in 1987. We saw the dilemma. We put in 
a value-added tax of 5 percent to get rid of this monster deficit 
growing and growing, the interest costs growing up to where we cannot 
have Government.
  But that is the effect of pollster politics. The pollster party says, 
``Get rid of the Government.'' They succeed. If we do not have a 
Department of Commerce, they are happy. If we do not have a Department 
of Education, they are enthralled. If we can get rid of the Department 
of Energy and Department of Housing and just leave them all on the 
streets, so be it; let the market forces operate.
  That is why they are down in the polls, and leaving this august body

[[Page S5119]]

does not release the distinguished Senator from Kansas from that silly 
contract of getting rid of the Government. That is what he has try and 
sell today as he goes around in Chicago. The contract is frightening 
the American people.
  At least he had the excuse of trying to keep us organized here in 
this particular body. Now he has to sit back and listen on the hot line 
to Speaker Gingrich saying, ``Wait a minute, you've got to stick with 
the contract, stick with the contract.''
  All this chatter. Meanwhile we face the largest deficit in the 
history of the Republic.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from 
January 1, 1995, by Judy Mann in the Washington Post.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       [From the Washington Post]

                       Fiddling With the Numbers

                             (By Judy Mann)

       Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican meteor from New 
     Jersey, had the unusual honor for a first-term governor of 
     being asked to deliver her party's response to President 
     Clinton's State of the Union message last week.
       And she delivered a whopper of what can most kindly be 
     called a glaring inaccuracy.
       Sandwiched into her Republican sales pitch was the kind of 
     line that does serious political damage: Clinton, she 
     intoned, ``imposed the biggest tax increase in American 
     history.''
       And millions of Americans sat in front of their television 
     sets, perhaps believing that Clinton and the Democrat-
     controlled Congress had done a real number on them.
       The trouble is that this poster lady for tax cuts was not 
     letting any facts get in her way. But don't hold your breath 
     waiting for the talk show hosts to set the record straight.
       The biggest tax increase in history did not occur in the 
     Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. The biggest tax 
     increase in post-World War II history occurred in 1982 under 
     President Ronald Reagan.
       Here is how the two compare, according to Bill Gale, a 
     specialist on tax policy and senior fellow at the Brookings 
     Institution. The 1993 act raised taxes for the next five 
     years by a gross total of $268 billion, but with the 
     expansion of the earned income tax credit to more working 
     poor families, the net increase comes to $240.4 billion in 
     1993. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, 
     by comparison, increased taxes by a net of $217.5 billion 
     over five years. Nominally, then, it is true that the 1993 
     tax bill was the biggest in history.
       But things don't work nominally. ``A dollar now is worth 
     less than a dollar was back then, so that a tax increase of, 
     say, $10 billion in 1982 would be a tax increase of $15 
     billion now,'' says Gale. In fact, if you adjust for the 48 
     percent change in price level, the 1982 tax increase becomes 
     a $325.6 billion increase in 1993 dollars. And that makes it 
     the biggest tax increase in history by $85 billion.
       Moreover, says Gale, the population of the country 
     increased, so that, on a per person basis, the 1993 tax 
     increase is lower than the one in 1982, and the gross 
     domestic product increased over the decade, which means that 
     personal income rose. ``Once you adjust for price 
     translation, it's not the biggest, and when you account for 
     population and GDP, it gets even smaller.''
       He raises another point that makes this whole business of 
     tax policy just a bit more complex than the heroic tax 
     slashers would have us believe. ``The question is whether 
     [the 1993 tax increase] was a good idea or a bad idea, not 
     whether it was the biggest tax increase. Suppose it was the 
     biggest? I find it frustrating that the level of the debate 
     about stuff like this as carried on by politicians is 
     generally so low.''
       So was it good idea? ``We needed to reduce the deficit,'' 
     he says, ``we still need to reduce the deficit. The bond 
     market responded positively. Interest rates fell. There may 
     be a longer term benefit in that it shows Congress and the 
     president are capable of cutting the deficit even without a 
     balanced budget amendment.''
       Other long-term benefits, he says, are that ``more capital 
     is freed up for private investment, and ultimately that can 
     result in more productive and highly paid workers.''
       How bad was the hit for those few who did have to pay more 
     taxes? One tax attorney says that his increased taxes were 
     more than offset by savings he was able to generate by 
     refinancing the mortgage on his house at the lower interest 
     rates we've had as a result. The 1993 tax increase did 
     include a 4.3-cent-a-gallon rise in gasoline tax, which hits 
     the middle class. But most of us did not have to endure an 
     income tax increase. In 1992, the top tax rate was 31 percent 
     of the taxable income over $51,900 for single taxpayers and 
     $86,500 for married couples filing jointly. Two new tax 
     brackets were added in 1993: 36 percent for singles with 
     taxable incomes over $115,000 and married couples with 
     incomes over $140,000; and 39.6 percent for singles and 
     married couples with taxable incomes over $250,000.
       Not exactly your working poor or even your average family.
       The rising GOP stars are finding out that when they say or 
     do something stupid or mendacious, folks notice. The jury 
     ought to be out on Whitman's performance as governor until we 
     see the effects of supply side economics on New Jersey. But 
     in her first nationally televised performance as a 
     spokeswoman for her party, she should have known better than 
     to give the country only half the story. In the process, she 
     left a lot to be desired in one quality Americans are looking 
     for in politicians: honesty.

  (Mr. CAMPBELL assumed the chair.)
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I quote:

       A dollar now is less than a dollar was back then--

  Talking in the eighties under President Reagan.

     so that a tax increase of, say, $10 billion in 1992 would be 
     a tax increase of $15 billion now. . . In fact, if you 
     adjusted for the 48 percent change in price level, the 1982 
     tax increase would become a $325.6 billion increase in 1993. 
     That makes it the biggest tax increase in the history by $85 
     billion. Nominally then, it is true that the 1993 tax bill 
     was the biggest in history. However, the biggest tax increase 
     in post-World War II history occurred in 1982 under President 
     Reagan.

  And the Senator from South Carolina voted for it.
  I voted against Reaganomics. Senator Dole was against it in the 
original instance. The then-majority leader Howard Baker called it ``a 
riverboat gamble.'' Then-Vice President Bush called it voodoo. But they 
want to forget that. Read Warren Rudman's book. He lays it all out. A 
substantial group of Republicans said this could not possibly work.
  But I ask, Mr. President, to include in the Record the budget tables. 
If you look at the budget tables, back when President Reagan came into 
office, the key figure is the Gross Interest Cost, which at that time 
was $74.8 billion. Today it is $353 billion. This crowd is against 
increasing spending--I'm against spending increases; I'm against 
spending increases. We have put spending increases on automatic pilot 
to the tune of $1 billion a day. I ask unanimous consent that those 
tables be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the tables were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                  BUDGET TABLES                                                 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                    U.S. budget                                    Gross Federal                
       President and Year           (outlays in     Trust funds    Real deficit        debt       Gross interest
                                     billions)                                      (billions)                  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Truman:                                                                                                         
    1945........................            92.7             5.4  ..............           260.1  ..............
    1946........................            55.2             3.9           -10.9           271.0  ..............
    1947........................            34.5             3.4           +13.9           257.1  ..............
    1948........................            29.8             3.0            +5.1           252.0  ..............
    1949........................            38.8             2.4            -0.6           252.6  ..............
    1950........................            42.6            -0.1            -4.3           256.9  ..............
    1951........................            45.5             3.7            +1.6           255.3  ..............
    1952........................            67.7             3.5            -3.8           259.1  ..............
Eisenhower:                                                                                                     
    1953........................            76.1             3.4            -6.9           266.0  ..............
    1954........................            70.9             2.0            -4.8           270.8  ..............
    1955........................            68.4             1.2            -3.6           274.4  ..............
    1956........................            70.6             2.6            +1.7           272.7  ..............
    1957........................            76.6             1.8            +0.4           272.3  ..............
    1958........................            82.4             0.2            -7.4           279.7  ..............
    1959........................            92.1            -1.6            -7.8           287.5  ..............
    1960........................            92.2            -0.5            -3.0           290.5  ..............
Kennedy:                                                                                                        
    1961........................            97.7             0.9            -2.1           292.6  ..............
    1962........................           106.8            -0.3           -10.3           302.9             9.1

[[Page S5120]]

                                                                                                                
    1963........................           111.3             1.9            -7.4           310.3             9.9
Johnson:                                                                                                        
    1964........................           118.5             2.7            -5.8           316.1            10.7
    1965........................           118.2             2.5            -6.2           322.3            11.3
    1966........................           134.5             1.5            -6.2           328.5            12.0
    1967........................           157.5             7.1           -11.9           340.4            13.4
    1968........................           178.1             3.1           -28.3           368.7            14.6
Nixon:                                                                                                          
    1969........................           183.6            -0.3            +2.9           365.8            16.6
    1970........................           195.6            12.3           -15.1           380.9            19.3
    1971........................           210.2             4.3           -27.3           408.2            21.0
    1972........................           230.7             4.3           -27.7           435.9            21.8
    1973........................           245.7            15.5           -30.4           466.3            24.2
    1974........................           269.4            11.5           -17.6           483.9            29.3
Ford:                                                                                                           
    1975........................           332.3             4.8           -58.0           541.9            32.7
    1976........................           371.8            13.4           -87.1           629.0            37.1
Carter:                                                                                                         
    1977........................           409.2            23.7           -77.4           706.4            41.9
    1978........................           458.7            11.0           -70.2           776.6            48.7
    1979........................           503.5            12.2           -52.9           829.5            59.9
    1980........................           590.9             5.8           -79.6           909.1            74.8
Reagan:                                                                                                         
    1981........................           678.2             6.7           -85.7           994.8            95.5
    1982........................           745.8            14.5          -142.5         1,137.3           117.2
    1983........................           808.4            26.6          -234.4         1,371.7           128.7
    1984........................           851.8             7.6          -193.0         1,564.7           153.9
    1985........................           946.4            40.6          -252.9         1,817.6           178.9
    1986........................           990.3            81.8          -303.0         2,120.6           190.3
    1987........................         1,003.9            75.7          -225.5         2,346.1           195.3
    1988........................         1,064.1           100.0          -255.2         2,601.3           214.1
Bush:                                                                                                           
    1989........................         1,143.2           114.2          -266.7         2,868.0           240.9
    1990........................         1,252.7           117.2          -338.6         3,206.6           264.7
    1991........................         1,323.8           122.7          -391.9         3,598.5           285.5
    1992........................         1,380.9           113.2          -403.6         4,002.1           292.3
Clinton:                                                                                                        
    1993........................         1,408.2            94.2          -349.3         4,351.4           292.5
    1994........................         1,460.6            89.1          -292.3         4,643.7           296.3
    1995........................         1,514,4           113.4          -277.3         4,921.0           332.4
    1996........................         1,572.0           126.0          -270.0         5,191.0           344.0
    1997 est....................         1,651.0           127.0          -292.0         5,483.0           353.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Historical Tables, Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 1996; Beginning in 1962, CBO's 1995       
  Economic and Budget Outlook.                                                                                  



  Mr. HOLLINGS. If any Members want to, they can get the entire record 
of each one of the particular Presidents. What happened is--let me 
quote David Stockman:

       The root problem goes back to the July 1981 frenzy of 
     excessive and imprudent tax-cutting that shattered the 
     nation's fiscal stability. A noisy faction of Republicans 
     have willfully denied this giant mistake of fiscal 
     governance, and their own culpability in it, ever since. 
     Instead, they have incessantly poisoned the political debate 
     with a mindless stream of anti-tax venom, while pretending 
     that economic growth and spending cuts alone could cure the 
     deficit.

  So they have given the Senator from Kansas the chant, ``Growth, 
growth; tax cuts, tax cuts; growth, growth; tax cuts.'' Will we ever 
learn?
  The debt from the beginning--from 1776 up until 1981--the debt was 
less than $1 trillion. With all the wars, the Revolution, 1812, Civil 
War, Spanish-American, Mexican War, World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam, 
the costs of all the wars were less than $1 trillion--$903 billion. 
Now, in 15 years, without a war--without a war, because the other crowd 
are supposed to have paid for the gulf war--in 15 years, we have gone 
up to $5 trillion and automatic tax increases, because that is what the 
automatic spending of interest costs amounts to.
  You cannot evade death, you cannot evade taxes, and you cannot evade 
interest costs or interest taxes on the national debt. So those who say 
that ``I am against increasing taxes,'' is the crowd that comes in here 
without shame and derides President Clinton and this particular budget.
  President Clinton came to town, and he is the only President to 
reduce the deficit. Since 1968, President Nixon did not. President 
Ford, President Carter, President Reagan, and President Bush all 
increased the deficit. The one man in town not responsible for this 
nonsense, President Clinton, the only man in town that has done 
anything about it, has reduced the deficit in half, and is derided now 
with all these monkeyshine charts. ``Look at how he said this. Look how 
he did this. Look how he did that.''
  The economy is working, is it not? Unemployment is down. Job creation 
is up. Interest is down. How do we get the truth out to the American 
people? The truth is, as I said before, that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was 
repealed. But we continue to read suggestions that we have already 
tried, suggestions that totally ignore the track record of some of us 
who have tried.
  A couple days ago our distinguished friend, Mr. Dave Broder, allowed 
that what we ought to do is do away with the payroll tax with a flat 
tax, recommended by Senators Domenici and Nunn. Well, in April 1991, 
the Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan, the Senator from 
Wisconsin, Senator Kasten, and the Senator from South Carolina, Senator 
Hollings, we all said, ``Look, if you are going to continue to violate 
section 13-301 and rob the Social Security trust fund, then, Heavens 
above, let's put Social Security on a pay-as-you-go basis so they will 
know it,'' we were completely against an increase in the Social 
Security taxes at the time.
  It would have been a tax cut, Mr. President, of $190 billion. But 
they voted against that tax cut. They say they are for tax cuts for the 
rich, for capital gains, but not for the wage earner, the fellow who is 
pulling the wagon. But Congress is in the wagon. We have to get these 
Senators and Congressmen out of the wagon. We are the ones using the 
trust funds, not paying the bills, and wrecking the economy.
  Mr. President, for the poor wage earner, who is pulling the wagon, we 
said, ``Let's cut their taxes,'' the payroll taxes suggested by Mr. 
Broder, we had that vote in 1991. But they do not want it that way. 
They want to continue the charade.
  So, Mr. President, I only hope there is a free press. Jefferson said 
it better than anyone. He said, if it is between the free press and a 
free Government, I would choose the former --intoning, if you please, 
that you can have a free Government, but it is not going to be free 
long unless you have a free press. It is supposed to keep us honest, 
supposed to keep us politicians honest.

  Instead, as Jim Fallows says in his wonderful book, ``Breaking the 
News,'' the press has joined in the post-party pap of ``I'm against 
taxes. And we can balance the budget by just cutting spending.''
  I have made my point on that. I wish it could be done. I have tried. 
We tried, first, cuts across the board. We tried spending cuts. We 
continue to try spending cuts where possible. We have tried a value-
added tax. We have tried everything possible, but we cannot get the 
truth out to the American people.
  Yes, I am voting for President Clinton's budget. His track record is 
true. He is the only President we have had around here that has done 
something

[[Page S5121]]

about this deficit. He has cut it in half. He has done it with tax 
increases as well as $500 billion in spending cuts. And the ones that 
caused this deficit--there ought to be ashes in their mouths--the ones 
that caused this rotten dilemma of spending $1 billion a day for 
nothing, have the audacity to be running around saying how honest they 
are and how true they are and how balanced their budget is.
  Read page 5: Deficits. It does not say ``balance'' in their document. 
It cannot under the law. In fact, it is really more than the $108 
billion listed, because the law does not require them to list robbing 
the distinguished Chair's retirement, robbing the military retirees, 
still robbing the Medicare trust fund, and others. All told, it is 
$151.9 billion. That is why these funds are not being used for the 
highways, the airports, or workers' retirement. We are robbing them. It 
is a shabby act.
  But they know no shame. They come around with their little charts. We 
hadn't seen their budget or anything else. They had the President's 
budget for 4 months, so they would work up their charts. And we would 
go into the Budget Committee, and they would go through their little 
acts. They had the Senator from Texas complaining about exactly what 
they have in defense.
  They had the Senator from Missouri talk about veterans, the next one 
talked about defense and came on with all his charts. It was just all 
applesauce, just a show on C-SPAN. We had no choice except to take 
their plan or leave it. What they offered was a three-way breakdown of 
the reconciliation process and ultimately, in my opinion, a violation 
of the Byrd rule.
  For the first time to my knowledge, they are using the reconciliation 
process to actually increase the deficit. By at least $122 billion. You 
can read it again in this document, in section (c) on page 51, that if 
the legislation is enacted pursuant to sections A and B no later than 
September 18, the Committee on Finance shall report to the Senate a 
reconciliation bill proposing changes in laws with any jurisdiction 
necessary to reduce revenues. That is so they can go around to the rich 
crowd in New York and say, ``We will give you capital gains.'' It is in 
their contract but it will not work.
  The one that should have set himself aside and be done with that 
silly contract is the distinguished Speaker. I yield the floor.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, on behalf of this side, I yield 20 
minutes to the Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm], is 
recognized for 20 minutes.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I am going to get back to the subject that 
we are here to talk about, the President's budget. Rather than getting 
into all of this argument about what is phony and what is not phony, it 
seems to me we what we ought to do is look at what this budget claims 
to do. The budget is the one issue of the year through which we define 
what we want America to be. In this case, we are talking about what we 
want America to be over the next 7 years.
  Let me begin by doing something that we do not do much of around 
here. Let us assume that every word in the President's budget is true, 
let us assume that we are going to do everything he asks us to do, and 
let us assume that everything he says will work will indeed work. We 
will grant him every assumption you would grant somebody to try to give 
them the benefit of the doubt.
  Let us take this budget, this great big thick document that we now 
have debated for 2 hours, and view it as Bill Clinton's vision for the 
future of America. What I want to do is ask not whether you can find on 
page 54 something that does not make sense, but rather to ask ``What 
kind of vision is this?'' Is this an America we want? This is the 
question that we are here today to talk about.
  First of all, let me just look at the Clinton budget and assume that 
everything works out exactly the way the President wants it to work 
out. I want to talk about what kind of America we will have if this 
happens and compare it to the America of the 1940's, the 1950's, the 
1960's, the 1970's, and the 1980's. This, again, assumes that 
everything works out exactly as the President hopes it will. This is 
the best case Bill Clinton scenario.
  First of all, let us look at the tax burden. In the 1940's, the 
average American family sent to Washington about 16.5 percent of 
everything they made; the Government took about 16.5 percent of all 
goods and services produced in America. In the 1950's, it rose to 17.6 
percent. In the 1960's and 1970's, it was up to 18 percent. If we adopt 
Bill Clinton's budget and enforce it exactly as it is written, where 
everything works out exactly as he wants it to and with the most rosy 
scenarios he can assume, we are committing ourselves to the highest tax 
burden in the history of the United States of America: 19.3 percent out 
of every dollar earned in America is going to come to Washington and be 
spent by Bill Clinton. These are the President's numbers and this is 
the President's vision. Under the best of circumstances, where 
everything works out exactly as the President would like it to, the 
American taxpayer will face the highest tax burden in the history of 
the United States of America.
  Further, under the President's plan, the cumulative tax burden will 
never have been higher. When you add up State, local, and Federal 
taxes, over 30 percent of all money earned by all sources in America 
will be spent not by the people who earn the money but by their 
Government. So this is the first part of the Clinton vision--the 
highest taxes in American history.

