[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 79 (Monday, June 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5667-S5670]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it is Monday, and we have had an hour and 
a half of morning business by the majority party. It is, ``He said, she 
said, they said.''
  And it is, ``President Clinton this'' and ``President Clinton that.''
  And it is, ``We have a balanced budget and the other folks don't.''
  And it is, ``They are the big spenders and we're the folks who want 
to put America back on track.''
  Let us review exactly where we are, because it is important for 
people to understand what the business of the Senate is today.
  The business of the Senate is to discuss a proposal by the majority 
party to change the Constitution to balance the budget and require a 
balanced budget in the Constitution, and the pending order of business 
in the Senate is a missile program, a national missile defense program, 
called the ``Defend America Act,'' which will cost, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office, upward of $60 billion of new spending just 
to construct--not to operate.
  So the same folks who have been treating us to an hour and a half of 
discussion about the need to change the Constitution to balance the 
budget are also saying, ``By the way, we want to balance the budget, 
but we want a new $60 billion spending program, and we want to work on 
that immediately, and we demand that that money be spent right now.''
  Following that, also pending before the Senate, is we also want to 
cut the gasoline tax, and we also want a very substantial tax cut 
during the 7 years. All of this from the same folks. ``We want a 
balanced budget, we want to increase spending,'' they say, ``we want to 
cut taxes, gas tax and other taxes.'' I do not understand what school 
they went to. I do not understand what arithmetic book they have 
studied.
  It seems to me to be consistent if one says, ``Let's change the 
Constitution to require a balanced budget,'' and the very next act of 
business would not be to bring to the floor an enormously expensive new 
spending program called the Defend America Act, which is a nice way, a 
retitling, of saying we want to build star wars again.
  Everybody has a right to develop their priorities and to advertise 
them, however inconsistent they may be. I am going to talk tomorrow 
about the Defend America Act, or the star wars program. We have had 
some experience with that. The only one that was ever built, the 
antiballistic missile program, was built in my State of North Dakota. 
There is a very large concrete monument to it, a large concrete pyramid 
that sits up in the hills of North Dakota. In today's dollars, $25 
billion was spent in order to construct it, and it was decommissioned 
the same month it was declared operational--$25 billion. That is called 
shooting blanks.
  But it is all right, I guess, according to some, because it was not 
their money, it was the taxpayers' money.
  That is the attitude of some--anything that explodes, they want to 
build, any new weapons program they want to construct. Katie bar the 
door. The sky is the limit. The American taxpayers' credit card is at 
stake, so let's build it.
  The same people who say let us change the Constitution to require a 
balanced budget, in the next order of business on the Senate floor will 
also say, let us spend $60 billion on a program that will not really 
defend America but that they can advertise will defend America.
  At another time I will discuss that in greater detail. But first the 
issue of the constitutional amendment to balance

[[Page S5668]]

