[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 84 (Monday, June 10, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5997-S5999]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE BUDGET RESOLUTION

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, Senator Domenici opened debate on the 
1997 budget conference committee report, the agreement that has been 
ironed out on the differences between the House and the Senate, for 
presentation to the Senate for final passage, so that the 1997 budget 
will be behind us and we can start making changes in the programs that 
will fit these programs into the budget that balances by the year 2002, 
6 years from now.
  CBO has scored it that way. CBO is a nonpartisan agency that rules on 
whether or not budgets are balanced and what programs cost and how much 
income is coming in. They said that this will balance by that time.
  The year 2002 is the year that we selected last year to balance the 
budget by. Our bill was presented to the President last year, and he 
vetoed it. We are not going to take an extra year to balance the budget 
when we do it this year. We are going to do it in 6 years now because 
that is all we have left between now and the year 2002. I hope that my 
colleagues will vote for that.
  In a sense, as the famous baseball player said, ``It's deja vu all 
over again.'' It is kind of that way with the Balanced Budget Act that 
we are dealing with today, tomorrow and the next day until it is 
passed. Because last year we worked for 8 months in 13 committees to 
pass this 1,800-page Balanced Budget Act of 1995. This was a bill that 
13 committees worked on to produce

[[Page S5998]]

changes in the programs so that the budget would balance in 7 years. We 
presented this to the President prior to Thanksgiving last year. The 
President vetoed it, I believe, on December 5.

  I remind people of that document existing, that we had the votes to 
pass it, because often I get the question, which is a question coming 
from a cynical attitude that people have because we promise more than 
we can deliver, where people ask, ``Do you think you can ever balance 
the budget?'' Well, I like to carry this around with me and remind 
people, yes, we can balance the budget. Here is the act that for the 
first time in a generation Congress not only had the document, but the 
votes to pass it and to present it to the President.
  Of course, that is history now. Ultimately, people are going to 
decide who won or lost with the veto that the President had of that 
bill last year. It also reminds you that one person can make a 
difference of having a balanced budget or not. We had a majority in the 
Senate, we had a majority in the House to pass the Balanced Budget Act 
of 1995. But one person, the President of the United States, stands 
between the people and a balanced budget. So historians will have a 
chance to look at who the big economic losers are in that veto of the 
Balanced Budget Act.
  But the 1997 budget resolution gives us another chance without 
necessarily losing time because we still meet the deadline by the year 
2002. But while we talk about balancing the budget, and we delivered a 
bill to the President last year to balance the budget and he vetoed it, 
the time clock is running, the national debt is growing, and interest 
is accruing on that national debt.
  Of course, since we did not balance it last year, and if the 
President vetoes it this year, we are not going to suffer; it is our 
children and grandchildren that will suffer because we live high on the 
hog today, spending beyond our means, satisfying our own materialistic 
demands, and engaging in the immoral act of worrying about today and 
forgetting about tomorrow because our children and grandchildren are 
picking up the bill.
  Every one of us in this body, whether we vote for it or against it, 
bears some of the blame for the situation that this country is in after 
a generation of deficit spending. Those of us who voted for it last 
year showed we were a year ahead of everybody else in balancing the 
budget.

  Still, that does not overcome the sin of the deficit spending of a 
generation and the tremendous load of $18,000 per newborn baby that 
they carry of that additional debt. Or the 80 percent tax rate that the 
President's own budget document says our children will have to assume 
for the interest and the principal of that great debt.
  None of this is done in a very perfect fashion. The legislation that 
we pass is not perfect. How we go about it may not be the perfect way 
of balancing the budget, but it must be done. It will be done. 
Everybody is going to pay a little bit towards this effort to get to a 
balanced budget. Maybe as a practical political exercise, that is the 
only way it can be done. Some people would say, ``Cut out completely 
this program,'' and others will say, ``We have to save this program,'' 
or ``increase that program.'' It can be done that way. Basically, the 
way we have done it is to make sure every program pays a little bit in 
the effort to get to a balanced budget.
  Ultimately, as a political system, it seems we have figured out we 
can indeed vote ourselves more money. That is why we have the problems 
we have. All the people have to do is vote for the guy who promised to 
protect expensive programs and who promised to let entitlements run 
wild. That is what has been going on. That is why we have a $5 trillion 
national debt.
  Last year, as a result of a mandate from the election of 1994, the 
new Members of Congress felt it is time to call a halt to deliver on 
the promises that have been made to balance the budget, and to do it in 
7 years. I am enthused about the 1997 budget resolution before the 
Senate. I think it is a belt tightener, a conservative one. Every item 
in it might not be exactly as it would be if I had written it, but 
broad representation is the nature of our Government. Compromise is the 
only way to accomplish some of our goals--everybody to give a little 
bit in the process. This gets us, as the nonpartisan Congressional 
Budget Office has said, to balance in 6 years. The nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office shows that we should even have a $5 billion 
surplus by the year 2002. To me, that is a pretty good report card. I 
note, for significance, that the 1997 budget resolution is the only 
plan that gets us to zero deficit in 6 years.
  Now, somebody would say, ``Well, the President says he has offered a 
budget,'' but it does not balance as he says it would. The President's 
aide, Dr. Tyson, has been on the morning talk shows saying that the 
President's budget balances. What she has not made clear is that the 
President relies on certain contingency proposals or emergency triggers 
in the year 2001 that either increase taxes or cut unspecified 
discretionary spending in order to reach balance by that year. It could 
be both a tax increase and unspecified discretionary spending cuts.
  If the President is on a path of spending throughout the 6-year-
period of time that he sets us on in the year 1997, there is no way you 
get to a balanced budget by the year 2002. You have an $81 billion 
deficit. Of course, in the meantime, even if this President is 
reelected, he is back in Arkansas at the time there are future tax 
increases and/or unspecified spending cuts have to be put in place, so 
it is not really his worry.
  Now, for the President's advisers to say on television that this 
budget balances, when that is the situation, is a failure to mention 
the balloon payments that the President has built into his budget plan. 
These balloon payments are similar to those magic asterisks that David 
Stockman put in President Reagan's budget when President Reagan 
promised he would balance the budget in 1984, at the end of his first 
term. When the President's budget did not balance--and some of the new 
Senators voted against it at that particular time--the President 
obviously was a little bit embarrassed, because he made a promise to 
balance the budget, and his first budget submitted in his 
administration did not do it by the time he said it would be doing it. 
So we were all sold on the proposition it could be done in the years 
1983 and 1984, so David Stockman put that magic asterisk into the 
President's first budget.