  The second part of his vision is social spending, by which I mean 
nondefense spending. In the 1950's, the Federal Government spent 7.4 
cents out of every dollar earned by every American on nondefense 
programs. This rose in the 1960's, in the so-called Great Society 
period, to 10.2 cents out of every dollar earned. It rose to 14.6 cents 
out of every dollar in the 1970's, and then 17.1 cents in the 1980's. 
If we adopt Bill Clinton's budget, and if it does everything he says it 
will do, we are still talking about social spending taking 17.3 cents 
out of every dollar earned by every American. That is the highest level 
of social spending in the history of the United States of America--thus 
giving us both the highest taxes in American history and the highest 
level of social spending.
  What about defense? In the 1940's, 7.9 percent of all income earned 
by all Americans went to national defense. As the cold war heated up in 
the 1950's, it grew to 10.6 percent. In the 1960's, it was 8.9 percent, 
and then it leveled out at 6 percent in the 1970's and 1980's. If we 
adopt Bill Clinton's budget and all the dramatic cuts in national 
defense expenditures that it entails, expenditures on national security 
as a percentage of the income earned by all Americans will be at the 
lowest level since the 1930's, with only 3.4 cents out of every dollar 
going to our national defense. This is the President's vision: the 
highest tax burden in American history, the highest social spending in 
American history, and the lowest defense spending in the post-war era. 
If we adopt the President's budget, we will have social spending twice 
as high as the Great Society's social spending, we will have taxes 
substantially above the tax burden of the Great Society, and we will 
have defense spending substantially below the Jimmy Carter era. That is 
the Clinton vision.
  In addition, what kind of growth rate does the Clinton administration 
say his budget is capable of generating? Let me begin with a brief 
reminder of the country we live in. If you have ever wondered why 
Americans, until this generation, have always been confident that their 
children will have a brighter future than they had, it is because up 
until now this has been true. We live in one of the few countries in 
the history of the world where it has been the routine for people's 
parents to do better than their grandparents, who did better than their 
great-grandparents, and where people knew that if they worked hard, if 
they were dedicated, they were going to do better than their own 
parents.
  Here is the reason why: In the 1950's, we had real economic growth in 
America which resulted in job creation, growth in the value of the 
things that we produced, and, as a result, real GNP grew on average by 
4 percent. It grew by 4.4 percent in the decade of the 1960's.
  But then something happened in the decade of the 1960's. What 
happened in the decade of the 1960's is that we traded an economy which 
was growing at 4

[[Page S5122]]

percent a year for a government that would grow at 9 percent a year, 
and, as a result, economic growth started falling. We had 3.2 percent 
growth in the 1970's, and 2.8 percent growth in the 1980's. The most 
optimistic assumption that the Clinton administration could come up 
with, given their budget, given what they are doing in taxing and 
spending, is that the economy will grow by a mere 2.3 percent. This is 
their rosy scenario.
  So, when you go back and look at it, what is the Clinton vision? It 
is the highest tax level in American history. It is the highest level 
of spending on social programs in American history. It is the lowest 
defense expenditure level since World War II and it is the lowest 
economic growth rate that we have had in the 20th century. That is the 
vision of this budget and that is exactly why it ought to be rejected.
  Let me address another issue: Medicare. It is an issue that 
frustrates me, because almost nobody is facing up to this problem, 
least of all the Clinton administration. The trustees of Medicare did a 
study last year which, given the rate that money is being spent out of 
the Medicare trust fund, and given the rate that it is coming into the 
trust fund from the high premium you pay in your payroll tax and the 
part B premium that our senior citizens pay for physician services, 
concluded that only people who were age 60 and above had any kind of 
guarantee of receiving benefits. This means that the remaining 93 
percent of the people in America, many of whom had paid in excess of 
$30,000 into Medicare, had no guarantee whatsoever that they were going 
to ever get a penny of benefits from Medicare. Now, I remind you that 
three of these trustees are Cabinet officials of the Clinton 
administration. So this is not Senator Domenici talking; this is the 
Clinton administration.
  What happened since that time? Well, two things have happened. The 
commission has gone back and looked at the data and, because costs are 
up sharply, they have concluded that Medicare is not 7 years from 
bankruptcy, it is now 6, and we are moving toward 5--so the numbers are 
actually worse than what is on this chart. The Clinton administration 
claims that it has submitted a plan that will protect 13 percent of the 
beneficiaries of Medicare and will roughly guarantee benefits to 
everybody who is 55 or older. That means that, according to President 
Clinton's own figures, 87 percent of the people who have paid into 
Medicare have no guarantee whatsoever.
  But when CBO looked at the Clinton proposal, they concluded that, at 
best, it would keep Social Security solvent only for one extra year. So 
the best the Clinton administration could do, while telling senior 
citizens that the people who want to deal with the Medicare crisis are 
trying to take their benefits away, is give us a Medicare policy that 
says to 92 percent of the people who have already paid into Medicare, 
``We are not going to guarantee your benefits. The problem is getting 
worse, but we are not going to fool with it.'' Why? Well, 7 years is 
two Presidential elections away so it's not this President's problem.
  Now, we can be sure that after the election, they are going to start 
talking about raising the payroll tax because if you raise that payroll 
tax by about a third, you can begin to come to grips with this problem.
  Let me remind you of what the Republicans tried to do in the balanced 
budget act that the President vetoed. The President went on and on 
about how we were going to decimate Medicare. But let me just show you 
how modest our attempt was relative to the crisis we are facing. We 
tried to guarantee Medicare for a generation. Had our reforms been 
signed into law, it would have guaranteed Medicare, under the current 
estimates, to everybody who, based on an average life expectancy, is 46 
years old or older. But you will notice that for 72 percent of the 
people who have paid Medicare taxes, we could not have guaranteed their 
benefits. We have, in our budget today, a modest proposal on Medicare, 
with the goal of making it solvent for another decade. Some day, we are 
going to have to come to grips with this.

  The great tragedy is, rather than the President doing what, very much 
to his credit, Ronald Reagan did--that is, getting a bipartisan group 
together in the mid 1980's and solving, at least for 20 years, the 
Social Security problem--the President is now playing politics. He 
calls dealing with a third of the problem an assault on Medicare while 
letting 92 percent of the people stand with no guarantee of medical 
benefit is called responsible.
  The truth is that the President has not come to grips with this 
problem, and the real crime is that our senior citizens are being told 
that the Republicans, who are attempting to deal responsibly with this 
situation, are trying to take something away from them. The truth, 
however, is that leaving the current situation in place, where in 6 
years Medicare is going to be bankrupt, creates an environment in which 
a great tragedy is just waiting to happen. In the private sector, 
anybody in a position of fiduciary responsibility in who let this 
happen would go to prison.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Parliamentarian be sure to advise us when the 
Senator's time has expired? I will yield him time off the resolution.
  Will the Senator look at the last column, the 31 percent, which is 
the Republican proposal? Is it not true that in order to get that which 
was vetoed by the President--and we are talking about the trust fund 
only--is it not true that there was not any increase in payments by 
senior citizens, that this was done by reform, that was done by 
provider changes and giving options to the senior citizens, and there 
were no increases in the costs of part B protection to the seniors? Is 
that not correct?
  Mr. GRAMM. That is right.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. GRAMM. I want to note one other thing. I do not want to get into 
a big discussion on Medicare but one of the clearly irresponsible 
actions that ought to be denounced on a bipartisan basis is what the 
President has done with his nursing home provision. One of the things 
the President's budget does in order to make Medicare look less 
insolvent is to take the nursing home component, which costs $55 
billion over 7 years and which is now being paid for out of part A, out 
of Medicare. But he is not putting it anywhere, and, as if by magic, he 
assumes that somewhere this $55 billion is going to appear.
  The final issue I would like to talk about is the issue of taxing and 
spending. Let me start by talking about taxes. It never ceases to amaze 
me that we have something underway here in Washington that the public 
is beginning to understand, but has not quite come to fully appreciate, 
and it is very much like the defense realization that occurred in the 
1980's. By the early part of the 1980's, the American people understood 
that, in foreign policy, the Democrats had a basic approach of blame-
America-first. Whatever happened, according to the Democrats, it was 
our fault. If there were troubles in the world, the Democrats said it 
was because of our greed and our imperialism. But finally, in the 
1980's, the American people began to disregard these claims because 
they realized that this was just the knee-jerk approach of the 
Democrats. I want to talk about taxes from this point of view and the 
point I want to make is this: To the Democrats, every tax increase is 
fair, and no matter how unfair it may actually be, they define it as 
being fair and go to incredible lengths to convince people it is fair.

  The second point I want to make is that, according to the Democrats, 
every tax cut is unfair, no matter who it goes to and no matter who it 
affects. By definition, the Democrats say every tax cut is unfair. And 
after a tax is increased and it actually turns out to be unfair, only 
then do the Democrats say it is unfair--yet they propose to correct it 
by raising taxes again.
  Let me give you an example. In 1993, we heard on the floor of the 
Senate--and the President to this day says, ``We only taxed rich 
people.'' Let me take a couple of examples that I think reveal the 
errors of this statement.
  The President proposed in his budget in 1993, in his largest tax 
increase in American history, to raise taxes on people who earned 
Social Security benefits. He raised taxes on people who made $25,000 or 
more, but how did he go about hiding it?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair would tell the Senator that his time 
has expired.

[[Page S5123]]

  Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield me 10 minutes?
  Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 10 minutes off the resolution.
  Mr. GRAMM. How they went about hiding it is, first, they said that 
really they are not talking about people earning $25,000 because these 
are older people who own their own homes. So we are going to impute, 
for the first time ever, income, and it became part of a concept of 
American budgeting. So if your mother owns her own home, the President 
would say, ``Well, look, if she had to rent that home she would have 
had to pay $400 a month or $500 a month. So we are not really taxing 
her at $25,000 because we are not taxing the imputed value of her 
home.'' Or she owns a lawn mower, or she owns a car, or she owns a 
dishwasher; if she rented those things, it would be imputed income. 
Actually, she is rich. She is making $25,000 a year, but she is rich 
because she may own a dishwasher, she may own a car. She worked a 
lifetime. She owns her own home. If you imputed the value of all of 
those things, her income would be higher.
  The Congress rightfully rejected that. But our Democratic colleagues 
imposed the tax on anybody making $34,000 a year or more who gets any 
Social Security. They said, this is not an income tax. But I want to 
show you that it is.
  This chart is a page from the advisory that was put out to go with 
your 1040 form in 1994, the year after the tax increase went into 
effect. People get a notice from the IRS that they are getting ready to 
be taxed again, then later get a form telling them how to fill it out, 
and then they get the tax form.
  Let me read for you what the IRS said when they sent income tax forms 
to 120 million Americans. Here is what they said:

       Social Security benefits. If your income, including one-
     half of your Social Security benefits, is over $34,000 if 
     single (over $44,000 if married, filing jointly), more of 
     your benefits may be taxable. See the instructions for lines 
     20(a) and 20(b).

  Let me show you on the 1040 form. This is income taxes. Look down 
here at line 20(a) which I have blown up. What line 20(a) says is, 
``Social Security benefits.'' In other words, you put your Social 
Security benefits right there and then you pay an income tax on them.
  So do you know how the Democrats argue that they were taxing rich 
people? Basically, they argued if you make $25,000 or more, you are 
rich, and if you own a dishwasher or if you own your own home or you 
own your own car, you are richer than you think, because if you had to 
rent all of those things, it would cost you money.
  We are trying to cut taxes on working families. The only tax cut in 
our budget this year is the $500-per-child tax credit. That would mean 
that if you have two children, you are going to pay $1,000 less in 
income taxes. You are going to be able to invest that money in your own 
children, your own family, your own future.
  We know that most people who are rich or who are upper-middle income 
really only start making money once their children are grown. So we are 
not shocked to hear that 75 percent of the benefits of this $500 tax 
credit goes to families that make less than $75,000 a year. But do our 
colleagues say, ``Well, we are against cutting taxes for working 
families because we believe Government can do a better job spending 
their money than they can do for themselves''? No. They say this is a 
tax cut for the rich. When they tax people who make $25,000 a year, 
they say they are rich. So, in one sense, they are consistent.

  But let me remind you what they are consistent about. They are 
consistent in saying that every tax is a tax on the rich and that every 
tax is fair.
  Another example which disproves this is the gasoline tax. President 
Clinton tried to implement a so-called Btu tax that would have raised 
the price of gasoline 7 cents a gallon. What he got was 4.3 cents. I am 
glad every Republican voted against it. I am proud of it. This was the 
first permanent gasoline tax that went to general revenue, and not 
toward build highways.
  Historically, the gas tax has gone to highways because to do 
otherwise makes it a discriminatory tax. If you live in Texas, the odds 
are you spend almost twice as much on gas than if you live in New York. 
If you live in a rural area where you have to drive great distances to 
get to work, you spend more on gasoline. If you live in the West, you 
spend more. If you live in the East, you spend less. If you live in the 
South, you spend more. If you live in the North, you spend less.
  The way we have dealt with the inequity is that we have used the 
gasoline taxes to build highways. So if you pay more, you get more. But 
President Clinton took the 4.3-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and spent 
it on his social programs. So we took money away from people driving 
their car and their truck to work to give money to people who do not 
work.
  Is that taxing the rich? No. It is taxing working people. We are 
trying to repeal the tax--the Democrats say it is a great idea. The 
problem is, this is the 21st day that we have tried to offer an 
amendment to repeal that 4.3-cent-a-gallon tax and, to this day, we 
have not gotten a vote.
  So, the principle I want people to understand is: whenever the 
Democrats raise taxes, whether they tax people who make $34,000 a year 
or whether they tax gasoline, they always claim to be taxing rich 
people. Whenever we try to cut taxes, therefore, they say we are 
cutting taxes for rich people.
  The plain truth is, God did not make enough rich people to make the 
Democrats's claims hold true. As these tax burdens, year after year 
after year, have gone up, what we have discovered is, if you are going 
to take 19.3 percent out of every dollar earned in America, you are 
going to have to take it from the people who earn that money. That is 
basically middle-income or upper-middle-income families and that is 
what the Democrats have consistently done.
  One very final point--and I do not want to get into the sparring 
contests with our colleagues about what is phony and what is not phony, 
but to stand up here and say that President Clinton's budget is in 
balance with a straight face neglects the fact that when the 
Congressional Budget Office Director, Dr. June O'Neill, was before the 
Finance Committee and she was asked, ``Is the Clinton budget in 
balance,'' here is what she said: ``CBO estimates that the basic policy 
proposals in the President's budget would lower the deficit 
substantially below the Congressional Budget Office baseline 
projections, but the deficit would still total $84 billion 7 years from 
now.''
  So how does the President close that gap? He closes that gap with a 
little piece of fine print where, in essence, he says, if for some 
reason the budget is not in balance, take back the tax cut.
  Tax America first. Spend first, tax first. Always tax. Never give the 
tax back. This is the Clinton prescription that we are talking about 
here.
  In the end, we are talking about competing visions. What kind of 
vision do we have for our country? The vision of Bill Clinton, the 
vision of our Democratic colleagues, is one of more Government, more 
social spending than ever in history, less defense than ever in the 
postwar period, and the highest tax burden in American history. That is 
their vision.
  Our vision is different. You can be for it. You can be against it. 
But our vision is a vision of more freedom and opportunity. We want to 
control spending. We want to let working families keep more of what 
they earn. We think families can spend their money better than the 
Government.
  That is the choice. The Democrats believe Government can do it 
better. We believe that families can do it better. It is a choice the 
American people need to make. We are going to make part of that choice 
here on the Clinton budget. The question is, do we want to commit 
ourselves to a future of more taxing and more spending? I think the 
answer is no. I yield the floor.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes off the 
resolution.
  Before Senator Gramm leaves the floor, would you put up your Medicare 
chart?
  I want to share a few observations with you about this, and you can 
tell me whether you think I am right, and you can add your marvelous 
way of expressing things to what I am talking about.

