[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 11, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6061-S6063]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 1997--CONFERENCE 
                                 REPORT

  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may need off 
of our 5 hours. I believe it is the first time charged to us. We are 
now proceeding as I understand it with debate on the conference report 
on the budget.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, we are on the final leg of this Republican 
budget's journey, and it is a fruitless one. It does not lead our 
Nation to any new horizons. It blazes no new paths. It offers no 
compromise to break the budget deadlock. This Republican budget makes a 
beeline, it pains me to say, to another dead end.
  Dead ends are becoming an all-too-familiar haunt for my Republican 
colleagues if they want to move ahead to something that is workable. 
Thanks to their intransigence and their extremist budget, that is where 
we spent most of last year. And it looks as though we will waste 
another session of Congress trying to back out of yet another dead end.
  The majority has held the Senate hostage for almost 2 years with 
basically the same budget. Perhaps they are hoping that the Stockholm 
syndrome will set in and Democrats will start identifying with their 
captors. They are wrong. Our will and our vision are strong.
  The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee did his best to repair 
the damage from last year's budget debacle. I compliment him for the 
fine job he did. In the hopes of attracting some unsuspecting buyers, 
the 1997 Republican budget has been spruced up in places. But if this 
budget were a house, it would still be condemned as unfit. It is still 
out of touch with mainstream America and I suggest that it should be 
rejected.
  All of the efforts of the Republican majority to portray their budget 
as a moderate one are in vain. The Republican majority have done a 
superb job to airbrush their budget, but the American people can see 
the real thing--warts and all.
  It retains the same unflattering profile as its predecessor: 
unnecessary reductions in Medicare and Medicaid

[[Page S6062]]

paying for tax breaks for the wealthy. This is in fact the Newt 
Gingrich Budget.
  The agenda has included a $50-billion-plus rehash of star wars that 
not even the Pentagon wants. And we have frittered away precious time 
reconsidering the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I have 
consistently voted for the balanced budget amendment, but could not 
cast my vote for it this time because the Republicans fouled the fiscal 
nest with senseless and in my opinion, irresponsible tax cuts if we are 
going to balance the budget fairly.
  I am baffled by the inconsistency. It is enough to give a prudent man 
pause. One moment the Republicans bring back to the floor the balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution, the next he resurrects 
discredited supply-side economics with tax breaks that could turn into 
the hundreds of billions of dollars.
  Mr. President, all of this is a great concern to this Senator who has 
been trying to be bipartisan in my approach to the concerns that all of 
us have.
  I had hoped that we could have used the good will engendered by the 
majority leader's departure to pass something meaningful for the 
American people. I ask with all sincerity, ``What has happened to the 
priorities that matter most to American families?'' What happened to 
the minimum wage? What happened to the modest health insurance reform 
package that passed the Senate 100 to zero? What happened to welfare 
reform? And the big question, we should be asking today, what happened 
to a balanced budget that all Americans could support?
  One bill after another has been shackled to failed Republican dogma.
  This rehashed budget is a prime example. It is part and parcel of the 
Republican strategy of no-work and all-political-play. Like ancient 
Gaul, the Republicans divided their budget reconciliation bill into 
three parts. They wanted to ram through--I emphasize ram through--their 
failed and stale political agenda and confront the President at every 
turn of this crooked legislative road. Worst of all, two of these baby 
reconciliation bills will be devoted largely to cutting taxes--an act 
that will worsen the deficit without any sense of being responsible or 
reasonable.
  We are already seeing the House voodoo work its way in this 
conference report. At least the Senate language required that all the 
entitlement spending reductions be enacted into law before--I emphasize 
before--we considered the tax breaks. The House, not surpisingly, 
shamelessly tossed that requirement out the window and the Senate 
concurred in conference. What a fiscal sham all of this is.
  The first reconciliation bill contains Medicaid, welfare, and tax 
breaks. Yes. Mr. President and tax breaks. So much for performing 
deficit reduction before doling out the tax breaks. So much for fiscal 
conservatism. The first reconciliation bill will reduce the deficit by 
just $2 billion, if it reduces the deficit at all. This is as plain as 
the light of day. The majority now want to eliminate the Medicaid 
guarantee of meaningful health care benefits for 18 million children, 6 
million disabled Americans, millions of nursing home residents, 36 
million people in all, to fund their tax breaks.
  The conferees assume a net tax cut of $122 billion, yet Chairman 
Kasich maintains that the cuts will be as large as $180 billion. You 
can look but you will not find a single specific mention of closing tax 
loopholes or of ending corporate tax giveaways. The same budget that 
eagerly reduces funding for our Medicare and Medicaid Programs cannot 
find the courage to call upon the special interests to assume any of 
the burden of balancing the budget. By contrast, President Clinton has 
proposed that $40 billion be raised from corporate reform and loophole-
closers, money that keeps the President's tax cut within reason. This 
Senator would prefer no tax cut at all until we truly balance the 
budget.