the budget. There is no balanced budget, contrary to the claims made in 
the last 1\1/2\ hours.
  This is from recent weeks on the floor of the Senate. It sat on every 
desk here in the Senate. It is from the Budget Committee. It is the 
budget passed by this Senate that advertised it was balancing the 
budget. It says for the year 2002 that there will be a $108 billion 
deficit. This is the resolution they said balanced the budget.
  Why would that be the case? Why, if they advertise a product they say 
balances the budget, would it in the text of the bill laying on every 
desk of the Senate say that in the year 2002 the deficit will be $108 
billion? Because they take money from the Social Security trust funds, 
$108 billion, and use it over in the operating budget to say, ``Oh, by 
the way, our budget is in balance.''
  But technically the law prohibits them from doing that in this 
legislation, so the only place where you have to tell the truth is 
right here. And it laid on every Senator's desk. Every one of the 
Senators who stood up stretched every inch of their height and 
proclaimed the budget was in balance. Even on their desks it 
demonstrated they were $108 billion short in the year 2002. But there 
is nothing in the Senate that prohibits anybody from false advertising 
or false claims or deciding to boast about whatever they want to boast 
about. So they boasted this was a balanced budget. Of course, it was 
not.
  But the point I want to make today is that exactly what they did in 
the budget resolution for this year is what they insist on enshrining 
in the Constitution. The language in the constitutional amendment to 
balance the budget enshrines in the Constitution the provision that 
they shall use the Social Security trust fund surpluses to balance the 
Federal budget. There would not be one vote in favor of that 
proposition in the U.S. Senate today if you had to vote up or down on 
it.
  I was here in 1983, serving in the House Ways and Means Committee, 
when we passed the Social Security reform bill. That bill provided that 
we begin saving each year--that is, raising more money in the Social 
Security trust fund--than we spend out through payroll taxes in order 
to save for when the baby boomers retire.
  What is that all about? If you read your history books, you will know 
that just after the Second World War America had the largest crop of 
babies in its history. I am told that there was an enormous outpouring 
of affection and warmth and love when people who had been separated for 
long periods were reacquainted. And guess what? The war babies, the 
largest group of babies ever born in this country's history, were born 
just after the Second World War, just after all those folks came back 
from fighting that war. They will retire after the turn of the century.
  In 1983, the decision was made to begin saving in the Social Security 
system for when we will need those funds when the baby boomers retire. 
This year, $69 billion more will be collected in the Social Security 
trust funds than will be spent out; $69 billion will be accrued as a 
surplus this year alone.
  The proposition that the majority party brings to this Congress is to 
say this: Let us balance the budget, and let us, in fact, enshrine in 
the Constitution a provision that will balance the budget by allowing 
us to take the trust funds in the Social Security system every year and 
show it over here in the operating budget and claim we have balanced 
the operating budget.
  My colleague from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, says if you were in 
business and did that, they would put you in jail. If you were in 
business and did that, and said, ``By the way, I am going to balance my 
business budget this year by taking my employees' pension funds, that 
is how I am going to balance my budget, I will just take their pension 
revenues and bring it over into the operating budget and claim I 
balanced my budget or made a profit,'' you would have 2 years of hard 
tennis in a minimum-security prison, because you cannot do that. You 
ought not be able to do it in the Congress either, and you especially 
ought not to be able to do it in the U.S. Constitution.
  If the majority party changed section 7 of their constitutional 
amendment proposal to say that they will not misuse these Social 
Security trust funds to balance the budget, they would get 75 votes for 
this proposition. But they will not do that. They will not do that 
because they understand that to lay their hands on the Social Security 
trust funds gives them an opportunity to claim they have balanced the 
budget even while they are pushing their own agenda of more tax cuts, 
building a $60 billion star wars program. And the fact is, none of it 
adds up. None of it adds up.
  It is interesting. I have seen and heard the three stages of denial 
about the Social Security trust funds on the floor of the Senate. I 
will not name the Senators. I could, but I will not. Three Senators.
  One stands up and says, ``There are no Social Security trust funds. 
There are no trust funds.'' That is the first denial. The second 
Senator stands up and says, ``There are trust funds, and we are not 
misusing them.'' The second denial. The third denial is the Senator who 
stands up and says, ``There are trust funds, and we are misusing them, 
but we promise to stop by the year 2008.'' All three assertions have 
been made by the majority side of the aisle.
  What is it? There are no trust funds? That is interesting. Tell the 
millions and millions of people who work, who pay into that trust fund 
every year with payroll taxes, that there are no trust funds, or there 
are trust funds but we are not misusing them. Explain this. Explain the 
bottom of the budget document that was brought to the floor of the 
Senate. Or there are trust funds, we are misusing them, and we promise 
to stop by 2008. Translated, this means: Allow us to write in the 
Constitution at least for the next 12 years that we can misuse Social 
Security trust funds to claim we balanced the budget that is not in 
balance.
  I know people have said, well, there has been switching here and 
there. Somebody voted for it before, then is against it. Look, when the 
constitutional amendment to balance the budget was previously brought 
to the floor of the Senate, Senator Simon, who spoke not too long ago 
today, was an author. I raised the question with him about using the 
Social Security trust funds. The fact is, he wanted a constitutional 
amendment that would exclude the Social Security trust funds. He 
proposed that. He favored that. But in order to have a bipartisan 
coalition, he did not get that. But he said to me on the floor, and he 
said to others: We pledge that we will not be using the Social Security 
trust funds. And others did as well. We had a pledge that that would 
not be the case.