[[Page S5124]]

  We have in our files a letter from the Congressional Budget Office 
that says if you do not do something about part A, the Medicare trust 
fund, in 10 years--10 years--it will be $440 billion in the red.
  Now, you have been talking about whether we ought to do something or 
not based upon what we understand the facts to be.
  It seems to me that what the President is doing--and yesterday I gave 
the President's budget an award. I crowned it with a new award. It is 
going to get the Oscar for fiction. The Oscar for fiction.
  Let me ask you if you do not think this is a marvelous fiction in 
this budget. While this fund is going to be $440 billion in the red, 
the President says, ``I want to fix that, so I will take away some of 
the responsibility of this trust fund.'' Right? That is what you have 
been telling us about. What is the responsibility in that trust fund 
that is growing the fastest of all of the accounts?
  Mr. GRAMM. Home health care.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Home health care. Right.
  Now, if you wanted to fix that trust fund without doing anything 
real, then you would say, ``Let us not pay for the fastest growing part 
of Medicare. Take it out.'' So the President's budget says, ``We are 
not going to pay for that out of the trust fund and, seniors, you ought 
to be thrilled; I am making your trust fund more solvent.''
  My mind has not yet permitted me to reduce this to some simple 
statement, but it is smoke and mirrors at least. It is gimmickry at its 
worst.
  Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Please.
  Mr. GRAMM. It seems to me it goes beyond that because there is 
already a lot of cynicism in budgeting--probably because the numbers 
are so big and we are doing it over multiple years. But to simply take 
home health care, the fastest growing part of Medicare and say we are 
going to help Medicare by taking it out of the Medicare expenditure 
accounting but we are not paying for it in any other way, we are just 
simply taking it out of accounting, that creates a level of cynicism 
which I think reaches a new level.
  It would be like if the Senator went to the doctor and the doctor 
says: You are in great shape except you have liver cancer. I cannot 
cure that but let me tell you, I can work on the rest of your body. You 
can go on an exercise program, you lose a little weight; you can quit 
smoking----

  Mr. DOMENICI. You did not mean me.
  Mr. GRAMM. No, but you would not just do all this other stuff until 
you died. No doctor in the world would do that. Instead he would say: 
Look, we have got to do something about this cancer. We have got to do 
it right now.
  All I am saying is, and I am not giving us the Academy Award for 
solving the Medicare problem, but we are trying to solve the problem 
for at least a generation. The President, however, is simply saying: 
Look, it is not going to happen until after the election. After the 
election, maybe we can raise the payroll tax.
  I think this is something we ought to do something about now.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me say that the Senator actually 
said it right. The President takes $55 billion worth of the 
responsibility from the protected care for seniors. They are guaranteed 
it under that trust fund, and he takes it out. And you said he does not 
provide any means of paying for it.
  Now, in a sense, that is because the taxpayers are going to pay for 
it--$55 billion worth of new taxes are going to be required for that 
$55 billion that, lo and behold, made Medicare solvent so the President 
did not have to bite any difficult bullets with reference to Medicare.
  Now, that is how I see it. I am being as honest as I can.
  Now, let me finish the thought and you fill in anything if I have not 
said it right. There is the second part of Medicare, which is the part 
B insurance program, started under Dwight Eisenhower, a great idea. We 
said back then we will put up 50 percent; seniors, you put up 50 
percent, and we will write you a health insurance. Everything that is 
not covered in the trust fund we cover. That is essentially the rules 
of the game. But we always thought the senior would pay part and the 
Government would pay part.
  Incidentally, the whole argument last year was what that part should 
be. Should it be 31 percent or 25, should it be $6 more or $7 more or 
$2 more. The President decided that for this new $55 billion, the 
seniors would pay nothing. The taxpayers will pay the $55 billion.
  Now, frankly, that is nice. That is nice except I wonder about the 
working families around who have two or three children and they do not 
have any health insurance or they are struggling for it. They have just 
been given a nice present--$55 billion of your taxes over the next 6 
years have to be used to pay for the President's gimmick, as I see it.
  I thank the Senator for accommodating me.
  Mr. GRAMM. If I may just conclude with this point. I have always 
believed that not addressing this problem before the election means 
sometime later we will be looking at a massive increase in the payroll 
tax. I believe that next year or the year after, if we do not address 
this problem now, we are going to be here on the floor of the Senate 
debating a 20- or 30-percent increase in the payroll tax, and all 
because the President was unwilling to do anything about these 
exploding costs.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I want to just close my remarks. There was an article 
by Robert Samuelson found in the Washington Post a few days ago. 
Actually, it was about Senator Dole's opportunities. That was the 
styling of it. I am going to put it in the Record after my remarks. But 
I want to read two sentences.

       At some point, spending and benefits will be cut to avoid 
     costs that seem politically intolerable. The trouble is that 
     the longer the changes are delayed, the more abrupt and 
     unfair they will be. That's why silence is irresponsible.

  I believe that is true. Silence or gimmickry on this issue is 
irresponsible.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment by the 
distinguished minority leader, Mr. Daschle, and the distinguished 
ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Exon.
  I have been talking with the people of Massachusetts about this 
budget. The people of Leominster and Worcester and Falmouth don't come 
up to me and say: ``Senator, how does that spending compare to the OMB 
baseline?'' They don't scream out: ``What is the savings in the 
outyears compared with the savings in next fiscal year?'' They don't 
ask: ``What is the cap on entitlement spending?'' But, Mr. President, 
that does not mean that the people of Massachusetts are apathetic about 
the Federal budget. They want to know if the Congress is going to work 
with the President to balance the budget. And they want to know how the 
budget is going to help them.
  The proposal submitted to Congress by the President of the United 
States balances the budget. This proposal before us eliminates the 
deficit in 2002.
  When he came to office in 1993, the President worked with Democrats 
in Congress, and we took a $290 billion deficit and cut it in half in 3 
years. That achievement fulfills the President's promise in 1992 to 
halve the deficit in his first term.
  America's deficit is still pernicious--but right now, we are doing 
better than any other nation in the world. Our deficit is smaller as a 
share of our economy than the shortfall in any other major economy in 
the world.
  Mr. President, let me state clearly: President Clinton and the 
Democrats in Congress worked together to enact this economic plan--and 
we did this without one single Republican vote.
  This budget reflects our priorities of deficit reduction without 
forgetting our commitment to middle-class Americans. Please remember, 
Mr. President, something the Republican Party seems to forget: Deficit 
reduction, in and of itself, is not an economic policy.
  It is part of a larger picture. It is part of a vision--the 
Democrats' vision--of this country's future which will lead us into the 
next century with a healthier American economy and a stronger middle 
class. That's good for America's corporate headquarters and America's 
households.
  Our plan has kept interest rates low, so more Americans have been 
able to buy a first home or a new car.
  Our plan has subdued inflation to 2.7 percent since 1993--the yield 
on 10-year

[[Page S5125]]

Treasury notes dropped a full point when this plan was enacted. That 
helped alleviate the credit crunch which hurt so many of my friends and 
neighbors in Massachusetts during the Reagan-Bush recession.
  Our plan has created more than 8 million jobs--including 1 million 
jobs in basic industries like construction and manufacturing. It has 
fostered robust and steady growth of gross domestic product--unlike the 
recession of the early 1990's which crippled the American family.
  This proposal before us, the President's budget, continues our good 
record. It balances the budget the right way--by making Government 
smaller and more efficient, by promoting a strong economy and a healthy 
business environment, by investing in the programs that matter to 
working Americans.
  There is a right way to balance the budget--to make Government more 
efficient without ripping away the safety net from the American family. 
This budget leaves no one behind. It helps people who need help and 
closes loopholes on those who don't.
  The American people understand this, Mr. President. This is a budget 
which reflects their priorities.
  Mr. President, let me take a moment to tell our colleagues about the 
impact this budget has on the families in my home State of 
Massachusetts. The President's budget designates more American cities 
as empowerment zones--a program designed to stimulate community 
revitalization. Our colleague from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman, 
understands how important this program is to America's cities. He has 
introduced legislation which would expand the tax credits under the 
Empowerment Zone Program to cities designated as enterprise 
communities. I support his efforts and I support the President's 
expansion of the current successful program.
  The expansion promises to help communities across Massachusetts like 
Boston, Lowell, Springfield, and Lawrence. The President's budget will 
allow these cities and others to develop and expand opportunities for 
their residents through a series of tax benefits, social service 
grants, and better program coordination.

  At a time when some cities face high unemployment and high poverty 
rates, the Congress should be passing a budget which encourages 
economic growth and citizen participation in strategic plans for 
revitalization.
  We, Democrats, are fighting to expand empowerment zones while we hold 
back Republican attempts to distress our urban centers further by 
cutting services vital to low-income Americans, like the low-income tax 
credit.
  The President's budget commits a full $1 billion for the Low-Income 
Home Energy Assistance Program in fiscal year 1997, $1 billion in 
advanced appropriations for fiscal year 1998 and $300 million for 
emergency funding. Mr. President, this past winter, my State survived 
one of the most brutal winters we have seen in a century.
  There was record snow in Boston and small towns all over New England. 
Families in Dorchester, in Everett, and in Malden--families all across 
Massachusetts--relied on LIHEAP to assist with staggering heating 
bills.
  This program literally kept families from freezing: I am proud the 
President has committed Federal resources necessary to meet the needs 
of working Americans, and I am discouraged that the Republican budget 
resolution is silent on funding for LIHEAP. The President and the 
Democrats are committed to the working families in Massachusetts and 
New England. The Republicans are silent.
  The President's budget proposes $200 million to electrify the Amtrak 
segment between Boston and New Haven--a project which will make 
possible high-speed rail travel between Boston and Washington, DC, by 
the year 2000.
  The President and Democrats commit $5.5 million to conservation and 
management of fisheries which would help restore New England's 
collapsed stock of cod, flounder, and haddock. The Republicans are 
silent.
  The President and the Democrats are fighting for $500 million in mass 
transit operating subsidies for Massachusetts. This means commuters to 
Boston will not constantly be asked to pay higher fares just to get to 
work. Republicans are silent.
  The President and the Democrats are fighting for $650 million for the 
Central Artery. The Republicans are silent.
  The President and the Democrats are fighting to expand the Summer 
Jobs Program which gives so many young people in Massachusetts their 
first work experience.
  This budget follows the wisdom of Mayor Menino who joined me in 
fighting against the Republican shut-downs earlier this year. He knew 
the effect these shut-downs would have on summer jobs. We forced them 
to open the Government, fund the Summer Jobs Program and we will 
together fight to expand it by giving another 500,000 kids a chance for 
employment. But, then as now, the Republicans are silent.
  The President and the Democrats are fighting the AIDS epidemic and 
have committed resources to highly affected cities like Boston by fully 
funding the Ryan White CARE Program. This means nutrition services to 
people living with AIDS, and testing and counseling for those who fear 
HIV-infection, will continue at the AIDS services organizations across 
the State. The Republicans are silent.
  The President and the Democrats are fighting for $100 million for the 
clean-up of Boston Harbor, and the Republicans are silent.
  That silence is unacceptable, Mr. President.
  I will do all I can to break the silence. I will come to the floor as 
often as possible and discuss the ill-effects of the Republican budget.
  If the President's proposal is not accepted by the Senate, I will not 
give up on the environment. I will offer an amendment at a later stage 
in this debate, and I will fight to restore drastic cuts in 
environmental programs the Republicans have imposed on the American 
people and the residents of Massachusetts.
  And, while we fight to clean our air and our water, the Republicans 
have locked arms against the American taxpayers. The Republican plan 
slashes funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and allows 
polluters to foist the tab for their mess on the taxpayers rather than 
forcing the polluters to clean up after themselves.
  If the President's budget is not accepted, I will offer an amendment 
that recognizes education as the key to economic and income security. I 
will offer an amendment to add-back the cuts the Republicans are making 
to the President's plan. I am proud he has included a provision for 
which I have been fighting in this Congress--the President's budget 
calls for a $10,000 deduction for educational expenses. That is real 
money to working families who face double-digit inflation in the cost 
of higher education.

  Real money to help real people. Listen to some of the letters I have 
received recently:
  Melvin Harris of Roxbury wrote to me:

       My son is currently attending school at Morgan State 
     University in Baltimore. He and I were shocked to find that 
     federal funds had been cut drastically which he was depending 
     on. With me being a retiree, it is hard for me to pay his 
     tuition, room and board. Would you please do something to 
     help me?

  The President's budget will help Mr. Harris.
  Timothy Crawford of Wellesley wrote to me:

       As a senior in high school, I am looking forward to going 
     away to college next year. I have worked hard to get good 
     grades throughout high school and have been accepted to good 
     schools and am now trying to make the decision of where to 
     attend. One very important part of my decision is the price 
     of the school and the assistance I can get.
       I am afraid the Republicans in our government will cut 
     education programs and I may not be able to attend college, 
     my brother may not be able to attend college, or we have to 
     work out a plan so that one of us goes to college while the 
     other works.
       I hope you will continue to support education and do 
     something to help us.

  The President's proposal will help Timothy Crawford and his family.
  I have dozens of letters from students at Wellesley College. And, 
hundreds of letters from physicians and attorneys who cannot repay 
their student loans, and millworkers and musicians who ask for help 
sending their kids to college. And, the President's proposal will help 
them all.
  The President has learned from Massachusetts the importance of 
science and technology to the American economy. This budget marks the 
fourth

[[Page S5126]]

straight year the Democrats have proposed an increase in science and 
technology programs--while the Republicans would cut science and 
technology programs by 30 percent by the year 2002.
  I will fight for the President's proposal for an increase of $13 
billion for university-based research: it is the key to America's 
future. And, Massachusetts knows this better than almost every other 
State in the Union.
  The President and the Democrats have given us a chance to fight back 
against crime in our neighborhoods. This budget proposes $2 billion for 
49,000 new police officers to protect America's neighborhoods. Putting 
additional cops on the beat in communities across Massachusetts will 
help deter crime, break the cycle of violence, and make our towns and 
neighbhoods safer places to live.
  In 1994, I fought successfully to increase the funding in the crime 
bill to put an additional 100,000 cops on the street by the year 2000. 
And, it is paying off for Massachusetts. Just this week, 99 
Massachusetts cities will receive more funding--Worcester will receive 
$1.85 million to hire 18 officers. Springfield will receive $1.25 
million to hire 17 officers and Lowell will receive $1.5 million to 
hire 20 new officers. To date, thanks to this program, my home State 
has received funding for 1,300 new police men and women.
  While the Republicans continue to threaten the community policing 
fund--jeopardizing the safety of corner stores and neighborhood schools 
and households--the President's budget understands the needs of 
Massachusetts' neighborhoods. That's why I support this proposal.
  The President and the Democrats also propose $25 million for new 
advanced police officer education and training. State and local police 
departments need assistance to meet the growing demands of law 
enforcement and I am prepared to fight to help them.
  And, Mr. President, what do we hear from the other side of the aisle? 
The same, war-torn, threadbare rhetoric about tax and spending. The 
same partisan bickering. Is this proposal all tax and spend? Of course 
not. The President's budget is certified by the Congressional Budget 
Office to balance in 6 years. It protects the environment. It protects 
our elderly. It funds education and puts cops on the street. It takes 
care of the little guy.
  In the face of the extreme Republican budget, the President and we, 
Democrats, have given the country hope by reducing the deficit with 
common sense and compassion. It saves the Medicare Program for our 
seniors, and the Medicaid Program for our children and low-income 
Americans.
  My friends in Massachusetts just don't buy it when you tell them: 
``this isn't a cut--it's merely a reduction in the growth of 
spending.'' They understand that the extreme Republican budget forces 
them to spending twice as much on Medicare premiums.