  Did that ever materialize? Of course it did not. Do you think the 
President's balloon payments of 2001 and 2002 will materialize, whether 
the balloon payments result in tax increases or in spending cuts, or 
both? I think it is less than candid for either the President or his 
Economic Advisers to go on television saying somehow that is going to 
happen in the year 2001 and 2002, when the President is back in 
Arkansas, and is going to result in a balanced budget.
  Now, when it comes to the budget that we present to this body for 
approval this week, the 1997 budget resolution conference report, it 
has no hidden gimmicks or balloon payments in it. Instead, there are 
only clear, specifically illuminated promises. In other words, we get 
to true balance in 6 years, because we set this budget on a course to 
balance much sooner than the President of the United States does. In 
addition, we get a 6-year $122 billion tax cut primarily made up of a 
$500 per child tax credit. Some people will criticize that. Some will 
say it is for the rich when they know in their heart that is not true. 
They forget that a $1,000 tax cut for a family of four can make a big, 
big difference, that everybody in this country is not rich, and that 
the middle-class families of America are going to benefit from that tax 
cut.
  Why a tax cut for families with children? It is because the tax on 
children is presently unfair. It used to be that the dependency 
exemptions for children almost nullified the tax liability for 
families. Those families, obviously, use the tax savings to raise their 
children. For the personal exemption today that is in the Tax Code, to 
have the same value relative to family income that it had in 1948, it 
would have to be $8,000 per child exemption in 1996, instead of the 
$2,600 per child it is now. Truthfully, to be fair, we need a credit in 
excess, then, of that $500 per child, to put families back with the 
same purchasing power that they deserve.
  Even with the new tax credit, families will have to continue to 
tighten their belts. But remember this credit is

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a credit and not an exemption or deduction. Thus, each child in any 
family is going to be worth $500 more, regardless of the income of the 
family. And the phaseout ranges of the credit begin at a lower level of 
income than do the phaseout ranges of the current dependency credit.
  So if any Senators claim that they want to defend families in this 
budget, the best place to start is by taking money away from Washington 
and returning it to the families. Families can spend that money more 
wisely than Washington can spend that money.
  Besides that $500 tax credit per child to help empower families, this 
budget resolution of 1997 reforms entitlements. It would be wonderful 
if we can continue to allow entitlements to grow unchecked, but that is 
not possible. Without legislative maintenance, entitlements are going 
to swallow themselves. We know now that if we do not do something about 
entitlements, by 2012, the entire budget will be made up of 
entitlements and interest on the national debt, with nothing even for 
national defense.
  Also, our budget resolution will save $53 billion in welfare programs 
as we reform welfare and turn it back to the States. Medicare spending 
is going to go up at a rate that will allow us to consume $72 billion 
less than under present payout. Of course, we just heard last week that 
Medicare is racing toward bankruptcy in 5 years. We will not allow that 
to happen. We allow Medicare spending to go up from $4,700 per person 
per year to $6,800 per person per year, and its solvency is extended 10 
years in this budget resolution. We do this without increasing the 
regressive payroll tax, and we do it with keeping the part B premium at 
its present level of 25 percent of total program cost. We freeze 
discretionary budget authority in this legislation in 1997 at the 1996 
level. One place where I disagree with Republicans is that defense 
spending in our bill is too high. I made an effort on the floor of the 
Senate to cut that back by $11 billion, but that lost. This budget 
compromise between the House and Senate reflects that higher level of 
Defense expenditures. I think that if families are tightening their 
belts, and other programs in Washington are tightening their belts, and 
if entitlements have to have their belts tightened, defense contractors 
ought to have their belts tightened as well.
  Finally, the budget process is somewhat changed from last time. This 
budget resolution offers three separate and independent reconciliation 
bills. Each bill can live without any of the previous bills. The 
structure of the two succeeding bills depends upon the success of the 
preceding one. This is a sound and flexible plan that will allow us to 
present to the President something that he will not have any excuse for 
vetoing, as far as I am concerned, considering the fact that he vetoed 
last year's budget that we gave to him.
  The days of our living beyond our means, hopefully, come to an end 
with the adoption of the budget resolution for 1997. Hopefully, it puts 
us on a path, for the first time in a generation, to get to a balanced 
budget. Hopefully, it means that each generation is going to assume its 
fair share of pain for our programs and for ending the principle of 
passing on to future generations the cost of our programs for today.
  I yield the floor. 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. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further 
proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lugar). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may be able 
to use such of the time reserved for the Senator from New Mexico as I 
may use.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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