  Experience also shows that once the tax-break game begins, the 
bidding keeps increasing with no thought to the consequences. Chairman 
Domenici says that the Finance Committee can use tax increases to 
offset additional tax breaks, and he is well aware that $35 billion is 
readily available simply by extending three excise taxes. But that 
won't be enough to satisfy their tax cut appetite and I predict that, 
like last year, the Republicans will soon be proposing to raid pension 
funds for working families to pay for the tax breaks that primarily 
benefit those earning above $100,000 a year. Fiscal insanity is 
galloping through this Chamber, and we do not have enough votes, 
unfortunately, to rein it in.
  One thing that has not changed in the conference report are the deep 
reductions in Medicare and Medicaid. The Republican budget would reduce 
Medicare spending growth per-beneficiary far below projected private-
sector growth rates. It would diminish quality and access to health 
care for millions of middle-class Americans. Doctors and hospitals will 
be able to charge seniors for the entire balance of the charges above 
the Medicare payment. The Republican majority may assert that premiums 
are not going up, but they cannot make the same claim about seniors' 
out-of-pocket expenses, and that is where, primarily, the seniors are 
going to be hit.
  The $123 billion reduction of Medicare hospital insurance spending 
will devastate rural and some urban hospitals as well. The Republicans 
assert that it is necessary to preserve the solvency of the trust fund 
through 2006. That is bending the truth to fit their agenda. Funny, is 
it not, if that is humor, that the net tax breaks--at $122 billion--are 
almost exactly equal to the cuts in Medicare part A--at $123 billion?
  President Clinton's budget proposal extends the life of the trust 
fund without such deep reductions. The Republican-appointed CBO 
Director has certified that the administration's proposals would extend 
the life of the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund until 2005.
  And if the recent alarm over the date of insolvency tells us 
anything, it is not that we should reduce Medicare more to pay for tax 
breaks for the wealthy. That is truly Medi-Scare. The trustees' report 
is a call for the majority to come back to the bargaining table to work 
with the President on an acceptable compromise plan that is within 
reach with just a little effort.
  And what about Medicaid? Instead of attempting to reform Medicaid in 
a manner that would be acceptable to mainstream America, the Republican 
majority put a hard edge to their proposal.
  I believe you would take a whole nation by surprise if you told them 
that Republican Medicaid reform might mean that middle-class, working 
American families might have to pay thousands of dollars out of their 
own pockets for nursing home care for a loved one. Or that millions of 
low-income children might have their health care jeopardized.

  In other words, reform means conform to their way of thinking, even 
if it means taking out a second mortgage on your home to pay for 
nursing home care for a sick or elderly parent. With a $72 billion 
reduction in Medicaid from projected spending, combined with a block 
grant approach, that may well be the scenario.
  I would like to conclude my remarks with an observation on this and 
the previous Republican budgets. I am reminded of an old print I once 
saw. It showed a man on a horse-drawn sleigh being chased by a pack of 
wolves. With the horses galloping as fast as they can, the driver is 
tossing out everything that is in the sleigh. If he does not lighten 
the load, the wolves will catch him. A pack of hungry wolves focuses 
the mind wonderfully on what is truly important. So should this debate 
on balancing the budget.
  The problem with Republican budget after Republican budget is that 
they will not give up on what is not important. What is important to 
the American people--and they have said it time after time, is 
balancing the budget and balancing it fairly. They would far rather 
jettison the tax breaks but maintain a first-rate health care system, 
and balance the budget than run the risk of deficits in the years 
ahead, eating into the future of their children.
  But my Republican colleagues cling to the tax breaks--the tax breaks 
that fuel the reductions in Medicare and Medicaid and divide our great 
Nation. That is why they and this budget will ultimately fail. And that 
is not only a tragedy for the departing majority leader but for the 
American people as well.

[[Page S6063]]

  It is sad to have to conclude on this note, but this is clearly a 
failed budget. Once it passes, as it will, we will be starting over 
again on what we went through last year--meeting after meeting, crisis 
after crisis, and not a workable budget that can be supported by the 
President, by the minority in both the House and the Senate, and 
certainly not by the American people. When, oh, when, will they learn?
  Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I wonder, since nobody else is seeking recognition, if 
I might ask the Senate if they would mind my yielding up to 5 minutes 
to Senator Abraham for comments on Senator Dole, to be taken off my 
time.
  Mr. EXON. We have no objection.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I so request and so yield.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Michigan is recognized.

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