  They understand that Cape Cod beaches will be under attack, and 
Boston harbor clean-up will be stalled while their water and sewer 
rates are skyrocketing. They understand that they are paying into the 
system and--under the Republican plan--they will be getting little in 
return.
  They understand that when the Republicans are not speaking in arcane, 
incomprehensible, confusing budget jargon--they are silent.
  The President's budget speaks to the people I meet at home in 
Massachusetts. This budget meets our spending priorities and promises 
more good economic news for the American family. That is why I support 
it.
  I urge our colleagues to support his balanced budget.
  Mr. DODD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I yield myself as much time as I may consume 
off the resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kyl). The Senator from Connecticut is 
recognized.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me begin my remarks by commending my 
colleague from New Mexico, who is the chairman of this committee, who 
has the unenviable task of chairing the Budget Committee. While we have 
our disagreements from time to time, I have a great deal of respect for 
him as a colleague, as a Member, and I appreciate the fine work that he 
does on behalf of his State and on behalf of the country.
  I will take a few minutes and go over some of the budget items. He 
does not have to stay. I know he has other things to do. But I did not 
want him to leave the floor without expressing my appreciation for the 
work he does.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DODD. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I want to say for the Record, it is mutual. While my 
colleague does not chair the budget committee--there cannot be that 
mutuality--he probably would not want it anyway. In any event, I want 
to say that my colleague's participation and contribution in matters 
that we work on, from my standpoint, is very much appreciated. I 
commend the Senator on the way he has handled himself.
  Mr. DODD. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, at some later point I will also have some extended 
remarks on the announcement by the majority leader, who has decided he 
is going to retire from the Senate the first part of June. While we, 
too, have our differences, suffice it to say, as a colleague and a 
friend, he will be missed. I mean that very deeply and sincerely.
  Mr. President, I will just begin my remarks here by asking unanimous 
consent to have printed in the Record a letter from June O'Neill, who 
is the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, dated May 9, 1996, 
in response in part to the colloquy between my colleague from New 
Mexico and our colleague from Texas regarding the condition of the 
hospital insurance trust fund. She says in that letter, here, and I am 
quoting it now:

       Under current law, the HI trust fund is projected to become 
     insolvent in 2001. CBO estimates the administration's 
     proposals would postpone this date to 2005.

  She goes into greater length here, responding to that, but I thought 
for the Record my colleagues ought to know what the Congressional 
Budget Office says with regard to the hospital trust fund.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                  Congressional Budget Office,

                                      Washington, DC, May 9, 1996.
     Hon. J. James Exon,
     Ranking Minority Member, Committee on the Budget, U.S. 
         Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator: At your request, the Congressional Budget 
     Office (CBO) has examined the effects of the Administration's 
     budgetary proposals on the Hospital Insurance (HI) trust 
     fund. Under current law, the HI trust fund is projected to 
     become insolvent in 2001. CBO estimates that the 
     Administration's proposals would postpone this date to 2005.
           Sincerely,
                                                  June E. O'Neill,
                                                         Director.

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I want to begin by trying to, if we can, get 
back to some basic information here, because you can get lost in a lot 
of the data and charts and numbers that get thrown around. Let us just 
remember we are talking about the President's budget. There is a budget 
presented by the committee and there will be some alternatives that 
will be offered in the coming days when we debate what the budget of 
the country ought to be, but I think it is worthwhile to point out we 
are talking about the President's budget to begin with.
  Remember, this is a man who arrived in town in January 1993, 40 
months ago--not 40 years ago, not a decade ago or 15 years ago; 40 
months ago he arrives in town. He never served in Congress, never 
served in the Cabinet. He was the Governor of a small State. As he 
arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he has left on his doorstep a 
mountain of debt. A mountain of debt is left on his doorstep. As you 
begin to look back at 1980 and start there and follow this redline, 
where the Congressional Budget Office projections were before, those 
are facts, where the deficit was going, where it was headed just prior 
to the President's arrival in town, and then what has happened to the 
projection of the deficit since his arriving, right here, in 1993. Here 
we get clearly where things were going up until his arrival here, and 
now the same Congressional Budget Office says we are headed this way.
  So, just for the purpose of clarity, let us keep in mind conditions 
when this

[[Page S5127]]

President arrives. We had mountains of debt, most of it accumulated 
between 1981 and 1993. In fact, we had a debt that went up almost $4 
trillion, from $1 trillion in 1981 to $4 trillion the day this 
President arrives in town. Then, in the 40 months he has been here, he 
has taken the projection of our deficit, which we are told was headed 
in this direction, and we are now moving it downward. So you begin with 
at least looking at the trend lines and where we are going.
  The President's budget is a commonsense approach. It cuts more than 
half a trillion dollars in spending over 7 years, yet, at the same 
time, it maintains our priorities as a nation. The President's budget 
invests in people. It protects Medicare and Medicaid, education and the 
environment, and it would maintain our national investments in 
education, job training and technology, all of which I think we agree 
are important.
  The budget maintains access to health care for our Nation's most 
vulnerable citizens. It keeps our natural environment and our 
workplaces safe. It understands that our overwhelming focus on 
balancing the budget should not cause us to ignore our national 
priorities. The President understands that all of this talk about 
balancing the budget should not cause us to lose sight of our most 
important national goals.
  As I have said in the past, this body, in my view, needs to be 
focusing more of its attention on increasing economic growth. We need 
to reform the Tax Code so it promotes savings and investment and higher 
growth. We need to increase opportunities for education and job 
training so that all Americans will have the tools to succeed. We need 
to make pensions and health care portable so that Americans can better 
cope with the technological and economic changes that are occurring in 
their lives.
  We should all remember that an increase of as little as one-half of 1 
percent in the growth rate of the United States could create enormous 
opportunities for new jobs and expand options for millions of working 
Americans. Increasing growth is a priority, in my view, that should be 
reflected in everything that we do in Washington, and it should be 
reflected in the Federal budget. It is reflected in the President's 
budget.
  All along, President Clinton has stressed there is a right way and a 
wrong way to balance the budget. The right way is by maintaining our 
commitment to Head Start, to police officers on the beat, to clean and 
healthy drinking water, to summer jobs, and to encouraging community 
service. Those are the kinds of priorities that help build a strong 
nation.

  The wrong way to balance the budget is by having unnecessary, unwise 
spending cuts and tax cuts for those, frankly, who do not need them. I 
am going to get to that in a minute here. Our dear friends on the other 
side, with all due respect, have not learned the lesson. The American 
public have said over and over again: You are going in the wrong 
direction. We want our budget balanced. We want it done, if we can, in 
the next 6 or 7 years, but we want our priorities to be reflected in 
that decisionmaking process.
  What good does it do if you balance the budget and simultaneously 
make it impossible for my children to get a decent education, have 
access to higher education in this country? Balancing the budget and 
depriving the next generation of the tools it needs is foolhardy.
  What good does it do to talk about balancing the budget if you are 
going to rip the heart out of the environmental laws that have made 
this a stronger and a healthier nation? What good is it to balance the 
budget if you then increase the financial burden of older Americans, if 
you begin to make it more difficult, because Medicare is being reduced, 
for these people to make ends meet? How many middle-income families 
depend upon Medicaid so their parents and their grandparents can have a 
decent, long-term health care program?
  These are the kinds of things people say we need to invest in 
intelligently, making choices about where you reduce spending so we can 
achieve a balanced budget but make our country strong simultaneously. 
In our view, the President has done that with his budget. No one is 
suggesting any budget proposal is perfect, but certainly, given the 
evidence of the last 40 months, the direction we are heading in will 
make the case that this is a good proposal and one we ought to be 
working on, if we can, to achieve some common ground over the next 20 
or so days left here so we can complete this budget process and do what 
the American public have asked us to do.
  Let me, if I can, address some of these issues with greater 
specificity. I want to begin with the budget being cut. I say this 
because I think it is important that people understand where we have 
come from in the last 40 months. This is what is called a primary 
budget. This is entitled ``Budget Without Interest Payments.''
  Obviously, interest payments must, like any financial obligation, be 
paid. But if you remove the interest payments--remember, you only get 
interest payments because of the burdens you accumulate. So if you take 
away the interest payments, here is the deficit that occurred over the 
12 years from 1981 to 1993, those 12 years: $660 billion. If you took 
away the interest obligations in the last 40 months, we have created a 
surplus of $239 billion in this country in the last 40 months. Those 
numbers are not being made up. Those are real numbers.

  So with all of this talk of what has happened here, here is a 
President who arrives in town in Washington for the first time in a 
Federal Government position, and in 40 months he is able to move us 
into the black, if you will--this chart is in the blue--but into the 
black for the first time in years.
  President Clinton inherited a $290 billion deficit in the year that 
he arrived in office. This year, the 1996 deficit will be $144 billion. 
That is cut in half. Those are the realities.
  Back in 1993, the Congressional Budget Office projected the deficit 
would hover around $300 billion. That was their projection. Following 
the implementation of the Clinton budget plan in 1993, as I pointed out 
earlier, the budget has declined sharply. In fact, Mr. President, let 
me point out one additional statistic reflected in this chart. The 
Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 1996 deficit will come 
in at 1.9 percent of the gross domestic product. That will be the first 
time since 1979 that the deficit has been below 2 percent of the gross 
domestic product. That is significant progress, and we ought to stay on 
that track, if we can.
  This chart is without interest payments, as I said, and has been cut 
in half as a result of what has happened just in the last 40 months of 
this administration.
  Let me, if I can, turn to the chart on job growth rate, because this 
is what people care about. Again, you can balance the budget tomorrow 
if you want to, just by juggling some numbers around here and getting 
rid of a lot of things. But this cannot be a process of just people 
with green visors and sharp pencils. What happens to real people in 
this country as a result of the decisions we make? If our only function 
were to balance the budget, we could do that simply by cutting out all 
our spending, if we wanted to, and raising taxes on everybody.
  We have to ask the question: What happens to real people when you do 
this? So while we have been able to cut the deficit in half, and, if we 
eliminate the interest payments, actually we put this country into 
surplus for the first time in years. What has happened to jobs out 
there? What has happened to people's jobs? Again, look at jobs created 
per year.
  In 1981 to 1992, jobs created per year were 1,540,000. That is the 
number of jobs created each year in those years. In 1989 through 1992, 
it averaged 608,000 jobs per year. But from 1993 to the present time, 
Mr. President, we have created in excess of 2,684,000 jobs a year. 
Compare that with 1,500,000 from 1981 to 1992; 600,000 from 1989 to 
1992. We are now getting close to 3 million new jobs a year, while 
simultaneously bringing the deficit down.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield, because I think it is so 
important.
  What that chart shows is the number of jobs created essentially under 
the Bush Presidency as opposed to the Clinton Presidency. What my 
friend is saying, and it is so dramatic I would like him to repeat it, 
is that under the Bush Presidency, there were how many new jobs 
created?

[[Page S5128]]

  Mr. DODD. Under the 4 years President Bush served as President, we 
created on average of 608,000 jobs per year, and in the last 40 months, 
from January of 1993 through December of 1995--it does not include 
these last 4 or 5 months, but my colleagues will recall there were in 
excess of 620,000 jobs created in the month of February alone. That is 
more jobs created on a yearly basis than between 1989 and 1992.
  Quickly someone is going to say, ``Well, those aren't great jobs.'' 
That is wrong. The overwhelming number of jobs, more than 90 percent of 
these jobs, are private sector jobs, and well over 60 percent of these 
jobs are high-paying jobs. Not every one of them is, but the 
overwhelming majority are high-paying jobs in the private sector.
  Mrs. BOXER. My last question. When President Clinton ran for office, 
he made a promise on new jobs. As I understand it, that promise has 
been met; is that correct?

  Mr. DODD. I say to my colleague from California, I believe it has, 
and promises were made in terms of cutting the deficit in half. Those 
are real numbers. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, says they 
are real numbers. So here is the deficit coming down, job creation is 
going up, and my colleagues on the other side are treating this like 
bad news, as if this was some dreadful information.
  If we are on the right track, if things are working right, why do you 
not stick with the plan and the program here so that you have a healthy 
balance--investment in education, investment in our environment, 
cutting back our spending where we can, trying to have some sense of 
fairness about all of this so we move into the 21st century as a 
healthy nation.
  Today, of the G-7 countries, we are the healthiest economy. We are 
the healthiest economy of all the great economic powers in the world. 
We are the healthiest today in terms of job creation and deficit 
reduction. Why are our markets responding the way they are? The people 
on Wall Street are not making those investments because they want to 
help Bill Clinton get reelected. It is not because they are Democrats. 
They are making cold, hard financial decisions: Are we heading in the 
right direction or the wrong direction? They are investing because they 
think things are going in the right direction. It is their money they 
are putting on the table, and they like the trend lines they see: the 
deficit coming down, job creation going up.
  You can dance all around this, you can try to throw out a lot of 
misinformation about it, but the hard line bottom facts are, we are on 
the right track, we are going in the right direction. A lot more has to 
be done. It would be foolish for anyone to stand up here and say our 
work is over with. It is not. There are going to be some difficult 
decisions that have to be made. But you cannot argue with the facts. 
Job creation, deficit reduction, the trend lines of where we are going 
in this country are on a solid and sound footing.
  So, Mr. President, I urge my colleagues in the coming days to move 
away from politics as usual. We need to come together. We have 20 to 25 
days to get a job done. There is no debate here about whether or not we 
ought to balance the budget. I know some hope others will take a 
position--in fact, I heard someone the other day in the House of 
Representatives say, ``We don't want to settle this because it is too 
good of an issue.''
  It reminds me of the story of the law clerk who arrives in a law firm 
and he has only been there a month. He walks in to the senior partner 
with this huge file, a file that has been around 20 years. He says to 
the senior partner of the law firm, ``I've got great news, boss. This 
case that has been here 20 years. I've settled this case. It's over 
with. It's done. Everybody's happy.''
  The senior partner says, ``Why did you do a thing like that for? I've 
educated four of my children on that file. You don't want to close that 
case, that's too good a case, keep that case open.''
  So we have certain friends who want to keep the case open, because it 
is a good case politically for them. Do not let it settle. For God's 
sake, do not come to an agreement, they say. Do not try to resolve your 
differences. The politics of that are dreadful; they are dreadful 
politics. Keep the issue alive, keep the debate going.
  We are here to say today, let us end the debate. We can. We have 
agreed on balancing the budget in 7 years. We all have agreed to do it 
according to the Congressional Budget Office numbers. We are on the 
right track. The differences are not that great. They can be resolved. 
We can get the work done.
  I urge my colleagues today on both sides, particularly those on the 
majority side--it is difficult, I know, to admit when you are wrong. 
That is a hard thing for anybody to do in this world. It is 
particularly hard, if you are in politics, to admit you are wrong, but 
the facts do not lie. The deficit has come down. A young Governor 
arrives from a small State in January of 1993, gets dumped on his 
doorstep--dumped on his doorstep--$4 trillion in debt, some $290 
billion, $300 billion in an annual deficit.
  In 40 months, that deficit is down to $144 billion. The Congressional 
Budget Office now says we are heading in the right direction, going in 
the right direction now. That is the right direction to be going in.
  Job creation is up, the basic thing people need. The best social 
program anybody ever created is a job, a good job in this country. Here 
we have jobs being produced in the Nation while the deficit is coming 
down, and intelligent priorities, good priorities.
  I heard the other day the House majority leader--put aside whether 
you are for or against a gasoline tax; we can debate that, and will, in 
the coming days--but, my Lord, to hear the majority leader of the House 
of Representatives say, I'll tell you how we'll pay for that--we'll cut 
education.
  In my State, my working-class families in my State need the Pell 
grants and the student loans and the Stafford grants and so forth. 
Otherwise, they could not get an education. We have commencements 
coming up.
  I am going to give a commencement speech at Western Connecticut State 
University, a State university in my State. Fifty percent of their 
students receive some form of financial help or assistance. Here we 
have the majority leader of the House of Representatives saying we 
ought to just pay for that gasoline tax by going after education. You 
wonder why people are suspicious.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DODD. With some reluctance, I yield to my colleague.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I just say----
  Mr. DODD. I am on a roll.
  Mr. DOMENICI. The distinguished majority leader in the House has not 
said that since that day.
  Mr. DODD. My colleague from New Mexico obviously got a hold of him 
and straightened him out. I appreciate that. But come on, what else do 
you rely on, when you get up on a national news program and you say, 
``I'll tell you how I'd do it. This is how I'd do it''? Immediately the 
phones were ringing off the hook. What a foolish thing to say. So 
immediately they start to backtrack.
  But if you wonder why the American people get suspicious about what 
the priorities are, it is statements like that. What are your real 
intentions?
  So when we hear statements about Medicare, and we say, ``We will let 
it wither on the vine,'' or, ``I'm proud I voted against it 35 years 
ago,'' then everyone gets upset. You can understand the average person 
in this country gets a little nervous when they hear that. If they are 
relying on Medicare, relying on Medicaid, in order to meet basic health 
care costs, they are wondering, which side do we chose here? Who is 
going to watch out for me? They have one person saying, ``Look, I think 
it ought to die or we get rid of it. I never thought it worked very 
well.'' And others say, ``Look, we're going to have to make it work 
better and make tough decisions so it's there.'' Then you begin to 
understand the suspicions, the worries, the fears, the insecurities 
that many people feel. This is not an abstraction to them.
  We have a good health care program as Members of the U.S. Congress. 
Thank God for it. We have a good health care program. But millions of 
Americans outside of Washington, Mr. President, they rely on Medicare. 
They rely on it. For many, Medicare is the difference between having a 
life of relative decency and being wiped out financially. It is not an 
abstraction to them.

[[Page S5129]]

  So when we talk about these numbers and CBO and OMB and percentages 
and GDP, and so forth, that person out there today watching this debate 
says, ``What does that mean in terms of me, my kids, our jobs, our 
health care? Where are we going? Who is on my side?''
  So, again, I come back to the point, Mr. President, I tried to make 
at the outset here. Put aside all the glitter and all the distractions; 
we are going in the right direction on deficit reduction. It is a major 
issue. People care about it deeply. This President in 40 months, not 40 
years, not 15 years, but 40 months, has moved the country in the right 
direction on deficit reduction for the first time in decades.