  The second time around we not only did not have a pledge they would 
not use the Social Security trust funds, we had a vote on whether or 
not they would, and they voted to say, ``We will use the Social 
Security trust funds.'' Then people say the vote was exactly the same 
vote under the same circumstances. No, I am sorry to disagree. The 
first was a promise they would not misuse the Social Security trust 
funds, and the second was a legislative promise they would. Big 
difference, a difference that amounts to well over half a trillion 
dollars.
  I want us to balance the Federal budget. I will vote for a 
constitutional amendment to balance the budget if they will change 
section 7 to say we are not going to misuse the Social Security trust 
funds. If they want to do that, they will get 75 votes, in my judgment, 
for this constitutional amendment. If they do not want to do that, it 
means they do not want a constitutional amendment and do not intend to 
balance the budget.
  I also say, the most consistent thing they could do, those who allege 
they should balance the budget by enshrining in the Constitution a 
provision that they should misuse the Social Security trust funds, the 
most consistent thing they could do is bring to the floor of the U.S. 
Senate an agenda that could balance the budget.
  I voted for a provision in 1993 that substantially changed 
expenditures by decreasing Federal spending, increasing some Federal 
taxes. And the deficit has been decreased substantially. All of us who 
voted for that experienced some difficulty because of the vote, because 
it was a hard vote to cast. I am glad I cast the vote. I think we did 
the right thing. Those of us who cast that vote cast an affirmative 
vote that says: We stand on the side of reducing the Federal deficit.

[[Page S5669]]

  We will cast our votes to demonstrate that we will reduce the Federal 
deficit. I am glad I voted that way. We did not get one accidental vote 
on the other side of the aisle. Not one. You would think occasionally 
with a mixup somebody would vote wrong. We did not get one vote on the 
other side either in the Senate or the House.
  They wanted us to do it because it was not easy to do it. We did it. 
The deficit is coming down. But the deficit will not continue to come 
down with a menu coming to the floor of the Senate for people that say 
the next thing we want to do is a $60 billion star wars program. I say 
to those people, how will you pay for it? Show me the money. Who will 
you tax to build the star wars program? Will it be like the concrete 
pyramid we have in the Dakotas, declared dysfunctional the same month 
it was declared operational, of which $25 billion of the taxpayer money 
was spent? Is that a consistent kind of philosophy? Does that come from 
people who really want to balance the budget? I do not think so.
  The Senator from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, my colleague, is on 
the floor. He also was involved in this discussion about the trust 
fund, Social Security, the right way to balance the budget, the right 
way to put something in the Constitution. There is a right and a wrong 
way to do it. I yield the floor so my colleague, Senator Conrad, could 
offer some comments of his on this subject.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from North Dakota for 
talking about the balanced budget amendment that will be offered this 
week and opening the discussion about what are we really doing here. I 
think this is one of the most misunderstood discussions in the United 
States.
  When we hear people talking about a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States, the first question we ought to ask 
is, what budget is being balanced? It is very easy to talk around this 
town about balancing the budget. What one finds is there are not many 
folks who are willing to actually sit down and put their name next to a 
budget that does, in fact, balance.
  What we have over the time I have been in Congress and for the time 
before I came to Congress, a series of folks who are willing to stand 
up and say, ``I am for Gramm-Rudman-Hollings. That is a formula that 
will balance the budget.'' Or, ``I am for a balanced budget amendment 
to the Constitution,'' without a plan attached to it and without 
talking very clearly about what budget they are balancing.
  I hope people are paying attention because I will give them precisely 
what this balanced budget talks about. It says in section 7:

       ``Total receipts shall include all receipts of the United 
     States Government except those derived from borrowing. Total 
     outlays shall include all outlays of the United States 
     Government except for those for repayment of debt 
     principal.''

  That is what is included in this amendment. Do you know what this 
means, colleagues and people who are listening around the country? This 
means you are including all of the receipts and all of the expenditures 
of the Social Security system. Social Security is not contributing to 
the deficit. It is not contributing to the debt. Social Security is in 
surplus. In 1997, for fiscal year 1997, the most recent estimate is 
that Social Security will contribute $72 billion of surplus--of 
surplus. Yet this definition would have us include in the determination 
of a balanced budget all of the Social Security surplus used between 
now and the year 2002.

