[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 92 (Thursday, June 20, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S6582]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF ALICE RIVLIN

  Mr. President, when Alice Rivlin came by my office for a courtesy 
call prior to her confirmation hearing in the Banking Committee, I told 
her I would support her confirmation. When she appeared before the 
Banking Committee, I voted in favor of her confirmation.
  I am in the habit of keeping my commitments. It is with great 
personal sadness, then, that I take the floor to announce that I will, 
in the coming vote, cast a vote against Alice Rivlin's confirmation. I 
want to take this time to explain why I have changed positions.
  It is, in no way, an attack on Alice Rivlin personally, and, frankly, 
it is not even an attack on the response that she gave to Senator Bond 
in his role as subcommittee chairman on the Appropriations Committee. I 
know he was outraged by the response he received. I have served in the 
executive branch, and I know that Alice Rivlin was not a free agent in 
terms of the kind of response she gave. She was under orders from the 
White House, and she had no choice but to follow those orders or 
resign. She chose to follow the orders.
  She sent a letter that was completely unacceptable to Chairman Bond 
and, frankly, completely unacceptable to me. I am a member of Senator 
Bond's subcommittee, and I was there when he asked the questions of the 
Administrator of the Veterans Administration: ``How are you going to 
administer your program when, according to the President's budget, in 
the outyears there is not going to be any money?'' He received the 
answer: ``I have been assured by the White House that the money will be 
there, the budget to the contrary notwithstanding.'' Senator Bond 
repeated the same question to the Administrator of NASA: ``How are you 
going to manage the program when you get to the outyears and there is 
not any money?'' He got the same answer: ``I have been assured by the 
White House that the money will be there.'' Senator Bond asked the 
question of the Administrator of the EPA: ``How are you going to fund 
your program when you get to the outyears and there is no money?'' She 
said: ``I have been assured by the White House that the money will be 
there.''

  It is very clear that this White House is playing the oldest of 
Washington's shell game, which is to give you a long-term balanced 
budget statement and load all of the savings in the years that will 
come to pass after you are safely out of office, with the full 
knowledge that Congress will never, ever act in the way that you are 
projecting they will act. But you can get safely reelected and point 
back and say, ``Congress did not do what we told them.''
  But it is even more blatant to put that kind of a budget before the 
Congress and then, at the same time, explicitly tell the managers of 
the programs: ``Manage your programs as if those cuts will never 
happen, because we know they will never happen.''
  That is outrageous, Mr. President. It deserves some kind of public 
protest. It is sufficiently outrageous that I will register that 
protest in a way I have never registered a protest before. I will 
publicly break my word, publicly go back on a commitment. I committed 
to Alice Rivlin that I would vote for her when she called on me. I 
voted for her within the committee. It pains me deeply to now break 
that commitment and say that I intend to vote against her, and I will 
vote against her with the firm understanding that this has little to do 
with Alice Rivlin and a great deal to do with the Clinton White House. 
It has little to do with what she did when she was following orders to 
extend that kind of a response to Chairman Bond, and it has everything 
to do with the administration that gave her those orders and said: 
Pretend, dissemble, camouflage, confuse, but do not tell the Congress 
that which is blatantly obvious to everybody else, which is that this 
administration does not intend to keep its word on the President's 
budget.
  So, Mr. President, perhaps it is a bit of rationalization on my part, 
but if the President will not keep his word on his budget and has sent 
the word directly to his administrators that they shall not keep their 
word, I think I am justified in breaking my word to Mrs. Rivlin and 
casting this protest vote, which I will do this afternoon.
  I yield the remainder of my time.

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