  At the end of this fiscal year, we will have now had 4 years of 
deficit reduction, 4 consecutive years. You have to go back to Harry 
Truman's adminis- 
tration--Harry Truman's administra- 
tion--to find another American President who took us through 4 years of 
consecutive deficit reduction.
  We have reduced the size of the Federal work force under President 
Clinton by 270,000 jobs. Now, 30 percent of those jobs were in the 
military. My colleagues on the Budget Committee pointed that out. That 
is accurate. But 70 percent of those jobs came from the civilian work 
force.
  By contrast, with all due respect, under President Reagan, the 
Federal work force increased by 188,000 positions; 188,000 positions 
during the 8 years of President Reagan. Contrast that with 270,000 
fewer jobs in 40 months under President Clinton.
  Under the leadership of Al Gore, the President has ripped out 16,000 
pages of the 80,000 pages of Federal regulations, so that businesses in 
this country can work with less paperwork cluttering their desks.
  Is it done yet? No; but for the first time, there is a real reduction 
in paperwork, real reduction in the size of the Federal work force, 
real reduction in the deficit, getting the unemployment rate down. 
Those are the things that people care about, seeing to it that 
Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment are going to get 
proper protection.
  It is a commonsense budget. That is what has happened under this 
proposal. That is why I urge my colleagues on the other side in these 
coming few days to sit down. Let us work out this budget.
  The President extended the hand to our majority leader. He said, 
``Let's come on down, you and I, no staff, no one else, and let's work 
this out together.'' Our majority leader is going to be here until June 
11. I hope he will take him up on that offer. What a great thing it 
would be, before the majority leader leaves and retires from the 
Senate, with one of the great issues we have tried to resolve, if an 
American President and the majority leader, from the two different 
parties in this country, the two major parties, came together, with no 
one else in the room, and the two of them sat down and worked out this 
problem before June 11.
  What a great achievement that would be. I think both individuals 
would deserve the sincere praise and credit from the American public. I 
know we have an election in 25 weeks, but this issue deserves 
resolution, and we are close to achieving it.
  You have a President taking us in the right direction. You have a 
majority leader who is about to retire from here, who I think could 
close the gap. I urge that that offer the President made to our 
majority leader be picked up before he retires, and let's see if we 
cannot complete this work.
  For those reasons, Mr. President, I urge our colleagues to take a 
good, strong hard look at the budget that has been proposed by the 
President. It takes us in the right direction for all the reasons I 
mentioned. I urge its adoption. With that, Mr. President, I yield the 
floor.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I speak off the resolution, Mr. President.
  I might say to Senator Dodd, I cannot at this point, because we are 
going to offer an amendment--but so the Senator will know, I will have 
an interesting rebuttal to what the Senator has said. I will give the 
other side of the coin sometime today. I do not want to do that and not 
have the Senator know about it. I cannot do it right now while the 
Senator is here because I have some commitments. But we will let the 
Senator know in advance, so if he wants to come down and sort of chide 
me, as I did him, he can.

  I say, I had a little trouble with the Senator's analogy of the law 
firm and the old case, because it seems to me it is the President who 
is gaining from this budget debate. He is the one who has that old 
case. He is the one who ought not to get rid of it because it has been 
good for him. I have a strong suspicion that unless you settle the case 
his way, he is going to have that old case right on through the 
election because it is, as that senior partner said, it is a great 
livelihood and it has kind of been a great political livelihood for 
him.
  Mr. DODD. If my colleague will yield.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Of course.
  Mr. DODD. Our colleagues will appreciate that my friend from New 
Mexico and I have spent a lot of time working together on old cases.
  Mr. DOMENICI. That is right.
  Mr. DODD. So we share at least our concern about old cases. I 
appreciate his comments. I will try to be here when he makes them.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I think we have tendered an amendment, 
second-degree amendment. We have given it to the minority so they know 
what it is. I understand that there are 7 minutes left on our side for 
our statutory time to rebut the President's budget. Is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back the 7 minutes. Now I yield to Senator 
Frist for a second-degree amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time is yielded back.


                Amendment No. 3968 To Amendment No. 3965

  (Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate that the discretionary 
   spending caps should not include triggers that would make drastic 
 reductions in nondefense discretionary spending in fiscal years 2001 
and 2002 (the last 2 years of the budget) for the purpose of achieving 
                 a balanced budget in fiscal year 2002)

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for 
its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Frist] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 3968 to amendment No. 3965.

  Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end of the pending amendment.

     SEC.   . COMMON SENSE BUDGETING AMENDMENT.

       (a) Findings.--The Congress finds that--
       (1) President Clinton proposed in this fiscal year 1997 
     budget submission immediate downward adjustments to 
     discretionary caps after the year 2000 if the Congressional 
     Budget Office projected that his budget would not balance in 
     2002;
       (2) the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated 
     that President Clinton's fiscal year 1997 budget submission 
     will incur a deficit of $84,000,000,000 in 2002;
       (3) as a result of CBO's projected deficit in fiscal year 
     2002, the President's budget would trigger drastic reductions 
     in discretionary spending in 2001 and 2002 to reach balance;
       (4) these drastic reductions would have to occur in 
     nondefense programs such as education, environment, crime 
     control, science, veterans, and other human resource 
     programs;
       (5) 100 percent of the nondefense discretionary cuts in the 
     President's budget occur in 2001 and 2002; and
       (6) the inclusion in a budget submission of triggers to 
     make immediate, drastic reductions in discretionary spending 
     is inconsistent with sound budgeting practices and should be 
     recognized as a ``budgetary gimmick'' that is antithetical to 
     legitimate efforts to achieve balance in 2002.
       (b) Sense of Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that 
     the discretionary spending caps should not include triggers 
     that would--
       (1) result in 100 percent of the nondefense discretionary 
     reductions occurring in fiscal years 2001 and 2002; and
       (2) make drastic reductions in nondefense discretionary 
     spending in fiscal years 2001 and 2002 (the last 2 years of 
     the budget) for the purpose of achieving a balanced budget in 
     fiscal year 2002.

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I submit what is a very simple and 
straightforward amendment today that strikes, I think, at the heart of 
one of the major problems that we all have with the President's 
proposal.

[[Page S5130]]

  To set the stage for this amendment, let me go back and set the 
background, starting with where we are today and how we have gotten 
here.
  The President proposed in his budget, the 1997 fiscal year budget, 
that there would be immediate downward adjustments to discretionary 
caps after the year 2000 if the Congressional Budget Office projected 
that his budget would not balance in the year 2002.
  The Congressional Budget Office, second, has estimated to us that 
President Clinton's fiscal year 1997 budget submission will, indeed, 
incur a deficit of $84 billion in the year 2002. Now, as a result of 
the CBO's projected deficit in the year 2002, the President's budget 
will trigger drastic, drastic reductions in discretionary spending in 
the years 2001 and 2002. It is important for my colleagues to 
understand that these drastic reductions which will kick in would have 
to occur in those nondefense programs such as education, the 
environment, crime control, science, veterans, and other human resource 
programs.
  It is also interesting, and, again, important for our colleagues all 
to understand, that 100 percent of the nondefense discretionary cuts in 
the President's budget that occur in 2001 and 2002, over that 2-year 
period, 100 percent of those cuts will occur.
  Now, the inclusion of a budget submission of triggers to make 
immediate drastic reductions in discretionary spending is simply 
inconsistent with sound budgeting practices and needs to be recognized 
for what it is--budgetary gimmickry, smoke and mirrors. This is, 
indeed, inconsistent with our bipartisan, I hope, legitimate efforts to 
balance the budget by the year 2002.
  Thus, this sense-of-the-Senate amendment says it is the sense of the 
Senate that the discretionary spending caps should not include triggers 
which would result in 100 percent of the nondefense discretionary 
reductions occurring in fiscal year 2001 and 2002, and, second, should 
not include triggers that make drastic reductions in nondefense 
discretionary spending in fiscal years 2001 and 2002, the last 2 years 
of the budget, for the purpose of achieving a balanced budget in the 
year 2002.
  This amendment is very simple. That is it. You just heard the sense-
of-the-Senate amendment. It is straightforward. By passing this 
amendment, the Senate, today, can make a strong statement opposing 
budgetary gimmickry, smoke and mirrors, and in support of nonsense 
budgeting.
  We all travel around this country and to our town meetings. It is 
very clear that the American people are tired of gimmicks out of 
Washington, are tired of the smoke-and-mirrors budgeting that we have 
undertaken in the past and that is reflected in the President's budget. 
Repeated use of these gimmicks over time has contributed to the overall 
lack of confidence that we see in our budgetary process in our Federal 
Government today.
  A few months ago, the President introduced his 1997 budget, proudly 
claiming that his budget balanced in the year 2002 using Congressional 
Budget Office numbers. Now, this is the 2,200 pages of the President's 
budget for 1997. Intrigued by the President's new enthusiasm, very 
different than a year and a half ago, for a balanced budget, my 
colleagues and I on the Budget Committee went through the 2,000 pages. 
It was very interesting what we discovered. Buried in the budget 
supplement on page 13, we discovered a very troubling budget gimmick 
that it is important for all of our colleagues to understand, to note 
that is in there. It is really the purpose of the sense of that 
amendment to point this out and to refute it.

  On page 13, it says that 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 the year 2002.
  Let me explain how this proposal works. The proposal is called a 
trigger here in Washington, but to the typical American it is not a 
trigger. It is a gimmick. It is a smoke-and-mirrors approach. The CBO, 
the nonpartisan Federal budget analysts that look at this information, 
says the budget of the President will have a deficit of $81 billion in 
the year 2002. To make up that deficit which the CBO tells us will 
exist in 6 years, the President's budget, in this document, includes a 
trigger. That trigger will make unspecified cuts in discretionary 
spending over those last 2 years. That is how his budget achieves so-
called balance, through this gimmick.
  Now, discretionary spending, what is it? It makes up one-third of our 
entire Federal budget. It includes spending on our basic Government 
functions, including education, including roads, including the 
environment, including science and scientific research, including 
veterans, including medical research. The President's trigger says it 
cuts discretionary spending in these fields in the years 2001 and 2002 
but does not say where these cuts will come from. It does not say which 
programs will have to absorb these drastic and instant cuts of such 
magnitude.
  Let me refer to this first chart. It basically is headed ``Spend now, 
save later.'' In red is the President's budget. In green is the budget 
proposed today before the U.S. Senate, the chairman's mark. The 
President's budget frontloads the spending and backloads the savings. 
The President proposes to increase spending over the next several 
years. This is 1996, 1997, and 1998.
  The President's budget says: Yes, increase the nondefense 
discretionary spending over the next several years and then drastically 
cut thereafter. Contrast that to the mark that we have before us today, 
the chairman's mark for spending cuts; reductions begin and continue 
evenly over that entire period of time.

  These drastic cuts are really what we are focusing on in this sense-
of-the-Senate amendment today because what the President's budget tells 
us in the supplement, that if they do not reach balance and the CBO 
says it will not reach balance, these cuts come in. Look at the drastic 
cuts occurring in these 2 outlying years. The chairman's mark shows a 
steady glidepath of decreased spending over time.
  Now, discretionary spending is an inside-the-beltway term. Let me 
show how the cuts and the President's budget compare to the cuts in the 
Senate balanced budget resolution. On the second chart we will look at 
one such area that is of the Food and Drug Administration. As we can 
see in our budget before the Senate today, in the Senate budget, we see 
we assume a freeze at a spending of about $880 million over the next 6 
years. In contrast, we see the President's budget also has a freeze the 
first year but then a reduction over time--again, with drastic cuts 
coming in to the year 2000.
  The Food and Drug Administration, a program we all know is valuable 
to the safety of our country, that is valuable both in terms of food 
and drug safeguards, we see the significant cuts. If we look at the 
Environmental Protection Agency, the Senate plan, again, in green, 
increases spending about $900 million next year and freezes it over the 
period out to the year 2002. In contrast, the President's plan 
increases spending over time. But, again, in those last 2 years, 
because of this smoke and mirrors, because of this budgetary gimmickry, 
we see drastic cuts that have to take place according to the budget as 
presented and written by the President in these last 2 years.
  It is these drastic cuts that we are addressing in this sense-of-the-
Senate amendment. On the one hand, we have had many attacks on this 
side of the aisle for ravaging the environment. Look at the difference 
of what actually occurs in the Senate-reported budget versus that of 
the President of the United States.
  Let me turn to another area which is obviously quite close to me, 
being a scientist in the U.S. Senate. That is the National Science 
Foundation. Once again, you see that what is in the chairman's mark, 
passed out of the Budget Committee, is very different than what is 
proposed in the President's budget--once again, if we focus on the last 
2 years.

  The National Science Foundation funds many of those important 
scientific research policies, projects, and investigations, which have 
long-term payouts and affect our individual lives.
  Another area I am very close to is the National Institutes of Health. 
If there is one thing I keep coming back to this floor talking about, 
it is that we need to think long term. We cannot just think short term 
and think just what gets us to the next election, or what will be 
politically appealing to the masses of people today. We have to

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think long term. The National Institutes of Health, as you can see, is 
at about $12 billion in spending right now. Under the Senate-reported 
plan, it will be frozen and will continue at that level. Right now, 
under the President's plan, there is a proposed increase. It makes us 
feel good because this is long-term investment for this country. But 
look what is also in the document. Look what happens in 2001 and 2002, 
which is 5 years from now. There are drastic cuts in the President's 
plan for the National Institutes of Health--a valuable program that 
engages in life-saving research that will affect everybody's lives in 
this body and all Americans lives in the future. It is this long-term 
view, not just the short-term view, that we must take.
  We can look at another area, again, that I have been close to, which 
is veterans' medical care and hospital services. I have had the 
privilege, over the last 12 years of my life, to spend every week 
operating in a veterans' hospital, either in Tennessee or in 
California. It has been a big part of my life to see the sort of care 
that can be delivered to our veterans, who deserve this care. Well, 
once again, we see in green on the chart what happens under our budget 
proposal, which came through the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. You can 
see that over time, there is essentially a freeze of about $17 billion. 
But contrast that with the realities that are in the President's 
budget. The realities are that we have extreme and drastic cuts, over 
time, into the year 2000.
  Again, we will focus on the years 2001 and 2002. These charts are 
really selected charts. You can go on and on, program by program. But 
what is important is for all of our colleagues to understand what 
happens by putting in this budgetary gimmickry. These are just a few 
examples, and there are many, many more. The simple fact is, Mr. 
President, that these cuts are never going to happen. I hope that they 
will not happen because they are so drastic, and they would occur in 
fields that need sufficient funds. And that is, science, education, the 
environment, and the Veterans' Administration. People know that these 
drastic cuts will never happen. We have this feeling put forward in the 
President's budget that we can spend more right now, and we can worry 
about saving later, and that we can cut drastically later. This is not 
fair to the American people or to Members of this body.

  We, as Senators and elected leaders, must avoid gimmicks when we are 
dealing with taxpayers' money. Earlier today, there has been a lot of 
pointing as to what happened in the past, 10 years ago, and with 
asterisks, and 15 years ago. Well, it is a new day and time, and there 
are new people in this body, and we have come here and said, ``No more 
gimmicks. That is not what the American people want. No more smoke and 
mirrors. Let us address the problems that can be addressed in a 
bipartisan way.'' We know what the problem is and the problem is that 
we have not been spending very smart in the past. We have been spending 
too much. Now is the time to avoid gimmicks and to spend smarter.
  Again, I will also re-echo what my distinguished colleague from 
Connecticut just said. This can be done in a bipartisan way; this can 
be done bringing both sides of the aisle together. I hope that in that 
spirit of bipartisanship both sides of the aisle will come together and 
join me in opposing the budgetary gimmicks and the budgetary smoke and 
mirrors that are in the President's plan, and support commonsense 
budgeting.
  Mr. President, at this juncture, I will yield 5 minutes to my 
colleague from the State of Missouri, and that 5 minutes should be 
taken off the resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  The Senator from Missouri is recognized.
  Mr. BOND. I thank and congratulate my colleague from Tennessee. 
Senator Frist has put his finger on the real problem in this budget. 
The President, in his budget, has glowing words, as several of my 
colleagues on the other side have, about the priorities that they think 
are important. The President has said that we must invest in education 
and training, the environment, science and technology, law enforcement, 
and other priorities.
  But, as I pointed out earlier today, when it comes to making these 
sets of numbers balance out, they have a meat ax, a paint-by-numbers 
meat ax that whacks 10 percent out of all of those budgets in 2001, and 
18 percent in 2002. Now, are you for the priorities? If so, this is an 
opportunity to vote for some honesty in budgeting. The President has 
claimed he gets to balance. I think most of the people in this body say 
we want to get to balance. But do we really want to get to balance by 
taking the drastic cuts that my colleague from Tennessee has just 
talked about?