  Mr. President, that is $525 billion being thrown into the pot to call 
it a balanced budget. What a fraud. That is not a balanced budget. 
There is not a company in America that would take the retirement funds 
of its employees and throw those into the pot and call it balancing 
their company's budget. In fact, if anybody attempted to do that they 
would be on their way to a Federal institution and it would not be the 
U.S. Congress. They would be on their way to a Federal penitentiary 
because that is a violation of Federal law. It is a violation of 
Federal law to loot the trust funds of employees who are going to 
retire in order to balance a company's budget. Mr. President, that is 
precisely what is being proposed as a constitutional amendment.
  Mr. President, let me say it as clearly as I can. We are talking 
about enshrining a principle and a policy in the Constitution of the 
United States that defines a balanced budget as one that uses Social 
Security trust fund surpluses to achieve balance. What could be more 
wrong? What could be more fraudulent? What could be a greater violation 
of the trust of the people that sent us here than to put into the 
Constitution of the United States, the organic law of this country, a 
definition of a balanced budget that assumes you raid and loot trust 
funds in order to achieve balance? Mr. President, I would not vote for 
that proposition under any circumstances, under any circumstances. I 
would not vote for that if my life were threatened because that is a 
fundamental violation of any precept of honesty.
  Mr. President, some will say ``Senator, we are engaged in that 
process now. We loot the Social Security trust funds every year and 
call it part of the unified budget.'' Mr. President, that is exactly 
right. That is what we are doing. That does not make it right. We are 
taking Social Security surpluses and counting them when we report on 
the deficit of the United States because even though the law says that 
is not to be done, people put all the funds into one pot. As this chart 
shows--which I call the budget teakettle of America--it shows the 
revenues that go into that teakettle. The individual income taxes make 
up 45 percent of the revenue, Social Security taxes make up 37 percent, 
corporate income taxes, 10 percent, other taxes 8 percent. That is the 
money that goes in. The spending that comes out, Social Security is 22 
percent, interest on the debt is 16 percent, defense is 16 percent, 
Medicare is 14 percent, Medicaid is 7 percent, and all other spending 
is 25 percent.

  This shows precisely that is happening. All the money goes into one 
pot comes out of that same pot. That is the budget they are talking 
about balancing under this balanced budget amendment. The problem with 
that is Social Security is in surplus by $70 billion. What they are 
saying is they will take every single penny of Social Security surplus, 
throw that into the pot, and call it a balanced budget. That is not a 
balanced budget. That is an absolute fraud. That is not a balanced 
budget.
  I have a financial background. Before I came here I was the tax 
commissioner of the State of North Dakota. I have a master's in 
business administration. Any class for anybody in business school, if 
you would have said you will take the retirement funds of your 
employees and throw those into the pot to call it a balanced budget, 
you would be laughed out of the class if you proposed such a thing. 
That is the balanced budget proposal that will be before this body. It 
is not, by any serious definition, a balanced budget.
  The only way one could claim a balanced budget would be to take out 
the trust funds from the calculation. In fact, that is what the law 
requires. The law says specifically you are not to count Social 
Security surpluses in making a determination, whether or not you have 
balanced the budget. We passed that law right here. The Senators 
overwhelmingly said it is not honest, it is not correct, to use Social 
Security surpluses to determine whether or not you have balanced the 
budget.
  Mr. President, all of us have been part of budget plans this year. We 
have had a Republican balanced budget plan. We have had the President's 
balanced budget plan. I have been part of a group called the centrist 
coalition, 22 Senators--11 Democrats and 11 Republicans--who have put 
together a plan. As I said in the Budget Committee, if we are going to 
be honest with each other and honest with the American people, none of 
those is a balanced budget plan. Each of them assumes the use of Social 
Security trust funds to balance by the year 2002. That is not a 
balanced budget.
  In fact, last year I offered the Fair Share Balanced Budget Plan, the 
only plan that has been offered here that balances without using Social 
Security surpluses. Mr. President, I recognize that makes it more 
difficult to achieve balance, but it is the only honest way to get the 
job done. Mr. President, I am going to oppose, with every fiber in my 
being, putting into the Constitution of the United States--let us think 
a minute about what we are talking about here. Let us think about what 
we

[[Page S5670]]

are talking about. We are not talking about passing a budget plan. We 
are not talking about passing a statute. We are talking about changing 
the organic law of this country. We are talking about changing the 
document that has made this country the greatest one in human history. 
We are talking about changing the document that has provided a 
protection and a series of guarantees to the American people, unrivaled 
in world history. We are talking about putting the definition of a 
balanced budget in that document that says, yes, it is OK to go loot 
and raid trust funds to call it a balanced budget.