  I talked earlier this morning about the cuts in NIH, National 
Institutes of Health, FDA. Yesterday, I talked about the serious cuts 
that would happen to the Environmental Protection Agency if you apply 
this meat ax arbitrarily in 2001 and 2002, because the President's 
numbers do not add up, unless you have the meat ax.
  What the Senator from Tennessee is saying is, if you are serious 
about this budget, serious about reporting a responsible budget that 
gets to balance, let us take a look at what your budget, as now 
proposed, would actually do. It savages some of the very programs the 
President said he wants to promote and defend on the way to a balanced 
budget.
  Well, Mr. President, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, 
if you are serious about establishing priorities, if you really believe 
that numbers do not lie, if you believe that budgets should say what 
they mean and mean what they say, let us get rid of the arbitrary cuts 
in NIH, funding for the Women, Infants and Children Program, funding 
for child care, funding for the National Science Foundation, and NASA, 
and, yes, funding for the Veterans' Administration.
  My distinguished colleague who has had experience in working with the 
Veterans, Administration knows how compelling the needs of those 
veterans are. I have visited facilities and talked with people who are 
finding that the problems in those Veterans' Administration facilities 
cannot be dealt with.
  If we follow this meat ax budget approach, we would be closing more 
than one out of four veterans' facilities in the Nation. That means, as 
I said, California, with 11 hospitals, would lose 3, or probably 4. Our 
friends from California might want to tell us which of these four 
hospitals would be closed; and Florida, with six facilities, would 
probably lose at least one, maybe two; Illinois, with six, would also 
lose one or two; Massachusetts, at least one; Missouri, at least one; 
New York, at least three, and probably four; Pennsylvania, at least 
two, and probably three; Texas, at least two; Ohio, at least one.
  Do we arbitrarily want to close all of these facilities because we do 
not want to meet our obligations to the men and women who have defended 
this country who are either injured in war or who are now medically 
indigent? I cannot believe that is a serious budget proposal.
  If my colleagues really want to pursue the President's budget and 
defend his priority, then I urge them to vote for the Frist resolution 
so that they can go back and make some intelligent decisions rather 
than taking a meat ax to the very programs the President said he wants 
as his priorities. His program would slash environment, children, 
education, and health care for veterans. Mr. President, that is not 
acceptable.
  I urge my colleagues to support the amendment which I think is very 
well considered presented by the Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I yield myself 15 minutes off the 
amendment.
  Mr. President, as we begin consideration of the fiscal 1997 budget 
resolution, we ought to take a good look at the history of what has 
happened to the Federal budget in the last 15 years.
  The fiscal records of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Reagan could not 
be more different. For 12 years the Reagan and Bush administrations 
racked up $2.3 trillion a day. In fact, if we did not have to pay the 
interest on the debt that was chalked up in these 12 years, the budget 
would be balanced in fiscal 1996.
  Just to be sure there was not too much confusion to make the point, 
let me repeat that, if we did not have to

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pay the interest on the debt that was stacked up in these 12 years, the 
12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations, $2.3 trillion worth of 
debt, the budget would be balanced in fiscal year 1996. Not once did 
President Reagan or President Bush propose a balanced budget. 
Fortunately, President Clinton's 3-year record is much different. 
President Clinton promised a change in 1992, and he has produced one.
  If you would consider the following, it makes the point very clearly. 
The deficit has gone down for 4 straight years. The deficit for the 
year that we are in now is expected to be only $144 billion which is 
1.9 percent of our gross domestic product. This is the lowest annual 
percentage of any industrialized country. For example, Japan's deficit 
is over 3 percent of its GDP. Great Britain's is 7 percent, and Italy 
is 9 percent budget to GDP.
  Finally, President Clinton is the first President to put forward a 
balanced budget proposal since the 1974 Budget Act created the Budget 
Committees.

  So the question is no longer whether we will balance the budget. The 
question is how we will balance the budget. President Clinton has laid 
out the right way to balance the budget. He did exactly what the 
Republicans demanded last year. He put forward a 7-year balanced budget 
scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
  President Clinton once again has put forward a 7-year balanced budget 
scored by the Congressional Budget Office. His budget is much different 
than the Republican budget. His budget protects Medicare and Medicaid, 
education and the environment, and does not increase taxes on working 
families. The President's budget not only protects 37 million senior 
citizens from deep Medicare cuts contained in this budget but would 
also make the Medicare trust fund solvent until the year 2006. It 
preserves the guarantee of Medicaid for 37 million seniors and disabled 
persons. It protects our Nation's environment by ensuring full funding 
for implementation of the major environmental programs that so many 
support like clean air, clean water, and toxic waste cleanups. It makes 
critical investments in education and training. It provides increased 
funding for programs like Head Start, title I, and Safe and Drug-Free 
Schools.
  Finally, the President's budget maintains the EITC, the earned-income 
tax credit, which provides tax relief for working families who earn 
less than $28,000 a year. This allows them to maintain their family 
needs for basic essentials for sustenance.
  The Republican budget is much different. It is punitive to working 
families and senior citizens. In reality, the underlying budget 
resolution should be dubbed ``extremist budget, part 2.''
  For example, they claim that they have lowered their Medicare care 
cuts. But have they? The answer is no. They claim that their cuts have 
come down to the President's level. But they have not. In January the 
final Republican offer in the budget negotiations included a $226 
billion cut in Medicare over 7 years. This budget resolution calls for 
$228 million in Medicare cuts over 7 years. The number is virtually the 
same.
  These large cuts combined with their structural changes will truly 
make Medicare, as it is said, ``wither on the vine.'' I think that 
quote comes from the Speaker of the House. If the Republican budget is 
enacted Medicare will become a second-class health care system.
  The Republican budget also eliminates the guarantee of Medicaid 
coverage for seniors, for the disabled, for children, and for pregnant 
women.

  This budget continues the Republican assault on education. Over 7 
years the budget cuts $70 billion in education and training compared to 
the President's budget.
  This budget contains the Republican trashing of the environment. It 
will cut environmental programs by 19 percent in the year 2002. It will 
slow down toxic waste cleanups.
  I am not going to stand idly by, and neither are many, and watch this 
pillaging of the environment go unchallenged. Senator John Kerry and I 
will offer an amendment to restore these deep cuts in the environmental 
protection programs.
  Finally, their budget contains the Republican war on working 
families. At the same time the Republican leadership is opposing an 
increase in the minimum wage, they are also proposing a tax increase on 
working families who earn under $28,000 a year. It is hard. It is 
unfair. And that is why this resolution should be called ``extremist 
budget, part 2.''
  Mr. President, as we heard the debate here, I have heard references 
to moral fiber; to the fact that the President lacks the moral fiber to 
produce a budget that truly answers the question as to balance in 7 
years. Mr. President, when we talk about moral fiber I cannot help but 
think about the moral fiber that is necessary to say to 12 million 
Americans that you ought to make more than $4.25 an hour, that on $180 
you are still way below the poverty level, and when you go, if we 
finally can get there, to $5.15 an hour, you are still being asked to 
get by on less than the poverty level.
  Where is the morality of that issue? I cannot see it. We can talk 
about the accountants' version of morality. That is what we are 
discussing. We are discussing whether or not this budget is balanced in 
7 years.
  The President, President Clinton, has delivered on his promise, and 
the budget deficit has come down 4 years in a row. It is the first time 
since President Truman that has happened. And we question the moral 
fiber of the proposal? It is an outrage.
  Part of the proposal put into the underlying budget resolution is a 
reduction, or the elimination, of much of the earned income tax credit. 
That is the payroll tax portion of the incomes less than $28,000. Give 
it back--$28,000.
  The poverty level for an individual today is $8,000 worth of income, 
and $11,000 for a family of three. But we are saying that even though 
the average income is substantially above the $28,000 that we ought to 
raise taxes on those people. Does anybody have an idea how well you can 
support a family in the high-cost areas of the country on $28,000 a 
year? At the same time, Mr. President, it is proposed that we furnish a 
tax break for those in the higher income levels. Under the original 
proposal, if someone earned $350,000, they would have gotten an $8,500 
tax deduction, but we do not want to give a 90-cent raise to people 
making $4.25 an hour. It is outrageous. We ought not to loosely talk 
about morality when we discuss these. If we want to discuss them as 
numbers, if we want to challenge the figures, everyone has a right to 
do that. But when we get into the subjective evaluations of what is 
moral and what is right, it is more hokum than a serious evaluation of 
morality.

  Mr. President, I have had the good fortune to have spent a lot of my 
years in the corporate sector, and I ran a fairly successful company. 
The company today employees 29,000 people, the company that I started 
with two other fellows, all of us from poor families in the working 
community of Patterson, NJ. So I know something about the corporate 
world, and I know something about how one conducts business. When I 
hear about how we have to achieve this balance in our budget, eliminate 
the deficit in 7 years, I think it is a worthwhile target, but I think 
we have to include in that evaluation which part of the budget is 
important and which part of it is simply paying attention and 
fulfilling obligations to special interests.
  There are few companies worth their salt in this country that do not 
brag about their creditworthiness, about their ability to borrow to 
make investments in the future. Unfortunately, the accounting technique 
that we use in Government does not permit us to take capital 
investments and amortize them over a period of years. They are treated 
like cash investments. So we have a skewed view of what national 
accounting is about.
  I announce here and now that I, too, want to achieve a budget 
balance, but I do not want to do it on the backs of poor working-class 
families. I do not want to do it on the backs of citizens who have been 
promised as they paid into the Medicare trust fund that they would get 
particular benefits, that they had a contract with their Government. I 
do not want to balance the budget on their backs. I do not want to 
balance the budget on the backs of young people who desire and have the 
ability to get an education who are not going to be able to get it if 
we continue to cut into college loan funds.

[[Page S5133]]

  So it is a question of not when we are ready to balance the budget--
the President has laid down a budget that will balance in 7 years; CBO 
says they agree with him; they are the objective voice that we are 
using here--it is only a question of how we get that budget balanced. I 
think if we all work at it, we all try our best, we can achieve 
something that is fairer to all of the members of our society.

  So I hope my colleagues will support the President's balanced budget 
and oppose the extremist Republican budget. Last year, we stopped the 
extremist Republican budget that gutted Medicare to pay for tax breaks 
for the rich. They want to do it again.
  At this point, Mr. President, I ask how much time we have on the 
amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 15 minutes 45 seconds.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. I yield the remainder of that time to the 
distinguished Senator from Oregon to use as he sees fit.
  Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. FRIST. I ask, how much time on this side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 13 minutes 45 seconds.
  Mrs. BOXER. May I ask the Senator from Oregon if he would reserve 
just 3 minutes of his 15 minutes. We do have an offer we want to 
propound to the other side.
  Mr. WYDEN. I would be happy to.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. WYDEN. Let me say thank you to my friend from New Jersey as well 
and say that I think he has made a fine statement and offered much on 
this issue with which I agree. I commend him for it.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, many Americans see the process of setting a 
budget resolution as a murky, inside-the-beltway exercise that, 
charitably speaking, leaves them confused and frustrated. More than 
occasionally I have shared this frustration. But Americans also know 
that the decisions we make now are going to affect their futures and 
the futures of their children and their grandchildren. At home in 
Oregon, that means doing the hard work that the majority budget 
resolution simply ignores. At home in Oregon, it means making tough 
choices, not politically expedient ones.
  For example, it means fixing Medicare and Medicaid, not just sucking 
billions of dollars out of these extraordinarily important health care 
programs. At home in Oregon, we have ground down the cost of health 
care and Medicare to one of the lowest per capita averages in our 
Nation. Republican budget drafters could have built on Oregon's 
success. They could have helped transform the Medicare Program, its 
management and its finances, in a way to encourage innovation and 
equality and efficiency as we have done in much of my State. But this 
budget simply cuts rather than transforms. It leaves behind many of the 
same old problems in the Medicare Program, the problems that have seen 
so often results in rewards for inefficiency and instead again pounds 
the vulnerable. I think it is a mistake, and I think it is possible to 
do far better.

  On the welfare reform issue, all of us understand this is a job that 
must be done. Again, at home in Oregon, we found a way to make a real 
start by reforming our health care system for the working poor and 
launching a new welfare-to-work program that is putting our citizens in 
good-paying jobs. It took an up-front investment that is already paying 
dividends and is expected to be yet more successful in the future. But 
it took political will. It took reasonable public support to get the 
job done, and again I think this budget is not going to make that 
possible.
  I am afraid this budget on the welfare reform issue promises a 
stillbirth for future efforts in other States by operating on the idea 
that you can just out-cheap the system rather than transform it to make 
it work.
  If you look at the budget offered by the majority, we would have to 
cut $56 billion more than the administration foresees for education and 
training. On one of the issues most important to the future of Oregon 
families, this budget says it is more important to spend on a number of 
outdated military weapons systems than it is to support education and 
vocational training for our children who are going to need the skills 
and the experiences essential to compete in a global economy.
  I say to my friends, the cold war is over. We won it. But the 
majority budget does not reflect this reality.
  The new war, the economic war that enlists every schoolchild in my 
State and across the country, is the one that we are going to have to 
fight aggressively. Our competitors in Asia and Europe shoot with real 
bullets. They are making stronger investments in education and training 
than we are, and they are creating world standard, technical quality 
work forces.

  What is the response in this budget? The majority budget extracts 
funds that we need for training and educating our schoolchildren and 
reinvests it in goldplated weapons systems that even the military 
questions today. The majority budget goes on to cap the Direct Student 
Loan Program at 20 percent, a program that eliminates red-tape and 
middle-level bureaucracy in order to get funds to working families and 
students. Head Start would be frozen, eliminating opportunities for up 
to 20,000 children. And, while Americans across the country are talking 
about the specter of corporate downsizing, this budget would deny 
assistance over the next 6 years through the Job Training for 
Dislocated Workers Program to many of the workers in our Nation who 
have lost their jobs.
  On the environmental issue, an issue of great importance to our 
State, we see again how there is a retreat in this budget from much of 
the great bipartisan progress that has been made in the last 20 years. 
For example, in my State this bipartisan progress has led to effective 
stewardship of great natural treasures like Crater Lake and the Three 
Sisters Wilderness. This budget would put that bipartisan tradition of 
environmental protection in reverse, simply by cutting the National 
Park Service budget by 20 percent below the administration's proposal. 
This is going to force some parks to close, others are going to cut 
back on maintenance and access, and we are going to spoil, in my view, 
much of the important progress in environmental protection that has 
been made in the last few decades.
  In the early 1960's, citizens of my State launched a huge public 
program to clean up the polluted Willamette River, a project that, at 
that time, was one of the biggest and most expensive environmental 
efforts in our history. We understand the value of clean water and 
resource protection, and we were willing to pay the price of renewing 
that great river. And that wise investment has been paid back many 
times.
  The people of our State want to see those special values and 
environmental stewardship projected in this budget resolution. But this 
budget makes a retreat from those values by cutting the environmental 
programs nearly 20 percent in 2002. The budget would relieve polluters 
of certain Superfund cleanup costs and make every taxpayer shoulder new 
burdens. EPA enforcement activities would be rolled back, and there 
would be fewer environmental cops on the beat.

  I am particularly concerned that the need for salmon restoration 
funds in the Columbia River and maintaining our fish hatcheries in this 
Great Basin are priorities that again come up unattended and short in 
this resolution.
  So I say to my colleagues on both sides, one of the efforts I have 
been proudest of in my early days in the Senate was getting 34 Senators 
to join me in a letter that I authored, making it clear that it was 
important to get the nongermane and devastating environmental riders 
out of the omnibus appropriations bill. We were successful at that. The 
spending bill does not gut the environmental protections that have been 
pushed so hard by so many for so long. If this budget resolution forces 
a retreat on environmental protection, we will make the same effort, as 
this process goes forward, to turn it around as we did in our 
successful work in terms of getting the antienvironmental riders out of 
the omnibus appropriations bill.
  Let me conclude with a word or two about taxes. Oregonians want tax 
reform and they believe that this should be a priority as part of this 
budget resolution. But this majority budget cuts taxes in strange and 
mysterious ways

[[Page S5134]]

that many of my constituents challenge. A $500 per child tax credit for 
a person making $110,000 per year? How does that square against 
increasing taxes to low-income working families, families that work 
hard, that play by the rules, and have had a chance to see work 
rewarded under the earned income tax credit? This budget, 
unfortunately, retreats, in terms of support for working families that 
are struggling to get ahead. It retreats on the question of Medicare 
and Medicaid. And I believe, as a result of those changes, we are going 
to see lower quality health care, a sicker pool of individuals relying 
on those Government programs, and we will see, as a result of the tax 
changes and the health changes, a significant reduction in the 
opportunities that all of us want to see for individuals in these 
public programs who want to get out having that opportunity to do so.
  The proposed cuts in Medicaid would end guaranteed health coverage, 
for example, for 36 million Americans. For seniors, the $250 billion in 
Medicaid cuts over 7 years risks cutting off prescription drugs, home 
and community-based care, and assistive devices such as wheelchairs. I 
do not think our families can afford those additional burdens.
  So, as we now go to the amendments on this issue of extraordinary 
importance, let us look beyond the cold, stark figures of the budget. 
Budgets just are not about numbers, they are about the hopes and 
aspirations of the American people. We have to get a balanced budget. 
The families of my State balance their budgets. It is important for the 
Congress to balance the Federal budget as well. But it has to be 
approached in a way that ensures a sense of fairness, that sacrifices 
are not just singled out for those who do not have political power. Let 
us make sure that this budget resolution, this budget resolution which 
would provide an opportunity to reform Medicare and Medicaid in a way 
that Oregonians have already begun, would be pursued by the Congress as 
a whole.

  I am happy to yield time to the Senator from California.
  Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. FRIST. Have the yeas and nays been ordered?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. They have not.
  Mr. FRIST. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is not a sufficient second.
  Mrs. BOXER. If the Senator will yield, I would explain we would just 
like to assure the vote is after 2 o'clock and we will be delighted to 
vote on this amendment.
  Mr. FRIST. That will be fine.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California has 2 minutes and 
25 seconds.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, do we have a unanimous-consent agreement 
now we are going to vote on the Frist amendment at 2 o'clock?
  Mrs. BOXER. We do not yet.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Is all time yielded back?
  Mrs. BOXER. No. We have 2 minutes and 30 seconds we would like to 
use.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, does the Senator from Tennessee have any 
additional time he would like to use?
  Mr. FRIST. We still have 13 minutes on our side. If we have time, the 
Senator from Michigan would like to use some of that.
  Mr. DOMENICI. In any event, I ask unanimous consent we vote on the 
Frist amendment at 2 o'clock, and there be no intervening amendments or 
requests for votes in the interim.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I would like to just ask--we would like to 
use a few minutes off the bill as well as this 2\1/2\ minutes. We would 
like to do that. Under the rules, are we permitted to do that? Would I 
have that right?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. You may choose what block of time you would 
like.
  Mrs. BOXER. I would like to add to the 2 minutes another 6 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are you yielding it from the time on the 
resolution?
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes; that is correct.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I am a little bit puzzled by the amendment the Senator 
from Tennessee has offered because it is an amendment regarding a 
trigger that is supposedly in the Democratic budget that is on the 
table, and there is no trigger mechanism in the budget we have offered. 
I ask my colleagues to carefully peruse this document, and you will not 
find a trigger mentioned in the budget that is before you.
  So this is really a phantom amendment about something that is not 
happening in the Democratic budget. Behind me is a chart which shows 
the Democratic budget that we have before us, and it shows that the 
discretionary spending is fairly close between the two budgets, the 
Democratic one and Republican one, despite the fact Senators on the 
other side have decried steep reductions in veterans, so on and so 
forth. That is not true. There is no trigger in this budget. We spend 
$65 billion more on discretionary spending than does the Republican 
budget.
  So, in our view, this is a kind of bizarre situation. We are happy to 
vote for the Senator's amendment because we agree that we do not want 
to see deep cuts in the outyears, and we do not have them in our 
budget. So we would be happy to take this without a vote, although 
Senator Domenici says he prefers a record vote. We are happy to do 
that. I yield to the Senator from North Dakota who has comments to make 
on this.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it seems to me a mistake has been made 
here, and I do not know the genesis of the mistake. As I understand it, 
we have an amendment that has been offered that suggests there should 
not be a triggered reduction in discretionary spending pending certain 
events, and there is no such trigger in the legislation before the 
Senate.
  Mr. FRIST. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. Momentarily--I will be happy to yield, just briefly.
  Mr. FRIST. The word ``trigger'' is not used, but if you look in 
function 920 of the document--I do not have it before me, I will have 
it shortly--you will see a series of numbers, and in those series of 
numbers the trigger is spelled out in actual numbers. So the effect of 
the trigger is spelled out in function 920, and that is what we are 
addressing.

  Mr. DORGAN. This is a matter of fact, not a matter of conjecture. 
There is no trigger that would automatically reduce discretionary 
spending pending certain events in the future. If we are going to 
legislate this way, maybe we should legislate against four or five 
other triggers that do not exist. As long as there is no prohibition 
against legislating to prohibit things that do not exist, let us amend 
this by saying, ``Let's prohibit a trigger that would reduce defense 
spending.'' There is no such trigger, but why not add that.
  I do not quite understand the circumstances here. There is, in fact, 
a trigger that given certain circumstances would allow an increase in 
certain discretionary spending, but there is no trigger that would 
provide for the decreases that are the subject of this amendment.
  In fact, the important point here is contrary to the assertions that 
have been made on the floor of the Senate yesterday and today about a 
whole range of issues, including funding for the NIH, funding for the 
EPA and others, contrary to those assertions, the budget that has been 
proposed by the President would provide more spending in these areas. 
In the aggregate, it proposes more spending in the discretionary 
spending accounts because that represents what he believes to be a 
priority.
  We have the circumstance of people coming to the floor of the Senate 
saying, ``We want more spending''--the majority party--``We want $11 
billion more spending on defense. We want to buy trucks the Defense 
Department did not ask for, planes they do not need, ships they do not 
want. We want to spend it on defense.''

[[Page S5135]]

  The President has said he believes we ought to spend slightly more on 
discretionary spending than the majority party is proposing. But this 
amendment is a real Trojan horse. It seeks to preclude something that 
has not been proposed, and if that is a new standard of amendments, 
then let us have fun by precluding a dozen additional proposals that 
have never been made. But it is not, in my judgment, a very sensible 
way to legislate.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to.
  Mrs. BOXER. I want to thank the Senator for participating in this. As 
a member of the Budget Committee, I will tell you right now, we have 
looked at this document. There is no word ``trigger'' in it. The 
Senator from Tennessee, who wrote this, admits there is no word 
``trigger.'' And yet, he has a sense-of-the Senate amendment that says 
the discretionary spending caps should not include triggers. We agree. 
That is why the bill we have put forward, the Democratic budget, has no 
triggers.

  This is what it has. We have used these numbers. They are $65 billion 
more than the Republicans have put forward, and they are complaining 
that we cut the budget too much--we cut the budget too much. They spend 
$65 billion less on veterans, $65 billion less on all of these 
discretionary spending areas.
  So this amendment is a phantom amendment, and that is why we are 
going to support it, because we do not like the idea of a trigger. We 
have not offered a budget that has a trigger, so why have an argument 
about it?
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. DORGAN. I simply observe, it seems a waste of the Senate's time 
to have a record vote on an amendment designed to prohibit something no 
one proposed. It might be fun to offer an amendment like this, but it 
serves no purpose and will simply delay the Senate.
  I think the Senator from California, I think the Senator from 
Nebraska also said, since this has not been proposed, if someone feels 
the urge to offer an amendment to prohibit something not proposed, we 
accept it. It seems to me irrelevant and nonproductive to have a record 
vote.
  Mrs. BOXER. We are ready to do a voice vote, but if the chairman 
wants a record vote that has nothing to do with the budget on the 
table, we will vote for it.
  Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.
  Mrs. BOXER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I will be referring to function 950 in the 
amendment. This is the President's policy which is laid out, the 
numbers that were put before us in the President's bill. Let me just 
read, again, what that policy is, and I quote page 13 of the 
President's budget:

       In case the new assumptions produce a deficit in the year 
     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 the year 2002.

  June O'Neill from the Congressional Budget Office came before our 
committee, and I will quote from her testimony on April 18, 1996. She 
says:

       The basic policies outlined in the President's budget would 
     bring down the deficit to about $80 billion by the year 
     2002 instead of producing the budget surplus that the 
     administration estimates.

  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. FRIST. Let me finish this line of thinking. We are going to have 
a deficit in the year 2002, according to CBO, using the policies set 
forth in the budget presented by the President of the United States. 
That is the President's plan. The President does have a trigger in his 
plan, and it is spelled out in function 950, which I ask you to refer 
to. Correction, 920. And if you look on page 41, those triggers, the 
trigger in the reduction is actually spelled out in numbers. The 
trigger has already taken place, and what my sense-of-the-Senate 
amendment simply says is that those triggers, which result in drastic 
reductions in the year 2001 and 2002, which are spelled out on page 41 
of this document, are already written and worded right now. Those 
triggers have taken place.
  My sense-of-the-Senate amendment says those drastic reductions 
spelled out in actual numbers, as spelled out in the policy by the 
President of the United States, are wrong.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. FRIST. Yes.
  Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate that. I yielded to the Senator when he 
asked. I enjoy the opportunity to discuss this. I guess the Senator's 
point is accurate with respect to what he read from the document in 
front of him. That is not what is before the Senate.
  Will the Senator not agree with me that is not what we have laid 
before the Senate, and if that is the case, you are talking about 
something we are not debating today?
  If I can make one final point. When you talk about cuts, there is not 
any way to deny that the amount of discretionary spending proposed by 
the majority party is substantially less than the amount of 
discretionary spending proposed by the President.
  So those two questions: Is it not true that we are debating something 
here that is not before the Senate? And what is laid before the Senate 
does not contain a trigger; is that correct?
  Mr. FRIST. To answer the Senator's question, is this the President's 
budget? This is the President's budget. I read the policy. The budget 
is spelled out in actual numbers on page 41 of function 950, the actual 
numbers which is the trigger in place, the actual numbers of policy 
spelled out in the document.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, how much time remains on either side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 9\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. FRIST. I yield to my colleague from Michigan on the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I think we should begin by just reminding everybody 
what we are about. Pending is an amendment to the Republican budget 
resolution which would substitute the President's budget for our own. 
So I will incorporate here in my comments remarks both about that 
budget itself, as well as the amendment by the Senator from Tennessee.
  The President's budget, in my judgment, is quite deficient in a 
variety of ways. We can call it a balanced budget if we want to, but as 
the amendment before us reveals, it is only a balanced budget if 
drastic reductions in discretionary spending take place in the final 
years of that budget. But that is not the only problem with the budget.
  First, and foremost, I believe the budget is inadequate to deal with 
the Medicare crisis which faces this country. We know already that the 
Medicare part A trust fund is headed towards bankruptcy. We have not 
gotten the most recent projections of the trustees of the Medicare 
trust account, but we believe that the date of bankruptcy will be much 
sooner than anticipated just a year ago when the majority attempted to 
try to address the problem and were thwarted by the President and the 
minority.
  The fact is that Americans expect the trust fund to be solvent. Right 
now the trust fund is paying out more than it is taking in. It will 
reach insolvency far sooner than anticipated. What we have attempted to 
do, in the budget that the majority has presented here today, is to try 
to keep that trust fund solvent for 10 years.
  The President's budget attempts to do that by simply removing a very 
vital part, home health care, from the trust fund and moving it off the 
trust fund somewhere else.
  If that is the way we are going to approach Medicare, Mr. President, 
then who knows what will be taken out of the trust fund next. Americans 
have a right to expect that trust fund will remain constant, that the 
items covered will remain protected, and that every time we face a 
crisis, Congress does not simply remove more and more parts of the 
trust fund and eliminate the coverage it provides.
  By moving them, as they have in the President's budget, the President 
and his budgeteers are, in fact, moving some $55 billion of trust fund 
responsibility to the taxpayers as part of the general account. That is 
not the way to guarantee the solvency of Medicare, and it is in 
contrast to Republican efforts to ensure Medicare's solvency for 10 
years its solvency in the budget we have presented.

[[Page S5136]]

  The second concern I think needs to be addressed is the issue of 
taxes. As Senator Gramm just a few moments ago indicated in a series of 
charts that the tax burden faced by America's hard-working families is 
the highest in the history of this Nation. Indeed, if the President's 
budget becomes the law of this land, under this budget we will move to 
the highest federal tax burden ever.
  At the same time, Mr. President, under this budget, social spending 
will also reach record highs at 17.3 percent of the gross domestic 
product of this country. That means more and more working families 
sending more and more dollars to Washington to pay for more and more 
programs that Americans find to be overbloated, bureaucratic and, in 
many cases, unnecessary.
  That is not the direction we should head, Mr. President. That is why 
the President's budget sends us in the wrong direction.
  To just once again comment on the tax portion of this budget, as I 
said, it heads us toward the highest tax burden in history. There has 
been an effort in the budget to address the question of high taxes with 
a purported tax cut. But when one examines the President's budget and 
calculates all the taxes that are cut and all the taxes that are 
raised, what you come up with is a final bottom line number of $6 
spread over 6 years. Distributed to 250 million American people, that 
works out, Mr. President, to $4 per year per American.

  I have talked to the taxpayers in my State. When they think in terms 
of getting a tax break, they at least were hoping for something 
slightly more substantial than that, Mr. President. The $4 a year will 
not make much of an impact on the hard-working middle-class families of 
my State or any of the other States.
  But I would like to more totally focus my comments at this point on 
the amendment before us to this budget. In this amendment, we are 
trying to address what we consider to be the truly extremist issue 
before us today. That is the proposal that in the final 2 years of this 
budget we will see drastic cuts, across the board virtually, in the 
domestic discretionary spending programs, huge cuts, cuts which I think 
go way too far. I think probably most of my colleagues, one way or the 
other, would agree they go too far.
  To approach balancing the budget in this fashion, to approach it by 
having all of these cuts happen somewhere in the far distant future, 
and to happen at this drastic of a level, literally 100 percent of the 
President's discretionary spending reductions happening in the years 
2001 and 2002, in my judgment, totally undermines any validity to claim 
that this is a balanced budget.
  This is the same thing as having a family say, ``Well, we're running 
in the red right now. We're spending more money than we take in. We've 
got to correct this. The way we're going to do it is not by addressing 
the problems over a period of time, this year, next year, and the 
following years, but 5 years from now we're going to eliminate all our 
expenditures on food.''
  That might make the budget of the family balanced in the fifth year, 
but it is unrealistic and wholly improbable that in one year an 
American family is not going to consume any food. The same way, it is 
inconceivable that 100 percent of the discretionary spending cuts are 
going to take place in the final 2 years of this budget to achieve 
balance. Neither will happen, Mr. President.
  For those reasons, I think the approach that is taken in this 
amendment is on track. I think we have to make a clear statement to the 
American people that we are not going to achieve a balanced budget with 
any kind of cook books, any kind of gimmickry, any kind of last-year 
changes of this magnitude. We are going to go at it in a responsible 
way.
  So for those reasons, Mr. President, I am pleased to support the 
Frist amendment and urge my colleagues to do so as well. I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. What is the situation? Do we have a unanimous consent 
to vote at 2 p.m. on the pending amendment? What exists with reference 
to time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct. Senator Frist's side has 1 
minute 50 seconds. The Senator from Nebraska has 2 minutes. The 
remainder of the time can be taken from the general-issue pool.
  Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, while the distinguished manager of the bill 
is here, I will just make a comment or two and see if we cannot do 
something to move this process along. I understand that a rollcall vote 
has been demanded on that side of the aisle, which is surely their 
right to demand a rollcall vote. I understand--I do not know who it 
is--but someone on this side of the aisle could not be here to vote 
until after 2 o'clock.
  I simply point out that we are wasting an awful lot of time. In the 
committee, as the chairman knows, this Senator has tried to move things 
along. On the floor, this Senator has been trying to move things along.
  Here we are debating a sense-of-the-Senate resolution which we all 
know has no effect in law whatsoever. But if we are going to spend this 
much time on sense-of-the-Senate resolutions that have no effect in 
law, and then put off votes that should have occurred an hour ago until 
some time after 2 o'clock--if that holdup is on our side, I apologize--
I simply say that I guess we have given up all chances of finishing 
this bill by tomorrow night as was clearly stated was the goal.
  Since that goal was stated, we have had one vote. We have been locked 
pretty much in meaningless debate in the view of this Senator, since 
yesterday morning at 9:30. We had only one vote yesterday. Like 
yesterday we came in at 9:30 this morning. Here we are at 2 o'clock 
this afternoon and we are continuing to move around, politicize and 
question the motives of others.
  We have so much to do in the U.S. Senate. I would have liked to have 
seen this finished by tomorrow night. I recognize now that is 
impossible. I simply say that this Senator is interested in reducing 
the number of the amendments that we have, as best we can. I simply say 
I hope we do not get tied up for this lengthy period of time as we have 
on the amendment before the Senate. We have agreed to accept the 
amendment.
  Earlier today I said we had 31 or 32 amendments. We now have 51 
Democratic amendments on this side of the aisle. If we take as much 
time on those and other amendments that I am sure are pending on that 
side, we could be here through July 4th on the budget resolution, 
talking past each other. We have agreed to accept this meaningless 
amendment by voice vote, but that is not good enough. Why? I do not 
quite understand. I simply say I think we are bogging down this process 
in an unreasonable manner. I renew my pledge to do whatever I can to 
expedite the process.
  I do not think there is any question that the majority is going to 
vote down the budget of the President of the United States, which is 
their right. Why do they not just go ahead and do it and move on with 
the process?
  I renew my pleading to the chairman that we move forward and expedite 
this process.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes. I very much 
want to not use up our time. Senator Hutchison would like to have some 
time before this 2 o'clock time. She has been waiting a long time.
  Let me suggest to my good friend, Senator Exon, first, if the Senator 
wants to work with me to establish policy for the rest of this debate, 
that sense-of-the-Senate resolutions--what was your word--are 
irrelevant, unnecessary.
  Mr. EXON. I said it had no effect in law, which it does not.
  Mr. DOMENICI. We will make a deal with you. We will get a grand 
agreement. You do not offer any of them, we will not offer any of them. 
I put that before you, since sense of the Senates have no effect in 
law. We are ready to negotiate. Just have real amendments from now 
until tomorrow afternoon at 3 o'clock and we will be finished with 
this. I am authorized to speak for the majority leader. We intend to 
finish this budget resolution this weekend so people who have plans 
better start talking to our leaders about how they might help us get 
this budget resolution finished. Everybody has plans, but

[[Page S5137]]

we have plans to get a budget resolution finished. Frankly, I think we 
can. I look over the list of amendments on our side. I have not had a 
chance to look over them on your side. I will shortly.
  Frankly, I do not know why, from now until 3:30 tomorrow afternoon, 
giving us until 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock tonight, and a nice chunk of 
time tomorrow, we could not get it finished.
  Let me talk a little bit about this amendment. The interesting thing 
about this amendment and the budget tendered by the minority, they may 
have pulled the trigger but they have replaced it with a giant plug. 
There may be no trigger but there is a plug. The plug is $67 billion 
out there in a little compartment of Government called function 920. 
You do not have to tell anybody how you got there, just put $67 billion 
in. What it will do, who it will hurt, what it will cut, is not 
itemized, as ours is. We would like to make sure that the vote says we 
want to pull the plug, pull the trigger on that plug so it is not 
there.
  Having said that, Senator, I seriously will work with you to try to 
narrow what we are doing and get on and try and get this done. Thank 
you for your cooperation.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your cooperation. This is an 
irrelevant amendment, a sense of the Senate that we should not have 
debated as long as we have. But we have. Talk about plugs, the kettle 
keeps calling the pot black.