  I will tell you, I really have to think, what would Benjamin Franklin 
think of that? What would Thomas Jefferson think of that? What would 
George Washington think of that? I do not think that would be a very 
proud moment in America's history--to enshrine in the Constitution of 
the United States the definition of a balanced budget that includes 
raiding every trust fund in sight in order to achieve balance.
  Mr. President, that cannot be the outcome here.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. CONRAD. Yes.
  Mr. DORGAN. I ask the Senator if he has heard this. I have heard 
people stand on the Senate floor and say this issue you are raising 
about the Social Security trust funds is a bogus issue. There is a 
fellow, whose name I will not give, who wrote a piece in the Washington 
Post that said this is a bogus issue, that the Social Security trust 
funds are just part of the regular revenues of the Federal Government. 
Do they just profoundly misunderstand the circumstances here? How would 
the Senator respond to the folks who try to create kind of a 
smokescreen and say this is all bogus and none of this means anything?
  Mr. CONRAD. I always hesitate to characterize the statements or 
motivations of others. But I will simply say this. It matters a lot 
what we do here. You know, sometimes the actions in this Chamber do not 
matter and the actions in the other Chamber do not matter much. This 
action matters a lot. Here is why it matters. For those who say, 
``Well, we have been doing that; we have been taking Social Security 
surpluses, so what does it matter that we keep on doing it?'' The 
reason it matters is because, back in 1983, we saw we were headed for a 
cliff, for a circumstance in which the Social Security system would be 
broke. So Congress took action. Congress put into place a system that 
would assure Social Security surpluses so we would be prepared for when 
the baby boom generation started to retire. We know now that we have a 
short period of time to prepare for when those baby boomers start to 
retire.
  The idea is to run surpluses to get ready for when those baby boomers 
have retired and have 48 million people on the system instead of 24 
million, because if we do not have surpluses, we will have to have 
either an 82-percent tax rate in this country, or a one-third cut in 
all benefits. Does anybody believe we are going to have an 82-percent 
tax rate? I do not. That means we are going to have some dramatic cuts 
in benefits which people have paid into to secure for themselves. So 
the money is not available.
  Mr. DORGAN. I have one additional question. There is virtue in 
balancing the budget. We ought to care about that and not spending our 
children's money or charging to our children and grandchildren. There 
is also virtue in keeping your promise. If you promise you are going to 
save by taking money out of people's paychecks, and if you say we are 
going to put that aside in a trust fund, there is virtue in keeping 
that promise as well; is that correct?
  Mr. CONRAD. I think there is not only virtue in it, but it is 
required that we do it because the hard reality in this town is that 
while it is true we have been talking Social Security surpluses--about 
$500 billion so far--this is the tip of the iceberg. We are about to 
run, over the next 15 years, $2 trillion in Social Security surpluses, 
and we need every dime of it to be ready for when the baby boomers 
retire. If we spent it all, squandered every penny, if we deluded 
ourselves by passing a phony balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution, and the baby boomers retire and they go to the cupboard 
and the cupboard is bare, we are going to have some mighty angry folks 
in this country, and they are going to ask some pretty tough questions. 
They are going to ask, ``Where did the money go? I thought you balanced 
the budget and secured the solvency of the Social Security System.''
  Mr. President, the hard reality is that we have been doing something 
wrong and we have to stop it to prepare for the future. We have to get 
ready for when the baby boom generation retires. The only way we can do 
that is to balance the budget and do it honestly, without counting 
Social Security surpluses. To put it into the Constitution of the 
United States, to put a definition in the Constitution of the United 
States that a balanced budget includes raiding and looting the Social 
Security trust funds is just profoundly wrong. There is no principle in 
that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired under the previous order.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 
5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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