  I simply cite on page 43, line 20, there is a $43 billion plug in 
your budget. Take a look at it. Maybe you can explain it. I simply say 
that it seems to me we keep blaming each other for the delays, when it 
is a responsibility of both of us. I think this sense-of-the-Senate 
matter is irrelevant. That is why I agreed to a voice vote. But you are 
entitled to a rollcall vote.
  I yield 4 minutes off my time to the Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is not a debate about plugs and 
triggers but a debate about that we feel is important in terms of 
investments for the future of this country. I am going to speak, after 
we have voted on this amendment, about the budget more generally. I 
want to stay on this subject because I think it is very important to 
lay out the facts.
  The facts are these: If you get rid of all the discussion about any 
triggers, all the discussion about plugs, the question of who is 
spending more or investing more in discretionary spending, especially 
nondefense discretionary spending, is not a serious question any longer 
at all. The President's budget proposes more investment in the kinds of 
things that many of us think are very important--college financial aid, 
Head Start, cops on the beat, the WIC Program. Things that we think are 
important are going to be better funded in the President's budget.
  Now, the majority party says their priority is to add $11 billion 
above what the Pentagon asked to be spent to buy trucks, planes, ships, 
and submarines that the Pentagon did not request. They want to add $11 
billion in that spending. Then they want to make the case that somehow 
they are spending more money in discretionary spending than the 
President's budget. It is simply not true.
  If you pull out the defense numbers from that chart, which is 
included in discretionary spending, the Republican budget would put $10 
billion less in nondefense discretionary, which means that the 
Republican budget over those 6 years is $116 billion below the budget 
submitted by the President in budget authority--$116 billion below in 
discretionary spending.
  You cannot paint those numbers any other way. That chart does not 
lie. That chart, if you take out the $11 billion increase in defense 
the majority party wants, would show a wider gap in nondefense 
discretionary spending. The President is requesting a much more 
substantial amount of spending in things like Head Start, WIC, 
education, student financial aid, cops on the beat, and a whole series 
of those issues than would exist in the majority party budget. They 
would have us believe somehow with charts and all kinds of tapdances 
around these numbers that they are proposing more funding for 
discretionary spending. It is simply and demonstrably not true. That is 
the point that is important as we cast this next vote.
  The Senator from Nebraska has it absolutely right. I do not know why 
we are wasting time voting on a proposal to eliminate something that 
does not exist, but, I suppose, some people will feel better if they 
can amend something that did not exist and maybe we can have six or 
eight more of these, but it wastes time and accomplishes nothing.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I yield the remaining time on the 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time on the amendment has been consumed. 
The Senator would now have to yield time on the resolution.
  Mr. FRIST. I yield time from the resolution to the Senator from 
Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas [Mrs. Hutchison], is 
recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank Senator Domenici 
and Senator Frist for all the work they are doing to try to draw 
distinctions between the President's budget, which is before us as an 
amendment, and the underlying budget resolution, which is the 
responsible budget resolution that really balances by the year 2002.
  My colleagues have said that the President's budget balances and that 
it provides for middle-class tax relief. The American people want a 
Federal budget that balances, and they also want to keep more of the 
money that they work so hard to earn. But let us look at the 
President's budget and let us respond to the demands of the American 
people. As Paul Harvey would say, ``Now it is time for the rest of the 
story.''
  Let us look at the issue of balance. I really think the President 
cannot have a straight face when he says his budget balances, when more 
than half of the cuts--more than half--come in the last 2 years--2001 
and 2002--of the 7-year period the budget covers. There are $600 
billion in cuts over 7 years, and some $350 billion of those are in the 
last 2 years.
  I think it is very obvious that whoever is elected President this 
year, 1996, is not going to have to face the issues in the year 2001 
and 2002, because there will be yet another President.
  I do not think we can, responsibly, with a straight face, pass the 
President's budget and tell the American people that we have done the 
responsible thing. I want to use some examples of what the President's 
budget does. Take NASA for an example. Under the President's budget, 
the NASA budget lopes along about where it is now for 3 years, and then 
it drops 10 percent over 2 years. Now, that is not a responsible 
approach toward a research, technology, or scientific endeavor. How can 
you be midway into an experiment and, all of a sudden, not have the 
money for it?
  The Republican budget, on the other hand, has steady declines in the 
NASA budget, for which they can prepare. NASA officials can see very 
clearly what is going to happen and plan how they are going to have to 
allocate their resources.
  Let us take defense spending, another example. The President is 
proposing another $3 billion in cuts this year. That would make it the 
12th straight year of decline in defense spending. Today we spend only 
a little more than one-half of what we spent on defense in 1985. 
Weapons purchases alone are down 70 percent from 1985. And here we are, 
at a time when we have American troops all over the world that are 
seeking to keep peace in some way or another; while we must maintain 
the highest defense readiness, and we are looking at a major technology 
initiative in theater missile defense to defend against the very real 
ballistic missile threat to our country and our troops in the field; 
with all these priorities, we are looking at a Presidential budget that 
reduces defense spending again.
  Now let us look at tax cuts. The President's budget has a tax credit 
of $300 per child up to the age of 13. But the tax credit is only 
temporary, because it ends if a balanced budget isn't reached in the 
year 2002. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the 
President's budget will not be balanced by the year 2002.
  By comparison, the Republican budget, the underlying budget, has a 
permanent tax credit of $500 up to the age of 18 for middle-income 
taxpayers. That is

[[Page S5138]]

a big difference to an American family. Anyone who has a teenager knows 
that those are the years when you face the most urgent demands on their 
hard-earned income.
  Let us talk about the homemakers of this country. The budget that is 
underlying--like the budget that we sent to the President last year and 
which was vetoed--hopefully will include homemaker IRA's. But the 
President's budget does not. He does not think that the work done 
inside the home is every bit as important as the work done outside the 
home. Therefore, he did not provide for the retirement security options 
for the homemakers of this country. We must not stand for that. We must 
make sure that this year we do address that terrible inequity, so that 
a one-income-earner family and a two-income-earner family will have the 
same retirement security options. It is only fair that homemakers have 
their retirement nest egg and that one-income-earner families, who are 
sacrificing to have a homemaker at home when their children come home 
from school, will not have to suffer in retirement years.
  So there are big differences between the President's budget and the 
budget that we are trying to pass today. We must reject the President's 
budget. It is a hollow budget. The balance will only occur if we make 
huge cuts in the year 2001 and the year 2002.
  Mr. President, now is the time for Congress to act responsibly, to 
have cuts that are sloping very gradually, so that agencies or people 
that are entitled to benefits will know exactly what is there in a 
responsible manner. The cuts in the rate of growth of spending should 
be gradual, not staying at the same level until no one around here will 
be in office anymore, and then cutting to the bone and saying, ``Oh, 
yes, we are going to set the budget numbers, but we are going to let 
you in the future make the tough decisions.'' No, Mr. President, now is 
the time to make the tough decisions, and that is the issue before us.
  Are we going to do the responsible thing for our children and 
grandchildren for the future of this country, or are we going to adopt 
the President's budget that is before us on the floor right now, which 
will not really balance? Those tough decisions being put off now will 
not be any easier then. Most certainly, we cannot expect a defense 
budget to go up, down, and back up. Nor can we afford to have an 
experiment at NASA proceed to a certain point and then drop off the 
face of the Earth--figuratively speaking.
  Mr. President, that is not responsible. We know it, and the American 
people know it. Let us do the responsible thing and reject the 
President's hollow budget and make the real tough decisions now. That 
is what the American people asked of us in 1994. It is what we 
promised. Let us keep the promise.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 2 minutes before the vote. There is 
no time remaining on the amendment.
  Mr. FRIST. We yield back our time.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we proceed 
immediately to the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from 
Tennessee.
  The yeas and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Kansas [Mr. Dole] is 
necessarily absent.
  The result was announced--yeas 99, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 114 Leg.]

                                YEAS--99

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Brown
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Faircloth
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Dole
       
  The amendment (No. 3968) was agreed to.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, let me tell my colleagues where we 
are. Frankly, we have a long way to go. Once again, I am urging that 
Senators on our side--and I will yield to Senator Exon on his side--we 
need all the amendments, everybody who has an amendment to get us the 
amendment or at least the substance of it. We are going to try to work 
something out so we can get out of here at a reasonable time.
  We are not anywhere close to that. I think on our side we have 22 
proposed amendments. We are looking them over, first with staff and 
then with various Senators.
  Senator Exon has a tentative list that is not even completed, of how 
many?
  Mr. EXON. Fifty-one.
  Mr. DOMENICI. That is 51, and 22, that makes 73 amendments.
  Our leader has told me his desire is that we finish this budget 
resolution over this weekend. That means we have all night tonight and 
we have all day tomorrow and perhaps we have part of Saturday. I know 
that brings a lot of grumpy looks on lots of faces, because I am sure 
everybody has something they planned to do tomorrow. I have great 
respect for that. But if I am the general, I will do the job. If I am 
the follower, I will do the job. Right now, I am the follower. I am 
doing what the leader suggested.
  We are going to be here a long time unless we can reach some 
agreement. In fairness, we are working with the minority leader and 
with Senator Exon, who is being very cooperative, to see how we can 
narrow this down.
  Maybe my colleague could report to the Senate from his side?
  Mr. EXON. I thank the chairman for bringing this up.
  Mr. DOMENICI. We need order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Order in the Chamber.
  Mr. EXON. Madam President, everything he said I second. The way we 
are going we will not be through even if we would stay here all weekend 
including Sunday. The way we are going that would not be enough, we 
would not get out of here until July 4 sometime, and I am not saying 
what year. We must move this ahead, not only because I think we are 
wasting a lot of time but because we have other things that we must 
address.
  I say to the leader, we are sending out a hotline at the present time 
to try to get an agreement that all the Democratic Senators would file 
amendments with me by 4 o'clock, or maybe 5 o'clock. I think something 
like that would very likely be acceptable on my colleague's side. Then 
we would know how many amendments we have and we might be able to work 
out something so we can maybe come to a reasonable agreement and if 
necessary go over sometime until next week, which I think everyone 
would like to do.
  But we are not going to do that, I suggest, following up on the 
statement of the manager of the bill, the chairman of the committee, as 
he has just indicated, unless we can have some movement. I think we can 
get that small amount done, and that small amount is simply to get the 
amendments listed as we have previously. I think that can happen, but I 
cannot commit to that now because we are running a hotline. But I 
believe that

[[Page S5139]]

will come to pass. I think the immediate thing we have to do is decide 
where do we go from here? The Senator from Nebraska is interested in 
going to a vote as soon as possible on my amendment offered this 
morning at 9:30, to have a vote on the President's budget. We have had 
a lot of debate on it. I do not know whether we shed much light, but we 
have had a lot of debate.
  In the meantime, I understand the next amendment on that side, and 
correct me if I am wrong, is an amendment that is supposed to be 
offered by the Senator from Missouri. Is that correct?
  Mr. DOMENICI. That is correct.
  Mr. EXON. I am looking at this for the first time now. Is this a 
sense of the Senate? It is not a sense of the Senate?
  Mr. DOMENICI. No, sir, it is a substantive amendment.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator from Nebraska yield for a question?
  Mr. EXON. Certainly.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I have been here listening to the dialog 
between my colleague from Nebraska and the Senator from New Mexico, the 
manager of the bill. I just have a question maybe one of them can 
answer.
  I have been faithfully attending to my duties here in the Senate the 
last 3 weeks. Frankly, we have not been doing anything. We have been 
playing here on the gas tax, minimum wage, and something called the 
TEAM Act. What, all of a sudden, when we finally have something we can 
work on that is substantive --what is the rush? Why, suddenly, are we 
going to work like we have not been working before? Is there some 
reason suddenly we have to work on these very weighty issues into the 
middle of the night and on weekends?
  Mr. EXON. I do not know for sure how to answer my friend and 
colleague from Nevada, except to say I do not think it would hurt the 
image of this place very much, in the public mind, if we would at least 
appear to be getting something done. That is the reason that I have to 
say we should move on this more expeditiously. But I think the question 
can more likely be answered by the chairman of the committee, with whom 
I have been working. I suspect maybe that is who the question was 
directed to anyway.
  Mr. REID. The Senator from Nebraska had the floor. I certainly am 
willing to work whatever hours anyone wants. I, like most Senators 
here, when there are not things going on on the floor, still have lots 
of work to do on committees.
  Mr. EXON. May we have order in the Senate?
  Mr. REID. I will await the judgment of the manager of the bill and 
the Democratic manager of the bill and be available whenever it 
requires. My only comment was that we have not been doing a great deal 
the last few weeks and I hope since we are on the bill now 
substantively, where we do not have the opportunity to offer an 
amendment on minimum wage which 90 percent of the American public 
wants, that we can handle this--expeditiously, of course--but I see no 
reason to treat this bill any differently than we do other bills. There 
is a lot of work that needs to be done and I think we should do it in 
an expeditious fashion, not necessarily work in the middle of the 
night, on weekends, on this bill when we have not been doing it on 
others.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I would say to my good friend, Senator 
Reid, from Nevada, it is not like we are trying to hurry this thing 
through. We almost always have agreed to waive substantial portions of 
the time on budget resolutions. Almost every evening as we went out we 
would say we have agreed to use up 5 hours or 7 hours, and I am 
checking so we will know and next time we can answer you, how we have 
been doing that.
  Second, it is very important we get this finished because we want to 
give the Appropriations Committee--the Senator serves on that 
committee--we want to give them their numbers at the earliest possible 
time so the 13 appropriations bills can be done early this year, rather 
than holding them over until December and maybe next year.
  In addition, we are not in any way talking about forbearing, 
precluding amendments. We are talking about whether we really need to 
do 75 amendments.
  Mr. REID. If my friend will yield, I understand. I know how hard he 
has worked on this bill.
  I do say, however, the budget resolution was not reported on time. I 
say to my friend from New Mexico, and I am not speaking for anyone 
other than myself, I have listened to the debate on this. I think it 
has been a productive debate to this point. I think it has been good 
for the Senate. I think it has been good for the American public to 
have this debate.
  I hope this budget resolution can be debated in its entirety. I think 
we need to have debate on the issues. I say to my friend, I agree with 
my friend from New Mexico, I do not think we need 75 or 100 amendments 
on this budget resolution but there are some substantive amendments 
that I think we need to fully debate and arrive at conclusions on.
  My only point is, as my friend knows, he works hard, I work hard. I 
am willing to do that. I just am a little bit concerned that there is 
some attempt to stop a full and complete discussion on this, one of the 
most important matters we are going to decide all year. But I 
appreciate the courtesy of explaining the Senator's position.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I have just received word, I want to 
say--Senator Daschle is here--I just want to say we are going to have 
Senator Bond's amendment ready in 5 or 10 minutes. He will come down 
and offer it. In the meantime, I want to say it is the intention of the 
majority that we proceed well into the night to see how much time we 
can use and how many amendments we can take care of.
  I wanted to make sure you knew that, your Senators know that, and I 
am informing ours right now.
  Mr. DASCHLE. I appreciate the Senator's comments. I hope we can get a 
good debate on amendments. We have a number of them we are prepared to 
offer just as soon as we dispose of the amendment offered by the 
distinguished ranking member. We will be prepared to offer those. I 
assume we will alternate back and forth.
  I think it is good to put Senators on notice that we will be here 
tonight. We are prepared to vote, and we ought to continue as we are.
  I thank the Senator.


                COAST GUARD BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 1997

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, with an extensive shoreline in Washington 
State, the Coast Guard plays an important role in protecting those 
people who rely on the waters of the Columbia River, Puget Sound, and 
the Pacific Ocean for commercial and recreational purposes. Whether it 
is dangerous search and rescue operations, enforcement of existing 
fishing treaties with Canada, or maintenance of navigational aids, the 
Coast Guard does its job and it does it well.
  For that reason, Mr. President, I included language in the report 
accompanying the budget resolution that commends the Coast Guard for 
both its current operations, as well as its efforts to streamline and 
reduce its overall budget. Under Adm. Robert Kramek's leadership as 
Commandant of the Coast Guard for the past 3 years, the Coast Guard has 
reduced its work force by 4,000 positions and lowered its budget by 
$400 million per year. All of this done without reducing any valuable 
services to the general public.
  In all of the debate over the next 9 months regarding funding for 
specific programs, I hope that the fiscal year 1997 Coast Guard budget 
appropriately reflects the efforts being made by Admiral Kramek and all 
of his staff to provide better government at less cost, while still 
providing important services to the citizens in Washington State and 
across the country.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I suggest the absence of a quorum just for a few 
moments until Senator Bond arrives and that it be charged equally.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S5140]]

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. How long does the Senator desire to speak?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Ten minutes.

                          ____________________